How can we be better than the fundamentalists?

Fellow atheists! We have truth on our side, and science as a powerful tool. The other side is full of lunatic ideas and stupidity; they cripple our country with their corruption of education and denialism. We are unstoppable. We shall be eventually be victorious.

So, wait, if their ideas are so plainly bogus and repressive, why do people still join fundie churches and throw money at charismatic con artists? Are they crazy or stupid? No, maybe not — maybe it’s because atheists aren’t recognizing some important aspects of the human condition.

A few years ago one of my friends had a birthday party, and he invited all the homeschool families he knew to his party. It may seem odd to an outsider to have young children at his 20th birthday party, but it was not the least bit weird to me (parties with my family are the same way; there were as many kids under 13 at my 18th birthday party as there were teens). But after an entire evening of playing board games with people of all ages, washing dishes together, and praying for each other, one of my public school friends (the only person who had attended public school at the party) said to me, “That was so much fun. I never experienced this in my life.” She explained that she never had an evening playing board games with children of all ages. In fact, she never went to someone’s house and had them pray for her either. It was foreign to her, but she liked it.

Fundamentalism offers that kind of community. Yes, the community creates pain and breaks sometimes, but it’s still community that often attracts people to fundamentalism.  I was looking through photos of my teen years earlier this week, and every photo of me has a child in the picture. Our community valued children.

The other end of fundamentalism has been a lot of pain: a lot of guilt over purity culture, a lot of culture shock, a lot of shame from never living up to expectations. The purity culture and anti-feminist culture let me down. It didn’t keep its promise. In the end, it didn’t make us closer together as a family, and it didn’t make us better than secular families. I’m not defending fundamentalism, except to say this.

Quit saying fundies are just crazy-no-brainers while secularists are enlightened and free thinkers.

Fundamentalist ideas are crazy-no-brainers, but sane, intelligent, ordinary people sign up for them all the time. Maybe we ought to pay a little more attention to the rational reasons people follow irrational ideas.

That bit about every photo from her teen years including children in it struck me as significant…and you don’t have to be fundamentalist to have that. I grew up in a great big messy extended family with swarms of cousins and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandparents, and religion hardly ever came up (except maybe with some eyerolling at a couple of wacky branches of the family that went Mormon and John Birch), so it can be a secular experience. But my own kids got far less of that, constantly getting ripped up and moved to strange distant cities at the commands of the peripatetic academic life style.

We’d like to believe that the triumph of secularism is inevitable — how can we fail when we’re going up against such nutty ideas? — but maybe it isn’t, if we neglect social and community and family ideals and pander only to nerdy asocial guys in tech.

We really need to wake up to the reasons normal people find value in weird religions.

“You people”

You can hardly blame Hobby Lobby for refusing to serve Christ-killers on Christmas, now can you?

Beginning your shopping list for Hanukkah gifts and decorations? If so, make sure to avoid Hobby Lobby, a swiftly growing U.S. crafts store with 561 stores, which sells zero Hanukkah merchandise, and hires Jewish intolerant employees.

On September 27th, Ken Berwitz took to his blog to explain what happened when a friend of his entered Hobby Lobby seeking Hanukkah goods. To the customer’s surprise, a sales associate callously replied, “We don’t cater to you people.”

Understandably, Mr. Berwitz had to hear this supposed truth for himself, and quickly made a call to Corporate to ask why Hobby Lobby didn’t put Hanukkah goods on their item list this year.

The response: ”Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”

My values involve never setting foot inside a Hobby Lobby store.

Ex-Muslims of North America

While I was in Washington DC a while back, I got to talk with Sarah Haider for a bit. She’s one of the leaders of the Ex-Muslims of North America, and they are trying to build up a greater profile — slowly and cautiously, though, because as she explained to me, there are a lot of non-ex-Muslims who want to infiltrate their group and expose their membership for apostasy. So if you’re an ex-Muslim who is in the closet about it, and you’re looking for a group that takes sensible precautions to protect their membership, you might want to reach out to EXMNA. I was very impressed with their professionalism and thoroughness.

