Blasphemous Blogging

There are Christian nudists and there are atheist nudists. Some Christian nudists have even formed groups announcing that they are both Christians and nudists.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_naturism ; http://www.naturist-christians.org/ ; http://www.christiannc.com/.

To my knowledge, atheism has not yet formed such an alliance. But nudism is good, healthy, and liberal, so maybe we should. But composed of a group of nudists tending to attract atheists not Christians.

Certain blog commenters seem to have neither read nor thought carefully on this issue. The point of my blog on Atheist+ is not intended to say anything bad about Atheist+ or those who embrace it. People can form the “Atheist+ All Things Fall Up When Dropped Club” if they want to, without complaint from me.

My only objection would be if such were to become an official policy of American Atheists. That would be not so good. Organizations have schisms. It may be part of universal law. AA has certainly had schisms in the past. Indeed, that is exactly why we have many of the larger freethought organizations that exist today.

It has been said that the present Atheist+ movement is not a schism, but a response to a schism that has already occurred. Probably lots of schisms say that.

American Atheists remains the Marines of Freethought. We protect and defend the civil rights of Atheists and we work for the total separation of Church and State. That keeps us fairly busy.

One can, of course, be a part of American Atheists and of anything else they want to belong to, so long as it is not thereby connected to AA. And it is certainly fine to form clubs largely limited to those who share one’s world view.

The problem is that not all atheists share this view. There are, for example, among atheists, the “carnivore humans” and the “grass clippings and tofu humans,” each perfectly able to have their own opinions and to form their own groups. And to call the result an A+ organization.

But suppose there were to arise (as there will) schisms within say the grass clippings and tofu group(s). And if some members of this splinter group thought it was okay to eat hummingbird eggs and others thought not should we then carve out another new division within the “Atheist+ Grass Clippings and Tofu” Group? What should we call this new vision?

Perhaps it should be an Atheist++ group, or an Atheist+V group. Or an Atheist—Hummingbird Speed of Light Squared Group.

Then the new group could feel superior to the group from which it parted and it could then heap invective on the Anti-hummingbird Atheist+? people who remained in the parent organization.

In brief response to the absurd charge that AA is a misogynistic outfit run by old men, please know that as of this writing the following are some of the positions in AA that are held by young women: three board of directors positions; bookkeeper; public relations director; managing director; development director; editor of American Atheists Magazine.

American Atheists. When you are ready to quit fooling around.

Edwin
© Edwin Kagin 2012.

There is much talk these days about a phenomenon called Atheism+. This is the notion that atheism is not just a definition but a weltanschauung that should and, it is thought, necessarily does, encompass the taking of stands on a variety of social issues. Those who think this are being recruited to the new, and growing, ranks of adherents to the concept of Atheism+. Some worry that the arguments being advanced for both sides of the issue will create a schism in atheism.

Will it? Of course it will. That is why it is a bad idea.

I have seen this happen before. Been there, done that, bought the T shirt, wrote the book, working on the sequel.

Atheism means without a belief in a god. That’s it. Within that shell are many many different points of view. This became clear a few years ago when several life members quit the organization American Atheists because it’s then President was actively working for the defeat of President George Bush. The quitting life members liked Bush and thought the organization had no business being against him, or for or against anyone else for that matter. I know this because they told me.

I could not imagine any atheist being in favor of Bush. But these folks were. I have also met atheists who are members of American Atheists and who oppose a woman’s right to choose. And who are opposed to gay marriage. And all sorts of things like that. The only thing that they all have in common is being atheists. Start taking sides on social issues and learn what chaos is all about.

I am a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) unless my membership has lapsed. I am also an NRA Certified Handgun Instructor. And I know some of our members don’t like that. Anyhow, a few years ago the NRA went against its own policy of being a single issue organization and took a stand on an abortion issue. In consequence, the NRA immediately lost about half of its members. Members who were in the NRA to protect gun rights, not to legislate women’s health issues, quit the organization.

The NRA changed their policy in a hurry, became a single issue organization again, and got its members back.

American Atheists is a single issue organization dedicated to complete separation of Church and

State and to fighting for the rights of atheists to equal protection of the laws.

That’s quite a bit.

It should stay that way.

Every generation does not have to re-invent the wheel.

Edwin
© 2012 by Edwin Kagin.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/conservative_group_challenges.html#incart_river_default

Check out this, and the great number of reader responses generated thereby.

