Atypical Guy

In recent months, even the mainstream media hasn’t been able to ignore the horrific impacts of religion on American politics.  To me, it seems clear that Bush’s Holy War in the Middle East is something that the majority of Americans agree with (or at least choose to allow).  But certainly there should be a backlash against this, right?  In most ways, McCain seems to be every bit as fueled by war-related fantasies as is Dubya.  Therefore, I think it’s important to consider the views of his supporters and influencers.

BraveNewFilms.org reports in McCain’s “Spiritual Guide” Wants America to Destroy Islam:

You may have heard of Rev. John Hagee, the McCain supporter who said God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual “sins.”   Well now meet Rev. Rod Parsley, the televangelist megachurch pastor from Ohio who hates Islam.  According to David Corn of Mother Jones, Parsley has called on Christians to wage war against Islam, which he considers to be a “false religion.”  In the past, Parsley has also railed against the separation of church and state, homosexuals, and abortion rights, comparing Planned Parenthood to Nazis. 

…

Since the media won’t question McCain about his deeply bigoted pastor, it’s up to you to call attention to this issue.  Make McCain’s pastor problem a major story by forwarding this video to your family, friends, and colleagues.

We can’t let McCain get away with aligning himself with a religious leader who’s called for an all-out war on Islam, someone who draws no distinctions between Muslims and violent Islamic extremists.  Now is the crucial time to act.

Most Americans seem to believe that Islam is a violent religion and is a threat to their own views.  Surprisingly, most of these people seem to be able to overlook the horrific acts in the Old Testament and the amount of violence in the New Testament.  Studies have shown that few Christian Americans read the Bible, and that gives hate-mongers clear reign to influence politics.  At the very least, we should be asking questions about what McCain - someone who has stated that the doesn’t think Americans would mind another 1,000 years of war in the Middle East - really thinks.

It’s no secret that the United States is engulfed in a culture of fear.  From Amber Alerts to a resurgence of homophobia, we seem to be scared of everything.  Local news stations in small towns will go far out of their way to report on any death that might have occurred.  And it’s not uncommon for violent news to dominate the airways.  Unfortunately, this often trumps more important and relevant news, like tax cuts for the rich and scientific research.

Could this be one of the reasons for the large numbers of Americans that are in prison?  The New York Times reports on statistics in American Exception: Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. 

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

…

Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America’s extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges — many of whom are elected, another American anomaly — yield to populist demands for tough justice.

We have far fewer prisoners that the entire nation of China.  A lot of this information seems consistent with statistics cited in Michael Moore’s movie, Bowling for Columbine.  That movie explored Americans’ obsession with violence.

The sad thing is that imprisoning people should be a last resort.  The cost of housing a prisoner is tremendous (not to mention the lost opportunity cost of having an individual that cannot contribute to society in any way).  So what’s the cause?  The article offers some theories, but I think the rise of religion in the United States is partly to blame.  We showed how cowardly and blinded we could be after the September 11th attacks.  We follow a leader who says that God told him to attack a nation, completely unprovoked.  We watch for Amber Alerts that state that a “Gray Volkswagen” was involved in a kidnapping (how could that help anyone?).  Christians fear that a God that supposedly loves them would torture them for all eternity if they break some arbitrary rules.  When we can identify these people, why not lock them up to keep them away from the “good” people?

Living in any society comes with risks.  Unfortunately, it looks like Americans are so terrified of crime, that we would spend amazing amounts of money on removing people from society.

There’s no shortage of funny and relevant quotes about atheism (I’ll post more in the near future).  Recently, I was thinking about something that several of my “faithful” (that is, religious) friends tend to say: “Open your heart and listen to what God is trying to tell you.”  They then allude to conversations with the Almighty - a benevolent being who apparently wouldn’t hesitate to torture you for all eternity if you question his existence. 

Of course, this one-way “conversation” can apply to just about anything, from making financial decisions, to acceptance of violence and torture, and to deciding on one’s outlook on the world.  All reason, logic, and evidence points to the fact that there is no such creature.  But, assuming that one did exist (admittedly, a huge leap), this God would have given free-thinking humans not only the ability and motivation to question it, but also the backing facts and evidence. 

So, in response, I’d like to propose the following:

Religious people often tell me to listen to what God is trying to tell me. Assuming that such a Supreme Being exists, the message appears to be clear: “I don’t exist.”

I can only hope someone finds it clever enough to quote me. After all, if people can take their cues from the Bible…

It’s always amazing to me that people continue to tolerate George Bush’s Presidency.  Perhaps some Americans think that he’s almost out of the White House, and that we should just sit back and wait it out.  But there’s still an incredible amount of damage that he and his puppet-masters can do, and the thought that King George will get away with all of his many crimes is appalling to me.

While most of us seem to hope that Bush was history already, it appears that historians can agree that his administration has been a disaster.  The History News Network reports in HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst:

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.

An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.

…

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

Those are the statistics.  Hopefully the complaints are fairly obvious.  However, here’s one particularly well-worded summary:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one [historian]. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

But that’s just one “review” of his presidency.  I would encourage people to read the others to see if there’s any part of it with which they disagree.

Of course, Americans have grown into a habit of ignoring professionals and experts.  Along with reason, logic, and a reliance on evidence, these things seem to be just annoying aspects of living in our universe.  It’s safe to assume that few Americans will care about what historians say.  Still, the fact that we’ll allow the Bush Administration to continue to damage the nation makes me wonder: What won’t American accept or tolerate?  The list is getting shorter…

Part of the challenge with atheism is that many of us are too scared to speak up in public (does this sound familiar?).  If you’re interested in voicing your opinion on atheism, please visit The OUT Campaign, an organization that encourages atheists to Come OUT, Reach OUT, Speak OUT, Keep OUT, and Stand OUT.  I strongly agree with the site’s message that there are far more atheists out there than most people would like to recognize.  If you have a blog consider adding the Scarlet Letter of Atheism to your site and adding it to the Campaign’s BlogRoll.

For those that tend to think that religion is just harmless fun for the deluded, it’s important to remember that the belief in the supernatural can have everyday consequences.  Such was the case for a less-than-two-year-old girl that was suffering from an otherwise easily treatable infection.  MSNBC reports in Faith-healing parents charged in baby’s death:

OREGON CITY, Ore. - A couple whose church preaches against medical care are facing criminal charges after their young daughter died of an infection that authorities said went untreated.

Carl and Raylene Worthington were indicted Friday on charges of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter Ava. They belong to the Followers of Christ Church, whose members have a history of treating gravely ill children only with prayer.

