Persecution

I've heard of Frank Schaeffer, even heard him interviewed and read some short pieces by him. But this afternoon a friend sent me a link to an excerpt from his latest book, and now I'd like to pass it on to you.

Schaeffer talks about how the whole "Left Behind" industry is really nothing more than the latest version of the crazy right-wing religious crap his father helped to start in this country. Here's a bit:

My mother is a great believer in forwarding emails of the Republican or Christian variety. I've seen most of them before, and generally I don't respond. Eh. My mom is awesome, but a little far right politically and religiously at this point in her life - and I'm too damned tired to start a war. Heh.

But when she forwarded this essay (quoted in it's entirety below the fold), and claimed it was written by our own curmudgeonly atheist Andy Rooney, I had to reply:

Hi Ma,

This was actually written by a sports writer by the name of Nick Gholson who worked for the "Times New Record" newspaper in Wichita Falls, Texas, back in 1999, NOT Andy Rooney. Andy Rooney is actually an atheist!

"Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don't push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion." -Andy Rooney, Boston Globe, May 30, 1982.

"I am an atheist... I don't understand religion at all. I'm sure I'll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it's all nonsense." -Andy Rooney, from a speech at Tufts University, Nov. 18, 2004.

------

And as for agreeing with Gholson's essay below, obviously I don't. I think it's a pretty desperate argument to claim that "might makes right" like Gholson does here - especially in America! Adult Americans don't usually agree or use petty, childish, playground arguments like that. We usually stand up for the little guy, don't we? Defend those who need defending? We say, "I disagree with what you say, but I would die defending your right to say it!" Right??

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to counteract the sort of "tyranny of the majority" that Gholson is promoting, and to protect the rights of the minority from being trampled by all the frothing "Christian Nation" kooks in the majority who want to have MY kids pray to THEIR god in public schools paid for by my taxes. You can say your prayers any time you want - on the street corner, in church, in your home, heck, even at a football game! What you *can't* do is have public school officials lead *my* children in saying *your* prayers to *your* god, to the exclusion of all other religions, or non-religion - and then expect me to pay for the privilege!

Argh! It drives me nuts! :)

I love you Ma, and I'm really not trying to make you upset, but I think you're 180 degrees off-center on this issue. I hope you'll reconsider your position.

Much love,

-Brent

Ugh. I hate writing to my family about this stuff. It's going to make the holidays interesting, in any case! :)

Yay! Religious fervor leads to five women being paraded through town, stripped, beaten:

Police say that people in Pattharghatia believe that certain women in their village are possessed by a "holy spirit" that can identify those who practise witchcraft.

"These women recently identified five women from the same village as being witches who practised witchcraft and brought miseries to the area," a police official said.

Soon, an unruly mob broke into their huts, dragged them out and started beating them up.

There's even video of it there on the BBC site. Worth watching, if you need to be reminded just how insane religion is.

Or, perhaps it isn't completely insane. Maybe there is another explanation:

Experts say superstitious beliefs are behind some of these attacks, but there are occasions when people - especially widows - are targeted for their land and property.

Who, me, cynical?

Jim Downey

Via MeFi.

The Lodi City Council has apparently "found their backbone" and has voted unanimously to allow sectarian prayers before City Council meetings in direct opposition to threats of legal action against the City of Lodi by civil rights groups concerned over the clear violations against the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause.

So, let's look forward in time a few months. Lodi's City Council has been rolling along offering prayers in Jesus' name for a while now. They knew that this meant - in an abstract way of course - that they may at some point have to allow a non-Christian prayer before the start of the meeting. So, a Mormon Bishop is allowed to pray. Then, a Rabbi. Finally, after much deliberation, an Imam offers a prayer to Allah.

People are tense, but things go well, and the sky doesn't split apart, so they try their best to forget it ever happened, while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for their "tolerance".

Then things start to go awry.

