Alea iacta est

So that happened.

I don't really know what to say about the US election result.  I mean I used to follow American politics as entertainment, mostly because I don't care much for sports and local politics is pretty much just about seeing by how much of a margin the ruling party will win by.  I don't think I realized how much I cared about this result until it happened. I have not felt OK since the results came out yesterday.  I know it makes no sense, because I'm not American and I don't even live close but I feel like something was taken away from me.  That's the best way I can describe it but I'm not sure I can explain it yet.  I don't think any election has effected me this way for as long as I can remember.

Maybe it's not so much that Trump won, I think this election was more than that.  I feel like this election was a referendum on what kind of a country America is and what kind of people her citizens are.

Does the truth matter?

Do facts and evidence count for anything anymore?

Is it wrong to be cruel, to be a bully?

Can we believe women?

Can we believe in women?

Is sexual assault a big deal?

Should people at least try to not be awful to one another?

And the answer was just a resounding NO across the board*.  This was a referendum on decency and decency lost.  I didn't think it would hit me this hard but it makes me really sad.  Maybe I shouldn't have but I expected America to be better than that.  Maybe that was my mistake.  And I get that it was only half the country but half is WAY TOO MUCH for that to be OK.  I love America so much.  I love the country, I love the people.  The friends I have there are some of the best people I know and when I think of America it is with fondness. Always.  But now I have a sad hollow feeling I can't seem to shake.

Best I can describe this feeling? This election was like finding out your favourite teacher is a pedophile.

*And that doesn't even touch on all the uncomfortable things it implies about race relations, LGBTQ rights, 1st amendment rights, etc.  But I leave that to more competent bloggers with smarter things to say.

"Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness" (Evangelicals For Trump Edition)

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.  “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.  “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Hold on. So you're saying that you'll give me the one thing I want most of all and all I need to do to get it is to compromise all the values I proclaimed so strongly up until now?”
The devil answered, “Seriously? I mean YES! Of course! After all I'm very well known for always telling the truth and never making outrageous promises I have no intention of keeping! I always keep up my end of a bargain, ask anyone I've ever done business with!”
 Jesus pensively mused, “Well on the one hand I've always insisted that even the slightest hint of compromise is completely unacceptable... On the other hand, I get the one thing I care about most so it won't matter much right?”
The devil answered excitedly, “Exactly! I will probably definitely maybe give you the thing you want most and all it will cost you is the moral high ground for, well, ever. Fantastic deal, none better, when it comes to the art of the deal, I pretty much wrote the book!”
 Then Jesus exclaimed “It's a deal!”
Then the devil departed and said, “Well that was easier than I thought... ”

Why Evangelical Support for Donald Trump Makes Total Sense

The fact that Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of a major party is baffling to people all over the world but somehow even more baffling to Christian folk all over (US included) is his support amongst Evangelical Christians.  I mean here you have the literal incarnation of the bad guy in every one of Jesus' parables and he doesn't just have their support, he has their enthusiastic support!  While on the one hand he can't seem to stop doing wrong, to them he can do no wrong!  I think I can clear that up though.  To a lifelong student of White Western Evangelical Christianity this really shouldn't be all that baffling.  When you think about it, it makes utter and complete sense.

But that's only if anyone is still around to see 2024...

See, in Donald Trump Evangelicals have someone they can treat the way they've been treating God all their lives, so of course they're going to worship him.  Think about it, he says one thing and then later says the complete opposite.  As his followers they then insist that doesn't count and that what he really meant was because and also there's no contradiction here, all these alleged contradictions are just being exaggerated by his enemies who hate him and want to distract from all the good he's doing!  See? They can treat Trump the way they've been treating the Bible their whole lives.  In a way, they've been training for the Trump candidacy since Sunday School!

That's why it doesn't matter how many terrible things Trump says.  You can quote him all you like, you'll have more luck trying to convince Evangelicals to cancel the rib cookoff by quoting Leviticus.  

Or rather, you'll have exactly the same amount of luck.  For exactly the same reasons.

Conservatives straining gnats and swallowing camels

Just in case ever wondered why this blog so often takes aim at American conservatives, I think I found the perfect way to explain.  No, it's not because I'm a left wing socialist hippie.  It isn't because I'm a Democrat or a huge fan of President Obama either.  No, it's nothing like that.  I found a great visual aid to help me explain though.  Check out this movie trailer, it contains the distilled essence of why I find American Conservatives so incredibly annoying:



Conservatives frustrate me to no end because they are endlessly obsessed with non-issues while happily ignoring real problems.  They are just tone deaf beyond belief!  This trailer showcases it perfectly.  First you have all this talk about how America is changing, how rights are disappearing and the constitution is under attack.  That's a great start because it's all true.  This is a conversation that needs to happen, Conservatives need to call out Liberals on the fact that under Obama:

• Indefinite detention without trail became legal.
• State sanctioned murder without trail of citizens at the president's discretion became legal.
• The books get cooked regarding the collateral damage of drone strikes by simply labeling all casualties as enemy combatants regardless of whether they were or not.
• The Bush era warrantless wiretapping and surveillance program was extended, and
• the only people prosecuted in relation to spying on citizens and torturing POW's were the whistleblowers who alerted the public of government misdeeds.

So yes, liberty is under attack.  Freedom is in danger.  The constitution is being undermined.  But guess what?  When Conservatives say those things they aren't referring to the Fourth Amendment becoming increasingly pointless.  No, instead all they ever get riled up about is the idea that America isn't Jesus-y enough.

Instead of dealing with any of the many real problems they instead choose to play the martyr over the most ridiculously superficial things like putting up religious displays or whether people say "Merry Christmas" or not.  It's as if the religious right have no idea what "freedom of religion" even means!  Not getting to put giant crosses, mangers and a baby Jesus on every piece of public land in no way affects your freedom to worship.  In fact, last I checked the Bible specifically warned against turning your faith into a public spectacle.  Unless I'm mistaken, those verses should be in American Bibles too.  This has nothing to do with freely practicing your faith and everything to do with making a public display of piety.  Just a thought, but if the only indications of your faith are your lawn ornaments your faith may very well be superficial to the point of nonexistence.  If you can't be happy in your beliefs without forcing everyone else to go along with it, what does that say about your beliefs?  This movie may depict a fantasy world where evil secularists are trying to oppress Christians but that bears no relation to real life. It's just fantasy role play.  It allows you to pretend to be brave Christian heroes when in reality you are being neither brave, Christian nor heroic.  If you keeping the 10 Commandments on the local courthouse to be more important the suffering of the poor in your community then you really have nothing to offer but empty gestures and hollow symbols.  You are not fighting for freedom, you're not being noble, you're being a pompous ass.

