Exodus story reveals Bible's dishonesty

By Marc McDonald 

Although some might be loath to admit it, many educated adults (even non-fundamentalist Christians) are aware that the Bible is perhaps not the best source of history.

I mean, how many people still take the story of Adam and Eve seriously any more? But I suspect that most people are still unaware of just how totally wrong the Bible is as far as anything remotely approaching real history.

This wouldn't be that big a deal, except for the fact that so many people take the Bible very seriously as a profound book of wisdom. The massive and growing population of Fundamentalists continue to believe the Bible is nothing less than the divinely-inspired, inerrant Word of God.

But the Bible is profoundly wrong in its historical accuracy. The Exodus story (now the subject of a big-budget Hollywood movie by Ridley Scott) is a good example. Some people might question certain fantastic aspects of the story (like the parting of the Red Sea). But I think most people accept that there must be at least a kernel of truth to the story's main points (such as that there really was once a big enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt). Many people continue to believe that this has been confirmed in the archaeological record.

But there's a big problem to this belief: it's simply not true. Nothing in the Exodus story has ever been confirmed by any serious archaeologist, despite long quests to try to confirm anything remotely related to the Bible story.

The fact is, even many Bible apologists have quietly abandoned their quest to try to confirm the Exodus story. The problem is that there is simply not a shred of historical evidence that any of this really happened. Forget wild tales like the parting of the Red Sea -- there isn't even the slightest bit of evidence that there was an Exodus captivity in the first place.

This whole story is a fairy tale. The fact is, the story of Exodus is one big lie. And if this well-known Bible story is a lie, then, really, how truthful is any aspect of the Bible?

The Bible is a dishonest book, period.

A lot of agnostics spend their time attacking the absurdities, contradictions and sheer nonsense of the Bible's philosophical teachings. But if they're trying to convince believers, they're wasting their time. The Bible is so vague and archaic that the sort of people who take it seriously are never going to be dissuaded via that approach.

What agnostics should be doing is attacking the historicity of the Bible itself. People should be aware of just how many of these Bible tales lack the slightest shred of historical evidence to support them.

It's time for humanity to move beyond the fairy tales, nonsense and superstition of absurd books like the Bible.

In much of Europe, this is already taking place. Sadly, in America, large numbers of people continue to take the Bible seriously (and try to ram their twisted beliefs down the throats of other people).

(Cross-posted at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.)

The day we celebrate

By Capt. Fogg

Of course the paper this morning contained the usual happy crap about celebrating FREEDOM as though we had either more of it or a better kind than Canada or most of Europe who have embraced the principles of democracy and the rights of man we seem to reject every Sunday as we yearn for the Divine Right of Government. What the day is about is political independence and independence from a government that denied us the right to parliamentary representation it was legally obligated to provide while requiring us to identify the king's right to be king with a state church. It was about our right to fair representation as citizens, as equal participants in government regardless of wealth and importance and heredity, and not about a tea tax.

As you watch the sound and fury of the fireworks, remember that the people selling themselves as patriots, the people talking about freedom in saccharine tones, really mean control by a powerful aristocracy allied with a narrow, sectarian interpretation of a certain religion.

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord"  begins the full page full color newspaper insert payed for by the Hobby Lobby. It leaves off the next stanza: "the people he chose for his inheritance," which of course in that context means the Jews. It also mistranslates אשר־יהוה,  asher-Yaveh, as the lord, so those who think "Jesus is Lord" will think it means them. The arrogance and the dishonesty would be amusing if the intent were not so insidious, because our friends at Hobby Lobby, glowing like the face of Moses in their victory over secular law, have asserted their commitment to and aspiration toward a government Dei Gratia. They assert their version of the Bible as the best source of normative morality.

The flag-bedecked page is packed with references to Supreme Court decisions from the 1830s supporting the public schools as the place to pray and teach Christianity and out-of-context quotes from the very anti-religious founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson about the Christian Bible being the basis of all true morality. (No mention, of course, of the Bible-backed, God-tolerated institutions of wife beating and slavery and rape and genocide and banishment of non-Jewish people from the Holy Land.)

