A blog by Tom Sheepandgoats (aka Tom Harley)
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Snake Handling in Worship….You Can’t be too Careful
Some things you don’t forget. Like that time I was doing magazine work with Tom Pearlsenswine. He was new then, and deadly serious. This was back when the magazines had no pictures on the cover – back when there was only a list of the articles within, like Craigslist. We were working with the issue about Snake Handling in Worship – that article had top…
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Pinks, Purples, Greens, Blues and Cold
I knew summer was close upon us when the Lilac Festival kicked off last weekend. That’s the only way I knew. The weather sure gave no clue. I've seen R-rated weather before, but this was obscene. Joan Osborn performed Sunday and, just like when Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt, she became a pillar of ice. I mean, she must have. When guitar strings…
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The Military-Industrial Complex and Jehovah’s Witnesses
During the Vietnam war, America’s younger generation broke from the older, and broke decisively. Student protesters besieged the White House, chanting “Hey Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” President Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, fared no better, since his name suggested the clever, if obscene, “Dick Nixon before he dicks you.” Mohammed Ali was drafted into the military and refused to go, famously…
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Enemies
As if it happened yesterday, this gem appears on a recent Australian jurisprudence questionnaire: "Some Jehovah’s Witnesses approach people in a predominantly Roman Catholic neighbourhood and play a CD, entitled ‘Enemies’, to them. The CD describes all organized religions as ‘instruments of Satan’ and then viciously attacks Catholicism in particular. Do you think that the law ought to prohibit conduct of this kind? Discuss with reference…
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Floods in Our Enlightened Age
Let's face it, Noah and the flood and the ark and the animals boarding two by two is hard for people to swallow. So, sure enough, after I posted I Don't do Floods this email landed on my desk: I truly wish I understood the mind that can accept, on faith and believe them to be factual events, such tales as a World-Wide flood not…
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1874, 1914, 1975, and ….um….1925, and what’s this about 1994?
Tobias from the other side of the globe penned a long and thoughtful post on religion. I commented about something or other, and he responded with: Personally, I don't believe the Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm more inclined toward the Protestant (maybe Presbyterian) view, but that's just my belief. Russell did make several mistakes, after all, declaring 1874 as the Second Coming of Christ and World War I in…
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The League of Nations and Jehovah’s Witnesses
After the first World War, weary nations hoped world war would never ever happen again, though it did 20 years later. They proposed a League of Nations - an international forum - that would hash out problems before they reached the boilover point. They even included Germany. Alas, the same Treaty of Versailles that proposed the League also decreed that Germany pay the full cost of…
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I Don’t Do Floods
Every so often someone will challenge me to “prove” the flood with science. But I don’t do floods. The cost/benefit doesn’t work out. I mean, if you’re going to debate something in Genesis, do creation. There are incentives to demonstrating creation; it is a truth that has consequences. For example, Paul, writing to the Corinthians, tells how the last Adam undoes the damage caused by the first…
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The Atheist Hall of Fame
My heart sunk right into my toes when I read that Randy Newman was an atheist, just after I posted that he was not. But I see now for sure that he is, because he is listed on the Michael Nugent Famous Atheist Site. There's a lot of famous people there. For example, from the Nugent site (with my comments in brackets): Douglas Adams (1954-2001)…
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Rationalism, the Third World, and Bible Principles
At first it appeared the countries suffering the most would be the "guilty" countries – the ones whose banks invented the super leveraged credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations – the ones whose governments and citizens were head over heals in debt – the ones whose people had replaced the Bible with Consumer Reports. "Responsible" countries, those operating a surplus, whose citizens were frugal, such as…