It's  actually easy enough to figure out whether your religious liberty is really in danger or whether you're just suffering from Persecution Envy.  Just answer the following questions honestly:

Are you free to do business? Are you free to take part in your country’s political system? Are you free to share your opinion in the press? Are your children welcomed in public schools? Are you able to work? Are you free to go to the church of your choice? Are you able to freely purchase and read a Bible? Do you have free access to Christian radio and television broadcasts? If you answered “yes” to these questions then you are most certainly not being persecuted.

Does your government ever raid your church? Are you forced by law to meet in secret? Are you in any danger of being shipped off to a concentration/internment/”re-education” camp for your religious beliefs? Are you forbidden to vote or run for office due to your religious beliefs? Are you legally forbidden from raising complaints about government policies? If you answered “no” to these questions then you are definitely not being persecuted.

Comedians making fun of Christianity or aspects thereof may be guilty of bad taste but they are certainly not guilty of persecuting you. Placing an atheist sign next to a nativity scene may be a dick move but it doesn’t count as oppression of the Christian faith. Matt 5:10 only applies in cases where people are persecuted, insulted and mocked for doing good. It does not apply to cases where Christians are insulted (or prosecuted) due to fraud, blatant dishonesty, unfair censorship and general douchebaggery (See 1 Pet 2:19-20). As long as you have the freedom to disagree, people expressing opinions contrary to yours regarding religion, abortion, birth control and homosexuality are not guilty of persecuting you either.

So no, your religious freedom is just fine.  So why pretend it isn't?  Why ignore all the extremely valid criticisms of Obama's presidency in favour of imaginary issues?  Why attack straw men when there are real problems to address?  Because as long as you keep doing that, it's going to be very hard for people to take you seriously on anything.  If you put all your efforts into avoiding reality, don't be surprised when it renders you increasingly irrelevant to people in the real world.

PS
So the movie's villain just happens to be a liberal black lawyer?  Real subtle!

Hungry Hungry Altars (are why you should smash them)

 
In the beginning there was a world we did not understand.  It was full of strange and terrifying mysteries and humans being what they are, we just couldn't bear it.  So we invented the gods to explain to ourselves why the sun appeared and disappeared, why the seasons came and went and so on.  But that wasn't good enough either because we don't just crave reasons we also crave control.  So we decided to bargain with the gods we made in order to try and bend the universe to our will and so the altar was born.  It was simple enough, we scratch a god's back by setting something on fire and the god does us a solid some time later.  It's a simple concept and it's easy to see how we got there but since it was based on an erroneous assumption, it also turned out to be one of the worst our species ever had.

Since the gods weren't real, the altars did nothing.  But people being what they are, they could not accept this.  If sacrificing your crops did nothing then it couldn't be because there is no god to accept your sacrifice, it has to be because you were supposed to give more.  So you sacrifice more.  You sacrifice better.  And if your crops and livestock cannot work then you give things even more precious - flesh, blood, even if it belongs to your children.

Altars are hungry.  Very hungry.  In fact they are downright insatiable.  If you let them, they will take everything you have to give.  They will take everything, give nothing and still demand more.  Altars are very bad things.

"So they took the bull given them and prepared it.  Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.
At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention."

Which brings me to the recent US elections and the way the conservatives behaved.  Now I'm not saying they had any literal altars to any pagan gods but they certainly behaved as if they did.  They had a demanding yet impotent god, a host of prophets and priests calling for more sacrifices and of course, they ended up with the inevitable failure of this god to deliver what his prophets promised.

I realise that all this talk of failed, impotent gods must be deeply offensive to American Conservatives.  After all, they are the ones who worship the One True God - the Christian God - and not only do they worship Him, they worship Him more truly than all others.  They don't pick and choose what to hold as sacred, they simply follow His inerrant Word, unlike some people who also claim to be Christians.  In fact, Conservative Christianity is the only Christianity.  Liberals are just fooling themselves.  Or so I'm told.  Respectfully, I have to disagree.  When the most far right wing fundamentalist elements took prominence in the party it became very clear that their god looked nothing like the Jesus of Scripture.

Bible Jesus was primarily concerned with the poor and the helpless members of society.  Conservative Jesus considers those people parasites who are just too damn lazy to lift themselves up by their bootstraps.  Unlike Bible Jesus, Conservative Jesus thinks the best thing to do for the poor is to give them no help at all, since that should motivate them to do better in life.  Conservative Jesus is primarily concerned with abortion, gays and women's reproductive rights - all things Bible Jesus was completely silent about.  While Bible Jesus had deep compassion for the sick, especially when they were too poor to get treatment from doctors, Conservative Jesus thinks that helping poor people have affordable access to medical help makes you worse than Hitler.  Bible Jesus had compassion for the imprisoned, Conservative Jesus thinks we should imprison more people for longer.  Conservative Jesus thinks government is a great evil that needs to be opposed at every turn while Bible Jesus (and the rest of the Bible) preached obedience to the government - all governments, even the bad ones.  I can keep going but I think this should be enough to make the case that Bible Jesus and Conservative Jesus cannot be the same person.  Conservative Jesus is pretty much the opposite of the Jesus of the Bible.  Clearly this is not the same god.  I'm kind of partial to calling him Bizarro Jesus but you could always use his more traditional name: Anti-Christ.  He is a god created in the image of those who worship him.  He loves who they love and hate who they hate.  Call him whatever you like, he was raised up on the Republican platform and a hell of a lot of sacrifices were made unto him.

I think compassion was sacrificed first - for the foreign, the stranger, women, gays, the poor, the "urban".  Soon after that went love for the neighbour, especially if the neighbour was in any way "other".  Before too long, reality itself was placed on the altar along with truth and reason.  Science, facts, figures, statistics - none of these were safe from sacrifice.  One by one the sacrifices were lined up and the candidates all fell in line to praise this god and seek his favour.  No position was to extreme, no sacrifice to great.  All who disagreed were swiftly dispatched.

As a quick aside yes, I realise there are conservatives who do not worship this god.  They may even be the majority.  If so, shame on you.  Don't balk at comparisons to the Bachmans and Santorums in the movement.  Where were you and your moderate opinions when the primaries were going on?  If you stayed silent while the extremist fringes took over the movement then you have no one to blame but yourself.

