From Wikipedia
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010)[1] was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.[2]
The full Wiki article is Here

And from the the comments at James Randi site

And the candle burns a little lower …
written by Carl, May 22, 2010

I never met Mr. Gardner, but his writing was a huge influence on me, as well as a pleasure for me. In Dr. Sagan’s metaphor, the darkness is curled a little closer around the sputtering candle, and we must all burn brighter to make up for the loss of Martin Gardner.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I remember so much of my early years doing Martin’s mathematical problems and later reading a few of his books. What a wonderful legacy he leaves. He will be missed and yet in the quote above it is up to us to burn a little brighter.

After much consideration about the upcoming “Draw Muhammad Day” tomorrow, I have decided to join others like Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, Vjack from Atheist Revolution, NoGodBlog and many others and post an invitation for those of you who wish to participate.

This action is not merely to rile up and piss off peace-loving Muslims. This is to stand up to those who are attempting to create a global theocracy and do not respect freedom of speech and expression except when it comes to their violent and oftentimes lethal public protests against any criticism of their religion and beliefs.

As for the risk of violent response? Here is a quote from NoGodBlog:

If it makes Muslims uncomfortable, maybe they should consider why they pray to a god that can’t even stomach being drawn, let alone being criticized. Maybe they should consider how barbaric it is that everyone taking part in Draw Muhammad Day is endangering lives, and risking terrorism. Maybe they should consider, just for a moment, that their religion is indeed primitive.

Definitely not a religion of peace if their response is going to be one of death threats and violence.

If we respect their beliefs and shut up like they want everyone in the world to do, then we are giving in. We may as well just shut down our websites, go back in the atheist closet and just let them have their way. And it won’t stop with just curtailing our freedom of speech. They will want to take more, and more of our freedoms away till Sharia Law rules the planet. We would not tolerate this from the Christians or any other religion. But because fundamentalist Islam threatens us with violent acts, many are too afraid to criticize them at all anymore. Like in the video of Vilks’university lecture being shut down in Sweden. If we keep giving in what will happen to our world?

There are many who truly intend to make this whole world a theocracy, and those who wish to make friends with those who would not lift a finger to stop it are merely helping the fundamentalists’ cause. As we saw on South Park, and heard from my warm-and-fuzzy friends, it appears some wish us to roll over and let them win. So we can’t mention Muhammad or show a drawing without fear — does anyone really think it ends there?

Of course it won’t. Like with the fundamentalist Christians, they want it all their way.

“What the American public doesn’t know is what makes them the American Public.”
– Zalinksy (Dan Aykroyd) in Tommy Boy

“Ha-ha-ha!  You said ‘nuclear.’  It’s ‘nucular,’ dummy.  The ‘s’ is silent.” – Peter Griffin in Family Guy

“The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.”

Those are the words of Thomas Jefferson.  He knew a thing or two about what makes this country work, and he repeated one of those things over and over and over.  He says it again here:

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”

And again here:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

If Jefferson were alive today, I think he would quickly come to one unavoidable conclusion:  We have a problem.  A big problem.

The word “elite” is thrown around a lot these days.  It is used sneeringly, with disdain.  A significant portion of the American population uses the word “elite” to indicate that a person or group is pompous, arrogant, overeducated, and most importantly, wrong.  It is a derogatory term meant to disparage its target.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines “elite”: “The choice part; cream; the best of a class.”

Here is Sarah Palin talking with Brian Williams on NBC News and giving her definition of “elite”:  “Oh, I guess just people who think they’re better than anyone else.”

According to Merriam-Webster, “elite” describes someone who excels, someone who is the best at what they do.  According to Sarah Palin, “elite” describes … what?  People who disagree with her?  People who criticize her?  From the sound of it, Palin wants you to think that the elite – the people who have worked hard to excel in their field – think they’re better than you.  In other words, people who are smarter than you should not be trusted because you have all you need to know as long as you … I don’t know, watch Fox News and read your bible?  Actually, it doesn’t matter what Palin’s definition means – what matters is that it resonates with her target audience, with her base.  Who are they?  Well, they’re people who like the sound of Sarah Palin’s definition of “elite.”  It rings true to them – He’s really good at something?  Really smart?  Then he thinks he’s better than me!

Never mind that her definition has absolutely nothing to do with the word’s actual meaning.  Her definition – which she is far from alone in applying to the word – transforms “elite” into a label for people who are … well, knowledgeable; people who tend to point out inconsistencies of logic; people who are prone to be articulate and well-spoken.  Palin herself is none of those things.  Neither are most of the people who make up her base.  Those who are those things are considered suspect by Palin and her many admirers.  They are not to be trusted.  Their knowledge and abilities are really nothing more than arrogance.  They are rejected, mocked and smeared.  And keep in mind that Sarah Palin was the Republican vice presidential candidate in the election of 2008.  Keep in mind that she fills auditoriums when she speaks.  Keep in mind that Palin’s book Going Rogue sold 300,000 copies it’s first day.  None of those things would be true if Sarah Palin were alone in the opinions she holds.

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, said, “Well, the jury is still out on evolution, you know.”  He also said, “The bird flu virus could evolve to a form that can be spread easily from human to human.”

In a 2007 debate of Republican presidential candidates, the following question was asked:  “Do you believe in evolution?”  Three candidates – Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo – said they did not.  Those three men were not elected to their offices in a vacuum.  They have a lot of like-minded supporters.

According to a Gallup Poll, fully one third of all Americans believe that every word of the bible is literally true and accurate.  That means they believe, among other things, that animals may talk, that a bush can burn without being consumed by the flames, that the sun can be stopped in the sky during its rotation of the earth, that eight people repopulated the entire planet after a global flood, that it’s sometimes okay for a man to have sex with and impregnate his own daughters, that a woman can get pregnant and have a child while still remaining a virgin, and that people sometimes come back from the dead and live and function as they did before dying.  This requires them to reject science whenever it contradicts these beliefs.  It also requires them to reject anyone who does not share these beliefs.  Don’t believe me?  Watch this political campaign advertisement.

That campaign ad pointed out that Bradley Byrne does not hold the beliefs listed above, but does accept the scientific theory of evolution and does not think that every word of the bible is literally true and accurate – and it pointed all of that out in an effort to discredit him.

America’s founding fathers repeatedly made clear their conviction that America was a secular nation that neither endorses nor enforces any religion, but allows all religions, or no religion.  The evidence of this is abundant.  There’s George Washington’s letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in which he wrote, “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”  There’s the Treaty of Tripoli, endorsed by Washington and ratified by John Adams, which states without ambiguity, “The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian religion.”  There’s the Constitution of the United States, in which the only time religion of any kind is mentioned is to prohibit it from government.  There is more, too, plenty more.

And then there’s this.

Despite the abundant evidence that they are flat wrong, a hefty segment of the American population shares Sarah Palin’s opinion in the video linked above that America is “a Christian nation” that merely “tolerates” other faiths out of the goodness of its heart and views these other faiths as inferior.  These people will passionately argue that America was founded on Christian principles by Christian people so Christians can live here in a nation of Jesus-loving Christianity, that the United States is the nation that Jesus built.  I was recently in an argument about this with just such a Christian, and when I pointed out that nowhere does the Constitution mention god or Jesus Christ, he said, “Yes it does!  The Constitution is dated this way:  ‘In the Year of Our Lord!’  And our lord is Jesus Christ, the son of god!”

