Well it's Christmas, and this IS the Immoral Minority, so let's stick a pin in the virgin birth story shall we?

Now I am sure that I have already covered this in the past, but I recently stumbled across an interview on Raw Story of Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions, and a symbologist.

Oh, and he is also an ordained  Presbyterian minister.

And I really liked his no BS explanation for why so many ignoramuses stick giant Nativity scenes on their lawns at Christmas.

On why we think Mary was a virgin:

The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities – contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite. 

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

You know for the "inerrant word of God" this book is certainly full of historical inaccuracies, and mistranslations. 

So did early Christians believe in the virgin birth?

Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”–they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when – Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection. 

Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.

So apparently all of the relatively rational early Christians were told to shut up, and that left the less than rational ones to interpret the story of Jesus. Well that figures.

So just how should we view stories in the Bible? 

We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.

Well good then I have been doing it right since I was just a boy.

I apologize if this interferes with your ability to enjoy the holidays. But take heart!

I mean sure the Biblical stories about Jesus are complete horse pucky, but at least we know Santa Claus is real. Right?

Right?

Is the slow motion death of religion in America more the fault of the Republicans than it is the fault of outspoken Atheists? Could be.

As all of you know the only thing that fascinates me more than politics is religion. And I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about its origins, evolution, and its decreasing popularity in America, and increasing popularity in other parts of the world.

Seriously I could write, debate, and learn more about it every day and not grow bored of the subject.

So when I happened upon this article from Salon I had to share it.

It sets out to essentially understand what is behind the increase secularization in America today.

It does discuss the Atheist movement led by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and others, as well as the Catholic church scandals, the rise of the internet, and a few other contributing factors.

However the one that caught my eye was this one:

For starters, we can begin with the presence of the religious right, and the backlash it has engendered. Beginning in the 1980s, with the rise of such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the closeness of conservative Republicanism with evangelical Christianity has been increasingly tight and publicly overt. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, more and more politicians on the right embraced the conservative Christian agenda, and more and more outspoken conservative Christians allied themselves with the Republican Party. Examples abound, from Michele Bachmann to Ann Coulter, from Mike Huckabee to Pat Robertson, and from Rick Santorum to James Dobson. With an emphasis on seeking to make abortion illegal, fighting against gay rights (particularly gay marriage), supporting prayer in schools, advocating “abstinence only” sex education, opposing stem cell research, curtailing welfare spending, supporting Israel, opposing gun control, and celebrating the war on terrorism, conservative Christians have found a warm welcome within the Republican Party, which has been clear about its openness to the conservative Christian agenda. This was most pronounced during the eight years that George W. Bush was in the White House. 

What all of this this has done is alienate a lot of left-leaning or politically moderate Americans from Christianity. Sociologists Michael Hout and Claude Fischer have published compelling research indicating that much of the growth of “nones” in America is largely attributable to a reaction against this increased, overt mixing of Christianity and conservative politics. The rise of irreligion has been partially related to the fact that lots of people who had weak or limited attachments to religion and were either moderate or liberal politically found themselves at odds with the conservative political agenda of the Christian right and thus reacted by severing their already somewhat weak attachment to religion. Or as sociologist Mark Chaves puts it, “After 1990 more people thought that saying you were religious was tantamount to saying you were a conservative Republican. So people who are not Republicans now are more likely to say that they have no religion.”

These are very good points that I agree with wholeheartedly. 

In fact, as I have shared many times before, the factors above have quite a lot to do with your ability to visit this blog today.

It was in response to that Republican branding, and the attempt to paint themselves as the moral superior of every other political group, that pissed your favorite Alaskan blogger off so much that he started channeling his frustration through a keyboard.

However as much as I agree with authors about how the Republican Religious Right poisoned the well, I still think that without the internet we would not be seeing the changes we are witnessing today.

Anybody care to disagree?

New poll shows that the more religious you are the more okay with torture you are. I know, right?

