Grounded In Reality

She had a choice?

2008-09-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

So Palin says this about her pregnant daughter:

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents."

They are "proud of her decision"? WTF?? I thought she didn't have one?

You see, Sarah Palin is staunchly anti-choice. In fact, even if her own daughter was raped and became pregnant, she would "choose life". She's a member of the anti-choice group "Feminists (sic) for Life". Their motto is "Refuse to Choose". And yet we are supposed to believe that her family allowed her to choose whether to keep her baby?

Let me be blunt here for just a second: Sarah Palin, take your pride and shove it up your ass. Sure, today your daughter actually had a choice because we live in a country where women are still free to control their reproduction. But if it were up to people like you, your daughter wouldn't have that choice (at least not legally and safely) in the first place. There is nothing to be proud of about forcing women to have a baby. So stop trying to pretend that you are a modern day enlightened parent and feminist who respects her daughter's decision about a major life-changing event. You aren't and you don't.

The Liberal Blogosphere is Imploding

2008-04-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

For the first time, I've found myself starting to remove blogs from my Google Reader. Of the political blogs I subscribed to, about half were pro-Clinton and half were pro-Obama. I liked it like that because I felt I'd get balanced coverage of the Democratic primary campaign. But what I have unfortunately come to realize over time is that instead of these blogs being either pro-Clinton or pro-Obama, they have gradually become anti-Obama and anti-Clinton. It's fine to constructively criticize your opponent when warranted, but too many blogs are obsessed with raking a fine-toothed comb over their opponent instead of supporting their own candidate. It appears the Liberal Blogosphere has gone negative. If I want to know what's bad about Clinton then I go to a pro-Obama site. If I want to know what's wrong with Obama then I go to a pro-Clinton site. So where do I go to find out what's good about either of these candidates? My choices appear to be limited.

I've always thought that the blogosphere was a great place to get information that the mass media wasn't willing to cover. And regarding a lot of issues this is surely the case. But as far as the two Democratic candidates are concerned, I'm beginning to hope that the majority of the population loses their Internet access for the next few months. Because if what I've been reading lately on a lot of the more popular blogs really reflects the majority of Democrats out there, then we're going to be stuck with McBush for four years because Clinton and Obama supporters have done such a good job of negative campaigning that they really won't vote for the other in the upcoming November elections.

I've heard more about Obama's preacher than Clinton's health plan. I've heard more about Clinton's trip to Bosnia than Obama's plans for reinvigorating our economy. I have to imagine that McCain is kicking back in a big comfy chair with his heels up on his desk, smoking a cigar and smiling because we are basically doing his campaigning for him and he doesn't have to spend a dime. If I hear one more Obama supporter tell me they will never vote for Clinton or one more Clinton supporter tell me they will never vote for Obama, then I'm going to teach them both a lesson and vote for Nader. From what I've been able to tell, there's really not that much difference between Clinton and Obama on the real issues. Any Democrat should be able to vote for either one this November. The Republicans are on the ropes. Bush's approval ratings are at an all time low. This is a no-brainer. We won't have Nader to blame this time. If McCain wins, it's our own damn fault.

Eric Alterman "Hearts" Dinesh D'Souza

2008-04-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

I picked up Eric Alterman's new book "Why We're Liberals" a few days ago from my local library. I know that he is a critic of the mass media and his previous book "What Liberal Media" was quite good, so I thought I'd give this one a chance. But only after 38 pages, I've decided not to bother.

In the first part of the book (at least up through page 38) Alterman attempts to explain why The Left/Liberals have lost their hold on the American population. Some of his points include "Permissive social morality", "Forced integration schemes" and "Welfare payments - particularly to minorities". Now I'm not sure that Alterman thinks that these things are completely bad ideas, but it is implied that we should at least rethink our stance on such things that piss off Red State America.

But then we move on to his next point: "The use of the courts, rather than the electoral process". His first example is Brown v Board of Education. He writes "Desegregation decrees were quickly followed by barely less sweeping orders demanding institutionalized tolerance and often favorable treatment not only for blacks and women but also for gays, Hispanics, endangered species, and any other group with the ability to pursue a political agenda by class-action lawsuit". Oh the horror, people were forced to treat minorities and women and gays equally!!!

And he continues, "Such victories opened liberals up to the politically powerful -- and not entirely unfair -- charge by the likes of right-wing provocateur Dinesh D'Souza that these massive social changes had been imposed on Americans without regard for political process or the strongly felt preferences of significant majorities of Americans." In other words, if the majority of Americans are racists or homophobes or misogynists, then the victims of their discrimination should just grin and bear it.

And he finally concludes with a quote from D'Souza: "the left has relied on the courts to declare a 'right' and then enforce the right against the will of the American people and their elected representatives. In this sense, the biggest victories of the cultural left in the past few decades have all been achieved undemocratically". One word: Bullshit.

We have three branches of government. They all serve their important purpose. Using the courts to protect the rights of those who are discriminated against by the majority is just as democratic as using the initiative process to keep gays from getting married. It's called "checks and balances" Alterman, you might want to look into it. It forms the foundation of our government.

And using Dinesh D'Souza to support your argument? Giving that man even one iota of respectability is too much. The guy is a shill for the bigoted hard core Conservative Right. I'm sorry, but that's where I have to stop reading your book. I'm sure you make some great points after page 38, but I don't want to waste any more time on you. I've got way too many books to read by authors who won't look to the likes of D'Souza to support their arguments. I hope you really don't believe that using the courts for remedy against discrimination is undemocratic. If you do, then I won't bother reading any of your other books either.

McClinton

2008-04-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

I really wish Edwards was the front-runner right now. I didn't agree with him on everything, but I think he was the best shot for a more progressive, liberal agenda. But of course, that is the very reason he is not in the race anymore, he's too threatening to the existing power structure.

So we get to choose between Clinton and Obama. Because I live in Oregon, I won't get to make my choice until May, so I haven't felt the pressure to decide on a particular candidate just yet. Personally, I think they are both centrist candidates who are not going to do much to solve some of the bigger issues facing this country, such as the need for Universal Health Care and tighter regulation of the economy. But either one will be much better than McCain, so whoever ends up with the nomination will get my vote. But I've been content to just listen to both of them and keep my options open until our May primary.

But I think that Hillary just helped me make my decision. I just saw her attacking Obama as elitist and out-of-touch with the people of Pennsylvania based on some comments he made suggesting people are "bitter" about the economic situation in this country. And guess what? I also just heard a quote from the McCain camp saying the exact same thing! I expect this kind of bullshit from the Republicans, but I cannot believe that Clinton is purposely twisting his words in order to attack him with the same Republican playbook.

Obama was not talking down to the people of Pennsylvania. People are bitter about the economic situation in this country today. They are angry that their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living. They are pissed off that their jobs move to countries with cheaper labor pools. They are incensed that CEOs who run their companies into the ground still manage to leave with golden parachutes. They are upset that they can't adequately take care of their family's medical needs. They are infuriated that gas prices continue to rise while oil companies are making record profits and we as a country have done nothing to find alternatives. They are outraged that they are losing their homes while Wall Street gets bailed out with taxpayer money.

And I could go on and on.

So Clinton doesn't think people are "bitter"? Are they "angry"? Are they "pissed off"? Are they "incensed"? "Upset"? "Infuriated"? "Outraged"? Apparently, according to Clinton, everything is just fine. People are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and doing what it takes to make ends meet. Does she also agree with Bush that working three jobs is uniquely American?

To deny that there is a problem in this country and that people are mad as hell about it is "The Elitist Position". I'd expect as much from McCain, but I'm disappointed when I hear it from Clinton. Obama is far from the perfect candidate as far as I'm concerned, but at least he is willing to speak some truth. People are bitter about the state of things in this country. Neither Obama or Clinton will be the people's savior, but at least Obama can admit that there is a problem.

Taking Credit for Other's Work

2007-10-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

In the current eSkeptic newsletter put out by Michael Shermer's Skeptic Society, Shermer has made his notes available from a recent debate with Dinesh D’Souza at Oregon State University on the topic "Is Christianity Good for the World?" Shermer's basic argument is that "It Depends". It's good when it does good and it's bad when it does bad. And in particular, one argument he makes is that often it is bad, even very bad, before it is good.

"Mark my words. Here is what is going to happen. Within a decade, maybe two or three, Christians will come around to treating gays no differently than they now treat other groups whom they previously persecuted — women, Jews, blacks — but not because of some new interpretation of a biblical passage, or because of a new revelation from God. These changes will come about the same way that they always do: by the oppressed minority fighting for the right to be treated equally, and by a few enlightened members of the oppressing majority supporting their cause.

Then what will happen is that Christians will take credit for the civil liberation of gays, dig through the historical record and find a few Christian bloggers or preachers who had the courage and the character to stand up for Gay rights when their fellow Christians would not, and then cite those as evidence that were it not for Christianity gays would not be equal."

Yep. That about sums it up. Attitudes toward gays have slowly been evolving toward tolerance and acceptance for decades now. Although the lunatic religious fringe still clings on to homophobia as a last resort to keep their weakening stranglehold on the sheep among us, just like we now shake our heads in disbelief at the treatment of Blacks pre-civil rights era, soon (and not fast enough) we will wonder what the big deal was over two people of the same sex loving each other.

Granted, this hasn't come easy. It has taken a lot of hard work to get to the point we are today and will continue to take just as much to get to the point where we should be. Many people have made sacrifices, and some have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the battle for equality. And though there is no doubt that many Christians have been a positive force in this struggle, while Christianity will try to claim credit for the ultimate victory, we should always remember that religion has been the primary oppressive force in this struggle. The driving force behind the gay rights movement is an appeal to fairness, equality and human rights, things that are completely and totally independent of religion. Meanwhile the driving force behind homophobia has been an appeal to "God's word".

My guess is that those words written in the Bible aren't going to change any time soon. Funny how in a few decades most Christians will read them differently though.

Why I Cannot Vote for Dennis Kucinich

2007-10-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I like Dennis Kucinich's politics, I really do. In every Internet poll I've taken so far to determine who would be my ideal candidate, Dennis always comes out on top. The local Air America affiliate here in Portland (KPOJ 620) is running a straw poll on their web site and Kucinich always gets the biggest percentage of votes. There is no doubt that I would be extremely happy to have someone like Kucinich become the next President and the country as a whole would be a much better place for it.

But I can't bring myself to vote for him.

Kucinich was born in 1946 (the same year as my father). Seeing as he just had a birthday on Oct 8, that makes him 61. He's not "old", but he's in grandfather territory now (my parents have three grandchildren). My parents are still married, but if my dad were to remarry, I would expect him to marry someone close to his own age, at least within the ballpark. Eyebrows would be raised if my dad announced that he was marrying a 30 year old woman who was soon going to be the step-grandmother to grandchildren whose parents are older than the new step-grandmother.

So why shouldn't I be just a little weirded out that Kucinich married a woman half his age (she is currently 30 years old)?

I'm not going to try and psychoanalyze their relationship. I'm sure they are happily married for all the right reasons. I'm sure that if Dennis were to be elected, his wife would make an outstanding First Lady. If two people have found true love, then more power to them. A real Harold and Maude for the ages.

I'll just leave you with one thought. Fred Thompson is 65. He looks even older. I'm sure I'm not the only one who cringes just a little when I see Fred and his extremely younger looking wife (who is 41) posing for the cameras. And they even have very young children who will most likely be losing a dad within the next ten years. Don't tell me that you aren't at least slightly disturbed and disgusted by their relationship. Don't tell me that you wouldn't be at least a little embarrassed about having Jeri Thompson as a First Lady. Don't tell me that you don't think Fred Thompson is trying to make himself look just a little more manly by nailing a trophy wife. There is something not quite right about this relationship and unless you are one of those guys who thinks it should be every man's dream to bang a young hot chick to prove that his dick still works, you don't want someone like this as President.

But hey, at least Thompson stayed within the half-your-age limit.

Supreme Asshole

2007-10-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of reading a very interesting book on the behind-the-scenes workings of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin entitled "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court". I highly recommend the book if you are into this sort of thing.

While I don't plan to do a complete review of the book, sometimes something in particular jumps out at me and I can't let it go until I rant and rave about it. In this case it happens to be that incredible waste of space Antonin Scalia. While he may never be Chief Justice, he will always be Biggest Douchebag of the Supreme Court.

In the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case, in which the Court struck down a Texas law making sex between two people of the same sex illegal, Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion which should not only compel him to recuse himself from any future cases involving the GLBT community but should send shivers down the spine of every clear thinking person in this country.

"Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," Scalia wrote in his dissent, adding, "the Court has taken sides in the culture war." (p. 192)

First of all, the phrase "homosexual agenda" is merely code for "we hate gay people". Anybody who uses that phrase in this day and age is merely admitting that like their KKK counterparts, they hate gays for the same reason White supremacists hate minorities, simply because of who they are. People who see a vast "homosexual agenda" are the same people who used to think (or maybe still do) that there are too many "uppity niggers". Nope, your appeal to god's law can't get you out of this one. God once told you it was OK to have Black slaves. He was wrong. Now he's telling you that it is OK to hate gay people. Fool me once...

And notice how Scalia uses the phrase "homosexual activists" in the pejorative. I would think that a judge would be especially sensitive about using such a word as "activist" to insult a group of people when judges themselves, and not just the more "liberal" judges, are routinely threatened by right-wing wackjobs as being "activist judges" who need to be taught a lesson. Remember how a few Republican members of the House made implicit threats on judges (including the Supreme Court) after the Supreme Court refused to hear the Terry Schiavo case?

Scalia is upset that "activists" are trying to remove the "opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct". Hmmm, I read through the Constitution and it doesn't mention anything about "homosexual conduct". I did find things in there about equal protection clauses and such, but nothing about the wickedness of homosexuality. So I wonder how an Originalist like Scalia can justify the Constitutionality of a law that makes being gay a crime? He can't. So then what is his basis for making such a statement? His own personal views, which he would be the first to call any other judge who used merely his own personal views to rule on a case an "activist judge". You see, it's only activism when the other guy does it. When you want to put your own personal agendas into the law, especially when you are a religious conservative wackjob, you're merely defending the Constitution.

And then as a parting shot, Scalia derisively notes that "the Court has taken sides in the culture war." Holy shit, can this guy be any more dishonest. He uses the phrase "homosexual agenda" and supports the "moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct" and has the balls to criticize the Court for taking sides in a Culture War. He is the Culture War. He is the last of a (thankfully) dying breed of bigots who think they have the right to impose their morals on everyone else. If tomorrow every state in the Union were to suddenly legalize gay marriage, there would be an outcry from the fundies for a few months and then the controversy would die down, every one would go on living their lives as usual and a few years later we'd all look back and try to remember what the big deal was. The only thing stopping this from happening now is a loud gradually shrinking minority of religious gay haters who are trying desperately to cling on to their fading power by playing the "gay card" whenever they get the chance.

Scalia represents the worst that this country has to offer. A relic from the past who refuses to broaden his educational horizons and takes pleasure in his narrow views of how the world ought to be. And as the book makes clear, he relishes his ignorance and prejudice and wears it as a badge of honor. I know the fundies are real proud to have a man like Scalia on the court. And I'm sure their god approves.

A Win for the Good Guys

2007-10-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

While Oregon is a great state to live in, I've always been ashamed that just enough of its people were fooled into voting a few years ago for "Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage" which legally defines marriage as being only between a man and a woman. It's a real black eye to this state that discrimination is now written into its Constitution. This is a state that has consistently defeated other anti-gay measures over the years. This is a "Liberal Bastion" which voted to legalize medical marijuana and doctor-assisted suicide (twice). We don't have a sales tax because it is too regressive. Hell, we won't even let you pump your own gas because of the fire hazard. But yet the bigots and haters were able to convince just enough of my fellow Oregonians that somehow the institution of marriage would crumble if we allowed all those gay couples who currently live together (or plan to) to legalize their union like the rest of us.

But I think the tide is slowly turning. Earlier this year, the Oregon legislature was able to pass two bills which would undo at least some of the damage. The first created domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. Granted, it's not marriage, but since marriage is defined in our Constitution as being only between a man and a woman, I guess it is the best that can be done for now. The second bill makes it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation. Now I haven't read the text of this second bill, but it strikes me as odd that we can have a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation at the same time that we actually have discrimination based on sexual orientation written into our Constitution (maybe this discrepancy will ultimately force a showdown on the constitutionality of the anti-gay marriage language?)

Now it should really not come as a surprise that some people have a problem with the two bills discussed above. Can you guess who? You guessed it, the same bigots and haters behind the marriage discrimination ballot measure. So sure enough, they immediately launched a campaign to put a ballot measure on the November ballot to force a vote on the domestic partnership bill, with the hope that they will again be able to fool enough people into thinking that allowing domestic partnerships will destroy their marriages.

But guess what, this time they were unable to collect enough signatures before the deadline to get their measure on the ballot.

Oh, I'm sure they will try again. There is no limit to the amount of bigotry and hate some people have. But I have always thought that a lot of the people who voted for the anti-gay marriage measure allowed themselves to be fooled by the smaller minority of true bigots and haters. I can distinctly remember the anti-gay marriage people saying that they didn't have a problem with domestic partnerships, only actual marriage. Yet, as soon as the Oregon legislature passes a domestic partnership bill they are trying to defeat it. And I think that over the few years since the anti-gay marriage measure passed, more people have come to realize that gay marriage won't destroy their own marriages and actually benefits society instead of harming it. Also, I think the rhetoric about protecting children has pretty much worn itself out. It's becoming blatantly obvious that religious-right Republicans don't really care about protecting children (take Bush's recent veto of SCHIP as an example). Keeping gays from marrying was never about protecting children or the institution of marriage. It has always been about punishing gay people for being gay.

Whether by ballot measure or judicial decree, I really do think that discrimination against gays will be removed from our Constitution within the next ten years and I will again be able to say that I am proud to be an Oregonian and live in a state that treats everyone fairly.

Outraged About Ahmadinejad

2007-09-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

OK, so Ahmadinejad is an idiot who still questions the veracity of the Holocaust. We know this already, but it makes for easy fodder on the Right Wing march to war with Iran and thus will get repeated constantly on Conservative talk radio and TV. Here's what you'll hear: Ahmadinejad is an insane, self-deluded moron because he refuses to acknowledge the tragedy that is the Holocaust despite the mountains and mountains of evidence documenting the event. Faced with hard facts, he chooses to ignore them and instead push his own twisted version of reality in order to further his political agenda.

Hmmm. Does this mindset sound familiar??? Know anyone else who chooses to ignore the facts and twist reality to fit their agenda? Let's see now, who could it be ... CREATIONISTS!

Sorry Conservative Right Wing wackos, but if you deny the basic scientific facts of evolution then you have no right to criticize anyone who denies the Holocaust, because you both deny reality. Why should we listen to one nutjob criticize another???

And I'm sure you also got a kick out of the "apparent fact" that there are no gay people in Iran. I'm sure you care very deeply that Iran routinely oppresses gays to the point of execution. Just another reason to bomb them, right? The civilized world knows that you can't go around killing gay people, though you can still deny them the basic civil rights that normal God-fearing people enjoy.

I was thinking, there's another place that has no gay people. A happy magical place where all your dreams come true. HEAVEN. That's right, according to you, God doesn't like gay people and he certainly ain't letting them into Heaven. But you can sleep easy at night because you don't kill gay people, you let God take care of that in the afterlife (actually, it would be more merciful if he did kill them instead of torturing them for eternity). But like Ahmadinejad does now, you're going to enjoy a gay-free society someday and I know you are really looking forward to it.

Book Review: Monkey Girl

2007-08-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Most of us atheists are already familiar with the case of the Dover Pennsylvania school board's attempt to sneak Intelligent Design into science classes and their subsequent smack down by a Federal Judge. We already know that the school board was composed of a majority of god-fearing, evolution-denying Christians who were concerned that the paltry amount of time spent teaching evolution in biology classes (which is basically zero since most teachers practice self-censorship and avoid the subject in order to placate angry parents) was going to turn their children into rabid atheists. And we all took great pleasure in reading Judge Jones' total rebuke of the school board and their religious inspired policy. So why read a book about something we already know so much about?

What is the best detective/drama television show of all time? That's right, Columbo. And what happened during the first ten minutes of every show? That's right, we find out who did it and how they did it. But did you stop watching after the opening scene because you already knew the answer? No way. You kept watching because you loved to see some smug killer who thinks he/she is above the law slowly get trapped in a web of lies created by their own hubris as Columbo methodically rips apart their alibi with his non-stop questioning. And this is the exact same pleasure you will experience reading Monkey Girl by Edward Humes. You'll get to follow a bunch of arrogant Christians as they willingly and purposefully break the law for Jesus' sake and then slowly implode trying to cover their tracks with double talk and outright lies, in a Federal courtroom nonetheless. This is Columbo in book form, and it's real.

Of course the book is much more than a story about a school board who gets their comeupance. Humes gives us a history of both the Creationist and Intelligent Design movements, a history of church/state separation issues in public schools, profiles of all the main characters. In fact, in some ways you almost find yourself feeling sorry for the lead instigator and head of the school board, Bill Buckingham, but even a painful and somewhat unsuccessful recovery from an addiction to OxyContin is no excuse for putting your own town through such humiliation and perjuring yourself in Federal Court.

I think the last paragraph of the book best sums up the anti-evolution mindset:

"I still don't know why people got so upset about it," one thoughtful student at Dover High said a few months after Jones's [sic] decision. "People are going to believe whatever they want when it comes to Darwin and God and coming from monkeys. That's why they call it belief. Facts have nothing to do with it. So why get all upset about it?"

That's right, facts have nothing to do with the Creation/Intelligent Design movement, except for the ones that you make up yourself and then later deny that you ever said them. Fortunately, the spirit of Columbo happened to be channeling himself through a Federal judge and just like the TV show, the bad guys got what was coming to them in the end. And like me, you'll have trouble putting this book down because you're going to enjoy their implosion immensely.

Book Review: Religious Literacy

2007-07-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't by Stephen Prothero

I was really hoping to get a lot out of this book. You see, I was raised with no religious education whatsoever. The only times I set foot in a church was for weddings and funerals. My family never discussed religion other than to laugh at the obvious religious wackjobs. And I am constantly asking my wife religious questions because her parents attempted to raise her Catholic (it didn't take). Now I know it may be hard to believe that anyone can grow up not knowing anything about religion, so let me give you just one example. I was taking an entry level political science class my freshman year in college and the professor used Pontius Pilate as an example to explain some concept (which I can't remember now) and I literally had never heard of the guy before and had no clue as to what the example represented. And I was too embarrassed to raise my hand and ask him to fill me in on Pontius Pilate since everyone else in the class seemed to be nodding their heads in understanding.

