New Atheists, Enlightened Religionists, and Fundamentalism

A friend of mine picked up for me a book entitled “The Reason for God”, a tome authored by a religious man, to answer the popularity of books by so-called “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, and the movie Religulous and other commentary by Bill Maher.

This led me to some Googling on other writers critiquing the “New Atheism”, including this post, entitled “Why Bill Maher Gets a ‘C’ in My Introduction to Religion Class”.

What Maher and filmmaking cohorts don’t appear to understand is that a person can be a Jew, have an enjoyable evening around the Sabbath table, and not believe that God actually created the world in seven days; that a Christian can stand up with her community, recite the 1700-year-old Nicene Creed, not believe a word of it, but still be moved by the experience of collective recitation; that a Muslim can make the pilgrimage to Mecca, touch the Kaaba, and still realize that at its base it is, indeed, a meteorite and not a holy rock from God. Maher even goes so far as to claim that “Christians believe” they are drinking the blood of a man who lived 2000 years ago. But he never asks anyone if they believe that. It’s a straw man argument. Even if this theological idea of “transubstantiation” has been written into Catholic dogma for centuries, I’ve yet to meet a Catholic who believes what Maher claims they believe (though I’m sure he could find a couple if he just kept throwing money at the film).

Continue Reading…

Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism and Princess Barbie Talibania

As I catch up on the news regarding the Christian Fundamentalist Terrorist* who assassinated George Tiller, I’m floored by the statements of the hate-spewing anti-abortion activists who are shocked – shocked d’ya hear? – about one of their own murdering an abortion provider.

(Christian Broadcasting Network) Randall Terry’s remarks and Scott Roeder’s alleged action against Tiller are not what pro-lifers are really about. Don’t get me wrong. Pro-lifers are frustrated and yes angry about the deaths of millions of these aborted babies.

One thing I will say for Scott Roeder is that he’s one of the few anti-abortion activists who really believes that abortion is the murder of babies. If I knew for a fact that there was a man in my town murdering babies, and the police knew and the people knew and nobody was doing anything to stop it, wouldn’t it be insane for me to allow that to happen day after day? Would you be content holding a sign or signing a petition to stop the bad man from murdering babies in your town?

These anti-abortion creeps are running like cockroaches now that the spotlight has focused on the rage they foment. They want to be able to have it both ways, to say that abortion is the murder of millions of babies, but no, we don’t want anyone to kill the murderer (an especially odd position for the non-Catholic pro-death-penalty anti-abortionist.)

Again, what would you say about a person who allows wholesale baby murder for near forty years, but doesn’t take direct action to stop it? It was inevitable that someone would take a look at the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” ethic and decide it is finally time to take action against baby murderers, especially when Christian theology is chock full of martyrs who disobeyed man’s law in order to implement God’s law (and this is the God who sent she bears to massacre 42 children for teasing Elijah about his bald head, so all bets are off regarding what “pro-lifers” are really about.)

Sorry, you can’t call abortion “America’s Holocaust” and then convince me you’re upset that someone assassinated Hitler. Hate speech has consequences.

*Hey, rhetoric that’s good for the Islamic goose is good for the Christian gander. Hmm. Islamic goose, is that even halal? Continue Reading…

California Supreme Court rules majority can take away minority’s rights

Today the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, the constitutional amendment that took away the right of gay people to marry in the state.  The majority may now invalidate a minority’s rights at the ballot box.

Remember, this isn’t the same as the other couple of dozen states, like Oregon, that have banned gay marriage in their constitution.  In those states, the right for gays to marry did not exist.  In California, the court declared the right for gays to marry to be a constitutional right, and then the haters passed the constitutional amendment to take away that existing right.

Strangely enough, the Court left intact the marriages of some 18,000 gay couples who exercised their right before Prop 8 passed.  I guess somehow that 18,001st gay couple to get married would’ve been the trigger for gaypocalypse or something.  Weird, isn’t it, that 18,000 gay Californians have a right that hundreds of thousands of other gay Californians do not, a right the 18,000 would lose if they ever got divorced.

