My first choice for titling this post was, “You cannot tell me there ain’t no god!”. But then I noticed something that ticked me off. BIG TIME!!!

So screw the first title! On behalf of the victim, I protest the extra bruising she took in newspapers across this planet!

Victim and thief meet again at bookstore

PRESCOTT, Ariz. – A woman whose purse was stolen and the thief who took it inadvertently stood next to each other at a Prescott bookstore — she to complain about the unauthorized use of her credit card, he to get some cash.

The 59-year-old victim went to Hastings Books and Music on Tuesday to tell the store that someone had stolen her purse and used her credit card to buy $200 in DVDs.

Minutes later, while the woman was standing there, a man came up to the counter and tried to return eight DVDs in exchange for cash. The two didn’t recognized each other, and the woman even politely made room for the man when he walked up.When the manager came to handle both transactions, she connected the dots.

It was “as if the world had stopped,” said Susan Murphy, another customer who had been browsing through magazines.

The manager “looked at the receipt, looked at the elderly lady and then at the young man standing next to her and said, ‘This is the transaction,’” Murphy said. “It just blew us all away.”

That’s when the man rushed out of the store. Police arrived and eventually caught up with him.

The 22-year-old man admitted to police that he had stolen the purse and used the woman’s credit card at the bookstore, a grocery store and a Wal-Mart. Police said the purchases added up to $716.

The suspect’s name had not been released.

The staff and customers at Hastings must be high-schoolers, as well as the editors at the Prescott AZ The Daily Courier. However, Yahoo!News only posted about 30% of the article. Check out: Community involvement helps catch credit-card thief. It’s a much better story. That said, I’m emailing the reporter with my comments on calling the middle-aged victim “elderly”!

But, seriously, what are the odds…

The Uncredible Halq offers up answers to FriendlyAtheist’s list of questions.

Below is my two cents’ worth. Maybe you’d care to toss yours in, too?

• Why do you not believe in God? I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious family, and from a very young age, religious stories sounded phony to me, and the rituals struck me as ominously cultish.
• Where do your morals come from? Instinct, society and culture, reasoning about what constitutes fair play and good civics.
• What is the meaning of life? On what basis do we assume there’s a general “meaning” to life?
• Is atheism a religion? As James Randi says, “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.” In a word, no.
• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times? Ruminate, hope, seek answers to problems that may be solvable, seek advice, commiseration, and/or distraction.
• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God? I don’t know if I’d say “should,” but it’s a goal that’s worthy, controversial, and generally unachievable. Lifelong brainwashing dies hard.
• Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists? Relatively few crimes are committed by atheists. Stalin, who elevated nationalism to a religion, can be cited as an “atheist monster.” Hitler, who likewise made a form of Fascism into a sacred creed, was not an atheist, despite frequent claims to the contrary.
• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God? The mass of people are wrong about things all the time. For millennia, people thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. The majority of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. People think cilantro is edible.
• Why does the universe exist? I’ll defer to science for the latest theories on “how,” a more sensible question than “why,” which supposes a sentient creator — something for which there is no evidence (it’s also the gateway drug to the paradox of who created the creator).
• How did life originate? Ditto on deferring to science. I’m not an expert on the latest theories, which may or may not hold up to additional evidence and scrutiny.
• Is all religion harmful? Ultimately, yes, because it keeps us from having a shared, legitimate sense of reality. It forces us to choose between sharing and reality, which is an awful choice. It also, of course, forces us to make arbitrary and often ill-fated decisions about with whom we can and cannot share.
• What’s so bad about religious moderates? I can’t improve upon what Chris Hallquist wrote: “Because the majority of them believe absurd things about religion that serve to give cover to the dangerously orthodox. Examples: “all religion is good,” and “it’s wrong to criticize someone’s religious beliefs.”
• Is there anything redeeming about religion? It can serve as a medium for building community and a vehicle for charity and comfort. I think we’d be better off choosing alternatives that don’t require us to check reason at the door; also, one man’s community is another man’s outsiderhood.
• What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)? I acknowledge that there could be supernatural forces that I don’t understand. All evidence suggests that religious humans don’t understand him/her/it any more than I do.
• Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected? Religious (or any) people, yes — unless they do something to earn one’s disrespect. Religious beliefs, not particularly, no. Where they approach philosophy, they may worth debating. But carte blanche respect for religion is the road to Hell.
• Are atheists smarter than theists? Of the smartest people I know, many are skeptics. Some are not. Atheists don’t corner the market on intelligence.
• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity? As I understand it, the Gospels were written long after Jesus’ death, by people who never met him. I’m slowly working my way through the Old Testament before I get to the red pages, so I don’t have too much to say yet about the teachings attributed to JC.
• Would the world be better off without any religion? I would expect so, as long as it isn’t replaced by something similarly misguided, such as fundamentalist nationalism. I don’t, however, advocate any sort mandated way to rid the world of religion — that would not only be a crime against freedom, it would surely backfire. Ideally, in the marketplace of ideas, ancient supernatural folly will eventually lose the day.
• What happens when we die? My guess is that our mind/personality/soul, whatever you like to call it, ceases to be, just as a lightbulb ceases to give light when the filament burns out.

