Atheists don’t believe in original sin


sin

All our evils are acquired. It’s like the whole nature vs. nature controversy!

Michael Seewald, who is some relative by marriage to the Duggar family, comes up with some slimy excuses for Josh Duggar’s abuses. The appalling thing is how typical this is for Christians: they have a demeaning vision of human nature dunned into them from an early age, and they think this sort of behavior is normal, and you can only be rescued from it by Jesus Christ.

There are many who seem shocked that a child from a Christian family would do such things. While it is always alarming when we find out about our children’s sins, we should not be surprised. Christians (and many other reasonable people) believe that we are all born with a sinful nature. David, king of Israel spoke of his inborn sin like this when he was repenting of his adultery and murder by proxy: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Psalm 51:5. The prophet Isaiah concurs. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6. While not all of our sins find a way to manifest themselves externally we all know the corruption that is present in each of our hearts. It is a mercy of God that he restrains the evil of mankind otherwise we would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.

I was raised in a relatively godless household — we went to church, but this whole notion of sinful human nature was most definitely not accepted. I was also the oldest of a large family of six kids, and surprise, I was never even tempted to molest my sisters. I did not have to pray to resist. I was not restrained by religious fears. They were my family, and I saw them as people, friends (sometimes, briefly, annoyances). This corruption that Seewald sees as an intrinsic part of our existence was simply not there.

Likewise, I am now part of a fiercely, loudly godless household, and we raised three kids who almost never went to church, had no interest in religion, and most certainly were not on Jesus’ leash. I can’t pretend to know what was in their heads, but I know how they behaved (one of the advantages of a smaller family is that every one of your kids can get your full attention for a significant amount of time), and there was no abuse going on, and they seem to genuinely like and respect each other as adults.

Why, it’s almost as if there is no correlation between adoration of Jesus and incest and sexual abuse…or even, possibly, a positive correlation.

That claim that it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keeps us from sexually abusing our families echoes the Christian belief that atheists are amoral and that people would be quick to rob, rape, and murder if they don’t have a fear of hell to constrain them. It’s not true. It seems to be important to have a sense of empathy and security in the love of others to motivate people to do good.

I’d also argue that if it is fear of consequences that keeps people in line, why do Christians work so hard to undermine those consequences? Most of Seewald’s babbling is about how the Duggar’s behavior is all OK, because Jesus. Jesus will forgive even child molestation if you ask him to. So where’s the threat? Apparently I can go on a murderous rampage, and still get rewarded with heaven if I profess a love for Jesus. I’ll also be rewarded here on Earth with the approval of the devout.

We can clearly see that fundamentalist/evangelical Protestantism poisons people’s minds with bad ideas. What’s the Catholic church been up to? It seems some people are unhappy about the Irish vote for marriage equality.

The outcome of the landmark referendum has been celebrated across the world as a resounding vote for equality. But Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, reportedly said he was “deeply saddened” by the result.

“I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity,” he was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. “The family remains at the centre and we have to do everything to defend it and promote it.”

The Catholic church sees equality and respect for others’ rights as a defeat for humanity and as something in opposition to Christian principles.

I think the eventual disintegration of Catholicism and other humanity-hating religions will be a great victory for our species.

Comments

  1. azhael says

    Christianity is a disgusting monstrosity…i know we all know this, but it’s never said often enough…

  2. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Since sin is a religious concept, so I don’t believe in it. JD didn’t commit a sin. He committed a crime. That is what the religious apologists don’t understand. Until he acknowledges and pays for his crime, he can’t be, and won’t be, forgiven.

  3. billyeager says

    There are many who seem shocked that a child from a Christian family would do such things.

    Really?

    I am getting sick of this whole trope concerning how us evil librul commie atheist muslims (it happens) expect Xtians to be so damn perfect and that it is just unreasonable for us to hold them to such high standards when it is only Big J, himself, who is perfect in every way . . .yadda yadda yadda . . .all boys want to molest their sisters . . .yadda yadda yadda . . .because shut up, that’s why!

    Truth is, this is fucking *exactly* the sort of shit we expect from them, unfortunately. I had desperately wanted to be proven wrong about this family, hoping against hope that their ‘quaint’ religious ways belied the fact that there might actually be a decent and healthy emotional environment in their household. Seriously, I even had a conversation with my wife recently, who had taken to watching the show and wanted it not be what we all feared it was, where we commented that it had been on the air for so long that it couldn’t possibly have skeletons in the closet because, well, production crew.

    Turns out there is only one thing worse then being proven wrong, that is being proven right. The production crew have played their grubby part in keeping their cash-cow public image sanitised. Learning now about the Duggar’s support and practice of that monstrous ‘To Train Up a Child’, disgusts me to think they were promoting this family as being all about the ‘positive reinforcement’, not the whip ’em til’ you break ’em mentality.

  4. rietpluim says

    The outcome of the referendum is a defeat for humanity? So the Church thinks gays are not human?

  5. Larry says

    Why, yes, rietpluim. Yes, they do.

    If you’re not on your knees, saying hail mary’s, and you don’t believe all the ritualistic mumbo jumbo, neither are you.

  6. grumpyoldfart says

    The Seewalds and the Duggars may publicly rally around the child molester but deep down they resent the bad publicity he has brought upon them. They all just wish he’d run off and join a monastery or something. His old man is probably already suggesting that ten years of silent contemplation in a cave might really be a good idea. Anything to get the family out of the limelight (which they had previously been so keen to share).

  7. says

    When I heard about this, my first thought was that this is what happens when you are raised in a household, and a religion that says even your own mother is only good for pumping out babies. When you grow up like that, it tends to warp how you view all females, even the ones in your own family. “This isn’t wrong, because this is what god said they’re here for.”

  8. anteprepro says

    Wow. This is the kind of argument I would say that Christians would be making, if they actually believed what they claimed to believe, as an Argumentum Ad Absurdum against the simultaneous belief in everyone being sinners and getting forgiveness based on being Christian, regardless of the terrible things they do, and the belief that Christianity is the source of an objective moral code, society’s morality, and the best possible morality. I almost can’t believe that someone is displaying that contradiction so clearly.

    Also, this is all part of weaving a web of sanctimony in order to ensure that we continue to have a culture that intentionally ties its hands up and promptly washes them off in regards to child abuse, spousal abuse, and sexual abuse, especially in regards to highly religious households. It is fucking horrifying and disgusting. Using “we are all sinners” to excuse and explain away this part of the prominent religious component to rape culture. And the fact that they pull this shit to protect their own in regards to child molestation, but conveniently forget to be so forgiving and dismissive of “sin” when talking about gay people, is just par for the fucking course.

  9. Sastra says

    Christians (and many other reasonable people) believe that we are all born with a sinful nature.

    This is a deepity, one frequently trotted out as an attempt to defend the reasonableness of Christianity from the presumed irrationality of secular humanism.

    What does “we are all born with a sinful nature” mean? Well, that depends. The meaning morphs. The usual interpretation — the actual Christian interpretation which involves Adam and Eve and perfection and corruption and the vile nature of the flesh as contrasted to the cleansing nature of Jesus’ sacrifice necessary after The Fall — is a steaming, rancid load of bollocks. It easily leads into a justification for atrocities, since, among other ethical crimes, it equates raping your little sister with telling your mother you won’t wash the dishes. In the eyes of God, sin is sin is sin. We are willful. We disobey. One wrong will naturally entail others, without needing much of a causal chain in nature . Expect it.

    Garbage.

    But a lot of Christians seem to like to flip over to the more reasonable interpretation of Original Sin, in which it simply means that “human beings aren’t perfect.” We don’t always follow our societies standards, or even our own. This is then waved around in the air as being in contrast to the view of secular humanists (and atheists in general) — that human beings are naturally perfect and the only thing keeping us from utopian heights of excellence is someone telling little children “no, don’t do that.”

    A deepity vs. a Straw Man.

  10. Scientismist says

    rietpluim @4:

    The outcome of the referendum is a “defeat for humanity”? So the Church thinks gays are not human?

    & Larry @5:

    If you’re not on your knees, saying hail mary’s, and you don’t believe all the ritualistic mumbo jumbo, neither are you.

    It’s not just the RCC. The current crop of candidates for Republican High-Priest-in-Chief have made it very clear that denying equal rights for gays is in no way in conflict with their love for all people.

    It’s simple: (1) All people are loved by me (and God); (2) Following the wishes of my God, I will do what I can to deny gays equal human rights; (3) God and I would never wish to deprive any people of human rights; (4) Conclusion: Gays are not people.

  11. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    Christians (and many other reasonable people) believe that we are all born with a sinful nature. Evidence: The Bible.

    I’m failing to see any evidence there for “many other reasonable people” sharing that belief.

  12. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    Oh, and on the Irish vote, I’ll say the same thing here as I said on FB: Fuck Cardinal Parolin, fuck the Vatican, and fuck the RCC. Well done to the 62% of Irish voters who told that bunch of backwards old hypocrites to take a running jump.

  13. says

    Thank you, PZ. Yours is the first post I’ve seen — in the ordinary course of my reading — that considers the pre shit-hitting-the-fan disclosure role of the parents in this family; their roles and responsibility as parents of a young brood of children, the eldest of whom was abusing his younger sisters and some of his sister’s friends.

    I tell myself mom must live in a constant state of physical exhaustion. But dad? I have a hard time imagining him taking night shifts so mom could sleep through. I wonder if they considered the crew ‘adult supervision.’ Where were the parents while this was going on? Where were the parents of the friends? Did no one notice anything about their own children?

    Also … body curiosity is normal. And children explore with each other. But an older post pubescent brother, changes the game. I grew up in a pack of kids; almost all older boys. Our parents — all migrated to California from points east — made community with each other. I remember an occasion when I and a few-years-older (probably still prepubescent) boy retired after hours of swimming, to a back bedroom to nap. I heard one of the parents, I think my mother, say something like ‘wait, they are a little old for napping together.’ One of the parents came in and put one of us in another room. No fuss, no blame, end of story. At the time, I was a little disappointed. Now, decades later, I feel protected.

    @3 Are you speculating or is there a link for this assertion?
    “The production crew have played their grubby part in keeping their cash-cow public image sanitised.”
    (I’m having NO success with HTML. Will keep trying.)

