Miscellanea Agnostica

Bill O’Reilly is commander-in-chief in the so-called “war on Christmas.” His crying and bellyaching about the poor, put-upon Christians who’re insidiously being thwarted in their efforts to force all Americans — of whatever religion, or of none — to worship their Christ and his putative birth, is by now an annual feature of his Fox News show. He’s launched a salvo at Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, who insolently calls the foliage in his state capitol a “holiday tree” rather than a “Christmas tree” (WebCite cached article):

Anyway, there is obviously more Christmas chaos in Rhode Island and Governor Chafee is again behind it. Apparently he believes that Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in 1636, would not want to call a Christmas tree “a Christmas tree” or something.

O’Reilly has some problems with semantics. Since “Christmas” is a “holiday,” then it is always correct to call a “‘Christmas’ tree” a “‘holiday’ tree.” There’s nothing wrong with doing so.

Also, the Billster conveniently forgets who Roger Williams was. He’s notable for having been the first major advocate of religious freedom in the American colonies. He was a Baptist preacher who was run out of the Massachusetts Bay colony by furious Calvinist Puritans who’d objected to his presence there, who took refuge among the Narragansett to the south, and then founded the colony (now state) of Rhode Island. Roger Williams understood sectarian persecution far better than Billy-boy ever will. He lived it! He even penned a work whose words have become part of the canon of the United States, an exhaustive treatise called The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. This work — not Thomas Jefferson’s now-famous letter to the Baptists of Danbury, CT — is the true origin of the phrase “separation of church and state.”

(Yes, folks. That’s right. The Founding Fathers’ effort to prevent the state from encroaching on religion, and vice versa, was not even their own invention; a century before them, a man had been agitating for that exact same policy. They were, to put it bluntly, Williams’s students. For Billyo to dismiss Roger Williams’ work as blithely as he does, is not only an affront to his memory, it’s also an insult to theirs. So much for the Religious Right’s vaunted worship of the Founding Fathers!)

I concede that it’s fair to ask if Roger Williams would have objected to calling a “‘Christmas’ tree” a “‘holiday’ tree” … but as far as I can tell, it’s also fair to conclude he would likely not have cared. Most people in the colonies in his time didn’t really celebrate Christmas at all, much less put up Christmas trees. (You can thank those angry Puritans for that.) This complaint is a strictly modern concept, manufactured from whole cloth by Religious Rightists like Billy-boy and his ilk. It’s not a controversy that Williams would have even known existed, nor would he have understood it, had he been aware of it.

Having spewed such a laughable anachronism, though, Billy-baby doesn’t stop there. He charges happily on to even greater heights of ridiculousness:

Now, this is insane, of course. There is no reason to mess around with the word “Christmas”. As we reported, President Grant signed a law in 1870 making Christmas a federal holiday. So there really isn’t any controversy unless Congress revokes the holiday.

You see, in Billy-boy’s mind, the fact that President Grant — whose presidential administration was, shall we say, somewhat underwhelming — made a proclamation about Christmas, appears to do all of the following:

• Requires all Americans, of whatever faith or of none at all, to worship Christmas along with all other Christians
• Mandates that nativities be planted on every town hall lawn, in front of every courthouse, etc., all around the country, every December
• Forces every American to say “Merry Christmas!” at each and every meeting — without fail, and without substitution or alteration of any kind
• Prevents Americans from ever referring to Christmas as a “holiday,” even if by every English dictionary definition, it is one
• It removes all of the sacredness from the holy day known as Christmas and makes it purely secular
• And on top of all that … Grant’s proclamation carries every bit as much authority now, as it did 142 years ago when he first signed it. The passage of time has only made it more compelling than it had been in the late 19th century.

I don’t know about you, but I find that quite a lot to ask of one simple presidential decree. Billy-boy must think Grant was a whole helluva lot more powerful — and everlasting — than he actually was.

Here’s my challenge to the Billster: If you really think that I, as an American, am obligated to celebrate Christmas alongside you; am obligated never, ever under any circumstances to refer to it as a “holiday” (even if it is one); and am obligated to wish “a Merry Christmas” to everyone I see, whenever I see him/her; then you just go right ahead and make me. I dare you. Please. I invite you to do everything in your power to compel me to obey your wishes. You deliver your copy of President Grant’s decree to me, slam it down, force me to read it, and then coerce me into celebrating Christmas. Go right ahead. If you’re truly convinced it’s my obligation as an American to do so, then why would you not do it?

