Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

The other day, as I drove toward our county seat, about 15 mi. from my house, I was marvelling at the interesting signs that regularly are present along the way.  Of course election time is usually the most interesting but on an average weekend I can usually find at least a couple of things to ponder.

I first pass a church whose marquee, until a couple of days ago had, "God is the start of wisdom," written on it.  This is a modification of what it said a couple of weeks earlier, which was, "Fear of God is the start of wisdom".  The original message was apparently too irrational for even the deluded fundies. Or, maybe the sign was changed because, according to their book, God made a tree that would give wisdom to anyone who ate the fruit, but if Eve had really feared God, she wouldn't have eaten the fruit and wisdom would never have started.

My favorite message on that marquee was a while back.  It said, "There can be no America without God."  I'd really like to see someone try to prove that.  It seems to me that, even by the most conservative Xian estimate of the age of the earth, there were people living here who knew nothing about their god for 5000 years, and they were doing just fine until Europeans showed up.

Up the road from the church is a farm market.  Below the farm market sign is one that says "Jesus is Lord."   I'm guessing you won't find a lot of kosher food there.  Oh! It also has "Elect Ron Paul" written in huge letters on the building's side.  I'm guessing you won't find a lot of democrats there, either.

Further up the road is a modest private home that one day had a sign that said "Impeach the imposter!"  All I could think when I saw it was: that delusional person's vote counts the same as mine.  I went back later to take a picture, but the sign was gone.  Perhaps, it was only there while the residents hosted a tea party.

A few miles on, at the outskirts of Mount Vernon, there was a large portable sign that stood next to the road for about the whole first year of the Freshwater fiasco.  It read; "If the bible goes the student should follow."  Those were the good old days, when the bible was gone and the student's family had yet to been driven out of town.

The last special sign sits in front of what looks like a typical ranch house, on a lawn that seems never to get mowed.  The sign consists of a Xian cross tilted toward the road at about 30 degrees from verticle.  Nailed to cross is a white depiction of an amputated human hand with blood running from its palm where the nail pierces it.  I'll bet the neighbors love what it does to their property values.  Other signs near the cross identify the building as a house of worship whose name seems to change frequently.  Most recently, these signs said something about Mogen David Tabernacle. Maybe they worship sugary wine.

Going back the other way, heading home from a motorcycle ride today, I noticed the church marquee held the question, "Where is your journey taking you?"  I was going home, thanks for asking.  As I was about a half a block my house, I noticed a bumper sticker on the back of a neighbor's car.  It was one of those that says "Coexist" spelled out in symbols of various world religions.  It reminded me that things aren't so bad.

About Christmas

It's Christmas Eve and my wife read me a post from a forum she follows. A woman wrote that she didn't know why atheists would celebrate Xmas except, maybe, for the presents. My cool wife responded that she did indeed do it for the presents; she loves making and giving them.

I really love Xmas and I don't care whether Jesus was perceived as a deity, or whether he was a religious leader, or whether he was just a composite of several 1st cen. messianic types. I gladly take the day off and enjoy the time on Martin Luther King Day and Presidents' Day and I enjoy the green beer on St. Patrick's Day without once thinking of any of them as my god and savior.

I often read Xian writers who assume that unless one buys into the Jesus mythology, that they cannot, or perhaps, should not enjoy any aspect of the celebration. For one thing, many assume any reference to Jesus in song or activity would be an irritant that atheists would try hard to avoid, I think that's because so many Xians assume that atheists hate their religion when, in fact it's just that we don't believe any of it. So, they probably think we are tolerating unpleasant experiences just to get to the cookies and presents.

I will assure the Xians that the lights are just as pretty, the music is just as melodious, the people are just as generous and joyful, and the warm feeling one gets from giving is just as warm if you don't believe in the divinity of the birthday boy.

To everyone who reads this; happy holidays, whichever holidays you choose to celebrate. For those who don't understand, if you see me smiling, singing carols, generally enjoying the season, it's because I sincerely love everything about Xmas except the parts about Jesus being a deity. It doesn't mean that I'm faking it for the treats and it doesn't mean I've become a Xian again.

