Watch out for those "duendes"

What could those critters be?

Judge Floro Florentino is not too pleased with his three spiritual guides being referred to as dwarves or duende, as superstitious Filipinos call these elf-like beings. His brother [Robert], who first saw them, called them duende, a Spanish word of ambiguous definition.

To Filipinos, they are something like tiny magical goblins who live in forested areas. There are, according to folklore, two types: black, denoting evil which can harm, and red, who are good and can heal.

Please don't laugh. I assure you we're all going to see magical goblins including Floro's three ethereal friends Luis, Armand and Angel very soon. Mark your calendars, folks. October 31 is the red letter day.

Coming very soon

Sometime ago the best-stocked bookstore in town told me Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion would be arriving in September. Well, I'm still waiting. Fortunately, the BBC is giving a sneak preview.

I'm sure Christians are just dying to kiss the face of Jesus

This is Angus



And this is his heinie. Lookie who's appeared.



Indeed the ways of God are mysterious.

(via Unscrewing the Inscrutable)

The 3rd Testament law: Thou shalt cherry-pick from the Old and New as you please

In a discussion board, a Filipino bible thumper was instructing a fellow Christian. The lesson for the day: men ought to wear men's clothing and women should stick to women's clothing. He zeroed in on the divine ordinance prohibiting women from wearing pants, since pants are--obviously--a male thing. According to this Xian, his fashionista deity had already set the eternal apparel trend and we alter/trangress it only at our peril:

A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor should a man dress up in women’s clothing, for all who do this are an offense to the Lord your God. (Deut. 22:5)

Donna Karan, Dolce y Gabbana, Versace, ... --you're all going to be cutting nothing but loincloths in hell!

I'm a little curious though as to whether this non-crossdressing Xian is really a devotee and is truly faithful to God's will. For instance a couple of verses down, among the stipulations in the Christian Building Code (eternal edition) is:

If you build a new house, you must construct a guard rail around your roof to avoid bringing culpability to yourself in the event someone should fall from it. (Deut. 22:8)

Does his home comply with this provision? Well, I've been looking around the metro taking note of any railings around roofing shingles and corrugated galvanized iron sheets that crown people's abodes. I must say I have yet to see this safety regulation complied with in--as I hear--a land where over 90% are Christian woowoos. Tsk, tsk. I'm really disappointed how His children are blatantly disregarding this very explicit instruction of His.

But what about other commandments of this deity, as in the following? Does he obey and enforce them?

If it should come to your attention in one of your cities that the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live that some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods whom you have not known before,” you must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is true and certain that this abomination is being done among you, you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; put under the divine curse everyone in it, even the livestock, by the sword. You must collect all of its spoil into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its spoil as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever—it must never be rebuilt again. (Deut. 13:12-16)

If a person has a stubborn, rebellious son who pays no attention to his father or mother, and they discipline him to no avail, his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city. They must declare to the elders of his city, “Our son is stubborn and rebellious and pays no heed to what we say—he is a glutton and drunkard.” Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. (Deut. 21:18-21)

Or say, His culinary laws? Is this Xian keeping himself gustatorily pure in the eyes of his god?

You must not eat any forbidden thing (Deut. 14:3)

The pig, though it has parted hooves, does not chew the cud and is therefore unclean to you. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. (Deut. 14:8)

These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fin and scale you may eat, but whatever does not have fin and scale you may not eat; it is unclean to you. (Deut. 14:10)

I don't know about the Xian above, but I'd like to poll the audience. Christians who have never tasted and promise never to dig into roast pig, adobong baboy (pork in soy sauce), dinuguan (pig's blood stew), ham, bacon, sausage, chorizo, chicharon (cracklings), crabs, shrimps, prawns, clams, mussels, oysters, lobsters, scallops, abalones, crayfish, ... please raise your hands. Don't be shy now. No false humility, ok?

