Loving Christians!

So there's this banner going around quoting Psalm 109:8 calling, essentially for the death of Obama. How nice!

Then there's the letter to the editor in a local paper here titled "Palin for President? You betcha!" The author of the letter said that she read Palin's book, saying Palin is "articulate, honest and real." I guess Sarah is really honest with the shirt she worn in Hawaii with "If you don't like America, then get the hell out!" on it. She ended the letter with a reference to Psalm 109:8. The letter writer and Palin have a lot in common.

It's curious that the Christian right can be so loving one moment and so hateful the next. I wonder how they would of felt if someone on the left of the political spectrum developed a banner calling for Bush to be kill, as in Psalm 109:8.

The scary part of all this is that the right, mainly religious, have become more entrenched. They are digging in heir heels and really pushing the "them and us" tactic. How many times have you heard about how Obama really screwed things up in the first year in office while the religious right conveniently forgot that Mr. Bush got us into two wars, costing lots of blood and money, allowed banks and financial institutions to almost wreck the economy and, oh by the way, ignored science and global warming. Great job George!

The problem with these people is that you can't reason with them. They are stuck in their world and no amount of persuasion will move them out of it. My only hope is that the younger generation is slowly tending to move away from this insanity.

Can you say something coherent?

Talk about mumbo-jumbo stuff, consider the following----

"Once upon a time, there was only the cycle of birth, life, and death. Then God created Darwin, whose theory of evolution transformed a static wheel of existence into a great arc of change, with bacteria, beast, biosphere and even human consciousness caught up in the currents of an evolutionary universe. This still radical revelation poses a fundamental challenge to some of our most cherished spiritual beliefs. In this teleseminar, Carter Phipps will upend traditional concepts of enlightenment and spiritual awakening, showing how the latest insights in science, philosophy, and spirituality are destined to transform our relationship to life, God, and…well, everything!"

I'm always amazed at how these "new age" gurus can peddle such nonsense. It seems like they know how to string a bunch of words together that at first glance sounds nice but upon closer examination, mean nothing. "The static wheel of existence into a great arc of change", huh? Darwin proposed a theory and "static" was done away with and "change" happened. Gee maybe I propose a theory of beautiful women that crave old guys like me and it will happen - just like that.

The quote was from EnlightenNext, a new age scam run by Andrew Cohen and Carter Phipps promoting a teleseminar entitled "Evolution Changes Everything: How the Discovery of Progress is Transforming the Spiritual Path". Huh?

Check out http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ and search for "I get Spam".

Hardy Ardi

I can hear the Creationists howl now. “It’s not a human. It’s a chimp!” In case you haven’t heard, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, announced the discovery of a fossil skeleton pre-dating the earliest known hominid, known as Lucy. The newest find, Ardipithecus ramidus, AKA Ardi, was dated at 4.4 millions years, some million years older than Australopithecus afarensis, AKA Lucy.

What struck me about this announcement is that we continue to discover more on more fossils that are adding to the overwhelming evidence for evolution. Also recently was the announcement of more evidence of the link between dinosaurs and birds with the discovery of a four legged winged reptile. Still no missing link, the Creationists continue to rant!

“No evidence! Just a theory,” creationists scream. Well what about this latest find guys? Oh, they say, the dating is suspect - it might just be a chimp.

If the creationists are smart – I know they are not – they should start to back off of trying to strike down every new discovery. Science will continue to find more and more evidence and every time they do, the creationist will have to come up with another excuse. They need to learn to pick their battles. Oh wait, they have, they trot out their inane reasoning on an American public which is increasingly scientifically illiterate. They have succeeded in make inroads into schools about Intelligent Design despite the overwhelming rejection by the scientific community. Maybe it says more about the dunbness of our fellow citizens than the smartness of the ID people.

Angry at God?

I've seen some comments on the web about Atheists being "angry at God." The statement makes the assumption that God exists and that Atheists are mad at him because they (Atheists) don't have a belief in him or something like that. Just writing that sentence didn't make sense to me but what do I know - I'm angry at God!

What Christians are getting at, in my view, is that Atheists are mad that they don't believe in God and God needs to somehow straighten them out if only they (Atheists) will believe in him. Here we go again with nonsensical reasoning.

