The Wrightwing

Over on NoGodBlog, the ‘house’ Blog of American Atheists, there is a post and comment thread about an attempted railroading of an Oklahoma Atheist family because their daughter objected to being forced into a prayer circle in her tax-payer funded Public School. The story is chilling in what can happen in America today. It is not just Islam that will engage in oppression and tyranny when it gains hegemony over a community. Without a courageous attorney and the support of American Atheists, and innocent man may have been imprisoned and a family run out of a state, forced to abandon their home and business.

So far, this case has attracted little attention outside the Atheist and Freethinker community. I can find no news sources on Google that mention it. Yet the only things this family did not endure were night riders and lynchings.

Corrupt and lying school officials, police, prosecutors and judges, along with biased and bigoted attorneys seeking to exploit and cheat them. It is a story out of the Jim Crow South. All you would need to do is change ‘Atheist’ to ‘African’ and you could not tell this story from others of that era.

Which brings me to arms.

I spend a lot of time, more than I probably should, on the NoGodBlog discussing and arguing with Atheists over politics, against collectivism and gun control, which many, though far from all, seem to support. At least within that grouping.

But one fellow there had a change of heart on guns, like I did over 25 years ago:

…I used to think as you do. I used to believe that guns were evil and the people that rely on them are cowards, afraid to back up what they say and do with little else but violence.

I swore I would never resort to gun promotion.

Then I took a job that required me to be armed, to take on the responsibility of protecting others. I leared how to safely handle a firearm.

The gun changed in meaning to me. I realized that it was little more than a tool. A tool when, in the right hands, has as much potential for good as it does for evil! Gun ownership did not transform me into a criminal. It did not give me any more desire to use a firearm on another human being than I already possessed.

It made me question the reason a free nation needs such a tool at all. I had my epiphany - arms make and keep humanity free and safe. Our revolutionaries did not merely bander harsh language with a tyrranical, abusive theocracy. They took lives and gave their own because they believed in their freedom!

I know how I must sound to you. Paranoid, delusional, even insane? I assure you that I’d have held those same sentiments not so terribly long ago! But I was an idealist. I believed in our police, our courts, our laws (and for the most part still do).

But I’ve also taken the bitter pill of realism, I’ve stood face-to-face with men that threatened my very life and the live of those I love. I’ve been forced into the harsh light of the truth: we will never, as a species, stop killing one another and we will never live in the utopias we dream of. The only solution to certain kinds of people will always be violence and it can only be met with violence.

There is more. Go and read the entire post and comments. A worthy story to become familiar with.

In my mostly wasted youth I was also very anti gun. I had stickers on my car from Handgun-Control Inc. The ones with a revolver inside an international ‘NO’ symbol, the circle-slash.

Then I went into the Army, (for the wrong reasons and all too briefly), and actually used some: M-16, M-60, M1911, M2, as well as taking the Armorer course, (not intentionally, it was ‘on the way’).

I still thought they should be severely restricted, but also kept reading on the subject, (among many). Being an activist in the LP, though coming to it from the left, for reason of personal freedom such as an end to Drug Prohibition, as well as an obsessive reader, I was exposed to ideas and thinkers from a wide variety of sources.

Having read the arguments on both sides, and having experience with arms, how they operate and their capabilities and just as important, their limitations, my mind was changed.

Everything I have seen, including the tragedies, since then has only reinforced my belief, a belief based on empirical evidence.

Like drug prohibition, gun prohibition is worse that whatever social ills it is supposed to cure.

While gun prohibition is no guarantee of political tyranny, it sets the stage. Every oppression or slaughter of minorities in history has been prefaced by a disarming of the targeted group. Go back in history before firearms were invented and you will see it. Look at modern history and you will see it.

In the past century alone, disarmed populations have been slaughtered in Armenia, Germany, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, more.
The banning of guns has lead to massive increases in crime in Jamaica, Britain and Australia, not to mention cities like Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

Guns in the hands of individuals can lead to tragedies, but they are tragedies limited to what a single person can do.
Guns in the hands of governments, without an equally armed populace to restrain that government, leads to tragedy on a national scale, if not outright slaughter.

Minorities of all persuasions, racial, religious, political, all of them, should always keep arms, and not let the government know it.

The day the government decrees that you must give up your arms is the day you must use them, even if it is just to flee over the border to the safety of asylum in another country.

My buddies of at American Atheists nogodblog point to a column in Newsweek by Marc Gellman, entitled “Trying to Understand Angry Atheists”, who asks: “Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?”.

Here is my response:

Mr. Gellman,

I hope this finds you well.

I have just read your column and would like to respond to your rhetorical question: “Why do nonbelievers seem to be threatened by the idea of God?”.

