Miscellanea Agnostica

Militant Christianist, Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has released a commercial for his failing campaign. In an effort to get the media talking about him again after he flamed out in recent debates, he’s decided to wade into Christian-persecution territory, and as CNN reports, is making the bullshit claim that current President Barack Obama is at war with religion (WebCite cached article):

Rick Perry says that if he’s elected president, he’ll end what he calls President Barack Obama’s “war on religion.”

Perry makes the comments in a new TV commercial that’s sure to create controversy. …

In an interview Wednesday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Perry said he stood by the ad.

“The administration is clearly sending messages to people of faith, and organizations of faith, that we’re not going to support you with federal dollars,” Perry said. “I’m very comfortable with that ad, for one thing. My faith is a part of me, and the values I learned in my Christian upbringing will affect my governing.”

You see, Christofascists like Perry have a strange definition of “persecution.” The president failing to obey the strictures of their metaphysics — you see — is an “attack” on them, and a “war” on their religion. To fail to obey them, is the virtual equivalent of a physical attack on their persons, and is also equivalent to an effort to abolish their faith.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth … but in his raging paranoia, Rickie-boy doesn’t understand that.

Here, Rickie. Let me help you out. A true “war on religion” would include any of the following:

• Churches being shuttered
• Bibles removed from homes
• Religious art being confiscated
• Clergy being jailed
• Crucifixes and crosses being seized
• Arresting people for praying
• And so on; you get the idea.

President Obama is doing none of these things — not one of them! — and will never do so. For you to talk as though he is, Rickie-boy, is the worst sort of lie. It’s flatly untrue and it’s ridiculous for you to say it.

Neverthless, I expect the Rickster will get a lot of traction out of this. The Religious Right in the US more or less believes exactly as he does … i.e. that refusing to obey their beliefs is the same as trying to utterly destroy them. Rickie-boy’s lies about Obama place him force me to list Perry as a member of my “lying liars for Jesus” club.

Photo credit: Based on Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

Tags: 2012 campaign, austin TX, barack obama, campaign 2012, christian, christian martyr complex, christian persecution, christian persecution complex, christian right, Christianity, christians, christofascism, christofascist, christofascists, gop, gop presidential campaign, gop presidential primary, liar for jesus, liars for jesus, lying liar for jesus, lying liars for jesus, paranoia, paranoid, presecution, president obama, religiofascism, religiofascist, religiofascists, religious right, rick perry, texas, war on religion

It’s been a while since I blogged about famed Christianist Marion “Pat” Robertson. I’d thought perhaps he’d mellowed with age, but it turns out that’s not the case. He’s still the same boorish idiot we’ve always known him to be. Right Wing Watch and the Huffington Post recently reported on his most recent remarks about President Obama during an appearance on the 700 Club (WebCite cached article):

Televangelist Pat Robertson revived conspiratorial talk about President Obama’s childhood Thursday, claiming that he was driven by some sort of Muslim inclination because of his upbringing in Indonesia. …

“They say he’s going back to the place that he spent his childhood, he spent four years in Indonesia, I don’t know if he was trained in a madrassa, one of those Muslim schools, but nevertheless that is his inclination,” Robertson claimed, during a discussion about Obama attending the ASEAN conference in Indonesia.

These claims about the religious nature of his schools have been debunked. In fact, according to a New York Times report [cached], one school he attended was Roman Catholic, while the other was a prestigious and wealthy primary school founded by Dutch colonialists. Obama has also frequently repeated that he is a Christian who attends church.

Here’s a Youtube video of Robertson’s remarks:

Note how clever Robertson is with this. He admits he doesn’t really know the circumstances of Obama’s youth in Indonesia, but blathers on about it anyway; and he says merely that Obama has a Muslim “inclination,” an indefinite enough word that no one can call him out on it, while his target audience (which presumably thinks Obama is a Muslim) will hear it as “Obama is a Muslim,” thus confirming — in their minds — what they already believed. Yet Robertson will be able to say, and with literal truth, that he never said “Obama is a Muslim.”

P.S. I don’t normally use ideological machines like Huff or RWW as sources; but in this case the Youtube video above substantiates what’s reported.

Hat tip: Mark at Skeptics & Heretics Forum on Delphi Forums.

Photo credit: Mediaite.