Now granted, I know a lot more about religion now then I did back then since I have taken it upon myself to get acquainted with the various myths our society seems to embrace. But my knowledge is by no means complete and thus I was excited to find a book claiming to teach me everything I need to know about religion in America. Unfortunately, I know little more after reading the book. The book is broken up into two parts. I'll start with the second, which is the actual list of facts (A Dictionary of Religious Literacy) that every American needs to know. And it does cover the basics, although not in great detail by any means. Most entries are a paragraph or two long and give a high level overview of the topic. This section is really not that bad, although personally, instead of alphabetizing the topics, I would have grouped them logically by religion (e.g. having all the topics on Christianity grouped together and then arrange them chronologically or by importance). But it does give a very basic list of mainstream religious topics that everyone should know.

The dictionary section of the book runs from p. 149 - 233 (85 pages). So what do the first 148 pages cover, you ask? Well, this is where my problem with the book lies. The first part of the book (and by far the bigger of the two parts) is basically a history of religious education in America and a plea to make it better. While this is a fine subject to write about, the book's title does not say "Why every American needs religious literacy" but rather "What every American needs to know" and yet the "why" part far outweighs the "what" part of the book. So you get just under 150 pages on the history of religious education and a justification for why it is important and then you get only 85 pages concerning what I thought was going to be the major emphasis of the book.

This is what I would have preferred. Condense the first 148 pages into the first few chapters. Short and sweet and to the point. Keep the next section (85 pages of the basic religious dictionary) as part two of the book. Then you have plenty of room left to add part three, which would cover more advanced topics for those who breezed through the basic dictionary. Now the book lives up to its name and also appeals to a wider audience.

Aside from the disappointing structure of the book, I have a few other qualms as well. Let's try this quote on for size:

"The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment requires of state government not just neutrality among religions but also neutrality between religion and irreligion. The current strategy of obeying the law by avoiding religion [in schools] may well be violating the Constitution, by indoctrinating students into a secular view of the world." (p. 130)

Indoctrinating students into a secular view of the world??? So I guess we need those stickers on biology textbooks after all? It is comments such as these scattered throughout the first part of the book that make me wonder if the author doesn't miss the good ol' days just a little too much.

"The question is turning from whether to teach about religion to how. And plainly the way to do that is to steer clear of both advocating religion and impugning it while at the same time communicating that individual religious convictions are to be treated, as a matter of both law and civility, with respect." (p. 132)

No, individual's rights to hold their religious convictions should be treated with respect, as outlined in the First Amendment, but the beliefs themselves are certainly open to criticism. Of course people should be treated politely and we should remember that many people take their particular religious beliefs very seriously and will not take criticism of those beliefs well. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't debunk them or question them. In fact, we need to teach our kids that no idea is immune from inquiry. A critical thinking class should be required right along side the author's recommended religion classes, unless of course that would be just more secular indoctrination.

"Two problems arise with thinking of religious literacy as moral instruction. First, this approach tends, at best, to confuse the agenda of spreading religious knowledge with the agenda of inculcating particular virtues. At worst, it sacrifices the former at the altar of the latter. In either case the educational goal shifts from making religiously literate citizens to making ethical citizens. In the process religion is reduced once again to "values," as if the world's religions cared not a bit about God, truth, or the afterlife." (pp. 141-142)

OK, I should cut him a break because he is trying to argue that religion should not be used for character or moral education in order to appease our fears about religious education in the schools. But seriously, isn't "values" about all that religion has left in this day and age? And he throws "God" and "the afterlife" in there with the truth??? I'm reminded of the old Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the others..." Teach religion in schools the way you would teach Greek Mythology or Native American spirituality. But we don't look to either of these things for the truth. They are interesting stories that intrigue us and nothing more. If you aren't prepared to teach your own beliefs the same way, then you aren't ready to teach religion in our schools.

The world is an ashtray

2007-06-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post will undoubtedly piss off some of my fellow atheists. I know this going in and I'm OK with that. There are a ton of very good atheist blogs out there. I'm not going to merely post about things that are already covered elsewhere (and much better than I could do in the first place). So I'm left with the more obscure topics that aren't as crowd pleasing but hopefully generate some interesting discussion.

I'm reading a rather popular atheist blog a few days ago and there is a nice post about dealing with religious co-workers and whatnot and the post starts out like this (I'm paraphrasing here):

"So I'm on a cigarette break chatting with a religious co-worker..."

OK, stop right there. Cigarette break?

Say you're having a polite conversation with someone and half way through the conversation they happen to mention that they are a Scientologist, or have been abducted by aliens, or tell you that Jesus is returning to earth next Friday. Be honest, you're opinion of them has just dropped a little, regardless of what you are discussing. I don't care if you discussing evolutionary biology with frickin Richard Dawkins. If he let's it slip that he wears a magnetic bracelet to help him with his arthritis, your estimation of his IQ just fell a few points, even concerning his area of expertise (after all, if he can be fooled into believing that magnets will cure arthritis, what does he mistakenly believe about biology or evolution?)

Now, let's move on to something that isn't in dispute and that the vast majority of the scientific community agrees on: smoking is dangerous to your health and even to other people's health. This is pure rational science, backed up by tons of evidence. The jury is in, the verdict has been read and the guilty have long since been executed. Everyone (in this country at least) has no excuse for not knowing that they are harming themselves and others by smoking. The rational conclusion is that you should not smoke.

So am I a bad person if my opinion of someone (and thus of their opinions) drops a little when I find out they are a smoker???

We atheists like to claim that we are rational thinkers. It's what separates us apart from those who choose to believe and have faith in something that has absolutely no evidence to support its existence. Yet there is a ton of scientific evidence telling us that smoking is bad for everyone and yet a rational person can still choose to smoke? I'm sensing a little cognitive dissidence here.

Yeah, I know, everything is bad for you. Some people eat too much. Others drink too much. Some participate in high risk activities. Hell, just waking up and getting out of bed in the morning exposes you to risk. And you'll wither away and die quickly if you stay in bed all day. You can't win, so why not just give in to your temptations? Because we pride ourselves on being rational and hence making decision and living our lives based on the best available scientific evidence we have available to us.

So I'm a smoking Nazi now I suppose? I'm not telling you that you can't smoke. I'm not asking the government to make smoking illegal (at least in non-public places). I'm merely saying that you shouldn't smoke because it makes you appear to be just a slight bit less rational than you would like.

It is of course possible to say "I know that smoking is bad for me, but I choose to do it anyway because it is my body and I can do what I want with it." Again, I'm not arguing that you can't. But when we accuse others of hurting people based on their irrational religious beliefs but yet we willingly hurt ourselves and others by choosing to ignore the recommendations of our doctors, then we lose some of our claim to rational superiority.

Cutting Off God

2007-02-28T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ever notice that every argument opposing gay marriage inevitably deteriorates into a religious sermon on the evils of homosexuality. Seriously, I have yet to encounter a truly secular argument opposing gay marriage that holds any water. Every one of their arguments boils down to one basic theme, bigotry against and hatred toward homosexuals.

In general, I love to get into a good discussion about religion. I love pointing out all the contradictions or just plain wacky beliefs they follow, or choose to ignore while cherry-picking the parts they like. I get a slight feeling of intellectual superiority when it becomes obvious that I know more about their bible than they do. There is nothing better than cornering a religious know-it-all into falling back on the ol' "God works in mysterious ways" when they have run out of excuses for beliefs they can't explain.

But I'm tired of religion poking it's head in where it doesn't have any right to be in the first place. And gay marriage is one of these places. So I am making a slightly late New Year's resolution: I will no longer tolerate any discussion of religious beliefs when it comes to gay marriage. Period!

"But people have a right to their religious beliefs. It's who they are. How can you expect them to set aside their most cherished beliefs on an issue so volatile as gay marriage?"

Let me explain it to you as simply as possible:

1. While many people consider marriage to have religious overtones, legally, in this country, marriage is a civil contract. For example, when my wife and I decided to get married, we were not required to be married in a church by a clergyman. We merely had to fill out the legal paperwork supplied by the state and then find someone who was granted permission by the state to marry us. And there was no requirement that the officiant be religious in any way.

2. In this country, we are governed by a Constitution that is neutral toward religion. While most people remember the phrase "Freedom of religion", this neutrality also means that our governmental institutions cannot actively support religious beliefs simply because of their religiously based justifications. There must be some secular justification for government to take action.

3. Because marriage is a civil contract regulated by government and because government can only act on secular justifications, common logic dictates that purely religious arguments for or against gay marriage should not be allowed to have any bearing on the matter.

Do religious people have the right to think that their god hates homosexuals and wants them to hate homosexuals too? Of course they do. Do they have the right to use those religiously based arguments to oppose gay marriage? NOPE. Only secular arguments can be considered when making law. When someone wants to make a religious issue out of it, we should ignore those arguments. Personally, I think we should stop taking the bait and simply refuse to get into any type of religious discussion with them. When someone wants to drag you down the road to god, simply say "You want to talk religion, go to church. This matter concerns civil law, and religion has no place in such matters."

So no more. I don't care if you're Mel White or James Dobson. Unless you have a secular argument to back up your assertions, your opinions may be interesting to your own congregations but they have no role in the workings of our government and I'm not going to tolerate them any further.

And to all you people out there who would like to tell me that I'm anti-religious because I'm trying to take away your right to religious freedom, TOUGH LUCK. As you are all so fond of telling us, go find a country that is ruled by the religion of your choice if you don't like it here, because in this country, we have a secular Constitution and when it comes to making our laws, your religiously based opinions don't mean squat. But if you think you really have a good secular argument against gay marriage, go ahead and lay it on me, because I'd really like to hear one.

Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

2007-02-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

So there is still some hope for humanity in this country.

U.S. court upholds same-sex teaching to children

Some families didn't like the fact that a gay couple were the main characters in a children's book. So they sued to get the book removed from the curriculum. And as any rational person would do, the judge told them to get bent:

Federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled on Friday that public schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy."

"Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation," he said.

And on what grounds did the parents sue???

The complaint filed against the town of Lexington, about 12 miles west of Boston, had said the school had "begun a process of intentionally indoctrinating very young children to affirm the notion that homosexuality is right and normal in direct denigration of the plaintiffs' deeply held faith."

That's right, the school was violating their right to religious freedom by daring to expose their kids to the real world. Apparently, if you point out the fact that there are gay people in the world and they often fall in love with each other, then you are repressing every religious person who hates gays. No wonder these types of Christians feel so persecuted. They've set themselves up as martyrs, but this time they're nailing themselves to the cross.

Prepare to be Pissed Off

2007-02-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've just finished reading David Sirota's latest book "Hostile Takeover" and I feel I need to warn you about this book in advance. Before you read this book there are a few things you need to do. If you own any guns, lock them up and throw away the keys. Likewise, keep all sharp objects out of reach. It might help to light a few candles and turn on some easy-listening mood music. Do not read this book in a public place where bouts of loud profanity would be inappropriate. If you are on blood pressure medication, double the dose. And by all means, do not miss your court-mandated RageAholics meeting, because this book is going to piss you off.

I'm not going to give a detailed chapter by chapter review because there just isn't enough space or time to cover all of the information packed in this book. Instead, I'm going to sum it up as clearly as I can in just a sentence or two:

Our country is controlled by a super wealthy minority who have rigged the rules in their favor while at the same time convinced the majority of us that it is in our best interest. In other words, they are screwing us against our will yet have convinced us that we enjoy it.

The rules and laws are gradually being written to benefit the few at the expense of the majority. And this includes both Republicans and Democrats. Yes, we may long for the days of Clinton, but he was no Saint of the working class. Until we can elect representatives who really want to make government responsible to "We the People", expect the trend to continue. How many more jobs will have to be shipped overseas? How many more people will have to go without health insurance? How many tax cuts for the rich will we be willing to trade for our public schools and our environment?

Hopefully the majority will come to its senses long before it realizes just how much they have already lost. Turn off those TVs. It doesn't matter if Brittney is in rehab again or some has-been Playboy bunny has died. Learn to think again and then start asking questions. Politicians pandering to your emotional and religious sensibilities may make you feel good about them, but ask yourself, "What have they done for me lately?" Chances are, absolutely nothing.

Religion Never Hurt Nobody

2007-02-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

So you think religion is benign? If someone wants to believe in some spirit in the sky, what's the harm? Why don't you just leave those God-fearing church-going people alone?

Well, here's a guy who is willing to ruin his marriage and make his wife's life a living hell because he thinks God wants it that way.

He already has three children. It's not like he hasn't been fruitful and multiplied. He had no problem using contraception in the past, but now his wife has given him an ultimatum:

So she has laid down the law: No sex until I get a vasectomy. Period.

She's already had three C-sections. She is in her forties. She has suffered depression. She is afraid of complications if she were to get pregnant again at her age. And most importantly, she just doesn't want to have another baby!

Perfectly reasonable request on her part if you ask me. But now that the pressure is on hubby to do something about it, he has suddenly had a change of heart. He believes that God is telling him (via the Bible) not to get a vasectomy because it is a sin.

OK, so you think this guy will eventually come to his senses and have the vasectomy and be happy with the three children he already has and start having a sexual relationship with his wife again, don't ya?

I made an appointment for a vasectomy. When I went in for my initial consult, the urologist asked me why I wanted to get a vasectomy. I said, "Because my wife wants me to." He told me that was the wrong reason.

I rescheduled my appointment for the actual surgery a couple of times for various reasons. At this point, I have no appointment.

So it has now been 15 months since we have had sex or even done much in the way of snuggling. It's not that we don't want sex. She has said several times that she didn't sign up for a sexless marriage. But even more than she wants sex, she doesn't want another pregnancy, another delivery, and resetting the clock for being a stay-at-home mom.

The lack of sex has been a wedge between us. The chemical thing that happens to your brain during sex to boost the emotional bond between a couple -- that's supposed to help sustain a couple in through the stresses of living together, but it's not available to us.

So what does a guy in this seemingly unresolvable dilemma do? I know you'll find this hard to believe, but he asks other Christians who also believe that a vasectomy would go against the "Word of God" for advice on how to save his marriage.

I'd like to reserve the comment box for this entry for those Christians who believe that contraception is a sin, to suggest solutions to my dilemma: How do I protect my wife from a dangerous pregnancy while avoiding the sin of abstinence and the sin of contraception?

Surprisingly enough, he's only heard from one such person so far and he didn't like the advice offered.

This guy doesn't want a solution to his problem because he already knows the answer: He believes that God won't let him have a vasectomy and no matter if this issue eventually destroys his marriage, he ain't gonna doit. What he's really looking for is a bunch of like-minded God-worshipers who feel the same way he does to reassure him that it's OK to figuratively screw his wife without actually having to.

My advice: Get a dildo for your wife and hope she doesn't leave you, and thank your God for the Internet, because your new lover is going to be that same computer screen you're currently blogging with.

Our Heterosexual Problem

2007-02-18T10:25:00.000-08:00

The mayor of North Maimi (who happens to be a gay man) has invited Tim Hardaway to spend a day with his family.

"I don't expect [Hardaway] to be waving a peace flag anytime soon, even after this," Burns [the mayor] said Friday. "But maybe he'll be less likely to say something bad about people if he knows them and understands a little more."

There was an episode of the Simpsons a few years back where the Director John Waters does the voice of a gay man who befriends the Simpsons, but Homer doesn’t realize he is gay right away and when he finally figures it out he goes crazy because he thinks Bart will turn gay. At the end of the episode, Homer finally comes to his senses when Waters saves his life. Homer tells Waters that because he has saved his life, he has changed his mind about him. And Waters responds:

“Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you’d be set.”

I think it is great that the mayor is willing to invite this bigot into his house for a day. Maybe Hardaway will change his mind and he will then tell the world that he was wrong and the world will listen. And if only every gay man and woman could invite every homophobe into their house for a day...

Let's go back a few years. Remember when Blacks were thought of as second-class citizens and feared for their safety, if not their lives, on a daily basis? Yes, racism was (and unfortunately still is) a problem for Blacks, but it was a White problem. Blacks did not have the burden of proof of showing that they should be treated and thought of as equals, and neither do homosexuals. The responsibility to rid the world of homophobia rests at the doorsteps of heterosexuals.

"But people have the freedom to believe whatever they want to believe. If someone believes that homosexuality is wrong, that is their right, and they should be free to say it."

Technically, yes, we can't stop someone from believing something, no matter how morally repugnant it may be, and we certainly shouldn't punish such thought crimes themselves. But we do punish behavior, and that behavior can include incitement. Is saying "I hate gay people" incitement? How about "It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States"? OK, so he's not directly telling people to go out and persecute homosexuals, but I can't help but wonder how he intends to get rid of "it" throughout the world? Maybe if every heterosexual could just invite every homosexual into their house for just a day...

It's time to be proactive about our problem. We can't keep relying on gay men and women to point out our bigotry and then expect them to solve the problem for us as well. The mayor's offer is extremely generous, but it shouldn't have to be made in the first place. Proactive would be the NBA creating a public service announcement rebuking Hardaway's statements and then running it as a commercial during every game for the rest of the season. Proactive would be our most prominent politicians calling press conferences and telling the world that there is no place for such hatred in our country or anywhere else in the world and then immediately submitting legislation to give homosexuals equal rights in this country.

But you know what, I don't think that's enough. When we say "It is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals", what do we really mean? Is it enough that we create laws that force homophobes to treat gay people the same as everyone else under the law, but to be content that they will always think of homosexuality as wrong and that there is nothing we can really do about that?

If a teacher in a classroom gives a presentation on the Civil Rights struggles of the 60's and talks about the injustices Whites committed against Blacks and shows a video portraying a Black family in a positive light, very few, if any will complain. If the teacher tells her students "We once considered Black people to be second-class citizens in this country, but we have learned from our mistakes and now realize that that was wrong and that the color of a person's skin does not make him or her any less of a human being than anyone else", not only would we approve of that message, we would encourage it to be told. We don't merely tell our children that you are only required to treat Blacks equal under the law but otherwise you can still hate them because their skin is darker than yours, we actually tell them that it is not OK to hate people because of the color of their skin. It can be done. We can teach our children not to be bigots and we can expect people who should know better to overcome their bigotry or expect to be ostracized from society.

Now change that class presentation to the Gay Rights struggle and put in a video of two lesbians and their child enjoying family time at home and you'll make the evening news.

Gay rights is still allowed to be a political issue in this country. We heterosexuals feel that we have the right to vote on whether gay people can get married or whether they deserve insurance coverage or other benefits taken for granted by us normals. Hell, we'll even tell them if they can legally have sex (although we won't tell them that we do that stuff too). That we even consider it acceptable to vote on and legislate such things is a sad commentary on us heterosexuals and an affront to those unalienable rights we claim to uphold.

Yes, I will continue to applaud the efforts of mayors. Yes, I will continue to vote against the "sanctity of marriage". Yes, I will continue to support legislation the we heterosexuals so generously offer to those poor, confused homosexuals (my front door is always open if you want to come in). But homosexuality is not a political issue, it is a human rights issue and homophobia is a heterosexual issue. Until the President of the United States can stand up in front of the country and state "There is nothing wrong with homosexuality", we've got a problem. Until every major network news channel can end their Tim Hardaway coverage with "Hardaway is a bigot because there is nothing wrong with homosexuality", we've got a problem. And until every homphobic preacher is relegated to the Aryan Nations of Idaho, we've got a problem.

I don't buy the Christian cop-out "Love the sinner, hate the sin." If you don't support gay marriage, you hate gay people. If you don't want them teaching your children, you hate gay people. And if you are willing to treat them equally under the law but you still think homosexuality is wrong, you still hate gay people.

Money Can't Buy Me Love Health Care

2007-01-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

People who are willing to pay for health care can't get it at any price.

As it turned out, Svonkin was rejected by not just one but three of California's biggest health insurers, which cited his history of asthma, among other things.

"I couldn't buy it at any price," said Svonkin, 40, who lives in Sherman Oaks. "I remember thinking, 'This can't be happening to me.' "

Health care/insurance is quickly becoming my number one concern in this country. Yet, almost none of our elected "leaders" are willing to do anything about it and it is basically left to the states (if you are lucky enough to live in one that even cares) to deal with the "uninsurables" (you know, those people like the poor sap above who was unlucky enough to be born with asthma).

There are good reasons why we don't privatize certain functions in this country. Imagine if we privatized police protection? Now apply the health insurance logic above: "Sorry, we are no longer going to cover your house for theft because you had a previous break-in last year. In fact, we can no longer offer services in your neighborhood because you live in the bad part of town and the risk is just too high. Maybe you can find coverage with the state-assisted protection program? That is, as long as the voters in this state are willing to foot the bill."

But this is America you say. In this country, we are all responsible for our own well-being. If you don't have health insurance, then get a job! Oh, you have a job, but you are self-employed? Well then, you must not be very good at what you do if you can't afford to purchase your own health insurance. Oh, you do make a comfortable living but nobody will insure you because of previous medical conditions? Well then, you should have taken better care of yourself instead of sitting on the couch all day and eating fast food. Oh, you were born with asthma but are otherwise healthy? America, love it or leave it you pinko commie socialist hippie!

Listen, I'm all for personal responsibility. The problem is, no matter how much we try to be responsible people, we don't always have control over the bad things that happen to us or the people who are dependent upon us (we can't help being born with asthma). So we as a society can continue to take the free market approach to health care and just shrug our shoulders and look away ("Life is unfair, deal with it") or we can start to realize that we are all better off when we protect everyone from the ravages of the health care free market. Most of the recent polls I've seen show that a majority of Americans are ready to make a change. Now if only politicians would pay more attention to the polls.

The Wizard Has Been Exposed

2006-12-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, an assistant editor for The Washington Post who was stationed in Baghdad from Sep. 2002 through Sep. 2004. The book is a behind the scenes look at the inner workings and political maneuverings in the Green Zone after the fall of Baghdad in March 2003. The story can be summed up as follows: A bunch of neo-con ideologues given free reign to create their version of a free-market utopia.

Qualifications be damned, as long as you voted for Bush in 2000 and watched Fox News, you too could get a well-paying job in Iraq.

"Once the Americans arrived, the job of rehabilitating Iraq's health-care system fell to Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle was a naval reserve officer with two Bronze Stars and a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. He taught at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues. During the first Gulf War, he provided medical aid to Kurds in northern Iraq. He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia. And in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, he had been put in charge of organizing the American response to the expected public health crisis in Iraq. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government"". (pp. 211 - 212).

