Little imaginary beings

I recently mentioned the way some serious theologians believe in demons and exorcisms. I can’t help it; I find these notions ridiculous to an extreme, and the absurdity of serious scholars blaming diseases on demonic possession in the 21st century is something one has to find laughable. I was being hard on Christianity, though. I left out an important exonerating factor for these people.

Some of them believe in angels, too.

Yes, I’m joking when I say this is an exonerating factor. This merely makes them even more silly. But no, you say, they can’t possibly argue for demons and angels being real agents in the natural world, can they? This must all be metaphorical, not literal. Judge for yourself.

Here’s a passage from the foreword to a 2002 book by Peter S. Williams, The Case for Angels. This is a book that argues for the literal reality of angels, and that they are important because “Angels (with a capital ‘A’, good angels) are worth studying because they are true (real), noble, right pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. Fallen angels (demons are worth studying because they are real and because it behoves every army, including the army of Christ, to know its enemy.” The author of the foreword agrees. Can you guess who it is?

Peter Williams’ The Case for Angels is about…the theological rift between a Christian intelligentsia that increasingly regards angels only as figurative or literary devices, and the great mass of Christians who thankfully still regard them as real (a fact confirmed by popular polls, as Williams notes in this book). This rift was brought home to me at a conference I helped organize at Baylor University some years back. The conference was entitled ‘The Nature of Nature’ and focused on whether nature is self-contained or points beyond itself. The activity of angels in the world would clearly constitute on way nature points beyond itself.

[Read more…]

It’s a safe bet that I won’t be voting for McCain

Just watch the little suck-up grovel for the Religious Right. It isn’t pretty.

McCain: I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’

Whenever I see these pious testimonies to “Judeo-Christian values”, I always wonder…how many Jewish founding fathers were there? How many Jewish presidents have we had? I have no objection to electing a Jewish president, but it always seems to me that these claims that toss in the word “Judeo” are made solely to put up a pretense of inclusiveness — they really mean “conservative Christian,” and they include an invisible, unnamed token Jew to hide their real narrowness.

Flattery is nice when you can get it

Andrew Brown is so kind: he calls me one of America’s most notorious atheists in an opinion piece on the wretched Archbishop Chimoio. He also makes an interesting game theoretic argument that, in purely pragmatic terms, the Catholic Church in Africa is simply following a winning strategy that maximizes the differential fitness of their group. It’s probably true, except that I think a rational secular strategy would work best of all … if anyone were playing that side of the game.

Evil Catholic propaganda

What a charming representative for Christianity! A Catholic archbishop is claiming that condoms and retroviral drugs have been intentionally spiked with HIV. That’s getting down and dirty with best evangelical strategy: lie, smear, and promote evil ignorance.

Archbishop Chimoio told our reporter that abstention, not condoms, was the best way to fight HIV/Aids.

“Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose,” he alleged, refusing to name the countries.

“They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century’s time.”

Please, Archbishop Chimoio, tell me of these amazing human societies where abstinence actually works.

I wonder if those mysterious unnamed countries are also where Ruloff’s mysterious unnamed researchers live.

He said he knew researchers, whom he would not name, who had studied cellular mechanisms and made findings “riddled with metaphysical implications” and suggestive of an intelligent designer. But they are afraid to report them, he said.

Liars for Jesus all begin to sound alike after a while, don’t they?

Oh, well. Ruloff is only trying to keep people stupid. Chimoio is trying to kill them.

Why do we need a secular America?

The Atheist Alliance convention is coming up this weekend in Washington DC, and one of the things that they’re planning to discuss is a generic atheist symbol. Among others, they want to consider the Affinity symbol that was proposed in this thread, oh so long ago (by the way: Godfrey Temple, email me so I can put you in touch with someone). Here’s an unfortunate twist, though:

Ironic note on the poster of Atheist Symbols for the Atheist Alliance International convention: I went to have it made today, at a local shop which specializes in posters, worked happily with the designer — and then several hours later got a call to come back and pick my stuff up, no poster. They are Christians and cannot do it. Went to another place, same thing. It was simply a poster with symbols to vote on — but it was for atheists. And they are Christians. One person helpfully explained that they turned down the KKK too. So sorry. But they’re Christians.

Well, I’m an atheist, and I’ve done work for churches. I can understand not making a donation. But throwing someone out of the print shop? Comparing them with the Ku Klux Klan? Oh. Wait. They’re Christians.

Let’s hear it for Office Max. They were the only ones who would print it. And deal with an atheist.

If Sastra would like to name the businesses and their addresses, I’ll happily add them here and urge everyone to boycott the bigoted pissants.

Two countries separated by a common idiocy

I had not known that the UK actually had a legal requirement “in all state schools for pupils to take part in a daily act of worship of a broadly Christian nature.” How … quaint. That must create a fair number of atheists, since I think I would probably have reacted with some resentment if my school had shuffled me off to chapel every day, just on the general principle. And I’ve learned something else: the UK government has an infestation of holy muckity-mucks, almost like ours! When Dr Paul Kelley tried to turn the school he runs into a a fully secular institution, he was told he couldn’t do that:

One senior figure at the then Department for Education and Skills, told Kelley that bishops in the House of Lords and ministers would block the plans. Religion, they added, was ‘technically embedded’ in many aspects of education.

[Read more…]

Huckabee heaven

As many of the readers here know, one of the most common criticisms of us uppity atheists is the idea that the religion we critize doesn’t exist: that the true power of faith is thoughtful, intelligent, and deep, and plucking out random weird beliefs isn’t really representative. When I hear that (and I have, often), I just have to roll my eyes and give the apologist a scathing look — if they believe naive god-wallopers weren’t the dominant form of religious belief on the planet, then I can at least castigate the self-declared ‘sophisticated’ theology for being an exercise in willful blindness.

But here’s another case. This is a presidential candidate. He has an audience eating out of his hand with his speech on how much he looooooooooves his guns, how the UN should float away, and other fodder for wingnuts. And of course, with gun love comes the love of Christ.

“watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”

Pretty deep thinking there from Mike Huckabee. Shallow, stupid git. But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible.

Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.

Entartete Kirche

Perhaps it was just poor framing when Cardinal Joachim Meisner said:

“Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism and culture becomes degenerate,” he said.

The word “degenerate” is hardly ever used in Germany today because of its known association with the Third Reich.

Well, yes, I can imagine that there is some sensitivity to the use of the word … but perhaps they should also consider the substance of his remarks. He has basically just said atheists are incapable of producing art: no music, no beauty, no poetry, none of the great works of the human mind.

He has made the usual disclaimer that his words were taken out of context — he didn’t mean to associate his position with a term used by Nazis. He has not, however, repudiated the sense of his words — the dehumanization of those who do not believe in his superstition.