(hat tip to Rob Boston @ Talk To Action)

The word ‘unbelievable’ comes to mind. Donohue makes some sort of distinction between practicing Catholics and non-practicing Catholics, the former allegedly agreeing with him (oh hey, they don’t eat hagus either, right?), he also carries on about how the ‘bishops are energized’ about Obama receiving a degree at Notre Dame.

At 6:48, the blonde tries to fire Boston up about honoring pro-death penalty speakers at the university – and Donohue spewing ‘It’s not intrinsically evil’. So…abortion is intrinsically evil, but putting people to death isn’t? I smell the fresh new-fallacy smell of special pleading.

An old post of mine, illustrates a number of problems with the modern religious viewpoints on abortion:

Still even Jerome – while saying some of the most awful garbage about women in recorded history, was not as hardcore about abortion as today’s Religious Right, writing "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it [abortion] does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs ("Epistle" (121, 4))"
Neither were early church organizational meetings unanimous. The Synods of Elvira and Ancyra (306 ACE, 314 ACE) explicitly called abortion a sin, while the Apostolic Constitutions (380 ACE) disallowed it only after the fetus took on a "human shape."”
(Snip)
“In the early 7th Century, the Church began codifying what it considered sexual sins and abortion made the list, but was well behind the "sins" of birth control, oral sex, and anal sex. In fact, the punishment for oral sex was at least 7 years of penance, while the punishment for abortion was a mere 120 days.”
(Snip)
“Even St. Thomas Aquinas himself – arguably the most influential theologian in Roman Catholic Christianity, did not consider a fetus human until the quickening.
This was the way it was for the most part until – and are you sitting down for this? – 1869. That’s when Pope Pius IX declared all abortion to be homicide. That’s right, for nearly the entire history of Christianity, the Catholic Church was officially tolerant of first trimester abortion. The change was well after the Enlightenment, after the Civil War, and into the modern scientific era. In fact, it was only as recently as 1983 that all vestiges of the distinction between the "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus" were quietly purged from Canon Law. (Yes, that was 1983… only 23 years ago)”

The entire argument hinges upon (and fails miserably) ensoulment. It fails because there is no substantial proof that there is anything resembling a soul – and when evidence is demanded, we become subjected to innumerable personal anecdotes, retrofitted laws of conservation, and anything else under the sun, excepting any sort of solid proof.

Tell me that I as an individual will survive death, and I will hold up a DVD (or CD-ROM), cut it twice with scissors,  and quietly request that the claimant retrieve the information on it.

In the meantime, we are yoked by the superstitions of the populace overly fond of their precious little fables, who will spend copious monies as well as time and energy to protest in favor of something unprovable, rather than address the root of their grievance, that of poverty, lack of education, and improved living standards for their fellow human beings.

It is to weep, sometimes.

Till the next post then.

Anti-abortionist activists are pulling all kinds of circus-like stunts at Notre Dame in protest against President Obama being invited to speak at the graduation ceremony at the Catholic university located in South Bend, In.

An airplane dragging a banner with a picture of an aborted fetus has been flying over Notre Dame University in protest of the Catholic institution’s invitation to President Barack Obama to speak on Sunday.

The plane is just one of the tactics employed by activists who oppose Obama’s support of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

More than 360,000 people have signed a petition asking Notre Dame’s president to withdraw the invitation for Obama to speak at the university’s commencement ceremonies and grant him an honorary degree.

Leaders of the Catholic Church were also vocal in their condemnation.

“It is clear that Notre Dame didn’t understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation,” said Cardinal Francis George, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who called it an “embarrassment” to “many, many Catholics.”

An “embarrassment” for a President to accept an invitation to your university simply because he is doing what he said in his oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the nation that elected him?

I would say that Catholic leaders should be embarrassed about the pedophile priest epidemic that has caused mental anguish to who knows how many thousands of their victims over the ages?

“What we’re doing is creating the crisis that forces real, constructive, positive change in America that protects human rights because social justice begins in the womb,” Troy Newman, a spokesman for Kansas-based Operation Rescue, told AFP.