So then, the sacrifices were made and the prophets of this god swore that this would ensure victory.  Problem was that this god was as powerless as he is mean.  Those sacrifices were all in vain and it left you with less.  Well less good things anyway, since those were the first things to go on the altar.  There still seems to be plenty of hate and anger and fear left.  In fact that's what prompted this post, the reactions from conservatives I saw on Facebook.  It's one thing to oppose the other party but I'm not seeing opposition, I'm seeing naked, seething hate for anyone who voted differently.  People are talking about revolution and bloodshed, they're talking about abandoning their motherland and telling each other scary stories about the coming apocalypse.  I see lots of slander for those who disagreed, which makes sense since understanding and empathy found its way  to the altar early on.  This is very bad.  For all of you.

So what to do now?  Well they could do what people with altars have always done.  They can assume that the fault lies not with the altar but with them, that they simply did not try hard enough, that they should have given more.  They could increase the fearmongering, they can up the attacks on reproductive rights and marriage equality.  They could shut themselves off from the reality of the world around them with even more resolve and pretend that the winds of change are not blowing.  They could keep fanning the flames of division, telling more scary stories about everyone who is "other" and insist that there are dark conspiracies everywhere.  Basically they could decide that the problem was not that their strategy was built on anger and fear but that it wasn't built on enough anger and fear.  The less the results the more they can do what they've always done.  More more more on the altar, always more.  That is after all how people with altars tend to behave.

Though not always.  Some people realized that the futility of it all and smashed their altars to bits.  I hope conservatives choose this course.  I hope they realize that to keep doing the same thing but expecting different results is madness.  I hope they choose to face reality.

No political movement is perfect and no party has all the answers.  A healthy democracy needs a healthy opposition in government (healthy being the key word here).  Blindly opposing everything the other guy does on principle is not healthy at all. But can conservatives be a healthy opposition party?  Only time will tell.  A lack of altars to bad ideas would be a great place to start though...

DBAA: About Elections

Dear American Conservative Christians,

Thank you for making me feel like an idiot.  I know none of you actually read it but 4 years ago, when I was still a fresh faced young Christian blogger full of hope and optimism, I wrote you guys a letter.  The elections were drawing near and I had noticed that there were a lot of (conservative Christian) people in the US that were very worried about what it would mean if Obama won.  So because I was under the impression that you guys were just operating under some bad assumptions, I opened my heart and shared a bit of my own story on how things went when my own country - South Africa - suddenly went from an almost exclusively Christian Conservative country to a Liberal, Secular state almost overnight.  We had all the same worries back then (well some of us did) and things ended up much better (or at least not as terrible) as was initially feared.  I thought that would be helpful because, naive simpleton that I was, I thought you guys were legitimately worried.  Clearly I was wrong.  You were just being assholes.

I'm sorry, does my language offend you?  Tough!  Your entire attitude offends me!  You didn't care about the truth at all.  I mistakenly thought you guys cared about facts when all you cared about was fearmongering.  If that doesn't make you an asshole, what does?

Go ahead, read what I wrote to you in October 2008.  While you're there, check out the letters by Focus on the Family and Janet Folger (reposted right here in this line for your convenience!) that prompted me to write my letter in the first place.  Who did a better job of predicting the future?  Be honest, if you still remember how.  It was me!  The stuff they scared you with absolutely did not come to pass* while my advice was pretty spot on if I do say so myself.  The fact that I was right just makes this sting even more.  I should have seen through you even back then.

I see clearly now how this was never about being accurate or truthful to you people.  If it was you would have admitted you overreacted and changed your tune.  But you didn't.  Like the Harold Campings and Alex Jones' of the world your predictions failed but you just went ahead and made them again as if you haven't been so very wrong every time before.  That is not the actions of a moral person, it's the actions of a fearmongering asshole desperately grasping for control over a small scared group of people (and their wallets).  I should have known!  I saw enough of the of the crap you're shilling during the last gasp of Apartheid.  Congratulations, you fooled me!

I hope you feel great about yourselves.  See you and I and your friends over at the news networks know that you're just telling scary campfire stories.  Sure, you all put on serious faces but you know it's not really true.  But not everyone does.  Every now and again, some mentally unstable person takes you seriously and then does the only thing that anyone who ACTUALLY believes you can logically do - they kill people:

  "Albert Peterson shot dead his wife and two sons hours after going to church because he dreaded the thought of Obama winning the election, a family friend has revealed.

    A confidante of the family for the past 25 years has spoken to MailOnline about the strength and grace of the Peterson family, as well as the torment that plagued Albert which drove him to shoot dead his wife Kathleen and his two sons Christopher and Mathew at their suburban home [near] DC on Sunday.

    A history of mental illness, the loss of a dear uncle, and a growing fear of Obama winning a second term in the White House took its toll on the mind of Mr Peterson, a wealthy defense contractor, the friend said."

Don't you dare stand there shaking your heads in sympathy you whitewashed graves!  You should thank your God that more people don't take you seriously.  I mean if someone truly believed that abortion was mass murder on a far greater scale than anything Hitler ever did, why wouldn't they shoot up a clinic?  What kind of person who actually believes babies are being murdered could do any less?  And how can actually believing your bullshit about death panels killing old people and Christians being rounded up into camps to be exterminated not seriously consider shooting someone?  No, really, answer me that you fucking vipers!

But that's not going to change a damn thing, is it?  You're still going to do your best to frighten the shit out of your gullible flock and they are going to listen to you and donate to you and vote the way you tell them to and when - not if - when you're proven wrong again, you will nevertheless do exactly the same thing again when the next election.  So you know what, I don't see the point in even trying to talk sense into you leaders.

Instead, I'm putting this angry letter online in the rather naive hope that maybe one of your followers will read it and have second thoughts.  Conservative Christian, you are being lied to by your leaders.  I'm not saying Obama is a saint and you should vote for him.  Hell there are some great reasons to not support him but you won't hear any of those from your leaders.  Instead they're going to sell you fantasies about coming persecutions and a 1000 years of darkness.  Don't buy into that!  And for the love of all that is good, don't pass on their lies to your friends and family!  I swear, I am not telling you who to vote for.  I'm just asking you for one simple thing.  Don't be an asshole.  Simple as that.  Hell you probably already adhere to that rule when you're in a parking lot or standing in line at the store or interacting with your neighbours.  It's just basic human decency.  That's all I'm asking for.

Don't be an asshole about the elections.  Don't lie about the future.  Don't make up stories.  Don't repeat predictions that are as false now as there were the first 100 times someone made them.  Don't act like you believe them.  No!  Debunk them instead!!  Keep calm and go with your conscience, not your basest fears.  When you find yourself tempted just remember DBAA - Don't Be An Asshole.  Then go forth and don't be one.  You'll be a happier person for it and you will never have to worry that maybe you were complicit in the deaths of anyone.

