religion Archive

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This isn’t helping: Atheists edition

By
Trevor Macomber
– March 27, 2012

You know what’s not a very enlightened way to get your point across? Acting like bizarro versions of the same proponents of inflexible belief structures that you claim to oppose.

According to USA Today,

About 20,000 atheists gathered within shouting distance of the Washington Monument on Saturday for a Reason Rally hell-bent on damning religion and mocking beliefs.

[...]

Dawkins didn’t appear until five hours into the event, but few seemed discouraged by the near-constant rain or drizzle. They whistled and cheered for his familiar lines such as:

I don’t despise religious people. I despise what they stand for …

Evolution is not just true, it’s beautiful …

Then Dawkins got to the part where he calls on the crowd not only to challenge religious people but to “ridicule and show contempt” for their doctrines and sacraments, including the Eucharist, which Catholics believe becomes the body of Christ during Mass.

Now I’m a fan of Dawkins the scientist and Dawkins the author, especially when he uses his substantial intellect and public platform to inform rather than (ironically) preach. He can be at his rhetorical best when offering level-headed admonishment such as that contained on page 25 of his provocative (and shiny covered!) polemic, The God Delusion, where he asserts that

I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as ‘Catholic child’ or ‘Muslim child’. [...] That is not a Muslim child, but a child of Muslim parents. That child is too young to know whether it is a Muslim or not. There is no such thing as a Muslim child. There is no such thing as a Christian child.

But as an occasional atheist myself (with ever-fluctuating trips into agnosticism, deism, and Einstein-ism*, depending on the day), I also want everyone to flinch whenever the not uncommon specter of Asshole Atheism tries to stand in for non believers as a whole. Ridiculing and showing contempt for acts of faith is no more progressive or productive than when the other side does the same to you. By all means, stand up and defend your convictions when necessary and engage in reasoned, fruitful , and civil arguments whenever possible, but don’t stoop to adopting the same inflamed rhetoric that ultimately led to the likes of the Spanish Inquisition and our current Republican presidential clusterfuck, to name but two arbitrary examples of religion gone awry.

* ”If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” Dukas, Helen (1981). Albert Einstein the Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 43.

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Jesus didn’t care about abortion

By
Ben Nolan
– February 27, 2012

The Jesus of the gospels was a bit of a hippie. Not totally or always (Matt 10:34-35, not so hippie-ish), but more often than not. Mike Lux over at the HuffPo put together some numbers (always a dubious game, but it has its uses). Money quote:

In fact, as I noted in my piece about Todd Akin, Jesus talks about mercy to those in trouble in 24 verses of the Gospels, tells people not to judge in 34 verses, tells people to love and forgive even their enemies in 53 verses, tells people to love their neighbors as themselves and treat others as they would want to be treated in 19 verses, and specifically tells people to help the poor and/or spurn riches and the wealthy in 128 verses.

That is a lot of verses, 258 by my count, where Rick Santorum’s savior and George W. Bush’s favorite philosopher sounds like a tried and true, solid to the core, far-out, lefty liberal. And all those where Jesus sounds like a conservative? I couldn’t find a single one. He never once condemns abortion, even though it was very common in ancient times.

That last bit really struck me. Maybe partially because I’m chin deep in the Game of Thrones books (crack, but really, really good crack), and there’s a kindof morning-after pill called “Moon Tea” that almost all of the adult female characters casually reference having taken at some point or another, and in at least one instance a character (Queen Cercei) references a more dramatic procedure she underwent when she actually did become pregnant. (The books are set in a feudal fantasy universe.)

All this is to say that I was primed, when I read the bolded sentence above, to smack myself on the forehead because OF COURSE people have been getting abortions forever, and OF COURSE forever includes 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and surrounding areas.

What I’m saying is, dude is right, it’s pretty ridiculous that THE locus of religious political identity for what seems like the vast majority of the most politically vocal Catholics and Protestants in North America is abortion when Jesus didn’t care enough to say anything even close to explicit about it.

(For your interest, here’s the best Biblical case for abortion opposition I was able to turn up in a lazy Google search — lemme know if you find a better one. This one makes A LOT of interpretive leaps.)

It occurs to me that one might argue that Jesus didn’t talk about abortion because, as a man, he may not have known about it. I call BS on that line for two reasons: (1) He hung out with prostitutes. (2) He’s supposed to be God.