Pretty impressive resume, huh? I bet you if they were going to replace a guy like that to head the reconstruction of Iraq's health care system, it would be with someone who has postgraduate degrees from five prestigious universities (instead of Burkle's measly four).

"A week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed that he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID told him that the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture of himself with the president". (p 212)

OK, so Bush wants someone who sees eye-to-eye with him on Iraq. I'm sure the replacement is a well-qualified individual.

"Burkle's job was handed to James K. Haveman, Jr., a sixty-year-old social worker who was largely unknown among international health experts. He had no medical degree, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Wolfowitz. Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Prior to his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions." (p. 121)

I guess it's not so bad. Even though Haveman doesn't have the experience of Burkle, at least women in Iraq won't be getting abortions.

OK, let's be fair here. Just because Bush decided to replace experienced, well-qualified people with neo-con newbies doesn't mean that they didn't get some things done. I'm sure if we take a look at the big picture there are many shining examples of American goodwill and altruism in Iraq. And who would know better than the Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for post-war Iraq and the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer.

"In an interview before his departure, Bremer insisted to me that Iraq was "fundamentally changed for the better" by the occupation. The CPA, he said, had put Iraq on a path toward a democratic government and an open economy after more than three decades of a brutal socialist dictatorship. Among his biggest accomplishments, he said, were the lowering of Iraq's tax rate, the liberalization of foreign-investment laws, and the reduction of import duties. As our conversation was drawing to a close, I asked a broad question about unfinished business. "When I step back," he answered, "there's a lot left to be done."" (p 289)

So the three biggest accomplishments of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq are:

1. Lowering of Iraq's tax rate
2. Liberalization of foreign-investment laws
3. Reduction of import duties

Come on Paul, don't be so modest. It sounds like you just about accomplished everything you set out to do.

Merry Christmas Everyone

2006-12-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

I'm sure we've all heard by now about the Rabbi Who [Nearly] Stole Christmas.

I understand the Rabbi's frustration. Christmas in this country definitely overshadows the other various holidays and celebrations this time of year. But to the good Rabbi and anyone else who may feel left out of the holiday festivities, there really is no need to deny yourself the fun of decorating a tree or watching your children open presents from Santa. Once you realize the true meaning of Christmas, you'll be the first one on your block to have their lights up.

You see, there's a little secret that we atheists have known for a long time now. A secret that Christians don't want leaking out and are trying desperately to suppress. But once you understand, you'll be able to celebrate Christmas guilt free with the rest of us drinking egg nog by an open fire.

Christmas is not a religious holiday.

Kids don't look forward to opening presents from Jesus on Christmas morning. Jesus didn't need any reindeer to fly to the heavens. And from the pictures I've seen, he certainly ain't no jolly old fat man in a red suit. Yep, everything great about Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.

We decorate trees because it is fun to do. We put up lights because it is fun to do. We give each other presents because it is fun to do. Christmas is merely an excuse to have a little fun and spread some good cheer. And it probably gives those with Seasonal Affective Disorder a reason not to kill themselves during the Winter.

So when someone asks an atheist or a Jew if they celebrate Christmas, the answer should be "Yeah, why not? Christmas is a fun secular holiday that everyone can enjoy. After all, who doesn't want to get presents from Santa?" And not only do you get to enjoy the Christmas festivities, but the more people who recognize Christmas for the secular holiday that it is, the sooner we will put to rest those Christian fantasies that anyone is actually celebrating the birth of their savior.

Granted, there are still some Christians out there who are hanging on to that last shred of hope that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Here's a little challenge. Take a walk around your neighborhood tonight and count the number of houses that have a lighted Santa or snowman or reindeer on the roof. Now, count the number of houses with a nativity scene. My guess is that Santa wins hands down. You see, that's what happens when you try to impose your religious holidays onto the public sphere, they get watered down and eventually lose any religious meaning they may have once had. Santa's your daddy now bee-yatches.

You want your religious holiday back? How about "ChristDay" or "JesusDay"? Just make sure you get the date right this time.

My Christmas List

2006-12-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

You want to know what to get me for Christmas? Anything with a pair of boobs and an American flag on it.

Fiasco

2006-12-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

Remember when we were told that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and candy? Conventional wisdom said that we would merely need to remove Saddam from the equation and democracy would flourish and the whole invasion would pay for itself with gushing oil revenues. Yeah, there were a few naysayers out there raining on our Operation Iraqi Liberation, oops, I mean Operation Iraqi Freedom parade, but they were merely unpatriotic, freedom-hating, French-loving, Bush-bashing traitor hippies. Besides, it was a slam dunk. We'd go in, remove the most dangerous man in the world, and then leave in no time at all (six days, six weeks, I doubt six months), all while basking in the gratitude of Iraqis who will have forgiven us for the past decade of deadly sanctions, also stabbing them in the back by encouraging them to overthrow Saddam after the first Gulf War and then allowing him to violently crush their revolts, and of course destroying their country and killing their people with the most lethal weaponry in the world. In fact, it was such a gimme that we didn't even need to bother preparing for any other alternative. After all, George Bush leads with his gut, and his gut was hungry for Freedom Fries, hold the insurrection.

And that is the main point of Thomas Ricks' book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq". The Bush administration and the military were unprepared for the fallout from our invasion because they did not consider any alternatives to the flowers and chocolates scenario. There was no guiding policy from the top on how to handle the inevitable unrest and insurrection. There was infighting among the Bush Administration and the military, often with inexperienced White House appointees overuling top military commanders (e.g. disbanding the Iraqi army and "de-Baathification"). A vast majority of the military were not trained properly to handle the civilian population, treating them as enemy combatants instead of trying to win their hearts and minds. And what's even worse is that three years later we're still in the same situation. No leadership, no clearly defined policy, no change of tactics. In fact, it may now be too late to stop the growing civil war that is developing, and according to Ricks, we have no one to blame except ourselves.

Our actions speak louder than words, and the Iraqis are listening. While the country continues to battle with third-world like conditions, our troops live in tightly secured bases with all the amenities of home and have little contact with Iraqi civilians. While Iraqis are sleeping, our troops bust down their doors in the middle of the night and round up all the military-aged males for interrogation. And if they can't find someone they are looking for, they'll just take some of his relatives as hostages, hoping to convince him to turn himself in. Want to get some information from someone? Try beating him to a pulp, then threaten to kill him, and finally send him to one of the makeshift overcrowded prisons run by untrained contractors and military grunts to be tortured and held without charges. The message is loud and clear. America may say it stands for Democracy and Freedom, but it sure has a funny way of showing it.

After reading Ricks' book, you realize that the whole mission has been one big clusterfuck. Of course we should have never gone there in the first place, a point which Ricks spends the first third of his book on. But after you make the decision to invade and send the troops in, there are still things you can do to make the best of a bad situation and try to "help" the Iraqi people govern themselves (if indeed that is your real goal). And time and time again the Bush Administration and the military command (with very few individual exceptions), either suffering from delusions of grandeur or possibly too cynical to care, made decisions that not only were bad for Iraq but ultimately stoked the flames of the insurgency which has now lead to civil war. "America First" isn't just a slogan here in the states. It seems to be the only consistent guiding principle this war has ever had.

Four Quick Book Reviews

2006-11-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

The End of Iraq by Peter Galbraith

A very nice, interesting, easy-to-read and concise summary of the history of Iraq, the current civil war in Iraq and the total and complete incompetence of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. Galbraith is an engrossing storyteller who has firsthand experience with the current struggles in Iraq. Not only is he a trusted friend and advisor to many prominent Iraqi leaders on all sides of the current civil war, but he has also put his life on the line several times in order to help preserve the documentary record of past genocide in Iraq. Galbraith's treatment of all sides in this battle is very even-handed and it is evident that he wants what is best for the people in Iraq, not what is best for George Bush. After reading this book, I finally felt like I had a clear understanding of the history of struggle between the Kurds, Shiites and Sunni Arabs in Iraq (and throughout the whole Middle East for that matter). And unfortunately now realize that the rifts between these three groups are currently too strong to overcome.

The bottom line: Bush's call for a unified Iraq is a pipe dream and a three state solution (Kurd, Shiite and Sunni) is the best option.

"In his 2000 election campaign George W. Bush spoke of the need for humility in our approach to the world. Yet we went into Iraq with the arrogant belief that we could remake the country as we wanted it to be. We failed miserably. We should do now what we should have done at the start--defer to the peoples of Iraq. They have concluded that a single country is not possible, except in name." (pp. 206-207)

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

James Bond, meet John Perkins, the real deal. This is no movie with CGI special effects and stuntmen doing your dirty work. All the "players" are real and so is all the mystery, intrigue and danger.

John Perkins was an "Economic Hit Man". His job was to convince the rulers of developing nations to accept huge economic aid packages from international loan agencies (World Bank, IMF) in order to keep them in economic and political slavery to the growing corporatocracy of transnational corporations and the governments that provide them sanctuary. And he was to use whatever means necessary to accomplish this goal, including dishonesty, extortion, collusion with corrupt politicians and even finding women who would provide sexual services to a certain Saudi Arabian Prince who has a thing for blondes. Ultimately, his guilt gets the best of him and Perkins turns over a new leaf by publishing his confessions and creating several organizations dedicated to healing the damage that he and others have done over the years, such as Dream Change.

If you are a tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist who always had an inkling that the industrialized nations of this world have rigged the system to their advantage to the detriment of everyone else, you will be both sickened and vindicated by this book. But in the end, you'll also find hope that something can be done about it.

Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement by Lauren Sandler

Sandler presents a sociological study of the burgeoning evangelical youth movement in this country. You'll meet a wide array of characters, from hard rockers to prudish home-schooled college students at Patrick Henry College; from tattoo-wearing skate punks to cadets at the Air Force Academy; from troubled youths turned born-again to sons of influential preachers groomed to carry on the gospel tradition. These kids and young adults make up what Sandler refers to as the Disciple Generation. And yes, they are rebelling; rebelling against a society that seemingly hasn't provided them with the meaningfull life they crave.

"Whether they are living in a region gutted by war, or in a banality-riddled nation like our own, the experience of modernity for many people is a lifetime of loneliness, the ache of utter isolation in an impossibly huge and uncaring world. It is a cocktail of fear and loneliness that brings people to the door of a church (or a mosque), or that encourages receptivity to the words of a skate pastor (or a madrasa teacher). Fundamentalism offers a snake-oil cure for their ills, promising the tight community groups of churches, the steadfast solidarity of activist groups, and most of all, the deep certainty of biblical inerrancy." (p. 240)

While previous youth rebellions have attempted to loosen the mores of society, the Disciple Generation's aim is to tighten the rules again based on a more literal interpretation of the Bible. All the usual conservative evangelical talking points are included: women need to be more submissive and have more babies, men need to reassert their authority in the family, homosexuality is bad, abortion is murder, we need to put God back into education and government. Yesterday's counter-culture hippies and Generation Xers are today's God-fearing Ozzie and Harriet.

While Sandler does an excellent job of presenting examples of the Disciple Generation, don't expect too much confrontation or critique. This is no God Delusion. Sandler's primary goal is to merely open our eyes to a growing phenomenon. This is a book about "who" they are and "what" they stand for, solutions for what to do about it will have to be found elsewhere. Sandler is an atheist and the book is written from an atheist's perspective, so you will feel a sense of camaraderie while reading the book. If you are unfamiliar with the Disciple Generation, this book will open your eyes. But don't be surprised if you find yourself feeling a little frustrated because you can't fight back.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan (edited by Ann Druyan)

No, Carl Sagan has not risen from the grave (as much as we may hope for it). Rather, Ann Druyan has unearthed the transcripts from a series of lectures he gave back in 1985 concerning the scientific approach toward the question of God. Any reader of Sagan will already know where he falls on the God issue, so there are no surprises here. But the beauty of this book is not so much in what he says but rather how he says it. For those of us who grew up watching Cosmos, this book will bring back fond memories of a man who can bring complex scientific ideas down to earth for us mere mortals. A man who not only exudes a passion for knowledge but wants us to share in his excitement. A humanist who was genuinely concerned for the future of our world and an activist who worked for the betterment of it. Carl Sagan helped us put ourselves in perspective to this vast Universe and made us realize that ultimately, we humans can rely only upon ourselves to find meaning in our lives.

Any Carl Sagan fan will love this book. And so will anyone else for that matter. This book will not scare away the believers out there. Instead, it will offer them a sane, rational and caring alternative to God. If the Disciple Generation is looking for a messiah, Carl Sagan is the answer. If only someone would step forward to take his place.

Quick Funny

2006-11-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

Now that the Dems have a mandate, we can finally unveil our real agenda.

I'll be taking it upon myself to implement #18. Who's with me?

Even in a landslide not everyone wins

2006-11-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am very happy that the Dems will gain back the House and Senate. It is high time that somebody called Bush on his bullshit and it was apparent to the majority of people in this country that the Republican congress was not willing to do its job.

On the other hand, once again, majorites in another seven states display their homophobic bigotry with pride and deny two consenting adults the same rights and privileges we heterosexuals all enjoy merely because they happen to be the same sex.

So the moral of this election season is? Iraq is a political death sentence AND we still hate gays.

And yet homosexuals continue to serve in our military (at least until they are outed). A group of people willing to die in Iraq for a country that hates them. No wonder we don't want them in the Armed Forces. Makes us look like complete assholes when we vote to deny our fellow patriotic Americans the rights and privileges we all take for granted.

Keeping gays out of the military has nothing to do with protecting the military and everything to do with punishing gays. Likewise, banning gay marriage has nothing to do with protecting marriage and everything to do with punishing gays. Will banning gay marriage keep gay people from living together? Will it keep them from having families and raising kids? Gay marriage bans are designed for one thing only, to punish gay people by denying them the rights and privileges that we straights take for granted.

And apparently, we have no problem with that.

P.S. In yet another threat to our country, several openly gay candidates won their races yesterday. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that it won't be soon enough when the "Protect the Sanctity of our Electoral Process" ballot initiatives start popping up around the country.

What is a book recommendation?

2006-11-03T13:04:00.000-08:00

I usually read books on religion, politics, history, science, philosophy, current events, books with lots of facts that usually need to be read at least twice before they really sink in. But once in a while I need to take a break from the real world and indulge myself in some lighter reading. One such book I have just finished is Prisoner of Trebekistan by Bob Harris and I highly recommend it. Bob Harris is one funny guy. He should be. Before getting his chance on Jeopardy he was a somewhat successful stand-up comedian. After moving to LA, he thought he'd try his hand at game shows and decided to take the Jeopardy test to get on the show. And then he tried again. And again. And again. It took him at least five tries (he can't really remember the actual number) to finally pass muster. But can a five-time flunky stand-up comedian win at Jeopardy?

This book isn't just about how to win (or lose) on Jeopardy or what Alex Trebek is really like (seriously, you won't learn a lot about Alex, they keep him away from the contestants for the most part). This book is just as much about one man's journey from aimless wandering to finding real meaning in his life. Trebekistan becomes more than just a bunch of pointless memorized trivia. For Harris, Trebekistan becomes the realization that everything seems connected in some way and a good way to learn more about the world (and yourself) is to explore it.

Read this book if you want a good laugh. Read this book if you like rooting for the underdog (just don't always expect to win). And if you ever thought about competing on game shows, you just might learn something about that too. But most of all, this book is a heartfelt memoir of one man's gradual progression to finding himself through the most unlikely of paths. This book won't change your life, but you will be glad you read it.

Protecting Religion From Itself

2006-10-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

As much as I love to poke fun at religion, I think it is important to recognize that not all religious people are "the enemy" (besides, I consider myself more Pro-Reality than Anti-Religion). We can argue the exact numbers, but there is a sizeable percentage of theists in this country who do not wish to turn our government into a theocracy, though they may not be as vigilant about the separation of church and state as they should be. One such theist who is on the right side of the battle happens to be a reverend in the United Church of Christ and also the executive director of one of the most prominent church/state organizations in the country. I am of course referring to the Rev. Barry Lynn and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. And I have just finished reading his new book "Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom".

There have of course been many books written about church/state separation and how the encroaching religious influence into government is bad for government. And while Lynn makes this argument throughout the book, he spends just as much time, if not more, exposing the other victim of this entanglement: government support for religion is bad for religion. I have been harping on this point for years and I think it may be more effective in convincing theists that they should be supporting the wall of separation. Some examples Lynn uses to get this point across:

"'In God We Trust' on the money has been challenged in court at least twice. In both cases, the federal courts declared use of the phrase "ceremonial" and held that it is not really religious. Phrases like this, courts have said, are merely examples of "ceremonial deism," and they lose their religious significance through constant use over time." (p 112)

"The ceremonial use of religion by the state is among the cheapest examples of empty spirituality available. As time passes, it descends to the level of mere ritual--something that must be done, but not ever thought about. Virtually every politician in America now ends his or her speeches with "God Bless America." Do they say this because they truly want God to bless the nation or because it is expected, because no other closing is seen as acceptable? If it's the latter, and I believe it is, we are simply going through the motions." (p 113)

"What happens when the federal government or the state comes in with a huge grant? Why should congregants dig deeper and go the extra mile if the government is standing by with a check? What's more fulfilling and personally satisfying to a congregation--energizing everyone to work side by side to raise money, build an addition, and open and stock a food pantry or having the church secretary fill out and mail a grant application to the Department of Health and Human Services?" (p 143)

"People often ask me, when I'm out giving a speech, why religion is on the decline in many other Western nations. I really do believe it is because the churches in those countries got too close to the state. As religious groups got more and more of their needs met by government sources, the people in pews grew alienated. Why should they give more on Sunday if they already paid taxes to support religion? Gradually the sense of alienation grew. If all people are asked to do is join in ritual and recite creeds over and over, if they are not drawn more fully into the life of a congregation, they will soon see little need to keep showing up on Sunday morning. So they begin to stay home." (pp 143-144)

"I'm a big fan of interfaith initiatives. If several small or medium-sized churches pool their resources, they can achieve more than they would acting individually and avoid unnecessary duplication of services. These projects also build interfaith cooperation and promote understanding among denominations. We need more of that in times like these. Ironically, the bush faith-based initiative does just the opposite: it actively pits religious groups against one another and against providers in the secular community for a shrinking slice of the social service funding pie." (p 145)

Basically, Lynn demonstrates that government involvement in religion turns religion into a ceremonial triviality, causes followers to become cheap and lazy, and ultimately alienates people from the church. If we atheists were as "evil" as they make us out to be, we would probably give up the fight for separation and let them have their way, knowing that religion would eventually cease to be a major influence in this country, making the US (and most likely the world) a better place for future generations. Maybe we just aren't that far-sighted.

While Lynn does address the dangers of religious influence on government (e.g. abstinence-only education, teaching creationism as science, anti-gay legislation), this book was also written for another purpose, one I feel isn't publicized enough by the secular community--to convince the average church-going American that it is in their, and their religion's best interest to support the separation of church and state. The assault on the wall of separation is an assault on religion itself. If you think about it, this is a win-win situation for us--not only are we protecting everyone's right to religious freedom but we can also argue that we are protecting religion itself from becoming obsolete. What theist can argue with that one?

An Evening with Richard Dawkins

2006-10-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to get to see Richard Dawkins last night here in Portland. Originally, he was scheduled to speak at our local Powell's book store, but since that venue can hold only 300 people, they decided to move it to a hotel ballroom a few blocks away, which was a good decision since by my estimate there were easily over 700 people in attendance.

The event got off to a good start even before Dawkins took the microphone. Before the official introduction, a bookstore employee came up front to do a little advertising for a few upcoming readings. It just so happens that on Monday, Oct 30th, Deepak Chopra will be in town to discuss his new book "Life after Death: The Burden of Proof". Needless to say, we all had a good laugh, including Dawkins who was waiting just off to the side.

Dawkins spent the first 30 minutes or so reading selected passages from his book. He is a very eloquent speaker and although I had just finished reading the first two chapters of his book while waiting for the event to begin, hearing them again from Dawkin's own voice made them even more impressive. Dawkins book is quite funny in places, and he highlighted many of those parts in his readings:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolvent bully." (p 31)

Not usually a run of words you would associate with humor, but Dawkins was able to bring the house down with laughter and applause.

"The Catholic Community Forum helpfully lists 5,120 saints, together with their areas of expertise, which include abdominal pains, abuse victims, anorexia, arms dealers, blacksmiths, broken bones, bomb technicians and bowel disorders, to venture no further than the Bs. And we musn't forget the four Choirs of Angelic Hosts, arrayed in nine orders: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and just plain old Angels, including our closest friends, the ever-watchful Guardian Angels. What impresses me about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along." (p 35)

"Pope John Paul II created more saints than all his predecessors of the past several centuries put together, and he had a special affinity with the Virgin Mary. His polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: 'A maternal hand guided the bullet'. One cannot help but wonder why she didn't guide it to miss him altogether." (p 35)

Even when he wasn't reading directly from his book he was funny. After finishing up selected passages from chapter 2, he continued (and I'm paraphrasing here):

"And on to Chapter 3, which is entitled Arguments for God's Existence ... (pause for dramatic effect) ... And now on to Chapter 4 ..."

"God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trussed Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking afterall, 'tempting' Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: 'I was only obeying orders'." (p 242)

"The temptation to sexual infidelity is readily understandable even to those who do not succumb, and it is a staple of fiction and drama, from Shakespeare to bedroom farce. But the apparently irresistible temptation to whore with foreign gods is something we moderns find harder to empathize with. To my naïve eyes, 'Thou shalt have no other gods but me' would seem an easy enough commandment to keep: a doddle, one might think, compared with 'Thou shalt not covet my neighbour's wife'. Or her ass." (pp 243-244)

Of course it wasn't all "shits and giggles" (to quote another famous British gent). Dawkins did leave some lasting impressions on the audience (this one is a little long, but made quite an impact):

"Tamarin [an Israeli psychologist] presented to more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren, aged between eight and fourteen, the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua:

Joshua said to the people, 'Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction...But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.'...Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and assess, with the edge of the sword...And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

Tamarin then asked the children a simple moral question: 'Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted righty or not?' They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 per cent gave total approval and 26 per cent gave total dissaproval, with rather fewer (8 per cent) in the middle with partial approval. Here are three typical answers from the total approval (A) group:

In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.

In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.

Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth." (pp 255-256)

Continuing on a little further:

"Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua, but with Joshua's own name replaced by 'General Lin' and 'Israel' replaced by 'a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago'. Now the experiment gave opposite results. Only 7 per cent approved. In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation, the majority of children agreed with the moral judgements that most modern humans would share. Joshua's action was a deed of barbaric genocide. But it all looks different from a religious point of view. And the difference starts early in life. It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it." (p 257)

After the reading, Dawkins opened up the event to questioning. Some of the questions were merely people relating their own deconversion stories or just thanking Dawkins for coming to Portland. And then there are always a few people whom it seems want to try and impress the rest of us with their superior intellect by cramming as many syllables into a word as possible or quoting from their doctoral thesis. Even Dawkins was confused by a few of their questions and had to ask them to elaborate before finally trying his best to be polite and give an answer that at least was slighty relevant to whatever it was they were attempting to ask. We did not have any theists come up to the mic and try to argue with Dawkins, but that's not too surprising seeing that the NorthWest, and particularly Portland, has one of the largest non-believer percentages in the country.

WARNING: Extreme ranting of opinion ahead. Of course, I'm not talking about you!

To be honest, I often find the question and answer period to be a little boring, especially in such large groups. Not boring in the sense that Dawkins is a boring speaker but rather boring in the questions asked. Professional interviewers (good ones at least) know how to ask questions which elicit interesting answers that are relevant to the discussion at hand. The general public unfortunately is not quite as good at it and it seems that sometimes the worst of them are drawn to these types of events. The next time, before you ask a question before 700 people, ask yourself "Are the other 699 people in the audience even going to care or understand what I am about to ask?" And further more, your question should actually have an actual question in it. If you can't put a question mark at the end of your sentence (or paragraph as is usually the case), then it is not a question.

OK, done with that. Now for some interesting things that I did remember from the Q & A. In response to someone asking if he had any thoughts as to why Europe was less religious than the US, Dawkins hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. He said that although people have suggested several theories to him, he felt the best explanation was the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. Separation creates a free-market of religions that compete for your brain, soul, and money, which causes them to work harder and thus they must try to make religion more enticing. In contrast, religion has become boring in Europe because it has come to depend on the State for support. This is "the only good reason I've heard for NOT abolishing the Church of England."

ATTENTION Religious Right theocrats and anyone else who still doesn't get it: Read the above again. The separation of church and state is the only thing keeping you from assimilation with the secular State apparatus you so vehemently oppose. You all should be on the front lines in the battle to protect the First Amendment. Just let me know where I can send those ACLU reg forms.

Someone asked what his plans were for the future. Though he didn't have specifics, Dawkins did say that he would like to write a children's book, maybe a child's version of The Ancestor's Tale. Personally, I think the letter to his daughter at the end of A Devil's Chaplain would make great reading for an older child. On a related note, while he was signing my book, I asked him if he was going to start writing articles for Free Inquiry magazine again and he said yes. Also, somebody asked him when we were going to see a scientific TV series from him similar to Sagan's Cosmos (which got a big round of encouraging applause). He said he would be more than happy to do it but that the decision wasn't up to him, it was up to the producers with the money.

Another person asked Dawkins for advice on how to approach his God-fearing mother who continues to insist that he is going to burn in Hell since he lost his religion. Dawkins explained that sometimes you can't always reason with the unreasonable but the only approach he recommends is through logic and reason. And then he suggested that the young man could start by getting his mother his book for Christmas (tongue-in-cheek of course, and it got a good laugh as well).

Overall, it was a very entertaining evening and I am still slighty awestruck to have been in the midst of such a great thinker. I actually would have preferred a smaller venue, because it would have been more intimate and we might have had a little more time to chat with him during the signing. But I completely understand the need to accomodate more people and did not leave disappointed.

Religious Right Pussies

2006-10-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

A snipet from a recent press release from the Alliance Defense Fund regarding the NJ Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage:

“Legally, marriage is the state’s way of protecting children by ensuring that whenever possible they are raised by their own mother and father,” said Lavy. “Because same-sex couples can’t procreate, this vital state interest is not advanced by handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court declined to address this issue because the attorney general specifically refused to make the argument.”

So you really think you are "protecting children" by denying gays the right to marriage? Do you think the American public is that stupid? Do you really think we can't see through your constant pandering to the gay agenda? We didn't die fighting for our freedom to protect children (or at least Jesus didn't) so that you can give them away to any Tom, Dick and Harry.

Let me set you straight. Ever notice that a lot of gays used to be married and have kids? Ever notice that some states allow gays to be foster parents or even adopt children? Ever notice that lesbians can have children of their own through artificial insemination? Surely you are aware that gays are teaching our children in our schools? Does gay marriage have anything to do with these issues at all? NO! Denying gays the right to marry will not stop gays from raising children in their homes or teaching them in our schools. It's time you got serious about "protecting children" and start focusing on the real gay issues in this country:

To protect children, we need to remove all gay teachers from our schools. Next to parents, teachers are the biggest influence on our children. Even if gay teachers don't discuss their sexuality with their students, gay can still be transmitted subliminally.
For the sake of the children, we need to keep homosexuals from adopting or even foster-parenting children. Why would we willingly allow gays to raise children? That's like throwing Christians to the lions.
For the well-being of children everywhere, we need to either remove children from households with a gay person or remove the gay person from the household. If one parent is gay, give sole custody to the non-gay parent and put a restraining order on the gay parent. If both parents are gay, put the children under the State's protective custody until a suitable heterosexual married coupled can be found. If an older child is gay, emancipate him/her immediately and remove him/her from the household (what teenager doesn't dream of being free from their parents control anyway?).
For the benefit of children everywhere, artificial insemination should be limited to married couples who can vouch for their heterosexuality with either a note from their clergyman or video tape evidence.
Due to certain recent events in Congress, it is my opinion that we need to make heterosexuality a requirement to hold office or at the least, deny homosexual congressmen Internet access.

To the anti-gay marriage movement, I say "Stand up for your values" and start addressing the real issue. Stopping gay marriage will do nothing to protect children because gay people will still have access to our children. If you really care about our nation's children, then drop the "marriage" from "Stop Gay Marriage" and start putting your mouth where your privates are.

Wedding Bell Blues

2006-10-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

Another step forward for gay marriage?

So, from what I can make of it, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that New Jersey doesn't have to allow homosexuals to get married, but if they don't then they need to set up an "appropriate statutory structure" (i.e. civil unions) that basically gives homosexual couples the exact same rights and privileges as heterosexual married couples. Didn't we already go through this once before as a country? I believe the catch phrase was "Separate but Equal", and we decided that it wasn't.

Theoretically, if civil unions and marriage are supposed to give the exact same rights and privileges as marriage, then we are merely dealing with semantics. So because some bigots don't want homosexuals to be "married", the state of New Jersey might go through the whole process of creating civil unions? Here is my suggestion for the upcoming New Jersey statute for civil unions:

Civil Unions: See all applicable marriage statutes, but replace any reference to "man and woman" with "two human beings".

Why do I have a feeling that it won't be so simple?

As I see it, there are two components to marriage: civil (legal) and religious. The civil aspect encompasses all the legal rights and responsibilites you acquire when you are legally married. These are real-world consequences that among other things allow two people to give each other responsibilities for their well-being that they wouldn't want anyone else to make for them. The religious aspect, on the other hand, is strictly between the couple and their god and is not even a requirement for marriage. Thus, because one (civil) applies to all marriage and the other (religion) is completely optional and has no real-world applications, it only makes sense that when we talk about marriage, we are really talking about "civil" marriage, the civil contract of marriage and all applicable laws, rights and responsibilites inherent in that contract.

So, if we already have the "appropriate statutory structure" in place defining a civil contract for two people who want to form a partnership that we call marriage, then why would we need to create a new "civil union" statute? Why doesn't the court recognize this and merely order the state to change existing marriage statutes to get rid of the heterosexual bias? Here is my guess: because the majority of people in this country (granted, they are slowly becoming the minority) still hold onto some form of anti-gay bigotry and a smaller, very vocal and influential minority are trying everything they can do to keep them narrow-minded.

Not all battles can be won in one fell swoop. I guess sometimes, as unfair as it may seem and as much as you might want immediate results, you must settle for a little less up front because your ultimate goal is unfortunately in the hands of a bigotted majority that is resistant to change ("Be grateful for what you can get because it could be worse"). Creating civil unions with the same benefits as marriage would undoubtedly be a great step forward in New Jersey. But ultimately, if the distinction between "marriage" and "civil unions" is endorsed by government, then that implies that there must be something different between the two concepts, and that my friends is discrimination. And since the difference between them is religious, then that is religious discrimination which even the New Jersey Supreme Court would surely not uphold.

It certainly seems that the New Jersey Supreme Court is sympathetic to the gay marriage cause. After all, they did say that the state either needs to allow gay marriage or create civil unions. They didn't rule out gay marriage, they just passed the buck to the legislature. And with all the current "activist judges" threats coming from the Religious Right (the very same vocal and influential minority who hate gays), they probably wanted to avoid the limelight. But at the same time, is it fair to leave discrimination to the whims of the voters?

Here is my theoretical solution: separate the "civil" from the "religious" in marriage.

As far as the government is concerned, when two people get married, they are entering into a civil contract. The religious aspect of marriage is of no concern to government. And if you remove religion from marriage you end up with a civil union (remember, the NJ Supreme Court has determined that the state should be able to create civil unions with the exact same benefits as marriage). So, from now on I propose that whenever two people want to get "married", what they will actually do is enter into a "civil union". This will also be retro-active, so all couples who are currently married will automatically be considered to be in civil unions.

On your tax forms, you won't file as married, you will file as a civil union. When you fill out the next census, your legal status won't be single or married but rather single or in a civil union. This is a purely legal status which reflects the fact that the only concerns government has about your relationship with another person are civil and thus two people enter into a civil contract we call a "civil union". This is the only step needed in order to have all of the benefits we currently associate with marriage. For people who are already married, they need to do nothing as nothing will change for them because civil unions are exactly the same as today's marriage. And of course, because all people are treated equally under the law, civil unions are open to both heterosexuals and homosexuals.

So if civil unions encompass the civil part of what we call marriage, then what about the religious aspect of marriage? That is the great thing about my plan, you can do whatever the hell you want concerning your religious beliefs about marriage because nobody, including government, cares except you and your god(s). If you want to have a church official marry you in a church, go right ahead. If you want to have a pagan ritual around a bonfire, go right ahead. If you prefer a satanic ritual, be my guest. If you want to get married in a mass ceremony with a thousand other Moonies, more power to you. Nobody else cares what you do for your religious beliefs and it is of no concern of government. Your marriage is entirely disassociated from the state. God no longer has to compete with goverment red-tape.

But remember, a religious ceremony in no way carries any legal recognition of a civil union. The only legal way to get the legal benefits that are currently associated with marriage is to enter into a civil union. Yes, you'll still have to fill out the necessary civil union applications just as you fill out marriage applications now. But guess what, the applications are exactly the same, so for the 50% of you who have filled them out before, it should be a piece of cake.

With my plan, everybody wins because everybody is treated exactly the same under the law and religion is freed from the tyranny of the state. And for those of you who can't handle equality, I suggest you find a country a little more to your liking. I hear Afghanistan is trying to rebuild.

5 quick book reviews

2006-10-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of books lately. I don't have time to write full length book reviews on each one, so I thought I'd just do quick summaries.

Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean

Excellent book. Demonstrates how the Republican party has been taken over by a bunch of amoral, power-hungry, bigotted, fear-mongering authoritarians and that they plan to continue to destroy our country from the inside. A self-described "Goldwater Republican", Dean is vicious in his attack on today's Republican leaders:

"What has driven this book is the realization that our government has become largely authoritarian. It is run by an array of authoritarian personalities, leaders who display all those traits I have listed -- dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, amoral, intimidating, and bullying; some are hedonistic, most are vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheaters, prejudiced, mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, and two-faced. Because of our system of government, these dominators are still confronted with any number of obstacles, fortunately. Yet authoritarians seek to remove those complications whenever they can." (p 183)

I will say that I think Dean lets Bush off the hook just a little. Dean tends to view Bush as merely a dim-witted puppet controlled by Cheney and Rove, more of a follower than an actual leader, which implies that Bush is somewhat a victim of these authoritarians himself. While all of this may be true, I just have a hard time finding even an ounce of sympathy for Bush. But a main thesis in Dean's book is that there are followers (those who score high on the Right-Wing Authoritarian Survey) and there are leaders (those who score high on the Social Dominance Orientation Survey) and then there are those who score high on both ("Double Highs") who are the biggest threat to our country. These Double Highs include Rove and Cheney but not Bush. Since Dean's book focuses mainly on the Double Highs, Bush does not get the scrutiny that Rove and Cheney receive. Whether Bush is merely a follower or leader or both, I guess history will have the final word.

One last thing that I just cannot let slide. Dean writes about the use of fear-mongering:

"Among the most troubling of the authoritarian and radical tactics being employed by Bush and Cheney are their politics of fear. A favorite gambit of Latin American dictators who run sham democracies, fear-mongering has generally been frowned upon by in American politics. Think of modern presidents who have governed our nation -- Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton --- and the various crises they confronted -- the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean war, the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, Iran's taking of American hostages, the danger to American students in Grenada, Saddams's invasion of Kuwait, the terrorist bombings at the World Trade Center in 1993, and Timothy McVeighs's 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma. None of these presidents resorted to fear in dealing with these situations. None of these presidents made the use of fear a standard procedure or a means of governing (or pursuing office or political goals). To the contrary, all of these presidents sought to avoid preying on the fears of Americans." (p 171)

Wasn't it Reagan who coined the phrase "Evil Empire"? Wasn't it Reagan who warned us that Nicaragua was only a two days drive from Texas? Wasn't the whole premise of the Cold War that the evil atheist Communists were intent on destroying our American way of life? No sir, no fear there. Dean seems to have forgotten that for the majority of the Cold War, Americans were constantly being reminded that we were one Central American Socialist Democracy away from turning Red. My guess is that the Cold War Presidents didn't have to work as hard as Bush does to convince people to be afraid. But that doesn't mean they didn't take advantage of Cold War fear for their own political agendas. Dean of course is a product of the Cold War, so he may have trouble recognizing his generation's own fear-mongering. Such fear may have appeared legitimate, but that doesn't mean it wasn't used to pursue office and political goals.

Destined for Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush

I really wanted to laugh, laugh out loud, while I read this book. It had so much promise. But you can only take so much of a bit before you get tired of it. I liken this book to one of the various movies made for an SNL character who had a few funny idiosyncrasies but really can't carry a 90 minute movie by constantly bobbing your head to the same song. The book is written in the voice of George W Bush. Literally in the voice of George W Bush, with all his tortured usage of the English language, his dim-witted thought process and his own, twisted version of reality. There are some laughs, especially the first few chapters. And the pictures in middle of the book are hilarious. But just as with the real Bush, you will laugh at some of the stupid things he says and does, and then after a while, it just isn't funny anymore because you remember that he is actually our president. And that is ultimately why this book loses its appeal. Even a fictitious book written to mock the President gradually becomes humorless as you realize that the truth is a lot closer to the fiction than you want it to be.

The Worst Person in the World: And 202 Strong Contenders by Keith Olbermann

I love Keith Olbermann. I love Countdown on MSNBC. Olbermann is surely one of the most honest and outspoken media personalities today in the mainstream media. Which is why I regret that I cannot recommend his new book. First, the book is merely a collection of transcripts from his "Worse Person in the World" segment on Countdown. Other than a brief introduction about why he decided to create the "Worse Person in the World" award, there are no extra insights from Olbermann about his awards, it is straight transcription from TV to book. Now, to be fair, if you do not watch the show or watch it infrequently, then most of these awards will be new to you, so this particular criticism does not apply in all cases. But even if you have never seen the show, my second criticism applies to everyone equally: the "Worse Person in the World" segment does not make interesting reading.

I love Keith's "Worse Person in the World" segment. A lot of times, even if I can't watch the whole Countdown, I'll tune in toward the end just to catch the award ceremonies. But what makes the "Worse Person in the World" so great is the presentation. Keith is a great TV personality and he delivers the awards with the perfect amount of humor, sarcasm, disbelief and outrage. Unfortunately, it just doesn't translate to the writen word. Each chapter of the book represents a month and within each month we are given between 5-10 days worth of transcripts. Because the TV segment is usually just a few minutes long, and there are three recipients for each segment, each recipient ends up getting just a few sentences (each daily segment generally fills up only half to two-thirds of the page). With such little real estate to work with, you really need to make a big impression in a few sentences. And to be sure, some of them do (such as the Bill O'Reilly smack downs, see next review for more on Bill). But overall, most are missing the key ingredient that make them interesting: Keith Olbermann. Imagine reading Seinfeld transcripts having never actually seen the show. Sure, there are laughs here or there, but without Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine, you are missing the best part of the show.

Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly by Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer

This book had one mission, to make a mockery of Bill O'Reilly, and it succeeds. Granted, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. But Amann and Breuer take ridicule to new heights. The reviews of O'Reilly's various books are particulary funny. There is also a musical at the end that you should not miss. If you want to laugh and you can't stand Bill O'Reilly, this book is for you.

With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military by Michael L. Weinstein and Davin Seay

A good exposé on how Christian Conservatives are attempting to take over the military leadership in our country. After Mikey Weinstein's son, who was attending the Air Force academy in Colorado at the time, confided to his father that he was being harrassed by Christians for being Jewish, Weinstein, himself a former Air Force cadet, decides to get to the bottom of things and uncovers an evangelical coup within the academy hierarchy. Weinstein ends up suing the academy after repeated attempts to work for change through the academy power structure in which he ultimately ends up stonewalled by the very evangelical Christians he is fighting against.

Mikey Weinstein may not be the perfect role model. His language is often harsh and injected with expletives. He admits that he is often too impulsive and abrasive and that this has probably cost him some support. His personality has made it somewhat easier for his critics to smear him. But he may also be the only type of person who can really go up against the military power structure and actually make a difference. Sometimes the messenger has to kick a little ass to get his message across. And this makes Weinstein an immensely interesting character as well.

The only disappointing thing about this book has nothing to do with the book whatsoever. Even after the lawsuit and all the publicity Weinstein was able to generate, it appears that little has been done at the academy to address the problem. Although promises have been made and programs have been drawn up to deal with the problem, because the evangelicals in charge do not consider this to be a problem in the first place (their main argument is that proselytizing is a significant part of their religious calling and thus by not allowing them to take advantage of their absolute authority over the cadets in order to force the cadets to endure various forms of religious indoctrination and humiliation, their first amendment rights are being violated), very little has changed. It is going to take a real Commander-in-Chief, one who really values religious freedom and the Constitution, to initiate changes from the top.

My Prayer

2006-10-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a likely Republican presidential contender in 2008, joked on Wednesday he would "commit suicide" if Democrats win the Senate in November.

"I think I'd just commit suicide," McCain told reporters, to accompanying laughter from Republicans standing with him. "I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen."

This is the only prayer I will ever utter in my entire life:

"Oh please God, let the Democrats take control of the House and Senate this November".

Excerpts from Letter to a Christian Nation

2006-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading Sam Harris' new book "Letter to a Christian Nation" and I'd like to post some of my favorite quotes. Most of them are self-explanatory, but I will add comments where necessary to help put them in context.

Remarking on how America stands virtually alone among the developed nations in the percentage of people who read the Bible literally:

"Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency." (p. xii)

The next three quotes demonstrate that the Bible (and all religions in general) is not necessarily the best moral compass to live by:

"The problem, however, is that the teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently--though isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith have failed?" (pp. 11-12)

"The moment a person recognizes that slaves are human beings like himself, enjoying the same capacity for suffering and happiness, he will understand that it is patently evil to own them and treat them like farm equipment. It is remarkably easy for a person to arrive at this epiphany--and yet, it had to be spread at the point of a bayonet throughout the Confederate South, among the most pious Christians this country has ever known." (pp. 18-19)

(This next quote addresses the anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-sex education, anti-HPV vaccine, anti-stem cell research crowd):

"One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not -- that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral -- that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings." (p. 25)

And now a good definition of Atheism:

"The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist". We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious belief." (p. 51)

This quote elaborates on the conflict between science and religion:

"If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. Everyone recognizes that to rely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact is ridiculous--that is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the Bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the archangel Gabriel, or to any other religious dogma. It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail." (p. 67)

And now, to knock them off of their religious high horse:

"There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend an eternity in hell.... An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse--and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists." (pp. 74-75)

And a wake-up call to the rest of us:

"It is worth remembering that the September 11 hijackers were college-educated, middle-class people who had no discernible experience of political oppression. They did, however, spend a remarkable amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and engineers must hit the wall at four hundred miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not merely a matter of education, poverty, or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: in the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don't know what it is like to really believe in God." (pp. 82-83)

And finally:

"Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God." (p.91)

Religion Gone Bad

2006-09-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

I don't usually read a lot of books by Christian evangelicals, but I just happened to finish one such book by Mel White, actually, the Rev. Dr. Mel White's book Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right. Now, if you generally think of Christian evangelicals as conservative fundamentalists (as I know I do), then you are in for a bit of a shock because Mel White is about as progressive and liberal as they come. He wasn't always so enlightened. He spent the majority of his life denying his homosexuality and using every Christian trick in the book to overcome it ("prayer, psychotherapy, exorcism, electric shock, marriage and family"). And he had access to the major players in the growing fundamentalist movement as he was a ghost writer for such evangelists as Billy Graham (who White actually does not consider a true Christian right fundamentalist because Graham apparently never spoke negatively about homosexuality, he just avoided the issue altogether), Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell.

But in the early 90s, White finally accepted his homosexuality as "a gift from God" and came out in a sermon where he announced publicly for the first time "I am gay. I am proud. And God loves me without reservation." And since that time, along with his partner, he has run the GLBT activist group Soulforce ("soul force" is the term Gandhi used to describe his nonviolent liberation movement, I'll have more to say about Gandhi later), whose mission statement reads "The purpose of Soulforce is freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance." And White is at the front lines of this battle. In 2003, he and his partner moved to a four-room cottage across the street from Falwell's church in Lynchburg, Virginia in order

"to be an eyewitness on the front lines of the war Jerry and his fundamentalist Christian friends are waging not just against gay and lesbian Americans but against women's rights, against the rights of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, and atheist Americans, against national and internation measures that would preserve and protect the environment, against sex education that includes safe-sex information, against stem-cell research, against affirmative action, against entitlement programs even if designed to help the poor, the homeless, and the retired".

