The Null Device

A piece in the Guardian looking at what exactly is taught in the Christian Fundamentalist academies enthusiastically enabled by the Tories' education reforms:

In an English test, students face the following multiple-choice question:
(29) Responsible citizens will vote for political candidates who
a. promise to provide good paying jobs for all those who are out of work
b. promise to cut back on both government services and spending and cut taxes
c. promise to raise taxes on "big business" and use the money to help the poor
d. promise to provide child-care services for all mothers who need to work
(The "correct" answer is b.)

A church history assessment contains these questions: (1) The four foes of the faith considered in this Pace are____________.
(Answer: "rationalism, materialism, evolutionism, and communism".)
(2) The foe of the faith that takes in all the other three foes and is organised against the church is _________.
(Answer: "communism".)

In economics, Keynesian ideas are wrong while Adam Smith's are right. In geography, the prosperity of nations is clearly linked to the amount of Christian influence ("God blessed the United States, and it became the strongest and most prosperous nation on Earth"). In US history, it is taught that Jesus commanded us to make a profit; giving "handouts to citizens" was contrary to the intentions of America's hallowed founding fathers; nontaxpayers should not vote; and it is wrong for governments to provide welfare for citizens. "Liberals" receive particular criticism.

¶ education politics religiots rightwingers tories uk 0

More good recent political news: Australia's Labor government has finally put a stake through the heart of its internet censorship plan. The plan, to establish a mandatory Chinese/Saudi-style national internet firewall blocking access to sites on a secret list (which would have not been limited to the worst of the worst but have included anything illegal in Australia, potentially blocking anything from nude images of small-breasted women to sites advising on suicide methods or graffiti, or, given its unanswerability, anything the powers that be or loud wowsers wanted swept under the carpet) had been adopted into the ALP's platform to appease the Christian Fundamentalist party Family First, whose votes they needed, though seemed to be supported a little too enthusiastically by then-ALP leader Kevin Rudd (himself a God-botherer cut from the same cloth as Tory Grand Inquisitor and current PM-in-waiting Tony Abbott). When Family First returned to a well-deserved obscurity, the ALP kept the national firewall as part of its official platform, though put it on the backburner, pending reviews and studies. Now, it seems, common sense has prevailed and it is finally dead.

The national firewall will be replaced by legislation requiring ISPs to block sites on an Interpol blacklist of child pornography sites. This list is organised by IP address, and would not slow down access the way the more comprehensive filtering proposed would have, and is apparently more transparently organised:

The Interpol process for identifying websites for the banned list is transparent. A site must be reviewed by authorities from two countries before it can be listed. Australian users trying to access banned sites will be redirected to a ''stop'' page.

Of course, not everyone's happy with the end of the Great Firewall of Australia: the fundies still want tough laws imposing their views and values on the rest of society, for the common spiritual good of all, of course, and have reiterated their call for a national firewall. For now, though, the public mood is not on their side.

¶ australia censorship internet politics religiots 0

With only days to go until the US Presidential election approaches, a poll states that 68% of registered Republican voters believe in the reality of demonic possession, compared to only 48% believing in the reality of climate change.

Meanwhile, The Baffler has a piece on the nexus between direct-mail con artists and Movement Conservatism in the US. The thesis of this essay is that the US Right today has a culture built on paranoia, a distrust of critical thought and a tolerance of lying, and that this culture is partly due to from a system of highly successful multi-level marketing cons, get-rich-quick scams and crooked fundraising operations wrapped in inflammatory calls to urgent action attached parasitically to the conservative movement for half a century. This state of affairs had modest beginnings in the 1960s, as the wake of the political autoimmune disorder that was McCarthyism was bleeding into the rise of the civil-rights movement and everything from modern art to teenage rock'n'roll were assaulting the relaxed and comfortable status quo of the extended 1950s. (The full cultural horror of the Sixeventies had yet to make an appearance, but it would, in turn, prove highly profitable.) It all started when a canny businessman acquired a list of Republican Party donors and and started using it to make money from the fearful and credulous, establishing a system of fundraising for right-wing causes which, conveniently, absorbed most of its takings in administrative expenses, leaving little for fighting imaginary Communist abortionists. This, in turn, was followed by an ecosystem of parasites, selling everything from miracle cures to investment strategies the pinko liberals don't want you to know about to the movement-conservative demographic, and reinforcing a culture of paranoia, demonisation of a nefarious Other and a convenient detachment from objectively measurable reality, culminating in the political climate today:

In 2007, I signed on to the email lists of several influential magazines on the right, among them Townhall, which operates under the auspices of evangelical Stuart Epperson’s Salem Communications; Newsmax, the organ more responsible than any other for drumming up the hysteria that culminated in the impeachment of Bill Clinton; and Human Events, one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite publications. The exercise turned out to be far more revealing than I expected. Via the battery of promotional appeals that overran my email inbox, I mainlined a right-wing id that was invisible to readers who encounter conservative opinion at face value.

Dear Friend: Do you believe that children should have the right to sue their parents for being “forced” to attend church? Should children be eligible for minimum wage if they are being asked to do household chores? Do you believe that children should have the right to choose their own family? As incredible as they might sound, these are just a few of the new “children’s rights laws” that could become a reality under a new United Nations program if fully implemented by the Carter administration. If radical anti-family forces have their way, this UN sponsored program is likely to become an all-out assault on our traditional family structure.

In this respect, it’s not really useful, or possible, to specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins. They are two facets of the same coin—where the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself. The proof is in the pitches—the come-ons in which the ideological and the transactional share the exact same vocabulary, moral claims, and cast of heroes and villains.

It’s time, in other words, to consider whether Romney’s fluidity with the truth is, in fact, a feature and not a bug: a constituent part of his appeal to conservatives. The point here is not just that he lies when he says conservative things, even if he believes something different in his heart of hearts—but that lying is what makes you sound the way a conservative is supposed to sound, in pretty much the same way that curlicuing all around the note makes you sound like a contestant on American Idol is supposed to sound.

¶ irrationalism politics psychoceramics religiots rightwingers superstition usa 0

The next front in the culture war for America's resurgent Christian fundamentalist movement may be set theory. That's right; some fundies find the mathematical theory of sets right down there with critical thinking, mainstream paleontology and Ozzy Osbourne records:

"Unlike the "modern math" theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute....A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."

They see modernism as the opposing worldview to their own. They are all about tradition (or, at least, what they have decided is traditional). Modernism is a knee-jerk rejection of tradition in favor of the new. Obviously, they think a very specific sort of Christian God should be the center of everything and all parts of society, public and private. Modernists prefer ideas like secular humanism and think God is something you should be doing in private, on your own time. They believe strongly in the importance of power hierarchies and rules. Modernism smashes all of that and says, "Hey, just do your own thing. Nobody's ideas are any better or worse than anybody else's. There's no right and wrong. Go crazy, man!"

More importantly, they know that [modernists] are subtle, and use sneaky means to indoctrinate children and lure adults into accepting modernist values. So the art, the literature, the jazz—probably the Scandinavian furniture, too, though I never heard anyone mention that specifically—are all just traps. They're ways of getting us to reject to One True Path a little bit at a time. (I should note that, up to this point, I am basing my analysis on what I was taught in Baptist school. After this, I'm speculating, and attempting to connect the ideas I know are present in this subculture with set theory.)

Set theory, particularly the stuff about infinity, has a bit of that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey flavor to it. It doesn't make sense on the level of "common sense". It's dealing with things that aren't standard, simple numbers. It makes links between nice, factual math and floppy, subjective philosophy. If you're raised in Christian fundamentalist culture, all of that—every last bit—absolutely reeks of modernism. It's easy to see how somebody at A Beka would look at set theory and conclude that it's really just modernist propaganda. To them, set theory is just a step on the road to godless atheism.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ culture war mathematics psychoceramics religion religiots set theory 2

Patent absurdity of the day: US patent application 11/161,345, by a Christopher Anthony Roller, who attempted to patent his "Godly powers", to prevent other parties, such as the magician David Copperfield, from using them for less than godly purposes. The patent application (available via the USPTO's PAIR portal; search for application 11161345) also includes miscellaneous correspondence from Roller, where he rails against the Mafia-like collusion by the patent office with powerful vested interests (including professional magicians) that could be the only explanation for his application having been rejected, and produces details of his lawsuit against Copperfield, including copies of his claims to be God and Jesus Christ, to have killed all his enemies, and to be married to Celine Dion and running for President with Bill Gates as running mate.

¶ bizarre law patents psychoceramics religiots 0

If you've ever wondered why what is commonly called Christianity in the US is so weird; why it so often condemns the poor as being responsible for their own misfortune, defends the right to make a profit above others, and is so obsessed with the evils of homosexuality and abortion, A guy named Brad Hicks wrote an illuminating essay in five parts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about how political expediency during the Cold War drove evangelical Christians (until then suspicious of worldly wealth) and the Republican Party (until then, the party of east-coast industrialists, with little time for religious pieties) into each others' arms, creating a Christianity that emphasises condemnation over redemption (though, granted, that's hardly new; Calvinism was there for a few hundred years before, though not quite to the same Randian extent), is not at all uncomfortable with getting filthy rich (as long as one donates to the Republican Party), and whilst not throwing any bones to the not-so-rich, manages to unite them with a common activity everyone can get behind: reinforcing a personal morality based in an idealised view of just-before-one-was-born (nowadays, the upright 1950s, that suburban patriarchial Garden of Eden before the serpent that was The 1960s came along and ruined everything), with a call to war against those who transgress against it (gays, feminists, abortionists and such).

The convergence of Christianity and right-wing politics in America has brought its own problems for both, with growing numbers of young Americans turning away from organised religion to avoid the politics. Granted, most of them aren't yet declaring themselves to be atheists (in America, it seems that one has to be pugnatiously anti-religious to feel comfortable using that label), but are filling in their religious orientation as "none".

This backlash was especially forceful among youth coming of age in the 1990s and just forming their views about religion. Some of that generation, to be sure, held deeply conservative moral and political views, and they felt very comfortable in the ranks of increasingly conservative churchgoers. But a majority of the Millennial generation was liberal on most social issues, and above all, on homosexuality. The fraction of twentysomethings who said that homosexual relations were "always" or "almost always" wrong plummeted from about 75% in 1990 to about 40% in 2008. (Ironically, in polling, Millennials are actually more uneasy about abortion than their parents.)

Meanwhile, in Finland, proponents of conservative Christianity have their own problems: after representatives of the state Lutheran church spoke against gay marriage on a TV current affairs programme, a record number of Finns had resigned from the state church. (Finland, like many European countries, has a state church, records citizens' religious affiliations, and levies an additional "church tax" on church members, to be paid to their respective churches.)