Ava died March 2 of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection. The state medical examiner’s office has said she could have been treated with antibiotics.

…

The Worthingtons could face more than six years if convicted on the manslaughter charges and up to a year on the mistreatment charges, said Greg Horner, chief deputy district attorney. They were released on $250,000 bail, he said.

Encouragingly, the article states that this is the first time that laws designed to prevent this form of child abuse have actually been enforced.  That’s good news for these poor children whose only “crime” was being born to extremely superstitious and irrational parents.  I think it’s fair to expect the Bush Administration or some of his cronies to start treating faith-based healing as a real solution.  In any case, it’s probably not much worse than the current state of the U.S. healthcare system.

In general, I would consider myself a supporter of Barack Obama.  He seems to be a rational man that’s not blinded by the “political” side of politics.  One part that does bother me, however, is his emphasis on the fact that he’s a Christian.  Even without the recent fiasco related to his preacher’s hateful comments, the idea that someone that believes in a supreme being doesn’t sit well with me.  After all, we’re living in a nation where the President states that God has told him to attack a nation, completely unprovoked.  And Americans seem to be fine with that (those that aren’t completely ignorant of it, at least).

But, assuming that a political candidate must profess (or at least, pretend) to believe in some magical Creator of the Universe in order to have a chance of being elected, Obama is probably the least of numerous evils.  At least the Mormon guy is out of the race. 

On the topic of his religious beliefs, I ran into a June, 2006 article by Obama titled Call to Renewal Keynote Address.  From the article:

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

So it sees that he’s at least capable of thinking about religion rationally.  And he’s not afraid to draw a line between absurd claims and the laws that govern the United States.  That alone is a huge step forward from the reign of King George. 

But I wonder if Obama really sees the many contradictions he pointed out.  The Bible is filled with tons of garbage that’s absolutely unconscionable by today’s standards.  Imagine if we had laws that made it acceptable to own slaves or murder children.  Yet, many Americans claim to believe in the literal truth of The Bible.  The other stories and examples of comments and statistics in this article should be terrifying.  But, because they’re based on “faith”, people accept these horrific views of the world. 

I truly hope that Obama can help save religious Americans from themselves.  Today, that seems to be a problem that God - even if one did exist - couldn’t solve.

Americans now live in a country where our leader claims that God commands him to make some of his most important (and devastating) decisions.  Rather than being shock and awed by the this unjustifiable belief in commanding voices in his head, we seem to just go along with it.  After all, how could anyone question “God”?  Never mind that hatred, injustice, cruelty, and economic ruin that it includes.

It should, perhaps, come as no surprise that extreme views are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. The Washington Post reports some statistics in Hate Rises.  From the article:

The dwindling Ku Klux Klan may seem like a relic of crueler times, but the number of hate groups operating in the United States has actually jumped a staggering 48 percent since 2000. Many of these groups have sprouted along the border in Arizona, California and Texas, where their ringleaders have often hijacked the immigration debate. - Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

This seems to be fairly typical of situations in which “faith” starts to control societies.  While the religious seem to preach incessantly about tolerance and openness, they’re messages (and the teachings of their God) are often exactly the opposite.  Today, homophobia is clearly on the rise (didn’t we get over this in the late 80’s?) and Americans accept that torture is necessary (despite the fact that the action is considered a crime against humanity).  Over a million Iraqis are dead subsequent to our baseless attack on the nation.  Yet, we have a leader that claims that God commanded all this, and he’s still in power.  The correlation between religion and the many things most faiths claim to oppose is staggering.  Until he can free ourselves from the tyranny of Dark Ages thinking, hate in America will continue to rise.

One might hope that, with all of the violence caused by religion, that people would start to learn that there’s a strong correlation between the two.  But not in the United States: We have a leader who claims that God told him to attack Iraq.  Apparently, this all-powerful and “good” deity didn’t mention anything about torture or the complete lack of evidence for creating a new war that has killed over a million people (I guess they were destined for Hell, anyway). 

But the greatest hits don’t stop there.  Dubya’s at it again.  The Raw Story has posted an article, Cheering God, Bush says war with Iraq ‘will forever be’ the right decision, that presents some truly scary thoughts:

Speaking Tuesday to the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention, President Bush declared the decision to “remove” Saddam Hussein in 2003 the “right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”

The 42-minute speech, covered in the New York Times, drew rousing applause, “mixing faith and foreign policy as he told a group of Christian broadcasters that his policies in the region were predicated on the beliefs that freedom was a God-given right and ‘every human being bears the image of our maker.’”

…

“The effects of a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will reach beyond the borders of those two countries,” Bush said. “It will show others what’s possible. And we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That’s why we’re doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

In another political and intellectual time, people would be horrified to hear this kind of thinking.  Sadly, in the U.S. it’s all just part of “business as usual.”  Let’s just hope that King George’s Holy Wars are nearing an end.

It’s really easy to see the effects of religion in just about every aspect of American life, and I can hardly think of any positive effects.  The President of this country apparently believes that God has ordered him to create wars (and also has no problem with torture), and the American people seem to be quite content with that.  Fortunately, it looks like there’s some hope in the rest of the world.  The UK Times Online reports in Over half of Britons claim no religion.  From the article:

In a 23-page report published this evening, a UN rapporteur claims the 2001 Census findings that nearly 72 per cent of the population is Christian can no longer be regarded as accurate. The report claims that two-thirds of British people now do not admit to any religious adherence.

The report also calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The role and privileges of the established Church are challenged because they do not reflect “the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations.”

I’m really encouraged by this, and I hope we have seen the last time that the “pendulum” will swing toward religion.  I also suspect that the number of Christians is actually lower than reported here.  While statistics show that most people don’t lie on anonymous surveys, I wonder if that holds up when people thing that some God (who reportedly loves them) will sentence them to an eternity of torture if they don’t say that they believe. 

On a side note, the site also has many interesting links related to atheism and religion, including some interviews and commentary on Richard Dawkins.  Personally, I find listening to Dawkins to be extremely “enlightening” and refreshing, especially in the wake of the tragedy of the Bush Administration.

I have often quoted numbers and statistics related to the bigotry and close-mindedness of the American people.  Of particular concern to me is the relatively large numbers of people that they would never vote for a person based on certain factors (examples include being black, being a woman, being homosexual, or being an atheist).  PollingReport.com’s Politics page provides a summary of the various findings from the many different polls that are taken. 

