fundie writing

Atheists = 1, Kentucky = 0

Nelson-HahaIt’s been almost two weeks, so the most dedicated atheist newshounds out there will already have seen this. A Kentucky circuit judge ruled that the 2006 statute that created the State Office of Homeland Security is in violation of the establishment clauses in both the U.S. and Kentucky Constitutions.

Ten brave Kentucky residents and the American Atheists sued the state and WON! In their case, they successfully argued the following:

“It is clear that the purpose underlying the display of the plaque and the contents of Office of Homeland Security training materials is not to celebrate the historical reasons for our great nation’s survival in the face of terror and war. Its purpose is to declare publicly that the official position of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is that an Almighty God exists and that the function of that God is to protect us from our enemies. Consequently, a reading of the statute’s plain language makes that clear. Effectively, the General Assembly has created an official government position on God.”

Judge Thomas Wingate delivered an 18-page decision in favor of reason stating:

“The statute pronounces very plainly that current citizens of the Commonwealth cannot be safe, neither now, nor in the future, without the aid of Almighty God. Even assuming that most of this nation’s citizens have historically depended upon God, by choice, for their protection, this does not give the General Assembly the right to force citizens to do so now.””This is the very reason the Establishment Clause was created: to protect the minority from the oppression of the majority,” he wrote. “The commonwealth’s history does not exclude God from the statutes, but it had never permitted the General Assembly to demand that its citizens depend on Almighty God.”

I have to admit: I didn’t think Kentucky was going to do the right thing on this one. A tip of my hat to Judge Wingate for proving me wrong.

Islam a Religion of Peace? Excuse Me While I Laugh

I am not a troll. I do not search out internet fora, Facebook and MySpace groups, or any other online community with the intention of creating inflamatory comments or rousing rabble of any sort. That doesn’t mean that I’m not tempted to do so from time to time. Usually, I just like to gain some perspective, see how people debate and support their positions (on all sides), and sometimes get some good ideas for blog posts.

I came across a doosie of a group a while back while browsing MySpace groups about Islam. There is a section devoted to the groups “rules”, some of which are very telling about not only the religion of Islam, but the sacred protection religion thinks it deserves in discourse.

The first few rules are reasonable enough:

  • No hate speech
  • No bigotry
  • No attacking another person’s religion

While I do not think that there is any such thing as hate speech in the way it is typically defined, I don’t think that every forum should have to be a stage for debate. No big deal so far, but the next few are quite revealing.

  • Non-Muslims are welcome and will be protected
  • Non-Muslims have the right to ask anything they wish. However if they abuse their privileges they will be banned!!!!!!
  • Anybody insulting my religion of Islam or my holy prophet Muhammad (saaw) will be banned !!!!!!!!!

It doesn’t say great things for your religion if you have to reassure non-adherents of their protected status when joining for discussion. Oh, and as for that discussion, ask anything you want, but don’t abuse those privileges. What the hell does that even mean? Is this like Scientology in that they will answer questions until one of the questions pisses them off or makes them reveal something embarrassing or heinous about their belief system? For instance, if I wanted to ask “How does the holy prophet Muhammad taking a child wife and consummating the marriage with intercourse when she was only 9 years old fit in to traditional Arab marriage roles during that time?”, I would probably be banned.

Even though it is a perfectly valid question whose basis is well document in the Hadith (Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64), this question would almost certainly be seen as an affront to Islam. As a non-adherent, this is a topic on which I would like more information, and what better place to ask questions than in a forum of Muslims?

Well, thinking about all of this again got me wanting to visit the group and put forth my two cents. Having bookmarked the link, I clicked through only to find that the group is no longer accessible. The group still shows up in search results, but cannot be viewed, which could possibly mean that the group has been made private. I’ve included the link in case it should ever be accessible in the future.

Happy Mother’s Day!

holy-motherFirst, I would like to wish all of the mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day! While I am personally a big fan of letting my mother know how much I appreciate her every time I speak to her, I am not out to rain on anyone’s mother-loving parade.

I would, however, like to rain on some theists’ nonsensical-beliefs parades.

I was listening to XM earlier, and instead of playing music, the DJ, who was blabbering on about shit that I could care less about, decided to close his verbal segment with some quotes about mothers. I don’t subscribe to XM to hear talk on a music channel, but I was too close to home to be channel zapping for alternate programming. One quote, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, stood out.

“God couldn’t be everywhere. That’s why he invented mothers.”

Yeah, I get it. You’re setting out to raise mothers to a godlike standard because they do indeed balance a frightfully heavy load when it comes to child rearing. But in repeating this, what every Christian is actually doing is impugning the omnipresence of their own Lord and Savior. For my Christian-troll readers, I don’t want to hear any of your, “It’s a joke you angry atheist! If you stepped down off your soapbox once in a while to stop persecuting people, maybe you’d have a sense of humor.” To responses like that I can only respond that this phrase does indeed lower God, and should be phrased so many of the other infinite ways it could be worded to give a boost to moms. Why, like so many other “cute” and “fun” sayings, has this caught on as an oft-repeated maxim without any critical thought given to its meaning?

It reminds me of a shirt, sign, or some other crap that I saw at Cracker Barrel that said, “And on the 8th day, God created chocolate.” No he didn’t. He just didn’t. There is no scripture to back this up, and instead of critically analyzing the natural processes that have formed every living thing on this planet, you instead create humor out of one of the most nonsensical leaps in logic in the world: the creation story. This gets repeated with many other things apart from chocolate: beer, Marines, tattoo artists, Legos, hairdressers, ad infinitum. Unlike moms, who deserve more than a pat on the back, these selfish people seek to create some kind of humorous inference related to the creation story that they are somehow special. Guess what? You’re not. You’re a sheep, and a dumb one at that.

Happy Mother’s Day! Unless you are a mother that stifles her children’s learning and discovery of the world by force feeding them bullshit stories from ancient, poorly-edited texts. If that’s the case, I hope the Mother’s Day Fairy leaves you coal in your apron.