The Terror by Night

I think about the Bible sometimes. When the Internet was cut off in Gaza, and the electricity, I thought about the "terror by night"--the nameless and wordless horrors of the obscured, when the beasts come out after sundown, and you can barely make out the face of friend from foe. The thieves and knives come out at night. 

That terror is called "pachad". It is the terror for one's life. What is also to be feared? The arrow by day. 

That arrow pierces to the quick, because the target is seen. There is nothing done under cover of night that doesn't come out in the daylight.

I worry about people who want to use the Bible about this conflict. A lot of the ancient of days stuff is just outdated, and I don't think it's right that we hear a chant of "Khaybar, Khaybar" in pro-Palestine marches, or references to Simon of Trent. 

Cops Killed Jesus

 

In addition to Easter Sunday it is also the 125th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's birth. So in honor of the man who once said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth," here's a message from an Asheville, NC graffiti artist. pic.twitter.com/A8YMxYYbyX

— Daryle Lamont Jenkins (@DLamontJenkins) April 9, 2023

I've been saying for some time that the things no Christian should be about are blasphemy laws and the death penalty. The trumped-up charge against Jesus of Nazareth was that he played at being king of the Jews, which was an office that could only be bestowed by Rome. He claimed a moral right to the children of Israel that he politically could not claim. But he wasn't saying he was the King of the Jews, only his presence as a preacher against the princes of this world existed as a problem for them. 

His sentence was death, and before his death was carried out, he suffered police brutality in the form of a crown of thorns. In custody, he was mocked and stripped naked. His judge, Pilate, didn't seem to think he was guilty, but "washed his hands and sealed his fate". Because someone had to be made an example of. 

Call me, the atheist, a Holy Saturday Christian, because I see the Christ in the downtrodden and persecuted, in the wronged and derailed, in the fucked up and failed people around me. I don't know that the fallen rise, but I want to believe we can all get lifted by understanding one another and helping ourselves up from failure bit by bit. I have no proof for my faith, I just think it would be great. 

Pat Robertson is Ghoulish

 

Pat Robertson came out of retirement to claim that Putin "is being compelled by God" to invade Ukraine in preparation for a massive End Times invasion of Israel. pic.twitter.com/Pmwybf57Ay

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 28, 2022

Claiming that Putin is being used as an instrument of God in what is looking more and more like a genocide (if he cannot take Ukraine with the people there, he will simply remove all the people) to ultimately lead to the End Times which for whatever reason is definitely in Israel is so, so...completely on brand? He's excited that there's misery on tap for humanity. His comforting message: the God we're supposed to worship wants this, so relax and accept all the death. It's almost as if death and misery give his conception of God shape and form. As if his concept of God requires blood and barely exists without the terror by night. As if ethnic genocide and horror were planned by God with the exacting detail of a Kommandant with the entire earth as his camp.

It takes away the human agency of Putin to not do horrific things, in the same way that John Hagee surrendered Hitler's human agency to God in declaring that he used Hitler to found Israel--again for the ultimate End Times purpose.  Will history's monsters face eternal judgment if they were just meat puppets God is operating through? It seems like an ethos that gives monsters a pass at the expense of so many bodies that are "fulfilling prophecy." 

And if God is good, then how is it He cannot achieve his ends without putting human lives through a meat grinder? Surely, a deity like that is to be feared, but how can one so monstrous be worshipped or loved? How can he be a comfort to the afflicted when he is the source of affliction? How can he be a savior when the model of his world is that his instruments are destroyers? 

In a moment of war and tumult, imagine thinking this is exactly the time to peer out from one's retirement and say "More of this, maranatha!" The Good News is--bad news until we all snuff it. 

It's folks like Robertson that are why Christianity and me aren't ever getting on. But it makes me wonder about people for whom this is their religion, the actual way they look at the world. There is a nihilism in it. Why do good at all? Why fight the good fight? The God who formed you in the womb also planned your eventual, necessary, and even potentially excruciating demise along with everyone you ever loved. How would you go through life? Would you be more inclined to do the right things, or find cosmic reasons why it wouldn't matter?  Would you decide that siding with horror had a purpose; that God was working through the evil you had done? 

I don't like the answers I see out there. But look at the old man. The specter of mass death livened his blood. 

