Miscellanea Agnostica

The purpose-driven beggar’s begging (about which I blogged a few days ago) has, apparently, worked spectacularly. KCAL-TV in Los Angeles reports Rick Warren’s good news and good fortune:

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren says his call for donations to fill a $900,000 deficit at his Southern California megachurch has brought in $2.4 million.

Warren announced the sum to cheers at a Saturday service, and said the total includes only money brought in person to Saddleback Church by New Year’s Eve.

I admit Warren sure has chutzpah. It takes real guts for a multi-millionaire (which Warren is, due to his “purpose-driven” publishing empire) to actually go begging for money as he did. But he did it, and his sheep congregants rewarded him handsomely for it.

I’m not sure exactly where Jesus’ own injunctions against amassing wealth* fits into all of this, but I’m sure Warren can twist scripture sufficiently to wring some sort of rationale out of them.

* For Mr Warren and others not already aware of these passages, a few of them are: Mt 6:19-20, Mk 10:23, Lk 12:15 & 12:33.

Tags: deficit, donations, evangelical, finance, fundamentalist, megachurch, purpose-driven, rick warren, saddleback, saddleback church

When you operate one of the largest churches in the country, the problems you face tend to be proportionally large. That’s the case for Rick Warren, who runs the Saddleback Church in southern California and is in charge of the “purpose-driven” publishing empire (as reported by the AP via Yahoo News):

OC megachurch pastor asks for urgent donations

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren appealed to parishioners at his Orange County megachurch Wednesday to help fill a $900,000 deficit by the first of the year.

Warren made the appeal in a letter posted on the Saddleback Church Web site. It begins “Dear Saddleback Family, THIS IS AN URGENT LETTER.”

“With 10 percent of our church family out of work due to the recession, our expenses in caring for our community in 2009 rose dramatically while our income stagnated,” the letter reads.

Still, Warren said the church managed to stay within its budget, but “the bottom dropped out” when Christmas donations dropped. “On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive — leaving us $900,000 in the red for the year,” the letter reads.

Since Warren is, himself, a millionaire author, he should be able to make up the $900,000 shortfall with just a check out of his own personal treasury, without breaking a sweat. One wonders, then, why he won’t do — himself — what he’s asking his own congregants to do.

Oh well, hypocrisy is nothing new with Warren.

I have no doubt, of course, that Warren’s sheep congregants will come through and bail him and his church out of this financial distress, at least this time, and perhaps a couple more times too, if it comes to that. But if Saddleback Church’s deficits are running this large, I have to wonder how long this can go on.

Hat tip: iReligion forum at Delphi Forums.

Tags: deficit, donations, evangelical, finance, fundamentalist, megachurch, purpose-driven, rick warren, saddleback, saddleback church

Rick Warren — about whom I’ve blogged many times, the fundamentalist preacher who built a megachurch in southern California, and created the lucrative “Purpose-Driven” publishing empire — just revealed his complete ignorance of freethought and atheism. According to the Raw Story:

Not believing in a Supreme Being takes more faith than believing in one, according to Pastor Rick Warren. “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” Warren told Fox News anchors Steve Doocy and Martha MacCallum Monday.

Warren puts forth arguments against atheism which are so old and tired that he has little rational excuse for trotting them out yet again. I’ll go over them one by one:

“You know, Steve, if I’m walking down a mountain and I see rock out of place and I go ‘that’s an accident.’ If I’m walking down a mountain — on the trail — and I find a Rolex that’s evidence of design,” he explained. “It actually takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in God.”

This is known as William Paley’s “watchmaker analogy,” a teleological argument, which is fallacious, and for several reasons. One of those failures is that it’s based solely on a subjective determination of what must have been “made.” Subjectivity can never be construed as objective veracity. Another failure is, one can know a watch is only human-made because one can walk into a factory and see them being designed and crafted. When it comes to the Universe, however, it is not possible to watch an “intelligent designer” (or deity) manufacture a new universe. (At least, no one has yet done so … and I don’t expect it ever will happen.) So, Rick, strike one!

While Warren scoffs at atheists, he seemed to respect every other belief system. “The are 600 million Buddhists in the world. There are 800 million Hindus. There are one and a half billion Muslims and there are 2.3 billion Christians. The actual number of secularists in the world is actually quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan,” said Warren.