Hmmm, I don't see any hands going up. Guess there aren't Christians in this crowd. You must all be Hindus then. Namaste, cow worshippers! Shall we all skip on over to McDonald's for burgers? My treat.

Tell me, How will your brain be reconstituted once it's been devoured by worms and bacteria?

When I swat a housefly dead, does it go to a heaven for flies? And do I, as punishment, get damned to some Almighty Fly's hell to be tormented for eternity by a swarm of giant impish bugs with menacing compound eyes, spiny legs, and razor sharp mandibles? Yikes! Talk about fear factor!

Why is it that out of the millions of species on Earth (and in the universe) only one gets to live again after it dies (whatever that means)? And why is it that it just happens to be the species that's making the afterlife claim? Fishy, ain't it? And how in the universe do decomposed corpses, skeletons, and fossils even, get regenerated into the very same organism--inclusive of memory and personality?

Richard Dawkins says, "Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end." Indeed, how can any rational adult who has time and again seen dead cats, dogs, birds, fishes, cows, pigs, dead relatives, and has read something about how the brain is the seat of memory and personality, and has in high school studied the processes of scavenging and bacterial decomposition, sanely harbor the idea that dead Homo sapiens can and will somehow come back to life. Madness!

Many thank the high heavens they are in their right minds. But a survey of the people around the world and their beliefs reveals that most humans cherish beliefs that are patently crazy and absurd. Apparently, we live in a world where the majority are possessed by their delusions. All too many naively invest their hearts and minds in beliefs that they like and wish to be true, but for which they have no shred of evidence. I guess such is the status quo of the evolution of human gray matter.

An old Chinese proverb

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a religion and he'll starve to death praying for a fish.

--Judith Bandsma

And so too he'll pray relentlessly for cures to every disease. Funny though. It isn't until hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers rack their brains and work their butts off that surefire, readily available cures start arriving.

Funny too that this man brings his dengue/leukemia/appendicitis/gastroenteritis/ ... -stricken daughter to the ER and then prays. A man of little faith in the power of prayer and in his omnipotent deity indeed!

Perks of being the best in fighting imaginary fiends

78-year old Fr. Gabriele Amorth is the Vatican's chief exorcist.

[H]e is considered the world's leading expert on problems concerning Satan and his evil activity against mankind. He is the 'doctor' par excellence for illnesses caused by evil, the 'surgeon' who knows how to root them out, fight and prevent them.

Proudly wearing it as a badge on his sleeve Amorth brags of having performed some 70,000 exorcisms in his lifetime. If we assume he started emancipating hapless souls from possession at the age of 18, it comes out he's been averaging 3 exorcisms a day every single day including Sundays for the past 60 years! This guy certainly wins hands down, outclassing Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Spiderman, and all the DC Comics superheroes combined.

James Randi blurts:

I can hardly believe that I, a grown man, will sit here at my keyboard seriously discussing with other grownups the notion of demons inhabiting a human body, demons that can be banished by saying special words and sprinkling “holy” water… I have to look at the calendar on the wall and move back into the 21st century! And there is a vast, wealthy, flourishing organization headquartered in Rome, Italy, that supports this farce…?

So tell me again, Why is it that relgionists must check their brains at the church door?

End of the world? Very soon!

A couple of months ago a religious sect predicted that mushroom clouds would be sprouting the world over no later than a day after 9-11. So you thought now that Sept 12 has come and gone the House of Yahweh and its band of deluded devotees would wake up to reality. Fat chance! Never underestimate the tenacity of delusions, particularly of the religious. As Randi would say woowoos are unsinkable rubber ducks.

Unable to deny that there have been no new Hiroshimas and Nagasakis, the House of Yahweh now claims the end of the world is just around the bend, or more precisely, within 100 days. Guess, we'll have to forget about Christmas shopping (oh how I wish!). This winter is going to be the mother of all winters; a very cold and dark nuclear winter that is.

