On a visit to the shrine, seeing the discarded canes and crutches, he exclaimed, “What, what, no wooden legs???”

Some of the most famous miracles of modern times, or so it’s claimed, are the miracles caused by the healing waters at the Grotto of Lourdes, in France.  Pilgrimages by the faithful are a constant source of tourism dollars miracle claims, and apparently, since 1858, millions of believers have visited the Grotto, seeking a cure for whatever ails them, always hoping for a miracle. It’s reported that on one day, alone, over 55,000 showed up. Special baths are set up for people to immerse themselves in the miracle waters. Even if you can’t go there, you can send away for your own bottle of the supernatural H₂O.

Yet despite the fact that millions of people have visited the grotto for a century and a half, the church has only recognized 67 actual miracles. In reviewing the medical conditions of the good folks who believed they were cured via a miracle, I find myself wishing I was a doctor, so I could determine whether these were the type of diseases or conditions that would have persisted but for a divine intervention, or whether they were the types of conditions that in a statistical sample of people, would have spontaneously regressed or remitted.  Google, while helpful, is not adequate to the task. I can’t tell without medical expertise whether these anomalies were the type that could easily be cured, statistically cured themselves, or were not as serious as they were reported to be. Most medical experts will acknowledge that miracles can often be ascribed to the “possibility that the altered states of prayer, religious faith, and meditation may allow the process of self-repair greater freedom to operate”, so the claims have to be approached with some skepticism. I will note, though, that on the list, there is not one spontaneous regrowth of an amputated limb, nor, for that matter, any men cured of baldness.

If you remember the story, Bernadette Soubirous, who was 14 at the time, reported that she had visions of the Virgin Mary, who told her to scratch the dirt in the grotto, after which water came bubbling out. Ironically, Bernadette suffered from severe asthma her entire life, was bedridden for the last years, and died at the ripe old age of thirty five.

Yep. Apparently the miracle cures of Lourdes didn’t work on Bernadette.

The Church had originally set up a committee to investigate the miracle claims (which resulted in the certified cures listed above) but recently the panel of independent physicians charged with assessing miracle claims has decided that they will no longer do so. Prior to that, they had weakened the definitions of miracles, due to the medical community’s reluctance to say that any medical condition was “incurable”.

So what we have here is the inexorable progress of human knowledge taking over those places where religion previously filled in the gaps that ignorance used to create. There was a time when certain diseases were deemed “incurable”. Entire facilities, such as tuberculosis sanatoriums, were set up to isolate incurable and contagious diseases. Science and medicine, however, have reached the point where it’s not prudent, or even reasonable, to say that a disease is incurable. The history of medicine has shown that once incurable diseases are not incurable. Greater understanding of the biochemical, physiological and systemic processes of the human body give us greater confidence in our ability to combat disease. Imagine what we would have done with HIV 200 years ago? Today, we have a massive effort directed at finding a cure. Even cancer is not deemed hopeless.

So what does this do to the miracle business? For one thing, as shown above, theists have to be careful about what they consider incurable diseases. If nothing is incurable, miracles lose all their punch.

More important, if people become more educated about medicine and science, they stop expecting their church to cure them, and instead rely on their doctors. Secular miracles become more realistic than divine ones. Religion has always relied on the magical side of their theology to rope in the masses. As long as they believed in things that transcended their normal lives, they stuck with their churches. This is why Jesus performs so many miracles in the Gospels, at a considerably greater rate as the Gospels were written from Mark, through Matthew, Luke, then John. If he simply preached his gospel, without the performance art, he would have been no different than any of the other itinerant preachers that wandered through the area at that time. The writers had to make him special, or there would be nothing on which to base their religion. Without the magic, religion is nothing.

The concession by the church that they can’t proclaim miracles like they used to is a good sign that religion will eventually go the way of all flesh.

Well, it would be if it had happened spontaneously.

Jeff Kepner just became the country’s first double amputee to receive hand transplants. Amazing as that may seem (or perhaps not so amazing considering what else has been transplanted lately)  what’s really amazing is that no one’s praising god for the results. Maybe we are finally beginning to understand why good things happen to people. It’s not because they are blessed, it’s not because they don’t have sin on their soul, it’s not because someone prayed for them. No, it’s usually because they are lucky, they live well, they are in the right place at the right time, they have the resources to ensure good things, they have good friends and family around them, or they’re just plain lucky. Did I mention luck?