They argue that putting a 17 foot steel cross, weighing many tons, that has been blessed, sanctified, and worshiped, in the 9/11 museum, is not an attempt to endorse or establish the Christian religion.

Wonder just how they think it would look if they were trying to establish the Christian religion in the museum?

Your response welcome.

Edwin.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120818/FEATURES10/308180065/Kentucky-can-continue-crediting-God-homeland-security

The now world famous Creation Museum is about 15 minutes from Kagin Manor. I feel as though I have been placed in a missionary field to help save thinking people, and especially children, from this amazing attempt to return to the Dark Ages.

You can learn about it here:

http://creationmuseum.org/

It is run by an outfit called Answers in Genesis. You can learn about it here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/

At the oxymoronic Creation Museum, thousands of innocent people, including many children, are actually taught to believe that the Earth is only 6,000, or so, years old. Their slogan is “Prepare to Believe.” Note that it is not, “Prepare to Learn.” This is not a church. This is a money making theme park that is helping to make us an ignorant people.

Since the opening day of the Creation Museum, that I met with an organized protest, I have encouraged people to go see this dog and pony show. In the proper frame of looking at things, this operation is truly hysterically funny. They even have a model dinosaur, complete with saddle, for children to ride. Maybe Jesus road into Jerusalem on one.

Here is a wonderful web site documenting and discussing our protest on the opening day:

http://www.edwinkagin.com/RALLY_4_REASON/rally4reason.html

Everyone involved in freethought, or who has any interest whatsoever in saving our future through reason, not superstition, should visit the Creation Museum.

You need to see it, and encourage others to see it, because it is, in its panoramas of Bronze Age creation myths, far worse than you think. You really need to see what a true threat this operation creates to the continuing process of the human race.

An even greater danger underpins the mythical systems of religions. This is the belief that science, evidence, and proof are meaningless when confronted by faith. If the question is between science and religious teachings, science loses. Such is the argument of Answers in Genesis, made manifest in its Creation Museum. If the data do not support the belief, discard the data. Simple.

Creationism, aka Intelligent Design, is offered by its evangelists as an alternative to the Fact of Evolution. Creationism is not an alternative to evolution. The only alternative to Evolution is ignorance.

Please do not whine that you don’t want to give these people money. Of course you don’t. Neither do I. But this is a false analysis. Education is costly. If you want to know what they are doing, and expose their dangers to others, you need to spend a bit of money to do so. For the amount of useful information you can obtain by a visit to the Creation Museum, it is wonderfully inexpensive.

Visitors to the fancy fool’s vision of history have frequently frequented Kagin Manor. There are two guest rooms, the Bates Motel Room and the End of the Hall Room. Comfort cat available. If you are interested in a visit, and if your manners be sound, and you can survive the spoon count upon departure, feel free to request accommodations. References required. Fundies are everywhere.

Edwin
Copyright 2012 by Edwin Kagin.

“Some people make the distinction that a pickaxe has a head with a pointed end and a flat end, and a pick has both ends pointed, or only one end; but most people use the words to mean the same thing.” from Wikipedia article “pickaxe.”

The Pope knows, from the traditions of his church, and because the Son of God gave him power over everything on Earth, that he (never she), the Pope, is the god’s man on Earth. This is a central teaching of the church. The Pope, and his millions of minions, wishes to have our country run according to their rules. And their rules are stated by the Pope, because he is the Vicar of Christ on this Earth. End of story. Not believing this gets you sent to Hell. Or so says the Pope, because he thinks his god is like that.

Because I know as much about the god as the Pope knows, I can assure you that what the Pope says on this matter is not true.

You can find much of the complicated and contradictory “doctrine” of the Catholic Church, in their Catechism of the Catholic Church. Available in better bookstores.

When our country was founded, Roman Catholics (hereinafter “Catholics”) were definitely unwanted on our shores. Those arriving had to hide in “safe houses” until they could get safely settled in. Americans were very afraid that the Catholic Church (hereinafter “CC”) would get in control of these United States and force the country to be Catholic and to take orders from god’s man, the Pope.

It is beginning to look as if our founders were right and that the CC really does want to control American government and laws.

President John Kennedy was the first Catholic to be elected President of the United States. Many voters were very worried that a Catholic President would take his or her orders from Rome, the world headquarters of the CC and the home of that Pope. Here is what Kennedy said when he was running for election: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him….”

