Mine eyes have seen the glory

Tired of the sanctimonious appropriation of all that is good in American history by the Christian right? Roger Ailes delivers a magnificent denunciation of the WSJ’s attempt to claim the abolitionist movement as a blessedly Christian endeavor by quoting Frederick Douglass.

Revivals in religion, and revivals in the slave trade, go hand in hand together. (Cheers.) The church and the slave prison stand next to each other; the groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master. (Hear, hear.) The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneer’s block stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit, the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches.

Now that is a fine Sunday sermon.

I fully understand that many individual Christians were active in the abolition and civil rights movements; I assert that their virtues lie in their recognition of the humanity of their fellows, and had absolutely nothing to do with the institution of their religion. Some of our finest moments in history have been those times when people defy the dogma and superstition with which they are smothered from an early age.

(hat tip to Hillary)

Nathan Newman on Romney

Nathan Newman asks a good question about Mitt Romney’s rejection of the godless:

And at some level, why shouldn’t a person’s religious beliefs be relevant?

They should be. However, when one holds a minority belief about religion, one that is widely reviled, then it is to one’s interest to insist that religion be off the table. That’s a purely pragmatic concern. In addition, I think there’s an element of resentment: we atheists have been told so often to sit down and shut up and keep our opinions out of the debate, even by people who don’t believe in religion themselves, that we tend to get a little cranky when we see people of faith indulging themselves in a class of criticisms denied to us, or that trigger howls of protest when we say them.

There is also a sound principle involved. In the next election, I’ll be voting for a religious person for president—there won’t be any atheist candidates, and if there were, they wouldn’t stand a chance. I cannot demand that the candidates believe in a certain way, but I can still insist that they govern as a secular leader. That’s the best I can hope for.

But Newman is right that that doesn’t mean we need to lay low.

I think it’s a profound mistake for atheists to demand that such religious debates be taken out of the public sphere, since they will never be taken out of voters’ minds. Instead, us progressive atheists should be engaging in that faith-based discussion more vigorously, laying out our belief systems and helping make voters comfortable with our viewpoint as part of the menu of “religious” options, not in order to convert them but just to integrate it into the terrain of debate that people are more familiar with.

Otherwise, atheism will just remain the unspoken Other, which voters will inherently (and rightly) distrust because they just won’t know what it means personally to the politician involved. So I’m all for a religion in public life debate — and I’m prepared to argue for why progressive atheism leads to the kinds of public policy voters should want. But if we don’t make the case, we can’t expect Christian voters to want anything other than what they are familiar with.

I think debating in order to convert people would be a good thing to do, actually — a large voting bloc of vocal atheists would do wonders for the body politic. I think the issue is one of framing the argument in a positive way: not, don’t vote for Candidate X because she is a [Catholic/Mormon/Pagan/whatever], but do vote for Candidate Y because she is a rationalist who holds sensible secular values. Romney was playing the blind, stupid politics of exclusion rather than promoting the virtues of his ideas.

Can we hound him until he resigns now?

Revere reminds us of the low esteem in which atheists are held, and specifically, that we are regarded as much less trustworthy than Mormons, a question brought up by the candidacy of Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (24% would refuse to vote for a Mormon for president, while 53% are against the idea of an atheist president). It’s hard to feel much solidarity with our Mormon countrymen, though, when one of their more prominent representatives can say something like this.

We need to have a person of faith lead the country.

It seems to me a little odd that people can have temper tantrums over a campaign worker criticizing Catholics, while a presidential candidate outright disenfranchising everyone in the country who rejects the nonsense of religious belief doesn’t seem to be stirring much concern at all. All together, everyone: Mitt Romney is a bigot who does not deserve to be in public office.

I like this guy’s style

An atheist goes for a walk and is accosted by a couple of Christians, and he defends himself…no, more than that, he goes on the offensive. It’s great to watch. This is what we all have to do: no more appeasement, no more making excuses for the foolishness of others, just smack down their yapping noises aggressively, confidently, without compromise. And he laughs good-naturedly at their crazy ideas. Perfect!