In Jeff’s case, he had a devoted, caring, interested, well informed wife, who thought that he might make a good candidate for a relatively new medical transplant procedure she read about. He then found a good doctor, along with his medical team, who determined that he was indeed a good candidate, and who was willing the perform the operation.   He also happened to be born, and suffered through the loss of his limbs, at a time when  medical technology had reached the stage where an operation like this could be performed.

Unfortunately, someone had to die in order for him to receive these new limbs. That someone left behind a 15 month old child.  So the story is not all happiness and light.

I can’t emphasize too strongly that god had nothing to do with this. In the entire recorded history of mankind, he has never seen fit to restore a limb to anyone that lost one, regardless of how deserving they were for a miracle. It didn’t matter if they lost their limb to an accident, it didn’t matter whether they relied on their hands to make a living, it didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor, good or bad. No one has ever spontaneously regenerated a limb, and no one will.

I mentioned this before, but for some reason, miracles are not in abundance anymore, while, according to scripture, they were almost a common, everyday occurrence in ancient times. Coincidentally, ancient times were not a time known for scrupulous, accurate, at-least-two-sources reporting. So what happened to god? Why doesn’t he restore limbs, or for that matter, perform miracles anymore? (There goes, SI, asking those rhetorical questions again. {sigh}).

I know some of you will say that he does, but in the Bible, he performs miracles that are easily and readily attributed to him. Jesus provided food for thousands of people with only a few fish and loaves of bread. He brought dead people back to life.  He cured lepers.  He knocked down solid stone city walls with just the toot of a few horns.  He turned people into salt. He split massive bodies of water in half  so whole populations could escape oppressors. In all these examples, god’s work is evident. He actually speaks to the beneficiaries and takes credit.

Today, people pray over sick children, and if they get better, the faithful are quick to give him credit,  but where is he actually taking credit like he does in the Bible?  Busy plastering his picture over truck tailgates or his mother’s on a bird dropping, apparently.  (Praise the Lord! Splat!)  Of course, as I mentioned, we have much stricter standards for evidence these days. We want cool, logical proof. Or at least quantifiable, repeatable evidence. We are skeptical by default. We have these standards of proof, today, because we’ve been burned in the past.

Mankind has had it’s share of charlatans who claim divine connections, but they never pan out. We’ve had whole periods of history defined by beliefs in utter nonsense. Mankind, like individual humans, has grown, and with growth comes knowledge and maturity. We won’t be fooled again, so we insist on standardized proof.

And within the ambit of a logical system of proof, miracles just don’t occur. Sure, we still have things that are unexplainable, but there are no such thing as certified miracles. We look at alleged miracles, and we withhold judgment, until no other explanation is forthcoming, or possible. Usually, things we might have ascribed to miracles in the past, turn out to have natural explanations, and given that fact, we are smart to withhold judgment on those things that are claimed to be miracles today, because the odds are pretty good that they aren’t.

So Jeff Kepner is just damned lucky. He has a lot of science, and medicine, and good, well trained people to thank. And a good wife.

But not god.

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Galileo’s head was on the block
The crime was looking up the truth

After a couple of very heavy, existential, somewhat contentious posts, I thought I’d lighten things up a little. Everybody knows who Galileo was. He was born 445 year ago last February, so it’s not exactly a nice round anniversary to celebrate. Lets just say that he inspired a song by the Indigo Girls that I like a lot, and that’s a good enough reason to write a post about him. For those that like their music pulled down towards heavy metal, I don’t think Megadeth has a song in their repertoire about Galileo. (And that’s not a slur on metal music, just a bad allusion to the weight of , you know, heavy metal). Besides, as I said, I’m trying to lighten things up a bit.

Embedding is disabled, but double-click on the video to go to YouTube

The sentiment about getting souls right I don’t find all that helpful,  and the video’s a little too cutesy, but, as a musical paean to the great scientist, it’s a wonderful song. The combination of exhilarating female harmonies mixed with an infectious syncopated percussive beat I find very uplifting. With Jackson Browne helping out on the vocals, it’s a win-win deal.

Checking out Wikipedia, I see that the Roman Catholic Church has recently tried to make amends for the shabby way they treated him in his lifetime, by acknowledging, in 1992, that the Earth actually does revolve around the sun  ( I knew this in 1960, but then I was a mature six year old at the time). And last year they even proposed erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican!

