Friday, August 11, 2006

Happy Birthday to the Great Agnostic

In 3 more minutes, it won’t apply… so, thanks RG!

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/god_in_constitution.html

Les said pretty much everything I’d say anyway… check it out

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Celebrating 6-6-06

I’m all for celebrating (and capitalizing upon,) any and all “holidays,” and god DAMN, I wish I would’ve planned better for today!  Then I could do cool shit like Les does Check it out:

(width=666 muahahahahaha!)

I just heard on the news that Stanton LaVey, the grandson of ol’ Anton himself is getting married in Hollywood tonight at the Music Box theatre in Hollywood, where there’s going to be a show featuring Goth/Satanic bands.  Good for all of them!

Of course, the remake of The Omen comes out today, and the fundy news source is linking to all sorts of articles about 666 and Christians.  Oh yeah, and Ann(ti-Christ) Coulter’s book is also hitting the shelves today.  No link for that hateful, ugly cunt!

Well, time for me to get to work… where I sell “sin” for a living, wallowing in my godless liberalism.  I’ll be wearing my CJ shirt in honor of the holiday!

Friday, May 26, 2006

Praise Jesus! At least one of His followers “gets it.”

Over in the Restore the Pledge Forums, discussing a recent case in Kentucky in which a Judge blocked a school-sanctioned prayer at a high school graduation ceremony and the Christian students’ response, rnrstar linked to a Letter of the Week at World Net Daily that gave me hope that there are at least SOME Christians who have taken the time to “walk in others’ shoes.”

Gary Christenot is an evangelical Christian who, while working with a youth group during service in the Air Force in Hawaii, attended a high school football game in a predominantly Buddhist area and came face to face with being a member of a minority religion in a public religious ceremony involving invocations and practices that were anathema to him.

The point is this. I am a professional, educated and responsible man who is strong in his faith and is quite comfortable debating the social and political issues of the day. Yet when placed in a setting where the majority culture proved hostile to my faith and beliefs, I became paralyzed with indecision and could not act decisively to defend and proclaim my own beliefs. I felt instantly ostracized and viewed myself as a foreigner in my own land.

We often advocate the practice of Judeo-Christian rituals in America’s public schools by hiding behind the excuse that they are voluntary and any student who doesn’t wish to participate can simply remained seated and silent. Oh that this were true. But if I, as a mature adult, would be so confounded and uncomfortable when faced with the decision of observing and standing on my own religious principals or run the risk of offending the majority crowd, I can only imagine what thoughts and confusion must run through the head of the typical child or teenager, for whom peer acceptance is one of the highest ideals.

I would say in love to my Christian brothers and sisters, before you yearn for the imposition of prayer and similar rituals in your public schools, you might consider attending a football game at Wahiawa High School. Because unless you’re ready to endure the unwilling exposure of yourself and your children to those beliefs and practices that your own faith forswears, you have no right to insist that others sit in silence and complicity while you do the same to them. I, for one, slept better at night knowing that because Judeo-Christian prayers were not being offered at my children’s schools, I didn’t have to worry about them being confronted with Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanic or any other prayer ritual I might find offensive.

The student in the Kentucky case, it turns out, was a Muslim. 

It has been tradition at Russell County High School in Kentucky for graduating seniors to elect a “graduation chaplain” who delivers a Christian prayer at the graduation ceremony. This year, a Muslim student filed a lawsuit and a judge issued an injunction to prevent it. As the principal began his opening remarks, 200 students stood and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Most of the rest of the audience gave a standing ovation.

When the Muslim student went up to receive his diploma, he was booed.

Ah, feel the Christian Love^™…

I agree with Gary Christenot.  Every Christian in America should be required to attend at least one government-sponsored event in which a non-Christian religious ritual is performed as part of the official ceremony.  Or perhaps have the Eleven Satanic Principles posted in their child’s school, or have their taxpayer dollars spent erecting a monument displaying them at their county courthouse.  Sadly, I think that’s exactly what it would take to get these thick-headed, self-righteous sons of bitches to understand that the only way to guarantee equality for ALL is for the government to stick to the absolute neutrality in matters of religion that the First Amendment requires.

Constitutional matters aside, the response of the Christians at the graduation ceremony was shameful, rude and just plain mean.  Once again we’re treated to a demonstration of the all-too-common attitude of superiority and self-righteousness of the Christian majority.  They’ll rise up to shout out a prayer (or the unconstitutional Pledge, as those congressional fucksticks did a few years ago) in defiance of a judicial ruling, all the while complaining that said ruling is evidence of their “persecution” in America!