So why is abortion THE issue for so many of these folks?

In addition to Game of Thrones, I’ve been reading this book called “Faces of the Enemy” — a psychoanalytic investigation of propaganda cartoons portraying, you guessed it, the faces of whatever enemy the propaganda was out to monsterrify (<3 making up words). One motif the book identifies as almost always coming into propaganda campaigns is “enemy as baby-killer.” Everyone has used it, and they’ve used it because it works. It’s in our brain stems that babies are for protecting, and few things are harder wired (breathing, maybe).

This is exactly the rhetoric the abortion issue opens up for political Christians of a certain rightward bent — a very powerful one (not like that “love your enemy” broth Jesus kept ladling), as far as provoking emotion-driven responses in people, and action that serves your ineterest. Political people like power more than almost anything. Therefore, political Christians of a certain rightward bent love the abortion issue. Q.E.D. 

(Hat-tip to TMM for posting the article on fb)

PS – Here’s a Wikipedia entry on “The History of Abortion.” Teaser:

The first recorded evidence of induced abortion, is from the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus in 1550 BCE.[3] A Chinese record documents the number of royal concubines who had abortions in China between the years 515 and 500 BCE.[4] According to Chinese folklore, the legendary Emperor Shennong prescribed the use of mercury to induce abortions nearly 5000 years ago.[5] Many of the methods employed in early and primitive cultures were non-surgical. Physical activities like strenuous labor, climbing,paddling, weightlifting, or diving were a common technique. Others included the use of irritant leaves, fasting, bloodletting, pouring hot water onto the abdomen, and lying on a heated coconut shell.[6] In primitive cultures, techniques developed through observation, adaptation of obstetrical methods, and transculturation.[7]Archaeological discoveries indicate early surgical attempts at the extraction of a fetus; however, such methods are not believed to have been common, given the infrequency with which they are mentioned in ancient medical texts.[8]

Interestingly, while Jesus didn’t seem to care about it, the Romans apparently did, though they didn’t see it as baby killing:

Paulus wrote in his Sentences that “those who administer a beverage for the purpose of producing abortion, or of causing affection, although they may not do so with malicious intent, still, because the act offers a bad example, shall, if of humble rank, be sent to the mines; or, if higher in degree, shall be relegated to an island, with the loss of a portion of their property. If a man or a woman should lose his or her life through such an act, the guilty party shall undergo the extreme penalty.” And also Ulpian, as it appears in the Digest regarding to the instutition of curator ventris (protector of the womb): “An unborn child is considered being born, as far as it concerns his profits”.

Suzanne Dixon, a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, writes that abortion was a threat to traditional power structures in the classical Roman world. A husband had power over his wife, her body, and their children. She explains that writings from the classical world portray abortion as expressions of an ideological agenda where men maintain or reestablish patterns of power between the sexes, not as information about historical realities.[25]:27Punishment for abortion in the Roman Republic was inflicted as a violation of the father’s right to dispose of his offspring.[11]:3Because of the influence of Stoicism, which did not view the fetus as a person, the Romans did not punish abortion as homicide.[26]

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A devout Christian waxes poetically on voting in favor of gay marriage

By
Trevor Macomber
– February 3, 2012

Washington State could be less than a week away from becoming the “seventh state to allow same-sex marriage.”

Even more remarkably, the individual responsible for casting the deciding vote in the senate is none other than self-confessed Christian traditionalist, Mary Margaret Haugen. Her statement explaining her decision is so reasonable, so decent — so goddamn human – that I’m going to go ahead and quote it here in its entirety:

“For several weeks now, I have heard from the people of my district. They’ve shared what’s in their hearts and minds.

“I have received many letters, emails, phone calls, very heartfelt, from both sides of the issue. I’ve also received a number of very negative comments from both sides.

“For some people, this is a simple issue. I envy them. It has not been simple or easy for me.

“To some degree, this is generational. Years ago I took exception to my parents’ beliefs on certain social issues, and today my children take exception to some of mine. Times change, even if it makes us uncomfortable. I think we should all be uncomfortable sometime. None of us knows everything, and it’s important to have our beliefs questioned. Only one being in this world is omniscient, and it’s not me.

“I have very strong Christian beliefs, and personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others. I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision. I do not believe it is my role to judge others, regardless of my personal beliefs. It’s not always easy to do that. For me personally, I have always believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. That is what I believe, to this day.