If I was one of his heirs, with some authority to refuse, I’d do just that.

Refuse, that is.

I knew that would get your attention.

I was sitting in the doctor’s office today, waiting for my friendly medical vampire  to suck out a small sample of my blood, and of course I picked up an old copy of Newsweek. (I’ve always wondered: Do the doctors  take them home to age, before putting them in the waiting room? ) The last page had a column by Anna Quindlen, who’s writing I’ve always admired, with a topic “Let’s Talk About Sex“. Very good column, and not too old.   It was published in March.  It’s a handy little example of rational, critical thinking, and a rejection of faith, even though it only peripherally deals with religion, if at all.

She points out that a faith based attitude towards sex doesn’t work. By “faith based,” I don’t necessarily mean religious, though that’s part of it. I mean the sense that many people believe that if you just avoid the subject, it will go away, a sort of ostrich attitude, if you will. It’s rooted solely in hope, rather that pragmatism.

Sex is a problem, or at least the collateral consequences of sex have become a problem, but only because of the way our society is structured. As a biological mechanism for ensuring the propagation of the species, it works exactly as designed (back off Creationists, you know what I mean). We have no problem creating children, but the side effects of too many children, coupled with the stigma and difficulty attached to single parenthood, not to mention potential diseases, makes unfettered sex, something our ancestors needed when our species was young, somewhat more problematic now that we’ve been around a couple of million years.

We’re kidding ourselves, however, if we think that we can stem that tide by simply telling others to not have sex. There are a billion years of evolved impulses built into the sex drive, that are automatic, and relatively uncontrollable, and certainly not fully understood. However, we have found that humans, or any other animal for that matter, can not just willingly turn them off, any more than we can turn off hunger pangs when we haven’t eaten lately, sneezing when our noses are irritated, or gasping for breath when our oxygen supply is cut off.  (Old joke: Sex is like air. It’s not important unless you’re not getting any.) And, according to Quindlen, the facts bear this out:

1: They don’t work. A study conducted for the Department of Health and Human Services during the last Bush administration showed that teenagers who took abstinence-only classes were just as likely to have sex as those who didn’t.

2: They’re actually counterproductive. Other studies have shown that adolescents in abstinence-only programs were less likely to use contraception, perhaps because those programs emphasize only the failure rates of even the best methods.

3: Everyone understands this. A growing number of states are turning down federal funds for abstinence-only education. Yes, that’s right: states are being offered money and saying no. (I wanted to write that in capital letters but restrained myself.) Texas leads the nation in spending for abstinence-only programs. It also has one of the highest teen birthrates in the country. Those two sentences together sound like the basis for a logic question on the SAT, but a really easy one.

What she said, however, about the relative worth of the issues in this national debate about sex can’t be stated too much.

Because we hear so often that there are two sides to an issue, we’ve become accustomed to thinking there are two equal sides to most of them, especially the ones on which people scream the loudest.

This is so true, and can be extrapolated to almost any issue, but I’m thinking about the one we’ve been discussing recently here, about the existence of god. It’s also relevant to the evolution/creationism debate, in which theists create a false dichotomy on purpose, to make it seem like the two sides are equal, and hence worth debating, when there’s really no controversy to debate. Just because there are two sides to an issue (or three, or four, or….) doesn’t mean they should be given equal weight, as if they are the flip side of the same coin. The amount of weight each side should be given should be in proportion to the amount and quality of evidence that can be advanced in support of the side.

Citations to scripture should have little weight, if any. The reason for this is that a citation to a book is not evidence. A citation in a book, by itself, only points to evidence, it’s not evidence itself. If there is something cited in scripture that points to evidence, then fine, give it whatever weight it deserves, if the evidence is behind it. But there are few books written between 2000 and 4000 years ago that point to any evidence still relevant today, unclouded by the passage of time and uncontradicted by the advancement of human knowledge.

So in the existence-of-god issue, like the sex/abstinence issue, most of the weight comes down hard on one side, with little evidence to support the other. It’s not a 50/50 proposition that god exists, with a flip of the coin giving you equal chances of being right. It’s closer to a 99.9/.1 proposition.

Which side would you bet on?

