The View from Number 80

 

Glossary (a work in progress)

BCE - Abbreviation for "Before Common Era" which coincides with BC (See Richard Carrier on this subject)

Blather - collective noun for a group of theologians

CE -  Abbreviation for "Common Era," which coincides with the Christian era or AD (see Robert R Cargill on this subject)

CLOOB - Complete Load of Old Bollocks (copyright Tony Youens)

Conservative - an individual with atrophied empathy

Deepity - Deepity is a term coined by Daniel Dennett in his 2009 speech to the American Atheists Institution conference. It refers to a statement that has (at least) two meanings; one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false, or meaningless with respect to this deeper meaning, but would be "earth-shattering" if true. Source - Rational Wiki

Devout - deranged, possibly dangerous

Dog Ma -  a bitch

Ex recto - from the fundamental orifice

Faith - Unsupported belief. It is useful to replace the word faith in any context with this handy alternative.

Female Circumcision - Female genital mutilation

Honor Killing - familial murder

Montel Williams - Unprincipled jerk

Psychic medium - a ghoul

Religion - Organized superstition

sCAM - so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (please see The Quack-Files for more on this highly apt acronym).

Spiritual Leader - theocratic dictator (coined, I think, by Ophelia Benson

Theology - "The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."  Thomas Paine 

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there."  Robert A Heinlein

"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."  H. L. Mencken  

Weasonableness - There is reasonableness then there is its slimy evasive counterpart, weasonableness. A Fuddism.