Are you beginning to see why “elite” has become such a dirty word in America?  It has replaced the once popularly maligned word “intellectual” – because, one might presume, it is shorter and easier to spell.  Intellectuals are usually the early targets of any dictatorship as it comes into power (it seems dictators don’t like the “elite” any more than Sarah Palin and her fans).  Why kill them?  Noam Chomsky answers that question:  “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.”

Those damned pesky elite intellectuals – always asking questions, and worse yet, often answering them!  They’re so troublesome and annoying to corrupt leaders who don’t like it when their actions are criticized or their motives questioned.

In an interview with Cincinnati Magazine, musician, writer, poet, actor, talk show host and punk rock legend Henry Rollins put it well:

How can you argue with someone who applauds when Sarah Palin says we need a real commander-in-chief, not some scholar?  Oh, I see, we don’t like intellectuals.  We don’t want a smart guy as president because he won’t start a war with Iran.  We like the dumb guy better, who couldn’t pronounce any leader’s name and couldn’t find a country on a map; who struggled with the English language like a guy trying to hold on to a live eel.  Yeah, that’s, you know, the coarsening of the intellect.  Who feared smart people?  Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Putin … interesting.  And Palin.  And her flock. “I like Sarah because she’s like me and she’s a good person.”  Well, what about her policies?  “Oh, I don’t know about them, but she’s a good person and that’s why she should be president.”

Of course, here in America, we can’t go around killing intellectuals the way Hitler, Mao and Stalin did … can we?  No, not really.  It wouldn’t look good.  It would be all over the news, Oprah would disapprove, and the media might even make a “reality” TV show about it.

Of course, just because we can’t kill them doesn’t mean we can’t assassinate them in the arena of public opinion.  Listen to right-wing radio talk show host Michael Savage on any day of the week and you will hear him venomously refer to President Obama as, “That university professor!”  As if it’s an epithet on a par with calling him the N-word.  Listen to any of the right-wing radio talkers and you will see how contemptuous they are of well-educated people who’ve devoted their lives to a particular field.  Former Saturday Night Live cast member Dennis Miller, once one of America’s wittiest, most intelligent and acerbic comedians, whose material was peppered with a wide variety of intellectually challenging references that ran the gamut of art, science, pop culture, and history, now hosts a right-wing radio talk show on which he says, multiple times every day, “I’m not much for no fancy book-learnin’.”

But if you think this rejection of intelligence, knowledge and excellence happens only on the right, you’re mistaken.  This past week, movie actor and vocal leftist John Cusack (whom I follow on Twitter) posted this message (I am reproducing it here exactly as he wrote it):

hope we can believe in– ban the ivy league! i kid but not really… lets see what happens when the” best and brightest” dont rule–

Let me repeat that last part again: “Let’s see what happens when the ‘best and brightest’ don’t rule.”  Yes, let’s shove the best and brightest aside and go down the ladder a ways to find our leaders.  Maybe this country would be better off if we put it in the hands of people with no historical frame of reference, people who don’t reach decisions through critical thought and reasoning but rather according to their religious beliefs and ancient religious texts written thousands of years ago by ignorant, superstitious men.  How would that be, huh?  Can you imagine a time when that’s the kind of thinking we use to choose our leaders?

Oh, wait … we’re already there.  Are you scared yet?

In 2008, Susan Jacoby was interviewed by Truthout.org.  Jacoby was a reporter for the Washington Post and the program director of the Center for Inquiry in New York City.  She is now the author of several books, including The Age of American Unreason.  She discussed the common attitude toward knowledge, intelligence and excellence in America and gave the following example of this phenomenon on the left side of the aisle:

At the end of the primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain endorsed a gas tax holiday for Americans this summer. Every economist, both liberal and conservative, said this would do nothing to help matters.  And when Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, “Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?” she said, “Oh that’s elite thinking.”

Now to say that economists have nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is like saying that you don’t ask musicians about music; you don’t ask scientists about science.  It’s not just an attack on a political idea; it’s an attack on knowledge itself. … Of course, she doesn’t believe it for a minute. It shows that a lot of politicians think they have to play to ignorance and label anything that goes against received opinion as elitism.

We live in a country in which many brilliant, well-educated people feel they have to play dumb in order to get elected.  They feel the need to pander to the most ignorant among us to get votes, to throw their own knowledge and intelligence out the window and say things they don’t really mean or believe in order to get votes.  And do you know why they do it?  Because it works.

In the same interview, Jacoby gives another example of the frightening way knowledge has been rejected and ignorance embraced:

I’ll give you an example of how stupid this country has become.  I’m one of the village atheists on Faith, a panel sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek.  In a recent post I wrote that when I was 7 years old, I was taken by my mom to visit a friend who had been stricken by polio and was in an iron lung. Polio has basically been eradicated, but I grew up when polio was still a real threat to children, before the Salk vaccine.  This childhood friend had been playing and running only three weeks before, and now he was in an iron lung. And I asked my mom, “Why would God let something like that happen?”  And to her credit, instead of giving me some moronic answer, my mother said, “I don’t know.”

After posting this on Faith, I received an e-mail saying, “All childhood memories are unreliable.  We construct narratives to justify what we now think.”

Of course it would be stupid if I’d said I became an atheist at the age of 7.  But I hadn’t said that, only that I remembered this childhood experience as making me begin to question what I’d been taught.  The whole tone of the e-mail was that nobody’s memory about anything could possibly be accurate – no fact could possibly be true.

… One of the points I make in my book is that unreason pervades our culture. It’s not just a matter of right-wing religious fundamentalism. There are all kinds of unreason and suspicion of evidence on both the Right and the Left.

We often hear about the vast promise of technology to educate and enlighten us, to put oceans of information at our very fingertips.  But how can all that information be useful … if we have no frame of reference to apply to it?  Susan Jacoby again:

In my talks to people, I often mention a statistic from the National Constitution Center that almost half of Americans can’t name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student stood up at a university in California and said, “That doesn’t matter because you can just look it up on the Internet.” But if you don’t know what the First Amendment is in the first place, you don’t know what question to ask the Web.  Garbage in, garbage out. The Web’s only as good as our ability to ask questions of it. The ability to access information means nothing if you don’t have an educated framework of knowledge to fit it into.

But aren’t we at least smart enough to know that we don’t know a lot?  How could we possibly get ourselves into this situation?  Susan Jacoby says:

A fundamentalist is one who believes in a literal interpretation of sacred books, and a third of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.  That’s about 10 times more than any other developed country in the world.  It’s entirely possible to be a religious believer and to accept science, but not if you’re a literal religious believer.  You can’t believe that the world was literally created in six days, and be open to modern knowledge.

There’s also something else:  We’ve always had more faith in technology than other countries. One of our problems with computers is that we believe in technological solutions to what are essentially non-technological problems.  Not knowing is a non-technological problem.  The idea that the Web is an answer to knowing nothing is wrong, but it’s something that Americans – with our history of believing in technology as the solution to everything – are particularly susceptible to.

