Archive for August, 2007

D. James Kennedy, famed theocratic evangelist and pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, has announced his retirement, having failed to recover sufficiently from the cardiac arrest he suffered last December to resume his preaching. Kennedy is one of the most influential, respected and powerful evangelicals in America, which should scare the shit out of you when you realize just what a dishonest, anti-intellectual weasel he really is. Some years ago, I started reading Kennedy’s book Skeptics Answered, and posted the first part of my fisking of it to the ACA website. It’s still there, and reading it today, I don’t think I did a half-bad job, even if I never got around to completing it. Considering the poor quality of what I did read and critique, I’m not confident it would have gotten better anyway. Still, you can check it out if you like. With Falwell mercifully gone, Kennedy and Graham ailing, and Robertson and Dobson hanging on, the old guard of septuagenarian evangelical superstars are on the way out. But sadly, their bad ideas have calcified in the public conscience. They leave behind an America thoroughly seeped in superstitious twaddle, distrustful and deceived about science, and ill-equipped for critical thinking and unable to judge new ideas, other than by how threatening they are to Christian dogma. It will take a lot of work to undo the damage, and I fear it won’t come soon enough for America to be surpassed in science, technology, and human rights by much of the rest of the world. Update: 9/5: Kennedy discovered there was no Heaven today.

Scumsucking dogkiller Michael Vick gave the usual on-camera “apology” today for his nefarious affiliation and support of interstate dogfighting, which involved directly participating in the killing of several dogs by drowning, electrocution, and strangling. Anyone wanna guess what he said once he was sure cameras and mics were rolling? Anyone? Ah, okay, I’ll tell you. “Through this situation I’ve found Jesus,” he added. He vowed to redeem himself, saying, “I have to.” Huh. Typical. Religion to the rescue again! Sad thing is, that little quote will mollify a lot of people.

On a few past episodes we looked at some of the gods mentioned in the Old Testament. Among them, Asherah, Nehushtan, Ba’al, Yahweh, and El. Many people are familiar with the texts found at Qumran, commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the 1940s. But fewer people have heard of the Ugarit findings, which began to be unearthed in the late 1920s. Both discoveries greatly increased our knowledge and understanding of Biblical texts and also of the history surrounding the evolution of Judaism and Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls impacted both the Old and New Testament interpretations, while the findings at Ugarit impacted only the Old Testament. These texts and architectural inscriptions predate the Hebrew settlement at Canaan, but interestingly, they mention some of the same gods that appear in the Hebrew religious writings, produced after the Hebrew contact with the Ugarit region. The most significant god mentioned is El. In one temple inscription he is said to be the father of Ba’al. In other mentions, he is even the father of Yaweh. In the Old Testament, Ba’al is associated with the Canaanites. And he is described as the focus of their religious worship in those stories—while El is described as being another name for Yahweh, the Hebrew patron god. In reality, however, based on the discoveries at Ugarit (the land called Canaan in the Bible), El is clearly the father of the gods in much the same way that Zeus is the head of the gods on Olympus in Greek mythology. And Yaweh is not another name for El, but a separate deity. Like Zeus, El headed a pantheon. He was not only the father of mankind, but the leader of the Ugarit gods. His pantheon, in Ugarit, is called the Elohim (literally, the plural of El). Using the book of Genesis as an example, the best scholarly estimates date it back to somewhere between 950 and 500 BC. It appears that the writings were composed in two styles, one style preferring to refer to god as El and the other using YHWH (or...
Read more

From Florida comes this report of a Christian evangelist who’s had his TV show yanked off a local station because he can’t resist talking smack about Islam. Earlier this month, officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations wrote a letter to the TV station’s owners asking for an investigation of the show it broadcasts, “Live Prayer with Bill Keller.” In a May 2 broadcast, the televangelist said Islam was a “1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell” and called the Prophet Mohammed a “murdering pedophile.” He also called the Koran a “book of fables and a book of lies.” Well, I for one utterly agree with the last statement, though I would add that Keller’s Bible also qualifies. I’d have to reserve judgment on the second statement and would agree with the first half of the first statement, too. Someone else who I’m sure would largely agree with Keller would be atheist bestseller Sam Harris, who’s written that Islam is nothing less than the “enemy of civilization”. It’s sweet when we can all see eye to eye on something, isn’t it? So, were local Muslims understandably offended? Sure they were. Should they have been allowed to protest the show, even to the point of having it taken off the air? Yes again. But did Keller have a Constitutionally protected right to voice his opinions of Islam, however offensive they were? Why, we’re back to yes. Welcome to the conflicted and messy world of free speech. There are actually many layers to a situation such as this. One valid criticism one might make of Keller is that while he has a Constitutional right to spew invective about a competing religion, he does not (nor does anyone else) have a Constitutional right to a TV show, and members of any community as well as a television station itself have every right to drop something that they find appalling. Readers will note a similarity here to the...
Read more

Okay, maybe that’s not great alliteration. Oh well. It’s early. The most recent effluvia from the Americhristian Fascist Association is plugging evangelist Tim Todd’s The Truth for Youth comic-book Bible for teens, which Tim is offering to send a free copy of to any teen willing to give it to an “unsaved” classmate. Todd is, as you may have guessed, one of those extra-sleazy evangelical ambulance chasers who latched onto school-related tragedies like Columbine to promote his ministry. In the breathless words of the AFA email, “The Truth for Youth” consists of the entire New Testament in the God’s Word version, along with powerful full color comics that are packed with “absolute truths” regarding issues young people are faced with, such as: Evolution, Sexual Purity, Homosexuality, Abortion, Pornography, Drugs, Drunkenness, Peer Pressure, School Violence and Secular Rock Music. God’s wonderful plan of salvation is incorporated into each of the stories. Ironically appropriate that they place the words “absolute truths” into quotation marks, since, whenever Christians start prattling on about “absolute truths” about whatever evil secular subject is obsessing them, they’re almost certainly about to start lying out their flabby butts. The evolution material will be nothing but the usual idiotic creationist canards that have been lying in ruins for ages; the homosexuality material will be plain old hate; the stuff about “secular rock music” will fall on deaf ears. In any case, it’s amusing that they think trying to go the Jack Chick route will be an effective tool to minister to teens, but the sad thing is it could well be. What I’d like to see is the NCSE or the Dawkins Foundation assemble a Basics of Evolution or The God Delusion for Youth, to make available to high school students for free as well. The best way to combat the propaganda of...
Read more