A Raëlian Priest, or "Guide" basically forces his way to the front of the meeting, ranting about God knows what. The Master at Arms throws him out, and the City Council members all have a nervous chuckle.

A Wiccan applies to lead the Council in a skyclad ceremony. The Council members look it up and deny the application.

A Pastafarian wants to dress and talk like a pirate while holding a delicious plate of spaghetti. Denied.

A Jedi Knight wants to have everyone close the blast shield and try to "feel the force". Denied.

Suddenly, a rain of lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations descend onto the City. Religious persecution accusations are flying thick. The Council members decide that the very next wacky non-Christian nutball who applies to lead a prayer, they'll approve.

A Church of Satan Magister applies. They swallow, and approve the application.

The day comes, and all nervously await the Magister as he sweeps into the chambers. The lights dim, and with eerily glowing eyes he begins the blasphemous words for a Black Mass:

"Thou, thou who, in my capacity of Priest, I force, weather thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself into this bread Jesus, artisan of hoaxes, bandit of homages, robber of affection- hear! O lasting foulness of Bethlehem, we would have thee confess thy impudent cheats, thy inexplicable crimes!. We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, and bring blood from the dry wounds.

Cursed Nazarene, abstractor of stupid parities, impotent king, fugitive god! O Infernal Satanic Majesty, condemn him to the pit, evermore to suffer in perpetual anguish. Bring Thy wrath upon him, O Prince of Darkness, King of Filth, Emperor of Putridity, Dark Lord Satan, hear our demands!"

Cue the lightning and fog machines and wolf howl special effects.

People freak the fuck out, cats and dogs start living together, chaos ensues, council members start raping goats right in the chambers, pregnant Christian ladies give birth to deformed monsters.

You know, the usual.

And atheists sit back and laugh. "Look," we'd say with a chuckle, "we fucking warned you morons about this six months ago! Now, grow the fuck up, stop breaking the law, and try following the Constitution. Make the council meetings secular, idiots, and pray in your own fucking church, and this won't happen ever again."

(Maybe not in those exact words... Heh.)

Duane Blake is a Bishop in the Upland, CA 1st Ward of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). He wrote a letter to the editor of the Bay Area's Contra-Costa Times, bemoaning the awful atheists trying to force all of the peaceful, persecuted Christians in America to "the religion of atheism" - by "removing God" from our government buildings, and from our society.

Notwithstanding the ludicrous notion that the absence of the word "GOD" equal "atheism" (Author's note: it doesn't. -Brent), and granting for the sake of argument the religionists assertions about this invisible god-thing, how the heck are us evil atheists supposed to "remove" a supposedly supreme magical being from anything - let alone an entire society? That doesn't make any sense even if we suspend our disbelief enough to look at it from their point of view! Preposterous!

The good Bishop says:

[link] In the great effort by many to remove God from our society they are, by default, forcing us into their belief system as an atheistic society.

There is just so much wrong here. I'll have to break it down into smaller chunks.

In the great effort by many to remove God from our society...

Where exactly is this "great effort" Bishop? Who are the "many" that you refer to? Yes, there are a few court cases a year where the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or the ACLU will sue a small city government, or a state government to stop what they believe to be gross violations of the United States constitution - specifically in reference to the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

But, "great effort"? "Many"? Please. You outnumber us nearly 9 to 1. Some of us try and address the worst civil rights and Constitutional violations in courts across the country. Yes, those cases get a lot of press because Christians are shocked - shocked I tell you! - that those uppity atheists would have the unmitigated gall to call them out for their bigotry and their dangerously theocratic, unconstitutional actions.

You also mention "removing God". This begs the question; which "God" are you referring to? Yours? Why does your particular flavor of magical man in the sky get such a prominent place on our buildings, our money, our Pledge of Allegiance, and in the speeches given by our politicians - despite the very clear concept of the separation of church and state being outlined in the First Amendment, then bolstered with 230 years of SCOTUS opinion and precedent?

...they are, by default, forcing us into their belief system as an atheistic society.

