Tag Archives: atheists

The newest malarkey from Pat Robertson and The 700 Club

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“It’s, well, Christmas all over again. The Grinch is trying to steal our holiday. It’s been so beautiful, the nation comes together, we sing Christmas carols, we give gifts to each other, we have lighted trees, and it’s just a beautiful thing. Atheists don’t like our happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable. They’re miserable, so they want you to be miserable. So they want to steal your holiday away from you.” — Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club, gearing up for another War on Christmas.


…

Maybe the real “war” on Christmas can be found in out-of-control consumerism:

Image: pricklylegs


via: TPM

In terms of income inequality and cheap prices at Walmart, “the four Walton’s who rank in Forbes’ list of the wealthiest in the country are worth almost as much as the bottom half of all Americans…. their wealth comes at a price to taxpayers. One study found that California Wal-Mart workers were 40 percent more likely to be on public assistance, which costs taxpayers $86 million a year.”

The protests on Black Friday were an attempt to call attention to how Walmart shoppers contribute to workers low wages — and to their own low pay – by further enriching and subsidizing greedy employers like the Walton family.

Sadly: 

After the protests, will people “now link Walmart’s low prices to ‘a circumstance where taxpayers are subsidizing Walton’s billion dollars of profits‘” — and even if they do, will they even care if they can buy another cheap tv?

Where’s the “spirit” of Christmas in Black Friday?

Sunday sermon: Mitt Romney criticized by Franciscan Friars for comments on the poor

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“Our Christian tradition teaches that we are to treat the poor with dignity and to prioritize the poor in our policies as a society. At a time when millions are struggling financially, it is degrading to talk about the ‘dependency’ of people hurting in this economy, as Gov. Romney did recently.” — The Franciscan Action Network (FAN), a Catholic faith-based advocacy and civic engagement organization, strongly criticizing Mitt Romney’s recent ads and rhetoric regarding welfare programs and welfare recipients. (via: azspot)

I would imagine, but I couldn’t say for sure, that this Christian tradition is similar between Mormons and Catholics. But the political agendas of Romney and Ryan — both of whom profess to be Mormon and Catholic, respectively — are not inspired by any of the teachings of Jesus Christ, as far as I can see.

It seems like Christianity only matters to far-right conservatives when they can use it as a weapon against a political enemy. Sometimes atheists can also be found wearing sheep’s clothing.

Politicization of Christianity fuels atheism in U.S.

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Andrew Sullivan discussed religion on Face the Nation yesterday and said this about the increase of atheists:

“I think our ability to be reasonable in politics and faithful in religion, and to keep those two things separate, has atrophied to the great disadvantage of religion,” he said during a panel discussion on CBS News’ Face the Nation.

Two other members of the panel, Dr. Richard Land and Rev. Luis Cortes, had said that the separation of church and state was meant to prevent the government from infringing on faith. But it was not meant to prohibit religion from influencing the government.

So, interestingly, that’s what separation of church and state means to rightwing evangelicals. Sullivan continues:

“What has happened since 1960 is that organized groups, like the Southern Baptist Council and other religious groups, have in fact become self-consciously political,” Sullivan explained.

“They have become fused with one political party, the Republican Party — a party that is now defined by a particular religious faith, evangelicalism or far-right Catholic hierarchy. And that is making many people feel that faith in Jesus is about politics and power and partisanship, in ways that’s turning off an entire generation. The biggest growth in any belief sector in this country in the last ten years has been atheism.”

Sullivan said those religious organizations were “muddying” the real “radical” message of Jesus, which was anti-political. Jesus was “only on the cross because he refused politics.”

It’s noteworthy that the tea party is front and center in this type of political-religiosity. And yet not many accept their weird version of Christianity: the ‘Republican Jesus,’ the thought of a God who would reward people like Rush Limbaugh or ‘Murikin patriot/racists or the very wealthy with Heaven, and throw illegal immigrants and welfare recipients (and those who want to help them — socialists!) into the eternal fires of Hell. Imagine Jesus shouting “Bootstraps, people!” to the lepers. This brand of Christianity is just not marketable to the masses.