Unless you’re willing to track me down and force me to do what you want me to, then you’re just another whiny coward who’s capable only of complaining, unwilling to put his own words into action.

Boo fucking hoo, Billy, you sniveling crybaby. Boo fucking hoo.

Photo credit: Christmas Stock Images.

Tags: 1870, bill o'reilly, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, christmas, christmas tree, fox news, holiday tree, lincoln chafee, president grant, providence, providence RI, religious right, rhode island, roger williams, ulysses grant, ulysses s grant, war on christmas, war on christmas 2012

Things apparently haven’t been looking too good for America’s favorite paranoid schizophrenic. Glenn Beck’s radio show is no longer aired on a number of stations, including WOR in New York and WDRC in Hartford, as I blogged just a short while ago. And now, Fox News has dropped his daily television show. The New York Times reports on what was behind this parting-of-the-ways (WebCite cached article):

The negotiations that led Glenn Beck to announce his departure from the Fox News Channel on Wednesday ended with an expression of “let’s part as friends,” according to several people with knowledge of the talks. But behind that moment was a torrent of acrimony that underscored just how fractious the relationship between Mr. Beck and the network had become during his three-year run on Fox. …

Notably, Mr. Beck became a daily broadcast platform for a libertarian strain of politics that is also evident in the Tea Party, a movement he embraced. Critics loudly condemned him for living with his own facts — but that only seemed to widen the conspiracy that he outlined each night, aided by a growing number of chalkboards in his studio.

But at that studio, he was unhappy from almost his first day on the job, which happened to be the day before Mr. Obama was inaugurated. Even in his first year, he was contemplating an exit from Fox and wondering if he could start his own channel.

In Glenn Beck’s world, you see, everything is all about “Glenn Beck” and to hell with everyone else — including the television network that hired him, aired his idiotic, insane drivel night after night, and even stuck up for him in the wake of criticism and an advertiser boycott:

As onerous as [the boycott] might have been to Fox financially, it did not seem to be an issue for Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation. In two recent comments to shareholders, Mr. Murdoch defended Mr. Beck. He said of the advertiser boycott, “They don’t boycott watching it. We’re getting incredible numbers.” He followed that by pointing out that even with his diminished ratings, Mr. Beck’s show provided a “terrific kickoff” to the lineup of Fox shows that followed.

Even so, it appears sliding ratings were the reason Fox News decided it wanted to be free of the egotistical Beck.

The problem is, I shudder to think what sort of lying liar for Jesus Fox News is going to scare up and put on their soon-to-be-vacated 5 p.m. Eastern Time slot.

Photo credit: Politicol News.

Tags: beck, boycott, fox news, glenn, glenn beck, lying liar for jesus, news, talk radio, tea party

The nation’s most famous paranoid schizophrenic continues to spew his batshit-insane conspiracy theories. I’ve blogged about Glenn Beck’s sanctimonious insanity, towering rage, colossal stupidity, vast ignorance, and fact-deprivation. His latest spew involves “the New World Order” being launched out of Egypt, where a relatively-peaceful revolution recently toppled president Hosni Mubarak. The Los Angeles Times reports on this latest round of lunatic drivel from the Beckster (WebCite cached article):

We saw all the character traits from one figure looming over the Egypt story: the massive shows of emotion, the sketchy command of others’ views, the megalomaniacal refusal to recognize facts on the ground. And, as always, the willingness to say and do anything to command the stage for one more day.

We speak not of Hosni Mubarak, but of that other master of manipulation and misdirection, Glenn Beck. …

In the case of Egypt and its democracy movement, the Fox News performer sees not the energetic amalgam of students, shopkeepers, bureaucrats, intellectuals and professionals who virtually every real journalist in Cairo has described in recent days. Beck’s evening chalkboard talks instead fulminate endlessly about the shadowy forces that will surely bring “the coming insurrection.”

