Sunday, July 12, 2009

Pity the Poor Persecuted Christians


“Here in America the persecuation [sic] of Christians has not yet reached the feverish pitch as in other parts of the world. There is still a Constitution that protects them and allows them to freely practice their faith … Slowly, methodically, and incrementally the anti-God forces are working to remove that Constitutional barrier.”

So reads an extract from a Christian website article called “War on Christianity.” It goes on in great detail decrying how prayer & the Bible have been removed from public school; how public property can’t be used to show religious symbols; how churches are threatened with losing tax exemption for openly campaigning for a political candidate.

It claims unfair treatment by the media, bemoaning how religious events aren’t given enough coverage on the major media outlets, and how religious leaders are intentionally cast as “cold and impersonal.” Here’s the site: http://www.jeremiahproject.com/prophecy/warxian.html

They sound as though Christianity is undergoing a veritable Inquisition. Naturally, their perspective comes through the lens of people whose religious fervor infects every aspect of their life. Indeed, they cannot differentiate between their right to practice their religion (which is never even hinted at), and the rights of non-Christians NOT to have the Christian religion forced upon them...which is exactly what they are protesting. By impeding their holy charge to proselytize, convert, harass, badger, impose their beliefs and idiocy on others it is THEY who are being persecuted. That’s about as bizarre a reversal of logic as one could conceive.

There are many other Christian sites who, in the best tradition of their whining martyrs and saints before them, claim persecution at the hands of “secular America.”

Funny thing is … 78% of Americans are Christians. The vast majority of elected government officials are Christian. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices are Christian (the other two Jewish). But that doesn't seem to occur to them. Evidently the 16% of the country that comprises atheists and agnostics are united, and powerful enough, to conspire to bring about the demise of Christianity in America. Sounds like a cross between Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare propaganda, and the vast Jewish Conspiracy myth.

Frankly, I wish it were so. If only Christians could experience genuine persecution just long enough to give them a first hand taste of the true horrors that Christians themselves perpetrated for ages on the Jews, Muslims, the Cathars, the Coptic Christians, “heretics”, atheists, “witches”, early scientists, homosexuals, various Christian sect offshoots, and indigenous peoples who refused capitulation to Christianity.

Let the poor put-a-upon US Christian majority experience the imprisonment, torture, pogroms, exiles, discrimination, displacement, genocide, cultural extinction, exclusionism, which their belief system and religious fervor has perpetrated on people all over the planet for almost two millennia. Then let them cry that they are “persecuted” because they aren’t allowed to shove their idiotic book of fables into our children’s minds in public school. OH MY, the HORROR!!

25 comments:

HoleyHands said...

Why is everybody always picking on us?

Semi-sage said...

HH- OMG That is Great!

Hump - Ya gotta just feel for the Christians. First is was the Lions, now it is the atheists!

Dromedary Hump said...

HH!! LOL..perfect!!!

No Guy...yeah. I'm really broken up over it. I say we ease up on 'em, and go back to letting them deal directly with the lions.

;)

NewEnglandBob said...

"Let the poor put-upon US Christian majority experience..."

But they should not have to actually experience it. As an example, I have not experienced much of it but I know about a lot of it and can empathize. This is because I am educated. Most of this group has either not been educated and/or even refuses to educate themselves once attaining adulthood.

We need to figure out how to better educated people as well as teach them how to be inquisitive so they can further educated themselves, then, maybe, a lot of this IDIOT-ology will disappear.

Dromedary Hump said...

Bob!!
Thanks so much for joining in!
Hey everyone..this is my pal NewEnglandBob. He lives in Taxachusettes.

Bob, Certainly I don't endorse actual persecution/physical violence / discrimination etc., against christians..or anyone. It would be antithetical to lovers of freedom and the constitution. Obviously, I was using it at a vehicle to point out the irony of Christian claims of persecution in the US.

Christianity is declining, as you know, in the US...just as it has been for years in Europe. Its a natural outgrowth of the acceptence of reality brought by the scientific age that I speak about in my book.

