Yes, this is a picture of Christians praying at a golden calf on Wall Street.

I don’t know where to go from here. They’re praying… to a golden calf. Have none of these people read the damn Bible?!?

Watch this ad and see if you can guess why this pisses me off.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5AsdYWtKLY[/youtube]

I’ve frequently expressed my dissatisfaction with the rather massive tilt in Washington against people who just plain don’t believe in any god. At this point the only one we’ve got Pete Stark out of 535 people on the hill. Given that in 2003 roughly 10% of Americans didn’t believe in any god, the 0.18% in Congress just doesn’t match up well. So yes, I’m happy a Kay Hagan is able to break into the Senate.

What really chaps my ass is that the fact that some people don’t believe in God is used as a bludgeon to beat people over the head with, complete with dramatic music. Apparently forgetting that the Constitution explicitly states that there shall be no test of religion required to hold public office, the NRSC wants its voters to think that not believing in God is, by itself, proof that this woman cannot be worthy of holding public office. The shadowy video bits to make her look extra demonic are a nice touch too.

EDIT: Yes, I put in the wrong video. Harumph!

The rule of thumb is that no one cares about the crazy priest when we’re talking the Republican party, so I’m sure tomorrow this story will vanish, but really. This guy fails at life in about ten different directions. Check this out from a recent McCain rally from Rev. Arnold Conrad.

I would also pray Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.

And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.

Oh Lord, we just commit this time to you, move among us, make your presence very well felt as we are gathered here today in Jesus’s name I pray.

First off, I didn’t know “Hindu” was a deity like Buddha and Allah. So watch out, there’s a lot of people praying to Hindu for Obama to win, and there’s like eighty billion of those people.

Secondly, this is why prayer is stupid. This guy is asking the Lord God Himself to intervene in the election to protect his reputation. I’m assuming he thinks God doesn’t care about democracy, but the real noodle-scratcher is what happens when Obama wins. Is Rev. Conrad going to think God wasn’t able to “guard his reputation”, or that he chose not to?

Finally, it really cracks me up that his reasoning isn’t that McCain would be more godly or that Obama is in any way un-godly, no. He’s just having a theological dick-waving contest and seems to think God was upstairs playing Medal of Honor and didn’t realize some people don’t worship him, and if this brown dude wins it means people won’t like him or something. I don’t know, sometimes it’s hard to wade through the river of stupid these people spill.

I had been under the impression that this issue was dead, buried, and on its way into turning into a fossil, but apparently I was wrong. Recently a school in North Carolina decided they were going to “consider” teaching creationism in science class. Here we go again…

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

I’m going to try and make this simple, because I think simple language is best suited to these discussions.

First of all, there seems to be this bizarre linkage between “evolution” and “atheism”, as though this is the only subject where science butts heads with the Bible. Take your pick between agricultural theory, anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, they all contradict something in there. Evolution vs creationism is only hanging on like a barnacle because it’s the only one that can’t be directly debunked.

Secondly, you can’t “teach” creationism. There’s nothing to “teach”. What does the lesson plan involve? What could a course on creationism possibly put on its final exam?

1. God created everything. []T []F

There is no science in creationism. None whatsoever. Keep in mind here I’m simply defining “science” to mean “evidence found through observation”. There is nothing involved in the concept of creationism (or its bastard cousin Intelligent Design) that is not either a weak refutation of evolution or rooted in the Bible.

By its very nature Creationism cannot be taught as science. The idea that a deity snapped his fingers and poofed everything into being precludes the ability to offer any evidence of it. We can support the theory of evolution by finding more links in the chain between the primordial ooze and all the varied life we have today, but when your theory is “there was nothing then God put stuff here”, unless you have video of things appearing out of nowhere your theory is pretty well sunk.

Creationism isn’t taught because there’s nothing to teach. It isn’t a theory, it’s a lack of a theory. Creationism says “we cannot explain X, therefore Y.” There may be no evidence of Y whatsoever, but that’s not important.

Back when the Wright “scandal” was still the top story in the campaign, I remember thinking that they wouldn’t be have accused him of being crazy if he was a white preacher. Well, I was wrong.

They wouldn’t have accused him of being crazy if he was a black preacher with history with a white candidate.

Bishop Thomas Muthee is a priest and a witch hunter. I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean he actually fucking hunts witches. He claims that witchcraft was the cause of “spiritual oppression” in the Kenyan town of Kiambu, and led 200 fanatics to exile an accused witch from the town

He also believes that we need God in the schools, to prevent children from worshipping Buddha and Muhammed. Again, I’m not making this up. He actually fucking said:

“We need God taking over our education system. If we have God in our schools, we will not have our kids being taught how to worship Buddha, how to worship Muhammad. We will not have in the curriculum witchcraft and sorcery.” He also preaches, “The other area is the media. We need believers in the media. We need God taking over the media in our lives.

