Bill Maher: Christianity Under Attack? By Whom?

There is a real persecution complex amongst today's most vocally strident Christians. I'm talking about the professionally and perpetually outraged group of pundits, talking heads, radio hosts, keyboard warriors and their followers, who are insisting that Christianity is under attack. By "the left," or the "gaystapo" (that one is rich, and often used interchangeably with "gay mafia," "homofascists" and most recently "Rainbow Jihadists"). They have for years railed about the "War on Christmas," and see anti-Christian bogeymen around every corner. Bill Maher wants to know, and I do too. . .who are these people?

Washington State Politician Thinks "Religious Freedom" Means for Christianity Only

Wow, would he be easy to caricature!
Image from source, Raw Story

When the Supreme Court recently ruled that it was constitutional to open governmental meetings with prayers, I knew this was coming. I've done enough arguing online over the years to see it. When a lot of Christians argue for religious freedom, they really mean freedom for Christians.

[Excerpt]

Wash. state city councilman demands all prayers be directed to Christian God

A city councilman in Kennewick, Washington is demanding that council meetings open with a prayer to an explicitly Christian God, The Tri-City Herald reports. John Trumbo proposed that all city council meetings should begin with a prayer “directed in name and reference to the same God addressed in the Founding Fathers’ signatory documents that established this nation. . .”

Read more at: Raw Story

American Taliban?

There is a temptation on my part to let this imagery speak for itself, paste a link, and then leave it at that. But I don't want it to seem that I'm saying this is a 100% direct equivalence. The components of the images are pretty much identical: a weapon, a flag, and a holy book being held by a woman who looks pleased with herself.

I've already seen some commentary on Facebook that virtually shrieks that the woman on the right would be either a) beheaded or otherwise murdered were she to go against her faith, or b) outright behead or murder us. Graphic, right? People have some vivid imaginations. They also seem to see wholesomeness with the girl on the left, and danger in the girl on the right. And most of all, they'll complain that Christianity and Islam are not equivalent, in that Islam is inherently dangerous, and Christianity is not.

I'm not sure this holds up historically. I think atrocities have been committed by religious people in general. I think radicals in any religion are dangerous. It may be true that there are more organized, potentially violent religious extremists on the Islamic side of the aisle at the moment. But let's not pretend that the Bible hasn't been used to justify murder and mayhem, nor that the lady on the left looks any more sane than the lady on the right.

Source: Free Thought Blogs

Betty Bowers Explains What the Bible Really Says About Abortion

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian™, has a series of videos explaining the finer points of Christianity to Christians who don't seem to really know what's in the Bible. Usually, the lesson is served with some less-than-gentle ribbing, and a heavy dose of snark. But the subject this time is abortion. Do you expect that subject can be handled gently and sweetly? So, be prepared for a gnarly, right in-your-face, shotgun approach. Oh, she's still snarky, but this time darkly funny, and really quite scathing. . .and utterly correct.

Thanks to my brother Jason for the tip.

Mrs. Betty Bowers Says: Join the Republican Party!

And if America's Best Christian™ says so, who am I to argue?

Found at: VoenixRising.com (often gloriously NSFW).

A Visual Message from Stupid Monkey Planet

For ALL followers of the NFL Religion. Bless your blissful ignorance. ~The Reverend Stu'

"I'm a Christian. Unless You're Gay"

The headline is also the title of the post excerpted below. What it means is, often times Christians* don't act very Christian around or about gay people. I've experienced this for years, having been a very early internet warrior myself. I'm somewhere on the continuum between agnostic and atheist (and sliding further toward atheist as I age), and also gay. So, since the days of Prodigy (and even a few bulletin boards before that), I've been having online discussions--usually arguments, really--with Christians. I'd argue with Jewish, Muslim or Hindu people, but they don't tend to "start" it, in my experience.

We know that this is not how all Christians behave. But
many--particularly on the internet--do.

No, virtually all of the condemnation, nastiness and outright hatred poured onto me in these conversations is from purported Christians. With rare exceptions, when things have gotten heated, they applied the heat first. I try to be mature, reasoned and calm. But I tell ya, they know how to elevate the rhetoric. They have a difficult time with the mental exercise of putting oneself into another's shoes. "Imagine there's no heaven," John Lennon said, "it's easy if you try." Not for these folks. They will not go there. And while the story below is all about "the gay," it could easily be about non-believers, or people of other faiths than Christianity.