Warren’s appeal to numbers … i.e. there are billions of “believers” but nowhere near as many non-believers, ergo, believers must be correct … is fallacious. This fallacy goes by many names; formally as argumentum ad populum, and less formally as the appeal to popularity, the bandwagon fallacy, appeal to consensus, democratic fallacy, appeal to the majority, etc. It fails, because reality and veracity are not up for a vote. That many people believe something does not automatically make it true. At one time nearly all human beings thought the Earth was at the center of a universe only a few thousand miles across; we have, however, found this is not so. If one followed Warren’s reasoning, we’d have dismissed Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo as mindless cranks and would still think we were at the center of the universe. So, Rick, strike two!

Bashing on atheists isn’t new for the pastor who has also compared gay marriage to pedophilia.

Warren is wrong here, folks. Gay marriage has nothing to do with pedophilia. It can’t … because marriage (of any kind) is a partnership between adults capable of entering into a contract; while pedophilia is an adult having sex with a minor. The two are completely and totally unrelated — and by definition. So, Rick, strike three — you’re out!

But wait, there’s more!

In April of 2007, Warren told Newsweek that he “never met an atheist who wasn’t angry” and that “far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together.”

While it is true that 20th century massacres and atrocities have killed more people than anything prior, and not all of them were done for religious reasons, keep in mind that these were political regimes, not religious ones.

The medieval Church which orchestrated the Inquisitions, was primarily a religious organization. The wars in the Middle East known collectively as the Crusades, had at least some religious motivation. The invasions of Europe and the Middle East by central Asians, under Genghis Khan and then under Timur the Lame — in their time the single most devastating conflicts in all of history, which were not exceeded until the 20th century — were partly motivated by religion: In Genghis Khan’s case, because his Mongol gods of heaven told him he would be a mighty ruler, and in Timur’s, because he wanted to spread Sunni Islam in places which were, in his day, primarily Shi’ite.

As for people like Hitler, who orchestrated the Holocaust, it hardly seems possible for him to have repressed and then slaughtered so many Jews, if not for centuries of Christian-inspired anti-Semitism. One can, therefore, also chalk up the atrocities of the Third Reich — at least partly — to religion.

Not to mention the fact that, while Warren condemns — and dismisses — atheists as “angry,” I definitely see a lot of sanctimonious anger on the part of lots of religious folk, too. Including himself! So, Rick, not only have you struck out, you whiffed an extra time!

If anyone isn’t clear, by now, what kind of bellicose, sanctimonious, ignorant creep Rick Warren is … well, you now have your evidence. He’s also proven himself a hypocrite by dismissing atheists as “angry” without acknowledging the religious are often just as angry, if not moreso. (Note to Rick: Your own Jesus specifically, clearly, explicitly, and unambiguously ordered you, as his follower, never to be hypocritical. So I’d be careful if I were you.)

Hat tip: iReligion Forum at Delphi Forums.

Tags: appeal to popularity, argumentum ad populum, atheism, atheists, belief, crusades, faith, fallacious, fallacy, gay marriage, inquisition, invasions, liar for jesus, lying for jesus, lying liar for jesus, lying liars for jesus, marriage, paley's watch, pedophilia, purpose-driven, purpose-driven life, Religion, rick warren, saddleback church, secularism

A hat-tip to the Friendly Atheist blog, which comments on megapastor Rick Warren’s latest effort to rehabilitate himself after his previous excursion into stupidity, which as it turns out, became yet another example of exactly the same phenomenon. This time he spewed his drivel on Hugh Hewitt’s show (as related by the Friendly Atheist based on transcripts):

Watch how Warren explains New Atheism: …

HH: What do you make of the new atheism, whether it’s Lobdell or Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, and all the attention they’re getting?

RW: Well, first place, they’re making a ton of money, okay?

The implication is that making money reduces one’s credibility. People can make money publishing the truth, however, so Warren’s implication is false. Not only that … the last I know, Warren’s “Purpose-Driven” publishing franchise is a multi-million-dollar-a-year operation! So who the hell does Warren think he is to whine about someone else making money on books?

Fucking hypocrite.*

As usual, Warren veers into two very old, tired, and thoroughly invalid apologetic whines about atheists:

I’ve debated Hitchens and I debates [sic] Sam Harris, and I told Sam, I said Sam, to be honest with you, I have never known an atheist who wasn’t mad, who wasn’t angry. And he got angry about it. But the truth is, every one of them have a thorn.

This is the old “discredit atheists by labeling them as ‘angry’” tactic. Unfortunately, like his “they’re making money” remark, this too is fallacious. Not only can he not demonstrate these guys are “angry” (at least, no more or less than any other human being, Warren included), even if they were, their anger does not make them wrong. Angry people can be, and sometimes are, correct. The second old apologetic whine Warren tries is:

I could have gone up, stood up and said the fact of life, and for instance, far more people were killed in the 20th Century by atheist regimes than all of the people ever killed in religious regimes put together in history. When you take Mao, Stalin and Hitler, there’s no comparison the genocides that have been caused by atheists.