Regards,
Eugene

*PS
If you want to see these "predictions" thoroughly demolished, check out Libby Anne's blog.  She does a great job going through these false prophecies bit by bit right here.  Don't trust them and their suits and smiling pious faces.  They lied before and they are lying now.  They are not the "men of God" they are pretending to be.

The Problem with CO2

"The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is," 
Rick Santorum

"I am strongly opposed to the President’s misguided attempts to regulate carbon in direct contravention of the will of Congress. Carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant” and I will seek an amendment to the Clean Air Act that makes this clear. " 
Mitt Romney

"But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle. "
Michele Bachmann

"George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide." 
John Boehner

Carbon dioxide is totally natural.  We all exhale it, plants consume it during photosynthesis, so why are some people trying to limit it?  You keep hearing people telling you that we need to limit CO2 emissions and that we have to reduce our Carbon footprint, so why this vendetta against CO2?  A friend of mine thinks he knows.  After years of listening to Alex Jones, he has it all figured out - THEY want to label CO2 a "pollutant" so THEY can tax you for breathing!  (Also it's probably going to be used to justify their sinister plot to kill all humans)

So is that true?  In a word, no.  That is not why scientists are warning us against our excessive CO2 emissions.  They aren't claiming that CO2 is dangerous to make money, they are saying that because it poses a very real threat to the world.  How can it pose a threat?  Isn't it both natural and non-toxic?  Yes, it's natural but so is cyanide.  Yes it's non-toxic but so is water and that kills a LOT of people every year.  Those aren't very good argument for the harmlessness of CO2.  So why then? 

The reason there is concern about CO2 levels (and not for instance Nitrogen levels) is because carbon dioxide is really really good at absorbing and trapping heat.  Simple as that.  Here, I'll let the scientists explain:



That's the problem with CO2 - it traps heat on earth and if we have too much of it, it will trap too much heat.

But OK, if you don't believe in Climate Change then you probably don't believe in scientists with all their science either.  After all, if you believe that they are lying through their teeth about Global Warming then how can you believe anything they tell or show you?  It could all be a trick!

Well, you're in luck.  The heat trapping ability of CO2 isn't some esoteric scientific principle that only those with a 5th degree High Exalted Science Dragon qualification can demonstrate!  You can do it too!  Right now!  At home!!  All you need is:

2 Identical clear containers
2 Identical thermometers
2 Identical heat sources (like incandescent bulbs)
and,
a source of CO2.  A gas cylinder used to carbonate drinks would work fine OR go old school and use baking soda and vinegar to make your own CO2

Step 1:  Set up a thermometer and a heat source in each container.  It should go without saying that the heat source cannot be a candle but I'm saying it anyway.
Step 2:  Fill one of the containers with CO2.
Step 3:  Turn on your heat sources, leave for 5 to 10 minutes and compare the readings on the thermometers.  Then turn off both heat sources, leave for 5 to 10 minutes and take readings again.

What did you observe?

If you'd like a visual demonstration of the experiment, here is a video showing it:



So who are you going to believe?  Right Wing politicians or your own lying eyes?

Unimpressed Martyrs

If there is one thing I'm consistently irked by it's the Persecution Envy of modern Western Christians.  They live in a world where they have more religious freedom than at just about any time in history and yet you wouldn't know that just by listening to them.  Somehow this privileged group considers itself the most persecuted group in the world.  They keep finding more and more ridiculous reasons to feel "persecuted".  Schools teaching evolution is not persecution.  Someone calling you a bigot because you said gays were abominations that will destroy civilization as we know it is not persecuting you.  Neither is someone who doesn't agree with your view that everything will be perfect if only we got rid of democracy and got a Christian Theocracy instead.

How did we come to a point where criticism = persecution?  That's an insult to everyone who has ever been ACTUALLY persecuted - for instance the countless Christians who were robbed, beaten, tortured and killed for their faith through the ages.  Two thousand years ago persecuted Christians had to face lions, now they just have to face facts!

So I decided to create some LOLart (based on the "Unimpressed" meme) to illustrate just how ludicrous and pathetic the faux-persecution complex of the modern Christian is.

So maybe lay off the hyperbole and whining and be grateful for just how great you have it?

A Secular Government is a Sane One - Part 2

A while back I wrote a post arguing that the current infusion of religious fundamentalism into politics (in the US specifically) was very dangerous and that the only sane form of government was a secular one.  Not everyone agreed with me on that, not because they thought that religious fundamentalism was good but rather because they considered secularism to be bad.  However I suspect it was because I wasn't that clear regarding what I mean by "secular".

So let me be clear then.  Secular does not mean anti-religious.  It simply means that government takes no sides in religion and that they don't promote one belief over another.  Now I realise that to some religious people this in itself is considered an attack on their faith.  If you really believe that your rights are being violated by the government not giving privilege to your beliefs then you may as well stop reading here, we're never going to agree.  What you want is a theocracy, not a democracy.  But ask yourself this - what if the government starts to mandate and privilege a religious view and it's different from yours?  The problem with theocrats is that they always assume their group will be the ones in charge.

That is exactly the kind of scenario that a secular government prevents.  Under a secular government everyone is free to believe what they like, provided it does infringe on the same freedom for others.  Therefore you can pray however you like, interpret your holy book as you choose and have the sacraments you believe in.  In a world where the church up the road - who considers your beliefs misguided and heretical - got to make the rules, you wouldn't be able to do any of that.  Think about that.  Best part is, under a secular government, you even get to disagree!  You get to call those other guys who do things differently things like "misguided" or "heretics" or "blasphemers" (and they get to call you the same) without the government throwing anyone in jail for it!  No one is forced to conform to anything.  You get to have and keep your beliefs.  A secular government is not an anti-religious one.  On the contrary!

Now I do understand that sometimes even the people in government fail to understand the nuances of secularism which leads to them actually acting anti-religious.  When that happens though, they are in the wrong.  You can turn to the law and the law will vindicate you.

Secular does not mean that no religious activity is allowed on government property.  It means that no one group gets exclusive access to government property.  Presbyterians can meet in a public park but not Presbyterians ONLY.  Anglicans, Catholics, Pentecostals, Muslims, Jews and the Secular Student Alliance all get the same access to it.

Secular doesn't mean you don't get to pray in school.  It means the government doesn't get to tell you what to pray or who to pray to.  If you were a Baptist, would you be OK with a school led prayer to the Virgin Mary?  I didn't think so.  When no one belief is forced on anyone, everyone is free to believe as they choose.

