‘It’s my right to make you support my religion!’

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Michael

At least that’s what many of the residents of King, N.C. may as well be saying. They’re all in a huff over a Christian flag the city council decided to remove from a war memorial after an Afghanistan war veteran made a complaint.

“This monument stands as hallowed ground,” said Martini, a tall, trim man with a tattoo on his right arm commemorating the day in 1988 when he became a born-again Christian. “It kills me when I think people want to essentially desecrate it.”

It now appears that many of the Christians in this small town have replaced the flag with a replica and are now guarding it. (It’s unclear from the article if the new flag is in the same place as the old one.) It’s a great display of ignorance, really. Someone doesn’t want the government supporting religion? Well, that person must just be desecrating everything! Actually, that wouldn’t be so bad – we really should never hold any ideas sacred, sealed off in a box where it’s unthinkable that anyone should ever question them. But that isn’t what’s happening here.

Of course in all this, the ACLU, as usual, has taken the correct position. They’ve praised the town for taking down the flag while allowing these people to hold their silly vigils. It’s no surprise that the ACLU is holding to actual principle. But that isn’t so clear to the residents.

The protesters, though, aren’t satisfied with the vigil. They’re planning an Oct. 23 rally in support of their ultimate goal, which is for the city to restore the Christian flag to the permanent metal pole on the memorial.

At a recent public hearing, roughly 500 people packed the King Elementary School gymnasium, many waving Christian flags. Of more than 40 speakers, no one spoke in favor of removing it.

“We’ve let our religious freedoms and constitutional rights be stripped away one by one, and I think it’s time we took a stand,” King resident James Joyce said.

James Joyce is just being a mook. The separation of church and state is well established; no one’s rights have been taken away by the removal of an illegal display of government-supported religion.

Of course, if the flag was a Muslim or atheist symbol of any sort, there would be an immediate uproar, quick adherence to the constitution, and no one in that town would be holding any vigil of support. It isn’t about principle for the Christian majority in King, North Carolina anymore than it is in the rest of America.

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Uganda is a terrible place

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Michael

It’s just awful.

More than 20 homosexuals have been attacked over the last year in Uganda, and an additional 17 have been arrested and are in prison, said Frank Mugisha, the chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Those numbers are up from the same period two years ago, when about 10 homosexuals were attacked, he said.

This all has come after the introduction of an anti-gay bill that would have imposed the death penalty on gays. (The bill eventually died.) By attacking the basic rights of gays, the legislators in Uganda have incited an increasing uprising against them; pretend like gays should have fewer or different rights than heterosexuals and you’re asking for discrimination. We see it all the time in the United States; Uganda has taken it to the extreme.

But you say you aren’t convinced of the similarities between what happens here and what happens in Uganda? How about the perpetuation of myths, then?

The Oct. 9 article in a Ugandan newspaper called Rolling Stone – not the American magazine – came out five days before the one-year anniversary of the controversial legislation. The article claimed that an unknown but deadly disease was attacking homosexuals in Uganda, and said that gays were recruiting 1 million children by raiding schools, a common smear used in Uganda.

Sounds an awful lot like that dastardly HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA!!ONE1!!, doesn’t it? Oh, but maybe it’s just one of them there backward places, huh? Well…

Rolling Stone does not have a large following in Uganda, a country of 32 million where about 85 percent of people are Christian and 12 percent are Muslim.

They do have very strong backwards thinking, but it derives from the same place as much of the backwards thinking in the U.S.

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To play the miracle game

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Michael

Miracles do conflict with science. But we can still discuss them. Well, most of us.