But knowledge can't be force fed. The fundamentalsts who believe in freedom of religion only for THEIR religion; or those who espouse this to be a "Christian nation" in direct defiance of the Founding Fathers words; or those nuts who deny/dismiss scientific evidence and believe in creationism / Intel design as a genuine science ... these people distain secular knowledge.

They defy being educated; they will fight it tooth and nail for it represents the eventual death of their beliefs. And, THESE are the people crying "persecution".

As moderate christians come to reality, as science and reason supplants ignorance with more liberal christians... at best the fundy nuts will eventually find themselves to be an island of backwardness in a universe of rationality, leading to eventual extinction of their cult.

But, to think they will, as a group, ever come to reaity, reason, rationality through any efforts of ours may be wishful thinking. Debating them may be entertaining...but it rarely if ever leads to internalization of fact and knowledge.

Welcome,
Hump

Semi-sage said...

New England Bob - "We need to figure out how to better educated people as well as teach them how to be inquisitive so they can further educated themselves, then, maybe, a lot of this IDIOT-ology will disappear."

I could not agree with you more. As soon as science discovers how teach down to the children of Christians, who by no fault of their own were brain washed into believing the rubbish of the bible.

I am sure that even you are vexed by the predicament Christians find themselves in. Attempting to surf the net, text with emoticons, and make calls without wires. Welcome Bob! To the 21st Century. Amazing technology shows us how things happened. You no longer have to sacrifice animals to get it to rain, declare a fine busty young lass a witch when she rebuffs your unwanted advances, and you no longer have to offer up mortification as a penance for sins not committed.

In this day an age you can live a free and full life, without the bondage of religion. Nobody really believes in that shit anymore ... Right ??? You aren't really dumb enough to believe? Please do not say in Genesis! Stop Bob. You are causing me pain. I must now sue you for personal injury. So what is your full name and address?

NewEnglandBob said...

Hump - I know you were not advocating persecution. I was just trying to say that we need to find a way to break the loop of indoctrination of each generation. Maybe in some areas the tide is breaking (although not fast enough for me). I have seen it around here - the empty(ish) parking lots of the churches on Sunday, people enjoying themselves at barbecues, shopping, ball games etc. instead of dressing up and sitting for a morning worth of silly religious indoctrination. I also see the religious schools, churches, and synagogues closing/merging and the younger generations having little interest in theism. But this is the northeast US and I doubt it is matched by many other regions of the US. Is there something we can learn about how it happened in Europe since WW II? I was amazed when I read "Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment" By Phil Zuckerman.

No Guy in the Sky - My address in Crawford, Texas... no wait, its Wasilla, Alaska...ummm, I am confused -- I do believe in "Gods I can Accept", chapter 82, p 231.

Dromedary Hump said...

Bob,
I can't explain what happened in europe to make religion dissolve so rapidly. I guess they have always been ahead of us in matters of intellectual awareness.

Yes, its happening here, and yes, its slower than we'd like to see...but I take heart in the thought that within 60-70 years we will out number them, if the trend reported in the Pew survey results from this past spring continue.

You and I wont be here to see it...but our grand kids will.

All we can do is be vigilant, keep the pressure on our gov't representatives, support the organizations that defend our right to non-religion, and hope the next generation is more in tune with reality and less likely to succumb to ignorance.

I'm glad you liked chater 82, it's one of my favs too. I'll be reading from it at my book signing next week. Thks.

Hump

Engineer of Knowledge said...

I guess our founding father’s “Separation of Church and State,” concept that this country was founded on, is somehow able to be selectively ignored by the Fanatical Religious Right.

Of course public property can’t be used to show religious symbols. Which religious sect would these people have displayed? Isis and Ra, after all they had the Greeks believing in the Virgin Birth first. Luke did not add this bit to the Jesus myth within the Christian faith until almost 60 years after the crucifixion.

If a church property is now slated to be used as a political front, then it is no longer exempt as a religious meeting house. These church properties should loose their tax exemption by openly campaigning for a political candidate. By doing this, it is no longer a house of worship but a political headquarters. They changed that status of the property, not the IRS.