(via MeFi) ¶ culture finland politics religion religiots society usa 0

As Australia's tenuous Labor government foolhardily presses ahead with its internet censorship scheme, more evidence of its epic unpopularity comes to light; this time, from analyses of Senate election results, showing thousands of voters placing the minister responsible, Senator Conroy, last, or second-last to barking religiot Steve Fielding, whose loyalty the plan had originally been intended to buy.

There are several points of interest here. For Senator Conroy, his largest spikes by far were at 2 and 8. This suggests that a large chunk of people are voting Labor first or second, probably after the Greens. Similarly, the spike at 57 would coincide with voters putting Labor last. Senator Fielding sees a similar pattern, the spike at 1 being people putting Family First first on their preferences, the group of spikes at the end would be Family First being voted towards last, the final spike at 56 being a large group of voters putting Family First as the last party on their ballot. Far more interesting, however, are the last few places on the ballot. If people were voting by party, this should drop off significantly. Instead, we see both candidates having a significant proportion of voters putting them last or second last.

(When I voted, it was a toss-up which of these distinguished gentlemen to reward with the honour of last place. In the end, I gave it to Conroy. While Fielding, a simple man of unbending faith, could hardly be expected to be anything but what he was, Conroy's disingenuous defences of authoritarianism, above and beyond the call of political expediency, merited a special honour.)

¶ australia authoritarianism politics psephology religiots 0

In New York, Catholics are planning a rally to protest against the Empire State Building's owners refusal to light up the building to commemorate Mother Teresa. The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights are outraged that the building owners turned down their request to light the upper floors in blue and white to honour the nun's 100th birthday, especially since they did light the same floors in red and yellow for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the (Godless, Communist) People's Republic of China. The building's owners, meanwhile, reiterate a long-standing policy of not accommodating requests by religions or for religious figures. The rally is expected to shut down 34th Street at rush hour.

(In the interest of context: Christopher Hitchens' exposé of Mother Teresa and her works.)

(via Infrastructurist) ¶ catholic mother teresa nyc petulance religion religiots 0

Christian Voice, a right-wing Christian Fundamentalist group in the UK has rejected all major UK parties because they're too pro-EU, pro-secularist and "pro-sodomy", and rejected the British National Party because they phrase their claims of white supremacy in the language of evolution. You can't make this sort of thing up.

(via David Gerard) ¶ bnp creationism fundamentalists psychoceramics religiots rightwingers 1

After professional bigot Pat Robertson declared that the Haiti earthquake was God's punishment for Haitians' un-Christian religious beliefs, one eBay seller responded by creating and auctioning a Pat Robertson voodoo doll, with all proceeds from the sale going to the American Red Cross. Bidding's currently at US$770, with eight days to go.

(via metaphorge) ¶ awesome haiti pat robertson religiots voodoo 0

Canadian psychology professor Bob Altemeyer has made available online the text of a book examining the psychology of authoritarianism. Altemeyer looks at what he calls Right-Wing Authoritarianism, a personality trait which manifests itself in a high degree of submission to the established authorities, high levels of aggression in the name of the authorities, and a high level of conventionalism, and correlates with the political right, at least in North America. (He also mentions left-wing authoritarianism—think dogmatic Maoism or similar—in passing, though dismisses it as having all but died out in North America, whereas right-wing authoritarianism is going from strength to strength.)

It’s about what happened to the American government after "conservatives" gained control of Congress in the 1990s and the White House in 2000. It’s about the disastrous decisions that government made, which have created the enormous problems we face now. It’s about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It’s about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It’s about how the “Religious Right” teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country.

For example, take the following statement: “Once our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within.” Sounds like something Hitler would say, right? Want to guess how many politicians, how many lawmakers in the United States agreed with it? Want to guess what they had in common?

The Authoritarians looks at the RWA scale and other phenomena, such as religious fundamentalism, social-dominance orientation and real-world politics. Not surprisingly, there are correlations between right-wing authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism, and both are strong predictors of prejudice against out-groups. (Paradoxically, many high-RWA people exhibit both racial prejudices and hostility to overt racism, largely due to not seeing themselves or their peers as racially prejudiced; this would be the dampening effect authoritarianism has on insight and analysis.) Meanwhile, there are both parallels and differences between right-wing authoritarian followers and people who score highly on the social dominance scale; the former don't necessarily want personal power, whereas the latter are less likely to be religious or constrained by rules, though will often happily feign religiosity as a means to an end. Some individuals, of course, score highly on both scales. Because authoritarian followers are receptive to messages that feel right, and are suspicious of critical thought, right-wing authoritarian movements attract more than their share of power-hungry sociopaths willing to pound the right talking points to get willing, unquestioning followers.

There are other ideas Altemeyer's Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale ties into, such as Lakoff's strict-father/nurturing-parent family dichotomy (which Altemeyer looks at though finds weakly connected), Milgram's obedience experiment, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, and theories about the mass psychology of fascism. (Of which this strikes me as one of the more useful ones; while it may be fun to posit connections between fascism and manned flight or the mass spectacle of rock'n'roll, those are probably less useful for actually understanding the threat of fascism as a mass movement.)

(via Boing Boing) ¶ authoritarianism culture fascism politics psychology religion religiots society 0

In the US, a group "conservatives" have decided that the Bible, for all it's worth, has too much of a liberal bias, and thus taken it upon themselves to rewrite it in a more acceptable form. This includes the obvious things (i.e., eliminating any namby-pamby politically-correct language or phrases that make Jesus look like a goddamn hippie, and peppering it with "free market parables"; I wonder how that'll change the story about Jesus and the moneylenders), as well as other principles such as "Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness".

The project page is here. Note that it is hosted by Conservapedia, previously noted for its somewhat obsessive focus on the mechanics and perils of homosexual sex.

However, there is nothing new under the sun; in the MetaFilter thread, a former seminary student revealed how he and a friend created, as a joke, a conservative reading of the Gospel of Luke by simply inverting the sayings. Behold, the National Gospel of Liberty:

8 "And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges the poor and the outcast will be acknowledged as an outcast; 9 but whoever denies the poor and the outcast will live in peace, because they are odorous and live in fields. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the poor will be forgiven, for this is right; but whoever speaks out for the poor and the oppressed will not be forgiven. 11 When they bring you before the magistrate, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; 12 for you are wealthy and the wealthy need have no fear of the courts."

27 Consider the lilies! They neither toil nor spin, and so I tell you, their life is but a season, and they have no wives. Solomon had many wives, and in his glory was arrayed in garments finer than any lily of the field! 28 They are but meager grasses, fit only to be thrown into the oven, but you are precious to your Father in Heaven and your prayers have brought you great wealth.

¶ christianity conservapedia culture war religiots rightwingers usa wtf 1

A new memoir by George W. Bush's former speechwriter sheds light on how the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded:

Latimer, whose memoir was published last week by Crown in the US, says that the "narrow thinking" of "people in the White House" led them "to actually object to giving the author JK Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft".

The first 16 recipients of Barack Obama's presidential medal, handed out in August, included Stephen Hawking and Senator Ted Kennedy – who, according to Latimer's book, failed to receive the medal during the Bush administration because he was "a liberal".

¶ culture war george w. bush harry potter politics religiots usa 0

The town of Kingsville, Texas, is doing its bit in the battle against the powers of evil by banning the word "hello", which contains the word "hell":

"When you go to school and church, they tell you 'hell' is negative and 'heaven' is positive,'" said the 56-year-old Canales, who owns the Kingsville Flea Market. "I think it's time that we set a new precedent, to tell our kids that we are positive adults."

On Thursday, courthouse employees were answering the phones, "heaven-o." And the chamber of commerce was working on a campaign promoting Kingsville, a Rio Grande Valley town of 25,000, as a "heavenly" place to visit.

Canales, a Catholic but not a regular churchgoer, has been as serious as heck about "hello" since 1988, when he told his brother he might start greeting people with "God-o." His brother suggested "heaven-o" instead.

(via reddragdiva) ¶ bizarre hell religion religiots stupidity superstition texas wtf 2

Sinister things are afoot at the United Nations, with an alliance of countries moving to change the UN Human Rights Council's mission to one prohibiting the criticism of religion. The alliance is comprised mostly of Islamic countries, though China, Russia and Cuba are notable by their presence. (It can only be presumed that they are doing this out of the principle of supporting repression wherever it rears its head.) I heard that the Vatican may also be involved, though this is unconfirmed.

For what it's worth, if you live in the UK, you can petition the Prime Minister to oppose this; if enough people do so, maybe, just maybe, he will.

¶ censorship freedom of speech liberty religion religiots un 0

Recently, the media (and not only the tabloids, but the Guardian, the BBC and Reuters, to name a few) was full of headlines suggesting that consuming even small amounts of alcohol would significantly increase one's risk of cancer. Now, Charlie Stross tears that report apart, revealing that the paper in question actually said the opposite, even if its abstract, for some unfathomable reason, didn't:

... there was no dose response between the number of drinks the women consumed and their risk for all cancers. Women drinking no alcohol at all had higher incidences for all cancers than 95% of the drinking women.

The actual incidents of all cancers was 5.7% among the nondrinkers. The cancer incidents were lower among the women drinking up to 15 drinks a week: 5.2% among those consuming ≤2 drinks/week; 5.2% of those drinking 3-6 drinks/week; and 5.3% among those drinking 7-14 drinks a week. [Table 1.]

"Alcohol is evil. We know this because it is True. And it's especially bad for women because, well, women shouldn't drink. If you run a study to confirm this belief and the facts don't back you up, the facts are wrong. So tell the public the Truth (alcohol is always evil) and bury the facts; the press won't be able to tell the difference because they're (a) lazy (or overworked, take your pick) and (b) statistically innumerate."

This is pernicious fallout from the way the 2000-2008 Bush administration did business. Their contempt for science was so manifest that distortion and suppression of results that undermined a desired political objective became a routine reflex. If the science doesn't back you up, lie about it or suppress it. That administration may have been shown the door (and replaced by one that so far seems to have a pragmatic respect for facts), but the disease has spread internationally, becoming endemic wherever ideologically motivated politicians who hold their electorate in contempt find themselves seeking a stick to beat the public with.

¶ alcohol cancer disinformation health media propaganda pseudoscience religiots science 0

As bushfires swept across south-eastern Australia, wiping out towns and killing hundreds, people asked why. Some pointed to climate change, the lack of backburning in recent years or flawed town planning. One man, however, has a different theory. According to Pastor Danny Nalliah, former Family First political candidate and friend of the former Howard government, the bushfires were God's wrath for Victoria having recently decriminalised abortion:

The evangelical church's leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, claimed he had a dream about raging fires on October 21 last year and that he woke with "a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb".

