Here is news in The Guardian concerning atheist UK foreign secretary David Miliband possibly becoming the next prime minister. It will take about 400 more years for the U.S. to get to this point, I am afraid.

In this climate of quarrels between religionists and secularists, there are very many reasons to hope for a non-believer at No 10

When Labour cabinet members were asked about their religious allegiances last December, following Tony Blair’s official conversion to Roman Catholicism, it turned out that more than half of them are not believers. The least equivocal about their atheism were the health secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary David Miliband.

The fact that Miliband is an atheist is a matter of special interest given the likelihood that he may one day, and perhaps soon, occupy No 10. In our present uncomfortable climate of quarrels between pushy religionists and resisting secularists – or attack-dog secularists and defensive religionists: which side you are on determines how you see it – there are many reasons why it would be a great advantage to everyone to have an atheist prime minister.

Atheist leaders are not going to think they are getting messages from Beyond telling them to go to war. They will not cloak themselves in supernaturalistic justifications, as Blair came perilously close to doing when interviewed about the decision to invade Iraq.

Atheist leaders will be sceptical about the claims of religious groups to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good, getting public funds, meriting special privileges and exemptions from laws, and having seats in the legislature and legal protection from criticism, satire and challenge.

Atheist leaders are going to be more sceptical about inculcating sectarian beliefs into small children ghettoised into publicly funded faith-based schools, risking social divisiveness and possible future conflict. They will be readier to learn Northern Ireland’s bleak lesson in this regard.

Atheist leaders will, by definition, be neutral between the different religious pressure groups in society, and will have no temptation not to be even-handed because of an allegiance to the outlook of just one of those groups.

*snip*

Despite appearances, the world is not seeing a resurgence of religion, only a big turning-up of the volume of religious voices. This is itself a response to increasing secularism among people tired of the disruptions, obstructions and conflicts religion so often causes. Public acknowledgement of atheism by a senior politician who might soon lead his country is just one indicator of the fact that the tide is actually running in the opposite direction: and that is a welcome and hopeful sign.

Maybe the “tide is running in the opposite direction” in the UK, but it certainly isn’t here in the U.S.

Ed note: To clarify–I did not post this to endorse Miliband as prime minister or his policies, I posted this to show that the UK is not afraid to elect an atheist and religion is not the centerpiece of politics there. We are centuries behind them in that regard.

I never thought I would see the day with the Democrats transforming the Democratic National Convention into an interfaith church service. I am greatly disappointed.

DENVER – At the first official event Sunday of the Democratic National Convention, a choir belted out a gospel song and was followed by a rabbi reciting a Torah reading about forgiveness and the future.

Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” assailed the death penalty and the use of torture.

Young Muslim women in headscarves sat near older African-American women in their finest Sunday hats.

Four years ago, such a scene would have been unthinkable at a Democratic National Convention. In 2004, there was one interfaith lunch at the Democratic gala in Boston.

But that same year, “values voters” helped re-elect President Bush, giving Democrats of faith the opening they needed to make party leaders listen to them.

The result was on display at Sunday’s interfaith service, staged in a theater inside the Colorado Convention Center, and will be evident throughout the convention agenda and on the sidelines.

There will be four “faith caucus” meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn’t even exist in 2004 — not to mention protests from religious groups and leaders opposed to the Democratic platform.

And of course no atheist, agnostic or secular humanist on the list of speakers. If the intention was to show diversity amongst the Democratic party and unity of people from all walks of life, then that should include everyone. Unfortunately, to the believers, Democrats or otherwise, a coalition that supports nontheistic views is not welcome. But those who value the separation of church and state still made their voices heard:

In June, the Madison,Wis.-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, a 12,000-member watchdog group for the separation of church and state, erected a billboard near the Colorado Convention Center that proclaimed “Imagine No Religion.” In early August the sign was changed to “Keep Religion Out of Politics.”

During the convention, the foundation will fund mobile billboards asking for church-state separation and broadcasting its view that religion is divisive.

“Faith does not unite us,” Freedom co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said. “And this is a time when we should be in unity behind our secular government.”

