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Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

I’d like to introduce a new category for my blog: NCOTW, or, “Nutcase Of The Week”

In it, I’d like to mention a person who, in my view, deserves that label. All the combined posts in this category form my list of people to avoid at all cost.

The first person to receive this ‘honor’ here is Donald E. Wildmon.

He’s the founder and head of the American Family Association. (I expect many nominees in this category to be ‘public’ figures)

What happened?

Walmart, just like many many other companies (amazon.com comes to mind), has an affiliate program that pays you a small bonus when people order something through a so called click-through link on your website. Basically a small commission for sending buyers their way. Good business practice I think. Walmart has some 23,000 organizations signed up for that program. One of those organizations happens to be a small obscure gay community. Someone actually ordered something through that click-through link, and Walmart paid them $4.17 in commission. Read that again: Walmart paid a member of its affiliation program $4.17 for sending a buyer its way.

Enter Donald Wildmon, the founder and head of the three million member American Family Association.

He sent THEE MILLION EMAILS (how far are we with those anti-spam laws anyway?) to his flock, urging them to boycot Walmart for ‘supporting homosexuals’. Other Christian organizations are now following his example (especially after one of them found out that Walmart sold the, oh horror,  “Broke Back Mountain” DVD), but Donald started it, so, fair is fair, HE gets my vote! Not that I think he’ll make a big impact with this, after all, his earlier call to boycot Disney Corporation for allowing gay couples into Disneyland didn’t exactly bankrupt Disney, but still.

Ironic is that Walmart, not exactly the most ‘progressive’ corporation around, just announced that it will put ‘Christmas’ back into its slogans. Something Donald’s club persuaded Sears, Lowe’s and Target to do. You’d think that that outweighs paying a gay website $4.17. But no. Principles are principles and gays are scary and dangerous.

Donald, you’re one scary and dangerous fruitcake nutcase!

(I can’t help wondering what Donald’s take on Ted Haggart’s mishap is, but I fear the worst)

Link to one of the many articles on this.

Last night I have seen God.

He spoke to me. And I have closed God into my heart.

No, not Jesus. God!

I may have uttered the name ‘Jesus’ a few times, but I’m referring here to God.

When he appeared to me I was not alone: many devout followers witnessed the event with me, mostly people in their 50’s and 60’s. There was waving of arms, chanting, calling His Name and I even have seen tears. It was glorious, awesome and just plain perfect.

He did not speak many words, but he needn’t speak much, his mere appearance was close to what mere mortals like us, in this big arena in Jacksonville, could take.

Of course, God has been God for a long time.

But it was still breathtaking to witness the evidence of his divinity: even after some 40 years, Clapton is still God.

Link to the history behind this

A certain Laura Mallory, of Loganville, GA, is loudly campaigning to ban the Bible from class rooms an libraries. This young mother of four is horrified about the book’s content and fears that the book will cause children, who can’t think critically yet, to indulge in, and even attempt to experiment with, the super-natural. I’m with her on this. I also think we should ban books in which people drive cars. I mean, haven’t you read those stories where 9 year olds get into daddy’s car and cause all kinds of accidents? Comic books are probably the worst: can you imagine the horror when kids think they can do what Superman and Spiderman can do?

We should also keep them away from anything that has to do with politics: kids are so gullible, they may think that politicians actually mean what they say (although, I must admit, the chance that kids understand what politicians are saying is quite remote). In fact, we must ban any form of fiction, because it could be taken as reality, and we all know that fiction is the exact opposite of reality, and we don’t want our kids to get confused about which is which. In fact, it’s better that we don’t expose our kids to any of the craziness that’s going on out there: keep your kids in the house (which, needless to say, is TV and radio-free).

Way to go Laura Mallory! Ban that Bi… errrr hang on… I read that wrong, it’s not the Bible she wants banned, but Harry Potter books. Oh well… same thing. Evil evil evil.

Now, go take your meds.

 

(I guess no Halloween for the four Mallory kids either… can you imagine, oh horror, a night full of witchcraft?)

 

Wake up, Laura Mallory! This is the 21st century.

 

For the story, just google ‘Laura Mallory’. I lost the link to the article, but the most frightning thing about the whole story was, that there was a poll connected to the article: of over 68,000 people who took the poll, 11% agreed with her!

I live in a country where 11% of the people think Harry Potter books should be banned and are dangerous for kids to read. Maybe I am the one who needs to wake up… from a very very bad dream!

I just finished reading Sam Harris’ new book(let) “Letter to a Christian Nation”.

The book instilled in me the urge to buy a big bag full of them and go knock on people’s doors on Sunday mornings at 8am to urge them to read the ‘Better Book’.

However, I realize that in order for this crusade to have any success, the people I would be targetting would be asumed to approach religion in a rational fashion, as Sam Harris’ arguments are all very rational and logical.
Since I know from experience that even some of the smartest and best educated people I personally know have ‘decided’ to not ever let reason interfere with their religious beliefs, this expedition is doomed to fail.