Listen up Christians, first of all Atheists by definition, don't have a belief in a supernatural being so there is nothing to get angry at or about. It's like saying that I'm angry at unicorns and I know they don't exist but boy am I mad at them! Again what am I angry about?

This whole "angry at God" thing is really a ploy by Christians who are trying to support their view (in their own feeble minds) by contending that the belief benchmark is a belief in God and those who don't believe are going against a given fact (God exists). They can not comprehend that maybe this God thing isn't real. They surely can not comprehend that someone in the good ole U S of A doesn't buy the notion of a God - large G or small g.

So the next time some Christian, those loving kind souls (ha!), yell at you that you are angry at God, tell them that you want God to contact you and then you and God can have a sit down over a beer in the White House gardens. Even Biden will be invited.

Is belief bad?

I’ve been thinking about faith and belief lately. At the outset I would like to say that as far as I’m concern, faith and belief are one and the same. In my Catholic school days, the nuns would say that in order to have faith you must believe. And in order to believe you must have faith. Two views of the same thing or circular reasoning?

The faith and belief that’s promoted today by many religions tend to be talked about in terms that could lead one to think that faith and belief are “things”. It’s supposedly something that comes into you as a gift when you pray a lot or attend church a lot. I prefer to see it as a mind concept or process that can supplant normal reasoning.

Look how, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, belief is defined -”that state of the mind by which it assents to propositions, not by reason of their intrinsic evidence, but because of authority.”

To me the crucial items in the definition are “not by reason” and “because of authority.” So when you believe something you abandon reason and you assent or accept belief because of some authority, either human or written.

The problem with that is that you relinquish your normal reasoning to just accepting what someone tells you. You abandon looking at evidence and questioning assumptions. That, to me, can lead you to be susceptible to anything because you have no external basis to judge validity. If you believe that illness can be cured just by praying, then you may die sooner than if you sought medical help. So belief can be a life or death issue.

It’s amazing to me to hear how much preachers continually push the notion to “just have faith” and everything will be just dandy. From an evolutionary point of view, belief can be a life saving thing for example if the tall grass is rustling, and you believe it’s because a lion is walking through there, it might save your life. But then again it might just that the wind is moving the grass. So if you are right or wrong in your belief doesn’t matter because you are still alive to tell about it.

But as we have gain knowledge through science about how the world works we need to abandon some beliefs. Infrared technology can now tell us whether or not the lion is in the tall grass. We no longer have to rely on faith. But to hold onto to faith when science and evidence tell you other wise, can have profound consequences.

Take the belief that prayer works. If a child is sick and the parents refuse to take the child to the doctors and rely on prayer instead, then the child is in great danger. Or if you are out of work and you have the belief or faith that God will find you a job with out you looking for one, you may end up on the street.

Or if your belief is that the Bible has the truth about how people came to be on this earth and insist on Creationism or Intelligent Design be taught in pubic schools instead of evolution, then our whole country is put at risk.

Beliefs can be comforting but they can be dangerous. We really need to recognize that.

I want to be a preacher!

I have a relative, a Christian evangelical, who lost his regular job some time ago and rumor has it that he is thinking of becoming a preacher. This caused me to think about the preaching business and let there be no mistake, it is a business.

For the longest time I have always thought that the reason Christianity succeeded was that it was one of the first network or multilevel marketing organizations. The idea was that you would "convert" some of your friends and you would get them to convert some of their friends and so on. Just like selling insurance with Primerica. Over a period of time the organization would grow and bingo, you have a megachurch like Joel Osteen's. Need less to say the guy at the top gets all the coin.

The other part of being a preacher is that you are really a salesman selling something that people don't get, supposedly, until they die. Notice that the really good ones, those with the most coin, tend to be good salesmen. What a great scam this Christianity is. I, your wonderful preacher, is selling you "eternal life." Want some? Well you'll get it but first you have to die. If you die and don't get eternal life, well tough cookies. No refund!

Now if you could only figure out a way to do that and not have to deal with all those closed minded Christians who may lynch you if you don't preach the right thing. Oh, I thought Christinaity was about peace and love. Silly me.

