Hypocrisy is the Handmaiden of Fascism

In Mississippi, GOP state Rep. Andy Gipson posted a message on his Facebook page which calls for putting gays and lesbians to death.

On May 10, Gipson made the following post:

“Been a lot of press on Obama’s opinion on “homosexual marriage.” The only opinion that counts is God’s: see Romans 1:26-28 and Leviticus 20:13. Anyway you slice it, it is sin. Not to mention horrific social policy.”

Later on in the thread, Gipson posts a comment about how homosexuality is “unnatural” and causes “disease.”

According to Leviticus 20:13, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

And, apparently, he’s not made any apologies for it and has if anything, doubled down on it.

This is, to date, the very worst examples of cherry picking one’s religious beliefs - or, as it is known in the religious world, “cafeteria christianity.”  Much has been written in the atheistic blogosphere lately about this, ranging from serious, outraged posts outlining all the commandments in the Old Testament that these cafeteria christians have rejected to amusing, yet cutting satirical pieces excoriating them for the parts they conveniently ignore, yet never talk about.

Lets be very clear here.

If you are one of those people who think gays (which, by the way, includes lesbians) are an abomination, unnatural and just plain icky, and you base your opinions on the bible, you’d damn well better be one of those fundies who think that selling your daughter into slavery is ok.

Because if you don’t, you are a hypocrite.

Andy Gipson is a hypocrite, because he hasn’t promoted putting apostate christians to death, nor does he still support slavery, nor stoning adulterers to death, nor stoning people who work on Saturday (NOT SUNDAY - that’s the work of a later Pope, and isn’t the traditional Sabbath the Ten Commandments refer to!) nor killing teens who are disrespectful of their parents.

All of this, and more, is commanded in the Old Testament, yet, inexplicably, the ONLY Old Testament command christians deign to obey is the one about homosexuality!  (Besides the Ten.)

Even worse than the hypocrisy is the thought that it would be ok, in the modern 21st century America, for the GOVERNMENT to be able to execute its citizens, in violation of every principle men and women have fought and died to preserve in our Constitution, just because of a personal characteristic!  I don’t know who really made the statement about fascism (there seems to be some disagreement as to authorship) coming to America carrying a cross and being wrapped in the flag, but, dang it, THAT should be engraved above the doors of every courthouse in the US!

It’s wrong, it’s unAmerican, and it should be treated as treason.

Even Republican pollsters are telling them that they are on the wrong side of history, and are urging them to modify their views to just give up the fight if they still want to be electable.

See how damaging religion is?  If it weren’t for the bronze age biases inherent in the judeo-christian-islamic triad, none of this would be an issue, as the old world Mediterranean civilizations never had any issues with the homosexual lifestyle, in fact, often embraced it as a part of the culture.

Robert Ahrens

http://thecyberneticatheist.blogspot.com/

What Man Hath Wrought in the Name of God

A big and growing theme in christian circles today is the idea that god wants you to be rich, and if you just do it all right, he'll shower you with riches. Here's what they say:

“We’re going to show you how to get wealth and use it for the building of his kingdom,” [Ephren] Taylor shouted to the congregation one morning in 2009. It was all part of what he called his “Building Wealth Tour,” which crisscrossed the country touting his investments and financial advice."

Quite an attractive message, isn't it? You can combine the pleasure of getting good with god with your earthly desire to get rich and have the best of both worlds! Right? Right? Or, maybe not:

"But according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, what Taylor was actually peddling was a giant Ponzi scheme, one aimed to “swindle over $11 million, primarily from African-American churchgoers,” that reached into churches nationwide, from [Eddie] Long’s megachurch in Atlanta to Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church congregation in Houston."

The problem with religion is the fact that it touts the use of "faith" in believing. One is taught not to question the teachings of one's "elders" in the church, but to simply believe. This kind of scam illustrates the failure of that paradigm. All it does is to enrich the man at the top, at the expanse of everybody else.


From ABC News.


(A repost from my blog, The Cybernetic Atheist, here at Blogspot)


Robert W. Ahrens

In Defense of Sarah

Sarah Hippolitus posted an interesting essay on Responsible Atheism. There were several people who criticized her for not providing evidence to support her case. They cited claims such as "Believing in a power infinitely stronger than you, and offering this power some kind of dominion over your life, is emotionally unhealthy." When I read this my thought was, of course this is the case. When others read this they thought she is providing no facts to back up this claim and there was no reason to accept this and other claims made by Sarah.

Let me start by saying that I am profoundly confident that Sarah can defend herself on this and related points. My title reference above really has less to do with defending Sarah than my desire to look at the issues that arise when considering the criticisms of her essay. What evidence is relevant and what should a person writing to a blog assume about the audience reading an essay?

I recalled a story about a couple of deeply religious Christians working in Afghanistan who got captured by the Taliban. Coalition forces found where they were imprisoned and a firefight ensued. The two Christians reported that when this happened they “prayed furiously.” They presumed that an infinitely powerful force controlled their lives and imploring help from this force could protect them.

In the same context I would have been thinking about where the bullets were coming from, what solid objects could shield me and if perhaps getting closer to the floor might be safer. Taking charge of my life would obviously allow me to best protect my own health in that context. I also recalled back when I was very young, 8, 9 or 10 year old, I would put enormous effort into praying. I had been told that prayers were answered and for a while I believed it. When I figured out that this did not work I was outraged. All that time and effort had been wasted. Obviously attempts to invoke magical supernatural actions is a waste of time that is a needless burden on a person's life. All such burdens of necessity reduces a person's ability to pursue healthy goals in life.

In short I had extensive data from news reports and my personal experience to document how and why Sarah's claim was valid. The people people criticizing Sarah almost certainly had a similar variety of common knowledge which they could use to evaluate this particular claim. Similar detailed analyzes could be made with all of Sarah's claims. Somehow her critics chose to not invoke the knowledge which would support this type of understanding.

What did they want? Did they want carefully controlled studies with empirical evidence concerning the degree of power allocated to a being with dominion over the person's life correlated with metrics of mental health? Perhaps that is what they might prefer but Sarah was doing something else. She was doing a very thoughtful analysis of extremely common religious assumptions and the probable implications in people's lives.

Any blogger must of necessity define a scope for a given post. If all implications and threads of evidence are covered a post on any complex subject it would have to have the length of an encyclopedia volume. Just before posting this essay I noticed that Sarah commented that she would be posting followup essays with supporting evidence. I very much look forward to those posts.

There were also that there were a couple of comments noting that religion also had positive effects. To be fair and balanced we need to look at and understand the positive elements of religion. I hope to post some thoughts on that issue if time permits.