Atheism is a condom for your mind

Matt Taibbi went off on a three day Christian retreat, and discovered how ridiculous they are…but he also discover the deep emotional, anti-intellectual pull of these kinds of events.

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place, you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you’ve gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no “anything else.” All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this “our thing,” a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that’s all.

Insulating yourself against the taint of all religion is a kind of psychological, informational hygiene. Abandon all rigor and requirement for reality-based evidence for one’s ideas, and you open the door wide for the kind of conditioning in dogma modern religion promotes.

When will Maj. Freddy J. Welborn be court-martialed?

I think he’s due, but he’s not the only one. It’s like our entire army is being turned into a pocket theocracy.

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Ugh. Threats from a commanding officer over what our soldiers believe? Not that anyone will chastise him; the conversion of our military into a goon squad for the believers is coming along too far for that.

But Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.

Complaints include prayers “in Jesus’ name” at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be “born again.” After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

“Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs,” Mr. Weinstein said. “You’re promoted by who you pray with.”

“Promoted by who you pray with”…that’s scary. We’ve got selection going on in the armed forces for uniformity of religious belief, and worst of all, it’s for the kind of religious belief endorsed by loud Christianist wackaloons.

KBSU peddling nonsense

KBSU is the campus television station for Bemidji State University, and apparently they’ve been broadcasting crap lately — several hours a day have been dedicated to episodes of this feeble series of videos called “Does God Exist?”. It’s awful. It’s basically some self-proclaimed Christian standing in front of a camera and preaching.

For an example of the quality of the thinking going into this video series, take a look at his proof for the existence of god. He literally says that there are only two possibilities: 1) the universe is eternal and uncreated, the atheist position (which is incorrect), and 2) the book of Genesis is correct. Because science has demonstrated the event called the Big Bang, it has proven that the Christian creation story is correct.

Really.

You know, I don’t think a public television has to be constrained to avoid showing inanity like this; in fact, this guy’s video series is so awesomely stupid that they are doing the cause of atheism a small favor by openly discrediting religious “logic”. However, as the television station for a university, I should think they would also be obligated to show something educational, with a little more intellectual heft than the ravings of a self-pithed delusional kook. How about also showing A brief history of disbelief? Bronowski’s Ascent of Man? Sagan’s Cosmos? There’s lots of good stuff out there, and that KBSU is rummaging about in the garbage bin for dreck to fill their broadcasting hours isn’t a good sign.

Leo: The stars predict there is a harem in your future. Unfortunately, it’s not as glamorous as it sounds; it’s more like a knacking yard cooperative, with benefits.

Morbid freaks

Christianity is a creepy death cult. Worshipping a rotting corpse is revolting.

The exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims on Thursday when it went on display 40 years after his death.

…

His face was reconstructed with a lifelike silicone mask of the type used in wax museums because it was apparently too decomposed to show when the body was exhumed.

…

The body of the bearded Capuchin monk was exhumed from a crypt on March 3 and found to be in “fair condition” after 40 years. Since then a team of medical examiners and biochemists has worked to preserve and reconstruct the corpse.

Yeesh. They dug up the decayed body of an old fraud, dressed it up in a mask and fancy clothes, and parade it around and worship it…and use it to bilk desperate, sick people out of money? That’s just vile.

Capricorn: You are going to experience a miserable…wait. Those eyes. Those weird pupils…I…I…All Glory to the Hypno-Capricorn. You will be appointed Ruler of the Universe. Hail! All hail the Capricorn!

Oh, well, that’s all right then.

I don’t say the pledge of allegiance; I actually find it rather offensive that I’m expected to give a loyalty oath to a political entity if I attend a school board meeting. So I was a little sympathetic to this story of a student was kicked out of school for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But then…the school administrators made a fast about face and decided to let her return to school. Why, you might wonder…but I think you can guess.

She simply said she was a devout Christian and could not make oaths to anyone but her god.

Zooom! Excused!

So this means an atheist student wouldn’t have an excuse and could be compelled to recite an oath to a nation “under god”? Charming double standard there.

Sanctimonious monsters

Yesterday, two great pious leaders of the world met in Washington DC. President Bush has immense temporal power, leading one of the richest countries on the planet with the most potent military force. Pope Benedict is a spiritual leader to a billion people, with immense influence and the responsibility of a long religious legacy. What could they have talked about? Mostly, they seem to have patted each other on the back and congratulated each other on their commitment to superstition.

In remarks greeting the pope at the White House, Bush called the United States “a nation of prayer.”

Bush was interrupted by applause as he said, “In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed.”

Benedict responded by praising the role of religion in the United States.

“From the dawn of the republic, America’s quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the creator,” he said.

