The Authoritarians

If you’re like me, you have a hard time ingesting current news, especially on the political front. The polarization of America is, front and center, the most perplexing aspect of current political discourse. Take for instance this fixation on defeating Obama, making him a “one term President” as Mitch McConnell promised early in his administration, during a time of economic crisis when millions of people were losing their homes, their jobs, and their way of life, and Congress should have been working WITH the President, not against him.

Islamic WTF?

People think we atheists pick on Christians too much, but tend to shy away from picking on Muslims. Actually, just about everything we object to, while often directed to some inanity of Christianity, could be easily extrapolated to any religion, because it’s theism that atheists don’t buy into.  Christianity is just the most pervasive form of theism on the planet, and a known target. In addition most atheists, if they were once part of a theistic community, were probably Christians, or at least live in a predominately Christian area. There are not a lot of formerly Islamic atheists out there. At least there are not many talking about it, even if they exist.

Photo Essay

Evidence for the proposition “There is no god”.

Hutu Death camp survivor - Rwanda 1994

Today is “Move All The Bibles To The Fiction Section” Day

‘Nufff said.

That Damned Mosque

It seems that just about everything I read coming out of the mouths of Republicans these day sounds so self-serving, so weaselly, so obnoxious, that I get only the sense that whatever they are saying boils down to one thing, and one thing only – “Vote Republican this November”. I never feel that when they speak, they are trying to voice an honestly held opinion, or are trying to relay facts they believe their constituents and the American people need to have to understand the great issues they are grappling with on a day to day basis. I also get the distinct sense that when their lips are moving I can be assured that they are, in fact, lying. Jaw movement and sound is all I need to confirm prevarication and falsehood.

Lies and Bribes

On the front page (the front page!) of our local paper there’s a story about a local megachurch which is apparently modeled on Rick  Warren’s Saddleback Church, along with the Willow Creek Church, called the LCBC — short for Lives Changed By Christ. It’s in Lancaster County, PA, home of the Amish. I happened to drive by it a few months ago on the way to picking up a car, and was amazed that it had sprung up out in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture. It’s huge! I jotted down the name and looked it up online, because I was curious, then promptly forgot about it.  The story in the paper brought it back to me.

Bullying Others

(((Billy))) has a great post on his blog, that I hope you’ll read, concerning human’s inexplicable subconscious ability to revert to tribalism.  He noted that we seem to have a tendency to see people who are different than us as outside ourselves, which allows us to treat them and think of  them as less than us, i.e. less than human. At least, that’s what I got from his post.