I would like to interject that this behavior is chiefly in the online realm. In my experience, people aren't usually confrontational in real life, with rare exceptions. It takes a picket line (like above) or other protest before it bleeds over into the "real world." But in today's world, where Facebook, Twitter and other social mediums are as common as actual personal interaction, the distinction has gotten quite blurry.

Like the author, I've very often tried to express myself on the subject, and had difficulty. He needn't have worried. It's excellent. [Thank you to Stupid Monkey Planet for the link. And the reminder at Joe.My.God.]

[Excerpt]


I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.

. . .“God hates fags.” We’ve all seen the signs being waved high in the air by members of the Westboro Baptist church. On TV. In real life. It’s hard not to take notice.
Over the years, I’ve watched seemingly never-ending disgustingness and hatred spill across the media airwaves from those who belong to the organization. For those who don’t know much about that “church,” they have made a seedy name for themselves by doing drastic things like picketing beneath atrocious signs and hosting flagrant anti-gay protests at military funerals.
Almost every person of nearly every religion has no problem loathing and condemning the Westboro Baptist Church and its members, and perhaps with reason. They take freedom of speech far beyond what our founding fathers intended when they fought to give us that right, and they laugh at the rest of the world while they do. . .

Read more at: SDL


*I by no means claim that all or even most Christians are hateful and homophobic. But the most vocal ones are, and they've got nearly the entirety of the 2012 Presidential candidates on board with them. 

Are All Religions Equally Crazy?

"Excuse me, miss. I'm Adam. Have you seen a guy
named Steve anywhere?" Image from AlterNet

Good morning! Why aren't you in church? I'm kidding. outside of funerals and weddings, I haven't been to church since ninth grade. See, I had the good timing to be taking weekly confirmation classes at a Lutheran church during about exactly the same time when I was a) recognizing my sexuality and b) taking freshman earth science. The intersection of these three things combined to form a hell of a lot of internal dialog, as you might imagine. Mostly what it inspired was a whole bunch of "outside the box" thinking.

Long story short, I did not get "confirmed" into the Lutheran faith along with my friends, because I didn't believe what I was being taught. It quite simply struck me as absurd. And I wasn't going to play along to get along. "Faking it" seemed a worse "sin" than actual disbelief. And any worry about sin quickly faded after that.

The wacky things that threw me off the faith path were mostly in Genesis and Leviticus. There's stuff in there that even the most literal fundamentalist can't really believe. But most of us have heard the standard Christian (and by extension, Jewish) stuff for so long, even the loopiest stuff starts to seem normal, or at least we don't think about it much. But to an outsider, just how crazy do virgin births and 900-year-old people sound? Exactly.

[Excerpt]

Are All Religions Equally Crazy?

Does any religion make more sense than any other?



Atheists, by definition, don't think any religion has any reasonable likelihood of being true. And yet, for some weird reason, we're often asked to choose between them. Believers often accuse us of ignoring more moderate and progressive religions while we trash the low-hanging fruit of hard-line fundamentalism. . .

Read more at: AlterNet
 
Thanks to StupidMonkeyPlanet for the link

The Gospel According to Betty Bowers

Amen, Betty. Hat tip to Joe. My. God.

Religious Knowledge Study Has Surprising Results

Image from source, Pew Forum

I say "surprising" because it surprised some religious people. I wasn't too surprised though, after years of online discussions and personal interactions with religious people.  I'm agnostic-bordering-on-atheist, and the subject of religion comes up a lot. Especially when I mention the above.  Religious people, upon finding out my heathen status, often make it their personal mission to "witness" to me, in a vain attempt to convert me.

Oddly, I rarely approach these discussions with the intent of converting anybody to my way of thinking.  My role is usually just to explain why I believe--or rather don't believe--the way that I do.  It is roughly akin to banging my head into a wall, but I'm apparently a glutton for punishment.  But I've found in these discussions that I often--very often--know more about religion than the religious themselves do.  Oh, not chapter and verse. I was never much for memorization.  Still, I have reasons from my state of disbelief, and those reasons are based on the good book itself.  My knowledge of Hinduism, Islam and other non-Christian faiths is a little more spotty, but that's because I've rarely run into anyone from those religions trying to convert me.

