From Jeff Sharlet's Salon article on Bart Stupak and Joseph Pitt's house-mates:

In its internal documents, the Family refers to itself as an "invisible organization" and the "prayer cells" into which it organizes politicians as "invisible believing groups.'"

The connotations run wild: part Manson Family, part Al-Qaeda, part Illuminati, part Scientology. I try not to invoke the word "post-modern" much these days, but I can't think of another word that fits. Well, other than "creepy" and "ludicrous" and "risible" and "scary."

Thanks to Stupak and Pitts, I learned another interesting word:

Together, they're poster boys for the evangelical/conservative Catholic alliance known as "co-belligerency," a culture war strategy designed to take territory within the Democratic Party as well the GOP. [em-phassis mine]

I don't know if that's the Family's word or Sharlet's own diction, but it raises an eyebrow or two (or three, if your third eye is alarmed.) On Sharlet's part, it could be rhetorical overload; he's genuinely --and rightly-- concerned about the religious right's (admittedly smart) tactic to infiltrate both parties to push their agenda forward. But the rest of us --secular left, religious left, or middle, or whatever word choice you wanna make-- could take a page from the fanatical fundy insurgency manual and (hopefully) adapt it with more intellectual honesty and transparency.

Anyhoo, just to be self-promoting "hoower", here's my relevant cartoon for this week.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Don't express anything; someone might get offended.

Wear a "positive costume" or don't dress up (but don't NOT wear anything at all or the SWAT team will take you down); but definitely do not wear a scary or creepy costume on Halloween, cuz someone might get scared or take offense or get their religious panties up in a bunch.

With Christmas and Hannukah coming, let's avoid controversy altogether by banning religious (and anti-religious) and nongovernmental displays at the state capitol. A democracy cannot countenance controversy. A free exchange of ideas and points of view is simply too much for adults to handle.

Sarcasm aside, I find the "culture wars" aspect of the holiday season to be almost as irritating as the commercial exploitation and religious indoctrination aspects. Last year Freedom From Religion posted a display at the Washington State Capitol mocking religious belief. Naturally people were offended. Fine, be offended, but FFR has as much right to mock religion in a public space as your local church, synagogue or mosque has to promote its religion.

This year, the Washington State bureaucrats chose to avoid controversy and national attention (understandably) by barring all religious and nongovernmental displays inside the Capitol campus. Here is where I, an atheist, find myself more in agreement with the religious than the anti-religious:

"It's a shame that the state is basically shutting down 95 percent of Americans that celebrate a federal holiday, which it is," said Ron Wesselius, a Thurston County Realtor who put up the Nativity the past two years. "They are not letting them celebrate."

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, said she was pleased about the new rules but added that they don't go far enough.

"I don't think Nativity scenes belong on the outside of capitols either," Gaylor said.

Maybe because I'm an artist, but I think more expression is better than less. Mr. Wesselius probably puts more creative effort into his nativity display than FFR did with their snarky placard last year (which I criticized along with another suit FFR brought against "so help me God" in the Presidential oath of office.) If FFR is out of ideas, I would happily create a satirical nativity or a Flying Spaghetti Monster sculpture or even something more positive, like a commemoration of great atheists. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, for example, who used the holiday season to promote peace, charity and social equality.

What bothers me about Ms. Gaylor's position is that it shuts down conversation and debate. The public space is where people should be able to convene and exchange ideas with all the passion, brilliance, silliness, ignorance, rudeness or politeness they can muster. FFR should not approve of the Washington State Capitol ban; they should oppose it and advocate for the right of atheists to express their beliefs in the company of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Wiccans, Rastafarians, Scientologists, and whoever else I forget to mention. Right now a ban on "nongovernmental displays" means all we get are governmental displays. Wheeee.

Originally published at mooreroom.

QScribe over at Pam's House Blend takes on charges that criticism of Christianity and its role in homophobia is "uncivil."