What the Catholic church leaders and these activists are doing is totally non-constructive. No signs up about using contraceptives because that is not acceptable to these anti-abortionists either. They are against using condoms, against any form of birth control what-so-ever except what doesn’t work. . . abstinence.

Luckily, it appears that the tide is turning with the Catholic church members in the general population. The “controversy” is only managing to stir a small number of protesters while most are excited and optimistic about Obama’s visit.

Just 28 percent of Catholics surveyed in a recent Pew Center poll thought Notre Dame was wrong to invite Obama while 50 percent said it was the right thing to do.

And Obama remains extremely popular, with his job approval rating of 63 percent at the first 100 days in office the highest of any US president since Ronald Regan.

Obama also managed to carry the Catholic vote in the November 4 election and was the first Democrat since 1964 to win the midwestern state of Indiana, where Notre Dame is located.

While Obama may address the abortion issue in his speech, he is not going to “dwell on the things that divide us,” political advisor David Axelrod said Thursday.

“He’s very much looking forward to it,” Axelrod told PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

Most students say they are excited to have Obama visit their campus and university’s student newspaper said 74 percent of letters to editor from students supported the invitation.

The controversy, daily protests and graphic billboards being driven around campus as students prepare for final exams has taken a toll.

“People are weary of it,” history professor R. Scott Appleby told the Washington Post.

“I certainly feel this is not the best way to respect life. It makes the cause a circus.”

Yes, more and more of us are getting very weary of the boo-hooing about abortion. Education is the key. Openness to other options of birth control is the answer to the abortion dilemma.

There are so many problems in the world that need attention, and we need to start coming together in order to accomplish things and repair things that need fixing, nationally and internationally.

(Click here for link to humorous Dickipedia article)

While giving a speech on behalf of a local charity in Allentown, Pa., Pat Robertson said:

“the nation’s dire economic circumstances are the inevitable result of years of unfettered greed in government and business and can only be reversed by the earnest action of ‘fired-up’ citizens demanding a return to responsibility.”

Robertson blamed the housing foreclosure crisis, mounting debt, growing unemployment and other woes on our stark departure from America’s roots as a frugal, responsible nation.

“His excoriations of Wall Street greed and government ineptitude,” the newspaper reported, “were greeted by murmurs of ‘amen’ and ‘that’s right’ from some in the audience of perhaps 150 people.”

Ironic considering the things about Robertson’s activities AU’s Joseph L. Conn points out:

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who used his Operation Blessing charity’s airplanes primarily to transport equipment for a Robertson-owned diamond-mining operation in Zaire (now the Republic of the Congo) called African Development Corporation?

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who went on his Christian Broadcasting Network show and asked for donations claiming that the planes were taking a “medical strike force” to towns in Zaire when in fact the planes were being used to ferry mining equipment?

(One pilot told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot that of the 40 flights he undertook to Zaire, “only one or at most two” were humanitarian in nature. He said the rest were “mining-related.”)

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who entered into a partnership with brutal Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to run a gold-mining operation in that war-torn African nation?

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who tried to become the main Internet provider in communist China (he said he wanted to be the “Yahoo of China”) and tried to open an oil refinery in a poor neighborhood near Los Angeles?

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who took a firm that sold home-study Bible courses and converted it into American Benefits Plus, a multi-level marketing scheme that sold coupon books and later moved into vitamins and cosmetics? (Wonder if I can still get “Sea of Galilee” skin care lotion somewhere?) The firm, renamed Kalo-Vita, went belly up in 1995, leaving investors holding the bag. (One 76-year-old retiree told Newsweek she lost $7,000 and had to refinance her home.)

Would that be same Pat Robertson who turned his nonprofit Family Channel into a for-profit enterprise and sold it to that paragon of virtue Rupert Murdoch for just under $2 billion?

Would that be the same Pat Robertson who reported in his book, Shout It From the Housetops, that his mother Gladys once had a vision from God of Robertson receiving packets of cash from heaven?!