If these nut jobs insist on pushing and forcing their religious viewpoint on everyone else and run with the big dogs so to speak, then they should not be surprised if they get their ass's humped and pissed on by the Alpha Dog they are going up against.

Val�rie said...

Hump and everyone else,

I read all your comments with great interest. I am catholic, live in France and have never been anywhere else although I would love to see other places.

I am in my early 30s and most of my many friends in Paris are about half catholic and half atheists. Nobody ever talks about religion, or very rarely, and it's never a subject of arguments. I live my religion inside myself, I never talk about it to other people, it's my business only.

I don't have a bible, and never read it. In fact no catholic in France that I know has ever read a bible. I do't care much for what the pope says, I live my religion between my connection to God and all the rest is just man-mad mumbo jumbo.

I believe in the right to abortion, in sex before marriage, in the right of homosexuals to live as couples and get married if they want (although in France, homosexuals or heterosexuals, nobody wants to get married any more nnyway).

The strange thing is that on the blog I attend every day (PP (= "Pourquoi Pas?"), http://ppblog.free.fr ) nearly everybody is atheist and is very nice and kind to me. But there are 2 fundamentalist Christians, Barb and Jeanette who hate me more than they hate the atheists and are always giving me a hard time.

Engineer of Knowledge, I have seen you a few times on Microdot's blog. Microdot comes often to PP. He is a vey funny and witty man.

Anyway, I would like simply to say to you all that it is possible to be Christian and to respect secular values, and not to bash people on the head with a stupid bible, and to love and respect atheist values because they are the same as any humanist ones which in my thinking are also that of a true Christian one.

Greetings from Paris,
Val�rie

Val�rie said...

"man-made mumbo jumbo", I meant to say.

Dromedary Hump said...

Val,
I've always said that people who find comfort in their belief and make it a personal thing are "the good ones".

Its when those fundamentalists force their beliefs on oters and demand we foillow their god's dictates that things get sticky.

thanks for your input as always.
Hump

Joyce said...

Well, as Drom and HH know well, I am a committed Christfollower (and we actually all like each other! Imagine that! lol).

I am also an American and strong supporter of our Constitution. Do I agree with everything in it? No. Do you? It's doubtful. We probably agree and disagree on many of the same things and are in total opposition on others. Hey, it happens.

This post caught my eye, however, because this lover of irony has just been reading and hearing about the ACLU, faith, and prisoners.

The ACLU demanded in a letter to Rappahannock Regional Jail in Virginia to immediately end their illegal practice of censoring religious material sent to detainees.

Joseph Higgs, Jr., the ACLU asks for jail officials to guarantee in writing that the jail will no longer censor biblical passages from letters written to detainees and to revise the jail's written inmate mail policy to state that letters will not be censored simply because they contain religious material.

"It is nothing short of stunning that a jail would think it okay to censor the Bible and other religious material for no reason other than its religious nature," said David Shapiro, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project. "Such censorship violates both the rights of detainees to practice religion freely and the free speech rights of those wanting to communicate with detainees...".

"It is essential that jail officials abide by the law and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "People do not lose their right to religious worship simply because they are incarcerated."

Another statement was made saying: "Arbitrarily banning religious material is in direct odds with our nation's constitutional values," said Rebecca Glenberg, Legal Director for the ACLU of Virginia. "Americans are free to practice the religion of their choice, or no religion at all, without interference from any government official."


I can't imagine that any of this would be opposed by you or any of your other readers.

Educate me, please, on just where is the persecution of Christians on this? I can't seem to find it.

Dromedary Hump said...

Joyce,
Interesting. Please post a link to that story.

Those prisoners religious rights were violated. And as much as the ACLU has fought to keep religion and govt separate, per the 1st amendment it fights to retain everyones freedom of and from religion guaranteed by the same amendment.