Conceivably, a majority of Californians could pass constitutional amendments to ban anyone from anything, so long as they didn’t touch the federally-protected classes of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, familial status, disability, or veterans status.  No decision on rights from the California Supreme Court can be considered final, because the majority could always overturn it.  This is much bigger than a ban on gay marriage, this sets precedent for the majority to take anyone’s rights!  A right isn’t a right if it can be taken away; it’s a privilege.  The California Supreme Court just decided that all rights in the Republic not granted by the federal constitution are now just privileges, granted unto you by the majority.

The reaction from some of the knuckle-draggers has been predictable.  This on from the HuffPo comments is typical:

There is ONE and only ONE fair solution to this problem and it is the same solution that has been proposed by many people including Elton John. Homosexuals should be granted all of the same rights, benefits of married heterosexual couples, the union should be identified by a different term than “marriage”.

Homosexuals don’t seem willing to accept that and I think that it speaks volumes to the underlying intentions.

Great point! Just like little black kids in the 1950s should be granted all the same rights and benefits of education as the white kids, but they should be housed in separate buildings identified by a different term than “schools”.

Strange how gay folks don’t seem willing to accept their lifelong loving partnerships being trivialized by straights as some sort of “sub-marriage” or “alternamarriage”. Homobigots don’t seem willing to see gay folks as equals and their need to cling to a word speaks volumes to the underlying intentions. You’d grant an equal marriage so long as it isn’t called “marriage”? It’s really just an eight letter word you’re hung up on?

Is marriage religious? Fine, keep it in your church, take government out of it completely, and ban anyone from it who makes you uncomfortable. But if marriage is a civil institution with government benefits, all citizens get to participate equally. Restricting one’s choice of lifelong partners to just half the population isn’t just homophobic, it’s sexist!

It will be fun being a cynical old coot, someday telling my grand-nieces and nephews about the days when we used to openly discriminate against gay people… if I can get past their holo-tattoos and cyber-implants.

Back to the Blog! And Very Very Important Subjects!

Howdy, Radicals!  It’s been a long time since I posted here.  I took the end of my show pretty hard and every time I thought about posting here again it just made me sad.  Thank you so much for all the emails and comments expressing your love for the show and missing it.  I miss it, too.

Many people have asked if I am returning to the air anytime soon.  Probably not.

Here’s the deal: Not only was I the host of the show, but I also had to produce it, engineer it, record it, write it, sell it, promote it… basically aside from Stevie doing a fantastic job with answering phones and running the live engineering, everything about The Russ Belville Show was done by me.  I won the talk radio contest and they put me on XM with no budget, no staff, no advertising, and no promotions.  In fact, they were going to dump me six months into the deal when I rose a stink about being promised “a year-long contract” for winning the contest.  As it turned out, being on for twenty months was 14 months longer than they expected and 8 months longer than I expected.  Every show I put on the air actually ended up costing me $67 by the time you work through all the income vs. expenses.

(You want an idea why progressive talk radio is in the shitter?  Do you think it is the talent of the hosts, or… y’all discuss it; any speculation from me would be seen as ’sour grapes’.)

Now, if someone from a progressive talk radio network called up and said, “Hey, we found your old shows and thought you’d be a hit.  We’ve got a studio for you, a producer, and an engineer.  We’ll begin a big ad campaign and we can start you on five of our network’s stations right off the bat.  Interested?”, I’d be in the air faster than freeway chase in LA.  But doing it all myself?  No, never again.

So, what after three months has inspired me to return to the Radical Writ?  Is it Obama backing away from nearly every campaign pledge?  Is it the not closing Gitmo, not prosecuting torture, bringing in the insurance industry to ruin health care talks, giving money hand over fist to Wall Street thieves, snickering at the marijuana legalization question, not ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and tacitly endorsing every right-wing fraidy-cat terrists-gonna-kill-us FOX talking point?