The story about his mother’s “vision” goes like this:

“I saw a packet of bank notes floating down out of heaven into your hands,” Mrs. Robertson reportedly told her no-doubt happy son. “I looked closely and saw that they were made up of large denominations. I didn’t know how much money it was, I just knew it was a lot; and it was as if you were kneeling under the open windows of heaven, and God was pouring out his wealth upon you.”

Robertson says he and his mom both cried at the glorious prospect. “Praise the Lord,” he reportedly whispered through his tears.

Barf!

But, whose family values? The Roman Catholic church’s values? Surely can’t be the Pope’s because he lives a life contrary to what he himself preaches to be “nature” and “family values” by taking an oath of unnatural celibacy. I guess he can look at it from a child’s perspective of what a happy, loving home is according to him, or can he? Seeing that his sister never married and his brother also became a priest, just what sort of “traditional family values” were established in that household to have caused all of their children to remain single and childless?

Pope, in Nazareth, says world needs family values

Moving away from political issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the pope used the visit to Israel’s Galilee region, the heartland of the country’s minority Arab population, to express his concerns about what the Catholic Church sees as the deterioration of the family around the world.

More than 50,000 people attended an outdoor mass — celebrated in Arabic, English and Latin — in the area of Nazareth known as Mount Precipice, where the Bible says a mob tried to hurl Jesus off a cliff.

There, Benedict spoke of “the sacredness of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift of new life.”

“FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH”

He added: “How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound consciences and the building of a civilization of love!”

And this is coming from a huge religious sect controlled by unmarried, supposedly celibate, sexually repressed MEN. The Pope’s statement “building the foundation of civilization and love” via “married couples”, he is living contrary to what he is promoting as sacred family values.

The Pope and others who promote “traditional family values” see the world in only black and white. (These celibate bastards are also hypocritical in the way they are against contraceptives and promotion of having a herd of children, however many gawd will “bless” folks with.)

They base these values on what or whom? What about the single mom’s who didn’t have a choice? What about a single folks who choose to adopt and raise kids on their own? What about that homosexual couple who could provide a loving home with all the love, comforts and care that they can give to an adopted child that he or she would not have had otherwise? What about the widows and widowers who are left to raise their families alone? What about the family who lives according the the “values” of the loving married couple and their family falls apart anyway?

These religious folks and others who have one idea of family are living in fantasy land because the family has never really been one set of ideals for all people.

All this talk about “family values” and yet no one has come up with one set of standards that cannot be provided by anyone other than married, heterosexual couples. People, from whatever walk of life and circumstances can raise their children to be good people and productive members of society.

These assholes just don’t give up. It’s not enough to have a day of magical incantation, it’s not enough to have their mythology temples, billboards, numerous television programs, etc., etc. Now they want a whole year of bullshit!

From Atheist Revolution
Get Ready for Year of the Bible

vjack writes:

Instead of doing actual work for the benefit of all Americans, Republicans in Congress are pandering to Christian extremists with H. Con. Res. 121, a measure to designate 2010 as the “Year of the Bible”. I’ll assume that they are referring to one of the many translations of the Christian bible and are simply too caught up in Christian privilege to say so. In any case, 14 Republicans are pushing the unconstitutional resolution.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Check out some of the comments at OpenCongress.com.

Eric at Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets writes:

Dear Christians: the next time you want to ask what we atheists get so angry about, take a nice long look at incidents of political grandstanding like H. Con. Res. 121. You’ll have politicians wasting everybody’s time on a showy, meaningless, offensive gesture calculated to show off their self-righteousness and religious prejudice and draw irate responses that will allow them to act all faux offended. “Oh,” they can whine, “this is an example of how we Christians are persecuted all the time.”

*snip*

American Muslims are people of faith underwhelmed by your “Holy Scripture,” and American Jews only believe half of it. There are American Hindus and American Buddhists. Dare we even mention American Wiccans? American Scientologists? And, oh yeah–all the atheists and agnostics.

