The first part of this blog was published on the 16^th, a couple of days ago. Here is the fourth part of This is a Christian Nation: What That Statement Really Means by Gregory W. Chmara.

 In part I, Gregg listed four statements:

1. “The United States was founded on Christian values and all are troubles are because we have drifted away from those.”
2.  “Christian values are founded on the rock solid principles of the Ten Commandments and they should be on display in public buildings and courts to remind us.”
3.  “All Christians believe the same things – those taught by Jesus Christ.”
4.  “I am a Christian and that settles the argument.” (Whatever the argument is.)

FOURTH STATEMENT:

“I am a Christian and that settles the argument! (Whatever the argument might be.)”

As Dana Carvey’s Church Lady might have said, “Well, isn’t that special?”

Well not really.  There are in excess of 15,000 various Christian sects for the billion professing Christians. I might add that one billion professing is a number greater than actual practicing Christians.  Each sect has its own interpretation of what Christianity is, who gains the rewards of recognizing Jesus Christ as a savior in their own special way, and what range of issues they wish to control.

A person who stops conversations with the phrase, “I’m a Christian, and Christians believe…” is avoiding any real discussion or study of a particular problem. Those problems could range from whether Mary was a virgin (totally unimportant), world hunger (important), the proper role of clergy in politics (very important), and acceptance of science and technology in solving problems of health and well being (exceptionally important). Using “my mind is made up by Christ” statement above indicates blind, willful ignorance.  It exposes the individual’s limited capacity to approach the real world in a thoughtful and understanding way.

The Amish Community openly rejects modern technology beyond that of a horse and buggy. Christians with a similar rejection of the discoveries of science should not be allowed to politically sway the rest of society. It is antithetical to everything I believe.

For example, science found that lives can be saved with blood transfusions.  However, refusal to receive whole blood is a settled issue for Jehovah’s Witnesses.  They are doctrinally enjoined from using whole blood to save their own life.  They cite ecclesiastical and Biblical references to support their views and go as far as to maintain their own health facilities (I refuse to call them hospitals) that do not offer transfusions.  I would hate to be in an accident with blood loss and be transported to a Jehovah’s Witnesses facility emergency room. It is OK for these ultra-religious people to accept that threat into their own life, if it’s a choice freely made but to push this anti-scientific faith-only doctrine as a law on everyone, or to force the belief on any other individual, including minor children or non-believing family members, is a crime against humanity. To deny that transfusions save lives more than prayer is a form of insanity — but it is a socially acceptable insanity under the U. S. Constitution, nonetheless.

This belief is similar to the no medical doctor or medicine beliefs promulgated by Christian Scientists. They, as Christians, believe that Jesus Christ was the great scientist healing with prayer, driving out spirits, demons, and defeating attitudes that caused ill health. A number of minor children with common but life threatening conditions have had to be removed from families who believed only prayer would save their disease ridden child. They imposed their irrational belief on the child often letting the child get close to death when a simple anti-biotic could quickly restore them to the state of health. (Prayer is not as effective as anti-biotics against infections.) Others have refused food to children in order to drive out demons. Recent court cases, luckily, have removed minors in danger from these fanatics and mandated life-saving treatment until the child is back to health.  Personal religious belief does not trump an individual’s right to live with the protections of our advanced secular society.

Consider the Terri Shiavo case. It is another example where the Christian dogmatic arguments conflicted with science while determining life and death. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been expended keeping Terri’s body alive by machine. Her body had shrunk and science showed that recovery was not possible. Her parents went as far as Congress to stop her legal representative (her husband) from pulling the plug. The Christians in congress aligned with the Catholic Church to make “pulling the plug” look like murder instead of recognizing very real and very unpleasant medical facts.  Being Christian, the parents fomented a religious vote seeking congress to vote for the idea you fight for life regardless of truth, pain, medical evaluation, or cost.  They tried to create a law that would make it a Christian’s (with a capitol “C”) duty to protect life at all costs and give prayer the time to work a medical miracle. The courts finally ruled that the husband had the right to withdraw the treatments that were running her vital signs by machine. As expected by Skeptics, no miracle took place and Terri Schiavo died. Prayers of all the Christians and even Congress did not save the life of her brain dead body. Quietly, an autopsy report was issued. It showed there was no possibility for recovery. Her dysfunctional brain had shrunk to a totally non-functioning organ during the months on the machines which kept her body “alive” in its vegetative state.

These are just a couple of extreme cases but they demonstrate that the ignorant, very vocal, dogmatic Christians involved were effective in using their passion and religiosity to sway public opinion and thwart the benefits of scientific advances. They used their beliefs to suggest all good Christians must morally support their radical view or lose heaven, and maybe go to jail. While Terri Schiavo’s body lived under the type of artificial stimulation that makes a dead frog’s leg jump with a shock from a battery, the legislators wearing their Christianity on their sleeves used the moral bludgeon of guilt (we are all sinners, but we can prevent this one murderous death) to force their view into a political precedent, one that could affect everyone under law in the United States, believer or not.

This is the same technique used by the Roman Catholic church in its very political alliance with Evangelicals to outlaw abortion.  Consider this, the term “abortion” (not just for birth control) covers natural functions of a women’s body and now includes psychological guilt cast on women who suffer a natural miscarriage and may seek medical aid. Consider too, that the religious articles of faith advanced by each Christian group as to when a soul enters a human embryo or fetus to make it human are very different. The Catholic Church believes the soul’s potential begins with ejaculation and even condoms are a form of “abortion.” Conjecture, evidence, and evaluation standards other than those found in the 2,000 year old philosophies of the Bible need not apply. Evangelical doctrine agrees that abortion is a sin — but not necessarily with the Catholic prohibitions on condoms.

In Arizona the legislature, controlled by Republican religious conservatives, passed a law that makes abortion illegal past 20 weeks following the last intercourse before a woman misses her period. Where is the evidence that would support this law’s assertion? By what fiat do they make rules for all women based upon little or no medical efficacy?  Now it’s up to the courts to decide if this law is another religious travesty. What happened to the previous tacit and legal agreements that a fetus must be viable before the mother’s choice is limited by state intervention?