Conservative Bible Projection

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but some Xian conservatives, the kind of folks whom I have most often heard calling the Bible “the unalterable word of god”, have decided that the word of god needs alteration. According to an AP article, Andy Schlafly, the founder of conservapedia.com and son of Phyllis Schafly (demonstrating, that like apples, nuts don’t fall far from the tree), has decided that liberals have tainted the translations of the bible. He has, therefore, decided that the word of god requires editing to bring it more into line with conservative views of the world.

Schafly and his conservative wiki-buddies have decided that the translators of the bible are college professors, and because they think all college professors are ultra-liberal, then all the bible translations have a liberal bias and need fixing. They, for example, insist that, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." should be deleted from the Gospel of Luke because it doesn’t appear in some early versions and because that quote is very popular with liberals.

Anyway, they probably want Jesus to be less Allan Alda and more Chuck Norris and maybe Moses could be a little more like Dick Cheney. The Sermon on the Mount should probably say the republicans will inherit the earth and Revelations should specifically say that democrats, gays, and atheists will get the worst punishments. Most importantly, the bible needs to affirm that whatever 21st cen. conservative Xians believe is indisputably right and anyone who disagrees will be doomed to hell.

What this silly editing exercise really indicates is that many modern Xians don’t care what lessons the bible was intended to teach and have no intention of modifying their own behavior to more closely follow those lessons. It is far more important that conservative Xians be able to make the bible appear to condone their current behavior. They might as well come right out and admit that they’re just making this stuff up as they go along and any correlation to any religious text is purely coincidental.

Amelia; Casualty in War on Xmas

Amelia, OH has had a Christmas parade for the last several decades which, apparently, was sponsored by the Amelia Business Association, but this year the sponsor backed out because they couldn't get enough volunteers. The village council decided that was no problemo; the council would just sponsor the parade. The village solicitor, however, did see a problemo; using village money to sponsor a parade for a Xian holiday could make the village vulnerable to separation of church and state law suits. The village council said they'd solve that by calling it the Holiday Parade.

You might have thought that all the obstructions to the parade had been cleared. Enter the church people. If the parade wasn't going to be named after the birth of Christ, they didn't want to play, because, nothing makes people think about the Son of God like marching bands and floats. Unfortunately for parade fans, church parking lots were the staging areas at the start and end of the parade and those churches were saying; no Jesus, no parking lots.

As if that weren't enough heart burn for Amelia, Catholic League President, Bill Donohue saw an opportunity to escalate the animosity by declaring that this was part of "the War on Christmas" saying, “Make no mistake about it: The declared enemy of these cultural fascists is religious speech, and they will stop at nothing to censor it."

I don't want to suggest that Bill Donohue is an hysterical rabble-rouser who perceives anyone whose opinions differ from his narrow-minded views as a member of some great conspiracy to destroy the planet, because I'd be belaboring the obvious.
Also, I have never seen any evidence of any cultural fascists (look fascist up in the dictionary, Bill) whose declared enemy is religious speech, especially since in order to have a declared enemy, someone has to make a declaration (Anybody got a copy of that? Didn't think so).

What this hullabaloo is really all about is a village solicitor knew that there are laws that prevent a civil government from financing or advocating for a specific religion. It was a non-issue when the sponsors were private business persons, but a village council is subject to different rules. That the government of Amelia chose to abide by the laws should be applauded rather than vilified.

The churches that are angry about this don't want to admit that the laws exist and think that the opinions of church people should trump secular laws they don't like (because church people are always right and anyone who thinks differently is an evil anti-Christian, as well you know). Furthermore, the church people are not intimidated by the threat of law suits since the non-tax-paying churches aren't going to lose any money. The churches get a public venue to pontificate about their views and it's the taxpayers' money that disappears when the village is bankrupted.

This was a secular parade, not a religious procession and the outrage of the local churches is a ridiculous and egocentric overreaction, as is the so called War on Xmas. The truth is that the War on Xmas is really a war on all non-Xian beliefs. The goal is to support the Xian holiday while suppressing the acknowledgement of any other group's holiday that occurs around the same time.

