Racism, Ignorance, Hate and Stupidity on Loan from God

Last week President Obama went on television to encourage American school children to stay in school, study hard because it is the path to success and a stronger nation. Period.

The firestorm of insanity by the fundamentalist religious groups who align with the far right was beyond the pale. Never before in the history of this nation has a US President, the leader of the free world, been so maligned and attacked for an appeal to education. Here are just a few examples of the insanity that was spewed by the religiously afflicted in opposition to President Obama’s speech to the kids: *

"Public schools can't teach children to speak out in support of the sanctity of human life or traditional marriage. President Obama and the Democrats wouldn't dream of allowing prayer in school. Christmas Parties are now Holiday Parties. But the Democrats have no problem going against the majority of American people and usurping the rights of parents by sending Pied Piper Obama into the American classroom." Jim Greer, Chairman of the GOP of Florida

The Christian Coalition's blog made the claim that Obama's speech would result in teachers directing school children "to do volunteer work in the areas which he is concerned about: going to rallies and getting their parents to go with them to support universal health care; encouraging their Members of Congress to vote for Obama's huge tax increase schemes."

The fundamentalist OneNewsNow posted several pieces against Obama's speech. One was titled, "Mother Fears Obama School Speech Will Be 'Indoctrination Into Socialism.'" Another title said, "Obama's School Speech—Social Indoctrination?"

A 2010 gubernatorial candidate and member of Woodlake Assembly of God, Brogdon said he was worried that Obama might address "environmental conservation and other social issues. These are topics for parents to talk about with their children, not the President of the United States."

The founder of the American Family Policy Institute urged parents to boycott the president's speech accusing Obama of wanting to "brainwash" American school children and comparing his administration to the "leaders of the Hitler Youth,"

Look -- a long time ago I came to the conclusion that the most religiously infected are the most ignorant and uneducated people on the face of the planet. The only thing that surprises me is that I underestimated their racism, utter idiocy, capacity for hate, fear and their disdain for thought.

Meanwhile, search as I may, I can find no examples of atheists, Humanists, agnostics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Satanists, Wiccans or any one besides Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians condemning Obama for his wanting to encourage our children to be educated.

I’m convinced that when they say “God’s will be done,” it means ”God wills you to abandon all dignity and reason, O ye mind slaves of superstition.”

* http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=14826

September 11 Remembered

Eight years ago Friday was the worst day in my life. It probably was for many of you, but for me and my family it was especially bad. My eldest son was in World Trade Center Tower II.

He had just come down from the 76th floor for a smoke break when the plane hit Tower I and dropped debris on the street. In the scramble to get back into the building to avoid the shards, my son was slightly injured. He went out side, looked up… and made the second best decision he ever made (the first best being his decision to have a smoke).

He left his suit jacket, telephone, and briefcase in his office 76 floors up and started walking up town. Instinctively he knew something was very wrong. As he walked up town among the crowds of people similarly trying to put space between them and disaster, he turned and saw the second plane hit his building.

I watched on TV at work, not realizing my son’s office was in the WTC, his having just changed companies. That’s when my wife called me. The panic we experienced over the next two hours was indescribable, until we finally heard from my son that he was safe.

He was one of the lucky ones. 2,973 people were not so lucky. Their lives were snuffed out by religious fanatics who, enflamed by religious passion and heartened by the promise of a martyr’s reward in paradise, destroyed innocents. They destroyed the innocent lives of their victims, the innocent lives of the victim’s families, and the innocence of a country which had never before experienced this kind of religiously inspired violence on its shores.

And that religious inspiration led us to correctly retaliate against a religion dominated Afghanistan. And a religious zealot in the Oval Office took us into another war with “God on our side” to battle “Gog and Magog” the demons of the anti-Christ in Iraq.

Never forget what happened on 911 -- not the people who died, nor their families, and not the fact that religious delusion helped make it all possible and promulgates madness all over the globe to this day.

Not Your Usual Christian

Let me preface this article with the following disclaimer: No! The Humpster has not turned soft; isn’t in the throes of religious conversion; and is still the cantankerous anti-theist that has endeared him to you over the past two years. I promise that will never change.