Beckie-boy is worried about something he calls “the Caliphate,” which — somehow — will plunge the entire world into a new Dark Age:

The menace that he envisions far outstrips that described even by other conservative commentators. Beck forecasts a wave of Muslim extremism sweeping from Egypt to the rest of the Mideast. He says this “caliphate,” or at least its revolutionary soul, could well darken Europe, if not our own shores.

But much worse than this nefarious Islamic conspiracy to destroy humanity, Beckie-boy claims the mass media are actually part of the conspiracy, actively working to prevent anyone from knowing about it:

Beck rolled out a battalion of bogeymen who he said willfully refused to recognize his vision. The crazy lefties in the press stood first among the accused. He belittled the New York Times, for one, because it identified “liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood” among the protesters, but did not recognize them as a) a mortal threat and b) part of a worldwide cabal. “Notice they don’t say communist yet,” he intoned darkly of the Times report.

But the media couldn’t cover up the looming catastrophe all by themselves, he suggested. No, that would take the collusion of the people Beck on Thursday called “the Harvard know-it-alls that have no clue.” And then there’s the Fellow Traveler in Chief, whose name Beck doesn’t even need to say. Instead, he merely compares those wild-eyed Tahrir Square maniacs to “community organizers.” We get the message.

Indeed we do! In Beckie-boy’s twisted universe, “community organizers” = “Barack Obama” = “ACORN” = “George Soros” = “fascism” = “communism.” Beckie-boy is pathologically incapable of separating things he dislikes or has subjectively determined to be bad. Everything he hates is equivalent to, and marches in lock-step with, everything else he hates. Conflation is his stock-in-trade.

For the record, Glennie, the reason the New York Times hasn’t mentioned “communism” yet, in conjunction with the Egyptian revolution, is because there is zero evidence that the protestors who finally got Mubarak to quit, are communists, or directed by them! The Times can’t report something for which there is no support.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I must observe that the Beckster himself is part and parcel of the very same mass media he claims is orchestrating this horrific scenario; he has a nationally-syndicated radio show, he’s published several books, he’s on Fox News nightly, and formerly had been on CNN Headline News. One must wonder why he’s biting the hand that feeds him. When Beckie-boy talks about the mass media, he is, by definition, also talking about himself and the rest of his furiously sanctimonious Religious Right colleagues at Fox News! Talk about hypocrisy! (By the way, Glenn … hypocrisy is something your own Jesus clearly, explicitly, and unambiguously forbid you to engage in. Christians such as yourself cannot ever be hypocritical. Period. So please, for the sake of your eternal soul, stop kvetching and griping about how horrific the “mass media.” Every time you condemn them, you condemn yourself.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore.

Tags: 2011 revolution, beck, caliph, caliphate, christian, Christianity, christians, conpsiracy theories, conspiracies, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, egypt, fox news, glenn, glenn beck, hosni mubarak, Islam, islamic, mass media, mubarak, muslim, muslim brotherhood, muslims, paranoia, revolution

Ideologues are nothing if not predictable. One of the things they always do, when caught saying something they shouldn’t, is to refuse to admit any error. Concession is not in their vocabulary.

Bill O’Reilly, the ferocious Rightist and religonist ideologue, is no exception to this rule. Last month he declared that God must exist because tides are inexplicable. That was an astoundingly stupid thing to say, because tides are quite explainable and are well understood.

But as a rigid ideologue, O’Reilly is pathologically incapable of admitting this. So, just like any other rigid ideologue, after having dug himself into an intellectual hole, he grabbed a bigger shovel, and kept right on digging.

In a video response posted on his private “insiders’” Web site, he declared that, while tides are explainable as a result of the moon, they nevertheless prove God’s existence, because — after all — where did the moon come from? Youtube now has video of his stupidity:

The problem here is that we have a lot of good leads as to the origin of the moon, and hardly require a God to explain its existence. Once again, science has already dared to go, where Bill O’Reilly fears to tread.

Keep it up, Bill. Stay at it much longer and you just might be the first to tunnel your way to China!

As an aside, O’Reilly charges money for access to his insiders’ Web site. A big “WTF?” leaps to mind; people actually pay for this kind of drivel and bullshit!?

Hat tip: Friendly Atheist.