Donohue noted that a "Holiday Parade" didn't point out which holiday was being celebrated which he sees as hypocritical since (in his tiny world) Xmas is the only holiday of relevance. The local church people may know how to google and therefore realize that Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and other religions and cultural groups (including the odious Wicca) have holidays in December. They probably fear that a generic holiday name might imply to some that tacit approval has been given to the tolerance of all those "false" beliefs. Perhaps the "Ignorant and Bigoted Fundamentalist Holiday of the Only True Belief Parade" would be acceptable to them, although the parade would undoubtedly have lots of scary clowns.

Could I Have an Opinionless Cashier, Please

This article in Yahoo News about a Home Depot employee who was fired for refusing to remove a pin from his apron that read "One nation under God" reminded me of some of the discussions I had with co-workers when I worked at a Home Depot. I worked at a store in Ohio when Bill O'Reilly started his big campaign to try to force retail stores to greet customers with "Merry Christmas" rather than something more generic like "Season's Greeting".

There were some staunch fundie employees who were convinced that a generic greeting was, at best, political correctness run amok, or at worst, an atheist conspiracy to wipe all references to Christianity out of the US. Efforts to make the fundies understand that a generic greeting was more inclusive and less likely to offend non-Xian customers was responded to with "Jesus is the reason for the season!" and similar cliches. Their insistence that Xmas was the only holiday that needed to be acknowledged was especially absurd that year because Dec. 25th was also the first day of Hanukkah.

What my co-workers and the guy in Florida could not wrap their minds around is that they don't have the right to advocate their own beliefs when they are being paid to reflect the policies of their employers and when their customers perceive them at representing their employers' views. Furthermore, others have the right to expect as much respect for their beliefs as the Xians demand for their own, and that people of other beliefs have as much right to be offended by a store representative advocating for Christianity exclusively (or theism in the case of the Floridian) as the Xian would be if the rep appeared to be promoting Wicca. The sense of entitlement among some Xians is so ingrained that conceptualizing other beliefs as having equal value would probably cause a brain aneurysm.

I think most US Xians, but especially fundamentalist, are so conditioned to unquestioningly accept what they've been told in church that they just cannot force their atrophied brain cells to think outside the little church-shaped box. People in the US with other beliefs don't have the luxury of such rigid thought because they are constantly bombarded with the message they are members of a lower class. Why else would something as innocuous as the phrase "There might not be a god" cause paroxysms of rage, or the mention of the proposed construction of a mosque or Buddhist temple in a neighborhood result in picketing, vandalism and threats of violence?

I can't imagine a life where I was dependent on someone else to tell me my opinions, especially if I was expected to believe that those opinions were facts, but it obviously has a strong appeal to a large number of Americans. I guess it's up to those of us with less impaired powers of cognition to keep chipping away at Xian cerebral concretions until, if they still don't understand, they might at least come to accept the fact that tolerance is the rule. Also, if someone proposed a law requiring periodic dope slaps for fundies, I'd support that.

Slides from my Vacation

Is this proof that the Christians are right?


What do they want to know? Spend my spare change? my free weekends? my momentum? What?

Actually, my wife and I laugh at these signs every time we pass them going west on I70. The people who put up these signs must think they are converting drivers to Christianity. We imagine the sign-posters visualizing drivers noticing the sign, slapping their foreheads and crying out, "Wow! Jesus and Heaven! I never thought of that before! I gotta get me some of that Christianity right now!" Call me a cynic, but I don't think that happens very often.

They Must Be Crackers

P. Z. Myers had a post on Pharyngula yesterday about the afternoon discussion he held in Fargo ND saying "My opening remarks were about being assertive atheists who challenge conventions and do things like desecrating crackers…", and then he commented on Catholics in the audience who expressed that they were offended. One can find examples of this kind of egocentric outrage any time a disregard for Christianity is expressed in the US (as in this later post).

They just can't shift their mental gears enough to understand that what they see as the "consecrated body of the Savior" is still just a cracker to anyone of a different belief. They think that because a priest said some words and made hand gestures over baked flour disks, everyone should perceive them as little chunks of human flesh that are part of their favorite person. A non-believer can do DNA testing, mass spectrometry, X-rays, fMRI's or satellite photos and still find nothing but flour and water. Unless one assumes that Catholics revere the Pillsbury Dough Boy, no evidence of a Savior can be found.