No religion is about freedom, they are all about orthodoxy and uniformity of belief to the exclusion of other ideas and practices. Freedom of worship is not freedom to enforce religious orthodoxy or religious law on others. No religion is about free choice, democracy, or the inherent rights of man. No one in America has claimed the right to dictate your thoughts about divinity but religious organizations. Your prayers, your right to congregate and worship, are guaranteed against the influence of Hobby Lobby and our Constitution forbids our government to do what they insist is the right thing to do: establish and enforce some form of Christian doctrine as the law of the land.

If this be freedom, then freedom is slavery and the American Revolution against a divinely-inspired Christian king we pretend to celebrate today was not only fought in vain, but was blasphemy and an unholy act.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

Bill O'Reilly kills Jesus

By Frank Moraes 

If there is one man alive I associate with the Prince of Peace, it is Bill O'Reilly. But I associate him as more the anti-Christ. I don't say that because he is such a bad guy, even though he is. It is just that he is the most prominent rageaholic in America. At the same time, I know he considers himself a good Catholic. So I was very interested to hear that he was writing a book on the life of Jesus. What would his take on the subject be?

For those who do not spend much time thinking about Christianity, a book on the life of Jesus probably sounds strange. After all, isn't that what the Bible is all about? Well, not really. First, there are only four books of the Bible that specifically talk about Jesus' life—the four Gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. And they aren't exactly what you would call histories. To begin with, they build on each other. First came Mark, then Matthew rewrote Mark. Increasingly, it looks like the theoretical Q document that Matthew and Luke supposedly used in combination with Mark didn't exist after all. Instead, it looks like Luke is just a rewrite of Matthew. John, is mostly independent of those Gospels and comes out of the ongoing fight of the early Christian church to separate itself from the Jewish church. It is also the antisemitic Gospel, much beloved by Mel Gibson.

What's also true is that like most of the rest of the Bible, the Gospels contradict each other. For example, in one, Jesus was crucified next to two thieves. In another, it was one thief. In the other two, it was none of them. What's more, almost all of the stories in the Gospels are clearly didactic. They are little narrative designed to teach a lesson. This is why, for example, the apostles are such idiots. They never learn from one story to the next. As a result of this, there really is a need to have one story of the life of Jesus. The problem is, as Albert Schweitzer noted, pretty much everyone comes up with a "historical Jesus" that just so happens to be the Jesus they want.

So what would a truly awful person like Bill O'Reilly come up with in his new book, Killing Jesus: a History? I have no intention of reading the book, of course. I actually like these kinds of books. For example, The Historical Jesus: Five Views is an exceptional book, which presents views from the most liberal to the most conservative. But O'Reilly is no scholar and his book never would have been published if he weren't a famous guy with a lot of fans who will buy any nonsense he sells. Still, I wanted to know, even if I suspected that I had a good take on what he would have to say. O'Reilly wasn't going to present a hippy "love thy neighbor" Jesus; that was for sure.

Luckily, New Testament scholar Candida Moss, in an act similar to that of Jesus, suffered for the good of all of us: she read the book. Her review can be summed up in one sentence, "The single most consistent social teaching in the New Testament is that Christians must support the poor, widows, and orphans, but this hardly gets a mention in Killing Jesus."

Read more »

Fox zealot vs. mainstream Aslan

By Frank Moraes

The Fox News interview of Reza Aslan was interesting and fun. (For those who haven't seen it, it is embedded below.) He was on to hock his book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. And basically, the entire interview was about why a Muslim would write a book about Christianity. I understand why they approached Aslan and his book this way. The truth is that he was only being interviewed because according to conservative ideology the only interesting thing about the book was that Aslan is a Muslim. And really: who in the mainstream press is interested in New Testament scholarship?

What is sad about the current state of Biblical scholarship is that the field is overflowing with Christians. To me, there is no question that a Muslim can be a good Biblical scholar. But I have great questions as to whether any given Christian can be a good Biblical scholar. This isn't to say that there aren't Christian Biblical scholars who are good. In fact, there are great Christian biblical scholars. But there is a natural concern that these scholars will try to conform their scholarship to their religious beliefs. A Buddhist, for example, doesn't have that problem.


The attitude on view at Fox News is typical. It is also an indictment of modern American Christianity. The way I see it is that "believers" are so insecure about the truth of their belief that they can't brook any objective discussion of it. What's funny about it is that such people think they are protecting the religion. But any objective viewer can see the terror in their attacks.