We are not threatened by the idea of god. We are threatened by YOUR idea of god. Yours and Falwell’s, and bin Ladens, and Robertsons, Roy Moore’s, and all fundamentalists of all beliefs. In the U.S. we atheists tend to gripe about christians because christians are in the majority. And an insufferable majority at that.

But we also gripe about radicals of all religions, judaism, mohammedism, hinduism, what ever ‘ism’ you can name. In India we fight against all sorts of spiritual charlatans and fakirs, mostly hindu, but also mohammedan. In Israel we fight conservative and hasidim parties.

We are not angry with our neighbors over their religion, so long as they are peaceful and non-intrusive. If I visit a neighbor or friend for dinner, I do not ask that they not pray before the meal, if that is their practice. At the same time, I ask that they not try to have a prayer circle at my home, when I have them over. They do not ask that I join their prayers, I do not care if they have a small discreet one at my house. Respect is a two way street, the host and the guest must be mindful of each other.

Which brings us to evangelicals. You mention them as a particular target of our wrath. Perhaps, but not because they are religious, but because, to us, they are a bunch of arrogant, self-appointed butinskis that won’t leave other people alone. Whether door to door mormons, seventh day adventists or others, or the local blue nosed, intolerant censor that wants to rid the local library of Harry Potter books or the works of Darwin. They are like a permanent mother-in-law that constantly reminds you that you are unworthy of being their child’s spouse. Even if they act as if they are all sweetness and light, it is always with a disapproving, condescending, sweetness and light. How would you react to someone that constantly disapproves of what you do in a non-religious context? That co-worker that always remarks on not eating meat in a superior tone, or that neighbor that always harps on those damn democrats/republicans?

We are angry, however, when we read things like “Perhaps their atheism was the result of the tragic death of a loved one, or an angry degrading sermon, or an insensitive eulogy, or an unfeeling castigation of lifestyle choices or perhaps something even worse.”.
There may be some that are ‘angry with god’, to paraphrase what you wrote, but not I, nor any atheist I know of. Those that I know are atheist because it makes sense, and the fables and superstitions of our neolithic past no longer fit in a world and universe that we increasingly understand.

We are angry when we hear things like: “How can you be moral without god or religion?”. I have had this, and similar, far more harsh things, said directly to my face.

We are angry when we read junk like the City of Detroit giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to churches for cosmetic improvements to church buildings. Why should we, taxpayers of all beliefs and no belief be forced to maintain a church we choose not to belong to? If the parishioners what the place to look extra spiffy for the Super Bowl, let them pony up the cash.

We are angry when we see George W. Bush funnel money to ‘faith based charities’, in a way that does nothing to ensure these public monies are not used to proselytize those ‘faiths’.

We are angry when the Vice President George H. W. Bush said:
“I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.”
As well as :
“I support separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists”

We are angry when supposedly enlightened people like Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bill Weir, Star Jones and countless others repeat the slander: “there are no atheists in foxholes“. This is a direct slap in the face of the many non-believers that have served, bled and died for this nation in all of its wars.

We are angry when we see political action by religious leaders that who were supposedly given tax exemption provided they do not engage in political action. We would rather they pay taxes and then engage in political action. The only thing that would change is the taxes, the amount of political action would remain the same.

We are angry when we see religious displays, almost invariably christian manger creche displays, set up and maintained by local governments during holidays, often with only a pretext of neutrality, like a small snowman or menorah discretely tucked away in a corner or half hidden by shrubbery. Often without even that. Those are our taxes to. When do the atheist and humanist displays go up? Or a hindu ganesh or kali? Or a mohammedan mohammed. Oops, forgot, you get killed for putting those up.

Atheists, freethinkers, humanists. We are all over the political map. All over the social map. We are of all sexes, races, national origins. We are conservatives, greens, liberals, libertarians, anarchists, communists, and probably others none of us have ever heard of. We are straight, gay, European, African, Asian and mixes of all of those. We are highly educated, or not. We work with our hands in trades, or with our minds in professions. We are athletes and couch potatoes.

Indeed, in an online poll a few years ago, in an atheist chat list, informal so unscientific, the results showed an almost 50/50 split between those that leaned conservative/libertarian and those that leaned liberal/green. Almost identical to what we see in the general population. The only difference was a higher likelihood of considering third party viewpoints. In other words, we are more likely to be open to alternatives and new ideas. I know atheists that are politically active and politically apathetic. I know atheist gun nuts and gun banners. Atheist pro-lifers and pro-choicers. If you are involved in any sort of civic, social or political group, chances are you talk to at least one atheist at every meeting, whether you know it or not.

So we are not angry at religion, nor are we threatened by the idea of god. We are angry at the actions of an overbearing, condescending arrogant majority that is imposed, often deliberately and with malice, on those of us that choose to believe in a rational, understandable cosmos. We are angry when we are accused of cowardice or immorality because we are heathens, infidels and non-believers.