The one thing that did surprise me is that a lot of Catholics don't know that transubstantiation--the conversion of the Eucharist and wine into Jesus' actual blood and flesh--is literal.  I can't say I blame them for attempting to wipe cannibalism from their minds.  Just, ewww.

[Excerpt]

U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. . .

Read more at: The Pew Forum

America is a Christian Nation According to Sarah Palin

I will echo Keith Olbermann's favorite phrase: "That woman. . .is an idiot." She honestly must not know much about the history of the founding fathers if she believes that they based this country on the Bible. They did not, and made sure that it would not be.

As an agnostic, declarations of a belief in god, or the need for prayer from the Government sounds something like, "all praise be to Superman." To me it is nonsense, and the founders of this country created it so that that would be a perfectly legal mindset.

Jesus! That's Pizza Sauce!

Image from source, Joe.My.God.

Honestly. . .

[Excerpt]

Jeebus In The Pizza Sauce! Praise!

A pizzeria worker in Pennsylvania says that she's been blessed by appearance of Jeebus in a plastic tub of tomato sauce. . .

Read more at: Joe.My.God

Previously:
Jesus Appears on a Steam Iron

Jesus on a Pickup Truck!

Virgin Mary Appears in a Brain Scan?

News of the Weird: Jesus! Clean Your Shower!

The Second Coming of Cheesus!

Cheesus: Jesus Found in a Cheetos Bag

Jesus Found in Potato!

Jesus Found in Slab of Granite

Jesus Christ on a Pancake!

Jesus is Everywhere!

Cooking With Mrs. Betty Bowers (America's Best Christian)

This admittedly irreverant (to say the least) video is posted especially for Stupid Monkey Planet, who has helped out so much of late. Enjoy, Monkey!



Found at: Joe.My.God.

Stupid Monkey Tip: You should try her speared ribs... they're to die for!

Christopher Hitchens on Joy Behar Show on God

I can't switch to The Joy Behar Show out of loyalty to Rachel Maddow. But I'm enjoying the clips! Atheist author Christopher Hitchens can out-debate a religious person on religion even when he's sauced. Which is often. His politics may be different from mine, but I dig his views on religion in America.

Religion Tropes: Explaining the Major Religions

I tried but couldn't find the original source for this brilliant analogy, but will be happy to provide attribution if anyone knows. As a fan of "tv tropes" and the idioms and conventions of pop culture, this analogy explaining religions hit me as just perfect. See what you think.

No, Muslims don't believe that Jesus was the messiah.

Think of it like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel.

Then the Koran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There's still Jesus, but he's not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn't shown up yet.

Jews like the first movie but ignored the sequels. Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third movie doesn't count. Muslims think the third one was the best.

Mormons like the second one so much that they started writing fan-fiction that doesn't fit with any of the series canon.

Source: Ask 500 People

Lost in Translation

Image from Wikipedia

I've spoken of "Wiki-holes" in the past; the act of reading one Wikipedia listing after another until a ridiculous amount of time has passed without your knowledge. Countless other internet-"holes" exist, from IMDB-holes to (undoubtedly) porn-holes. Heh.

Well, I've just climbed out (for the moment) from an Amazon-hole. Nothing kinky, just reading some commentary accompanying Bill Maher's release of Religulous on video. There's a fervent batch of discussions brewing there between Bible literalists and agnostics/atheists. And I find the back-and-forth fascinating. The discussion that sapped my time this time was one between the "there are no contradictions in the Bible" faction, and the dissenters.

Now, whether or not there are (and IMHO, there are), the contradictions between Genesis and basic freshman Earth Science pretty much clinched it for me, all the way back when I was 14 years old. But many cling to the idea that the Bible is inerrant, despite the many authors, rejected gospels, and the translations and re-translations.

One point caught my eye, though, and I had to share it here on the blog. Here it is:

"Computer translation of The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak from English to Russian then back to English became The Whisky is Strong, but the Meat is Tainted."

Says something about translations, doesn't it?

