| The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all price, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.... —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil |
Fundamental Enemies May 6, 2007
Posted by Rastaban in : Afterlife & Immortality, Bush Wars, Bushwacked, Christinsanity, Islaminsanity , 2 commentsIt is not easy to make human pleasure the enemy. It is not easy to induce people to sacrifice the creature comforts of bodily life for the wasteland of spiritual existence called heaven: paranoia and fear are required for the task.
To create the necessary conditions requires the presence of a dangerous, virtually undefeatable enemy. Satan, who is so powerful that God apparently needs our assistance to defeat him, fits the bill perfectly. And the devil is the sort of ubiquitous, wily adversary that can’t help but make believers paranoid at every momentary lapse from the battle, at every voice that isn’t an obvious paean to God.
That is the real reason we invaded Iraq. It is the reason we threaten Iran today with two major carrier groups sitting in the Gulf ready for attack. Fundamentalism relies on struggle with a dangerous adversary. The state of the world in 2007 is the direct result of putting a fundamentalist in the White House and giving him the most powerful position in the world. (more…)
Christian ‘BattleCry’ to save America’s Soul May 29, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Bush Wars, Christinsanity, State & Church , add a commentSunsara Taylor reports on a recent BattleCry rally of 17,000 young people in Philadelphia. BattleCry is Ron Luce’s effort to engage young Christians in order to return the United States to “Christian” values. Taylor reports,
‘A featured speaker, Franklin Graham, who delivered George Bush’s first inaugural prayer, was introduced. . . .
The “heart” of Graham’s speech was a call for holy war. He preached about the “battle for souls of men and women from North to South, East to West, over the entire earth.” There is, he declared, “No way to God but through Jesus Christ.”‘
Franklin Graham and Ron Luce seem to be off the same religious block as Charles Stanley, head of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who declared in a sermon that “God is in favor of war” during the propaganda run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (more…)
Doctors Complain about Health Lies May 25, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Bush Science, Christinsanity, State & Church , add a commentNow that conservative Christians have gained control over the Federal and some State governments, doctors are complaining about “unreliable” and in some cases entirely false information showing up on government websites and in sex education programs. So reports an article in Glamour magazine titled “The new lies about women’s health” by Brian Alexander. Glamour’s own investigation found “blatantly false anticondom information” on both state & Federal websites. According to the article,
“radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives.”
Perhaps even more shocking are efforts by the anti-sex crowd to prevent release of Merck’s new vaccine Gardasil, which protects women from cervical cancer. Why? Because it would take away one of their (misleading) arguments against condoms: namely, that condom use doesn’t protect against HPV and that HPV causes cervical cancer.
“The public should be outraged at this misrepresentation of facts for political reasons,” says Dr. Holmes. “This really reveals the true agenda for those who have argued that the reason for not promoting condoms is to protect girls against HPV.” If you truly cared about HPV prevention, his reasoning goes, you’d be thrilled at the advent of a vaccine to save women’s lives. “It really illustrates that the opposition to condoms has nothing to do with protecting women and girls,” he says, “but everything to do with opposition to discussion of sexual health.”
“The new lies about women’s health” by Brian Alexander, Glamour, Apr 3, 2006
1,000,000 Rupees for Dan Brown’s head May 23, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Christinsanity , 1 comment so farCatholics in India are so upset with the movie version of The Da Vinci Code, that some are going beyond just trying to get the movie banned in India. According to Ecumenical News, Nicolas Almeida, a Catholic from Mumbai India, has offered 1.1 million Rupees (about $25,000) for anyone who can bring him Dan Brown’s head. Dan Brown is the author of The Da Vinci Code. The Vatican does not endorse Almeida’s head bounty.
Losing Sacred Stories May 13, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Christinsanity, The Bible, Unsacred Texts , add a commentOver the past decade most major daily newspapers added a religious section. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) calls theirs “Faith & Values”. Its primary goal seems to be defending the faith — or at least the various faiths — of the newspaper’s readers. Last month the AJC even used that phrase for its lead article: “Defending the Faith” by John Blake.*
“Millions of Christians read the Easter story through the lens of faith,”* the author tells us. This is supposed to be a good thing. Problem is, Blake continues, popular culture is interfering with that faith by presenting alternate mythologies about Jesus: The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Papers, Misquoting Jesus: the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, and to top it off now scholars have discovered the long-lost Gospel of Judas according to the May issue of National Geographic.