How does NOT engraving your deity's name on every new piece of masonry on government buildings at the taxpayers expense (many of whom are NOT CHRISTIAN) equal "forcing" citizens into "the religion of atheism"? How does NOT seeing "GOD" plastered all over everything strip you of your beliefs? Are your beliefs so weak that they must be constantly nurtured, and lovingly protected from criticism and - uh, absence on government buildings lest they dissapear in an instant like a soap bubble?

Goodness! What frail, delicate flowers you religious folks are! Your beliefs, so easily swept away by the cruel notion of government neutrality.

You know, the one outlined by our Constitution? The First Amendment? Heard of it before?

And just so you know, I could devote an entire post to that one stupidly willful misconception that religious folks LOVE to make. There is no excuse for an intelligent, grown adult human being to make a mistake of this nature. The phrase "religion of atheism" is something only an idiot, a religious conservative with a political axe to grind with atheists, or a very young child would say. Which are you Bishop? Let me guess.

This:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller, a prominent advocate for abortion rights wounded by a protester more than a decade ago, was shot and killed Sunday at a church in Wichita where he was serving as an usher and his wife was in the choir, his attorney said.

Tiller was shot during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church, attorney Dan Monnat said. Police said a manhunt was under way for the shooter, who fled in a car registered to a Kansas City suburb nearly 200 miles away.

National anti-abortion groups had long focused on Tiller, whose Women's Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

Someone has been arrested. Who wants to bet that they did it "in the name of Jesus!"? To "save the little babies!"? To "stop the holocaust!"?

A bus driver in Southampton, Great Britain, refused to get on the bus he was supposed to drive...because it offended him.

A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming "There's probably no God".

Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with "shock" and "horror" at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest

The slogan in question is from the British Humanist Association's recent ad campaign promoting atheism. The full text of the ad is "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

OH THE HORROR!

Mr Heather told BBC Radio Solent: "I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.

"I felt that I could not drive that bus, I told my managers and they said they haven't got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did.

"I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God."

Oh, this is good:

Man Complains About Buddhas At KC Zoo

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Zoo has received a complaint about Buddha statues in an Asian-themed area.

David Engle, of Overland Park, Kan., complained after visiting the zoo on Sunday. He said it's "phenomenal to me" that the zoo would put up two smiling statues of Buddha when "we can't have a cross or a nativity scene on public property."

Engle, who said he is Christian, called the statues idolatry and "infuriating to God."

I continue to be amazed at how hurt many religious people claim to be by the atheist plaque at the Washington State Capitol Building. I have written on my own blog about the false equation often made of criticism of a person’s choice of religion versus denigration of a person for accidents of their birth (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.). I posit that criticizing a particular religion (or religion in general) is akin to criticizing someone for being a Democrat or a Keynesian: it is a reaction to someone’s philosophical or ideological choice, the tenets of which are open to debate. It is not the same as hating someone simply because they are black or gay or Romanian or what have you.

Chuck Norris (for whom I think a whole separate post is required to lament the loss of a folk hero to wingnutsville), for example, has “written” an “article” for the “news site” WorldNetDaily in which he laments:

Jessie Kilgore, a 22 year old, former Christian, internet-savvy, military veteran committed suicide on October 25, 2008. He walked into the woods by his home and shot himself.

Apparently, Jessie was one of us at the end of his young life. An atheist.

There is not a lot of information out there about Jessie. His handle for most of his online activities is 'Jkrapture' I Googled that username and found a few sites like his old blog, and his MySpace page. I also found his Shutterfly site - a storage area for Jessie to keep his funny message board images and LOLCats pictures. This one and this one in particular are kind of disturbing, given the circumstances.

The weird part about this whole thing is that Jessie's father, Keith Kilgore, a former military chaplain (here are some of his thoughts on the war), has gone to WorldNet Daily and is claiming that Jessie killed himself because of Richard Dawkin's book "The God Delusion". Apparently, the book was suggested to him by his college biology professor. (The college denies that the book was part of the biology curriculum.)