(Apologies to all you Googlers who thought this was going to be about something a little more salacious. Y’all come back now, hear?)

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We spend a lot of time here talking about peripheral issues in religion and atheism. Oftentimes we get sidetracked, sometimes intentionally, on these peripheral issues. They can be intellectually fulfilling at times, but in the end, like theological Chinese food, they don’t satisfy. But there’s one issue, one single question that never seems to get discussed head on: The Existence of God. I’ve contended here many times, if god doesn’t exist, the rest of this stuff is meaningless blather. Without god, theology is just philosophy and someone needs to prove he exists before I waste a lot of my time reading the Bible.

So I’m going to open up this post and comments to anyone and everyone that has evidence for the existence of God.

I’ll state my prejudices, up front,  for those who don’t already know. I’ve never seen anything that comes close to evidence for the existence of god.  But I have an open mind (I think) so I am willing to be convinced. I’ll even say that if you show me good evidence, I’ll bow down and worship your god, whoever he may be. But I want evidence.

By evidence I want to see something, or hear something, or feel something, or have explained to me something that I can’t see, hear or feel, that can be reproduced at any time by anyone without exception, and capable of being experienced or understood by anyone and everyone equally.

What I don’t want, and what I don’t think will suffice, are quotes from any Holy Scripture, though I won’t delete them if you really feel they are evidence. Don’t get pissed, though, if I don’t respond to them, or if do respond, I do so by quoting another book of my own choosing.

Personal anecdotes are welcome, provided you don’t mind them being dismissed or ridiculed, especially if no one else can corroborate them.

Visions of Jesus, Mary or Mohammad on a slice of toast, a window, or the sky probably won’t cut it, but feel free to give it a shot.

Seriously, this is an opportunity for theists, all three of you who read this blog, to tell the world exactly what did it for you. What evidence did you experience that convinced you that you were worshiping the right deity?

And if you want to say you don’t need no stinkin’ evidence, you just know god exists, then I appreciate your honesty.

Have at it.

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I like that. The genesis of god. Catchy title, don’t you think? It implies that god had a start, a beginning, just like the earth, contrary to fundeological beliefs.

One of the more persistent commenters in my last post, good ol’ c “Piltdown Man”  l, objected to my claim that “gods were born” at some time in mankind’s primitive past, primarily as a reaction to their own ignorance. I stand by my observation, because cl’s sole objection boils down to “you can’t prove it, you simply believe it”, not noticing apparently that this is a blog in which I basically set forth my beliefs, and the reasons for them. It is not a scholastic, peer-reviewed journal, after all. My beliefs also have some basis behind them, unlike his “belief” that primitive man actually met the gods they worshiped. (I’m sure he’ll parse this last statement, but if he’s honest he’ll have to admit it). Mine are based on a convergence of knowledge gleaned from many sources, like history, anthropology, paleontology, sociology, etc. His is total guesswork and religious belief.

More to that point,  since primitive man, while leaving some vestiges of their existence and culture, hadn’t invented writing and left no histories, it’s difficult to determine with pinpoint accuracy exactly what they were thinking when they invented gods (and make no mistake about it, they did invent them).  Cl’s rationale in making his objection is that because I can’t go back and interview them, or can’t really find any significant evidence of what was in their minds, then there exists the possibility that they worshiped gods because  {drum roll} they actually existed, but we’ll never know, until we invent the wayback machine. Until then, the actual existence of animistic gods is a perfectly viable alternative to common sense, according to cl.

Blatherskite.

So I found it coincidental to see this interview with Robert Wright, in which he discusses his latest book The Evolution of God. In the interview he does talk about primitive beliefs in religion, (he calls them hunter-gatherer religions) however he ruminates more widely on recent and advanced forms of religion, primarily of the monotheistic variety. This is what got cl so incensed in the previous post:

Do you think religions share certain core principles?

Not many. People in the modern world, certainly in America, think of religion as being largely about prescribing moral behavior. But religion wasn’t originally about that at all. To judge by hunter-gatherer religions, religion was not fundamentally about morality before the invention of agriculture. It was trying to figure out why bad things happen and increasing the frequency with which good things happen. Why do you sometimes get earthquakes, storms, disease and get slaughtered? But then sometimes you get nice weather, abundant game and you get to do the slaughtering. Those were the religious questions in the beginning.

A couple of more excerpts:

Why did monotheism first develop?