Then there is this: In the past few years the infallible Roman Catholic Pope declared that Limbo does not exist — but did not explain what happened to all those souls of fetuses that previously allegedly resided there — or if in-vitro baptism to save them would be restored.

It was not too long ago that the Catholic Church was sure that any aborted (or miscarried) fetus’s soul went to Limbo instead of Hell. Now, everyone (infants too) who is not baptized as a Catholic ( you know those who are supposed to hell anyway) has no way station to get to Heaven except Purgatory, a  place of punishment for sin until released to heaven, after burning to perfection.

This doctrinal change is in no way is a comfort to Catholic women who lose a fetus and have tremendous hormonally caused emotional problems of loss to deal with but most Christian’s believe “God’s ways are not man’s ways” as if that was an explanation or comfort.

Previously, not too long ago in history, the Catholic church in its wisdom required in-vitro (in the womb) baptism to save an unborn child or fetus in danger of dying before emerging from the woman’s body. This applied especially in cases of then inoperable and deadly breach birth and used enema like inserts. This would assure the unborn fetus a place in heaven, even if it risked the life of the mother and/or child.

Now, add to this the consideration that the Catholic Clergy’s mind is made-up in all matters of birth control. The Roman Catholic Church equates all birth control methods, except vaginal intercourse on the rhythm method, with abortion in the weighing sins that will get you to Hell.

If you look closely  you will discover that those particularly Catholic doctrinal views have now slowly been inveigled into state and national  health bills riding alongside arguments and legislation to remove a woman’s right to choose, (abortion) under the broad-brush that Christian views do not permit birth control.  This now influences not just abortion but all pre and post coital birth control measure in use — and if and when legislated, controls everyone of every faith or non-faith.

Many Christians who may feel that abortion is morally reprehensible and distasteful are less than thrilled with this shift in the anti-abortion movement’s goals.   They believe in family planning. These Christians do not want their newly won reproductive and sexual rights to contraception and birth control that is scientifically viable, safe and healthy, should not be broad-brushed into a Christian anti-abortion issue by those Catholics.

The dogma and doctrine of these Christians and the allied Roman Catholics hierarchy openly conflict in the real world when you move beyond the issue of abortion.

Clearly, these are secular issues, at best, based upon the health of a mother and potential child, and her mate. Religious discussion of fantasized and unsubstantiated claims of when a fetus is imbued with a soul belongs in a religious frame of the specific sect’s beliefs and rules do not belong in secular law.  They should not be imposed on those who do not subscribe to them.

And without a clear understanding of responsibilities for raising a child, when a fetus becomes viable, the potential costs to society of hundreds of thousands of dollars in care for the fetus and child, and the mental and physical health of the potential mother, legislation based upon religious dogma or doctrines should not be part of our secular government.

Now turn to this. There are some who believe that the theory of evolution is wrong-headed and un-Christian. It is supposedly capable of morally turning man into no more than an animal.  They would have us use a broad-brush to think this is a widely held Christian belief.

But the Catholic Church accepts evolution and believes the evidence for it is more than substantial, at least until it comes to the infusing of the soul of man into the human body. That infusion is the work of God.  Other sects believe that evolution and godliness ran concurrently, over unknown eons,

The broad-brush of fundamentalist, literalist, and anti-evolutionary theory Christians does not admit to the fact that science is always investigating, researching, and revising, based upon the latest information and advances, even contradictory evidence.

While us  humans do not know every last step of development from single cell creature billions of years ago to humanity, we can see and prove not only the blind alleys and pathways that nature has taken to develop life and human thought and curiosity, but we can use our brains to connect the dots. We can demonstrate a solid convoluted path to thinking humans even those using religious thought and blind belief to explain the creation of the world.

This should be clear to anyone who is rational, and more importantly in the future will be able to understand all the developments in medicine, physics, germ theory, and the sciences and technologies of human life and curiosity.

Let’s turn to global warming.  Note, more than 90 per cent of every living species that has ever been on earth is now extinct.  There is a Christian belief offered and promulgated on a broad-brush basis saying that the end of the world is near.  Broad-brush Christian preachers offer the idea that an apocalypse will occur in our lifetime, so we need not worry about the rapidity with which man (as a species) has changed (some would say spoiled)  the ecology of the planet.

Is it possible they do not understand the belief that Christ predicted that ‘the apocalypse” would happen before all the original apostles left the earth 2,000 years ago?  Then consider the Christian apocalypses of 1,000 CE, and Y2K, etc.

A change must be made in this broad-brush Christian belief.  It is too often applied to keep people in ignorance of our industrial destruction of the planet and changes that must be made, no matter how unpopular and difficult those changes may be. And changes must be made if we are to offer a living planet to future generations. These Christian people have a right to their apocalyptic opinions and speech. However I also have an opinion and a few rights under law and beliefs I feel are moral.  First, remember that law can be amended to account for modernity. I believe ignorance is not a benign state or a state of grace.  I believe that deliberately blind ignorance is at least a misdemeanor if not an intellectual crime against humanity. It is an excuse for not thinking, then not acting unless directed by a “Christian leader.” By the way,  I plead guilty of  inaction for too many years.

I firmly believe those who use the four arguments quoted at the start of this article have no right to avoid evidence, they have no right to promulgate falsehood (remember thou shalt not lie — as in bear false witness, etc.).  They have no right to force their unsubstantiated doctrinal beliefs into law or public policy to govern everyone.

No, we are not a Christian nation.  We are a human nation experimenting in self government. We do not subscribe to religious blind belief and adherence to mindless dogma or doctrine handed down from an unseen, improvable, invisible beings. We realize statements of doctrine come through men, whether they claim to be prophet, priest or king. Men, especially men in ecclesiastical power, have agendas that vary from advancing the full bloom, curiosity and development of mankind. These agendas may be couched in godly phrases, but most often do not bring liberty, thoughtfulness, and progress to all humans. Rather they benefit the select few in power or who subscribe to the dogma and doctrine advanced.