Similarly secular doesn't mean that for instance the Bible is banned from schools.  It just means the government doesn't get to force anyone to read it.  If you were a Christian, you wouldn't like it if your kids were forced to read the Book of Mormon would you?  And no, doing Bible readings and letting some kids "opt out" by standing outside is pretty much the same as forcing everyone to read the Bible.  Peer pressure is immense in school, not many kids will willingly choose to become outcasts.

No one is forced not to have a religion.  Even politicians get to have religious faith and still be in a secular government.  They just don't get to impose their religious views on others.  Secularism is simply about keeping government and religion separate.  The government doesn't tell you what to believe (or not believe) and faith groups don't get to mandate rules for everyone else to follow.  

OK, that was my clumsy attempt at explaining Secularism as applied to government.  For a far superior and much more eloquent explanation, please check out this video by youtuber QualiaSoup.  One day I wish to be this good at explaining myself...

 

Who's the Evil Marxist Now?

I'm not particularly good at making predictions about the future but I'm going to try and make one anyway.  Obama is going to get re-elected.  It's not going to be because he's a great candidate because he's not.  It's just that his opponents are so effing terrible that he can't help but look better in comparison.  It's like in High school when a girl has a fat friend that makes her look more attractive by comparison except in this case the fat girl hates women and science and gays and wants to turn America into a fascist theocracy.  You don't have to be "good" to compete with that, "semi-competent" will do just fine.  Also helping Obama is the fact that his critics are pretty much as insane as his opponents.  Again, he's a pretty terrible president but not for any of the reasons you are likely to hear from the Right.  When your critics only bring up patently untrue, hyperbolic bullshit as criticism it's easy to act as if your actual failures and transgressions never happened.  Obama has done a lot of questionable things but all you ever hear about is how he's a Socialist Atheist Muslim who wants to take your guns and Bibles away and kill your grandma with communism - none of which is actually even kind of true.

Let me tell you a story about a country.  Imagine if you will a land where:

• Abortion and birth control was illegal and illegal abortions was a criminal offense with harsh penalties.
• Divorce was also illegal except in the most exceptional cases
• Sex education in schools was non-existent
• The government was focused on the family - with not only a massive propaganda campaign extolling the virtue and patriotism of family but also heavier taxes for the childless and monetary incentives for those who did have kids
• The police are deployed in hospitals to ensure that no abortions take place.
• There is mandatory monthly gynecological examinations for all women of childbearing age (even for pubescent girls), to identify pregnancies in the earliest stages and to monitor pregnant women to ensure that their pregnancies came to term. 
• All miscarriages were to be investigated  to make sure there was no foul play
• The state set up "Demographic Command Units" to ensure that all women were given gynecological exams at their place of work to check for pregnancies and monitor women from conception to delivery.
• Childless couples also get investigated by these units to find out why they don't have any children.
• In the extremely rare case where an abortion was absolutely medically needed, a women needed not only government permission but also a government representative present to supervise the process.

Does that sound familiar?  Kind of sounds like the kind of place that GOP is headed with their war on contraception, abortion and women's reproductive rights, doesn't it?  Unfortunately if you want to visit this Republican wonderland you would need a time machine.  Not because it's a description of the Santorum presidency but because this all happened a couple of decades ago in the Communist wonderland of Romania.


Kind of weird, isn't it?  You constantly hear accusations that Obama is following some kind of radical socialist playbook but here we have the Republican party doing its best to follow in the actual footsteps of this guy.



So who is the one with the radical communist agenda now?

**************************************
Update:
**************************************
Truth be told I was worried that this post would seem a little hyperbolic when I wrote it but I needn't have worried.  I just read Libby Anne's post "My rights as a pregnant woman or the lack thereof" and it turns out this is in fact exactly what the GOP seems to aiming for.

Recent Ancient Beliefs

When I was a young fundamentalist Christian, I felt very secure in my beliefs.  After all, the things that we believed in MY church were the things that all real true Christians have always believed.  The rest of Christianity may fall away from the one true faith thanks to all their compromises with the fallen world, but not us!  No, we would always stay true to the things that Christianity have always taught and always believed.  We knew we were right because we were holding fast to what had always been right.  So it came as quite a shock to me to find out that so many of my age old beliefs were really quite modern!

I've blogged before on how some of our doctrine wasn't as Bible based and unambiguously clear as I once thought.  But it's really more than that.  It's not just about how "Bible based" my beliefs really were it's how recent they were, considering that these were the things that, supposedly, "Christians have always believed".

Christians have always been Young Earth Creationists.  Except they weren't.  This wasn't always an article of the faith, once upon a time it was totally acceptable to be a Christian and believe in an old Earth.  Throughout Church history there have been a variety of opinions on just how to interpret Genesis and the consensus was not always on the side of a strictly literal interpretation.  Some Christians fear that accepting science undermines the authority of the Bible (and therefore their own authority) and therefore we have the modern insistence on YEC as a tenet of the faith.  But listen to what the early church leader Augustine of Hippo (354 AD to 430 AD) had to say on the topic in his commentary on Genesis:

The full quote is even better!

So to paraphrase Augustine, if a literal interpretation conflicts with science then stop holding on to the literal interpretation because you will only embarrass yourself.  Or as he wrote elsewhere: "In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture."  This also shows up the claim that, Christians have always been Biblical Literalists.  This just completely flies in the face the long history stretching all the way back to the Judaic Rabbis of debating and discussing the meaning of Scripture.  The whole strategy of throwing out all interpretation and only taking every verse at literal face value is a fairly recent invention. I believe that the strict literal approach arose in opposition to Higher Criticism gaining more mainstream acceptance around the 19th century.



Around this time a new doctrine also arose amongst Christians, that of The Rapture.  I was taught that Christians have always believed in the Rapture but no, this belief is only about 200 years old.  Christians may have always believed in the Second Coming of Jesus but the idea that all Christians would be snatched up to heaven some time before that is very new.  In fact the entire premillenial dispensationalist end times doctrine has very recent origins.  Before that time, most Christians were postmillenialists and if you go all the way back to the New Testament it certainly looks like the early Christians were amillenialists in they weren't following any kind of prophetic playbook, they expected Christ to return at any time.



Have you been following the current events in American politics?  Christian legislators are doing all they can to outlaw abortion and even contraception.  After all, Christians have always believed that life begins at conception.  Except it turns out this belief isn't even as old as I am!  As The Slacktivist points out, this is A ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal.  Now just to be clear, yes Catholics have for centuries held this belief.  Catholics.  Not Protestants.  Up to the 70s evangelical protestants did not believe that abortion was murder or that contraception was evil and they even quoted from the Bible to back it up.  But I guess the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism was scary enough for Protestants to put aside their differences and start agreeing with the Pope.