Courtesy of Libraland:  

One characteristic, above all else, defines the sociopath: an utter lack of guilt or remorse. One characteristic, above all else, defines Christianity: freedom from guilt and remorse. Christianity, as a rule, doesn't explicitly endorse the worst possible things a person can do. But it does forgive them, and that insidious negation of conscience is a quietly lethal thing. Anything's possible when you don't have to live with the guilt of doing it. And as one poll from NBC shows, even a group less trusted than rapists can be good, if there's no one around to take away the guilt of being bad. 

The poll comes from MSNBC's This Week in God, 12/20/14 edition. It was conducted in concert with MSNBC's friend in print, the Washington Post. First up, this question, with results sorted by race and religious affiliation, or lack thereof:

 The poll also asked the respondents if the CIA torture was justified. This how they answered in response to that question.

In the headline to this article over at Liberland was the word "shocking." However nothing about this shocks me.

The idea that people of faith are more moral or ethical is false, and one of the main reasons that I started The Immoral Minority in the first place.

Anytime any group claims to be the moral superior of others not in their group you can be dead certain that that is where you will find the most morally corrupt of them all.

Woman murders son because she believed it would be "better for him to go to heaven."

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:  

A Kansas mom stabbed and beat her son to death because she thought he'd be better off in heaven, police said. 

Lindsey Blansett was charged with first-degree murder after allegedly killing her 10-year-old son, Caleb, on Sunday, KAKE reported. 

Caleb's 9-year-old sister was home during the grisly attack, Wellington police said. 

The 33-year-old mom took a rock and a knife to her son's bedroom after he went to sleep Sunday, Sumner County Attorney Kerwin Spencer said in a court complaint. 

Earlier that evening, Blansett "decided his life would be full of suffering and pain and that it would be better for him to go to heaven" than to "face the world's problems," the complaint said. 

She allegedly hit him with the rock and then stabbed him in the chest. 

He died in his bedroom.

Years ago I was assigned to work with a boy who was actively trying to kill himself. A lot of troubled kids make these threats to get attention but this one was deadly serious.

The reason why is because life was too hard for him and his fundamentalist parents had taught him all his life that Heaven was this amazing place where all of his pain would be taken away and he would be happy forever.

We watched him around the clock for several weeks, and intervened during numerous attempts to take his own life. I personally had to unwrap another care coordinator's shoestrings from around his neck.

And during all of this protocol forbid us from criticizing his religion or from explaining to his young man that his parents were superstitious idiots. Essentially we simply had to avoid discussing his beliefs altogether and instead discuss with him all of the wonderful possibilities that he would miss if he took his life prematurely.

Today he is a grown man, with a job and a girlfriend. He is happy.

Don't ever tell me that religion cannot be incredibly destructive.

I have seen it myself.

American pastor who helped craft Uganda's "Kill the Gays" legislation to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Courtesy of Death and Taxes:  

The First Circuit Court of Appeals has denied Pastor Scott Lively’s petition to have a crimes against humanity lawsuit against him dropped. 

The anti-gay pastor will stand trial in a federal court in Massachusetts for his part in crafting Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Act, popularly known as the “Kill the Gays” bill. The bill was largely the product of a workshop held in Uganda by Lively and two other american anti-gay activists, focused on “how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how ‘the gay movement is an evil institution’ whose goal is ‘to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Look, apparently you can still get justice in America.  Assuming of course that he is eventually convicted.

This bill in Uganda has spread fear throughout the gay community, and among those who have friends and family who are gay. And resulted in a dramatic spike in the number of attacks on homosexuals.

Of course these charges have done little or nothing to change Lively's homophobia:

Lively said that homosexuality is a Satanic attack “on the very essence of who we are” that God has deemed a more offensive abomination than mass killings: “When you look in the Bible, there are sins that you would think of as worse, you know, murder or mass murder, but what does it come down to? Leviticus 18 tells the Hebrews exactly what it is that God identifies as the most rebellious behavior, the behavior that causes the land to actually vomit out its inhabitants and every item on that list, except for child sacrifice, is sexual perversion, and child sacrifice is often a form of sexual perversion. So that’s where we are.” 

“Homosexuality is not just another sin,” he added, “it is the sin that defines rebellion against God, the outer edge of rebellion against God and it is the harbinger of God’s wrath, that’s why the Scripture gives the warning, ‘as in the days of Noah.’” 