“But this issue isn’t about just what I believe. It’s about respecting others, including people who may believe differently than I. It’s about whether everyone has the same opportunities for love and companionship and family and security that I have enjoyed.

“For as long as I have been alive, living in my country has been about having the freedom to live according to our own personal and religious beliefs, and having people respect that freedom.

“Not everyone will agree with my position. I understand and respect that. I also trust that people will remember that we need to respect each other’s beliefs. All of us enjoy the benefits of being Americans, but none of us holds a monopoly on what it means to be an American. Ours is truly a big tent, and while the tent may grow and shrink according to the political winds of the day, it should never shrink when it comes to our rights as individuals.

“Do I respect people who feel differently? Do I not feel they should have the right to do as they want? My beliefs dictate who I am and how I live, but I don’t see where my believing marriage is between a man and a woman gives me the right to decide that for everyone else.

“I’ve weighed many factors in arriving at this decision, and one of them was erased when the legislation heard today included an amendment to clearly provide for the rights of a church to choose not to marry a couple if that marriage contradicts the church’s view of its teachings. That’s important, and it helped shape my decision.

“My preference would be to put this issue on the ballot and give all Washingtonians the opportunity to wrestle with this issue, to search their hearts as I have, and to make the choice for themselves. But I do not know that there are the votes to put it to a ballot measure. So, forced to make a choice, my choice is to allow all men and women in our state to enjoy the same privileges that are so important in my life. I will vote in favor of marriage equality.

“I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage. That’s neither here nor there. If I were the first or the seventh or the 28th vote, my position would not be any different. I happen to be the 25th because I insisted on taking this much time to hear from my constituents and to sort it out for myself, to reconcile my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy.

“This is the right vote and it is the vote I will cast when this measure comes to the floor.”

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Conservatives are confused about what “Freedom” means

By
Trevor Macomber
– February 1, 2012

Susan G. Komen may be having her time of month (see Tom’s post below), but at least the Obama Hill Gang has decided to think with its little and big brain in its

recent decision not to exempt religiously-affiliated groups from a rule requiring employers to offer birth control coverage to the women they employ.

And yet, for some reason, Newt Gingrich is less than ecstatic. In his usual measured and understated way, he has decided that this is yet more evidence that ”the Obama administration is engaged in a war against religion.”

More calm, collected analysis:

“Their decision last week that they would impose on every Catholic institution, every Jewish institution, every Protestant institution, the Obamacare standard of what you have to buy as insurance is a direct violation of freedom and religion — an example of the increasingly dictatorial attitude of this administration,” Gingrich said.

“Cardinal Timothy Dolan has said this is a direct assault of freedom of religion in America and a complete violation of our First Amendment rights,” he added, referencing objections of the new rule by the Catholic Church, of which Gingrich is a member. “On the first day that I am president, I will issue an executive order repealing every aspect of infringement upon religious liberties in America at that moment.”

A “direct violation” and “direct assault” of freedom of/and religion? Umm, okay, except for the fact that these “religiously-affiliated groups” only have to reimburse their female employees for birth control if their female employees buy birth control. A bit of a tautology, I agree, but if you don’t hire a bunch of heathen whores — you know, like a struggling mother with five goddamn kids already — then the law shouldn’t cost you a dime, right? Clearly these groups need to screen their potential employees better before they go around hiring a bunch of godless sinners to do their clean work.

And if worse comes to worse and — Yahweh forbid — your liberated women employees do decide to act like responsible adults…well, for the record, even the “devil’s contraception” — Plan B — doesn’t actually do anything resembling abortion, given that “Once a fertilized egg implants, Plan B will have no effect.”

(Also, you know what else prevents children from being born? Sex! Gingrich and co. realize that tens of thousands of potential kids aren’t born every time you have sex, right? Poor unsuccessful spermies, sacrificing themselves en masse like that so one can live. It’s like a great orgasmic Greek tragedy every time you bang!)

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Sometimes, Religion vs. Not Religion is just silly

By
Trevor Macomber
– January 27, 2012

With a breathless headline declaring “Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer,” and accompanied by a classic “Me against the world” banner photo (right), the New York Times has managed to both amuse and annoy me with the story of Jessica Ahlquist and her successful efforts to have a “prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.”

