Religion

Bill O’Reilly, well, he’s just an overheated idiot

Watching Bill O’Reilly talking-points memo this evening, he was mad at a Florida newspaper that blasphemed (or so he thought) the Virgin Mary.

The newspaper printed an editorial which took the side of a teacher in a Catholic grade school who was fired for being pregnant and unmarried.  They concluded by asking if Jesus would have fired the woman, noting; “...after all, His own mother once found herself pregnant and unmarried.”

“How could they insult Mary like that?!” demanded O’Reilly.  “And the elite media didn’t even cover it!  If they’d insulted Islam, it would have been front-page news!” He went on to say the paper was either anti-Christian or ignorant of Christian doctrine, and that “...either is unacceptable - don’t buy their paper.”

Calm down, Bill.

Even stipulating Catholic doctrine1 that Mary never had sexual intercourse, wasn’t she nonetheless pregnant - and unmarried - at one time?  Isn’t that the reason Joseph was planning to dump her, until an angel told him she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit?  Only a select few were aware of the highly unusual circumstances of her pregnancy.  Does it not seem likely that she related the experience to her extraordinary Son?

It is right in the Bible, and once again I wonder why the wingnuts apparently need an atheist to explain their own religion to them.

It is all part of O’Reilly’s big campaign to “save Christmas.” You know, because those awful secularists at the ACLU want to stamp out Christmas and he has to save it.  Never mind that the ACLU has defended many a religious display, and only tries to stop tax-funded and government-sanctioned religious expression where it violates the First Amendment.  But I guess that wouldn’t play well to the “persecuted Christian” mentality Bill O’Reilly is trying to foster among his enormous audience.

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Posted by George on 11/30/05 at 09:00 AM
Religion • (3) Comments • Link

God did it

Some comments are too good to bury in a previous post.  I’m bringing this one up from “AuntDottie” to the top:

Dear Old Fool:  You referred me to this site so don’t get upset if I quote from it…

Upset?  I’m delighted you stopped by.  It gives me a chance to address the moral question in more detail.

(quotes from Agape Press article about how God smote New Orleans for sin) “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion—it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there—and now we’re going to start over again… It’s time for us to stand up against wickedness so that God won’t have to deal with that wickedness”

Think back, old fool.  The epicenter of the California earthquake was Northridge, which was also an epicenter of pornography production.  Think back some more.  The tsunami slammed Thailand, famed for its homosexuality and cross-dressing.

Is it any wonder that some folks think maybe God is fed up? ...

No wonder at all.  Do you remember what people thought caused the plague back in the middle ages?  They thought it was God’s wrath.  Later it turned out to be fleas from rats, easily prevented by good sanitation.  Apparently God’s wrath can be thwarted by picking up the garbage.

We know what causes Earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes now, too. 

That point about morality…

Don’t forget, satellite warnings allowed most of the population of New Orleans to escape harm.  They had already left by the time the hurricane arrived.  But who was left behind?  Mostly the poor.  They really took it in the shorts this time.

The Bible has hundreds of verses about caring for the poor, but only about ten that directly mention homosexuality and a couple that mention cross-dressing.  Jesus’ ministry focused relentlessly on mercy and he never once mentioned homosexuality or abortion.  Apparently God isn’t reading His own book; He just reached out and smacked the poor while the rich escaped.  If that weren’t bad enough, His aim is terrible.  He smote the whole coast, millions of people.  And our nation’s economy, which hits the poor, the hardest.

The alternative (if you prefer not to believe this of God) is that the hurricane is a natural phenomenon, like any other weather.  It is seasonal, geographically specific, and increasingly well-understood by scientists.  Just like the plague.

If the poor people in New Orleans were punished for anything, it was an unfair punishment for the incompetence of the government that was supposed to protect them.  Scientists have been saying for years that the erosion of barrier islands and marshes needed to be reversed, that global warming would increase the intensity of storms, and that the levees around New Orleans needed to be reinforced.  Everyone in the know has been calling for a real evacuation plan, which was never created.  It had nothing to do with what anyone does in bed.

… But I don’t expect you think there is a God or that there is anything that is a sin.  Speak to your auntdottie.