Oh yeah this guy needs to spend some real quality time in prison. 

The real cancer in this country is fairly easy to detect.

The idea that seemingly rational people can say, or accept, this kind of thing absolutely boggles my freaking mind.

Kirk Cameron's craptastic, fact free, Christmas movie is now officially the worst movie ever made.

As I am sure many of you remember Cameron went on Facebook to beg people to give his truly ridiculous movie a good review on Rotten Tomatoes because it was being trashed by regular movie goers.

You know, people with taste.

Well clearly that didn't help at all, and today the film has the unenviable rank of 0% on the Tomatometer.

If that were not bad enough (And really it should be don't you think?), the film also found itself on the absolute bottom of IMBD's list according to ratings.

It is even considered worse than Son of the Mask, Glitter, and something called Invasion of the Neptune Men.

Which only goes to prove that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you simply cannot force your obvious Christian propaganda down people's throats just because you were once a semi-famous sitcom star.

(H/T to the Friendly Atheist.)

Exactly.

Oklahoma cancels Hobby Lobby bible course in response to protests.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

An Oklahoma school district scuttled plans to offer an elective religion course developed by the head of the Hobby Lobby retail chain. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) said on its website on Tuesday that the Mustang Public Schools district canceled the course, “The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact.” 

“The topic of a Bible course in the Mustang School District is no longer a discussion item nor is there a plan to provide such a course in the foreseeable future,” superintendent Sean McDaniel was quoted as saying. 

The district’s decision came after the foundation made a second open-records request in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United. 

Hobby Lobby allegedly did not provide the district with “legal coverage” for offering the course, nor did it allow the district to review the final curriculum beforehand.

Though I am very glad that this course will not be offered in Oklahoma public schools, I am still more than a little concerned that it might have been offered at all.

If students wish to learn about Christianity there are these almost impossible to miss buildings called "churches" where that information is readily available.

I also understand that there might be some kind of a handbook available that explains it as well.

I wonder if the people who decided to introduce this class had even considered that doing so would open the schools up to challenges from OTHER religious groups demanding equal time?

Could you imagine a class schedule that offered "Islam 101?" Or "Buddhism for Beginners?" Or "An Introduction to Scientology," with guest instructor Tom Cruise?

No I think the Oklahoma public school district really dodged a bullet with this one. And the students certainly did.

Hey would you like to feel smart today? Well watching this homeschooling mother demonstrating stunning ignorance while visiting the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago should do the trick.

Now the above is just a sample from the original 30 minute video which I will embed below, but it gives you some idea of that vast which emanates from this Megan Fox woman. 

As you may have guessed she is a Fundamentalist Christian, who home schools her children to protect them from anything which might threaten their faith in what Mommy and Daddy believe.

Here is how Raw Story reported on this: 

In the description of the 30 minute video she uploaded to YouTube to document the visit, Fox wrote, “In November 2014, Megan Fox toured the Field Museum’s ‘Evolving Earth’ exhibit to audit it for bias. She found many examples of inconsistencies and the Field Museum’s insistence that people support opinion as fact without proof. The Field Museum pushes certain theories as if they are absolute proven law when that is not how the scientific method works.” 

In the video’s opening moments, Fox is reading a display regarding the evolution of eukaryotes — which she has to ask her camera operator how to pronounce — simple, microscopic animals that first evolved as single-cell life forms, but which became multicellular, beginning the diversification that would lead to complex life forms. 

“‘At first, many eukaryotes were single-celled, and many still are today,’” Fox reads from the display before scoffing. “What? If many still are today, then that would support the theory that they have never changed, that they have always been as they are today, not that they started someplace else and then are here, but they were always this and still are today.” 

Regarding what paleontologists have said about the first animals to make the transition from life in the water to life on land, Fox says this is impossible. God made the creatures of the water to live in the water and the creatures of the land to live in the land, which is why fish have fins and people have feet. 

“It’s not like their fins fell off and they grew feet,” she says. “That’s what they want you to believe, that their fins fell off and then they grew some feet and started walking on the land. This is the dumbest theory I’ve ever heard in my whole life. It’s not good, it’s really not good. It’s bad. It’s very bad. Do you know how complex feet are?”

