defaithed's blog

An addition to yesterday's Texan Democrats (a little) less religious than Republicans: Let's take things up from one state to the national level. In Republicans v secular America, Dan Kennedy of Guardian News and Media reports on the latest machinations by a party salivating over the prospect of religion-based control over the US populace. Yes, that's all nothing you don't already know, but it's a jolting drink of gasoline to see so many voices of inanity gathered into one article:

• Tim Pawlenty: "God is in charge ... In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn't say we're endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It's by our creator that we are given these rights."
• Mitt Romney: Deflects suspicion toward his wacky Mormon sect by embracing "any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty" – but apparently, only such believers.
• Sarah Palin: Prays to invisible spirits for oil pipelines. (I presume the difficult words were written on her palm.)
• Mike Huckabee: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

But wait! There's more! Virginia State Delegate and Republican Bob Marshall just added, in a rant against Planned Parenthood:

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children. In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

That's right: We're one-tenth into the 21st Century, and this guy claims that handicapped children are a punishment from the Old Testament Yahweh.

Fiscal conservatism? Proper role of government? Those and a thousand other matters are reasonable discussions on real-world topics to be had between "the left" and "the right" in the US, with meaningful ideas potentially coming from both sides. But as long as the Republican party is chock full of nuts like the above, who want to move their adherence to an ancient Middle Eastern cult from an appropriately private matter to a public requirement, any American wanting to keep religion and government separate (as the nation's founders clearly intended) needs to support the lesser of the two evils, the Democrats.

Or get to work cleaning house in the Republican party, pronto. Is it so hard to throw out morons who want to base government on supernatural voodoo? 

UPDATE: The same breed of idiots claims that any gathering of atheists is, by definition, a hate group.

Over in the US of A, modern culture divides the nation into two wildly polarized, at-each-other's-throats, black-vs-night, white-vs-day, Spy-vs-Spy (?) factions: Republicans and Democrats. (The big sad joke being, of course, that the two are slightly different variants of the same bland centrist position.)

Given the screaming and the hate that flies back and forth between the two, you'd think they were warring religious sects, not political parties. Yet it turns out religion isn't entirely removed from the goings-on. The proponents of the two parties do differ in their religious leanings – though in the Jesus-packed theme park that is America, we're again talking two mild permutations of the same thing.

The Texas Tribune reports on the sorry state of the state (Meet the Flintstones): Nearly one in three Lone Star citizens admits to a fantasy in which humans walked the earth with (and maybe roped and saddled?) dinosaurs, while a similar number drawled an addled "don't know". Only 41% of Texans comprehend that 65 million years of separation would make the Amarillo Trachodon Rodeo a wee tough to schedule.  

The article spells out the the numbers on Texan religiosity. My interest was in the latter part, which broke down Republican vs Democrat responses. Noteworthy differences include:

• Both groups attend church in similar proportions, though the Republican side attends more often.
• Over a third of each group imagines evolution taking place guided by God, but only Democrats also have a significant number willing to acknowledge evolution without God.
• Both groups show depressingly large numbers of persons denying evolution, including development of humankind from earlier lifeforms, but Democrats yielded notably better numbers willing to accept the reality of evolution.

Check the details for yourself in the news story. While the results speak only to Texas, you can expect to see similar divisions between Republican vs Democrat pretty much anywhere in the country. 

And that largely explains my own political leanings. The sad fact is that the leadership and members of both parties rate far too high on Jesus-loving evolution deniers, but at least the Democrat bunch is slightly more rooted in the real world. Given the continuing necessity to choose between these two parties in the US, then whatever the differences or similarities in actual political platforms, the religion factor alone keeps me – well, not exactly attracted to the less-religious Democrat half of the bag of nuts, but at least less repulsed by it. 

Yeesh, that's a depressing place to be. Is there a proper secular party in the house?

What? People are angry at Elton John for suggesting Jesus was gay? Says the star-spectacled one:

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.

(Via Richard Dawkins' site)

Jesus? Gay? Well, what do we know about Jesus from writings, legend, and religious art? 

He was neat. Slim. Thirty-ish. Never married. Never touched a woman. Spent all his time with (and liked to wash the feet of) twelve smelly guys. Oddly silent on the whole "kill the homos" thing when pushing his uptight Dad's old laws. 

Do the math, believers. Jesus was gayer than a figgy pudding. 

(See also Is there something Jesus wasn't telling us?)

Is it just me, or are these the same faces?

Carl Sagan

David Lee Roth

If it weren't for Carl's untimely departure, I'd have to ask whether the beloved astronomer was ever spotted shouting "Bill-ions upon bill-ions of stars!" while doing high-jump splits off a Cornell podium.

Hey, it's religion week on the popular A.Word.A.Day mailing list!

A.Word.A.Day broadcasts a new word every day for the vocabulary nuts out there, and it's always a welcome ping in the mailbox. It's not a place where you'd expect to see a religion-related message of any kind, but as the list kicks off a week of sacerdotal offerings, I was surprised to see this short paean to free thought leading off today's installment:

The word religion derives from Latin ligare (to tie or to bind, as in 'ligament'), but it best serves as a tool to divide people. My religion is better than yours. My god true, yours false. What, we have the same religion? No problem, my sect is better than yours.

I recently read a thought-provoking book 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy Harrison. I found the author's patient and thoughtful discussion worthwhile reading and I highly recommend it to all, believers and non-believers. 