He has been arrested several times while protesting outside the offices of Falwell and Robertson and also on the White House steps during a hunger protest over the "Defense of Marriage Act". Yes sir, Mel White is a true progressive liberal who puts his money (and body) where his mouth is and he now considers people who were once his role-models and friends to be his enemies (in fact, part one of his book is titled "My Friends, The Enemy"). And he does not hold back on his distaste for the fundamentalist religious right and their war on the GLBT community. He uses Laurence Britt's 14 Characteristics of Fascism to demonstrate how the Christian right is quickly becoming a fascist movement. He uses the post-WWII study The Authoritarian Personality to demonstrate how Falwell (and others as well) appeal to people who are susceptible to authoritarianism. And he compares the language used by fundamentalists to the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew to demonstrate how the Christian right is attempting to demonize the GLBT community.

As a Secular Humanist (that's the best term I have found for my philosophy on life), I have a feeling that Mel White and I would agree on 99% of the important social and political issues facing us today. In his chapter on "Reclaiming Our Progressive Political Values", his big three values are:

We value the US Constitution as the bedrock of our democracy: therefore we will resist all efforts to put the Bible in its place.

We value our religious freedom: therefore we will resist all efforts to make this a "Christian nation".

We value the separation of church and state: therefore we will resist all efforts to bring down the "wall of separation".

This is definitely one Christian who understands the importance of the first amendment and that the "wall of separation" is something that all religious people should support because it ultimately protects everyone's right to religious freedom.

But of course, the one thing we don't see eye to eye on is God, which in itself is really no big deal because the arguments in support of equal rights for the GLBT community are not religious in nature. And the first half of the book (the "enemies" list and the history of the fundamentalist movement) has very little proselytizing at all. The second half of the book however is much heavier on God's role in the GLBT movement, which I guess is to be expected from a book written by an evangelical Christian. In fact, the God-talk was so heavy at one point, I remember asking myself if I thought I was going to make it to the end of the book. White does attempt to make us non-believers feel welcome in his Soulforce movement (and I have no doubt that we would be), but the second half of his book is clearly targetted to Christians (which is not necessarily a bad thing, since Christians do have a responsibility to rid their religion of bigotry). Unfortunately, White's evangelical Christian heritage shows itself just a little too much as he plays the Christian card of moral superiority while discussing Gandhi's influence on his own moral values:

There are many reasons that Gandhi saw faith in God as necessary and not just for the person involved in a nonviolent liberation movement. Gandhi saw faith as a powerful and positive force in our daily lives. His personal faith was hammered out of blood and tears when his nation was on fire, the arsonists were Anglican Christians, and faith in any God was rapidly giving way to faith in the weapons of violence and destruction. His call to "Reclaim faith" then seems appropriate for our call to reclaim faith today.
"We have become atheists for all practical purposes," Gandhi laments, "and therefore we believe that in the long run we must rely upon physical force for our protection".
"Without faith in God," Gandhi says, "man can have faith neither in himself nor in others.... The finite cannot be understood unless we know it is rooted in the Infinite."
Without faith in God, a personal value becomes "a lifeless thing and exists only while it is a paying proposition. So are all morals," he says. "If they are to live in us they must be considered and cultivated in their relation to God. We try to become good [keep our moral values] because we want to reach and realize God."
Without faith in God, our values are "likely to break down at the critical moment."
"God is a living Force," says Gandhi, "and our life is of that force. That Force resides in us, but is not the body. He who denies the existence of that great Force, denies to himself the use of that inexhaustible Power and thus remains impotent...like a rudderless ship which tossed about here and there perishes without making any headway."
Without faith in God "we won't have the courage to die without anger, without fear and without retaliation. Such courage comes from the belief that God sits in the hearts of all and that there should be no fear in the presence of God.".

I have great respect for Gandhi and what he did with his life, but unless I'm interpreting the above quotes incorrectly, according to Gandhi (and thus Mel White) non-believers not only are not as "good" as believers but can never be as "good" as believers. It is hard not to be offended by such rhetoric.

I have no doubt that I would like Mel White if I ever had the chance to meet him and that we could possibly become great friends over time. But apparently only if we never discussed religion. I'm sure there are other books out there that discuss the threat of the Christian right just as well as this book (such as Kingdom Coming, which I am currently third in line on the request list at my local library) but without the religious bias. But I'm glad that I read this book for several reasons. Mel White is a good writer and he has some very interesting stories about certain fundamentalists (such as a hidden homosexual relationship at a young age) since he had access to these people and their personal writings and such. He is an inspirational leader in the fight for equality for the GLBT community and you can't help but route for him as he relates his life story and work toward this goal (the story of how his father overcame the advice of church elders and openly supported White in a gay pride parade is very touching). His disgust for the Christian right rivals any non-believer and at times you may even forget that he goes by Reverend. And it is refreshing to read a progressive and liberal Christian viewpoint. Let's face it, religion ain't going anywhere anytime soon, so it is comforting to know that there are progressive Christian leaders out there (since they don't seem to get as much exposure in the media as the Christian right).

But at the same time, I am also reminded of the inherent prejudice built into religion, even for a very liberal Christian. And this is one reason why I will probably never be convinced that religion has a predominantly positive effect on society. Even when religion is used for very noble purposes, it still acts to divide people based on the "truth" of its claims. And as history has shown, when you believe you have the truth, you want people to know it, whether they want to or not.

Jerry and Me

2006-09-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

You know, I most likely agree with Jerry Falwell on very few things, but I think he and I have finally reached some common ground. In a very recent Sunday sermon, Jerry reminded his flock that "Enemies of the Cross" abound throughout. But while ranting against "liberalism", he made a very insightful point that I couldn't agree with more:

Who are our enemies of the cross today? Well let me list but a few. Liberalism. Liberalism which says not all the Bible is inspired and inerrant. When you find someone who doesn’t believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, you’ve found an enemy of the cross. Because if you can't take God at his word, then how do we know there was a cross? How do we know there was a virgin birth? How do we know there was a glorious ressurection? Either this book is God's word, or there's no grounds, no intellectual grounds for Christianity.

Precisely! If we can find just one falsehood in "God's word", then the whole book is called into question. If the Bible is not inerrant, then how do we know which parts are true and which parts need further clarification/re-interpretation? And if this is the case, then religion basically comes down to an individual interpretation of what one believes the Bible to say. It is no longer the word of God but rather what someone thinks God intended to say (and interesting how those sentiments change over time). And in the competition for "the truth", not everyone is a winner (but it sure helps to be really charismatic or have a good marketing team). Considering all the different sects that have emerged based on their own unique biblical interpretation, it is easy to see that this is exactly what has always been and what will always be with bible-based religion (or any religion in general).

I'm not going to present a bunch of examples of contradictions and errors in "God's word" because they are easy enough to find through a quick Google search. What I find much more interesting is the response to such criticism. I'll let the good people at GotQuestions.org explain their reasoning:

So, what are we to do when someone approaches us with an alleged Bible error? (1) Prayerfully study the problem and see if there is a simple solution. 2) Do some research using some of the fine Bible commentaries, "Bible defense" books, and Biblical research websites that are available. (3) Ask the helpful servants at www.gotquestions.org or your pastor to see if they can find a solution. (4) If there is still no clear answer after steps (1), (2), and (3) are followed - trust God that His Word is truth and that there is a solution that just simply has not been realized yet (2 Timothy 2:15; 3:16-17).

Yep, even errors are proof of God's divine inspiration. Which is why Jerry can never be wrong. And neither can any other Christian for that matter.

Fight Fire with Fire

2006-09-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Want an insight into what theocracy looks like? Read this.

The author asks at the end of the story:

Moral of the story?......

Well, quite frankly I don’t know, it seems that there is no moral to the story other than morality clauses fucking suck.

Let me suggest a few morals.

Women need complete and unfettered access to all forms of birth control. It is unconscionable what this woman had to go through in order to get the morning-after pill and it is immoral for any doctor to deny her the pill for any reason (other than what better be a damn good medical reason). Granted, the pill will soon be over-the-counter, but will every pharmacy stock it? Will moralizing pharmacists try their best to throw up whatever road blocks they can in order to keep women from getting the pill? The moral here is that we need to fight every effort to block, restrict or limit womens' access to all forms of birth control. There will always be people out there, primarily religious people, many in powerful positions in this country, who will do everything thing they can to see to it that women are denied accesss. The fight will never end and thus we can't become complacent in the struggle.

Let's be honest, the overwhelming majority of these moralizing doctors and pharmacists justify their discrimination based on their religious beliefs. "But what harm does religion do? Religion is a positive influence on people." Bullshit! Religion may have made all these moralizing doctors feel good about themselves because they were "doing the Lord's work" but they made this woman a nervous wreck, feel like an "unworthy dirty whore" and possibly subjected her to (or rather, forced upon her) an unwanted pregnancy. It's time to stop giving religion a free pass. It's time to stop bending over backwards with "religious correctness" in order to be respectful to other people's religious beliefs. No more! A spade is a spade and a moralizing-woman-hating-doctor is an asshole. We can respect a person's right to believe but we don't have to respect their religious beliefs any more than we have to respect the beliefs of a white supremacist. I know we all want to try and get along, but the more we bite our tongues and allow people to use their religion as an excuse to discriminate against and control others, the more they'll take advantage of our good will.

Fine Line

2006-09-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

So a guy crashes through a security barrier and enters the US Capital.

"He was unstable. He apparently thought the devil or the demons were chasing him," a Capitol law enforcement official said.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church continues to believe that demons possess people and apparently even Pope John Paul II had performed exorcisms while wearing the pointy hat.

So one guy is unstable and probably needs psychiatric care while the other guy was(is) revered as a moral leader by what could be up to a billion people throughout the world?

Yes sir, it is indeed a fine line between religion and insanity.

Carnival of the Godless #49

2006-09-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another installment of the Carnival of the Godless. Enough idle chatter. Let's get to the posts.

This post by Alonzo over at the Atheist Ethicist reminds us that the struggle to raise the next generation of "Intellectually Responsibile" adults can't begin early enough and we should not be afraid to "Talk to the kids" and plant the seeds of doubt early on. And while we are on the subject of kids, Cassandra over at The Atheist Mama offers a nice alternative to the bedtime prayers that so many parents force upon their children.

So why all the fuss about children? Is brainwashing children with religion really that harmful? Adam over at Daylight Atheism answers this question with his post "Nightime is for Dreaming. Daylight is for Action." in which he explains that faith in an afterlife can be hazardous to this life (and also that Mother Teresa is a Masochist for Jesus). And Carl over at Hot Cup of Joe offers his two cents worth on whether religion is truly "evil".

With the 5th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed by, it seems appropriate that we have at least one post on the subject, and Matt (aka "olly") over at 10,000 Reasons to Doubt the Fish has written a nice little post about his reflections on the event, and also on how the theocrats in this country have exploited it in a cynical attempt to strengthen their own powerbase and destroy the secular underpinnings of our government.

Speaking of significant dates, did you know that 8/22 was supposedly another important date of apparently apocalyptic proportions? Well, The Hippo over at Hippo Campy appears to have come out of it unscathed.

And now let's turn to the epic struggle between science and religion. Ever been accused of having "faith" in science? Are the “Dogmatic Darwinists” keeping “Intelligent Design” under wrap? Well, Stuart over at Daily Irreverence wants the faith-based community to know that "Science is not Dogmatic". Speaking of dogma, according to the senile old man in the pointy white hat, we are losing our souls to scientific rationality, and according to BigHeathenMike over at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant, it's about damn time!

And now to play a little Devil's advocate. Stuart, yes the same Stuart above of Daily Irreverence, wonders out loud as to whether we need to speak out against every public display of religious symbolism and if we aren't wasting valuable resources and destroying what little public sympathy we have in waging a war against "a historical artifact in a veterans memorial." And Phil over at Phil for Humanity wonders whether Christians should even be putting up crosses in the first place?

And what Godless celebration would be complete without a little "sacrificial lamb"? Can a religious society under a secular government truly succeed for a continuous period of time? This is the question that Aisha E responds to over at Eteraz. Unfortunately, while trying to maintain a seemingly tolerant stance toward us ungodly heathens, the article turns into one big Bingo party.

Is your atheist blog about as popular as a Hare Krishna at an airport? Does your blog see less action than a night out with the Virgin Mary? Good News! NonProphet over at beware of the dogma has some helpful suggestions for increasing your blog traffic.

And now for the lighter side of godlessness. Mark over at the skwib entertains us with the ongoing adventures of that precocious prehistoric caveman Thag and how he found religion at the bottom of a bottle. And the Atheist Comedian has just returned from "The Hood" and he's got some Yo Mama jokes of the religious variety to share with you.

It has been a pleasure hosting this installment of the Carnival of the Godless. Next up is Martin over at Salto Sobrius on Oct 1.

My Turn

2006-09-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

OK boys and girls, I get the privilege of hosting the next installment of the Carnival of the Godless (or as I like to call it, Cirque de Soulless). This will be the 49th installment. 4 + 9 = 13. 1 + 3 = 4. According to one random numerology web site, the number 4 represents "Practicality, application, loyalty, rigidity, repression". Thus, while I will try to be practical about which posts to include, I will demand strict obedience to the rules and any deviation will be dealt with harshly.

Submission guidelines:

In addition to writing "COTG Submission" in the subject of the email, please include the following information:

The name of the blog where the post is from
The post title.
The post author's name or handle.
The post's permanent link.
A short description of the post.
A small kickback to ensure that your post is included.

You can send your submissions to cotg-submission@brentrasmussen.com or you can cut out the middle-man and send them directly to brucesreality@gmail.com (besides, I never get any email because my blog has less traffic than a Starbucks in Utah).

Abort Abortion?

2006-08-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled across a post at needlenose.com entitled "The True Face of Abortion Opponents". While the main point of the post seems to be about exposing the "Pro-Life" movement for the theocratic, morality-imposing, woman-controlling hypocrites that they are, I couldn't help noticing a secondary theme running through the post of which I have pulled out examples below:

No released eggs means no fertilization, no fetus, nothing. So this leaves these groups with three options: 1. Concede that science may have finally found a way to eliminate abortions, pack up their bags and go home.

Besides, the FDA's decision to allow over-the-counter sales has let the cat out of the bag. Now they [the religious right] have to take a position that is consistent with the fact that abortion clinics may very well stop performing abortions altogether because nobody needs them any more.

I don't like abortions either. Nobody does. I wish they could be avoided altogether -- and it looks like they very well may be [because of the availability of Plan-B].

The far bigger impact of Plan-B and other non-abortive solutions is that they essentially render the whole Roe v. Wade debate pointless too. So what that you've got all your Supreme Court justices lined up? Go ahead and outlaw abortion. Nobody will care if they can just walk into the pharmacy and buy a couple of pills.

Notice a pattern in the above statements?

Plan-B is a very good thing and it should be available over-the-counter to ALL women, but Plan-B is not going to stop the need for abortion. It does have the capacity to prevent some abortion, which is great because I'm assuming that most women would rather take a pill then go through the ordeal of an abortion. But Plan-B works on a very limited time scale. If it is taken too late then it will do nothing to prevent an abortion several months down the road.

So, "let's make it easily available everywhere" you say, "that will put an end to abortion" (which you have never really felt good about but considered it more of a necessary evil because you vote Democrat and don't want to be seen as a woman-hating neanderthal). Yes, I agree that we should make it as easily available as possible. Hell, I think we need to subsidize it free-of-charge and stock it in middle schools and high schools across the country (along with all other forms of birth control as well). But that still isn't going to eliminate the need for abortion.

There is a reason we refer to our side as "Pro-Choice". It is because, no matter how we personally feel about abortion, we realize that each individual woman has the right to make up her own mind and decide for herself if she wants to have an abortion. It may very well be that a woman wants to be pregnant, but then a few months later, for whatever reason, decides that she does not want to be pregnant anymore. Plan-B ain't gonna do nothin for that! And regardless of what the "Religious Right" believes, people do use birth control. But unless your form of birth control involves severing tubes, it ain't perfect (including Plan-B itself). And of course there are a variety of other reasons why a woman may not take Plan-B in the critical time frame.

The point is that it doesn't matter why a woman is pregnant, she has the right to control her body and may choose to terminate her pregnancy via abortion if she so wishes. And Plan-B is no help once she is pregnant. Because we believe in choice, abortion is a necessity we cannot afford to lose. So no, Roe v. Wade is not pointless. We should do everything in our power to keep abortion legal in this country and to make it available to any woman who needs one. Science can do a lot of wonderful things, but unless it can find a way to convince women that they should not be in control of their own bodies, it will not eliminate abortion.

Fear of the Unknown

2006-08-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

"Why are we here?"

"What is the meaning of our existence?"

"What is the purpose of life?"

To be honest, I'm tired of these questions. As far as I'm concerned, we'll never be able to answer them definitively in my lifetime, or quite possible in any lifetime. And not having the answer does not bother me one bit. In fact, I rarely ever think about it. And I doubt most people spend a lot of time really thinking about it either.

And yet so many people seem to need to cling to one of the various mythologies floating about to give them a sense of meaningfullness about their existence. "If there is no God, then what is the meaning of life?" is a common question asked on atheist blogs. While no other life form on this planet seems to need an ultimate purpose, we humans are just arrogant enough to assume that it was all created just for us.

I know you're not supposed to answer a question with another question, but since I don't know the answer anyway, what else have I got?

What if the only answer to these questions is "We don't know"? Would life suddenly become meaningless? Would you struggle to get out of bed every morning? Would your personal relationships fall apart? Would food lose all taste? Would what was once exciting and fun become boring and uneventful? Would you find the nearest gun and put an end to it all?

If so, I think that says a lot more about you than it does about our existence.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

2006-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

I would like to critique a few of the arguments I have heard over the past few weeks against the Federal Marriage Amendment.

1. "Gay marriage is a state's rights issue."

Wrong.

When conservatives make this argument, I think they are counting on the fact that a majority of people in this country (although that majority appears to be slowly dwindling) will currently vote to define marriage as between a man and a woman only. Even in my great state of Oregon, the state that has brought you doctor assisted suicide and medical marijuana, the state that has one of the most liberal universities (Go Ducks) and one of the most "godless" cities (City of Roses) in the nation, has managed to convince a majority of the population to vote discrimination into its marriage laws. Thus, conservatives lose relatively little when they play the state's rights card concerning gay marriage. They get to give the appearance that they respect the constitutional principals of this country while at the same time they can be rest assured that very few states will currently vote to allow gay marriage.

When liberals make this argument, I think they mean well but they are missing the big picture. Yes, I agree that we currently stand a much better chance of getting a few states to legalize gay marriage than we do any federal recognition. And it could be that once a few states come on board, the dominoes may begin to fall and more and more states will gradually legalize gay marriage. But what about those states that don't want to play along? Will we be content with segregating gays to certain parts of the country? It seems to me we already settled the segregation issue a few decades ago, and it took the Federal courts, the Supreme Court and National Guard to enforce it.

Gay marriage is ultimately a federal issue, not a state's rights issue. Yes, it may look bleak at the moment now that Bush has changed the make-up of the Supreme Court, but the only way homosexuals will be guaranteed complete equality is if all states are forced to recognize them as equal citizens in this country. We don't allow states to vote on legalizing racial discrimination, so why would we even consider allowing states the right to vote on discrimination based on sexual orientation? Equality should not be left to the whims of the bigoted majority, it should be protected and enforced because it is a basic human right. When we finally do gain back control of a branch of government, I want to see a constitutional amendment that guarantees everyone equal protection and rights regardless of sexual orientation. No more lip service, let's actually do something about it. Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath.

2. "The amendment isn't going to pass. We are wasting our time debating it."

It is definitely true that most Republicans are using this issue purely for political ends. There is no doubt they intend to use their opponent's vote against this amendment to imply that their opponent is part of the "gay agenda", just as racists called their opponents "nigger lovers" when fighting the civil rights movement. And they indeed did know that it had no chance of passing the Senate. But this in itself is not an argument against the Federal Marriage Amendment, this is merely an astute observation about how low some politicians will go to pander to their homophobic base.

The real argument against the Federal Marriage Amendment is not that it is a waste of time because it won't pass the Senate, but rather that it is wrong because everyone deserves to be treated equally and given the same privileges under the law. It is fine to point out that the proponents of this amendment are wasting everyone's time because it has no chance of passing, but you can't stop there. Unless you are willing to defend the rights of homosexuals to be treated equally under the law, you aren't really in support of equality. And I have a suspicion that a lot of the Senators who voted against the FMA would not be willing to make that all important next step. So while this was indeed a waste of time in one sense, it was an opportune time to come out in support of equality for everyone, which it seems to me very few Senators actually did.

3. "We don't want to put discrimination into the Constitution."

While I completely agree that the last thing we want to do is amend the Constitution to legalize discrimination, I can't help but feel that this argument is too specific and thus allows convenient loopholes for those who don't really support gay rights. For example, there are many Senators who voted against the amendment but are perfectly fine with allowing states to decide to discriminate against homosexuals. Thus, technically, they don't want discrimination written into the Constitution, they just want the Constitution to be neutral on the matter so that the states can decide for themselves.

It is fine to point out that Constitutional amendments have historically been used to expand rights, not take them away, but unless you are willing to apply that concept across the board to all law making bodies, you aren't really in support of equality for everyone, you've left the door open for discrimination at a lower level. Instead of saying that "We don't want to put discrimination into our Constitution", we should be saying "We don't want to put discrimination into any law in this country, whether local, state or Federal".

Summary

I'm certainly glad that the Federal Marriage Amendment died in the Senate. I'm just not so convinced that everyone who voted against it did so because they really believe in equality for all. While I understand that politics makes strange bedfellows and sometimes you have to scratch a few backs, I really long for a strong united front that isn't afraid to proclaim that equality for everyone, including those "perverted homosexuals", is a basic human right that needs to be protected at all levels of government. And if the Democratic Party can't manage to support that simple idealistic notion, then they might as well call themselves Republicans for all I care.

Have I Told You How Much I Hate These Guys

2006-05-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

(Title of this post respectfully plagiarized from Mike Malloy)

Bush orders documents seized in Capitol Hill search sealed

"This period will provide both parties more time to resolve the issues in a way that ensures that materials relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation are made available to prosecutors in a manner that respects the interests of a coequal branch of government," Bush said.

So all of a sudden Bush is concerned about the separation of powers and wants to make sure all relevant materials are made available? So I can assume that the Justice Department will be getting those NSA security clearances any day now? NOT!

"Let me be clear: Investigating and prosecuting crime is a crucial executive responsibility that I take seriously," he said. "Those who violate the law -- including a member of Congress -- should and will be held to account. This investigation will go forward and justice will be served."

Pardon my French, but HOLY FUCK I hate this man.

I guess you can't violate the law when you consider yourself above the law and nobody will call you on your own law breaking?