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The mouth of the Lord

By Capt. Fogg

The "reverend" Phelps is at it again, twittering that God Bombed Boston for the same reason God does most of the horrible things he does like letting millions of children die miserably and needlessly and live miserably and hopelessly all over the world -- because they aren't actively persecuting gay people. So busy is the God of Rage and so obsessed with regulating love and sex that he's never had the time to do anything else. You'll notice that he never blew up Sobibor or Auschwitz or wasted his time with chastising the murderers of millions of children in Africa and Asia and, yes, even Europe. In fact he must have blown the budget on his flood since he hasn't done shit that looks anything like divine retribution since -- except for the odd bombing or two -- and a lot of threats.

No, what God, or at least Deus ex Westboro, is about is -- you should pardon the term -- "fags." God just hates 'em, the way Indiana Jones hates snakes or the way I hate preachers. He can't really do much about it, though, whether he's in the form of the old man or his son who's also himself or that bird that crept in sometime in the 4th century when they left the window open, other than to use an improvised explosive device against people who can hardly be blamed for not persecuting anyone. Little kids, for instance.

Read more »

A message from God, in response to Marco Rubio

Okay, so stop me if you've heard this one: 
A Cuban and a writer from GQ walk into the back room of a local community center in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. The writer then asks the Cuban: 

GQ: So, how old do you think the Earth is?

Cuban: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians... I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all... Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Ready for the punchline? The Cuban is actually a sitting senator from Florida named Marco Rubio and he is one of my so-called "children" who think I was being literal when I said the universe and everything in it was created in seven days. I mean, thanks for giving me that much credit, but damn... er... sorry, I meant darn... had I known humans would be so literal with my words I would have been more specific.

You know, when I said all those things back in the day I honestly thought people would take that information and really think about it. Instead, they took me at my word and now we have people like this Rubio fellow making me out to be some kind of comic book superhero.

I mean, think about it. What is more impressive, that I can create heaven and earth in a week or over billions of years? I would have thought the latter to be more mind-blowing, but then again thank you for suggesting I am only 6,000 years old. Flattery will get you everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, if you catch my drift. Do people still use that expression, or am I dating myself?

Now, I have seen this so-called Bible and it always makes me chuckle (you might know it as thunder). And this might also come as a surprise, but I see the Bible as more like a game of telephone than my actual words. You know that game? What is said on one end gets translated into something completely different? That's the Bible.

Let's be real. If I really could create all of this in that brief time, wouldn't I have also taken the time to make people a little bit more aware of their surroundings? From what I understand, the writers of the Bible thought the universe was as large as the distance they could walk in a day. They must have thought all I could do was make sand!

I have to say, though, I love your depictions of me. You flatter me with the flowing hair, white beard, and muscles. I hate to break it to you, but neither I nor my son is as handsome as you all imagine, or as tall. Plus, if I were able to create everything in a week, wouldn't that leave me plenty of time to shave?

Sorry, I know I should not be so sarcastic, what with being perfect and all.

Anyway, I said what I had to say. Please, stop taking everything you read to be the gospel, pun intended. It is flattering, but it also makes me seem like a simpleton. I actually tried to make things very complex and complicated because I love watching scientists trying to figure it all out. But when those so-called religious people try to put all of my hard work into such simple terms, well, I get kind of annoyed. You forget, I created all of you in my own image. I have a reputation to uphold!

Don't make me come down there. 

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

Laughing and crying with Victoria Jackson

By Frank Moraes

(Ed. note: I would note that Victoria Jackson seems to use Twitter as an Tourette-style outlet for her right-wing diarrhea. Among other things, she has been calling for secession: "Better to SECEDE than have a Civil War." Yes, the conservative mind in action. -- MJWS)

There is something in the water over at SNL and it ain't LSD. Or maybe it is. That would kind of explain the likes of Dennis Miller, Jon Lovitz, and especially Victoria Jackson. On election night, she had a bigger meltdown than most conservatives, claiming that she couldn't stop crying. And for good reason: "America died." On the badness scale, that is one notch below, "Music died." What especially sucks is there is no cool song to go along with it.

That evening Jackson also tweeted the now infamous, "Thanks a lot Christians for not showing up. You disgust me." Can't you just feel that Born Again love? You know what Jesus said, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who votes Democratic to enter the kingdom of God." So suck it all you America-hating commie bastards!