Once upon a time, to be Christian you had to believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that He died for your sins.  These days it seems that to be Christian you have to believe that life begins at conception, homosexuality is a sin, science can't be trusted, every word in the Bible is literally true, the Antichrist is coming, sex before marriage is a mortal sin, Christian morality must be enforced through legislation, welfare is from the devil and oh yeah, some stuff about Jesus.  Seems to me like Fundamentalist Christianity has little to no relation to the fundamentals of the Christian faith at all.  Funny how ancient and eternal truth can change over time...

Remedial Class Warfare

I stole this from Leaving Alex Jonestown.  Go read her Christmas countdown series , it's scary and hilarious!

I don't think I could work for Fox News.  It's not just because I'm not blonde a pretty enough either.  Having to constantly act outraged at the most trivial bullshit imaginable would just take too much of a toll on my general wellbeing, I don't think I could handle that.  If I had to spend my days acting like a new type of lightbulb is the worst thing in the history of anything I would have to fucking kill myself before the inevitable aneurysm puts me into a permanently vegetative state.  I don't know which is worse either, having to constantly pretend that the most trivial nonsense is worse than Hitler or having to ignore the genuinely terrible things out there because you're paid to pretend it's the best thing since the discovery of cheese.

In a season where many in the media are even more nonsensically outraged than usual, Fox has once again managed to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack with its current outrage at The Muppet Movie:



That's right, the fact that the bad guy in the movie is a rich oil tycoon means that the Muppets are teaching class warfare to kids.  Fox totally calls it like it is there, liberal Hollywood is  totally demonizing the rich!  It started way back when with classic movies like It's a wonderful life.  Basically every Bond movie ever along with all Superman movies that featured Lex Luthor had evil rich villains.  Of course there are also horror movies like Hostel where evil rich people pay to torture and kill young people and sci-fi movies like The Phantom Menace where the Trade Federation (a group of interplanetary job creators simply protesting a tax hike) are portrayed as the bad guys.  Also, when the A-Team got hired it was usually because some rich guy was trying to muscle out a smaller competitor.  In pretty much any period piece or Western I can think of the bad guy is almost always the rich landowner/tycoon trying to destroy the hard working poor.  Actually, come to think of it most villains tend to be rich and powerful people oppressing the poor and disenfranchised. It makes sense though, having the protagonist be richer and more powerful than the antagonist just wouldn't be good storytelling, why would anyone root for someone like that after all?  This is another reason I can't work for Fox, I don't think I can pretend that I think Ebenezer Scrooge should have been the hero while holding a straight face.

Of course while Fox I knows all about the infamous liberal bias of Hollywood, they may not realize that this evil liberal bias against the rich is everywhere.  Not just in movies and the media but also in books!  And not just in radical fringe works like The Communist Manifesto either, I'm talking about the world's favourite all time best seller - The Bible.

The Bible is just class warfare from cover to cover*.  Well by Fox standards anyway.  You have Jesus commanding a job creator to redistribute his wealth to the welfare cases.  There is the socialist setup of the original church which is portrayed in a positive light.  Jesus even told this one parable in which a rich man goes to hell because he was rich and a poor man goes to heaven because he was poor - not because of their creeds, dogma or belief systems, riches and poverty are the only things mentioned in the parable.  Also that whole thing about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven didn't seem very pro-capitalism at all!  It wasn't just Jesus being all hippie either.  As The Slacktivist pointed out recently, the prophet Nathan once used a story about an evil rich man who took from a man who had very little to illustrate to King David just how evil his actions have been.  In fact, demonizing the rich seems to be a running theme with the prophets.  The Bible has lots to say about money but it rarely has a good word for those who have a lot of it.  It has plenty of really bad things to say for those who make their money by exploiting others, those who don't pay their workers fair wages (promptly) and especially those who foreclose on widows (See Deut 24:15; Isa 58;  Mark 12:40 for but a few examples)

Clearly the Bible is one long piece of anti-capitalist propaganda and I bet Fox would be outraged that it is taught to children.  Of course they can't be outraged by it since they've clearly never read it.


*To be fair, Fox is also wall to wall class warfare but unlike the Bible, they side with wealthy.

Be a better person than the Pilgrims

"Be a better man than your father"

I heard that line on Fringe some time back and while I have forgotten the episode, story and original context that the quote first appeared in, I have never forgotten the quote itself.  To me it was just so beautifully profound I wanted to translate it into Latin and put it on my family crest.  It's a great motto for any individual and certainly for any family.  Even more so, it would be a great motto for a country to have wouldn't it?.  OK sure, it's a little patriarchal but the sentiment is about more than sons and fathers.  It's about honoring those who came before without living in their shadow.  It's a reminder that each generation can reach higher by standing on the shoulders of the previous one.  It shows no disrespect to your parents and grandparents - if they were bad, you can be better;  if they were good, you can be great.  Instead of stagnation, everyone can move onward and upward, even if it's just by the smallest increment at a time.  "Be a better person than your ancestors".  There, I washed off the patriarchy and now everyone can enjoy it!  Happy?

Well turns out not everyone agrees with me that this is a good motto to live by.  I'm specifically referring to the massive crapstorm that hit the airwaves when President Obama's Thanksgiving proclamation on Youtube failed to explicitly thank God.  I'll let Jon Stewart run you through the story:

                       

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On a day commemorating their history, these Fox News pundits and their fellow umbrage junkies ended up being no better than their forefathers.  Guess it's true what they say about those who do not learn from history!  So lets look back.


Everyone knows that the Pilgrims left England and sailed for America (after a bit of a detour in Holland) to escape religious persecution.  Worth noting though is the nature of this religious persecution.  It's not that these people weren't allowed to be Christians in jolly olde England.  On the contrary, Christianity was compulsory!  What made these Christian Pilgrims feel so persecuted was the fact that they had to be Christians the way the official state church mandated - with harsh punishments for anyone who tried to be a different kind of Christian.  Now interestingly enough it turned out that these Pilgrims weren't really opposed to the idea of religious persecution, they just didn't like being the ones getting picked on!  After settling in the New World they established a system identical to the one that drove them from their homeland, only this time they were the ones deciding how Christianity should be practiced and punishing those who would not conform to their ideas. 