He quoted a headline describing the fires as "The Darkest hour for Victoria". "A few months ago the news media should have reported 'the darkest hour for the unborn', but unfortunately the 'Decriminalisation of Abortion bill' went through parliament and was passed, thus making many people call Victoria 'the baby killing state of Australia,' " Mr Nalliah said.

Of course, Pastor Nalliah doesn't speak for all Christians or theists; far from it. The Age's religious editor, Barney Zwartz, points out that, actually, that's not what God is about, citing Bible verse to back up his point. Needless to say, he cites different Bible verses to the ones the Pastor does. That's the marvellous thing about scripture; it's so ambiguous that one find things in it to back up wildly divergent positions.

God, meanwhile, could not be reached for comment.

¶ australia christianity natural disasters religion religiots rightwingers stupidity 3

Today's heartwarming display of ecumenical outreach between religions comes to us courtesy of Australian Christian-right parliamentarian Reverend Fred Nile, who has tabled a bill to ban toplessness on beaches, to protect the sensibilities of Muslims and Asians who are not used to such licentiousness:

The Reverend Nile has rejected allegations that prudishness is behind a bill he has prepared to ban nudity, including topless sunbathing, on the state's most popular beaches.

Australia's reputation as a conservative but culturally inclusive sociery was at risk of erosion by more liberal overseas visitors, he said.

"Our beaches should be a place where no one is offended, whether it's their religious or cultural views," he said.

¶ australia hypocrisy religion religiots wowsers 5

Now that he no longer needs the votes of the faith-based voters, outgoing president George W. Bush pretty much admits to not believing that religious stuff he earlier expounded:

Here's the précis: he does not believe in the literal truth of the Bible, did not invade Iraq because of his Christianity and does not believe his faith is incompatible with evolution. Bush will not even assert that the Almighty – who, he believes, is much the same one as is worshipped by other religions – chose him to become president.

¶ christianity deception george w. bush hypocrisy politics religiots usa 8

A few stories from the US elections:

• Barack Obama's acceptance speech. And here is McCain's concession speech; and a gracious and dignified one it is too.
• It seems that prejudice against less-religious folks no longer cuts it in the US; North Carolina Republican senator Elizabeth Dole lost to a relatively unknown Democrat challenger, Kay Hagan, after an attack ad accusing Hagan of being the choice of the "Godless" backfired spectacularly.
• Prejudice against gays, alas, is alive and well in California, with a ballot proposition amending the constitution to ban non-heterosexual marriage looking set to pass narrowly. I wouldn't have a problem with this, as long as couples civil unions had exactly the same rights and responsibilities as married™ ones—and such civil unions were available to heterosexuals. If religious traditionalists want to claim marriage as a trademark, that would be fine as long as those who don't agree with their agendas can opt out. At present, though, this discriminates against not only against gays but also against heterosexuals who don't wish to be lumped in with the bigots.
• It's not all doom and gloom in California, though, with the proposed high-speed rail link between LA and San Francisco looking set to win approval. The proposal to rename a San Francisco sewage plant after George W. Bush, however, didn't pass.

¶ california culture war gay politics railway religiots usa 6

A Catholic girls' school in Manchester has blocked its students from receiving government-funded Human Papilloma Virus vaccinations. They didn't say as much (their line is a cryptic statement that the school is "not the right place"), but this presumably has to do with the idea that HPV, and the higher risk of cervical cancer, is divine punishment for sexual promiscuity, and it would be sinful to interfere in this. Isn't religion a wonderful thing?

¶ catholic religiots 1

Psychoceramic artefact of the day: "Man For Young Girl To Become My Wife", the web page of a 53-year-old man looking for a wife to meet his exacting requirements:

Hello, thanks for visiting my profile (This Blog), however, so as not to waste your time, if you are not a girl (born female) who wants and is ready to marry a man in his fifties then don't bother reading this profile and move on. I am not accepting any more friends on here, I have plenty already. Besides, when I find and marry the one I'm looking for, I will delete all my Yahoo accounts and no longer visit here, for instead, it will be my wife my time will be spent on.

And as amusing as such screeds are to connoisseurs of the psychoceramic, there is an undercurrent of tragedy and human despair beneath the surface. Upon reading it, one pieces together a likely narrative of the author's life: his marriage and divorce (though one does wonder how he managed to marry in the first place, or why his wife waited until they had had four children to leave him). His hidebound, inflexible mindset, further rigidified by the certainties of absolute religion, having left him unprepared for dealing with real women on equal terms, subsequent attempts at dating were failures, each one prompting the addition of more denunciations and proscriptions to his list of requirements. (Certainly, some of the "disqualifications" hint at traumatic failed dates.) And he doesn't seem to have the people skills or historical insight to recognise that his vaunted strict Biblical values would only work in a world where one could buy a bride from her family without her getting a say in it.

There is a definite whiff of despair emanating from this document; on one hand, one feels pity for the poor, trapped wretch chronicling his futile struggle, knowing where this is likely to end in a way that he lacks the insight to. On the other hand, one hopes to God (literally or metaphorically) that he doesn't get to crush another human being beneath his rigid rules.

(via MeFi) ¶ dating despair psychoceramics religiots sex 3

US Republican electoral strategists' latest tactic against Barack Obama: ads that insinuate that he is the Antichrist, in the hope of getting evangelical Christian voters out to vote for McCain. They're careful not to say outright that Obama is the Antichrist, of course, as that would make them look like lunatics to non-Evangelical voters. Rather, the ad (titled "the One") has an innocuous surface message, ostensibly poking fun at Obama's messianic image, though is peppered with coded references to popular American Christian thriller series Left Behind:

As the ad begins, the words “It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One” flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: “We Are God”) and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, “A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”

Sapp knows that the phrasing and images could just be dismissed as a peculiar coincidence. After all, it was Oprah Winfrey who told an Iowa crowd that Obama was "the one!" But, he insists, "the frequency of these images and references don't make any sense unless you're trying to send the message that Obama could be the Antichrist." Mara Vanderslice, another Democratic consultant, who handled religious outreach for the 2004 Kerry campaign, agrees. "If they wanted to be funny, if they really wanted to play up the idea that Obama thinks he's the Second Coming, there were better ways to do it," she says. "Why use these awkward lines like, 'And the world will receive his blessings'?"

It’s not hard to see how some Obama haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don’t stop there. Everything from Obama’s left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be “A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent,” which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.

(via Mind Hacks) ¶ antichrist barack obama dog whistles politics religion religiots usa 3

The Exclusive Brethren sect, an ultra-conservative Christian separatist group, praised as pillars of the community by the previous right-wing Australian government (with which they had some kinds of dealings), and which, incidentally, also gave the world Aleister Crowley, is facing allegations of high-level criminal activity, including kidnapping, money laundering, fraud and bribery, in Australia, New Zealand and India.

Three sisters, from India, who say they are on the run from the sect, allege they can link it to numerous crimes.

"We've got 3000 pages of evidence … and now we're going to expose this whole thing," one of the sisters told reporters in Canberra.

¶ australia crime cults exclusive brethren fundamentalists religiots rightwingers skulduggery 1

A poll has shown that fewer than a third of Americans consider nanotechnology to be morally acceptable; considerably fewer people than in Europe:

In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.

In European surveys that posed identical questions about nanotechnology to people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, significantly higher percentages of people accepted the moral validity of the technology. In the United Kingdom, 54.1 percent found nanotechnology to be morally acceptable. In Germany, 62.7 percent had no moral qualms about nanotechnology, and in France 72.1 percent of survey respondents saw no problems with the technology.

The catch for Americans with strong religious convictions, Scheufele believes, is that nanotechnology, biotechnology and stem cell research are lumped together as means to enhance human qualities. In short, researchers are viewed as "playing God" when they create materials that do not occur in nature, especially where nanotechnology and biotechnology intertwine, says Scheufele.

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits. "They still oppose it," he says. "They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs. The issue isn't about informing these people. They are informed."

Technology makes peoples lives easier. Technology is the product of inventive geniuses who were inspired by God. Inventions and innovations improve life.

Science causes confustion and makes things complicated. Everytime there is a new discovery the old discoveries and old wisdom are discarded! And theories get more and more complex. Science makes people confused and complicates things. Who is the author of confusion? Satan of course. The bible it the opposite of science. Biblical wisdom NEVER CHANGES, and anyone can get it. Scientific wisdom is always changing and contradicting itself, and really nobody gets it.

(via WIRED News, alecm, imomus) ¶ anti-intellectualism culture nanotechnology politics religion religiots science society usa 0

MySpace's legendary contempt for its users has now extended to deleting the Atheists & Agnostics group with 35,000 members, apparently because its existence offended some religious hardliners.

“It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the world’s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics-- and if this situation goes unresolved I’ll have little choice but to believe they do,” said Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain of Harvard University. News Corporation, Murdoch’s global media corporation which also includes Fox News, purchased MySpace in 2005.

We were deleted two years ago due to complaints from a group called the "Christian Crusaders." They would search Myspace for profiles they found offensive, and then mass complain to customer service. Their strategy was to send so many emails to customer service that someone, somewhere at Myspace would delete the profile or group.

(via Charlie's Diary) ¶ atheism bigotry censorship freedom of speech murdoch myspace religiots usa 0

Top 100 quotes from Christian Fundamentalists on the web. Pure comedy gold:

Atheists have the greatest "cover" of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.

Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that's just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it's not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn't the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.

I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don't think he's ready to date yet. What's worse is that he's sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie

Apes are just creatures twisted by Satan to mock Jesus by giving EVILolition credibility. Further more they are naturally lust crazed for human women. Since they are not natural creatures they should be exterminated forthwith as the tools of evil they are.

The word of God has been in heaven forever. The KJV has always been there. The so called Hebrew words like Alleluia are English words. The English did not borrow them from the Hebrew but rather the Hebrew borrowed them from the English. If the KJV has always been there and is the original word of God then there is no other conclusion. The same can be said for any so called Greek words that were borrowed from the Greek or transliterated. It is a matter of what bias you approach this particular subject.

Jesus is not a Jew. Jesus was Jewish.

Do you know what medical students are exposed to as they are learning about medicine? In one college course, students were required to "examine" other stripped down students! This is abominable. Is it worth it to go through that kind of education and ignore God's Word? Looking on nakedness is a shameful and intolerable thing. And most employment for doctors and nurses requires looking on other people's nakedness (bathing patients, giving shots, operating, examining, etc.) What will we do as people who have been bought at the very high price of the blood of God? What will be most important to us? Our careers... or our integrity as priests of God?

(via Charlie's Diary) ¶ christianity creationism fundamentalists religiots stupidity unclear on the concept 1

There's bad news for the Westboro Baptist Church, a religious organisation whose central principle appears to be hatred of homosexuals and of anybody who doesn't hate them; they've been hit with a US$10.9m fine for picketing the funerals of soldiers (on the grounds that their deaths are divine punishment for America being too corrupt to put homosexuals to death).