And like a raw wound, constantly irritated by ill-fitting clothes, never allowed to heal, we react strongly when provoked by things that normally would not bother anyone.

If you want a peaceful society, keep religion out of the secular government that we all pay for, stop reserving special privileges for religion in the public square, stop subsidizing religion with tax dollars and regulations. Maybe then we atheists that you consider so angry, will stop seeming so.

In other words, do unto yourselves what you have done to others, then maybe you will understand what bothers us so much. And then maybe you will understand that golden rule that has been passed down through human societies since before the written word: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Andrew Sullivan seems to have become a nexus for secularists this past week, and with good reason. As I noted in the previous post, he has had his own struggles with faith, and has dealt with them openly.

From that, he has opened a conversation that is long overdue.

His most recent gems:

A reader points to this quote from John Adams -

“Government has no Right to hurt a hair of the head of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.” as offered by Jon Rowe and unearthed here.

A reader writes in on his families non-religious, though not atheist life style, wishing that the ‘haters’, on all parts of the political spectrum, would just leave us all alone.

And some posts on the evangelical right and how John McCain has seemingly abandoned a previous position against religious extremists, only to embrace them now.

There are reasons A.S. is so popular, one is his open journey in his own faith. This is much appreciated, all the more so because it is honest, conflicted and sincere.

So to all my conservative ‘friends’ who are religious and continue to think they have a corner on the market in morality, and to my fellow secular and atheist citizens, who think they have no place in conservative circles, maybe it is time to re-think.

Since last Thursday, when Andrew Sullivan noted the survey that detailed just how hated atheists are in the U.S., he has had a series of posts and exchanges with readers on religous freedom.

Today, he points to what Thomas Jefferson wrote about children being taken from parents due to lack of religion on the part of parents, as well as to a very long article Eugene Volokh and Gary T. Schwartz have written for the New York University Law Review on judicial discrimination against Atheist parents.

From the introduction, some of which A.S. also quotes:

“Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet and a cad. He married his wife, Harriet Westbrooke, when she was 16, but left her for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin three years later. When Shelley left Harriet, their daughter was a year old, and Harriet was pregnant with their son. Two years later, Harriet drowned herself. When Shelley decided to raise the children himself, Harriet’s parents refused to turn them over, and Shelley went to court. Though fathers had nearly absolute rights under then-existing English law, Shelley became one of the first fathers in English history to lose custody of his children. Percy Shelley was also an avowed atheist—and the Court of Chancery mostly relied on his views, not on his infidelity or unreliability, in denying him custody.2 Shelley shouldn’t be put in charge of the children’s education, the Lord Chancellor reasoned:

Shelley endorsed atheism and sexual freedom, and would teach his children the same values. Twenty years later, Justice Joseph Story likewise wrote that a father could lose his rights for “atheistical[] or irreligious principles.”

Shelley’s case may look like something out of another time and place. That time and place, it turns out, is 2005 Michigan, where a modern Shelley might be denied custody based partly4 on his “not regularly attend[ing] church and present[ing] no evidence demonstrating any willingness or capacity to attend to religion with [his children],”5 or having a “lack of religious observation.”6 It’s 1992 South Dakota, where Shelley might have been given custody but only on condition that he “will agree to present a plan to the Court of how [he] is going to commence providing some sort of spiritual opportunity for the [children] to learn about God while in [his] custody.”7 It’s 2005 Arkansas, 2002 Georgia, 2005 Louisiana, 2004 Minnesota, 2005 Mississippi, 1992 New York, 2005 North Carolina, 1996 Pennsylvania, 2004 South Carolina, 1997 Tennessee, 2000 Texas, and, going back to the 1970s and 1980s, Alabama, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska.8 In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a mother to take her child to church each week, reasoning that “it is certainly to the best interests of [the child] to receive regular and systematic spiritual training”;9 in 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court did the same, partly on the grounds that weekly church attendance, rather than just the once-every-two-weeks attendance that the child would have had if he went only with the other parent, provides superior “moral instruction.”

While I have faced some discrimination and bigotry for my atheism, it has been rather minor and easily borne and deflected.

But to lose your child? That is an outrage worthy of armed defiance. Why these judges still draw breath is testament to the peaceful nature of most Atheists. Or perhaps to their compete subjugation by the religious hegemony in this country.

Yet sources such as Fox News and conservative commentators have been flogging a ‘war on christianity’ meme for the past few years. I would ask them, if there is such a war, where are the christians that have had their children seized due to their faith? Where are the laws discriminating against christians? Where is the government funding for atheist or even non-christian monuments and public displays?

We Atheists may not be under threat of summary execution here in the U.S., as we are in some mohammedan countries, but there is still work to do towards true equality under the law, and religious neutrality in the government.

