Stop tax payer funded proselytizing!

It's time for Obama to keep his promise and reverse the policy of tax payer funded proselytizing.

Can Sarah Palin lead the religious right?

I've written before that Sarah Palin is a part of the "Christ-hating egalitarian agenda of the socialist elitists of this nation." Yep. Well, that's not my characterization, that's the religious right, Pastor Matt Trewhella for you.

Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches explains why this is so.

That's a major prediction, and not one that is suggested either by the past or the present. In some ways, the Christian right has always been a movement about women -- about what their role is in the family, in the church, and in the culture. That doesn't make it a women's movement, and that doesn't make Palin its leader. The movement's original sin, if you will, is that it is entirely predicated on the idea that America is a Christian nation and must be guided by biblical principles. And those biblical principles, as defined by the Christian right, preclude things like women's free agency -- choosing when and if to have children, choosing to enter ministry, choosing not to submit to her husband's spiritual authority, or choosing not to get married and have children at all.

The religious right will never concede that a women has her own right to her body and mind since they value women as nothing but breeders. As the Pastor describes, women's rights are "Christ-hating."

The religious right will always place women in subservient roles because it is religiously mandated.

Man tries to kill bin Laden

I found this story rather amusing. An American, on mission to kill Osama bin Laden, was arrested in Pakistan.

When asked why he thought he had a chance of tracing bin Laden, Faulkner replied, "God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him," said Khan.

Wouldn't the Christian thing to do, is to convert Osama bin Laden to Christianity, instead of killing him?

You would think.

If God is really with him, shouldn't God just deliver Osama bin Laden to the United States?

A manhunt is unnecessary.

(Source)

The Taliban is brutal

As the 9-year war in Afghanistan drags on, we are reminded about just how brutal the Taliban is.

On Wednesday, the Taliban hanged a 7-year-old boy in public in Helmand province, neighboring Kandahar, for alleged spying, a local official said. Also Wednesday, insurgents dragged a Kandahar provincial council member, Amir Mohammad Noorzai, from his house and fatally shot him, said local government spokesman Zalmai Ayoubi. 

A7-year old? That is just breathtaking.

The Taliban are monsters and a threat to a liberal society.

(Source)

Reading the Bible: Genesis 3

Fundamentalists take this chapter literally as it essential to the belief in original sin. They really believe in a talking snake and magic fruit on some magic trees. My mind bends at these suggestions.

Talking snakes. That's all I really have to say about his chapter, other than the contradiction of god making a personal appearance and also being a voice.

Talking snakes.

President Bush is a War Criminal

Yesterday, former President Bush admitted to a war crime.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the former president said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

This is in direct violation of UN Convention on Torture, Article 2.

Let's see if conservatives who are in a fury over Obama's non-paid job offer to Rep. Stestak, can find similar courage to call out Bush. I seriously doubt that they will.

(Source)

Reading the Bible: Genesis 2

Genesis 2 almost reads like an entirely different creation story.

I find it funny that God needed a rest from all the work that he had done. He sounds like some kind of overworked farmer that can't wait for the weekend. He must have been so pooped from all his hard work!

And of course, this is the introduction of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Fundamentalists really believe that such trees actually existed, and that such trees grow magic fruit.

God states:

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

This is a newly created world, how is man to know about death? God is making a demand that has no context. And without knowledge of good and evil, how is one to know that disobedience is a bad thing?

I'll talk more about the ridiculousness of original sin in the next chapter.

The other highlight is that Eve is created from Adam's rib. Do I even have to comment on how unscientific that is?

One last observation.

At no time does God set out and create Hell. If, after all, this is supposed to be a literal record of creation, you think God would have set his sights on creating the damn place.

Reading the Bible: Genesis 1

As a child, I was taught that the Genesis story was an accurate account of how the universe and life on earth became into being. It was unquestioned, even by me. And if I recall, it seemed to make sense. God created this. God created that. Everything had to come from somewhere, so placing God as the nexus seemed like a natural move. Let's see how my reading today holds up to these memories.

Some observations.

The real blaring inaccuracy I see is that God makes light before he makes the stars. Stars produce light. The moon (lesser light to govern the night) does not. There is no way he could have called the day and night without first establishing a light source. And that's a big problem with this story if it supposed to be read literally.