"We previously thought it (the world) would end on the night of September 12th but it failed to happen. We have given it the next 100 days. Within that period, he says, we're foreseeing powerful nuclear weapons which will strike the world and bring it to an end," Mosheh Sang, the sect leader in Njoro said.

The billion excuses that woowoos resort to after cognitive dissonance hits them are sooooo lame and soporific. Wonder what rationalization the House of Yahweh will cook up when we start welcoming 2007.

Bet this cranky, fussy deity always has a bad hair day

I wouldn't have believed it had it not been pointed out by a Christian in all seriousness. Looks like Mr. Incompetent Designer not only designs earthquakes, tsunamis, cancer and hereditary diseases, he's into coiffure as well. According to the bible thumper his master wants females to sport long hair (must be in the in-thing--eternally that is--up there), while he demands males to have theirs trimmed short.

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her for her hair is given her for a covering (1 Cor 11:14-15).

Spelling it out, the toadie said it's a sin to trangress these hair laws. Ok, ladies. You heard your Lord and Master. Bob cut is definitely out. And you can bet your curly locks Sinead O'Connor's already been booked on the train to the infernal concentration camp.

Hey, wait a minute. How about this dude?!




Uh oh. Supposedly spotless, the Son in fact isn't immaculate at all! And I thought teaching by example is the best way of educating humans. All well, hypocrisy does run in his family. Try emulating his dad's killing spree and see where that lands you.

(Since he's already sporting a woman's hairdo why not go all the way and have the Second Person of the Trinity in drag?).

In the end it wasn't a croc that got him

I actually shouldn't be shocked, knowing that the kind of work he's into is probably more life threatening than police work. Putting your life in harm's way isn't an advisable formula for longevity. But still I was in disbelief when I heard on tv that Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin passed away yesterday. Apparently, the barb on the tail of a stingray he was following pierced his heart. I hate to say "appropriately" but he got whacked while filming an episode of "Ocean's Deadliest." He was 44 and his eldest child is only 8.

Hubbard's here

Visited the book fair held at the World Trade, Roxas Blvd last Saturday. Saw a number of wannabuys. But as expected books have become too unaffordable. I did manage to find a bargain--a local reprint of the seventh edition (2004) of Critical Thinking by Moore and Parker, so I didn't leave empty-handed.

What made this year's book fair stand out for me (and the reason for this entry) was the presence of an exhibitor I might've missed had the sales reps not been handing out promotional material. That exhibitor is the Hubbard Dianetics Center of the Philippines.Yep, it's a local branch of the organization by science-fiction writer and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911 - 1986).

As the guy was handing me their newsletter he asked whether I'd like to have a "stress test." I could see one willing male victim seated and wired to a small desktop gizmo no bigger than a portable typewriter. Though I never inquired, I bet that's one of the latest models of Scientology's infamous and ridiculous E-meter--a glorified and insanely overpriced ohmmeter. Pressed for time and not at all in the mood to stress these guys out, I declined the offer to be another gullible guinea pig of the day. Feigning ignorance I asked the other rep whether they were in any way connected with Scientology. She enthusiastically replied they indeed were. She then politely asked why I was inquiring. Trying to find the right word, it took me a couple of seconds before I answered, "Because Scientology's kooky." Her brows shot up and I could see her mouth go, "Oh," but I guess my reply had inadvertently clicked the mute button. How I wish I could just as easily silence all the woowoos and quacks out there. Yeah, in my dreams!

Apparently, the company's main product is Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, available through them or through your neighborhood reap-more-profit-by-selling-as-much-poppycock branches of National Bookstore, Power Books, and Goodwill Bookstore. At PhP395.00 (USD7.80) a pop you'd think it's a bargain, but this 600-page wad of toilet paper's just a little too steep for me. Besides, my tushie's a tad sensitive to newsprint.