Of particular interest to me is the result of a fairly recent Gallup Poll.  Here are the details and the question asked to over 1,000 adults in the United States:

“Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [see below], would you vote for that person?” Trend includes slight variation in wording.

Note: The left-hand column in the charts is used to express the dates of the results.  It’s extremely difficult to read, but it does convey the data.

There are many results in the list that I find disheartening (and others that I find downright scary).  For example, Atheists rank at the absolute bottom of the list.  Put another way, no single group is more despised by American adults.  Anyone who planned to run for President would at least have to pay lip service to religion (read: Christianity) in order to have a chance of leading the country. 

Note, however, that almost anyone would vote for a Catholic.  Apparently, issues such as hypocrisy in the church and widespread, organized child sex rings aren’t much of a detractor as long as one claims to adhere to these bizarre, outdated, and backwards practices.  People report that they are much more likely to vote for a Mormon or a homosexual than an atheist.  I have to wonder, though, how many of these people have any idea what it is that Mormons actually teach and believe.

On the bright side, the general trends are positive.  A large majority of people would vote for a black or female candidate (compare this to the early numbers, and we’re clearly headed in the right direction).  Still, it’s extremely frustrating to me that there’s so much outstanding prejudice in areas such as race and beliefs. 

Apparently, it’s fine for the leader of our nation to wage war on another country without evidence.  No one seems to care about his claim that God told him to do it.  Yet someone who chooses not to believe in supernatural forces, mysticism, miracles and superstition stands little or no chance of ever running the United States.

Note: The Polling Report page that I linked to earlier is a wealth of information from numerous other polls and studies into Americans’ attitudes.  Upon reviewing some of them, it looks like the Gallup Poll results were actually optimistic.

It’s quite difficult to drive a mile in most major American cities without seeing at least a few churches, bumper stickers, or billboards that advertise how much Jesus loves us.  Christian-related messages (no matter how poorly stated or taken out of context) seem to be all around us.  It hints that it’s somehow good to believe in something without evidence, reason, or logic.  Clearly, American policy under the Bush Administration has been shaped by this level of ignorance.

That’s why it’s good to see an organization actually fighting back.  BBSNews reports on the effort in Free Thought Takes on Organized Religion in National Billboard Campaign.  Below is an image of the sign along with a quote from the article:

The national campaign is an effort to let Americans know that there is room for reason and clarity of thought, free from the dogma that organized religion uses to keep its flock in line; as well as donating.

Dan Barker, Foundation co-president and author of ‘Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist’ said “Many of our members, including generous sponsors in Ohio, want to balance all that religion on the roadside with some reason on the roadside.”

According to the FFRF, one of the local Ohio donors to the new nationwide sign campaign said, “Gov. Ted Strickland apparently needs to be reminded that many wonderful, patriotic, hard-working Ohioans do not ’support churches.’ In fact, they believe that too much religious influence over state government is harming the state. In recent years, state officials have caved to the religious right on issues such as gay rights, the right of other consenting adults to live as they wish, and the display of Christian symbols on state property. These divisive actions have driven people from Ohio and distracted the state from the serious economic problems it faces.”

Obviously, we can expect a backlash against this type of “advertisement”.  It seems that many people who are reluctant to think for themselves have a problem with advertising the importance of free thought.  For some typical reactions, read some of the comments.  It’s always strange to me how threatened people feel by the mere suggestion that they question their “faith”.  If faith is the belief in something without evidence or reason, then shouldn’t we question (and, hopefully, reject) it?  For more information, see the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s web site.

Religion will be an important topic for many votes in the 2008 elections.  We have some candidates that believe in some of the most outrageous and extremist views (even for religion) that are candidates for the highest position in the nation.  We already have a President that believes that God talks to him in dreams.  We have Republican candidates that believe in Mormonism and that think that God has chosen them to lead the United States.  In some ways, it seems like these people are almost ashamed of their beliefs (as I believe they should be).  They try not to talk about their ideology (which is often indefensible anyway) and cast enough doubt so the religious sheep of America overlook the plain contradictions in what they’re saying.

Much of that is expected nowadays from conservative Republican candidates.  But what about the Democracts?  Several months ago, Barack Obama spoke on the topic.  You can read the entire contents in Call to Renewal’ Keynote Address.  From the beginning of the article:

But today I’d like to talk about the connection between religion and politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through some of the often bitter arguments that we’ve been seeing over the last several years.

I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible; and we can raise up and pass out this Covenant for a New America. We can talk to the press, and we can discuss the religious call to address poverty and environmental stewardship all we want, but it won’t have an impact unless we tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.

Later, Obama presents the following, highlighting the standard view of many religious people:

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest “gap” in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

He also recites some statistics that I have also posted on this blog in the past:

And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

And later he talks about the difficulty and risk of trying to define public policy based on religion:

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

Overall, I have mixed feelings on these statements.  On one hand, it finally restores a sense of separation between church and State (something that shouldn’t be optional in our current government).  However, I wish Obama would have gone further.  I wish he would have pointed out that there’s no evidence whatosever for the believe in a magical, supreme being (despite what the majority of under-educated people might claim).  I wish he had drawn the parallels between violence and religion.  And I wish he had said more about encouraging people to really question their faiths.  (On the last point I quoted, I do agree with Obama: If Christians were to read their bibles, I think there would be far fewer religious people.)

Then again, the most important thing for this country is to get religious zealots that manufacture wars out of office.  In that respect, Obama is a step in the right direction.  I just hope I live long enough to see nations abandon these silly notions of religion and start to thing logically, rationally, and based on study and evidence.  It’s a real long-shot based on the recent history of the United States, but I’m holding out hope.

While very few people seem to have any objection to it, religious indoctrination is worst when it’s aimed at children.  Children will instinctively accept most information from parents and teachers.  In some ways, this is for good reason.  But in other cases, that trust is clearly betrayed.  Chick Publications has a comic strip that does a great job of illustrating this.  In a comic strip called Birds and the Bees, author Jack T. Chick presents some truly scary ideas, apparently aimed directly at children.  Here’s are some excerpts from the comic strip (click on the images if they’re hard to see - the facial expressions and homophobic imagery will make it worth it).

First, the setup:

Apparently, Satan is far more tolerant than God (as is evidenced by his not-so-attractive agents in the background).  The teacher’s not looking all that great herself.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say that she’s going to Hell for sure (although God loves her and really doesn’t want it to come to that).  It gets far better.  These children - whose education is unfairly restricted by laws - start to discover the “truth” for themselves…

There are so many comments to be made from just these few panels.  First off, these children are learning (indirectly) from one girl’s grandfather.  I think it’s same to assume that this guy isn’t the best source for objective information about morals (or even the Bible). 

