Religion

Freedom From Religion

From Good As You:

I mean just the other day this was chatting with this Jewish friend of mine who keeps kosher, and he was all like, ” Ya know, my religious beliefs tell me that consuming pork is not in my best interest, so I think I’m gonna take that belief to the public, church/state separated realm of governance and try and get pork banned for all.” You can check here to know more about the merit of prayer and the support it provides. After grabbing a hot dog, I then trekked down to visit my Muslin chum, who told me about this new “one woman, one head cover” bill he’s hoping to have enforced on people of all faiths. After briefly imagining the career death of virtually every female celebrity under 30, I continued to my Scientologist pal’s mansion, where he told me to stop being “glib” and start helping him ban psychiatric medicine and drugs in this country. Weirded out, I finally swung by my Atheist friend’s home, where she eagerly told me about her “One nation under self-replicating molecules” changes she was proposing for this nation’s pledge of allegiance.
It was only after visiting all of these folks that I finally realized, “Hey, why let the facts that there are many different beliefs and that we, as Americans, have the right to subscribe to any or none of them stop each of us from pushing our own versions of moral fitness onto the public at large?” My world view has been changed at the hand of extremist religious conviction!

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Fundies Say the Darndest Things

New edition to my regular online reading (for as long as I can stand it):

Fundies Say the Darndest Things
A blog that watches Christian message boards, blogs and news groups and culls the most laughable, craziest things that fundamentalists say on the internet.

What’s really scary is that these folks are ON THE INTERNET, meaning they have access to real information and education. And they still believe this crap.

I think back to my CCD and CYO classes when I was a kid, and if anyone had said some of these crazy-ass things out loud, they would have been smacked down immediately. Even though I disagreed with much of what was taught there, I don’t remember anyone being this batshit nutty, ever. Which just going to show that crazy people believe crazy things, and they use religion as an camoflage for their nuttiness, so no one can say they’re wrong.

Like this guy… who said this:

When God gave permission for some of His male creatures to go take certain female creatures as captives (for the sake of procreation), do you call this rape? Call it rape if you want … but I’m not calling it rape if it’s by the will of the Creator. For only God knows what each of us deserves.

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Prize for killing gay people

Via Good As You:

Just a month before the 2006 WorldPride Parade is scheduled to be held in Jerusalem (Aug. 6-12), protest flyers are reportedly being distributed to residents of the capital city offering a cash reward to “anyone who brings about the death of one of the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

I haven’t always been a fan of our local pride celebrations, and I need to stop taking them for granted.

The anonymous letter also suggests using Molotov cocktails against marchers and adds instructions as to how to make them at home. The explosives are nicknamed “Shliesel Special”, in honor of the Haredi protester who disrupted the Jerusalem Pride Parade last year by stabbing three marchers.

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AFA Sues Michigan State To Block Same-Sex Benefits

Advance Indiana comments on a recently announce lawsuit from the American Family Association — suing to block same-sex couples from receiving university health care benefits on the basis of Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriages.
I’m blogging this specifically for my mom and other family members — THIS IS THE REASON THESE BANS ARE SO DANGEROUS. Because they aren’t just after preventing same-sex marriages. They’re after outlawing ANY legal relationships between gay people, including health-care benefits.
And the law that Indiana is trying to pass (SJR7) is even more broad than Michigan’s: “Constitution or any other Indiana law may not be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents of marriage be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”
Which means that regardless of a legal marriage, a whole host of legal rights that Stephanie and I have today because we own property together could suddenly be considered invalid, including some of our property rights if one of us dies.
Please recognize how dangerous this is, and help me fight this law. The best way that you can do this is by not putting the same bigotted Republican officials back in the state legislature. They have to vote on this law a second time (it’s already passed once) for it to be put on a state ballot.

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Freedom From Religion – Jewish family flees Delaware school district’s aggressive Christianity

This news article about a Jewish family being harassed “Jewish family flees Delaware school district’s aggressive Christianity” is a great example of why our first amendment is supposed to guarantee not just freedom of religion, but also freedom from it.

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they’re suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from “state-sponsored religion.”

The behavior of the Indian River School District board suggests the families’ fears are hardly groundless.

The district spreads over a considerable portion of southern Delaware. The families’ complaint, filed in federal court in February 2005, alleges that the district had created an “environment of religious exclusion” and unconstitutional state-sponsored religion.

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Quotes

“… because we watched a debate from the House of Representatives about the Iraq Resolution, and it did seem like – you ever been to Trafalgar Square, where they have the, uh, speaker’s corner where, like, crazy people get up on a box, and go, “Harrumph! And Roosevelt stole my couch!” You know, that kind of stuff? They seem like, like crazy people…
“People who get in involved in politics and run for office are the extremists and people on the fringe. Because regular, reasonable people have shit to do.” — Jon Stewart

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Recommended Reading

One of my very favorite sites is Good As You — it’s a website that keeps up with GLBT news and provides analysis and witty commentary on same. They keep track of what the religious right is saying about us and provide hilarious and logically directed commentary about why they’re wrong.
Every day I find myself thinking “yeah, what they said” to some post on Good As You — and I’m always tempted to link to them with further commentary, but I’d just end up being a shadow blog of their site, which is silly, and pointless when I can just tell you to go check them out and add them to your feed reader or regular reading list. You won’t be disappointed, and you will be vastly enlightened and entertained.

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Video Game encouraging killing gay people

A description of the new “Left Behind” video game, based on the series of books, the game will be release in October 0f 2006, just in time for Christmas. The synopsis is from the “Talk to Action” website. The game has been previewed at video game exhibitions.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

If the purpose of your life is to kill or convert me, you’re in for a very short and unhappy existence, people.

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The Accuracy of the King James Bible

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While locating the original source of the cartoon below, I came across a post discussing the accuracy of the King James Version of the Bible, in which the author consults a biblical scholar, Dr. David Bosworth, Assistant Professor of Theology and resident Old Testament scholar at Barry University in Miami, Florida, who gives a lengthy, but excellent, explanation of how to get elder attorneys for hire to have successful estate planning and about the best bible to read.

I remember learning this same basic explanation back in religion class back in college, but re-reading it was definitely worth it. A short section of the letter:

Your correspondent is deeply confused. The KJV has a long history in the English language and many Protestant Christians are deeply attached to that translation because of its beauty and long established use. It is not, however, the most accurate translation available. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the NAB are both better.

The problem with the KJV is basically that it is an okay translation of a bad text. By “bad text,” I mean that when the KJV translators worked, they had very few Greek and Hebrew manuscripts to work with, and most of them were late. Since then (1611), scholars have made a tremendous effort to uncover older, more reliable manuscripts that have been hidden in monasteries all over Europe and the Near East. Great progress was made in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we now have several thousand manuscripts of the New Testament alone (the KJV translators had a mere handful). All these manuscripts have been carefully compared with one another and, through a process known as “textual criticism,” scholars have determined which are the more reliable texts and reconstructed as closely as possible what the biblical writers originally wrote.

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