Showing posts with label fundamentalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fundamentalists. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Cowans sack "wizard"

Teacher Jim Piculas does a magic trick where a toothpick disappears and then reappears.

Piculas recently did the 30-second trick in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes.

Piculas said he then got a call from the supervisor of teachers, saying he'd been accused of wizardry.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue, you can't take any more assignments, you need to come in right away,'" he said.

Piculas said he did not know of any other accusations that would have led to the action.

The teacher said he is concerned that the incident may prevent him from getting future jobs.
SOURCES
Oh for goodness sake - when I was a teacher, I outed myself as a Wiccan, let students play on computers when they shouldn't, and definitely deviated from lesson plans (especially the time when I tried to get the kids interested in CAD by suggesting they design a weapon of mass destruction). It's obviously because Florida is the state where they want to stop teaching evolution and teach intelligent design instead, and they're so fundamentalist they even think conjuring is a snare of the devil. Er, hello, Land o' Lakes, this is the 21st century, not the 17th.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Save Fawza Falih

HALT EXECUTION OF SAUDI WOMAN FOR "WITCHCRAFT" Petition
We are citizens of many countries appealing to you on behalf of Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali who has been sentenced to death by beheading for the alleged crimes of “witchcraft, recourse to jinn, and slaughter” of animals. The conviction of Fawza Falih for “witchcraft” is a travesty of justice.
BBC: Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.
This is like some medieval notion of justice, not what you would expect to be happening in the 21st century. I mean, I know Saudi Arabia is basically a medieval state, but I didn't even know they had the death penalty for witchcraft until I saw this. Please sign the petition. I am glad to see that people from lots of different faiths have signed the petition.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Save Sayed Kambakhsh

Sentenced to death for reading about women's rights
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
That is terrible. We need to support Sayed Kambaksh - it is unthinkable that he should be executed merely for reading something. Please sign the Independent petition for his release.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

just plain thick

People like this should not be allowed to spout their nonsense in the public domain:
The new co-host of "The View," Sherri Shepherd, insisted Tuesday that Christianity was older than ancient Greece, and even Judaism.
Even Whoopi Goldberg didn't seem too sure whether there were any Christians around at the time of Epicurus (341-270 BCE), even though she was pretty sure there weren't. Hmm, you would have thought the popular usage "BC" would have been a big clue...

I would imagine that even creationists, who are total numbskulls, know that Judaism predated Christianity, because the Bible makes it clear that Judaism came first (unless the reader is severely intellectually challenged). It also mentions the other religions that were around at the time when Christianity started, and which fairly obviously predate it (e.g. in the Book of Acts when the silversmiths of Ephesus raise a clamour against Paul, saying "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians").

You would have thought that before somebody went on TV to talk about Epicurus (or any other topic), they would be required to get their facts straight. Not only does this woman think that there have always been Christians (what, even in prehistory?) but she also said earlier this year that she didn't know if the world was flat or round.

This would be funny if it wasn't deeply, deeply tragic that this kind of nudnik is actually allowed on TV, or indeed, allowed out on their own without supervision.

[Thanks to Caroline Tully for sending me this.]

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

(p)arson

"Christian" arsonist burns down church for not adhering to Bible teachings

This is scary - if there are "Christians" (however disturbed) prepared to burn down other Christians' buildings for not adhering to the teachings of the Bible, then it's not long before they get onto book-burning, shortly followed by people... oh, somehow I recognise a pattern here....

On the other hand, I am awed at the forgiveness offered by the people whose church got burnt down - well it's obvious which ones are the real Christians.

Let's hope this sort of thing doesn't catch on, but maybe the Christians will sit up and take notice of the scary fundies, now that the fundies are attacking the moderates....

(Spotted by Alfreda.)