Tags: barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, indonesia, madrassa, marion pat robertson, obama, obama is a muslim, pat robertson, president barack obama, president obama, religious right

It’s that time of year again, folks. The time when the Religious Right gets its knickers twisted into knots over their delusion that Christmas either has been, or soon will be, outlawed in the U.S. This “war on Christmas” trope is usually good for about a dozen blog posts each year, and likely will continue to be … because the R.R. is so predictably outraged over this manufactured controversy.

The Aledo (IL) Times Record reports that Congressman Joe Walsh has proffered what he calls the “Save Christmas Act” in an effort to “defend” his supposedly-beleaguered holiday (WebCite cached article):

Yesterday, Congressman Joe Walsh (IL-8) introduced the ‘Save Christmas Act’ to permanently end the Obama Administration’s new tax on Christmas trees. This tax was established to fund yet another unnecessary government board, the Christmas Tree Promotion Board. This is clearly the most ridiculous in a long list of new taxes and regulations proposed by the Obama Administration.

Walsh stated: “The sheer audacity of a tax on Christmas trees is ridiculous. Are we going to start taxing Halloween candy and pumpkins or turkey and apple pie? Are we going to tax the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny too? Are we going to tax hotdogs and hamburgers and American flags for the Fourth of July?

There are actually several problems with this. Yes, the proposal to levy a 15¢ fee per tree sold on sellers of live Christmas trees was a genuine one. And it was announced by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture recently. However, as Snopes makes clear (cached), it is not a “tax.” Rather, it’s a cooperative program — first requested by the Christmas-tree-growing industry, I might add! — intended to promote the sale of live Christmas trees.

Of course, these little facts didn’t get in the way of the Right-wing flaring up with sanctimonious outrage. In light of this shitstorm, the White House quickly put the kibosh on this idea … even though those who raged and railed against it were angry for all the wrong reasons. If the Right-wing fury over this supposed “Christmas tree tax” was predictable, so too was the Obama administration’s eagerness to cave into it.

But beyond the problem of the Right’s outrage over this being counter-factual, is that even the scenario they were telling themselves was in play — i.e. that Obama and his evil cohorts were taxing Christmas trees in order to hinder the celebration of Christmas by Christians around the country — makes absolutely no sense! A 15¢ tax is nowhere near enough to put a dent into sales of Christmas trees, which normally cost upwards of $20; and it wouldn’t have been limited just to real trees, artificial ones would have been “taxed” too.

Time to get over yourselves, Christians, and grow the fuck up. Not everything is intended to abolish your religion and/or its trappings. Really. Moreover, if you guys are really fans of the private sector and want to help industry, you’d have supported this 15¢-per-tree fee, because it was the Christmas tree industry itself that originally came up with it!

P.S. There’s almost nothing truly or genuinely “Christian” about Christmas trees, as I explain in my page on the myths about Christmas that the R.R. clings to so irrationally.

Photo credit: julian.

Tags: barack obama, christian right, christmas, christmas tree, christmas tree promotion board, christmas tree tax, christmas trees, department of agriculture, illinois, joe walsh, obama, obama administration, religious right, usda, war on christmas, war on christmas 2011, white house

There are lots of people who will never be satisfied with anything about President Barack Obama. Most of these people are “birthers” who deny he was born in the US to an American mother. But the odd juxtaposition of Obama releasing his “long-form” birth certificate (cached) — which the birthers have long demanded, but now refuse to accept — with the killing of terrorist-in-chief Osama bin-Laden, these people have morphed into “deathers,” who refuse to accept the al-Qaeda founder is dead (cached).

Well, as though in answer to their childish demands to see the body of bin-Laden, al-Qaeda itself has admitted their revered prophet of death has, in fact, been killed, as Politico reports (WebCite cached article):

Al Qaeda appears to be confirming that Osama bin Laden was killed in Sunday’s raid on a Pakistani compound by American forces, and is vowing revenge against the United States.

In a statement posted on militant websites and signed by “the general leadership” of Al Qaeda, the group says that bin Laden’s blood “is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain” and that it will soon release a voice recording made by bin Laden a week before his death.

The Taliban have confirmed what al-Qaeda said:

Meanwhile, in a separate statement released later Friday, the Taliban in Afghanistan said that bin Laden’s death would “give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders” — the United States and its allies in the Afghan war.