So I will NOT actually go knock on people’s doors.
Which is good, because I don’t like getting up at 8am on Sunday mornings.

Instead .. I just started in Richard Dawkins’ (whom, I can proudly say, I once met. Okay, so it was during a book signing session, so what? I am actually in a picture with the Great Man himself! So! There! I bet you’re all jealous now! And so you should!) new book “The GOD Delusion”. Very promising! So far I only read the introduction, and even THAT was already delightful reading!
 

Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation 

Richard Dawkins: The GOD Delusion

Do fundamentalist Muslims scare you?

Fundamentalist Christians scare me too. And you should be scared too.

How Christian (supposedly a faith based on love, compassion and tolerance) are you really, when you send death threats to a judge who ruled that today’s most popular delusion (Intelligent Design) cannot be taught in public schools?

Scary bigots!

Link to article

The Catholic church recenty appeared to start embracing some subtle rationalism by saying they were sorry about the whole Galileo thing, and that, perhaps, our star system is heliocentric after all, kinda, sorta. And yes, evolution, hmm..  it probably could have happened.

But the new Pope seems inclined to steer the Catholic church right back to the middle ages. Assisted in the attempt by some of his loyal followers:

Father Gabriele Amorth, who is Pope Benedict XVI’s senior exorcist (no really!! I’m not making this up!), takes issue with the Harry Potter books.

Please read this article about Father Gabriele’s insights.

Too silly for words, really.

“Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil“

Well, yes, nobody denies that, in fact Harry always takes on the “king of the darkness” and always wins, he’s the good guy. He defeats the devil, so to say, in every single book. How is this different from any other fantasy book that deals with the same theme and is read to kids as bedtime stories all over the world, like, for instance, the bible? What’s the problem?

Well, the problem, as Father Gabriele sees it and explains to us, is, that “the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction “does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil“.

Read that again: “magic is always a turn to the devil“

That is interesting! I have always been taught that Jesus himself performed quite some magic left and right. And isn’t it also true that in order to become a Saint, one has to have performed magic somewhere in ones life? In fact, doesn’t every priest during mass turn to magic, when he performs a cool trick by the name of transsubstantiation?

I will not spend any words on the lunacy of the  ‘remote exorcism’ of Hitler. Other than to remark that it utterly failed (why am I not surprised). That just has too high of a voodoo content for me.

I have posted about this lady before. I just read another article about her. I strongly recommend you read this article, but the main reason for bringing it up, is to inform you to I am going to borrow a ‘word’ from it. From now on, when I mean to write ‘fundamentalist Christian zealot, I will write ‘talibaptist’ instead. It’s shorter, and I’m lazy.

A few more links:

Time: “Katherine Harris’ comedy of errors”

Wikipedia entry (Not very flattering. Also interesting: “During her first 22 months in office, Harris spent more than $106,000 for travel, more than … the governor.”

Slate: “Jilted. The Bush brothers kick Katherine Harris to the curb.”

Slate: A blog overview

If you believe in God and in miracles, I have a tip for you:

Leave the miracles to God

He’s a trained professional. Don’t try this at home!

If you really have to do that water-trick, then follow the bible: the correct order is:

first part the seas, then do your crossing.

 

I’m sorry, but this image of a nun laying in an MRI machine while having some kind of a religious orgasm .. is too much for me to take. I’m losing it.

The “ramped-up electrical activity in parts of the brain“ is the result of “feelings of profound joy and union with a higher being”? How about the result of feelings of extreme claustrophobia? Ever been in such a thing? Well I can almost envision anyone praying when you’re in one, but “feelings of profound joy” while every unpaired proton and neutron in your body is being spun around? You’ve got to be kidding me!

If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin

*wipes foam off mouth*

I will probably respond to this later. It’s too soon after I read this. I need to sit down a bit for a while. Get my heart rate and blood pressure under control. 

I mean:

“Separation of church and state is ‘a lie we have been told’“?

This candidate for the US senate *gasp* calls her own nation’s constitution a lie?

“separating religion and politics is ‘wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers‘”?

Lady, go look up the meaning of the word ‘democracy’. This is neither Iran nor the Vatican. US citizens choose our leaders (check that constitution again!). In any case, if God chooses our rulers, why are you campaigning?

“God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”“?

To claim to know God’s intention is pure blashpemy, or stupidity, depending on your religiosity, but in both cases extremely arrogant. The intention of the founding fathers, however, can be known, since they wrote it down. Mrs. Harris clearly doesn’t have a clue about her own country’s history.

She means to tell me that the founding fathers didn’t mean to establish the strict separation of church and state after one of them, Thomas Jefferson, wrote this (part of a longer) letter:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.“