This is important work. Anyone with concern for religious freedom in this country should take the time to read it. Atheists involved in custody suits should print it out and give it to their lawyers.

Andrew Sullivan, (at his new blogHome at Time magazine), points to a quote from Condi Rice during her confirmation hearings, and rightly states that, regrettably, Iraq is still a fear based society:

To be sure, in our world there remain outposts of tyranny — and America stands with oppressed people on every continent: in Cuba, and Burma, and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe. The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the “town square test”: if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a “fear society” has finally won their freedom.

At most US colleges, campuses are fear based, in that those opposed to socialism or Marxism, are banned, punished, assaulted and otherwise harrassed. Good thing the colleges do not have the powers of arrest and imprisonment.

As well, there are still places in this country where gays fear to tread, and even more where atheists are still targeted by laws denying them rights, such as the ability to hold elective office.

So by Sharansky’s criteria, is the US a fear based society?

Islam is a vile, evil superstition that is inherently violent, that preaches slave-like submission to authority, the enslavement of women as property, and treatment of children as livestock.

Unlike all other religions currently extant in human society, it embraces violence and death. When members of other faiths commit acts of violence using their faith as a justification, they are condemned by the majority of those of the same faith. When Pat Robertson utters the insanities he does, 99.9% of self-professed christians condemn him.

Not so islam. The worshipers of mohammed and their version of the abrahamic god they call allah. When a self-professed mohammedan commits an act of violence using his faith as a justification, he is applauded. His parents rejoice if he is killed, since it guarantees his entry to paradise and supposedly paves their own way to paradise. It is rare for ANY mohammedan to condemn him, let alone any recognized leader that would influence others. Most of the time there is nothing but cold, menacing, silence.

Islam must be destroyed, peacefully or forcefully, but it must be destroyed for the sake of the human race.

One more piece of evidence:

With a copy of the Quran and a Palestinian flag in his trunk, a Jordanian-turned-U.S. citizen crashed his car into a Home Depot in Arizona where he formerly worked, igniting an explosive blaze in the stores’ paint section and causing $1 million in damage.

The Dec. 18 attack in Chandler, Ariz., by 24-year-old Ali R. Warrayat was a carefully planned “personal statement,” the East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz., reported.

While disgruntled former employees going nuts is not news, up to now they did not use their deity as a justification.

All forms of fanaticism are dangerous. But fanaticism is a religious behavior. Look at the atrocities of christians throughout the dark ages and the inquisition. Look at the atrocities of socialism and its fundamentalist aspect, communism, where belief in an omnipotent, benevolent, mythical god was transferred to a belief in an omnipotent, benevolent, materialistic state. Look at jewish history, as claimed in their ancient writing where they slaughtered entire populations. The wars between hindu and sikh, animists and mohammedans. The list is endless.

All fanaticism is evil: supernatural:natural, religious:atheistic, spiritual:materialistic, religious:political.

But right now, at this point in history, islam is the single greatest threat humanity has ever faced. We face a religion that, unlike all others, embraces death as a tenet of faith. Unlike all others, where fear of death can make opposing parties settle disputes, mohammedans will actively seek to die as a way to paradise.

Add to this, the weapons capabilities that have only become possible in that last century, and new weapons being developed now. Unlike previous waves of fanaticism, where the greatest weapons to hand were swords and firearms, we face fanatics potentially armed with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that can destroy entire cities at a single blow, infect entire populations with disease, and destroy entire economies in mass fear.

If we wish free, liberal, democratic civilization to continue, we need to destroy those fanatics that threaten it. This includes the mohammedan fanatics that infest a swath of the planet from north Africa across south central Asia to the islands of the south Pacific.

This includes the political and atheist fanatic currently subjugating North Korea.

This includes the fanatics currently infesting the two old political parties in the US, and elsewhere. In the US, the Republican party has been suborned to the interests of a small, fanatical sect of fundamentalist christians, and the Democrats are controlled by a small bunch of radical socialist/progressives. But both parties do contain a few people that are rays of reason in the political darkness, but they seem near powerless.

It may seem hypocritical for liberal and tolerant societies to go to war to destroy others, but a healthy body can not abide the cancer that will kill, the poison that will weaken it, or the predator that seeks to eat it alive. Cancers must be cut out, poisons washed away and predetors hunted down and killed.

Self defense is the right of all animals on this planet. It is the right of free people to defend themselves against those that would enslave them.

I am both a libertarian and a Libertarian, but I am not a pacifist, nor an isolationist. The idea of going to war like this raises a lot of issues for the libertarian philosophy as I understand it, that I need to think about. The Libertarians will remain the party I identify with, since the Republicans have a large theocratic streak and discourage secular and atheist people from membership, and the Democrats have a large socialist authoritarian streak that I find distasteful to individual liberty.

