Category Archives: National media

Salon headlines

The entry below for December 30, 2015 was the last straw, moving me to “out” this information as a post.

For some months, I have made a good faith effort to note every headline my Yahoo! News feed captured from Salon.com that touched on religion.

Salon.com holds itself forth as, in effect, the voice of progressivism.

The headlines themselves display a pronounced bias on the topic of religion. Not all, but almost all, are hostile.

Not skeptical. Not indifferent. Not equanimous.

Hostile.

I am struck that this posture cannot possibly be intellectually honest.

Continue reading Salon headlines

Is This Stone the Clue to Why Jesus Was Killed?

Is This Stone the Clue to Why Jesus Was Killed?

Here is the latest in a flurry of rather silly articles extolling the supposed archaeological significance of the First Century synagogue at Magdala; which just happens to be located wholly within the confines of a privately-owned Christian tourist resort (hint, hint).

Conspiracies occur.  In my past work as a legal secretary, I had direct contact with secret campaigns to promote certain large corporations and political movements.  These included “news” articles and ghostwritten op-ed pieces planted in various major news outlets.

Some years ago, there was a tremendous scare over avian flu, which was portrayed as threatening a real plague over North America.  I came to conclude that the whole thing was a PR ploy to ennoble public impressions of the pharmaceuticals industry.

The present article sets forth a fanciful notion of what the Sanhedrin may have been thinking during Jesus’ trial.

As to many New Testament stories, my position in the past has been, “This specific thing may not have happened, but something like it probably did.”  There are so many problems with and discrepancies among the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial, however, that as a Christian I now doubt he was ever tried by the Sanhedrin at all.

By the time of his arrest, Jesus had become such an irritant to the Jewish leaders that the New Testament easily  portrays them as having wanted him dead.  A conspiracy of the chief priests and Pharisees (John 11:57) to that end would have been singular, as these two parties were otherwise bitter enemies.  The Sanhedrin, however, was without power at the time to condemn anyone to death, for blasphemy or any other reason; so the New Testament portrays “the Jews” as having taken Jesus to Pilate to portray him as an insurrectionist, on which basis Pilate might well put him to death.

My own current belief is that Judas may never have betrayed Jesus into the hands of “the Jews” at all; he may instead have betrayed him directly to Pilate, who I believe had his own, wholly personal, reasons to want Jesus dead.

Related:  The Son of the Blessed

Originally posted 2015-12-14.

 

 

Headlines about race

Beginning as of the earliest link below, I have, and plan to continue to, attempted in good faith to copy every single headline that appears in my Yahoo! News feed pertinent attitudes toward race.

My hypothesis was that, overwhelmingly, it is only the attitudes of white people towards race, that are studied and reported.  The data here below speak for themselves.

Continue reading Headlines about race

Guilt porn

My patience ran out when a display ad for Feeding America appeared on my e-mail inbox page.

I am seeing their ads and their public service announcements (PSAs) everywhere.  Like certain other charities, notably Autism Speaks and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, I wind up wondering if they engage in any activity beside fundraising.  In recent years, Breast Cancer Awareness Month had such media saturation it seemed impossible to be aware of anything else.

Continue reading Guilt porn