Yeah, sure.  But first, I want to talk about something REALLY important: the embarrassment that was the selection of Kris Allen as the next American Idol.

Michael Glitz writes at HuffPo:

But for a theory about how Kris pulled an upset over the wildly popular Adam Lambert, the Christian vote is a pretty good one. It’s certainly one factor. (So is talent, Tiger Beat ready looks and viewers who get tired of being told someone is a lock when they haven’t even voted yet.) In fact, look at seasons past and where there’s a clear Christian vs secular showdown, the Christians have been winning handily. Take that, Charles Darwin! Sometimes the survival of the fittest goes to the person with the best telephone prayer chain. Check it out. (And please keep in mind I’m not talking about their personal faith, just our perception of it from what we told on the show at the time they were competing. Someone I describe as worldly might be exceptionally devout while the contestant prominently sporting a cross might be at the juke joint on Saturday and never even make it to church on Sunday.)

Season One featured wholesome Kelly Clarkson vs the worldly, media savvy Justin Guarini. Clarkson won big time and set the standard for Idols to come.

Season Two: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard both held forth on their faith. Ruben had an edge perhaps from the tight-knit black churches that came out strong for him. But this was a Christian vs Christian finale so you can’t draw any conclusions from this one.

He continues on through the current season, pointing out how the contestant with the most “God cred” wins the Finals.  (However, for Season 2, while both Ruben and Clay had the God card, don’t forget that Clay was “teh gay” for those Christian viewers.)

But I think the true theory is the Southern AT&T Text Messaging theory, only with the Christian vote acting as tiebreaker. In Idol voting, you’re allowed to call or text in ten votes per line. However, calls get you busy signals and you have to keep redialing to get just two votes, much less ten.

Text messaging, though, gets no busy signal and you can send in ten of them in the time it would take to get through one Idol phone call. Now, understand that anyone can call, but only AT&T subscribers can text, and AT&T’s subscriber base is largest in the South.

So when watching Idol Season 9, ask yourself, “Who would a 13-year-old girl in Mobile vote for?”

Evidence?

Allen (Arkansas) vs. Lambert (California)
7) Cook (Missouri) vs. Archuleta (Utah)
6) Sparks (Arizona) vs. Lewis (Washington) (Religion wins tiebreaker)
5) Hicks (Alabama) vs. McPhee (California)
4) Underwood (Oklahoma) vs. Bice (Alabama) (Religion breaks tie)
3) Fantasia (North Carolina) vs. DeGarmo (Georgia) (Religion breaks tie)
2) Studdard (Alabama) vs. Aiken (North Carolina) (”Not gay” breaks tie)
1) Clarkson (Texas) vs. Guarini (Pennsylvania)

What are the chances you’d get three finalists from Alabama and only two from California? Or that ten of sixteen finalists would be from former Confederate States and zero from the Northeast?

Bristol Palin Syndrome

ATLANTA – Mississippi now has the nation’s highest teen birth rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, a new federal report says. Mississippi’s rate was more than 60 percent higher than the national average in 2006, according to new state statistics released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The teen birth rate for that year in Texas and New Mexico was more than 50 percent higher.

More than a year ago, a preliminary report on the 2006 data revealed that the U.S. teen birth rate had risen for the first time in about 15 years. But the new numbers provide the first state-by-state breakdown.

The new report is based on a review of all the birth certificates in 2006. Significant increases in teen birth rates were noted in 26 states.

Some experts have blamed the national increase on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education that does not teach teens how to use condoms and other contraception. They said that would explain why teen birth rate increases have been detected across much of the country and not just in a few spots.

I wonder what else might explain that..

Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses

London Journal – Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses – NYTimes.com
Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and on Tuesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Spotting one of the buses on display at a news conference in Kensington, passers-by were struck by the unusual message.