Everything is Teaching the Controversy, Now

 

I was recently reminded, now that we're in the age of "alternative facts" regarding Covid-19 and the 2020 election and climate change and who knows what else, of some of the strategies of disinfo I first encountered when intrigued by the creationism movement.  It still strikes me as interesting that creationism still exists even after we've got oodles of examples of transitional types (as are we all) from the fossil record, and that nothing will ever persuade people who have made it their mission to not be persuaded. 

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. 

    Georg C. Lichtenberg

One of  the things to understand about humans is we are political animals--we do tribalism. We have a need for belonging, we are not islands to ourselves but members of societies. We tend to consider our "goodness" according to the ideas of our immediate culture.  We identify and signify. And when we see our opposite number, we attack.  People who have found a disinfo tribe will defend their territory. They are defending their very identity. They see defending a thing that might even not be true as being existential for them,

 For many people, it might be necessary to profess untruths to continue in their identity. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the main group of folks who support Trump, creationism, are climate change denialists, and now antivaxxers, are evangelicals. They are basically who the old news media covenant of "both sides" was made for--the habit of mainstream journalism to also include minority views no matter how batshit or miniscule. So as to satisfy a vocal and activist minority.

They are "teaching the controversy" and so long as some kind of controversy exists, even if it is just some ignoramus sticking their tongue out and saying "Nyah!"--that's enough controversy for some to hang a movement or at least, a meaningful sense of tribal belonging on to. You could say that the existence of UFO-enthusiasts is proof aliens are among us, if you don't actually require proof of the aforementioned aliens and only need proof that people are asking questions and looking into it. And that also stands for any other "controversy". 

So, Andrew Wakefield was debunked, but persists. because having existed, one could also say there is a controversy. Just like any tobacco farmer could claim they don't think there's a really for real link between smoking and cancer, and any oil company can deny climate change. Transport ballots hither and yon under the auspices of being contracted by a GOP State Senate and count them and count them and fiddle with machines a bit and stow some ballots in a cabin somewhere and invalidate future use of those election machines and also be really dodgy, and you've got some kind of...election controversy, I guess (Although a goddamn stupid one, because who believes anything this stupid? --Oh yeah! Tribalism!) 

I'd love to believe that as a species we could be better than this especially since recent weather events show the climate crisis foretold by science is really upon our asses, but I also get that for many, tribalism is a form of survival. They depend upon signifiers to tell other people of the tribe they are fit to endure. They need to tell the kind of lies that make their lives worth living. Their belonging is their infrastructure, even if their roads and bridges and potable water and electric grid and other stuff that government should manage, goes to pot. As long as they represent their team, they suppose they have a means to a necessary social end. 

So I view with rank skepticism the idea that vaccine deniers just need someone to talk pretty to them, for example, or that rational arguments will debunk election denialists. I sometimes find myself thinking they just need shunning and gross disapprobation, to understand that neighboring tribes won't harbor their asses. That there is some activity beyond the social pale. This seems far more commensurate with primate psychology. 

BRB--Attacking and Dethroning God

Apparently, this was a thing on Laura Ingraham's show the other night, which is really weird, because Weather Underground hasn't been a thing since the 1970's and this curious to-do list, culminating in, amusingly enough, "Attack and dethrone God" doesn't necessarily line up with all of the goals of the group--like, I wonder about "The weapon of choice--systemic racism and police racism." Pointing it out would be the actual weapon here since it's part of the structure that has to be changed, but I quibble. 

Look, it's 2020. We can literally turn on a device we carry in our pockets to view evidence of police brutality and racism. Human beings are miserable to one another. And I don't even think the people who uphold that viciousness do it for the sake of upholding capitalism--they do it because they can. Because it fits a hierarchy that needs to exist for them, a pecking order, if you will. A top-dog, bottom bitch order, a cosmology into which one can also fit misogyny and homophobia and transphobia.  They do it because it gives them, for what it's worth, purpose. 

I don't decry systemic racism and police brutality as a leftist--I do it as a moral person. To my mind, all persons are equal in their humanity and the fragility and dignity at once of their lives. Religion can decry racism and support human dignity.  It doesn't always, and has been used to reinforce the hierarchy as well. I just don't happen to believe. But viewing The Left as "attacking and dethroning God" strikes me as being an awful lot about calling liberals "socialists" and "godless commies" and claiming that leftism lacks a moral impetus. It's a pretty long-standing trope. 

