Atheism and morality (Part 2 of 3)

In my previous post I addressed the oft-repeated claim by believers that god/religion/holy books provide an objective moral benchmark by pointing out that this morality is hopelessly vulnerable to selective and flawed execution. I hasten to add that even when such principles are universally applied, the results are frequently ghastly. One need only think back to the time when the Catholic Church, with its absolute standards of morality, reigned supreme over Europe. This epoch is called the Dark Ages for a reason, and the presence of an objective system of morals was of no consolation to those who were persecuted in accordance with its precepts.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs claims that when Sam Harris and other atheists condemn the Taliban (or anyone else) for engaging in objectionable behavior, they are betraying the principles of atheism, which for Jacobs includes rampant moral relativism. This is because atheism is the rejection of deities, and for him deities are the only things capable of advancing objective moral guidelines. By implication, the theist is in a far better position to decry as immoral the acts of the Taliban. But does not the Taliban feel its actions are guided as much by their understanding of divine law than Rabbi Jacobs is of his? In this regard, the problem is not godless moral relativism, but competing religious moral absolutisms.

Not content with accusing atheists of nihilism, Jacobs hurls this insult:

“At the end of the day, the reason that I can agree with many of the moral assertions that these atheists make is because they are not truly outgrowths of their purported philosophies, but rather of mine. I would suspect that the great majority of the atheistic understanding of morality comes directly or indirectly from what is commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic. I have not yet found an atheist who is willing to follow his or her convictions through to their logical conclusions (outside of sociopaths like Jeffrey Dahmer who was at least honest enough to say, ‘I always believed the theory of evolution as truth that we all just came from the slime ... if a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?’ [sic, no closing parenthesis]”

There you have it. Neither Jeffrey Dahmer nor Rabbi Adam Jacobs can imagine a reason for behaving oneself in the absence of a supernatural entity that promulgates and monitors morality. I suppose what the rabbi is confessing here is that if he stopped believing in god today, he would turn into Mr. Hyde—or Jeffrey Dahmer—tomorrow.

As to Jacobs’ contention that the morality of atheists is in fact the residual influence of the “Judeo-Christian ethic,” that is wishful thinking and spoken like a true arrogant religionist. Read the books of the Old Testament and see how much of the “Judeo-Christian ethic” you actually assent to or would deem fit to teach a child for that matter. These books are replete with god-sanctioned genocide and homicide, contain obscure commandments that not even the most ardent of the faithful follow or even know about, and prohibits certain sexual activity that only a truly neurotic deity could care anything about, among other abominations. It should also be added that of all the commandments found in the Old Testament, not one says anything like, “Thou shalt not rape.” I am quite certain that Sam Harris, other atheists, and Rabbi Jacobs himself think that rape is bad, but if that’s the case, then on whose authority do they form such an opinion?

If the bible contains any provisions which have been codified in the laws of our modern society, this is only a happenstance. Believers pick and choose which commandments they follow as evidenced by their following of rules not put forth by the deity, and their neglect of those that are. The implication here is clear: humans are capable of forming a set of morals independent from divine sanction.

Not only does Jacobs conveniently ignore the selective application of his beloved objective morality, he fundamentally misunderstands evolution:

“Is not [Christopher] Hitchens an ardent supporter of the tenets of Neo-Darwinism that necessitates the perpetual death struggle within all species at all times? Shouldn't he in fact believe the precise opposite of what he claims? Survival of the fittest does not suggest social harmony.”

A more fatuous point would be difficult to imagine. Anyone who has stopped often and long enough to observe wildlife will notice that a general peace exists among animals of a particular species, and often animals of different species. In my travels I find that squirrels are the most abundant mammal, and I see several of them each day. And yet, not once in my years of observing thousands of squirrels have I observed one squirrel attacking another. This is not to say this doesn’t happen or that squirrels do not kill one on another on occasion, because they surely do. However, squirrels have no sense of divine morality, and so according to Jacobs’ logic, there could be no expectation of social harmony among these creatures. And yet there is. Take any species. No doubt it happens that rams or giraffes or sharks, etc. attack each other (especially when females are involved), but these are rare occasions. No population of species whose members are engaged in a “perpetual death struggle” with each another would last very long. Without question living things are engaged in a competitive struggle, but rarely must the survival of a member of one species involve the demise of another member of same. In many cases, it is quite the opposite.

- Max

Part One

Atheism and morality (Part 1 of 3)

Consult a preacher about morality and he will tell you that like everything else, it is a gift from god. Without this divinely imparted sense of right and wrong, you will be told, all would be lost. There would be no standard for human behavior other than for each person to act as his own conscience dictates. Without this god-given morality, the world would be marred by chaos, uncertainty, and unspeakable acts. A true Hobbesian jungle in which there is no “objective” way to view human behavior.