The fear element, to me, is both the most effective and the most offensive.  Kids want to be good, right?  And Hell is bad, of course.  So, they must do whatever they can - no matter how immoral or unconscionable - to stay out of there.  Note how much anger and hatred God seems to have.  I don’t even need to get into the details of the paradoxes and logical contradictions here (God clearly created “the Gays”, and he’s awfully frustrated for someone who’s supposed to be all-powerful). 

If you find yourself convinced by the comic strip, you should consider filling out the little form at the bottom of the page.  For the rest of us, I guess we’ll have to keep supporting our Godless ways of tolerance, acceptance, and non-religious education.

The term “standards” seems hardly fitting when we evaluate the quality of political candidates in the United States.  We have a President who wages war with no evidence (other than, apparently, God’s voice in his head), and a population that seems to be just fine with that.  Worst of all, it seems that we’ve learned nothing, and these people are still able to run for office.

TheRawStory reports on another example in Huckabee: Amend Constitution to be in ‘God’s standards’.  From the article:

The United States Constitution never uses the word “God” or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from “We the People.” However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it’s time to put an end to that.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Perhaps it’s worth reminding people that this kind of change is exactly what the authors of our Constitution wanted to prevent against.  Religion tends to pollute everything it touches, and government is no exception.  If this were some backwoods, uneducated, country preacher speaking, it would be easier to dismiss.  But this guy is actually in the running to lead the United States!

I recently saw the following paper included with a vehicle registration renewal form for Texas license plates:

Incase the text is a little hard to read, the statements include:

Fight Terrorism

God Bless America

God Bless Texas

I have always wondered exactly what kind of message these license plates are supposed to convey.  If you really believe that some omnipotent being is watching over the entire universe, then why should this person bless only America or Texas?  And what about “fight terrorism”?  What exactly should we do - live in fear or continue unbridled funding for the Bush Administration’s pointless wars? 

It’s not much of a surprise that this comes from Texas (I’m sure other states have similar offers), but it’s actually quite embarrassing.  It looks like the irony is completely lost on drivers of 5,000-pound SUVs that have stickers suggesting that we should “fight terrorism”.  Ugh…

Courtesy of Digg, here’s an interesting list of the Top 50 Atheism Quotes.  All of these are from people who are generally well-respected intellectuals.  A classic (and of my favorites) is the first one by George Carlin:

Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

What I have always found very interesting about religion is who people come to trust.  Rather than trust educated people who have contributed greatly to humankind, people tend to turn to tele-evangelists for their religious information.  The vast majority of these people are worth many millions of dollars and have committed numerous crimes.  Their formal education (if any) is limited, and the routinely speak about things they barely understand (for example, the science behind evolution). 

Furthermore, children are often told by their parents (at an early and impressionable age) that it is good to be faithful.  They are told that God is good and that believing in God is the right thing to do.  It is only in this one case that faith - the belief in something without reason - is considered a good thing.  The same logic used in any other area of life would be considered insanity.

Why should we use a different set of standards for testing religion?  And why do the masses ignore people that we would trust with other important decisions in the area of religion?  We should be listening to Richard Dawkins and others that base their beliefs of logic, reason, and evidence. 

Even in light of the many surveys and studies that show the obvious ignorance and prejudice of a large portion of the United States, I still run across things that surprise me.  I recently read a post on Digg titled 100 Greatest Quotes from fundamentalist Christian chat rooms.  The site which hosts the original source document is currently inaccessible (due, no doubt, to bandwidth limitations).  You can read the Google Cache version of the article if you can’t get to the primary site. This Top 100 list features so many logical fallacies and ignorant statements that it’s hard to pick out the best.  You can choose from racism, general bigotry, a complete misunderstanding of science, and just good ol’ stupidity.

Some might argue that this post tends to target a Straw Man (that is, it picks about arguments from the most unqualified people to represent religion). I could agree with that to some extent, but I don’t think it’s a good generalization.  I have friends that are educated but believe in the literal truth of the Bible (including stories such as the one about Noah’s Ark) and feel that it’s just fine to attack, murder, and torture Muslims with no need for evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever.  I maintain that these people aren’t just “religious freaks” - they reflect much of the standard beliefs that are prevalent in our society.  They also give some helpful insight into how people could let the United States devolve into its current state so quickly and with little or no debate whatsoever.  We’re on a dangerous track, and I think this post helps create a “hit list” of ideas we must address.

One of the things I really liked about the TV show Heroes is that it portrayed non-white people as actual normal human beings.  You had Asian people who weren’t just bumbling extras.  Hiro was a friendly and good-natured guy who was just out to save the world.  And, you had Indian characters who weren’t just people with funny accents to be ridiculed by the rednecks of the nation.  Sadly, that’s certainly the exception.  The overwhelming majority of movies and TV (and, consequently, public opinion) in the United States is stacked against brown people.

Thanks to Digg, I recently cam across a 9-minute YouTube video titled Planet of the Arabs helps highlight some of the details.  The original Digg post provides some interesting statistics:

Planet of the Arabs is a powerful 9 minute collage of racist stereotyping of Arabs in movies.Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000) 12 were positive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 900 and so were negative. A montage of Hollywood’s relentless dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims.

What’s saddest is that a lot of Americans think this is just fine.  After all, it’s not just a few masterminds in Hollywood that are coming up with this stuff - there’s a true demand for it.  Even friends of mine will start to giggle when they see any non-white person enter a scene on a TV show or movie.  I don’t see these stereotypes changing anytime soon, though. 

I was happy to hear that at least some individuals and groups are pressing the 2008 candidates on topics that actually matter.  To me, views on sciences are extremely important.  Wired reports in Scientists Push Presidential Candidates for Positions on Science.  From the introduction:

A Who’s Who of America’s top scientists are launching a quixotic last-minute effort this week to force presidential candidates to detail the role science would play in their administrations — a question they say is key to the future of the country, if not the world.

“Right now we have a confluence of issues facing candidates: embryonic stem cell research, global warming, science and technology education, biotechnology and energy policy — it’s just becoming an avalanche,” says Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western University, and author of the bestselling The Physics of Star Trek. “I think at some level, you have to get some insight into what the candidates know, or what they’re willing to learn.”

Behind the call is a growing fear that the United States is falling behind in science and technology education, and that a leader who is scientifically illiterate won’t be able to keep the United States ahead in the global economy.