Why is it that such a large percentage of the Americans read every word of the bible literally?  Jacoby again.

That’s in my previous book, Freethinkers.  One reason, oddly enough, is our absolute separation of church and state.  In secular Europe – as it’s often called sneeringly by people like Justice Antonin Scalia – religious belief and belief in political systems were united.  So if you opposed the government, you also had to oppose religion.  That wasn’t true in America because we had separation of church and state.  Many forms of religious belief survived in America, because you could believe anything you wanted and still not be opposed to your government.

The freedom of religion in America gives us more freedom, it’s true – but it also gives us more religion, and that freedom provides no balance whatsoever.  People are free to believe whatever idiotic nonsense happens to appeal to them – and they do.  But shouldn’t education provide a balance for this?  Sure, our educational system is a bit problematic these days, but it’s still the best in the world, because America is number one – right?  Jacoby says:

… Americans are unwilling to look at how really bad our educational system is because we’ve all been propagandized with the idea that we’re number one.  That may have been true after World War II, but not anymore.  The idea that we’re number one and special and better than everybody else is a very powerful factor in American life, and it prevents us from examining certain respects in which we’re not number one.

Is Jacoby exaggerating?  Is the educational system really that bad?  After all, America is number one … right?  Well, let’s see.  According to the December 12, 2004 issue of the New York Times, the United States ranks 49th in the world in literacy, 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy and American workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that businesses in the U.S. spend $30 billion a year on remedial training.  According to the January 7, 2005 issue of The Week, 20% of all Americans think the sun orbits the earth, and 17% believe the earth orbits the sun once every day.  On page 78 of Jeremy Rifkin’s book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, he notes that the International Adult Literacy Survey found “that Americans with less than nine years of education ’score worse than virtually all of the other countries.’”

If you don’t believe any of this and think I’m exaggerated or my information is incorrect, please watch this video, which is a few years old, but still quite relevant.  And be afraid.  Be very afraid.

From the time that I was a boy, I watched my father retreat from the world because the world refused to conform to his opinions and beliefs.  When he was in the sixth grade, his teacher wanted him to give an oral book report in front of the class.  He didn’t want to.  The teacher insisted.  So Dad threw a tantrum, walked away from school halfway through the sixth grade with his signature I’ll show them attitude and never looked back.  He went through life with that same attitude, and the older he got, the angrier he got, because he found that his attitude was not well received.  When I was a child, he used to come home from work angry every day – everyone else was stupid, everyone was out to get him, everyone else was to blame for all of his problems.  After having back surgery, he applied for disability and got it.  He wasn’t disabled – he did plenty of hard work around the house – but he no longer had to face a world of people who knew more than he, who thought more clearly than he, who refused to tell him he was right about everything when he was right about virtually nothing, and who refused to tolerate his tantrums when this fact became clear.  He continued to retreat from the world until he almost never left the house, even to go to church (he was quite religious and was fond of wildly misquoting the bible he never read).  The excuse he invented was, “I don’t like being around crowds.  It’s my nerves.”  My mother played along.  The little house in which they lived became his entire world, and in that world, he knew everything, he was always right, and everyone else was crazy and ignorant and full of crap on every conceivable topic.  And if you didn’t believe him, just ask Mom.  She would nod and smile and say, “That’s what Dad has always said.”  As if always saying it makes it right.

If you had a discussion with him about anything and you happened to disagree with him, you didn’t simply hold a differing opinion – you were saying that he was wrong.  Opinions weren’t just opinions to him because in any conversation, someone had to be right and someone had to be wrong – and he had to be right.  As a result, he walked away from every conversation by angrily snarling his favorite words:  “I know what I know!”

Dad used to pronounce the word “realty” as “reality.”  This drove me crazy.  Finally, I pointed out to him that he was mispronouncing the word.  “Realty refers to the sale of real estate,” I said.  “Reality is a different word and has an entirely different meaning.”

“But I’ve always pronounced it ‘reality,’” he said.  My family was big on the idea that repeating something a lot made it true.

“I know you have, but it’s always been wrong.”

“Well, I prefer to say it my way,” he said.

“Then no one will know what you’re talking about, Dad.”

“That’s their problem.”

I wanted to say, No, Dad, that’s your problem, but I said nothing, and if you’d known my dad, you would know why.

Life in America is starting to bear a terrifying resemblance to life with my parents.  I’m 47 years old, have been married to my wife for 20 years, and yet it seems that, with increasing frequency, when I engage others in conversation on topical subjects, I feel like a little boy again trying to have a conversation with my father.  This is due, I think, to a combination of phenomena that have created a perfect storm of willful ignorance in America.

Fully one third of the population believes in the infallible accuracy of a book that claims it’s okay to abuse or even kill your children, that seas part so people can walk across them, that women are unclean during their menstrual cycle and everything they touch during that time must be burned, that virgins have babies and people rise from the dead.  These people in turn reject any scientific information – sometimes even evidence that is right in front of them – that contradicts this book.  And let’s face it, folks – if you believe all that not only without a speck of evidence to support it but in the face of hard, cold proof to the contrary, then there is no limit on what you will believe.

We live in an era that is bloated with information.  Once upon a time, there were only three, four, maybe five television channels available to most people.  Now there are hundreds.  News channels now have 24 hours to fill every day, which has made everything “news” – the latest celebutard drug overdose, political sex scandals, missing puppies and updates on American Idol contestants are now given the attention and significance once reserved for national policy decisions, wars and natural disasters.  “Reality” TV has invaded every area of television – the major networks, MTV, cooking channels, it’s everywhere – presenting as “reality” the very worst elements of humanity.  Selfish, arrogant, angry, deceptive, promiscuous, ignorant, small-minded people get their own TV shows today and are held up as celebrities, and people tune in to follow their exploits.  They’re soon popping up on shows other than their own – talk shows, panel shows, “news” shows, and in magazines where they pose for glossy, glamorous photo shoots.  They become the topic of watercooler coversations in workplaces around the country.  These people – the stars of “reality” TV shows who have, as a result, become TV stars, celebrities, and the subject of stories that pass for “news” these days – have rapidly become cultural touchstones for us.

On top of that, our culture has become dominated by things like Twitter, Facebook and cell phone texting, all of which have positive aspects.  But a significant portion of our population has come to believe that it’s very important that everyone know exactly what we’re doing at every moment and that we share every little thought that pops into our heads.  It has given us a sense of self-importance we did not have before, the feeling that the minutiae of our lives is somehow special and of great interest to others.  Hey, if those unpleasant, obnoxious, proudly stupid people on The Jersey Shore can have their own TV show, then I can be a celebrity, too, right?  We have become celebrities in our own minds, filled with a false sense of our own importance.

