Christmas trees removed at Sea-Tac

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All nine Christmas trees have been removed from Sea-Tac International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested.

WHAT’S NEXT?
Could airport officials reinstate the Christmas trees? Read our follow-up story for further developments.

For more than 25 years, the airport has celebrated the holidays with Christmas trees over its entrances. But overnight, the Port of Seattle ordered all of them removed. Maintenance workers boxed up the trees during the graveyard shift early Saturday, when airport bosses believed few people would notice.

“We decided to take the trees down because we didn’t want to be exclusive,” said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. “We’re trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year.”

Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who made his request weeks ago, said he was appalled by the decision. He had hired a lawyer and threatened to sue if the Port of Seattle didn’t add the menorah next to the trees, which had been festooned with red ribbons and bows.

“Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season,” said Bogomilsky, who works in Seattle at the regional headquarters for Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation.

After consulting with lawyers, port staff believed that adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest. The holidays are the busiest season at the airport, Betancourt said, and staff didn’t have time to play cultural anthropologists.

Hanukkah begins this Friday at sundown.

“They’ve darkened the hall instead of turning the lights up,” said Bogomilsky’s lawyer, Harvey Grad. “There is a concern here that the Jewish community will be portrayed as the Grinch.”

Angry airport employees have started a campaign urging people to call the Port of Seattle to complain.

The Christmas trees are now in storage or hidden in unused areas of the airport where they won’t be seen.

Airlines companies that lease space in the airport are not being required to remove decorations from their check-in counters.

Rachel Garson with the Port of Seattle said the issue would be revisited after the holidays are over.

“Since this is the busiest time of year we decided to take the decorations down now and consider a new policy after the new year,” Garson said.

The rest of the story is here. The Rabbi started this in October. read it for yourself.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/295428_trees11.html?source=mypi

I am no longer amazed at the ignorance that is displayed by people as regards religion. I read about 4 other articles on this today and just thought WTF? I am not a xmas kind of guy. As far as I’m concerned it is strictly for and about kids. Do I participate? Not much, but only a little. Am I against it? NO. To me it is just something else that we are stuck with in our society.

Here is the thing that gets me about taking down the trees in the above article. The admin at Sea-Tac could have added one other religious symbol but they chose not to. Apparently they were either afraid or they were opposed to it on religious grounds. They mention that they may need to accomodate other religious celebrations but left it unclear as to how that would be any different than what they are doing now. And the whole time they feel justified by their decisions. I guess it is because I have no belief in gods that I don’t seem to get it. Celebrate one celebrate them all why should anyone care?

What it indicates is just how far the retarded will go to spite one group at the expense of another. This is only happening in the last few years and has become all too prevalent. The politicians have us all fighting each other over insignificant matters while they plunder our future. It must be the GOOD Christinsanity that they are practising.

I really don’t have much to say about this, it just struck me as being odd. But why are the religious so angry at each other? Also I needed to use the Pic.

Just came across this nice post from Ron from the archive, and wanted to remind everyone about this classic commentary on the xmas season in relation to parenthood. Times like these reveal much about the social advantages of belonging to that crazy xian cult (especially here in the midwest, and, I’m sure, in other places as well). For those of us who have yet to drink the punch, it’s like we woke up on Mars.

I know you’re trying to be nice to my son. But unless you just think we’re monsters for not doing Xmas (and you probably wouldn’t, if we were Jews instead of Atheists), you’ve got to be able to recognize that saying to a kid what amounts to “looking forward to all those presents? oh, what’s that, you don’t get those? you poor deprived child!” isn’t making his life happier. Aside from the whole creepiness of the imaginary old fat guy who sneaks into your house through the chimney in the middle of the night story, it’s really not very decent of you to ask a 5-year-old to think about the ways he might be excluded from something like this.So shut the fuck up. If a kid is talking about Xmas, or wearing a Santa hat, or whatever, fine. But asking random small children how excited they might be about the pile of loot that comes to all good kids on Xmas morning is pretty insensitive.

‘Tis the season to be xian…

Not an act of God’s wrath but of man’s greed

Another devastating supertyphoon has roared through the central Philippines leaving an estimated thousand people dead, many of them buried in gigantic mudslides like what we saw here in the Philippines only a year ago. There is perhaps nothing more terrifying than being buried alive and waiting to die. The typhoons are growing in intensity year by year as a result of climate change and are destroying the infrastructure, the crops and the peoples’ lives month by month. During my 35 years in the Philippines, I cannot recall such a typhoon at this time of year. This was heightened by the recent eruption of the Mayon Volcano that left tons of sand and ash on its slopes that turned to a slimy sludge that surged down the mountain side engulfing villages, homes and people in minutes. In other places, one placid hillside began to move so great was the deluge of rain that emptied from the sky it undermined the treeless but grassy covered slopes. Rivers and swamps had been dredged for industrial use disrupting the mangroves and the natural barriers allowing great unstoppable floods to rush unimpeded through the coastal towns and swamp the villages carrying away dozens of flimsy disintegrating homes on a powerful wave of death and destruction. The suffering, devastation and destruction caused the loss of 66,500 homes, dozens of bridges, power lines and roads were ripped up and cast aside like straw. The bodies are buried so deep it is impossible to dig them out. Many will remain beneath the hundreds of tons of debris and dirt.