But every now and then I meet a Christian, or read his works, and find myself surprisingly charmed and disarmed by their intellect and honesty. In my book I praised the Reverend Barry Lynn, an ordained minister, a believer, and the Executive Director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a staunch defender of the 1st amendment's establishment clause, as our Founding Fathers envisioned it. He’s my hero.

Joyce, one of our very few Christian visitors and commenters here and her husband Jeff, have become good internet friends with whom I can banter and challenge without it lapsing into a flame war or pointless proselytizing... by either of us. Just two examples of many believers who have my respect.

That said, I want to introduce Jason Boyett. Jason is a prolific author and a blogger of some fame. He has appeared on The History Channel and National Geographic Channel; and is a Christian who is so far removed from the caricature that we the thinking godless typically paint of Christians that he defies my ability to label him. I hate that!

Jason saw my Eternal Earth-Bound Pets site and asked to interview me for his blog. I was delighted and not a little surprised to find that he didn’t pass judgment on my perspectives, didn’t proselytize, didn’t censor or curtail my rhetoric. In fact, if anything, he made me sound more coherent than I am in real life. Then, as if that wasn’t surprising enough, his blog readership’s comments were as respectful of me and appreciative of my points as Jason was in his professionalism. Pretty refreshing.

Jason and I have exchanged books (he sent me three of his). I read the first one in a few hours. While I learned a lot, I am still scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck kind of Christian Jason is. He is irreverent, damn funny, and challenges Christian doctrine -- even questioning the bible and his own degree of faith. What’s up with that?!

With this as ground work I now encourage my readers to click on this link and read the two part interview I did with Jason. http://blog.jasonboyett.com/
Please scroll down to August 25th for Part 1, then up to August 26th for Part 2.
Don’t forget to check out the reader comments.

And if you want to get a whole new perspective on what a thinking Christian is all about, check out Jason’s Pocket Guides http://www.pocketguidesite.com/index.html . They are as entertaining as they are educational and as far removed from anything you’ve ever read on religion/Christianity.

While I’ll never respect “beliefs” of any kind, I have a profound respect for this kind of believer, and a new Christian friend in Jason. I will return to being my usual “ornery-anti-fundie-take no prisoners-foul tempered-spitting camel” self by my next blog posting. Promise.

To the Terminally Religious "Non-Belief = Religion."

A theist emailing me at Eternal Earthbound Pets tells me that since I have no belief in the existence of a God, that non-belief is therefore a belief, and thus equates to a religion.

What is it with these people? Why is it they are so desperate to call disbelief a belief, and atheism a religion, when the concepts are diametrically opposed to logic, and the very definitions of these terms?

I’ve discussed this before… how one’s non-belief in alien abductions, or vampires, et al, does not equate to a “belief” in their nonexistence much less a religion. It’s simple disbelief, a rejection of a concept because it is devoid of evidence and cannot be supported by natural law. No belief does not a belief make-- it’s quite simple.

Calling a lack of belief in such things “Belief because you don’t believe” is just plain moronic. It's the same as insisting that I subscribe to “The Religion of There are No Vampires" because I have no belief in the existence of vampires. It's patently crazy.

Mostly I think this is a product of Christian apologists who like to play fast and lose with word definitions and the minds of their even less intellectually gifted followers. Once infected by convoluted word games proffered as fact, these poor uneducated folks have no way of displacing it with logic or authenticated definitions. That’s not how their brains are wired.

I don’t “believe” the Earth is flat. I reject it as fallacy until and unless those who do believer it’s flat can substantiate it with scientific evidence. I do not have “belief” in an alternate concept of the shape of the earth as theists have belief in God. What I do have is a very strong degree of certainty that the Earth is spherical because of scientific evidence and proofs that seem to defy contradiction. That’s as far from blind belief as one could get. A "belief" in flat earth, or anything else, is acceptence of that which is devoid of empirical evidence. Non-Belief is simply the result of a lack of empirical evidence.