Albert Snyder's attorney, Craig Trebilcock, had urged jurors to agree an amount "that says 'Don't do this' in Maryland again. Do not bring your circus of hate to Maryland again".

Defence attorney Jonathan Katz's argument that the $2.9m in compensatory damages already far exceeded the defendants' net worth and would be enough to "bankrupt them and financially destroy them" was ignored.

¶ attention seekers hate psychoceramics religiots schadenfreude westboro baptist church 0

If the RRR morning news is to be believed, the Australian citizenship examination will contain a question that reads something like:

Australian values are based on:
a) the Koran
b) Judaeo-Christianity
c) Catholicism
d) Secularism

Australia has been a secular culture; more so than, say, America; relatively few Australians attend churches, and religious dogma is more often mocked than revered. Religious debates of the sort seen elsewhere have little traction; Creationism isn't taken seriously, except perhaps in parts of Queensland, and attempts by rightwingers to make abortion an issue recently fell flat. But now, with the stroke of a pen, John Howard remakes Australia in his image, and secularism is now officially as un-Australian as Islamism.

(via 3RRR) ¶ australia culture war politics religiots rightwingers 0

The editor of the Indonesian edition of Playboy has been acquitted of indecency. While pornography is widely available in the populous Islamic country, the local edition of Playboy has avoided taking risks, and it is probably safe to say that most of its readers really do get it just for the articles:

The Indonesian version of the magazine went on sale for the first time last April, featuring several scantily-clad models but no nudity.

Arnada would have faced two years in prison, if convicted and his magazine welcomed the ruling. "Playboy Indonesia never has and will never publish nude photos or other forbidden materials," it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Thailand has blocked access to YouTube, after the site refused to remove a video insulting the king (by showing graffiti over his face). Thailand takes insulding the king very seriously; just recently, a Swiss man was jailed for ten years for defacing posters of the monarch.

One thing I'm wondering: would Thailand have blocked YouTube had this happened before last year's military coup?

¶ asia authoritarianism censorship indonesia playboy porn religiots thailand youtube 0

It's official: a US district court has ruled that household product manufacturer Procter & Gamble are not Satanists, despite the persistent urban legends: More specifically, the ruling smacked down four representatives of Amway, a rival product manufacturer allegedly connected with the US Religious Right and/or operating in a cult-like fashion, of deliberately spreading this rumour and urging a boycott. The defendants denied malicious intent, saying that their goal was merely to "fight the Church of Satan".

To the best of my knowledge the Church of Satan has not issued any statement on the ruling.

¶ amway fundamentalists paranoia psychoceramics religiots satanism urban legends usa 0

This year in India, anti-Valentine's Day demonstrators (mostly from the Hindu religious right) have adopted the tactic of forcibly marrying couples found celebrating Valentine's Day:

A 'rath' (decorated vehicle) prepared by the protesters, mainly activists of the Dharam Sena, for "forcibly marrying couples found celebrating Valentine's Day" was seized in Jabalpur, Additional Superintendent of Police Manohar Verma told PTI.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ authoritarianism crime culture culture war india law religion religiots 0

After a recount in the Victorian state election, the DLP has lost one of its two seats to Labor, who, in turn, have lost one of theirs to the Greens. So now the upper house looks like:

• ALP: 19
• Liberal Party: 15
• Greens: 3
• National Party: 2
• DLP: 1

Meanwhile, political scientists are blaming the election of this bunch of fusty relics (who are rather unlikely to speak for the fabled Silent Majority Of Suburban Battlers) on the above-the-line preferential voting system used to elect candidates. In short, this system works by allowing voters a choice: vote below the line, enumerating your candidates of choice in order from most to least preferred (and there's usually a good 40 or 50 there), or tick the box of one party above the line and automatically vote according to whatever preferences the party has chosen in its various deals. The political enthusiasts who keep up to date with the details of the preference deals are, for the most part, the same tiny minority of voters who can be bothered to vote below the line; meanwhile, the vast majority of voters tick one box and hope for a result with the flavour of their particular party.

IMHO, there is a solution: make above-the-line voting preferential, allowing voters to rank their parties of choice in order, removing control over the exact distribution of the preferences of above-the-line voters from party dealmakers.

¶ australia culture war politics religiots rightwingers victoria zombies 2

It's December, Christmas sales are entering their third month, and Britain's right-wing tabloids are full of stories about politically-correct do-gooders banning Christmas to avoid offending minorities. The problem is, further investigation reveals the stories to be utter nonsense. Birmingham hasn't ordered Christmas to be rebranded as "Winterval" (the name was used for a three-month shopping promotion in 1998, and never since), the evil secularist LibDems in Luton haven't replaced it with a Harry Potter festival, and as for the millionaire who was banned from putting up a light display outside his home, that had nothing to do with enforcing secularism and everythign to do with the large illuminated snowmen, amplifiers blaring Christmas songs and increased traffic and crime.

So what's going on here? Well, it looks like the "war on Christmas" is a quite deliberate ploy by a loud minority of religious traditionalists trying to claim more cultural clout than today's largely secular society entitles them to.

"There's something very complicated going on here," says Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "It has to do with the contest between Christianity and Islam: Christians are becoming very alarmed about the progress they see Islam making in this country, and they fear their own festivals will be overwhelmed. I was doing a phone-in the other day, and everybody who rang in was saying, 'They're banning Christmas!' So I said: 'Who? Where? Who's standing outside a church saying you can't go in? Who's coming and knocking on your door at 6am and asking if there's a nativity set in your house?' It's quite dangerous, I think, to incite this kind of resentment against a perceived enemy."

This year, though, the defenders of Christmas aren't only invoking the fear that nebulous Muslim forces might be about to obliterate Britain's traditional religion. Simultaneously, they have also aligned themselves with Muslim groups, arguing that the real enemy is secularisation. It's a position well-crafted for the historical moment, and for the currently fashionable notion of Britain as comprised of groups defined above all by their faith (even though barely 10% of us regularly attend any kind of religious service).

Then, last year, the War on Christmas received a massive boost when it exploded on to the American political landscape, thanks primarily to two Fox News anchormen, John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly. Gibson had a vested interest, having just published a book entitled The War On Christmas: How The Liberal Plot To Ban The Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought. (A note in the interests of full disclosure: O'Reilly, as I enjoy telling people whenever possible, accused me of "spout[ing] incredible nonsense" earlier this year after I wrote a story about a speech in which he invited al-Qaida to attack the liberal stronghold of San Francisco; previously, he had speculated that the Guardian "might be edited by Osama bin Laden".)

¶ culture culture war daily mail politics religiots theocrats uk usa 5

It looks like last year's Danish cartoons row may have actually helped Denmark's exports:

While Danish milk products were dumped in the Middle East, fervent rightwing Americans started buying Bang & Olufsen stereos and Lego. In the first quarter of this year Denmark's exports to the US soared 17%. The British writer Christopher Hitchens organised a buy-Danish campaign. Among the thousands of emails sent to Rose was one from an American soldier serving in Iraq. "He told me he was sitting in Iraq, watching a game of football and drinking a can of Carlsberg," Rose said.

¶ middle east politics religiots 1

Hacker turned theologian Simon Cozens puts forward an argument that the belief system known as "Christianity" in America is not Christianity. By which he means not that is a weird form of Christianity, or even that it is heretical or flawed, but, quite literally, that it is a completely different, unrelated, belief system that happens to have the same name:

The situation only makes sense if you consider a separate entity called "American Christianity" which is an entirely separate religion to Christianity. Not a branch of Christianity, not a form of Christianity, but something with absolutely no connection to Christianity at all. It's a separate religion. And what is the goal of this religion?

look at it phenomenologically, look at it sociologically, and what do you see? Basically a syncretic folk religion, based primarily on American nationalism, an expression of the "pervasive religious dimension of American political life". (Bellah; see also "Civil Religion in America") Its purposes are basically civil and political. Its morality is taken from a highly selective and individualistic reading of the Old Testament, and it mixes in bits of consumerism, Zionism, Republican political values, and corporatism for good measure. Add to this an almost romantic sentimentality concerning the person of Jesus, much like the contribution of Catholicism to Vodou religions, and suddenly it all makes sense.

(via reddragdiva) ¶ christianity culture politics religion religiots rightwingers usa 2

American Christianity may have fallen behind fundamentalist Islam in the fanaticism stakes, but it's now making an effort to catch up. Witness the Jesus Camps, America's own madrassas, which serve to indoctrinate 9-10-year-olds in a severe form of fundamentalist Christianity, linked to all manner of conservative ideologies, from veneration of George W. Bush to denial of global warming:

Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim -- the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an "army" to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle -- how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)

at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus -- the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, "Oh no, we're not like them" -- but they admit that the principal difference is simply that "We're right."

In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought out and the children are urged to identify -- many of the little ones come forward and reverently touch his cardboard hands.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ christianity extremists fundamentalism george w. bush indoctrination jesus camp propaganda religiots rightwingers 0

This past Fourth of July, a megachurch pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, has given the Statue of Liberty a faith-based makeover:

As the congregation of the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church looked on and its pastor, Apostle Alton R. Williams, presided, a brown shroud much like a burqa was pulled away to reveal a giant statue of the Lady, but with the Ten Commandments under one arm and "Jehovah" inscribed on her crown. And in place of a torch, she held aloft a large gold cross, as if to ward off the pawnshops, the car dealerships and the discount furniture outlets at the busy corner of Kirby Parkway and Winchester that is her home. A single tear graced her cheek.

In "The Meaning of the Statue of Liberation Through Christ: Reconnecting Patriotism With Christianity," he explains that the teardrop on his Lady is God's response to what he calls the nation's ills, including legalized abortion, a lack of prayer in schools and the country's "promotion of expressions of New Age, Wicca, secularism and humanism." In another book, he said Hurricane Katrina was retribution for New Orleans's embrace of sin.

(via jwz) ¶ culture war religion religiots usa 1

A new video game is in the works in which the player plays a paramilitary soldier in New York whose job is to convert or exterminate nonbelievers and apostates. It's not the latest piece of viral jihadist propaganda from al-Qaeda, but the latest tie-in to the Left Behind movies, bound for a Wal-Mart near you in time for the Christmas shopping season:

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.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ christianity religiots usa 0

America may have had Freedom Fries and Freedom Ticklers, but Iran is doing one better: the national confectioners' union has ordered danish pastries to be renamed "Roses of the Prophet Mohammed", in retaliation for a Danish newspaper's disrespecting of the Prophet. Presumably there would also be a mandatory "(peace be upon him)" after that, making the new appellation sound even more awkward.