Such is the critique by Rabbi Adam Jacobs on Huffington Post, which seems to have an endless supply of rabbis and other unimaginative clergymen whose thinking is limited by a belief in celestial magic. I am not very much interested in specifically critiquing Rabbi Jacobs since he makes a charge against atheists that so many others have made and will continue to make. I will however, quote one relevant paragraph because it typifies this kind of accusation:

“What I do not yet understand is why [Sam Harris] (or any atheist for that matter) makes so many moral proclamations. The average atheist makes certain basic assumptions about reality: that we all exist as a result of blind and purposeless happenstance, that free will is illusory, that there is no conscious ‘self’ and that there is no objective right or wrong. As Dr. Will Provine has said, ‘[as an atheist] you give up hope that there is an imminent morality…you can’t hope for there being any free will [and there is]…no ultimate foundation for ethics.’”

He goes on to say that to be an atheist is to be amoral because atheism does not allow for an objective standard of morality. According to Jacobs, only theism can provide this much needed behavioral benchmark. And so any pretense on the part of atheists to be able to judge right from wrong is actually a subjective exercise because, well, on whose authority are such judgments being made?

This is the reasoning of a slave. The notion that a divine engineer is necessary to provide universal norms of behavior is one that recurs everywhere—among Jewish populations, Christian populations, Muslim populations, and so on. Such is the purpose of religion, to provide an explanation for life—its nature and meaning, as well as how it ought to be lived. This is morality by revealed wisdom. No thinking necessary.

One immediate problem with Jacobs’ view is the sheer of volume of disagreement on moral questions that believers in god have amongst each other. Take for example, the Ten Commandments, the most famous and perhaps the most important divine moral instructions for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition

The Sixth Commandment admonishes, “Thou shalt not kill.” This seems a straightforward dictum. And yet believers of all kinds cannot seem to agree on a whole range of issues in which this commandment is a central concern. Ask a group of Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews about the death penalty, or if and when it is ever morally acceptable to use lethal self-defense, or if it is ever right to kill in war. See if you can find a uniformity of opinion with respect to any of these questions, even among members of the same faith.

Or take, “Remember the Sabbath; to keep it holy.” Jews and Christians do not even agree on which day the Shabbat falls. Nor do they agree on what kinds of activities can be performed on that day. And while we’re at it, why is it that Christians and kosher Jews do not see eye to eye on the matter of pig consumption? They are after all praying to the same Yahweh.

How about, “Honor thy father and thy mother”? What form shall this honoring take? Is the honor to be bestowed even on those parents who are negligent or abusive? What exactly is so “objective” about this or any of the aforementioned instructions? One could go on in this fashion for days, but I’m sure you can think of your own examples of Biblical or Koranic ambiguity. Clearly, even when morality is assumed to emanate from divine wisdom, these rules still lend themselves to subjective interpretation.

Granted, Jacobs and his ilk might very well concede the above points without agreeing that they have damaged the contention that atheists must necessarily be amoral or that divine sanction is a prerequisite for moral objectivity. One of the more interesting (and wrong) arguments I’ve heard that defend this position admits that religion is flawed because it is a “human endeavor,” which is to say it’s as corruptible as anything else. In which case, what is religion for?

- Max

Part Two

The faitheism of S.E. Cupp

The underrated Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore once mused on the absurdity of stating a fact, but then claiming to believe its opposite. For example, the sentence, “S.E. Cupp is attractive, but I don’t believe she is,” while not a contradictory statement in and of itself, nonetheless conveys contradictory ideas. A statement like this is an absurd declaration that no rational person could utter with any sincerity. To assert A is to believe A (unless one is lying). Notice that what matters is not whether A is actually true or false, but whether A is being asserted or not. In a similar fashion, it is equally absurd to assert not-A, but believe A, e.g., “I didn‘t get an email from John, but I believe I did.”

Thankfully, real-world instances of Moore’s Paradox are few and far between, if they exist at all. But Cupp, the popular conservative columnist, author, and self-proclaimed atheist dangerously straddles the line demarcated by Moore’s Paradox that separates the world of rational thought from the world of total incoherence. There may not be another creature like her on the planet. Whether she truly holds wildly contradictory beliefs about faith and atheism, or, by calculated contrivance is carving out a profitable niche for herself as a nonbelieving defender of the faithful, we cannot know for sure. All we have are her words on the subject, and they make no sense at all.

Everything you need to know about atheist Cupp, author of Losing Our Religion—an attack on atheists (you heard right)—and her brand of nonbelief can be gleaned from this portion of an interview she gave to C-SPAN in 2009. Explaining her rejection of religion, she told interviewer Brian Lamb:

“I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t for me. But I’m envious. I’m envious of the faithful. So I defend the faithful, especially the Christian Right in America at every opportunity I get….I haven’t closed the door on faith. It just hasn’t found me yet.”

Yet?

“I don’t believe in a higher power of any kind. No deity whatsoever. I really believe that when I die I go in the ground like every other animal and that’s that.”

That’s good.

“I aspire to be a person of faith one day.”

What? What does that even mean? Becoming a person of faith isn’t like becoming a CPA. There’s no training or certification process. To say you aspire to be a person of faith one day makes as much sense as saying at some point you hope to be a postmodern feminist. Here’s a person who’s basically saying that she sees no good reason for believing in a deity, but that one day she hopes to believe in a deity that presently she does not think exists. In other words, “God doesn’t exist, but I hope I will believe he does.” Cupp hasn’t contradicted herself here, but this view is nevertheless bizarre.