I also wanted to mention this other aspect of their work. Sure, there are Muslim fanatics they have to be on the guard against, but also they’re imbedded in an unfortunately xenophobic culture that has turned all Muslims, even the ex kind, into boogeymen; and then there are the apologists who go too far the other way and pretend that hard-line Islam is benign and must be sheltered.

These days, there is a stark polarity that exists in media, academia and public life when it comes to discussions about Islam and Muslims. There are those who propagate racist, bigoted and xenophobic ideas against Muslims, against anyone who comes from a Muslim background, and even against people who are not Muslim at all (e.g. Sikhs). These types of people (the bigots) tend to treat all Muslims (or all those perceived to be Muslim) as a monolith, a horde without internal differences or dissent. On the other hand, there are those who react to the bigoted, xenophobic types by trying to justify the violent parts of Islam and the harsh actions of some Muslims. This second type (the apologists) often shields Islam and Muslims from any and all critique and scrutiny, even the kinds of critique and scrutiny they themselves apply to other ideologies like Christianity, Capitalism, Communism, and others.

I don’t envy them the narrow tightrope they have to walk, but these are people doing it as well as possible. Check out Ex-Muslims of North America. Don’t expect them to embrace you immediately, though — they’re understandably wary.

The inconsistency of Hamza Tzortzis

This is an interesting clip of Tzortzis first rebuking Lawrence Krauss for his lack of an objective morality in admitting that there are certain conditions under which he could not condemn incest, and then, in a different debate, Tzortzis defending sex with children and rationalizing the lack of a taboo in the Qu’ran against it.

It’s so hypocritical, and so lacking in a rational morality. Krauss’s argument has a clear foundation in mutual consent and a lack of harm; we should not prohibit private actions of consenting adults that do not cause harm to others.

Tzortzis tries to claim that the Qu’ran uses similar principles in accommodating sex with children, by claiming that it should only be done when the child is physically and emotionally ready. But he ignores the concept of consent, and in fact flouts it when one of his points in favor of some cases of child marriage is that the father was willing to give away the child. And of course he doesn’t bother to mention the disturbing fact that he’s not discussing cases of kids exploring their sexuality together (I suspect he’d be dead set against that), but of grasping old men taking ownership of little girls and using them as sex toys.

The Catholics are still pulling this stunt

The lesson is never learned. MPR is running a local story on a St Paul parish which was afflicted with another of those perambulating pedophile priests. Curtis Wehmeyer was a known sexual predator to the Catholic church, and they sent him to St Paul and didn’t tell any of the locals.

Curtis Wehmeyer kept his white 2006 camper parked outside Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul where he served for six years, three of them as pastor.

With the shades drawn, Wehmeyer could avoid the obligations of priestly life. He got drunk, smoked pot and looked at child pornography. He also lured to the camper two boys whose mother worked at the parish, plied them with alcohol, turned on pornography and told them to touch themselves. Several times, he touched one of the boys, according to police records.

The family trusted "Father Curt." As a priest, he had special powers. He could anoint the sick and baptize the young. Maybe, the mother hoped, he could inspire one of her sons to become a priest.

Why would anyone want their child to become a priest?

The St Paul/Minneapolis archdiocese had a “delegate for a safe environment” who actually wrote a letter concluding that he would “recommend against any disclosure in his workplace” — apparently, “safe environment” means safe for priests, because they did a remarkably good job covering for a nasty man who was exploiting the children of his parish. The coverup has been unambiguously documented in a memo posted at the link.

Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest who was one of the earliest national whistleblowers on clergy sex abuse in the 1980s, said the memo shows that parents cannot trust the archdiocese to protect their children.

“Celibate clergy who aren’t trained in psychology are in no position to make that kind of a judgment call over someone like Wehmeyer,” he said.

Yet they all assume that their training in theology, or perhaps it is their imaginary direct line to a god, gives them the expertise to be counselors, psychologists, and therapists. It does not. These people are quacks and frauds who let a child molester have access to children for a decade — and even now they’re unapologetic about it.

