Rick Stedman, meet Barbara Streisand

Remember David Marshall? Christ the Tao? The last thread he commented in was this one, where he was his usual bumbling pretentious self, if you need a prod to the memory. He recently had a debate at Adventure Christian Church with Phil Zuckerman, the sociologist, and was creamed. The church then refused to release the video of the debate…until now.

Dear Friends,

Earlier this month our church hosted a debate featuring Dr. David Marshall speaking on Christianity and Dr. Phil Zuckerman, sharing his views on secular humanism.

The night was designed to provide a platform for each to debate their views on civil society. We hoped to encourage a sharing of thoughts and ideas between Christians, atheists and the surrounding community.

After the debate, I honestly thought the video posting was my choice to make, and I was floored to learn that our decision not to post it was considered by some as evidence of close-mindedness. I apologize for not posting this debate earlier, and now that we have clearly heard from both presenters, we are posting the debate.

I hope that the conversation about civility can continue and might return to the civil tone in which it began.

Shalom,

Pastor Rick Stedman

So he was surprised that people pressured him to release the video. How disingenuous, especially given that before he revealed it, he had posted several one-sided rebuttals. And now he has the gall to whine about ‘civility’! You gotta give it to get it, guy.

So here it is, the video Adventure Christian Church was embarrassed to show.

If he’d just quietly released it from the very beginning, probably no one would have noticed. I suppose we should thank Stedman for doing such a fabulous job advertising it.

I have a sudden craving for Girl Scout Cookies

If a Girl Scout showed up at my door right now, I’d buy half a dozen boxes, easy. Not that I’d eat them, but apparently Girl Scout cookies are now the cool way to promote feminism, lesbianism, and unbiblical womanhood, at least according to a couple of right wing radio hosts.

Swanson: The individualism of feminism has been devastating to this country. I’d say you ought to say no the Girl Scout cookies too. I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies. Now I suppose if you take a big, fat, black magic marker and you say, ‘give me that box,’ and you start marking out all of the references to the Girl Scouts of America on all the boxes then maybe we’re not promoting that organization anymore and I’d be willing to buy it. Maybe it’s not food offered to idols anymore if I had the opportunity to scratch out references to the Girl Scouts of America on the boxes of the Girl Scout cookies offered to me at Safeway.

Buehner: Those are some pretty expensive cookies you’re eating though. At some point a Christian has to say, ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,’ and where you spend your money does count.

Swanson: It does and I don’t want to promote a wicked organization that according to its own website doesn’t promote godly womanhood, it just doesn’t, I don’t see anything that promotes godly womanhood. The vision of the Girl Scouts of America is antithetical to a biblical vision for womanhood, it’s antithetical to it.

I think these guys have very dirty minds. They seem to think Girl Scout meetings are lesbian orgies.

Now Dave if you go the website for the Girl Scouts and you find out what the Girl Scouts are doing with their national conventions, some shocking things. Now you showed me these websites this morning, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this, you know who shows up at these Girl Scout conventions? Guys just check it out at the Girl Scouts’ websites and you’re going to find that the people showing up are lesbians, lots and lots of lesbians. Dave I didn’t realize there were this many lesbians leading this country but they certainly show up in Girl Scout conventions across America.

This one was October, 2011, in Houston, Texas, and the first openly homosexual mayor in the United States, which happens to be Annise Parker, showed up at the convention. A lesbian; a lesbian. By the way, her lesbian partner Kathy Hubbard is the treasurer for Planned Parenthood PAC so apparently there is this unholy alliance between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. Also Sara Bareilles is a prominent voice for the gay and lesbian agenda, she performed at the 2009 Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Rights Celebration, she lends her image to the YouTube video ‘President Obama will you say I do?’ campaign supporting gay marriage, she’s joined the True Colors Tour as ‘a vehicle to entertain as well as engage audiences to take part in the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality,’ anyway this woman showed up at the lesbian conference—I mean, the Girl Scouts conference down in Houston.

I’m telling you Girl Scouts: print out a transcript of that little chat. Show it to potential customers. It won’t just be the atheists who whip out their checkbooks, I think a lot of non-evil Christians would do likewise.

Gulf states develop amazing new biomedical technology

First off, I must mention that these states are awful, evil, terrible places under the thumb of an obsolete religious morality.

Those under the age of 21 living in Kuwait found to be taking part in homosexual acts currently face prison sentences of up to ten years. Homosexual acts are banned in all GCC member countries, which include Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier this week Oman suspended their newspaper The Week, alleging it had printed an article that was considered sympathetic towards homosexuals.

Homosexuality is illegal in 78 countries across the world and is still punishable by death in five countries, which include Iran and Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

But despite their repressive social policies, they must have made an astonishing scientific breakthrough.

Yousouf Mindkar said routine clinical screenings of expatriates entering Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) such as Kuwait would be introduced under new proposals. Persons who are identified as LGBT through the tests would then be refused entry into the country.

Whoa. They have clinical screenings for the Gay? I would like to know about those, but they aren’t giving out the details. I hope it’s not that fuzzy digit length stuff, or lie detector tests, because they don’t work. But something that can unambiguously detect what sex a person finds attractive would be really interesting.

They couldn’t possibly be lying about this, could they? Those government officials from the GCC all sound so rational.