The GOP Religion

It struck me the other day that there is a commonality between the Republicans and Christian religion more than most people think. To me it’s more than a coincidence that many who are to the right in the political spectrum tend to be both religious and Republican. There is also a shared cultural phenomenon and process going on.

The Christian religion tends to promote a particular view of the world and uses a rigid system of teaching dogma to promote and maintain that view. Every week in Christian churches across the country the pastor indoctrinates the congregation on this view and it is reinforced over and over with very little allowance for opposing views. Sure there are Sunday school sessions and other “Bible Studies” but they tend to be opportunities to squelch differing views before they cloud the mind of the believers. The over riding theme seems to be “I know this doesn’t make sense, but just believe it.” In fact the convoluted attempts to make sense of the Bible and other religious tenets, have created confusion and spawned other sects who see the dogma just a little bit differently.

Republicans use the same tactic when it comes to political views. They are entrenched in certain dogmas, i.e. no abortion, less taxes, less government, etc, and for the most part put their hands over their ears when ever anyone offers a different view. Many Republicans tends to see and hear only what they want to see and hear just like the congregations on Sunday.

The GOP is very good in reducing issues down to clever phrases or ideas and they work like crazy to enrage the populace, just like a revival meeting. Take the hype about the “death panel.” The right has latched onto this and uses it to support their dogma of “less government.” “The government wants to kill your Grandma”, they scream! Whether it’s true or not (it’s not), they use this to support their dogma of less government involvement in individual lives.

What can you do? Not much except to get out as much of the facts as possible and hope some will alter their view – somewhat. As much as you try to point out contradictions in the bible, believers will still stick to their belief despite logic. The same is true with Republicans. Logic takes a back seat in the GOP.

Birthing a notion

It floats around like swarms of mosquitoes that annoy and annoy. It’s seems like such a minor thing but it just doesn’t go away and to kill it takes a lot of effort. I’m talking about the “birth controversy” regarding Obama.

There is a segment of the population that contends that Obama wasn’t born in the US and therefore can’t be the President. The controversy is fanned various groups all over the internet and on TV by many including Lou Dobbs, who was thought to be a reasonable reporter. Despite the evidence of a live birth certificate issued by Hawaii and newspaper clippings announcing his birth, the "birthers" continue their rant. What we are dealing with here is not that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii (he was) but that the belief of him not being born in the US is kept alive by those who cling to that belief despite the evidence.

It’s a classic case of intractable belief. You’ve seen cases like this before. There are those who contend that the attacks of 9/11was the work of the US government to get us to go war in Iraq. Or that the crash of TWA flight 800 off Long Island on July 17, 1996 was caused by a missile fired by a military jet or an onboard terrorist. Once a notion or belief is created and held by an individual, no amount of contrary evidence will do.

The same is true of those who hold a religious belief. No amount of discussion will change the mind of the believer. The more you talk to them the more their view gets entrenched. As Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson point out in their book “ Mistakes were made (but not by me)”, “the brain comes packaged with other self-serving habits that allow us to justify our own perceptions and beliefs as being accurate, realistic, and unbiased.”

So the “birthers” will continue to rant until they tire but the religious believers go on forever inflicting their nonsense on us. I would say "Jesus help us!" but he seems to be a slacker of late.

Foxy News

I’ve never been a fan of Fox News or the Fox Network. It’s been apparent to me that it leans so far right that it’s not even funny. Except for their tag line - “Fair and Balanced.” Now that’s laughable.

Anyway a video was recently put up on the blog “Pharyngula” by P.Z. Myers that was in response to a piece that Bill O’Reilly did some time ago about the Netherlands. Seems, according to O’Reilly, the Netherlands was shutting down some prostitute houses and curbing pot use. The point O’Reilly and others were making was that all this liberal business by the Dutch was leaving the country in a “cesspool of corruption”(1) according to conservative talking head Monica Crowley, Ph.D. Again according to these Fox Network folks, the Netherlands was where every criminal, crack head and whore were going. However the video countered with some interesting stats like the percentage of people who ever used cannabis in the US is 40.3% while in the Netherlands it’s 22.6% and a more telling stat was that the homicide rate per 100,000 in the US is 5.6 while it’s 1.2 in the Netherlands. Of course remember that America is a good Christian country loaded with guns and while the Dutch are not!