It’s enough to prompt Bob Hodgson with the American Bible Society (he’s actually dean of the Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship with ABS) to complain, “we’re losing control of our sacred stories.”*
But Bob, it’s your own fault for insisting that your sacred stories are historically true — for that means that they are not “your” stories but everyone’s. Stick with Christianity’s sacred stories as just that: mythologies belonging to Christianity alone, and Christians have some emotional right to claim proprietorship. But once you insist on historical truth for your myths that right dissipates. History belongs to us all, even if only to be mythologized anew, as a book like The Da Vinci Code attempts to do.
So Hodgson and other Christians need to make a choice: is Jesus a sacred story belonging to the Christian religion, or is Jesus historical and therefore a story which belongs to everyone?
And if you choose the latter, remember: history is no respecter of mythology.
—-
* John Blake, “Defending the Faith”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 15, 2006, Faith & Values section, page 1
Templeton Prayer Study Flawed March 31, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Christianity, Christinsanity, Prayer , 5 commentsTouted as the largest scientific examination of prayer’s effect on hospital patients, the Templeton Foundation arranged for Christians to pray for 1800 heart patients and tracked the results. Prayer was not effective. According to CNN, “[t]he patients . . . were split into three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren’t prayed for but were told it was a possibility.” Arrangements were made for 3 different Christian groups to pray “starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks”.
But the study was flawed. And it was flawed in a way which reveals the underlying absurdity of prayer itself. (more…)
In Praise of Folly January 10, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Christinsanity, Prayer, State & Church , add a commentWhere is Erasmus when you need him? The Catholic divine might have thought he chased this sort of folly out of Christianity 500 years ago, but it appears not.
. . . three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.
Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.
“We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,” said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.
. . .
The two men, along with Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of a group called Faith and Action, read three Psalms outside the committee room, knelt to say the Lord’s Prayer and marked a cross in oil on the committee door before leaving. –Wall Street Journal, Jan 5, 2006
Relativism & the Pope April 20, 2005
Posted by Rastaban in : Christinsanity, Ethics & Morality , add a commentRatzinger, the new Pope, wrote
“Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ’swept along by every wind of teaching’, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” - Pope Benedict XVI
Which is a very confused description of relativism. On the one hand it sounds like relativism = being open to “every wind of teaching”, that is to say it looks like our new Pope confuses relativism with open-mindedness — and opposes open-mindedness. The desire to be sure of the truth, to not be misled as a result of lack of exposure to ideas, which leads one to listen to “every wind of teaching” (the Pope says “swept along by” but that is mere hyperbole) he equates with being selfish.
It is selfish to want to know the truth, says our new Pope. It is selfish to listen to what reform Catholics — or God forbid non-Catholics — think. Relativism means simply “not bowing down to the wisdom of the Pope”. (more…)
Eve’s Breasts February 25, 2005
Posted by Rastaban in : Atheist Culture, Christinsanity , 2 commentsWith apologies to Christ (who I’m certain would have been as perplexed as I am), we have more evidence of the moral insanity of American Christians. An artist in Roseville, Michigan and an art gallery owner in Pilot Point, Texas have been arrested and convicted (Edward Stross of Roseville) or threatened with arrest (Dwight Miller of Pilot Point) for painting murals depicting God’s creation of Eve. Read about it here.Both artists had the apparently not-so-original idea of painting a variation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (the original graces the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) using Eve in place of Adam. The problem? Eve has breasts — naked breasts. God forgot to create her with clothing, it seems.
For that, the artists had to be charged with pornography.
These are the same Christians going apoplectic over breasts who don’t seem to have a problem in the world with torture.
The flaw with the Christian religion (and from my point of view it is an unforgivable flaw) is that it loves pain and hates bodily pleasure. Pleasures are “deadly sins” which God will, according to Christinsanity, punish with eternal pain. Sex, of course, is a horror, but so is the entirely innocent pleasure of being a body and having breasts — if you can be seen by anyone. (more…)
War or Reason? a reply to Rev. Charles Stanley February 13, 2005
Posted by Rastaban in : Bush Wars, Christinsanity , 4 commentsIn early March of 2003, a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, relatives sent me the tape recording of a then recent sermon by the Rev. Dr. Charles Stanley entitled “A Nation at War”. Rev. Stanley is not some minister on the religious fringe: his credentials are very mainstream. As senior pastor of the 16,000 member First Baptist Church in Atlanta, his “In Touch” TV broadcast is heard on more than 200 TV stations, 7 satellite networks, and 450 radio stations. It reaches over a million viewers a week. A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Stanley has written 45 plus books of which more than 3,500,000 copies have been sold.
The focus of Stanley’s sermon was two-fold: God loves war, and it was wrong for protesters to oppose the Bush administration’s forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Since I was both atheist and protester, the tape was undoubtedly sent my way in an effort to change my outlook on each count.
Instead, I responded with a long emailed reply, which follows: (more…)