Source: Amazon.com

UPDATE: I'd also like to point out something interesting (at least to me). I've participated and read message boards for as long as online communication has been available. The topics are many, but some of my favorites (outside of religion, and gay rights discussions) are fan sites. And in fan sites--whether the topic is The Terminator, Superman, Aliens, Seinfeld, Friday the 13th or any other work of fiction--there is the phenomenon of the "fan wank." A fan wank is an explanation by a fan that clears up problems in continuity. The fan makes an effort to explain away an uncomfortable diversion from established facts. They are rarely supported by "canonical" evidence.

This is exactly the same MO you find on religion boards. Contradiction in the Bible? Fan wank. Where did Able and Cain find wives that weren't their sisters? Fan wank. How was "light" created before the sun and moon and stars? Fan wank. In fact, Biblical apologists are likely the grandaddies of fan wankdom.

More on fan wanks: Here

Paranoid "Anti-Christian" Top 10 List

Many of the far-right uber-religious in this country like to fancy themselves as somehow beleagered, or otherwise "under attack." This is of course absurd, as Christianity is the de-facto religion of the United States. Muslims, Buddhists, Jehovah's Witnesses, even Mormons have a tougher row to hoe, not to mention the atheistic-leaning agnostics like me.

Still, they try to prove how they are an underclass or something. Witness this ridiculous "Top 10" list of "anti-Christian" attacks of the last year.

[Excerpt]

Top Ten Instances of Christian Bashing in America, 2008

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has prepared a Top Ten list of the most egregious acts of Christian Bashing in American in 2008. Every day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values.

"It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of CADC. "Anti-Christian bigotry is real and growing. Those who engage in it should be exposed and called to account. . ."

Read the silly list at: Christian News Wire

My responses (please read the list to see what I'm talking about):

10. The Jack Black video in no way disparaged Christianity. Only a certain select group of homophobic Christians.

9. Bill Maher is a comedian. And religion provides a ripe subject for comedy. Suck it up.

8. Oh, who cares.

7. The whole "transubstantiation" thing is pretty oogy. Cannibalism, really? You think that's not open to criticism?

6. Maher again. Comedy. Grow up.

5. Play by the rules.

4. State and religion should not mix. That is all.

3. Subjective attack on a political figure you do not like. It is not up to you to decide what a person's "real" religion is.

2. Sarah Palin wasn't attacked for being a Christian. She was attacked because of the freakin' witch doctor who laid hands upon her in her church. Big difference.

1. Both sides of the Proposition 8 battle displayed improper reactions. Neither side is represented by a few isolated cases. And a group being denied rights by another is understandably going to go out of bounds a bit.

Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly on Atheists vs. Christians

By now, I'm sure you've read about the case of the atheist sign put up alongside the Nativity scene. Its wording may have been a touch over the top, but every bit as valid a viewpoint as anybody else's. FOX "News" star, Bill O'Reilly is having none of it though.

The big splotchy bully brought in Megyn Kelly to argue the legal merits of the case. . .and then the fireworks started. Usually, O'Reilly steers his guests into agreement, or he talks over them and then effectively declares himself the winner. In this case, he gets his loofahed butt handed to him. For all I know, Kelly is just a douchey as O'Reilly in other contexts; I honestly have no idea. But here, she comes of very, very well. Bill? Not so much.

Religious Discovery: Ancient Hebrew Tablet

Photo from source, New York Times

Religious artifacts offer something for everybody. For the devout, they offer affirmation, and excitement. For the irreligious, they often offer a chance for debate. Like, does this prove that the religion is true, or does it merely lay the groundwork for a fabrication that came after it?

Either way, it can be fascinating.

[Excerpt]

Ancient Hebrew tablet sparks debate on Messiah

A 3-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing reevaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, because it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time. . .

Read more at: New York Times

Thanks again to Stupid Monkey Planet for the link.

10% of Americans Think Barack Obama is Muslim?

Image from blog-city.com

This just in. . .10% of Americans are dumber than a brick. After three weeks of saturation coverage of Barack Obama's Christian minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, cognitive dissonance has apparently taken hold. For the uninitiated, that's when you hold two contradictory ideas to both be true. He's a Muslim! He's a crazy Christian!

Idiots.

[Excerpt]

One in 10 voters believes Barack Obama is Muslim, a mistaken impression that lingers across party lines, a poll showed Wednesday.

Fourteen percent of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of independents mistakenly think he is Muslim, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just over half of each group correctly identified him as Christian, while about a third said they don't know his religion. . .

Read more at: Raw Story