The media have become Jesus-stupid

OK, this is just stupid. A lawyer is trying to get the conviction of Jesus overturned. The state involved no longer exists, the man has no living kin or friends to carry the case forward, and it’s not even certain the individual actually existed…not to mention that the case is 2000 years old and is only one of many thousands of similar executions carried out by Rome. Dumb, a total waste of time, something to laugh at briefly and then dismiss.

But the article goes on and on, at overtly theological length. I had just clicked through when someone sent me the link, and as I was reading this, I was wondering…what is the source here? Is this one of those wacky religious newspapers or something? No serious secular source would give a good god damn for this nonsense.

So I looked. This was from Time magazine.

As oddball as the case may be, Indidis’ effort does raise a larger theological question that Christians have long debated: Why did Jesus have to die? Theologians have argued that his death was required for salvation to actually happen and that it was important for Jesus, who claimed to be the Messiah, the God-man, to experience human suffering and death.

TIME devoted a cover story to that question in 2004, when Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ premiered. Theories of atonement, the theological term for the meaning of Jesus’ death, have varied throughout Christian history, and the story is a deep dive into how the doctrine of atonement changed over time:

What was the cosmic reason for his agony? What is its purpose, its divine calculus? How precisely does his death, usually referred to in this context as the atonement, lead to the salvation of humanity?

The atonement “is the centerpiece of Christianity, and it’s what distinguishes it from all other religions,” says Giles Gasper, a religious historian who has written a book about one of the topic’s great medieval interpreters. Without at least an intuitive comprehension of atonement, a believer stands little chance of making sense of the faith’s promises of redemption and eternal life.

It is a question believers will continue to ponder. But as the Apostle Paul explained, in the New Testament’s Book of Romans, the atonement comes with rewards: “If we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

How does the execution of some guy lead to our salvation, and what cosmic purpose did his agony have? It doesn’t, and none. Case closed. Bye.

I knew there was a reason I haven’t read Time in years.

I’m happy to make a deal with theists

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

Oh, hi, Rachel Held Evans. I hear you’d like to make a deal with us atheists. That’s rather sweet! Let’s hear it.

Dawkins is known for pushing his provocative rhetorical style too far, providing ample ammunition for his critics, and already I’ve seen my fellow Christians seize the opportunity to rail against the evils of atheism.

As tempting as it is to classify Dawkins’ views as representative of all atheists, I can’t bring myself to do it.

I can’t bring myself to do it because I know just how frustrating and unfair it is when atheists point to the most extreme, vitriolic voices within Christianity and proclaim that they are representative of the whole.

So, atheists, I say we make a deal: How about we Christians agree not to throw this latest Richard Dawkins thing in your face and you atheists agree not to throw the next Pat Robertson thing in ours?

Uh-oh. Did you really just compare Richard Dawkins to Pat Robertson? Really? I mean, because that gets your “deal” off on the wrong foot straight away. I do agree that Dawkins has been prone to gaffes, especially on twitter — he’s a master of thoughtful lucidity when he takes the time to write in the long form, as in a book, but oh, boy, do I agree that he has a knack for blowing it in the short form.

So you want to compare: on our side, a brilliant fellow with a long career in science who carries some unfortunately antiquated attitudes and has a tendency to be blunt on twitter; and on your side, a lifelong con artist who bilks little old ladies out of their life savings so he can buy diamond mines, to which he ships mining equipment under the guise of charitable rescue. Hmmm. This isn’t exactly a fair exchange that you are proposing.

And it’s not an exceptional choice you’ve made in Pat Robertson. There’s the Pope and his gang of child rapers, there’s Oral Roberts and Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham and the guy with the giant teeth — Joel Osteen — and Creflo Dollar and Robert Tilton and Jim Bakker and Paul and Jan Crouch and Ted Haggard…I could go on and on. Richard Dawkins is well off because he has earned his money with his writing talent, and by writing a number of critically well-regarded books. But he’s a peon compared to these pirate extortionists that use your religion to bilk thousands out of their cash. You might fairly argue that some of his personal views are a bit old fogeyish — he’s only human — but to compare one of ours, who has worked hard to disseminate good science, to one of yours, who has lived fat off the hate and fear of humanity…well, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take your offer seriously. Or perhaps laugh in your face and snarl and sweep the table clear before stomping furiously out the door.