Americans seem to have developed a distaste for rational and logical thought.  We focus on the latest escapades of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and the like.  The only time real issues seem to come up is when ultra-religious-types oppose things like stem cell research and the teaching of evolution.  It’s certainly time to get some more intelligence in our government.  Another Dubya might sink this nation into another Dark Age.

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, but The Huffington Post Post reports about The White House’s Super Christian Christmas Card.  The article includes pictures, and here’s the description:

This morning on “The View,” Barbara Walters displayed the Christmas card she recently received from the White House. She said it was the most religious White House Christmas card in her memory. The card included explicit religious references beyond just a bible verse.

The super-Christian card features a verse from Nehemiah (Old Testament, it should be noted):

You alone are the LORD.
You made the heavens, even the highest heavens,
and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it,
the seas and all that is in them.
You give life to everything,
and the multitudes of heaven worship you.
NEHEMIAH 9:6 (NIV)

But whereas in previous years the President and the First Lady opted for messages of happiness, goodwill, and peace, this year featured the following closer:

May the joy of all creation fill your heart this blessed season 2007.

It is then signed by both George and Laura Bush.

So, if I understand this correctly, some Bible verse is far more important a message than happiness, goodwill, and peace.  I, for one, certainly don’t think those more meaningful goals are compatible with the current goals of the Bush Administration.  Choosing from the Old Testament - one of the most violent and immoral books in all human history - is somewhat appropriate.  I just wish that more people would detect the irony.

Perhaps one of the reasons that people seem to fear or discount atheism is that they don’t understand it.  One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide some responses to common questions.  In some cases, the questions themselves are so ridiculous that I would find it inappropriate to answer.  Others, however, seem of reflect a lack of knowledge about atheism.  Recently, a commenter on this blog, Joel Justiss, lead me to find an interesting site: FriendlyAtheist.com. The author has posted numerous observations that help show the plight and struggle of atheists (as well as all-too-common examples of religiosity in the United States).

Of particular interest is the posting Keep Them Short and Sweet - a series of questions for atheists.  A few examples:

• Why do you not believe in God?
• Where do your morals come from?
• What is the meaning of life?
• Is atheism a religion?
• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?

The comments section includes many responses, as does Joel’s “Forest Trail” page.  Some of my personal favorite responses include:

What is the meaning of life?
The meaning of a person’s life is the message communicated to other people by that person’s words and actions. The idea that a particular message is intended by someone or something outside of that person is a natural consequence of belief in gods, but it implies that people are not responsible for their own lives.

Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?
All people should be respected. Beliefs deserve respect to the degree that they are supported by evidence, not merely because someone holds to them.

Would the world be better off without any religion?
The world would be better off with more focus on truth—without religion or superstition in any form.

While there are certainly no canned or standard answers to these questions, I have found most responses to be well thought-out.  And, to my pleasant surprise, it has been rather rare for me to find a comment with which I completely disagree.  In the future, I’ll try to develop my own list of short and sweet responses and post them here.

A recent Time Magazine article, What Makes Us Moral, investigates the issue of human behavior.  From the introduction:

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn’t lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger “soul.” The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

…

Morality may be a hard concept to grasp, but we acquire it fast. A preschooler will learn that it’s not all right to eat in the classroom, because the teacher says it’s not. If the rule is lifted and eating is approved, the child will happily comply. But if the same teacher says it’s also O.K. to push another student off a chair, the child hesitates. “He’ll respond, ‘No, the teacher shouldn’t say that,’” says psychologist Michael Schulman, co-author of Bringing Up a Moral Child. In both cases, somebody taught the child a rule, but the rule against pushing has a stickiness about it, one that resists coming unstuck even if someone in authority countenances it. That’s the difference between a matter of morality and one of mere social convention, and Schulman and others believe kids feel it innately.

… and from the conclusion:

For grossly imperfect creatures like us, morality may be the steepest of all developmental mountains. Our opposable thumbs and big brains gave us the tools to dominate the planet, but wisdom comes more slowly than physical hardware. We surely have a lot of killing and savagery ahead of us before we fully civilize ourselves. The hope—a realistic one, perhaps—is that the struggles still to come are fewer than those left behind.

While the general question is certainly an interesting one, I find it particularly relevant with relation to religion. People seem to have this idea that (at least for religious people), morality is defined in their ancient texts.  It follows, then, that the rest of us (atheists, for example), have no reason to follow generally-accepted moral teachings.  Personally, I feel this is complete garbage.  There’s little evidence that religion has anything to do with morality, and many of the teachings of books such as the Christian Bible are filled with immoral acts performed by none other than God himself.

Evidence and studies show quite the opposite: Human beings (and other animals) exhibit traits and behaviors that are inline with what we consider “morality.”  Much of this is independent of learning, and has roots elsewhere. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, describes studies that show that there’s no correlation between religiosity and the decisions people will make when presented with difficult decisions.  The Brights organization has also started a project to investigate the same.  For details, see “Action Arena #1: Reality about Human Morality.” 

Overall, I hope that these studies will have some impact on making the human race less violent (especially in the name of religion).  History shows that it’s unlikely to help, but there’s always hope.

I’m not usually inclined to further gossip and stories that tend to be blown out of proportion, but I found a story on MSNBC to be relevant to the topic to the focus of this blog.  That article, Megachurch leader in mega-sized sex scandal, provides details about another church-related scandal:

DECATUR, Ga. - The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.

Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk’s family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.

In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.

I’m guessing that most people won’t be shocked by this (I’m certainly not).  However, it makes me wonder: If these religious “leaders” really believed in anything that they preached, wouldn’t they be less likely to commit these kind of offenses?  We have some of the richest organizations in the world that claim to be devoted to religion.  They don’t have to pay taxes and, in many cases, don’t even have to report where their money goes.  The leaders of these rackets have been found hiring prostitutes, covering up organized pedophilia, and so many other bizarre acts that a complete account would be even wackier than most of the stories in the Bible.  Still, this doesn’t seem to hurt their popularity all that much.  Here’s more from the article:

At its peak in the early 1990s, it claimed about 10,000 members and 24 pastors and was a media powerhouse. By soliciting tithes of 10 percent from each member’s income, the church was able to build a Bible college, two schools, a worldwide TV ministry and a $12 million sanctuary the size of a fortress.

Today, though, membership is down to about 1,500, the church has 18 pastors, most of them volunteers, and the Bible college and TV ministry have shuttered — a downturn blamed largely on complaints about the alleged sexual transgressions of the elder Paulks.

