Tag Archives: cults

America’s Largest Cult: 64% of Evangelicals Hold to the Young Earth Creationist Belief That “God created humans pretty much in their present form at one time in the last 10,000 years or so.”

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

Physicist Karl Giberson, a former evangelical who now identifies as a mainline Protestant, has written an admirably clear-headed essay for The Daily Beast on contemporary evangelicalism’s fraught relationship with the theory of evolution. Here he is summarizing scientific illiteracy in … Continue reading →

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Awesome

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

This comes via The Huffington Post (in case you missed it): Employees at a Motor Vehicle Commission office in New Jersey called the police on Feb. 2, when a man claiming to be a “Pastafarian” — a follower of a … Continue reading →

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North Korea Mass Cult Watch: Weeping and Bowing Before the Golden Jackass

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Below, North Koreans react to news of Kim Jong-il’s death. My first thought on seeing this was the Christian notion of Judgment Day (with Jesus, not Kim Jong-il, inhabiting the Big Brother space). Every knee shall bow and every tongue … Continue reading →

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Harold Camping’s Apocalypse Fail Watch: To Be Rapture Ready, Adrienne Martinez Gave up on Medical School!

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Concerning radio evangelist Harold Camping’s apocalypse prediction fiasco, the Christian Post this afternoon reports on a specimen of the human wreckage. Here’s what the past year has been like for the Martinez family (after Adrienne and Joel came under the spell of the May 21, 2011 rapture … Continue reading →

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Max Keiser on the “Blind Cult of America”

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Max Keiser’s money program is uneven in quality and alarmist catnip for gold bugs, but this recent episode is mildly entertaining (though I don’t like his anti-intellectual populist posturing against Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman). Max Keiser presents himself as a truth-teller bravely … Continue reading →

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“Jews Look Like Monkeys and Pigs”: Medieval Cultism and Antisemitism in British Islamic Schools

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Out of 30,000 schools in Great Britain, 160 are Muslim faith schools. Below is a deeply troubling BBC report on what some of these schools are teaching: So this is what happens when you set out to live a segregated and parallel … Continue reading →

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Henry James’ “The Last of the Valerii”: Breaking the Spell of Religion?

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Henry James has an intriguing, but not widely known, tale of a person coming under the spell of a religious mania. James titled it: The Last of the Valerii The short story is set in Rome, and the narrator is the godfather of an … Continue reading →

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Apocalypse Now?: North Korea, a nuclear power, threatens full-scale war with South Korea

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

And this chilling sentence appeared in the New York Times story on the crisis: The motivations, health and even state of mind of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, remained cloaked in mystery. Got it? We don’t know whether, exactly, Kim … Continue reading →

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David Frum’s Wife on the American Conservative Movement: “I’ve never seen such a hostile environment towards free thought and debate”

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Danielle Crittenden, the wife of conservative David Frum, sees a serious narrowing of the intellectual range of opinion that you can safely express within contemporary American conservatism (and still remain in the fold):   We have both been part of the … Continue reading →

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Al Franken, the comic book?

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

According to the Washington Post, Minnesota Senator Al Franken has a liberal profiles-in-courage  comic book coming out about him in May: The Al Franken edition of the “Political Power” comic book series is due out in May. (“There is a … Continue reading →

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Dear Leader Megalomania

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

I like these two:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        . And this one:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   . More from MightyGodKing (MGK) here. And still more Dear Leader totalitarianism and megalomania (but of the Christian fundamentalist variety) here.

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News from the Back of the Atheist Bus: Richard Dawkins and Josh Timonen Put Their Fellow Atheists and Agnostics in Their Proper Place

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

Disgruntled Peter Harrison, a (former) forum moderator at RichardDawkins.net, dishes on a behind the scenes controversy between the site’s support volunteers and Josh Timonen, the site’s manager. Peter Harrison now wants people to join him at a different (and presumably more open) … Continue reading →

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Is the Tea Party Movement a Cult? The Case of Idaho Resident, Pam Stout

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

The New York Times recently did a profile of the Tea Party movement, and after reading the article I came away with the sense that what we’re seeing is more akin to a religious cult than a political movement. Here, … Continue reading →

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Laura Miller Reviews Rebecca Goldstein’s anti-Harold Bloom Novel “36 Arguments for the Existence of God”

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

In Rebecca Goldstein’s recently released novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Yale’s famous literary behemoth, Harold Bloom, apparently takes some bruising hits. Here’s Laura Miller on this aspect of the novel: Obsessed with “genius” (and his own supreme authority in the … Continue reading →

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Poet Kate Gale Reflecting on Philip Garrido

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

Just when I think I’m getting warm and fuzzy towards religion, I encounter testimony like this. Poet Kate Gale grew up in a cult, and the whole creepy Philip Garrido incident gave her a bit of deja vu : It … Continue reading →

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Atheism is Dead?

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

There will always be atheists in the world—so I’m not talking about a demographic trend. I don’t know where atheism is heading with the masses. For all I know, it may be growing faster than any other idea in the world. Go team! … Continue reading →

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Blogging UFOs: Schisms! And My Discovery of Jeremy Vaeni!

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

In my ongoing quest, the past few weeks, to discover what I think of UFOs and the UFO-believing community, I purchased a copy of UFO Magazine  (Issue #150) at my local Barnes & Noble and found something that surprised me. There … Continue reading →

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Thinking about UFOs

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

Do you think that there is any possibility that those who claim to have seen UFOs are actually encountering, well, you know, actual alien spacecraft that have come from another solar system? I know that sounds absolutely crazy to even … Continue reading →

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Contemporary “Confidence Atheism” and the Jaw-Jutting Fundamentalist Style

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

I think, as a practical matter, if the purpose of atheism is to win debates with, or score points against, theists, then it makes sense to resist phrases like “fundamentalist atheist.” But as an existential concern, this kind of semantic … Continue reading →

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You Don’t Need to Follow Me. You Don’t Need to Follow Anybody! You’re All Individuals. Yes, We’re All Individuals!

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

Brian tries to get his followers to think for themselves:

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