Whether people want to admit it or not, the way Fred Phelps and Benedict XVI talk about [lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered] is consistent with the way we've been treated by the Christian church for 2,000 years. Anything pro-LGBT in Christianity is a recent development. I know there are people who are willing to give Christianity a pass on that. Many more of us are not.

It will be argued that "not all Christians are like that" and that "you shouldn't paint Christians with a broad brush." Well, I can't remember ever seeing a comment here (or anywhere else, for that matter) to the effect that every single Christian everywhere is a bad person. We are all perfectly aware that there are "affirming" and "accepting" congregations and a great many fine individual Christians. Comments tend to be about the Christian church at the institutional level and its supporters.

I've pointed out before that of the 30-odd state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and the scores of anti-gay ballot initiatives and referenda across the country, every single one of them has been initiated or actively promoted by a Christian group. In contrast, I'm not aware of even one pro-gay measure that has come out of a Christian group. Not one.

Moreover, the "affirming" churches never seem to speak out against the language and behavior of the actively hateful ones. It's all very well for churches to claim to be "affirming," but that affirmation never seems to translate into action. The old phrase "all aid short of help" comes to mind.

QScribe goes on to discuss the long history of skepticism regarding the existence of God and/or gods, providing several amusing quotes from philosophers, scientists, social critics and at least one Founding Father whom American religious conservatives attempt to co-opt:

Thomas Jefferson: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva from the brain of Jupiter."

The main argument is this: religions and the propositions they make about reality, history and morality should not enjoy a special exemption from skeptical inquiry. There's no need to be an asshole, of course, but there is no need to check one's critical thinking cap at the door, either.

One thing QScribe does not address, so I'll add it here, is the role multiculturalism plays in stifling legitimate criticism. By and large I support multiculturalism as a way of respecting the liberties and rights of people in a pluralistic democracy. That includes the right to practice one's religion and to express one's faith openly and publicly with an expectation of respect, even from cranky atheists like me. Yet when such faith is used to deprive people of civil rights and liberties, to persecute them for their very mode of being; or even to impose its view on public school curricula (Intelligent Design, school prayer, etc.), articles of faith become fair game.

However, there is this view that skepticism is a Western construction; that using it to criticize the claims made by non-Western religions is a form of racism or imperialism. Recently Oktar Babuna, a Turkish physician has taken to publicly decrying the theory of evolution as a Western attack on Islam, sending out copies of his book on the subject to schools in Turkey; indeed, he ropes in Judaism and Christianity as allies in defense against this perceived attack on the unique relationship these faiths posit between God and humanity. To be sure, scientists who subscribe to these faiths are appalled. And it should be noted that evolutionary theory itself, pioneered by the devout Christian Charles Darwin, makes no claims on Biblical accounts of Creation or any other religious explanation of human and cosmic origins. It makes its own claims, striving do as all scientific theories to understand external phenomena based on evidence, theory, prediction and falsification. (Please note that last element; the scientific method trains skepticism most intensely on theories proposed in the name of science.) Nonetheless, the Turkish government has banned access to Web sites on evolution and prevented publication of the Darwin issue of its oldest and most respected science magazine. Notably, Babuna derives much of his inspiration from the American Creationist and Intelligent Design movements, which treat evolutionary theory as an assault on its faith. As ever, the assault is really the other way around. Here is Babuna:

These two ir-religious philosophies, Darwinism and materialism, are the foundation of the conflict and corruption going on in the world. Because we all believe, Christians, Jews and Muslims, that God has created the entire universe out of nothing and that he dominates all that exists with his omnipotence.

And his boss, Harun Yahya, who has recently written an 800-page refutation of Darwin, makes these claims:

Im a believer in science. If I had ever found any hard evidence for evolution, in the Koran or in the world, I would accept it. There are millions of fossils, but none of them ever show creatures evolving. Darwinism is nonsense, and dangerous. Despots like Stalin and Hitler used Darwin to justify murdering millions.

