Tag: Religion

Offensive — But Funny — Religious Image

I found this image in the RSS feed of a popular atheist multi-author blog. When I went to visit the site, however, the image and its post had gone 404. Apparently someone decided it was a bit too offensive for the tone of the site. Me, I don’t have any such compunctions (plus, seriously, its meant to be funny, get over it),

Praying for Oil

I was going to write a gratuitous slam on Pray At The Pump’s efforts to pray for lower gasoline prices in the United States. Then I realized that Pray at the Pump’s understanding of how oil markets work is no less irrational than either John McCain or Barack Obama’s apparent understanding of oil markets, so what’s the point?

It’s really sad — but so typical — to see the US election boil down to a battle of The Moron vs. The Messiah.

Sigh.

American Atheists on Barack Obama

The last few weeks have been a bit amusing as Barak Obama seems to have gone from “Change You Can Believe In” to “Policies the Establishment Will Be Comfortable With.”

After all, it wasn’t too long ago when Samantha Power drew criticism for saying that Obama’s 18-month withdrawal plan was a “best case scenario.” Now, Obama himself is clearly distancing himself from his own promise of a quick withdrawal from Iraq (and Obama, after all, is the Senator who said the withdrawal should have begun in 2007).

Similarly, Obama says he’s going to vote for the bipartisan FISA bill which will provide immunity for the telcommunication companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of Americans.

But, Obama really jumped the shark with his promise to not only continue but expand George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives. For once, I agreed with the American Atheists’ analysis,

“This makes it official – the Democrats are trying to outdo their Republican colleagues in using religion and the lure of more taxpayer money to turn houses of worship into voting blocks,” said Zindler. “Obama wants to continue the discriminatory policy of taxing millions of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists and other Americans who profess no religious beliefs, and give that money to organized religion. That’s unfair, that’s discriminatory, and it endangers our First Amendment freedom.”

Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists, said that the Obama pledge to continue Bush’s programs is a risky economic and social experiment. “The faith-based initiative allows religious groups to use our money in programs that are poorly monitored, have little or no accountability, and drain resources for their more effective secular counterparts,” said Silverman. “This is pandering to religious groups, and offers the lure of free government cash in exchange for political support.

Apparently either a McCain or Obama presidency will resemble a 3rd Bush term a lot more than people are willing to admit at this point.

Secular Coalition for America on That Pew Religion Poll

The other day I noted a Pew poll where 1 in 5 self-identified atheists said they also believed in God, and likened it to similar number of vegetarians who say they occasionally eat red meat — these folks aren’t atheists or vegetarians, but rather clueless. Anyway, the Secular Coalition for America has a slightly different interpretation. This isn’t cluelessness, they claim, it is an example of the fear people have in contemporary America to admit they don’t believe in God,

“When atheists are telling you they believe in God and Catholics are admitting they don’t, that’s evidence of the stigma our society puts on nontheists,” said Lori Lipman Brown, Director of the Secular Coalition for America. “Americans repeatedly tell pollsters that an atheist is the last person they’d want their children to marry, the last person they’d vote for as President. This prejudice also appears in the widespread impression that atheists lack ethics and values.”

Atheists afraid to admit they believe in God? Give me a break. In fact, I think one of the reasons many Americans have such negative views of atheists is that a good proportion tend to want to talk about their irreligious views exclusively and incessantly (see, for example, Michael Newdow).

Just look at popular culture for goodness sake — the objects of ridicule and prejudice in movies, television shows and news broadcasts are the evangelical Christians (and often, frankly, for very good reason). For example, I just watched HBO’s Friends of God documentary for the third time. There is a Christian comedian featured in the documentary who complains, rightly I think, that evangelical Christians are one of the last groups that you can openly make fun of. And, of course, the entire point of the documentary itself seems less to understand Evangelicals than to simply make fun of them (which is hard not to do when you see adults singing ridiculous “Behemoth Was a Dinosaur” songs to convince children of the inerrancy of the Bible visa vis evolution).

If anyone had reason to conceal their true views for fear of ridicule it would be evangelical Christians, and yet they are hardly shrinking violets. If there are a bunch of secret, scared atheists, I suspect that says more about those individuals than it says for any lack of tolerance of atheism in America.