But I will look at whoever runs to replace Corzine as Senator, and whichever sacrificial lamb the Republicans put up against him. If either of them understands the danger liberal democratic civilization faces, and is in turn not a religious fanatic in turn, they get my vote. The same will go for House Rep, state Senator, state Assembly and Governor.

When I vote, I will vote for any non-fanatic, Democrat or Republican, that understands this danger. This leaves out anti-gun socialist Democrats and born-again neo-con Republicans. It also leaves out most of those few Libertarians that show up on the ballot in NJ, but they will remain my default choice. But I will vote, one way or the other.

To paraphrase a meme going around some of the blogosphere, which I first saw over at the Smallest Minority:
Islam Delenda Est

Happy New Year.

Good essay on Atheists in foxholes and religious discrimination against non-believers in the military by Gaurd officer recently returned from Iraq:

The United States military has gone to great lengths to accommodate soldiers from a variety of religious backgrounds. They provide dietary alternatives, a variety of chaplains and printed materials from every major religion. They have gone as far as accommodating Wiccan rituals and allowing open Satan worship on military bases and ships. But there is one group of soldiers that the military has turned its back on.

Atheists are still openly disparaged by chaplains in today’s military. Chaplains continue to perpetuate the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes despite the fact that atheists are serving honorably right now in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The military’s response has been to simply ignore it.

Recently, evangelical christians, feeling flush with power over their connection with the current Republican administration, have started to complain about both the call by secularists to remove religious symbols from government property, AND that many stores have ‘Happy Holidays’ signs instead of ‘Happy Christmas’ signs. They are complaining, along with conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Sean ‘hamitup’ Hannity, that there is a ‘War on Christmas’, that there is an attack on religion in the public square, and they call for boycotts of stores with ‘Happy Holidays’ signs that do not reference their particular christian holiday.

There are secular and atheist groups that are complaining about religious symbols on government property. But I do not know of any that are complaining of religious symbols on PRIVATE property, nor any complaints about stores that display signs that say ‘Happy Christmas’, ( or ‘Merry Christmas’) or ‘Happy Hanukkah’ or that reference any specific holy day.

There are evangelicals/fundamentalists in all camps. I understand antipathy towards fundamentalism on both ends of the argument over religious displays.

Disclosure: I was BRIEFLY an assistant state director for American Atheists, but I am not suited to a role like that, and it quickly folded.

I will use the term ’secularist’ in general, and use ‘atheist’ only should it apply to something specific.

Yes, we secularists are irritated by IGWT on money, but why is it there? How would a theist react to seeing ‘In No God We Trust’ on money? Turnabout is fair play. If one phrase is permissible, so is the other. Should the majority opinion switch, as it has in most of the rest of the world, could we secularists change our currency to say ‘In No God Do We Trust’? Could we change the Pledge of Allegiance from ‘One Nation Under God’ to ‘One Nation Without God’? Could we place displays on government property saying ‘Celebrate Atheism’?

Who is in the majority should not make any difference in what the government does regarding religion, because if the government were truly neutral regarding religion, there would be no difference no matter who the majority is, religious, secular or atheist.

When secularists object to religious displays such as creches on government property, we are not objecting to the display, but to the venue and who is paying for it. It is on a venue that we secularists are as much owners of as the religious are, that we pay for as well as the religious do.

We are not irritated by every religious display we see. Only the ones we are forced to pay for at the point of the tax mans gun. We see creches and crosses and other displays all the time. On peoples front lawns, on church property, in stores. We do not care. We even admire the craftsmanship and artistry that goes into some of them.

We are not objecting to religion in the public square, only to religion that we are forced to support in the public square. If a church across the road from a town commons puts up a religious display, we do not care. But if it is across the street on the common, only 50 feet away, that is a different story. Why do religionists demand that their display be on the commons, when the church lawn is equally visible, equally on, or in, ‘the public square’? Why do they demand that all citizens pay for their private beliefs? This is what secularists object to, not the display itself, but who is forced to support it.

We do not care if a politician speaks of religious convictions and how they inform their opinions any more than most people do. Though if they start to sound like some fanatical mullah in Iran, we would, as I hope all would. Both George Bush and Joe Lieberman spoke of their faith during contentious election of 2000, one from a conservative view, one from a liberal view. We did not care, about that. Like most citizens, we cared about the content, not the source of that content. If we cared about the source, we would have condemned both of them equally. (I did, but not for the religious speech, for the content. I voted for neither of them).

I find this to be true of all but the most extreme atheists I know. We can admire what someone says, whatever the source, just as we can enjoy religious music without believing the content. Mozart’s Requiem is truly sublime, but enjoying it does not make me a christian any more than enjoying a dish of beef with broccoli from my local Chinese restaurant makes me a Mandarin.

