Christian shame

Salon has a peculiarly defensive article by a Christian confessing to being embarrassed about her beliefs, which seems like a good start to me. She should be embarrassed. As a fun exercise, though, try reading her article while categorizing its statements in the Kübler-Ross stages — there’s a bit of denial in there, some bargaining, and a faint hint of depression, but mainly what she’s got is anger. She lashes out at atheists a fair bit, but it’s in a revealing way.

Writers like Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Victor J. Stenger — and, of course, performers like Bill Maher — get loads of press mocking the dummies gullible enough to believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son. But come on. It’s like shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.

Well, yes, it is easy to mock people who “believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son.” But, you know, that’s the central tenet of the Christian faith! Shouldn’t you stop and wonder about the validity of your beliefs when you realize the core idea is ridiculous? She isn’t going to defend that idea at all, though — atheists are just mean for noticing it, I guess.

Oh, and of course she trots out the standard fundamentalist canard.

And yet, atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death. Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on “Larry King Live” and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.

Atheists are not fundamentalists. Saying so just makes you look like a moron.

We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE? I had no idea that atheists were unable to create stained glass windows — maybe this is the answer to Hitchens’ challenge, to find something good that a theist can do but an atheist cannot. Unfortunately for our distressed Christian, stained glass is a secular technology that has been used to decorate churches…but we godless people can use it just fine, if we want.

No great literature? One name: Mark Twain.

No great art? Berlioz, Paganini, Schubert, Saint-Saëns. If that’s not enough, browse the list.

No comfort in the face of death? What we lack is a collection of lies about death. I could say the same of Christianity, since I certainly find no comfort in unwarranted authority, wishful thinking, and delusional incentives. And at least atheists do not threaten others with hell.

Her snide comment about Hitchens is accompanied by a link which you should watch. It’s revealing. It’s Hitchens surrounded by a couple of McCain apologists before the last election, ripping into Sarah Palin’s anti-scientific views on genetics and research, and her ridiculous creationism. Does the sad Christian somehow find that antagonistic to her beliefs? I know many members of her own faith who would have expressed the same sentiments…just not as eloquently as Hitchens.

Finally, she wonders if she should speak up.

But also, increasingly, I wonder: When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from “Religulous,” do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race? Increasingly I wonder if I should pipe up from the back seat and say, “Excuse me, but these fools you’re talking about? I’m one of them.”

You certainly are. Please do speak up, we like to know when we’re in the presence of fools.

The equation of race with religion is also standard practice for fools. Sorry, lady, ignorance isn’t the same as being brown, and you can’t excuse yourself by claiming that you were born without knowledge.

Wouldn’t you know a whole bunch of people would write to me with examples of stained glass in scientific institutions? Here’s an example from the Pembroke College library at Cambridge:

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Mormon prophecy

It’s a little known disturbing fact that the Mormons have a set of prophecies that foretell that the Mormons will take over the leadership of the US. A candidate for the governor of Idaho has brought this out into the open — he’s having meetings to talk about saving America by having the Mormon leadership intervene.

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I’ve had a few conversations with crazy Mormons who actually take this nonsense very, very seriously. They don’t seem to understand that having the country taken over by a freakish cult with dreams of theocracy would be a way to destroy the constitution.

Mexico City has legalized gay marriage

Wow, we’re surrounded now. When will the US follow suit and join Mexico City in the 21st century?

That article has other interesting information: Uruguay has legalized civil unions throughout the country, and several cities scattered throughout South America have done likewise. Good for Latin America, a region working on being more progressive than our little backwater.

Do not vote for Pawlenty in 2012

I live in Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty is our governor, and he’s got his bland and uninteresting gaze fastened on the White House. Don’t be fooled. He’s just another Republican hack who has been drifting ever right-ward towards increasing lunacy. He was interviewed in Newsweek, and this will give you an idea of what kind of waffly worthless panderer he is.

Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.

The Bible doesn’t mention Tim Pawlenty’s parents, Eugene and Ginny, anywhere, either, and neither does it mention Tim Pawlenty, so apparently the question of Pawlenty’s origins are still open. This all fits with my theory that he is merely a recent conglomeration of mindless amoeboid slime.

Garrison Keillor falls flat

People are already talking about Garrison Keillor’s ghastly opinion piece, the one that basically revels in anti-semitism and preaches that only a select few are allowed to enjoy Christmas.

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.

Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.

It’s so over-the-top that there is a temptation to call it simply badly done satire, but Keillor has regularly spewed bile at gays and atheists, and the “he’s just joking” excuse is a bit tired. He plays one note and one note only on the subjects of atheism and homosexuality, and it’s not even played well.

But who cares? He can be a public bigot all he wants, especially when he does such a fabulous job of making himself out to be such an idiot. This is everyone’s time, not just the Christian’s; we don’t conveniently shuffle out to a nearby transdimensional shantytown and disappear for a few weeks while they pretend to be the only people on earth who enjoy a vacation and a nice party.

He is right, though, that we’re going to commit a little piracy (not spiritual piracy, though, which is nonsense — it’s more of an institutional hijacking, along the lines of the Crimson Assurance). We’re breaking into their smug little holiday, see, and making it ours, too. And everyone’s. I get to put Baby Cthulhu in my creche if I want to, and no antiquated sap gets to stop me, no matter how much they want to squeal. We get to mess with the Messiah all we want, and we will, and especially now that we know it will make Mr Keillor’s maudlin pablum all rancid and bitter.

The Papal figure is copyrighted

Seriously? The Vatican has just declared the Pope a legally protected icon. Don’t you dare use it in a cartoon, you vandals, or slap the holy name up on your soap-on-a-rope to gin up extra sales from the gullible.

The Vatican made a declaration on the protection of the figure of the Pope on Saturday morning.  The statement seeks to establish and safeguard the name, image and any symbols of the Pope as being expressly for official use of the Holy See unless otherwise authorized.

The statement cited a “great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father” in recent years as contributing to a desire to use the Pontiff’s name for all manner of educational and cultural institutions, civic groups and foundations.

Due to this demand, the Vatican has felt it necessary to declare that “it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church.”

The declaration alludes to attempts to use ecclesiastical or pontifical symbols and logos to “attribute credibility and authority to initiatives” as another reason to establish their “copyright” on the Holy Father’s name, picture and coat of arms.

“Consequently, the use of anything referring directly to the person or office of the Supreme Pontiff… and/or the use of the title ‘Pontifical,’ must receive previous and express authorization from the Holy See,” concluded the message released to the press.

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How could I resist? I had a pen and the back of an old envelope, so I had to draw an official pontifical caricature. I suspect the Vatican is much more concerned about the fact that they aren’t raking in a cut on the money-making uses of the papal image than about satirical uses (although you never know — they’re a thin-skinned lot over there), but still…I had to get a lick in, with a completely unauthorized picture of the pope waving a big stick and waggling his spirit fingers at the world. In a small gesture of respect, I did take pains to draw his penis completely condom-free.

(via Infallible Failure)