This is the message a school sends to parents. It’s a Christian school, so it’s substandard bad education, and packed with the baggage of a wicked ideology, but that doesn’t excuse it.
The day before Easter, Pastor Matt Baker of the Trinity Christian Academy in Lake Worth, Florida, emailed the school community to inform them that he was canceling Autism Awareness Week because “the teachings and actions of my Jesus are fully able to do all that this program intends to achieve and so much more.”
“Anything that teaches our children to have their identity in anything other than Christ is idolatry and demonic,” he declared, as first reported by WPTV.
Baker wanted to make sure there was no room for doubt regarding his edict.
“Let me repeat myself just so I am not quoted out of context: any philosophy, teaching, or program that teaches our precious children that their identity is found in anything other than Christ is idolatry and demonic. Period.”
Go to your hell, Matt Baker. Is my identity as a husband and father also demonic? Is everyone who is not a Christian also demonic? Can you demonstrate the existence of demons at all?
Here’s another example of a Christian pastor in Missouri demonizing autistic kids. At least this one got compelled to resign.
Matt Baker is still poisoning minds.
I don’t know why these “schools” are allowed to exist.
Cue all the exceptions made for “acceptable” identities, like white, cis male, and hetero.
JACA (Just Another Christian Asshole)
Not sure if this is the demonic influence of my autistic identity speaking, but someone spouting such a pile of complete and utter bullshit belongs to school as a pupil, not as a teacher or whatever Pastor Baker’s function at the school is!
I’d tell him to go to hell, but as demonically autistic as I am, I don’t believe in hell.
I’m sure Pastor Matt Baker also identifies as, a Fascist, a follower of Donald Trump (MAGA), GOPer, Control Freak, Hater of LGBTIAQs and Progressives, and Not Very Bright.
Hypocrisy is one of the three main sacraments of fundie xianity.
Shrug. These schools tend to be expensive, $8-12,000 a year per child.
It would take 5 minutes to get your kid out of this substandard dismal so called school and into some place where they can get a real education.
@ 3. mordred : Actually Hell does exist – but its a lunar crater :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_(crater)
Named after an ancient Hungarian Jesuit astronomer priest. As well as a village in Norway :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Norway
Plus a town inMichigan, a number of songs, a Hieronymous Bosch painting, a band name or two, a pizza chainsome films and more :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_(disambiguation)
The mythical afterlife locale not so much..
raven @ #4
Oh, oh, I know, I know! Hypocrisy, Greed, and Sexual Indiscretion.
Christians have long denied the reality of mental illness because it throws.a monkey wrench into their superstitions about “free will” and substance dualism (i.e. “souls”). I’ve heard of plenty of Christian media where those who have depression or anxiety throw away their meds because only JEEEEEZ-us can make you happy.
@5 I don’t think the good people of Hell, Norway should be burdened with this guy, but the lunar crate sounds like a good destination for the pastor.
@ 2
You could have just said “Christian.” No need for the superfluous language.
Someone should ask Coyne where those “fundamentally decent” Christians are while this is happening.
This is from the other link, the pastor on a school board in Missouri.
He claims autism doesn’t even exist because god doesn’t make mistakes.
Autistics aren’t born that way, they are possessed by demons.
He is actually an example of one of his god’s many mistakes.
Pastor Rick Morrow is a very stupid, vicious idiot. He is simply stupid and uneducated.
In Realityland,..”About 1 in 33 babies (about 3 percent) is born with a birth defect in the United States each year.”
These are just visible birth defects noted at birth.
I’m sure the actual number is much higher.
A lot of “birth defects” aren’t even detected until late in life.
That would include such conditions as heterozygotes for familial hypercholestemia, autism, schizophrenia, and bicuspid aortic valve, etc..
It’s a matter of common knowledge and fact that his god makes mistakes all the time.
In fact, about 50% of all pregnancies just end in spontaneous abortions, often due to a nonviable fetus sometimes with chromosomal abnormalities.
Bicuspid aortic valves are common and quite often aren’t detected until late in life.
These are aortic valves with two leaflets (cusps) instead of the usual three.
In some cases, they don’t cause any problems and you die without knowing you even had one. In other cases, they can cause heart failure later in life.
I was reminded of this condition because Arnold Schwarzenegger was born with bicuspid aortic valve and ended up recently having it surgically replaced.
Was Arnold Schwartzenegger possessed by a demon?
Did god make a mistake here?
We gave up on the demon theory of disease centuries ago.