Of course, not all the “deathers” are extreme Rightists, a few are extreme Leftists, like Cindy Sheehan (cached).

I doubt that even the admissions by al-Qaeda and the Taliban that bin-Laden is dead, will silence the “deathers.” They aren’t interested in facts, they’re interested in their own feelings … and since their feelings are of intense hatred for Obama, they cannot and will not let go of them. This is, perhaps, a neurophysiological inevitability, since studies have shown that people predisposed to believe something, will continue to believe it, even moreso than before, after having been given demonstrable evidence that it’s not so. If this is the case, then they truly cannot help themselves … they’re essentially prisoners of their own immature, irrational minds.

Photo credit: Reddit via About.Com / Political Humor.

Tags: barack obama, bin laden, birther, birthers, deather, deathers, obama, osama bin laden, osma, president barack obama, usama, usama bin-laden

We’re finally getting more information about the death of Osama bin-Laden. First, it turns out he wasn’t in the wilderness between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rather, he’d been living in style, deep in the heart of Pakistan, not far from Pakistani military installations, as the New York Times reports (WebCite cached article):

When the end came for Bin Laden, he was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered*, but in a massive compound about an hour’s drive north from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. He was hiding in the medium-sized city of Abbottabad, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy of the Pakistani Army.

This raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is how bin-Laden could have been right under the collective nose of the Pakistani government for quite some time. They are — supposedly — our allies. It’s clear they aren’t quite as “allied” to us as they might like us to think.

Pakistan is a deeply troubled country with a large number of Islamofascists … such as the crowds who gave “rock star” treatment to the man accused of killing the Punjab provincial governor because he criticized that nation’s blasphemy law.

While it’s great news that Osama bin-Laden is dead, clearly we face a continued struggle around the world, not just against the kind of Islamofascism that bin-Laden and his supporters promoted, but against all forms of religiofascism, everywhere. It will remain a problem for many years to come.

I close with this video of President Barack Obama announcing bin-Laden’s death to the United States and the world, courtesy of CNN:

* Yes, I admit it, I was one of those who believed this.

Photo credit: Michael Appleton / New York Times.

Tags: abbotabad, barack obama, bin laden, Islam, islamabad, islamofascism, islamofascist, muslim, muslims, osama, osama bin laden, pakistan, pakistani, pakistanis, president barack obama, religiofascism, religiofascist, religiofascists, terror, terrorism

According to Franklin Graham, son of the world-famous preacher Billy Graham, the Obama administration is in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood and has saturated the US government with its vile Islam-loving and Christian-hating agents. We know this is true, because … well, he says so, and because his media outlet of choice, Newsmax, is reporting it (WebCite cached article):

The Muslim Brotherhood, with the complicity of the Obama administration, has infiltrated the U.S. government at the highest levels and is influencing American policy that leaves the world’s Christians in grave danger, warns internationally known evangelist Franklin Graham.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is very strong and active here in our country,” Graham tells Newsmax. “We have these people advising our military and State Department. We’ve brought in Muslims to tell us how to make policy toward Muslim countries.

Note that this isn’t really a new allegation; the American Family Association made a similar claim about a year ago — about the US military — after the Pentagon disinvited the younger Graham from its National Day of Prayer event.

Graham’s “evidence” for this, is the following:

A new report from the Roman Catholic aid agency Aid to the Church in Need supports Graham’s contention that the persecution of Christians world­wide has worsened exponentially in the past few years.

According to the report, Christians face increased suffering in 22 countries around the world, with Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Nigeria being among the worst countries to be a Christian in today.

Even if this report were true, it still does not prove that Barack Obama has allowed a cabal of Muslim Brotherhood adherents to infiltrate the US government and ceded control to them. What I can say is that Christians are guilty of no small amount of persecution, themselves, so Graham hardly has the “moral high ground” to stand on.

Generally speaking, I find paranoid conspiracy theories like this one amusing … if only because so many people buy into them, in spite of such little evidence that they’re true. In some cases the lack of evidence is, perversely, viewed as being evidence itself; i.e. “If this conspiracy existed, of course, they’d make sure no evidence of it was available, so a lack of evidence is precisely what we’d expect!” The illogic of this just shows how abysmally ignorant people are. It’s as though they walked around with neon signs that say “Idiot”!