Sagan joins the fray

The NYT has a nice article on Carl Sagan’s new posthumous book—it was put together by his widow, Ann Druyan, and she makes a few good points:

In the wake of Sept. 11 and the attacks on the teaching of evolution in this country, she said, a tacit truce between science and religion that has existed since the time of Galileo started breaking down. “A lot of scientists were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it anymore,” Ms. Druyan said over lunch recently.

I’ll say. It was a stupid truce, anyway, entirely to the benefit of the old guardians of mythology.

Darwin Day party coming right up!

The Myers household is going to celebrate the day in half an hour — we’ve got the cake, we’ve got the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, we’ve got the hot chocolate — and we figure we’ll party by watching CNN at 8ET to see if Dawkins and Hitchens are going to go on a rampage. I hope they do, but I also sort of expect that they’re being set up by the theidiots at the Zahn show. I’ll report back on how (and if) the show goes.

Hey, the CNN show went well! Dawkins was good, emphasizing the positive aspects of atheism. The panel consisted of Ellen Johnson of American Atheists (good work, getting an American representative), Rachel Maddow of Air America, and a deranged dimwit priest named Jesse Lee Peterson who made the godless look damn good. You know we’re on the winning side when the resident theist resorts to protesting the way atheists seek to impose their evil lifestyle on Americans in exactly the same way those wicked homosexuals imposed their lifestyle on heterosexuals (that was a real “WTF?” moment). Ellen Johnson was also clear and assertive, and got the most time on the panel; Maddow was also strong in stating that freedom from religion is exactly what the Constitution guarantees us.

I’m relieved. I was worried about a hatchet job, but our secular representatives made an excellent show.

OneGoodMove is sure quick—the complete segment is available here already, in case you missed it.

‘Tube atheists

Lots of people have been emailing me about this: YouTube is getting weird about censoring accounts by atheists. This one fellow, Nick Gisburne, with a long history on the service had his account abruptly deleted due to its “inappropriate nature”—he’d read some excerpts of violent passages from the Koran, with no commentary at all. It’s bizarre—it’s apparently not that he was espousing atheism, which YouTube does not seem to object to, but that he read quotes that put Islam in a bad light.

This is a remix of the ungodly CNN panel, with refutations and arguments imbedded in response to the harpies’ wicked denunciations. Good stuff!And remember, we’re guessing Dawkins and Hitchens will be on CNN tomorrow at 8ET. Unless Paris Hilton steps on a poodle or something.

(via Freethought Weekly)

The ever-shifting plans of CNN

OK, here’s the latest word on tonight’s show on atheists with Paula Zahn: there will be a different version of the previous report on ostracized atheists. Dawkins’ interview will be four minutes long. There will also be a panel with Niger Innis (a conservative Republican), Roland Martin (a religious commentator), and Christopher Hitchens (atheist pain-in-the-ass). Apparently, they searched the entire United States of America and couldn’t find a single atheist, so they had to import a couple from one of those godless foreign countries. You know, if they’d called me this morning I could have rushed off to the airport; when one is the only atheist in America, as I seem to be, one has to get used to making these emergency runs to meet demands to appear on a freakshow.

I guess this is standard operating procedure, with much last-minute juggling of the schedule, so you might tune in at 8pm EST tonight and discover that they thought 10 minutes of some guy playing the accordion would be more entertaining. Don’t be surprised, it could happen.

Debbie Schlussel might become a Muslim terrorist any day now

Really, I don’t read Debbie Schlussel’s blog—a reader sent me a link, so I put on the waders and gas mask and climbed down into the sewer. I’m now completely baffled; why is this insane and deeply stupid person ever put on television? Her response to the CNN complaints is illustrative, and even if you sympathize with her, you’ve got to recognized the big picture here: she’s not very bright.

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