Pastor Rick Morrow is just a common ignorant idiot.
PS: Who was born with a perfect body anyway?
If it wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger, probably very few of us.
Why we may (almost) all have 10 fingers and 10 toes, seems like we all have inherited disease susceptibilities of one sort or another.
The average human is carrying around 4 genetic lethal genes anyway.
I must need a demonectory to cast these evil doers from my eyes so I can rid myself of these ungodly glasses. Also, rid me of the joint demons who torture me with arthritic hips and knees.
If “God doesn’t make mess ups,” that must mean that God, in his infinite wisdom and error-free decision-making, knowingly chooses to allow demons to possess innocent children, when he knows he has the power to prevent it.
Offhand, I kinda think a god who makes mistakes is a eentsy bit more deserving of worship than a god who knowingly chooses to enable innocent kids to be set upon by demons.
Why would anyone in their right minds follow a ‘god’ who allows demonic possession of babies, and at birth too? That god doesn’t make mistakes. That god IS a mistake.
Demons! Demons! Demons everywhere! So why doesn’t God, who is omnipotent and loves the world (John 3:16) just get rid of Satan and all these demons?
If you were God, would you get rid of Satan and devils and demons and cute little imps? I wish the Pastor Bakers of the world would be asked this question every time they opened their yaps about stuff like this.
Trust me, charlie, that lot learn early on how to avoid, deflect or shout down questions like that. The best you can expect in the way of an answer is a lot of incoherent drivel and maybe a dollop of “it’s the Devil that causes people to ask these questions!”
So, is he renouncing his citizenship, then?
Saw this on Friendly Atheist and there’s a link to one of this braying jackass’s sermons. I dropped a comment on it… 😏
@Akira — Autism isn’t a mental illness, it’s a difference in the literal wiring of the brain.
@ Raging Bee
Recently, I have been thinking “If you were God” is a good way to deal with this sort of idiocy. If you were God, wouldn’t you do something about Satan? Would you kill all the first born of Egypt? Would you make some people elkect and others non-elect, arbitrarily? Would you command nasty genocides?
You may not make the Pastor Bakers of the world change their mind, but then we have the lurkers. And if you asked a class room of sixth graders such questions, I am sure that most sixth graders will prove to be smarter and more humane than the God of Christianity.
“If you were God” makes for a good rhetorical device that personalizes these issues, and makes it harder to bluff one’s way around these issues. If you were God, would you send a message to Putin? If God hates gays, why does he make so many of them? If you were God, wouldn’t you stop the creation of gay people?
How about you, little lurkers?
This pastor better watch his mouth. Jesus wasn’t particularly fond of bigots.
My theologian mate with Asperger’s will love this, NOT. but he’s not a Baptist so he’s even more demonic.
@raven #11,
I like how the possibility that autistic people aren’t junk doesn’t even cross his mind. Even with all the theodicies out there to explain all the horrible stuff in the world, it’s apparently inconceivable that his God might have a reason to value autistic kids.
@LykeX #18,
Watch that “he” and “his” stuff! Gender identities are demonic, after all. Pastor Matt–wait, I guess I shouldn’t be identifying them by name either. They’re Pastor X from now on.
garydargan @23: We need more Baptist ministers like Tommy Douglas.
@cheerfulcharlie #21,
It certainly works on some people–Charles Darwin, for example, considered it an “abominable doctrine” that God would do something so evil as sending unbelievers to Hell. But many Christians would say that it’s foolish, arrogant and/or blasphemous to imagine being God in the first place. How do you know what decisions an infinite being would make?
And if you ask why they trust that this same unknowable being is acting in their best interest, well, that’s what faith is for. It’s quite hard to argue with someone for whom logic is explicitly optional.
Is that a non doctor practicing medicine without a license?
Jesus may well have been psychotic. Hard to diagnose from published accounts and there’s that whole problem that he probably never existed. But he sure confabulated some whoppers.
Ezekiel 11
18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the
detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence.
19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within
you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give
them an heart of flesh:
20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and
do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
See also:
Ezekiel 11:18-20, Ezekiel 36:25-7, Jeremiah 24:7, Jeremiah 32:38-41,
Hebrews 8:10-12, Hebrews 10:15-17
here are the Bible verses where God states he will put his commands and statutes into the heart of the Israelites. With the “Great Commission” of Mark 16 to preach the gospel of Jesus to all mankind, it is obvious God could have placed his commands in the hearts of all. Jesus said so, the Bible proves it, that settles it.
