Blasphemy

Well Pope Francis is not Pope Benedict but he is still Catholic and still adheres to his religions’ tenets. And as such he doesn’t like anyone ridiculing his flock’s beliefs.

On board his plane he said "If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said half-jokingly, throwing a mock punch his way. "It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."

Sorry Pope Frank, as Bill Maher likes to call him, I have to disagree. If religion and faith are off limits to free speech, what else is off limits? When religion says things like gays should be herded into an area and left to die, as one pastor said not long ago, then free speech requires a response. If the religious folks don’t like it, tough.

Take the Westboro Baptist Church and their protests at military funerals or their protests about gays. As disgusting as they are, they have a right to say this B/S. And we shouldn’t try to stop them. But we also have the right to speak out against them and make our voices heard as well. Even to the point of mocking them. It’s part of free speech.

With the events in Paris last week, free speech needs to be proclaimed everywhere. If a particular group, like some Muslims, don’t like what the magazine Charlie Hebdo says or prints, they can speak out in  opposition. But they have no right to commit violent acts, like shooting people.

And speaking once again of Pope Frank, although he may present a softer, kinder side to the world, he still adheres to the Catholic doctrines like being against birth control and gay marriage. In an era of AIDS and the fact that condoms have been shown to reduce the spread of AIDS, the Catholic church still maintains that wearing a condom while you have sex is unnatural. At the same time they allow a ban on condoms, they sing the praise of the sanctity of life. Have sex, get AIDS and then die is the Catholic doctrine.

Of course the Catholic Church is not alone in this insanity about the sanctity of life while at the same time doing everything possible to ruin lives of others. Recently in Alabama a bill was introduced to provide an attorney to the fetus of a woman who is looking into having an abortion. Despite the fact that Alabama doesn’t have the money to do this, they are seeking to prevent the abortion and force the woman to carry the child to term. But after the baby is born, no care is given to the mother or baby. This is a clear example of the religious right spouting venom about abortions but not giving two cents to help anyone after the baby is born.

Getting back to blasphemy, religion needs to hear from everyone who thinks religion is doing harm to our society and no one should be prevented from speaking out. To be silent is to be powerless.

Charlie Hebdo

Nice way to start the New Year! Three Islamic terrorists decided that the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, insulted the prophet and Muslims one too many times. They were so upset by cartoons, of all things, that they killed 12 people and wounded 11 others. Can’t they take a joke?

This is is another example of this “respect my religion” thing. You see it everywhere. Christians get upset if you mock the Pope, Jesus or anything in their mythical world. Muslims can’t seem to handle any comment or picture that they “decide” is an insult to their prophet or their religion. It doesn’t matter if someone from another country says or draws something they don’t like. They go into a hissy-fit and their reaction is generally violent. So much for Islam being a religion of peace.

William Saletan at Slate.com wrote recently - “The fantasy of these terrorists, like those who previously bombed Charlie Hebdo and attacked a Danish cartoonist, is that they’re honoring Islam. But they aren’t. They’re disgracing it. When you murder people in the name of Allah, you fulfill the most pernicious of all Muslim stereotypes. You do so not in ink, but in blood. Your crime sows fear of all Muslims. You don’t avenge the caricature. You are the caricature.”

There is something to the fact that a drawing can illicit such a barbaric response. That says the believers are on shaky ground. It’s akin the the southern Bible believer who says “the Bible said it, I believe it, and that’s that.”  They don’t want their little mind filled with reason or, God forbid, doubt.

When terrorists like the ones in France kill people, what do they accomplish? They showed how petty and small minded they are and how weak their belief in their religion is. Their only response to these “insults” is to gun down offenders. Again, what is accomplished? Do they win over anyone by doing this?

I agree with many who say that we shouldn’t give religion a pass and we shouldn’t insult or ridicule religion. Calling out religion for what it is, a barbaric and power hungry system of thought policing, needs ridicule to expose it’s insanity. In the U.S. where Christian politicians, who do not disguise their religious beliefs in the public arena, get upset if they are challenged about their religious views. Tough! If they use their religion as the basis of their public policies, we have the right and duty to speak out.

On a recent Bill Maher TV episode, Carly Fiorina was a guest on the panel. When the topic came around to terrorists and Bill Maher indicated that all religions have their terrorists, Carly tried to say that yes Muslims are terrorists but Christians are nice people who wouldn’t do things like that. See my previous post, Carly!

There are cracks in religion all over the world. The response you see is a knee jerk attempt to shore up religion’s medieval belief system however they can. In doing so they are showing how insane they are. Instead of winning converts they are driving people, especially the young, away. I hope that religions as a whole are going through their death throes. To quote John Lennon – Imagine no religion!

Only Muslims are terrorists?

All terrorists are Muslims? Check out what some Christian and right wing terrorists have done over the years.

Source - Alex Henderson, Alternet as seen on Raw Story, January 11, 2015

On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented: he had been a member of the neo-Nazi rock bands End Empathy and Definite Hate. Attorney General Eric Holder described the attack as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred.” It was good to see the nation’s top cop acknowledge that terrorist acts can, in fact, involve white males murdering people of color.

Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.

On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto.

The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.

The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996. Eric Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. Hawthorne wasn’t the only person Rudolph murdered: his bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998 caused the death of Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard) and caused nurse Emily Lyons to lose an eye.

The murder of Barnett Slepian by James Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later. Kopp later claimed he only meant to wound Slepian, not kill him. But Judge Michael D’Amico of Erin County, NY said that the killing was clearly premeditated and sentenced Kopp to 25 years to life. Kopp is a suspect in other anti-abortion terrorist attacks, including the non-fatal shootings of three doctors in Canada, though it appears unlikely that Kopp will be extradited to Canada to face any charges.

Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others. Salvi was found dead in his prison cell in 1996, and his death was ruled a suicide. The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved.

Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter. Stack left behind a rambling suicide note outlining his reasons for the attack, which included a disdain for the IRS as well as total disgust with health insurance companies and bank bailouts.

The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984. One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.

Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995. Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. Neocons will claim that bringing up McVeigh’s name during a discussion of terrorism is a “red herring” that distracts us from fighting radical Islamists, but that downplays the cruel, destructive nature of the attack.