  14. chigau (違う) says

    HTML examples

    <blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>

    paste copied text here

    <b>bold</b>
    bold

    <i>italic</i>
    italic

  15. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    before I read any of this, I will just add that ORIG SIN was (to me) the _essential_basis_ of Catholicism (Roman style). Leading to GUILT being the main teaching point of the entire Gospel/Bible. (1) This massacree happened cuz these people were guilty, (2) all of mankind was guilty so Gawd wiped us out with his spin-n-span FLOOD, etc, etc ad infinitum. And I believed, that, was the cause of the “schism”; i.e. why Prots see the Caths as Devils, that Jebus is all about luuuvvvv, guilt nowheres. That is what the Caths taught me about Prots; why would they lie? To tell us that Duggar was just an inherent sinner, acting totally naturally when incesting his sisters, so therefore will be SAVED by Jebus Love when he submits to the holiest of all true religions, is excuses all the way, double down. A spouting of Dolly’s advise, while disregarding it (and her context for it) elsewhere: “Don’t judge Duggar, we are ALL sinners!!!!”
    [sheesh, I’ll read this thread for context, sheeesh]

  16. jacksprocket says

    He can’t be blamed. He was predestined to do it, by the God who Knows all Things, from an infinite time before the Creation of the World. It doesn’t mean he won’t go to heaven. Only God chooses who goes there, and if you’re not Elect, there’s nothing you can do about it.

    Or have Goddsts dropped that bit now, in favour of the wily tempting AntiGod, who can thwart the best laid schemes of the Infinitely Powerful Good God?

  17. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Republican High-Priest-in-Chief have made it very clear that denying equal rights for gays is in no way in conflict with their love for all people.

    [piling on…] “Denying “gay-marriage” is how we show our love for our poor gay brethren, we don’t deny them the right to marry, they can marry any woman they want to [gays are only guys btw], we will never deny them that RIGHT.” “We love the gays. We just tryin to save them from hell, where God will send them, for doin all that man-on-man sex stuff. (not doin the ‘proper’, procreative, sex stuff)”
    Which derails me: to remark how, to the Rethugs, sex can NOT be fun and for pleasure (and express love for another person), it can ONLY be done to make a baby, anything else is just sinful hedonism. /derail

  18. says

    It is a mercy of God that he restrains the evil of mankind otherwise we would have destroyed ourselves long ago.

    I can’t even express just how much I loathe this circular sin concept. When you teach people that they are corrupt, evil beings who must constantly be in thrall to a god in order to be good, the door is wide open for people to do whatever the fuck they want, then, when caught, cry for forgiveness and go on their merry way. *spits*

  19. busterggi says

    Christians don’t really care about ‘sin’ as long as they have a get-out-of-hell card which consists of telling they sky that they’re sorry.

  20. anteprepro says

    The Christian community responds to various kinds of abuse with initial coverups, and then spouting out long-winded quotations of scripture and minimization because we are all sinners and requests for forgiveness and assurance that everyone is going to try to be even more Christian in the future and everyone pray and stop thinking about it and then Amen.

    The non-religious community responds to various kinds of abuse with initial coverups and then spouting out nope nope nope nope nope nope nope and minimization and then bashing victims and anyone supporting the victim until everyone stops thinking about it and then Yay Men.

  21. keithm says

    “So let me get this straight: you’re saying the only thing preventing you from being a rape-torture-murder serial killer is that there’s an invisible man in the sky watching you who will punish you if you do it, but you can get away with all the rape-torture-murder serial killing you want as long as you say you’re really sorry and pinky-swear you won’t do it any more. And you say you regularly meet with a large group of people who believe the same thing.”

  22. carlie says

    I’d also argue that if it is fear of consequences that keeps people in line, why do Christians work so hard to undermine those consequences? Most of Seewald’s babbling is about how the Duggar’s behavior is all OK, because Jesus. Jesus will forgive even child molestation if you ask him to. So where’s the threat? Apparently I can go on a murderous rampage, and still get rewarded with heaven if I profess a love for Jesus. I’ll also be rewarded here on Earth with the approval of the devout.

    Because the ultimate goal isn’t for people to stop doing those things, it’s to get people to depend on the church. If people all acted good all the time, the churches wouldn’t get repeat customers.

  23. Dutchgirl says

    keithm: only if you are white, otherwise you are a thug that deserves what coming.

    I’ve heard the argument “we need to hold on to our Christian religion, otherwise we’ll all be Muslim in a decade” and it never occurs to them that we could all be atheist.

    p.s.: I haven’t commented here in a long time and Dutchbaby is now Dutchtoddler and all full of awesome. Anyone who can look at a young child and go “yup, sinner” is sick.

  24. raven says

    Xians have a Get out of Hell Free card. And they use it often. That is one reason why it isn’t a source of morality.

    Just faith that jesus is god is necessary for Salvation. (Some add in Good Works as well.)

    Even the ancient Roman Pagans noticed this and commented on it. Everything we say today was said millennia ago. And nothing has changed.

  25. raven says

    Child sexual abuse is common in fundie and other authoritarian xian households.

    Studies show membership is Oogedy Boogedy cults is the second highest correlation and is causal to child sexual abuse. The first is drug and alcohol use by the father.

  26. raven says

    Even a lot of xians know they have huge social problems.

    A common saying is, Xians aren’t better just forgiven!!!

    Not right either though. The fundie perversion is quite a bit worse than the general population based on any factual metrics you care to name including child murder rates.

  27. anteprepro says

    Dutchgirl:

    p.s.: I haven’t commented here in a long time and Dutchbaby is now Dutchtoddler and all full of awesome. Anyone who can look at a young child and go “yup, sinner” is sick.

    Their trick is that “sin” can just mean disobedience and will say that any time a toddler has a tantrum or doesn’t listen is Sinful Nature at work. Yes, it is transparent bullshit, but that is just how the use the word “sin”: It means a small trivial thing when they are on the defense, it means a big serious terrible thing when they are on offense.

  28. theDukedog7 . says

    Hey, sometimes Christians do bad things, and Christian culture is not perfect.

    But I never cease to be amazed that atheists who critique Christianity-when-ascendant seem to have so little interest in atheism-when-ascendant.

    Atheism has been tried. Intensely. There are relatively secular countries–Sweden, Switzerland, etc–but they all have long Christian histories and likely to some extent live off the fumes of the Church. There have been quite a few explicitly atheist countries in the 20th century–the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea.

    Why are atheists so uninterested in the ethics and politics of nations that have explicitly adopted atheism? If Christians are held to account for fundamentalists and the Inquisition and the Crusades, why aren’t atheists held to account for the gualg and the killing fields and the People’s Republic of North Korea?

    We’ve got the Duggars, you’ve got the Kims.

  29. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Atheism has been tried.

    Not really. Too much hold over from delusional fools like you, who believe in phantasms, and books of mythology/fiction you claim are special. Not.

    We’ve got the Duggars, you’ve got the Kims.

    Typical of delusional fools like you, you haven’t noticed NK is a religious state. The religion is Kimism, and they believe they are gods. They are in your court, not ours.

  30. anteprepro says

    theDukedog7:

    There are relatively secular countries–Sweden, Switzerland, etc–but they all have long Christian histories and likely to some extent live off the fumes of the Church. There have been quite a few explicitly atheist countries in the 20th century–the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea.

    Secular countries don’t count because of Christian histories.
    Communist countries do count, who cares about their histories (or the communism (unless the post is about politics, in which case definitely focus on the communism)).

    The special pleading is obvious.

    (Also, I thought this idiot got banned? Or was just one comment wiped?)

  31. chigau (違う) says

    theDukedog7 .
    Atheism isn’t a religion.
    We are not united in identical beliefs about a single Book and single God.
    Like you Christians.

  32. raven says

    We’ve got the Duggars, you’ve got the Kims.

    Really dumb stuff from the latest troll.

    We’ve got science and reason, they’ve got Hitler and the Holocaust. A pure xian invention start to finish.

    Hitler was a Catholic. Himmler didn’t allow atheists in the SS so they were all Catholics and Lutherans. It started in the NT and Martin Luther drew up the plans.

    Atheism has been tried.

    A lie. Up until a few centuries ago, atheism was a death penalty offense. There weren’t many open atheists.

    Hitchens: Xianity lost its best defense when it lost the power of the noose, gun, and stack of firewood.

    Without the ability to burn to death whoever they want on stacks of firewood, they’ve got nothing but lies, hate, and mythology.

  33. militantagnostic says

    Dukedog7 has been stinking up Dispatches with his anti-gay bigotry. The commenteriat there believe he is Egnor and usually address him as Egnorance.

  34. Freodin says

    If Christians are held to account for fundamentalists and the Inquisition and the Crusades, why aren’t atheists held to account for the gualg and the killing fields and the People’s Republic of North Korea?

    Quite simple.

    Because you ARE the fundamentalists, the Inquisition and the Crusades. There are still some decent Christians out there, but even many of them support or simply do not oppose you, the fundamentalists, inquistitors and crusaders.

    But most atheists are not totalitarians.

  35. CJO, egregious by any standard says

    We’ve got the Duggars, you’ve got the Kims.

    That’s stupid. Totalitarian regimes need either to use a (preexisting) state religion as a tool of totalitarian oppression (ISIS), or to ban religion as a “counter-revolutionary” or otherwise state-opposed institution (USSR; N. Korea, Khmer Rouge).

    In a secular, nominally democratic (but in any case non-totalitarian) society, atheism “has,” in the sense you mean, the atheists who participate in the civic and cultural life of the society, and Christians “have” the Christians who do. So, in addition to the special pleading anteprepro cogently identifies, you’re claiming that Christians should only have to answer for private citizens in their own society (the Duggars), while atheists should have to answer for a totalitarian regime (the Kims). It’s an entirely unreasonable double-standard.

  36. raven says

    If Christians are held to account for fundamentalists and the Inquisition and the Crusades, why aren’t atheists held to account for the gualg and the killing fields and the People’s Republic of North Korea?

    Cthulhu, this guy is stupid.

    We aren’t responsible for the Gulag any more than xians are responsible for WWII.

    Xians started WWII after all. Xians fought on both sides. So why isn’t xianity blamed for a war that killed 50 million people.

    Because people do things for other reasons than religion. WWII was about territory and the Gulags were about totalitarian communism. Stalin was motivated by atheism, he was motivated by power and control.

    If you want, we will own the Gulag. If xians own every war in Europe all the way back to the fall of the Roman Empire. Which was destroyed by…Germanic xians.

  37. says

    Advertisers are fleeing the Duggar brand. I can only assume that the advertisers are not really good christians like Michael Seewald.

    […] As of Wednesday morning, at least nine companies that advertise with TLC had pulled advertising from episodes of “19 Kids and Counting” or announced that they would not advertise on the program in the future. […]

    General Mills
    Payless Shoes
    Choice Hotels
    CVS
    Allstate Insurance
    Pure Leaf Iced Tea
    Behr Paint
    Walgreens
    Ace Hardware
    H&R Block
    Keurig

  38. odin says

    So, Russia doesn’t have a long history of Christianity, but Sweden does?

