I ran across this article on RightWingWatch.org earlier and saw something worth noting. You can listen to Dobson's full program here if you can manage to make it through the whole thing. Anyway I noted this particular quote from Rabbi Lapin with my own comments interspersed.
Once you remove the religious restraints to
rampant sexuality, and all you got to do is relax those religious
restraints and male nature will take care of the rest and bring about
the decline of a civilization,
Fundamentalists no matter the religion have a big drive to control people's sexuality with fear tactics like this. Of course he also makes a jab at men, who apparently are just beasts who can't keep in in their pants without the fear of god in them.
one of the mechanisms is of course as
we’ve discussed economic because in a sense it requires the same kind of
control and self-discipline to get up every single morning and go to
work whether you like it or not as it takes to restrain various
appetites.
Amazingly many cultures and people who have not restrained themselves sexually in the way Dobson or Lapin's religion requires have still been able to manage to go to work. I wonder if Lapin has ever read a history book, no civilization in the history of the world, including Victorian era England has ever been as puritanical as Christianity or Judaism requires.
So when you weaken one muscle you weaken everything else as
well and not only do we have a tendency on the part of a society that
has relaxed all form of sexual restraint to also go into free fall
economically but what also happens is such a society tends towards
becoming a more feminine society in a sense.
More feminine? I'm not exactly sure what he means here but no matter how you interpret this it sounds sexist. It also seems to contradict what he said earlier about "male nature."
Islam, fundamentalist
Islam, which is essentially a brutal and violent culture is seducing a
somewhat effeminized American culture because there is no other way to
explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites
have with Islam.
Yes because us liberals just LOVE us some fundamentalist religion, nothing we like better than to have our liberty taken away by some crazy religious zealot. That was sarcasm in case you were wondering.
I really am not even sure where he is getting this from, he seems to believe that we, "secularists," who have fought tooth and nail to wrest our civil liberties from the hands of fundamentalist Christians in this country would just hand it over to another group who is even more extreme than they are.
Islam has at least as bad if not a worse track record on women's rights, sexuality, free speech, and many other issues. Why would he think that secularists would just turn over our rights to them? If there is anyone who would it is most certainly not me or any of the members of skeptical/atheist movement. The idea that any of the feminists in our movement, the likes of Greta Christinea or Jen McCreight have some love affair with fundamentalist Islam is ridiculous.
It also strikes me a rather funny that he talks about Islam as being a "brutal and violent culture" when historically Judaism and Christianity have been very bad too. Indeed the world Dobson and Lapin want to create in America doesn't look any better than the ones fundamentalist Muslims want to create.
Back when I was a fundamentalist I carefully studied the bible quite a bit. You see, back then I took very seriously the command in 1 Peter 3:15 that states:
But sanctify the Lord God in you hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
You see, I felt as if I needed to be able to offer justification for everything I believed. I was, for most of my time as a Christian, a literalist, that is to say I believed that the entire bible was scientifically, historical, and ethically accurate. This belief served to keep me well in the fold of Christianity during my high school days, but once I got to college and started taking my beliefs more seriously I began reading the bible every day. I began evangelizing to people, leading bible studies, etc.
I found passages that troubled me often but I usually could find ways of rationalizing them. However, now and then I found passages which seemed wrong in one of the three ways I mentioned with no good answer to them. My inability to mesh my faith with reality or morality was one of the primary things that lead me away from Christianity.
So with that in mind, for your viewing pleasure I would like to present one of the many passages I came across during that time of my life which I spent years in a vain attempt to find an explanation that didn't make my skin crawl.
Deuteronomy: 22:23If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; 22:24Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die;the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
So, to be clear about what is going on here, we have a women who is engaged and she and another man have sex. If she cries out the man gets stoned but if she doesn't cry out the she gets stoned too. To be clear this is not the kind of stoned that leaves you with a desire for brownies, this is the getting your head bludgeoned in with large rocks until you die kind of stoned.
The explanation that is most often offered here is that the sex was consensual, otherwise she would have cried out. I see two problems with this, one I can easily see a circumstance where a woman is raped and stays silent, drugged, knocked out, threatened with a weapon, or just plain scared, yet there is no consideration for those things in this law.
The second, much larger problem, is that this apologetic is basically arguing that it is reasonable to make consensual sex a capital crime. Even when I was a Christian and thought premarital sex was wrong the notion that someone should be killed for it seemed incredibly offensive to me.
