End of the semester crunch-time, and it always sucks: students who need stuff, who just woke-up to the fact that they’re failing, who still ask for makeups left and right, final projects, blah-blah-blah. It always starts around the beginning of April, and doesn’t let-up till around the end of May. UGH.

But I couldn’t help but notice this little ditty:

Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

Praise Jesus!

We already know that fundamentalist Islam approves and even encourages child marriage. After all, they point out, it’s written in their holy text. They excuse it as part of their “culture”, their “beliefs” and try to say that the girl has a voice in the matter. But I and human rights activists seriously doubt that. An eight-year-old, no matter what culture is not physically and emotionally ready for marriage and sex. All this is is legalized and religion condoned pedophelia.

8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband

CAIRO – An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages. The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a “clear and unacceptable” violation of human rights.

*snip*

The 8-year-old girl’s marriage was not the only one in the kingdom to receive attention in recent months. Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or young boys including a 15-year-old girl whose father, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate.

Here is how the fundamentalist Muslim clergy feels about it:

Saudi Arabia’s conservative Muslim clergy have opposed the drive to end child marriages. In January, the kingdom’s most senior cleric said it was permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who believe they are too young are doing the girls an injustice.

Is it an economic thing? Are we missing something, here or just not getting it because of the culture in which we live where we cherish childhood and do all we can to protect our little ones from child predators and perverts?

This story was just brought to my attention by Lynda. The Catholics think they can erase everything with words (a good example of this on a daily or weekly basis is confession). He says he is “praying for them”, which is basically doing nothing. However, the Vatican has been parting with a bit of its wealth as compensation, and the Canadian government has offered billions of dollars.

Pope Benedict XVI apologized Wednesday to native Canadians who were physically and sexually abused at church-run boarding schools they were forced to attend, saying he was sorry for their anguish and was praying they would heal.

*snip*

“His Holiness emphasized that acts of abuse cannot be tolerated in society,” it said, adding that the pope was praying that the victims would heal and move forward “with renewed hope.”

Praying is going to do nothing. If he is truly grieved and sorry, how about helping in the arrest of pedophile priests and bringing them to justice instead of praying for them and hiding them away somewhere.

Christianity has not always been the same as it is today. It’s been changing over time, “evolving” (I know fundamentalists hate that term — tee hee). But history provides evidence to the truth of my statement. There is also controversy over whether this Jesus even existed at all, and debatable even amongst us non-believers. Whether he did or not, there are obviously many who choose to believe he did exist without sufficent evidence. And there are many who stubbornly believe that “True Christianity™” has always been the same since the beginning.

What did the first Christians believe?

As stated at Jesusneverexisted.com, “The evidence shows clearly that the Christians took over pre-existing beliefs and sacraments rather than introduced new ones.” There are many mythologies involving a man/god who is born of a virgin, who is sacrificed in some way and then resurrected. “The earliest Christian theorists denied a physical incarnation of their Lord and knew nothing of the Bethlehem saga.” Details of the Jesus myth were added over the decades, the story being passed along sort of like the telephone game children play.

Christians were a relative minority until it aligned itself politically with the State. As for “Biblical accounts” which Christians revere as “divinely inspired”, in actuality, they were written by imaginative human beings. Can’t deny that the Bible is a collection of some very interesting storytelling, but as I said, invented by human imagination just as any other mythology of the many cultures.

There are actually some 200 gospels, epistles and other books concerning the life of Jesus Christ. Writing such material was a popular literary form, particularly in the 2nd century. The pious fantasies competed with Greek romantic fiction. Political considerations in the late 2nd century led to the selection of just four approved gospels and the rejection of others. After three centuries of wrangling 23 other books were accepted by the Church as divinely inspired. The rest were declared ‘pious frauds’. In truth, the whole lot belongs to a genre of literary FICTION.

I would call it historical fiction, like a John Jakes novel. Certain historical events strew in here and there and added fiction to spice it up. Most of these tall tales in the Bible are fables, many are based on mythologies of other cultures. Yet many people believe these far-fetched tales to have actually happened, without having evidence. Many of the Biblical characters are fictitious. The existence of the historical Jesus has been an ongoing argument for ages.

The first believers in Jesus maintained he was an ethereal spirit, much like other sky/sun-gods. Only later did he acquire a human death, a human life and finally a human birth. The composite ‘Jesus Christ’ character – god, man, king, carpenter, conqueror, peace-maker, dispenser of justice, advocate of love – was assembled to try and unify a fragmented and fractious messianic religious movement.

In the mid-2nd century the Jewishness of the faith was purged but apologists had little to say about a human Jesus. They took comfort in noting similarities between their own ideas and pagan myths. The Christians remained a minority until well after one particular faction formed a political alliance with the Roman State. The orthodox creed remained unpopular for centuries and persecution was necessary to impose its will.

And Christians still cherish their persecution complex, that much hasn’t changed.