The Son of Sam claimed his dog ordered him to go on a serial murderous rampage, but I don't think we should hold the dog accountable, should we? Anyhoo, Babuna and Yahya, as implied by reporter Aaron Schachter, see the strident atheism of the Richard Dawkins school as a direct provocation, deserving of response. Fair enough, Dawkins is not always the most pleasant of critics, and he would claim provocation by the Creationists seeking to eliminate evolution from school curricula and the role of religion in promoting all sorts of nasty violence, for which a link can be made that is more direct than Darwin's role in The Holocaust. Yet for all of this "he started it" playground sniping, the real issue is that a legitimate and working field of scientific theory is constantly under attack from groups who mask their fears of its implications behind characterizations of the scientific method as a kind of aberration of Euro-American thinking, a cognitive blip, an ideological weapon of Western Imperialism.

And, at the risk of seeming "uncivil," that's bullshit. Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have certainly put forward some crazy racist ideas in the past, yet no one has been harder on them than modern practitioners of these fields; not only because such ideas are abhorrent, but because they are rendered utterly false by scientific skepticism, by testing the claims against reality. You want to drive a scientist crazy? Misuse his or her findings to justify your personal ideology; misuse the scientific method to prop up racism, as anyone who was alive during The Bell Curve controversies should recall with a sense of outrage that inspires the use of uncivil language. To be fair, plenty of people of faith feel a similar degree of anger when co-religionists misuse scripture to promote homophobia or sexism or any other agenda of oppression. Twenty years ago, I worked at a daycare center in a church, where I found someone had stashed a Chick comic book (I think it was this one), an artifact of fundamentalist crackpottery I thought hilarious. The priest I showed it to did not share my amusement: "If you find any more of these, bring them to me right away!" I have never forgotten the look on his face.

I feel more common ground with that priest, certainly, but that doesn't mean I should not criticize the irrational claims of Creationists or of Islamist charlatans like Yahya and Babuna; or, for that matter, refrain from holding the claims of even friendlier strains of the Big Three religions. Critical thinking is not a form of incivility or Western imperialism. It's our most important strategy for survival.

Originally published at mooreroom.

The Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear a case brought by a student Bible study group against their school district, which refused to charter them as a school club.

The school refused to let the group be chartered as a school club. They cited the group's name, the fact that students would have to pledge to Jesus Christ to vote in the club and that allowing the club in would bring religion into the school. The club's would-be founders then sued the Kent School District, claiming discrimination.

Couldn't this have been more easily resolved? Like, say, drop the pledge to Jesus requirement? Open up the study to anyone interested in the Bible?

After all, it should be pretty obvious that, for better or worse, the Bible is an important literary work in the history of Western Civilization. A lot of claims have been made based on its contents that people have used to justify slavery and its abolition; war and peace; Jim Crow and Civil Rights; Creationism and The Big Bang; monarchy and democracy; burning heretics at the stake and religious tolerance; overthrowing the State and imposing Absolute Rule; etc, etc, etc.

I seriously doubt such discussion is what this Bible study group had in mind. (The price of religious fealty for admission gives a clue.) The difficulty we have in even allowing space for such discussions in public education opposition coming from religious zealots and from church-and-state separators alike (though not at all alike, I should add; the latter just want to keep religious indoctrination at bay) speaks volumes about the low level of religious maturity extent in our culture. Just too politically loaded.

Speaking of using the Bible to justify dumb shit, Barry posts an interesting excerpt on the various pro-slavery arguments that Americans used prior to the Civil War. Instructive stuff.

Originally published at mooreroom.

If you want to annoy an anarchist, say something like this: "Anarchist organization? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" And then scoff dismissively.

Certainly puts a twitch in my bomb-throwing arm. But the recent movement of atheist churches has provoked thoughts similar to that anti-anarchist canard. Isn't an atheist religion kinda, I dunno, a contradiction in terms?

Given the past 8 years, which were really a topper to the past 30 years of ascending fundamentalist Christian political power, I understand why my fellow atheists would start to band together.

More than ever, Americas atheists are linking up and speaking out even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words I Believe (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).

