Every religion has its insane elements

Orthodox Jews are rioting in Jerusalem. The reason: because the city allows a parking lot to remain open on Saturday, which means people are able to drive on their holy day, which they consider sacred. Anne Barker was there to record the event as a journalist, and she switched on her recorder to document it all — when the protesters turned on her.

I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting – on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms.

It was like rain, coming at me from all directions – hitting my recorder, my bag, my shoes, even my glasses.

Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face.

Somewhere behind me – I didn’t see him – a man on a stairway either kicked me in the head or knocked something heavy against me.

I wasn’t even sure why the mob was angry with me. Was it because I was a journalist? Or a woman? Because I wasn’t Jewish in an Orthodox area? Was I not dressed conservatively enough?

In fact, I was later told, it was because using a tape-recorder is itself a desecration of the Shabbat even though I’m not Jewish and don’t observe the Sabbath.

This is something too many religious people fail to understand — you can practice your religion, other people can practice their religion, but you don’t get to tell other people that they must practice your religion. If your crazy superstition says you aren’t allowed to push a button on a certain day of the week, then don’t. If your old myths claim that your god turns into a cracker when the right ritual is carried out, go ahead and believe that. If your dogma dictates that you should visit a certain magic rock before you die, then go ahead, make your pilgrimage.

But excuse us, everyone who doesn’t have these wacky ideas has a perfect right to push the button, disrespect your cracker, or stay home and skip the crowds…and we also have the right to point and laugh at you. And if you are so intolerant, so irrational, and so vicious as to try and impose your foolishness on others, especially in such disgusting ways, then we have an obligation to use civic law and the power of the state to protect those others’ liberties.

Unfortunately, some states become so entangled in the religious absurdities of a segment of their society that they lose the ability to protect every citizen’s rights. That’s happening in Israel, and it’s happening to a lesser degree here in the US.

Michael Jackson news

I know! He’s dead! But that’s one corpse that you know isn’t going to rest easily.

First, the ghouls are out in force. “psychic” ghoul James Van Praagh says he’s been having conversations with Jackson’s ghost; ghoul enabler Oprah Winfrey has quickly snatched him up to appear on her show and make the entire country disgusted.

Sylvia Browne, quick to gnaw the scraps off the bones, now claims that she has been chatting with the dead guy. Coming in second means she gets the consolation prize of appearing on the Montel Williams show.

There is now a video circulating about that claims to have captured Jackson’s ghost walking through a hallway in Neverland. Oh, the ignominy of it all: lively, talented, enthusiastic black kid, reduced to creepy, wispy white man, and now at the end, seen as nothing more than a compression artifact.

Finally, after the flesh has been stripped from his bones, something has to be done with those untidy scraps of discarded mortality, lest they interfere with subsequent myths about his faked death and new life frolicking about with Elvis. There will be a memorial service. A huge, overblown, expensive memorial service to the tune of $2.5 million. Would you believe there is a poll about who should pay for it?

Should California Taxpayers Pay For Michael Jackson’s Memorial?

Yes, absolutely, 100%. 46.73%

They should pay for some of it, and the Jacksons should also help pay. 22.43%

No, this is not their responsibility. 30.84%

They can’t be serious. A dead wealthy popular entertainer with an extremely checkered reputation should not be receiving a state-sponsored funeral.

(via Tommy Holland’s Vision)

Brother Sam Singleton, the Atheist Evangelist, on “Patriarchs and Penises”

On 11 July in St Paul, the Irreverend Singleton will be presenting a two-act play titled “On Patriarchs and Penises”, which promises to be delightfully rude and will almost certainly give the accommodationists the vapors.

Park describes the scene: “The stage is black and bare except for a pulpit, a small altar bench, three rickety folding chairs, and a coat tree, all starkly white. Brother Sam, in his signature frock coat, blue vest and matching spectacles, conducts the crowd through a hilarious and hair-raising tour of his childhood among ‘the tongues-speaking, snake-handling, frothing-at-the-mouth holy rollers,’ and subsequent ‘reversion to the atheistic state into which we all are born,’ before ending Act I with a mercilessly satiric deconstruction of the role of God in American life.”