These verses completely gut the “God is mysterious, incomprehensible” dodge. This also destroys free will apologetic arguments. God does not care about free will if we take these verses seriously. These verses are pretty much ignored by religious critics.
@20 WMDKitty: Most mental illnesses have a difference in brain structure or function as a component, otherwise how would medicine work?
Autism is a spectrum though and some presentations are functional enough not to be considered illness. In other words, the key factor that determines whether something is a mental disorder is whether it disrupts their life. It doesn’t matter if they’re “wired differently”.
Just like dyslexia and dyscalculia, autism is a mental disorder, but can be “overcome” through coping strategies and skills.
IX-103, I’m not speaking for WMDKitty, but your question is public:
That mental illnesses might have a difference in brain structure or function as a component does not entail that a difference in brain structure or function as a component entails mental illness. It might, but then it might not. Yet, here you are presuming that any difference from the norm is an illness. Tsk.
(In short — not normal does not entail ill)
[Hetero people are normal, gay people are not normal, hence gayness = illness; same sort of thing]
@24 Prax
‘Pastor’ is a label he identifies as. What he is really saying is that he is a demonic idolator.
#20
I’m sorry for conflating neurodivergence with mental illness. That was my bad. However, I think my overall point stands in either case: Christians don’t like the idea that our behavior is controlled by material processes rather than a magical ghost driving our meat puppet body.
@cheerfulcharlie #29,
Not really. Counterargument #1: God did place his commands in the hearts of all, that’s what the conscience is. But we suck, so we don’t listen to it properly. Neither did the Israelites, apparently, because they lost their faith again and rejected Jesus. Ezekiel’s prophecies and the Gospels and the church and the Great Commission are yet more attempts by God to remind us of what we should have known and done all along. We should be grateful that he’s still trying.
Counterargument #2: Ezekiel 11 isn’t a prophecy about the historical Israel, it’s a prophecy about the “new Israel” that will be inhabited by his Christian faithful after Armageddon. So it hasn’t actually happened yet.
Counterargument #3: God uses a variety of methods to lead us back to righteousness. Sometimes it’s a direct revelation, sometimes it’s an obvious miracle, sometimes it’s a piece of scripture or an evangelist knocking on the door. Why does he use a particular method on a particular person at a particular time? Mysteriousness and incomprehensibility!
Again, not really. A common Christian interpretation is that the “new heart and spirit” provided by God enables good behavior, but it doesn’t force it. Our individual and collective legacy of sin makes it almost impossible to choose righteousness on our own, so we need God’s help to restore the free will we’ve abandoned through our previous choices. We can still go on to choose evil again, though, just as Satan did.
Also, most conservative Christians don’t believe that God always supports our free will in the first place. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he doesn’t allow the damned to repent, nor those who take the Mark of the Beast when the Antichrist shows up. If you misuse your free will too much for too long, you don’t deserve to have it anymore. Apparently.
I’m not saying any of these are good reasons to believe, of course. But they are pretty hard to refute with pure logic. Basically, the combined premises of “God is incomprehensibly perfect” and “humans are too mentally corrupted by sin to perceive or reason correctly” make Christianity incredibly good at gaslighting.
Not really. This was at the top of the results when I Googled “Ezekiel 11 free will”.
@ardipithecus #33,
I think the ‘Pastor’ bit gets a pass because it’s a label “found in Christ.” The fact that it also gives him status, authority and a paycheck is purely coincidental.
Of course, in Matthew 23 Jesus actually warns against religious leaders flaunting status and titles, saying that we shouldn’t call anybody “Rabbi,” “Father” or “Master” except God. But he didn’t mention “Pastor” specifically, so that’s no problem! Loopholes are fantastic. (Except if you use them to justify being gay or something.)
Oh yeah, that’s pretty much what the church I was brought up in taught (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod). “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” means that you are allowed to put nothing before your obedience to God, least of all your own identity. If you do, that’s idolatry. It’s the first rule on the list, and that obviously meant it was the most important. That means you obey God without question, first and foremost, followed by those God had put over you, like your parents.
It also means that loving anyone more than God is a grave sin. I learned that in Sunday School before I was old enough for kindergarten. It wasn’t until I was in confirmation class, starting at age 11 or 12, that I learned it was an unforgivable sin. I’d been under the impression that God would forgive all sins, as long as you accepted Jesus as your savior and were truly repentant. Nope. You break Rule Numero Uno, and you’re fucked. Well, you’re damned, to be precise.