And then you wait for it…

Is this another act of punishment of an angry God for the sins of the world as some religious extremists would say or the result of a greedy, irresponsible generation of fossil fuel junkies and profit gouging addicts causing climate change? Is not the greatest sin against the environment to be laid at the door of us who pollute, waste and abuse the environment and never plant a flower, a bush or a tree? Or the sins against the rain forest to be laid at the door of teak loving tycoons that own the chain saws and lumber mills, the wood paneled palaces, fitted with lavish mahogany furniture and teak floors.

Baron d’Holbach said it so well so long ago. I could not have written this any better:

“. . . In all parts of our globe, fanatics have cut each other’s throats, publicly burnt each other, committed without a scruple and even as a duty, the greatest crimes, and shed torrents of blood. . . .

Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, ‘a God of armies,’ a ‘jealous God,’ an ‘avenging God,’ a ‘destroying God,’ a ‘God,’ who is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere be seen, who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him they must inflict on themselves, the most exquisite torments. The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have every where disquieted their minds, and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness.

How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.”
– Baron d’Holbach, Common Sense, 1772

Here is the conclusion of an excellent and very thorough essay I ran across this morning concering biblical belief, religion and knowledge and how for the fundamentalist, knowledge is stymied and discouraged by pastors who have little or no proper education themselves (or at least not much of a well-rounded education) , credentials or legitimate qualifications in the subjects and issues they are criticizing and condemning. They lack research and evidence needed to support the outrageous supernatural claims they promote, except from which is written in an ancient book by ancient, superstitious peoples who knew very little about their world, environment and universe which lie outside the borders of their own little patch of Earth. Here is the link to the ENTIRE ESSAY.

Science has enabled humanity to make enormous improvements its technological capabilities, material prosperity, and moral philosophy. These results led Carl Sagan to say: “Science is supported because it provides spectacular benefits at all levels in the society. . . .”[97]

Bertrand Russell similarly observed: “Almost all the changes which the world has undergone since the end of the Middle Ages are due to the discovery and diffusion of new knowledge.”[98]

But the Bible contains numerous teachings opposed to scientific inquiry and the increase of knowledge. The teachings are dangerous and continue to produce harm.

Former Christian fundamentalist Richard Yao maintains: “Perhaps the unpardonable sin of fundamentalism is its effort to make people suspicious and afraid of their own minds, their own logic and thinking process. . . . If we cannot depend on our minds to process reality and make choices and decisions in life, then we are more likely to depend on fundamentalist preachers. . . . How can a democracy survive if all of us renounce reason, thinking and logic?”[99]

Harold Bloom states that the problems are not confined to fundamentalism: “Fundamentalism . . . is viciously anti-intellectual, but so, alas, is most American religion, of whatever camp.”[100].

Bloom’s observation will be true as long as American religion looks to the Bible for guidance. No other outcome is possible when people follow a book that instructs them to distrust and reject their sensory perceptions and reasoning abilities.

The Bible’s anti-intellectual teachings are a recipe for being out of touch with reality – which is a path to ignorance, misery, and disaster.

Those irrational and harmful biblical ideas need to be replaced by science – with its methods of reason, observation, experience, and compassion.

Got another winner from P.Z.’s site…

281 Tricks to Irritate an Atheist…

I mean, it’d be so much more funny…

Well, you know, if it wasn’t true…

I know we have hashed and re-hashed this in the comment sections and posts at GifS before, but I keep encountering this Noah debate again and again…even with xian members of my own family (the Baptist members), and it becomes quite frustrating. Since we know we have a lot of xian lurkers at this site, I thought I would post this and maybe it will get the rusty wheels turning in their heads. (or am I being too hopeful?)

Over at Tommy’s Exercise in Futility blog we have been discussing the mythological story of Noah, and the subject of flood myths has come up here on my own blog in the comments of that post. It’s amazing to me how anyone in the year 2006 can still believe that mythological stories such as Noah and a whole-earth flood are literally true.

(Even creating museums that promote myth as truth.)

One xian commenter writes:

That Chrisitianity has many common themes as many other religions / mythologies shows me that these other religions and mythologies were not entirely off base. The Greeks did not get everything wrong. There have been several ancient myths that have spoken of a great flood. Given all of these myths, even to an unbeliever, it stands to reason that there probably was a great flood.