Add to all of the above another factor, one that perhaps does the most damage.  Just as wealthy, pampered celebrities tend to surround themselves with “yes men” who tell those celebrities only what they want to hear, it is now possible for us to structure our own personal lives to confirm only those things we believe about ourselves and our world.  You’re a Christian conservative who believes that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles to be ruled by Christians?  Then watch Fox News and CBN and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham and go online and read Newsmax and WorldNetDaily (both of which have a long history of outright lies).  You believe that the scientific theory of evolution is a lie and the world was created in six days by a silent, invisible god?  Well, there are plenty of well-funded organizations that agree with you and are working hard to spread the word that your belief has scientific support and is being unfairly rejected by the American educational system in favor of its wicked, godless teachings.  In no time at all, you will be absolutely convinced that you are right about everything!  You don’t even have to listen to anything that disagrees with you!  After all, you have TV shows and reporters and news websites and celebrities and shiny organizations to back up everything you believe.  Suddenly, all those who disagree with you become the “elite” – people who think they’re better than you, people who think they know more than you.  What more do you need to know other than the fact that you’re right!

Now, ignorance and stupidity are not only allowed, they are actively encouraged and nurtured!

During the eight years that George W. Bush was president, I nearly pulled my hair out every time I heard him speak.  Whenever he opened his mouth and words came out, he butchered the language, said appallingly ignorant things, and made it very clear that he just wasn’t thinking clearly, as if all the wrong synapses were firing at all the wrong times (“Is our children learning?” … “You need to put food on your family.” … “The jury is still out on evolution.”) Whenever I openly complained about this, it seemed there was always someone who spoke up and said some variation of the following:  “Leave him alone!  At least he’s not one of those people who says everything exactly right all the time, like he’s better than everybody else, like knows more than everybody else!  He talks like a normal person!  He talks like me!”

Every time they said that, what I heard them saying inside my head was, I like him because he’s dumb like me! I heard my father saying, I know what I know! I heard him saying, That’s their problem.

No.  It’s our problem.  It’s the entire country’s problem.  And it’s a problem that is rapidly getting worse, metastasizing like a cancer.  Thomas Jefferson was right – the functional operation of this country as it was conceived by the founders is absolutely dependent on an informed electorate, on reasoning and informed intelligence.  All of that is disintegrating right before our very eyes.

Don’t wait for the educational system to fix this.  Don’t wait for the government to correct it.  It will only get worse unless we start doing something about it ourselves, individually, one at a time.  Educate yourself and stay informed.  Think – and think critically.  Turn off the television and radio and stop listening to the many talking heads who want to do your thinking for you.  Go to the library or a book store, do some reading.  Seek out information and opinions that challenge you and will keep you from saying, I know what I know.  Examine each issue thoughtfully, using reason as your guide, not devotion to a religious belief or allegiance to a political party or the popular opinions of our time.  Keep in mind that the majority opinion is seldom the right one – that the majority once wanted black people and women to remain second class citizens without voices or rights.  Arm yourself with the facts, then speak up when you hear those facts being trampled or twisted.  Don’t remain silent in the face of willful ignorance and disinformation.  Point it out, correct it, and then denounce it.  If we don’t do that with frequency and conviction, we will find ourselves traveling backward in time with terrifying speed, and we will land in a place ruled by ignorance, superstition and anger.  We’re halfway there right now.  In that place, there will be no freedom, no individuality, no thinking.  There will only be the constant repetition of the words, I know what I know … even if what is known is nothing at all.

Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who sparked controversy by drawing Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog, was physically attacked on Tuesday while giving a lecture at the university of Uppsala, north of the Stockholm.

“The man was sat in the first row and suddenly he rushed at me. He punched me in the head and I lost my glasses,” said Vilks, adding that at the very most he was “a little bruised”.

The Muslims who showed up to protest knew ahead of time what the lecture was going to be about. Why attend if you know that what is going to be shown will offend you? Because, they don’t want anyone insulting their imaginary friend. Nevermind that Vilks spent time making fun of other religions. That does not matter to the protesters, because they believe that Islam is the only “true beliefs” and if no one else protests so violently, well…that just proves to them that Christianity, Buddhism, and all other religions are untrue but Mohammad and Islam are true and according to extremist Muslims, the right to free speech does not apply to Islam.

I was a bit frustrated to see Swedish non-Muslims just sit there there doing nothing at all during the whole ordeal. No one stood up in defense of free speech. It’s like our friend Pat Condell says, people are afraid to stand up to Muslims because of the risk of violent retaliation. The actions against Vilks shows that the fear is not unjustified. Because of the violent threats by Muslim extremists (which are carried out all too often), groups and organizations choose to just back down and let them have their way.

For Mr. Vilks, who has booby-trapped his own house and says he sleeps with an ax beside his bed, the right to unfettered speech – regardless of whether it offends Muslims – is a point of principle. “This must be carried through. You cannot allow it to be stopped,” he told the Associated Press, saying he wouldn’t hesitate to give the address again.

But the university apparently disagrees. Officials said they would “not likely” invite Vilks again because of the incident. In some quarters, the university’s reponse is adding to concerns that violence and threats from some members of the Muslim community are effectively muzzling free speech.

Last month, Comedy Central edited a “South Park” episode showing Mohammed in a bear suit in response to veiled threats by a New York-based Muslim group.

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art pulled a collection of art of Mohammed to avoid offending Muslims, who believe that the depiction of any of the prophets is a form of idolatry.

And Brandeis University professor Jytte Klausen says that Yale University Press prohibited her from using several 2005 Danish newspaper caricatures depicting Mohammed with a bomb on his head in her book “The Cartoons That Shook the World.”

“When it comes to depicting the Prophet, this has nothing to do with social issues or integration,” says Professor Klausen. “This is about a political movement by sectarian groups where [depicting Mohammed] has now become a primary trigger for political contention. The university pretty much told [Vilks] to shut up and go talk somewhere else, and I find that reaction very dangerous and problematic. It means that the extremists have achieved what they wanted.”

Here is the video of what happened after the attack on Vilks:

Chris Hedges, via Alternet, via TruthDig

Religious Institutions are Ruled by the Morally Bankrupt — But Should We Be Cheering It’s Demise?

As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced.

It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars. They have failed to unequivocally denounce unfettered capitalism, globalization and pre-emptive war. The obsession with personal piety and “How-is-it-with-me?” spirituality that permeates most congregations in narcissism. And while the Protestant church and reformed Judaism have not replicated the perfidiousness of the Catholic bishops, who protect child-molesting priests, they have little to say in an age when we desperately need moral guidance.

[...]

But I cannot rejoice in the collapse of these institutions. We are not going to be saved by faith in reason, science and technology, which the dead zone of oil forming in the Gulf of Mexico and our production of costly and redundant weapons systems illustrate. Frederick Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or “Superman”—our secular religion—is as fantasy-driven as religious magical thinking.

[...]

The great religions set free the critical powers of humankind. They broke with the older Greek and Roman traditions that gods and Destiny ruled human fate—a belief that, when challenged by Socrates, saw him condemned to death. They challenged the power of the tribe, the closed society. They offered up the possibility that human beings, although limited by circumstance and human weakness, could shape and give direction to society and their own lives. These religious thinkers were our first ethicists. And it is perhaps not accidental that the current pope, as well as the last one, drove out of the Catholic Church thousands of clergy and religious leaders who embodied these qualities, elevating the dregs to positions of leadership and leaving the pedophiles to run the Sunday schools.