In the handout local celebrities Joey Ayala (composer and musician) and Ernie Reyes, Jr. (martial artist and actor) effusively endorse dianetics. Just goes to show being good in a certain craft or discipline and being famous don't translate into being critically minded and smart when it comes to assessing allegedly "scientific" claims. Brings to mind the baking engineer I studied under who believes in evil spirits, in blessings with holy water to rid abodes of such malevolent entities, and in the ludicrous yarn that Proctor and Gamble had a pact with the devil. An expert in technical stuff he was; totally bonkers when it came to mythology and folklore.

According to the Dianetics Center of the Philippines,

Dianetics is not psychology, it is not psychiatry, it is not psychoanalysis. Dianetics counseling does not use hypnotherapy, trance techniques, meditation or positive thinking. Dianetics does not involve drugs, supplements, or fasting. To use Dianetics you don't have to change your diet, your lifestyle or your religion. Dianetics is a science of the mind, based on the natural laws of the mind and employs an ability every person has but rarely uses.

Note that they claim dianetics is a science. But as Robert Carroll rightly points out Dianetics is in fact pseudoscience, because it doesn't offer evidence and is in many ways nontestable.

What Hubbard touts as a science of mind lacks one key element that is expected of a science: empirical testing of claims. The key elements of Hubbard's so-called science don't seem testable, yet he repeatedly claims that he is asserting only scientific facts and data from many experiments. It isn't even clear what such "data" would look like. Most of his data is in the form of anecdotes and speculations....

Testimonials, as those by Ayala, Reyes, et al. are hardly scientific evidence. We can find testimonials from people given sham treatments and placebos or even from people who've taken poisons such as arsenic. On the contrary, the only scientific study of dianetic therapy showed it had no effect upon intellectual functioning, mathematical ability, or personality conflicts.

I wonder whether this company is just trying to sell as many copies of Hubbard's books and materials or whether it has long term plans of establishing the Church of Scientology in this country. Well, we can thank such meatheads as Tom Cruise and John Travolta for keeping this woo alive. Thank singer David Pomeranz as well for promoting it in the Philippines. Most of all, thank the Intelligent Designer for deliberately leaving out critico-scientific thinking as an innate skill in his beloved Homo sapiens.

This priest should've taken swimming lessons

This must be a joke. Then again the religious are famous for being total nutcases. Seriously, how can anyone be so utterly stupid and deluded to believe that he can walk on water?

A PRIEST has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water.

Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle.

But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa.

One eyewitness said: "He told churchgoers he'd had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus.

"He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat.

"He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."

I bet his congregation is mourning ... his lack of faith.

Baggini: Take a rational, critical look at religious claims and stories

Some thoughts by Julian Baggini of the Humanist Philosophers Group.

Much of [religious education] is about presenting a range of myths and belief systems as a kind of metaphysical smorgasbord from which children can choose. But, like vegetarian sausage rolls at a buffet, the provision of alternatives to the dominant faith is largely token and not expected to be taken up by many. What's more, all are expected to eat up.

This way of teaching religion presents faith as a kind of fact of life which does not need to be justified or explained, merely described. You're taught what sacred texts say, but not to question their divine origins. You're taught what people of different faiths do, but it is considered disrespectful to question if they are right to do it.

Believers themselves are often resistant to the idea that religion should be challenged more, but if you do not believe that your most fundamental beliefs can stand up to the relatively superficial kind of rational scrutiny possible in compulsory education, that does not exactly express confidence in their robustness.

The kind of rational scrutiny I want to see brings in more of the history, philosophy and psychology of religion. The history is particularly important, for it is that which makes the human hand behind our myths of the divine abundantly clear. Christians, for instance, should know that there were numerous versions of the life of Christ purporting to be written by the apostles in circulation, and that what we now see as the New Testament didn't take shape until the Council of Rome in 382.