Luckily for everyone, subsequent generations of Americans did turn out to be better men than their fathers.  Over time Americans didn't just embrace religious freedom, they became the example for the rest of the world on what freedom should look like.  Once the First Amendment arrived on the scene, it pretty much set the standard for everyone else to try to live up to.  It's sad then that those talking heads on Fox didn't seem to get the memo.  Instead they still seem to be stuck in the mindset of the Pilgrims, namely that everyone should not only be Christian but that they have to be Christian in a very certain way and anyone who fails to conform must be persecuted as much as possible.  They use the word "freedom" a lot but I don't think they really understand what the word actually means!  I'd like to believe that they represent the exception rather than the rule though. 

Look, I get it.  By its very nature the past will always exert a stronger influence on us than the future could ever hope to.  I don't know about yours but my forefathers invented Apartheid!  I have to live with that legacy and I have to try to do better.  Maybe our forefathers did the best they could with how they understood the world but if we know better then we have to do better. What good parent would not want their offspring to reach greater heights than they did?  If our forefathers are worth the reverence we afford them, would they not want us to exceed them too?  I'm not saying that just because your ancestors were imperfect you have to be perfect in every way.  But if every generation can just take one small step forward, who knows where we could end up going?  

Politicians vs Truth

So today many of us in South Africa protested unsuccessfully against a proposed bill on the "protection of information" which many fear will become a tool for the government to silence media reports they dislike.  The government swears they would never use it to censor the media though.  Somehow I'm less than convinced.  Lately it has become very clear to me that politicians as a species very much dislike the truth.

Now I'm sure you just had a very sarcastic thought after reading that last sentence of mine.  I know how naive it must sound, expecting honesty from politicians!  A politician telling lies is hardly breaking news after all, it's business as usual.  In fact it is probably the earliest entry in the big book of lame cliches and I get that.  I promise you I'm not as naive as I sound, I understand that politicians have never actually been honest.  It's just that they seem to be getting worse lately.  Much worse.

First there was Senator Jon Kyle who told a whopping lie about Planned Parenthood - nothing odd about that.  The really crazy part came a few hours later when he was confronted with the truth and his office responded that his words were "not intended to be a factual statement".  I'm pretty sure I'm not just looking at the past with rose coloured glasses here, this isn't par for the course!  Pretty sure that traditionally when caught telling a big fat lie politicians at least bothered to come up with some lame excuse for it or at least doubled down and tried to defend their statement.  To basically tell everyone else that they are actually the dumbasses for expecting a politician to tell the truth in the first place seems like a brand new twist on dishonesty!  It's not just me right?  Pretty sure this was the first time that a politician blamed the public for stupidly expecting his facts to be factual!  Sadly, that was not the last time...

Just the other day I watched presidential hopeful Herman Cain start a discussion on the Occupy Wall Street movement by saying "I don't have facts to back this up".  Since when is that a way to start a discussion?  Am I the crazy one for thinking that is how you end discussion of a topic?  "I don't have any facts to back this up" should be how you excuse yourself from discussing something you don't know anything about.  It should not be offered as a license to share any crazy idea you just pulled out of your ass!  Maybe I'm wrong but my parents raised me differently.

Speaking of parents, Michelle Bachmann is a proud parent.  I've often heard her bring up the fact that she is a mother of 5 and foster mother of 23 to illustrate her conservative, pro-family credentials.  Yet, lately she has started doing something I'd bet she never let her children do.  First she went on national television to tell the world that the HPV vaccine causes girls to become mentally retarded.  Now this claim is utter bullshit as any doctor would be able to tell you but Mrs Bachmann had a great source - some woman she doesn't know told her that.  Now I'm not sure what kind of a parent Mrs Bachmann is but I know what my parents would have told me if I came to them with a wild story I heard from a complete stranger;  They would have told me to stop passing on unfounded rumours and to check my facts before I start spreading lies that could potentially hurt people.  I may be out of line but I'm reasonably sure that Mrs Bachmann would have told her children the same thing.  So why is it OK for her to spread false rumours?  It's not like it was a one time thing either, she recently told how "Obamacare" prevents doctors from helping the sick because they have to check with the IRS before they can treat someone.  It's not true at all but she shared it anyway because an anonymous 7 foot tall doctor told her that story.  Surely she knows better?  She must know she's spreading rumours and telling lies, right?  She can't not know, people keep telling her these aren't true and she keeps doing it anyway!

What's going on?  Is this normal now?  I didn't even have to go looking for these stories, these are just the ones that made the headlines so who knows what else is out there!  Like I said, I'm not really this naive, I know politicians are dishonest but this goes way beyond simply telling lies.  This is a new level of brazenly disregarding the truth.  It's like they don't even have the decency to act honest anymore!  They're not even pretending to tell the truth anymore, they are just openly lying and getting upset at people for not being OK with that.  It's gotten so bad that I can't even enjoy the irony of seeing the same people who rail against the dangers of moral relativism be openly dishonest when it suits their campaigns.

Am I the crazy one?  Am I wrong?  Surely it wasn't always like this?  When did politicians openly declare war on the truth? 

The Libertarian and the Antichrist

While watching this week's Daily Show interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, I was once again reminded of why I find Libertarians so fascinating.  As you may have guessed from the title of this blog, I do enjoy a good juxtaposition and Libertarians offer a particularly interesting one in that they claim to follow both Christ and an antichrist*.  Now I realize that I'm generalizing here and that this will not apply to every Libertarian, but hear me out at least because I do think it applies to a whole lot of them.

First off, I know that not all Libertarians are Christians and therefore would not claim to follow Christ - what follows does not apply to those.  A lot of Libertarians on the other hand are Christians.  All the Libertarians that I know are certainly Christians and I don't mean the nominal kind, these are all very serious Christians.  Not sure about Judge Napolitano's exact religious beliefs but in that interview he talks about "Judeo-Christian values" being foundational.  So then a lot of Libertarians claim to follow Christ.  Which makes it extremely strange that so many (again, not all) would also be such avid followers of an antichrist like Ayn Rand.

Again, I know that not all Libertarians worship Ayn Rand and that she herself wasn't a big fan of the Libertarian movement, but it's undeniable that Rand is idolized by a significant portion of Libertarians.  She famously authored "The Virtue of Selfishness" and in that interview, Judge Napolitano explicitly mentions that "selfishness is a virtue" - that is no coincidence.  Her works and words have clearly saturated the thinking of many in the movement. 

So how exactly do so many people see no contradiction in following both Rand, who advocated individualism over collectivism and egoism over altruism as well as Jesus, who preached pretty much the exact opposite?  Judge for yourself if you think I'm being too extreme:

 Ayn Rand said:
And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I."