The Friendly Atheist reveals this complaint as bogus:

The whole argument about Mao and Stalin has been debunked repeatedly. While they may have been atheists, they didn’t kill in the “name of atheism.” Hitler was a Christian.

Having spewed these trite — and invalid — apologetic whines about atheists, he proceeds to regale Hewitt with a third one, which is new to me, if no less asinine:

Paul Vitz, who is an author with New York University, wrote a very fascinating book called Faith Of The Fathers, in which he went and studied the 72 most well-known atheists in history, the Bertrand Russells, the Voltaires, the Freuds, and the only thing he could find in common with every one of them is they all hated their dads. Every one of them. They had distant dad, demeaning dad, a dead dad, they had no relationships with their fathers.

So atheists are atheists because they had problems with their fathers, if we take Warren at his word. This is even more laughable than dismissing atheists as “angry.” What’s more, Warren knows he cannot prove that all atheists had problems with their fathers … so when he offers this theory, he is lying. Yet another lying liar for Jesus.

Not to mention, even if these people’s opinions were flavored by (bad) relationships with their fathers, that still does not mean they must be wrong. Even people with bad parental relationships, can be and often are correct about things.

I wonder when the rational Christians out there are finally going to summon the courage to do what they know ought to be done, and come up with some way to quiet Warren down, or else, drown out his crap somehow? (Answer: It will never happen. Christians do not criticize each other publicly. Ever.)

* Note that Warren — like virtually all other Christians who have ever lived — forgets that Jesus Christ himself explicitly, clearly, and unambiguously forbid his followers ever to be hypocritical. But that’s an old story.

Tags: apologetics, christian apologetics, friendly atheist, hugh hewitt, liar for jesus, lying liar for jesus, rick warren, saddleback church

To follow-up on my blog entry about multimillionaire megapastor Rick Warren’s cowardice exhaustion, Politico offers an elaboration on Warren’s claim:

Pastor Rick Warren abruptly canceled an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” in which he would have had the opportunity to clarify his denial last week that he had ever endorsed California’s anti-gay-marriage ballot measure, when in fact he had done so on videotape.

A Warren aide e-mails the best-selling evangelical pastor’s view on both issues:

“Easter weekend is like the Super Bowl for a megachurch like Saddleback; this year they were expecting upwards of 43,000 to attend 43 service venues and locations offered at 13 separate service times, requiring an intense several weeks of preparation by the pastor and his team.

Interesting. If Easter weekend is so understandably busy for the megapastor that his exhaustion is a natural consequence, why then did he book an interview with Stephanopoulos in the first place? Clearly Warren planned to go through with it and did not consider the busy pace of an Easter weekend to be a problem, back when he promised to go on George’s show.

Nevertheless, the Warren aide quoted in this Politico piece goes on:

“There has been a lot of blog chatter trying to connect the dots with the interviews this weekend and comments Dr. Warren made on CNN Larry King Live, but his cancellations were related to health and fatigue…. I was looking forward to the opportunity for him to clarify his position with Messrs. Stephanopoulos and Huckabee (the latter with whom he was to interview live at 2:45 PM EDT on Saturday) to reframe the picture for television viewers the way we had been trying to do on a per-inquiry basis with print outlets by sending out the statement below:

Warning to my readers: What follows is Warren’s twisted rationale for lying to Larry King. The aide’s promise to “clarify” and “reframe” the matter should serve as a warning that you’re about to be inundated with bullshit … and he doesn’t disappoint:

“Throughout his pastoral ministry spanning nearly 30 years, Pastor Warren has remained committed to the biblical definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, for life — a position held by most fellow Evangelical pastors. He has further stressed that for 5,000 years, EVERY culture and EVERY religion has maintained this worldview.

“When Pastor Warren told Larry King that he never campaigned for California’s Proposition 8, he was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative in that state, based on his focus and leadership on other compassion issues. Because he’s a pastor, not an activist, in response to inquiries from church members, he issued an email and video message to his congregation days before the election confirming where he and Saddleback Church stood on this issue.

There are a number of problems with this statement. First, it is factually untrue that — as the Warren aide put it — “EVERY culture and EVERY religion has maintained” that marriage is only between one man and one woman. Warren’s holy text itself contains proof that this is not true. The list of patriarchs and kings in the Old Testament who had multiple wives and even concubines is long. (See my earlier post on the subject of marriage for details … complete with chapter and verse citations.)