In closing, let me paraphrase the old Negro College Fund public service announcement used to raise funds during and after the Jim Crow era:

“A closed mind is a terrible thing – it is a waste of human potential.”

A nation that lets itself be run by religious totalitarianism, closed minds and willful ignorance, with laws based upon lies and misinformation that has been preached and repeated from pulpits and biased, unknowledgeable, and frightened news sources,  deserves everything it gets.  And that nation will probably, in the end, lose everything it really values as it deserves.   That’s my broad-brush statement.

Jim Wilson addresses an inconsistency in dealing with the different parts of the canonical Bible:

In debates over the morality of Christianity or the character of the God of Abraham, I am always happy to bring up instances in the Bible where this God condones slavery, orders mass murder, or sets laws that are utterly immoral or nonsensical. Often these references are met with: “those passages don’t matter because they are in the Old Testament!”

It’s as if being in the Old Testament excuses the utter moral nonsense that these books contain. It’s as if Christians are convinced that the Old Testament no longer has any bearing on their theology or it’s as if they want to be able to pick and choose the parts of the Old Testament, like the Ten Commands which they think still matters while disregarding the nastier parts of those books.

First off, it is a bit arrogant of Christians to refer to this collection of Jewish scripture as “the Old Testament”. After all, the culture that produced it does not even recognize the New Testament. What’s more, Christians often play up Old Testament prohibitions against male homosexual behavior, while ignoring similar worded prohibitions against pork and shellfish consumption. Fortunately, Jews and Christians no longer follow Old Testament instructions to kill people who leave their faiths or work on “the Sabbath.”

In spite of the fact that Christians like to talk as if the Old Testament does not matter, Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus saying otherwise.

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:18-19)

That is to say, Jesus viewed the Law of the Old Testament with all it’s ridiculous and immoral aspects as binding until heaven and earth pass. I have argued in previous posts that Matthew’s Gospel was very likely produced by a Christian community that was still closely bound to the Jewish faith and went through great lengths to connect Jesus’ teachings with Jewish Scripture. Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is shown to do many things specifically so that Old Testament prophecy could be fulfilled. Matthew’s gospel largely takes Mark’s more stripped-down gospel and expands on it by adding material drawn from the Old testament. This may have been in response to the fact that Christianity was becoming less and less Jewish at the time of writing and Christians were starting to completely reject the Old Testament.

Aside from Matthew, the Pauline epistles also rely on the Old Testament for their teachings on Jesus. These letters have surprisingly little to say about Jesus’ actually biography or teachings but instead draw on the Old Testament to justify the beliefs,they express about Christianity.

With that in mind, it is hard for Christians to take the New Testament at face value while showing such a complete disregard for the teachings in the Old Testament. The desire to do this though is understandable. After all, it is awfully hard to reconcile the “love thy neighbor” teachings of the New Testament, with the kill and enslave the members of every other tribe teachings of the Old Testament.

At least one group of early Christians agreed. The Marcionites, were founded by the shipping magnate Marcion. He produced one of Christianity’s earliest cannons featuring a collection of the Pauline epistles and a version of what is now known as the Gospel of Luke. Marcion and his followers explicitly rejected the God of the Old Testament as being a monster completely inconsistent with the God who fathered Jesus. He believed the Old Testament to be true but that its creator God was not the true God but a lesser being he called the Demiurge. He interpreted Genesis as describing its God as walking in human terms and lacking universal knowledge. He declared this to be inconsistent with the heavenly father Jesus spoke of. The Demiurge was a brutal, legalistic, tribal deity, while the Heavenly father was morally superior. This of course angered the early Catholic Church which declared him a heretic.

Marcion’s desire to separate the more love and peace teachings of the New Testament with the war god of the Old Testament is understandable. Of course, there is no evidence that Jesus ever said anything to lead us to that conclusion. The differences between the testaments are due to cultural developments that happened in the 500 years between them rather than different aspects of a God’s personality. Additionally, the Christian notion of hell is far worse than anything introduced in the Old Testament. The consistent Christian should stop dismissing or disregarding the Old Testament. They should read it and be more willing to own up to some of the morally questionable teachings of their holy book.

[Editor’s note: The “New” Testament isn’t all that new, is it? Perhaps the Bible should be called the Old Testament and the “not so old” Testament.]

Jim Wilson rushed this right out to get his thoughts on the record as Todd Akin seeks to impose his “right-to-life” will on rape victims. There is so much wrong in what he said in the interview on the Jaco Report . In the interview, he exposed his uncompromising anti-abortion stance and his willingness to legislate to force women to carry a rapist’s child to full term. As bad as that is, he went one notch further stating that not all rape victims are legitimate…Here’s Jim’s take on the Todd Akin situation: 

Why does this country feel the need to elect people like Todd Akin?  For those unfamiliar, with the story, Congressman Todd Akin the representative of Missouri’s second district in an interview earlier this week discussed his desire to ban abortion even in cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape.  He said such a ban was justified because pregnancies from rape are “extremely rare”.  He goes on to say:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin is wrong.  Pregnancy is caused by the uniting of male sperm with the female egg.  These cells do not know or care if their union was the result of a forced sexual encounter.  A 1996 study by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of South Carolina, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248) estimated that some 5% of rapes result in pregnancy amounting to 32,101 pregnancies per year.  Akin’s notion that the female body has some sort of mysterious anti-rape-pregnancy mechanism is bizarre even if we lacked statistics proving otherwise. It is completely unsupported by evidence.  Ignorance of this type in the fields of biology, human sexuality, and medicine should be unheard of in our elected officials and especially true of elected officials who were elected, in part, on their positions regarding reproductive health.  Unfortunately, Todd Akin is now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate!