Check out that note of surprise: "even here." More like "definitely here." Atheists feel surrounded besieged in The Bible Belt, so it's only natural they would seek each other out for comfort and security. And I really appreciate the likening to the queer rights movement:

Its not about carrying banners or protesting, said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. The most important thing is coming out of the closet.

Emphasis mine. All well and good. Getting politically organized and active in defense of true religious freedom including the freedom from religion (pace Mitt Romney) via groups like the Secular Coalition for America or the United Coalition for Reason is long overdue. The ACLU can't do all the heavy-lifting.

My reservations kick in when I start thinking about joining such a group. Granted, I am not much of a joiner (a condition common to cartoonists and, um, cranks alike.) Occasionally I like to hang out with a fellow atheist and gripe about creationism or fundamentalism or The Pope. Yet I like myths, gods and rituals. The problem with creationism is not the creation story itself, but the insistence that it replace science in explaining origins of the universe. Yet myths have a cultural, symbolic explanatory power that can be useful. The question is, to what use is a powerful myth being put? Or in whose interests? I am much more in sympathy with raging liberation theologian and Marxian critic Terry Eagleton, who insists on viewing Jesus as a revolutionary against exploitation and for the poor, than, say, Christopher Hitchens, who is an asshole.

The challenge for atheists is not an argument of absolute truth or the infallibility of science. Everyone loses the first and only an idiot believes in the second. The challenge is storytelling. What is the atheist myth of creation? Of righteous living? Of a "purpose-driven life" (to borrow a popular homophobe's phrase)? If that can get sorted out, another challenge lies down the road: How do you prevent that from ossifying into dogma? For any new movement, I cannot recommend enough periodic viewings of Monty Python's great film on religious and political organization, The Life of Brian.

Splitters!

Originally published at mooreroom.

I am so glad I signed up for the OneNewsNow daily newsletter. It's like getting a daily chuckle in my e-mail, only from your crazy right-wing religious uncle who fears Muslims, Arabs and Teh Gayz. And he's not at all in on the joke.

For example, take this headline: 'God' - the new four-letter word in public schools.

Perhaps they mean "Godd." Or "Gawd." Or "G-man."

You totally know where this article is going a litany of whinging about the exclusion of religious indoctrination from public school curricula. No posting of the Ten Commandments, no teaching Intelligent Design in biology class, no Christmas pageants, no prayer or moment of silence or whatever. Actually, the fundy-du-jour John Whitehead, a "Christian attorney" (as opposed to those godless shysters at the ACLU) does not tick those issues off, but they are in the background to such grandiose pronouncements as this:

The issue, according to the attorney, is not separation of church and state -- an argument frequently cited by those who assume the secular viewpoint. "The issue in such instances is the religious believer versus the secular state," he writes. "It is also a denial of everything this country stands for in terms of the freedoms of speech, religion, and a respect for moral tradition."Whitehead believes that what exists now in America is akin to the old Soviet Union and China, where it is religious believers fending off the state.

Yes, it is EXACTLY like that. Have you not seen the lines of evangelical clergy rounded up and carted away in black vans to trains bound for gulags and labor camps? Man, one month into the Presidency, and the socialist caliphate is in full swing!

All irony aside, here's an alternate link to the etymology of the word "shyster," disputing its anti-semitic origins. Interesting history, but I feel the word is often employed with anti-semitic intent, often against attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union which, it should be noted, employs lawyers from a wide range of religious and non-religious beliefs.

At any rate, I used it to reflect on the rather presumptuous identification of Whitehead as a "Christian attorney." What is that marketing? Like the "Christian supply" store near my house? (Just in case I ever run out of Christians.) Look my toothbrush is bona fide Christian! It's got a pithy quote from scripture! Now my teeth will be super shiny clean and saved!

Originally published at mooreroom.

Jim Brown at OneNewsNow, a conservo-christian news portal, reports that some folks recently connected with Senator John McCain's presidential bid are going to speak before a group of Log Cabin Republicans.

So that sound you hear? Not a car alarm going off. It's Gideon's trumpet calling the armies of God to assemble on the Day of Judgment. Or perhaps the desperate screams of religious rightists watching their influence on the GOP slowly fade away.