The interview takes an even stranger turn when she starts heaping praise on George W. Bush:

"I’m a fan of George Bush…I think he had a conviction, personal principles that required him to answer to someone else when he went to bed at night. Not to the state and not to himself. I don’t see the same kind of reverence in some of our other recent presidents. Barack Obama included. Bill Clinton included. That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power. So he’s thinking about the decisions he’s making, not just because they’re going to affect him and his legacy, but because he has someone or something to answer to. I really respect that. And I think that whether you liked his policies or not, he really did what he thought was best for the country. And I think that’s really really rare."

At this point, Lamb asks what is no doubt on just about every viewer’s mind. Here is the rest of the exchange:

Lamb: If you don’t believe at all, why would you then follow somebody that has that as their way of life?

Cupp: As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state. He doesn’t think that the state has all the power and he doesn’t think he himself has all the power. That’s important to me. I mean, I represent two percent of the world. Why would I, why would I want someone who thinks that 98% of the world is crazy running the country?

Lamb: [Composed but incredulous] But you don’t think that that higher power exists.

Cupp: I don’t. But I don’t think people are crazy. I understand the allure of religion. I really do. I’m just not going to be dishonest and say I believe in something I don’t yet.

Lamb: But what if he’s hearing voices all the time and taking advice from a higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion, and makes decisions based on the higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion?

Cupp: Well, I mean, people’s faith—it’s very personal, and I don’t judge the way that people use their faith to inform their decisions. I really don’t. We can judge him on his policies, whether he heard it from a voice in his head, he got it from the bible, he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner. I mean, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’d like to judge the policies on face value.

Sensing an impasse, the interviewer moves away from Cupp’s whirlwind opinions on religion to spare the audience from further decreases in IQ.

Several statements stand out here. Let’s start with,

“That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power.”

Now, it’s one thing for Christians or Muslims or other theists to say this. After all, they believe in said higher power. But what about Cupp, who doesn’t? What are we to make of the person who essentially says, “I don’t believe in a higher power, but I’m glad the president answers to it”? As Lamb pointed out, she doesn’t believe in that higher power, so how could that possibly give her comfort? If anything, it should concern her that her president is getting guidance from a nonexistent entity. One has to seriously wonder whether Cupp thinks that a schizophrenic who receives instruction from benevolent voices is better qualified for the presidency than an atheist.

Her response is full of specious generalizations and tacit self-deprecation:

“As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state.”

First of all, Cupp says she is an atheist, which is to say she believes that religion is false and deities are nonexistent. Yet simultaneously she insists that believers in such falsehoods are the only ones qualified to be president precisely because they believe in god. Ok?

Second, Cupp is claiming that the religious are made more honest because they believe in what she herself thinks is a false doctrine.

Third, the idea that god kept Bush honest is betrayed by his administration’s penchant for mendacity and deception. Also, how honest and decent are the ruling mullahs in Iran being kept by their higher power? Or the 9/11 hijackers? Or the people who blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors in the name of their higher power? And what about the fact that Bush’s former top advisor, Karl Rove, is an atheist? Rove was arguably the most influential man in the life of Bush the candidate and the Bush president, and yet he answered to no higher power.

Fourth, implicit in Cupp’s assessment is an admission that she would not vote for herself for president because she presumably would not be kept honest by a higher power since she does not believe in one. In which case, how could we trust anything she says?

But Lamb hits a home run with his question, “But what if he’s hearing voices all the time?”

Realizing she can’t reason her way out, she backtracks somewhat, now saying she judges the president based on his policies. She’s a conservative, and so if a president has conservative policies that match up with her political beliefs, she’s going to view him favorably. As she just said, she takes a policy at face value, and said it doesn’t matter how he arrives at it, whether “he got it from the bible [or] he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner.”

So Cupp goes from saying that only believers should be president, to admitting it doesn’t matter how the president makes the decisions he does, just as long as they make for good policies, which for her means “conservative,” while seemingly maintaining her position that atheists like herself shouldn’t be president.

What do we call this position, where a person believes that what she believes to be false must be believed as true by another as a prerequisite for being awarded a special privilege, in this case the presidency? (I suppose this take would be fine if Cupp viewed holding the presidency as some sort of detriment or punishment.) Boiled down to its bare bones, Cupp’s view is,

“Atheism is true, and atheists should not be elected because they believe atheism is true.”

Or

“Faith is false, and only the faithful should be elected because they believe faith is true.”

Nonsense? Absurdity. Craziness? Cupp’s Conundrum?

Call it whatever you want, but I know what I’m calling S.E. Cupp: a faitheist.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

If the Jews killed Jesus, where's their medal?

This week Joseph Ratzinger, stage name Pope Benedict XVI, made headlines by making a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus of Nazareth in his upcoming book, The Audacity of Aiding and Abetting Pedophiles.

So I made the last part up, but the rest is true. No doubt Ratzinger’s gesture is one of goodwill, but the fact that he felt compelled to convey such a message is evidence of an unfortunate and befuddling reality.

