Apparently, some of our representatives are passing unconstitutional declarations

Unbelievable, I know — especially when there are so many right wing guardians of the Constitution and every word of the Founding Fathers in office. But they’re the ones shredding the Constitution!

I guess today has been declared a National Day of Prayer by congress, in complete violation of the first amendment. A Montana judge explains exactly why this is a bad idea.

So, besides violating the principle of separation of church and state, what’s wrong with a national (or state) day of prayer?  First, Americans don’t need a congressional proclamation to tell them to pray; they already have a personal, constitutional right to pray – or not to pray – as they (not the government) see fit.

Second, government is not permitted to be in the business of telling people whether to pray, when to pray or who to pray to.

Third, the National Day of Prayer has become a vehicle for spreading religious misinformation and fundamentalist Christian doctrine under the aegis of the government – again precisely what the framers were seeking to prohibit.

Feel free to pray or not pray today – not in response to a congressional proclamation but because you have a constitutional right to do either. But, if you choose to pray, you may want to ask that our elected officials begin to honor the letter and spirit of the First Amendment and respect the separation of church and state.

After all, each previously swore an oath to do just that.

I choose to honor this day by blatantly and offensively not-praying all day long. And anyone who dares to ask me to pray is going to get two middle fingers, rampant, and a suggestion that they go tell their god to go fuck himself, from me, because I don’t talk to imaginary entities.

The Catholic Church has always been a machine for greed

I really don’t get it. Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII are about to be canonized as saints, which is awfully peculiar: they weren’t particularly magical in their life, just relatively popular, and nobody has any insight into what’s going on in their heaven — which seems to be entirely imaginary anyway.

But the Church is having a gigantic gala event in Rome, with swarms of tourists, and big money corporate sponsorship from banks and oil companies…Oh. Right.

Never mind, there isn’t any mystery at all here. Just the con being briefly exposed.

Also, dead people don’t roll in their graves…but point taken

After that silly poll claiming Britain was a “Christian country”, after many public figures disagreed, I rather like Tim Minchin’s response, given to the British Humanists:

Even if Britain was a Christian country (it isn't); even if "Christian values" were meaningfully distinct from the moral values of humans worldwide (they're not); even if promoting religious doctrine improve moral behaviour in modern society (it doesn't); even if all these were the case, the fact that this rhetoric is being spouted by Mr Cameron would surely make the socialist, leper-lover iconoclast, Jesus Christ, roll in his grave (had he not so famously vacated it).

Even if Britain was a Christian country (it isn’t); even if “Christian values” were meaningfully distinct from the moral values of humans worldwide (they’re not); even if promoting religious doctrine improve moral behaviour in modern society (it doesn’t); even if all these were the case, the fact that this rhetoric is being spouted by Mr Cameron would surely make the socialist, leper-lover iconoclast, Jesus Christ, roll in his grave (had he not so famously vacated it).

It gives way too much credit to a first century religious fanatic (if he existed at all), but I get the point.

I guess I don’t know the right Christians

Right now, I get more vicious hate mail from atheists, a little bit from Christians, and almost none from Muslims — but I shouldn’t take that as representative. You have to look in the right place to find Christian hatred.

You know if any of you commenters said anything like that about any group here, it would be grounds for banning, right?

Uh-oh. I could have warned them.

Some Lutheran churches in Sacramento started a program to lead their members through a close reading of the Bible — the whole Bible, not just the usual study guides.

You’re atheists. You’re already laughing, aren’t you? You know what a huge mistake that is — they were probably expecting an enlightening revelation of God’s Holy Word, but instead, the Bible is sordid work of cheesy pulp fiction.

It’s been an eye-opener: The violence—the sheer level of bloodshed in the Old Testament—has taken many of them by surprise.

“Your Sunday school teachers didn’t tell you about that,” associate pastor Leslie Welton said to a recent class of almost two dozen people.

“How many of you are shocked by the blood and gore and carnage?” asked Welton.

There were nods of agreement around the room: Page by page, chapter by chapter, class members are deeply shocked. With its betrayals, infidelities and lessons stubbornly unlearned, its epic levels of carnage and vengeance, this wild ride through the Old Testament is not the Bible they expected.

You might be thinking that if they’re this shocked, then perhaps they’re also realizing that the foundation of their faith is a piece of crap. Not so!

“For people looking to renew their spiritual lives, the No. 1 thing they should do is read Scripture,” said Jimmy Hurd, minister of Cordova Church of Christ, which launched its own Bible in 90 Days curriculum during the Lenten season. The Rancho Cordova church offers the program each year.

How, though, do they account for the fact that so many atheists know more about their religion, and that more people are abandoning it? They don’t, actually.