Not always positively. “I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”

Yeah, it kinda sucks when everywhere you go, everywhere you look, somebody’s dreadful religious opinion is in your face.  How’s that feel, Sandy?  Now imagine that feeling amplified by about 4 billion.  Imagine that everywhere you go, everywhere you look, everyone you talk to thinks you’re a freak for not proclaiming obedience to a Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Imagine that agreement with that simple bus message means you’ll never hold high elected office.  Imagine that some people would actually fear you teaching or babysitting their children because of your cosmic philosophy.

Imagine there’s no heaven.  It’s easy if you try.

The Mormon Pro-Prop 8 Letter

SALT LAKE CITY 30 June 2008 The following letter was sent from the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Church leaders in California to be read to all congregations on 29 June 2008:

Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families

In March 2000 California voters overwhelmingly approved a state law providing that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The California Supreme Court recently reversed this vote of the people. On November 4, 2008, Californians will vote on a proposed amendment to the California state constitution that will now restore the March 2000 definition of marriage approved by the voters.

The Church’s teachings and position on this moral issue are unequivocal. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children. Children are entitled to be born within this bond of marriage.

A broad-based coalition of churches and other organizations placed the proposed amendment on the ballot. The Church will participate with this coalition in seeking its passage. Local Church leaders will provide information about how you may become involved in this important cause.

We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.

Individuals exercising their 1st Amendment rights… or a church violating its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status?

First Female Four-Star General Promoted

So, I’m elated when I read this:

First Female Four-Star General Promoted

WASHINGTON — Call it breaking the brass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody, after 33 years in the Army, ascended Friday to a peak never before reached by a woman in the U.S. military: four-star general.

Later Friday, at Fort Belvoir, Va. _ her birthplace _ Dunwoody was being sworn in as commander of the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming all soldiers. Just five months ago, she became the first female deputy commander there.

There are 21 female general officers in the Army _ all but four at the one-star rank of brigadier. It was not until 1970 that the Army had its first one-star: Anna Mae Hays, chief of the Army Nurse Corps.

Until I get toward the end and read:

Women now make up about 14 percent of the active-duty Army and are allowed to serve in a wide variety of assignments. They are still excluded from units designed primarily to engage in direct combat, such as infantry and tank units, but their opportunities have expanded over the past two decades.

Why?  Why can’t a female soldier drive a tank?  Do boobs get in the way of the steering wheel?  Tanks are small places; I had a friend who was a “tanker” in the Guard – a short, squatty fellow.  You’d think female soldiers would be a natural for tank duty.  Have you seen a woman drive an SUV (bah-dum-bum!  Thank you, tip your waiter, I’ll be here all week…)

Why can’t a female soldier be in the infantry?  Trust me, BDUs (battle-dress uniforms) and camo face paint are hardly sexy.  Is that what we fear, that male soldiers wouldn’t be able to fight with all the hot babes around?  Is it the “no gay soldiers in the shower” argument from the straight angle?  Would macho he-males make stupid decisions to gallantly rescue fallen damsel privates in distress?  (I mean, Army soldiers of the rank of “private”.)  Because I know at least one female former soldier who I’d give an M-16 and fight from a foxhole with any day.  She’s far more vicious and a better shot than I am!  With an infantry full of women who all “get in sync”, we could time tactical operations around “cycles” and rain down hell on the enemy with The Fightin’ PMS Battalion!  (bah-dum-bum-spish!  Thank you, thank you, catch me next week at Mr. Yuks in Sheboygan…)

Sexist jokes aside, really, why do we still ban women from direct combat duty?  I’m all for strict physical standards – can you do the obstacle course, shoot a rifle, carry your fellow soldier, patch a wound, and so on – but I can’t understand why if a woman can be a firefighter, cop, or four-star general, she can’t also be an eleven-bravo grunt.

 

Idaho Kids chant Assassinate Obama

Kids chant Assassinate Obama – 236.com – The Feed

Yup, that’s the state where I grew up, all right.  Red State Refugee isn’t just a tag line, it’s a badge of honor!

America is NOT “center-right”

The Progressive Majority