Holy crap! This woman almost makes Sarah Palin seem like a Rhodes Scholar. 

What is even more troubling is that this lunatic has a YouTube channel where she reviews, and recommends, books for children.

Now as promised embedded below is the entire 30 plus minute video.

My advice is to watch in small segments however as the stupidity is actually overwhelming.

Kirk Cameron is begging his Facebook "friends" to artificially inflate his craptastic Christmas film's Rotten Tomato ratings. Apparently most people thought it sucked jingle balls.

This from the Christmas revisionist in chief's Facebook page: 

Help me storm the gates of Rotten Tomatoes! 

All of you who love Saving Christmas - go rate it at Rotten Tomatoes right now and send the message to all the critics that WE decide what movies we want our families to see! If 2,000 of you (out of almost 2 million on this page) take a minute to rate Saving Christmas, it will give the film a huge boost and more will see it as a result! Thank you for all your help and support in putting the joy of Christ back in Christmas!

Now I have no personally seen the film because I don't feel it appropriate to go on a murderous rampage right before Christmas. but I have written about it. 

However apparently many of the people who were tricked into thinking they were going to see a....a...well you know an actual movie that made sense, have not been holding back their criticism.

Here is but a sample courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes:

First the critics:  

With a smile so wide and laughter that sounds so forced you half-expect the camera to pull back to reveal hostage takers, Mr. Cameron explains how several facets of the holiday - the tree, Santa Claus, gifts - have roots in religious tradition. 
Ben Kenigsberg New York Times 

Perhaps the only Christmas movie I can think of, especially of the religious-themed variety, that seems to flat-out endorse materialism, greed and outright gluttony. 
Peter Sobczynski RogerEbert.com 

As a movie, Saving Christmas is not good. But as a teaching aid for congregants about having their fruitcake and eating it, too? Sure, why not. Go nuts, guys. 
Kimberley Jones Austin Chronicle

Now the audience members:  

Beware! This movie will make you a dumber person. When you look into Kirk Cameron's vacant eyes, they will suck the intelligence from you like a particularly stupid industrial vacuum. His complete inability to form logical thoughts can be dangerously contagious. Do not under any circumstances allow children near this movie. 

As a struggling Christian, I saw this with hopes of finding comfort and peace in religion. After watching this, I feel more frustrated and disgusted by others who claim to be Christians. I think this would be more entertaining to unquestioning, uneducated people. What a waste. 

I don't think Jesus is going to come back now after seeing this! 

What a terrible movie. This should come with free eye bleach and a time machine capable of giving me back 2 hours. 

Falsification of history by a clueless faded child actor, making a bleak attempt to hide the fact that "Christian" traditions were borrowed from earlier cults and religions. 1h 20 mins you won't get back. Avoid.

There are forty six pages of these, almost all overwhelmingly negative. 

Hay Cameron do you know how to get good reviews for a movie, besides begging for them on Facebook?

By actually making a GOOD movie that does not attempt to change facts to suit your fundamentalist religious views! Or one that does not treat its audience like they have only six brain cells to rub together!

Just a thought.

Misogynistic quotes from Christian leaders throughout the ages.

Courtesy of Salon:

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, the “father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225) 

Woman is a temple built over a sewer. —Tertullian 

The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. —Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546) 

Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband….For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior. —John Dod, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603 

The second duty of the wife is constant obedience and subjection. —John Dod 

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. —Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930–) 

The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. —James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999. 

Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. —Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill nondenominational mega-church franchise. (1970-)

Salon lists twenty of these quotes in all, each one incredibly insulting and degrading towards women.

The Christian religion was never created to support women. It was created to subjugate them, render them mute, and to bend them to the will of man, using the ultimate male figure to frighten them into subservience. 

Which of course brings up the question which vexes me still. I understand why women of years past might have simply accepted their circumstances, since they had not way out of them at the time, but with all  that we know today, and the voice that women have found for themselves, why do so many continue to self identify as Christians?

New report finds that yes religion is the source of most of today's terrorism.