I cannot see how anyone could take a rational, critical look at the Bible and not conclude that even if it was the infallible word of God, so much had been added or subtracted in the translation that we would be fools to take it as such. I have much sympathy with Isaac Asimov, who claimed that: "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

Children should also understand about the psychology of religious belief: how humans have an instinct to see causes and purpose where there is none; and how we have a need to divide the world into in-groups and out-groups. The philosophy of religion should also be taught so they can understand why intuitively plausible ideas such as that the universe must have had a divine first cause or that morality vanishes without God are much weaker than they first appear.

Shermer: The joys of life without God

Learned about this fine Salon.com interview with Michael Shermer from Randi. Excerpts:

Why do we reach so hard for a divine force to explain life?

The natural inclination in all humans is to posit a force, a spirit, outside of us. That tendency toward superstitious magical thinking is just built into our nature. What's more, it doesn't cost anything to have a false positive, to assume there's a force behind the lightning or a spirit in the rock. In the ancestral environment, when we evolved, we might think spinning around three times is going to bring rain. Well, once in a while it works and makes everybody happy. And it doesn't cost much to keep doing it. It doesn't take you out of the gene pool.

You sound so benign. Yet your day job is debunking pseudo sciences like rain dances and astrology. There's no harm, then, in me thinking that because I'm a Libra I just might get what I wish for today?

[Laughs] No, for most people astrology is just light entertainment. But the problem with taking it seriously is it can lead to other irrational beliefs. And presumably in an educated democracy we want to have a certain level of education, as Jefferson says, so we can have a serious national discussion about problems. I mean, people who believe in astrology tend to believe all kinds of goofy things. All the pseudo sciences -- astrology, Tarot cards, psychics, mystic healing -- use the exact same principle. They work because we have a selective memory and a confirmation bias. We look forward to finding evidence for what we already believe and forget the rest. In an hour reading, a psychic will make 200 or 300 statements. If a person walks away with half a dozen things the psychic got right, he's ecstatic. It's like Skinner with the rats. You don't have to reinforce them every time. In fact, they'll press the bar even faster if you give them intermittent reinforcement. It's the same with slot machines. You just have to pay off every once in a while and it will keep us pulling the levers.

Do you think the impulse to believe in God is the same as believing in astrology?

Yes, it's a similar foundation of magical superstitious thinking. And our need to be spiritual takes all forms. Given that traits vary in populations, it's natural that some people will gravitate toward New Age spiritualism and others toward conservative Christianity. Even secularists believe in all kinds of transcendent things, such as "mind." This is the Deepak Chopra school. He says, I don't believe that Christian conservative stuff, but the universe is intelligent, it's alive, it knows we're here. What? You're goofier than the Christians!

...

What's your best answer for why there is no God?

It's not why there is no God, it's why there's not compelling evidence to believe in God. That's a better way to put it. And from my perspective, it's just not there for me. With training in science, I have high standards of evidence. If you said God is real, and you sent your evidence to the journals Science or Nature for publication, you'd be laughed out of the room; you wouldn't get past the first reviewer.

On the other side, the best evidence that there probably isn't a God is that belief in God is so deeply culturally embedded. When you study world religions, it's obvious that, throughout time, all of these different people are making up their own stories about God. If you lived 1,000 years ago, hardly anybody would be a Christian. If you were born in India, you'd likely be a Hindu. What does that tell you? From a Christian perspective, it means we need to get more missionaries over there to tell them the truth! From an anthropological perspective, it's another case. Christians today might say, I don't believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real god.

So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we're all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I'm an atheist on one more god.

Must be pareidolia season

Not at all happy that her son is stealing the limelight, the mother of that Semitic deity makes her appearance as well.

A Chicago woman claims the image of the Virgin Mary has appeared on the stomach of a pet turtle.

Shirley McVane, 81, says it appeared on a sand turtle bought by her grandson, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

Shirley's daughter, Dolly Fordyce, 58, said: "I thought we were going crazy the first time I saw it. I looked at it and said, 'It can't be.' But then I looked again. I mean, you can't deny it."