Most liberals here still support Obama and the Democratic party despite the religious mumbo jumbo he believes in and that is interjected into politics from both sides now to pander to the evangelicals, but we must continue to make our voices heard that separation of church and state must be upheld and to keep our secular government from slipping towards a theocracy.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE

I was reading about this over at PZ Myers’ blog about how some claim that similarities in evolutionary pathways indicates some sort of designer’s manipulation. Convergent evolution.

And here I will say it: there was a designer, there still is a designer, and the design is ongoing, a work in progress.

The designer that I speak of is the process of evolution. It has no face: no direction: no ‘grand purpose’ in mind. It just is, and it just does what it does and all the vocabulary and spin and sugar-coating and politics and rhetoric cannot alter that.

The creationist George McReady, spun it thusly:

For instance, we have the shark, the ichthyosaur (an extinct kind of fish-shaped reptile), and the dolphin (a true warmblooded mammal, and not a fish at all), all of which greatly resemble each other in external shape and general appearance. Each has the same long, sharp snout, the same powerful tail, the same general fishlike shape. And yet the first of these is a true fish, the second was just as true a reptile, while the third is a mammal, bringing forth its young alive and feeding them by milk, just as does a cow or a horse, though it lives in the sea.

Here the evolutionists have to say that this peculiar shape and general form has been evolved separately and independently in each of these three instances. Indeed, Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, declares that a very similar shape and form has been independently evolved “at least twenty-four times.”—”Encyc. Brit.,” Vol. XX, p. 578…

From this large group of facts we become convinced that these many similar or identical structures, which must have been evolved quite independently (if evolved at all), make too great a draft on our credulity. At least, these hundreds of examples of “parallel evolution” greatly weaken our confidence in homology, or similarity of parts and organs, as a proof of blood relationship.

Well, no, to be honest, it certainly doesn’t stretch my credulity: it’s a far leap from the premise ‘Look at all the similarities inherent among species’ (given that we share a large percentile of DNA with a banana) to ‘there’s a divine hand behind it all’. If anything, these items reinforce the concept of natural selection. Certain forms work better in the water: other forms work better on the land. We should be surprised to see marine species using flippers instead of four legs, when they swim? It would be more interesting to see a gilled mammal. A literal ’sea-cow’, that was gilled, grazed underwater, had four legs and horns, etc.

 So we have evolutionary relay, convergent evolution, and parallel evolution as constructs. No doubt some IDiot will use these as being contradictory to one another, when all three can be used as the situation fits.

As an aside, it amuses me to see how the hereafterians sputter in horror at the concept of a universe lacking a guiding hand. As if left to our own devices, we somehow become a psychopathic bunch of nerve endings unable to restrain our baser impulses.

Till the next post, then.

I have fundies in my family who avoid me and my immediate family because we are the “evil atheists” and our influence might rub off on them and their children somehow will be contaminated by our mere presence. It’s very unfortunate and unnecessary that they choose to keep us and other non-believers out of their lives simply because we do not believe in their imaginary friend, even though we have never insulted or criticized them personally for their beliefs.

Fundie family members cannot stand the fact that I have an atheist blog, and that I write my opinions openly about atheism and criticize religion in my posts and essays. They say it is “hurtful” to them to just know what I think and write about. I pointed out to them that from my perspective, them believing that I am such a terrible person that I will spend eternity suffering in hell is much worse than me just dissing their religion in general. I don’t wish them eternal torture for holding ludicrous beliefs. Their belief that I will be damned forever is much more personal than my general commentary on religion and the religious.

Getting back to the subject of avoiding atheists, here is a good editorial written by David N. Miles in rebuttal to a fundie Xian who believes children should be protected from atheism:

In her Dec. 7 letter, “Beware of book,” Kathy Momic tells us that children should be protected against atheism.

She probably isn’t acquainted with an atheist but “knows” that atheists are possessed by the devil, don’t know right from wrong and don’t believe in anything.

There are certain precautions she can take to protect herself and her children from these agents of Lucifer.