¶ denmark iran islam politics religion religiots 0

American Holy Man and political powerbroker Pat Robertson, who previously called for the assassination of Venezuelan leftist president Hugo Chavez, is at it again, this time claiming that God smote Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon for giving up the Gaza Strip:

"He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America,'" Robertson told viewers of his long-running television show, "The 700 Club." "God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone,'" he said.

¶ ariel sharon israel pat robertson politics religiots rightwingers 1

In Australia, it is now a crime to discuss suicide options by telephone, fax, email or the internet. So much for the ideals of free speech and liberalism; apparently the right of religious busybodies to control when and how people can exit their divinely bestowed lives overrides such considerations.

¶ australia authoritarianism censorship religiots 0

Just as proponents of "Intelligent Design" are rallying against the theory of evolution, their counterparts in linguistics are pushing the (strictly scientific, mind you, and not in the least religious) theory of "Wrathful Dispersion":

The opponents of Wrathful Dispersion maintain that it is really just Babelism, rechristened so that it might fly under the radar of those who insist that religion has no place in the state-funded classroom. Babelism was clearly rooted in the Judeo-Christian story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 19); it held that the whole array of modern languages was created by God at a single stroke, for the immediate purpose of disrupting humanity's hubristic attempt to build a tower that would reach to heaven... Wrathful Dispersion is couched in more cautiously neutral language; rather than tying linguistic diversity to a specific biblical event, it merely argues that the differences among modern languages are too perverse to have arisen spontaneously, and must therefore be the work of some wrathful (and powerful) disperser who deliberately set out to accomplish a confusion of tongues.

One cynical observer has likened WD to Scientology, which "is a religion for purposes of tax assessment, a science for purposes of propaganda, and a work of fiction for purposes of copyright."

The Tower of Babel scenario of the Biblical account in Genesis 11 posits that all people spoke the same language before the Lord confused human tongues. Up until the nineteenth century it was common knowledge that the pre-Babel tongue was the language of the Bible, Ancient Hebrew and the language of Adam and Eve. ven in colonial America, Hebrew was so revered that the first dissertation in the New World, at Harvard College, was on Hebrew as The Mother Tongue. The Continental Congress nearly made Hebrew the language of the new republic, as much to break away from England as to reaffirm America's status as the new Promised Land.

And it goes on from there, going into things from the white-supremacist tenets of Darwinism to Noam Chomsky being the connection between Godless non-Edenist linguistics and rabid anti-Israelism, not to mention the "proto-world" fallacy of assuming that languages remain largely static.

(via found) ¶ bible hebrew linguistics religion religiots satire science usa wrathful dispersion 2

In what The Age says is part of the hardline Christian conservative Assembly of God movement "gaining influence" across Australia, two Assembly of God councillors have won seats on the Shepparton council on a platform of banning a brothel. I wonder whether this is an isolated incident, or the sign of a larger trend of hardline religious moralists winning more power and reshaping Australia in their own image.

¶ assembly of god australia culture war religiots 0

A jihadist website has published a fatwa on "Islamically-sound" ways of playing soccer:

2. International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like "foul," "penalty," "corner," "goal," "out" and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished, reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told, "You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is forbidden."

3. Do not call "foul" and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose.

4. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.

6. Do not play in two halves. Rather play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the polytheists, the corrupted and the disobedient.

13. You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish and reprimand him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practicing?

(via substitute) ¶ bizarre football islam islamism religiots sport wtf 4

George W. Bush, Commander of the Free World, says that God told him to invade Iraq:

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

The Whitehouse, however, is denying that Bush made those statements. I wonder whether it's (a) to not alienate the more secular-minded Republican voters (i.e., neoconservatives and libertarians) or (b) because much of the staunchly pro-Israeli US Religious Right would consider the idea of God sanctioning a Palestinian state blasphemous.

¶ george w. bush god mental illness religion religiots 0

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, a list of charities and their ideological affiliations; in particular, which charities are fronts for fundamentalist religious groups (predominantly Dominionist Christians, as this is a US-specific list), will use money donated for evangelism or pushing a political or theological agenda, or have troubling denominational biases or discriminatory practices (such as, for example, the Salvation Army).

(via kmusser) ¶ charities hurricane katrina politics religion religiots usa 0

As expected, America's religiots are making hay of Hurricane Katrina. A "pro-life" group claims that the hurricane is God's wrath on America for allowing abortion, taking as their proof the fact that the hurricane looked vaguely foetus-like in some satellite images. And an evangelical Christian group is claiming that God sent the hurricane to stop a gay festival due to take place in New Orleans. Meanwhile, holy man Rev. Fred Phelps has his predictable hate-on over recent events; you can almost feel the spittle flying from the screen as he calls the faithful to pray for more dead bodies floating on the santorum-rancid waters of New Orleans, not to mention for US soldiers to be killed in Iraq because America is an "evil fag nation".

Soon, I imagine, statements will appear on at least two Islamist websites from hitherto-unknown al-Qaeda franchises claiming responsibility for this daring strike into the very heart of the Zionist-Crusader Infidel.

(via chuck_lw) ¶ abortion gay hate religiots usa 5

A set of parodic postage stamps commemorating American anti-scientists; a more timely response to this:

While standing in line at the post office, I saw this new series of stamps devoted to American scientists...which is kind of ironic considering how our sciences are now under attack from all corners: from evangelicals to pharmaceutical marketing, educational declines, and funding cuts. It's like singing "Happy Birthday" to a man as he's being taken away on a gurney.

(via bOING bOING) ¶ creationism gay parody religiots science usa 3

The Australian federal government adds another ally to its culture-war Coalition of Willing, with the Special Minister of State addressing a dinner by a militantly anti-gay Christian group known as Salt Shakers:

The Salt Shakers website says it is time to stop pandering to the gay minority group, especially as homosexual sex is still the main cause of HIV/AIDS in Australia.

"By lending his credibility to a hate group like Salt Shakers, Senator Abetz is undermining the Howard Government's commitment to tolerance of homosexuals and religious minorities," Mr Croome said.

And so, the courtship dance between the Australian conservative government and a rising US-style religious right continues. Which suggests that, far from being in decline, Australian wowserism is remaking itself in the image of the tremendously politically sophisticated US religious right and attempting to make the (increasingly misnamed) Liberal Party its own (much as happened with the Republican Party in the US).

¶ aids australia bigotry culture war gay religiots religious right wowsers 0

Australia's Education Minister endorses Creationism, or "intelligent design", calls for it to be taught alongside evolution. And so, John Howard's Australia slips closer to the parallel universe in which the Joh For PM campaign was successful. There is no word on whether flat-earth geography, geocentric astronomy or alchemy will also be taught along the Godless post-Enlightenment sciences to give students diversity and "reasonable choice".

¶ australia creationism culture war religiots 10

The Australian federal government has failed in its attempt to have the film Mysterious Skin banned, with the Office of Film and Literature Classification deciding that it should keep its R rating. The government, along with various conservative Christian groups, requested a review of the film's rating.

I wonder whether the government will now move to tighten up censorship laws and/or stack change the composition of the OFLC's board on the grounds that it is "too liberal" and does not represent "community values" (you know, of communities such as the Festival of Light and the Assembly of God).

(via graham) ¶ australia censorship culture war mysterious skin religiots 0

The Howard government's fondness for censorship and kneejerk moralism strikes again: now they're pushing to have the film Mysterious Skin banned. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock ordered a review of the film's classification because the puritanical wowsers from the Australian Family Association and evangelical Christian groups read a summary of the film and decided that it could titiliate paedophiles or help them seduce children. Which, as anyone who has seen the film will tell you, is absurd. But it plays well with the Hillsong/Family First constituency who have the government's ear, so the rest of Australia have to make do with the cultural products our appointed spiritual leaders decide are appropriate.

(The film showed here in the UK some months ago, and there was no outcry whatsoever; to people here, it was just another small indie film. But for some reason, Australians cannot be trusted with the same amount of leeway they have elsewhere.)

Anyway, if you live in Australia and are displeased with small-minded petty theocrats from one-book households deciding what you can and cannot legally see, write a letter to a newspaper. It's important that someone lets the censors of Canberra know that they are answerable to people other than religious prudes. (Perhaps it's time someone printed stickers that said "I Watch Controversial Arthouse Films And I Vote"?)

(via justlikehoney) ¶ australia censorship culture war mysterious skin religiots 4

I'm not a huge fan of the This Modern World comic. Perhaps it comes from not living in the U.S., and thus being able to tune out the domestic issues it often covers, or perhaps it's that, more often than not, it tends to smugly preach to the choir and its message can be boiled down to something like "Republicans/neocons/right-wingers are insane, evil doodyheads and they smell, so there". However, the most recent one is a rather keen satire of recent Creationist tactics.

¶ comics leftwingers religion religiots science secularism this modern world usa 1

In the U.S., a small minority of pharmacists are refusing to sell birth-control pills to women, sometimes even confiscating their prescriptions, on "moral grounds". State legislatures are divided between outlawing such actions and enshrining them in law:

At a Brooks pharmacy in Laconia, New Hampshire, Suzanne Richards, a 21-year-old single mother with a 3-year-old son, was denied the morning after pill because of the pharmacist's religious convictions.

Richards says she felt "humiliated and traumatised", and was too frightened to approach another pharmacist the next day, allowing the 72-hour limit for taking the pill to pass.

One can understand people getting squeamish about the abortion of developed foetuses with nervous systems and such, but refusing to sell morning-after pills is just stupid. For one, it ignores the fact that between 60% and 80% of fertilised embryos are naturally spontaneously aborted, in much the same way that the morning-after pill would do (an argument which, when combined with pro-lifer ideology and a dose of logic, implies that much of the population of Heaven would be comprised of never-born embryos). This is clearly not about saving lives but rather about assertion of power; the Religious Right flexing its muscle and seeing how much it can get away with in Bush's America.

¶ abortion authoritarianism human rights religion religiots vigilantism 0

In the U.S., abortion-clinic and gay-bar bomber Eric Rudolph, who hid from police in the North Carolina mountains for five years using survivalist techniques, has confessed to the Atlanta olympics bombing. So far, he appears to have declined to give a theological argument against sporting events. His explanation for bombing the Olympics is here; apparently it has to do with the Olympics' "despicable" Lennonist-socialist ideals; that and abortion.

Meanwhile, in Britain, another one of God's soldiers has been convicted for planning ricin attacks on the public. Kamel Bourgass, linked to al-Qaeda and a militant Islamist group centred at the Finsbury Park mosque, was found to have plans and raw materials for making the deadly poison; it is believed his plans for it included spraying it on car door handles around that hotbed of Zionist-Crusader Infidelism, Holloway Road. Bourgass, also known as Nadir, is already serving a life sentence after stabbing a police officer to death when facing arrest.

¶ islamism olympics religiots terrorism uk usa 2

Interesting to see that the Daily Mail's headline yesterday on the Pope's death was "SAFE IN HEAVEN"; in other words, that they presented an article of faith as a fact. Then again, what are tabloids for?