For 2,000 years, Jews have been scapegoated, targeted, and persecuted because, according to the largely apocryphal New Testament, a handful of Jewish priests asked Roman governor Pontius Pilate to have Jesus executed. So Pilate did. And after a weekend power nap, Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to be reunited with his estranged father. This wondrous event proved that Jesus was indeed the son of god, as he had said before, and that humans were thus saved from their iniquitous ways, so long as they gave Jesus his proper props as savior of mankind.

A more ridiculous and incoherent narrative would be difficult to conceive. Nonetheless, this is the Word for hundreds of millions of misguided individuals who think, (a) they needed to be saved from damnation, and (b) a vicious child sacrifice conducted in 1^st century Palestine has redeemed them.

I need not apprise you, dear reader, of the craziness and implausibility of such a situation. To even mount a counterargument to this hokum is to elevate it to something worthy of a rebuttal. Besides, I have already made counterpoints against this tripe before, so I need not repeat myself.

But if we accept the Anti-Semitic position that “the Jews are responsible for the murder of Jesus,” this begs a most obvious question: Why should Jews be persecuted for this killing and not praised? Indeed, the entire basis of Christianity is premised on the idea that Jesus of Nazareth had to die in order to absolve humanity of its inherently sinful and wicked ways. He had to be sacrificed, like a lamb in the Old Testament as an offering to his father who had sent him earthward for the purpose of being brutalized and victimized in a most unholy fashion. The whole sorry episode was a kind of sequel to the tale of Abraham and Isaac, except in this case the dirty deed was carried out to the awful end in a torturous filicide that finally quenched the bloodlust of the heavenly patriarch.

Given the terms of this odious quid pro quo, the Jews—far from being villains in this sordid story—were crucially necessary players in god’s Divine Plan of human sacrifice and vicarious salvation. Without the Jewish elders’ entreaties to Pilate to persecute Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion does not happen, the sacrifice does not happen, and the salvation does not happen. Without this atrocious occurrence, there is no everlasting life, only darkness. The Jews are therefore heroes, deemed by god as such, who carried out this dastardly deed as foreordained by god himself. They were merely acting as the instruments of god, who knew damn well what was going to happen when he impregnated Mary, while poor Joseph was left to wonder whether his wife had been sleeping around on him.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

High school football player gets flagged for praying

I could sit here and say that even as an atheist I find this penalty ridiculous. I could also say that a player shouldn’t be penalized for a modest celebration or gesture whether religious or not. Furthermore I could say that this referee was being a bit too sensitive to the rules governing unsportsmanlike conduct. I could say all of that. But I’m not going to say that because it’s just too easy, goddamn it.

Damn straight you got a flag, buddy. You think busting an awesome touchdown run complete with great cutbacks and broken tackles entitles you to kneel and point to the sky? After the game, Mr. Play-and-Pray tried to explain himself:

“I do that to give glory to my heavenly father, Jesus.”

Oh really? Let’s see how the referee called this one during the game:

“Personal foul: praying to a supernatural deity whose existence cannot be empirically verified. Fifteen yard penalty will be assessed on the kickoff.”

Ok, so I made up the ref’s quote. But maybe we rationalists should start carrying little yellow flags around to throw at people who commit penalties against reason. Although this could be dangerous because living in America, I think I’d tear my rotator cuff.

ps: I’ll give this kid a break when he starts to give god credit for his failures as well as his successes.

- Max

The theocrackpots are whining yet again

“Waa. Waa.” - Bill Donohue

On multiple occasions I have noted that those who most fervently claim belief in a ubiquitous and all-powerful deity tend to be those most easily disconcerted by perceived affronts to that deity’s honor (see here and here). One would think that a truly robust faith in the veracity of the underlying precepts would obviate the compulsion to lash out at instances of blasphemy.

But clearly this is not the case.

The most recent example of theocratic encroachment on free society involves a favorite target of religionists: a “controversial” work of art housed in a publicly funded museum. This time the piece in question was a four-minute video assembled by the late avant-garde artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992. The video came into existence with no public funding whatsoever and the exhibit itself at the National Portrait Gallery—a branch of the Smithsonian Institution—was privately funded. I say was because the theocrackpots succeeded in imposing their religious agenda and the display was removed.

What exactly is so horrifying about the artwork, “A Fire in My Belly,” that has some Christians foaming at the mouth? You may watch the full video here, but it sufficeth to say that the main offense is the portrayal of Jesus on a crucifix covered in ants. Far be it from me to point out that Christians seem to revel in describing the tremendous suffering Jesus experienced, and that having ants walk all over him would have been kinder and less deadly fate than the one he actually endured.

Naturally, Catholic League president and serial whiner Bill Donohue led the charge by citing that the Gallery and its staff are publicly maintained:

“This is not the first time the Smithsonian has offended us,” he said. “I’m going to cast my net much wider. Why should the government pay for this? ... How dare they take our money to fund attacks on (our religion).”

