American’s own godly jihadist


I keep hearing how Christianity is so much more gentle and loving than those savage barbarians who follow Mohammed…but Christians seem to have their own subset of savage barbarians. Take it away, Todd Starnes!

I’m no theologian, but I suspect Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant for dispatching another Godless jihadist to the lake of fire.’

It gets really hard to take seriously complaints about the brutality of Muslims (and some of them clearly are vile people) from people who simultaneously advocate mass murder against Muslims, in the name of Jesus.

Comments

  1. Amphiox says

    This being the same Jesus who reputedly taught his followers to “turn the other cheek”, and berated his disciple Peter when he drew a sword and cut the ear of one of the soldiers who had come to arrest him and send him to his own death?

  2. Ichthyic says

    This being the same Jesus who reputedly taught his followers to “turn the other cheek”, and berated his disciple Peter when he drew a sword and cut the ear of one of the soldiers who had come to arrest him and send him to his own death?

    yeah, the same Jesus the Pope obviously was modelling himself after when he said he would punch anyone that insulted his faith or his mother.

  3. aelfric says

    I’m no theologian, but I suspect Todd Starnes is an asshole who knows nothing about his own religion.

  4. raven says

    No surprise. Nothing new.

    It’s the fundies perennial question. Who would jesus rape, torture, mutilate and kill?

    Anyone not them. Right now that is about 6.8 billion people.

    Fundies like Todd Starnes are no different than any wild eyed Moslem killer.

  5. raven says

    More proof that jesus is just a sockpuppet.

    I’m sure the moderate xians will be along any minute now to correct Todd Starnes.

    Any minute in xian time is around a million years from now.

  6. raven says

    I keep hearing how Christianity is so much more gentle and loving than those savage barbarians who follow Mohammed.

    Not lately you haven’t.

    The xian god of light and love was a modern invention. He didn’t last too long. That god was overrun and killed by a horde of wild eyed, vicious, and stupid sockpuppet jesuses.

  7. jeff34345 says

    @aelfric He knows his religion just fine. It’s the hate-fueled Conservative Christian religion that’s the problem. Starnes was probably raised by stupid Conservative Christians to be one of them, and due to his low IQ, never had a chance to think it through and set himself straight. The problem with calling out Conservative psychos like him, is that you always wind up picking on a mentally-handicapped person.

  8. Ichthyic says

    …or he’s NOT stupid, and knows that he needs to say this shit BECAUSE he grew up in a little conservative christian town in dumbfuckistan, and knows that if he doesn’t, he loses is voting base.

    he could just be spineless, instead of brainless, IOW.

  9. Ichthyic says

    voting base… money base… power base… all the same thing, in case you planned to nitpick that Starnes really isn’t a politician.

    Pat Roberston isn’t a politician either. but he knows how to con the rubes.

  10. Saad says

    I’m no theologian, but I suspect Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant for dispatching another Godless jihadist to the lake of fire.’

    Jihadists are very much not godless. And Jihadists very much revere Jesus. He’s right about one thing: He’s not even a theologian.

    And how the hell would a theologian know what an iron age myth would have said to a 21st century American sniper?

  11. Jerry says

    Christian apologists say that the time of the Crusades was long ago. I disagree. Some few of the Christian soldiers are pacifists in the Salvation Army, but all too many are chicken-hawks like Starnes (who I will bet is not a vet) and W.

  12. Becca Stareyes says

    Well, not the correct god, Saad. Or at least, not the correct way of worshiping the correct god, which is pretty much worshipping the wrong god, which is pretty much worshipping no god.

    (I suspect that most fundamentalists of Starnes’ ilk assume there are two religions: Us and Not Us*. Even wavering on things that don’t seem to be related to his professed religion (like, say, supporting the Republican party) is suspect.)

    * And maybe ‘Us, but Doing it Wrong’ in case you need to bump the numbers.

  13. moarscienceplz says

    And of course an ignoramus shows his ignorance. John Wayne was nothing but a chickenhawk:

    Wayne was exempted from service due to his age (34 at the time of Pearl Harbor) and family status, classified as 3-A (family deferment). He repeatedly wrote John Ford saying he wanted to enlist, on one occasion inquiring whether he could get into Ford’s military unit, but consistently kept postponing it until after “he finished just one or two pictures”.

    (from Wikipedia)

  14. ck, the Irate Lump says

    jeff34345 wrote:

    The problem with calling out Conservative psychos like him, is that you always wind up picking on a mentally-handicapped person.

    Please don’t use that comparison. These people are willfully stupid, unlike those who suffer from developmental problems that they had little or no choice in.

  15. phein39 says

    “More proof that jesus is just a sockpuppet.”

    Wow, is that not the absolutely perfect perspective on religious authorities?

    I hope you trademark that phrase: “Jesus is just a sockpuppet.”

  16. Ichthyic says

    I’m not sure I want to see a movie directed by an old man who argues with chairs.

    I saw the movie.

    If the themes are any indication, Eastwood is still arguing with empty chairs.