Just so no one can claim I am making up this apologetic I found a link to the section of the Matthew Henry Commentary that speaks about this. Here is the pertinent section from the page in question:
And it shall be presumed that she consented if it were done in the city, or in any place where, had she cried out, help might speedily have come in to prevent the injury offered her. Qui tacet, consentire videtur--Silence implies consent.
If you think that is the worst of it, there are some extremely twisted attempt to justify this particular passage It didn't take me long to find this one out there on the net which was very similar to things some Christians said to me years ago.
This law exists to protect everyone involved, and it actually demonstrates a rather impressive knowledge of human behavior and human nature. The key words here are "because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city," under the assumption that if she went along with it willingly, it wasn't actually rape. First, it protects the man from false accusations--if a malicious woman makes an accusation like that, she's on the hook too. And second, it protects the woman. If she knows that if she plays along, she's guilty under the law, then he can't use the best-known of intimidation tactics employed by rapists, "play along or I'll kill you!" It gives her a strong incentive to struggle, fight him off, and scream for help, which makes it less likely that she will actually end up being raped. All in all, this demonstrates the brilliance of God's law, not the cruelty and immorality of it.
First off, creating a situation where women are afraid to report rape does NOT qualify as brilliance, secondly setting up a situation where the woman has to fight back to have any chance of living no matter the circumstances of the assault is outright repugnant. Rape is about control, setting up a situation where the victim has even less control is the exact opposite of brilliant thinking. I have yet to hear an apologetic for this passage from a Christian that does not appeal to some kind of misogynistic or anti-sex nonsense.
In concussion this passage is pretty damn immoral in my book. I am always amazed at Christians who complain about the misogyny in the Koran and ignore all the stuff right in the middle of their own holy book.
Wooden & LaBarbera: Anti-LGBT Violence is "Normal"
Peter LaBarbera
Patrick Wooden
For those of you who don't want to listen here is a transcript of the exchange with my own comments interspersed.
Wooden: My heart breaks and I literally
mourn over what has happened to the NAACP. Ben Jealous says he has a
brother who is transgendered in his family, the little boy grew up
dressing like Diana Ross or somebody when he was a child, well I say his
parents should’ve took the child and whooped the child’s behind and
taught the child how to dress.
So being transgendered can be cured with a spanking?
… Wooden: If you want to get knocked out just go into a
male bathroom in the African American community or any community I
would think and you’re standing there in a dress and many times the
people are trying to hit on people, trying to make sexual responses, one
man there, you know, you don’t want to be in there feeling like another
man is trying to look at your penis. We’ve always had a hostile
response, or a disrespect if you will, for that kind of behavior.
It is rather insulting to suggest that gay men think about sex any more often that straight men, why would they be looking at your penis just because they happen to be in the bathroom with you?
LaBarbera: It used to be common of course, I’ve
heard many stories. I remember a story from a military guy, saying a guy
came and he was a sailor and they had some temporary little day off at
port and some guy hit on him and he decked him. Wooden: That’s normal.
That's normal? Its normal to hit someone because they propositioned you for sex? Last time I checked just saying no thanks is usually sufficient. Someone needs to teach you how modern society works, physical assault is not a normal reaction to anything.
LaBarbera: When you make a sexual advance against a
man on man, that is a normal response, and yet I fear in the rise of
political correctness what’s going to happen is, somebody is going to
find out that there was a man in his wife’s—his wife was in the restroom
when a transgendered man, a biological male, was in the female restroom
and he’s gonna punch him, but then the man who punches him is gonna be
charged with a hate crime, that’s what I’m afraid of.
Yes he would be charged with a crime, and for good reason. Asking someone for sex is not a crime, going to the bathroom is not a crime, punching someone is a crime.
Wooden: We’re not promoting, advocating violence here. LaBarbera: Of course not!
Not promoting violence? Give me a break. Next he will tell us that some of his best friends are transgendered.
So Richard Dawkins and Laurence Krauss visited Phoenix, AZ this week and had a lively discussion.
For anyone who hasn't had a chance to see it there are videos YouTube.
Though I won't spend a lot of time speaking about the talk I did want to mention one thing that happened. After the initial talk we had a brake and came back for a short Q.A. time. The first person to ask a question turned out to be a Christian, I gather that he was a fundamentalist but that was not entirely made clear by what he said.
In any case, this Christian started out by giving us a litany of his degrees in religion, which well all patiently listened too and then he proceeded to speak for well over a minute without asking a question, then he ended with an attempt to evangelize in the form of a thinly veiled question about proving god's non existence.