These religious institutions are in irreversible decline. They are ruled by moral and intellectual trolls. They have become arrogant and self-absorbed. Their sins are many. They protected criminals. They pandered to the lowest common denominator and illusions of personal fulfillment and surrendered their moral authority. They did not fight the corporate tyrants who have impoverished us. They refused to denounce a caste of Christian heretics embodied by the Christian right and have, for their cowardice, been usurped by bizarre proto-fascists clutching the Christian cross. They have nothing left to say. And their aging congregants, who are fleeing the church in droves, know it. But don’t think the world will be a better place for their demise.

As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced. We are becoming objects, consumer products and marketable commodities. We have no intrinsic value. We are obsessed with self-presentation. We must remain youthful. We must achieve notoriety and money or the illusion of it. And it does not matter what we do to get there. Success, as Goldman Sachs illustrates, is its own morality. Other people’s humiliation, pain and weakness become the fodder for popular entertainment. Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing see contestants disappeared from any reality television show or laughed out of any Wall Street firm.

[...]

The consumer culture, as Nietzsche feared, has turned us into what Chalmers Johnson calls a “consumerist Sparta.” The immigrants and the poor, all but invisible to us, work as serfs in this new temple of greed and imperialism. Curtis White in “The Middle Mind” argues that most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their consumer society and empire. He suspects they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins or the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is welcomed and appreciated. It ensures that we remain Last Men. And the death of religious institutions will only cement into place the new secular religion of the Last Man, the one that worships military power, personal advancement, hedonism and greed, the one that justifies our callousness toward the weak and the poor.

My take is that the “Last Men” he refers to are the present-day fundamentalist, evangelicals, and under-educated lazy-thinkers of FuxNews.  Surely he couldn’t mean me!

A pessimist?  Or a clear-eyed realist?  Or both?

It’s a helluva read.  It gave me chills and will probably pop  into my mind, at inopportune times, for the next few weeks or months.  If he’s right, I’ll remember this whenever I see events that Hedges predicted.

But, by that time, it will be too late.  Armageddon’s tipping-point is probably nearer than I think.

Religion has given itself such a bad name that even some believers don’t want to be associated with it.  “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual,” is something that’s usually said by people who believe in god but don’t want to be included in his army of uptight, church-going, dogmatic, judgmental, hypocritical, unreasonable, irrational, bullying followers bent on overthrowing the United States and turning it into a Christian theocracy.  If someone says this and you ask what it means, you most likely will find it’s shorthand for something like this:  “Well, I’m just not comfortable with the idea of a godless universe, so I believe in something, but I haven’t really worked out exactly what, and it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, so I just try to keep a good moral center, but I’m not religious.”  Whatever their beliefs, that’s the one thing the “spiritual-but-not-religious” folks have in common – they don’t want to be mistaken for one of those people.  And who can blame them?

Now “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual” is in the news.  According to a study conducted by Lifeway Christian Resources, 72% of the 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed described themselves as “more spiritual than religious.”  In an article in USA Today, Lifeway president Thom Rainer says that if this trend continues, “the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships.”  This reflects the findings of other surveys by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and the Pew Forum.

According to ARIS, despite the addition of 50 million adults to the population in the last 18 years, religion is steadily losing ground.  In fact, the “nones” – people who claim no religious affiliation or no belief at all – now outrank all other religious groups in the United States except for Catholics and Baptists, and its numbers are growing.

Across the board, more and more people are turning their backs on organized religion.  None of the surveys I’ve found have asked why they’re doing this – I wish someone would do that study.  I suspect high on the list of reasons would be rampant hypocrisy among the religious, as well as the elitist, judgmental and bigoted attitudes of American Christians and the bullying behavior that demands respect from everyone but shows no respect to others.  Another reason might be the overwhelming authority churches claim to have over their members (and even non-members) without any real support for it.  They dip their hands into people’s lives, telling them how they should and shouldn’t live.  This is typically done by the men in the pulpits – pastors and priests who have decided to devote their lives to telling others how to live theirs.  These are usually men who have no formal training in anything but being pastors and priests, and yet they have the arrogance to counsel others on serious life issues, including marriage and family problems, which is especially disturbing in the case of priests who are not allowed to marry and who remain celibate – well, in theory, anyway … as long as you don’t count sex with kids.  As their source of authority and wisdom, they point to that ancient book written in a time of astonishing ignorance and superstition, the bible.  But that seems to be carrying less weight these days, too.  People are steadily seeing the weakness of the bible as a source of divine authority, morality or even good sense.

According to a Gallup poll, one third of the American population believes the bible is the infallible word of god and should be taken literally – an average of 31% between 1991 and 2007, a number that has dropped from 38% in the period between 1976 and 1984.  The level of education one has seems to be a factor in how literally they take the bible – the more educated, the less seriously the bible is taken.  A third of the country might seem like a hefty percentage – until you realize just how little the believers themselves know about what’s in the bible.  In his book No Place for Truth, theologian David Wells wrote, “I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy.”

According to an article titled “Crisis in America’s Churches: Bible Knowledge at All-Time Low” by Michael J. Vlach, Ph.D., the most widely known bible verse among adult and teen Christians is, “God helps those who help themselves” – which isn’t even in the bible.  Valch writes, “One-third could not put the following in order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of Christ, and Pentecost. … One-third could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a list of New Testament names … half did not know that the Christmas story was in Matthew, half did not know that the Passover story was in Exodus.”

According to Christian researcher George Barna, “Literally millions of Americans who declare themselves to be Christians contend that Jesus was just like the rest of us when it comes to temptation—fallen, guilty, impure, and Himself in need of a savior.”

If so many Christians are unfamiliar with the information in the bible that is relevant to their religious beliefs, then how many more have no familiarity at all with the ugly, hateful, immoral and downright horrifying material in the bible – the stuff their pastors and priests never cover in church, the stuff that doesn’t make it to buttons and bumper stickers and T-shirts?  A lot.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say all of them (but I have no statistical study to support that – it’s just an opinion based on my experience with Christians).

Whenever I have any kind of discussion with a Christian about religion, sooner or later they fall on the old, “But the bible says so!” argument.  Oh, the bible?  You mean the old book that condones and advocates things like slavery, child abuse, torture, rape, incest, murder, genocide and communism?  That bible?  That, of course, is always met with indignant cries of, “It does not!” to which I calmly reply, “Yes, it does.”  Sooner or later, they say to me, “Prove it!”  That’s always fun.  Because I can.  And when I do, almost without exception, they are thrown into stammering, stuttering, slack-jawed speechlessness because they had no idea that the book they’d always believed to be the infallible word of god, the manifesto of god’s merciful love for his children, is actually the world’s oldest and bestselling horror novel in which the bloodthirsty monster is god.

My wife Dawn recently had a conversation with a friend who’s the daughter of a Christian minister.  The friend said something about the bible being “god’s word of love,” and Dawn laughed.  She suggested that a god who would command his people not to kill then tell them to wipe out an entire people by killing all the men, women, children, pets and livestock and take any surviving girls home for sex, was not too loving.  Her friend insisted the bible contained no such thing.  Dawn told her to ask her minister father about it, and the friend said she most definitely would.  She never brought the subject up again.  I assume Dad filled her in and she preferred not to talk about it anymore.

