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CFI: Racism linked to religious dogmatism

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Quelle surprise!

From John Shook, writing at the Center for Inquiry:

Religious people can be racist, and that’s not news. But are they more likely to be racist than non-religious people? A new study now confirms this hypothesis.

The February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review has published a meta-analysis of 55 independent studies conducted in the United States which considers surveys of over 20,000 mostly Christian participants. Religious congregations generally express more prejudiced views towards other races. Furthermore, the more devout the community, the greater the racism.

Those aren’t exactly replicas of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that the Christian Ku Klux Klan ceremoniously torch to spark fear.

And we know, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that Christians love torture, while the least support for torture comes from those who never attend religious services. 77% of American Evangelicals asked supported the invasion of Iraq, according to another Pew survey:

Solid majorities of white evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics favored the U.S. taking military action to end Saddam Hussein’s rule. Support was strongest among Evangelicals, 77 percent of whom supported war, compared with 62 percent of Catholics and mainline Protestants. But only 36 percent of African-American Protestants supported military action, and seculars — respondents who said they were atheists or had no religious affiliation — divided evenly on the question (44 percent in favor, 44 percent opposed).

Much of secular Europe, on the other hand, opposed the invasion of Iraq — Freedom Fries, anyone? Just out of curiosity, where and when does that whole living what we’ve more or less come to think of as a Christ-like life part kick in?

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Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position — and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk
(video: TED: Ideas Worth Spreading)

Here’s why you should make time to listen to Richard Dawkins.

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Posted in History, Life, People, Politics, Religion, Science, Technology, The Media | 2 Comments »

Overtime turns to atheism

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Overtime With Bill Maher – Atheism (video: Overtime With Bill Maher)

When asked about a visit by the leaders of a coalition of non-believing organizations to the Obama White House (see earlier post on the paranoid ravings of Bishop Council Nedd), comedian and atheist Adam Carolla launches — surprise! — into comedy schtick. Bill Maher thankfully, given the hysterical overreaction of the wingnuts and the religious reich to the atheist’s visit, redirects the conversation back to the statistical dominance of superstitionism over reason and the need for nonbelievers to come out of the closet and take a stand against what we don’t believe in and for our Constitutional right to to choose not to believe.

Sorry, cupcakes. There’s absolutely no proof of a religious gene (or even a phenotype), and any religious impulse to please an invisible deity is clearly nothing more than panic when it comes to not knowing the currently unknown. Smart people no longer see the hands of the gods in solar eclipses, because we know what causes solar eclipses. If there is, and I believe there is, an impulse to do good, take a bow, folks. You’ve evolved, because it’s just smarter to treat each other well and to make an attempt to get along with each other. And, bonus points to those who are motivated by something other than fear of the post-life consequences of not adhering to some man-made-up dogma.

It’s precious when conservative political writer Reihan Salam suggests that opposing currently accepted scientific principles (which are unceasingly fluid because science is rooted in skepticism) is a form of skepticism and not motivated by superstition once again rearing its ugly head. Skepticism is therefore a good thing when the faithful practice it on non-believers and science, but not vice versa.

Salam also advises non-believers and scientists — over 93% of whom do not believe there is an invisible guy in the sky toiling effortlessly away, simultaneously reading and evaluating the thoughts of every being in the universe, tossing curiosities like “the virgin birth” in man’s face with a hearty “trust me, I’m God,” and then sending the bad dudes and dudettes (including non-believers) packing to a post-life vacation in Hades for all eternity and without the possibility of 72 drop-dead gorgeous virgins on standby — to tolerate the intolerant.

As for the call for “humility” on the part of non-believers: Oh. Fucking. Please! Let’s all humbly tolerate the lifestyle choices of the faithful — no matter how freaky their beliefs — in the name of tolerance? I don’t think so. There’s no way we should tolerate a messiah who shows up on the side of a grilled cheese sandwich, let alone one who says withholding medical attention from your children when they’re dying or who says raping kids is cool — but only if you’re a priest. And, in fact, let’s fact-check the holy fuck out of the gods who say give all your money and grains and goats and first borns to the already rich guys through whom I’m delivering my sacred and irrefutable word … or else.

(tip: Norm Jensen, OneGoodMove)

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Call HRC re: DADT

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Today a coalition of gay and straight bloggers are asking their readers to contact the Human Rights Campaign on behalf of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s time to demand some serious bang for all those LGBT bucks!

The Message for HRC Is Simple:

Publicly demand that President Obama take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.