Hey Red America, we're still waiting for our apology.

Critical Thinkers

2006-05-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

Judge Blocks Prayer at High School Graduation

A student brings suit against his school district to stop a school sanctioned prayer at his graduation and a Federal (activist, no doubt) judge issues a restraining order against the prayer. Do the students learn a valuable lesson in the principle of separation of church and state? Or do they willfully ignore the judge's order and impose their religion upon everyone else at the graduation ceremony? Let's find out.

About 200 seniors stood during the principal's opening remarks and began reciting the Lord's Prayer, prompting a standing ovation from a standing-room only crowd at the Russell County High School gymnasium.

Looks like the students have learned nothing. No respect for the constitution. No respect for the legal system. No respect for those who don't feel they should have to listen to the "Lord's Prayer" just to go through their graduation ceremony. But it can't be all bad, can it? Some good must have come from this brave act of civil disobediance.

The challenge made the graduation even better because it unified the senior class, Chapman said.

"It made the whole senior class come together as one and I think that's the best way to go out," said Chapman, who plans to attend the University of the Cumberlands with her twin sister Megan.

Umm, doesn't she mean "it unified the senior class against the student who brought the lawsuit"? Or maybe they welcomed him with open arms and appreciated his attempt to uphold the separation of church and state and keep the state from imposing religion on its students?

Gabe McNeil said during a rehearsal on Thursday, other students booed the student suspected of filing the challenge when he walked across the stage.

"They've been giving him crap," McNeil said.

Whoops, guess not. But apparently, the rebellious kids have learned something from the experience.

Russell County School Superintendent Scott Pierce called himself a "person of faith" and said he was pleased with the response to the ruling by the senior class.

"This was a good learning process for them as far as how to handle things that come along in life," Pierce said. The response of the students showed an ability to be "critical thinkers."

Critical thinkers ehh? Let's look at some examples of their supposed critical thinking skills, shall we?

"In our little town, we've always had that prayer at commencement," said Brenda Hadley, owner of Anna's Garden [across the street from the graduation ceremony]. "Why not? That's part of our everyday life."

Ah yes, appeal to tradition, surely one of the critical thinker's greatest arguments.

The revival like atmosphere continued when senior Megan Chapman said in her opening remarks that God had guided her since childhood.

"More glory went to God because of something like that than if I had just simply said a prayer like I was supposed to," Chapman said.

And where would the critical thinker be without God to guide her along her journey through life. Everyone knows that the Bible is the critical thinker's, umm, bible.

And finally, some glowing praise from Superintendent Pierce:

"They exhibited what we've tried to accomplish in 12 years of education - they have the ability to make these compelling decisions on their own," Pierce said.

Wow. If this is considered the pinnacle of accomplishment after twelve years of public education, then we are in a world of trouble.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

2006-05-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

I hate to toot my own horn here, but I have recently started another blog called The Atheist Comedian, in an effort to fight the stereotype of the "angry atheist", one joke at a time. There will be various bits, such as my first post imitating a hacky stand-up comedian throwing out one-liners faster than a retired general can turn against the war. I also plan to do weekly updates on current news topics, similar to what you might find on SNL's Weekend Update or a Leno/Letterman monologue. And of course, there may be just a few religious casualties along the way.

So if you feel like a quick laugh, please stop on by. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I'd like to thank Rabbi Gellman for inspiring me to start this new blog. You're right Rabbi, it's time to stop being so angry and have a little fun.

Lies and the Lying Liar Who Tells Them

2006-05-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

From the Great Dictator's speech last Thursday morning, marking the National Day of Prayer:

America is a nation of prayer. It's impossible to tell the story of our nation without telling the story of people who pray.

"Freethinkers - A History of American Secularism" by Susan Jacoby. Look into it.

The first pilgrims came to this land with a yearning for freedom. They stepped boldly onto the shores of a new world, and many of them fell to their knees to give thanks.

Thanks for smallpox which wiped out nine-tenths of the Native population. Thanks for the guns and horses which took care of the rest.

At decisive moments in our history and in quiet times around family tables, we are a people humbled and strengthened and blessed by prayer. During the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress and George Washington -- I call him the first George W. -- urged citizens to pray and to give thanks and to ask for God's protection.

The real George W is spinning in his grave right now. And I can tell you this much about him, he didn't pray to get accepted in the National Guard.

More than two centuries since our first National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving, we continue to ask for God's guidance in our own lives and in the life our nation.

What is it with this "we" crap? Oh yeah, I forgot, just like your father, you don't consider atheists to be real Americans. That's OK, we don't consider you to be a real president.

Each year, thousands of citizens write letters and send cards to the White House that mention their prayers for this nation and this office.

Big deal. I bet you more kids mail letters to Santa each Christmas. That doesn't make it real.

Prayer is a gift from Almighty God that transforms us, whether we bow our heads in solitude, or offer swift and silent prayers in times of trial. Prayer humbles us by reminding us of our place in creation.

No, science humbles us by giving us a perspective about our place in the Universe. Of course, you have to have half a brain in order to comprehend it.

Prayer strengthens us by reminding us that God loves and cares for each and every soul in His creation. And prayer blesses us by reminding us that there is a divine plan that stands above all human plans.

George, you have a direct line to Jesus, why don't you let us in on his plan? If he's not answering the phone right now, I'm sure Falwell or Dobson or Robertson would be more than happy to help you out.

In the stillness and peace of prayer we surrender our will to God's will, and we learn to serve His eternal purposes. By opening ourselves to God's priorities, our hearts are stirred and we are inspired to action -- to feed the hungry, to reach out to the poor, to bring aid to a widow or to an orphan or to the less fortunate.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this the opening paragraph in the last tax cut you signed?

On this day, we also remember that we are a people united by our love for freedom, even when we differ in our personal beliefs. In America, we are free to profess any faith we choose, or no faith at all. What brings us together is our shared desire to answer the call to serve something greater than ourselves.

Uh George, I think your speech writers really "screwed the pooch" on this one. You see, atheists don't pray or believe in God, so if there is something that is bringing us ALL together, then it must be non-religious (i.e. greater than God). I'm sure you didn't really mean it, you probably just didn't understand the implications.

From our nation's prayerful beginnings, America has grown and prospered. Through prayer, we humbly recognize our continued dependence on divine providence.

Well, I guess it's better than dependence on cocaine.

I want to thank you all for keeping prayer a part of our national life. May God bless each one of you, and may God continue to bless our nation.

Hey, with your current approval ratings at the lowest in history, maybe he is listening after all?

National Day of Prayer

2006-05-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

The gospel, as preached by Father George Carlin:

"I've often thought people treat God rather rudely, don't you? Asking trillions and trillions of prayers every day. Asking and pleading and begging for favors. Do this, gimme that, I need a new car, I want a better job. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday His day off. It's not nice. And it's no way to treat a friend.

But people do pray, and they pray for a lot of different things, you know, your sister needs an operation on her crotch, your brother was arrested for defecating in a mall. But most of all, you'd really like to fuck that hot little redhead down at the convenience store. You know, the one with the eyepatch and the clubfoot? Can you pray for that? I think you'd have to. And I say, fine. Pray for anything you want. Pray for anything, but what about the Divine Plan?

Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayerbook can come along and fuck up Your Plan?

And here's something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy Will Be Done." Fine, but if it's God's will, and He's going to do what He wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will? It's all very confusing.

So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don't pray to the sun. You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.

For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog, Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat.

So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself."

The Power of Prayer

2006-05-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

D.C. prayer rally to seek lower gas prices

In a release, the Pray Live group said many people are "overlooking the power of prayer when it comes to resolving this energy crisis."

And of course, their real agenda:

"It is our hope that seeing and hearing some of the nation's most powerful preachers gathered around a gas station and the United States capital as a backdrop, will remind everyone who is really in charge of our world -- God"

Bush: Let’s pray there’s no hurricanes

“The lessons of Katrina are important,” Bush said. “We’ve learned a lot here at the federal level. We’re much more ready this time than we were the last time.”

And of course, our first level of response is:

“Let’s, first of all, pray there’s no hurricanes,” Bush said. “That would be, like, step one.”

Some jokes just write themselves.

The Real Culture War

2006-04-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

There is a sense in this country that we are in the midst of a Culture War. Liberal vs. Conservative. Secularism vs Religion. Christian vs. Athiest. However you want to break it down, the underlying theme is morality. Right vs. Wrong. Absolute moral righteousness vs. Permissive moral relativism. Standing up for your principles vs. Anything goes.

And we all know which side atheists supposedly fall on.

Yet, I think it is safe to say that neither side has complete unity within its ranks. Let's take atheism for example. The assumption is that atheists are pro-choice baby killers or at least want to allow women to make that decision for themselves. But there are undoubtedly some pro-lifers out there amongst us who aren't willing to grant women that right. And though I have run into very few (if any) personally, I'm sure it is possible to find homophobic atheists who would rather not see homosexuals attain the status of equals in our society.

Now, I will be completely honest, it seems to me that on these two big social issues (and many others to be sure), the great majority of atheists do come down on one side. I attribute this to the fact that since atheists don't have one ultimate authoritative book to turn to for moral guidance, they have to look at all the facts surrounding an issue and make their decision based on logical reasoning given the evidence. If the evidence overwhelmingly points to one side over the other, then most people will come to the same conclusion, but of course there will always be a minority who see it the other way.

But the important point to remember here is that atheists don't claim to have a monopoly on the absolute moral truth. It is entirely reasonable to present new evidence, or at least expose an atheist to evidence she has never considered before and expect her to change her mind. And may I point out that this sort of relativism isn't just practiced by one side. Just ask a Christian how they feel about slavery today and you will most likely get a very different answer then you would have a few hundred years ago.

But slavery is one of those "black and white" issues today. No civilized person is going to justify its existence. If you really want to get at the heart of Christian relativism, then you have to take a look at an issue which isn't quite so settled in today's churches, such as homosexuality. While atheists may agree to disagree with other atheists, there is no better spectator sport to watch than Christians who can't decide whose interpretation of the Bible is the best, in this case, with respect to respecting homosexuals.

Their arguments are more pedantic than Clinton's confusion over the meaning of "is". They will argue over the meaning of a single word in the Bible or some obscure command tucked away in a book over 1000 pages long. While some will argue that we must look at Jesus' overall message of "Love Thy Neighbor", others will rely on an archaic verse in Leviticus tucked away amongst such admonitions as "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material" or "Do not cut the hair at the sides or your head or clip off the edges of your beard". And of course it goes without saying that they are using as a foundation for their beliefs a book written a few thousand years ago by extremely superstitious people and which has been both mistranslated and miscopied throughout the years (both accidentally and purposefully). But yet they take it as gospel, they just can't agree on the message.

This is the real culture war, Moderate vs Fundamentalist, Catholic vs. Protestant, Bapist vs. Even More Conservative Baptist. And they are fighting for their life, or rather afterlife. Everytime a church splinters, it makes their religion weaker. If the Bible is the word of God, then having a thousand different interpretations casts doubt as to whether anyone can really know what God is saying in the first place, which means the Bible becomes irrelevant and their claim of moral superiority essentially worthless. And as I've explained previously, they already know this, which is why they are hesitant to criticize each other, at least in public.

You see, when you have the word of God on your side, the other other side is wrong by definition, and those are fighting words in the battle for God's grace and your eternal soul.

Angry Atheists

2006-04-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

The good Rabbi Marc Gellman has some questions for us.

Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?

I don't know any atheists who are threatened by the "idea of God". In fact, most atheists laugh it off as a silly fantasy. But I wonder, why do you say "idea of God?" Why don't you just ask "Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by God?" I'm assuming that God isn't just a mere idea for you Rabbi, but rather an indisputable fact of the universe. And if it is a fact, then it doesn't really make sense to feel threatened by the "idea" of that fact. Would I ask someone if they feel threatened by the "idea" of having a nuclear waste dump in their back yard when it has been there for the past 10 years? I may be reading too much into this, but it seems to me that if God really exists (or at least you believe he exists) then you don't consider God to be an idea and you would not normally go around saying "Praise the idea of God" or "Let us pray to the idea of God". Come on Rabbi, stand up for God. Don't piss him off. I've heard his payback is hell.

So we disagree about God. I'm sometimes at odds with Yankee fans, people who like rap music and people who don't like animals, but I try to be civil. I don't know many religious folk who wake up thinking of new ways to aggravate atheists, but many people who do not believe in God seem to find the religion of their neighbors terribly offensive or oppressive, particularly if the folks next door are evangelical Christians. I just don't get it.

Rabbi, didn't you learn that you can't compare apples and oranges? Being a Yankee fan, rap music aficionado or animal hater (and I really don't think there are "animal haters", rather just people who don't necessarily want to be bothered by them) doesn't have anything to do with disagreeing about God. Religion is a fundamental philosophy of how the world works. It provides a framework and moral guideline for living. Baseball, rap music and animal preference is not a basis for morality. I can brush off a Yankee fan's obnoxious egotistical attitude because other than baseball, it doesn't really affect us anywhere else in life. Likewise, other than bad taste, it doesn't really harm us if someone listens to rap music.

On the other hand, there are numerous negative side effects resulting from religious belief. Do I really have to list them? So yeah, religious folk may not consciously "wake up thinking of new ways to aggravate atheists", but they don't have to, it is built into their religion. God says something is bad. His believers try to impose God's morality on the rest of us. They believe that they are doing God's work. Everyone else thinks it is oppressive. But you still don't get it? Really? I've never seen the movie, but I hear that the Passion of the Christ isn't exactly the feel good movie of the summer for everyone.

This must sound condescending and a large generalization, and I don't mean it that way, but I am tempted to believe that behind atheist anger there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories.

A generalization is "A principle, statement, or idea having general application". The word "oftentimes" means "Frequently; repeatedly". These two words seem to complement each other, yet you "don't mean it that way"? Please, stop with the wishy-washy fence-straddling already. We understand. You think the reason people are atheists is not because they used their "God-given" intellect to consider all the evidence (or lack thereof) and came to a rational conclusion, and not because they were never indoctrinated as children and thus were free from the bonds of dogma, but rather because they are mad at God. It's OK Rabbi, you can be straight up with us, we've heard this one before.

I'll let you in on a little secret though. In order to be mad at God, you have to first believe in God. You see, that's the thing, atheists don't generally tend to believe in god(s). Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to direct my anger at some imaginary being instead of (unfortunately) my friends and family. But it just doesn't work. It just rings so hollow.

But I think I can help you out. I think I see the error in your thinking. You see, you assume that belief in God is the natural state of the human mind. You think that if left to our own devices, we will naturally come to the conclusion that there is a God. Well, as I've explained previously, the burden of proof is on you, not me. That means the default human state of belief is no belief. The only mystery is why so many people fall for something that you can't prove?

I can humbly ask whether my atheist brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to Camus's existential despair: “The purpose of life is that it ends."

Wow, I'm an existentialist and I didn't even know it. Actually, I think your close, but no cigar. It's not the fact that life ends that makes us who we are, it's the fact that we recognize we only have this life to live and thus we should live it to its fullest. You see, we aren't obsessed with death like you guys are. It seems that almost everything you do is done in preparation for the afterlife. You live your life cowering under the shadow of God's wrath, faithfully doing his bidding, hoping to win his graces. In fact, from what I've heard, Heaven is way cooler than this place. Heck, I bet you can't wait to get there.

We, on the other hand, try to make the best of what we have now because you can't take your regrets with you. And as hard as this may be for some of your fellow theists to believe, we aren't just watching out for number one. As I'm sure you know, you can experience great joy from helping others, from sacrificing something of yourself in order to benefit someone else in need. Being nice is its own reward. And yet, we don't need a God to threaten us with eternal damnation in order "to discipline our animal urges, to overcome racism and materialism, selfishness and arrogance and the sinful oppression of the most vulnerable and the most innocent among us" (but yet so many people insist on telling us that without the Bible they would do just those things). We seem to be able to figure these things out on our own. Besides, is it truly altruism if you are compelled to do it by threat of torture rather than doing it of your own free will?

I know that Jim believes way more in Darwin than in Deuteronomy, but he also believes that at Cold Spring Labs the most important thing is not whether you are a man or a woman, not whether you believe in God. The most important thing, as he says, is “to get something done.” Now there's an atheist I can believe in.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that's the first time you've heard the phrase "get something done" from an atheist, because in fact, that happens to be our team motto (I'm wearing a baseball hat with that slogan as I type this). As I explained before, this is it, there ain't no other chance at life. Every atheist realizes that you've got to "get something done" while you've still got the chance. And thank goodness for that, because there have been a lot of great atheists who have made a lot of great contributions to this world. And just as importantly, the atheists working behind the scenes, the ones you don't really hear about, they are digging in the trenches, fighting to keep this country, and this world, from destroying itself over the pissing match you all are having about whose God is greatest.

And unfortunately, our work is never done.

Fear No More

2006-04-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Attention all you people who fear God's wrath, I've got great news for you. You don't need to be afraid any longer. You can safely ignore all those threats of eternal damnation that are keeping you from raping and killing indiscriminately. You can throw away your Bibles and sleep in on Sunday mornings from now on.

What I'm going to tell you is not hard to understand. It's based on the simple principles of logic and reason. It may be hard to accept at first. I understand. Living in constant fear all your life can wear down your critical thinking skills. But trust me, once you are able understand the argument and accept its conclusions, you will experience a revelation that is orders of magnitute greater than any religious experience can offer.

Are you ready? Don't be scared. Open your eyes and free your mind, because

God doesn't care if you believe in God!

Blasphemy you say! It says so right there in the Bible, believe in God or go to Hell. You are certainly the Devil in disguise! Be gone with you evil demon.

Now hold on a second. Stay with me for a moment. This is where that little concept called logic I referred to earlier comes into play. Ok, here it goes:

1. God gave us free will. God does not force us or cause us to do anything. We are completely responsible for our own actions.
2. Because we have free will, we are free to make decisions for ourselves based on our God given abilities intrinsic in free will, such as reason.
3. If reason leads us to conclude that God does not exist, then God should be perfectly fine with this conclusion because he gave us free will in the first place.

That's it, three easy steps. If you're having doubts, if reason tells you that religion is a big fairy tale but you still hang on just in case, well you no longer need to lie to yourself.

But God will punish us if we don't follow his word.

I am constantly hearing about how "God loves us". If God truly loves us, would he be so cruel as to give us the gift of reason and the complete freedom to exercise our intellect and conclude that he doesn't exist but then punishment us for using his gift? If this is the case, then God truly does not love us. Or maybe God made a mistake? Maybe he never thought that free will might lead to disbelief? Maybe he thought the evidence was so overwhelming that we would have no choice but to believe? Maybe he underestimated our sophisticated scientific ability to understand the universe and just assumed that some simple miracles a few thousand years ago would do the trick forever? Well then that is his mistake and to take it out on us is not the act of a loving god. Parents love their children, but they don't hand them a loaded gun and then blame them when they accidentally shoot someone.

It is impossible for us to fully understand the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. Only God truly knows how the two work together. We will never be able to fully understand how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will work together.

Cough ... copout ... cough. This is the last refuge of a religious scoundrel. When you get to this point, you are basically saying "I give up". You run into a logical inconsistency and merely explain it away with God. What you are really saying is that we have free will except when God decides to exercise his sovereignty. This would imply that ultimately God is responsible because even his lack of interference is a conscious decision on his part to allow our free will to prevail. But God can't be responsible if we have free will, so we have a contradiction once again. How you survived this long without your head exploding is beyong me?

Pot. Kettle. Black.

2006-04-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me how I came upon this particular web page, because I can't remember the chain of events that lead me there. It is on the WorldNetDaily web site, which from what I can tell has a conservative slant. The page itself is a critique of Richard Dawkin's recent TV special "Root of All Evil?". The review itself is nothing remarkable. But one paragraph did jump out at me:

Madeline Bunting, a columnist for the Guardian, who reviewed the series, wrote: "There's an aggrieved frustration that [atheist humanists] have been short-changed by history – we were supposed to be all atheist rationalists by now. Secularization was supposed to be an inextricable part of progress. Even more grating, what secularization there has been is accompanied by the growth of weird irrationalities from crystals to ley lines. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, the problem when people don't believe in God is not that they believe nothing, it is that they believe anything."

So belief in crystals and ley lines are weird irrationalites but religion is not? And just where is all the credible evidence for all of religion's claims of miracles and supernatural beings? How is believing that a woman was impregnated by a god or that her son rose from the dead and will some day come back to earth any less irrational than believing in the power of crystals? And religion has never produced any weird irrationalities? Does the Salem witch trials come to mind? And believe it or not, some of the crystal web sites I found were actually written by Christians! (Although maybe they are not real Christians?) Sorry, but secularism does not have a monopoly on weird irrationalities. In fact, weird irrationalities are the hallmark of religion.

Belief in the power of crystals is merely a minor inconsistancy in logical reasoning compared to the effects of religion on rationality. In my quick perusal of some web sites devoted to the power of crystals, they seemed to be primarily about protecting yourself from negative energy and such. Yes, somebody could take this too far and foolishly decide to rely on crystals instead of seeing a doctor for a major health problem. But in general, it seems the biggest danger of believing in crystals will be your money magically disappearing from your pocketbook.

What I didn't find on these web sites was any prescription as to how to live your life. I didn't find anyone preaching about right and wrong, good and evil, saints and sinners. I didn't find anyone villifying people who don't believe in the power of crystals. I didn't find threats of eternal damnation for all those "immoral sinners" who don't follow the power of crystals.

Yes, believing in the power of crystals is an irrational belief. But something tells me that I would have a much easier time convincing a crystal believer that they are being irrational then I would a religious believer. If I got to choose, I would much rather live in a country where the majority of people believed in the power of crystals instead of the power of Christ. Crystals won't tell you whether homosexuality is a sin or whether abortion should be legal. Crystals won't try to impose creation myths upon our science classes or subvert our constitution. Crystals won't command people to persecute, hate and kill in the name of the Almighty Diamond. Hence, I have a much better chance of getting Crystalites to consider such things in a rational manner. Give me the weird irrationalities of secularism any day.

And a note to G.K. Chesterton: When they believe in God, they already believe anything.

Blaming the Victim

2006-04-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

So I'm flipping through the TV channels this afternoon looking for a quick fix to veg to for a few minutes when I happened upon a documentary titled A Question of Miracles. It follows two faith healing evangelists (Benny Hinn and Reinhard Bonnke) on their "crusades" and then pretty much calls their bluff and explains away all the "miracles" performed by these two men of God as either fakes or just plain non-miracles (i.e. the "cured" still suffered from their afflictions after they had been "healed" or in the worst case, died shortly thereafter). Since I already knew that these guys are just scam artists preying off the pain, suffering and ignorance of their victims, I wasn't going to watch it, until I noticed that the Benny Hinn crusade they were going to examine was in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. So I just had to watch it.