We also do not care that a store says ‘happy whatever’. We will patronize a store with a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign, a ‘Happy Hanukkah’ sign or any sort of sign such as those. I think stores that avoid signs mentioning specific holidays, are overreacting to protests over government displays, as well as making an economic decision.
They seem to think people will be offended if a store has a sign recognizing a single holiday. They are assuming that we secularists would object to such a sign at their venue as we do to at the government venue. Not a single secularist I know cares what a store has on its sign, provided it is not directly offensive. A sign that says something like ‘We will go to heaven, the rest of you will go to hell’ would be offensive in a store, and I think all will agree that many would be justified in being offended and avoiding that store. There may be some offended by a simple ‘Merry Christmas’ sign in a store, but I do not personally know any.

Considering that there are many religious days around this time of year, christian, jewish, mohammedan, shinto, kwanzaa, and many more, rather than have a bunch of signs for every day, changing them as the calendar progresses, and keeping track of those that are on a lunar calendar and therefore move around on our solar calendar, using a generic ‘happy holidays’ sign makes sense from an economic standpoint. If the proprietor of a store, whether an individual or a corporation, is devoutly religious in any faith, and wants to display signs specific to that faith, we do not care. We won’t boycott or fail to patronize them for thats sign. It is their store, their property, their choice, we do not care.

There is even a meme going around that people can not say ‘Merry Christmas’ to others, for fear of giving offense. Nonsense. That is an invention of theocrats seeking to enrage supporters into action. If it has ever happened, where someone is offended by that, they were probably off their medication.

If someone says ‘Merry Christmas’ to me, I will smile and say thank you, or maybe respond with ‘Happy Solstice’. There have been times that the context of where and how it is said have been offensive to me, and was intended to be offensive the one saying it to me. But I am a big boy, I can handle it, as can the vast majority of secularists. There may be a few people that will complain about having ‘Merry Christmas’ said to them by anyone at any time, but they are probably the sort that complain about everything, and can not be pleased no matter what.

This is a fight over who is forced, by the awesome power and threat of government, to support christmas, or ANY other religious display or ceremony, jewish, mohammedan, wiccan, any of them.

A banning of faith in the public square? That is another invention of extremists seeking throw a monkey wrench into the public debate over mixing government and religion, seeking to use emotion over reason, seeking to justify their restrictions on freedom and liberty just as cynically as those on the left who use the phrase ‘for the children’ to justify their chosen restrictions on freedom and liberty.

But here is no War On Christmas.

Totally, gobsmackingly BRILLIANT.

Over at TruthDig, an essay by Sam Harris called ‘An Atheist Manifesto’:

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings.
The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe — at this very moment — that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

There is also a brief excerpt available over at HuffPo.

I am currently reading his book The End of Faith, along with three or four others, and am very impressed so far.

I wish I could write half that well.

Good, brief essay on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design by Dawkins here.

I am amused that so many proponents of Free Market Economics find Darwinian Evolution objectionable, and so many proponents of Socialist Economics find Darwinian Evolution wonderful.

Free Market Economics is just Economic Evolution. Those businesses that do the best job of providing goods and services to their customers prosper, survive, and pass their methods on to other businesses.
Evolution is just a biological Free Market. Those organisms that do the best job of providing goods and services to their offspring prosper, survive, and pass their genes on to other organisms.

In the Free Market, goods may be anything like computers and clothing, and services may be anything like delivery companies such as UPS, FedEx or DHL, or a barbershop.
In Evolution, goods may be anything like stronger limbs and better senses, and services may be anything like care of offspring during development or good choice of egg placement if care is not provided.

It seems to me if you understand how biological complexity comes from small changes over vast extents of time, (Evolution), you should be able to understand how a Free Market works.

Just as those that understand how the invisible hand of a Free market can produce ever better goods and services, with countless ideas, each a little different from the other, competing to survive by serving the needs of customers, leaving obsolete ideas in the dustbin of history, should be able to understand Evolution.

I know I am not the first to make this comparison, but why these two complimentary ideas so often seem at odds in the minds of so many people continues to perplex me.

What a BRILLIANT concept. Trading in old, outdated smut, for new, modern smut! Cheeky, satirical, performance art in the tradition of student republican clubs mischievous bake sales.

A group of atheists at UTSA was asking students to exchange bibles for porn magazines Wednesday, and that has made some religious leaders angry. News 4 WOAI first broke the story at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

From the groups site:

Porno for Bibles and comments smut-for-smut-2

Via boingboing

This had me going for about two sentences:

Facing a boycott launched by the Catholic League, Wal-Mart has retracted a series of malicious falsehood it had recently begun spreading regarding the origins of Christmas holiday traditions.

The state of Georgia exempts christian bibles from sales tax. The koran was taxed until recently, but no other books, religious or not receive an exemption. Why should hindu, buddhist, shinto texts be taxed? Why should atheist texts be taxed, that argue the other side of this question?