Congressman Akin uses a bizarre choice of words.  What is his definition of “legitimate rape?” This may betray his belief that many of the rape cases in this country are fraudulent where women commonly bring forth false accusations of rape.  Perhaps he was speaking under the belief that any rape involving pregnancy must be fraudulent, because if the rape really happened it would have set off the woman’s magical pregnancy prevention mechanism.  This may sound cynical but it is an attitude similar to the whole “you dressed like a slut, so you are asking for it” attitude.  Blaming the victims of rape or giving blanket dismissals of the experiences of rape victims should be utterly unacceptable in politics.

Unfortunately, the conservative movement in this country thrives on biological and sexual ignorance.  Their emphasis on abstinence-only education indicates that they want a nation of married people and sexually frustrated virgins, ignorant of contraception and basic biology.  Unsurprisingly, American conservatives have increasingly politicized issues like contraception.  Consequence-free sex is seen as the enemy by much of the conservative movement. There are people with huge amounts of political power, in this country, who want to keep your kids sexually ignorant, make it more difficult to get contraception, and then force women to carry the pregnancies resulting from the policies to term.  It’s insane, and it is antithetical to a healthy attitude towards sexuality.

Akin continues:

“But let’s assume that maybe that [the magic anti-pregnancy mechanism] didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

Of course Akin has no problem punishing the woman involved as well, by making her carry her rapist’s child.  This is like raping the woman a second time in the sense that it forces the woman to use her body in a way that is against her will.  I see the intuitive appeal of the pro-life position, but seriously, the woman should not be forced to go through a 9 month pregnancy and raise a kid just because Todd Akin does not want to punish a cluster of cells.  Keep in mind that is what the embryo is. It’s just a cluster of cells like any other and still has a long way to go before it develops anything resembling a central nervous system or sentience.  I reject the notion that fertilized eggs or embryos have a right to life.  I hold the same view even for more developed fetuses.  No one should have the right to use someone else’s body against their will, especially if the one using the other’s body was forcibly imposed on them through rape!

The first part of this blog was published on the 16^th, a couple of days ago. Here is the third part of This is a Christian Nation: What That Statement Really Means by Gregory W. Chmara.

 In part I, Gregg listed four statements:

1. “The United States was founded on Christian values and all are troubles are because we have drifted away from those.”
2.  “Christian values are founded on the rock solid principles of the Ten Commandments and they should be on display in public buildings and courts to remind us.”
3.  “All Christians believe the same things – those taught by Jesus Christ.”
4.  “I am a Christian and that settles the argument.” (Whatever the argument is.)

THIRD STATEMENT -

“All Christians believe in the same things.”

The official title of the Mormon Church is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”  It includes the proclamation that its members accept and follow the perceived deity of Jesus Christ. The church also maintains that Christ allegedly visited the American Continent after his crucifixion to teach true doctrine to the righteous descendants of the tribes of Israel who then inhabited the American Continents.

Mormon doctrines in other areas agree with that of many protestant sects. In construction and management the Mormons closely follows an interpretation used by the early Roman Catholic Church in centralizing how scripture and “moral” law are to be interpreted and applied.

Yet dozens, even hundreds of Christian sects, evangelicals, main stream Protestant and Catholic declare Mormons are not Christians.

Another example:

Until the election of John F. Kennedy no Catholic “papist” could be elected to the Presidency of the U.S.A. — because they would take their orders from the Pope. And were Catholics Christian? (Never mind the Constitution’s restrictions against religious tests.)

Schisms based upon both real-world problems and imagined theological discussions over the centuries have driven wedges into Christian beliefs.

To some, Baptists will go to hell, while to others all Jehovah’s Witnesses will take up residence there after death. Catholics know they are going to have to wear asbestos underwear if they wish to visit their Protestant Christian friends in Hell after death. They contend Catholics will be saved to heaven by deathbed confession and absolution by a priest even if the sinner was a cheat, liar, thief, adulterer, fornicator, and in most cases a murderer.  Mormons believe only Mormons can get to “the highest degree of Celestial Glory,” (heaven) but you can join their church by proxy after death and get there if you work at it.  They also believe only ex-Mormons can go to hell or “outer darkness” because they have known, and then denied the truth of the LDS Church and its priesthood.

Very recently the Christian designated First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, Mississippi refused to permit their pastor to marry Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson in their facility.  The reason?  The couple is African-American (Black.)  The Church governing body (local) felt that blacks should not be married in their religious facility. Why?  Well because their Christian (with a capitol “C”) facility was for marriage of whites only.

For this nation it took a major war and constitutional amendments to give blacks their full rights after the fiasco of the 3/5 of a person and no vote compromise embodied in the original Constitution. Many of the founders knew it was inhumane, immoral, and abhorrent. It eventually led to the Civil War. Then it took another 150 years of struggle and constitutional amendments, the shame of Jim Crow laws, church bombings, lynchings, voting purges, poll taxes, segregation, and massive congressional action to drop the level of racial prejudice to its still unacceptable and inhumane simmering lower level of today.

But those who believe in the inerrancy of the Ten Commandments most often refer to their scriptures as the only correct moral guides.  This, in turn gives credence to those vocal enough to use those “moral” arguments and language. They focus unknowing voters’ attention on issues that end up being used as wedges to facilitate the broad-brush insidious agendas of totalitarian control of information, thought, and liberty. Some even believe segregated church buildings are moral and correct.

To these Christian folks, unlike the Constitution, neither the Ten Commandments nor their scriptures are open to amendment.  To them, as to rebels in the south during the Civil war – owning slaves and racial inequality, was and remains in the same inerrant category and is scripturally supported. It was, and is, to them  a matter of State’s Rights being used in protecting a religious belief and opposing national unity on the value of man.

I said in an earlier part of this essay the Ten Commandments are a distillation of 613 commandments given through Moses in what is called the Old Testament. (Even though it has been revised, condensed, and manipulated many times.)  Most Christians and their sects find the specifics of those 613 laws onerous at best. They tend pick and choose which their specific doctrines and laws they will follow.  As we see in the case of the Wilsons in Mississippi, picking and choosing the way through these ancient moral codes and laws in the Bible brings Christian in conflict with Christian, and none will brook amendments to their beliefs.