¶ daily mail in your heart you know it's flat religiots 3

More news on the Australian Liberal Party's project to establish a US-style religious-right power base: it now emerges that the Hillsong Church, a hardline, US-style Pentecostal church with links to the Liberal Party, has received almost A$800,000 in funding from various government agencies; this included funding for community programmes and "emergency relief", and more than $300,000 from the Department of Workplace Relations in the last financial year alone.

¶ australia culture war hillsong religiots 8

An amusing take on the evolution-vs.-"intelligent-design" debate. (via Toby)

¶ comics creationism evolution religiots 0

What do Saudi Arabia, the Bush Whitehouse, the Mormons, the Vatican and former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad have in common? They are all part of an international alliance against liberal secularism:

The Doha conference, and the resulting UN resolution, provided a striking example of growing cooperation between the Christian right (especially in the United States) and conservative Muslims - groups who, according to the clash-of-civilisations theory, ought to be sworn enemies.

The family debate certainly divides the world, but the divisions are not between east and west, nor do they follow the usual dividing lines of international politics. The battle is between liberal secularists - predominantly in Europe - and conservatives elsewhere who think religion has a role in government.

On this issue, with a president who sounds increasingly like an old-fashioned imam, the United States now sits in the religious camp alongside the Islamic regimes: not so much a clash of civilisations, more an alliance of fundamentalisms.

And in another unholy alliance, US Christian Fundamentalist groups are holding their noses and jumping into the hot tub with Hollywood on the issue of file-sharing, in the interest of instituting centralised control over the lawless internet, mechanisms control which could just as easily be used for enforcing religious morality and stamping out sin as for making sure that every byte of copyrighted content is paid for.

¶ catholic copyfight mahathir mohamad malaysia mormons religiots saudi arabia secularism usa vatican 2

Sydney's Anglican Dean, Philip Jensen, has said that the tsunami was a warning from God that judgment is coming, and that society has become too sinful and Godless. Perhaps if we banned pornography and Satanic rock music and indecent language on TV and kissing in movies and unmarried couples going about unchaperoned and started stoning homosexuals, witches and wearers of mixed fabrics to death as the Book of Leviticus commands, God would make all the earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and suicide bombers and email spam and antibiotic-resistant superbugs and killer bees and killer sharks stop. Maybe if we were super-obedient, He would even see fit to bring down petrol prices or something.

Another religious leader, Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, claims that God sent the earthquake to kill 2,000 Swedish tourists because their country prosecuted a fundamentalist preacher for preaching against homosexuality. That would be a lot of collateral damage for a kind, loving God; though I suppose for Rev. Phelps' God, it makes perfect sense.

On a different note, the Ayn Rand Institute says that the US should not help tsunami victims, because (a) taxation is theft, and (b) altruism is evil.

¶ ayn rand bigotry psychoceramics religiots rev. phelps sweden tsunami 3

The first people convicted under Victoria's religious vilification laws were two evangelical Christian pastors, one of them an unsuccessful Senate candidate from the Family First political party (you know, the ones all the majors did deals with to keep those dangerous radical Greens out of the Senate), convicted for a 2002 seminar in which they told their congregation that Muslims were training to take over Australia and encouraged domestic violence, and that Islam was an inherently violent religion. The two pastors, from evangelical group Catch the Fire Ministries, claimed that they were merely trying to "increase understanding of Muslim culture".

On one hand, it seems fair enough; the two defendants were obviously fundamentalist bozos. On the other hand, it makes one wonder against whom else the laws could be used. If, for example, Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji did a bookshop tour of Australia to discuss her thesis that mainstream Islam has problematic veins of intolerance and absolutism, could she be prosecuted? Could she be prosecuted for claiming that the Koran was written as a pragmatic political tool for governing the Arab Empire, and not a divine revelation? (Also, if she did the same in Britain after the Blair government's Religious Vilification Bill, which allegedly prohibits saying mean things about the Koran, were passed, what would happen?) Could we end up with a situation where following certain lines of inquiry could lead to criminal prosecution and, instead, baroque lines of circumlocution must be devised to avoid the elephant in the middle of the room?

¶ religiots 6

Controversy has erupted after a Christian school in North Carolina introduced into its classes a booklet defending slavery in the South. The booklet, titled Southern Slavery, As It Was, attempts to provide a Biblical justification for the institution of slavery, asserting that the Confederate South was the last true Christian civilisation, and claims that the life of slaves was one of plenty and simple pleasures, with nearly every slave enjoying a higher standard of living than the poor whites:

"Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." (page 24)

"There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world." (page 24)

The school insists that the booklet merely provides a balanced view of the institution of slavery; critics argue that it goes beyond that, and provides a theological justification for the neo-Confederate movement. (via bOING bOING)

¶ bigotry christianity north carolina patriarchy racism religiots slavery usa 0

US Citizenship and Immigration Services has denied a Filipino man residency because his wife had had a sex change 24 years earlier, and thus was legally a man, making their marriage unlawful. The funny thing, though, is that the wife had been legally living as a woman in the United States for the past 24 years, and had been recognised as such on her US citizenship certificate.

Meanwhile, the CBS and NBC are refusing to air a church's television advertisement as it's "too controversial". The controversy has to do with the advertisement implying acceptance of gay and lesbian couples.

And in Alabama, a lawmaker has proposed a bill to ban novels with gay protagonists from public libraries, to protect children from the "homosexual agenda". The bill will also prohibit books which suggest that homosexuality, or any lifestyle prohibited by Alabama's sodomy laws, is natural.

Meanwhile, a recent report claims that abstinence-only sex-education programmes, as promoted by the Bush Whitehouse, are riddled with inaccuracies, including claims that touching a person's genitals can lead to pregnancy, AIDS can be transmitted in sweat or tears, half of gay male teenagers in the US are HIV-positive, condoms don't work, and a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person".

¶ abstinence aids bigotry culture war gay religiots rightwingers sex usa 0

The US religious right is up in arms about a recent film about sexologist Alfred Kinsey, because it does not demonise the man enough:

"Alfred Kinsey is responsible in part for my generation being forced to deal face-to-face with the devastating consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, pornography and abortion," said Brandi Swindell, head of a college-oriented group called Generation Life that plans to picket theaters showing the film.

"Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family Institute.

Meanwhile, according this article (via 1.0), many Evangelicals believe (a) that God personally put Bush in the Whitehouse to give America another chance, and (b) if bad things happen on Bush's watch, it's not his fault, but rather divine wrath for the excesses of liberalism (i.e., America not being a proper Talibanic theocracy). (Which paints a rather unflattering portrait of the God of the Bible Belt; either He is a sadistic bully and a psychopath, or else His creation is of no more serious concern to Him than a game of The Sims is to computer gamer. As flies to wanton boys, indeed.)

And those reading this in California, and in the confidence that they're well outside those barbarous Red States, don't be so sure. Apparently, according to former Democratic strategist, the Republicans stand a good chance of picking up California, and its 54 electoral college votes, in 2008; this could turn the US into a one-party state; or perhaps it could be just what the Libertarians or Greens need.

Voting patterns have been steadily moving California back to the midwest in recent years - a trend that is likely to continue. Democrats can rely on Los Angeles county and the San Francisco Bay area, but these concentrations are now surrounded by Republican territory.

The same cultural conservatism that is reshaping America is also alive and well in California. Sixties-era liberalism may still radiate from the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco to the Bay area, but today's California is much more a capital for the Christian right than for the progressive left.

¶ alfred kinsey california culture war film god religiots usa 0

The twilight of secularism (an ongoing series): Australia's highest-ranking Catholic clergyman and leading conservative hardliner, Cardinal George Pell, gave a speech comparing Islam to Communism and saying that secular democracy has failed and must be replaced with what he called "democratic personalism", with paternalistic Christian government being the only hope of countering the spread of fundamentalist Islam.

"The small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction which communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other," he said.

He asked: "Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? "What would democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?"

Perhaps, after a few more terms of John Howard/Tony Abbott, we'll find out. Besides which, "democratic personalism" has a nicely euphemistic ring to it. Given how misleading it is for the Tories to call themselves the "Liberal Party", perhaps they'll take the hint and rename themselves the Democratic Personalist Party.

¶ authoritarianism catholic censorship conformism culture war islam paternalism religiots 6

A good essay by Simon Schama on why America is now two nations: Godly America and Worldly America.

Worldly America is pragmatic, practical, rational and sceptical. In California it passed Proposition 71, funding embryonic stem cell research beyond the restrictions imposed by Bush's federal policy. Godly America is mythic, messianic, conversionary, given to acts of public witness, hence the need - in Utah and Montana and a handful of other states - to poll the voters on amendments to their state constitution defining marriage as a union between the opposite sexes. But then Worldly America is said to feed the carnal vanities; Godly America banishes and punishes them. From time to time Godly America will descend on the fleshpots of Worldly America, from Gotham (it had its citadel-like Convention there after all) to Californication, will shop for T-shirts, take a sniff at the local pagans and then return to base-camp more convinced than ever that a time of Redemption and Repentance must be at hand. But if the stiff-necked transgressors cannot be persuaded, they can be cowed and conquered.

And jwz makes a case for the US Presidential election having been rigged (though concedes that it is entirely possible that that didn't change the final outcome):

bellaciao.org has some graphs of the major discrepencies between exit polling and vote counts. They're pretty incredible! Now, maybe the exit polling methodology is just fundamentally broken, but isn't it funny when you see pictures like the one at the right, knowing that last year, Diebold's CEO swore that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to President Bush."

You don't steal an election with a landslide, you steal it with 3%. You stay within the margin of error across the board so that it's not obvious.

¶ culture culture war fraud politics religiots usa 4

A look at how Family First handle the media from a Christian concerned about their tactics (to vehemently deny religious affiliations on one front and assert them elsewhere). It appears that they're the kinds of True Believers to whom the ends justify the means, which suggests that they could be extremely dangerous. Do the ALP and Democrats really believe there is much to be gained strategically by replacing the Greens in the Senate with this mob?

¶ australia family first politics religiots 0

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died."
-- Jimmy Swaggart.

You know, "I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died" sounds like a country song lyric.

¶ bigotry country homophobia jimmy swaggart murder religiots 2

"If you all don't lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes." (via everyone, it seems)

¶ religiots showtunes 1

Is Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Moonies cult, sponsor of religious conservatives across the US and Congressionally-crowned "King of Peace" also providing nuclear submarines to North Korea, giving them the capability to strike California? If so, he's quite the James Bond villain.

¶ moonies north korea religiots rightwingers sun myung moon 1

A Catholic canon lawyer has filed heresy charges against Senator John Kerry, the US presidential candidate, in an ecclesiastical court. The charges relate to Kerry taking communion whilst advocating legalised abortion.