My my. Mr. Kennedy and I share the view that religion should not have anything to do with the decisions of government and the laws made pursuant thereto. The Pope thinks that no earthly authority is superior to his authority, an authority given him, he believes, by his god.

The Pope believes that a god has appointed him to lead the rest of us. While that is more or less the way the god of the Bible operates, I don’t believe in what the Bible says. Not necessarily. Not generally. Not usually.

At any rate, it is clear that I know as much about his god as the Pope knows about his god.

More on this later.

Readers’ comments most welcome.

Edwin
Edwin Kagin © 2012

Thank you Bryan Fisher, for so neatly combining a whole lot of fundy hate thought and offering it as a reason for the Aurora horror.

With no intent to appear cynical or uncaring, there are other ways you might find less conclusive with which you can trash the laws of cause and effect you sometimes applaud.

You are concerned that liberals breed like rabbits? Their sexual behavior is like that of animals, you ignorantly opine. Believe you came from animals, and you will act like animals. This is a fool’s argument. Do you really think a butterfly will act like a worm?

Evolution is going your way. Incompetence, or purpose, among some of your fellow travelers has caused them to have 10, 12, or more children, while many liberal couples have somewhere between none and one hell of a lot less than 10. Sounds like your side is the one doing the majority of breeding, and so those genes will tend to survive and the genes of the many much more intelligent humans will die with them. This will leave those sharing your belief system to rule the planet. Dog only knows what will happen in the future (if any) evolution of humans, when their ever increasing numbers are forced by your faith to accommodate every fertilized egg as a person.

Have you no knowledge, sir, of the number of people who have committed atrocities as bad, and many much worse, than the criminal acts at Aurora? Some who have been captured said that they did their evil because it was the will of some god that they do so.

Let us for a moment accept your absurd underlying assumption that something more or less universally denounced, like murdering humans in a high school or in a movie theatre, is proximately caused because the god, or gods, in which you believe is so annoyed by something or other that we as a society, or that one subdivision of that society, did, or did not do, that the god permits, or encourages (take your choice), someone to randomly shoot a lot of fellow humans trying to watch a Batman movie.

Well, maybe the god permitted these things because we have not dealt with the reality of global warming. Maybe because we have not put forth enough effort and money to stop continental drift.

Maybe the god became outraged because we put the god’s name on the paper money, and in the Pledge of Allegiance, in direct violation of the Third Commandment. Look it up. Maybe the god did as the god did in that movie theater because some nun was caught masturbating.

Consider the case of your icon Ted Haggard, of Colorado, who has “proved,” to your uninformed fellow fanatics, the evils of those humans he calls “Gay.” This paragon of conservative truths also of course believes your absurdity that every human embryo is a human being and that gay marriage, or gay anything, is against the will of the god.

Maybe the god permitted, or encouraged, the horror at Aurora because the god finally found out that your golden boy appears to be, in fact, a cock sucker. How about that as a cause for the unrelated deaths? Tell that to your preacher and watch him right them bells.

History rings and blushes at the record of your religion consistently violating the Sixth Commandment (look it up—Protestant version). Where to start? Burning to death “heretics” and “witches,” favoring capital punishment, suggesting death as the punishment for most crimes, the Crusades (note the plural), and volumns of other really bad stuff. Dare we mention the proven rape of children by priests of the god worshiped?

Shall we mention Jonestown? Don’t know about it? See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

918 humans were murdered by Christian religious fanatics. No, I did not say you were in any way responsible for this. But how dare you claim that non-believers were responsible for Aurora?

If you must have it that a god was behind, or permitted, the murders, how do you know that the god did not do so as a result of your consistent violation of the direct command by the god, through his son and spokesperson, that you should only pray in private after you have entered your closet and shut the door. Matthew 6:6. Could it, in your world of logic, be that your kind brought death to Colorado because of your unrepentant and blatant flouting of this instruction by vigorously and proudly engaging in expressly forbidden public prayer?

Can you prove that you and your sycophants are not the cause of the tragedy?

Get out of the way! We have a universe to explore and the secrets of our existence to discover.

Your behavior in using this slaughter of the innocents to promote your vicious religious views is appalling.

Focus on your own damn family. Leave us alone!

Perhaps some, otherwise convinced of your sincerity and correct knowledge, will, as a result of this foolishness, fall away from the ranks of your followers, who are, as Jonathon Swift put it, in the voice of the King of Brobdingnag, “…the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Edwin Kagin
July 25, 2012
© 2012