Huckabee heaven

As many of the readers here know, one of the most common criticisms of us uppity atheists is the idea that the religion we critize doesn’t exist: that the true power of faith is thoughtful, intelligent, and deep, and plucking out random weird beliefs isn’t really representative. When I hear that (and I have, often), I just have to roll my eyes and give the apologist a scathing look — if they believe naive god-wallopers weren’t the dominant form of religious belief on the planet, then I can at least castigate the self-declared ‘sophisticated’ theology for being an exercise in willful blindness.

But here’s another case. This is a presidential candidate. He has an audience eating out of his hand with his speech on how much he looooooooooves his guns, how the UN should float away, and other fodder for wingnuts. And of course, with gun love comes the love of Christ.

“watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”

Pretty deep thinking there from Mike Huckabee. Shallow, stupid git. But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible.

Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.

That’s easy to say in San Francisco

Mark Morford has an exceptionally optimistic — dare I say, “triumphal” — article on the collapse of the religious right today. People are reacting (in the right way, so far) to the tremendous damage the Bush presidency has done to our prestige, our security, our economy, our rights, and the legacy we’ll leave to our children, and every reasonable person that Morford knows is reveling in the growing political morbidity of the Republican party. And it was all so inevitable.

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Those Catholics in Canada have been acting up lately, haven’t they?

Now the Catholic schools want to ban the HPV vaccine. I simply do not understand that attitude. I can understand wanting to protect your daughter from the entanglements and risks of too-young sex, but this is a vaccine to protect them 1) from a disease 2) transmitted by sex. My eyes tend to focus more on point 1 than on point 2; 1 has greater penalties and none of the joys of 2, and protecting against 1 does not entail that 2 will occur.

Is there something in those communion crackers that shorts out the logic circuits of the brain?

Pandagon disturbs me

Sometimes, men really suck. Amanda horrifies me with this wife-beating video: a horrible little man browbeats, strikes, and briefly chokes his wife while having their children videotape the whole thing. I guess he felt that she deserved it.

I couldn’t help but noticed that the wretched Y-chromosome-bearing thug was also prominently wearing a bright, sparkly cross around his neck the whole time.

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Call to action!

Everyone: get on your email or your phone, contact your representative, and tell them to support HR2826, the house bill to restore habeas corpus. You can find the text of the bill here (search by bill number for “HR 2826”). This is an opportunity to tell your congresspeople to support a positive action to restore a little bit of respect for the constitution, instead of the usual desperate call to oppose some odious scrap of legislative defilement coming out of the far right reaches of political hell.

Hallelujah! The GOP presidential train wreck has been SAVED!!

By the addition of a new candidate who actually believes in God. Yes, everyone, Alan Keyes has entered the race.

Dear jebus, why is the race for the election of the president of the most militarily powerful country on earth such a ludicrous joke? Shouldn’t this be an office for serious people with serious plans and serious expertise, and shouldn’t certifiable lunatics like Keyes be given the cold shoulder? (Oh, right: they can’t do that, because if sanity were a prerequisite, the entire Republican slate would evaporate.)