Throughout the Old Testament, god kills men, women and children, orders his people to kill their own children and loved ones, to burn nonbelievers, and to murder, rape and pillage entire civilizations.  He encourages slavery and even tells his people it’s okay to sell their own daughters into sexual slavery.  But the great majority of Christians are unaware of this because they don’t read the bible, they just listen to their pastors and priests tell them about it, and the pastors and priests tell their congregations only what they want them to know.  Those who are familiar with it have a number of standard defenses for its litany of obscenities.  My favorite is, “Things like that were cultural norms at that time.”  This, of course, makes no sense, because these same people will adamantly insist that god never ever changes and remains the same god he’s always been in every way.  But if what god deems acceptable behavior – slavery, rape, torture, child abuse, etc. – changes from one culture to the next, then obviously god does not remain the same and is heavily influenced by what humans deem acceptable behavior … which is awfully conveeeenient, as the Church Lady used to say.  But try pointing that out to them and see what happens.  The conversation will become uncomfortable at best, hostile at worst.  Usually hostile, by my experience.

Of those who say they believe the bible to be the word of god, how many know exactly what it is they’re claiming to believe in?  How seriously are we to take people who claim this book came from god when they don’t even know what’s in it?

Back to the Lifeway Christian Resources survey.  65% of those surveyed call themselves Christian, but Rainer says, “Many of them are mushy Christians or Christians in name only.  Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.”

This brings up the elitist and judgmental attitudes of Christians that I mentioned earlier.  Mr. Rainer has no qualms about letting us know that he is capable of deciding which people are real, sincere Christians and which ones are “mushy Christians or Christians in name only,” or “indifferent.”  The bible assures Christians that “whosoever believeth in him (Jesus Christ) should not perish but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16)  In that particular part of the bible – the bible goes through wild mood swings throughout – all that’s required is belief.  But apparently Mr. Rainer knows better and has found many of those who claim to be Christians to be, in truth, severely lacking in some way.  I have no idea what he’s basing this on, and frankly, I don’t care, because along with being appallingly arrogant and judgmental, Mr. Rainer is full of hot air.  His dismissal of those whose brand of Christianity he disapproves of is actually a pretty good description of most of the Christians in this country.

Going by my experience with Christians – which is reflected in the experiences of most people I know – most use their religious belief rather than live it, and they use it only when it suits them.  Others – even nonbelievers – are expected to live by their religion’s rules while they do whatever they like and claim to be “not perfect, just forgiven.”  Little or no attention is given Jesus’s instructions.  He tells them to pray in private, but they want public prayer mandated.  He tells them to be humble and meek and not judgmental, and … well, we all know how that’s worked out, don’t we?  It has been my consistent and unwavering experience throughout my life that the most Christ-like people are those who do not believe in or worship Christ.  So when Mr. Rainer claims that only some of those who profess to be Christians are actually Christians, which suggests that others are fine, devout, loving, Christ-like Christians, I can’t help but laugh.

According to the Lifeway study, 65% of those surveyed “rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.  65% rarely or never attend worship services.  67% don’t read the Bible or sacred texts.”  Among those who still believed they would go to heaven “because they have accepted Jesus Christ as savior, 68% did not mention faith, religion or spirituality when asked what was ‘really important in life.’  50% do not attend church at least weekly.  36% rarely or never read the Bible.”

But who are these Christian young people between the ages of 18 and 29?  Chances are extremely good that they were born into the religion or targeted by evangelism at a very early age, and the statistics – gathered by Christian researchers – back that up.

According to studies by Nazarene Church Growth Research and the International Bible Society, 83% to 85% of all Christians “make their commitment to Jesus between the ages of 4 and 14, that is, when they are children or early youth.”

Between the ages of 4 and 14.  I know that’s when I made all of my significant life commitments with full knowledge of precisely what I was doing – how about you?

According to an article by Michael Rohling, Manager of Youth and Family Interventions at Southern Illinois Regional Social Services (SIRSS) in Carbondale, Illinois, “Teenagers do not look as complete in brain development as researchers previously thought.  According to Barbara Strauch, the medical science and health editor of the New York Times, in her recent book, The Primal Teen [First Anchor Books Edition, September 2004], the notion that the brain was complete at age 13 or 14 has been thrown away.  The latest neuroscience is finding that structural changes are not finished until age 25 or so.  And, although there are numerous hormones involved, brain development plays a larger part in teen impulses.”

In a San Francisco Examiner article, education professional and Lifeline Foundation Inc. co-chair Sharon Biggs wrote, “Prior to full brain development children exhibit the following behaviors more coincidentally vs. consistently:  Decision making, use of appropriate judgment; rational thinking; integration of emotion and critical thinking; ability to think clearly about long-term outcomes that stem from behaviors; global thinking vs. self-centered thinking.”

Howard Culbertson, professor of missions and world evangelism, writes on the Southern Nazarene University website, “This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.  Because the 4 to 14 period slice of the pie is so large, many have started referring to the ‘4 to14 Window.’”

So the reasoning behind the “4 to 14 Window” goes something like this: We need to get them before they can think straight.  This makes sense, of course.  According to the Nazarene Church Growth Research study, only 4% of Christians converted to the faith after the age of 30.  Older people, especially those who’ve been educated – those who have fully-developed brains and have integrated their emotions with critical thought, those who are capable of consistently making rational, carefully thought out decisions – are a little harder to sell on the idea of the earth being poofed into existence in six days, talking animals, seas opening up so people can walk across them, a pregnant virgin, and people rising from the dead than are children between the ages of 4 and 14 whose gray matter, like a mold of unfinished Jell-O, has not yet set.  People at 30 and older are not as likely to be convinced that if they don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior, his loving and merciful father will make them suffer and burn for all eternity in hell.

It’s not suprising that, according to Culbertson, “Many people serving as career cross-cultural missionaries have testified that they first felt god calling them to missionary service during that 4-14 age period.”  Was that really “god calling them,” or was it the high-pressure fear-mongering and guilt trips of adults who know that kids of that age are the easiest to convince, the easiest to dominate and indoctrinate, the targets most likely to yield successful results?

Let me repeat the words of Howard Culbertson: “This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.”  Replace the word “influencing” with the word “indoctrinating.”  I would suggest using the word “brainwashing,” but that would imply that prelearned information is being erased and replaced with new information – we’re talking about children who don’t have any prelearned information to erase.  Their young, new minds are being shaped and sculpted at the earliest stages, particularly those who are born into religion and indoctrinated from infancy onward.

No one asked me if I wanted to be a Seventh-day Adventist.  That decision was made for me.  My earliest memories are of fear of the “last days,” of the “national Sunday law” that Adventism teaches its children will be passed, possibly at any moment, forcing everyone to worship on Sunday – Adventists observe the Old Testament Sabbath and worship on Saturday.  I was taught that when that happened, we would have to drop what we were doing, flee to the hills and hide in caves so the Catholics and other “Sunday-keepers” couldn’t find us, imprison us, torture us, and execute us for our beliefs.  I lived in such terror of this happening that every time a TV show I was watching was interrupted for a “special news bulletin,” I had a panic attack for fear that the announcement would be about the abrupt passage of the Sunday law.  Children born into religion are taught to see the devil around every corner, to prepare for the end of the world, to keep a watchful eye for the antichrist, and all kinds of scary things – all injected into a small child’s mind before it can reason or think clearly or choose.