Too often the fallacious claim of unity of belief of among all Christians frightens politicians into positions that do not allow for compromise or amendment if they wish to continue to serve in elected office. Promised Christian voting blocks are meaningful in winning re-election.

In past generations, the United States population dealt with major problems and programs by coming together for common secular causes like winning wars, getting out into space, creating highways, and preserving public health through regulation of food and drug supplies.  Today those secular issues are being delayed and subjugated to discussions of matters best dealt with in ecclesiastical realms and in their member’s practices or in the areas of personal belief.

The resolution of these common sectarian issues should be happily applied to believers in the believer’s organized churches. But ecclesiastical matters and decisions have no place being forced upon non-believers.  These include subjects such as divorce, abortion, death with dignity, civil union versus religious concepts of marriage, birth control, the use of Shari’ah law, teaching evolution, and/or unsupported opposing religiously based hypotheses.

The entanglement of church and state in education funding was demonstrated recently in the Louisiana Legislature when it passed a bill to fund religious schools through a tuition transfer bill.  It was a little while before it leaked out how unhappy some legislators became when they discovered that religions other than Christian (for example: Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists and Jews) could receive those funds.

So, in this way, maybe all Christians do think alike.  My late father used to put it this way:

“Hooray for me — the rest of you — go to Hell.”

Jim Wilson would like to query the sexually suppressed religious leaders:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
-H.L. Mencken

This goes out to our sexually-hung up religious readers.  I’m talking about the sex-obsessed purity crowd:  The type of people who want to see a world populated by virgin twenty or thirty somethings.  I’m talking about the type who makes their teenage daughters wear purity rings and attend father/daughter purity balls where they promise to refrain from sex until marriage.  This is the crowd that pushes for abstinence only education and dreads the thought of their kid knowing how to use a condom.

My question for you is this:

If a cure for all STDs with no side-effects was discovered tomorrow and made available to all at zero cost or some new technology made it completely impossible get pregnant, or impregnate someone else without wanting to with no side effects, would you consider it a bad thing?

The answer to this hypothetical question is a resounding no!  Removing the unwanted consequences from sexual encounters would be a positive development.  Any development that maximizes personal freedom and ends negative societal consequences should be celebrated.  It is a wonderful development that birth control has so greatly reduced the risk of unwanted pregnancies and that we are able to test for STDs and cure the majority of them.

I cannot imagine any sane person disagreeing with this but apparently many do and they have a disturbing level of political clout in this country.  One organization with over a billion members worldwide is explicitly anti-birth control.  In all fairness if Catholics were better about practicing what their church preached, there would be a lot more of them.

Those who answer my question with “yes” simply cannot stand the idea of people having the freedom to violate their prohibitions.  They think that living in fear of HIV is a good thing!  They’d rather have disease and unplanned pregnancies as ammunition in the culture war they are losing.  Science will continue to remove the risks from sex and people will continue to reject Victorian sexual repression.

My question, of course, is just a hypothetical exercise.  We live in a world where sexual encounters can produce unintended consequences.  However, with care these can be avoided.  I advocate sexual freedom accompanied by personal responsibility.  People should be free to enjoy sex with other consenting adults but must take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.  Treat others ethically and honestly and demand the same.

[Editor’s note: Thank you Jim Wilson. I’d like to rant a bit now. Purity Ring balls are creepy and ineffective! The following come from HERE:

Purity Balls are a very elegant and elaborate purity ceremony. It is elaborate in that it is symbolic of a wedding. A purity ball is thrown for daughters and their fathers. The daughters come dressed in beautiful gowns and the fathers come dressed in tuxedos. It is an evening full of dancing, cake, prayer and most important, the presenting of purity rings or other purity items, such as a necklace or bracelet, by the fathers to their daughters. Fathers make a vow and promise to protect their daughters and guard their virginity. As the fathers are making these vows and promises, they present a purity ring (or other item) to their daughters. These daughters are then under their fathers guard and protection until they are married and replace their purity ring with a wedding ring. The daughters promise their fathers that they will stay pure.

 Did you know that Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod was considered by many to be unholy because it prevented God from expressing His displeasure on people and buildings as he saw fit? In one case a preacher blamed Franklin’s lightning rod of creating the Massachusetts earthquake of 1755. Get a grip! Science has made life better for human kind. Any advance that reduces pain and suffering should be celebrated, not restricted. Religious people who prevent their daughters from getting vaccinated against a virus that causes cervical cancer are not to be respected as parents.]

Jim Wilson knocks around a few feelings. Apparently, he’s interested in allowing more than our thoughts to be free:

Did you know that women in the State of New York are legally free to go bare-chested in public? This has been true ever since the 1992 New York Court of Appeals case: People v. Ramona Santorelli and Mary Lou Schloss. In this case, the defendants were arrested for showing too much of their breasts. They were effectively able to effectively challenge the law as being discriminatory since it defines the ‘private or intimate parts’ of a woman’s but not a man’s body as including a specific part of the breast.

Since this case, there have been women wrongfully arrested for exposing their breasts and one received a $29,000 settlement. In the meantime, a “Topfreedom” movement has grown to promote the freedom of women to go topless around the world. In this country, victories include the freedom to breastfeed on federal property. Two groups have emerged: the Topfree Equal Rights Association, which helps women charged with illegal toplessness and GoTopless which organizes demonstrations.

I support the right of women to publicly go out bare-chested. It is consistent with my opposition to any government restrictions on harmless personal freedom. There is no harm caused by women going about topless. Men have been shirtless in public for ages and certainly did not cause any demonstrable harm. It’s a bit silly that women can wear extremely revealing clothing, leaving little to the imagination and yet we draw an arbitrary line at the full breast. Partial breast exposure is apparently OK but showing the wrong parts is somehow taboo.