In 1992, a church member claimed she was pressured into a sexual relationship with Don Paulk. Other women also claimed they had been coerced into sex with Earl Paulk and other members of the church’s administration.

My theory: Much of what religions state as “good” from a moral or behavioral standpoint are flat-out contradictory to human nature.  From the promotion of abstinence-only programs to general sexual repression, it’s really no surprise that religious people run into these types of problems.  What is (or at least should be) surprising, is that no one ever seems to learn from these failures. 

Despite the fact that there’s no verifiable evidence of miracles, Hell, or events in religious texts, people still follow these teachings.  It does seem consistent with the nature of religious belief.  Many people I’ve talked to feel that facts and evidence are only useful if they agree with their preconceptions and prejudices.  I’d like to think that some good might come from this latest “scandal”, but I doubt it will have any effect on the typical religious mind.

I recently read a post on Greta Christina’s Blog titled Atheists and Anger that attempts to address the issue.  Among the many examples of infuriating issues cited by the author are the following:

I’m angry that according to a recent Gallup poll, only 45 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist for President.

I’m angry that the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, said of atheists, in my lifetime, “No, I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.” My President. No, I didn’t vote for him, but he was still my President, and he still said that my lack of religious belief meant that I shouldn’t be regarded as a citizen.

I’m angry that it took until 1961 for atheists to be guaranteed the right to serve on juries, testify in court, or hold public office in every state in the country.

I’m angry that women are dying of AIDS in Africa and South America because the Catholic Church has convinced them that using condoms makes baby Jesus cry.

I get angry when advice columnists tell their troubled letter-writers to talk to their priest or minister or rabbi… when there is absolutely no legal requirement that a religious leader have any sort of training in counseling or therapy.

I’m angry at preachers who tell women in their flock to submit to their husbands because it’s the will of God, even when their husbands are beating them within an inch of their lives.

I’m angry that so many parents and religious leaders terrorize children — who (a) have brains that are hard-wired to trust adults and believe what they’re told, and (b) are very literal-minded — with vivid, traumatizing stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they’ll be too frightened to even question religion.

I’m angrier when religious leaders explicitly tell children – and adults, for that matter — that the very questioning of religion and the existence of hell is a dreadful sin, one that will guarantee them that hell is where they’ll end up.

I’m angry — enraged — at the priests who molest children and tell them it’s God’s will. I’m enraged at the Catholic Church that consciously, deliberately, repeatedly, for years, acted to protect priests who molested children, and consciously and deliberately acted to keep it a secret, placing the Church’s reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck’s sake, children not being molested.

I’m angry that huge swaths of public policy in this country — not just on same-sex marriage, but on abortion and stem-cell research and sex education in schools — are being based, not on evidence of which policies do and don’t work and what is and isn’t true about the world, but on religious texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago, and on their own personal feelings about how those texts should be interpreted, with no supporting evidence whatsoever — and no apparent concept of why any evidence should be needed.

I’ll add one more of my own to the list: I’m angry that people seem to think that they’re the exception to the rules of religion.  Their believes (no matter how horrible or dangerous) are acceptable, as long as they feel that they are acting based on God’s will.  They distance themselves from other religious believers who claim the same thing and do thing with which they might not agree.  People need to be accountable and should oppose pointless wars and social injustice - whether it’s purportedly God’s will or not.

It was tempting for me to copy the entire article, but I highly recommend reading the entire article.  I have written about many of these issues in past blog postings, and I hope that they help inform people of America’s position on religion and those who do not believe in superstition.  I would have hoped that important events like the freeing of slaves and the Civil Rights movement in the United States have taught us something about what we should and should not tolerate.  Personally, I find it surprising that people would not be angry at some of these things. 

I would ask: If anger is not the most appropriate reaction to these outrages, what is?

A Redmond, WA conservative preacher is attempting to take on Microsoft’s “sinful” ways.  Could this be about anti-trust or anti-competitive actions?  No.  This guy’s talking about Microsoft’s acceptance of gay people.  The Telegraph reports in Pastor in Microsoft ‘gay rights’ share bid:

“There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don’t scare me. I got God with me.

“I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”

Mr Hutcherson’s office is decorated with the heads of deer, elk and a buffalo – “when I run into animals, I kill them and bring them home and eat them” – as well as invitations to the White House and signed pictures of himself with President George W. Bush.

His ambitious plan signals a new offensive in his two-year battle with Microsoft after it abandoned its neutral stance on gay rights legislation, which he says he helped secretly negotiate before outraged gay employees intervened.

By trying to become a political player in Washington state, he said, the company was trying to impose its sinful ways on others.

This is just but one more example of how neo-conservatism can make outrageous claims against progress.  Thousands of people apparently believe (or will at least listen to and pay) this guy.  From treating homosexuality as a choice (I’m sure lots of people want to line up to be persecuted) to seeing his mission as a Crusade against “sin”, this would have been rather shocking a few years ago.  Now, it seems to be the norm.

I’ve been looking for a good way to bring up this topic for quite a while.  If the Republican Party leadership is based on a conservative Christian constituency, shouldn’t there be some reaction to our leadership’s open advocacy of torture? And if religions somehow preach good, moral, decent behavior, why are so few churches and religious people speaking against such horrible atrocities?  An opinion piece in the Progessive Daily Beacon states, “Republicans Should Ask, ‘Who would Jesus Torture?’“  From the article:

The Republican Party is supposed to be home to a lot of Christians and that might be true. Judging by the view of most Republicans, however, the Party doesn’t appear to contain very many Christ-like people. It is hard to imagine Jesus Christ waterboarding someone while sermonizing on turning the other cheek, or loving thy neighbor, or doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you.
And yet, a lot of Republicans, Christian Conservative Republicans, are vocal supporters of torture.

Personally, I don’t believe that people get their morals from religion.  One needs only read a small portion of the Bible (by starting at a random place) to see that.  From advocating the subjugation of women and condoning slavery, I would certainly hope that no one took this garbage seriously.  Unfortunately, those that do seem to be running this country.  And, we’re all stuck with the results.

If ever there has been a sign of religious leadership gone awry it’s the televangelists.  These people con their “flocks” (of human sheep, I suppose) out of millions of dollars in the name of God.  They survive (and even thrive) after being caught with prostitutes.  And, they do it all tax-free.  In the United States, all you have to do is claim to be a church, and you’re exempt from having to report where all this money is going.  Hopefully, more of these outrages will soon be exposed.  CBS News reports in “Senate Panel Probes 6 Top Televangelists“:

Because they have tax status as churches, the ministries do not have to file IRS 990 forms like other non-profit organizations - leaving much financial information largely behind closed doors.