To those in this thread wondering why so many people don’t ask themselves why God doesn’t do this or that, it’s because many Christian sects teach that any questioning of God is a form of idolatry. You’re taught that asking questions like that is putting yourself above God by thinking you, a lowly, wretched sinner, have any right to question the Creator.
As I explained above, idolatry is a sure way to earn yourself a one-way ticket to an eternity of torment beyond human imagining. It’s been my experience that pastors of denominations that teach this love to dwell on just how horrible Hell might be.
Personally, seeing Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth late one night around the time I’d learned I was probably damned (yes, the thought was what was keeping me awake) scared me bad enough that I spent the better part of the next decade groveling to God for forgiveness. There’s one part in particular, where the heroine is threatened with something like an oversized, acid-spewing, barbed-and-bladed penis… I saw that, and I thought about what the pastor had said about Hell being worse than anything the human mind could dream up. I was like, “fuck that, I’ll be good,” and I started begging for forgiveness. That I already knew what it felt like to be raped no doubt amplified my “devotion.”
Teaching unquestioning obedience through a lifetime of terror works, unfortunately.
Rob Grigjanis #25
Amen to that.
Prax, um.
‘Pastor’ is literally ‘Shepherd’. As in, shepherding a flock of sheep. The sheep are the faithful.
(Nothing whatsoever to do with Christ, either historically or etymologically or semantically)
No, that is literal, not figurative.
Each tribe had their god, but to Judeans and Israelites YHWH was the pre-eminent one.
Supreme god for his people, no more than that. Boss god of the gods.
Only a bit later was true monotheism the teaching.
—
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion
@John Morales, #39
It certainly has something to do with Christ historically, since it’s a common and ancient title for a position within the Christian church. And the church is the body of Christ, except when he’s being a bunch of communion wafers or a Jewish rabble-rouser or a 300-foot-tall dude with a sword coming out of his mouth.
Also, Jesus talked about sheep and shepherds a lot, which makes it super-legit. In fact, he called himself a shepherd, which should probably make it idolatry for anyone else to name themselves a pastor, but it doesn’t because Paul used the same metaphor for himself and other Christian leaders, and Paul can’t be wrong, not that he’s infallible because that would be idolatry, but God made sure Paul wouldn’t be wrong about this bit. When properly interpreted, of course, and Pastor Matt knows the proper interpretation so it all works out! You’ll understand if you just tithe harder.
By the way, is that Trinity Christian Academy’s original logo on the top right corner? It looks kind of heathenish.
@ John Morales, #40
Yes, I know that now. I was explaining what I was taught back then. The LCMS, and many other conservative denominations, teach that “thou shalt have no other gods” before me means just what I said. In part, this is about fostering unthinking obedience to God (and his “servants”), but it’s also part and parcel of another teaching of those sects: that there are and never have been any other gods.
If there were never any other gods, then the “gods” in that commandment must refer to something else. Hence, we were taught that it meant holding anyone or anything “above” God in our lives.
OK, Prax. Got me there.
So is Patriarch and Father (and Primate, which can be amusing.
(And Mother Superior!)
Silly nonsense – and what’s more, inconsistent. If “he probably never existed” (he almost certainly did, in the consensus of relevant experts, who include atheists, agnostics and observant Jews as well as Christians), then it’s hard to see how he “may well have been psychotic”. But there’s no good evidence of that in any case – majority expert opinion is that he was an apocalyptic Jew, who probably thought he was going to be the Messiah (“anointed one”, i.e., king of a revived Jewish state), but in the cultural context, the first was widespread among his contemporaries, the second certainly unusual, but by no means unique and not an obvious sign of psychosis (he seems not to have gone around openly proclaiming it, as you might expect of a psychotic). As for “he sure confabulated some whoppers”, all the evidence we have of his words comes from accounts written some decades later, so methods of textual criticism are needed to identify the things that he did probably say; what they indicate is that he was badly wrong, most notably in anticipating a near-future apocalypse, but they don’t indicate that he was a liar, if that’s what you mean.
If for some reason you think demons exist, it seems more probable Yahweh was one of the demons, than god.
Apparently Jesus gave him the idea, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
Just for spite, I identify as a Doom Metal enthusiast. Hail Satan!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqoyKzgkqR4
Also, just because neurotypicals keep trying to “fix” us neurodivergents (whether we want it or not) doesn’t mean we’re sick or broken. We’re just different, we need different supports, and that’s okay.