And in this vein, Jackson tweeted yesterday morning, "Obama's policies (communism) PUNISH the Responsible and REWARD the Irresponsible." This was following from a tweet last night in which she spread her Christian love:

Obama's policies (communism) PUNISH the Responsible and REWARD the Irresponsible.
— Victoria Jackson (@vicjackshow) November 13, 2012

Don't get the wrong idea here: Victoria Jackson is not racist. You know this because of that caveat. It's not that white people are better, it's just that they tend that way—statistically! It's just science. Like The Bell Curve. It's not like she wants to kill non-whites; they're just like Christians; you know: disgusting.

But perhaps we are too harsh on the once talented Ms. Jackson. She has known tragedy. Her first husband -- fire-eater Nisan Mark Eventoff -- left her, because it is apparently easier to swallow fire than Victoria's bullshit. And her two daughters are rumored to have died recently of extreme cases of shame and embarrassment. Jackson is apparently immune.

On her Twitter desciption, Victoria Jackson lists simply, John 16:33. For those of you not up on your Bible, John is the anti-Semitic Gospel. Not that I'm saying Jackson is anti-Semitic. Like most loon Christians, she probably loves the Jews because they are necessary to the Second Coming. After that they can burn in hell, of course. Anyway, here's the verse:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

I'm fond of this verse, because it calls on Christians to chill the fuck out. And they used to! It is only recently that the Religious Right rose up and decided they should work to make their perfect biblical government here on earth. This is why they get so angry at the radical Islamists: they're competition.

I find it a little sad that Victoria Jackson could be doing all of this as an art form: political satire. It disturbs me that she is clearly not. She is all too typical of her species of born-again Christianity that seems to think Jesus was Joseph McCarthy plus magic tricks. Reading Jackson's comments is one of those rare activities where you truly don't know whether to laugh or cry.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Craziest (Arkansas) Republicans of the Day: Charlie Fuqua and Jon Hubbard

By Mustang Bobby

Here's some handy parenting advice from Charlie Fuqua, a Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature: if your kid mouths off to you or doesn't clean their room, kill them:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21.

Mr. Fuqua is on record as being in favor of expelling Muslims from America, presumably because he thinks they're too easygoing on their children.

By the way, Mr. Fuqua doesn't have the corner on the loony market in Arkansas. There's a state representative who says that slavery was a "blessing" for African-Americans:

Jon Hubbard, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, has written a new book in which he says slavery was "a blessing" for African-Americans, among other questionable statements.

Hubbard, a first term Republican from Jonesboro, Ark., makes a series of racially charged statements in the self-published book, including saying that integration of schools is hurting white students, that African slaves had better lives under slavery than in Africa, that blacks are not contributing to society, and that a situation is developing the United States which is similar to that of Nazi Germany.

Lovely people.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Republicans aren't reading their Bibles

By Nicholas Wilbur

Whether you're Christian or Jewish, God makes a pretty clear case against selfish ambition and hypocrisy in both testaments of the Bible.

Source: WMX Design

Remember Cain, the first man born on Earth? Cain was cursed by the Lord for killing his brother, but Cain's first sin (one always leads to another) was selfish ambition. While his brother, Abel, sacrificed the first-born of his flock, Cain offered only defiled fruit (the assumption being that he kept the good shit – probably the chocolate-covered strawberries – for himself.)

In the Gospel of John, when the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman who'd been accused of adultery, they cited the law of Moses, which commanded that such a woman be stoned. Jesus said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

The morals of these stories are self-explanatory, but for those who aren't keeping up on their studies (I won't name names, yet), they are straightforward warnings against selfish ambition and hypocrisy.

Republicans would be wise to take note.

From The New York Times:

In last year's campaigns, Republicans ripped into Democrats for failing to perform one of Congress's most basic duties: providing money in a timely way for the operations of government. But Republicans acknowledged Thursday that they would miss the deadline they had promised to meet. They began to rush a stopgap spending bill through the House because, they said, Congress could not finish work on any of the 12 regular appropriations bills before the new fiscal year starts in two weeks, on Oct. 1... [T]he stopgap bill includes $3.65 billion in assistance for people affected by Hurricane Irene, wildfires, floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters. Of this amount, $1 billion would be offset by cutting a loan guarantee program for production of more fuel-efficient cars.