How often have you heard this:  I think it’s important for children to go to church so they get some kind of moral, Christian training. I’ve heard my wife’s sister say this many times.  It’s not an uncommon thing for the parents of young children to say.  According to a friend of mine who used to be involved in Christian ministry, “Our experience in ministry was that the vast majority of the newcomers to our church – the previously unchurched – between the ages of 25 and 35 started attending solely because they wanted their children to grow up with some form of religious/Christian training.  They did not start the church thing for themselves.  They only chose our church because it was enjoyable.  It didn’t really matter to most of them what denomination just so long as it didn’t bore the hell out of them.  But their commitment was generally pretty flimsy.  They never ‘caught fire’ as we would say.”

It’s typical for people to think that religion and morality are the same thing.  Religion has spent thousands of years claiming that it virtually invented morality.  It has commandeered morality and claimed it for its own.  Christianity claims that its morality comes from the bible.  You remember the bible — that book that condones and advocates things like slavery, child abuse, torture, rape, incest, murder, genocide and communism?  Yeah, that bible.  That’s where they claim their morality comes from.

The fact is that morality – right and wrong, good and bad – exist independent of religion and always have.  But that’s another blog post.  Unfortunately, those who’ve bought into the lie that religion is the source of morality often decide they must turn their children over to what is in fact a system of indoctrination that is ready and waiting to seize control of the minds of those children.  Rather than being taught morality or the difference between right and wrong, they will be taught a false morality, taught to believe in myths and invisible, unprovable beings that have nothing to do with morality.  They will be taught that they are inherently bad, that they are filled with sin and are worthless unless they accept a non-existent being who will forgive their sins and give them worth.  They are told that this being died a horrible death for them and they are obligated to accept him and devote their lives to him, and if they don’t, they will burn forever in hell.  What does this have to do with morality?  What does this have to do with being a good person?  Nothing.  But these children will be told otherwise, and they will be told at a time when their minds are vulnerable and defenseless.

Sure, they would like you to convert and join their church.  But what do they really want?  They want your children.  That’s where their future lies.

There’s just one problem.  It seems this system of indoctrination isn’t working as well as it used to.  Young people are walking away from religion more than ever before.  And people like Thom Rainer of Lifeway Christian Resources are worried that this trend could cause churches to close “as quickly as GM dealerships.”  Interesting he referenced car dealerships.  It probably would have been more accurate to specify used car dealerships.

But Christians are not surprised by this.  They say they’ve always known this would happen in the last days before Christ’s return – the great apostasy, the falling away of Christians as predicted in the bible.  When I was a boy living in fear of those last days, I was constantly being reminded of the many signs that we were living in them.  Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, horrible diseases.  Never mind that there have always been earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and horrible diseases – don’t confuse them with the facts, they hate that.  The one that always confused me, found in Daniel 12:4, was this:  “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”  This was always quoted to me as if an increase in knowledge were a bad thing (to say nothing of running to and fro).  This made no sense to me.  Wouldn’t an increase in knowledge be a good thing?  That’s what I always thought.  But everyone I knew seemed so afraid of that idea.

The young people who are now rejecting religion in greater numbers than ever before are living in a time of tremendous knowledge.  We now know more than we’ve ever known about our universe, our planet, our origins, and our bodies, and knowledge only continues to increase faster than ever.  The internet has made that knowledge instantly accessible.  A quick internet search can answer just about any question you might have about anything.  A lot of questions are being answered – questions about god, the bible, religion.  Before the internet, these questions were asked of pastors and other church leaders; they were given vague or evasive answers, and if the questioner continued asking, he or she was accused of the sin of doubt and was told to shut the hell up.  Now there are other places to get answers, and those answers are being pursued.  While it’s true that being spiritual but not religious, or rejecting religion but maintaining a belief in some kind of god, is a little like saying, “I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I believe in Santa Claus,” it’s a start.  Knowledge is increasing.

“And knowledge shall be increased” is scary to Christians.  But it’s not a sign of the end of the world.  It’s a sign of the end of their reign.

Read it and weep, fundies!

Of course, this only applies to the UK.  For now.  But if it breaks the stranglehold in one country, the meme will spread.

Judge rejects ‘irrational’ idea that Christianity deserves special protection from law

Christianity deserves no protection in law above other faiths and to do so would be “irrational, divisive, capricious and arbitrary”, a senior judge said yesterday.

In the latest clash between the judiciary and Christian believers Lord Justice Laws said that laws could not be used to protect one religion above another.

He also delivered a robust dismissal to Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who had warned that a series of recent court rulings against Christians could lead to civil unrest. He called his idea for a specialist panel of judges to hear cases involving the practice of religious beliefs “deeply inimical to the public interest”.

To give one religion legal protection over any other, “however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled”, the judge said. It would give legal force to a subjective opinion and would lead to a “theocracy”.

Lord Justice Laws’s comments came in the High Court as he rejected a marriage guidance counsellor’s attempt to challenge his sacking for refusing to provide sex therapy to gay couples.

Lord Carey had given a witness statement in support of Gary McFarlane, 48, from Bristol, a member of a Pentecostal church. Mr McFarlane was seeking permission to appeal against an Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that supported his dismissal by Relate Avon in 2008.

Rejecting Mr McFarlane’s application, Lord Justice Laws said: “We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion — any belief system — cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.”

The judge said it was right that he should address what the former Archbishop had said because of his seniority in the Church “and the extent to which others may agree with his views, and because of the misunderstanding of the law which his statement reveals”.

Lord Carey and other Christian leaders had expressed concerns after Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury and two other appeal judges ruled last December that Lillian Ladele, a Christian registrar, was breaking discrimination laws by refusing to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

In his witness statement Lord Carey said: “It is, of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a religious bar to any employment by Christians. I believe that further judicial decisions are likely to end up at this point and this is why I believe it is necessary to intervene now.”

The fact that senior clerics of the Church of England and other religions felt compelled to intervene directly in judicial decisions was “illuminative of a future civil unrest”.

Lord Justice Laws said that Lord Carey appeared to be arguing that the courts ought to be ready to uphold and defend Christian beliefs. But the judge drew a distinction “between the law’s protection of the right to hold and express a belief and the law’s protection of that belief’s substance or content”.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition had exerted a profound influence on the judgment of legislators but to confer on it preferential legal protection was deeply unprincipled, he said. It would mean laws being imposed “not to advance the general good on objective grounds, but to give effect to the force of subjective opinion since faith, other than to the believer, was subjective”.

Andrea Williams, the director of the Christian Legal Centre, warned that the judgment would deny Christians a range of jobs because of their beliefs.

“The judge’s comments could lead in effect to a religious bar to employment, in which Christians could be prevented from being registrars, counsellors, teachers, social workers or work on adoption panels,” she said.

“We never attempted to argue that we could impose a Christian law, which the judge seems to suggest. We are simply talking about the principle of marriage, between a man and a woman, which has undergirded society for hundreds of years.”