"I'm afraid that some Republicans are going to think, 'Hey, we have to go pro-gay and try to be hip to get the youth vote,'" suggests [Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality]. "Look, the kind of youth who are going to be the long-term heroes in the Republican Party are going to be the principled youth of today and the principled youth don't want us to play around or go half-way on homosexuality, or just fight gay marriage and not anything else." [emphasis mine]

Right on, Pete kids today want you to go ALL THE WAY. Woooo-hoo! Get yer gay on! Yee-haw!

Ahem. Anyhoo, LaBarbera or "Babs" seems to think that even just talking to Teh Gayz will get nasty gay germs all over the Republican party and soil it before the eyes of that loving, compassionate Father to all his children except the ones he wants to burn in Hell for eternity. Reaching out to gays and lesbians in the GOP tent or in Republican families only spreads the contagion:

"They believe that they're showing love for their family member by promoting homosexuality and embracing homosexuality and that's just not the case," the Christian activist emphasizes. "Homosexuality is a sin whether your sister or brother or son is engaged in it. We want to hope that those people will come out of that lifestyle because it's wrong."

This is pretty close to stamping one's foot and shouting, "No fair!" And it is unfair, Babs. You were raised to believe all sorts of hateful, stupid things, and the people around you are starting to grow up and out of their own poisonous upbringing; but you bought into the nostalgia of a simplistic vision of the past, one that never acknowledged just how complex, variegated, and interesting the real world is. Now you are clinging to it with every last knuckle. Excuse us while we step on your fingers and let your sorry ass plummet to the abyss. Happy landings!

Originally published at mooreroom.

Jan Markell, founder and director of Olive Tree Ministries is excited to see Benjamin Netanyahu back as Prime Minister of Israel:

"Basically Israel now has to go at it alone, which is actually fulfillment of scripture. Zechariah 12 through 14 prophesies that to happen. They have to go at it alone in this world. America is going to be tougher and tougher on them under this new administration, which will be more pro-Islam than it will be pro-Israel," she contends. "And they want a leaderwho will not cave. And the only one that Israel could see that would not cave is Benjamin Netanyahu."

Which is scarier Netanyahu's advocacy of violence against Palestinians and a free-market approach to the Middle East peace process; or this End Times craziness? Obviously, they tend to work hand-in-hand. The only consolation I can derive from this depressing development is that Netanyahu, like most Israeli and American conservative politicians, strings these blinkered souls along to maintain political clout while pursuing their imperialist objectives.

Some consolation.

It is notable, albeit predictable that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be using Senator Joe Lieberman as his messenger boy with President Obama, who likely commuted the Senator's political punishment by his Democratic colleagues in order to play such a role. Phyllis Bennis offers more small consolation on the likely relationship the ObamAdmin will have with Netanyahu's coalition government:

But from the vantage point of justice rather than diplomatic convenience, a return of Netanyahu as prime minister, even with a visible role for [Avigdor] Lieberman, may not be such a bad option. Netanyahu's abrasive rhetoric is far more honest in depicting actual Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

Er...I guess. I am still puzzling the logic on that one. Because he's more "honest" or less "dissembling"? Right now Netanyahu is playing hardball with Kadima, despite President Simon Peres' anointing him to create a unity government, over the issue of the peace process. Perhaps Markell is right that Netanyahu will give the ObamAdmin a hard time, but only insofar as the Israeli coalition government is held together with twine and chewing gum. As Massimo Calabresi observes:

The biggest danger now is that Washington expends too much diplomatic activity at a time when it is least likely to have an effect. The U.S., as it continues to engage, faces the danger of becoming part of the furniture if George Mitchell begins making monthly visits during a period of minimal possibility for progress. "One or two listening tours will do," says Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group, "But at a certain point it will become better not to go than to go." Indeed, it may be better to hope a resting Middle East peace process can be resurrected in the future than to insist on creating the appearance of life when there is none.

Originally published at mooreroom.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Click to see the whole cartoon.