Also, contrary to Warren and his aide, there are, even now, cultures and religions that accept alternative forms of marriage such as polygamy. (Islam is the most significant example … nearly one/third of humanity is Muslim, a number far too large for Warren or his aide to dismiss as they do.)

To lie as an explanation of a lie, is never a good idea. But Warren, through his aide, has done so! This means that not only did Warren lie for Jesus, he lied for Jesus again in order to justify having lied for Jesus. How nice.

Second, Warren asserts that his support of Proposition 8 was not as part of “the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative,” yet nevertheless he informed his sheep to vote for it; even so, those instructions were not “support.”

Did you catch that? The aide concedes that Warren supported Prop 8, but because his support was not of the “official” variety, it doesn’t actually count as “support.” This is gibberish, pure and simple.

The question I asked in my prior blog post (near the end), remains unanswered: Why is it not possible for Warren simply to apologize for having lied and be contrite? It won’t kill him to do so. And it’s never a bad idea for a Christian pastor to show a little Christian humility.

Note to Rick Warren: The humility part of your religion was best explained by your own Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount — if you open your Bible, you’ll see it in chapters 5 through 7 of the gospel of Matthew. Read it sometime. Just once, and just for kicks.

Tags: contrition, gay marriage, george stephanopoulos, lying for jesus, lying liars for jesus, marriage, matthew 5-7, plural marriage, rick warren, saddleback church, sermon on the mount

Rick Warren was supposed to have appeared on George Stephanopoulos’s show yesterday (Sunday, April 11, 2009), but he canceled at the last minute, as George disclosed to viewers:

For those of you tuning in this morning expecting to hear from Pastor Rick Warren, we were too, but the pastor’s representatives canceled moments before the scheduled interview, saying that Mr. Warren is sick from exhaustion.

Gee, I wonder if this decision might not have had something to do with his having been caught lying to Larry King a little over a week ago (as I blogged about already). Maybe his “exhaustion” comes from having been up all night with his handlers trying to come up with yet another lie to explain the already-outrageous lie he told Larry King.

Just once I would love to see one of these sniveling, craven liars “man up” for once, ‘fess up to their dishonesty, admit they wrong, apologize for having done so, and promise not to do it again.

Just once I’d like to see it. Would it really kill any of them to do so? About the only example of this that I can think of, was in late 1998 when then-House speaker-elect Bob Livingston (R-LA) apologized and resigned — not just as speaker-elect, but from Congress altogether — when Larry Flynt threatened to reveal the Congressman had had an extramarital affair. That was nearly 11 years ago. In all that time we have yet to hear a public figure ever honestly or candidly admit to doing anything wrong. It’s always “deny, deny, deny,” until finally the proof is so overwhelming that it can no longer be denied … yet even then some continue to claim innocence (e.g. Rod Blagojevich).

It would be nice if a spokesman for Christ — as Warren claims to be! — actually managed to show the kind of humility Jesus himself demanded of his followers, as he did in the Sermon on the Mount (you know … the meek shall inherit the earth and all of that). I guess it’s just another example of how Christians refuse to obey the instructions Jesus himself gave them. I have no idea why they dig their heels in on it as often as they do, but apparently they see nothing wrong with it.

Time for Warren to grow up, act his age, take his lumps, and move on. Or … he can remain a sniveling, cowardly little boy. His choice.

Tags: george stephanopoulos, humility, larry king, liars for jesus, lying liars for jesus, rick warren, sermon on the mount

Multimillionaire megapastor Rick Warren is exposed as a “lying liar for Jesus” by the Unreasonable Faith blog. The evidence is incontrovertible. Another example of Christian righteousness in action.

Tags: larry king live, liars for jesus, lying liar for jesus, proposition 8, religious right, rick warren, saddleback church

I’ve blogged previously about pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback megachurch in southern California. He’s already built a vast multi-million-dollar-per-year publishing franchise based on his insipid Purpose-Driven Life book (and its sequels and workbooks and study guides and etc.). And he injected himself into the presidential campaign, by hosting a candidates’s forum in August, and will preside over Barack Obama’s coronation inauguration. He’s clearly angling for more power and influence, despite the vast sums of money and influence he’s already collected from his Purpose-Driven Life franchise.