Courtesy of the Guardian: 

Religious extremism has become the main driver of terrorism in recent years, according to this year’s Global Terrorism Index. 

The report recorded 18,000 deaths in 2013, a rise of 60% on the previous year. The majority (66%) of these were attributable to just four groups: Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaida. 

Overall there has been a fivefold increase in deaths from terrorism since the 9/11 suicide attacks. 

The report’s authors attribute the majority of incidents over the past few years to groups with a religious agenda. 

Before 2000, it was nationalist separatist terrorist organisations such as the IRA and Chechen rebels who were behind the most attacks. The number of incidents from nationalist separatist groups has remained relatively stable in the years since while religious extremism has grown. 

The prevalence of Islamist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria is the main driver behind these trends. 

This report is interesting because it flies in the face of  arguments given by Islamic apologists, like Reza Aslan, who argue that religion is NOT the trigger for extremist views or violence.

And in fact making this connection was what got Bill Maher into so much trouble recently.

However I would be quick to mention that just because it seems that Islam is the religion of choice for most terrorists today, there is still plenty of terrorism in the name of Christ as well.

And it could be argued that in the not too distant past Christian terrorism terrorized communities around the world for many hundreds of years before it was brought under some semblance of control by more civilized minds.

As Steven Weinberg once said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

God is my codefendant. There are 32 states where parents can use a religious defense in court for abusing or neglecting their children. In Idaho that protection extends to manslaughter.

Courtesy of Vocativ:  

Currently, 32 states, including Idaho, provide a religious defense to felony or misdemeanor crimes specifically against children, including neglect, endangerment and abuse, according to state statutes compiled by Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD), a national advocacy group. There are 38 states that provide religious exemptions in their civil codes on child abuse and neglect, which can prevent Child Protective Services from investigating and monitoring cases of religion-based medical neglect and discourage reporting. 

Of the states that still provide a religious defense to felonies against children, Idaho remains in a league of its own. It is one of only six states that provide a religious exemption to manslaughter, negligent homicide or capital murder (the others being Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia). But of those six, it is the only state where children are known to have died at the hands of faith-healing parents in the last 20 years. Rita Swan, CHILD’s co-founder, describes Idaho as “the worst in the country,” and she attributes the state’s high number of deaths to its overreaching religious exemption laws, which were enacted in 1972.

Swan and other child advocates argue that Idaho’s laws, and those like them, are in direct contradiction with the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Prince v. Massachusetts, which ruled that parental authority cannot jeopardize a child’s welfare, even in cases of religious expression. “The right to practice religion freely,” the court concluded, “does not include liberty to expose…[a] child…to ill health or death.” 

“Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves,” the decision continued. “But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”

Even though over the years numerous children in Idaho have died from medically treatable diseases or injuries, there is currently no plan to change this religious exemption.

Oregon also used to have a similar law in place, but then things changed: 

Outside of Oregon and Idaho, there have been 20 documented faith-healing fatalities of minors since 2008 in 10 different states, including Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, according to CHILD. But the death count among Followers of Christ puts Idaho well out in front as the deadliest state in the country. That distinction actually once belonged to Oregon, until a highly publicized child death in 1998 ultimately prompted prosecutors and lawmakers to act. 

Oregon, like Idaho, had a religious defense to manslaughter on the books when 11-year-old Bo Phillips died from untreated diabetes that year. His family, who were members of the Followers of Christ, prayed over him and anointed his body with oil instead of taking him to a doctor. It was the first time authorities felt they had a clear case of abuse in a faith-healing child death. But the district attorney for the county, Terry Gustafson, declined to prosecute the boy’s parents because of ambiguities in the state law. 

Gustafson’s decision triggered public outcry across the state. The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, the state’s largest paper, launched an investigative series on faith-healing deaths, which found that of the 78 children buried in one Followers cemetery in Oregon City since 1955, 21 had died from treatable illnesses. Shortly after, ABC’s 20/20 and Diane Sawyer brought national attention to the state’s faith-healing controversy with a prime-time segment on the Followers. By 1999, legislators had eliminated religious protections in cases of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment. 