    Yeah, that’ll get filed in the “don’t know the first thing about history” bin.

  39. shikko says

    @28 theDukedog7 .:

    Hey, sometimes Christians do bad things, and Christian culture is not perfect.

    Replace “Christian” with “human” and you have a statement I think everyone on the planet would agree with. The difference is, Christians often claim they have the One True Way to Be Good…and many of them continue do bad things, almost as if what they said isn’t particularly reflective of reality. Interesting, isn’t it?

    Atheism has been tried. Intensely. There are relatively secular countries–Sweden, Switzerland, etc–but they all have long Christian histories and likely to some extent live off the fumes of the Church.

    Please support this claim. Please define what “good” things these relatively secular countries must have gotten from their Christian histories, as opposed to “good” things that came about in response to those same histories, if not in spite of them. And please explain why you left Japan off the list, given that it is a rather secular country with functionally zero Christian history, some horrible events in its recent history, and a currently quite high standard of living.

    There have been quite a few explicitly atheist countries in the 20th century–the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea.

    Why are atheists so uninterested in the ethics and politics of nations that have explicitly adopted atheism? If Christians are held to account for fundamentalists and the Inquisition and the Crusades, why aren’t atheists held to account for the gualg and the killing fields and the People’s Republic of North Korea?

    We’ve got the Duggars, you’ve got the Kims.

    You know what else those explicitly atheist countries all have in common? You must, since you are claiming — actually, scrap that, you’re not claiming, you’re hinting since you’re not actually interested or brave enough to actually make a claim you’d have to support — that it’s atheism specifically that lead to these countries all being horrible places. So please, since you’ve thought about this so deeply, explain why everything else these countries share historically and sociologically cannot possibly have been the cause of whatever horrors have gone on in them.

  40. anteprepro says

    militantagnostic: He has claimed to be Egnor here at least once before. Or signed off as “Michael Egnor”. Perhaps both.

  41. zenlike says

    anteprepro

    militantagnostic: He has claimed to be Egnor here at least once before. Or signed off as “Michael Egnor”. Perhaps both.

    Signed of. And multiple signs point towards the same person: eg in denial of much of science, including AGW, and also being a catholic.

    He is getting really tiring leaving his dropping all over multiple threads both at Dispatches and here. And he is totally clueless about any topic he wants to discuss about. Well, discuss, regurgitate the same old nonsense over and over again is a more apt description.

  42. robro says

    There are many who seem shocked that a child from a Christian family would do such things.

    This may have already been said up-thread (TL;DR), but no, I’m not shocked at all. In the Christian world I grew up in, it was often said that the children of preachers were the biggest hell raisers. I might add that I wouldn’t be shocked if even worse came out about the adults in the family.

    Nerd @ 2

    JD didn’t commit a sin. He committed a crime.

    Indeed! And so did his parents. What they did brings to mind terms like abetting a crime and obstruction of justice.

  43. Funny Diva says

    I made this comment on FaceBork today (in response to a share of the RawStory piece on how JD sued Arkansas when they started investigating him for sexual assault):

    “Gimme that old time religion…so I can stuff it in a Hefty-bag, double- triple-bag it and haul it out to the damned dumpster. I’m so outta patience with liars and abusers for [whatever name said liars/abusers use for their deity].”

    and it got #notallChristians-ed within 5 minutes. *sigh* At least the friend-of-a-friend didn’t go full metal No True Scotsman Christian…

  44. evodevo says

    @ Raven #25 &26 – got any citations on that? I would LOVE to have some studies/polls to throw at my fundie relatives/co-workers…..

  45. theDukedog7 . says

    @raven:

    [Up until a few centuries ago, atheism was a death penalty offense.]

    No really. Heretics were executed, but mostly atheists were unmolested, mainly because people thought they were crazy and that it would be cruel to execute an insane man.

    The first time atheists assumed real power was in France in 1792, and then the atheists showed no hesitation whatsoever to kill people for their beliefs, and trend that has continued unabated.

    No ideology has rivaled atheism for concentrated violence and cruelty.

  46. says

    rietpluim @4:

    The outcome of the referendum is a defeat for humanity? So the Church thinks gays are not human?

    The first thought that sprung to my mind upon reading that line [defeat for humanity] was “If they think this is a defeat for humanity, they clearly don’t view the millions of LGB people on this planet as human beings”.

  47. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    No really. Heretics were executed, but mostly atheists were unmolested,

    Your unevidenced word is dismissed as fuckwittery. Either supply a link or you are a proven liar and bullshitter DukeDog. Your intellectual immaturity is becoming tiresome. Links, or you lie and bullshit.

  48. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    DukeDog is too stupid to understand atheist = heretic. What an intellectual loser.

  49. says

    theDukedog 7:
    I hope you’re not commenting here thinking you’re going to change peoples’ minds with your bald-faced assertions, lies, and distortions of the truth. Buzz off you fucking bigoted shitstain.

  50. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    In the 20th century, atheists killed that many people every week. (100 million total)

    Atheist family history:

    Yawn, never heard the category error of dictators versus your hundred years wars? Or that WWI and WWII were started by theists. What an intellectual lightweight lightweight, liar and bullshitter DukeDog is….

  51. Al Dente says

    theDukedog7 @47

    No ideology has rivaled atheism for concentrated violence and cruelty.

    Ever hear of the 30 Years War? If you knew some history, you’d know this war between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th Century killed about one-third of the population of Germany and Bohemia. In 1631 the German city of Magdeburg was sacked by the Catholic army under Count Tilly. The city’s population went from 30,000 to 5,000. No atheists were running armies during the war.

  52. says

    I think you’d be hard pressed to find atrocities committed in the name of atheism (whatever the hell that would mean). The examples cited by Cap’n Bigot are not examples of atrocities committed in the name of atheism. Meanwhile, atrocities committed in the name of a deity are plentiful. Nevertheless, some people (like our resident bigot) think they can retcon history and no one will be the wiser. Such smug arrogance combined with profound ignorance. So sad.

  53. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony!

    I have no illusions about changing minds.

    Truth just likes to stretch its legs on occasion.

  54. says

    No really. Heretics were executed, but mostly atheists were unmolested, mainly because people thought they were crazy and that it would be cruel to execute an insane man.

    Citation please.

    The first time atheists assumed real power was in France in 1792, and then the atheists showed no hesitation whatsoever to kill people for their beliefs, and trend that has continued unabated.

    Citations please.

    No ideology has rivaled atheism for concentrated violence and cruelty.

    Citation…fuck, I’m not going to ask nicely. Either cite your sources or shut the fuck up you repugnant asshole. Personally I’d rather you just shut up and stop commenting. Hopefully PZ will ban your ass soon (and Ed needs to do the same thing as your uneducated comments have infected his comment threads for far too long now).

  55. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Truth just likes to stretch its legs on occasion.

    The TRUTH is that you are a bigoted intelectual lightweight without evidence, but heavy on opinions, burdened by the twin fallacies of believing in imaginary beings, and a book of mythology/fiction is meaningful.
    You have nothing rational to base your claims upon. So, you are just seen as an ignorant unevidenced troll without any redeeming facts, knowledge, or EVIDENCE.
    Total abject trollery. Typical of those who are divorced from reality.

  56. says

    theDukedog 7 @56:

    Truth just likes to stretch its legs on occasion.

    Given the ignorant comments you’ve made between here and Dispatches, it’s clear you wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and smacked you on your hateful and hatefilled noggin. Why don’t you wander off somewhere else? Go worship your genocidal, homophobic, misogynistic, sex-obsessed deity why dontcha!

  57. theDukedog7 . says

    @Al:

    [Ever hear of the 30 Years War?]

    A cataclysm.

    I’m not referring to war, though. Wars are violent. Such as when Hitler and his atheist former ally went at it–bloodiest war ever, made possible Hitler’s prior alliance with the largest atheist nation in the world at the time.

    I didn’t count the WWII dead in atheism’s tally, although I could. Soviet atheists killed a lot of people in that war.

    What’s remarkable about atheism is that atheism killed 100 million of its own people, in peacetime.

  58. says

    Further to militantagnostic’s comment @33, here is info on Michael Egnor:
    On creationism:

    When it comes to creationism, Egnor eschews the weaselly escape hatch-style arguments often employed by its proponents in favor of blatant ignorance. He is, however, highly fond of points refuted a thousand times. Egnor claims his views are based largely on the book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton, a book which its own author later largely disowned. Most of his arguments are based on the argument from incredulity — that life is just too damn complex to not have been designed by a creator.

    The worthy professor equates evolution with Darwinism though reasonable evolutionary biologists understand that the Theory of evolution has progressed since Darwin. He states that Darwin failed to explain molecular pathways, but molecular pathways were not understood in Darwin’s time; later biologists explained them. He keeps on about random causation, but evolutionary biologists never suggest random causation: the whole point of Natural selection is that only mutations that help an organism to survive are preserved in the genetic record. Based in particular on his complete ignorance of the history of biology PZ Myers called Egnor “the Swiss army knife of creationist hackery”.[4]

    One of his more ridiculous arguments was that evolutionary theory had made no contributions to medicine. This was slapped down by Burt Humburg of The Panda’s Thumb, who gave numerous examples of such contributions, such as the explanation for the biochemistry behind the use of aspirin to treat patients who have suffered heart attacks. He also coined the term “Egnorance” in his fisking.[1] Orac referred to him as the “Energizer Bunny of antievolution.”[5]

    He has attracted criticism from evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who wrote a rebuttal to a column Egnor had published in Forbes.[6]

    Steven Novella has played arch-nemesis to Egnor with regard to all subjects Egnor promotes his woo on, including creationism.[7]

    On dualism and non-materialist neuroscience:

    Creationism plays into Egnor’s defense of dualism as he believes that a materialistic explanation cannot fully explain the brain and behavior. One of his most infamous arguments is that the brain itself cannot be fully responsible for behavior because, for example, no part of the brain is “altruistic,” so altruistic behavior cannot arise from the brain (thus, a dualist explanation is necessary). This is a straw man of neuroscientific explanations. More specifically, it is a fallacy of division. Altruism is simply a label we give to a set of behaviors — behaviors which arise from the brain. Egnor also makes a classic category mistake in assuming ideas cannot “arise” from physical substance (like neurons) because they are not made of the same “stuff,” which means he totally fails at understanding the concept of emergence.

    PZ Myers has dismantled his arguments and Novella has had numerous, long-winded correspondences with him on the subject. Novella and Egnor were featured in dueling interviews on NPR, ultimately resulting in further embarrassment to Egnor (if that’s possible).

    If theDukedog 7 is Egnor, then in addition to his supreme ignorance on evolution and irrational adherence to creationist bullshit, he’s added anti-gay bigot to his resume.