He didn’t say this in Kenya. He didn’t say this in some crackpot church in Montana. He said this when visiting the Wasilla Assembly of God, Sarah Palin’s church. And not only was she in the audience (unlike Obama at the time of Wright’s “evil racist crazy bad man” statements), she was called up to the stage for Muthee to lead everyone to pray for her political career.

First off, here’s the cartoon in question. Just so we’re all on the same page.

Let’s assume your reading comprehension ranks somewhere between 3rd grade and PhD from Cambridge. Chances are you should be able to piece together the intention of this cartoon: Palin speaks in incomprehensible gibberish and her claims of being our holy candidate aren’t legitimate, in the eyes of our cartoonist, delivered by poking fun at the tendecy of Pentecostals to “speak in tongues” aka “make random noises”.

Well hold tight, because the hypersensitive Christians have come around to claim that the cartoon is mocking God and religion itself. Crying that “The Washington Post would not think of printing a cartoon that mocked members of the Muslim or Jewish faiths,” and that “the cartoonist portrayed God as cranky, befuddled, a user of profanity and not omniscient,” they’re all up in arms in the way they mocked Muslims for being a few years ago.

I’m sure the WaPo will go on to apologize and say the message wasn’t that harsh (which it wasn’t), but you know what? Even if it was, tough titty. When someone is running for VP that is waiting for Jesus Christ to descend from the sky, they deserve to be mocked until they’re sent home crying. Someone who thinks the earth is 7,000 years old isn’t qualified to teach elementary science or history, let alone be 2nd in command at the White House. Period.

I want you all to know that a reason I take potshots at the religious isn’t because it feels good. It’s not that I consider it sport and take glee in mocking anyone. No, the reason that evangelicals scare me is that they foster a worldview that can lead to absolutely disastrous policies.

That Sarah Palin believes the Earth is 7,000 years old and claims to have seen dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them is scary. Scratch that, it’s terrifying from a general standpoint; an adult in 2008 should not harbor such misguided “knowledge”. But no, here’s the real issue:

[Valley activist Philip] Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. “She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.’”

Now let’s first remind ourselves that everyone thought Jesus was coming back during their lifetime. That’s why the “Wandering Jew” concept came around. The claim was that he’d come back within the lifetime of at least one person who saw him the first go-round. So pastors and zealots from every century between the the 1st and the 21st have been dead-set positive that the messiah was coming back.

I digress. What scares me is that this worldview is, as Sam Harris often points out, completely counterproductive to any kind of long-term policy. When you believe, in your heart, that Christ is coming back to whisk his followers to Heaven and bring about the end of times, why bother with environmentalism? Who cares if Social Security will be bankrupt by 2050? What does it matter if the United States is making enemies? By the time any of that comes around, Jesus will have already taken the true believers to paradise and we’ll all be in the midst of Armageddon. No reason to piss around with Medicare during the apocalypse.

Someone who genuinely believes in the End of Times, and that it’s coming soon, will likely not be reserved with the red button. We cannot expect someone of that mindset to think of long-term consequences when discussing nuclear war (which may explain Palin’s glib comments about Russia and Israel/Iran).

Don’t forget that part of the End of Times is that Israel is destroyed. So when Palin shrugs off talks of Israel attacking Iran with “we shouldn’t second guess them” four times, is she showing unity, or is quietly excited at the prospect, as it signifies the end of times? Does she really want Israel to remain safe, protected, and war free when the destruction thereof is a major part in getting Christ back?

This is why evangelicals scare me, folks.

Joe Biden’s managed to just evaporate from the country’s consciousness somehow, with McCain’s “promise for change” is being compared to Obama’s as is Palin’s experience, but he’s still out there, and still causing hilarity.

Right now he’s getting smacked around for something he said concerning abortion and when life begins. I could just pop out the AP report on the incident, but I feel like aiming at the National Review Online, whose response is nothing short of amazing.

Long story short, Biden made a statement on abortion that says while his religion states life begins at conception, he doesn’t want to impose religious views on the country and thus is pro-choice. Sounds good, most intelligent people can divest their religious convictions with rational ones that should apply universally. Not Father Williams.

Moreover, when we advance religiously grounded moral viewpoints in the public square, we are not im-posing; we are pro-posing. That’s what we do in a democratic republic: We propose, we deliberate, and we vote. Oddly, many Catholic politicians understand this well when it concerns the death penalty, but are strangely reticent when it comes to protecting innocent unborn human life.

The sheer presumption of this sentence is mindblowing, and it goes back to a more general idea that the religious really do pick and choose when to apply this logic. If someone were to stand up and say they want to amend the constitution to mandate Christianity on the grounds that they truly, at their core, believe that non-Christians are doomed to an eternity of hell and torment, somehow that’s considered “crazy”, but in the abortion and gay debates, having nothing but the Bible in your pocket is “credible”.