But those prison officials weren't godless atheists trying to stamp out the rights of the christian inmates. More like red neck moronic inbred Barney Fife types who thought that by preventing ALL religious communication they will interdict religious writings to muslims without being accused of profiling muslims.
I havnt read the article youre quoting, but I seem to remember something like that coming out recently, and being struck down.

Thanks,
Hump

Joyce said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joyce said...

Here you go. There are other links in this article as well. I had originally copied and pasted them in but I was cut short. I forgot about that and meant to post another comment to include them. My apologies.

http://www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/40258prs20090709.html

Above is where I got the quotes from.

That link also includes the following:

A copy of the ACLU's letter is available online at: www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/40257res20090709.html

Additional information about the ACLU National Prison Project is available online at: www.aclu.org/prison

Additional information about the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at: www.aclu.org/religion

Additional information about the ACLU of Virginia is available online at: www.acluva.org

Joyce said...

Whoops. Let me hyperlink the original where I got my quotes from:

http://www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/40258prs20090709.html

Dromedary Hump said...

ok joyce got it thks:

http://www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/40258prs20090709.html

strange it doesn't mention the reason the jail had such a bizarre policy... nor did any of the other stories I found on this case.

Dromedary Hump said...

I dont know why this didnt dawn on me earlier...but this may be the most ironic thing of all about this story.

As any Fundy-Born Again- Right Winger will tell you the ACLU is made up of "atheists, homos, and liberals, with a smattering of Jew".

The ACLU are the very people the rightwing fanatical fundies claim are denying Christians their rights and persecuting them by maintaining the separation of church and state, and protecting our right of freedom FROM religion. Yet, here they are protecting the rights of imprisoned Christians to practice their religion.

The ultimate irony and total debunking of the "persecuted christians" at the hands of the godless secular liberals. But you'll never see the fundies retract it. It doesnt support their agenda.

Hump

Joyce said...

Exactly. Which is why I asked 'Where are Christians being persecuted in this country?' after posting that.

There are entire organizations set up to 'defend' Christianity against the ACLU because 'they' are so out to get us (sarcasm intended).

It boggles my mind.

I have no clue where this policy in Virginia came from. Was it on their law books? I can't imagine that it is. Very peculiar indeed.

Good to have the ACLU on our side. Oh, wait. They have always been on the side of Americans' rights, haven't they?

Silly me. ;)

Dromedary Hump said...

joyce, in deed. well said.
hump

Anonymous said...

As our local ACLU guy told us the last we saw him, "If we're not pissing you off, we're not doing our job".

Unknown said...

We are so blessed by Atheist excellence like Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Genghis Khan. Voltaire predicted our demise, you have heard the Old saying, God is dead, Voltaire, Voltaire is dead, God.

NewEnglandBob said...

Yet another ignorant, uneducated (probably ineducable) Liar for Jesus™ heard from spewing filth.

Dromedary Hump said...

Heheh... Iknow I'm wasting my time here, theists dispise education and reality, but I'm bored at the moment and dinner isn't ready yet so.... :


"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter."
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on
12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

I wonder if Michael can tell us what godly loving Christian church opposed Hitler in Germany. Hmmm?
Perhaps he has a link to some corroborating evidence for it. But I think not. Nope, the loving christian churchs of germany supported Hitler.

On Genghis Khan... atheist???!!!!

"Genghis Khan's religion is widely speculated to be Shamanism or Tengriism, which was very likely among nomadic Mongol-Turkic tribes of Central Asia. But he was very tolerant religiously, and interested to learn philosophical and moral lessons from other religions. To do so, he consulted Christian missionaries, Muslim merchants, and the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan#Religion

Couldn't say that about the christian church's tolerance.

As for stalin, he was educated as a catholic and went to catholic school..one can speculate how much that upbringing shaped his thinking as an adult, but who knows. Christianity has been the cause alot of people thinking irrationally and causing mayhem.

But what's funny about Michael's statement is he is basically saying: " Christianity has caused no more havoc, horror, injustice and genocide than these meglomaniacle fiends of history."

That's quite an endorsement for Christianity, Michel. LOL!!!!