Photo credit: Crooks & Liars.

Tags: bill o'reilly, christian, Christianity, christians, fox news, god, ideologue, ideology, moon, o'reilly, Religion, religionist, religionists, religious, religonism, right, rightism, rightist, tides

The overuse of the reductio ad Hitlerum, or appeals to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime, is a trend I’ve remarked on many times so far — and likely will have to again. Over the last couple of months, Fox News has become a particular outlet for this sort of fallacious antic, having been used by (probable) paranoid schizophrenic Glenn Beck and his boss, Roger Ailes. The Washington Post reports that a group of rabbis have called out these screaming, bellicose crybabies on their use of this childish tactic, ironically using Fox News’ “sister publication” to do so (WebCite cached article):

A coalition of rabbis wants Fox News chief Roger Ailes and conservative host Glenn Beck to cut out all their talk about Nazis and the Holocaust, and it’s making its views known in an unusual place.

The rabbis have called on Fox News’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, to sanction his two famous employees via a full-page ad in Thursday’s editions of the Wall Street Journal – one of many other media properties controlled by Murdoch’s News Corp. …

The rabbis were prompted by Beck’s three-part program [cached] in November about liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom Beck described as a “Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps” during World War II.

My skepticism caused me to wonder why the rabbis waited a couple of months to take out their ad, but the Post explained its timing:

Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day [cached], an observance established by the United Nations in 2005.

For the record — and as I posted earlier — I do not think Beckie-boy or his boss are anti-Semites. They are, rather, furious with the Left, and so juvenile that they think they’re entitled to stoop to any kind of rhetoric — no matter how fallacious or vile it may be — to discredit the Left. Their anger and immaturity are so overwhelming that they just can’t help but act like tiny little children.

Can’t we all put away the tired, worn tactic of the reductio ad Hitlerum? Isn’t it time for a little more maturity and a little less caterwauling?

Photo credit: féileacán.

Tags: ad hitlerum, adolf hitler, ailes, appeal to hitler, appeal to nazis, argumentum ad hitlerum, beck, fox news, george soros, glenn beck, hitler, hitlerum, holocaust, ideology, jewish funds for justice, left, leftism, nazi, nazis, nazism, news corp, reductio ad hitlerum, right, rightism, roger ailes, rupert murdoch, wall street journal

In his effort to debunk outspoken atheist David Silverman, Fox News headliner and militant Christianist Bill O’Reilly came up with a truly asinine objection to science. In his desperate effort to contradict Silverman, O’Reilly actually said that tides — yes, tides! — were not explainable! The Newser reports on his idiotic ramblings (WebCite cached article):

Apparently, Bill O’Reilly has never heard of the moon. In a debate Tuesday with Dave Silverman, head of the American Atheist group behind this, the Fox host tried to prove the existence of God by citing the unknowable mysteries of the tides. “I’ll tell you why [religion is] not a scam, in my opinion,” he told Silverman. “Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”

That’s right, folks. In Bill O’Reilly’s delusional universe, religion has veracity, because there is no explanation for tides. If you find it hard to believe that, you aren’t the only one:

Silverman looked stunned. “Tide goes in, tide goes out?” he stuttered. O’Reilly pressed on. “The water, the tide—it comes in and it goes out. It always goes in, then it goes out. … You can’t explain that. You can’t explain it.”

Of course, that’s not quite true. In the real world — i.e. outside of Bill O’Reilly’s delusional hyperreligious universe — tides turn out to be readily explicable:

Of course, Raw Story points out [cached], people who passed high school science might tell you that tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon as it orbits the earth.

In short, tides are caused by the moon’s revolution of the earth, combined with the oceans’ elasticity. Contrary to what O’Reilly, says, there is nothing mysterious or inexplicable about the tides. They have been measured, and compared with the moon’s motion, and the correlation between them is very well-known.

This is just the sort of childish, contrarian bullshit that militant religionists are forced to resort to when faced with the fact that so much about the world is as well-understood as it is. Religion is the purview of the mysterious and the uncertain; the more we learn, the less of our lives it can control. Fierce religionists like O’Reilly dislike this, so what they do, in order to expand their religion’s sphere of influence, is to deny that certain things are known.