It seems there is nary a time when Bill Donohue is not indignant at someone or something that dares to treat his beloved religion with any hint of irreverence. Five hundred years ago, a scoundrel with his level of fanaticism and blind loyalty to the Vatican would have made for a highly esteemed Grand Inquisitor with near dictatorial powers. I suspect that the sheer number of screams a medieval Donohue would have elicited from the tortured throats of his heretical victims could have put Torquemada to shame. Today, however, such men are reduced to canting at public officials via email and telephone to say how much their feelings have been hurt by some offense to their Christian faith.

Sadly, Donohue’s inevitable involvement is not the most grotesque part of this story. Indeed, it is bad enough that the National Portrait Gallery capitulated to his theocratic whims, but the situation becomes even more absurd now the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has involved itself in the matter:

GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor spoke out against the display Tuesday, an exposition entitled “Hide/Seek.” The video in question was created by AIDS victim and late artist David Wojnarowicz.

“Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in],” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said.

Cantor also demanded its replacement, and called it “an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.”

For his part, Georgia congressman Jack Kingston was given an expectedly amiable audience in the form of Fox & Friends, a show whose hosts assume a childlike innocence that always morphs into shocked disbelief when they are “presented” the latest Beckian conspiracy theory centered on the nefarious machinations of liberals. On the show, Kingston wailed,

“This is a museum that gets $5.8 million in taxpayer dollars and in the middle of a high deficit, 15 million unemployed Americans, they decide to have money to spend like this. This is a museum that, by the way, has next to it a display of the American presidents, on the other side, Elvis, and then you go through this—which is really perverted, sick stuff—ashes of an AIDS victim, in a self-portrait, eating himself. Male nudity, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her own breast - lots of really kinky and really questionable kind of art.”

The line about deficits and the museum’s funding are completely disingenuous because both the artwork and the exhibit of which it was a part were privately funded. This pretense is simply a backdoor way of passing judgment on an individual work of art that Kingston et al. either do not like personally or because they think it offends their respective constituencies. Kingston himself is gunning for the chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and it would not surprise me if Kingston were simply grandstanding in this fashion in an attempt to garner support to that end.

The religious fascists have won this round thanks to the cowardice of the National Portrait Gallery in the face of relatively light opposition. People have the right to feel offended when viewing a work of art they find obscene, but they do not have a right to dictate the terms on which that art may be displayed. The right to take offense at art both begins and ends in the mind and speech of the individual. Any action that goes beyond is censorship.

- Max

Bills Player Drops Ball, Blames God

The sports media is all over Buffalo Bills wideout Steve Johnson for dropping a potential game winning overtime pass yesterday against the formidable Pittsburgh Steelers, and then blaming god on his Twitter account. I watched the play unfold live and and screeched in horror at the gaffe because I don’t like the Steelers. The Bills went on to lose, but I have to say that Johnson’s postgame tweet almost makes up for it:

“I praise you 24/7!!! And this how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this???How??? I'll never forget this!! Ever!! Thx Tho.”

How many times have we heard a football player praise god or Jesus for having a great game or making a game-winning score? A gazillion. How many times have we a heard a football player or any professional athlete blame the deity? Well, Johnson makes one. This is truly historic, like moon-landing historic. Like first artificial heart transplant historic. We need more Steve Johnsons not just in the NFL, but in everyday life. If more people start to think that their beloved god is working against them despite all their praying, then it’s only natural that there would be a turning away from the great dictator in the sky.

My only regret is that George Carlin did not live to see this day.

- Max

Gearing Up For The War On Christmas

Alright, let’s do this.

It’s that time of year once again when opponents of the separation of church and state decry…well…the separation of church and state. Christmas season provides no shortage of Christian zealots wishing to foist their iniquitous hocus pocus on others by using the public forum to display apocryphal scenes from Biblical lore and to spread the fraudulent words of their huckster messiah.

The inevitable and Constitutionally-minded secular pushback against such ignoble and illegal buffooneries will be met with perfunctory revulsion and shocking disbelief by those who are Holier than Thou. Editorial pages of the conservative press will be rife with indignation at the offense to this great “Christian nation.” Fox News anchors and like-minded media personalities everywhere will feature a seemingly endless parade of segments announcing that “the war on Christmas” is once again under way, with the godless factions “mounting this surge because they are aware that they have a large, untapped army of potential troops.” Christmas indeed seems to be under attack. Or so we are being told.

But the media, far from overstating the atheist objective as I understand it, actually undersells the broader objectives of the freethought movement. What I envision is not a war on Christmas, but a war on Christianity and religion in general. I am not content with merely keeping a nativity scene off the public grounds. That is but one minor skirmish in the wider war on superstition, gullibility, ignorance, and bigotry. If this writer had his druthers, no one would belong to any religion anywhere. That is not to say I am desirous of imposing nonbelief on the faithful. Far from it. The shedding of religious belief must be undertaken by one’s own volition, which is actually anathema to the manner in which religion itself afflicts human minds. Typically religion is simply inculcated on children who know no better than what their parents and mischievous clergy tell them. And that is how religion in the 21^st century must survive: through early indoctrination and general social sanction. Religion has no real merits of which to speak.