Clearly what needs to happen in Idaho is the same kind of media scrutiny that took place in Oregon. However it would be incredibly sad if another child had to die in order to trigger that response.

Sometimes people ask me why I find religion so threatening. Honestly sometimes I just don't know where to begin.

Could it be that it is used as an excuse to hate those who supposedly the Bible deems worthy of hate?

Could it be how religion is used to oppress women?

Could it be how religion has negatively impacted our views of human sexuality?

Could it be that it is used to undermine our teaching of science?

Or perhaps it could simply be that it allows terrible people, to do terrible things, and defend their actions by using God as the scapegoat.

Remember, it's not about protecting babies, it's about controlling women's sexuality.

Courtesy of Slate: 

During arguments for the recent Supreme Court case McCullen v. Coakley, which eventually led to the court striking down Massachusetts' buffer zone protecting abortion clinics from protesters crowding the door, it was revealed that many abortion clinic protesters think of themselves less as protesters and more as "sidewalk counselors." Jill Filipovic of Cosmopolitan decided to go to Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinics to find out, exactly, what these protesters want to counsel women about. The answer turns out to be a little more complex than "don't get an abortion." 

"Men and women are made different," Father Andrew Beauregard explains on camera while protesting at a clinic, "in that women, as the church teaches, reach their full potential in motherhood." There's a tight if inhumane logic to this thinking: Women exist to give birth. Thus, if a woman is choosing not to give birth, she is not working as she is supposed to. Which means she must be broken and needs fixing. Ergo, "counseling." 

As Filipovic found, none of the self-described counselors she spoke to actually "had any educational background or credentials in psychology, therapy, counseling, or mental health," but they do sincerely believe that something is deeply wrong with women who want to exert control over their own fertility or who want to have sex on their own terms. And they felt absolutely free to share that point of view with Filipovic.

Did you hear that one lady?

"If women want careers and education and everything and they don't want children what are they doing having sex?"

Why does nobody ask men that same question?

But then I forgot that it was a woman those convinced Adam to eat that apple. Which is why God punished her,and all that followed, with a painful childbirth, and demanded that from that day forward females must subjugate themselves to the will of their husbands.

This is why the abortion debate cannot be ignored, and why people must understand that these people will not stop with outlawing abortion in this country. They want nothing less than to turn women into breeding stock and put them back under the control of men.

And towards that end they have no lack of useful idiots to help them achieve that goal.

For the first time ever a Muslim conducted a prayer service at the National Cathedral and it went off without a hitch. Just kidding, some crazy Christian lady totally lost her shit over it.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The woman who disrupted the first ever Muslim prayer service conducted at the National Cathedral claims she was sent to protest the ceremony by God after reading about it on the Drudge Report. 

In an interview with World Net Daily, Christine Weick, 50, said she read about the event on Drudge and became enraged, saying, “My blood began to boil as I read the comments of how this is to be such a wonderful event and how religious tolerance can, for the first time, be shown in our nation’s capital.” 

Friday’s prayer service was just beginning when Weick stood up and began walking towards the front of the cathedral shouting. 

“Jesus Christ died on that cross. He is the reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,” she said. “We have built …allowed you your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your mosques and leave our churches alone? We are a country founded on Christian principles.”

In other words, "My god is better than your god."

According to Weick she expected to get arrested but everybody treated her with respect, which is more than you can say for how she treated the folks attending this service.

Weick went on to explain that God not only gave her a sign that what she was doing was right, but that he helped her get through security, and briefly made her invisible.

Which is an indication right there of how completely sane she is.

However not everybody sees things that way. Her family for instance: 

After being ejected, Weick said she got into her SUV and began the 400-mile trip back to Tennessee where she says she lives in her car after being disowned by her family because she took a stand against same-sex marriage and other “moral issues.” According to Weick, her husband divorced her last year “over a spiritual conflict.”

Clearly the woman is mentally unbalanced, and much like that stenographer who interrupted a Congressional vote, she has used religion as a vehicle for her psychosis.

My question is does religious faith encourage breaks from reality, or does it cause them?

The internet continues to pound that stake through the heart of religion.