(Continued after the flip.)

The MRFF helps another atheist soldier file a suit against the Defense Department:

[link] Spc. Dustin Chalker, who has served in Korea and Iraq, is the second soldier at the northeast Kansas post to file such a lawsuit. The New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation joined Chalker as a plaintiff in his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

Here's the PDF of the "Complaint For Injunctive Relief".

I wonder how long it will be before he receives his first drunken death threat from his fellow "good Christian" soldiers?

It is a truism that religious bigotry and the entitlement mentality of the wanna-be theocrat grow strong in our small community school boards. It's relatively easy to get elected to a school board as a trustee, and in a small town most folks think just like you do.

Imagine the surprise of the Wylie, TX School Board trustees when during a bond meeting, School board member Ralph James tried to begin the meeting with a recitation of with The Lord's Prayer. He had got out "Our Father..." when bond committee member Mikki Lewis stood up and said very loudly, "Excuse me?"

Mikki Lewis is Jewish. Her husband is a Catholic. Her father is an atheist, and his parent were orthodox Jews.

[link] ...it wasn't on the agenda, and it surprised me," said Mrs. Lewis, a mother of two in the Wylie school district.

"I wasn't there to pray or practice my religion," she said.

Afterward the committee decided to have a "moment of silence" instead of a prayer. Mrs. Lewis then emailed the superintendent to discuss her protest. However, instead of a reply from the superintendent, she received a response from school board trustee Sue Nicklas - who does not seem to get the whole "U.S. Constitution, First Amendment" thing.

[link] "I must share with you first and formost [sic] that there are many people who are praying for you," Ms. Nicklas wrote. "In ten years as a trustee of the Wylie school board, you're the first parent to complain about a prayer, and the very first person in my 68 years that has ever had the audasity [sic] to interrupt God and one of His children in prayer."

Ms. Nicklas said Mrs. Lewis "doesn't set the agenda for meetings. We are elected by the people ... in the community."

Wylie is a Christian community, Ms. Nicklas said.

"You go with the culture and customs of the community," she said.

Uh, no.

You see Mrs. Grundy, that's not the way it works. Christianity isn't "more equal" than every other religion out there, and because of the First Amendment, U.S. citizens have a reasonable expectation that we won't be preached at by our elected officials. Quite frankly, no one gives a flying fudge sickle about your self-righteous proclamation about "many people praying for" Mrs. Lewis. Jesus! How arrogant can a person get, anyway?

Tell me the truth, Sue - is that part of your publicly elected secular job description as a Wylie ISD school board trustee? To organize voodoo chants against the unbelievers? I don't think so.

It isn't "audacity" that made Mrs. Lewis speak up after four years of cowed silence, Mrs. GrundyNicklas - it was a sense of outrage! A sense of injustice perpetrated by the bullying 400-lb gorilla of the Christian majority!

Here's a little secret I can let you in on, Sue: You don't get to be "more equal" than everyone else. You don't get to have the privilege of including your own personal wacky religious rituals in public meetings. Period. The end. Yes, yes, even if you have wink-wink, nod-nodded at it for 10 years. Just because you and your fellow Christian theocrats have been breaking the law for ten years does not magically make it legal.

Also, your tut-tutting at Mrs. Lewis was truly despicable. She is the one trying to get you to follow the law - YOU are the one breaking the law.

For the sake of our Constitution, I sincerely hope the citizens of your school district vote you out at the next election.

Childbirth is usually associated with some pain and struggle, at least in most humans. That's normal, and to be expected.