This documentary was actually quite good. It took a scientific approach to answering questions about how large groups of people can be encouraged to behave in ways they would not normally behave (such as falling violently to the ground when Benny Hinn merely points to them). One of my favorite comparisons was to facism and Nazism in particular, such as how Hitler was able to get large groups of people to act out in ways they wouldn't normally be inclined to do. They even compared the Nazi salute of raising one arm up into the air with people at these crusades raising their arms up to God (as they were instructed to do over and over again).

But it was heartbreaking at the same time. Parents bringing their brain damaged children to be saved. Paraplegics in wheelchairs hoping to walk again. People shunning their medication and refusing to have operations because they believe they have been healed. And of course, the healing didn't begin until the collection plates had been passed. And they'll take cash, check or major credit card. The donation slips they hand out have suggested donation amounts, with the minumum being $500 and the maximum $10,000! The Rose Garden in Portland holds about 20,000 (and the place was packed). Assume the average donation was the minium $500. I'll let you do the math.

But I'm not going to write a review because you all know how it ends anyway. Instead, I want to concentrate on one particular family that was followed in the documentary. They had recently converted from Hinduism to Christianity and genuinely believed that Benny Hinn would cure their 10 year old boy from the two inoperable tumors in his brain. The doctors had given him only a short time to live, but they knew that with enough faith, God and Benny Hinn would cure their son.

Though they were struggling to make ends meet due to the amount of money it cost to care for their dying son, they were already on Hinn's $100/month donation plan. And at the crusade in Portland, they were so caught up in the moment that they decided to donate another $2000 there on the spot. Why they thought that giving $2000 to Benny Hinn would help cure their son, I don't know? Was God demanding some sort of monetary payment for his services? Sounds like blood money to me.

So they brought their son to this weekend long crusade with hopes that Benny Hinn would personally cure him. But as the crusade was winding down, Hinn had still not called out to their son. Amazingly, at the suggestion of the director of the documentary, on the last night, Hinn called the entire family up on stage. He spent minutes talking to the parents and praying for the boy and rallying the crowd. The emotions were overwhelming. And then at last, Hinn put his hands on the young boy's head and declared him healed.

And you all know how this one ends.

Nine months later and the boy is dead. The parents can barely speak, they are so overcome with grief after his death. They really believed that Benny Hinn (and God) were going to cure their son of his fatal brain tumors. So the family is out an extra $2000. Maybe they won't be so quick to throw it away as fast next time? And it's not like the boy had any alternatives. He was receiving medical treatment after all. The problem was, there was no cure. So if Benny Hinn could bring just a little hope and comfort to this family in the face of certain death, what's the harm?

One of the last questions the director asks the father after his son's death is whether he blames himself in anyway. And the father explains that his son was punished for his own sins earlier in life. He believes that he has cursed his family and that the curse may last for several more generations. This poor man believes that he is directly responsible for his son's brain tumors and may go to the grave believing that he basically killed his own son. And where did he get such a ridiculous idea? You guessed it, from Benny Hinn.

Bad things happen to good, innocent people. Yet this man will continue to suffer for the rest of his life believing that he has contributed to the death of his son. I guess there really is a Hell on earth, and religion is stoking the fires.

Nutty Professor

2006-04-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Some quotes from Bush's speech discussing the American Competitiveness Initiative at Tuskegee University.

And here are some things we need to do to make sure we shape the future. First is to make sure we're always on the leading edge of research and technology.

Basic research to meet one set of objectives can lead to interesting ideas for our society. It helps us remain competitive. So the government should double the commitment to the most basic -- critical research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years.

The federal government has got a role in making sure that there's research dollars available for places like Tuskegee. The federal government has got a role to provide incentive for private corporations to continue to invest in research and development.

So Bush is concerned about our scientific literacy?

This is coming from the same man who will not allow federal funding for stem cell research. According to the Boston Globe,

[Bush's] action spurred conservative members of Congress to introduce legislation that would criminalize both research with human embryonic stem cells and their future therapeutic use. If passed, the measure will send scientists, patients, and physicians to jail for up to 10 years and fine them $1 million. Competing legislation designed to overturn the ban was written a year later. Both measures passed the House and are now before the Senate.

Not only will he not allow funding, Bush and the Republican controlled Congress are going to throw people in jail who want to expand our scientific knowledge and help keep us on "the leading edge of research and technology".

And this is the same man who believes that evolution and "Intelligent Design" should both be taught in science classes.

Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about

Problem is, there is no debate in the scientific community about evolution. Evolution is the only scientific explanation for the development of life on our planet.

So Bush doesn't understand the difference between scientific fact and religious myth. The man is willing to imprison scientists working to help make our world a better place because he thinks a few cells are a human life. And yet we are supposed to believe that he is truly concerned about our scientific literacy and wants to stay on the leading edge of research and technology?

Sorry, but as long as we have Jesus' spokesman in the White House, science will continue to play second fiddle to God.

How Far Will They Go?

2006-04-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

I agree with Rachel Maddow, this interview makes me physically ill.

As I've argued previously, when you consider a few cells to be a human life with the same protections as any other person in this country, then logically, there really are no exceptions for allowing abortions. When a pro-lifer says that "abortion is murder", then it is murder whether the condom broke, or she forgot to take her pill, or she was raped by her uncle.

So who do you prosecute and what are the penalties when abortion is a crime? If I kill my friend because he is merely an "inconvenience" to me, I will most likely spend the rest of my life in prison. If a fetus-baby has the same protections under our constitution as my friend, then surely someone should pay for this "convenience" killing as well.

"Go after the doctors who perform abortions" you say. Well sure, but if I pay someone to kill my friend for me, am I still not guilty of a serious crime? Should I be let off with a slap on the wrist or should I serve some hard time? Remember, the fetus-baby and my friend have the same protections under our constitution. And, since according to pro-lifers, most abortions are for mere convenience, both abortion and my plot to kill my friend are premeditated acts for purely selfish reasons and should probably be treated the same under the law.

We all know that pro-lifers are against abortion and want to make it illegal. I'm tired of hearing their same old tired rhetoric over and over again. What I want to know is how they are going to enforce it and what the penalties will be? As we all know (because the death penalty works so well), the best way to reduce crime is through deterrence. You've got to make the punishment severe enough to fit the crime. So please pro-lifers, stop paying lip service to your beliefs and give us something we can really sink our teeth into. You're not soft on crime, are you?

Bruce's Hot Stock Tip of the Week: Invest in prison futures
Bruce's Idea for New Hit TV Show: Law and Order - Forensic Vagina Specialist Unit

Judge, Jury and Executioner

2006-04-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Quick quiz. Who said the following:

"Question comes up: is there a constitutional right to homosexual conduct? Not a hard question for me. It's absolutely clear that nobody ever thought when the Bill of Rights was adopted that it gave a right to homosexual conduct. Homosexual conduct was criminal for 200 years in every state. Easy question."

A: Jerry Falwell
B: Pat Robertson
C: James Dobson
D: Phyllis Schlafly

Tough choice, isn't it? These are all hateful bigots who have no respect for our constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. They would tear down a couple hundred years of hard work to establish the world's first truly secular government and replace it with their own god in a heartbeat. They have limited understanding of constitutional legal principles and use childish arguments based on ignorant, intolerant traditions and outdated laws. They view the Bill of Rights in the most narrow of terms in order to justify their discrimination. They see the establishment clause of the first amendment as a barrier to theocracy rather than as a protection against religious persecution.

Give up? Well, I have to admit something. It was a trick question (or rather, trick answers). Even though each of the above could have just as easily spoken those words, it wasn't any of them. No, it was someone far more dangerous to our country. Someone who actually has the ability to put those words into our laws. Someone who has the capacity to legalize bigotry. Those words were uttered by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia within the past month.

Yes, this is the logic of one of our supposedly most brilliant legal minds. If it isn't specifically granted in the Bill of Rights, then you don't get it. If it has been illegal in the past, for whatever reason, then you don't get it. If the Founding Fathers didn't have the foresight to consider it, then you don't get it. And this was the role model Bush used for his last two Supreme Court appointments!

This is Bush's America. This is the Religious Right's America. This is Scalia's America. You may someday be denied the right to control your own body. You may eventually be prosecuted, fined, and/or imprisoned for your behavior with another consenting adult or adults. And this will all be done with the approval of the United States of America.

And don't think that this will stop at homosexuality. It is true that God hates fags, but he also has a lot to say about straight folks too.

Witch Doctor?

2006-04-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

So some people have invested yet even more time and money into something that the reasonable among us already know, Praying Won't Affect Heart Patients.

But apparently some doctors still don't accept the results:

Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, said he believes intercessory prayer can influence medical outcomes, but that science is not equipped to explore it.

So let's explore this doctor's logic a little closer:

1. Science is not equipped to explore the effects of prayer (or I'm assuming God's intervention in our world in general)
2. The good doctor still believes that prayer can affect medical outcomes

The obvious question is how the doctor knows that prayer affects medical outcomes if we don't have the ability to measure the effects of prayer in the first place? If we have no way of determining whether prayer works (i.e. we can't quantitatively measure the results using our puny little scientific method), then we have no way of detecting any correlation between prayer and medical outcomes. Thus, we cannot in any way positively assert that prayer influences medical outcomes because that would imply that we were able to measure the effects of prayer (which we cannot).

The next question is why the doctor still believes that prayer can affect medical outcomes when he has no evidence to back up his beliefs? Of course, he has faith.

The final question you should be asking yourself is whether you want to go to a doctor who makes decisions based on sound empirical evidence and medical research or on whatever personal faith he happens to adhere to?

No offense, but if I ever go into a doctor's office and see a certificate from the Christian Medical and Dental Association hanging on the wall, I'm going to turn around and run like hell. They can pray for me all they want, just as long as they don't try and send me a bill for their services.

Gentleman's Agreement

2006-03-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

I am currently in the middle of reading Ibn Warraq's book "Why I Am Not A Muslim" and I came across a passage that nicely expands on the reasons for why they (theists) fear us most of all:

Many European apologists of Islam of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had a far greater knowledge of Islam and were, by contrast, devout Christians - priests, missionaries, curates - who realized that to be consistent they had to accord Islam a large measure of religious equality, to concede religious insight to Muhammad. They recognized that Islam was a sister religion, heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas; and Christianity and Islam stood or fell together. They knew that if they started criticizing the dogmas, doctrines, and absurdities of Islam, their own fantastic structure would start to crumble and would eventually crash around them.

As I've already demonstrated in my post Beware of the Dog, they fear us because we represent reality. But Ibn's point above explains why they would rather have their children marry someone of any other religious affiliation before marrying an atheist. Every theist knows deep down that his specific religious beliefs are just as unsupported as the next guy's, so criticizing someone else's beliefs would be tantamount to criticizing his own. Therefore, even though they may not see eye to eye on everything, most religions (and the various sects and denominations within a particular religion) have an unwritten agreement to show some tolerance toward each other in order to keep them from destroying themselves.

Thus, it is safer for a Christian to marry a Mormon or a Jew or a Muslim before marrying an atheist, because we will most likely call them on their bullshit.

Enough Is Enough

2006-03-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

How much longer are the American people going to let the current criminals in the White House and their enablers in Congress continue to screw them over? If these same deceptive, illegal and treasonous acts had occured during the Clinton years, ol' Bill would be rotting in a prison cell right now and it wouldn't be cigars we was smoking.

I'm hopeful that the makeup of Congress will change in the upcoming election (the current polls seem to be going our way). But I'm also just as cynical that nothing will change. The opposition has a lot of money to spend and a lot of time left to find the perfect negative marketing campaign that works best to scare us into voting for our own bondage and servitude. And speaking of bondage and servitude, they apparently have God on their side as well.

But if Congress does go our way, I think we need to push the "I" word big time. If Congress can hold an impeachment trial over Clinton's fib about his sex life, then it is nothing short of a national disgrace if it can't manage the same for this president, with all the mounting evidence implicating Bush in crimes against not only the Iraqis but the American people as well.

To help create the impeachment buzz, I would like to direct your attention to the ITMFA website. The "IT" stands for "Impeach The". The "A" at the end is for "Already". I'll let you try to figure out the "MF" in the middle. A few hints. It's not "Moderate Fibber" or "Mindless Fundie".

P.S. I don't intend to do a lot of direct Bush bashing on this site. Not that I don't despise the giggling murderer any more than the rest of you. It's just that there are so many blogs out there that already do it way better than I ever could.

Beware of the Dog

2006-03-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

We have two dogs. One we refer to as the "good dog" and the other the "bad dog". The good dog is everything you could want in a dog. He gets along with other dogs and our cats (in fact, I have never seen him meet another animal he doesn't like) and he has a very even temperament. The bad dog on the other hand does not get along with other dogs, in fact, he can be very aggressive toward them. And he has a tendency to chase our cats too. He can also be unpredictable with people at times. He loves to bark and growl and show his fangs and basically put on a big show.

Having a bad dog can be good for keeping solicitors away, but it is generally a pain in the ass otherwise. So we decided to hire a professional dog trainer to help us control our bad dog. I always assumed that our bad dog just had an aggressive personality and we needed to learn how to control him. But much to my surprise, the trainer explained that in our case, the displays of agression, the big shows of dominance, were really the result of fear. Our bad dog isn't innately evil, he is just afraid of other dogs and his aggressive behavior is merely his way of saying "back off buddy, I'm afraid of you".

So allow me to break away momentarily from my dogs and bring your attention to the following study:

Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority

Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

I don't think there is anything too surprising here. It seems to me that the general public's views toward atheists has been this way for some time now. But why? Why do religious people distrust atheists to such an extreme?

Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”

Yes, I agree, it is typical to hear Christians accuse atheists of not having any morals. How many times have we been asked why we don't just go around killing people since we have nothing to tell us right from wrong? But I'm not sure that fear of moral decline is the ultimate reason for such attitudes.

It is obvious that religion does not directly correlate with good behavior. I merely have to take a gander at the Black Collar Crime Blotter in my monthly issue of Freethought Today to see numerous examples of the pious acting immorally. Besides, the great majority of people in this country consider themselves to be religious. Unless I live in an alternate universe in which I travel exclusively in atheist circles, then of all the various people throughout my life who have wronged me in some way, the majority of them have been religious. Surely, religious people are not living in the same alternate universe either.

No, their fear is not based exclusively on our "lack of morals" or self-interest, for they also suffer from the same afflictions. And even though I think there are many illogical inconsistencies in their beliefs, I find it hard to believe that they fear themselves. Rather, their real fear, what scares them most about us, is that we offer a rational, believable alternative to their superstitions, one they cannot easily brush aside.

Ahh, I think I hear my bad dog barking again.

As you will recall, his aggression was out of fear. He shows his fangs and barks and growls because he fears what he is attacking. Likewise, when the religious attempt to malign us by claiming we have no morals or that we are only self-interested, they are on the attack as well. Their slander and insults are merely the barks and growls of a fearful dog. Their fear is knowing that our reality is the ultimate threat to their dogma.

So the next time a Christian accuses you of being morally deficient or not worthy of marrying one of their own, try to remember that like the aggressive dog, the Christian is really just afraid of you. He's saying "Back off buddy, I'm afraid you'll take a bite out of my superstitious beliefs and infect me with the truth".

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

2006-03-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

re·spect:

1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
2. To avoid violation of or interference with: respect the speed limit.

"Respect my beliefs". "We should respect other's beliefs". "You can't say that, you should respect their beliefs".

How many times have we heard something similar to the quotes above? Do we really need to respect everyone's beliefs, no matter how unfounded? Do we really need to respect the racist's views on minorities or the homophobe's views on gay marriage or the sexist's views on woman or the religious person's view on your impending eternal damnation?

Of course not.

"Respect my beliefs" has become a catch phrase for people who don't want to tolerate views other than their own. It is a way of stifling opposing viewpoints by implying that people who hold differing opinions from yourself are somehow discriminating against you.

Now let me clarify, I am not suggesting that we start stoning people in the middle of the town square because we don't respect their beliefs. You see, while I in no way feel obligated to respect your beliefs, I will always "respect your RIGHT TO HAVE your beliefs". Let me clarify. You are free to believe in the supernatural deity of your choosing. And while I am in no way obligated to respect your god, I will protect, defend and support your right to believe as you wish.

So let's take a look at our definition again and apply it to our distinction between "respecting your beliefs" and "respecting your right to have your beliefs".

1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.

As noted above, I have no obligation to defer to, show esteem for or view favorably anybody's beliefs. I have a right to disagree with, poke fun at, object to and find repulsive any beliefs that I feel are wrong, unfounded, discriminatory or illogical. But I do support your right to have your beliefs. See the difference? Beliefs themselves are fair game. Your right to have your beliefs is honored without question.

2. To avoid violation of or interference with: respect the speed limit.

I think this is where most of the confusion comes into play. Just what is interference or violation regarding beliefs? Is it even really possible to interfere with beliefs? I suppose some form of brainwashing can forcibly alter your beliefs, but I think that is an extreme case and not what most people mean by interfering with their beliefs.

I think many people equate having a right to their beliefs with having a right to practice (or express) their beliefs and view any restriction on those rights as interference with their right to believe. While I can certainly understand this viewpoint, we generally find it acceptable to place reasonable restrictions on people's rights to practice their beliefs when warranted, especially when the practice of such beliefs could be harmful to others or violates the law. Unless we are willing to allow that everybody has an unlimited right to practice their beliefs regardless of harm or law, it is impossible not to have some interference with practice of belief. But I don't think the various restrictions placed on people's ability to practice their beliefs demonstrate an intent to interfere with their right to believe merely for the sake of violating that right itself, but rather to comply with the law.

Likewise, dissent is not a violation of belief or interference with the right to believe. As noted earlier, I am free to criticize, expose as fraudulent or offer rational alternatives to any belief I disagree with and in doing so I am in no way infringing on the rights of anyone to have those beliefs. If this wasn't the case, if we had to hold our tongue out of respect, then we would never be able to speak out against injustice because we would always be attacking someone else's belief system.

So let's use an example to illustrate the above points. I know many Christians who feel that homosexuality is a sin. They believe homosexuals will not only be punished by God but should also not be allowed some of the various rights that heterosexuals take for granted (marriage, adoption, etc...). As should be obvious by now, I completely respect their right to have their beliefs, no matter how wrong I think they may be. I would love to be able to change their mind, but I in no way want to take away their right to believe that homosexuality is a sin.

But, I do not respect their beliefs about homosexuality. In fact, I think they are wrong. I might even refer to them as homophobes or bigots. And if they wanted to try and convert my friends, I would actively oppose them. But none of my actions would violate their right to believe that homosexuality is a sin. It may make them uncomfortable. It may make them unpopular. It may cause them to lose some friends. But as an atheist, I have only one thing to say to that: welcome to the club baby.

Likewise, if there is a law which states that you can't discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation and it applies to one of my Christian friends, then forcing them to comply with that law is also not a violation of their right to believe. They are free to continue to believe whatever they like about homosexuals, but they are not free to do harm to others by violating a law that protects people from discrimination.

So the next time someone plays the "respect my beliefs" card, you can safely toss it aside, knowing that you have them on the ropes and they are desperately holding on for the bell. You must respect their right to believe. You should probably conduct yourself in a respectful manner. But you do not have to respect their beliefs.

Holy War

2006-03-20T16:47:00.000-08:00

Afghan Christian Could Get Death Sentence

An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday.

"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam."

Now, why does the Afghan judge's "It is an attack on Islam" remark sound so familiar? I just can't put my finger on it. Maybe it has something to do with following:

Vision America's "The War on Christians" Conference (props to God is for Suckers!)

Some of the panels in this conference include:

- The ACLU And Radical Secularism: Driving God From The Public Square
- The Judiciary: Overruling God
- Jews Confront The War On Christians
- The Media: Megaphone For Anti-Faith Values

Many Christians throughout this country seem to be suffering from a disorder that, while it seems to be a recent phenomenon, has actually been around for just over 2000 years and which I like to refer to as "Christian Persecution Complex". There are a variety of things which can trigger this affliction, such as:

- Supporting equal rights for EVERYONE
- Defending EVERYONE's civil rights
- Creating a government based on a secular constitution
- Representing EVERYONE in the media

Being as I am such a kind and loving person (almost Christ-like, if I may be so bold), I just can't stand to see so many persecuted Christians suffering this unbearable attack on their beliefs. So, in order to help our Christian friends fight this epidemic, I suggest the following:

- Instead of supporting the ACLU while it defends Christian's civil rights, please vote for politicians who are willing to give the current Jesus in the White House unlimited power to spy on the godless Quakers.

- Rather than watching those evil liberal left-wing radical secular humanist cable news channels, please watch FOX News and the 700 Club instead. (Update: you can safely ignore this one since no one has ever been able to find an evil liberal left-wing radical secular humanist cable news channel)

- When playing the Chinese fortune cookie game where you add "in bed" to the end of the fortune, please add "with Jesus" instead (e.g. "Good things come in small packages ~~in bed~~ with Jesus").

- Get a copy of the constitution and replace every instance of "the United States of America" with "Our Lord Jesus Christ".

We the People of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for Our Lord Jesus Christ.

- When approaching a river, stream or large body of water, ask yourself "What Would Jesus Do?" (If you don't know how to swim, then ask yourself "What Would Noah Do?" instead).

We may never find a cure for Christian Persecution Complex, but every little bit we can do to make our Christian brothers and sisters feel more comfortable and ease the pain of the relentless attack on their beliefs will help immensely. Won't you do your part today?

Honesty is the Best Policy

2006-03-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

As Homer Simpson once said: "You know me Marge, I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals flaming."

And I like my Christians evangelical.

That is why Jerry Falwell is such a breath of fresh air. He isn't afraid to tell it how it is. I respect a man who stands up for his convictions.

Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue.

You see, he doesn't tip-toe around on broken egg shells. You don't have to read anything in to what he says. There are no secret meanings or double entendres.

While I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel and dearly love the Jewish people and believe them to be the chosen people of God, I continue to stand on the foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to enter heaven.

Uh oh, I was worried there for a second. The opening of that sentence is a little too "Jesus loves you" for me. You know what I mean. Those people who go around saying "love the sinner, hate the sin". Give me a break. If God is willing to punish them in hell for all eternity without any chance of redemption, then why would hating them be any worse. In fact, I would much prefer to be hated here on earth than to burn in hell for eternity. I consider hate to be step up from eternal damnation. Besides, we all know that hate is more of a motivator than love. The carrot can't dangle in front of us without the stick.