My explanation for Abrahamic monotheism is different from the standard one. I believe it emerged later than most people think — in the 6th century BCE, when Israelite elites were exiled by the Babylonians who conquered them…

Israel was a small nation in a bad neighborhood that got kicked around. This culminated in the exile, which was humiliating. It dispossessed the Israelites… This kind of mind-set brings out the belligerence in a religion. You see that in the Book of Isaiah, thought to be written by so-called Second Isaiah. These are the earliest scriptures in the Bible that are clearly monotheistic. You get the sense that monotheism is about punishing the various nations that have persecuted Israel.

So you see a connection between the political power of a people and the god they believed in?

In ancient times, there was always a close association between politics and gods. The victor of a war was always the nation whose god beat the other god. But the specific political dynamic that monotheism reflected at its birth was Israel’s desire to punish other nations by denying the very existence of their gods, and also envisioning a day when Israel’s god, Yahweh, would actually subjugate those nations

…

For people who claim that Israel was monotheistic from the get-go and its flirtations with polytheism were rare aberrations, it’s interesting that the Jerusalem temple, according to the Bible’s account, had all these other gods being worshiped in it. Asherah was in the temple. She seemed to be a consort or wife of Yahweh. And there were vessels devoted to Baal, the reviled Canaanite god. So Israel was fundamentally polytheistic at this point. Then King Josiah goes on a rampage as he tries to consolidate his own power by wiping out the other gods.

That’s an interesting theory. I might have to read the book to see it it pans out. Monotheism was actually developed (or evolved, if you will) as a reaction to persecution by a nation with an inferiority complex. “My One God is bigger and badder than all your puny gods!” It both allowed human rulers to consolidate power while at the same time giving their people a fantasy of superiority.

I find it interesting that if you strip theology from the subject, and look at it through a filter of  legitimate disciplines like science or history, you get a much clearer picture of the role of religion in our culture. The reason for this, I think, is that theology, by its very definition, assumes the existence of gods. You cannot validly study the question of gods in culture while assuming their existence. You have to start from the proposition that they don’t exist, and work your way forward. Theology doesn’t do that.  Science and history don’t assume anything factual, such as the existence of gods. They require proof. So, to me, a historical analysis of religion, such as Robert Wright’s,  is far more valid than a theological one.

Clearly, there’s more supporting the theory that man created gods, than the other way around.

We spend a lot of time here on the Atheosphere debating the fine nuances between the religious worldview and the atheist worldview. From our Point of View, the religious just don’t have a clue, and they think the same of us. We think that a rational, skeptical, humanistic, evidence-based way of grasping reality is the way to go, or as my grandmother used to say, the cat’s pajamas. Theists think that having faith, blind or otherwise, in an unseen and unknowable supernatural entity  is also the equivalent of wearing sleepwear manufactured for members of the feline persuasion. In effect, we are debating opposing views of reality.

What they don’t realize is that the battle over which view of reality is correct was over hundreds of years ago, and they are simply clinging onto their religious view out of pure fear. They delude themselves cannot accept the indisputable fact that they will die, and their religious beliefs give them comfort and hope that they will linger on after they’ve completed their enlistment in the human race.

I say that the battle was over hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago. Not just the battle, but the war was won when we discovered science and the scientific method. Theists simply didn’t realize it at the time, and refuse to accept it now.

Mankind evolved from a state of ignorance. We were not self-cognizant at first, we had small brains, and we didn’t have sufficient knowledge to understand reality until we developed more fully. The accumulation of knowledge is an evolutionary process by itself. It starts simple and becomes complex as we learn new things, increasing exponentially, adding to the database of human knowledge, and building from that knowledge to a greater and greater understanding.

In our primitive years, we couldn’t understand natural phenomena, such as lightning, droughts, reproduction, death, and many other natural events that we understand fully now, but didn’t have the basic knowledge to understand back then. Lightning was real. The birth of children was real. Death was real, but we didn’t understand any of it. Where did lightning come from? Was it a response to something we did? How did my wife get pregnant? Why did my son die in childbirth?  In an attempt to understand these perplexing facts, though, some of our ancestors devised the concept of the supernatural to explain them. If it was real, right there in front of us, but the explanation was not obvious, then the explanation must be “somewhere else”, not here, not within the purview of our senses. Somewhere outside the natural world.