Neither Christianity nor any other faith can withstand the rigors of intellectual honesty and scrutiny. Indeed, one suspects that the religionists are so sensitive to perceived assaults on their faith because on some level they surely know that their beliefs are logically indefensible. Religion is therefore inherently weak, and this fact should encourage those who wish to see it destroyed. And be destroyed it must.

- Max

Score One For Zeus!

Awesome news out of Ohio. The regionally-famous “Touchdown Jesus” statue off I-75 was struck by lighting and got its shit ruined. Let’s see the Jesus freaks try to explain away this one.

- Max

Of Christians And Atheists

A recent survey has confirmed what is already well-known: that Americans are a hopelessly religious lot, given to infantile delusions about their place in the cosmos and a penchant for believing the utterly implausible.

The poll found that 78% of Americans believe that not only did Jesus exist, but that he rose from the dead, a feat that was most notably replicated by the estimable Dr. Frankenstein. Like the barely literate ignoramuses who assembled the tall tale of Jesus, Dr. Frankenstein created his monster from an assortment of discarded parts, which, by their individual selves, were hardly remarkable in any sense. But with a few serendipitous tweaks and revisions, the good doctor struck the perfect combination and brought his beast to life.

So it went with the gospels, a collection of third, fourth, and one hundredth-hand hearsays about the alleged miracles of Jesus. Realistically, if he existed at all Jesus of Nazareth was most likely little more than an eccentric preacher, and thus by definition a charlatan. The gospels were written at different intervals, but all were penned at least fifty years after the death of Christ, which is plenty of time for the notable peculiarities of one man to morph into a fantastic story about the savior of humanity; and more than enough time for the countless clueless of antiquity to warm up to it.

A short meditation on this score: Most of us have played some version of “telephone” as children, whereby one child starts by whispering a statement to another, and that child whispers it to another, and so on and so forth. When the last child receives the news, she is to repeat aloud what she has just been told for all to hear. Very often the final statement is so bowdlerized, so misinterpreted and tinkered with, that it hardly resembles the opening remark if at all. Quite naturally, the likelihood of a sentence becoming lost in translation increases when there are more players. Now imagine a game of telephone that starts not with a statement, but a vague anecdote. Imagine also thousands of players, most of them illiterate and gullible. And suppose the game takes place not over a few minutes or over the course of an afternoon, but instead for more than a half-century. I should hope we do not need the informed opinion of a child to surmise that the fruits of this grapevine would be very rotten indeed.

The lack of contemporary extrabiblical sources accounting for Jesus does not bode well for this already extraordinary tale’s veracity. Indeed, the evidence on which Christians base their faith is put to shame by the available data speaking to the existence of the elusive chupacabra. Nonetheless, that hardly prevents 81% of Americans from believing that Jesus was sent earthward by god to serve as a child sacrifice so that humans could be absolved of their inherently wicked ways.

Naturally, these statistics are reported in earnest by the reputable media, no members of which deign to remark on the absurdity of the figures. Of course, with more than four-fifths of the general population having bought this sordid story of vicarious redemption, believers are going to be everywhere, including the media. But it is the political ramifications of this idiocy that produces the worst kind of mischief.

Article VI of our Constitution states, “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Yet such examinations are given all the time, informally, by the virtuous and faithful populace which demands that the metaphysical beliefs of public officials do not stray too far from what the collective wisdom deems “normal.” That is to say, Christian. Failing that, a belief in a god of some kind is necessary. One survey indicated that Americans are less likely to vote for an atheist than a Muslim candidate, which is puzzling for this observer since he cannot recall any atheistic terrorists waging jihad against the United States.

But mere belief in the proper deity does not always suffice to convince the masses of one’s virtue. It is often necessary to persecute some group or vice in order to demonstrate an adequate level of religious commitment. No longer is it considered appropriate in America to target Jews, or Mormons, or even Muslims. Thus xenophobia, a constant presence in American society from the moment the Europeans arrived, manifests itself in other ways more acceptable to so-called good society. Atheists are always a reliable whipping post, because while it is inappropriate to attack a man because of his religion, it is only right and godly to scold him for his lack of one.

- Max

Christopher Hitchens Calls Pope "Institutionally Responsible" For Child Abuse Coverups

I Have Seen The Light And It Is Christ (*April Fool's)

Our Savior

Although I haven’t posted in a few days, there is a reason for my brief hiatus. For the last several days I have undergone a remarkable personal and spiritual transformation. It all started on Sunday when a friend whose father recently died asked me to attend his church for a service dedicated in his honor. I was reluctant at first, but I came to realize that it would be kind of dickish of me to refuse the request of a grieving buddy. Besides, my friend isn’t really that religious, but just wanted to attend the sermon at his father’s church.

As I sat in the pew, my mind drifted in and out of the sermon being delivered by the oddly-proportioned preacher before me. He was a balding man, short and bespectacled like an evangelical George Costanza. And he was just as animated.

“We all deserve death,” he began what was to me a very strange way to start a sermon dedicated to a churchgoer who just died. “Every last one us. But through the grace of God, and the sacrifice of His Son, we are rescued from the darkness of death and are allowed to bask in the righteousness of His light.”

We all deserve death. Interesting.