Courtesy of Alternet: 

While the burgeoning atheist movement loves throwing conferences and selling books, a huge chunk--possibly most--of its resources go toward the Internet. This isn’t borne out of laziness or a hostility to wearing pants so much as a belief that the Internet is uniquely positioned as the perfect tool for sharing arguments against religion with believers who are experiencing doubts. It’s searchable, it allows back-and-forth debate, and it makes proving your arguments through links much easier. Above all else, it’s private. An online search on atheism is much easier to hide than, say, a copy of The God Delusion on your nightstand. 

In recent months, this sense that the Internet is the key for atheist outreach has started to move from “hunch” to actual, evidence-based theory. Earlier this year, Allen Downey of the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts examined the spike in people declaring they had no religion that started in the '90s and found that while there are many factors contributing to it--dropping familial pressure, increased levels of college education--increased Internet usage was likely a huge part of it, accounting for up to 25 percent of the decline in religious belief. While cautioning that correlation does not mean causation, Downey did go on to point out that since so many other factors were controlled for, it’s a safe bet to conclude that the access to varied thought and debate the Internet provides is persuading people to drop their religions. 

But in the past few months, that hypothesis grew even stronger when a major American religion basically had to admit that Internet arguments against their faith is putting them on their heels. The Church of Latter Day Saints has quietly released a series of essays, put together by church historians, addressing some of the less savory aspects of their history, such as the practice of polygamy or the ban on black members. The church sent out a memo in September telling church leaders to direct believers who have questions about their religion’s history to these essays, which they presented as a counter to “detractors” who “spread misinformation and doubt.”

The Mormon church made the case that the websites which were causing a crisis in faith among its followers were disseminating "disinformation" but in fact the converse was true, and the websites were providing historically accurate information that the church could no longer hide from its members.

The posts made on the Church of Latter Day Saints website were really an attempt to put into context embarrassing information that the church had denied was true for decades.

Having such recent historical facts working against, kind of makes the Mormon church the low hanging fruit, however information is being shared which also challenges the very foundations of Christianity, and which has resulted in some rather startling converts to Atheism.

It is no secret how I feel about all of this, and why I think the internet may be the best thing since...well it sure beats the hell out of sliced bread.

By the way Bill Maher had some good fun with this Joseph Smith story Friday night on Real Time, and it evolved into a rather interesting, and entertaining conversation about religion in general.
You know I sometimes feel badly for Andrew Sullivan. He is so right about somethings (Like Trig's birth) and so wrong about others.

Kirk Cameron wants people to ignore history and facts and accept that Christmas, and all of its traditions, are Christian. Oh and he wants you to pay good money to watch his movie about that too.

Courtesy of The Christian Post:  

Kirk Cameron is introducing a new way of thinking about Christmas and its many traditions this year with the film "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas," in theaters on Friday. 

In his first release since "Unstoppable," Cameron aims to "put the Christ back in Christmas" this holiday season by attempting to debunk disparaging theories surrounding Christmastime. Furthermore, the actor shares his own ideas on where Christmas traditions originated, including loose Biblical interpretations of the Christmas tree and the nativity scene. It is the actor's hope that Christians are inspired to protect and preserve customary Christmas activities after watching "Saving Christmas." 

The "Growing Pains" star dismisses theories that Christmas is derived in the pagan celebration of Winter Solstice in "Saving Christmas," offering viewers a Biblical reference to items such as the Christmas tree instead. Furthermore, the film reveals Cameron's take on Santa Claus, the three wisemen, and why Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 25 each year. 

"We don't know this stuff, we kinda drink the Kool-Aid and believe pagans when they tell us they have ownership of these things," Cameron explained to CP.

Clearly Cameron is from the camp that believes that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Which by the way, is kind of like Christianity itself. 

The facts are that we do indeed "know this stuff," and the origins of most of the pagan origins of Christmas traditions are well documented.

Speaking of history and facts Cameron might be interested to know that the Puritans who founded this country roundly rejected Christmas and outlawed its celebration.

And they were well aware of its origins as well:

When the Puritans rebelled against King Charles I, inciting the English Revolution, the popular celebration of Christmas was on their hit list. Victorious against the king, in 1647, the Puritan government actually canceled Christmas. Not only were traditional expressions of merriment strictly forbidden, but shops were also ordered to stay open, churches were shut down and ministers arrested for preaching on Christmas Day. 