The letters sent Monday were the culmination of a long investigation fueled in part by complaints from Ole Anthony, a crusader against religious fraud who operates the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, which describes itself as a watchdog monitoring religious media, fraud and abuse. “We’ve been working with them for two years,” Anthony told CBS News. “We have furnished them with enough information to fill a small Volkswagen.”

Anthony said after twenty years of working with media organizations to expose televangelists, he saw little reform. He says that’s why he turned to another tactic, going straight to Grassley. He is confident that Grassley’s inquiry will be different, “What we hope is that this will lead to reform in religious nonprofits.”

Of course, based on religious followers’ acceptance of past outrages, it’s unlikely that any type of finding or indictment will shake their “faith”.  Much of this information is not new, and one doesn’t have to look hard to find out how these people live.  Still, they’re revered by many as the cornerstone of Christianity.  It almost makes me want to pray…

For many people, this will come as no surprise, as it’s almost taken for granted that evolution is a controversial subject.  Thankfully, that’s really not the case in most of the world. In U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

The researchers combined data from public surveys on evolution collected from 32 European countries, the United States and Japan between 1985 and 2005. Adults in each country were asked whether they thought the statement ?Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,? was true, false, or if they were unsure.

 

The study found that over the past 20 years:

• The percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution declined from 45 to 40 percent.
• The percentage overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48 to 39 percent, however.
• And the percentage of adults who were unsure increased, from 7 to 21 percent.

Of the other countries surveyed, only Turkey ranked lower, with about 25 percent of the population accepting evolution and 75 percent rejecting it. In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did.

I have encountered or directly experience this type of thinking (or lack thereof) numerous times with friends and acquaintances.  Not only are these people ignorant of science (even though most of them have college educations), but they seem to be offended by the suggestion that they even investigate science and their their beliefs.  There have even been religion vs. atheism “debates” where the religious leaders have asked that, if evolution is correct, why no human has ever given birth to a monkey.  These people just “feel” that their beliefs are correct, and that seems to be enough.  Perhaps it’s natural to fear what one doesn’t understand.  Americans seemed to be up in arms about the whole stem cell research issue (which isn’t an issue in most parts of the world).  But how many Americans could tell you what a cell really is? 

Also from the article:

Paul Meyers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study, says that what politicians should be doing is saying, ‘We ought to defer these questions to qualified authorities and we should have committees of scientists and engineers who we will approach for the right answers.”

Hopefully, this is a passing fad that cannot possibly continue.  This stuff does matter - it affects education, our economy, and our society.  Reason, logic, and science are clearly important, and the U.S. is lagging far behind in modern thought about life and our role in it.

Reference

The series of articles continues at LiveScience.com:

PART 1
An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution
This Trojan Horse for Creationism has become very popular. But who is being duped? And what does it all mean for morality?

PART 2
‘The Death of Science’
Intelligent design is presented as a legitimate scientific theory and an alternative to Darwinism, but a close look at the arguments shows they don’t pass scientific muster. So why are scientists worried?

PART 3
Belief Posing as Theory
As evolution takes a beating, scientists remind us of the difference between fact, theory and belief.

PART 4:
Anti-evolution Attacks on the Rise
Each time the effort to introduce creationism into classrooms starts up again, so does legislation aimed against evolution. Learn about the rash of recent cases, plus a look at historically pertinent court cases.

It has always been my hope that the absurd levels of religious nonsense in the United States would lead to a backlash.  Rather than being influenced by the ever-present influence of religion on politics (e.g., George Bush stating that God told him to attack Iraq), some of this religious extremism should have a counter-effect.  Highlights within the last decade include absurd initiatives against stem cell research, gays, and abstinence-only programs.  Fortunately, there are some numbers that show the actual effects.

An AlterNet post provides details in Young People Rejecting Christianity, Have Perception of Religion as Homophobic.  From the article:

A study released last week by the Barna Group, a reputable Evangelical research and polling firm, found that under-30s — both Christian and non-Christian — are strikingly more critical of Christianity than their peers were just a decade ago. According to the summary report, Barna pollster David Kinnaman found that the opinions of non-Christians, in particular, had slid like a rock in that time frame. Ten years ago, “the vast majority” of non-Christians had generally favorable views of Christianity. Now, that number stands at just 16%. When asked specifically about Evangelicals, the number are even worse: only 3% of non-Christian Millennials have positive associations with Evangelicals. Among the Boomers, it’s eight times higher.

The article also mentions that these views aren’t just from outsiders or critics:

And this wasn’t just ignorance talking. The people interviewed had an average of five Christian friends. Eighty percent of them had spent at least six months attending church themselves in the past; and half of them had considered becoming Christian, but rejected it. Familiarity with the faith, it appears, has bred quite a bit of contempt…

Also, Sara Robinson sums up some of the many reasons for this in All Over But the Shouting. 

I often hear the argument that it’s not the religions that are “bad” - it’s the people that do negative things in the name of religion.  Personally, I don’t buy it.  I believe that there’s a fundamental issue with claiming that absolute truth comes from a book that condones so many immoral activities and condemns other activities that are now the basis of civilized society. 

Overall, I’m glad to see that there’s a limit to how much double-talk and hypocrisy people are willing to put up with.  I truly hope that this will result in a long (or even permanent) improvement in politics and society.

One of the big issues that I have with religion is that most people have never taken the time to even consider their beliefs (let alone less research atheism or other religions).  From very early in childhood, Western religions teach children that they were created by a kind, just God that love them.  Incidentally, this same creator has promised to torture them from all eternity in the pits of Hell.  Of course, you can always choose whether or not you want to believe.  Regardless of the fact that there’s no evidence for the existence of a Supreme Being, more than 90% of Americans claim that they believe in God.

People need to be scared into believe in religion, since it can’t stand on its own merits.  Along the lines of starting early, here’s a particularly creepy cartoon describing Satan: Banned Childrens’ Cartoon about Satan.  There are several more stop-motion animation films (search YouTube’s recommendations for a list).  

I can only hope that most adults will find this to be humorous and also outrageous (and not in a good way).  Richard Dawkins has described teaching children about Hell as tantamount to child abuse.  I certainly agree with that.  Hopefully someday children will be able to make their own informed decisions about what to believe without the shadow of fear.