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” – Isaac Asimov

“So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.” – Isaac Asimov, Nightfall

There is no doubt that we’ve all heard that nonsense, the ‘prophecies concerning Jesus’, in various guises in the blogging world.

I’ve pretty much slaughtered this whole nonsense, and torn some Old Testament folderol into confetti. Oh, and lest I forget, I pretty much trashed the entire New Testament, in accordance with the book’s own rules. (For those interested in my amateur exegesis that lead me to where I’m at today, my personal ‘trilogy’ that grants some insight can be found at one, two and three – but be forewarned: they’re somewhat on the long-winded side, but I fancy them entertaining.)

These would be mind-boggling feats, except that

A. It’s been done before, and
B. it’s fairly easy, for anyone with any sort of a critical mind. (I mean, really! Christians snort and scoff at others, yet don’t realize that their miserable little fairy tales are just as outrageous.)

And the patterns are fairly predictable. We hear about the ‘odds’ about these alleged ‘prophecies’ coming true, yet we’re criticized when we point out how these allusions are taken completely out of context. Then the claim is that we’re the ones who are quote-mining (talk about Tu Quoque!).

And for my efforts, I’ve been deemed ‘evil’. I must confess, my favorite is the old ‘retreat behind the trilemma‘ tactic (which is, of course, easily debunked by adding a fourth option: LEGEND). This is usually a tactic used when the ‘logic’ of the elocutor is sliced to ribbons by the audience (that is to say, when a creationist comes into an atheist blog and starts babbling in tongues, claiming the world’s only X amount of years old, you know the drill).

Religion seems to be a form of voluntary hemispherectomy – a form of voluntary lobotomy where logic is disabled, and the naturalistic fallacy (or a form thereof) is engaged.

It is to weep, sometimes.

It is a world of wonder we live in: there is no need for supernatural fairy tales to awe us into submission. The universe is a wild, wooly place indeed. Chock full of mysteries, replete with content enough to fill our lives and eyes. Who then requires a divine hand to stir the pot?

Not I.

Till the next post, then.

Happy fucking weekend, everyone! We need to eat, drink and be merry – within moderation. After all, we’re the adults of society – the xians are the piggish children.

Bad week! The president is pushing his “executive privilege” bullshit. Congress needs to tell him that the only “executive privilege” that Constitution allows him is “the privilege to use the executive washroom”.

And I’m looking forward to Harriet Miers being declared in “inherent contempt”. This nifty little distinction means that Congress doesn’t have to present a case to a US Attorney in DC (fat chance of finding an untainted-by-Gonzalez USA).

Congress can direct the US Congressional Security forces to arrest, handcuff and frog-march Harriet “I’ve got a crush on you” Miers to testify. (I wonder if Cheney will let her share his “undisclosed location”.)

Witness this laissez-faire attitude to the rule of law by a presidential candidate. And remember every infraction thereof on election day.

(I expect the title of this post will become a running series, with appended numbers to differentiate…)

Romney aide’s bogus badges: Sources detail ‘illegal’ security tactic

In an apparent violation of the law, a controversial aide to ex-Gov. Mitt Romney created phony law enforcement badges that he and other staffers used on the campaign trail to strong-arm reporters, avoid paying tolls and trick security guards into giving them immediate access to campaign venues, sources told the Herald.

The bogus badges were part of the bizarre security tactics allegedly employed by Jay Garrity, the director of operations for Romney who is under investigation for impersonating a law enforcement officer in two states. Garrity is on a leave of absence from the campaign while the probe is ongoing.

Oh, please, please! Read it all. You won’t be sorry.

Final paragrah: Garrity is also under investigation in New Hampshire for a separate incident in which he allegedly told a New York Times reporter to stop following Romney’s motorcade. He also allegedly told the reporter his license plates had been run. Garrity has denied through his lawyer that he checked the reporter’s license plates.