“And in His light, all our desires are fulfilled. All our questions are answered. All our suffering is ended. If we glorify God during our life, he will surely glorify us upon our death.”

I’d like to be glorified, I thought.

“Not to glorify God during life is to fail God,” Pastor Costanza continued. “It is to do disobey him. It is to disgrace him. It is to turn your back on God. God will not tolerate the prideful because pride is Satan’s best friend. And pride goeth before the Fall.” He then proceeded to remark how my friend’s dad was one of the most unprideful people he had ever met.

For some reason I cannot explain, the sermon was resonating with me. And I could have sworn that the giant cross on the wall above the minister began to radiate, as if surrounded by an aura of that light he had just been talking about. I rubbed my eyes and even shook my head a couple of times, but the aura remained and seemed to pulsate correlative to the intensity of the pastor’s message. My brain felt numb, as if high on drugs, but this was no substance-induced high. This euphoria was not a natural phenomenon. The warm feeling that washed over me that day was nothing short of an otherworldly experience, no doubt brought on by unerring truth of the words emanating from the stocky and unassuming man at the front of the church. Had he been more charismatic, I might have chalked up the entire experience to the skillfulness of the messenger. But there was nothing remarkable about this preacher, which seemed to lend legitimacy to the very strange yet uplifting experience I was so gleefully enjoying.

After the sermon I went home and consulted my Bible, which up until then I regarded as a work of literature only. I reread the Gospels and to my surprise, found that they actually made sense to me for the first time in my life. Not only did they make sense, but the truth of them seemed so obvious that I wondered how I could’ve been so stubbornly resistant to the Word. The reason was my pride, and like the pastor said, pride goeth before the Fall.

At that moment, I told myself that I would refuse to fall. Right there on the spot where I had been reading the Bible in my kitchen, I knelt on the hardwood floor and prayed to Jesus and begged him for forgiveness for having been such a prideful fool. Only weeks before I was telling a relative how I was utterly incapable of believing the “nonsense” in the Bible. Praise be to Jesus that I was wrong.

I am now glad to call myself a slave to Christ. I am here to serve Him and no other. Thus, in good conscience, I cannot contribute to this website any longer. It is embarrassing for me to go back and read the awful things I said against God, and I hope that Wolf will understand why I want to take them down. In the meantime, I am working on a new blog designed to spread the good news of Christ’s sacrifice. I will work tirelessly to make sure his message is heard loud and clear. I know many of you will be upset by my “conversion.” However, I can only ask you respect that I have had an epiphany that I can only hope will lead to a fulfilling life that is devoid of the rank cynicism that has hardened my heart for much of my life.

Thank you and God Bless,

Max Canning

Ratzinger Ignored Pedophile Priest

His Unholiness

Pope Joseph Ratzinger ignored inquiries from concerned church officials about ongoing sexual molestations by priests. As the New York Times reported yesterday, in 1996 then Cardinal Ratzinger was apprised of the case of priest and serial rapist Lawrence Murphy, who admitted to church officials that he had molested children:

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations…

… In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy [who died in 1998] landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

However, it was not until 1996 that Archbishop Weakland tried to have Father Murphy defrocked. The reason, he wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, was to defuse the anger among the deaf and restore their trust in the church. He wrote that since he had become aware that “solicitation in the confessional might be part of the situation,” the case belonged at the doctrinal office.

It should also be noted that Weakland would later use $450,000 in Church funds as hush money for his former gay lover who was threatening a lawsuit.

I guess this is what the repulsive and obnoxious American papist Bill Donohue meant when he said the Church should be allowed to treat child rape as “an internal matter.”

It is difficult to discern which party displayed more shameful behavior in this travesty: the Milwaukee Archdiocese, which, when faced with the reality of a confessed child abuser in their ranks, thought it appropriate to contact Vatican officials instead of the local authorities in this, an obvious criminal matter; or Ratzinger and Bertone who swept the allegations under the rug as if they were no big deal.

But as Joe Biden would say, this is a big fucking deal. This is about the future pope, knowingly and willingly ignoring letters from officials within his own church saying that they have a rapist on their hands and that they—incredibly—are unsure what to do about it. In any sane universe, in any responsible organization, Ratzinger would be forced to step down in light of such allegations. But that’s not going to happen because the Church thinks it’s infallible.

I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.

- Max

Bill Donohue Is A Disgrace

Nice shit-eating grin.

Recently I wrote a post on the absurdity of Guardian writer Andrew Brown’s reprehensible defense of the Catholic Church in light of the most recent revelations of child abuse. His argument that Catholic priests are no more likely than adults in other professions to rape children is tasteless and irrelevant, especially since it has been documented that Church officials in various parishes and archdioceses actively covered up the abuses.

Until the other day, Brown’s recycled defense of the Church’s child abusers was the worst opinion piece I’ve read about any of the Church’s scandals. But enter Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and loudmouth windbag extraordinaire. For CNN.com, Donohue writes,

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Though this is starting to change, any discussion of employee sexual abuse that took place 30 and 40 years ago must acknowledge this reality. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.