The point is that what is revered within a religion is perceived in a unique way by devotees of that religion, but for those outside that belief, these things are just mundane objects. Christians should understand this since it has been their attitude toward the religious objects of other religions for as long as there have been Xians. Missionaries have denigrated, defaced or destroyed religious objects of other people on every continent of the world (except, maybe Antarctica) and when the non-Xians rose up in outrage, the Xians would shrug and say, "What's the big deal? It's only a cracker."

Acts like Dr. Meyrs' "desecration" of a communion wafer need to occur to remind people that there are a lot of different views represented within the human population and one's own beliefs are no more valid than anothers. Most of the people that are outraged by the blasphemous acts of non-believers have themselves sneered at or desecrated what others believe to be holy. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Catholics should not be too surprised if a non-Catholic looks at a communion wafer and sees only a cracker, and those same Catholics should not be surprised by the outrage of Native Americans when something they revere is desecrated by ignorant or uncaring persons.

For way too long Xians in the US have had the attitude that their religious symbols are "the body of Christ" but everyone else's are just crackers. They need to learn that the trappings of their religion have no more value than anyone else's, and no less, but once that wafer is out of the hands of a believer, what ever special powers it possessed are gone and it reverts to cracker status and is not worthy of your outrage.

Devalued Voters Summit

Big fat bummer! I missed the Values Voters Summit in DC this weekend. It sounds like it was quite a wingding with all the best and brightest of the Real Americans. Just check out the awesome subjects for the breakout sessions:
•SPEECHLESS - SILENCING THE CHRISTIANS
•THUGOCRACY - FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY
•DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD
•ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM: FIT TO A TEA (PARTY)
•THE THREAT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
•OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY
•MARRIAGE: WHY IT'S WORTH DEFENDING AND HOW REDEFINING IT THREATENS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
•THE NEW MASCULINITY
•WAIT NO MORE: FINDING FAMILIES FOR WAITING KIDS
•TURNING THE TIDE IN YOUR GENERATION

So how do you suppose the summit went? Well, if the schedule was followed, everyone got together and congratulated themselves for being such upstanding, moral, Xian patriots and guardians of American culture. Then a bunch of conservative politicians reiterated the self-congratulation. At every opportunity, some Xian ceremony or religious lip-service was added just in case someone forgot that all Real Americans are evangelical Xians, then they talked about fixing the ruination of all that is good in the world that has occurred in the last 8 months. Before going home, they all did more Xian ceremonies to insure that god knows what he's supposed to be doing.

Judging by the synopses of the above topics, and knowing the track record of some of the speakers, these folks spent the weekend convincing each other that whatever they believe is the unalterable truth and the will of god, and anyone who disagrees, or any idea created by her/him, is the spawn of satan and must be completely crushed lest the world should come to a horrible end before the next teabag meeting.

In short, these folks get together, reinforce their self-centered belief that they're the ideal examples of the true American Xian and then proceed to demonstrate that anything good or moral in the bible is beyond their knowledge. They vilify and demonize those outside their group with bigotry, distortions, and bold faced lies. They demand their civil rights, which they interpret as the right to impose their views on everyone else any time they want and the right to suppress or destroy even the most benign opposition. They then discuss their methods of achieving their goals including what amounts to destroying the constitution and overthrowing the legitimately elected government. These are our great Xian patriots.

The most repugnant thing about this summit is the way conservative politicians cater to these people and even aid and abet their delusional agenda. The world will always have crackpots that live in a fantasy world, but there is no good reason to encourage belief in a 6000 year old world, the world ending in the next few years, CO2 not effecting the atmosphere, the president being the antichrist (from a foreign country) or any other anti-reality, anti-American nonsense. It's time for people to step forward and point out that delusional, treasonous behavior is not acceptable in our government representatives. We don't tolerate victims of alien abduction, Atlantians, or reincarnations of Jesus in office, so supporters of the Flintstones as history, or Satan in the oval office should be treated the same.

A Christian Nation is a Civil Right. Right?