Mrs McVane added: "She came to a holy house. I think she came to visit us so God knows she's happy and safe."

Dianne Dunagan, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said: "If something like that causes people to think about God and pray, that's a good thing.

"Time usually takes care of these things. If it gets to the point where people are flocking to this thing, the church will call in experts. If people forget about it, it may just fade away."

(via Edifying Spectacle)

More pareidolia by the deluded

That Jesus is popping up in the oddest of things and places. Here are his latest appearances:

1. Inside an oyster found by a couple in Florida waters.



I don't know about you but I say that's Bin Laden. Oh my gosh! It's a pre 9-11 omen!


2. In an MRI of someone's spine



Pretty hefty bun that dude's got there. Complete with the, uh, orifice.... Or maybe that's his front rather than his back. So could it be his you know what?



(via God is for Suckers)

Ahem!

The thing is I'm feeling kind of low right now. The results are consoling my ego ... Good for about 10 minutes.

Very Well-Rounded You have: 70% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 70% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition. (Weirdly, your emotional and scientific intuitions are equally strong.) Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences. Try my other test! The 3 Variable Funny Test It rules.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 59% on Scientific You scored higher than 59% on Interpersonal

Link: The 2-Variable Intuition Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Punishing the yet to be conceived

The following just made me wince in disgust. That wacko (former) judge Floro now claims that he

was ordered by Luis ... to cleanse the Philippine Judiciary and Government of corruption and evil via the flashing of the highest lights, VIOLET and WHITE, thereby, inflicting temporal punishment of sickness, lingering illnesses, accidents, KARMA, CURSE and the SPELL upon those who receive BRIBES and abuse power (upon their loved ones and up to the 7th generation). [emphasis Floro's]

Punishing even the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great ... of the culprits?! In his zeal to ferret out corruption, he too has become corrupt--morally. Using imaginary dwarves as a pretext he yearns to punish the offenders to the very hilt and even beyond what is called for such that he wishes to afflict the innocent, the unborn, and even the yet to be conceived! How awful a failure in ethical thinking. It's so ironic that one who dispenses justice would crave and exact such unjust, inhumane, and tyrannical retribution.

Floro should ask himself whether it is right and just that he, his parents, his children, his grandchildren should be punished for offenses, however grave, that any of his ancestors up to the seventh generation had committed.

This guy is a real goner.

Feeding time

It's those Indian statues sipping milk again. No matter how many times Rationalist International debunks these "miracles" Hindus just keep going gaga over Ganesha drinking milk. Sigh.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians thronged temples across India on Monday in the belief that statues of Hindu gods were drinking milk.

"I put a milk-filled spoon to Ganesha's mouth and he drank it," exclaimed Akhilesh Shukla, a trader in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.

He was among the countless devotees who carried milk in glasses and pitchers to northern Indian temples where Hindus worship Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good fortune and wisdom; Shiva, the destroyer, and Durga, the goddess of strength.

"It is a miracle," said Sudhir Mishra, a priest at a Shiva temple in Lucknow. He said that at least 10 liters of milk had been offered at his temple on Monday.

"Look at the floor it is fairly dry. Where's the milk gone? It should be visible on floor. Can you see that."

But others dismissed the milk-slurping gods as the work of less miraculous forces - surface tension, which pulls the liquid toward the statues, and capillary action, through which the milk is leached into the statues by tiny pores on the surface of the stone.

"Milk disappears the same way water reaches the top of a tree through roots," said A. K. Sharma, a professor at Lucknow University.

...

[In 1995] a group of scientists visited a temple in New Delhi and fed a statue milk tinted with dye. The milk was quickly absorbed by the idol, and soon permeated the stone, leaving the statue coated by a colored, milky film.

(via God is for Suckers)

That evil bible

It's been two millennia. Haven't these friggin Christians discovered and decided how their imaginary deity wants His Unchanging Word to be read and interpreted? There are very real consequences, you know.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."