It will be interesting to see if the Catholic Church prosecutes these charges. They seem to have had a policy of not prescribing Catholic politicians' agendas, though this is changing somewhat with the conservative line taken by the current Pope (and, indeed, doesn't look to get any more liberal, with demographic shifts giving more power to conservative bishops in Africa). On the other hand, there are politics to consider; aside from the likelihood of a backlash occurring from any perceived interference in the election, the Vatican is not too fond of Bush (indeed, it has been claimed that the Pope thinks he may be the Antichrist foretold in the Book of Revelation, though this may well be apocryphal), and may not be too keen to shoot down the opposition.

¶ catholic heresy john kerry politics religiots us 5

Ted Jesus Christ GOD is a man with a plan to protect America from terrorism. This he intends to accomplish by building sealed underground cities for the worthy to move to. The cities would be deep underground (deep enough to guard against burrowing nukes sent by America's evil enemies), with huge lift shafts, sealed ecosystems, and farms growing natural ("Creator-original") food. Only the most virtuous and genetically pure 37,000 Americans would be allowed to live in the cities; Satanists, Pagans, atheists and "DarkSide people" (I guess they're the ones with the black clothes and facial piercings or something) would be ostracised to up top, where they'd be easy pickings for the forces of evil. Also, alcohol, drugs and pharmaceuticals would be banned, as for thousands of years people survived well enough without them. Oh, and the the X Files are real, only "X" stands for Christ, and they're a secret FBI/CIA programme to isolate demonic DNA and hunt down and destroy Satan. We know this is true because he has angels with IQs of 10,000 telling him it is.

¶ psychoceramics religiots underground usa 2

George W. Bush, many US leftists and secularists say, is a religious fundamentalist zealot determined to turn America into a theocracy and/or use his presidency to bring about, and be at the front of, the Battle of Armageddon. Not so, according to this sociological analysis of US Evangelical Christianity. For one, the two aims are rooted in two incompatible Christian Fundamentalist doctrines (reconstructionism and premillenialism). Secondly, Bush belongs to the same religious denomination as Hillary Clinton. (via MeFi)

The connection between Christian commitment and politics has always been pretty strange in this country. Ronald Reagan became beloved of the "religious right" while rarely darkening the door of a church and articulating only vague belief in a vague God, while the church-going, Bible-toting Bill Clinton was despised by them. If there has been a recent American president whose policies were derived relatively consistently from evangelical Christian theology, it would be Jimmy Carter, that Baptist Sunday-school teacher from Plains, Ga. But that's a story for another day.

Mind you, Bush still noisily attempts to tear down the wall between Church and State, ostracises secularists and throws bones to the Religious Right (such as his appointment of bona-fide Fundamentalist nutter John Ashcroft to the Department of Justice and railing against the threat to Truth, Justice and the American Way that gay marriage is), in between mouthing religious catchphrases at the right moments, though chances are, that has more to do with electoral opportunism than religious zeal.

¶ christianity george w. bush politics religiots society usa 1

Is US foreign policy strongly influenced by a fundamentalist belief in Satan? (via FmH)

Ellis argues, you can't understand contemporary American politics without understanding the importance of profound spiritual faith, and specifically belief in Absolute Evil. "An experience-centered believer," he says, "is going to think and vote different ways from someone who -- like me, being a Lutheran -- checks the precedents and reads the Bible and thinks for a while before making a decision."

So when our born-again president refers to Osama bin Laden as "the Evil One," he is not dealing in metaphor or analogy, even assuming he is capable of such things. Rather he is addressing his co-religionists in a not-so-secret code. "That makes perfect sense to a born-again believer," Ellis says. "Evil, like God, is One. So you can say, and believe in, an 'Axis of Evil,' because you know that the person who is giving the orders to bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the leader of Iran and the leader of North Korea is, of course, Satan."

The thought that such atavistic, aggressively anti-intellectual beliefs may be governing the world's largest nuclear arsenal is not a comfortable one.

¶ al-qaeda politics religion religiots satan usa 2

Comment shamelessly stolen from someone else's a LiveJournal:

I wonder how long it will be before certain Christian Conservatives will argue that the earthquake in Bam, Iran was God's wrath against Iran for supporting terro...

Oh, wait. I forgot. God only inflicts disaster on US because of gay firemen.

(from Lt. Wilkes)

¶ gay iran religiots sarcasm usa 1

*ahem* Is this thing switched on?

The EFA looks at Senator Alston's spam bill. It looks like the possibility of the World's Biggest Luddite having crafted a fair and enlightened spam law was too good to be true; according to the EFA, the bill will give miscellaneous ill-defined government officials sweeping search-and-seizure powers without the need for criminal proceedings, and also legitimise spam from various parties (including Alston's favourites, religious groups, who will be able to tell you why you're going to burn in hell with impunity).

¶ australia politics religiots spam 3

The EFA's response to, and refutation of, allegations of them being "the spokespeople of the porn industry", "doctrinaire libertarians" and defenders of child pornography. The allegations in question were made by Senator Harradine (a religious-right crank from Tasmania, whose vote has been vital to the government on occasion) and Senator Alston (the slightly less reactionary Minister for Communication, often referred to as "the World's Biggest Luddite"). (via Toby)

¶ australia censorship efa politics religiots 0

The Dalai Lama: cuddly, celebrity-endorsed embodiment of Peace'n'Love and self-help and feeling good about yourself and universal acceptance, or bigoted reactionary snake-oil peddler, whose mediæval views are modulated by a hypocritical pandering to gullible, moneyed westerners?

In reality, Tibetan Buddhism is not a values-free system oriented around smiles and a warm heart. It is a religion with tough ethical underpinnings that sometimes get lost in translation. For example, the Dalai Lama explicitly condemns homosexuality, as well as all oral and anal sex. His stand is close to that of Pope John Paul II, something his Western followers find embarrassing and prefer to ignore. His American publisher even asked him to remove the injunctions against homosexuality from his book, "Ethics for the New Millennium," for fear they would offend American readers, and the Dalai Lama acquiesced.

I remember a public talk he gave at his headquarters in Dharamsala in northern India in 1990, after conflict between Tibetans and Indians there. He spoke in Tibetan, and his delivery was stern and admonitory, like a forbidding, old-fashioned father reprimanding his children. The crowd listened respectfully, and went away chastened.

All this reminds me of claims about various parties in the Middle East (on both sides) saying one thing in English for the benefit of gullible western liberals and another, considerably more warlike, thing in their people's own language. The moral of the story: the dumb Yanqui (and that includes Americans, Britons, Australians, Canadians and such) are mugs to be played as such.

But yes, back to the subject at hand. I once got a book "by" the Dalai Lama as a present from a new-age relative. Little surprise that it consisted of the most vapidly insipid pabulum, a lowest-common-denominator collection of self-help aphorisms with the Dalai Lama brand slapped on it. It's highly unlikely that its wisdom came from any tradition older then 1960s California. The Dalai Lama appears to have become the leading brand of guilt-assuagement for affluent Westerners whose TV doesn't quite drown out the awareness that they're living high off the hog amidst massive injustice and thus need to be reassured that they're good people and their positive thoughts cancel out any contribution their lifestyle makes to global suffering. Either that or he's just an incredibly successful conman. Or both.

And here's an article on rampant brutality in feudal Tibet; not quite the happy valley of bliss Richard Gere would have you believe. Mind you, it seems a bit pro-Chinese in places. And here's Hitchens' opinion on the Dalai Lama. (via MeFi)

¶ buddhism christopher hitchens contrarianism dalai lama feudalism new-age religiots theocracy tibet 10

Straight Pride Wear; where you can express your intolerance for alternative lifestyles in eXtreme skate-mook style that wouldn't look amiss at a skate ramp or the mosh pit at Big Day Out/a Limp Bizkit concert. The only thing they're missing is big yellow shorts with "Exit Only" written on the back. And it's not just about shaming the sodomites back into their closet, it's also about being a good all-American patriot, as the stars and stripes will attest. And the links to religious-right groups and the "pro-life-punk" movement pretty much confirm one's suspicions. (via MeFi)

I wonder when the Ku Klux Klan will follow the lead and bring out a line of "White Pride" streetwear for Aryan mooks.

¶ bigotry homophobia religiots rightwingers wtf 3

Recently aircraft were banned from the skies above Disneyland, to prevent terrorists from striking America in its heart (and to prevent competitors from advertising to its customers; one of the profitable side-effects of the War On Terror). Now Christian Fundamentalist groups are suing to have the ban lifted on Gay Days, allowing them to overfly the park with giant banners condemning homosexuality. Words fail me. (via MeFi)

¶ disneyland gay religiots terrorism the long siege 0

An interesting article about Jack Chick, author of numerous Christian Fundamentalist crackpot tracts and ironic inspiration to several generations of underground comics artists, including Daniel Clowes and Robert Crumb.

When Clowes, whose screenplay for the indie film Ghost World received an Academy Award nomination, was in college, he read 80 Chick tracts in one sitting. "By the end of the night I was convinced I was going to hell," he says. "I had never been so terrified by a comic book."

The movie will consist of a series of oil paintings that the camera will dramatically pan across to give the appearance of movement. Carter has completed most of the paintings, which are being stored in the offices of Chick Publications. Fans have encouraged me to try to see them. Kurt Kuersteiner, Web master of the Jack Chick Museum of Fine Art (an online fan site that carries news and reviews of nearly all of Chick's works), describes them as modern masterpieces. "There is this beautiful picture of people languishing in hell, with a dragon's head blowing hot flames," he says.

(Hang on, isn't "Kurt Kuersteiner" an alias used by SubGenius church figure Janor Hypercleats?)

¶ comics daniel clowes jack chick psychoceramics religion religiots robert crumb subgenius 1

Someone named April Winchell has an impressive awe-inspiring collection of unbelievably bizarre MP3s; from Christian Hygienist educational recordings to Hindi covers of ABBA, from TV celebrities' ill-advised attempts at singing to outsider art. Nice... I may have to grab some of those for my next DJ set. The only thing she seems to be missing is the Blind Man's Penis song. (via MeFi)

¶ bizarre mp3s outsider music religiots 2

I was deliberately avoiding blogging about the war (you can find all manner of kibbitzing, pontification, play-by-play commentary and ill-informed speculation in too many other places, or just bypass the armchair pundits and tune into the BBC or someone), but this piece is too good to pass up: Richard Dawkins on Bush and the system that elected him.

Osama bin Laden, in his wildest dreams, could hardly have hoped for this...