  1. That means the President needs to state publicly that he wants Congress to repeal DADT this year; and
  2. The President needs to take the lead in working with Congress to make sure the repeal happens.
  • HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
  • TTY: (202) 216-1572
  • Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723
  • HRC Web site comment page.
  • General membership email at hrc: membership@hrc.org

Some may say that there is little the President can do, or that this is up to Congress now. That is simply untrue. The President can send a powerful signal that he wants the repeal done this year. He can include the repeal of DADT in the Defense Budget he sends to Congress in the next few months. If the President is serious about keeping his promises to our community, now is his chance to prove it.

Blog Swarm Sponsors

Today’s blog swarm is sponsored by the following bloggers and sites, all of which will also be writing about this issue today, and urging their readers to contact HRC:

Joe Sudbay and John Aravosis, AMERICAblog; Pam Spaulding, Pam’s House Blend; Michelangelo Signorile, Sirius OutQ & the Gist; Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos; Andy Towle, TowleRoad; Joe Jervis, Joe My God; BIll Browning, Bilerico; Taylor Marsh, TaylorMarsh.com; Dan Savage, Slog.

Momentum Has Turned to Confusion

HRC may argue that it’s already told the President it would like to see DADT repealed this year. Well, that’s not enough. And here’s why.

We’ve had an amazing few weeks of momentum on DADT repeal following the mention of DADT in the State of the Union, the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing during which both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs both stated their support for repeal, and the unexpected support we’ve received from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell and former Defense Secretary and Vice President Dick Cheney.

But that momentum is quickly slipping away. After talking to people around Washington over the past two weeks, Joe and I have found a vacuum of leadership that is leading to confusion. The Hill has no idea if the President does or doesn’t want them to move ahead with repeal this year. The House has already said that it’s waiting for the Senate to do something. The Senate is in turmoil after the Democrats lost a single seat in January. And the DADT proposals being discussed in the Senate are focused on every possible approach except full repeal this year.

As we painfully learned last year during health care reform, nothing happens in Congress unless the President leads. And when the President doesn’t lead, disaster is guaranteed.

Whatever HRC has been telling the White House about DADT, it clearly isn’t working. In spite of the President’s positive comments during the State of the Union, no one knows where President Obama stands on repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”this year. All the while, unnamed administration officials are telling the media that it could be years before repeal finally happens. The White House clearly didn’t get HRC’s message, and as a result, we are losing this historic momentum.

Why HRC?

Why are we focusing on HRC? Because HRC is our community’s largest, best-funded gay rights organization in Washington, and they carry the most sway with the White House. In fact, HRC often boasts about their close working relationship with the White House. HRC’s President, Joe Solmonese, is so close to the White House that he gave the President political cover during the uproar over theadministration’s brief in support of DOMA. It’s time HRC, and our entire community, got something in return for everything we have done for this President, this Congress, and the entire Democratic party.

Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point with the Obama administration where allies have to publicly demand action, or promises are never kept. Just last week, the AFL-CIO was forced to send an action alert to its members, targeting the White House. If it’s good enough for the unions, it’s good enough for us.

We truly believe that if HRC were to openly call on the White House to get DADT repealed this year, it would happen. Mostly because Democrats are rightly worried about the gay vote (and the support of our straight allies) months before a critical congressional election.

If Not This Year, When?

It’s been a long first year of the Obama presidency. While our community made some gains in the past 13 months, there has been no progress whatsoever on the President’s top three commitments to the LGBT community: to repeal DADT and DOMA; and to pass ENDA. In fact, we’ve seen backward movement, as the President has continued to defend DADT and DOMA in the courts - even though he didn’t have to -going so far as to invoke incest and pedophilia. What’s more, we’ve been told to expect no progress on DOMA until the second term of the Obama presidency, if there is one, and if we still control the Congress. And ENDA, which we had been assured would pass last year, is now nowhere to be found. If DADT is not repealed this year, it’s not clear if any of the President’s top three promises to our community will be kept before he faces what might be a difficult reelection.

Why not just pass the repeal next year? Because Democrats are already having enough problems passing legislation, next year we’re expected to have even fewer Democrats in the House and Senate, and there’s talk in town as to whether the Democrats will even control the congress after the elections this fall. We saw the damage that was caused by the loss of one single Senate seat in Massachusetts. Democrats panicked. They talked about the need to move to the middle, be more bipartisan, give more to the Republicans, and at all costs avoid all those “controversial” issues – all of that is code for distancing themselves from you and me. If DADT isn’t repealed this year, it may not be repealed for years to come. And that will mean none of the President’s top promises will be kept to our community.

Please Contact HRC Today

Please contact HRC today, and urge them to publicly demand that the President take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.

We are at a unique moment in history. Pro-gay Democrats control the White House and the Congress. Momentum is building for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And the polls show that the American people, even Republicans, are on our side. We can win this battle. But only if our leaders choose to lead. Gay Americans helped elect this President and this Congress with our votes, our money and our time. And gay Americans have funded HRC for years, in exchange for a promise of results once the Democrats finally came to power.