Just remember, you asked for it:

You’re right, Dottie; I don’t believe there is a god.  But it is certainly a sin against humanity to let ignorance foster poverty around the world.  It is a sin for “leaders” to breeze from one black-tie event to another in limousines while ignoring clear warnings from scientists and engineers.  It is a sin to let people suffer and then sanctimoniously huff that some imaginary man in the sky was punishing them when the real reason was completely clear.  That is “wickedness”.  You should be ashamed of yourself, but you probably aren’t.

Updates below the fold…

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Posted by George on 09/04/05 at 08:35 AM
Religion • (9) Comments • Link

Mythos and Logos

I know some Christians who stand as a counterexample to the bible-thumping, dominionist right-winger nudging us ever closer to a theocracy.  Oh, they’re not “moderates” many of their ideas are plenty radical - they just seem to have read the bible with a sense of proportion.  It’s very refreshing.

Which leads to New Scientist writer Karen Armstrong’s review, Two paths to the same old truths, of Michael Ruse’ The Evolution-Creation Struggle from Harvard University Press.  While Ruse dawdles on the same old canard of “evolutionism as a civil religion,” Armstrong extracts an important truth from his book, one which the bible thumpers should consider:

In the pre-modern world, it was generally understood that there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato called them mythos and logos. Neither was superior to the other. Logos (reason; science) was exact, practical and essential to human life. To be effective, it had to correspond to external reality. Myth expressed the more elusive, puzzling aspects of human experience. It has often been called a primitive form of psychology, which helped people negotiate their inner world…

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Posted by George on 08/07/05 at 07:36 PM
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Ten Commandments letter to the editor

I live in a mid-sized MidWestern community with a good newspaper, The Pantagraph, which does a good job of publishing editorials from community leaders.  A local pastor wrote one of those “We’re a Christian nation, the Ten Commandments are the basis of our law, etc.” editorials.  This is my response:

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Posted by George on 07/24/05 at 02:14 PM
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The atheist closet

Imagination is an important tool for understanding others.

Ever consider what it would be like to live in the closet?  Suppose you were gay (some won’t have to suppose) and a majority of people around you thought that because of that you were immoral or evil.  Just to get along, you disguise any hint in your actions or words that might tip anyone off.  You’re conscious of every word and gesture, hiding even from people in the same house.  At work you have to be careful.  In your heart, you know you’re a good person but you hear talk…

All around you people are relaxed and at-ease with their heterosexuality.  They crack jokes, kiss in public, hold hands, talk about their kids.  Pictures of their partners adorn their desks and wallets.  You can’t have any of that.  You wish you could just relax and be yourself.

A few years ago I wrote an essay comparing the gay closet and the atheist closet.  It rattled my mother so badly she stopped reading my website!  She was actually afraid I’d be fired for being an atheist and said I should take the essay off my website.  (In fact I am lucky to work for very fair-minded people).  But occasionally I do read of atheists hitting reprisals in the workplace.

Then last week I found a new blog, Atheist Exposed, about a woman who lives in the South (!) and has come out of the atheist closet in her workplace.  She inspired me to dig up the essay and re-post it here on my blog. 

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Posted by George on 07/17/05 at 07:17 PM
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The Ten Commandments

With the Real True Christians™ fighting to have the Ten Commandments posted, well, everywhere they can, and the confusing SCOTUS ruling that just came out (that public Decalogue posting is sometimes OK, but sometimes it isn’t OK) I thought I’d take a look at the Ten Commandments themselves.  The list itself, along with the claim that it constitutes the foundation of our entire legal system, deserves close examination.

You know the story: Moses went up on the Mount to meet with God, and was given these commandments which were written in stone by the hand of God himself.  And what does Moses do when he hauls these precious deifacts down the mountain only to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf?  He smashes them (the commandments) on the ground.  He was pissed.  That is almost the only realistic part of the story.

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Posted by George on 06/30/05 at 02:00 PM
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Christians on a Muslim train

Rather than try to comment on Midnight train to Marrakech, I’ll just recommend it to you as a thought-provoking and engaging story of two Americans on a train, and running afoul of local Muslim sensibilities.  Go read!