At least there isn’t a dog involved – that we know of!

The newest wrinkle in the “Haircutgate that won’t go away; the MSM loves it because the joke is on the Dems!”, check these links:

Mitt’s makeup wakeup call: Romney pays $300 for predebate primp-fest. [I love the juxtaposition of "makeup" and "wakeup". And "predebate primp-fest" - how pre-prom! How gay! But he did look fabulous...]

Mitt Romney spent nearly $2K on makeup while governor. Money quote? “You know I think John Edwards was right. There are two Americas. There is the America where people pay $400 for a haircut and then there is everybody else,” Romney said. [If that sounds like Mitt and Naomi are "equivalent", I call "bullshit"!]

What? You never heard of this? Well. among other corrupt news outlets, NBC continues to report on Edwards’ haircut, ignores Romney campaign’s makeup purchases.

Summary: Regarding the Mitt Romney campaign’s $300 makeup expenditure, NBC News’ First Read blog advised readers on July 17 to “look for [John] Edwards supporters to use this as a test to see if the MSM [mainstream media] covers Romney as harshly as Edwards was.” Despite that admonition, a July 19 Today report on candidate expenditures mentioned Edwards’ $400 haircuts, but not Romney’s makeup purchases.

If you wouldn’t vote for Romney, tell us why. If you would vote for him, you’re on the wrong blog!

American Family A$$ociation’$ late$t Hate-project
is to $ee that $.1055, a bill currently before the U$ $enate,
i$ defeated. They $ay, “Thi$ legi$lation will make
homo$exual$ a protected cla$$”, $eparate and
$uperor to chri$tian$, and will $upre$$ biblical Free$peech
that merely $eek$ to di$$eminate “god’$ $acred word”
on the $ubject of gay$.

Oops! No more pro$elityzing, no more $ermon$ again$t
gay$? No more “$econd-cla$$” citizen$hip for gay$”?
Who CAN we per$ecute, then, huh? Who doe$ that leave
u$ to feel $uperior to? (*$obbing*) What about OUR right$?

Oh, and, “Would you plea$e $upport u$ with a $mall gift?”

Okay. Here i$ my “$mall gift”: (*flip$ bird*) I advi$e you to
get a life! And $top eyeing my pur$e! Or el$e I will $mite you!

American Family Asses: go fuck yourselves!

I’m sorry; I came across this video in The Angry Toxicologist, one of the newest sites at Pharyngula’s host scienceblogs.com, and I can’t help but share it:

Party on, dudes and dudettes!

Great to see the indispensable Glenn Greenwald tackling the topic of Bush’s disturbing faith in his faith.

The Most Powerful Man in the World said this about his global agenda:

It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.

Glenn’s response:

This has been the great unexamined issue of the Bush presidency — the extent to which Bush’s unwavering commitment to Middle East militarism is, as Bush himself has made clear, rooted in theological and religious convictions, not in pragmatic or geopolitical concerns.

Of course, in little dens of blasphemy like this, this theme isn’t “unexamined,” but in the mainstream it certainly is one of the many large elephants in the room.

For your edification and delight, as an old teacher used to say before launching into something people didn’t want to hear, here’s the comment I posted on Salon:

To these eyes, this is the defining challenge of our age: to break the taboo on criticizing religion.

In this supposedly modern era, ancient superstitions hold a troubling power, as evidenced by…

• Bush’s “Crusade” (his term) in the Middle East, and the Religious Right machine that installed him in the White House
• The intractability of both sides in the Arab/Israeli crisis
• Islamist terrorism around the world, including the Iraqi Civil War started by our Christianist president
• Domestic Christianist terrorism, such as abortion-clinic bombings
• Institutionalized child rape by Catholic priests
• The “I’m a believer” kabuki dance every major political candidate is caught up in, at the expense of rallying around once-cherished values like reason and the separation of church and state

Yes, it’s gauche to criticize faith. And desperately, desperately necessary.

Criticizing faith and its excesses is not the same as demonizing its practitioners. Superstition and shared myth are pretty much fundamental to humankind. One can hate the sin of religiosity and still love the sinner.

However, in an age of mass communications and weapons of mass destruction, we need to be willing to admit when religion isn’t all bake sales and Kumbaya.

Ultimately, the suspension of reason and criticism creates grave risks to society, as does the suspension of checks and balances in a democracy.

As long as there’s a blank check for those who let hokum trump logic, we’re in for a world of hurt. This is probably the most inconvenient truth of all, and odds are not in favor of our species being willing to accept it.