You’ve done your job. Now it’s time for the President, Congress and HRC to do theirs.

  • HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
  • TTY: (202) 216-1572
  • Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723
  • HRC Web site comment page.
  • General membership email at HRC: membership@hrc.org

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    Posted in General Interest, History, Politics, The Media | No Comments »

    Christianists prey for death of Obama, gays

    Monday, February 15th, 2010

    And a Happy Presidents Day to each and every one of you!

    Over at The Daily Beast, the author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, John Avlon has piece up called: Praying for Obama’s Death:

    At a time when some people confuse losing an election with living under tyranny, it’s perhaps no surprise that a day set aside for marking past presidents’ birth has become, for some, a day for praying for the current president’s death.

    Praying for President Obama’s death has become a sick cottage industry for some evangelicals on the lunatic fringe. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and teddy bears are sold with the wholesome-sounding slogan “Pray for Obama” but tagged with the more troublesome “Psalm 109:8”—which reads “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”

    Amongst the paranoid lunatic fringe of the radical religious reich this is called “Imprecatory Prayer.”

    Offered not just from select pulpits, but increasingly expressed through tweets and forwarded via email, this decidedly un-Christian Christian subculture has found its most enthusiastic advocates in a few Obama Derangement Syndrome-afflicted preachers—notably Orange County’s Wiley Drake and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson.

    Pastor Wiley Drake kicked off this Presidents’ Day Weekend with an email blast to his supporters saying “Imprecatory Prayer is now our DUTY” and announcing a daily teleconference call to advance the cause. Drake has been an enthusiastic advocate of imprecatory prayer since he announced that God answered his call with the murder of Kansas abortion clinic doctor George Tiller in church last May. “George Tiller was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler,” Drake said at the time, “so I am happy. I am glad that he is dead.” This emboldened him to add “the usurper that is in the White House … B. Hussein Obama” to the list said in his church on Sundays.

    (emphasis: mine)

    Avlon visited Wiley’s First Southern Baptist Church near Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Orange County — a stone’s throw from the birthplace of the John Birch Society — for a tête-à-tête:

    “I’m known as a birther, you know. I don’t believe Obama was born in this country. He’s an illegal alien and so forth,” Wiley told me, matter-of-factly. “And so I began to pray what the Bible teaches us to pray and that is imprecatory prayer. An imprecatory prayer is very strong. Imprecatory prayer in Psalms 109, for example, says if you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless and his wife a widow and that his time in office be short… Other Psalms say when they speak evil, God will break out their teeth and when they run to do destruction God will break their legs.”

    To those offended by the idea of praying for death, Wiley shrugs. “I’m praying the word of God. I didn’t write it. Don’t get mad at me.”

    And these hate-mongering christers get bent when non-believers point out that their “God” is a hateful bigot?

    Still, Wiley pales in comparison to Pastor Steve Anderson, who graced these pages last September when he said he wished gay radio host Michelangelo Signorile would get cancer and die like Senator Ted Kennedy.

    But Drake is subtle and even civil compared to the deranged hatemonger who preaches at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona: Steven L. Anderson.

    “I hate Barack Obama. You say, well, you just mean you don’t like what he stands for. No, I hate the person. Oh, you mean you just don’t like his policies. No, I hate him … I am not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to Hell.”

    Avlon provides a snatch of what the religious right and their Republican buddies think embodies the spirit of Christian prayer these days:

    “Break his teeth, oh God, in his mouth, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away, like an untimely birth of a woman—that he thinks—he calls it a woman’s right to choose, you know, he thinks it’s so wonderful, he ought to be aborted. It ought to be, ‘Abort Obama,’ that ought to be the motto.”

    And, of course, Anderson’s God has it in for the gays:

    Anderson’s gospel of hate is careful to hit the culture war trifecta: God, Gays, and Guns. Gays, he has said, should be executed—(“The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites, and queers!”). And as for guns, well, they’ve been as common as Bibles in his church some Sundays. In fact, Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR15 assault rifle as a protest outside an August ’09 Obama event in Arizona, attended the “Why I Hate Obama” sermon just the Sunday before. Broughton has called it “the best church in the world.”And as for guns, well, they’ve been as common as Bibles in his church some Sundays. In fact, Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR15 assault rifle as a protest outside an August ’09 Obama event in Arizona, attended the “Why I Hate Obama” sermon just the Sunday before. Broughton has called it “the best church in the world.”

    It looks like advocating death and imprisonment for the gays is trending among radical religious reichsters like the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, as evidenced by recent statements from the AFA’s Brian Fischer and FRC’s Peter Sprigg.

    I’m all for free speech, but, since superstitianity seems to have gone off the tracks, I think any sane person will agree that it’s about time to dust off the laws put in place to protect American citizens from violent mobsters.

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