It's one I've seen the White House use, lately. Kayleigh McEnany recently described the WH press pool as a room full of people who desperately wanted churches to stay closed, trying to play on the idea of the so-called "liberal media." White House counselor Kellyanne Conway actually dressed-down a cleric for her opinion of Trump's photo-op, by trying to pose as morally superior for being able to temporarily forget what a photo-op is. 

To both of them, a part of me even came close to wanting a deity, to presume upon them: "If you do believe, don't you think your god can hear you lie?" 

I mean, are we really in 2020 going to arm wrestle about the Great Chain of Being and all that? 

*Sigh* Not me, babe. I'm all about the Enlightenment values all day, everyday. I thought we already won this one. But since I'm off-gassing about the right-wing fuckery once again, what about the Antifa hoaxes?  And does Trump and them actually believe that shit or what?

I'm for yes. Paranoid style and all that. After all, poster child of "whatever happened to" once decent journalist Lara Logan is straight-up passing on Antifa bullshit like a MAGA hatted Qanon Facebook aunt no longer invited to the family reunion. And apparently elected officials close to TrumpWorld just trust and believe in random circulars 

stuffed under their windshields, so good for you, future Tony Alamo fan club guy. (And this dude tagged in all of right-wing media like "Yes, please, report on this thing I found like it was real because um hm! Real!") (No I'm back in my parentheticals--"Fascist Republicans must not be allowed to live!" all caps wow! This is serious business worthy of your immediate attention! YES! It reads like a Bronner soap label taken over by Glen Beck's blackboard: scary shadow Soros operative, only very obvious and projecting.)

My blog's too short to box with God. I used to do more atheist posts maybe a decade ago. But I could goof on dumbasses who think the Antifa hordes of "The Left" including Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and the Squad and lots of other, mostly female and POC folks, are attacking God and man all day. And I remain, as ever, antifascist. 

Did He Say "Militant Secularist" Like it Was a Bad Thing?

Militant secular "ascendency" has "brought with it immense suffering," William Barr said in a startling speech at Notre Dame. https://t.co/QJGZLothM9

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) October 12, 2019

He sure did. I don't quite appreciate the value of a religious-freedom message that needs to exclude people of no religion, but I understand it in the same sense that I understand the use of the term "Judeo-Christian" to be inclusive of "People of the Book" regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (to a certain degree)but to leave Muslims out of the coalition of Abrahamic faith altogether (because--brown? or maybe--exotic to Barr's reckoning?) and to also omit the equally vibrant Western traditions of people who philosophically rejected faith. Basically, this speech, even if I have not seen the whole text, rankles me in the way that Pat Buchanan's culture war speech did over 25 years ago (but more so, as he is in an actual position of power at a critical juncture for this country). I see it as rhetoric that singles out me as the problem in need of fixing, and we have seen in history where being the "problem" is a fatal diagnosis. But I do have this question from his speech that I can easily answer:

“Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives, but where is the progress?” he asked. “We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?”

I do not, as a "militant secularist" (I guess, as a practicing democracy-loving atheist) believe that we are living in a post-Christian era, except in the chronological sense that Christ seems to have lived some time before us. Christians certainly still exist. The text they read from still exists. The morality of Christ in the Book of Matthew is still instructive to even faithless secularists who profess progressivism.

What has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? Well, if you are one William Barr--partisanship and the notion that a unitary executive, however dodgy in his capacity, should rule over persons because ordained by electoral fate. Apparently. If you are me, the supposedly not Judeo-Christian secular militant (who nonetheless has drawn deep from that well, like a Samaritan of good will) you would hope that what follows from rote understanding of religion would be dialogue, moral testing, an appreciation that all humans should be treated as equal under the law of either God or mankind (or such laws are capricious and unworthy), and a cessation of blind faith in the divine right of earthly kings as revealed through a clearly jiggered legal system made to benefit top dogs as if they were tin pot gods.

Where Barr speaks the words "freedom to live according to one's faith", I can read the lines "to use one's faith as a cudgel against other people's ability to do so."