Predictably, the effort and its results have sparked an uproar:

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion. [throbbing emphasis my own]

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

Though I’m generally in favor of people like Jessica acting as ad hoc watchdogs in any attempts by public schools to foist religiosity on the malleable pubescent masses, this whole thing is fairly ridiculous. First of all, the prayer itself is so innocuous that the removal of three single words would render the entire passage neutral (if not quite grammatically sensical).

Our Heavenly Father, grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, to be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen.

Replace “Our Heavenly Father” with “Brain,” nix the “Amen,” and suddenly you’ve got yourself a damn good prescription for successful life-living — written by a seventh grader, no less (precocious little twerp).

That said, Ahlquist did give an arrogantly bad-ass response when asked,

Does she empathize in any way with members of her community who want the prayer to stay?

“I’ve never been asked this before,” she said. A pause, and then: “It’s almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good. I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I’m defending their Constitution, too.”

Maybe the photoshoot was her idea after all…

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Chuck Klosterman is great at everything

By
Trevor Macomber
– January 20, 2012

Which is to say, he’s great at writing about everything. There is simply no topic that this guy can’t put his deliciously unique spin on if it catches his attention. To wit: this month-old Grantland column on Tim Tebow. Even if you would rather convert to Scientology than read about Tim Tebow again, and even though his dramatic narrative has declined rather precipitously since the column was originally published, Klosterman’s innate ability to connect Tebowmania with broader world issues while offering his usual display of uncanny armchair psychoanalysis makes the whole read worthwhile.

The briefest of snippets:

I doubt many Christians believe that God is unfairly helping Tebow win games in the AFC West. I’m sure a few hardcores might, but not many. However, I get the impression that especially antagonistic secularists assume this assumption infiltrates every aspect of Tebow’s celebrity, and that explains why he’s so beloved by strangers they cannot relate to. Their negative belief is that penitent, conservative Americans look at Tebow and see a man being “rewarded” for his faith, which validates the idea that believing in something abstract is more important than understanding something real. And this makes them worried about the future, because they see that thinking everywhere. It seems like the thinking that ran this country into the ground.

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Piling on Santorum

By
Trevor Macomber
– January 11, 2012

No, not like that. Yikes, get your minds out of the butt-butter gutter, would you? I’m talking about Ricky-boy’s fifth place finish in New Hampshire yesterday — just behind Newt Gingrich. (And believe me: nobody wants to be just behind Newt Gingrich, least of all Rick Santorum.)

It’s a tough, uhh, pill to swallow after a virtual first place tie in Iowa last week, and even tougher when you factor in how Romney, a Mormon, also earned 45 percent of the Catholic vote, while Santorum, a Catholic, earned a mere eight percent.

So there’s that.

There’s also this: a video of Santorum getting booed during a Q&A session in New Hampshire last week after a convoluted tête-à-tête about marriage rights:

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His personal beliefs aside, I actually think Santorum conducts himself rather well during the affair, remaining reasonable and open to discussion despite the pointed nature of the questions. On top of which, his interrogator — who had already been munching on word salad up until that point — totally pussies out when Rick responds with the “totally wacky” counterexample of, (basically), “Hey, if two men should be allowed to marry, then why not three men, if being happy and not hurting anyone are the main criteria for marriage?” (Totally wacky, right??) Anyway, the reason I mention the video is not because, against all odds, Santorum isn’t wearing a sweater vest in it, but because it’s basically yet another long-winded example of his (and many other people’s) easily encapsulated view that marriage is an inviolable biblical construct between a man and a woman, end of story.

Or, to put it another, catchier way:

There are two major problems with this vaguely clever bon mot, however:

1) Most inviolable biblical constructs were violated long ago. Behold, a fantastic infographic from r/atheism Redditor and brilliant pseudonym selector, jesusonadinosaur: 

Why don’t you ever hear anyone defending these thousand-year-old traditions! Rapists deserve a new toaster too, don’t they?