Why is this considered taboo in the first place? We allow men to go bare-chested why not women? Women’s breasts are for milk production and a perfectly normal part of human biology. There is no need to scandalize it or make it taboo. The female breast plays a role in sexual attraction along with every other part of the body for some individuals and yet I don’t see a push to have us all wearing Burqas, in western society. The most attractive and seductive part of a woman is her face for me and many others yet there is no movement in this country to prevent facial nudity.

In the western world, people of both sexes are free to dress as modestly or immodestly as they want. Why not take this principle to the next logical step? Despite what some Muslim clerics claim, there is no evidence that female immodesty creates earthquakes or other natural disasters. In other traditional cultures around the world it is perfectly normal women to be topless throughout their daily activities. The children in these cultures are not scandalized by this.

A positive development is that western society is dumping Victorian prudery and is more open about embracing the sexual aspects of human nature. It is time to dismiss the notion that breasts are somehow indecent. Human bodies come in many shapes and sizes, so why single out this particular anatomical feature for censorship? It seems that for many males in this culture, breasts have some sort of mystical status, which is in part because exposing them is somehow taboo. Many males may also have an idealized view of how breast should look, and living in a world where women go topless may give them a more realistic view.

Perhaps changing the law would not actually change much. I’m sure most businesses would keep their “no shoes, no shirt, no service” policies. Schools would almost certainly maintain their dress code. Of course, the topless bar industry might be forced to modify their business model to remain relevant. Yet after a while, we’d all become accustomed to the sight of bare-chested men and women alike. We can look to Europe as a good example – across the pond, topless beaches and spas abound and society survives in spite of the partial nudity.

In summary, I support the pro-topless movement. It’s time to modernize our modesty laws and finally leave the Victorian age behind us. It’s rational, it’s practical, and it costs us nothing.

Once again, Jim Wilson concedes the existence of God, paradise , and hell in order to argue: “Do you think the things being taught by Christians are fair and just?”

Imagine you are the average American Christian, or even an above average American Christian! You believe that because of your beliefs you will be eternally rewarded, while, a typical American Atheist will be punished for ever in a place far worse than any dictatorship on earth ever created. I have to ask: why?

How is it, the two of us despite our numerous similarities are deserving of such different fates. We wear similar clothing, probably made y the same manufacturers, in the same foreign factories. We most likely shop at some of the same grocery stores and eat at the same restaurants. We may listen to the same radio stations and even have some of the same favorite musicians and sports teams. We send our kids to the same schools, shoot hoops in the same local parks and golf at the same golf courses. We could very well work for the same company or have similar jobs with different companies both controlled by the same interlocking boards of directors. We both likely give to some of the same charities for the same reasons and probably do not have overly differing visions of the world we want to live in. Both of us do all we can to avoid harming others and when we do we feel remorse and try to correct whatever it is we have done. Neither of us would go about killing, looting, raping, or plundering even if we could get away with it.

We really are very much alike. Perhaps we listen to different music or vote for different politicians or one of us enjoys alcohol and the other rejects it. These same differences are found among Christians and among Atheists. In many areas, there is just as much diversity within these groups as there is between them. So I ask, what is it about my group that is so horrible that makes it deserving of eternal torture?

Christians will answer by telling me that God has every right and would be exercising perfect justice by sending me to an eternity in hell for my beliefs. This is apparently because beliefs lead to actions. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that beliefs inform actions. That is why I write for this blog but I would argue that my Humanist beliefs have made be a better person less deserving of torture. After all, my lack of belief in a cosmic justice fills me with the desire to ensure justice is done here on Earth. My lack of belief in a heaven or hell ensures that my random acts of kindness are done without expectations of reward or punishment. They say that your moral character is most clearly demonstrated by what you do when no one is looking and for me no one is ever looking. Yet, I still do all I can to be kind and helpful to others, even without the expectation that a celestial being is sitting there judging me from above.

I agree with Physicist, Steven Weinberg, who said “With or without it (religion) you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” I would change his sentiment in two ways.  First, I acknowledge that there are people who have been motivated to do wonderful things by their religion. There have been countless Christians, Jews, Muslim, Buddhists, and other people of faith whose beliefs have inspired them to show amazing acts of heroism, kindness, and humanity. At other times tough, some of these same beliefs have motivated people into engaging in horrendous acts of cruelty. Take the Spanish Inquisition or the September 11^th hijackings as just a couple examples.

I’d also change Weinberg’s quote to saying it takes religion, or something like religion, to make good people do atrocious things. After all, Maoism and Stalinism were technically atheistic movements but they had all the dogmatism of religions and to a great extent simply replaced the notion of a heavenly dictator with an earthly one. Dictatorships tend to engage in leader worship and place their leader a god-like status. This is not more compatible with the Secular Humanism I advocate, than Christianity.

I am not a murder, plunderer or dictator, nor do I have any desire to be. I live like an ordinary American, except for my lack of belief in any god. I cannot for the life of me imagine why so many people think that makes me deserving of eternal torment while other ordinary Americans apparently will be sent to a paradise. It seems rather petty of the Christian God to judge us solely on that one belief.

Jim Wilson believes his Christian friends are way better than the Christian God:

I don’t believe in the Christian God. But if He did exist, He would certainly be a crazed, murderous tyrannical monster. Despite this, I am still cool with most Christians I know. Christians usually have far more character than their god. They are more moral, more sensible, less jealous, and less insane than their god. I wish they would realize this and stop making excuses for this celestial monstrosity. To elaborate on how much better Christians are than their God, let’s pretend you are a typical Christian. Here is a list of 43 reasons why you are a vastly superior moral and rational being than your god:

1. You almost certainly would never sentence me to torture for not loving you.

2. I doubt you would ask me ever ritualistically kill and burn animals for you.

3. You would never require a brutal human sacrifice in order to forgive people.

4. You would never conceive a child for the purpose of using him as a human sacrifice.

5. You would never condone slavery.

6. You would never permit slaves owners to beat their slaves just short of their lives.

7. You would never make an exemption to this rule, in cases where the slave dies a day or two after the beating. See Exodus 21:20-21.