  59. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    What’s remarkable about atheism is that atheism killed 100 million of its own people, in peacetime.

    Nope, only in your delusional mind, full of phantasms and other things without reality
    Loser.

    Pretty happy about Ireland, heh?

    Theist against theist, and still going, just at a very level. What miserable people theists are. Like you…Delusional and irrelevant, but noisy.

  60. plainenglish says

    @Dukedog7: I think the honorable thing to do now, soldier, is turn your stupidity-barrel on yourself and blow yourself in another direction. Landover Baptist is seeking military men, I hear…
    Your Ireland nonsense will hopefully get you tossed out of this area.

  61. says

    Nerd @63:

    Nope, only in your delusional mind, full of phantasms and other things without reality
    Loser.

    I’m sure he’ll regale us with a ton of citations to show that all the atrocities he’s mentioned were done in the name of atheism, rather than atrocities performed by people who were atheists.

  62. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony:

    [Pretty happy about Ireland, heh?
    Yes, as are all decent human beings.]

    A lot of folks are celebrating. You should take someone to court to make them bake you a cake.

  63. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Funny how the normal people in most communist countries still followed religion. Examples are seen in the gay bigotry of Russia, which comes from the church, not the atheist teachings that all men are equal….Delusional fools like DD7 don’t understand context.

  64. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A lot of folks are celebrating. You should take someone to court to make them bake you a cake.

    Why? Why not you bake that cake…Or do you have problems with gays? Like all delusional bigots?

  65. throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble says

    theKookyidjit7 . @67

    A lot of folks are celebrating. You should take someone to court to make them bake you a cake.

    Unlike you, gay people don’t need to take anyone to court to receive love and attention from people who value their existence. Pretty sad that that’s the only way you can get cake, Projectionist.

  66. theDukedog7 . says

    @Nerd:

    “the atheist teachings that all men are equal”

    Goodness gracious that’s funny.

    Ever read Descent of Man? Atheist prophet talking about exterminating the inferior races…

  67. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    DukeDog, please provide conclusive third party evidence (not been done to date), how the Redhead’s cousin marrying his long time partner (and I was the one that said they sounded like an old married couple, to many wide finally understanding eyes), hurts the 40+ year marriage of the Redhead and myself.
    I await evidence, not opinion.

  68. theDukedog7 . says

    @Nerd:

    [Or do you have problems with gays?]

    I like gays. It’s plaintiffs I’m not so fond of.

  69. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    like gays. It’s plaintiffs I’m not so fond of.

    Yeah, folks trying to get the rights they should have without going to court. Still losing loser.

  70. says

    theDukedog 7 @ 67:

    A lot of folks are celebrating. You should take someone to court to make them bake you a cake.

    Nah. Not planning on getting married any time soon. Of course if I were, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about a baker citing “sincerely held religious beliefs” to justify their refusal to serve me because I’m black, since y’know, that’s covered under anti-discrimination statutes. I’d still have to worry about them pulling the “sincerely held religious beliefs” card to justify refusing to serve me on the basis of my sexuality, thanks to bigots like you who have fought to prevent sexual orientation (and gender identity) from being added to non-discrimination ordinances.
    I must say, I really appreciate your faux concern and attempts at civility towards me, a gay man. After all, you are a hateful, homophobic bigot, and people like you are rarely nice, even superficially, to LGB people.

  71. says

    theDukedog 7 @73:

    I like gays. It’s plaintiffs I’m not so fond of.

    Ah, so you don’t like it when gay people turn to the courts to enforce anti-discrimination laws. What do you have against anti-discrimination laws Mr. Bigot? They serve to protect classes of people who have been oppressed and discriminated against. Do you rail against African-Americans who turn to the courts to sue companies who discriminate based on race? What about women who sue corporations who discriminate based on gender or sex?
    Or do you only dislike it when gay people use the courts to enforce the anti-discrimination laws?
    No need to respond, as I’ve read more than enough putrid comments from you to know how you’re likely to answer. I already know you don’t view LGBT people as full human beings with the same right to access public services and accommodations as everyone else. To you, we’re second-class citizens who don’t deserve the protection of the state. I know this because you wear your hate on your sleeve.

  72. theDukedog7 . says

    Good points all, Tony!

    It seems that I’m the incarnation of all the slights of your life.

    I am a fervent supporter of gay rights. Right to freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms, right to trial by jury, all of that.

    Those are the rights I support. Special privileges–like forcing a devout Christian to bake your gay wedding cake–not so much.

    I like the kind of that rights everyone has, not just special privileges claimed by victimology-obsessed SJW’s.

  73. throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble says

    theDukedog7 . @77

    Those are the rights I support. Special privileges–like forcing a devout Christian to bake your gay wedding cake–not so much.

    Is forcing a devout Christian to bake an interracial cake also one of those things you have on your pet peeve list?

  74. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    like the kind of that rights everyone has, not just special privileges claimed by victimology-obsessed SJW’s.

    Ah, in other words loser, anybody who should know their place in society below you, and accept that without complaining.
    Asshole, I’m a 65 year old white male, well educated, decent income. I also remember this from a trip to Florida in the early sixties. It showed with prima facie evidence that folks like you are nothing but liars and bullshitters. You lose again loser.
    Grow up intellectually. Don’t presume we will swallow your tripe. Presume we have evidence to refute your tripe.

  75. Matthew Trevor says

    theDukedog7 @ 71:

    Atheist prophet

    You do understand how utterly stupid it is pairing those two words together, don’t you?

    If you do, then you’re being deliberately deceptive in your arguments by attempting to characterise atheism as religion in a different suit. Freudian rebuffs are shitty debate tactics.

    If you don’t, then you really should just stop talking.

  76. theDukedog7 . says

    @Duck:

    I don’t like forcing folks to do stuff. Maybe that’s your thing. It’s not mine.

    If a business refused service on account of race, I would never patronize that business and I would encourage others to never patronize that business. I detest racism.

    I have problems with the government forcing folks to do stuff. I think it is defensible to use government force to prevent racial discrimination. You Democrats gave us slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK and segregation, and we have a responsibility to undo what Democrats have done to our nation.

    I oppose the government forcing businesses to accommodate gay weddings. Free Exercise of Religion trumps any anti-discrimination law.

    I wouldn’t patronize any business that refused to serve gays (for non-wedding business). I don’t like anti-gay discrimination, but I respect freedom of religion.

  77. theDukedog7 . says

    @Nerd:

    That sign was posted by Progressive Democrats, who were the segregationists in the South.

    What party do you vote for?

  78. Matthew Trevor says

    theDukedog7 @ 777:

    Special privileges–like forcing a devout Christian to bake your gay wedding cake–not so much.

    So you would have no issue with gay business owners refusing to deal with xianist clients and would in no way see that as being an unjust discrimination? Because I keep hearing xianists crap on about this supposed “war” against them whenever people don’t kowtow to their beliefs…

  79. theDukedog7 . says

    @Matthew:

    [So you would have no issue with gay business owners refusing to deal with xianist clients and would in no way see that as being an unjust discrimination?]

    No problem. I don’t like to force people to do stuff. If I thought the business owners had real animosity against Christians, I wouldn’t patronize them (and they probably wouldn’t want my business.)

    Live and let live.

  80. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    That sign was posted by Progressive Democrats, who were the segregationists in the South.

    What party do you vote for?

    There was hundreds of examples bigot. You know that. You expect nobody to notice your lies and bullshit. Everything you say is subject to extreme skepticism, since, being a delusional fool who believes in phantasms, you have no idea of reality. Whch is why you are a loser every time you post here. Nobody believes a word you say….

  81. springa73 says

    It is true that regimes that were avowedly atheist (which is pretty much the same thing as saying communist regimes) have an exceptionally horrific record of atrocities. These atrocities weren’t necessarily committed because of atheism, but I think that they are a strong argument against the idea that atheism makes for superior morality and ethics.

    FWIW, I think that the most important difference isn’t between religion and atheism or secularism. The most important difference is between people who are willing to hurt others who believe differently from them, and people who are not willing to do this. Every religion, plus atheism and secularism, has both types of people.

  82. throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble says

    This nincompoop…

    You Democrats gave us slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK and segregation, and we have a responsibility to undo what Democrats have done to our nation.

    The oft-defeated propagandic canards are just oozing from your bilious hole tonight.

  83. Rumtopf says

    If you can’t do your fucking job without discriminating against people for their race, sexuality, gender and so on, then don’t go into that line of work. Maybe look into hosting private clubs for shitty people or something.

    Totally love that bullshit tactic though. Calling someone a “victimology-obsessed SJW” – for actually being a victim of discrimination and, instead of shutting up about it, claiming your equal right to service. How dare those gay dudes demand the “special privileges” that majority groups already have(that’s what makes them so special! They won’t be special anymore if everyone has those rights, dammit). To be truly strong and worthy you have to ignore it when people discriminate against you, because they don’t make you into a victim by actually victimising you, you do it to yourself for recognising the discrimination!

    Fuck

  84. theDukedog7 . says

    @Nerd who flunked history:

    Nearly all segregationists were Democrats, and the Progressive wing of the party was virulently segregationist.

    The first Democrat Progressive president was Wilson, who was a spitting racist who re-segregated the federal government after the Republicans desegregated it.

    Progressive Democrats own segregation. Here’s your history lesson for today:

    http://reason.com/archives/2006/05/05/when-bigots-become-reformers

    Who do you vote for?

  85. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You Democrats gave us slavery and Jim Crow

    The ones still trying for Jim Crow are the rethuglicans. Who freed the slaves post Civil War. Politics change over the years. Stupid people don’t. Stop being stupid.

  86. says

    theDukedog 7 @77:

    Those are the rights I support. Special privileges–like forcing a devout Christian to bake your gay wedding cake–not so much.

    Ha ha ha.
    Special privileges.
    Like the “special privileges” accorded to women and African-Americans that prohibit discrimination based on gender or race? A devout Christian who runs a bakery open to the public would have to serve women or black people, even if they claim their “sincerely held religious beliefs” prevent them from doing so. You and other bigots engage in special pleading when you support anti-LGBT discrimination from bigots who run public businesses. They can’t legally discriminate on the grounds of sex, gender, national origin, race, age, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof, which I’m sure pisses off ignorant theists such as yourself). But you think its A-Ok to discriminate against LGBT people. Why are you ok with Christian business owners being forced to comply with anti-discrimination laws in all cases except sexual orientation and gender identity? Why are those two the exception?