Hat tip: Mark at Skeptics & Heretics Forum at Delphi Forums.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: afa, american family association, barack obama, christian persecution, conspiracy, fallacy, franklin graham, ilogic, Islam, islam conspiracy, islamic conspiracy, muslim, muslim brotherhood, muslim brothers, muslim conspiracy, muslims, obama administration, paranoid conspiracy theorist, paranoid conspiracy theorists, paranoid conspiracy theory, persecution, president barack obama, president obama, us government

In a development which arguably has been a long time coming, the Obama administration has finally decided it will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996. The New York Times reports on this announcement (WebCite cached article):

President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift, has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional, and has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court, the administration said Wednesday.

The announcement was not made in person, and not by the president, as the Times explains:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during Mr. Obama’s first two years in the White House.

“The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation” should be subjected to a strict legal test intended to block unfair discrimination, Mr. Holder wrote. As a result, he said, a crucial provision of the Defense of Marriage Act “is unconstitutional.”

The Religious Right, of course, is not happy about this:

“It is a transparent attempt to shirk the department’s duty to defend the laws passed by Congress,” Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “This is the real politicization of the Justice Department — when the personal views of the president override the government’s duty to defend the law of the land.”

I’m not sure any Republican has any kind of moral standing to complain about the “politicization of the Justice Department,” given what the Bush Jr administration had done with it. Fucking hypocrites.

At any rate, this bodes well for my home state of Connecticut, which has permitted gay marriage since the Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health decision was handed down by the state Supreme Court in late 2008.

All I can say is, good riddance to this law. The idea that marriage is something that needs to be “defended” is logically absurd. Marriage is something that people willingly enter into. Their ability to do so need not be “defended,” since they can do so whenever they wish. The idea that allowing gay marriage somehow prevents heterosexual couples from marrying, is likewise absurd. It does no such thing!

Lastly, the Religious Right’s assertion that, according to Judeo-Christian principles, marriage can ONLY be between one man and one woman, is factually incorrect, as I’ve blogged previously. There have been several different kinds of marriage during the history of the Abrahamic faiths; there is no “one” definition of it.

It’s time for the Right — which, especially during the Obama administration, has argued that government meddles too frequently in people’s lives — to put its money where its mouth is, and stop getting in the way of gay couples marrying, if they wish to. Freedom is a good thing; we should have more of it, not less.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / Claus Ableiter.

Tags: barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, defense of marriage act, doma, gay marriage, kerrigan v commissioner of public health, marriage, marriages, obama, obama administration, president barack obama, religious right, wedding, weddings

The blogosphere has raged over the past few days over the remarks of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s comments about abortion. Naturally, he’s against it — even when the mother’s life is in danger — which follows his Catholic religion’s teaching that women’s lives are forfeit the moment they become pregnant. His remarks that have sparked controversy came in an interview with CNS News, where he said the following, as Huff reports (WebCite cached article):

A conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, Santorum has signaled he’s mulling a run for the White House in the next election cycle. During the interview, he voiced his staunchly pro-life stance, as well as his belief that when life begins “is not a debatable issue,” before going on to criticize the president.

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”

Video of his remarks is courtesy of Youtube:

The buzz that’s erupted around the Internet is that “Santorum is a racist!” Well, I’m no fan of Santorum. He’s a ferocious Christofascist who probably has not had an original thought in his head for the last 3 or 4 decades; he’s only capable of continuously spewing religious and ideological doctrine told to him by others. So don’t think I’m defending him … I’m not. But really, I’m not sure this is evidence he’s a “racist.”

His comments are actually an indirect, implied version of the fallacious reductio ad Hitlerum, a reprehensible propaganda device I’ve blogged about on many occasions already. Now, Dear Reader, if you’re the critical thinker I hope you are, you must be wondering where I got that from … and you’d be 100% right to ask how I could draw such an inference. So here goes.

Santorum’s remark suggests that abortion is used to control the population of “undesirables” or as a tool of discrimination. This is, basically, eugenics. As such, this alludes to the Third Reich and its various policies intended to eliminate “degenerates” and — supposedly — improve the “Aryan race.”

I concede that Santorum never mentioned Hitler or the Nazis, however, the Religious Right frequently states explicitly that abortion choice equates with eugenics, which equates with Hitler. Here is one example of what Santorum is alluding to, and here’s another, and here’s yet another.