I have always wondered about how neoconservatives (generally ultra-Christian conservatives) can reconcile their supposed belief in faith with the violence, racism, hatred, and bigotry that they so often preach.  It seems strange to me that affluent people would feel so threatened by equity in the world. 

Populist America has an article that sheds some light on the subject.  In the The Morality of Neoconservatism, the article states:

Blinded by such an ethnocentric vision of the world, they tend to become convinced that we, as a nation of people who have received the special blessing of God, are somehow inherently better than, somehow superior in relation to, and thus more worthy than all others in the world – vis a vis, Western civilization along with its associated religious beliefs excel all else in the world.

 

The result is an egocentric world view that breeds a vitriolic arrogance that inclines so many of us as Americans to ignore the fact that other people value their lives just as much as we do, and that their values, their beliefs, their ways of living are every bit as important to them as ours are to us. Such a harsh and brutal way of approaching others can do nothing but lead those of us who hold such an outlook to have nothing but contempt for the rest of the world.

I hope most people thing there’s something odd with the “God Bless America”-type bumper stickers that are so fashionable these days.  Couldn’t an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the Universe just bless everyone?  Why should the purchaser of said bumper sticker by privileged to be born in a place that seems to guarantee his or her carriage into Heaven? 

The results of this kind of thinking are far from harmless:

Consequently, neoconservatives have seemingly come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with our having invaded the country of Iraq even though as many as 100,000 or more Iraqis have died (been killed?). With little concern for those who have died, the dead have been degraded as nothing more than “collateral damage“– a simple, yet unfortunate cost of war, an inauspicious accident of having taken residence at the side of a beleaguered enemy.

I wish I could say that this kind of thinking were extreme.  Unfortunately, friends of mine seem to think this way.  I question whether they even think of “those Middle Easterners” as human beings.  Imagine if another country ha attacked the U.S. without any provocation.  Should we welcome them as liberators? 

Bush, in his infinitesimal wisdom, has claim that God told him to attack Iraq.  I think Christians, most of all, should be outraged by this.  But, as group, they’re his biggest supporters.  We’re a long way off from making rational and logical decisions, and neoconservatives are definitely not pointing the nation in the right direction.

I’ve heard people claim that one of the things that makes America great is that people can believe whatever they want.  Of course, this sounds good in theory, but in practice the situation is quite different.  In general, the best course of action for an atheist is to keep his or her mouth shut.  Sharing that opinion generally leads to being marginalized or being a rather hated outcast.  And why?  Personally, I think that most people know that their views on religion are on such shaky foundation that even questioning it would be a threat to their irrational views. 

In any case, Truthout reports in Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity the details of a lawsuit against the U.S. Army.  From the article:

“Immediately after plaintiff made it known he would decline to join hands and pray, he was confronted, in the presence of other military personnel, by the senior ranking … staff sergeant who asked plaintiff why he did not want to pray, whereupon plaintiff explained because he is an atheist,” says the lawsuit, a copy of which was provided to Truthout. “The staff sergeant asked plaintiff what an atheist is and plaintiff responded it meant that he (plaintiff) did not believe in God. This response caused the staff sergeant to tell plaintiff that he would have to sit elsewhere for the Thanksgiving dinner. Nonetheless, plaintiff sat at the table in silence and finished his meal.”

…

Moreover, the complaint alleges that on August 7, when Hall received permission by an Army chaplain to organize a meeting of other soldiers who shared his atheist beliefs, his supervisor, Army Major Paul Welborne, broke up the gathering and threatened to retaliate against the soldier by charging him with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The complaint also alleges that Welborne vowed to block Hall’s reenlistment in the Army if the atheist group continued to meet - a violation of Hall’s First Amendment rights under the Constitution. Welborne is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

While this is one specific example of forced religion, it’s certainly not an isolated one.  It’s quite common in schools (at all levels) for teachers to assume that people believe in God (n.b. the singular form of the word).  As I mentioned in the past, George Bush apparently doesn’t believe that atheists should be considered citizens.  Clearly, religious (or anti-religious) persecution is quite alive and well in the United States.

A while back, there was a big fiasco over a fight on the talk show The View.  The “debate” concerned a statement that Rosie O’Donnell has made in the past related to how the argument could be made that Americans are terrorists for invading Iraq.  Based on the fact that George Bush has said that God told him to do it, I find it hard to tell the difference.  Regardless, the womens’ arguments were a perfect example of a lack of rationality and logic.  Rather than focus on getting and understanding information and views (the name of the show), this degenerates into people making silly soundclip-type assertions. 

Here’s another case in point: New “View” Co-Host Sherri Shepherd Doesn’t Know If World Is Flat.  The other women on the show are right to press the issue, but again, you really don’t get any answer.  I have to differ with the argument that it’s not really important whether the Earth is flat.  Sherri Shepherd tries to respond, but it doesn’t really make her seem much more intelligent.  I wonder, what does it take to get on this show?

So if all of this were just an episode of The Family Guy, perhaps it would be funny.  But many people actually have their views influenced by this kind of discussion.  It’s really worrisome that more people could name all of the regular cast members of The View, and few could even mention the name of a handful of scientists.  Clearly, people’s time and attention would be better rewarded watching just about anything else on TV.

Award acceptance speeches are generally known for the inane babbling, sending thanks to long lists of people who no one else really cares about.  You even get an occasional shout to Jesus (who apparently didn’t favor the other nominees).  Recently, there have been a couple of more interesting ones, though.

ThinkProgress reports in Fox censors Sally Field’s anti-war speech at Emmy’s Fields’ full comments:

“Surely this [award] belongs to all the mothers of the world,” she stated. “May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. Especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war. I am proud to be one of those women.”

Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.”

Another good one is from Kathy Griffin.  Reuters reports the details in Kathy Griffin’s Jesus remark cut from Emmy show.  The offending quote:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.”

Asked about her speech backstage a short time later, an unrepentant Griffin added, “I hope I offended some people. I didn’t want to win the Emmy for nothing.”

It’s no surprise that major networks would suppress these views, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually hear non-mainstream opinions every once in a while?  I’m just glad that I’m not the only one that has problems with Jesus or the Iraq War.  At least I can voice them in this blog.

One of the worst aspects of religion is the way in which it is forced upon people.  While there’s often tremendous social pressure to conform to unfounded beliefs, children often have it worse.  They’re indoctrinated with religious dogma from a time before they can make rational decisions on their own.  I’m always happy to see people start to question religion and to work against its damage.&