I suspect that you aren’t negotiating in good faith, ma’am.

But you’re in luck! I’ve already voluntarily given away the store. I have this book, The Happy Atheist, and right there in the very first chapter I say this:

There is nothing unusual about my town. This is perfectly ordinary, rural midwestern America, like thousands of other small towns all across the country. We’re just immersed in religion, like every other god-soaked spot in lightly-populated, Republican-leaning, Real-Live Genuine USA.

I would even say that these are good people, like most human beings, who are mostly concerned with getting along, doing well for their families, and seeing their community thrive as a safe and stable place. I don’t accept the common atheist line that religion is a phenomenon that makes men do evil acts, like fly airplanes into buildings or start holy wars; it can and has, of course, but those are the pathological extremes, and it isn’t right to judge an idea by the excesses of those maniacs who turn a belief into a cause for violence. Mainly what religion does is make people believe in ludicrously silly things, substitute dogma for reason and thought, and all too often, draw people down into self-destructive obsession as they fret more over their reward in the next life than their accomplishments in this one.

See? I already agree that my mother and your beloved relatives and maybe you and Richard Dawkins and the Unitarian church pastor and the guy who fixes my plumbing aren’t all equivalent to a moral fuckwit like Pat Robertson! You didn’t have to offer anything, and your insults to atheists were completely unnecessary! Doesn’t that make you feel good?

So, agreed, I won’t mischaracterize all Christians as being war-mongering terrorists and greedy exploiters and unethical damaged goods. I’ve never thought that, and will try to take greater care to avoid rhetorical excess. That’s a deal.

But…

We’re still going to jump on you all for the nonsense and bullshit you do believe. And boy oh boy, there is a lot of that.

For instance, you claim to be a skeptic and a follower of Jesus. You probably are skeptical about many things, but to say so in the same sentence in which you announce that you actually believe a first century Jewish mystic actually had magic powers worthy of your allegiance…the incongruity is hilarious. Even if you claim it’s his philosophy you love, well, that’s a chickenshit excuse used by a lot of people who want to hew to the in-group of Christianity. There is no coherent philosophy there: it’s a cobbled-together mess thrown together by proselytizing religious fanatics. And really, if you’re going to sneer at Richard Dawkins for a few bad tweets, are you willing to stand up for the Apostle Paul? Or perhaps Augustine or Luther? Which have been more influential in shaping the beliefs that millions of people actually have?

I agree that Christian beliefs are complex and scattered all over the map — Calvinists are different from Mormons are different from Baptists. But there are still these common absurdities that clutter the brains of their adherents.

They believe in a guiding intelligence in the universe that is especially concerned with the sexual behavior of one species on one small planet.

They believe that they must spend time and money placating this intangible being by worshipping it or, preferably, giving money to its self-appointed intermediaries.

Christians believe that the universal sentient principle that rules the universe somehow condensed itself down into the form of one man, and that because he was killed (only not really), this god is now able to forgive us for an act of willful frugivory by one of our distant ancestors.

And the reward for this forgiveness is that some undefinable fraction of our consciousness will be permitted to live forever in an invisible church in the sky, rather than being set on fire and suffering eternal torment.

I am quite able to agree that you Christians are mostly harmless. But when you look objectively at the goofball ideas that you consider to be essential core beliefs of your religious philosophy, it’s a fair cop to say that you also look like freakin’ idiots.

Were you hoping that that was on the negotiating table? Because it’s not.