8. You would never develop a set of rules for men to sell their daughters into slavery. (Exodus 21:7-11)

9. You would not give instructions like: Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves. (Deuteronomy 20:14)

10. You would not make rules like: If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.  Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). Seriously what kind of sick freak would make a rape victim marry her attacker?

11. You would not advocate killing unborn children, as in Numbers 31:17: Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

12. You would not advocate murdering people for their sexuality. (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

13. You would not advocate killing people for fortune telling (Leviticus 20:27), hitting their parents (Exodus 21:15), or cursing their parents (Leviticus 20:9).

14. You would not advocate killing women if they are not virgins on their wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)

15. Even if you are pro-capital punishment, you would probably not advocate stoning people to death as your execution method of choice.

16. You would never command wide spread mass civilian murder as is described in the book of Joshua (6:20).

17. You would not send bears to attack children for making fun of a bald man (2 Kings 2:23-24).

18. You would not advocate killing people for working on the wrong day of the week (Exodus 31:12-15)

19. You would not kill a fig tree for not bearing fruit when it is not even in season. (Mark11:12-14)

20. You would not have such a fragile ego, that you need to be constantly praised, by sycophants, and told how great you are.

21. You would not punish me in a hell for questioning why you send people to hell.

22. You would not be let people conduct witch hunts, torture people, or burn others at the stake for hundreds of years in your name, if you could prevent it.

23. You would not allow an evil super natural well evil being to screw up the lives of others, if you could prevent it.

24. You would not kill a man’s servants, family members and animals, and inflict him with disease to prove his loyalty to you. (This is exactly what happens in the book of Job).

25. You would not value faith over reason.

26. You would not obscure yourself and punish people for doubting your existence.

27. You would not set up a system where all who do not wish to worship you would get tortured.

28. You would not impose eternal punishments for temporal crimes.

29. You would not impose thought crime laws on the population.

30. You would not recommend that people who work on Sunday should be killed.

31. You would not reveal your existence in a book written in someone else handwriting.

32. You would not approve of morons like Ted Haggard, Mike Huckabee, Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Pope Benedict or Osama Bin Laden, speaking on your behalf.

32. You would not ask a man to kill his son to demonstrate his loyalty to you.

33. You not make people promise to cut off parts of their penises or their decedent’s penises.

34. You would not ask me to drink your blood or eat your body.

35. You would not build a world for people, and yet cover most of it with salt water.

36. You wouldn’t punish everyone who ever existed, for 2 people disobeying you.

38. You would not kill all but 6 of the world’s people in a global flood.

39. You would not place a curse on a people, because one of their ancestors walked in on his dad naked.

40. You would not use a book written 2000 years ago with as your primary means of communicating with people today.

41. You would not demand we believe silly things like the story of Noah’s ark or that the world was created less than 10,000 years ago.

42. You would not make your teachings indistinguishable from that of brutal, bronze age tribesmen.

43. You would not answer the prayers of wealthy Americans while, ignoring those sickened and impoverished in the third world.

This list could be much longer, but we can leave it here. There is plenty more irrationality and immorality in what the Bible teaches, and in what Christians believe about God. This also goes for practicing Jews and Muslims and other believers in the God of Abraham.  If only they would realize this and stop being believers I think the world would be a better place.

Here is another excerpt from Dr. Stephen Uhl’s book Out of God’s Closet. It was my intention to take a commentator’s “proof of God” and discuss it here, today. However, I read the “proof” and found nothing but a string of anecdote outlining a series of happy and not so happy occurrences in the commentator’s life that she took to “prove” God’s existence. It was not proof or even credible evidence. It was interesting reading, at times, like reading the Bible. The stories were interesting if not compelling and she was not shy about exposing some sexual dalliances that she felt earned her direct punishments from The Almighty (part of her proof). You can read her “A Foolproof Test That Proves God Exists” Click HERE  .  It’s 3,392 words. I visited her website, read her “proof,” and read her rather verbose comments,  it was clear that she is thoroughly convinced but she is more into preaching than communicating. Preachers can comment here but if it is obvious that they’re not participating in the conversation and just preaching, they can’t continue to fill up the comment space and will be banned. Feel free to visit with 1prophetspeaks at her website at www.1prophetspeaks.com but she’s done here.

Since my plans fell through, I decided to use another excerpt from Out of God’s Closet. It’s on the topic that I intended to cover and follows a couple of pieces from Jim Wilson, FreeThought Bible Studies: A Job Well Done, and Evidence for God: The Argument from Cacti.

As always, f you’d like to get the book or listen to Dr. Uhl read it to you, you can do both right HERE.

Beauty and order in the universe argue for God’s existence. It is easy to say, “Look around you, Stupid Writer. See all the wonderful beauty and precision in the universe! Where did it come from?” Yes, of course, I see a lot of beauty and order in the universe much bigger than humanity. I also see a lot of ugliness and disorder or chaos much bigger than humanity. Humankind wrestled with this problem of ugliness and evil in the world long before the biblical allegory of the Book of Job.

Can man make a sunset? Of course not; but realize the most beautiful sunsets are not mysterious or divine creations but are totally natural refractions and reflections of sunlight by the various levels of pollution and moisture in the atmosphere. The human creation of the selfless smile of a caring nurse or friend helping a cancer victim outshines the most gorgeous sunset. A sunset may be ugly for the person who desperately needs more time or daylight to find his way home; an artist at leisure may see great beauty in the very same sunset. Beauty and ugliness are created in the perception of the beholder, not by some mysterious Force beyond or above nature.