To the contrary, the proportion of people who think the Bible is just another book has doubled to about 20 percent in the past three years, the study showed. Two-thirds of the people most skeptical about the Bible are age 48 and younger, the generations most steeped in the solipsism of social media.

That opinion about solipsism is not a quote — it’s the inserted interpretation of the journalist, which I found interesting. She’s got a bit of a bias, doesn’t she?

I hope Facebook isn’t the key to destroying religion. It’d be replacing one evil for another.

Cataclysms on the way!

What are you doing this summer? You might want to change your vacation plans. There is going to be a lunar eclipse tomorrow night, and according to Pastor Hagee, that means disaster. I don’t know what he’s talking about; he’s a minister, he gets loads of tax breaks, so 15 April is no big deal to him.

"I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard, that he has been sending signals to planet Earth," he explained. "God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’"

So what’s going to happen?

Hagee predicted that the four eclipses were signaling a "world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015."

A world-shaking event, some time in a span of a year and a half? That’s pretty vague. Could you at least say something like an event that starts with the letter ‘m’, or maybe ‘j’ or ‘t’, on a planet with a name that definitely begins with an ‘e’. Come on, try a little harder.

But this surprises me:

"God sends planet Earth a signal that something big is about to happen! He’s controlling the Sun and the moon right now to send our generation a signal, but the question is, are we getting it?"

He’s controlling the Sun and moon? But these are phenomena that are reliable and mathematically predictable, a pattern determined by the movements of the bodies involved. It’s like announcing that twice today, God will make both the little hand and the big hand on your clock point straight up — it’s a non-power. We don’t need prayer for it to happen, and praying won’t stop it from happening, and it won’t mean anything other than that it is noon and midnight.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that sometime today, god will make me hungry, and then god will make me find something to eat, and later tonight god will make me sleepy.

Uh-oh, how will I be able to remain an atheist with proof like that?

Bringing back Salt Lake memories

In anticipation of the American Atheist conference next week, many ex-Mormons marched and sent in resignation letters to the LDS leadership. The timing was key.

David Silverman, president of the American Atheists, said the Mormon church has too much influence on people’s lives, especially Utahns’. Officially leaving the church during General Conference sends a message, he said.

"They’re doing it during the General Conference to make a statement, and that statement is that they feel oppressed here in Salt Lake City, where the Mormon church governs so much of not just the Mormons’ lives but everybody else’s lives," Silverman said. "It’s not fair. It’s a violation of the separation of church and state, but it’s also a violation of religious freedom."

They did it during the General Conference? Risky. It might have gotten completely ignored.

When we lived in Salt Lake City, I remember the General Conferences as the times when a news blackout fell over the state. The local newspapers would all run big front page stories on the most tedious pablum: “SENILE OLD MAN SPEAKS FOR TWO HOURS ON HOW WE SHOULD BE NICE”. The LDS leadership was (is) all these older conservative fellows in the same dark suits who took themselves very seriously, and all the news organizations were expected to report in detail everything that was said…not that they ever said anything of any interest or importance whatsoever. It was the time of the year that felt closest to living in North Korea — although, of course, the LDS church never subscribed to purging undesirables with flamethrowers. No violence, just state-enforced veneration of the blandest boringest bureaucrats of the church.

Most of the time, you could ignore the Mormon leadership, especially if you were living in SLC, which was about half Gentile. Not during the General Conference. Even then, though, what was most striking wasn’t the actual leadership, which was facelessly tedious, but that there were so many devout Mormons who would reverently worship every word dripping from the White Geezers at the top. It was weird; it was the time of year when the pod people would start speaking synchronously.

So that’s how biblical literalism works

Michael Peroutka gave a speech in which he revealed how Bible interpretation is done. He declares that evolution is anti-American, and to prove it, he says he is quoting from the Declaration [of Independence]…I’m paraphrasing. You will be surprised at what’s in that document.


There exists a creator God. He is the God of the Bible. He is not Allah, nor any of the Hindu deities, nor is he the God that is in the wind or in the trees or some other impersonal force. He created us. We did not evolve from apes or slimy, swampy things.

I looked real hard in the Declaration of Independence, and I saw a mention of “Nature’s God” and being “created equal”, but all the rest…well. I guess you have to read between the lines and use your imagination a little bit.

Islam and science are compatible, as long as you cut out the bits of science you don’t like

I visited Brighton, once. I took a pleasant stroll down along the beach, dipped my toe in the water, and I liked it! Therefore, my current physiological state is entirely compatible with swimming the English Channel, and how dare anyone criticize my lack of swimming practice and stamina and strength as somehow incompatible with being a successful English channel swimmer. Didn’t you see in my first sentence that I liked it?