What a fucking joke.

If you’re like me, you need proof O’Reilly said something as astoundingly stupid as this; if so, you can see it for yourself, right here:

Denying the science of tides … I mean, really. Seriously. How much more fucking childish can anyone get?

Update: While I’m not really a fan of Keith Olbermann — he can, after all, be a real asshat sometimes — he reacts in precious fashion while replaying this same video and declaring Bill O’Reilly his “worst person” (video courtesy of YouTube):

Hat tip: Mark at Skeptics & Heretics Forum on Delphi Forums. Hat tip for update: Unreasonable Faith.

Photo credit: Drive-By Times blog.

Tags: american atheists, atheism, atheist, atheists, bill o'reilly, christian, christianism, christianist, christianists, Christianity, christians, david silverman, fox news, gravity, hyperreligious, moon, mystery, o'reilly, physics, Religion, religionism, religionist, religionists, science, tide goes in, tide goes out, tides

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

Bill Donohue, the Christofascist who heads the Catholic League, reached a new high in low, during an appearance on Fox News, wherein he made his position on Christmas — and on what everyone should believe, generally — crystal clear. News Hounds reports that what he said, is that non-Christians need to convert to Catholicism and worship Christmas along with him (WebCite cached article). He began with some remarks about reports that Christmas trees make some non-Christians uncomfortable:

Bill’s verbal pugilism escalated with “tell them to get over it.” He then did a litany of those who are “excluded,” including “mothers who feel excluded from father’s day” (WTF!) and said “too bad.”

What the fuck, indeed! I had no idea that any mothers felt “excluded” from Father’s Day. Where did the Billster pull that from?

Bill claimed that his Jewish friends (imaginary?) say this is ridiculous and that “everybody celebrates Christmas.”

Aha. The old “some of my best friends are Jewish” thing. Sorry Bill, but that you happen to know a few Jews who celebrate Christmas, tells us absofuckinglutely nothing about Jews as a group, or even about non-Christians generally. My guess, Bill, is that any Jewish friends you may have, are telling you what you want to hear because they know what a ferocious Christofascist you are. (That’s assuming you really have any Jewish “friends,” Bill … I find that claim to be non-credible.)

He then brayed that if people are made uncomfortable by Christmas displays — are ya ready for it — they should “convert to Catholicism.”

Yes, folks, that’s the Billster’s solution to the problem of religious inclusiveness … everyone should just convert en masse to his own religion, Roman Catholicism, and — voilà! — problem gone.

That, Gentle Reader, is the very definition of a religious militant, and now you see why I’ve been saying that the Billster is a Christofascist.

The really sad part about this is that a lot of religious folks are going to read what the Billster said, and agree with him, that everyone converting to the same religion would solve the problem of religious division. What all of Bill’s believer/defenders fail to understand is the truly hideous nature of this idea. Its horror would become clearer, if put in the mouths of others. They wouldn’t be too keen, for example, on al-Qaeda terrorists saying to them, “If you want us to stop trying to blow you up by the dozen, all you have to do is convert to our Wahhabi Islamism.” Its criminality becomes even more obvious if one puts it in the mouth of a robber: “All you need do is give me all your money, and I won’t be forced to attack you.”

At any rate, I have to wonder, though, how many of the Billster’s allies among the rest of the Religious Right — which is overwhelmingly evangelical Protestant and therefore opposed to Catholicism — are going to take his demand that everyone convert to Catholicism. My guess is that they secretly cringed when they heard that … but in the interest of militant-Christian solidarity against non-Christians, they likely would never openly admit it.

I hope any doubts as to the religiofascist goals of people like Bill Donohue have been dispelled. Now you understand why they make such an issue out of Christmas every year … for them, it’s a wedge issue they can use to push their demand that everyone in the world believe what they do.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: bill donohue, billster, catholic, catholic league, catholicism, catholics, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, christmas, christmas tree, christmas trees, christofascism, christofascist, christofascists, conversion, convert, fox news, militant, militant religion, religiofascism, religiofascist, religiofascists, religionism, religionist, religionists, religious militant, religious right, roman catholic, roman catholicism, the billster, war on christmas, war on christmas 2010