England, having survived the turmoil of “state-sponsored religion” knows all too well that that road leads to disaster.  The populace, over 150 years, changed back and forth between the old church (Catholic) and the new church (Anglican).  They even had Cromwell’s Protectorate, a puritanical nightmare.

Cooler heads are in charge now, thank FSM!

Until we develop a vaccine for b’leeevers, we’ll have to depend on the rational thinkers to build the wall around them.  Or, as I said before, as thes regress further back into our “bad old days, when they get to 1555, we’ll just cut them loose.

Credit: Woody Guthrie (composed 1940; recorded 1944; published 1951)

Arizona is the new Alabama, c.1963. The racists “nativists” in AZ can’t get into a debate about the “brown-skinned” illegals. How do you say, “There’s a huge difference! The blacks in the South were born here! They were already legal citizens!” That’s contrary to their cultural behavior, back in the day.

The shouting has just begun, over a bill that won’t go into effect until August. But that didn’t stop one state trooper from demanding a birth certificate from an AZ truck driver. The driver wasn’t carrying it on his person; he called his wife and had her bring it to him so that he could be released from custody.  Iowa Independent (04.26.10):

The new birthers: Arizona truck driver arrested, forced to show birth certificate”

A Latino truck driver outside Phoenix was taken into custody by law enforcement at a weigh station. He pulled in to have the truck looked at, was apparently approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and asked for ID. He showed them his commercial driver’s license. They asked him for more ID. He told them his social security number. They cuffed him took him to the central office in Phoenix and called his wife to bring his social security card and birth certificate. The man is identifying himself to media only as “Abdon” and he is an American citizen born in the USA.

Governor Jan Brewer gave her Montblanc a real workout last week.  First, she signed the “birther” bill, making all future candidates for the presidency (of the United States, not of AZ) show “proof of citizenship eligibility”.  No word on whether President Obama will need to re-meet their standards in 2012.  However, I suspect that is their sole motive in passing this AZ legislation.

“This is a question that has been answered exhaustively,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told CNN. “I can’t imagine Arizona voters think their tax dollars are well served by a legislature that is less focused on their lives than in fringe right-wing radio conspiracy theories.”

By the way, the MSM ignored this.  But the UK didn’t.  Check here.

Second, she signed a bill that will allow AZ citizens to carry concealed weapons without the need for a permit, joining Vermont and Alaska.  USA-Today (04.16.10):

In Arizona, it’s now legal for (most) adults to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer just signed the legislation, putting her state in the same camp as Alaska and Vermont.

The state had issued 154,000 permits under the old law, which required background checks and instruction. Gun buyers still face federal background checks when purchasing weapons from a store.

And last, she signed into law a bill so “draconian” (the seeming consensus of opinion), it is unparalleled.  Police are allowed to shake-down any person who appears to be of Mexican heritage, if they have “cause” while performing their duties.  BUT police are required by law to do this, facing lawsuits by their local citizens if said citizens believe that their police force is not doing their job to the fullest extent.  One critic called it, “the crime of breathing while Hispanic”.

President Obama “on Tuesday warned of harassment against Hispanics under Arizona’s tough new immigration law, saying such “poorly conceived” measures can be halted if the federal government fixes the nation’s broken immigration system for good.”  AP, via HuffPost (04.27.10)

Obama’s comments came on the same day that Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were critical of Arizona’s new law, and Holder said the federal government may challenge it. The president sought to step up Washington’s will to get an immigration deal done.

“I will bring the majority of Democrats to the table in getting this done,” Obama said in response to a question at a town hall in south-central Iowa. “But I’ve got to have some help from the other side.”

The GOP is shameless but they may recognize that this is “their very own Waterloo”.  It would be a mistake on their part, if they treat this as just a “little dustup in Arizona”.

The passion on both sides is running red hot (think:  habanero pepper!).  John McCain has waffled back and forth.  On the other hand, his daughter, Meghan, was an early voice with clear and concise rhetoric.  (Meghan, your Dad looks and sounds like a doddering fool.  Have a doctor check him over; if he hasn’t had a stroke yet, doctors may be able to intervene.)

“One Man’s Family”:  “Look, our border is not secured. Our citizens are not safe.” But the Arizona senator did not provide any additional details to back up his assertion about cars carrying illegal immigrants “intentionally causing accidents.”  John McCain on April 20.

“I believe it gives the state police a license to discriminate, and also, in many ways, violates the civil rights of Arizona residents,” Meghan McCain wrote in her column, entitled “Hate the Law, Not Arizonans.” “Simply put, I think it is a bad law that is missing the bigger picture of what is really going on with illegal immigration.”  Meghan McCain on 04.26.10

“Well, I regret it. People are free to express their views but the fact is the Arizona legislature and governor acted for one reason and that is because the federal government didn’t — did not act and carry out its responsibilities to secure our borders.“  John McCain, on Feh…News, 04.28.10

But wait!  There’s more!  Reverend Jim Wallis hates the bill:

“Wallis calls the new law a “social sin” and just issued a press release, vowing the churches “will not comply.”

Even (possible pederast) Cardinal Mahoney hates the bill:

The head of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese has condemned a proposed Arizona crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it encourages people to turn on each other in Nazi- and Soviet-style repression.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans “will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents,” Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday – a day before Arizona’s Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

We’re not done yet!  The boycotts are coming!

A sports correspondent for The Nation says:  No One is Illegal:  Boycott the Arizona Diamondbacks. His motivation rests on this:   “‘The D-backs organization is a primary funder of the state Republican Party, which has been driving the measure through the legislature.”

While San Francisco’s municipal government may boycott Arizona as a conference destination,  SFGate’s Phil Bronstein says:  not so fast. Boycotting Arizona a bad idea on 04.27.10

“In our great rush to protest potential discrimination, we should be careful that we don’t discriminate ourselves. Since Arizona is about 58 percent white, could we be guilty of reverse discrimination if our boycott affects some of those people who may not support their new law? Or how about the 30 percent of Arizonans who are Hispanic? It seems likely that banning SF-to-Arizona business and the reverse could end up hurting not Gov. Brewer – the evil signatory – but, instead, innocent folks just trying to get by.”

Boycotts to the North, followed by Travel Advisories from the South.

It says that the law’s passage shows “an adverse political atmosphere for migrant communities and for all Mexican visitors.”

Weaponized Frijoles Refritos:  vandals smeared refried beans in the shape of swastikas on the state Capitol’s windows.

Let’s wrap this up quickly.  Dr. Boyce Watkins says: “Immigration fight could pit blacks against brown.”  Tom Tancredo says “Arizona Immigration Law Goes Too Far, [but I] Still Support It.”

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and KARL ROVE spoke out against it!

Finally, on a surreal note, GOP contender in Iowa:  Microchip Illegals Like Dogs

However the most heinous suggestion came from the mouth of physician Pat Bertroche who said,

I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going…I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal? That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under.

UPDATE:  And then there is this from Greg Palast, who concludes the hysteria is misplaced because the GOP is secretly using this for voter suppression.

What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote — and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.

In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters … directed by one Jan Brewer.

In the category of asshattery and/or meanness, with few exceptions, the GOP takes the cake.