I do not find this point of view salutary or fit in the highest lawman for a diverse people. He reckons those of us of the inappropriate level of faith an "enemy" to the public good--but I have seen in his public duties where he has pardoned and exculpated the lawless deeds of an only nominally Christian president. How should I look at his rebuke of law-abiding faithless progressives, in his slavish toadyism to a tyrant of appalling lawlessness and nominal Christianity?

I can suppose he means none of it. I can assume he has blinders and lives in a delusion. He is either a liar or a mad idiot. But in neither situation is he a fit arbiter of law, so long as he does not appreciate it should fall on all equally without fear or favor.

He's pious, but poor in moral strength, for good would even be good without God to make it good, if God were logical and words meant things. Barr flings words about. What they mean is no good to those of us of religious minorities, or who oppose the would-be monarch he's become a dependent of.

An Argument for Religious Freedom

Recently, Franklin Graham, the late Rev. Billy Graham's Islamophobic and homophobic scion, challenged Pete Buttigieg for referring to himself as a gay Christian because to Graham, it is not possible to be both Christian and gay. 

This is not news to millions of gay people who actually consider themselves Christian--of course, they've heard at one time or another that they are imperfect in their beliefs if they don't also hate themselves. It might be news to Graham that their religion, and freedom to practice it, is no less valid than his own and that it isn't actually up to Graham to decide who gets to call themselves a follower of Christ.

I don't follow religion, myself, and struggle with the textual smarty-pants tendency to point out this passage or that to refute the fine print gatekeepers who want to reserve their own slice of heaven, for the price of striking off others for whatever scape-goatish reason they are so inclined. It's truly not my god and not my book, and as far as one person's interpretation of it goes, it's probably not even my business--but to that extent, it isn't really Graham's business to monitor someone else's religious rectitude, either, as if only one version of the Bible even existed. 

What we do have in common, as Americans, is the First Amendment. It seems that Graham would prefer to have his interpretation of religion override what others hold to be true, and even would ask that the government agree with his interpretation to limit the rights of others to follow their non-harmful life choices, such as marrying a consenting, adult partner.   But religious guidelines can dictate what to eat and what to wear and how to discipline one's children and on and on--the problem is to what extent any religious person's mere opinion should hold weight over another person's pursuit of happiness. 

Or maybe it isn't a problem at all--Graham just wants to cause trouble. Pete Buttigieg is as free to be a gay Christian as Graham is to be a bigoted one because he accepts Christ as central to his faith. I'm a happy little atheist because why not? But that sort of assumption that freedom of religion can mean freedom from having one's rights impinged by another's religious view isn't as common as I suppose it ought to be. I can't help but think about the times I've seen Tony Perkins or Brian Brown or some other "true religion" type being treated as if their view--imposing a specifically scriptural interpretation on LGBT people's right to marry, adopt, or even exist, as if they were perfectly ordinary--and not actually peculiar sectarian extremists trying to impose a sort of Christianism on other folks. Especially when this kind of judgment and imposition of religious bigotry does societal harm. 

Former Rep. Joe Walsh is Very Entertaining

Or he would continue to be about the money changers in the temple and turning the other cheek and be totally accepting of what His Father's children needed for comfort and healing because he too was persecuted and oppressed? Also, he would continue to share loaves and fishes because he being a Son of Man hungered also. And the sharing of meals would be the sharing of his body, because the creation of the Father was for all of us. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Nothing--the world is nothing you can keep, your soul is all you have.)

I'm an atheist and got this much catechism down. Bro, do you even lift Scripture?

John Cleese Discusses Christianity. An interesting Interview

I enjoyed this conversation, having come across it on YouTube. The idea that humor should approach religious and philosophical figures alike, and that religion and race alike shouldn't be a bar to conversation, are fascinatingly explored. It's an engaging topic, engagingly engaged in.

(Note--I know this is old, I just enjoyed it.)

Reading, Writing, or Rapture?

I'm basically suspicious of the idea of homeschooling, folks. See, while a part of me wants to believe that the majority of homeschoolers just want their kids to receive a better education than the state can provide them, it seems to me that a part of that desire comes not only from a deep distrust of government and people who are different from oneself in the first place, but also a desire to exert a great deal of control over one's own children, in being the only conduit through which their worldview gets constructed. I feel like this is a dangerous thing, because the world is populated by many people with many conflicting interests and views. Getting only one filter for understanding the world isn't much better than getting a blindfold. I've mentioned before instances where this control over children denied them not just a complete education, but basically their lives. I can also point out that this distrust of outsiders is also sometimes a guard against being caught abusing children.