In this age of political correctness and diversity, the traditional evangelical belief that salvation is available only through faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ is often portrayed as closed-minded and bigoted. But if one is to believe in Jesus Christ, he must believe in His words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father but by Me” (John 14:6). I simply cannot alter my belief that Jesus is The Way to heaven, as He taught.

Thank you for addressing my concerns above. Yes, it's about time we stop caving in to political correctness and diversity. As painful as it may be, the closed-minded and bigoted truth must be told.

I want to reaffirm that I am a Zionist in terms of Israel’s entitlement to its homeland. I continue to pray daily for the peace of Jerusalem, as the Bible instructs Christians to do. And I have dedicated my life and ministry to working for the peace of Israel. I dearly cherish the highly esteemed Jabotinsky Award which was given me in 1981 by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. I have led thousands of pilgrims through the Land Of Israel during my 31 tours over 36 years. I seriously believe that few Americans have invested more time and resources in the defense of Israel in this generation.

You're backsliding again Jerry. There is no need to defend your beliefs, you have Jesus on your side. Whether you are helping pilgrims steal land from Palestinians or stealing money from little old ladies sitting in front of their TVs, your message is pure.

However, I simply cannot alter my deeply-held belief in the exclusivity of salvation through the Gospel of Christ for the sake of political or theological expediency.

Like the Apostle Paul, I pray daily for the salvation of everyone, including the Jewish people.

Can I get a hallelujah? And nice touch "including the Jewish people", because it does seem like we sometimes forget that Jews are people too.

We need more Christians like Jerry if we are going to win the religious arms race. For God's sake, Muslims are willing to kill themselves for their beliefs. That must be some marketing campaign. How are we going to keep up with that unless we start promoting all the good things that Jesus has to offer?

The Carrot or the Stick?

2006-03-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Missouri House rejects spending for birth control

Missouri stopped providing money for family planning and certain women's health services when Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature in 2003.

But a Democratic lawmaker, in a little-noticed committee amendment, had successfully inserted language into the proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would have allowed part of the $9.2 million intended for "core public health functions" to go to contraception provided through public health clinics.

The House voted 96-59 to delete the funding for contraception and infertility treatments after Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.

Their logic boggles the mind. Let me see if I understand this correctly:

1. You're an anti-abortion group called Missouri Right to Life.
2. Assuming you live up to your name, you oppose abortion.
3. But you apparently also oppose helping women get access to contraceptives which would prevent the need for abortion in the first place.

Maybe I am missing something here? Let's read on, shall we.

The family planning program that was canceled in 2003 had provided state grants for women's health care services. Anti-abortion lawmakers had battled in court for years to try to prevent that money from going to Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortions.

This year's provision, inserted by Rep. Margaret Donnelly, D-St. Louis, would have avoided the Planned Parenthood controversy by only providing contraception through public health clinics. It primarily would have affected women who lack private insurance but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, which provides contraception under federal rules.

So Donnelly was trying to bend over backwards to appease the "pro-lifers" and they still wouldn't budge. I don't get it? The funding was targeted to public health clinics only (which I'm assuming in Missouri do not provide abortions). If I were a member of Missouri Right to Life, I'd be all over this. It is the best of both worlds: no funding for abortion and prevention of abortion.

There must be something else to this? Let's continue.

"If you hand out contraception to single women, we're saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that," Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

OK, now I see the problem.

Susan, your lack of political savvy is appalling, but I can understand your confusion. When I think of "women who lack private insurance but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid" I automatically assume they are single as well. And that might have very well been the case back in the good old days we all long for. But today, for whatever reason, a lot of women who lack private insurance but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid are actually married. So in effect, you are alienating a percentage of your constituency by implying that they are single and promiscuous (they go hand in hand after all) when they are really just poor. And you and I both know that you don't want to alienate poor voters, not in this economy. As the wealth continues to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands, Republicans will need all the poor voters they can get.

So I'm going to offer you some advice to get you out of the mess you have created. Instead of outright denying funding for contraceptives, why not just attach a rider to the Democrat's proposal requiring that a woman be married before she can get contraceptives? You can't miss, it's a win-win for everyone.

1. You won't alienate all those poor married women whose support you are going to need in the future.

2. You are promoting traditional family values by encouraging single women to get married.

3. You are defending the sanctity of marriage. Women who have access to contraceptives will have less worry about unwanted pregnancy. Thus, they will be more willing to fullfill their wifely duties and then their husbands won't need to look elsewhere.

4. You are promoting sound economic policy. Fewer poor children equals less government handouts which means even more tax breaks for everyone.

Oh yeah, I guess there is that whole thing about reducing the number of abortions, which I'm sure you support 100%. The thing is though, if you push that angle, then people are going to start asking why you don't want to reduce abortions for poor single woman as well? While this question may seem logical, they just don't understand that abortion isn't the primary focus here. Encouraging Family Values is the real issue. So just keep repeating the spin: "Family Values will encourage marriage. Married women will be able to get contraceptives. Contraceptives will keep dad happy." But if at all possible, don't bring up the abortion issue if you can avoid it. You're a little weak on this one.

So let's go over this one more time. Punishing the poor is out (at least overtly), it only alienates potential voters. Encouraging marriage is good, it plays to those traditional heartland values. Rewarding married women with contraceptives not only allows you to score much needed political points, but it allows you to continue to punish single women who should know better.

You see, a win-win for everyone.

This one is for all the ladies out there

2006-03-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

A helpful guide to proper ladylike feminine womanly behavior from the good people at the The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

We believe the Bible teaches that God means the relationship between husband and wife to portray the relationship between Christ and His church. The husband is to model the loving, sacrificial leadership of Christ, and the wife is to model the glad submission offered freely by the church.

Submission refers to a wife's divine calling to honor and affirm her husband's leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts. It is not an absolute surrender of her will. Rather, we speak of her disposition to yield to her husband's guidance and her inclination to follow his leadership.

Repeat after me: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

In the home, Biblical headship is the husband's divine calling to take primary responsibility for Christlike leadership, protection, and provision.

Headship bears the primary responsibility for the moral design and planning in the home, but the development of that design and plan will include the wife (who may be wiser and more intelligent).

Well, at least they threw in that whole wiser and and more intelligent part. Kudos to you ladies.

Thus we believe that there is good reason to affirm the enduring validity of Paul's pattern for marriage: Let the husband, as head of the home, love and lead as Christ does the church, and let the wife affirm that loving leadership as the church honors Christ.

You hear that ladies. Men are willing to be so gracious as to let you affirm your subordinate role in the family. With friends like that...?

We would say that the teaching inappropriate for a woman is the teaching of men in settings or ways that dishonor the calling of men to bear the primary responsibility for teaching and leadership.

But I'm sure you ladies would have no trouble find teaching jobs at either a beauty academy or culinary institute.

Yet not even well-educated Priscilla, nor any other well-educated women in Ephesus, were allowed to teach men in the public assembly of the church: writing to Ephesus, Paul said, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man" (1 Timothy 2:12). The reason was not lack of education, but creation order.

Sorry ladies, you drew the short straw on that one. But I guess we now know which came first; the egg, not the chicken.

OK, I have to stop now. It was funny at first, but now it is just too painful to continue reading through. If you have the stomach for it, more power to you. Me? I think I've got my God given right to a foot massage coming.

God Complex

2006-03-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, Washington Considering 'Pharmacist Refusal' Proposal.

ATTENTION PHARMACISTS. YOU ARE NOT DOCTORS. If you were, you would be the one's writing the prescriptions instead of filling them.

I don't mean to demean the profession in any way. Pharmacists play a valuable role in the process. But their role is limited. Good pharmacists understand their role and don't overstep their bounds.

So let's elaborate a little on the difference between a doctor and a pharmacist. I go to the doctor for advice on my health and for help with making decisions about any problems I may have. I go to the pharmacist to fill any prescriptions that my doctor may have given me for treatment. Do you see the difference here? I actively seek advice/treatment from my doctor, not from the pharmacist.

Now I do appreciate the fact the pharmacist may be able to recommend an equivalent alternative that would be better or cheaper. And I really appreciate it when the pharmacist warns me about taking it without food or asks me if I am taking any other medications to make sure I don't have any reactions. But this is not advice about medical decisions made between me and my doctor. This is helping me carry out those decisions in a safe manner.

Feel free to browse the Code of Ethics for Pharmacists. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there, but nowhere can I find an allowance for pharmacists to overrule the decision making of the doctor-patient relationship. In fact, there are a lot of things about respecting the rights of the patient:

a pharmacist promises to help individuals achieve optimum benefit from their medications, to be committed to their welfare, and to maintain their trust.

A pharmacist is dedicated to protecting the dignity of the patient. With a caring attitude and a compassionate spirit, a pharmacist focuses on serving the patient in a private and confidential manner.

In all cases, a pharmacist respects personal and cultural differences among patients.

A pharmacist avoids discriminatory practices, behavior or work conditions that impair professional judgment, and actions that compromise dedication to the best interests of patients.

So if a woman and her doctor decide that a perfectly legal drug is the best treatment, then by their own code of ethics, the pharmacist has a duty to fill that prescription. If a pharmacist cannot fullfill his/her duty, then he/she needs to find another line of work.

But what about pharmacists' rights? You can't force them to do something they are morally opposed to? This is a free country after all, isn't it?

If you are a pacifist, you shouldn't join the armed forces. If you are a militant vegetarian, you shouldn't work in a steak house. Surely, I am not the only one who realizes that doctors prescribe birth control and morning after pills to women.

If you are a pharmacist and you don't like the fact that there is a drug available to prevent conception and you can't uphold your own code of ethics to respect the patient's right to make perfectly legal medical decisions for herself, then you need to find another profession because you have proven that you are incapable of handling the responsibilites of your own.

If you want to help make medical decisions for other people, then go back to medical school. If you want to play God, then go to church. But leave your own morality out of the patient-doctor decision making process because you have no right to play doctor or God behind the counter.

Updated 3/16/2006

God-Doctor says: I'm not denying a woman the right to get the morning after pill. I'll happily recommend another pharmacist who will fill her prescription.

You pharmacists are as spineless as those pro-lifers who are willing to let women murder their babies if they were raped. For God's sake, stand up for your principles and beliefs. If you were involved in a plot to murder someone, but you actually didn't pull the gun, does that still not make you guilty? How can you sleep at night knowing that you contributed to the killing of an innocent life?

Burden of Proof

2006-03-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

There is a quijibo living in my house. Prove to me that it does not exist!

You can't. No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to prove to me that it doesn't exist. You can use all your fancy scientific methods of observation to try and prove me wrong, but you will never convince me because I had a personal revelation a few days ago in which the quijibo made himself known to me. Science can explain a lot, but it can't explain the supernatural. So don't even try to convince me otherwise. I know the quijibo exists and you are merely anti-quijiboan if you say otherwise.

Now of course you don't have to prove that my quijibo doesn't exist. Why should the fact that I concocted an entity known to me as a quijibo burden you to prove that it doesn't exist? There are an unlimited amount of supernatural phenomenon I could dream up which you have never considered before. Should you be required to prove that each and every one of them does not exist in order to know that they don't exist? Are you not reasonable in stating that my quijibo doesn't exist until I can prove that it does?

OK, so I'm the only one who believes in a quijibo. It is easy to write me off as a nutcase. But what if we replace my supernatural entity with another one, one that has a much bigger following. You know who I'm talking about, the big man in the sky. Does the fact that more people believe in God than in my quijibo shift any of the burden of proof on to the non-believer to prove that God doesn't exist? Are we not still just as justified to say that God doesn't exist as we are to say that my quijibo doesn't exist?

Just as with my quijibo, the default and rational position is that God doesn't exist until proven otherwise. There is definitely a comfort in numbers, but appeal to the masses (tradition) is not a valid argument for theism for the same reason that personal revelation is not valid, they are both too subjective to be used as proof. Whether one or one billion believe in some supernatural concept, the burden of proof is still completely on the believer and the reasonable and rational default position is that it doesn't exist.

In fact, it has to be this way in order for religion to exist in the first place. For example, does the Christian need to prove that every other supernatural god created, or that could be created does not exist? Does he need to prove that my quijibo is not the supreme ruler of the universe? No. The default and rational position is that all those other supernatural entities do not exist. If this weren't the case, if he were forced to prove that all other gods did not exist in order to justify his own belief, then he would never be able to believe in his own god because it would be impossible to disprove all the others just as he would claim it is impossible for atheists to disprove his own.

Just as the burden of proof does not shift to the Christian with regards to other gods, it does not shift to the atheist with regards to any gods. The default and rational stance is that no gods exist until proven otherwise. The only difference between the Christian and the atheist is that the Christian is willing to accept anecdotal proof for belief in his God while atheists are not (or for any supernatural god for that matter).

One more time, repeat after me. The burden of proof is on the believer and the rational position is that supernatural entities do not exist until proven otherwise.

Common Courtesy

2006-03-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Paul Kurtz had an editorial in the Dec/Jan 06 issue of Free Inquiry magazine (which I highly recommend) about the Pursuit of Excellence, in which he states:

... if an open democratic society cherishes the right of privacy, at the same time it needs to encourage the cultivation of excellence and nobility. It should endeavor to raise the levels of taste and appreciation by means of education and persuasion.

According to Kurtz, this goal can be accomplished through moral education (develop moral character and reasoning), cultural education (elevate aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity) and the development of intellectual talent (a good liberal arts education).

Well, I would like to suggest an additional target be included with the three above; teaching common courtesy. I think if we can bring back a lot of the little niceties and polite behavior that we seem to have forgotten, the world will be a much better place for everyone.

While I'm sure everyone has their own pet peeves, here are some of my favorites:

Please keep your gum to yourself. If you're in your own house, or car, or by yourself on a desert island, by all means, chew as much gum as you want. But when you are with other people, please swallow it or get rid of it. Believe it or not, not everyone wants to hear you chewing your gum, especially when you are oblivious to all the snap, crackle and popping produced by your chewing. When I'm in a movie theater and I can't hear the dialogue over your gum chewing, you have the problem, not me. And your coworkers will thank me, because trust me, they are about ready to go postal on your ass after having to listen to you for the past 10 years.

Please eat with your mouth closed. Not only is the sound of your smacking just as annoying as gum chewing (see above), but the sight of saliva-drenched, half-chewed food in your mouth is downright repulsive. Trust me, I'm doing you a favor here. I've known people who have lost business deals over lunch because their table manners were so atrocious. Cows chewing their cud belong in a field, not at the dinner table.

Ask for permission, don't assume you have it. For example, if you are selling your house and you want to put a for sale sign on my front yard because I have a good location, all you have to do is ask. You see, I spend a lot of money paying a yard service to keep my lawn looking nice. Therefore, I don't want a for sale sign right in the middle of my yard, ruining the aesthetic beauty. Thus, I will be more than happy to let you put your sign in my yard, but it will be over toward the side yard. And if you insist on putting your sign up anyway without asking me, don't get angry when I move your sign or throw it in the trash.

OK, this one may be a little controversial, but I think that people should at least make an effort not to bring their cold/flu symptoms with them to work or other public places. I realize that we can't avoid getting sick and I understand that there will be symptoms such as runny noses, coughing, etc... I'm not asking for a complete sickness free environment. But there are over the counter medications that will help alleviate your symptoms and make you feel better at the same time (you see, we both win). You could try blowing or wiping your nose every once in a while instead of trying to create the biggest snot-loogey known to man. There is a difference between someone making an attempt to keep their symptoms down to a reasonable level and those who just let it all out without concern for the others around them.

Flush the toilet in public restrooms. If you are a germophobe, then use your foot. Seriously, were you born in a barn?

Don't barge into elevators. Guess what? There may be some people who want to get off on the very floor you are standing on. It's going to be kind of hard for them to exit when you are blocking the door. I've nearly lost teeth from head on collisions. If you have a problem restraining yourself, just remember this simple rule, "You are not the only one in the building".

Please feel free to leave your own suggestions. Together, we can make the world a nicer place.

Rape and Incest

2006-03-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Miss. House Advances Bill to Ban Abortion

OK, no surprises here. Mississippi seems like it might be the type of place where women are treated like second class citizens.

The measure, which passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday, would allow abortion only to save a woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

Barbour, a Republican, said he preferred an exception in cases of rape and incest, but if such a bill came to his desk: "I suspect I'll sign it."

Heck, I'm surprised they even made an exception for the woman's life. Most pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception and thus the fetus has the same rights as any other person because it is a protectable life. So why should anyone be surprised that there would be no exceptions for rape and incest? After all, it is not the fetus' fault that it was the product of rape or incest. Wouldn't the fetus have the same rights as any other person, regardless of how it was conceived. If the woman was raped, she will just have to accept the fact that she must act as an incubator for some baby she never asked for because that baby has just as much a right to life as she does.

So why are some pro-lifers willing to make an exception in the case of rape and incest? Why is it OK to terminate a fetus (which remember, has the same rights as any other person and is a completely innocent bystander) in these circumstances but not because someone's birth control failed or because the woman is in an abusive relationship or because the woman is a teenager who is not capable of taking care of a baby or just because it is not the right time to have a baby? Seems to me that if you start going down the slippery slope of allowing some abortions then you are opening up the flood gates for unlimited abortion. Just ask those valiant warriors battling to protect the institution of marriage.

Should the life of a woman trump the life of an innocent fetus? Who gets to play God and decide which one lives and which one dies? Put yourself in the place of an innocent fetus (which, in case you have forgotten, is a person with the same rights as any other person). Would you want someone else making life and death decisions about you? Wouldn't you deserve a fighting chance? Besides, if a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, can't we all be comforted that it was part of God's Plan?

I would be suspicious of any pro-lifer who does favor exceptions in the fight to save innocent ~~fetuses~~ ~~babies~~ people. If they can justify the killing of the innocent in certain circumstances then surely they are animals capable of leading us into the next holocaust.

Updated 3/4/2006

Senator Bill Napoli from South Dakota supports the murder of innocent people.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

So you have no problem allowing a religious virgin to murder her baby, eh Bill? I guess her baby is shit-out-of-luck and doesn't even deserve as much protection as a crack whore's baby? You make me sick you hypocrite. If a teenage slut can survive the physical and emotional trauma of rape, surely God's loving grace will heal the wounds of an innocent virgin. Stop turning your back on the unborn. Uphold the sanctity of life and force that girl to give birth to that baby.

State Religion

2006-03-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

Appeals Court Denies Stay Of Legislative Prayer Ruling

A federal appeals court is refusing to temporarily lift a judge's order banning prayers during Indiana House proceedings from mentioning Jesus Christ or endorsing any particular religion.

House members have been complying with the order by meeting for informal prayers in the back of their chambers before official business begins.

Am I the only one missing something here or have they already found a solution to this problem? Why can't they just continue to hold their private prayer meetings in the back of the chambers? Are their prayers any less meaningful if they are done there instead of in front of the House? Will God only listen to their prayers if they are presented during official House proceedings? Do they need to force their prayers upon the entire House in order to validate their own beliefs?

It is impossible to be all-inclusive when it comes to religion. If we let the Christians have a prayer then we have to let the Jews have a prayer, and also the Muslims, oh, and what about the Mormons and the Jehova's Witnesses, and don't forget the Scientologists and the Satanists, and did I mention the Pagans, the Wiccans and the Seventh Day Adventists, and it would be rude to exclude Hindus and Taoists.

I know, let's just create a generic prayer that doesn't reference any religion in particular. Well, if I were religious, I'd consider a watered-down prayer designed not to offend anyone to be a slap in the face. If I really believed in the power of prayer, I would want my prayers to reflect my beliefs. And if that meant praying to Jesus, then I surely would not settle for leaving him out.

It is obvious why atheists cry foul whenever a breach occurs in the separation of church and state, but I would argue that theists should be just as concerned. State sanctioned religion can never be all-inclusive. And a generic religion includes almost no one. So why settle for some bureaucrat's idea of what religion should be when you can have it exactly the way you want it in the privacy of your own prayers?

What I Would Have Done If I Had Won the Lottery

2006-02-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

I'm not a gambling type of person. I don't like to throw away my hard earned money. But for those few times a year when the Powerball lottery gets ridiculously large, I just can't resist the temptation to throw away a dollar and buy a ticket. At the least, it gives me a chance to dream about what I would do if I were to win all that money.

Of course I would quit my job and blow some of it on myself, my friends and family. But being the generous person that I am, I would also want to use my good fortune to help those less fortunate. And there are plenty of well established charities and organizations out there to donate to.

But I'm a man of action. I like to make things happen. So when I see a need arise, I want to do something about it. Hence, when I see crap like this

South Dakota passes law to ban abortions

I know that it is time to get moving.

Although I can't be certain, my gut tells me that soon the Supreme Court will allow states to place severe restrictions on, and possibly criminalize, abortion. But even if this doesn't happen, let's face it, access to abortion is already becoming increasingly difficult for women.

So, if I were to ever win the Powerball lottery, I would set up the Abortion Scholarship Foundation in order to help make abortion available to those women who did not have access to it. The ASF would provide financial help to women who could not afford an abortion. It would provide transportation to the nearest abortion provider for women who live in one of the 87% of US counties that have no identifiable abortion provider. If there is a mandatory waiting period, the ASF would provide food and lodging while the woman is forced to wait before having an abortion.

I would of course have a website for the ASF where women could request assistance online. And the website would have a big numerical counter displayed prominently right in the middle of the page. And it would read "Number of Abortions Made Possible". And each time the ASF successfully helped a woman obtain an abortion the counter would increment by one.

Sure, I could water down my rhetoric and say "Number of Women Helped" so as not to offend anyone. But I'm tired of skirting around the issue. There is nothing inherently wrong with having an abortion. It is a completely rational choice for those women who want one. No woman should be ashamed of having an abortion and she should not feel the need to hide that fact. So the ASF will not hide it either.

Hillary Clinton said

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion.

I don't understand that. If they are not pro-abortion then are they anti-abortion or just neutral on abortion? Does pro-abortion imply that people are out there urging women to have abortions against their will? That is not pro-abortion, that is anti-choice. A woman having an abortion is a good thing if that is what she chooses, isn't it? Or is she really a killer but pro-choicers are willing to overlook her sin because it is the lesser of two evils? I'm pro-abortion the same way I'm pro-triple-bypass or pro-vasectomy. I guess I need to introduce myself to Hillary.

"Bringing Abortion to Women Who Want One" would be our motto at the ASF and we would be damn proud of it!