She could join an organization that does not admit atheists, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, Christian militia groups. She could join a God-fearing terrorist group that blows up abortion clinics and high-rise buildings (Oklahoma City, World Trade Center); or she could restrict her friends to those spewing venomous hate upon individuals the Bible says should be put to death, e.g., non-believers and homosexuals.

To be on the safe side, there are havens of atheism that she should avoid: Ivy League universities; the Nobel laureate laden National Academy of Sciences; organizations concerned with the environment or civil rights; and Scandinavia, where the percentage of atheists is at least three times that of the United States.

She should stay in the Bible Belt with the highest religiosity (and highest violent crime rate) in the country.

The absurdity of religious myopia was exemplified after the 1997 school shootings in Paducha, Ky. In defense of the young killer who somebody called “godless,” his pastor at the Lutheran Church said, “Michael Carnael is a Christian. He’s a sinner, yes, but not an atheist.”

I wonder if that made his victims less dead or the crime less wrong.

Nothing major, just this comic site I found via conversation at a sports blog- of all things. Make sure your mouth is empty of liquid and spend a few moments in the archive here. Here’s an example, just a little sample:

While our focus has been on the attempts of cretinists creationists here in the U.S., Answers in Genesis followers are on a mission to integrate their ID crap in public school curricula in Britain and France. It is not enough for them to teach their mythology in their churches and in their homes, and it’s not enough to work on fucking up their own country, they want to drag all people back to the dark ages with them.

These people still don’t have a clue or refuse to accept what scientific theory is. It does not mean “to guess” or to make shit up. For our fundie lurkers…once again:

From Wikipedia, In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. For the scientist, “theory” is not in any way an antonym of “fact”. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behavior are Newton’s theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and the general theory of relativity.

I found a rebuttal site to Answers in Genesis called NO Answers in Genesis. Creationists, please go there and READ, if you can. No god will strike you dead if you do.

Well, there goes my idea of moving to Sweden. It appears they are not free of religious kooks, either. My Swedish friend tells me that Islam is growing and mosques are popping up everywhere, and then there are Christian freaks similar to our own here in the U.S.:

Swedish ‘cowboy church’ called abusive

MALMO, Sweden, Aug. 21 (UPI) — A Swedish church that operates out of a cowboy theme park is being accused by former members of being a violent religious sect.

The Kingdom Center’s pastor, Christer Segerliv, who calls himself the Sheriff of Lone Star, allegedly bullies members and their children to work long hours at the theme park and conference center. He also forces participation in extremist exorcism ceremonies, said former church members interviewed on a Swedish public service broadcast Tuesday.

One former congregation member who declined to give her name, alleged that Segerliv forced her to be part of one bizarre ceremony, The Local reported Thursday.

“He was supposed to pray for me but instead he threw himself on top of me and knocked me to the ground”, she said on the program. “It was very violent.”

Segerliv denied the allegations.

“They should have interviewed somebody who is currently a member of the congregation in order to get a fairer picture,” he said to the local newspaper Kvallsposten.

So, it’s like the saying about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, it’s not. They’re everywhere.

Check out the Swedish cowboys and cowgirls for God who want to spread their “kingdom” everywhere on earth. Yeeeehaaaaw!

You all probably remember Todd Bentley who I did a post about here: Ministry of assault and battery!

Well, it appears that while Bentley was hearing God telling him to kick old women in the head with his biker boot and to punch cancer patients in the stomach, he failed to remember that commandment in his Babble about adultery. Guess he should beat the lust out of his own ugly body…BAM! Right in the groin!

ABBOTSFORD, British Columbia – Todd Bentley, the Canadian revivalist whose tactics drew protest from some fellow Pentecostals, has resigned from public ministry after acknowledging an “unhealthy relationship on an emotional level” with a female staff member.

The board of Bentley’s Fresh Fire Ministries announced the resignation last Friday, saying the pastor has agreed to “receive counsel in his personal life.” Days earlier, the board of directors had said that Bentley, 32, and his wife Shonnah had separated.

Of course, Christians who do not want to claim him are saying that he was not a “true believer”.