What concerns me with this story is not the blather that O’Reilly and others at Fox News put out but the fact that most who watch this network don’t bother to check the facts or even care about the facts. Fox News and the various programs they broadcast are little more that a bunch of biased right wing yoyos who spout garbage and inanities while their loyal audience just eats it up without question. In my opinion Fox News is developing a group of Americans who buy into what ever is said on their network that supports their beliefs, whether it’s true or not. The fact that most of their viewers see what they say as the “truth” is very worrisome. Fox News is not even journalism – it’s a forum for who ever want to speak their mind regardless of the facts. A case in point is Glenn Beck, another Fox yoyo, who recently said that Obama has a “hatred for white people.”(2) Fox News will say that Glenn Beck is not a journalist but a commentator, but their viewers don’t know the difference.

We need, as a country, to have citizens who that want to dig for the truth, that don’t buy into what one person may say without hearing from others, and who hold belief until they make a careful analysis of all facts. I fear that that’s not going to happen. It’s a lot like the Sunday preacher who tells his sheep, excuse me, congregation to believe even though it doesn’t make sense. Perish the thought that believers would want to question things. That’s heresy!!!

[1] “Well, in the Netherlands their experimentation with social tolerance, free love, free drugs, clearly has backfired. Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, crime. Everything is out of control. It's anarchy. And as you point out, you know, one of the great magnets for tourism in Amsterdam was this, except it has now crossed the line and gotten totally out of control.” Monica Crowley on the O’Reilly Report, December 9, 2008

[2] “This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don't know what it is.” Glenn Beck on video posted on “Crooks and Liars” July 28, 2009

How stupid can you be!

Ireland has just passed a law that punishes anyone who makes "blasphemous" remarks about a religion that offends a number of adherents. The fine is 25,000 Euros.

First of all, how do you enforce such stupidity? Do you have to read all the newspapers, watch all the TV broadcasts, listen to all the radio programs and read ALL the Internet? Come on!

Secondly, religion it's self will be in trouble with this law. How many time have you heard Muslims calling for the death of Christians and Jews? Every time a Christian preacher states that Muslims are going to hell because they don't have the "right" religion, would they be subject to this law?

Now granted this law is an Irish law and doesn't affect other countries but it is a trend that is very worrisome.

Recently the UN tried to pass a resolution calling on countries to try and prevent people from speaking ill of people who hold religious views. In other words if you say that Christians are nuts for believing in a space daddy who rewards and punishes them after they die, are you guilty of blasphemy?

For centuries, religious individuals have blasted non-believers in nasty ways. Just look at the nutty believers at the Westboro Baptist Church in the news that carry signs saying that "God hates Fags." Believers can be very nasty, even violent especially around abortion.

Religion needs to be always questioned. Religion continually makes assertions about many things that affect us all especially science. You only have to look at Christians who are pushing for the teaching of Intelligent Design in science courses under the guise of "Teach the Controversy" and other such nonsense.

It's apparent in Europe and some Far East countries that religion is loosing it's grip on the population but they continue to use every tool available to maintain some sort of influence for as long as they can. Even in the U.S. more and more people are indicating that they are non-religious or at least do not proscribe to any particular religion. At the same time you see the very vocal Christian opposition to things like abortion, stem cell research and evolution. The only way to call Christians on their claims is to speak up. It's not blasphemy, it's telling it like it is.

Sarah, we hardly knew ya...

Not that I really cared about Sarah Palin but her quitting as Alaska's Governor doesn't surprise me in the least. I never could understand why the GOP gushed all over her except that maybe the GOP, being a party of middle aged horny white guys and she being a hot chick, aroused them.... you know.. down there! But all this spinning of her resignation is funny to watch because the political right is trying their darnedest to show her as smart and cagey. Listen GOP, maybe she just doesn't have the stomach to handle all the pressure of political life.

Can you imagine her running for national office now, of any kind, and the first question to her is going to be "How long do you intend to stay in office?"