The Puritans who came to America naturally shared these sentiments. As the Massachusetts minister Increase Mather explained in 1687, Christmas was observed on Dec. 25 not because “Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian” ones. So naturally, official suppression of Christmas was foundational to the godly colonies in New England.

Actually Cameron's efforts are part of a coordinated effort by Christians to take ownership of the holiday,  which of course makes it less accessible for those of us who do not embrace their faith.

And that is too bad, because Christmas is a great holiday for ALL Americans, and if Cameron, and his fellow Christians, really love it so much they should help to make it something that we all could enjoy without using it to cram their religion down everybody's throats.

By the way once you watch the trailer for this crappy little film it becomes quite apparent that it will not be changing ANYBODY'S mind about the true origins of the holiday.

Good news for secularists in Anchorage, Jerry Prevo's church will no longer host high school wrestling event due to public prayer.

Prevo on the left.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

The Anchorage Baptist Temple’s school will not host this year's state wrestling tournament for small high schools, as it has in the past, after the Alaska School Activities Association asked it to stop its practice of including a public prayer in the event. 

An attendee of the 2013 event had complained to a national church-state separation watchdog group, which told the ASAA that as a public entity it couldn't sanction prayer at a school extracurricular event. 

Removing the prayer "was a show stopper for us,” said Tom Cobaugh, the administrator of the private Anchorage Christian Schools, the Anchorage Baptist Temple's education ministry. “That’s who we are.” 

The prayer issue made its way to the pulpit of the Anchorage Baptist Temple Sunday morning, when pastor Jerry Prevo used it in his sermon as an example of what he described as a “battle against prayer” in public schools. 

For seven years, Anchorage Christian Schools hosted the wrestling championship for small schools in its gymnasiums, Cobaugh said. The school, which shares an East Anchorage campus with the Baptist temple, serves about 650 students from preschool to high school.

This is yet another victory for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They have been advocating on the side of secularists and Atheists for a number of years now and have managed to achieve some rather impressive wins.

I particularly like this one as Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple is an especially disruptive and dangerous member of our community. He has almost single-handedly manged to oppress our LGBT community, and has had very unfortunate and pernicious influence on our politics.

Seeing him lose in this way does nothing but fill my heart with joy. And I hope it is only the first of many defeats that are coming his way.

Sister Mary Moosenuggets gives a shout out to Billy Graham on his 96th birthday.

I actually was not going to address this video as it does not have much of anything to do with politics. However it does deal with Palin and her phony religious convictions, so that is certainly in my wheelhouse.

Do not expect a transcript as this thing is so convoluted and impossible to follow that it would take me an hour and I would end up with a splitting headache.

The first thing I noticed is that Palin was dressed as if she had suddenly been accepted into the nunnery. Gone are the sparkly shirts and fake cleavage, and instead she is wearing what looks like a minister's robe or a table cloth from a Black Mass.

Hard to tell really.

Palin essentially gushes over Billy Graham for a little over six minutes, telling us how honored she was to have attended his 95th birthday..

..seen above, and how her mother came to become a follower of his.  (Though in this newer version she explains that her mother saw his message on television, and in the original version I do believe she suggested that Sally had seen him in person.)

Palin explains that her mother became enamored with Graham during the time that she refers to as the "Jesus Era" of the seventies, which is a sanitized memory of what we all called the era of the "Jesus Freaks."

What makes this video interesting, in an "Oh my God there is a four car pileup on the highway" kind of way, is that Palin is clearly working without a script, and her meanderings are essentially a stream of consciousness look into how her brain misfires and jumps from topic to topic like a frog in a frying pan.

All in all it is incredibly bizarre and in some ways a little disturbing. But then again what about Sarah Palin is not both of those things?

P.S. Oh I almost forgot that in the early part of the video the person behind the camera kept adjusting it up and down in an attempt to frame her in the shot without cutting off the top of her head. Which makes me think that either it was a drunken Todd or Bristol behind the camera.