Fear Them!

In a previous post (The GOP Religion) I talked about how the GOP is a lot like the religious right. The recent back and forth between Dick Cheney and Joe Biden caused me to think about how both the GOP and religion use fear to push their agendas.

Consider the fear theme that ole grumpy Cheney keeps pushing. Those bad terrorists are still planning to attack and kill us nice, sweet Americans! And, according to ole grumpy, we must attack anyone who looks like a terrorist with everything our military can muster. Because someone wearing explosives in their panties is a sicko deserving of our wrath.

Then there is religion, especially evangelical Christian religion. First of all, you must be saved. Saved from what? Why Hell, you sicko! If you don't accept Jesus as your personal savior (never sure what that really meant) you'll burn forever in the fires of Hell. So come and join our religion and you'll be safe. You'll go up to heaven where you'll have 72 virgins at your disposal. Oh wait, that's the OTHER religion pushing that. Christians will just sit around and sing all day -- forever!

Cheney and his GOP flunkies really love to push the fear factor. They figure that if they can scare the crap out of us, we'll accept the GOP as our Savior party. And we, as dumb American sheep, go along with it. Terrorists are the worse thing that ever happened to America and we have to pull out all the stops to stop them, Cheney shouts. Never mind that more people die from the flu every year than from terrorists.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything about these wackos. I've heard it said elsewhere that we need to make the terrorists inconsequential. In other words don't forget about them but at the same time don't give them what they really want. And what they want is us quaking in our boots at the thought of what they might do to us. Here's ugly old bin Laden hiding in a cave somewhere in Pakistan having the U.S. jump every time he speaks. Well, ignore him and let him rot in the cave!

These terrorists are nothing more than low life criminals, like Timothy McVey, Richard Reid - the shoe bomber - and the Christmas underwear bomber. Throw them in jail and forget about them! As for the others, strengthen police and undercover work and nab them before they do the dirty. As for our military, let them fight legitimate wars not police actions.

Guerrilla tactics, such as the terrorists employ, are not designed to win anything. Their sole goal is to terrorize and as long as we stay scared of them, they gain the upper hand. If we treat them like annoying mosquitos, then they fail and slowly die of old age.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Who's knocking?

I have a cousin that I would classify as an evangelical Christian. She frequently forwards to me Christian theme emails that I generally delete without opening. Recently I got one that I did open (God talking to me?) and it was basically a picture of a Jesus-like figure knocking on a door. (The picture is in this blog.) I noticed that one of the comments from one of the other recipients was something like “I would love to have Jesus knocking on my door.” The whole concept of a Jesus-like person knocking on a door intrigued me.

First of all we don’t know what this Jesus person looked like or if he really existed despite what the evangelicals say. All the paintings and statues of Jesus are idealized and romantic depictions. They are simply the figment of the artist’s imaginations. So Jesus could have been a short, dumpy, balding, ugly guy as well as the viral, young bearded stud we seemed to be accustomed to. So if a short dumpy guy in a robe of some sort comes up to you and says “I’m Jesus” how many people would take him to be Jesus? Even evangelicals might not embrace him.

I was thinking this might be a good stunt for one of those “Candid Camera” shows. I, however, would not want to be the person playing the Jesus role. He might be looking down at the barrel of a .22 by some offended evangelical. You know how loving and accepting they can be!