Tell ya’ what, pals–I give, you win. America is a Christian nation–it’s the official State religion now. So Washington gets to decide what your church is like. There will be statutes defining what a church is and who God is and what the sacraments are and resolving all former disparities in doctrine about the Trinity, the Mother Of God, whether declaration of faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation or it must be joined with works…. No, no–this is what you people wanted, you wanted us to be a Christian nation, so let’s make it official. Religious doctrine will be decided by the Secretary Of The American Faith, who as a cabinet position will be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. Hearings start as soon as Mr. Obama narrows his short list down. All churches shall be Christian churches, Christianity being defined by a bunch of career bureaucrats in D.C.

No, shut up. You won, didn’t you hear me? We’re going to give you exactly what you fucking want and see how long ’til you choke on it.

Who has a stopwatch?

Ramen!

Student Wins Suit After Teacher Says Creationism ‘Superstitious Nonsense’

SANTA ANA, Calif. — A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” during a classroom lecture. U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett. Farnan sued in U.S. District Court in 2007, alleging that Corbett violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by making repeated comments in class that were hostile to Christian beliefs. The lawsuit cited more than 20 statements made by Corbett during one day of class, all of which were recorded by Farnan, to support allegations of a broader teaching method that “favors irreligion over religion” and made Christian students feel uncomfortable. During the course of the litigation, the judge found that most of the statements cited in the court papers did not violate the First Amendment because they did not refer directly to religion or were appropriate in the context of the classroom lecture. But Selna ruled Friday that one comment, where Corbett referred to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense,” did violate Farnan’s constitutional rights. Farnan is not interested in monetary damages, said his attorney, Jennifer Monk of the Murrieta-based Christian legal group Advocates for Faith & Freedom. Instead, he plans to ask the court to prohibit Corbett from making similar comments in the future. Farnan’s family would also like to see the school district offer teacher training and monitor Corbett’s classroom for future violations, Monk said. There are no plans to appeal the judge’s rulings on the other statements listed in the litigation, she said. “They lost, he violated the establishment clause,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “From our perspective, whether he violated it with one statement or with 19 statements is irrelevant.” In making his decision, Selna wrote that he tried to balance Farnan’s and Corbett’s rights. “The court’s ruling today reflects the constitutionally permissible need for expansive discussion even if a given topic may be offensive to a particular religion,” the judge wrote. “The decision also reflects that there are boundaries. … The ruling today protects Farnan, but also protects teachers like Corbett in carrying out their teaching duties.”

Yes, but what if he was correct?…

For example, what if he just said, repeatedly, that creationism was “false” instead of “superstitious nonsense?” Would those words also violate?

There are clear problems of scope for such a ruling, what with all the subjects we can go over, in how many types of educational contexts, and all the possible religious beliefs we could “violate”…

UPDATE:

The Awesome Teacher Dude actually gives his response: Teachers must challenge myths

Challenging myths is dangerous, but it is the essence of getting students to think for themselves. The Athenian judges, like some parents today, would have students accept myth without question, because myth is the foundation of their parental, political and/or religious authority. Ms. Farnan objected to my challenging the myth of the Puritans as a pious people who fled religious intolerance to found America. As Ms. Farnan sees them, the Puritans are quaint, pious people with buckles on their hats and shoes as portrayed in the national mythology, but they may also be seen as intolerant, misogynistic and homophobic religious bigots who hanged Mary Dyer, a Quaker girl, for preaching something other than Puritan doctrine and several other women for the crime of “witchcraft.”

And the fucking ringer quote that I’m going to put on my door:

It is not “bullying” to demand that students think.

The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.  – James Madison

“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.” – Ulysses  S. Grant

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute–where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote–where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. – John F. Kennedy

"I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office — and by personal conviction — I am sworn to uphold that tradition." – LBJ, Interview, Baptist Standard, October, 1964

"We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate.” – Reagan Speech to Temple Hillel and Community Leaders in Valley Stream

But I am a strong believer in the separation of church and state, and I think that we’ve got to translate…
By the way, I support it not just for the state but also for the church , because that maintains our religious independence and that’s why we have such a thriving religious life. – Obama

This is David Barton’s picture. This is one of the faces of the enemy.