Up to this point Dawkins and Krauss as well as the crowd had been polite, then the Christian decided to up the ante by reading a bible verse. I don't know which verse it was, beyond it coming from Hebrews because once he started he was quickly drowned out by the crowed booing him. He also tried to interrupt Krauss at one point in the exchange while Kraus was answering the question he tried to add an addendum on to it and Krauss shut him down by explaining that the great thing about being on stage was when he is talking the audience has to listen.
The interesting thing to me about this exchange is that afterwards I could distinctly imagine this Christian going back to his fellow believers and talking to them about how he stood up to the evil atheists in the face of our persecution of him for his religion. I can see him talking about how we wouldn't let him read a bible verse due to the fear of it touching our heart magically somehow. I can also see his Christian friends agreeing with him without the slightest sense that maybe our problem was not that he was a Christian but that he behaved badly.
Of course none of this may have happened afterwards, but I can see it happening precisely because I spent years as a fundamentalist Christian and saw this same scenario play out many times. Often it seems that the Christian's need to disseminate their view takes precedent over couth social behavior. In this particular instance this was meant to be a chance to ask Dawkins or Krauss questions, but the Christian used that opportunity to essentially preach a small sermon at us and only barely disguise it as a question. The booing started when we realized this was what he was doing.
I can't speak for every atheist there, of course, but I was not afraid of the bible or anything he might say. I've read Hebrews and indeed the entire bible, and found it insulting to suggest that a simple quotation from the bible would make me or anyone else there question our thoughts on the matter.
So, to the nameless Christian who stood up and asked that question, we weren't objecting to you being a Christian, we weren't objecting you asking a question, we were objecting to you being a jackass.
Catholics and other Christian groups are up in arms about the government requiring the insurance companies provide to their employee's with FDA approved contraceptives. They are angry because this law is extending to many church owned organizations such as private schools and hospitals.
For those of you not familiar with law here, churches are granted an exemption to a lot of rules that other business must follow. Some of them make a lot of sense, for instance laws that prevent religious discrimination in hiring would not really work in a church, requiring a church not to consider the religious beliefs of their pastor in hiring him would not work very well. I may consider all religious beliefs to be rather illogical but I can still understand the need for this kind of separation.
Now when it comes to this particular law there is also an exception for employees of churches and and religious organizations, however the private schools and hospitals owned by the Catholic church do not fit into these exceptions, and in the case of hospitals generally receive public funding. These organizations do not and, in fact, are not allowed to discriminate based upon religion. The end result is that many of the people working for them are not Catholics. The people being serviced there are also often not Catholics but this is not even relevant to the current issue since it affects employees.
Catholics, being anti-contraception, have decided that they don't want to set up the insurance for their employees to cover such things. A situation that has no doubt been the way they have done things for quite some time. Now, the government is saying it can't be that way anymore, that women have a right to contraception and they have a right to expect their employer to offer insurance that covers it irregardless of how their employer may personally feel about contraception. Make no mistake, this is a women's rights issue, since in order for women to maintain a equal place in society they must be able to choose when and if to get pregnant.
Part of me can't help but think this might be a good thing. Do we really want the Catholic church running our hospitals and our schools when they care more about controlling the reproduction rights of women and obeying moral rules that are insulting to any thinking person than they care about doing the jobs they built those hospitals and schools for? One wonders what they founded these hospitals and schools for; is it because they care about people or is it because it gives them an opportunity to force their moral ideals on to the general populace?
Perhaps it would be a good thing if they shut down, other people would build hospitals after all. People get sick and someone else would fill the need for hospitals, that's how free market economies work.
Meanwhile, the height of irony in this is that many Conservative Christians like the Catholics LeaguesBill Donohue are claiming that this is a violation of "Church state separation." You might remember that as the thing they have spent years claiming doesn't exist. The fundamentalist interpretation of the establishment clause is that it does nothing more than prevent the establishment of a state religion. This law in no way violates that interpretation, but I will go one step further. The more encompassing interpretation of the clause offered by the courts is that no government organization can show favoritism to one religion over another because such actions would lead to an implication of an establishment of a state religion. Nothing about this law comes anywhere close to a violation of church state separation. However, it is ironic how quickly the establishment clause became important.
Personally I am a fan of the old saying, "your right to swing your arm ends at my nose." Well the Catholic church has been swinging their proverbial arm into the bedrooms of American citizens for years and personally I have no problem with the government finally telling them to get the hell out.