Christianity is evolving all the time, even now. The Christianity today is a “touchy-feely” kind of religion, and a belief that this God is some kind of magical genie and Jesus is their best pal who walks and talks with them and is their emotional crutch. The Jesus of today is for the “me” culture, self-centered and softened while all the bad parts of their mythology are ignored (except for the gory zombie Jesus part and the threat of eternal flaming Hell and suffering for non-believers).

Thanks to ChuckA for the link to jesusneverexisted.com. Kenneth Humphreys has done a lot of work to put together an interesting site with lots of things to read, consider and discuss. Humphreys even cites his sources.

April 8, 2009 on MSNBC
Christopher Hitchens educates Ken Blackwell of The Family Research Council

Well, here is a perfect example of how Christian extremism is as bad as Islamic extremism. Unbelievable. We are supposed to be the “most advanced” nation on the planet and we still have these kinds of dangerous religious kooks calling for their god to off others who simply want to uphold freedom and human rights for all people no matter what their faith or non-faith. Though Rev. Barry Lynn is a follower of the same imaginary friend as former Navy chaplain, Gordon James Klingenschmitt, Klingenschmitt has called for prayers to end Barry Lynn’s life. He has been trying to raise money and recruit supporters through a Religious Right Web site titled prayinjesusname.org. (Warning, you will need to take a hot shower after viewing his website.)

Spiritual Warfare: Ex-Chaplain Prays For Death Of AU’s Lynn

Americans United and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) took issue with Klingenschmitt’s site and his e-mail alerts that referred to him as “Chaplain Klingenschmitt” and showed him in a Navy uniform. We wrote to Navy officials, arguing that Klingenschmitt was attempting to mislead people, as he is a former chaplain.

I guess we got Klingenschmitt’s attention because he has now placed a disclaimer on this Web site admitting he’s no longer in the military. And — apparently still disgruntled — over the weekend he called on supporters to launch “imprecatory” prayers against AU Executive Director Barry W. Lynn and MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein.

For those of you not versed in the finer points of extreme right-wing theology, imprecatory prayers are prayers that bad things will happen to your enemies – things like death, loss of income, loss of property, etc.

“Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who recently issued a press release attacking me personally,” prays Klingenschmitt on his Web site. “God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround me and tell lies about me. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore, find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with godly people. Plunder their fields and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants. And remember their sins. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

You can read the prayer here or listen to it here. (For the printed version, scroll down to “Saturday 25 Apr 09 One-Minute Prayer.” Note that there are a few minor differences between the printed version and the audio version.)

As Rob Boston points out, this isn’t the first Christian loon to call for the end of Barry Lynn’s life, Southern California pastor Wiley Drake has done it twice (after AU blew the whistle on his partisan pulpit politicking).

So, while we really don’t have a name for it like jihad or fatwa, it’s the same damn thing. While Klingenshit says on his site he is fighting for “religious freedom” what he is really doing is fighting against the freedom that this country was founded on and he has no respect for the rights of others who do not share his beliefs. And his public call for wanting someone dead is criminal. All it would take is one psycho to do “Gawd’s Will” and go down as a martyr in the eyes of his fellow lunatics.

Just saw this over at the Friendly Atheist site. Dying Jeebus license plates had been approved by the Florida Senate WITHOUT THEM SEEING IT! This one is even worse than the South Carolina ones that say “I Believe” or Indiana’s “In God We Trust”.

These folks in Florida just do not give up and refuse to understand that Sunday School songs do not belong in a secular public school. When they had to stop singing “In God We Still Trust”, they just pulled another one out of the childrens’ hymnal hat to sing.

Florida at it again — Second Preaching Song for Children:

From American Atheists

Attorneys are seeking to halt teaching of a song they call a “blatantly sectarian and proselytizing religious song” to third-graders at The Webster School until the case can go to court.

This is the second time in less than a month that attorneys asked the United States District Court in Jacksonville for a preliminary injunction to stop a song at Webster.

School district officials said they knew nothing about the amended complaint until contacted by The St. Augustine Record Tuesday evening.

Read more

What a waste of taxpayer money to have to keep on fighting this baloney over and over again. Huge fines should be imposed upon those responsible and maybe they will get back to teaching things that will actually help these kids succeed in their academic career.

Many, many secular songs for children are available that contain very cute and fun lyrics that are appropriate for kids from all backgrounds and walks of life no matter what their family beliefs are. The choice of “Chatter with the Angels” is a blatant attempt of some adult at Webster school to proselytize to youngsters about the Christian heaven and believed afterlife.

The lyrics to the song are:

Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the morning
Chatter with the Angels
In that land!
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the Morning
Chatter with the Angels
Join that Band!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!

(And the lyrics keep repeated over and over, ritualistically in a brainwashing sort of way.)

Love the comment by bigbangbeliever: “What a scary song-sounds a little suicidal (”Soon…in that land…”). I’d rather the kids sing “Gonna cure Cancer someday soon-study my science instead of singing dopey tunes”!

Ramen, bigbangbeliever!