If Sarah was the new GOP, boy are they in trouble! Democrats, don't get cocky. You got to get your act together too.

Christian nation?

I got an email from a person I knew in the Service many, many years ago. The email was about Obama saying at some point that "America is not a Christian nation." As you can imagine this upset my friend, who is, I guess, a devout Christian now. The email was basically a chain email for folks to send to others.

I was going to respond to him directly but since it's been many years since I've known him I decided to respond in my blog.

I think Obama was right in saying that the U.S. is not a Christian nation. I know many Christians who want to force their religion on others but we are not a Christian nation. More correctly, in my view, we are a nation OF Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, AND non-believers. The government of the the U.S. must be secular, taking no position on any religion. Hence the separation of church and state. I do not want to be a Christian nor do I want our government to run at the will of Christians. In fact, if the U.S. government were to favor one religion, which it seems to be sliding towards, then it will be to the detriment of all religions and all Americans.

We had eight years of Bush siding with the religious right and see what it got us! Let's move towards the other direction!

My aching back!

There's an article in the Boston Globe that caught my attention. It's about a man, Jack Sullivan, from Marshfield Massachusetts who in August 2001 prayed to some dead Cardinal to cure him of the terrible back pain he was having. This piqued my interest because I too have experienced very bad back pain that over time eased up and went away. But the curious part of this story was that when he did this prayer thing to Cardinal John Newman from England, it was AFTER surgery on his back at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston. Gee makes you wonder!

The story goes that in June of 2000, Jack Sullivan had some vertebrae squeezing on his spinal cord. He apparently had some surgery then (the story isn't too clear on that) and he prayed to Cardinal Newman at that time. According to the story he was then pain free for eight months before the pain returned (prayer cure timed out?). He again had back surgery and again he prayed. Now he's been pain free since (according to him).

Now having had back issues for many, many years and knowing that if it isn't serious, most back pain eases with rest and mild exercise. Yes in some cases surgery is needed and the outcome to back surgeries is not good in many cases. But sometimes it works.

So my question is, what really caused the cessation of back pain? Prayer or surgery? How many times had Jack been praying to Cardinal Newman or to God and nothing happened? How serious was the back issue and what do doctors say about this? Given what we know about back problems and how they sometimes respond to treatment/surgery and how they sometimes get better on their own, it makes you at least question as to the efficacy of prayer in this case.

Of course the faithful will tout this as proof that God answers prayers - sometimes! It's a case of how we are quick to jump to some conclusion that supports our beliefs while ignoring the obvious. It's also interesting that Jack had opted for back surgery. He could of saved a lot of money if he had prayed first to cure his back problem before going in for surgery. I guess believers like it both ways!

And me of no faith.

I have just finished reading "Me of little faith" by Lewis Black. For those who do not know him, he is a comic that had made a movie or two, been on television notably HBO and The Daily Show on the Comedy Channel. He minces no words about various topics and speaks his mind when it comes to religion.

One thing he said in his book struck a cord with me --
"In a land that should take great joy in the differences of its people -- and in the knowledge that those differences are what make us strong -- we generally choose to fear diversity while wallowing in our own stupidity. For a country where so many believe in some sort of God, we seem, as a whole, to have more faith in our ignorance. We seem to find a shared comfort in our fear of those who don't share our beliefs."

I think that's true. I find that Christians tend to talk of love and accepting but when the rubber hits the road, if you don't believe as they do, they will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Next to being gay, if you say you are an Atheist, then you are the scum of the Earth. You are evil, immoral and not a nice person. I think it would really surprise most Christians that, according to Adherents.com in 2000, the nonreligious/secular made up more than 13.2% of the U.S. population. More than the Jews (1.3%) and Muslims (.5%). If you add the agnostics (.5%) and declared atheists (.4%), that gives you 14.1% of the U.S. population that's not religious. And even more interesting is the nonreligious group is up over 110% from the previous survey. So more and more folks aren't buying Christianity.

Anyway it would be better for all of us if the Christians would back off and let people run their life as they see fit. That doesn't mean we run naked in the streets and forget right and wrong. I think our society has figured that out already and we don't need someone shoving a 2000 year old book down our throat. But Christians backing off? Not a chance!