1. All theologies that accept miracles admit they are exceptional events. That’s what “miracle” means. So if there’s a possible natural explanation of an phenomenon, we go with the natural explanation.
2. If you stand to gain from explaining something away as a miracle, you don’t get to play.
* If you’re from Enron, you don’t get to claim your documents disappeared miraculously. It only happened if the FBI and the SEC said it did.
* If you’re a defendant, you don’t get to claim your fingerprints miraculously appeared at a crime scene. Only the DA is allowed to say that.
* If you’re a bookkeeper, you don’t get to say money miraculously disappeared from your company. If the auditors conclude that’s what happened, all right, but not you.
* If your religion needs to postulate a miracle to keep some doctrine from going south, guess what? You don’t get to do that. Only someone with nothing to gain from claiming a miracle can say that.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Religiously-based divide in Germany

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Michael

As usual, religion is spurring divide in the world. And, without surprise, Christianity is the aggressor.

Germany’s attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country’s immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.

Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

“Multikulti”, the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

“This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values.

“We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” said the chancellor.

Hitler’s (creationist) Christian values didn’t work out too well for Germany. Nor have Christian values led to better nations, families, or individuals in general. The fire of this religiously-based divide that Merkel is stoking isn’t going to lead to a better world; homogeneity is a concept foreign to the religious realm. Every attempt to attain such a state has led to death and suffering and evil.

Oh, and the “Christian values” Merkel wants would mean she couldn’t be a world leader.

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Judge Talmadge Littlejohn is a moron

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Michael

Everyone with any knowledge of history and any bit of rationality knows a government entity cannot require individuals to say the Pledge of Allegiance. This might lead one to believe a judge, of all people, would never be genuinely dumb enough to require a courtroom full of people to recite it. But that’s a faulty lead when Talmadge Littlejohn is involved.

The furor began Wednesday when an attorney with a reputation for fighting free speech battles stayed silent as everyone else recited the patriotic oath. The lawyer was jailed.

A day later, Judge Talmadge Littlejohn continued to ask those in his courtroom to say the pledge.

…

Attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours behind bars before Littlejohn set him free so that the lawyer could work on another case. Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal he respected the judge but wasn’t going to back down.

“I don’t have to say it because I’m an American,” Lampley told the newspaper.

Littlejohn clearly needs to face some disciplinary action for this. It would also help if he apologized to Lampley. It’s hard to believe he doesn’t know he’s in the wrong. I’m sure he thinks what he did was morally right – because the religious often have screwy morals – but how he might think he can do what he did? It’s nuts.

Of course, with others it’s abundantly clear they don’t really know what they’re talking about.

“I thought he was a disgrace to the United States,” Bobby Martin, a 43-year-old self-employed maintenance worker, said of Lampley. “If he can’t say that in front of a judge, he don’t deserve to be here” in this country.

Ayuh, he ain’t not don’t deserve to be no dang lawyerin’ fella in front of no judge! It ain’t right!

Oh, the silliness of nationalism, huh?

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The greater enemy

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Michael

From The God Delusion:

“[The nature of the conflict] is not just about evolution versus creationism. To scientists like Dawkins and Wilson, the real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition. Creationism is just a symptom of what they see as the greater enemy: religion. While religion can exist without creationism, creationism cannot exist without religion.” ~Jerry Coyne

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Hitchens on Christianity

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Michael

This is utterly excellent.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Religions | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Anti-vax crowd causing deaths

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Michael

Anti-vaccine people are a significant danger. They encourage a state ignorance or fear, or both. There’s hardly a discernible reason why they want to advocate against something that has saved so many lives without once causing autism or any of the other horrible conditions they falsely attribute to vaccinations. Perhaps it’s a hatred of “Big Pharma” or maybe it’s a general anti-science attitude. I’m not entirely sure. But whatever the reason, the results are deadly.

State health officials reported Thursday that California is on track to break a 55-year record for whooping cough infections in an epidemic that has already claimed the lives of nine infants.

At least 4,017 cases of the highly contagious illness have been reported in California, according to the state. Data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control show 11,466 cases nationwide, though the federal numbers are known to lag behind local reporting.

Vaccinations would have almost certainly saved all those infants. Even if they didn’t get the vaccines themselves, if roughly 95% of all other members of at-risk groups were vaccinated, they probably wouldn’t have faced any illness.