    …sheepdog….

    fucking inane crap. and yet, the meme has been VERY successful as a recruiting strategy for the armed services.

    sad to say.

  17. Ichthyic says

    Matthew 10:34 “I did not come to bring peace, but a kalashnikow”

    RED SLEIGH DOWN!

    …and if you get that reference, you probably have watched too much South Park.

  18. raven says

    I hope you trademark that phrase: “Jesus is just a sockpuppet.”

    It’s not mine. It’s also a very common observation that has been around for about forever.

    The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Maryan Czajkowski | The …
    thephilosopherseye. com/…/the-god-of-abraham-isaac-and-maryan-czajk…

    Dec 2, 2009 – Given God’s omniscience, a given judgment is correct if and only if … Epley’s study does contain some evidence for the Sockpuppet Hypothesis.

    There is even data on sockpuppet gods.

    If your god hates who you hates and wants you to have what you want, it is a sockpuppet you made up. AFAWK, all gods are…someone’s sockpuppet.

  19. raven says

    PNAS vol. 106 no. 51 Nicholas Epley, 21533–21538
    Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs

    Nicholas Epleya, Benjamin A. Conversea, Alexa Delboscb, George A. Monteleonec and John T. Cacioppoc
    Abstract
    People often reason egocentrically about others’ beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent’s beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people’s own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God’s beliefs than with estimates of other people’s beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people’s beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God’s beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people’s beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one’s own beliefs and God’s beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person’s beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God’s beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person’s beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God’s beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one’s own existing beliefs.

    FYI Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a first tier journal.

    TL,DR version “In both nationally representative and more local samples, people’s own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God’s beliefs than with estimates of other people’s beliefs.”

    Basically god usually agrees with you. And that is because…you made him up yourself. A sockpuppet.

    Todd Starnes idiotic comment says a lot about him and nothing about “jesus”, an imaginary being.

  20. sterling6 says

    “and some of them clearly are vile people”

    That’s the thing: Muslims — except for very small, marginal groups — believe that it was perfectly OK for the prophet Muhamed to marry a 6-year-old girl and fuck her when she was 9 years of age. They will make excuses for it like the vast majority of Christians do for the plain sick morality of Jesus dying for your sins (that case being ridiculous on different levels for it was God trying to rectify his blundering even while being omniscient, of course.) This, in my book, makes them vile people. Vile people that have the right to express these beliefs, same as Christians, Hindus, etc. But still vile, like anyone who would try to justify or downplay any of that shit for even a second.

    That said, given that their beliefs are just a vile as those of Christians, etc., it is obviously very much deplorable that they are specially persecuted and even more so when taking into account things like Christians being far more of a terrorist problem in the US. This shouldn’t need saying.

  21. Golgafrinchan Captain says

    Reasonable Doubts has a recurring podcast segment called God Thinks Like You, which is largely about the phenomena of Sockpuppet God. It has branched more into the general category of psychology related to God, but it started out with studies investigating how god always agrees with each individual believer, even in the face of obvious contradictions.

    P.S. Check out their video Reverend Carl Sagan’s Logos.

    P.P.S. I swear I’m not a shill for Reasonable Doubts, it’s just that they’re awesome.

  22. whheydt says

    Re: marcus @ #4….

    Of course “Roman =/= Muslin”! A proper toga is made of wool.

    (The cry of the proper costumer is…”Get thee behind me, Satin!”)

  23. Akira MacKenzie says

  24. HolyPinkUnicorn says

    Regarding the now apparently Jesus-approved Kyle and subsequent film biopic, Matt Taibbi recently wrote an editorial on it for Rolling Stone. Some of the how-could-you-Taibbi comments are hilarious, as if daring to question American Sniper now amounts to blaspheme among conservatives.

    Needless to say, Taibbi did not like the film, and this quote sums it up pretty well:

    Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question.

  25. randay says

    Starnes, born in 1967, could easily have joined the military to fight in a couple of wars or more, but he is just another wingnut chickenhawk.

    On his promotion site for his book God Less America he has the unfortunately ambiguous description, “As a national reporter covering the culture war, Todd Starnes is on the front lines of these attacks against traditional values.”

  26. Janine the Jackbooted Emotion Queen says

    Just a friendly reminder that some of the atheistic members of the pit were linking to Todd Starnes when he wrote his rather fanciful article of how PZ was suppressing the free speech of the student editor.

  27. caseloweraz says

    Starnes: There was a time when Hollywood and Democrats stood in solidarity with our fighting men and women — folks like Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope and John Wayne, American heroes.

    As moarscienceplease noted, John Wayne never served in the military. Neither did Bob Hope (although it could be argued that his USO work sometimes put him in harm’s way.) Jimmy Stewart became an Army Air Corps pilot in 1941.

    And if Starnes is saying that John Wayne was a Democrat, he’s wrong there too.

  28. Trebuchet says

    I wonder what Jesus said when Kyle (as he claimed) was murdering Americans from the top of the Superdome? Oh wait, those weren’t REAL Americans, just N*****s. Jesus is totally cool with it, I’m sure.