Even that, however, turns out not to be enough for the good pastor. As I found at U.S. News & World Report — and as originally reported in Christianity Today — he has invited breakaway Episcopal congregations to build new churches on his own property:

Evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren is offering his Saddleback church campus as a place for breakaway Episcopal congregations to meet, or even to start, new churches. Christianity Today has the story.

Now there’s some Christian humility for you. Somehow I don’t think single-handedly building a new Christian denomination on the foundations of a fracture in an older one, is what Jesus had in mind when he famously said, “the meek shall inherit the earth” (Mt 5:5).

Tags: christian humility, episcopal schism, purpose-driven franchise, rick warren

The Washington Post reports that the widely-derided-by-religionazis Michael Newdow — backed by groups such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation — is suing in federal court to keep two pastors off the podium when Barack Obama is sworn into office as president, and to keep him from having to say “so help me God” at the end of his oath:

A group of atheists, led by a California man known for challenging “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, plan to file a lawsuit today to bar prayer at the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama.

Michael A. Newdow, 17 other individuals and 10 groups representing atheists sued Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., several officials in charge of inaugural festivities and Rev. Joseph E. Lowery and pastor Rick Warren.

Somehow, America’s religious folk are not clear on this, and need to be reminded (as I blogged earlier): They aren’t going to see a bishop crown a king in a medieval rite, they’re going to see a US president sworn into office. In case anyone sees no problem with that practice, keep in mind that the author of the First Amendment, James Madison, said that the hiring of Congressional chaplains violated that Amendment (all spellings original):

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes.

So … if the man who wrote the First Amendment didn’t think Congressional sessions should be opened by chaplains, what the hell business does a president have being sworn in under the watchful eye of clergy?

Any questions from the so-called “strict constructionists” out there (who are almost universally all of the Religious Right persuasion), who always seem to foam at the mouth over what they claim is “the Founders’ intent”? You now know what the Founders’ intent was — from the pen of that very Founder who wrote the First Amendment! Read it, learn it, understand it.

P.S. Did I mention that “so help me God” is also not part of the Constitutional oath that presidents swear to? Oh, that’s right … it’s OK to add stuff into the Constitution, so long as it’s God you’re adding in. There’s a word for that, you know … hypocrisy!)

Tags: barack obama, convocation, establishment clause, first amendment, hypocrisy, inauguration, invocation, james madison, joseph lowery, lawsuit, michael newdow, rick warren, strict constructionism

Barack Obama’s inauguration, about a month from now, will feature an invocation by evangelical Christian Bible-thumper Rick Warren — pastor of the famed Saddleback megachurch and millionaire author of those cloying “purpose-driven” books — about whom I’ve blogged before. Warren is supposed to be a member of the “new” evangelicals … interested in social-justice causes and all of that, theoretically closer to the political Left than more traditional evangelicals. But let’s be honest about this; when it comes to the “big-ticket” issues so near and dear to the hearts of Protestant evangelicals — abortion, gays, etc. — Warren is a slave to the traditional dogma. Any difference he has with other evangelicals is strictly cosmetic.

Having an evangelical like Warren has, therefore, outraged Obama’s supporters on the Left, as one would logically expect:

No backing down whatsoever today from President-elect Barack Obama in the face of some strong criticism from gay and lesbian interests over his choice of Saddleback’s Rick Warren for the invocation speaker at the Jan. 20 inauguration.

As pastor of his mega-church in Lake Forest, Warren was an outspoken proponent of Prop. 8, which passed on Nov. 4 and overturns a court decision allowing same-sex marriage in California.

I wonder when the Left is finally going to figure out that Obama is not really their guy as much as they believe … they nominated and elected him primarily because he had not voted to approve the Iraq War (not possible for him, since he wasn’t in Congress then) … but this did not really make him “their” man, and he’s showing his true colors.

But the question that most nags at me is a bigger one: Why in hell is it even necessary to have a preacher presiding over the inauguration in the first place? Back in the Middle Ages, monarchs were crowned by popes or other bishops, in ecclesiastical rites that in some cases took all day. But I’ve got news for America — our president is not a king; his office is not a sacred one; he is, rather, the chief executive of a completely-secular government. It is not necessary for him to be inaugurated under the watch of the clergy.

Really, it’s not.

So … why the hell is Obama doing it? Could it be because too many Americans are not yet mature enough to let their new president take office without having God paraded around at the same time? Isn’t it time for Americans to grow up?

It’s unfortunate that Obama has chosen to do this; he could have displayed a great deal of courage by refusing to make his inauguration into a medieval sacerdotal rite. But I guess he just was not up to it. Pity.

Tags: barack obama, coronation, inauguration, rick warren, sacerdotal