But the biggest thing I worry about is the idea that kids might not get any kind of education at all. That parents, with good intentions or bad, try their own idiosyncrasies out on their kids and adopt this method and that, and wind up with kids who aren't properly educated and aren't well-capable of taking on employment opportunities or caring for themselves. That sort of thing sounds like it could be guilt-ridden and hard to overcome, because the child so (un)educated might themselves be isolated by a distrust of formal learning opportunities to fix their educational deficits.

So, hearing that a "homeschooling" family wants to forgo any curriculum at all because they are waiting on the Rapture strikes me as appalling. That's abusive. We're working on two thousand years since the life of Jesus, and no man knows the hour or the day of his Coming again. So why in the heck wouldn't you want your kids to pick up a little knowledge in the meanwhile on the off-chance they might have use of some adult skills? Or just to keep themselves usefully busy? Or because knowing stuff is rewarding and interacting with the world is why we are actually here?

MM Kalburgi Murdered at his Residence

I have posted regarding the brutal slayings of freethinking bloggers in Bangladesh, but it was not until reading about the slaying of MM Kalburgi that I understood that something very similar was happening in India. India has also had the loss of  Dr. Narendra Dabholkar  and Govind Pansare. (Contrary to Bhuvinth Shetty, UR Ananthamurthy seems to have died from illness and old age, not anything some would-be terrorist planned for him. ) 

It doesn't matter to me whether the war on free speech, free thought, scholarship, and democracy, comes from Muslims, Hindus, Christians, or any other creed. It is always wrong, and a sign of people who grasp at faith ignorantly and without any concern for truth or morality. There seem to be Hindu extremists who have a list, like the Muslims in Bangladesh have a list.

I have a list of people I might like to light up, myself, but I would not ever use anything more dangerous than my blog to do it (I think). And since these extremists think so much of the danger of bloggers and scholars, maybe that is enough for me. Since words alone drive them to barbarism and murder. Maybe words alone can drive them into the daylight, and out of a society that protects them.

Another Bangladeshi Blogger Has Been Murdered

A Bangladeshi blogger known for his atheist views has been hacked to death by a gang armed with machetes in the capital Dhaka, police say. Niloy Neel was attacked at his home in the city's Goran area. He is the fourth secularist blogger to have been killed this year by suspected Islamist militants in Bangladesh. Imran H Sarkar, head of the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, told the Daily News Videonel that Mr Neel had been an anti-extremist voice of reason. "He was the voice against fundamentalism and extremism and was even a voice for minority rights - especially women's rights and the rights of indigenous people," he said.

I despise the fundamentalists who willfully murder such intelligent voices, and feel even more strongly that I should speak out against fundamentalism in my own country. Any impulse that views dissident voices as in need of being extinguished is an impulse of tyranny. Wherever the argument is silenced by force of arms--we have a true failure to communicate. But the failure is on the end of those who use force to silence--not those who use their voice for reason. One more voice was silenced--let a thousand others rise.

UPDATED: Bangladesh Home Minister Kamal in response has made a very strong statement: Don't go writing things that hurt religious sentiment. So the priorities here are clear. You can maybe have people hacked to death in the street, but let's not hurt those religious sentiments.

Some Thoughts About the Pew Religion Study

So, by now, most of my readers have probably heard about the Pew 2014 study on religion.  I find it an interesting document, especially because religion seems to be politicized in this country, and I blog about politics and religion. As an atheist (or probably more precisely, "militant agnostic"), I find the sharp rise in the "unaffiliated" category to be comforting as a probable hedge against political forces thrusting a theocracy on us. (Think I'm paranoid? One SCOTUS member has voiced the opinion that while there can be no federal church, there is no reason states can't have official churches, And polls have shown a high percentage of people who would make Christianity the national religion. I'm a regular reader of Rightwingwatch.org. I take the threat of theocracy fairly seriously.)