Yep, it sure is a tool to divide people. I'll add, though, that the "tie or bind" root still holds as well: There's nothing quite like religion to tie people to dogma and superstition, and bind them to the commandments of bejeweled priests.

Speaking of priests, did I casually pop the word "sacerdotal" up there? Why, that'd be today's word: Sacerdotal (the "c" is like an "s"), meaning "Of or relating to priests: priestly."

(Oh, Latin, is there anything you can't make sound good?)

By the way, you also gotta love the Internet Anagram Server found at the same domain. Let's ask it to make anagrams of "defaithed". Here goes... Ye gods, "Dead Thief"? "Fetid Head"? Never mind. 

(You've probably heard somewhere the awesome anagram that exists for "Internet Anagram Server" itself: "I, Rearrangement Server". Show me something that nifty in the so-called "Bible codes", and I'll take an interest in those too.)

The Age's article Beyond Belief, an overview of "new atheism" and atheism in general, is generating comment over a few points that don't ring true with actual atheists. (See Michael Bachelard's story on the New Atheism - a response by Russell Blackford.) 

My instant beef with the article was one small claim. This:

The new atheism is bigger, more organised, and much more assertive than ever before. It's based on the belief that science explains everything we need to know about the world so there's no need for religion. 

Bollocks. No one sane claims that "science explains everything"; we all know there are things that remain very unexplained, and even the most ardent admirer of science (with its incredible record of explaining so much) must admit that some mysteries might always remain outside our grasp. 

Atheism is not based on the belief that science explains everything. Rather, it's based on the demonstrable fact that religion and faith explain nothing.

Oh, and one more small beef, though it's a common flaw not at all confined to the Beyond Belief article. The discussion is the usual one about atheism vs belief in God. As in, singular God. That false dichotomy is so common we usually let it pass, but we shouldn't.

There are still believers in whole pantheons of gods; we have no business handing Abrahamic monotheists the standard as the sole representatives of religion. Any monotheists expecting to automatically advance to the final debate with belief in no gods need to first settle their dispute with belief in three gods and four gods and a hundred gods and so on. We, in turn, should force those warring parties to slug it out every time.

Over at Common Sense Atheism, Luke Muehlhauser shares how he "came out" and told his religious family about his atheism. It's a valuable experience; many, many people who lose religious faith (or realize they never had it) wrestle with the question of how to break the news to family. ("How do I tell them?" seems one of the most common questions asked by callers to atheist TV show The Atheist Experience.)

The comments below the post show lots of appreciation for Luke's tale, as well as the expected (but mostly short and civil) back-and-forth involving believers who find fault with the post. Until a comment by "Siamese", a loooong screed making God-filled claim after claim with, as you might guess, zero evidence or even argument. Out-of-thin-air assertions like these:

Heaven does last for eternity and those who chose a personal relationship with Jesus while on earth will be united with God. This unity does not imply the experience of pleasurable earthly activities; rather, it is an experience of selfless love and adoration for the God of all creation...

God desires a personal relationship with each human, in order for this relationship to occur he provided each human freedom of choice. If he had not given human beings the freedom to reject Him, all humans would go to heaven and be united with him, but their choice to be with him would have been a programmed fact...

Since God is loving and just he respects the decisions one makes and will eternally separate himself from this individual on judgment day...

And so on. Run of the mill stuff. What kills me about such blather, though – and what we too often led slide by without challenge to the claimant – is that the above claims are not only refuted by atheism, they're refuted by religion. It can't be said often or strongly enough: Every religious claim a believer can make is refuted first and foremost by the majority of religious believers not adhering to the claimant's particular minority faith/sect/denomination. When atheists want to refute a religious claim, they always have to get in line behind the throng of believers shouting "You've got that wrong" (often followed by further brilliant commentary such as "Infidel!", "Heretic", "Blasphemer!", "Hell-bound!", and the like).

Why should the atheist – or anyone – accept one minority claim over countless additional minority claims? The argument will typically bounce off the listener, but it has to be said again and again anyway. So here's my humble response left in the Common Sense Atheism comments: Readeth thou more

From The Onion:

"Ha, really funny", the believers will say, but the funny part is that this has actually been taking place over the centuries. 

The situation: A school wants to take 6th and 7th graders to a Fossil Discovery Center to attend a Rocks and Mineral Festival.

The problem: Those awful people are going to tell little Johnny – oh heavens! – that rocks are old!

From I bet that kid is popular in class at the Fail Blog: It's a simple field trip permission slip defaced by a barely-literate parent who thinks a Mineral Festival needs to begin and end with Jesus. The scrawl reads:

Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay 'Rock and Minerals' but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.

(Hmm, is this from the United States? Hmm, do we even need to ask?)

We can laugh at the idiot parent, but what's being done to the poor kid is just sad.

If you've got an atheist blog, consider adding your vital info to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see a feed from other blog members to the right; head to the Blogroll site itself to see all 1000+ blogs on the list.

It's one more small way that the widespread, fractionated, largely independent, and often invisible atheist community can show off its impressive true size. Ask Mojoey at Deep Thoughts if you'd like more info.

And if you don't have an atheist blog, why not start one? Get a low-cost hosting service (I like DreamHost, which offers quick'n'easy installation of a number of blogging platforms), get a domain name, and start writing whatever's on your mind.

Oh, you're not atheist, you say? Well, that's even easier to fix. Just drop the religion – not only is it free, but you'll save money on churchy stuff! (Big money if you're shoveling cash to the Mormon church, Scientology, or televangelists.)