Jesus said:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 Ayn Rand said:
“the first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.”

Jesus said:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

 Ayn Rand said:
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Jesus said:
"whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

 Ayn Rand said:
"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality -- the man who lives to serve others -- is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism."


Jesus said:
And whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

"The greatest among you shall be your servant. "

"Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves."

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.”

"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

From Common Sense Jesus

I could go on but you get the idea, Jesus and Ayn Rand had polar opposite worldviews.  These were just the words of Jesus mind you, if I started quoting from the rest of the "Judeo Christian tradition" (aka the Bible) this would have been a very long blog post indeed.  My point is that while anyone is free to read both the Bible and Atlas Shrugged, no one can reasonably base their beliefs on both.  You can follow the teachings of Jesus or the teachings of Ayn Rand but as far as I can see it would be a complete contradiction to claim to follow both.

"Contradictions do not exist". "Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises". "You will find that one of them is wrong".  Ayn Rand

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Jesus of Nazareth


Seems like Jesus and Rand do agree on some things...


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*Please not that I'm using the term "an antichrist" here and not "THE Antichrist".  The Antichrist is what fans of the Left Behind books imagine will be the leader of the coming One World Government that will resemble Christ as far as the world is concerned but who will actually be a satanic imposter.  The Bible on the other hand does not refer to one single antichrist but instead uses the word as a plural, i.e. those people who live and operate as polar opposite to the life and teachings of the Christ.

"Common Sense" Jesus

Would you vote for Jesus?  In principle, a lot of people probably think they would.  In reality though, I don't think they would, not in a thousand years.  Jesus would make a terrible president.  Not that he would even make it past the campaigning stage without being re-crucified!  The fact is, Jesus had some strange ideas and tended to ruffle everyone's feathers.  Not some feathers, everyone's.  It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you reside in, chances are pretty solid that there would be some things about Jesus you would not be willing to live with if they were government policy.  If you don't believe me, go read the Gospels.

Not that this has ever stopped opportunistic politicians from claiming Jesus' personal endorsement on their campaign.  None of them are of course willing to look at the whole package when it comes to Jesus though - both liberals and conservatives tend to only focus on the things Jesus said that they personally agree with while pretending all the other stuff He said somehow doesn't count.  For instance, recently Herman Cain made the following statement:

 "He helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick without a government health care system. He feed the hungry without food stamps. And everywhere He went, it turned into a rally, attracting large crowds, and giving them hope, encouragement and inspiration. For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check. Nevertheless, he completed all the work He needed to get done. He didn’t travel by private jet. He walked and sailed, and sometimes traveled on a donkey.  For over 2,000 years the world has tried hard to erase the memory of the perfect conservative, and His principles of compassion, caring and common sense."

See?  Jesus was the "perfect conservative"and his approach was one of "common sense".  Oh really?  Well I guess I could answer that by quoting some Scriptures but we all know how that goes; before you know it both sides are throwing Bible verses at each other, armored with the deep conviction that they are right and that Scripture vindicates their personal beliefs with neither side listening to anyone else.  So why bother?  Instead I'm just going to link to this fantastic new site called Common Sense Jesus.  It does a beautiful job of debunking the idea of Jesus being a party line towing, modern right wing, common sense conservative.  Go there now!  You will find more gems like these:

A Secular Government is a Sane One

I've mentioned before (also before before) that I'm a big fan of American politics.  Elections in the US are exciting to watch because there either candidate can actually win, unlike in South African politics where we have only one party that always wins every election by a landslide.  I think that the upcoming presidential elections are shaping up to be really interesting.  So far I'm especially enjoying the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  I'm no political analyst so I don't want to use overly dramatic language like saying "the Republican Party is at a crossroads!" or that there is "a battle for the soul of the party!!" but it does seem to me that what happens in the 2012 election will have a serious impact on the future of the party.

Following the success of the Tea Party in the midterm elections, the religious right suddenly have more power than they've had in a very long time - and they are using it for all they're worth.  Things that belonged on the far right fundamentalist lunatic fringe just a few years ago are becoming increasingly mainstream on the conservative side it seems.  Case in point, the popularity of Michelle Bachman as a serious presidential candidate and of course this:

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What was poison for a presidential candidate just last election is now the water of life and those who are unwilling to swear fealty to the new right wing, fundamentalist Christian dogma may just find themselves sidelined.  The religious right are now the kingmakers and they demand doctrinal purity - no gays, no abortion, no taxes, no healthcare, no compromise.  Therefore, all the moderate, more centrist conservatives are being flogged for their "progressive" views and so now the moderates have to fake allegiance to the fringe or risk losing support.  This in turn leads the party ever further towards the far right and I think this will cost them.  For instance look at the issue of gay marriage - fast becoming the Republican Albatross.  The religious right wants none of that and are fighting it tooth and nail BUT public opinion is turning rapidly and the majority of Americans now favour it.  While doctrinal purity may win you the Republican nomination it may very well cost you the election.   Worse, in the history books of tomorrow they will stand alongside the villains who fought against women's suffrage and to keep racial segregation alive.  Only time will tell I guess.

Now I could be reading it all completely wrong, I am half a world away after all.  Just seems to me that this next election will determine the future direction of the Republicans - either they will do well and the Religious Right Wing Fringe will become more powerful than ever OR they will get spanked and moderates could wrestle back control.  I for one hope that cooler heads will prevail.

But again, I know that no one likes a foreigner coming along, telling you your business and pretending that they understand things better than you do and I definitely don't want to be that guy.  No one likes that guy!  So I will rather just post the words of a great American, Robert Ingersoll.  He wrote the following in 1879 but it's so appropriate that it may as well have been written last weekend:

"I would like also to liberate the politician. At present, the
successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the
earth; he weighs nothing himself but draws everything else to him.
There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that
it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a
political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are
Catholics with Protestant proclivities, or Christians with liberal
tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of
wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are,
and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is
that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real
principle; and this will never change until the people become grand
enough to allow each other to do their own thinking.

Our Government should be entirely and purely secular. The
religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of
sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the
inspiration of the Bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the
immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal.
He should be allowed to settle such things for himself and should
he decide contrary to the law and will of God, let him settle the
matter with God. The people ought to be wise enough to select as
their officers men who know something of political affairs, who
comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future
grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck
wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was
necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the
brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on
the five points of Calvinism. Our Government has nothing to do with
religion. It is neither Christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as
long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account
of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place
and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust --
hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend
to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest
men be trampled under foot."

From "Some Mistakes of Moses" by Robert G. Ingersoll available for free online here.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.