And gods were born.

When we came upon a natural phenomena that could not be explained, we now had the answer. A god did it! At that time, there were so many gaps in the database of human knowledge, that gods were used to fill in the explanations for almost everything. This is why we had multiple gods. Gods of the hearth. Gods of the field.  Gods of the sky and the ocean. Gods of the bed chamber, etc.

As we slowly found an explanation for the many and various perplexities of human life, our need for all of these gods diminished. Slowly, we learned that we could figure out many of these problems by using our brains, not by offering sacrifices. We discovered hypotheses and experiments, and created new tools to test our hypotheses, such as telescopes, microscopes, and many others.

It was not until the Scientific Revolution that we changed our human way of thinking about the natural world. There were scientists before that, of course, but even the term Scientist wasn’t coined until the 19th century. Prior to that, they were called natural philosophers. Religious thinking had a very strong and historically entrenched grip on the minds of Man, and it was painful to shake.  Once the scientific mindset became predominant, however, appeals to the supernatural for explanations of reality, and a belief among scientists in the supernatural virtually disappeared to the point where today, only 7% of all scientists in the National Academy of Science believe in a personal god.

Science has not been able to explain everything we want to know, mainly because the limits of knowledge are probably infinite, so the more we discover, the more we want to know. In other words, each scientific explanation opens up another avenue of research. The beauty of this is that it assumes that with patience and faithful application of the scientific method of inquiry, we can answer all of life’s questions, even though it will take a long time. The history of scientific discovery, and the reliability of science to explain the unexplainable, gives us confidence that this as true. In the meantime, we simply say “I don’t know” and keep looking.

We have a relatively foolproof  method for exploring and ultimately explaining the natural world around us. Scientific experiments can be repeated, and tested, and confirmed over and over again, by people with axes to grind, and by people with none. We do not have to rely on secret incantations or the intercession of priests to gain a secure knowledge of reality. The battle, indeed the war, between atheism and theism was won when science arrived on the scene.

Since then, it’s just been a matter of mopping up.

Science 10,859,284 (and counting) – Religion 0

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Miraculously enough, I actually watched Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life last night, for the first time. Yes, I know I’ve been remiss in my satirical duties, especially considering my moniker, as I’ve had the disc for quite awhile. I’ve subscribed to their theology ever since I first watched their TV series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (of which I now own every episode), then later The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian. I never knew until last night just how deep, nor how caustic, their theology could go.

I love it!

Here are the lyrics of the song, in case your speakers are as tinny as mine.

Every Sperm is Sacred

There are Jews in the world.

There are Buddhists.

There are Hindus and Mormons, and then

There are those that follow Mohammed, but

I’ve never been one of them.

I’m a Roman Catholic,

And have been since before I was born,

And the one thing they say about Catholics is:

They’ll take you as soon as you’re warm.

You don’t have to be a six-footer.

You don’t have to have a great brain.

You don’t have to have any clothes on. You’re

A Catholic the moment Dad came,

Because

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite irate.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite irate.

Let the heathen spill theirs

On the dusty ground.

God shall make them pay for

Each sperm that can’t be found.

Every sperm is wanted.

Every sperm is good.

Every sperm is needed

In your neighbourhood.

Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,

Spill theirs just anywhere,

But God loves those who treat their

Semen with more care.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite irate.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is good.

Every sperm is needed

In your neighbourhood!

Every sperm is useful.

Every sperm is fine.

God needs everybody’s.

Mine! And mine! And mine!

Let the Pagan spill theirs

O’er mountain, hill, and plain.

God shall strike them down for

Each sperm that’s spilt in vain.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is good.

Every sperm is needed

In your neighbourhood.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite iraaaaate!

______________

I also read a very short, but extremely accurate, one line description of the so-called pro-life movement, which I thought I’d share, as it’s in keeping with the spirit of this post.

The pro-life movement believes that life begins at conception and ends at birth.

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217 years after the Bill of Rights was finally ratified and became the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, a significant percentage of the population doesn’t seem to understand, yet, what Separation of Church and State actually means. Most people understand the “Freedom of Religion” aspect of the Amendment (which doesn’t actually use that exact phrase) to mean that they have the freedom to impose their particular flavor of religion on everyone, especially on the courthouse steps. So once again, we have another bunch of probably well meaning but misguided religionuts up in arms about having another set of stone tablets removed from the front of the Haskell County (Oklahoma) Courthouse, by order of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Actually, the case was simply sent back to the District Court to enter an order consistent with the Appellate Court ruling, but the bottom line is that the Ten Commandments are, again, a governmental no-no.