But the cries of anguish I'm expecting to hear shortly will not be coming from women giving birth. Rather, it will likely come from religious fundamentalists who are going to scream about how their rights are being denied, how they are being persecuted for their beliefs. Which beliefs? These:

Calif top court: Docs can't withhold care to gays

SAN FRANCISCO - California's highest court on Monday barred doctors from invoking their religious beliefs as a reason to deny treatment to gays and lesbians, ruling that state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination extends to the medical profession.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

Cue the outrage:

Via PZ, the latest screed over crackergate comes from a Dallas Morning News editorial. Here's an excerpt - see if it makes your head explode:

The Eucharist is merely a "sad little cracker," Dr. Myers wrote, and the Quran nothing more than words on paper. That may be true, and no one is bound to believe that Catholics or Muslims are correct. What we are bound to do, especially in a pluralist democracy, is show basic respect for the human beings who hold beliefs we don't respect. People don't lose their dignity because they believe implausible, even offensive, things.

There's something about these new atheists, for whom P.Z. Myers is a folk hero, that's profoundly inhuman.

Yeah, you got it right: in one paragraph he states without equivocation that all people deserve respect regardless of beliefs, and in the next he says that atheists are inhuman.

What. The. Fuck?

Small news item from yesterday:

Fire reported at Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church

TOPEKA | The Topeka Fire Department is investigating a small fire outside of a church whose members protest at soldier’s funerals.

A fence and garage at Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church became engulfed in flames early Saturday, according to the Topeka Capitol-Journal Web site. The fire did not spread to the church building.

Topeka Fire Marshal Greg Bailey said the cause of the fire has not been determined. However, a spokeswoman for the church, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said she believes it was deliberately set.

I know the odds are with me on this, but what do you want to bet that this was done (if it was arson) by some good Christian who is just plain fed up with the hate spewed by the Phelps clan? Ignoring, of course, that everything that Fred Phelps claims has about as much biblical basis as mainstream church beliefs . . .

Jim Downey

This is my first original post, so I hope I get the damned thing right.

Did you know that the Texas Supreme Court takes separation of Church and State very seriously? They do, really. In fact, they take SoCS so seriously that they ruled that they couldn't let a church be punished for abusing a girl because "the case unconstitutionally entangled the court in religious matters."

In a 6-3 decision, the justices found that a lower court erred when it said the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God's First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion did not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by a "hyper-spiritualistic environment."

So the Church's freedom of religion does mean that they can get away with abusing a girl (they call it "exorcism"), cutting and bruising her, and scaring the hell out of her (no pun intended). Ruling otherwise infringes not only on their rights, but "entangles the court in religious matters."

Yup. If I wanted a prophet of God to predict the end of the world, I would definitely look for one whose nickname was "Buffalo Bill".

[link] Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas.

"It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast tonight. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.

Hundreds of truck trailers have been loaded with food and water on the group's 44-acre compound, in preparation for the coming war.

Unfortunately for Hawkins, it is not the first time he predicted the outbreak of nuclear war.

You know what? I feel fine. How about you?

Welcome to the effects of magical thinking:

Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.

Yes, you read that correctly: albinos are being hunted down, killed, and then their body parts used in potions sold to people to 'make them rich'.

How can this happen? Well, the quote I used in the title comes from this statement, which just might offer a clue:

Kenyans burn alive 11 'witches'

Eleven women accused of being witches have been burned to death by a mob in the west of Kenya, police say.

A security operation has been launched to hunt down villagers suspected of killing the women in Kisii District.

* * *

Local official Mwangi Ngunyi condemned the murders.

"People must not take the law into their own hands simply because they suspect someone," he told AFP news agency.

*sigh*

Jim Downey

Jeff Mullin is a "Senior Writer" for the Enid, Oklahoma News & Eagle newspaper. A few years ago he wrote an article "poking fun" at atheists for having the unmitigated gall to suggest that traditional god-belief was exactly the same as belief in an Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be Her unseen curly mane.) He subsequently received a letter from an atheist who asked him what gave him the right to ridicule atheists for their lack of belief?

Nothing, apparently. He just likes to ridicule atheists. So, nice Christian guy that he is, he decided to do it again. This time in a column dripping with insincere pity for the poor, deluded atheists.

How very thoughtful of him.

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