About me
I am a graduate of Grinnell College with a degree in Biological Chemistry. The name of this blog is derived from the name I use in Chinese, 孟柏民 (Mèng Bómín).
I can be reached by email at:
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Category Archives: Religion
A final look at the Pew Survey
It’s been a couple weeks, but as promised, here’s my comprehensive look at the results of the Pew Religious Knowledge Survey. This post is very table dependent and I wrestled a bit with the methods I employed to pull out … Continue reading
A closer look at the Pew survey
In my previous post I did a quick overview of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey carried out by the Pew Research Center. To supplement those initial impressions, I’m posting a color-coded table of group performance within the subcategories of questions … Continue reading
The Pew survey on religious knowledge
The Pew Research Center, as it is prone to do from time to time, released a religion oriented poll of Americans today, this time on the level of religious knowledge among Americans. The main takeaway picked up by major news … Continue reading
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ got some attention when a man heckled Pullman over the offensiveness of the book’s title and Pullman came back with a principled defense of freedom of speech and attack on … Continue reading
Posted in Religion, Reviews
Tagged Phillip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
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Near-death experiences a result of high carbon dioxide levels?
The Telegraph reports on a Slovenian study by Dr. Zalika Klemenc-Ketiš suggesting that some near-death experiences result from a hallucinatory effect of high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood stream. It’s not especially surprising to me that a physiological … Continue reading
Posted in Religion, Science
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The United States as of 1953
From YouTube user Evid3nc3: Sometimes it’s nice to have a reminder that though we all take for granted that “In God We Trust” is our national motto, inscribed on our currency and “under God” is part of the pledge of … Continue reading
God is a jackrabbit
From an image recently released by a team working with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes probing the center of our galaxy: As you can see, the very center of our galaxy is inhabited by a giant spectral jackrabbit, who … Continue reading
On Rick Warren
Mass behavior is a very interesting phenomenon and one interesting manifestation of it was the liberal reaction to the announcement that Rick Warren would be on the program for Barack Obama’s inaugeration. For a sample, here is an arbitrary list … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Opinions, Politics, Religion
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The Biggest Difference…
…between Santa Claus and the Christian God is that no one has been burnt alive for denying the triune nature of Santa. Paraphrased from a comment at Pharyngula
Posted in Opinions, Religion
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Deference to Religion
This Thanksgiving, I was given a reminder of how differently many people see the world than I do. I spent the Thanksgiving weekend with one of my maternal uncles’ family, who live in Shakopee, which is a suburb located to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal, Religion
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Meng Bomin 