That’s how I read Sana Saeed’s article in which she declares that Richard Dawkins is completely wrong about the incompatibility of science and religion. Her reasons are remarkably superficial and trivial, and she manages to kill her own case midway through. Here’s why she thinks they’re compatible:

I spent my childhood with my nose firmly placed between the pages of books on reptiles, dinosaurs, marine life and mammals. When I wasn’t busy wondering if I wanted to be more like Barbara Walters or Nancy Drew, I was busy digging holes in my parents’ backyard hoping to find lost bones of some great prehistoric mystery. I spent hours sifting through rocks that could possibly connect me to the past or, maybe, a hidden crystalline adventure inside. Potatoes were both  apart of a delicious dinner and batteries for those ‘I got this’ moments; magnets repelling one another were a sorcery I needed to, somehow, defeat. The greatest teachers I ever had were Miss Frizzle and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I also spent my childhood reciting verses from the Qur’an and a long prayer for everyone — in my family and the world — every night before going to bed. I spoke to my late grandfather, asking him to save me a spot in heaven. I went to the mosque and stepped on the shoes resting outside a prayer hall filled with worshippers. I tried fasting so I could be cool like my parents; played with prayer beads and always begged my mother to tell me more stories from the lives of the Abrahamic prophets.

That’s all very good — it’s a great start to have a childhood in which she was enthusiastic about science, and perhaps she could have even gone on to be a practicing scientist when she grew up (she didn’t) — and she could have even continued to be a practicing Muslim. There is nothing in her story that rebuts any claim of the incompatibility of science and religion.

But here’s where there is an incompatibility: she could do experiments with magnets and potatoes, but did she ever ask herself if those long prayers really worked? Did she ask her grandfather how he knew heaven existed, and would she have been content if he’d simply said it was a tenet of their religion? Did she ever examine those stories of the Abrahamic prophets and ask if they were really true?

No, she did not. She comes right out and says it: magnets and potatoes, sure, but there are some things you are not allowed to question.

In other words: There’s plenty of wiggle room and then some. On anything that is not established as theological Truth (e.g. God’s existence, the finality of Prophethood, pillars and articles of faith), there is ample room for examination, debate and disagreement, because it does not undercut the fabric of faith itself.

She’s so blinkered by her faith that she doesn’t even realize that setting boundaries on what you may question is completely antithetical to science, and that her religion compels her to accept counterfactual nonsense. The only way she can say religion is compatible with science is by imprisoning a broken science within the limited boundaries of what the patriarchs of her faith will allow.

You may not question god, angels, the Qu’ran, Mohammed, the existence of the afterlife, or God’s will, but hey, as long as you unquestioningly accept everything the antique holy book says about the nature of the universe, it’s totally compatible with science.

She gives an example of how Islam and science are compatible, but it’s enough to make one cry in despair.

Muslims, generally, accept evolution as a fundamental part of the natural process; they differ, however, on human evolution – specifically the idea that humans and apes share an ancestor in common.  

Well, then, that means you don’t accept evolution. There is no good reason to single out humans as exceptional — the science says one thing, religion defies the evidence, and Saeed accepts the religion.

In the 13th century, Shi’i Persian polymath Nasir al-din al-Tusi discussed biological evolution in his book “Akhlaq-i-Nasri” (Nasirean Ethics). While al-Tusi’s theory of evolution differs from the one put forward by Charles Darwin 600 years later and the theory of evolution that we have today, he argued that the elemental source of all living things was one. From this single elemental source came four attributes of nature: water, air, soil and fire – all of which would evolve into different living species through hereditary variability. Hierarchy would emerge through differences in learning how to adapt and survive.

This is a “theory” that is not founded on evidence and experiment, propagates archaic ideas about the structure of the universe (water, air, soil, and fire are not the fundamental attributes of nature), contains erroneous statements about biology (al-Tusi endorsed a hierarchical ladder of life, and also set humans apart as a special case), and completely lacks the population thinking that was the core of Darwin’s insight. He was a smart fellow who did some brilliant things, but he was also a person of his times and his biological explanations were most definitely not comparable to what Darwin came up with 600 years later.

That Saeed thinks they are is just another sign of her ignorance.

Al-Tusi’s discussion on biological evolution and the relationship of synchronicity between animate and inanimate (how they emerge from the same source and work in tandem with one another) objects is stunning in its observational precision as well as its fusion with theistic considerations. Yet it is, at best, unacknowledged today in the Euro-centric conversation on religion and science. Why?

Because it was wrong? Because it did not lead to greater understanding of how biology works? Because it was all tangled up in ridiculous religious beliefs that you were not allowed to question?

I think Saeed understands her religion very well. But despite some early promise in childhood, it’s clear that she doesn’t understand science at all.