Image: A bodyguard from Blackwater USA protects former Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer in Iraq in 2004. Blackwater’s founder is a right-wing Christian whose paramilitary contractors may be operating outside constitutional restrictions imposed on the police and military. Truthdig.com: America’s Holy Warriors, by Chris Hedges

KA brought us Allegories Gone Wild – The Arm Of Gord Smites Mightily The Feeble Of Mind…, about the dangers of mixing malcontents, lack of education and religious fervor.

This is about the dangers of a different brand of malcontent: educated; powerfully-connected, wealthy and secretive; and a religious zealot. Follow these links:

Erik Prince has a private army, sometimes called the Praetorian Guard; others say it “unites conservative Catholics, evangelicals and neoconservatives to fight a theoconservative holy war“. Son of an entrepreneur (who ran Holland MI as a “company town”) and a former SEAL, he started Blackwater USA in the late ’90s; his private-contractors include former Pinochet-backed Chilean soldiers, and more from Honduras, both of whom know how to torture; on his board of directors is a Knight of the Military Order of Malta***, who hates all Muslims, just like those in Iraq. He doesn’t take criticism well, disliking the documentary, “Iraq for Sale,” immensely. But Prince has loyalists, like White Rabbit (who doesn’t understand how ironic this is: “Definitely a hot issue. Keep digging for the truth. Start here [his own site! doh!], and don’t accept opinions and conjecture as facts. Read Pelton, watch Shadow Company … think critically about what both sides are telling you!” A visit to that site will show you just how “wrong and soft our gummint really is”…) Not everybody in Michigan “luvs” Erik; check out the very funny The Disembodied Head of Dick DeVos for even more informative links.

I say he’s a cog in a much bigger wheel bag-man for the theocratic movement. And is involved in sedition with many christian zealots, including Paul Weyrich, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Gary North, Gary DeMar, both Mr.&Mrs. Tim LaHaye, Don Wildmon and many, many others. I’m not alone; it’s what the Blog Against Theocracy is about and why Talk to Action and TheocracyWatch stay vigilant. Contrary to what FixedNews says about us, it isn’t “tinfoil hat” lunacy at all.

Assuming they never join forces: which is the more dangerous malcontent? Which will fulfill their mission first? Both want a theocracy in America, with white christians in charge. One is willing to use actual warfare to obtain it; the other has built a high-tech army loyal-to-the-CEO, and has been working with an underground network of religious leaders and thinkers who have been establishing think-tanks, recruiting people to run for office (and getting them elected) and pushing legislation. Pushing limits. Pushing false ideologies. Pushing false propaganda and revisionist history.

But both can be stopped by a single word : Treason, or most specifically Sedition. (Even this is a tough-sell: “Although the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 11 [Communist Party]USA leaders in 1951, the court reversed itself in 1957 in Yates v. New York by ruling that ‘teaching an ideal, no matter how inimical that onlookers may view it to the United States, does not equal advocating or planning its implementation’.”)

So, why aren’t they stopped? In a word: Religion. In America, and around the world, it gets a “free pass”, a convenient “get out of jail free” card. It is accorded a respect it doesn’t deserve; it is “above reproach”; its undeserved “feel-good/do-good” reputation seems unassailable and impervious to scrutiny; and, moreover, criticizing religion brings hate-mail, death-threats and worse. Atheists understand this instinctively.

Squishy christians, of the liberal-almost-agnostic sort, also understand this in their hearts and minds – it’s their lips that stay zipped… Why are they silent? For the same reason others are silent: criticizing religion brings hate-mail, death-threats and more – even to christians. Or, especially christians. It’s the unwritten Eleventh Commandment: Thou shall not speak ill (nor even honestly) of religion. Called “heresy” for centuries, it was the usual charge levelled during that Middle Ages’ own Abu Ghraib: the Spanish Inquisition. (Witchcraft was in second place.)

Today, we can call it “First Cause Anti-Whistleblower Gord-Protection Act”.

______

*** Ex-Pentagon IG Joseph Schmitz is a real “class-act”. A member of the Federalist Society (as is John Roberts, Supreme-SCOTUS), he 1) was accused of covering up several investigations into fraud, waste and abuse within the Rumsfeld Pentagon; 2) is the son of the late GOP far right congressman and segregationist American Independent Party presidential candidate John G. Schmitz; AND 3) is the brother of former Washington State school teacher Mary Kay Letorneau who was jailed for child rape after having sex with her 12-year old sixth grade student! To say nothing of his adult affair with a college-age student nor his out-of-wedlock child…