2) While I guarantee that I’m not the first person to bother pointing this out, it’s worth reiterating that, even if you only tote such rhyming signage as an approximate illustration (rather than a literal indication) of your interpretation of Genesis, by explicitly advertising such views vis-a-vis the first man and woman on earth, you are simultaneously implicitly supporting incest. Don’t look at me like that: it’s a simple fact that, if Adam and Eve really were the first and only people around at the time, then their children would have had to have a ton of hot brother-on-sister sex in order to populate the planet. But hey, I’m not here to judge. If you want to embrace incest over homosexuality, go right ahead. Hell, you’d certainly be in good company, since God himself obviously subscribes to the adage that, “If you can’t keep it in the pants, keep it in the family.” He could have avoided the whole debacle if he’d just kept breathing life into clay after creating Adam, but I guess he thought it was more important to take a day off instead. Remind you of any other powerful bodies…Congress??? 

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God’s quads

By
Trevor Macomber
– December 20, 2011

I’ve touched on religiosity in sports in the past (and am clearly enamored enough with Carlin’s take on Christian athletes to embed the clip twice without remembering I’d already done so), so why not go there a third time, right? This week’s Yahweh blah-weh comes, surprisingly, not from the Denver Broncos and their Mile-High Messiah (aka, the 1.6 Kilometer-high King of Kings), but from my very own (as in, I have nothing to do with them in any material sense whatsoever) New England Patriots.

Via the Boston Globe:

Patriots defensive end Andre Carter will be placed on injured reserve, ending his season, a league source confirmed last night.

Carter injured his left quadriceps on the final play of the first quarter of Sunday’s 41-23 win in Denver and will require surgery.

The 11-year veteran took to Twitter last night, tweeting, “God is great. Thank you for showing me and my family support this season. It’s been a blast. Wouldn’t change it for anything.’’

Really, Andre? You wouldn’t change it for anything? You wouldn’t, say, change it if God offered to heal your goddamn leg?

I hope you and Adrian Gonzalez have a gay old time this offseason reminiscing about not the playoffs. (Not like that though: we already know God’s take on The Gays.)

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“I’m Rick Perry, and I’m a douchebag.”

By
Tom OHare
– December 7, 2011

Stolen from here.

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Massachusetts is quaint

By
Trevor Macomber
– November 15, 2011

Massachusetts, as everybody knows, was founded by a bunch of religious folks eager to escape British persecution for their disparate beliefs so that they, in turn, could be free to persecute a different bunch of religious folks for their disparate beliefs. (Maybe David Brooks should move there!) This worked pretty well (give or take recorded History) until just last week or so when, once again, the 21st Century was forced to make space at the kids table for the 17th. As the Boston Globe points out, they really don’t have much in common any longer:

With the year’s biggest shopping blitz just 10 days away, major retailers across the country have already released their doorbuster deals and crowd-control plans for the Friday after Thanksgiving. But many merchants are scrambling to figure out one crucial detail: what time to open in Massachusetts.

Some chains that had promoted midnight sales are amending their early-bird hours to comply with the state’s 17th-century blue laws. The rules prohibit retail employees from working until the clock strikes 12 a.m. after Thanksgiving – leaving no time for staff to prepare for midnight openings.

[...]

The laws, penned by the Puritans during the 1600s, were created to prevent Colonists from straying from church to drink or conduct business on the Sabbath. They include many regulations that are rarely enforced, such as a ban on dancing on Sundays.

Okay, so the dancing law is still useful (who the hell wants to stay out at the local discoteque past midnight?), but why the hell are so many other hoary headscratchers still on the books? Lawmakers know that Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, right? I mean, I don’t know any Puritans personally so I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that decision would bunched a few petticoats. But fuck retailers, right? (Note the singular “t” in the first word of that sentence, please.)

Hurst and officials at the Massachusetts Department of Labor Standards said they have spoken with merchants over the past several days to clarify the rules.

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls from many, many retailers on what the law is,’’ said Patricia DeAngelis, general counsel for the department.

“This agency has not issued a statewide permit to allow retail stores to be open or permit work on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day. The spirit of the law and intent is to give people a day off, and that is why this state has exercised that authority in the way it has.’’

Fortunately, as a consumer, you actually shouldn’t care all that much about when stores are going to open, because the truth of the matter is, you’ll find equal or better deals online this Black Friday — not in line. Plus, you’ll be less prone to being upsold on other crap you don’t need and significantly less likely to be trampled by stampeding mobs. (Unless you kick back with your laptop in front of the bathroom door after everyone has begun to digest Aunt Gerry’s famous apple rhubarb pie, in which case, you have only yourself to blame.)

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