And there’s more.

A measles outbreak has claimed the lives of 70 children in Zimbabwe over the past two weeks, mostly among families from apostolic sects that shun vaccinations, state media said Thursday.

This is both unnecessary and an extension of the anti-vax movement that is taking place in the United States and Europe. We should know better.

It isn’t surprising that religion is involved. Few religious groups overtly advocate against modern medicine based upon their religion, but many of them are hostile towards all the advances human society has made because they’re hostile towards science. There is an unresolvable conflict between science and religion so long as both exist, and this is an extension of that, just as the anti-vax movement in the U.S. and Europe can be partially labeled an extension the conflict. (All the causes, though, are perplexing, and as I said earlier, I just don’t know all the motivations.)

Children aren’t getting autism or any other disease or condition from vaccines. They’re only gaining protection needed for the stability and strength of their health.

Vaccinate.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social, Religions, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Sexually immature much?

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Michael

Christine O’Donnell is the Teabagger who won the Republic primary in Delaware this week. Of course, being a Teabagger, she’s a ridiculous candidate, and that fact is quickly coming to light.

But I want to be fair about this. It’s true enough that a lot of Christians are sexually immature. They find discomfort in sexual displays when the reality is so benign. They fight against giving equal rights to people who like different sexual things (the audacity!). They say no sex before marriage is a good thing, as if healthy relationships are at all likely between two people who may not, as it turns out, have a very strong sexual connection. But what isn’t true is that a lot of them are anti-masturbation. I suspect there are plenty who say masturbation is a sin, but the reality of their actions is that they don’t much practice what they preach. And I can’t be sure, but it’s my hope and suspicion that a good number grow to a state of comfort with their actions, past, present, and future. (But probably less so for a lot of Catholics.)

But maybe an (old) anti-masturbation message will resonate with a lot of Christians. I’m don’t know. But I do know it makes for a good point-and-laugh type video for those of us with a little perspective and reason.

Yeah! It’s so icky and, like, stuff! Christ.

As PZ emphasized, here’s the best line:

If he already knows what pleases him and can please himself, then why am I in the picture?

I mean, it’s clearly best that we think of our significant others as there for the sake of giving us physical pleasure. And besides that, who wouldn’t choose masturbation over sex?! Solid Teabagger points, I think.

Filed under: Politics and Social, Religions | Tagged: , , , | 24 Comments »

Anti-science stances

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Michael

One of the indicators that science is the best way of knowing is how everyone clamors to claim their views are in line with its findings. Of course, it can’t be so that anyone’s views are entirely in line with science, even for those who, ya know, actually accept scientific findings. That’s simply because it isn’t possible to be familiar with every ounce of science out there. Anyone who is smart enough to constantly be considering what science has to say on the issues around us will have discovered this time and time again; if you haven’t had to change a preconceived view in light of learning something new within science, then you can hardly be aware that, no, not everything you believe is in line with science.

That said, it is possible to hold a vast majority of one’s views in line with science. Evolutionists do this, as do most atheists. But one group that can’t possibly do this is theists who believe in miracles.

It is a basic fact of physics that for something to be considered a “law”, a consistent, discernible pattern must be exhibited. We call gravity a law, in part, because it is true everywhere and at all times. If it could be suspended at the whims of a supernatural being, it wouldn’t be worth calling a law. All we could say is “Gravity is true. Probably. Maybe. Who knows?” And what more is a miracle than a claim that any given physical law or constant can be altered without regard to what science tells us can happen?

This is one of the dangerous of religion. The belief that science isn’t really describing the Universe because, hey, miracles can contradict all we know, sows unjustified seeds of doubt. But religion encourages such belief. It says it is okay to claim any random thing can happen – and it’s okay that it isn’t possible to describe why. Such an insane fostering of promoted and celebrated ignorance has no scientific backing; belief in miracles is about as anti-science as it gets.

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