  87. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Progressive Democrats own segregation. Here’s your history lesson for today:

    Politics change loser. You are stuck in the past with your bigotry, which is being called out today. Today’s rethuglicans are for bigotry. The democrats, no so much. Who do you vote for loser? No doubt the rethugicans, since they back your ability to discriminate based on religion. You know, your imaginary deity….which makes you a delusional fool….,

  88. WhiteHatLurker says

    @Sastra #9

    the more reasonable interpretation of Original Sin, in which it simply means that “human beings aren’t perfect.”

    I thought the reasonable explanation was that people don’t create perfect deities. With due respect to Mr. Deity (and Lucy!!!).

  89. says

    I see theDukedog 7 is ignorant about the Southern Strategy and the Dixiecrats. Can he really be so ignorant to not know that the Democratic Party and the GOP of today are not the same parties they were 75 years ago?

  90. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Can he really be so ignorant to not know that the Democratic Party and the GOP of today are not the same parties they were 75 years ago?

    Absolutely, nothing ever changes in DukeDogs mind, since his imaginary deity is eternal. So most be political parties and their policies. Notice the lack of evidence to show that is the case….

  91. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @theDukedog7:

    Who do you vote for?

    As it turns out, I have never once voted for Woodrow Wilson. Not for any office: executive or legislative, federal, state or local.

    Weird, huh?

  92. theDukedog7 . says

    @Nerd:

    [Politics change loser.]

    Yea. In 1964, there was a magic switch, and the party that championed slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK and segregation just turned into an integration-loving interracial-hugging multi-racial lovefest. Just like in a fairy tale.

    In the 1960’s, Democrats realized that blacks were more useful as government-handout-dependent voters than than they had been as tree ornaments for the first 150 years of the party of slavery.

    Democrats are, and have always been, the party of race-baiting. Race is a tool for the Democrats.

  93. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Yea. In 1964, there was a magic switch, and the party that championed slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK and segregation just turned into an integration-loving interracial-hugging multi-racial lovefest. Just like in a fairy tale.

    No link, dismissed as lying and bullshitting from a confirmed bigot. You lose again loser.

    Democrats are, and have always been, the party of race-baiting. Race is a tool for the Democrats.

    THANK YOU FOR CONFIRMING YOUR BIGOTRY. IT IS ESTABLISHED FOR ETERNITY HERE AT FTB.

  94. says

    Learn your fucking history theDukedog 7:

    The Democratic and Republican Parties have undergone a long transition from their founding ideological principles. The Democrats started out as the conservative party but are now the liberal party, and the Republicans were once the liberal party but are now the conservative party.

    The Democratic Party we know today evolved from the conservative Democratic-Republican Party of the 1790’s. The first contested Presidential election was in 1796. The Democratic-Republican Party nominated the conservative Thomas Jefferson as their first presidential nominee. Party members were anti-federalists who favored state sovereignty, free markets, a decentralized federal government, and an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and the attendant Bill of Rights. The Democratic-Republican Party also supported the institution of slavery.

    Democratic President Martin Van Buren presided over the panic of 1837, and during that time he was steadfastly opposed to using the government as a means of employing workers on public works projects. In fact, during this economic depression Van Buren literally sold the federal government’s tool supply so that the government could not use the tools for public works projects. This ideological mindset is diametrically opposite of the economic stimulus proposals that contemporary Democrats now support and advocate for, especially during periods of economic morass.

    Similarly, the Republican Party has also experienced significant ideological alterations. Founded in 1856, it was the liberal counterweight to the conservative Democratic Party, opposing the expansion of slavery, supporting more money for public education, and advocating a more liberal immigration policy.

    The original liberal bent of the Republican Party is especially evidenced by the 1888 Presidential election where Republican Benjamin Harrison was elected President by advocating a liberal platform. He favored expanding the money supply, expanding the protective tariff, and allocating munificent funding for social services. Harrison lost his re-election bid in 1892 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, who advocated a conservative platform, including maintaining the gold standard, reducing the protective tariff, and supporting a lassie faire approach to government intervention in the economy.

    Then in 1896 as the country was mired in another depression, there was a move afoot in the Democratic Party to abandon the conservative orthodoxy of Van Buren and Cleveland, and to undertake a radically different ideological approach. To the chagrin of the Democratic high command, the party took a leap of faith when it nominated the 36-year-old firebrand populist William Jennings Bryan. Nicknamed “The Great Commoner,” Bryan advocated a liberal platform. He opposed the gold standard, advocated an interventionist role for the government in the economy, and supported an expansion of the money supply. He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party Presidential nomination. This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party.

    In response to the nomination of Bryan by the Democrats, the Republican Party countered by straying away from its liberal beginnings and nominating the moderate-conservative Ohio Governor William McKinley, who, like Harrison, was a proponent of a strong protective tariff, but who, unlike Harrison, favored the Gold Standard. This incensed many old-line progressive Republicans. Some even defected to the Democratic Party to support Bryan. McKinley won handily and was re-elected in a rematch with Bryan in 1900.

    The paradigm of the Democrats being the center-right party and the Republicans being the center-left party remained for much of the nineteenth century. However, this all changed when the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, ushering in a transitional era where both parties had a significant liberal and a significant conservative bloodline.

    Nomination battles within both parties were usually battles between conservative and progressive wings of each party. In 1912, the Progressive former President Theodore Roosevelt challenged the more conservative incumbent President William Howard Taft for the Republican Party nomination. Though Taft won just one primary, Massachusetts, he garnered the Party’s nomination by winning enough delegates at the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Roosevelt, who won nine Republican primaries, bolted the party and formed the Progressive Party, a.k.a. the Bull Moose Party, and won 86 electoral votes in the General Election. Taft won just eight Electoral Votes. The Democratic nominee, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, mustered 435 Electoral votes and won the Presidential Election in a landslide victory.

    Similarly, in 1924 there was opposition from the progressive wing of the GOP when conservative Calvin Coolidge pocketed the Republican Presidential nomination. Coolidge, who assumed the Presidency on the death of Warren G. Harding in 1923, was challenged for the Republican nomination by U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA). Johnson defeated Coolidge in the South Dakota primary, but failed to garner much electoral traction. With the Democrats also nominating a conservative, John W. Davis, disgruntled Progressives in both major parties deserted their nominees and supported the newly formed Progressive Party, which nominated Republican Robert M. La Follette Sr. for President and Democrat Burton Wheeler for Vice President. The ticket won a formidable 16.6% of the popular vote. Twelve liberal Republican U.S. House members supported the La Follette Candidacy and were expelled from the Republican caucus by conservative U.S. House Speaker Nicholas Longworth (R-OH).

    Liberals and conservatives had an uneasy cohabitation in both parties. In the South, opposition to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society emanated from what came to be known as “the conservative coalition,” consisting of conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats and Western Republicans.

    In their 1976 bid for their respective party’s nomination, Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat George C. Wallace fought for the same conservative voters. After Wallace lost the Democratic Primary in Florida and his chances at securing his party’s nomination were dim, the Reagan campaign ran an advertisement urging Wallace supporters to cross over and vote for Reagan in the Republican Primary. A voter appearing in the advertisement intones: “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, a conservative Democrat. As much as I hate to admit it, Wallace can’t be nominated, Ronald Reagan can.”

    Since that time, there has been a gradual ideological homogeneity within both parties. Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republican were either defeated for re-election, retired from office, or became Republicans.

    Over the last decade we have witnessed the near end of progressive Republicans. This is evidenced by the defeat of U.S. Representatives Connie Morella of Maryland and Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and by the egressing from the GOP of former U.S. Senators James Jeffords of Vermont and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, both liberal Republicans.

    The final nail in the coffin for conservative Democrats occurred in 2010 when the three most conservative Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives (Bobby Bright (AL), Walt Minnick (ID), and Gene Taylor (MS)) lost their re-election bids. All three representatives voted against President Barack Obama’s Stimulus Plan, the Cap-and-Trade legislation, and the Health Care Reform package.

    With the stock of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats nearly depleted, the Republican Party is now the conservative party and the Democratic Party is now the liberal party. This is an ideological reversal. The U.S. now mirrors many parliamentary systems in that the ideological outliers are de-minimis. Outliers who get elected are also usually the most electorally vulnerable in that they invariably represent states and Congressional districts inhospitable to their party’s ideology. The Republican Party, once the liberal party is now the conservative Party. The Democratic Party, once the conservative party is now the liberal Party. The ideological role reversal is now complete.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rich-rubino/democratic-and-republican-ideologies_b_3432210.html

    The GOP was once a liberal party, while the Democrats were conservative, but those roles switched in the 20th century. Do try to keep up.

  95. Rumtopf says

    So basically this asshole’s all about the: “wah wah why are you discriminating against my religious right to discriminate against others”

    Fundies, man.

  96. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Do try to keep up.

    I don’t think he is capable of questioning his unevidenced beliefs…..Which someone of even moderate intellectual capacity would be doing with new evidence. That you for confirming you are an intellectual lightweight DukeDog.

  97. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony!

    [Can he really be so ignorant to not know that the Democratic Party and the GOP of today are not the same parties they were 75 years ago?]

    Yea. Democrats have been such a blessing for blacks. Just look at all of the prosperous safe well-governed cities Democrats have provided for their black constituents–Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, East St Louis.

    Every place in America where black Americans are shot and robbed and poor is governed by Democrats.

    A black American voting for a Democrat is like a Jew voting for a Nazi. You might like the current iteration of their social programs, but they have a history.

  98. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @theDukedog7:

    I am a fervent supporter of gay rights. Right to freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms, right to trial by jury, all of that.

    Those are the rights I support. Special privileges–like forcing a devout Christian to bake your gay wedding cake–not so much.

    I like the kind of that rights everyone has, not just special privileges claimed by victimology-obsessed SJW’s.

    So… you’re against “rights” not extended to everyone? You mean like the right to be served by a public establishment regardless of your religion/religious views/religious sins or virtues and/or the establishment owners’ religion/religious views/religious sins or virtues?

    As I remember it, it’s actually illegal for a queer person to refuse to serve a Christian because the Christian believes queer sex is a sin. But this has been turned into a “special right” by Christians who have convinced the courts that they aren’t required to reciprocate to the queers who violate Christian religious codes.

    So, how often have you railed against Christians and their “special rights”, precisely? How much time have you spent on that? How many words? How many stories have your read, outraged, that a devout Hindu baker was forced to sell a wedding cake or pay a civil penalty when the customer was an admitted muslim? an admitted Christian? an admitted Presbyterian?

    I would love to read your erudite opposition to these injustices.

  99. says

    Who do you vote for?