In the non-thinking of the religiously stupid, if that makes me a congregant of the "Round Earth Religion," well pass me the Round Earth communion wafer and call me Father Hump.

An Atheist Apologist for Religiosity: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

There is a new book entitled An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion than without It by Bruce Sheiman. Mr. Sheiman says this about himself:

“I have repeatedly insisted that I am an “aspiring theist” -- an unbeliever who wants to believe. Interestingly, the ironic flip side of being an aspiring theist is being an unhappy atheist, an experience I explain later in this website.”

I hesitate to cast aspersions as to Mr. Sheiman's honesty about calling himself an “unbeliever”, I don't know the man. But something’s just not right here. It smacks of [self?] deception or a confused state of mind at best.

Let me state clearly -- I have not read this book. Thus, this is not a review of the work. Nor will I read this book for three reasons:

1. With 84% of the planet/ 5 billion people being "believers" of some sort; and with the millions of tomes of apologetics produced by believers justifying and defending their unsupported belief/ doctrine/dogma, et al ... why would an atheist need to mount a defense for religiosity? They have been doing it themselves more or less effectively for at least the past 3,000 years.


2. There can be no new argument for defending religion/faith.
   -Whether it is predicated on the false premise that religion= morality and without it man would be immoral or less moral, thus it should be promoted, promulgated; - or whether it's because it makes people "feel good" like alcohol or any other mind numbing drug or happy hallucinogenic and thus anything that makes one feel good is good; - or whether it's because it gives [false] hope / comfort to those who would otherwise have no hope
   … is hardly a justification for defending or endorsing a lie, delusion, self deception, that promotes less than full acceptance of reality and responsibility for ones own life. What's left after those defenses of religion ... Pascal's Wager?


3. Finally, I find the premise of the book off putting. I can't think of one good reason why I'd want to read it. I've read plenty of works by genuine theists liberal/ modernist and conservative/ fundamentalist; agnostics who are biblical scholars; atheist philosophers and hard core atheist anti-theists. Some how I can't rally any enthusiasm at all for the point of view of an atheist who is sorry he is one and is a quasi/ would-be theist and theist apologist.

One last thought. The author says: "How, if religion is characterized by enormous institutional ills, is it not only a universal phenomenon, but one that is growing more prevalent all the time?" Is it just me, or could a blind man see that this argument is a new take on the same old fallacious justification for belief based on "popular acceptance" that religionists use all the time? I.e. “If there is no God how come so many believe?” I can't remember how many times I have debunked the "truth by virtue of popular acceptance" fallacy.

As for religion “growing more prevalent” … where exactly? Certainly not in industrialized progressive nations, where religiosity is in decline. No, it’s growing in third world countries where lack of education, abysmal poverty, drought, starvation, disease, institutionalized genocide and utter desperation make people susceptible to proselytizing by missionaries who dangle blankets & food in one hand while holding out a Bible or Koran and a promise of a better life after death in the other. What exactly does this prove?

I have always promised myself I’d never call a self proclaimed atheist “not a TRUE atheist” like Christians so often do to their brethren. But in Sheiman’s case, I don’t even think HE thinks he’s a true atheist. I’m looking forward to his next book, probably something akin to: "A German Jew Defends National Socialism: Why Judaism is better off with Nazis than without them"

God ISN'T Dead! Friedrick Nietzsche was Wrong

In our local paper a religionist decried the “new atheists.” That’s the religionist’s term for atheists who don’t lay down, play dead, and kowtow to the theistic majority.

Theists much prefer the “Old Atheists,” you know, the ones who -- under threat of fines, imprisonment, torture or death -- dared not speak up against the Church’s suppression of scientific advancement; didn’t openly decry the Church’s intolerance of varied belief or no belief; who kept silent when the Inquisition rampaged; you know… the good old atheists in the good old days.

In the course of his letter this defender of the faith offered this insight:
“Nietzsche was wrong when he said 'God is dead,’ it’s Nietzsche who is dead.” Patently silly, but no doubt when he wrote it it struck him as particularly witty.

