Month: June 2015

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – marriage and a lovely example of TrueChristian hysteria

Remember this. credit - Greta Christina
Remember this.
credit – Greta Christina

Whoo-hoo, marriage for all!   I hope that everyone who chooses to get married is as happy as my husband and I.

Rather than reviewing the SCOTUS decisions since others have done a better job than me, I found a typical opinion piece by one of the horrified TrueChristians, or as he puts it “orthodox Christians” (not to be confused with Orthodox Christians, of the eastern varieties). It’s much more fun to watch the schadenfreude and hypocrisy that such people create and reap for themselves.

First, a few thoughts though on the decision. The reason rights are enshrined in the Constitution is because states shouldn’t have that power. We fought a war over that. We’ve constantly been adding classes of people who get to enjoy those rights.   The dissenting justices were amazingly unprofessional sounding in their writings and ended up using nothing more than personal attacks and the logical fallacy “appeal to tradition”. All of their arguments would have been just great in defending slavery or denying women the right to vote. It strikes me as they lost their minds as soon as their religion was under fire for simply being wrong. They aren’t special snowflakes any more. Another thing that these idiots can’t quite get is that there are churches that have no problem with people who are gay and lesbian. All they want to do is enforce their particular religion on everyone.

Now, let’s get to the fun bit. An opinion piece out on the Time magazine website was written by Rod Dreher, a writer for the magazine The American Conservative. For a bunch of people who claim to hate big government, they sure want it when it can force their religion on others. We wouldn’t expect anything less. Dreher is the person who claimed that the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t at fault for allowing priests to molest children, it was the gays!

This post is full of sarcasm. Anything that resembles agreeing with these twits isn’t.

At least the fellow is smart enough not to claim that the sky is falling, at least “not yet”.   It’s always so embarrassing when “orthodox Christians”, and Orthodox Christians (not the same), and evangelical Christians, and Protestant Christians, and Catholic Christians, etc ad infinitum fail repeatedly in their predictions of how their god is going to get us, honest, really soon now.

We’re supposedly now in “post-Christian America.”  Funny how that seems to be not the case because there are churches still on many corners, still hundreds of media outlets that are entirely Christian, my local screaming preacher on street corner is still there.  Bibles are in every library and every bookstore.  Scads of websites and blogs, and golly, Mr. Dreher is still writing his very own and very TrueChristian opinions on the Time magazine website!  You know you are persecuted when you are in Time. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – marriage and a lovely example of TrueChristian hysteria” →

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A Gay Dad Sounds Off on the Terror Threatening to Be Unleashed on California Families

A Gay Dad Sounds Off on the Terror Threatening to Be Unleashed on California Families.

 

Unsurprisingly, there are still more attempts to legitimize the actions of conservative theists.   The Westboro Baptists aren’t the only ones that bear watching and confronting by pointing out their actions and showing them for what they are.

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Evidence and personal experience

atheist evidenceRecently, I’ve been crossing swords with some Christians. A Calvinist, an evangelical American Christian fundamentalist, a Christian whose God doesn’t really punish people for sins by sending them to hell, a Quaker who doesn’t like to call himself a Quaker, quite a motley lot. They are all very different in what they claim is the objective truth of Christianity, and also quite sure that their version is the correct one. If they weren’t, they’d not be the type of Christian that they are, eh?

(as usual, this is a riff on some themes I’ve discussed before. You have been warned  🙂  ).

The Christian, equippedcat, whom I met on Hessian With Teeth’s blog, was indignant that I asked for evidence from Christians and claimed that I wasn’t presenting evidence for what I supposedly believed (the whole very long discussion can be found in comments here). I had presented this evidence, but it got me thinking, what evidence would my opponents consider valid? EC said that he was looking for “universally valid evidence” too. I wondered what that exactly was to him. He of course has not yet explained what that is. I’ve invited him here to do so. ( and he has which I do appreciate.  See down in the comments).

Evidence is considered at its base “something which shows that something else exists or is true       (Merriam-webster.com). You can get more refined with what a court might consider evidence, but for my purposes, I think this is a pretty good definition. Many Christians claim that their personal experiences should be considered evidence, as valid as anything else. However, let me present a situation: Drugs can give hallucinations. Someone near and dear to me had hallucinations that there were giant mosquitos attacking him after taking lithium. I, after smoking salvia, saw the entire world as constructed out Twizzlers (yes, the candy). Now is this evidence? And evidence for what?   Well, it *can* be considered evidence, no doubt about that.   The hallucination shows that *something* occurred. The question is what was that *something*? Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – Evidence and personal experience” →

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – my thoughts on “A History Of God”

Why-Believe-Something-Without-EvidenceOver on Hessian With Teeth’s blog, the authors have watched a documentary and asked for comments about it. The doc is “A History of God” based on the book by Karen Armstrong of the same name. Armstrong is a theist who wants to have her god but who doesn’t want the baggage it comes with.

The following is my stream of consciousness kibitzing written while watching it. It was going to be just a comment on the blog, but it quickly got out of hand.  🙂

Well, the first thing that struck me is that the doc, and probably the book, assumes that everyone believes in a singular god and we’re all just one happy family, which of course is not true, the reality being much more complicated. It’ strikes me as the same bs when Christians want to claim that everyone “really” believes in their god, in an attempt to co-opt every good and decent person in history to their “team”.

Ms. Armstrong makes the claim that we “can’t” worship like our ancestors. That is of course not true. There are plenty of people worshipping quite like their ancestors, and there are people worshipping as close to their ancestors as they can get. There has indeed been a change in worship for some people, like Ms. Armstrong, who do their best to redefine their god so they don’t have to be responsible for what their religion has done, and so they can ignore that their religion is based on just as many ridiculous things as those “pagan” religions were.

Hilarious that the one Lutheran fellow says that Agnes was a saint for breast cancer when that was entirely invented. Funny how he forgets that the Church claimed that sickness was from being unright with their god.

It does do a decent job of showing how belief in gods is nothing more than human fantasy and that the idea of Israelites as culture always separate is nonsense. If the OT claims are wrong, then there is little reason to believe in a god invented from that culture.   Armstrong’s attitude seems to be a bit condescending, rather like patting an ignorant child on the head.

It is interesting that the rabbi says that sacrifice is for when you really mean it, which does indicate that the resurrection is rather meaningless. It’s also rather amusing that the wrestling with God is now magically just a metaphor, but there is nothing to show this is what was thought by the authors.   It’s the usual invention by modern theists to claim that they know exactly what the ancient authors meant in one case, and claim to not know in another. Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – my thoughts on “A History Of God”” →