Arms of Catholic priests not shown due to it being a metaphor
I ran across this today and with Darwin's birthday coming soon I decided to share, it seems several different states are putting forward bills about evolution.
— The “Missouri Standard Science Act” would require the equal
treatment of evolution and “intelligent design,” an idea that the
universe was created by an unnamed “designer.” A second bill would
require teachers to encourage students “to explore scientific questions,
learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and
respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about
controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.”
Well parts of this don't sound to bad, who doesn't want students to develop "critical thinking skills," but evolution is not particularly controversial among scientists, its only controversial among people who know very little about science. Why should science teacher have to walk on egg shells about an observable scientific fact because some of his students have religious beliefs that conflict with it?
—
A bill in the Oklahoma Senate would require the state’s board of
education to help teachers promote “critical thinking, logical analysis,
open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not
limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human
cloning” if a local school district makes that request.
This one mentions global warming too. It seems the religious right is expanding their list of things in science that they hate. I guess cloning made the list because of the fear that people are going to start cloning whole humans for organ harvesting or some bullshit. I think fundamentalist Christians get all their science education from movies.
— A second
bill in the New Hampshire House would require science teachers to
instruct students that “proper scientific inquir(y) results from not
committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it
appears to be established.”
In a sense what is said in this bill is accurate. However, there is a difference between the fact that evolution happens and the theory of evolution which explains how it happens. Even if you disproved the theory it would just mean evolution happened a different way. Also, while the theory is incomplete it is not likely to be proven entirely false.
— A bill in Virginia would make it
illegal for state colleges to require a class that conflicts with a
student’s religious views. Critics say that would enable a student to
receive a biology degree, for example, without studying evolution if he
or she objected to it.
This is the most absurd of all of them. I sometimes wonder if politician even think about the ramifications of bills they passed. I couldn't find the exact wording of the bill on the internet, so if anyone has a link to it I would be interested, but if this works as I am reading it then anyone could refuse to learn something because of their religious affiliation. Jehovah's witness, no problem you don't need to learn about transfusions to be a doctor.
— A second bill in Indiana would require the state board of education to
draft rules about the teaching of ideas in science class that cannot be
proven by evidence — a clear doorway for the teaching of creationism
and intelligent design, critics say.
Why would we ever teach anything in a science class room that can't be supported by empirical evidence? This practically screams Wedge document. It is clear that the goal here is not to just undermine evolution but methodological naturalism as the basis for science.
Haven't been able to post for a couple of days, I've been busy moving to a new apt closer to work.
Well I am done moving...mostly anyway. I still have a few boxes to unload.
I thought would post a spam email I got in my inbox while I was moving. This persons grasp of English could use some improvement.
Hello! .
So, I found your photos on dating site .Use my sister’s account...
I'm looking for novelty in relations. I am Summer
reply me..
I would have to be really desperate to reply to this....
Now, another common accusation towards atheism is that it
leads to communism or that, more generally, that it is responsible for the many
terrible genocides of the 20th century. I have heard this attack from many people over the years but one of the more recent examples I have seen was in this video where Matt Dillahunty debates father Hans Jacobse, who despite being fairly liberal religious leader still believes this slanderous lie.
There are many more cases of this but rather than just start going through all of them if you doubt that this McCarthy era argument is alive an well just take a look at this Google search.
Of course most will admit that bad things
have been done in the name of religion but, they will say, Hitler, Marx,
Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong were all atheists and they killed more than any
of religion ever killed throughout history.
First I’ll point out that this argument, even if correct, is an
affirmation of consequence and thus does nothing to prove god actually
exists. Arguing that god must exist
because not believing in him might make us violent is not even an argument
worth refuting. However, this argument
is flawed; indeed it is flawed in so many ways I am not even sure where to
begin in refuting it.
Bullshit at it's best.
First, since Hitler was the only member of this group who
was not communist, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, I will speak about him
shortly. There is basically no evidence
that Hitler was an atheist, though I will not claim to know exactly what his
religious beliefs were he never once said that he did not believe in some kind
of god. First it needs to be mentioned
that no matter was his religious beliefs were all of Europe had been steeped in
an antisemitism based upon Christianity for well more than a thousand
years. Martin Luther, the German
reformer, wrote a book entitled “On Jews and their Lies” in 1543, nearly 4
centuries before the Third Reich, and his views were hardly uncommon.
Good Christian literature in the 16th century.
Hitler’s speeches were peppered with religious symbolism. You can easily dig up many quotes from him on
the internet, but just one will do for the purposes of this article.