I find the reactions of other people interesting, as well. Because marriage equality has been a big topic of conversation lately, I find it interesting that some anti-gay politicians, like presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and activists like Phyllis Schlafley, seem to believe that LGBT activism and especially the marriage equality movement are out to destroy the Christian church. And yet, nearly 50% of gays consider themselves to be Christian, and there is increasing acceptance of LGBT people in several Christian denominations.

Bangladesh Must do More to Prevent the Murder of Writers

This interview with Rafida Ahmed, the widow of slain Bangladeshi freethought blogger Avijit Roy, who also suffered injuries in that attack, must be read. Her husband's murder, and the physical assault that cost her a thumb and left several scars, is just a part of a greater pattern of oppression and death because of religious and politically-based ideas. Although Bangladesh was founded with secular ideals, religious extremism has had a free hand in that religious extremist and terrorist influence have grown.

People may be punished for actions, but I am appalled by the idea of people persecuted for their opinions, however outspoken. I feel sorrow for the life cut too short of Avijit Roy, and I wish Rafida Ahmed resolution and peace. What befell her husband and herself was an affront to all thinking, writing, socially concerned people who believe in reason and peace. More should be done to prevent, and persecute, such tragedies.

Update:  via Friendly Atheist,  another murder has taken place. Taslima Nasreen has a more personal reflection of the slain blogger, Ananta Bijoy Das.

Religious Extremists Killed Avijit Roy

Avijit Roy was an atheist blogger who was brutally hacked to death for being an atheist blogger.

Being an atheist is not reason for being hacked to death--I hope.

Being a blogger is not reason to be hacked to death, I hope.

Being an American atheist and blogger a couple days younger than Roy, I realize I haven't challenged religion in the in-your-face way he did, but I feel no less like the kind of religious movement that would kill him, would kill me. And am, not surprisingly, very much against that kind of extremist--the same kind that made a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, that follows Lars Vilks to this day, and that slew several contributors to Charlie Hebdo magazine.

The willingness to slaughter people for words is the weakness that will make religious extremism collapse, because they lead people to the gallows, and there is, no kidding, a humor for that. And this little humor of mine, this bile....this little bile of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Three Americans Gunned Down By Suspected Terrorist

Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife, Yusor Muhammed, and her sister, Razan Muhammad Abu-Salha, were gunned down in Chapel Hill, NC by a self-professed "anti-theist" and gun enthusiast who maintains that he killed the trio over a parking space dispute.

As of yet, I haven't heard enough of Craig Stephen Hicks' side to be 100% certain that he didn't just snap out and kill three human beings over a petty neighborhood squabble that could have easily been resolved in a handful of other, adult, peaceful ways. From the sound of things, he was a guy carrying a shit-ton of anger who made other neighbors a bit wary--and that isn't a good sign. Some people are like powder kegs. When they go off is a just a timing issue with their particular fuse.

Thinking it Over, I'm With Affleck and Kristoff

It's not like me to mull something like this over so long. For a long while I had a leaning in the direction that Maher and Harris are displaying, although to help their argument, I think what they are looking for is the word "fundamentalism". Unwavering fundamentalism in religion, a hard-core unwavering ideological belief system, is pretty basically pernicious and unhelpful and impedes dialog. And I will allow that it is true that majority Islamic nations have a high percentage of people who have fundamentalist Islamic views and that people who are professed Muslims tend to agree with those fundamentalist views, wherever they happen to be--although I kind of think this might be "more in theory than in practice."

I've done a bit of evolving myself over the religious question. I used to have a scarlet "A" from Dawkins' Out Atheism project on my sidebar, but I just don't care--atheism isn't an organized thing. And as my atheism might suggest, I ain't so much of a joiner anyways. I was skeptical of the idea that the US had to recognize the variety and specific understandings of people of faith in the areas we diplomatically dealt with, but think I got even then that we are dealing with a problem of multiple viewpoints. And now, considering a group like ISIL, it makes even more sense to embrace the Islam that mostly is practiced by moderate and peace-loving folks, to alienate the abhorrent chaotic nightmare these extremists want to wage, and share a common viewpoint that random violence and beheadings and all that are not acceptable.