Candace Apple, owner of the Phoenix and Dragon Bookstore near Atlanta and a plaintiff in the suit, argues the exemption should apply to any book that addresses the meaning of life, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“If they’re not taxing someone’s holy scriptures, they shouldn’t be taxing anyone’s,” said Apple, whose store specializes in metaphysical books. “I’m not willing to stand at the counter and tell someone, ‘Oh, sorry, your religion is wrong.’”

While I believe they are all wrong, as far as deities, creation etc, that is beside the point. Why should one religion get special exemption and not others? This is clearly an endorsement of one religion over others, and if extended to other religious texts would be an endorsement in general. If then also extended to atheist texts, it would be neutral at least, but still would punish texts on politics, science, sports, whatever.

Free speech is free speech, religious or otherwise. Tax it all, or not at all.

It is one thing to be respectful of all in government policy requiring neutrality in religious matters, it is another to target personal, private religious practice.

high school has rescinded a rule that prohibited students from wearing rosary beads a week after administrators prohibited them as symbols of potential gang involvement.

Schools and government in general should certainly refrain from religious activity, but they should also refrain from interfering in private religious activity and expression. Some times they do so out of genuine misunderstanding of the rules, sometimes out of malice.

Evey time I hear of a school or other government facility banning students private religious displays, like emblems on neck-chains and such, I wish church-state separation activists, like American United or American Atheists, would step up to the plate. It would only add the their credibility. Instead they are silent, which only damages them and the cause, and lends credence to those that seek to impose religion on captive children when they claim that neutrality is an attempt to impose atheism, when it is not.
Remember: Politics rarely has anything to do with truth and reality, except when convenient.

An Atheist activist in RUSSIA is suing the national governemnt for imposing religion through the national anthem, and for building a church within a ministry building at government expense, and for a new state holiday that just happens to also be a church holiday:

An atheist activist has brought a lawsuit to challenge the word “God” in the lyrics to the Russian national anthem, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday.

The hideous Powerline points to a pair of book reviews at the Claremont Institute, and at the same time repeats the calumny that Communism and Nazism were attempts to create Atheistic societies.

Atheism was a part of the Communist philosophy, just as mohammedist religion is a part of the sharia based rule in the islamic prison camps countries of the world, and as christianity was a part of the mass murder that occurred during the inquisition and other European religious cleansing. But atheism was not the driving force of communism. Communism instead replaced faith in an omnipotent and benevolent god, with belief in an omnipotent and benevolent state, and quickly devolved into a cult of personality everywhere it was tried, whether by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Castro.

But nazism was a religious cult as much as a political and socialist cult. The monster Hitler repeatedly refers to god, (over 20 times) in that roll of toilet paper he named ‘Mein Kampf’. His chosen supermen, the SS, had “Got mit uns”, (God is with us”), embossed on their uniforms. They were enamored of the prophesies of biblical revelation, Nostradamus, and aryan mythology. They believed in, and promoted, an incredible number of fantastic mythological fables. While they were, to a large extent, anti-clerical, they were far from atheistic. There are christian sects that are anti-clerical as well, that does not make them atheistic. Judaism no longer has priests, they have rabbis, (teachers), they choose to follow or not. Rabbis are not clerics in the sense they are ordained by an ecclesiastical authority, but judaism is certainly not atheistic.

Now I know the religious right is grossly ignorant of the history of religion as a whole, and in particular the history of the various christian sects. But this particular slander about the nazis being atheists is a premeditated, viscous, attempt to convict atheists, using guilt by association, of responsibility for what many consider the most evil event in the twentieth century. It is something that needs to be condemned as sternly as the blood libels against judaism are, and as sternly as examples of christian sects like ‘the church of the creator’ are used to smear all the christian faithful.

Both Scott Johnson and Andrew Klavan should be ashamed of their blatant revisionism of history. They, among many in religious culture, engage in the same tactics that the liar Michael Bellesiles did in his propaganda war against gun rights. Made up facts, false statements and slander.

There have been complaints at the academy that a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and that another Jew was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet. A banner in the football team’s locker room read: “I am a Christian first and last … I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.”

Also, there have been complaints that cadets were pressured to attend chapel, that academy staffers put New Testament verses in government e-mail, and that cadets used the e-mail system to encourage others to see the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

This is why we have the First Amendment.

The lawsuit cites a remark by Brig. General Cecil R. Richardson, the Air Force deputy chief of chaplains. “We will not proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched,” he said in a New York Times article published in July.

Using the power of his office to FORCE those under his authority to submit to religious indoctrination not of their own free will.

This is why we have the Second Amendment. To prevent the imposition of tyranny.