(From The Revealer)

Posted by George on 06/30/05 at 01:26 PM
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Are you wearing the correct hat?

Sometimes the reason we can’t think clearly about a common problem is that it is too familiar.  We’ve grown up with it, and as with the stench of a nearby pig farm, are not really aware of it except in a hypothetical way.

Reframe the problem in another context, and the result is humourous and insightful at the same time, as in Pharyngula’s post, Planet of the Hats.

Posted by George on 06/18/05 at 11:20 AM
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How and who

I went to a private Christian college, where academic standards were quite high and my professors were not afraid to wrestle with intellectual questions.  So “DumbChristianity,” the mindset where science is the enemy and no effort is spared to hold it at bay, is a mystery to me.  There are plenty of intelligent people, including scientists, who are Christians.

Lately it seems like The Stupids are winning.  But there are signs of hope.  I was delighted by the following comment to a post at Respectful Insolence:

“I’m a Bible thumpin, conservative minister in the Methodist Church. I have no problem with evolution. Those who use the Bible to disprove evolution obviously do not understand how to read and interpret scripture. The Bible is not a book about the “how” of creation, but of the “who” of creation. Leave the “how” to the scientists and the “who” to the Bible.”

A rather elegant distinction, don’t you think?  That guy won’t be driving educated people out of his church. He’ll be able to concentrate on things that are central to his faith, and not be sidetracked into politically-driven issues manipulated by right-wing kingmakers. 

As long as you stay safely ensconced in a little whirlpool of creationist literature and websites, you could go on thinking that evolution is an evil atheistic plot instead of the logical conclusion to the massive and ever-growing body of evidence that it is.  The anti-science mentality has been carried to its logical conclusion: Afghanistan.  As one Imam said when asked if children should be vaccinated; “We are as modern as Allah ever intended us to be.”

Posted by George on 05/29/05 at 06:56 AM
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Don’t question the myth

First Coast News reports an art student’s billboard project questioning the existence of Santa was pulled by the advertising company he hired when the project got negative media attention. 

The project decried consumerism and said, “Stop lying to your children about Santa Claus” but garnered a storm of criticism.

I get it now: if you can’t even publically question a myth that every adult agrees is false, no wonder you get in so much trouble for questioning other myths that people claim to believe in, like an invisible sky-god who watches every move we make.

True, millions of people say they believe in god, but do they really?  To question that myth publically makes you a pariah, making it less likely anyone will question it privately.

Funny how the god we profess has so much to do with where we’re born.  But we can’t question any myths, can we?

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Posted by George on 05/01/05 at 08:03 PM
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Theocracy II

I don’t want to believe that our country could fall under the thrall of some local flavor of Taliban, but I keep seeing indications that keep me up at night wondering.  It’s the curse of consciousness; the brain is a pattern-seeking engine and when you see a pattern that someone else doesn’t see, they look at you funny.

Over at Two Percent Company, they’re seeing it too:

“...Laugh at us if you will. Hell, we wouldn’t blame you if you did. We used to laugh when people said that we were headed for a theocracy — we used to think that ridiculous far right legislation would never make it through the Senate. But then “Terri’s Law” was passed in the blink of an eye even though most Americans were against it, and we stopped laughing. At this point, it looks like we need some more people to stop laughing, and start yelling. And we’d better start yelling soon, because if we wait too long, we can yell ourselves hoarse, and it won’t make a bit of difference.”
- Two Percent Company; So, When Does The Backlash Come?

Their entry covers the “Constitution Restoration Act of 2005,” and efforts to muzzle the judiciary from ruling on any church/state issues.  You’ll find links to Alabama’s many attempts to codify religious intolerance, and Mississippi’s proposed law to pretty much make Christianity the official state religion complete with monuments in public places.  And much, much more, all for the low-low price of…

Just keep telling yourself: it couldn’t happen here.

Posted by George on 04/13/05 at 09:03 PM
Religion • News • (5) Comments • Link

Caveman commentary


I’ve been a fan of BC by Johnny Hart ever since I learned to read so I hope he won’t mind if I say he’s missing a point or two here…

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Posted by George on 03/23/05 at 08:32 PM
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