    No one from the GOP, given that their party platform is anti-LGBT, anti-anyone who isn’t white, anti-women, anti-human rights, anti-science, anti-education, anti-poor, anti-union, anti-working class, anti-immigrants, and denies climate change. Additionally, they’re warmongers who support sending troops overseas to fight and die, but don’t support them when they return home. They’re also pro-capital punishment and pro-unregulated firearms.
    There is literally nothing in the GOP party platform that is good for this country (or the world). The party is filled with theocratic minded reactionaries opposed to any and all efforts to improve the quality of life for USAmericans as well as people around the globe.
    It’s laughable that you support such a vile party. Worse, that you actually think it’s reasonable to do so.

  100. says

    theDukedog 7 @103:

    A black American voting for a Democrat Republican is like a Jew voting for a Nazi.

    Fixed that for you to make it more accurate since the GOP is the party opposing any and all efforts to eradicate racism in this country.

  101. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony! the misinformed!

    Eisenhower desegrated the Little Rock schools. Republicans passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1958, 1960, and 1964 over furious Democrat opposition, and Republicans passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nixon, not Johnson, desegregated public schools in the South. Nixon started Affirmative Action, which was started to prevent Democrat trade unions from excluding blacks in Philadelphia. Nixon created the Civil Rights Commission. 23 of the 26 Dixiecrats remained Democrats all their lives, and some were still serving in Congress in the 1970’s. J William Fullbright, Bill Clinton’s beloved mentor, was a rabid segregationist.

    Democrats own racism. They changed tactics a bit in the 60’s when the political wind began blowing the other way. They suck all the juice they can from racial fear and hate. Still do. Al Sharpton. Need I say more?

  102. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony, the confused Democrat:

    [… GOP, given that their party platform is anti-LGBT,]

    Actually, Obama and Hillary both “opposed” gay marriage until a year ago. Such bigots! You didn’t vote for bigots did you?

    Of course they weren’t lying or anything.

    Hillary has been described, aptly, as a well-lubricated weather-vane.

  103. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony! the Rick Santorum supporter.

    [It’s interesting that he doesn’t cite any sources for the numerous claims he’s made.]

    Here, let me google it for you…

    [It’s also funny that he thinks I’m a Democrat.]

    Yea. I don’t blame you. I’d run away from the Party of Corruption and Jim Crow as fast as I could. Your presidential candidate this time around is a shameless gangster in the money-laundering business who has trouble saving her e-mails.

  104. says

    Democrats own racism. They changed tactics a bit in the 60’s when the political wind began blowing the other way. They suck all the juice they can from racial fear and hate. Still do. Al Sharpton. Need I say more?

    Not unless it’s to say “As it stands today, the GOP is a party of racist, retrograde fuckwads, in ways similar to how the Democrats used to be.”

  105. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony! who’s confused about Republicans

    [“As it stands today, the GOP is a party of racist, retrograde fuckwads, in ways similar to how the Democrats used to be.”]

    Yea. Republicans today support slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and segregation.

    Oh…wait….wait…!

  106. says

    Here, let me google it for you…

    I don’t see any link. Did you forget how to copy/paste a link to support your assertions? Or are you unfamiliar with the burden of proof? You made the claims. You support them with citations. If you can’t do that-and you have yet to do so-your claims will be dismissed. Which is what pretty much everyone here is doing.

    Yea. I don’t blame you. I’d run away from the Party of Corruption and Jim Crow as fast as I could. Your presidential candidate this time around is a shameless gangster in the money-laundering business who has trouble saving her e-mails.

    I assume you’re talking about Hillary. She’s not “my” candidate. If it were up to me, Bernie Sanders would be President. In any case, you left out the part where you mention that Hillary is still a better candidate than the dozen+ clowns aiming for the GOP nomination. She is far from perfect, but at least she isn’t scum of the earth like Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, or Ted Cruz.

  107. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony!:

    This is what Republicans say, and have always said: “Content of character, not color of skin”.

    Pandering and race-baiting is for Democrats.

  108. says

    Yea. Republicans today support slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and segregation.
    Oh…wait….wait…!

    Because supporting slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and segregation is all there is to racism. You have much to learn young Padawan.

  109. says

    This is what Republicans say, and have always said: “Content of character, not color of skin”.
    Pandering and race-baiting is for Democrats.

    Once again, no citation for your assertion. Given that one can turn on FOX “News” and find race-baiting and pandering, it’s amusing that you think this is a hallmark of Democrats.

  110. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony! who doesn’t like Ben Carson:

    [scum of the earth like Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, or Ted Cruz.]

    I have the greatest respect for all three. I know Ben personally–he is most assuredly not scum.

    So much hate Tony. Sad.

  111. Al Dente says

    The Republican Egnor is trying to tar Democrats for racism committed over 40 years ago while refusing to acknowledge the racism of present-day Republicans. Why am I not surprised that a know-nothing creationist hasn’t kept up with politics since the 1960s?

  112. springa73 says

    Today’s Republicans are a lot different from those of 100, 50, even 25 or 30 years ago. There isn’t much room in today’s Republican party for someone with views like Eisenhower, who supported raising taxes in order to balance the budget and pay for major infrastructure improvements, or Nixon, who started the EPA and supported affirmative action. Even Reagan would probably be seen today as not conservative enough. Today’s Republican party seems to be mainly about unlimited faith in unrestricted free markets, conservative Christianity, military intervention abroad, and making it as difficult for immigrants as possible. Of course, even those things sometimes conflict, so they sometimes need to fudge a little.

  113. Amphiox says

    This is what Republicans say, and have always said: “Content of character, not color of skin”.

    What they say is irrelevant.

    What matters is what they DO.

    They lie.

  114. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Pandering and race-baiting is for Democrats [RETHUGS[..

    Fixed that for you unevidenced liar and bullshit, and total abject intellectual lightweight.

  115. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I have the greatest respect for all three. I know Ben personally–he is most assuredly not scum.

    So much hate Tony. Sad.

    Whereas you have no hate bigot, and supporter of bigots? What an intellectual bankrupt fool you are. It starts with believing in imaginary deities. Try being intelligent, and questioning your presuppositions. You are unable to do so….

  116. What a Maroon, oblivious says

    A black American voting for a Democrat is like a Jew voting for a Nazi.

    And yet black Americans consistently vote for Democrats at a rate of about 85-90%.

    Why is that?

    I’m afraid that I don’t have the comparable statistics for Jews during the Wiemar Republic, but my guess is that less than 50% of them voted Nazis. Hell, I’d bet my car that the rate was under 5%.

  117. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    What is obvious to everybody but the oblivious DukeDog, is that he succumb to political dog whistles from the Rethugs. Being the bigot he is….He doesn’t think they are bigoted, although any rational person (which leaves DukeDog out), knows better.

  118. says

    theDukedog 7 @118:

    I know Ben personally–he is most assuredly not scum.

    A look at his views on multiple issues support my contention, not yours.
    On abortion:

    My entire professional life has been devoted to saving and enhancing lives. Thus, the thought of abortion for the sake of convenience does not appeal to me. Many of us turn a blind eye to the wanton slaughter of millions of helpless human babies who are much more sophisticated than some of the other creatures, when nothing is at stake other than the convenience of one or both parents. I am not saying that we should abandon our efforts to save baby seals and a host of other animals. Rather I am saying shouldn’t we consider adding human fetuses and babies to the list?

    He believes women should be forced to carry unwanted children to term, which means he is opposed to women having full control over their reproductive anatomy. Which means he doesn’t believe women have the full range of human rights.

    On welfare and poverty:

    Charities better at providing for needy than the government

    He railed against the government’s lack of forethought to deal with the national debt. “We’re not planning for the future,” Carson said. “If we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion, we are going to destroy this nation.” He also said the government is treating corporations “as enemies” and that corporate taxes should be lowered to encourage growth. “Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations; they are there to make money,” Carson said.
    Charities, he added, are better at providing for the needy than the government. “Nobody is starving on the streets. We’ve always taken care of them,” Carson said. “We take care of our own; we always have. It is not the government’s responsibility.”
    Source: 2013 Conservative Political Action Conf. in Baltimore Sun , Mar 17, 2013

    Ignorant of the people who are starving on the streets-men, children, women, black, white, young, old, gay, lesbian, transgender. Doesn’t care enough about the suffering of people in this country to rectify his ignorance.
    Also ignorant of the fact that charities are not equipped to meet the needs of the poor, a fact that is even more noticeable in rough economic times.

    Those who don’t want to work? They are on their own

    The issue of how to handle able-bodied individuals who simply do not want to work has three practical solutions:
    Tell those who don’t work that they are on their own.
    Take from those who have something and redistribute it to the individuals who aren’t working.
    Borrow from a 3rd party in order to take care of the nonworking individuals and leave the debt to future generations.
    Logically, with solution 1, the individual who isn’t working clearly either starves or finds a job. What about solution 2? In this case, those who are forcibly constrained to support the individuals who aren’t working eventually lose interest in working themselves, since the fruits of their labors are being confiscated. This, in turn, leads to even more individuals who aren’t working. What about solution 3? These investors are unlikely to extend credit indefinitely. Thus solution 1 is the only one that stands the test of logic and is the one upon which we should concentrate.
    Source: America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, p. 88-89 , Jan 24, 2012

    On their own eh? Shows how little he cares about people once again, especially the children who would suffer if their parents were unable to use government assistance. Also shows that he assumes that some unknown number of people who don’t want to work, but doesn’t provide any evidence that this is the case.

    On civil rights:

    Marriage should not be extended to same-sex couples

    Carson remained firmly rooted in his belief that the term “marriage” should not be extended to same-sex couples, although he said the couples should be treated “kindly” and have whatever legal agreements they desire in order to transfer property and have visitation rights, among other rights. “Marriage is a very sacred thing and we need to maintain it as a sacred thing. When I say we don’t want to change it or degrade it by calling everything marriage, that’s not aimed at any particular group,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, the Bible and God have set very specific standards. It’s very clear what’s being said. God doesn’t change, man changes. Our duty is to allow for that change and to still love them and in terms of what happens with them, that’s a decision that’s up to God, that’s not our decision.”

    He supports continued discrimination against LGB people based on religious reasons. As someone looking to serve this country as POTUS, he should know that religious beliefs are not the foundation of laws in this country, nor should they be, as we are not a theocracy.

    On foreign policy & poverty:

    US poverty pales compared to billions in India & Africa

    God has opened many doors of opportunity throughout my lifetime, but I believe the greatest of those doors was allowing me to be born in the USA.
    Growing up, I heard many complaints from those around me about poverty, but visiting such places as India, Egypt, and Africa has provided me with perspective on what poverty really is. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people in the world live on less than $2 a day. Many of those living in poverty in this country, in fact, would be considered quite wealthy by poor people in other countries. Also, here in the US, there is no caste system to determine one’s social status, so there are many opportunities for people to escape poverty without resorting to a life of crime. You are much more likely to be judged in this nation by your knowledge and the way you express yourself than you are by your pedigree. I’m not sure we realize how good we have it on this point.