It is clear from this article that giving priests military rank has opened up doors to mischief and religious strife and oppression within the ranks. It has encouraged bigotry and hatred. It will not be long before physical violence occurs against some religious minority

As far as I am concerned, any cadet, or any citizen for that matter, has the right to use deadly force against anyone using the force of law and authority to coerce them into religious practices not of their own free choosing.

Brig. General Cecil R. Richardson, by reason of the statement above admitting he plans to coercively proselytize and establish his religion upon the unwilling, is unfit to hold any office of trust, let alone that of a General Officer in the military. He is using taxpayer funds to actively promote his hideous superstition.

He should be removed, with a DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE.

In addition, the chaplain corps should be disbanded. If any chaplain wishes to continue serving, they must do so without military rank or authority, and must do so at the expense of their religious orders or the voluntary contributions of those that care to donate funds. It is one thing to make a reasonable accommodation, such as time off to attend services OFF BASE, it is another build and maintain churches at taxpayer expense, pay the priests at taxpayer expense, and to grant authority under law to FORCE others into submission.

Over at nogodblog there is a discussion of how ‘out’ one is as an Atheist. Dave mentions his bumper stickers, t-shirts, ‘evolve fish’ emblem etc. He reports mostly positive results. Other comments report harassment though. Like damage to cars with stickers, attempts to remove, scratch, and even burn stickers. Drivers cutting them off, flipping them off, telling them they will go to hell, or asking them how come they are so nice if they are Atheists.

‘OUT’ Atheists

Bigotry is not surprising, certainly not in a nation that has been indoctrinated to link Atheism with the horrors of fundamentalist socialist sects like Russian communism, German national socialism and the like.

I am a very out Atheist. I have mentioned I am an Atheist during candidate debates when I was running for U.S. Congress here in the NJ 5th district, I have the Darwin fish on the pickup, people at work and the family know it as well. At work another guy came out as an Atheist after he saw I was out and had few problems. I did have one problem at my current job a few years ago, with a fundamentalist xtian guy, that escalated way too far. While there were no repercussions from management on that, I am much more careful how such discussions go, and refuse to get into email debates any more, for certain.

I did have one very amusing thing happen. When I was running for Congress, I was consulting for a client here in NJ as a Cobol/DB2 programmer-analyst. One of the employee’s there was a strict xtian fundy, thought the world was 4000 years old, or so. Fossils were god’s test of mans faith, all that nonsense. After the election, he said he and his wife had voted for me, saying he was happy to vote for a third party candidate over the 2 old party candidates, who was such an obviously good, god-fearing person. I said, essentially, thank you very much, I appreciate your vote and the compliment, though you should know I am an Atheist. The blood drained from his face, a shocked look appeared on his face, he literally blithered something Cramden-like: ‘humina-homina’, turned and went to his cube, looking like his brain had been shorted out. It had, in a way. He never mentioned it again.

I get very little negative reaction to being an Atheist, but NJ is less intolerant of such things than much of the rest of the country.

I have received far more intolerance of my RKBA activism. Though perhaps the 10 inch NRA Life Member decal on the car and truck mitigates that. Ahem.
During the height of the school shooting hysteria/witch-hunt a few years ago, I took to wearing pro-RKBA t-shirts, and that is when the NRA stickers went up on the car, and later the truck, as well.

Now at that time, most of my social activity revolved around a local bicycle touring club, and another small racing club I helped found. There is nothing like a trim, fit lady in Lycra leading you down the road to get the old attention focused.

From my ‘tolerant’ ‘progressive’, ‘open minded’ Liberal Democrat and Green ‘friends’ and acquaintances, (no longer, sadly), who virtually ‘owned’ and ran the touring club, I received outright calumny. I was accused of being pro-baby-killing, supporting school shootings, and being a brainwashed sock puppet of a radical cult for being a member of the Libertarian Party. It was like they were suffering from some sort of arrested development that ran back to some mythical time in the 1960’s out of a Hollywood movie. It would have been hysterical, absurd even, if it had not, in the end, been so totally isolating. It went so far as to have every one in a room get up a leave when I walked in.
I no longer belong to that club, indeed I almost never ride anymore because having people accuse you of hideous things and motives just is not worth it, and riding solo on the roads here in NJ is just too dangerous due to traffic. My extra 40 pounds of blubber can attest to this.

I have NEVER had such a response from conservative groups about my Atheism or my positions of drug legalization, free speech, church-state separation, prostitution, gay rights, reproductive choice, or any other issue that goes against supposedly conservative positions. They are much more open to differences of opinion and reasoned argument. My libertarian friends are, of course, pro-choice on EVERYTHING, so we have no issues either, for the most part.

The most doctrinaire, authoritarian, intolerant responses I get are almost exclusively from people of a leftist ideology. Their response is very close to a fundamentalist like: “Atheism? Fine… but GUN RIGHTS?! You Blaspheming Heathen! You will go to HELL!”.

Irony….