But inadvertently, and in a whole different sense he was correct. God IS’NT dead. Nietzsche WAS wrong. The Abrahamic God is no deader than Brahma, Ganesh, Zeus, Isis, or any of the thousands of other gods. God is no deader than Moby Dick, Jean Valjean, or Sherlock Holmes. God is no more deceased and buried than leprechauns, zombies, or sprites.

They cannot die, because they never existed. They will live on in literature and in the minds of some people prone to imbuing living status on fictional characters for eons to come.

Of course, Nietzsche knew this. He never intended his “God is Dead” statement to be taken literally. He was no fool. But, somehow a more succinct phrase i.e. “The age of dependency on the delusion of God/gods has expired - reason has seen to it.” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Geocentric Believers - The TRUE Christians

"Modern geocentrism is the belief by extant groups that Earth is the center of the universe .... This belief is often based on Biblical verses and is most common among American Protestants. This belief is directly opposed to scientific evidence that the Sun is essentially the gravitational center of the solar system, and that the location of the Earth is not privileged."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_geocentrism


As long ago as 600 BCE, Ionians postulated that the Earth orbited the Sun, and that the sun was the central point of the solar system about which the planets revolved. Subsequent Ionians correctly calculated the size of the earth. They understood the stars to be very distant, that they are created and eventually extinguish, and correctly determined that the magnitude of light from a star determined a star’s age and phase of life. This was in the 2nd century BCE. These Greeks were the forerunners of the scientific method, and modern astronomy. http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_astronomy.html

This view of the universe was corroborated by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Isaac Newton

But the church rejected this concept for some 1500 years. The Bible has multiple references to Earth as the immovable center of the universe. Joshua 10:12-13, 2 Kings 20:11, Isaiah 38:8, Isaiah 30:26 Psalm 93, all of them and others contradict what astronomers knew for centuries. Scripture places the Earth as the focal point of the universe, with the Sun and planets revolving around it. With stars set in a firmament above it (Genesis). To believe otherwise was to doubt the Word of God, a heresy.

The Church suppressed Copernican theory and its scientific truths, by threat, by house arrest, by accusations of blasphemy. But by the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, truth won out, the Church retreated, begrudgingly accepting that the Biblical concept of the universe was in fact wrong. No wait!!!~ Not “wrong” wrong, ... Uh … “incorrectly interpreted” for 1500 years. Yeah, that’s it… “incorrectly interpreted.”

FAST FORWARD TO THE 21ST CENTURY:

Among modern day Christians who believe the Biblical concept of the universe to be correct are The Geocentric Bible Foundation of Hugoton, Texas; The Tychonian Society; and Catholic Apologetics International, among others.

Devout Christian proponents of Biblical Geocentrism, some of whom believe that the Copernican helio-centric system is Satan’s deception, have websites that fight proven science http://www.endofman.com/True_Religion/galileoheresy.htm , http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/geocentr.htm , http://www.mbowden.surf3.net/ , http://www.fixedearth.com/ , http://www.geocentricity.com/ and more.

Now I can hear some Christians protesting “But these are fringe crazies, they aren’t TRUE Christians, they are misinterpreting Scripture, the Bible never said these things, etc., etc., etc..” But they would be wrong. They are in denial. They are apologist liars. There are millions of American Evangelical Christians who subscribe to the Earth as center of the universe, center of the solar system, Earth as fixed / non-rotating etc. These are the devout believers who reject science and accept the Word of God unquestioning no matter how stupid, pre-scientific and deluded their scripture and “God” might be.

I say these are the TRUE Christians. They don’t pick and choose and mince words about what the Bible says. It says what it says! God doesn’t misspeak. He doesn’t deceive. These believers talk the talk, and walk the walk. These Christians deserve credit for their unfailing, uncompromising acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God un-contradicted, inerrant.

They are also total fucking idiots, but how much more idiotic are they than their brethren? Those who choose to selectively believe in reanimation of dead bodies, virgin pregnancy, walking on water, life after death, demons, angels, Hell, Second Coming, Original Sin, Noah’s Ark, et al all because the Bible told 'em so. ? By my calculation, not enough to make much of a difference.