Related: 

Because why would you need a church to follow Jesus?

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Because of things like Red-State RWNJ Political-Christianity (also known as the laughable Teaparty fiction of a Republican-Atlas-Shrugged Jesus figurehead) combined with the worldwide sordid and hypocritical displays of modern “Christianity,” like the Catholic Church attempting to conceal systemic child molestation by its priests for decades (if not centuries), what we know as organized religion is dying a very slow but well-deserved death.

Newsweek: This week’s cover features a very average-looking Jesus Christ, whose cover line urges we follow him—and ditch the church. The cover story is written by Andrew Sullivan, who who argues that Christianity in America is “in crisis,” as political issues like contraception, health care, and abortion have been usurped by religious thinking, and the kind of Christianity that is most essential and pure has been lost. 

Here’s an excerpt (full story online and on newsstands tomorrow AM):

It seems no accident to me that so many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial—or that most Catholics, even regular churchgoers, have tuned out the hierarchy in embarrassment or disgust. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism, which has leapt in popularity in the new millennium. Nor is it a shock that so many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward “spirituality,” co-opting or adapting the practices of meditation or yoga, or wandering as lapsed Catholics in an inquisitive spiritual desert. The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?  That’s why polls show a huge majority of Americans still believing in a Higher Power. But the need for new questioning—of Christian institutions as well as ideas and priorities—is as real as the crisis is deep.

All organized Christian institutions today are based on The Council Of Nicea, which met to “define” Christianity and Jesus Christ in 325 AD, and which involved exactly zero women (because the common thread between the ancient Abrahamic-based religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — is that women are second-class citizens who don’t seem to have independent or valuable souls). The reality of modern Christianity is that the final biblical canon was chosen by and for rich and powerful men — likely for as many political and social reasons as for religious purposes. Kind of sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And it’s interesting that the New Testament that was chosen by this group of powerful men left out more than they put in.  What did they accomplish? — what we have today when we think of organized religion.

Atheists, Agnostics Know The Most About Religion

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“A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.

[...] The study also found that many Americans don’t understand constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools. While a majority know that public school teachers cannot lead classes in prayer, less than a quarter know that the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly stated that teachers can read from the Bible as an example of literature.

“Many Americans think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are tighter than they really are,” Pew researchers wrote.”

Atheists, Agnostics Know The Most About Religion

– No surprise here. Makes perfect sense: believers would think knowing about another religion might be ‘sinful.’ What if you started questioning your own faith? And knowledge might be the opposite of belief. The more you know about religion, yours and others, would you be more or less likely to believe a specific one?

9/11: Cheyenne, Wyoming

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Protester plans to burn Quran on Capitol steps

The founder of the Wyoming Tyranny Response Team plans to burn a copy of the Quran on the steps of the State Capitol on Saturday. Duncan Philp said he will protest the location of a proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero in New York City. He also will protest President Barack Obama’s support for the location.

“I feel Obama is being disingenuous when he pretends he supports religious liberties,” Philp said. “(The Muslims) are not building that mosque out of love for my culture or love of the victims of 9-11 but for political reasons.” Continued…

All faiths join as one

Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists and Unitarians marched together through downtown and culminated in front of the State Capitol on Saturday to protest religious intolerance.

The rally was brought on by a national controversy over an Islamic center that was proposed to be built near ground zero in New York City and threats to burn the Quran. The theme of the peace demonstration, which was organized by the Cheyenne Unitarian Universalist Church, was that all religions must coexist harmoniously.

At the demonstration a Jew and Muslim stood next to one another and read verses from the Quran.  “In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful,” Jason Bloomberg, a Jew, read from the Muslim holy book.
Bloomberg wore his former firefighter uniform in honor of the emergency personnel who died on 9-11. Continued…

Wyoming Tyranny Response Team: teabagger who was irrelevant before 9/11, on 9/11, and who will be irrelevant after 9/11. Tolerance ftw.

Very difficult (to embed) video here — wouldn’t play in Firefox does play in IE.

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