She notes that the second act has Brother Sam teaching a “biblically accurate but somewhat irreverent “Bible class” in which Brother Sam satirically details the symbolic use of penises throughout the Scriptures. “Nobody ever told me that what ties the whole book together, its narrative thread, is penises,’ he says.

I think I’m going to have to try and make it to this one.

(via The Sunny Skeptic)

Poor business plan

I don’t think I’d trust this Latvian money-lender to stay in business for long — he’s giving small loans and asking for your soul as the only collateral. He doesn’t employ collection agents, using only fear and superstition to get people to pay him back, which might work for a little while…but only until the atheists show up. Sure, I’ll take a loan for $500, and hey, I think I’ll just default and let you keep the collateral. If you only want to trust me for $1.98, that’s fine, I’ll take it and you can have my soul for as long as you want.

There’s also a poll with the story: Would you use your soul as collateral for a loan?. Unfortunately, you’ll have to until tomorrow to get the results.

That month flew by…time for another Molly

It’s July already? Time to tally up the votes in the last Molly nomination thread and induct yet another regular commenter into the Order of the Molly.

The acknowledged worthy for the month of May is Kel. About time, too, his name keeps coming up month after month, and someone is always jumping in to wave their arms about and eclipse him.

So now you have to think back over the past month of voluminous commenting and pick out a name that stood out for you, and leave it in the comments right here.

McLeroy is down; could Texas possibly consider an even greater wackaloon to replace him?

Yes, Texas could. After ditching creationist dentist Don McLeroy as head of the state board of education, Governor Rick Perry is now considering Cynthia Dunbar for the job. Dunbar is the author of a book called One Nation Under God, and despises public education…just the person to put in charge of public education, right?

In a book published last year, Dunbar argued the country’s founding fathers created “an emphatically Christian government” and that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.” She endorses a belief system that requires “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.”

Also in the book, she calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”

The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical,” she wrote, because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children.

The discussion in that article is bizarre. Crazy Dunbar is regarded as a likely choice because her selection would make far-right conservatives happy; they don’t even want a moderate Republican to be considered for the job. And Dunbar claims that she is just the person to bring together the various factions on the current board!

The other conference I missed…

…was the SkepchickCon in Minneapolis this past weekend. This was a consequence of some extremely ugly last minute flight rearrangements from Germany that brought me home significantly later than I had planned (although Lufthansa did helpfully tell me I could get back earlier if I would just buy that seat in first class in an earlier flight…for an additional $5000). Melissa Kaercher did make the grand effort of connecting me up virtually over skype for the Evolution 101 panel, but unfortunately, the internet in my hotel went totally kablooiee 5 minutes after the panel started.

Oh, well. I learned about everything I missed from Greg Laden and bug_girl. Next year! Next year I must go!

Gosh, I think I went to the wrong meeting

While I was off at the Lindau Nobel meeting, hanging out with mere Nobel prize winners and scientists and enthusiastic graduate students, I seem to have missed my chance to hang out with fairies and angels.

About 250 people came to the Methow Valley June 26 through 28 from as far away as Europe and Hawaii to participate in the ninth annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress, an outdoor festival in a secluded mountain meadow called Skalitude.

Hey, I know where that is — near Twisp (a wonderful name for a fairy congress), Washington, and very lovely place. And they were gathered for such a noble purpose!

“The purpose of the congress is to encourage communication and cooperation of the fairy realm,” said Michael “Skeeter” Pilarski, the event’s founder and organizer.

The human world is in crisis and can use all the help it can get, Pilarski said, so why not form alliances with those in other realms?

Why not, indeed. It sounds so reasonable. They’re also right about something.

Skeptics might mock the participants or dismiss them as New Age hippies, but they say their belief system is not much different from Native American animists or even Christians who believe in angels.

You’re exactly right, Skeeter. There’s no difference at all between what you’re doing and what’s going on in churches every day, all across the world.