There is no way that Santorum’s intended audience would have failed to recognize his reference.

Isn’t it time for this kind of baseless, fallacious, personal demonization of others to stop? It’s childish at best, and disingenuous at worst. I don’t care for the reductio ad Hitlerum when the Left uses it, and find it still less appropriate for the Right — which prides itself on having upstanding morals — to engage in it.

Here’s my personal rule when it comes to this propaganda device, paraphrased from a saying used by the character Salvor Hardin in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation: “The reductio ad Hitlerum is the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt.”

My final note is that people like Rick Santorum — who would like to turn the US into a Christianized fascist regime — are hypocritical to accuse their ideological opponents of being Nazis. Of course, no Religious Rightist ever fails to disobey Jesus’ own explicit, clear injunction against being hypocritical … but hey, what can you expect from irrational militant religionists like Santorum?

Photo credit: Austin Cline / Atheism/Agnosticism at About.Com.

Tags: abortion, adolf hitler, appeal to hitler, appeal to nazis, barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, cns news, eugenics, fallacious, fallacy, hitler, ideologue, ideologues, ideology, nazi, nazi party, nazis, nazism, pro-choice, pro-life, propaganda, reductio ad hitlerum, religious right, rick santorum, right, third reich

It was inevitable, I suppose, that once word came out that President Barack Obama had complimented the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles (WebCite cached article) for having hired Michael Vick after his release from prison for running a dog-fighting operation, the Right would suddenly treat Vick as though he were worse than Hitler or Stalin. It’s the “friend of my enemy is also my enemy” principle in action. It’s natural this would happen, I guess. But the ferocious Rightist Tucker Carlson, however, took that just a few steps too far recently in one of his (many) appearances on Fox News, as AOL Fanhouse reports — and he used Christianity as an oblique justification for it (cached):

“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that.

Now, Vick’s arrest, trial and conviction took place quite a while ago. I can’t find any record of Carlson having weighed in on this matter, before. So I can’t help but conclude that Obama’s comments were the trigger for this call to execute Vick. In fact, Carlson veers close to admitting this overtly:

“[T]he idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”

Here’s video of his comments, courtesy of YouTube:

The bottom line, Gentle Reader, is this: Carlson decided that Michael Vick should have been executed, merely because Barack Obama had something nice to say about him.

Wow. That’s all … just “wow.” The viciousness of that is stunning. Not to mention the idea that people should live or die based solely on the ideological identity of others who happen to say nice things about them.

What a marvelous Christian he is, eh?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: barack obama, christian, Christianity, christians, dog-fighting, dogfighting, football, fox news, michael vick, nfl, obama, philadelphia eagles, potus, president barack obama, president obama, right, tucker carlson

A contentious lame-duck session of Congress is underway … but its Religious Right members appear not to have anything to do. So they got together and whined sanctimoniously that President Obama isn’t being religious enough for their taste. ABC News reports on their fit of enraged hyperpiety (WebCite cached article):

President Obama doesn’t mention God frequently enough in his speeches, a group of religious House Republicans said in an open letter to the president, chastising him for skipping over mention of the “Creator,” especially in a recent overseas address.

Forty-two members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus complained in a letter sent to the White House Monday that in a speech delivered last month in Indonesia, the president substituted the U.S.’s religious-themed national motto for a more secular alternative.

This caucus of religionists spews the old lie that only Jesus gives Americans their freedoms (cached):

The prayer caucus members say that by failing to mention God, the president is “removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom.”

The truth is that God had absolutely nothing to do with making the US into a free country. Ironically, the US would cease to be a free country, if these angry Christofascists get their way … it would instead become an Old Testament-style Christian theocracy.

In any event, these people are claiming that, essentially, it’s every American’s duty — from the President on down — to be a Christian. I dare Michele Bachmann and the rest of the members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus to apply their awesome Congressional power, and force this cynical, godless agnostic heathen to become the dour Christianist they want me to become. Come on. Give it your best shot! You have nothing to lose by trying, so why would you not do so?

Hat tip: Apathetic Agnostic Church.

Photo credit: anarchosyn.

Tags: barack obama, christ, christian, Christianity, christians, christofascism, christofascist, christofascists, congressional prayer caucus, god, jesus, jesus christ, michele bachmann, president obama, Religion, religionism, religionist, religionists, white house