The obvious critique of GOP hypocrisy is that the same Republicans who "ripped Democrats" throughout the 2010 midterm campaign for not passing an appropriations bill on time suddenly are finding that they, too, are having a difficult time with such "basic" duties.

The greater hypocrisy, however, is that the same party that has been attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats for failing to stimulate job creation is now vying for cuts to an auto industry that just recently returned to the black"

Democrats and an auto industry expert warn the funds [Republicans] picked to pay for disaster aid is currently supporting a successful program that has pulled manufacturing jobs back from other countries and helped keep the industry alive around the eastern Midwest. Taking the money away would jeopardize that program.

Though I'm no theologian, I don't think there's anything in the Bible saying idiots don't get into heaven. That said, I bet if the Pope picked up the big red phone on his nightstand and gave the Man Upstairs a ring, He'd relay a reminder to the masses that while ignorance is not sinful, willful idiocy is definitely frowned upon.

Rep. Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia,
House Majority Leader, Big Oil Toady 

Fuel-efficient cars are the future. Even your average NASCAR T-shirt-wearin', Budweiser drinkin', gun totin' Texan wouldn't mind paying a little less for gasoline – especially if it meant eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil.

The problem, of course, is corporate profits. Fuel-efficient cars burn less gasoline, gasoline is made from oil, and oil is a gold mine – a gold mine that donates heavily to the Republican Party.

So far in the 2011-12 election cycle, the oil and gas lobby already has contributed $4.5 million to the GOP (compared to $670,000 to the Democratic Party).

Just as the oil and gas lobby has a role in the fuel-efficiency debate, so too does the insurance industry play a role in the disaster relief debate.

When the majority leader of the United States House of Representatives – of the "people's house" of Congress – told us, "the people," the masses and the voting public, that the federal government will provide disaster relief only after Congress agrees on another round of spending cuts, some thought it was career suicide.

In a statement to the press after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Virginia on August 24, Virginia congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor admitted that "the federal government does have a role in situations like this," but just how immediate or significant that response should be was up to him and the rest of the Republicans in Congress.

"[T]hose monies will be offset with appropriate savings or cost-cutting elsewhere," he said. 

When I first read this, it seemed like just one more example of anti-government right-wingers trying to tarnish the image of the U.S. government in the eyes of the American people by setting up another politically divisive, partisan and months-long congressional battle over budget issues that not only will postpone financial assistance to communities, but which also will perpetuate the idea that the federal government is incompetent, unhelpful and, in turn, unnecessary.

Since then, I've been reminded of what the Roman poet Phaedrus said: "Things are not always what they seem."

It was a less-publicized statement by Cantor that provided context to his seemingly callous, heartless, and politically motivated words:

"Obviously," he said, "the problem is that people in Virginia don't have earthquake insurance."

Earthquake insurance!

A quick perusal of OpenSecrets.org shows that Cantor's biggest contributor in the 2011-12 election cycle is... AN INSURANCE COMPANY!

The guy who's fighting to cut investments in fuel-efficient cars is not only the sixth biggest recipient of oil and gas contributions this election cycle, he's also the third largest recipient of insurance contributions.

I won't make any accusations – that's sinful – but I will make the observation that the leader of the majority party in "the people's house" of Congress is acting exactly like a pitchman for the insurance industry and a profiteer for oil companies.

It appears this disaster relief / fuel-efficiency budget cut issue isn't just about conservatives and their fiscal hawkishness. It's about money.

When you get to the Pearly Gates, ye Republicans, and St. Peter asks about how you fought so ardently to cut American investments in resource- and money-saving technologies, how you hypocritically dismissed the experts who warned that such actions would result in the very elimination of both jobs and MADE in AMERICA goods that you campaigned on in 2010, how you chose politics over the rebuilding of your own communities, and how you did all of this because your selfish ambition for campaign donations from corporate lobbyists blinded you from the suffering of those whose homes and businesses were ravaged by disasters, what will be your defense?

(Being as you're not keeping up on your Bible studies, I'll warn you not to lie. That's sinful, too.)