Even more baffling is a Denver Archbishop’s claim that “modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it.” Well, no. That’s just flat on its face. Even after the egg is fertilized, it’s still a few days before it travels to the uterus and starts to turn into a fetus. The reason that pregnancy doesn’t always happen isn’t because the sperm “missed” the egg, it’s because the fertilized egg got washed out instead of surviving the journey. If these people were right and life begins at conception, we’d better start holding funerals any time woman flushes out a fertilized egg during that time of the month.

There is no biological (or even religious) defense that life begins at conception, and that’s only half of the problem. The second half is that these are the same people who argue against social security, welfare, unemployment, urban improvement projects and (recently) community organizers. They don’t give a shit what happens to the baby once it’s born, and just prove that “abortion” is being used as a sledgehammer to beat liberals around. It’s a cheap political stunt, and in a case like this it subverts an actually honorable statement made by someone who recognizes the disconnect between religious and objective beliefs.

By the way, Williams’ claim of “elsewhere pols are scrambling to win the “Catholic vote,” which now represents nearly 25 percent of the voting public” is also false, given the high amounts of Catholics who polls have shown over and over again support abortion rights. The group Catholics for Choice (yes, this is real), has an amazingly in-depth sampling of surveys showing just how it breaks down. PDF link here.

They say you shouldn’t write anything when you’re angry. I say fuck them. I can’t talk about creationism and “intelligent design” without getting angry. I’m not a scientist, but I at least have a functional knowledge of the scientific method, and how and why the scientific and academic communities work the way they do. I understand the standards that are held by those communities, and that understanding means creationist rhetoric throws me into a bloody rage.

And so, gloves off, there is an open letter to all creationists, intelligent design proponents, and any other evolution-hating nutjob who wants to either replace or “teach the controversy” in the classrooms.

Dear transparent fundie fuckwits,
I’m fucking sick and tired of hearing the same utterly ignorant bullshiat from you in every discussion about evolution and creationism. I’m sick of the cries of “teach the controversy!” and “why should students learn only one point of view?” I’m sick of the disingenuous argument that science should somehow be democratic, with no consideration for things like “evidence” and the “scientific method.” I’m sick of the thinly veiled religious zealotry shown by people whose faith is so flimsy that they can’t resolve their personal beliefs with physical reality, an act easily accomplished by all but the most narrow-minded and rigid Biblical literalists, who even then end up “interpreting” passages that are inconvenient to them.

Science is not a point of view. It is not a democratic system. It is not a fucking debate for school children. It is a system of rules and procedures created to help us better understand the physical workings of our world. It is why we are a civilization, and not just clusters of gibbering morons shitting out of trees. It is the process of determining the concrete specifics of a question, attempting to come up with an answer to that question, testing the validity of that answer, going over the results, sharing those results, and then doing it all again and again and again, constantly improving your understanding of both the question and its possible answers in doing so.

I’m almost ashamed to admit that I snagged this one from Fark, but hey, why is that site any less valid than any other? News is news, no matter where it comes from.

Anyway, in the wake of the McCain ad “The One”, some speculation amongst the more… evangelical (to put it charitably) have opened up as debate asking whether or not Barack Obama is, in fact, the antichrist. The Washington Post, eager to settle this one early, went to the experts: the authors of the “Left Behind” series.

The debate over the debate has gotten so intense that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the authors of the “Left Behind” series, issued a statement clarifying that Obama is likely not the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation. “I’ve gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the Antichrist,” Jenkins told Christian Newswire. “I tell everyone that I don’t think the Antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics.”

You can read his full statement if you want, but my problem here isn’t whether or not Barack Obama is the antichrist. My problem is that we’re even debating whether or not Barack Obama is the antichrist.

In 2008, two thousand and effing eight, we’re having major media sources (apparently CNN weighed in as well) actually taking the question of “Obama the Antichrist” seriously enough that they’re asking the likes of LaHaye and Jenkins and devoting airtime to it. To the matter of whether or not Barack Obama is the man who will stand in opposition to Jesus Christ and bring about the Armageddon.

This is the kind of thing that should be laughed off instantly. You can be as devout as you want, but let’s not mince words: this “antichrist” business is Christian mythology. End of story. Even if Obama fit every single definition the Bible had, he could still get elected, have a one or two term presidency, die of old age, probably write at least two more books, and the world would keep on turning. Asking if he is or isn’t wastes time because, hate to break it to everyone, whether he matches the Bible’s definition or not it doesn’t actually mean the end of the world is coming.

That it gets ANY serious consideration is nothing short of depressing.