MP Mohammad Al Jabri called on the Kuwati authorities to clamp down on Amnesty itself, ‘I condemn the brazen requests by an organization that introduces itself as a protector of freedoms and human rights,’ Al Jabri said.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should respond urgently to the so-called Amnesty International to highlight the noble Islamic principles, values and teachings in which the people of Kuwait believe and which reject the propagation of vice and debauchery in the community.”

Retired MP Mohammad Al Hayef accused Amnesty International of “interlacing honey with poison” and suggest that gay people “destroy humanity”.

He told Al Rai “It should have reinforced the slogan of human rights and the defense of the oppressed, not confuse issue[s] and interlace honey with poison so that one of its officials dares to encourage behavior that is against the human nature and clashes with the teachings of all apostles. Deviant behavior and attitudes undermine and destroy humanity.”

Don’t they sound nice? They’d be right at home in Texas or Washington DC. I guess we can expect our Republicans to follow suit on this important issue any day now.

The Kuwait Times reported earlier on Wednesday that coffee shops which allow men and women to drink together “corrupt morals” according to Kuwaiti MPs.

I wonder if there is a clinical test in the wings to determine whether someone has shared coffee with a person of a different sex, and I wonder if it will be sensitive enough to detect whether you’ve had coffee with a gay person.

That is a good cartoon

The Digital Cuttlefish has found an excellent expression of religious thought.

show-me-a-sign-cartoon

That isn’t photoshopped or fudged in any way — that is the actual, complete cartoon that Ken Ham has happily encouraged everyone on the internet to share around.

It’s perfect. We ask for evidence of their god, they point to one of their own silly texts. And we really are stunned, shocked, and surprised, just like the guy in the cartoon…because we had no idea anyone could be that stupid.

Alabama football prayer poll

Boy, when you see those four words strung together in the title, you know exactly what you expect to see: sophisticated theology. They certainly do parse the temporal options finely to conceal the fact that they are proposing to to use the public school system to promote sectarian religious practice.

When do you think prayer is appropriate in high school football?

Over the public address system  33.77%

In the locker room  20.65%

At midfield after the game  19.44%

Before or after practice  17.44%

Not at all  8.7%

They left out “Whenever the opposing team scores a goal” and “When the cheerleaders do those high kicks” and “Someone ought to be constantly praying to make sure the earth doesn’t open up beneath us and tumble us down into Hell.”

Another ridiculous poll

The Montgomery, Alabama police have pious plan to send out priests along with the police on emergency calls. “Trained” priests, apparently, which means they’re going to be spending money on completely unqualified people who can provide no material assistance to tag along with the police. Why? Because it makes someone in the chain of command feel good, I suppose.

Do you think police should send out trained clergy to violent crime scenes?

No, there should be a separation of religion and government  66.64%

Yes, police and victims need all the help they can get.  29.98%

I don’t care either way.  2.45%

Not sure  1%

The only virtue I could think of is that maybe they’d put a check on the police and prevent them from shooting innocent people, but you don’t need to be a priest to do that.

Yell at ’em until they believe!

Wow. Glenn Beck really is an authoritarian tool. Watch this clip; he’s ranting at the microphone at children, insisting that they must learn that their rights come from god.


Push them. Well, they’re going to cry, I’ll hurt their feelings. PUSH ‘EM!, because if you don’t do it now, it’s going to be much worse when they’re pushed and they’re shoved and they’re shot. Push them! Teach them! The need to know the truth and the need to be pushed up against the wall once in a while so they know they can defend themselves. They know they can survive. They don’t run around like little girls crying at the drop of a hat. Push them!

You’ll be relieved to know that his tirade is directed only at little boys. You little girls out there are free to laugh at his magic god and recognize that your rights represent privileges and responsibilities conferred by your fellow human beings.

And I hope that the rest of you all see that bullying kids into guilt is also a bad thing. You don’t want to be like Glenn Beck, do you?

How can smart atheists be bamboozled by Joseph Atwill?

Atwill is this guy who claims to have evidence that Jesus wasn’t real: Christianity was a cunning product of a Roman imperial conspiracy, intentionally designed to placate those troublesome Jews, and he claims to have a Roman confession that he’ll reveal next week.

I think a few too many atheists are seeing “Scholar Says Jesus Was Fake” and are not thinking any more deeply than that. The whole idea is ridiculous.

The Roman idea of social engineering was to plant a legionary fortress, or retire a bunch of legionaries, into an area that they wanted to pacify. Incorporating regional gods into their pantheon by synonymizing them, sure; far-fetched long-term plans that would require centuries to mature into a tangible result, no.

Has there ever been a religion that was created by a government that actually caught on? Most religions die young; they have a very low success rate. It’s not a smart investment — it’s like buying a lottery ticket. If Romans had been in this game of inventing religions to win over the natives to Romanism, we’d see more examples of failures than long term success.

What would you think of a conspiracy theorist who announced that Joseph Smith had been a secret government agent with the mission of persuading a large number of people to settle that barren Utah territory? Or that L. Ron Hubbard was J. Edgar Hoover’s boy, part of a plan to provide an alternative to the Communist Party for impressionable youth? There are always people to whom a conspiracy theory is attractive, but more rational people would just laugh at the very idea.

Finally, as Russell Glasser points out, real scholars don’t spring the evidence on their audiences by press release or by public lecture — it is first reviewed by independent scholars for authenticity.

If you’re one of the many atheists who gleefully forwarded this to me or credulously mentioned it on twitter…hello, there. I see you’ve already met the good friend of so many half-baked wackos in the world, Confirmation Bias.

Richard Carrier demolishes Atwill in detail.