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Stoning the Orca

By Capt. Fogg

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

-- Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813

**********

It was inevitable, since after all, this incomprehensibly huge and ancient universe exists only to provide a place in which God can test the mindless obedience to a farrago of meaningless and often contradictory rules of the sentient apes whose existence spans an infinitesimal part of the space time continuum -- anything that happens must be seen in the context of peremptory power and abject submission to the words of ancient men who went their whole, ignorant, bug-infested lives without soap. Or so saith the AFA.

A captive six-ton top predator, by following its possibly God given instincts to grab and kill any smaller animal at water's edge, was God's way of testing his demand that an ox who gores a man must be stoned. That's right, the sad death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau was God's punishment to "the west" for the very concept of animal rights and her death a test to see if we'd follow the commands of ancient, flea bitten, psychotics. By not "stoning" the Orca, it's only going to get worse. God will have his oxen (and Orcas) stoned even if the hirsute brutes he chose to write down his words never heard of such an animal.

Have I been listening to too many paranoid schizophrenics at Nurse Ratched's cuckoo's nest? No, just the perennial font of psychotic idiocy called the American Family Association.

"Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture," wrote Bryan Fischer, at the AFA's official blog. "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable."

Do you think that if I stampeded some oxen through their offices and gored the living shit out of Fischer and his batshit crew of straight-jacket candidates, the AFA would find me liable and sue me? I think so too but I would truly love to try it. After all, I could easily cite the 613 Biblical Commandments, 600 of which they routinely ignore, such as the "abominations" of the cheeseburger or using cotton thread to sew your linen clothes or turning on the lights on Friday night. A good goring and stoning would only be God's work, dontcha think? The work of that smelly little sociopathic God who lives in some dank invisible basement in some invisible world and tortures animals for fun?

There is no place in a sane and decent society for these sick bastards and the curious selection of perverted bronze age superstitions they'd like to replace our laws with. The Bible, or whatever dubiously assembled antique political documents they'd like to tell us is the backbone of existence and the source of all goodness, is simply not compatible with decency, truth, freedom and the safety of humans beings or their families. Freedom from being ruled by its self appointed priesthood has been the long struggle of our kind and I will not have it snatched from us after two centuries of secular Democracy by these evil men.

For I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,

said Jefferson.

Yes, me too.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

God retarded my baby

By Capt. Fogg

Giving birth to a disabled child is God's way of punishing women for having had a prior abortion, says Virginia Representative Bob Marshall, R-13th:

In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest.

Yes, it's redundant to mention that he's a Republican, a raging mob which for the last few decades has been the party of and a party to promoting such shameless indecencies. Of course, some biblical scholars tell us that the story of Abraham and Isaac was a priestly way of moving away from a prior and very ancient practice of sacrificial infanticide, but indeed, the first born male lamb in the flock of a Hebrew shepherd was to be sacrificed and the first born son was at one, very pre-Christian time, dedicated to service in the Temple.

Of course, there hasn't been a Temple since the 9th of Av in the year 70 CE, and Christians really don't hold with more than 9 or 10 of the 613 commandments and none of the Rabbinical laws, but that doesn't stop the kind of shoot-from-the-hip theology prevalent in these days of the senescence of American Christianity. Christians might suggest anything in truth, but if they're suggesting any such thing, it's a suggestion with no roots in the teachings of Jesus.

One might be tempted to ask Bob why, according to antique Jewish law largely set aside by Jesus and his followers, Christians who don't force their first born to become priests aren't subject to the same punishment, but his answer isn't very likely to enlighten us.

Surely anyone who still believes in a God with some tenuous attachment to decency if not actual justice will have trouble with the bloody Saturnine entity who condemns a child to a lifetime of pain and deformity because of something his mother did. But not Bob Marshall.

Some will have difficulty reconciling the position that it's indecent to mention that someone may be mentally retarded unless the mention is made by some pasquillant Republican creep like Limbaugh; but not Bob Marshall and probably not a large number of morally retarded, power hungry and profoundly ignorant Republican Theocrats who haven't bothered to consider that the enormously vast majority of children with deformities and defects and abnormalities are not born to mothers who aborted their first pregnancies.

Down Syndrome for one, seems more likely to affect children of older mothers. Conjoined twins, anencephalic babies, spina bifida, heart defects -- can anyone show any statistical correlation with sin? Of course not and anyone promising that virtuous people are less likely to give birth to lives affected by diseases and afflictions and deficiencies is likely to be a liar and an idiot, willing to use other people's tragedies to gain political power -- like Bob Marshall.

