"I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus."



How anyone could intone this passage and end with the word "Jesus" and not die from hypocrisy, I have no idea.

Also, read Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation.

Hinduism, eh?



Christianity, eh?

I've wrestled with writing this post for a while now, and in fact, this is more of a teaser post rather than anything substantial, as I'm still thinking about a lot of things. It was only a couple years ago, after all, that I realized my long-held agnosticism had come around to a stance of full-blown atheism. My hesitation in writing about all this comes from the fact that I know that I have readers who are decent, rational Christians, and I don't mean to offend them in what I have to say. Furthermore, I've never wanted to fight fire with fire when reacting to religious fundamentalism. But I've got to get this powder keg off my back, so here goes...

( Light the fuse! )

The Church of England will make an official apology to naturalist Charles Darwin for criticising his famous theory of evolution

Coming 126 years after his death, the church's apology will focus on how wrong it was for senior bishops in the past to misunderstand and attack Darwin's theory about man being descended from apes.

"Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth (in 1809), the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,'' the article says, according to extracts printed by The Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Source.

Now how about an apology to us Americans who somehow ended up with all of those "defenders"?

Oh, speaking of which...