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the
Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's
work." [Adolph Hitler, Speech,
Reichstag, 1936]
Of course it is not possible to know how much of it he
actually believed and how much was used just to manipulate the German populace,
but to argue he was clearly atheist is entirely contrary to the facts we have available.
Perhaps by lord he meant the flying spaghetti monster? Oh wait FSM doesn't condone this sort of shit.
Communism is something quite a bit different of course in
that it is atheistic, or at least very anti-religious. Of course we can look back into the history
of communism and see the thinking in the famous quote by Karl Marx
"Religious suffering
is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest
against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people."
"The abolition of
religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real
happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is
to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism
of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of
which religion is the halo"
One will noticed that Marx speaks about religion not god,
but clearly he was no friend of religious beliefs and certainly many communist regimes
seem to mandate a lack of religion
I could get bogged down in a debate about the history of
Marxism here, but quite frankly this is a blog post not a graduate dissertation,
so I will simply stipulate that the most if not all communist governments have
mandated atheism.
One exception I must note. I personally think
that North Korea may well be an exception as they believe that the current
leader is a reincarnation of his grandfather Kim Il Sung, which strikes me as,
if not a religious claim, then something rather like such a claim. In any case I do not think communism's support
of atheism says anything about the modern atheist movement in America.
Though we might want to check under the bed just in case.
There are two reasons that the argument that atheism is to
blame for the atrocities of the 20th century fails, one is a factual
problem and the other a philosophical one.
First, there these communist countries forced atheism on
people, this is not only ethically wrong it is entirely contrary to the goals
of the modern atheist movement. While I
will not hide the fact that I think the world would be a better place if it
were less religious, (not perfect, just better) how one reaches the conclusion
of atheism is actually more important than the conclusion itself. I happen to believe that the world would be a
better place without religion because religion is not rational or evidence
based and it is far better to believe in something for rational reasons. However, forcing a belief using political or physical
force does not make anyone more rational.
Many societies other can communists ones have forced a
belief onto its people such as many Middle Eastern countries where many governments
are Islamic theocracies or Europe in the middle ages being controlled by Catholicism
in many ways. None of these are examples
of humans behaving rationally, and forcing any view onto a populace using
political force is not something that leads to more rational people.
On second thought maybe I should reconsider Catholicism.
There is a further philosophical problem with ALL of these
claims. It must be asked if atheism is
both necessary and sufficient to justify the atrocities of these totalitarian regimes. “Necessary and sufficient” is a phrase in
logic used to define the two elements needed to prove causality.
One must ask if atheism is necessary, meaning that
totalitarian regimes, and the atrocities they commit are necessarily atheistic. Second, one must ask if atheism is sufficient,
meaning that the mere lack of belief in a god is sufficient to justify the
atrocities.
Of course there is no argument that manages to prove either necessity
or sufficiency. In fact, plenty of empirical
data exists to show that atheism is hardly necessary. There are plenty of examples totalitarian regimes
and human rights violations from a variety of cultures and religions.
Now when it comes specifically to communism I could grant
that atheism is necessary for it, except that there are quite a few theists these days that support Communism. Liberation theology for instance seems to be rather chummy with a lot of communist ideals.
Now, as to atheism's sufficiency, even if you take the most
extreme definition of atheism where it is defined as a total rejection of even
the possibility of any god existing, (no atheist I have ever met would go this
far) one could not state that such a claim could, on its own, justify genocide,
eugenics, communism, or totalitarianism.
Each one of these ideas are completely irrational, there is no empirical
support for them and there is no valid reason to assert that just because atheism
is sometimes mixed up in these things that it is integral to why they all went so
wrong.
This argument is made more out of fear and prejudice than
anything else, the cure for those prejudices is for us to be out and letting
people know that these are not the sorts of things we believe in. Preachers and other religious leaders may
keep attacking us with all the prejudice and bigotry that they can muster, but
more and more people will realize that the things they say just do not mesh
with reality, and that we atheists are not the bogeyman that religion makes us
out to be.
I believe that the idea that atheists do not care about ethics
and that we turn a blind eye to human suffering will become increasingly laughable,
and that the views of the bigots who say such things will eventually be ignored
by most people in the same way people ignore the KKK today. Indeed it is quite the opposite, many atheists
think this way precisely because we do care and we see the harm religion does
to people and societies. As long as religion is used as a tool to hurt our fellow humans beings we will be here calling out the religious for their bull shit.