Perceived mysteries, as mysteries, argue for the supernatural. Early man looked at nature and, because of his ignorance, saw all kinds of mysterious wonders. Because of his limited understanding, he could be excused for letting his mystifying world convince him of the existence of lots of superstitions, devils, and Gods. He was surely overwhelmed by his limited knowledge of his world. Like an inexperienced child, he feared the unknowns of his mysterious world that he knew so little about, unknowns that he could neither control nor understand. So when ignorant and desperate pre-scientific man felt helpless, he prayed. In a drought he prayed to his rain-God; when hungry because the hunting was bad, he prayed to his God of the hunt; when fearful or desperate, he begged for help from the God of storms, the God of war, the God of love and more. His faith was intermittently reinforced by bountiful nature, so he believed ever more strongly in his many Gods.

When the rains came late, or the hunt was so unsuccessful that the villagers were going hungry, manipulative leaders, shamans or priests easily convinced the desperate believers to make sacrifices and give generously to appease the angry Gods. Understandably the earliest belief systems of such awe-inspired folks included an abundance of superstitions. These simple folks created lots of Gods to be respected, thanked, feared and appeased. Of course, the rains eventually came, and the hunters eventually found food; this convinced the believers that their sacrifices and offerings to the Gods and their representatives were effective.

What might have developed as our cultural heritage if ancient man, with his lack of scientific knowledge of nature, had imagined himself as a very tiny part of magnificent nature, perhaps as an ant or a little bug. The ant finds a nice crumb or bit of food dropped in its way. Does the natural ant worship or thank the unknown “litterbug” for dropping the gift from above? Or does the dung beetle worship the cow that defecates so that he has a place to roll around and have a ball? Not likely. I suspect that both the ant and the dung beetle just enjoy what came their way without any evidence of a leftover obligation to the big crapper in the sky. As far as we know, these natural animals simply appreciate nature’s gifts and go on being part of nature.

Much later in human development, after appreciable philosophical development, by the time Marco Polo was traveling to China (1271), and by the time St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was writing his Summa Theologica, the majority of humankind had reached the conclusion that there must be only one God, one Highest Power in charge and that they had to worship and obey that one unknown Power.

St. Thomas Aquinas, reputedly one of the greatest philosopher-theologians of Catholic Christianity, saw the need to prove God’s existence philosophically or logically. He proposed five formal proofs of God’s existence; four of them being emotion based ad hominem arguments which I will not bother to address beyond what has already been done above. The only so-called proof that even approaches a logical proof of God’s existence is “the proof from causality”; this is the one that is still seen as an effective proof by millions. This causality proof gets a bit abstract, but because it is still accepted by serious thinkers today, it must be dealt with carefully and adequately.

 [Editor’s Note: Dr. Uhl’s argument on the invalidity of St Thomas Aquinas’ “the proof from causality” was previously covered and can be found HERE. The comments on that post have long been closed but if you have fresh comments you’d like to make that pertain to the current conversation, feel free top post them.

Jim Wilson, for this argument, assumes there is a Christian God and a hell. He then examines the character of those Christians that seem to take pleasure in telling their friends that they’re going to tortured forever:

I have had Christians tell me things like, “Your time will come! You will have to face God’s judgment! It’ll be fun seeing you try to weasel out of your judgment but it will not help you. For all things you said, you will suffer forever. Remember my words! I will take pleasure in God’s judgment, and the pain he will rain upon you!”

Isn’t it interesting how this supposed religion of peace and love turns seemingly nice people into the nastiest kinds of sadists? Seriously, what kind of sick freaks find so much pleasure in the torture of others? I have had Christians tell me that they wish they could see pathetic little me facing God’s wrath so they can laugh. There are no people nastier than ones who think their nastiness has heavenly approval.

Most of us know at least some Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Jews, Pagans or others who know of Christianity, but reject it. We consider these people to be among our friends, family, and neighbors. While the people we know may not be perfect, overall they are usually kind, decent people who are not out to hurt anyone. Yet, the Christian is forced to believe that all of these people are so horrible that they not only can but should be tortured forever. They seem to delight in this judgment.

If you are a Christian in this country, it is likely that you have at least some friends or loved ones who do not share your beliefs even if they have never told you so. You may have known and cared for these people for much of your life. You may know them to be kind, loving people who have gone most of their lives never wanting to hurt anyone. They feel remorse if they ever do. As a Christian, are you are expected to take joy in God’s decision to sentence them to eternal torture?

The very idea that anyone could be happy in a heaven while their friends and loved ones are tortured forever is utterly mind-blowing. If I thought that any of my loved ones were being tortured, I could not possibly be happy. Some traditions apparently have the people in heaven looking down upon people they know in hell as they are tortured. They apparently take pleasure in seeing this. This shows how truly sick Christianity really is.

Christianity has long had traditions about the horrible things that will be done to people in hell. They believe demons and hell beasts engage in all sorts of endless bodily torture of people. For example adulterers, I am told, will apparently have their genitals ripped off by monstrous creatures wielding giant pokers. Adulterers of course are defined as anyone who has ever looked at a woman lustfully which is nearly all heterosexual men who ever lived and many women.

Hell is a very real place for many believers. They seriously think that after I die I will go to this place which is far worse than anything the nastiest dictatorships ever created and be tortured there forever. For many, it is tied up in their sense of justice. After all, we like the notion of mass murderers and rapists being tortured forever for what they have done. This makes the universe seem more just to us. Unfortunately, the Christian God happily forgives murder, rape, theft, child abuse, and all the crimes that most of us think deserve punishment. Disbelief is the one sin that is sure to land someone in hell.

I love kindness for its own sake. It’s best to be helpful to others with no expectation of award of any kind and yet I am told by Christians that I should be tortured forever because of my willingness to question their God’s existence and authority. Willingness to question things is something that should be celebrated rather than punished.

Of course, you could say God is not sending me to hell, I am, but this strikes me as arguing that I made the mugger shoot me by not giving him my wallet. This God, we are told, made hell and set up the criteria by which one is sent there. The fact that people question his supposed criteria is a good thing. It is certainly not something they should be endless tortured for. I will go on the record of saying any God who would send me to hell does not deserve anyone’s worship.