I get email

Aww, I don’t get as much furious Catholic email as I used to, so this is just a sentimental blast from the past.

www.vaticancatholic.com I hereby declare- you to be – – an unlawful obstructionist. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. I repeat- to immediately disperse. I order all your activity to immediately cease. I repeat-to immediately cease. It is not in accord with the ordinances of Canon Law. Due to your catalytic tendency of disseminating objectives adverse to Christendom – you are therefore ordered to discontinue your illegal profession. Failure to do so will result in proactive, responsive, and co-active measures. I judge, adjudge, adjudicate, deem, determine and declare your thoughts, words, actions, public or secret, and omissions, biological and spiritual property, subject to the Jurisdiction of the Unfathomable, Infinite, and Ineffable Excellence of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Further, your humanist anachronism, obscurantism, absurdum, intent, mission, and schemes, are henceforth proscribed and condemned. You may be arrested and or subject to other police action. It has so been declared: It is declared that all non-Catholic government exists in a state of inauthenticity. It is thenceforth declared that all modern constitutional states lack canonical legitimacy. It has therefore been thenceforth declared that their existence is an offense to the Divine Majesty and a crime against humanity. The aforesaid Freemasonic corporations are hereby declared anachronical to true human progress. It is decided in order for modern constitutional states to gain authenticity they must recognize the Supreme Jurisdiction of the Papacy and all Papal Dogmas. As a failure to do so will only inflame the Catholic against such blasphemous tyrannical backwards regimes. Lord God is due to make Visitation to such blighted and noxious governments and tyrannies. He will Visit the iniquities upon the infidels and the Anti-Church bigots. Terror will overtake the faces of the unwashed masses. These exquisite bigots against the Papacy will know that the Lord God Himself has done it. The infidel are richly fattened for such Visitation. It is hereby determined. ‘Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra’. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Libertarianism (and the constitution) are simply tyrannical failures and instruments that lead to false flag attacks and government-run pedophilia through their Manual (and Visual) Body-Cavity Searches of Juvenile Hall youth. A Catholic Monarchy simply is the answer to today’s varied and many problems. There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com

So when did the Catholics declare paragraph breaks to be heretical?

There are good Catholics. There is no good Catholicism.

Kristen Ostendorf was a teacher at a Catholic school in Minnesota for 18 years. Then one day, in a workshop with 120 other teachers, she openly confessed how she lived her life.

It wasn’t planned. It was a very surreal moment when I heard myself saying the things I tried not to say. And I was at once terrified and really glad and proud. I didn’t just say, “I’m gay, I’m in a relationship with a woman, and I’m happy,” and sit down. That really wasn’t the point of what I was saying. It was, “This is my prayer for all of us: That we mean what we do.” Then I sat down and I thought, “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” I hadn’t considered [the repercussions], but I didn’t know I was going to say what I said.

Take a guess what happened next. Go on, I bet you can do it, no problem.

The next day, not even after any significant deliberation, but the very next day, she was called into the office and asked to resign. She refused, so they fired her.

This is the same school that recently compelled their president to resign when it was discovered that he was in a long-term relationship with another man.

Ms Ostendorf seems like a good person with a great deal of personal integrity, yet, unfortunately, much of her discussion in that article is about how Catholicism is such a positive, affirming force in her life, and how she loves the scripture and has been inspired by it.

The evidence says otherwise. I think too many people look into religion and see a mirror, reflecting their good values and their personal aspirations, and they fail to see that they’re holding up a burden and a distraction and a poisonous delusion, and that, as good people, they’d be even greater when free of that ugliness. They need to realize that they are not the church, and the church is not them — and that separating oneself from an edifice of lies is actually a virtue.

Karen Stollznow has a new book coming out soon

Now this looks interesting: God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States.

God Bless America lifts the veil on strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the modern-day United States. Do Satanists really sacrifice babies? Do exorcisms involve swearing and spinning heads? Are the Amish allowed to drive cars and use computers? Offering a close look at snake handling, new age spirituality, Santeria spells, and satanic rituals, this book offers more than mere armchair research. It takes you to an exorcism, a Charismatic church and a Fundamentalist Mormon polygamist compound. You will sit among the beards and bonnets in a Mennonite church, hear the sounds of silence at a Quaker meeting, and listen to L. Ron Hubbard’s sci-fi stories told as sermons during a Scientology service. From the Amish to Voodoo, the beliefs and practices explored in this book may be unorthodox, and often dangerous, but they are always fascinating. Some of them are dying out, while others are gaining popularity with a modern audience, but all offer insight into the past, present and future of religion in the United States.

My only question would be…are there religious beliefs that aren’t strange and unusual?