What's the "Spirit of God?" God has a spirit? I thought god was a spirit, that is, an immaterial ghost thingy. Does a spirit have a spirit? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Also, God seems a little smug and little too prideful in himself by showing satisfaction for every one of creations. I was taught that God was all powerful, so I don't understand why God must call everyone one of his moves "good."

Is it me, but does God seem overly Earth-centric -- what about the rest of the solar system, much less the universe? Did the god of this story create only one planet? Not all exo-planets, much less planets of the solar system behave like the Earth in its orbit around the sun.

I find it interesting that in Genesis 1:27 God created male and female. Like the rest of this chapter, God is said to have created kinds. There is nothing specific about creating one man and one woman, although it can be read that way. This is interesting, because if God created more than just one of each, you avoid any problems with incest in propagating the species later on.

The biggest problem with the story is how god became created. Does the spirit of god generate any radiation that may be measured? If not, then what can you reliably say about something that has no fingerprints which to be measured. God fails to give an accounting of himself.

All in all, I don't get the appeal of the story. It's entirely unscientific and inconsistent with itself.

Reading the Bible: Introduction

To give me something to blog about, I've decided to read the Bible in its entirety. As of late, I seem to have plenty of time so I thought I give it a go.

As a child in Sunday School, I was instructed from teachers materials on the Bible and guided as to how to read the Bible. Instruction on the dogma of the church superseded any time actually spent reading the Bible. It wasn't until my confirmation classes, as an adolescent, that I spent any time actually reading the Bible. Because of confirmation, my brother and I both decided that becoming Christian held no future for us. We deconverted.

I haven't been a Christian for a very long time and I don't think reading the Bible now will change the fact that I'm an atheist. But since the Bible is a collection of books that has so much weight in this society, reading the Bible will be of great value.  Most Christians don't read the volume, instead they learn about the Bible from secondary sources like I did in Sunday school. Reading the Bible will give me an advantage over proselytizing and garden-variety Christians. I've at least read the damn thing, have you?

I know there is debate on how to read the Bible. Every church instructs its faithful to read it in its own idiosyncratic way. This leads to the dilemma on how to read the Bible. I did a google on "how to read the bible" and 24,900,000 results were returned. One such return instructs how to read the Bible "theologically."

To read the Bible "theologically" means to read the Bible "with a focus on God": his being, his character, his words and works, his purpose, presence, power, promises, and precepts.

That's not much help.

First of all, how do you "focus on God?" The author promises that the Bible is to "be read as a God-given rule of belief and behavior—that is, of faith and life." This is all meaningless. At no time are my terms defined. What is a "God?" Without knowing what a "god" is how am I to know what is its "being" and "character" are? In order to do that, the answer is "belief." But without belief than I can not know the "being" and the "character." This is all highly tautological, circular, and does nothing to answer the question on how to read the Bible. This is why people are instructed as to what to believe about the Bible, as I was when I was just child.

Perhaps another how to will be helpful.

3. Approach the Bible with prayer and anticipation. "Expect God to speak through God's Word, if you are a believer," says the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. "If you are a critic and a doubter, your reading of the Bible will be nothing more than an intellectual exercise. You will take nothing to the text and you will get nothing from the text!"

Again, I am faced with more circular reasoning, except this time the caveat of intellectualism is included. What it is with Christians and reason? You think a reasoned faith would be the most valued of faiths, but according to pastor above, critical analysis is to be shunned.

Since either of them is of no help, I can only resolve to read the Bible as myself. I carry no agenda other than reading the thing to kill a little time. I plan on reading the Bible as it is plainly presented to me, as if I was a believer that doesn't have any special knowledge of the volume's history and canonical past. (Which I do.) The only difference is I will not be a believer. If reading the Bible is supposed to be the way to god, the perhaps my perspective will change and I will be lead to faith. I am not reading the Bible to debunk it or to criticize it, but that doesn't mean that I won't in the process.

My plan is to read a chapter a day and write a review of what I observed, or learned, in the body of a blog post. I was raised on the King James, but I plan on reading the NIV. I'll be using Biblos.com. They feature a range of tools and other translations which should be helpful in my study.

So with that, I'll begin my reading of the Bible. That's not to say I'm looking forward to reading all of it. Some of the sections are incredibly tedious, but if it is in there I will be reading it.