My response:

While religions/mythologies have been passed down and mixed up with other religions/mythologies, many non-religious traditions, customs, taboos and other aspects of societies have also been passed down and incorporated from one culture to another. Natives of isolated islands are in their own little world, doing their thing and along comes the missionaries to “save” them. This becomes a problem when a culture has created a mythology of their own already. Then when xians come trying to “convert” these people what you get is a whole new kind of bizarre religion like Cargo Cults. Most stories of mythology (including the xian mythology) are pretty far fetched, and though some do contain some sort of morals for people to live by in certain societies, for the most part, one mythology is just as absurd as another with gods smiting people, eating and sacrificing their own children, flooding the earth, etc. Pretty gruesome stuff…because humans have a gruesome side and usually it comes out in their imaginations…though some unfortunately decide to act on those things in a physical way (they are criminals, murderers, and such who usually end up locked up or executed.) Just because people have been making up superstitious beliefs to explain what they do not understand for centuries upon centuries and to try to control things they cannot doesn’t prove that any mythology is true, including xian mythology. It just means that humans have always been, and are still superstitious and fearful of the unknown.

Putting aside the other aspects of mythology, let’s look at flood myths and some reasons why humans invented them:

Every place on the planet experiences flooding…even at times in the desert regions. In ancient times, all people knew existed was their own little world, so when a flood occured, they assumed the whole world flooded. I am sure if the tsunami that happened in Indonesia a couple of years ago happened a couple thousand years ago, the natives would think the whole world was washed away. To believe that there was a global flood, and that before this flood Noah went around the world like Santa Claus, gathering two of every living thing and shoved them all the an ark is absurd.

And there are living organisms that would have perished, but impossible for an ancient person to even know about such as protozoa
* Flagellates
* Amoeboids
* Sporozoans
* Apicomplexa
* Myxozoa
* Microsporidia
* Ciliates

Certain species of fishes and water mammals can only live in fresh water, and certain species can only live in salt water. This would mean that Noah would have had to engineer tanks (small to massive in size) and filters to keep these aquatic animals alive for a long period of time, a long, long time after flood waters disappeared.

And what about vegetation and flora? Controlled greenhouses would be needed to provide differing adequate heating and light for all the millions of species of plants that are found in all of the climates around the globe (again, for a long,long time even after flood waters disappeared). What about insects? As we know, insects play a crucial part in the balance of nature. How did Noah manage to capture all species of insects and what did he keep them in to prevent them from escaping (as well as spreading disease to the animals)?

How did Noah manage to feed all these creatures and where did he store the massive amounts of food they eat, and how did he manage to keep it all from spoiling? What about the carnivoires that needed fresh meat to survive? How would he have provided air conditioning for arctic and cold-climate creatures? (And AGAIN, FOR A LONG, LONG TIME AFTER FLOOD WATERS DISAPPEARED!)

And the waste from these animals would have been an astronomical amount, and if they weren’t poisoned by the methane gas given off by the fecal matter, no way could a few people keep up with “digging out” and the ark would have sunk.

Looking at the book of xian mythology, some extraordinary claims are made:

God opens the “windows of heaven.” Genesis 7:11

the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;Genesis 8:2

Is heaven one huge cosmic cistern?

Instead of the man with the long white beard portrayed in xian art, is this god really an extraterrestrial amphibian or sea monster? Or maybe King Neptune works for him? Strange that believers in the literal interpretation of the Noah story never question how this bizarre and outlandish tale can be true (except with magical explanations like some I have heard like “god put all the animals into suspended animation, god made the animals not have appetites, god magically made everything grow back again after he made the flood waters disappear…etc.”). If this god has such magical powers, why would he need human Noah, who really wasn’t so virtuous—which is another biblical contradiction…READ HERE:The 500 Year Old Virgin

Another good point from Skeptics Annotated Bible

“Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn’t germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period.”

Where did all the water go? Evaporate back up into outer space? How did all of the animals get back to their perspective homes? Did Noah and his family take polar bears back to the Arctic regions? Did they take the elephants back to various locations in Asia and Africa? Did he take the penquin back to Antarctica? Or were all of the creatures like Lassie and found their way home on their own accord?

I don’t know how anyone with a thinking brain can take the story of Noah literally…along with the Tower of Babel story, turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt story, parting of the Red Sea story, talking snakes, creation story, etc. And Revelations is by far the most bizarre “prophecy” and it’s mind boggling that so many accept these as literal “truths”(and more frightning they believe it so much they are looking forward to the “end of times” and the destruction of their fellow human beings and all life on this beautiful planet).

In reality, this god has not shown any of these spectacular magical powers except in the writings of one small book. When disasters happen, humans must go and rebuild, replant, and clean up. As for Nature, when there are floods, fires, droughts, etc., if seeds survive, nature will gradually regenerate…but not in seven days…that is absurd to even consider to be anything other than an ancient mythological stories.