    Demonstrates that he has a poor grasp of the realities of poor people in the US.
    Also plays the Dear Muslima game in an attempt to diminish the impact of poverty on USAmericans.

    Yeah, he’s pretty damn scummy.

  119. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    DukeDog7, I try to read your comments but your misattempts at html make them illegible.
    To blockquote someone else’s words, using [ ~quoted text~ ] does not produce your desired result.
    To do so correctly, is to type <blockquote>quoted text</blockquote> to produce:

    quoted text

    providing a link, is only a little more complicated:
    <a href=”www.google.com”>link text</a> to produce:
    link text, being a link to the google site. Instead of http://www.google.com, to link to some other site, just copy the url box from your browser and paste it between the quotation marks in the href=”” portion.

    Is this too complicated, DukeDog7? It would help remove one impediment to reading your comments here.

  120. Lofty says

    Pukedog7, way up thread somewhere

    Ever read Descent of Man? Atheist prophet talking about exterminating the inferior races…

    Here, let’s try the sound of this…

    Atheist prophet

    Not working, try again…

    Atheist prophet

    Still doesn’t work, category error failure.

    Ye non existent gods, you’re projecting so hard, I’m amazed you have a functional hand for typing. You really are Eignorant.

  121. sundiver says

    Still trying to explain reality to pukedog, huh. Might as well try and explain the concept of Friday to an amoeba. Pukedog is too stupid to get it.

  122. theDukedog7 . says

    @Tony! who’s confused about abortion

    [He believes women should be forced to carry unwanted children to term, which means he is opposed to women having full control over their reproductive anatomy]

    Ever hear of the “Roe Effect”? The Roe Effect is the suppression of black population growth by abortion since Roe v Wade. Black children are aborted at a rate 2-3 times higher than white children: 20 million black lives have been terminated since 1073 by abortion.

    Planned Parenthood started out as a eugenic organization called the “Birth Control League”. It’s motto was “To breed a race of thoroughbreds”

    Tony: you aren’t one of the thoroughbreds they were talking about.

    Planned Parenthood’s founder was Margret Sanger. She was a rabid eugenicist and racist. Planned Parenthood sited its clinics heavily in minority neighborhoods–ever wonder why?

    Abortion is a black holocaust.

  123. anteprepro says

    I see the fucking creationist idiot has derailed the thread completely.

    Dukie boy, it is just utterly precious that you felt compelled, when faced with a fellow American and fellow Christian molesting children, and faced with other fellow American and fellow good Christian men covering that shit up, to shriek “but…but…but…STALIN!!!!”. Doing that to dismiss the significance of the thing we are actually discussing.

    What I have yet to hear is an actual rebuke of the thing that is actually the topic. What I have yet to hear is a rebuke of those covered it up. What I have yet to hear is a rebuke of the good fellow Christians who further dismiss the significance of it all with the excuse of “we are all sinners”. What I have exclusively seen are all distractions. Odious, idiotic distractions. Transparent attempts to divert attention from the issue at hand, because Communist Dictatorships and Abortion.

    You are a fucking scumbag, Dukie.

  124. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    DukeDog liar and bullshitter. Nobody is forcing abortions. The fact that poor women have them at higher rates than those with good health care and ready access to birth control is typical. Poor white women have higher rates too. All you have are lies, bullshit, and distortions of reality that fit your delusions. Typical lightweight intellectual loser talk. You should know better.

  125. anteprepro says

    Fascinating, the talking point about Democrats being The Real Racists. Because, unless The Real Racism is the precious “reverse racism” that so flusters the typical white Republican asshole, the Republicans accusing the Democrats of being the Truly Racist Ones are saying that the 80% or so of African Americans who affiliate with Democrats, and the 95% who vote for Democratic presidential candidates, have just been fooled and misled and don’t know racism when they see it.

    Obviously, there is nothing racist at all with that mindset either…..

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/139880/election-polls-presidential-vote-groups.aspx
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/160373/democrats-racially-diverse-republicans-mostly-white.aspx
    http://blackdemographics.com/culture/black-politics/

  126. drst says

    Dukedog @ 131 – you need to present some sources for those stats, son, and nice attempt at redirecting but you didn’t address the fundamental problem that your “buddy” Ben Carson thinks its fine for the government to force women to stay pregnant against their will and give birth against their will.

    Also, an organization that offers low or no cost medical care places its clinics in locations close to people who are living in poverty? What a vast racist conspiracy.

  127. drst says

    Dukedog @ 115

    This is what Republicans say, and have always said: “Content of character, not color of skin”.

    Did you really just attempt to claim that an MLK Jr quote is somehow a Republican mantra?

    Of course you did. It’s the racist white person’s favorite MLK quote, since cherry picked and completely without context it seems like it supports some bs “bootstraps” “I don’t see race” version of reality.

    For some context:

    I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    I have a dream today!

    I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

  128. anteprepro says

    I swear Dukie might as well be a bot. They only have three arguments in their arsenal.

    1. Libruls are bad because a small handful of Big Cities are in poor condition!
    2. Atheists are bad because Communist Dictatorships!
    3. Democrats are Teh Real Racists because I refuse to acknowledge that political parties changed dramatically during the Civil Rights Movement!

    And then just insert additional smug, inflammatory remarks, like the shit about gay wedding cakes, and that is DukeDog.

    Also: I see What a Maroon already provided information I linked to in 135. Whoops.

    Also also: Anyone want to place bets on Dukie actually going back, addressing the OP, and making a clear statement that they oppose and will not make any excuses for Christian child molestors and the people who cover that shit up? I know I wouldn’t bet on it.

  129. What a Maroon, oblivious says

    Also: I see What a Maroon already provided information I linked to in 135. Whoops.

    No worries; can’t hurt to see it twice. And I’d like to see how theDukedog7 space period explains away the voting patterns if they’re not willing to admit that black Americans are right to see the Democrats as the lesser of two evils.

  130. says

    theDukedog 7 @131:

    @Tony! who’s confused about abortion

    I’m not confused at all. All women should be able to have full control over their reproductive anatomy at all times. Full stop. No exclusions.

    [He believes women should be forced to carry unwanted children to term, which means he is opposed to women having full control over their reproductive anatomy]

    Learn. To. Fucking. Blockquote.

    You said:

    Ever hear of the “Roe Effect”? The Roe Effect is the suppression of black population growth by abortion since Roe v Wade. Black children are aborted at a rate 2-3 times higher than white children: 20 million black lives have been terminated since 1073 by abortion.

    First off, your typo actually makes this one of the funniest things you’ve said, given that there were no African-Americans (indeed, no Americans of any sort) in the year 1073.

    Secondly, it doesn’t matter to me how many fetuses-black, white, asian, hispanic or any other race-are aborted. What concerns me is that pregnant women of all races and ethnicities have access to abortion services if they want to make use of them. If that results in 20, 90, or 100 million aborted fetuses, that doesn’t matter to me. The rights of extant, autonomous human persons with rights is what matters. Between a fetus and a pregnant woman, only the latter is an extant, autonomous human person with rights. So they are the ones who matter.

    Thirdly, it is true that the abortion rate among African-American women is higher than among white women. But you, like others, distort the truth to suit your own purpose. From Guttmacher:

    Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women’s unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all. These higher unintended pregnancy rates reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time. Moreover, these realities must be seen in a larger context in which significant racial and ethnic disparities persist for a wide range of health outcomes, from diabetes to heart disease to breast and cervical cancer to sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV.

    Behind the Numbers

    Abortion rates have been declining in the United States for a quarter of a century, from a high of 29.3 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 1981 to an historic low (post-Roe v. Wade) of 19.4 in 2005. The overall number of abortions has been falling too, dropping to 1.2 million in 2005. Currently, about one-third of all abortions are obtained by white women, and 37% are obtained by black women. Latinas comprise a smaller proportion of the women who have abortions, and the rest are obtained by Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and women of mixed race (see chart).

    The abortion rates among women in minority communities have followed the overall downward trend over the three decades of legal abortion. At the same time, however, black women consistently have had the highest abortion rates, followed by Hispanic women (see chart). This holds true even when controlling for income: At every income level, black women have higher abortion rates than whites or Hispanics, except for women below the poverty line, where Hispanic women have slightly higher rates than black women.

    These patterns of abortion rates mirror the levels of unintended pregnancy seen across these same groups. Among the poorest women, Hispanics are the most likely to experience an unintended pregnancy. Overall, however, black women are three times as likely as white women to experience an unintended pregnancy; Hispanic women are twice as likely. Because black women experience so many more unintended pregnancies than any other group—sharply disproportionate to their numbers in the general population—they are more likely to seek out and obtain abortion services than any other group. In addition, because black women as a group want the same number of children as white women, but have so many more unintended pregnancies, they are more likely than white women to terminate an unintended pregnancy by abortion to avoid an unwanted birth.

    The disparities in unintended pregnancy rates result mainly from similar disparities in access to and effective use of contraceptives. As of 2002, 15% of black women at risk of unintended pregnancy (i.e., those who are sexually active, fertile and not wanting to be pregnant) were not practicing contraception, compared with 12% and 9% of their Hispanic and white counterparts, respectively. These figures—and the disparities among them—are significant given that, nationally, half of all unintended pregnancies result from the small proportion of women who are at risk but not using contraceptives.

    Bolding mine.
    Moving on to your next piece of unevidenced bullshit, you said:

    Planned Parenthood started out as a eugenic organization called the “Birth Control League”. It’s motto was “To breed a race of thoroughbreds”

    It’s no secret that Margaret Sanger identified with broad elements of the eugenics movement, but she believed reproductive choices should be made on an individual basis. Moreover, she did not believe in and repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles:

    Eugenics is a theory of improving hereditary
    qualities by socially controlling human reproduction.
    Eugenicists, including the Nazis, were opposed to
    the use of contraception or abortion by healthy and
    “fit” women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger’s
    books were among the very first burned by the Nazis
    in their campaign against family planning (“Sanger
    on Exhibit,” 1999/2000). (Sanger helped several
    Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi
    regime in Germany (“Margaret Sanger and the
    ‘Refugee Department’,” 1993).)
    Sanger, however, clearly identified with the broader
    issues of health and fitness that concerned the early
    20th-century eugenics movement, which was
    enormously popular and well-respected during the
    1920s and ’30s — decades in which treatments for
    many hereditary and disabling conditions were
    unknown. But Sanger always believed that
    reproductive decisions should be made on an
    individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she
    consistently and firmly repudiated any racial
    application of eugenics principles. For example,
    Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that
    effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on
    the grounds that intelligence and other inherited
    traits vary by individual and not by group (Chesler,
    1992).

