Actually, today is a quasi-holiday, No Beard Day, not to mention my and Barry’s birthday on the Gregorian calendar. The title of today’s post is in commemoration of a new milestone on the Divine Misconceptions project. On Tuesday, I criticized the deceptively named “Jews for Jesus” over its deceptive advertising. Well, yesterday, a “Jew for Jesus” by the name of Moshe posted a comment criticizing my criticism. (Not particularly well, but criticize he did. I had no trouble driving him into the pavement.) I welcome all people and groups I criticize in my “divine misconception of the day” feature to criticize my criticism of them and even encourage their friends and associate to criticize my criticism, too. The goal of having a “divine misconception of the day” feature is to get text written which can be later incorporated into my book in progress, Divine Misconceptions: An Orange Catholic Necronomicon of Religious Fallacies and Misinformation, and criticism has the potential to uncover errors in my arguments so that they can be fixed or abandoned earlier rather than later. So, please, if you believe I am wrong on anything, leave a comment saying so and why.
And if you are wondering about the title of today’s post, it is of the same sort Jews for Jesus uses that I complained about on Tuesday. It is a deceptive truth, designed to sound like Jews for Jesus have turned traitor to Jewish-rite Christianity. Jews for Jesus really do ask “Did Jesus even exist?”—in their Questions & Answers section, where they proceed to give evidence (of whatever quality) that Jesus really did exist.
I would also like to honor the addition of a link to Jews for Judaism, the sworn nemesis of Jews for Jesus, to my sidebars.
Divine misconception of the day: “Parents use religion to avoid vaccines”. This article is not about poor-quality religious belief, but rather its equally bad mirror image, poor-quality nonreligious belief. Atheism and agnosticism, as ideologies, are supposed to be rational. Vaccination paranoia, in contrast, is a purely irrational fear. I have read many papers on the alleged connection between MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism, and all had the same conclusion: there is no association, period. One never, ever hears of any serious research finding vaccines causing anything bad other than allergic reactions. Considering the dangers of the diseases people are at very serious risk of getting if they are not vaccinated, the only valid reason to not vaccinate children is if they are allergic to eggs. That parents with no religious belief would not vaccinate their children is a betrayal of everything atheism and agnosticism are about. Worse yet is the fact that they lie, claiming to believe when they most certainly do not, in order to sidestep vaccination; atheism and agnosticism are supposed to be honest ideologies. Shame on these parents!
Today’s news and commentary:
- “The Big Chill (1978)”
- “HRC Behind The Scenes”
- “Bill would let ID theft victims seek restitution”
- “Giant pillow fight mocks regional rivalry”
- “Spam reaches all-time high of 95% of all email”
- “Last year there were two trillion stalks of corn in Iowa, and most of it went to corn syrup”
- “Martian Volcanoes May Not be Extinct”
Aaron
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