Bush seems sincerely to see the world as a battleground between Good and Evil, St Michael's angels against the forces of Lucifer. We're gonna smoke out the Amalekites, send a posse after the Midianites, smite them all and let God deal with their souls. Minds doped up on this kind of cod theology have a hard time distinguishing between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Some of Bush's faithful supporters even welcome war as the necessary prelude to the final showdown between Good and Evil: Armageddon followed by the Rapture. We must presume, or at least hope, that Bush himself is not quite of that bonkers persuasion. But he really does seem to believe he is wrestling, on God's behalf, against some sort of spirit of Evil.

¶ atheism evil george w. bush religiots richard dawkins secularism 5

A Canadian court has ruled that parts of the bible are hate literature; specifically, the parts of Leviticus that mandate the putting to death of homosexuals and adulterers. The court upheld a ruling by a human rights tribunal which fined a man for putting an ad in a newspaper quoting Bible verses denouncing homosexuality. It's refreshing to see authorities who aren't blinded from such things by a belief that religion is the basis of all morality, civilisation and common human decency, and a spot of xenophobic hatred here and there is a small price to pay for fending off the chaos, nihilism and lawlessness that would follow mass godlessness. (via rotten.com)

¶ bible bigotry hate religion religiots secularism 6

Proof that sometimes, just sometimes, religious fanatics accidentally do something sensible: Hindu militants raid shops, burn Valentine's Day cards. (via bOING bOING)

¶ hindu religion religiots valentine's day 0

The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: The local branch office of the Catholic Church has attracted criticism after officially supporting a visit by an American psychologist who claims that homosexuality is an illness and can be cured.

Meanwhile, it has recently emerged that, on the other side of the world, a religious organisation has been rounding up single mothers, sexual abuse victims and orphans as well as girls who were too dangerously pretty to be allowed out, stripping them of their identities, forbidding them to speak, and forcing them into slavery, making a tidy profit of their labour. Is this in Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Or perhaps one of the excesses of the Taliban? No; it's the work of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and its "Magdalene Laundries", the last of which closed way back in 1996.

¶ abuse catholic gay psychology religiots slavery 3

Proof that "punk" has lost whatever meaning it may have once had: the "pro-life" hardcore punk movement; that's right, pierced, blue-haired people moshing and militating for reimposition of traditional sex roles and moral values. The signifiers of punk have been completely disconnected from the radical social causes they signified.

JUST ANOTHER Sunday night punk rock concert. But these kids are wearing bright red sweat shirts inscribed with the words I Survived on the front and Over 1/3 Of Our Generation Has Been Wiped Out on the back.

(via rotten.com)

¶ commodified rebellion pro-life punk religiots religious right 6

Read: Christopher Hitchens on Islamic fundamentalism, the marginalisation of moderates and humanists, and why the Saudis and their ilk are not our allies.

And he's right; moderate humanism isn't very popular in Washington either. Not long before 11 September, the Bush administration was advocating "faith-based government" and praising the Taleban as allies in the war on drugs. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan are still persona non grata with Washington, who preferred to back the warlords and rapists from the Northern Alliance. The conflict is not so much framed as "humanism vs. zealotry" as "our god vs. your god"; the God-given manifest destiny of America vs. the will of Allah. Which sounds like nothing so much as a debate between paranoid schizophrenics. Only the schizophrenics have armies and nuclear missiles and zealots willing to kill and die on their word.

The real conflict would be between enlightened, tolerant liberal (I'd say libertarian, if the word hadn't been taken over by the Ayn Rand cult and like-minded zealots) humanism (i.e., the values we should export to all who seek them) and the belligerent, atavistic ignorance of every thug, tyrant and dictator. Though our leaders have sided with the thugs too often.

Or, to quote an entirely different holy book, "Death to all fanatics!"

¶ christopher hitchens contrarians humanism reason religion religiots 1

Faith-based government: Florida, the state which gave George W. Bush the presidency, is leading the U.S. in its march towards theocracy. Case in point: the new Bush-appointed head of Florida's child welfare agency and his outspokenly fundamentalist views; among other things, he believes that ''biblical spanking'' that leads to ``temporary and superficial bruises or welts do not constitute child abuse'', that women should not work, and that husbands have ``final say in any family dispute.''

The essay also said Christians should not marry non-Christians, that divorce is acceptable only when there is adultery or desertion and that wives should view working outside the home as ''bondage.'' The ''radical feminist movement,'' the essay adds, ``has damaged the morale of many women and convinced men to relinquish their biblical authority in the home.''

(Notice the use of the word "biblical" there, seemingly to mean "atavistically brutal". Barbarism begins at home, folks.)

In other faith-based-government news, a woman in Nigeria has lost an appeal against a death sentence for bearing a child out of wedlock, and is sentenced to die by stoning (a slow and uncommonly unpleasant method of execution) as soon as her child is weaned. Her boyfriend was discharged.

So a woman who didn't harm anyone is sentenced to be tortured to death in a spectacle of bestial sadism, all in the name of an infinitely merciful God.

¶ christianity culture war florida islam nigeria religiots sadism stoning 1

The Bush administration vetoes a UN declaration on children's rights, refusing to sign it unless provisions for sexual health services are removed, replaced with abstinence-based programmes. The US is supported by the Vatican in this (and possibly the Australian government as well). It is predicted that if the US gets its way, it will exacerbate the AIDS crisis in the third world, not to mention the other consequences of unwanted children being born. But hey, think of all the souls that will be saved...

¶ abstinence culture war human rights politics puritanism religiots sex un usa 5

This is not the Onion: The Islamic theocracy of Iran is ahead of the U.S. in sex education. Mostly because of the U.S.'s federally-mandated "abstinence-only" sex education and panic about regarding under-18s as sexual beings. (For example, the Missouri legislature, presumably taking a break from the War On Goths, recently voted to cut $100,000 from a University's budget to punish a professor who claimed that the 'moral panic' over paedophilia is exaggerated.)

Update: An AlterNet story about the issue, and about a controversial book criticising the whole notion of protecting minors from the very knowledge of sex.

(via Unknown News, The Fix)

¶ abstinence iran moral panic politics puritanism religiots sex education usa 0

A page written by an outfit calling themselves "Objective: Christian Ministries" and detailing why Apple Computer is a tool of Satan; from their new Darwin OS, based on Communist open-source software and demonic BSD UNIX to notorious atheist Richard Dawkins' preference for Macintoshes, it's all here.

Mind you, I'm not sure whether these people are a joke or a genuine group of honest-to-goodness religious fruitcakes. For what it's worth they also have a campaign to shut down Landover Baptist as an "anti-Christian hate crime".

¶ apple religiots satanism 3

A look at the parallel universe of Christian apocalyptic fiction, comparing and contrasting it with science fiction and techno-thrillers. (via bOING bOING)

¶ apocalypse christianity literature religiots 0

In the US the Bible-belt state of Missouri has allocated US$273,000 to stamp out "Goth culture" among its youth. Which is a laudable goal, though probably not for the reasons they had in mind. (via rotten.com)

¶ goth missouri moral panic religiots 11

America's own home-grown Hezbollah, the Army of God, has been capitalising on the anthrax scare, by mailing white powder to Planned Parenthood offices. It'll be interesting to see whether the Bush administration (which is virulently anti-abortion) devotes much in the way of resources to tracking down the perpetrators or just shrug it off as "you reap what you sow".

¶ christian fundamentalists extremists religiots terrorism 0

Hey Mr. Taliban: A piece in the Hindustan Times claims that Mullah Omar, the chief of the Taliban, suffers from brain seizures, locking himself away for days at a time, with the official line being that he is having visions. He is also said to suffer from bouts of depression alternating with childlike behaviour. Then again, there's a good precedent for that kind of thing among Holy Men; St. Paul, the founder of the Christian church, apparently suffered from similar seizures, and doesn't the Bible tell believers to be like a child? (Not to mention the Borges story in which a madman is used as a judge in a religious court, on the grounds that the insane are in touch with the Godhead.) (via Follow Me Here)

¶ afghanistan epilepsy jorge luis borges neurology neurotheology religion religiots taliban terrorism 0

US Roundup: And now, the latest news from the World's Leading Nation: Firstly, it comes out that George W. Bush's successful missile defense test was a fake, with the target missile being rigged with a GPS beacon for the "kill vehicle" to lock onto. Now if we could persuade Saddam to make GPS beacons standard equipment, then everything would be fine and dandy, but failing that, the test is a sham. Meanwhile, ancient superstition has triumphed over scientific progress with the House of Representatives voting to ban stem cell research, on Scriptural grounds. And the White House's reproductive health policy, surprisingly enough, will divert funds from those subversive pinko feminists in the family-planning movement towards an abstinence-based strategy, closely tied to evangelical Christian groups.

¶ abstinence aerospace george w. bush religiots scams 0

Abortion clinic sniper arrested in France; he went into hiding in Ireland, doing "clerical work" (would that involve proselytising his religion and recruiting converts?), but fled there after Irish police started closing in. How much do you want to bet that he's just a disposable soldier, and that the organisation that trained him, provided him with papers and kept him hidden still exists and has others willing to take his place. (That anti-abortion hitlist website was updated awfully quickly.)

¶ abortion christianity crime religiots terrorism 0

A somewhat psychoceramic religious extremist group has seemingly not been too happy with the heathens poking fun at them, and has decided to fight back. The source of this page on the evils of teen pop bands contains this interesting JavaScript fragment:

var redirectto = "http://abortiontv.com/AbortionPictures1.htm";
var refusedfrom = "http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0200/backstreet.html"; // required prev. page
if (document.referrer.indexOf(refusedfrom) != -1) {
alert("Access ot this page is forbidden from Landover Baptist");
window.location=redirectto;
}

That really says a lot about fundamentalist psychology; in particular their favour of psychological impact and manipulation over reason.

¶ abortion javascript landover baptist religiots 0

A detailed and informative article on the evolution of creationism: (New Scientist)

[the Kansas State Board of Education] deleted all references to evolution or the big bang, and inserted fundamentalist material. For instance, the original standards defined science as seeking "natural" explanations. That was changed to "logical", which can include supernatural explanations. The revision also says-- incorrectly--that "natural selection . . . does not add new information to the existing genetic code". Willis believes that dinosaurs lived in the US until late in the 19th century, and his school standards ask students to "analyse hypotheses about extinction of dinosaurs" and "show the weaknesses in the reasoning".

¶ creationism evolution religiots 0

Scaring 'em for Jesus: Christian Fundamentalist `haunted house' includes Columbine massacre. (via Robot Wisdom)

¶ columbine religiots usa 0

A Christian Fundamentalist warning about how Pokemon leads to role-playing and necromancy:

Strange as it may sound to American ears, demonic possession is no longer confined to distant lands. Today, government schools from coast to coast are teaching students the skills once reserved for the tribal witchdoctor or shaman in distant lands. Children everywhere are learning the pagan formulas for invoking "angelic" or demonic spirits through multicultural education, popular books, movies, and television.

¶ necromancy occult pokemon religiots satanism 0