I am often told that religion is a source of morality. I’ve read the Bible myself; I can see that there were moral philosophers at work behind that book, that we have a tradition of law in the Old Testament, with a fellow named Jesus adding social justice and concern for the poor and weak in the New that are actually rather commendable. I also see a lot of myth and error and misplaced obsession with the supernatural that rational people are willing to set aside to focus on the core humanitarian message … or at least they do so in the best of circumstances.

Yet what I also see in modern religion is a re-prioritizing: the secular concerns that should matter, the egalitarian word of a religious tradition that valued the cohesion of the social fabric and demanded equal treatment for even the least of society is ignored, given a little lip service perhaps, but made subservient to the intangible theological nonsense of prayer, of an invisible god, of submission to dogma and hope in an unevidenced afterlife. It’s a religion that has shifted its eyes from a task to be done here on earth to an unearthly vision of a magical unseen world run by an ethereal tyrant who must be placated.

Bush calls us a nation of prayer — a depressing label that makes us a country of delusions. Worse, he claims that we respect life as sacred, a lie straight from his lips. How can George Bush claim our country does not debase and discard human lives?

As you well informed blog readers all know by now, last week ABC broke an interesting little story. It was about how Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Colin Powell, George Tenent, John Ashcroft and other Bush “Principals” all gathered in regular meetings in the White House to discuss and approve of the various torture methods being used against prisoners held by the United States in the War On Terror. ABC interviewed the president a couple of days later and asked him if he was aware of these meetings and he said he was not only aware of them, but that he’d approved of them. Moreover, he specifically said he had no regrets about what was done to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who we know was tortured with simulated drowning — also known as “waterboarding” — which is considered by the entire civilized world to be torture.

The great pious Catholic Pope stands before this man, and what does he say? Does he mention that Jesus asked that we do to others as we would have them do to us? Does he remind him that they call their religious figurehead the “Prince of Peace”, and that he asked us to turn the other cheek when we were struck, or that he asked that we protect the poor and weak? Does he point out that the central event in their shared faith was the torture and execution of their prophet and god, and that the New Testament isn’t about emulating the heroic Romans?

No, of course not. An obscenely wealthy old man heading an organization that protects child abusers and advocates horrendous and ignorant social practices that harm the poor all around the world would look utterly hypocritical even trying to rebuke a war-monger and apologist for torture. So instead he stands there and tells him that they share common principles founded in fear of a nebulous god. Those are ‘principles’ I reject — they seem to be nothing but labile excuses for doing as you will to anyone who falls under your thumb.

There’s an evil tableau for you: the callous torturer stands up with blood on his hands and a lie in his teeth, while the priest draped in gilt reassures him of his righteousness. How often has that scene played out in history, I wonder?

Our press seems to be more interested in promoting the pomp of a papal visit than actually addressing the vileness that this administration prosecutes; we’ll see more of the pointless, self-promoting ceremonial nonsense of the mass in New York this weekend than we’ll see addressing the unconscionable evil these great pious leaders condone. I won’t be watching any of it. The sight of these two sanctimonious monsters makes me ill. How about you, Christians? These are your leaders, your paragons, your representatives of the power of your faith. Do you feel some slight tremor of shame that your values are on parade in an empty ritual in the foreground, and a brutal indifference to human life in the back?

God must really hate black people

A family of Minnesotans were involved in a horrific plane crash in the Congo.

Barry and Marybeth Mosier were on their way to visit their son Keith, 24, in Kinsangani, Congo, with two younger children when their plane crashed on takeoff Tuesday in Goma. At least 36 people died as the plane plowed through a market and burned. Most of the people who died were on the ground, according to the U.N. mission in DR Congo.

…Mosier said, he and his wife were carrying their son Andrew, 3, in the shoving “mass of humanity” trying to escape the burning plane. They got out through the opening in the fuselage.

…“Outside the plane, she was wandering around. … It was total chaos,” he said. “People were screaming and yelling because the plane had landed on this market. All of a sudden, out of the blue, all of these people who were just standing there are now dead.

“So there’s parts of bodies and people burning and people screaming and yelling, and she was out there by herself.”

It sounds like a nightmarish event, and I’m glad they survived. I wish a few more people hadn’t died horrible, painful deaths in such a catastrophe, but this was a family of despicable missionaries, so you know what’s coming next.

“We couldn’t believe that our family of four could all escape a plane that was crashed and on fire, but by God’s mercy, we did,” he said.

Mosier said he believes the family made it for a reason.

“I think the Lord has a plan for us, otherwise we wouldn’t have survived,” he said. “He still has work for us to do.”

Their god has no mercy to spare for the innocent people in the market, of course, and their lives must have been totally useless for their god to be able to dispense with them in such a brutal fashion. Or perhaps they were wicked and deserved a flaming extinction with lots of fear and screaming?

In a just theistic world, I think their god would despise such smug, self-satisfied Christians.