Summer Reading: A Pair of Books on Paradox

You may have noticed light posting of late around here, but this is just a thing I do--it seems like there's usually some handful of weeks in the summer when I just want to lay about and read. A lot of it just pure fantasy fun reading (I finally got around to reading some of Hamilton's Anita Blake series--so, that's a thing I did) and some of it is better than others (yay--there was another Laundry novel! and I think I have become a new Tim Powers fan).

But sometimes I try to chew over something with a little more weight, and this summer, I picked up two books that had pretty intriguing titles to me and which also seemed to fit my current state of mind: Brad Warner's There is No God and He is Always With You and Frank Schaeffer's Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God. Both titles have an internal paradox about the nature of the divine and the relation of the individual to it: How is a non-existent being always with one? Isn't believing in God kind of not the point of atheism?

Well, in keeping with the spirit of my reading--yes and no, to both.

This is the first book I've read from Warner--I will probably pick up a couple of his other titles based on this one. He tackles the question of God from the point of view of a Zen practitioner, in a tradition that really isn't concerned with God, as such. It's a book in part about the looking for transcendence (he describes books that describe transcendent experiences as "enlightenment porn", which I think is kind of spot-on) but also admitting the limitations of our ability to grasp or articulate what that exactly is. He explains that from an eastern perspective, the Hindu or Yogic tradition describes Brahman or the ultimate reality as "neti neti" or "not that, not that"--in other words, to drop one's preconceptions about what reality or the divine is.

Maher, Noah, and the Paradox of Blasphemy

I watch Bill Maher--I don't agree with him all the time, and sometimes I think he can be crude (heh, me too, come to think of it), but what I find fascinating is the way he gets up the nose of fundamentalists. Here's Maher the other week regarding the bad image one might get about God from that Book people are always talking about:



And just between you, me, and the rest of the Internet--he has a point. Old Testament God is very smitey and doesn't seem to be especially discriminating about who he does the smiting against. And people to this very day use that kind of smitey Godhead to harsh the mellows of other folks the whole world round, whether it's saying Gays or Boobs cause earthquakes, or even personal messages of how people done asked for it by not forgiving their abusive parents.

So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that some followers of Smitey Godhead want Maher to be punished for blasphemy:

The evangelical activist said Maher is known for his anti-religious views, but Emmanuel said “this time he’s gone too far.” 

“He may have protection under the First Amendment to say whatever slanderous thing that comes out of his toilet bowl brain, but that does not mean Christians should turn the other cheek,” Emmanuel said. 

He agreed with the Psalms 14 passage that questioned the character of anyone who would believe in his heart there was no God, suggesting Maher and outspoken atheists Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens had much in common with the Devil.

The Refuges of a Scoundrel

Via Buzzfeed--

After leading the audience in an impromptu Pledge of Allegiance in the middle of his remarks, Romney launched into a riff designed to needle the Democratic Party for initially removing the word "God" from its 2012 platform, and then adding it back in despite protests from many delegates. 

"That pledge says 'under God.' I will not take God out of our platform. I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart," Romney declared.

The claim that godless commies are going to make godless money and then the whole country will be up Shit Creek in a wicker basket is the sort of thing one might expect from, say, Michele Bachmann or maybe even Romney's new BFF, Steve King. But it looks like the Romney/Ryan Campaign has decided that if they have any prayer of success--they'll need to lean on the perception that they are people of (the right kind of) faith, and that President Obama is not. 

This isn't a necessarily rare strategy--only a shocking one. former Senator Elizabeth Dole used the "atheist" smear against Kay Hagen four years ago--and that may have cost her the election. In this year's congressional race, Rep. Allen West (a National Chairman of the Romney Campaign's Black Leadership Council) has an ad out based on the odd God kerfuffle at the DNC, claiming that Democrats said "No" to God three times.

(You know who denied Jesus three times? St. Peter! I'm not sure what point I'm making here, just, funny old thing, that.) 

Samuel Johnson had it that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels, but many would contend religion truly is.  It's a way to change the subject and to get believers on one's side--or it's a way to smugly presume superiority while flaunting shamelessness. Insofar as the Romney Campaign has been staggeringly dishonest, perhaps we shouldn't be especially surprised that he would manufacture a claim that a president whose religion has been as regularly challenged as has his citizenship might be insufficiently Christian for a job having, Constitutionally, no litmus test.  Yet I think I will be surprised. And disappointed. 

You would think he'd save that level of desperation for October.