    In addition, the quote you attribute to Sanger was not hers. It came from Dr. Edward A. Kemf, and has been distorted as well by people like you (from the same link as above):

    “To create a race of thoroughbreds . . .”
    This remark, again attributed originally to Sanger,
    was made by Dr. Edward A. Kempf and has been
    cited out of context and with distorted meaning. Dr.
    Kempf, a progressive physician, was actually
    arguing for state endowment of maternal and infant
    care clinics. In her book The Pivot of Civilization,
    Sanger quoted Dr. Kempf’s argument about how
    environment may improve human excellence:

    Society must make life worth the living and
    the refining for the individual by conditioning
    him to love and to seek the love-object in a
    manner that reflects a constructive effect
    upon his fellow-men and by giving him
    suitable opportunities. The virility of the
    automatic apparatus is destroyed by
    excessive gormandizing or hunger, by
    excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive
    work or idleness, by sexual abuse or
    intolerant prudishness. The noblest and
    most difficult art of all is the raising of human
    thoroughbreds (Sanger, 1922 [1969]).

    It was in this spirit that Sanger used the phrase,
    “Birth Control: To Create a Race of
    Thoroughbreds,” as a banner on the November
    1921 issue of the Birth Control Review. (Differing
    slogans on the theme of voluntary family planning
    sometimes appeared under the title of The Review,
    e.g., “Dedicated to the Cause of Voluntary
    Motherhood,” January 1928.)

    And regarding your comments about Sanger’s Birth Control League, once again, you’re wrong. It wasn’t a eugenics organization. It was a reproductive rights organization:

    The ABCL was founded on the following principles, here excerpted from Margaret Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization:

    We hold that children should be
    Conceived in love;
    Born of the mother’s conscious desire;
    And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health.

    Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.

    At its founding, the ABCL announced the following purposes:

    To enlighten and educate all sections of the American public in the various aspects of the dangers of uncontrolled procreation and the imperative necessity of a world programme of birth control.
    To correlate the findings of scientists, statisticians, investigators, and social agencies in all fields.
    To organize and conduct clinics where the medical profession may give to mothers and potential mothers harmless, reliable methods of birth control.
    To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisors, statesmen, and legislators in effecting the removal of State and Federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding.

    Margaret Sanger listed the following aims of the organization in the appendix of her book The Pivot of Civilization:

    *Research: To collect the findings of scientists, concerning the relation of reckless breeding to the evils of delinquency, defect and dependence;
    Investigation: To derive from these scientifically ascertained facts and figures, conclusions which may aid all public health and social agencies in the study of problems of maternal and infant mortality, child-labor, mental and physical defects and delinquence in relation to the practice of reckless parentage.
    Hygienic and Physiological instruction by the Medical profession to mothers and potential mothers in harmless and reliable methods of Birth Control in answer to their requests for such knowledge.
    Sterilization of the insane and mentally retarded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.
    Education: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of thought and opinion–teachers, ministers, editors and writers to the moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and racial progress.
    Political and Legislative: To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the establishment of a policy of national health and strength.
    Organization: To send into the various States of the Union field workers to enlist the support and arouse the interest of the masses, to the importance of Birth Control so that laws may be changed and the establishment of clinics made possible in every State.
    International: This department aims to cooperate with similar organizations in other countries to study Birth Control in its relations to the world population problem, food supplies, national and racial conflicts, and to urge all international bodies organized to promote world peace, the consideration of these aspects of international amity.

    Note: I find the idea of sterilizing people with mental illness or disabilities a vile idea.

    You said:

    Planned Parenthood’s founder was Margret Sanger. She was a rabid eugenicist and racist.

    She did have racist beliefs and did agree broadly with some of the principles of eugenics. That that is true does nothing to support any of your other assertions, which I’ve shown to be distortions in the above cases, and lies in the remaining few.

    Case in point. You said:

    Planned Parenthood sited its clinics heavily in minority neighborhoods–ever wonder why?

    No, I don’t wonder why, because it PP clinics were not heavily in minority neighborhoods during Sanger’s time:

    Cain also claimed that “75 percent of [clinics] were built in the black community.” But we found no evidence that that was true in Sanger’s time, and it’s not true today.
    Sanger’s first clinic, opened in 1916, was in Brooklyn in a neighborhood called Brownsville, which was 80 percent to 85 percent Jewish in 1910 and 1920, according to author Wendell E. Pritchett’s “Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews & the Changing Face of the Ghetto.” Cathy Moran Hajo writes that the neighborhood was “populated largely by Italians and Eastern European Jews” in “Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916-1939.” She says that Sanger didn’t choose to open her first clinic in Harlem, where infant and mother mortality rates were similar to those of Brownsville.
    In fact, early birth control clinics didn’t welcome black women with open arms, Hajo writes: “In the 1920s and early 1930s, African Americans had far more limited access to birth control than did white women. Not only did many clinics discriminate against black women, but the regions with the largest black populations had fewer clinics.”
    Sanger opened a clinic in Harlem in 1930, and, as mentioned, the “Negro Project” began in the late 1930s.
    That doesn’t support Cain’s implication that Sanger’s “objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities,” or that “75 percent” of clinics were in such neighborhoods. It should also be noted that these early clinics were focused on providing birth control, and Sanger herself warned of the dangers of abortion. “While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization,” she wrote in her 1920 book “Woman and the New Race.”

    Nor are todays PPs concentrated in black neighborhoods:

    This month, the Guttmacher Institute, crunched the numbers on race and clinic location. After cross-indexing racial and ethnic information from the 2000 U.S. Census with the Guttmacher Institute’s own 2008 census of known abortion providers, researchers found:

    * 63 percent of abortion providers are located in predominantly non-Hispanic white neighborhoods.

    * 12 percent are located in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.

    * 9 percent of abortion providers are located in predominantly black neighborhoods.

    * 1 percent of abortion providers are located in other predominantly non-white neighborhoods.

    * 15 percent of abortion providers were located in neighborhoods where no racial group constituted a majority of the population.

    According to the 2000 census, blacks and Hispanics each made up about 12 percent of the U.S. population. “These statistics definitively refute the assertion that most abortion clinics are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods,” the study concludes.

    Finally, you said:

    Abortion is a black holocaust.

    False. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. Many black women-like women of other races-elect to terminate their pregnancy. You seem to think that millions of women choosing to terminate their pregnancy equals a holocaust. Sorry, that’s not how it works. Women who elect to have an abortion procedure do so bc they made the choice to do so. You would rob them of the right to make that choice themselves. You would deny women the right to bodily autonomy. You would enslave half the human populace because you want to control their bodies. That’s one of the many reasons you’re a disgustingly putrid human being.

    Damn. Looking back, I see that your comment @131 is deeply, massively, wrong on pretty much all fronts. You ought to be embarrassed to hold the beliefs you do. It took me longer to create this comment than it did to find and refute your bullshit, which means that you could have done the same if you were actually interested in supporting your opinions with fact. But clearly you’re not. Like other fundamentalist, conservative, theocratic, misogynistic, homophobic bigots, you aren’t interested in facts. So sad.

  131. anteprepro says

    Damn Tony! Bravo. Well researched and a damn good and thorough refutation.

  132. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Applause Tony, applause. DukeDog won’t read or understand it (it doesn’t fit his prejudices), but the lurkers will see DuckDog for the quack he is.

  133. says

    Nerd @144:

    Applause Tony, applause. DukeDog won’t read or understand it (it doesn’t fit his prejudices), but the lurkers will see DuckDog for the quack he is.

    I won’t lie. There’s a small part of me that hopes he’ll read the response and actually attempt to comprehend it.
    A. Really. Small. Part.

    The main reason I wanted to refute his bullshit is for the benefit of others, such as lurkers.

  134. Nick Gotts says

    A black American voting for a Democrat is like a Jew voting for a Nazi. – the Dukedog7

    What utter scum you are, Egnor, using the victims of the Holocaust to prop up your stupid lies. You know as well as I do that the vast majority of black Americans who vote, vote Democrat. So in making this ludicrous comparison, you are not only insulting the Jewsih victims of the Nazis by using their suffering in your dishonest rhetoric, insinuating that the vast majority of black Americans who vote are as stupid as Jews would have been to vote for the Nazis.

    Now, since you insist that an organization remains responsible for everything it has done at least for a century, and since you have introduced the topic of the Nazis, let’s consider the role of the Catholic Church in relation to them. It was, of course the Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church – and not the leader of the Democratic Party or of any atheist organization, who signed a concordat with Hitler – following on from the one signed with Mussolini. The Church was also instrumental in helping leading Nazi war criminals escape at the end of the war. It was the Catholic Centre Party which gave Hitler the majority he needed in the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act which gave him dictatorial powers. Hitler’s puppet ruler in Slovakia was a Catholic priest, Josef Tiso. The Church took no action against him. Never did the Pope or the German hierarchy call for resistance against the Nazis, nor was any Nazi leader ever excommunicated or threatened with excommunication for their crimes. And:

    On December 24, 1936 the hierarchy ordered its priests to read the pastoral letter, On the Defense against Bolshevism, from all the pulpits on January 7, 1937. The letter included the statement : “the fateful hour has come for our nation and for the Christian culture of the western work. The Fuhrer saw the march of Bolshevism from afar and turned his mind and energies towards averting this enormous danger from the German people and the whole western world. The German bishops consider it their duty to do their utmost to support the leader of the Reich with every available means in this defense.”

    Now, I suggest you shut your lying mouth, you hypocritical racist pile of stinking filth.

  135. Al Dente says

    Nick Gotts @46

    nor was any Nazi leader ever excommunicated or threatened with excommunication for their crimes.

    The only Nazi leader excommunicated was Dr. Josef Goebbels. His sin was marrying a divorced Protestant.

  136. What a Maroon, oblivious says

    Typical. I post a beautifully concise, pithy response, only to be overshadowed by Tony’s brilliant tour de force.

    Thanks, Tony.

  137. Lofty says

    I doubt Mr Smegnor will change his mind even if you spent the next decade swamping him with citations, the insufferably stupid never do. Good post though Tony.

  138. says

    Niiiiiice, Tony. A saying about pearls and pigs comes to mind, but that was epic.

    Egnoramus, on the off chance you’re still here, get it through your thick goddamned skull that those so-called “atheist regimes” didn’t commit their atrocities in the name of atheism, while your religious nuts specifically did theirs because of their religion. I see this strawman every-damn-where and it’s rage-inducing.

    Bearing false witness is a sin, so unless you wanna burn so hard your ashes scream for their mother to bring them water, you better cut it out, capisce?