Selective indignation at the Catholic Church is not confined to Brady. Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to “fix” abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.

Where to begin? First off, Donohue is confusing sexual abuse with sexual harassment. It is true that employers often treat sexual harassment as an internal matter. Sexist jokes and unwanted physical advances—when reported—are generally met with disciplinary action, as they should be. The police are not usually called because although lewd jokes or even an awkward grope are tasteless, the victim generally does not notify the police. Suspension or termination may be enough to remedy the problem. Sexual abuse is an entirely different story. The children under the care of pedophile priests were not merely subjected to harassment; they were sexually assaulted. No one I know of, with the exception of Bill Donohue and KBR, would regard rape in the workplace as “an internal matter.” Victims are entitled to press charges, and they should in order to shed light on the sexual perverts who lurk in our places of business and elsewhere.

Bill Donohue thinks differently. If priests, or lawyers, or physicians, or indeed, even kindergarten teachers are believed to be raping children, Donohue says that their supervisors should handle it as “an internal matter,” as he says is the custom. And handle it that way they did. The former Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law, handled it by simply shuffling accused child-fuckers from parish to parish where they kept abusing children. I guess this is what Donohue means we he says we should “give the offender a second chance.”

Donohue has made it his sole purpose in life to defend the Catholic Church against all enemies, real and imagined, no matter how corrupt, immoral, disgraceful, and discriminatory the institution behaves. Indeed, whenever a set of allegations arises accusing Catholic officials of child abuse, Donohue steps into the breach not to condemn the abuse, but to decry the “hysterical” reactions that inevitably follow, as if the level of indignation at the Church is unwarranted.

Amazingly, Donohue is not a fringe figure. He can occasionally be seen on the various cable news networks whining about perceived public insults to Catholicism, a hilariously ironic development given the ubiquitous and omnipotent presence the Church once enjoyed in the Western world. Clearly, much progress had been made if Catholicism’s defenders have been relegated to complaining about potshots at the Church which they can do absolutely nothing about. Still, Donohue is a minor nuisance despite his overall irrelevance as a cultural “warrior.” Thankfully, the sixty-two year old Donohue and those who think just like him constitute a literally dying breed. And for this endangered species, extinction can’t come fast enough.

- Max

Hick High School Cancels Prom To Avoid Having To Allow In A Lesbian

Forsooth

A Mississippi high school faces a lawsuit over its decision to cancel its prom rather than allow a lesbian high school student attend with her girlfriend…

...At the center of the lawsuit is a memorandum from the school to students, dated February 5, which states that prom dates must be of the opposite sex.

Also, when McMillen expressed a desire to wear a tuxedo to the prom, the superintendent told her only male students were allowed to wear tuxes, according to court documents.

Superintendent Teresa McNeece also told McMillen that she and her girlfriend could be ejected from the prom if any of the other students complained about their presence there, according to the documents.

The prom was canceled after McMillen and the ACLU tried informally to get the school to change its stance.

CNN

You may have noticed that at select points in some of my writings, I trash the American South. Several people have emailed me to complain about my “Northeast liberal elitism.” But this isn’t about elitism. It’s about the South being as backwards as shit. Whether it’s an attempt to teach creationism in science classes, or willfully telling a journalist that they don’t like Obama because “He’s a fucking nigger,” or treating gays like second class citizens, many Southerners of this fine nation have a serious problem. This isn’t to say that most of them are like this, but there sure are enough ignorant redneck fuckwits to give the whole region a terrible reputation.

Such is the case with Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, which apparently is run by people so sexually repressed, that in the 21^st century they cannot bear the sight of two gay students attending a prom. As if the poor girl weren’t feeling ostracized enough by her school’s official policy to exclude her and her partner from the prom, the school has sinisterly cancelled the whole thing. Sane people will consider this episode and determine that it is the school officials who are being ridiculous and inconsiderate. But yours truly has spent some time today on the comments threads of the local Southern news media. The anonymous responses are astounding. Many people commenting from locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other red state backwaters have seen fit to blame the lesbian student for the cancellation. There wouldn’t be a problem, one of them says, if only gays wouldn’t try to advance “their perverted lifestyles down all of our throats. Are you really proud of your sickening selves?”

The claim that gays “flaunt it” is a ragged canard. It’s not as if gays go around unwelcomingly hitting on people of the same sex. When homophobics say that gays flaunt themselves, what they’re really complaining about is the fact that more gays are simply out of the closet. The haters liked the good old days when gays were afraid to let it be known who they are. Thankfully, gays are becoming increasingly accepted in American society. And some people just don’t like it.

Why? Who knows? Religion I’m sure plays a large role. Also, people who merely are different have often been the targets of social ridicule, especially in the South. Different religions, different skin colors, different languages, and different sexualities have never played well down there. These are important factors, as is another commonly overlooked motive because of its uncomfortable premise: the theory that homophobia is often (though not always) the product of repressed homosexual desires in the homophobic himself. Think Roy Cohn, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Roy Ashburn, or any other anti-gay religious or political figure who turned out to be a flaming homo.

So whenever I see rabid homophobia on display, I can’t help but ask myself, what’s really going there?

- Max