The insistence that we are and were always intended to be a Xian nation is much like other aspects of evangelical Xian belief, where they cherry-pick a few factoids and ignore or deny everything else, it makes me want to taze the whole bunch in hopes the shock makes some of their synapses fire ( Zap! Hey, I just noticed that opinions aren't the same as facts!). Yes, it's true that the Pilgrims were Puritans and Virginians were Church of England and, in fact virtually all the 13 colonies were Xian. That, however, does not mean that in 1776 the founding fathers wanted religion incorporated into their government.

Currently, evangelicals are the most insistent that we were always intended to be a Xian nation. This does a great disservice to their forefathers. The evangelicals at the dawn of our nation were the most adamant supporters of separation of church and state. Heck, Roger Williams, Baptist minister and founder of Rhode Island is credited with first using the term "a wall of separation," when talking about keeping church and state separate. The prevailing attitude at that time was, that anyone who felt their religion needed help from the government, had very weak faith in their religion.

Unlike today, the first generation of US citizens had seen plenty of examples of Xian nations for comparison. They viewed the Church of England as synonymous with the British government from whom they were seeking independence, they'd observed how the Catholic Church controlled the governments of other countries and, many of the people had themselves been driven out of their homes for following the wrong religion.

The colonies themselves were also examples. The Puritans of Mass. didn't come to America for religious freedom so much as they came to isolate themselves from the less conservative religions. They drove out or, in a few cases, killed those who wouldn't convert to the Puritan religion. At the same time, in Virginia, one could not get a government job without joining the C of E. Bigotry against Catholics and Jews was prevalent and it's estimated that only about 15% of the American population were members of a church when the Constitution was written.

All of that history is largely irrelevant since every time the separation or church and state is argued in court, the separation is reiterated. Still we get people standing up at school board or local government meetings insisting we are a Xian nation, therefore we have a right to blah, blah, blah. I think the problem is that since they have the right to freely practice their religion, any opinion shared by a majority of their church congregation must also be their religious right to practice.

They think subjecting the general public to Xian ceremonies is a good idea, then it must be their 1st amendment right. The same is true about what constitutes a fact, what media should be censored, what politician should be elected, what minorities should not be tolerated, or whether miniature marshmallows should top the jello salad at the potluck. It's not opinion; it's their god-given constitutional right. Right?

Not Perfect, Just Forgiven. So?

Once again, someone directly involved with a Christian church has been indicted for a really heinous crime, but I doubt it will have any effect on the bias in the Xian community toward other Xians. A Sunday school teacher in CA has been indicted for kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8 year old girl and drugging a 7 year old and a 37 year old man in a separate incident.

This sort of thing occurs with enough frequency that it should give people pause before being more trusting of a person just because of a religious label, yet it never seems to work out that way. Some people will read a headline about priests or ministers molesting children in their care, or about a serial killer being an officer in his church, or about a religious leader conning people out of their life savings, then set the paper down and go vote for someone because that candidate is a Xian and therefore can be trusted.

When I was growing up, I always heard that someone, who added religious symbols or statements to their secular business, was prostituting their religion for personal gain, and was therefore neither a good Xian or a trustworthy businessperson. Nowadays it seems like every other business has a cross or a bit of scripture prominently displayed, knowing that plenty of folks will prefer that business because, "Oh! They're good Christians! We can trust them to be honest." The same thing goes for politicians, museum owners, book publishers, and apparently molesters, murderers and thieves.

Forrest Gump's mom always said, "Stupid is as stupid does," but I still am amazed that so many people can absolve themselves of responsibility for their own cognition. Yup, yup. Cross on sign, good, no cross on sign bad. Time to go back to thinking about dinosaurs on the ark.

Why Xians Need Rules

Maybe I just need to stop listening to and reading anything Xians write about their beliefs. I feel compelled to write comments arguing against their assertions, but the Xians just ignore them and the free-thinkers have heard it all before. A case in point; In the middle of some forum, one of god's select had to throw in the ol' chestnut about atheists not having morality because they don't have a religion to tell them the rules. As always, a freshman college course, in this case Social Anthropology, is sufficient to rebut that assertion, but I also thought about the light this assertion sheds on the Xian.