People give me shit all the time for calling Christians delusional… but if their acceptance of fable as fact isn’t enough evidence to support that notion, their claim of persecution in the United States clearly qualifies!!!

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Udargo sums it up

Found in the comments on one of PZ Myers’ posts on Pharyngula, concerning Rabbi Avi Shafran’s assertion that atheists can’t be moral:

There’s something disturbing about these people who can’t comprehend how humans can be moral without fear of the “glaring cosmic policeman.”

And this perhaps shows us the true value of religion: There are a lot of people who need a belief in the glaring cosmic policeman to keep them in line. If Rabbi Shafran wasn’t a rabbi, he’d probably be a pretty scary dude. He’d be raping, pillaging and murdering, apparently.

And maybe some people will never be able to develop a more sophisticated moral awareness, based on empathy and respect for the truth (which I believe are the twin pillars of a healthy, adult morality). Maybe that’s why we do need religion. Maybe it does us more good than we realize.

I think this is actually what many of the Founding Fathers believed about the Christian religion. It was something necessary to keep those less philosophically sophisticated in line. Maybe they were right.

Posted by: udargo May 21, 2006 03:59 PM

Respect for the truth, and empathy… that’s what “morality” boils down to for me.  The only way to educate is to tell the truth, and the foundation of nearly every religion on earth is “treat others as you’d like to be treated.”

Not only does religion, and in particular Judeo-Christianity, require one to ignore certain truths, but by painting humans as inherently sinful beings’ whose only salvation lies in denying their natural biological instincts except under strict rules (say… sex exclusively within marriage), it fosters guilt and shame that leads to secrets and lies. In turn those “sins” or vices end up breeding entire subcultures where there are bound to be extremists. Not to mention entire families whose “history” is peppered with lies because someone was afraid of what the ladies at church would say about Grandpa’s “breakdown” or Aunt Sally’s unwed pregnancy.

The truth may not be pretty, or welcomed… in fact, it may be downright offensive or painful to hear.  But it’s infinitely more useful to have accurate information by which to live your life, and in the end spares you the unnecessary pain of having been deceived.  It’s not always the easiest or most comfortable course of action to tell the truth, either, and as cliche as it may be, honesty IS always the best policy.

Except of course, when listing one’s weight on her driver’s license

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Breaking Commandments is OK, if it’s “for the children!”

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Unless, of course, your neighbor is Planned Parenthood, or a pregnant minor seeking an abortion.

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called “crisis pregnancy center” run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their “other office” (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The “crisis pregnancy center” had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The “crisis pregnancy center” staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Our clinic director reports that the girl was “scared to death to leave her house.” They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these “crisis pregnancy centers” across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What’s more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

Go to: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fakeclinics

People wonder why I’m so hard on Christians… the story above is just one example of the things that prompt me to rail against the Christofascist hypocrites who claim the moral high ground.  Again we see that no underhanded deed is evil in the sight of the Lord they claim to follow, if it can be even remotely justified as being “for the sake of the children!” They will toss aside one of the Commandments they claim as the foundation of all human morality (which apparently American Christians will never remember unless they’re plastered on every school and government building in the country), usurp parental rights, and employ mafia-style tactics in order to further their agenda of controlling a woman’s body.  “Family values,” my fat, white ASS!

I’m so glad my tax dollars are supporting groups that consider MY right as a mother to take my teenaged daughter for medical treatment both she and I agree is necessary as secondary to the need for all people to bow to the wishes of this God character, whose “mind” they claim to know - and in whose existence I fail utterly to believe.

I find nothing so depressing and hopeless as the thought of a woman (and in particular a teenaged girl) bearing a child before she’s ready.  At this time in history, it simply should NOT happen.  We have the technology to guarantee that every child born is both wanted and loved… what we don’t have is comprehensive, REALISTIC education; and more sad still, our society has politicized the issue of a woman’s right to choose the number of children she will bear as well as when she will do so, using religion as justification to limit the methods that make it possible.  Shame and fear are the tools employed to keep women in check, which is why it is so important to be open enough in our education and public dialogue to remove the shame associated with our bodies, and to stop falling prey to fear of some sort of divine retribution for standing up for our right to do whatever the hell we want to with them.

Write to your representatives NOW.  These lying hypocrites must be stopped…

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!