[EDIT: Here's the opinion, in case anyone wants to read it.]

This is really getting old. As usual, the ignorant elected officials, who think their religion is the cats pajamas, just can’t fathom why anyone in their right minds are against the Ten Commandments, which they say they follow, but rarely do.

The latest ruling prompted Haskell County Commissioner Mitch Worsham to say, “Whoever was the judge in this, I feel sorry for him on Judgment Day.”

Of course, Mr. Worsham is one of those religionuts who doesn’t understand that his “Judgment Day” may not be observed by any number of people who want to use the Court House every day. His viewpoint, like that of most fundamentalist Christians, is narrow, condescending, and exclusive, and as the 10th Circuit noted, the imposition of those tablets “has the primary effect of endorsing religion.” His religion in particular, but also religion in general.

We’re not talking about  a small plaque on the wall next to the entrance, or a bronze tablet in the garden. No, what Haskell County tried to erect was an “…8-foot granite slab planted in the Haskell County courthouse lawn [which] makes the Ten Commandments easy to read and hard to miss from the state highway that doubles as this town’s main thoroughfare.” (Why is it that Christians always have to do things so BIG?)

And apparently the Buckle of the Bible Belt has recently passed a law that authorizes a privately funded erection of a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn at the state capitol. In light of this 10th Circuit decision, they will be looking at that a little more closely, as will the ACLU.

Like the Evolution/Creationism/Intelligent Design issue, the Ten Commandments issue has a way of evolving in order to try to skirt court rulings disfavoring it. The Courts have consistently ruled that if there is a religious intent behind the monuments, then it is a violation of the 1st Amendment to erect them. So, the proponents  have taken to a new tactic of de-emphasizing the religious nature of the monuments, in favor of their “historical” significance, arguing that the Ten  Commandments have played a huge role in the shaping of our laws.

That’s the rhetorical equivalent of claiming that the Intelligent Designer of all creation was an alien from another planetary system – not god. It’s a red herring, in other words. We all know that the Ten Commandments arise out of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and that our laws presently derive little from them. Let’s be serious. How many state, local or federal laws contain requirements that you worship only one god, or admonitions against taking the Lord’s name in vain, as the First two commandments require? Since when is it illegal to covet your neighbor’s wife or his possessions, as the last two prohibit? Dishonoring your parents, not keeping the Sabbath holy, committing adultery? All legal, last I looked (though a possible grounds for divorce with regard to the last one).

That’s 70% of the commandments that have little or no bearing on our laws, and in fact at least three of them specifically force religion on you. The remaining three are based on common sense, and certainly existed long before the first book of the Bible was written. Don’t lie, steal or murder. What society would survive without those three? You don’t need Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai to tell you those three are not conducive to a stable society. What? Did the Jews, and everyone before Moses, really believe those three were OK before Moses showed up with the other seven?

The bottom line is that when god-fearing Christians decide to spend my tax money, or even spend privately raised funds, to place 10 religious based admonitions on my tax funded and maintained property, then that clearly has the primary effect of endorsing religion, because there’s really nothing else it’s endorsing.

I wish some of the local and state officials that come up with these rationalizations for forcing their religion on us had the attitude that one of the commentators to the first link had:

From a legal standpoint, I agree with the judge. It is not the job of the state to promote religion.

As a Christian, my faith in God is strong and a constant driving force in my life. Without him, I am nothing.

As an AMERICAN (and human being in general), I support the rights of others to believe as I do, believe in something else or believe in nothing at all. I will have a VOLUNTARY religious discussion with someone, but will not attempt to convert him/her OR prove the existence of God or any other deity.

There are appropriate places for this display, but on courthouse grounds is not one of them.

One’s religious beliefs should be, and are, protected by the First Amendment.  A corollary to that is that those same religious beliefs, being beliefs, are personal to the individual, and should not be forced on the population as a whole.

Besides, we all know you have to be on drugs to believe that shit.

I’m not exactly sure who Betty Bowers is, but she does seem to have  marriage, according to the Bible, down pat.

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