The insistence that morality can't exist without religious guidance, in spite of the fact that they keep addressing this to atheists who clearly understand and practice morality as adeptly as their Xian counterparts, suggests that maybe the Xians have no capacity to act morally without threats of eternal damnation. If these Xians feel that they, themselves, would be unable to act morally without thinking a vengeful god is watching over them, maybe they cling to the structure of religion to help them control their sociopathy.

Let's see, what are the symptoms of a sociopath, or what they now prefer to call a person with antisocial personality disorder? They include persistent lying (where have I seen that lately? Oh yeah, Ken Ham's Museum-o-lies.), an extreme sense of entitlement (like when someone feels that his personal beliefs should be part of public school curricula and be codified into local, state and federal law), lack of remorse or empathy (like the way he doesn't understand or care when people become upset, or become the victims of prejudice, as a result of his personal beliefs becoming part of the curriculum or the law), a tendency to violate the rights and boundaries of others (like when he fights to keep other religions out of his neighborhood, also see above), aggressive behavior (like threatening to murder someone for breaking a cracker), and, of course, a general difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong.

Well, maybe there are some slight similarities between sociopaths and evangelical Xians, but they're mighty subtle. So if these Xian writers assert that morality requires adherence to religion, because they themselves are unable to be moral without adherence to religion, we may never know for sure. Oh wait! What's the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? I may have looked up the wrong one.

Christian Peace and Harmony

An article today in Yahoo news about a rift in a big Presbyterian church in FL, got me thinking about how often one sees claims that peace and harmony are among the benefits of being an Xian compared to the actual observed evidence. The above church is only unique in that it was one of the first mega-churches and that it has connections to Billy Graham and religious right leader D. James Kennedy. There's nothing at all unusual about seeing a headline that there is a rift within or between Xian denominations, and I suppose we should be glad that, at least in most places, the denominations aren't torturing and killing each other any more, but you'd think that when they make bumper stickers and song titles they might want to stick to claims that are less demonstrably false.

Most of the time when I hear of religious discord, I think of the bloody wars and suppression between Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Britain, but the first thing that came to my mind today was Africa. Have you ever wondered why there are so many followers of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though most of those nations were colonies of Xian countries? It seems that when the imperial Europeans decided to claim ownership of Africa, they included the traditional imposition of missionaries on the indigenous population, but the different Xian denominations spent so much time arguing with each other over who had more right to force their religion on the locals, that the Islamic missionaries were able to walk in with a monolithic message and convert everyone.

Maybe I'm the only one amused by this, but I'm always hearing about how the spread of Christianity, with all its manifest benefits, throughout the world is evidence of it being the true religion. Yet, it seems these guys are their own worst enemies and in spite of the constant discord, they'd like us to believe they are the primary force for achieving world peace and harmony.

Religion of Hate

I just saw an AP article about the Idaho town near which the Aryan Nation had its headquarters. It sucks that the little upscale town of Hayden Lake is still stigmatized as the address of the neo-nazi group that was gone by '04 but for me it was more interesting to learn that the Aryan Nation compound included the leaders home and his church. Apparently the group is a religion and the leaders are referred to as pastors. A church with a pastor and crosses sure does sound like they at least thought of themselves as Xians.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they tried to emulate Hitler's regime where every Wehrmacht soldier wore a belt buckle embossed with a swastika and the words "Gott Mit Uns" (God is with us). This, however, is another example of how people can be motivated to hatred and bigotry by incorporating the message into the matrix of religious belief. If you change the message from Jews and blacks to gays and atheists, you pretty much have evangelical Xianity.

It's Columbus Day

Today we honor the man who didn’t discover America. The Native Americans obviously discovered it first. Then Vikings, Chinese, and maybe others arrived. Columbus never even found the North or South American continents; he only landed on some Caribbean Islands. What he did do is begin the invasion of the Americas by European Christians. These were soldiers accompanied by priests. That way, when they were done torturing, enslaving, infecting, and killing the indigenous people, they could force the survivors to adopt Christianity.
Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain, having driven off or killed all the Jewish, Islamic and other non-Catholic people, needed someplace new to spread Christian love and charity. Thus began centuries of religious bigotry, holy wars, destruction of native cultures, and ethnic cleansing, as soldier and inquisitor marched arm in arm across the land. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.