He isn’t simply an evangelist. He’s actually the author of the website Wallbuilders.

Their/his About page reads as follows:

WallBuilders is an organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built; a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined. In accord with what was so accurately stated by George Washington, we believe that "the propitious [favorable] smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation which disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained."

Why the name "WallBuilders"?

In the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, the nation of Israel rallied together in a grassroots movement to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and thus restore stability, safety, and a promising future to that great city. We have chosen this historical concept of "rebuilding the walls" to represent allegorically the call for citizen involvement in rebuilding our nation’s foundations. As Psalm 11:3 reminds us, "If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?"

Our Goal

WallBuilders’ goal is to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena.

In a nutshell, he’s one of the foremost proponents of theocracy – his claim is that America was founded as a Christian nation, every square inch of it, and he and his ‘holy warriors’ are revising history to tailor the country to be the way they imagine it should be.

How bad is this? Very. He wrote a book entitled The Myth of Separation: What Is the Correct Relationship Between Church and State? While it’s not even close to being on the NYT bestseller’s list, Time magazine lists him as one of the top 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America (top 25 parasites is what I call them):

The Lesson Planner: Even before he got directly involved in politics, David Barton was a major voice in the debate over church-state separation. His books and videotapes can be found in churches all over the U.S., educating an evangelical generation in what might be called Christian counter-history. The 51-year-old Texan’s thesis: that the U.S. was a self-consciously religious nation from the time of the Founders until the 1963 Supreme Court school-prayer ban (which Barton has called "a rejection of divine law"). Many historians dismiss his thinking, but Barton’s advocacy organization, WallBuilders, and his relentless stream of publications, court amicus briefs and books like The Myth of Separation, have made him a hero to millions—including some powerful politicians. He has been a co-chair of the Texas Republican Party for eight years, is friends with House majority leader Tom DeLay (whom he has advised on the Pledge Patriot Act, which seeks to keep the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance) and was tapped by the Republican National Committee during its election sprint as a liaison to social conservatives. Those elected as a result of his efforts need not feel lonely in Washington: Barton conducts tours of the Capitol, during which he shows his rare copy of the Bible that Congress once printed—for use in the schools.

He was also (no surprise here) hired by the Bush campaign in 2004 – and Dubya hasn’t been an admirer of SOCAS since…well, since never.

And his…inaccuracies (oh no, to hell with that, let’s call them what they are: LIES) are spread across the Interwebs like a bad joke. He argues the concept of Original Intent, making claims that the Founding Fathers meant this to be a Christian nation no less (though the FF could barely agree on anything except that the US needed independence), and in his relusional state, he’s bound and determined to ‘turn back the clock’ so that America IS that sweet wet dream he thought it used to be.

A theocrat by any other name is a Dominionist, in my book.

There is no reasoning with these people. There is no ‘debate’ or ‘open exchange of ideas’. All we can do at this point is wage a war of attrition on the rhetoric of these people – don’t let your guard down, they’ve been at this for decades, this is no creeping paranoia, this is fact and public record. They spread lies and disinformation, just like the creationists do. With calm voices and well-informed facts, we join combat, and with the Obama administration we will likely see less of their grandstanding ilk. But always plotting in the shadows, they seek to enslave us by the words of ancients, and the rotting fingers of anachronism still clamber up the walls of the mind like ivy.  The whisper of ghosts that never were haunt us still, and it will be many years before those voices are silenced. So be strong, brothers and sisters. Take the battle to them – but stay on your toes. The enemy is cunning indeed, and not to be underestimated.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” – Jefferson

Till the next post, then.

This was sent to me via email today and the lyrics are very powerful. Pretty much sums it all up about this God of Abraham character. If this god did exist, it would not be worthy of anyone’s worship or admiration.

Link to video