I await Sarah Palin's response to what could, amongst people who can actually reason consistently, be taken as an accusation of having had an abortion. I'm sure she'll choose to ignore it however, for fear of damaging the fabric of the alternate universe in which the ultra-right lives: where right and wrong, left and right, up and down are nebulous and interchangeable concepts and useful only to defame the enemies of these Insaneocrats and to yoke Jesus to their bandwagon like an ox.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Under my skin

By Capt. Fogg

It's strange to find myself on the same side of any fence with the Book of Revelation literalists, a group for which my loathing is nearly boundless. Nonetheless, the disturbingly Orwellian prospect of having RFID devices implanted in people so that their employers can track their movements scares hell out of them as much as it does me.

A Radio Frequency Identification Device is small enough to be placed under the skin with a hypodermic needle, and it's a great thing for keeping tabs on cattle or identifying lost dogs. They can also contain data, medical or otherwise, that can be read by a scanner. Most humans object to being forced to having one inserted, however, particularly as a substitute for a key or ID badge.

Civil libertarians -- indeed, any kind of libertarians -- tend to be militantly opposed to allowing this to be done to people, but it's of course for reasons of privacy and the protection thereof, not because they give credit to what may be the looniest book to worm it's way into the Christian canon. There are many such people in places like Virginia, and it seems to be they who are behind a bill designed to prevent such implants. Why? Because John of Patmos, almost 2000 years ago, had RFID capsules in mind when he talked about the Mark of the Beast.

He didn't, and the Beast is most likely Nero, but even if the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend, these things are the mark of some kind of beast, corporate or governmental, and I'm as much against it as they are.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Mark Sanford, you're no King David

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I haven't written anything on the Mark Sanford saga since Thursday morning, when I commented on his humanity and hypocrisy -- what he did was all-too-human, however bizarre the contortions of his trip to Argentina and the lies of those close to him, but also, given his conservative Republican moralism, deeply hypocritical as well.

Since then, more has come out. For example:

-- His wife, Jenny, now says she's known about the affair since January.

-- Fox News, hardly a media outlet to pass up sensationalism, whatever its partisan leanings, reported that the mistress, a 43-year old resident of Buenos Aires, is professional, passionate, and beautiful -- and a brunette.

-- Politico reported that Sanford had initially booked a 10-day trip.

-- TMZ.com found the bar Sanford and his mistress went to, the owner of which noted that the two were "all over each other," "kissing, holding hands and drinking wine."

-- The woman's name, apparently, is Maria Belen Chapur. And, apparently, she's hot.

-- And then there was Dear Leader Rush, once again proving himself to be a top blowhard among blowhards, and spewing his usual partisan venom, blamed Obama for Sanford's demise.

In that last post of mine, I said I felt sorry for Sanford -- and certainly more so for his family, especially his wife. Do I still? Yes, I suppose I do. I may not agree with him on, well, anything, but I am not without compassion. I recognize that what he has done is not just all-too-human but all-too-common, and maybe he truly is remorseful. I hope so.

But it's hard to feel sorry for him when he's comparing himself to King David.

Yes, that's right. King David:

I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.

May I say it again?

Mark Sanford... you're no King David. (Not that I knew King David, but I think I'm right.)

Now, I realize that the Bible is full of fictional(ized) stories meant to be edifying. And I realize, though I am neither Jew nor Christian (nor anything else of the kind), that those stories are not without value to all of us. They can say a lot to us, if we keep our minds open, and we can learn from them, Jew or Christian or not.

But come on... King David? Really? Is that the best comparison to be making at this point?

Sanford is saying many of the right things, and following the standard script -- confession, apology, determination to heal, dismissal of the story, hope that it fades from the media's attention -- but this wasn't one of them.

Now, should he resign? Well, that's not for me to say... ultimately, Sanford is answerable to the people of South Carolina, not to the rest of us onlookers and commentators. And South Carolinians are divided. A poll that was conducted shortly after his Wednesday press conference has it 50-42 in favour of resignation.

But Mark Sanford, to Mark Sanford, is King David, and he's not about to resign. (One of his advisors has said that resignation is not an option. Of course, that's what they always say.)

We shall see.

Headline of the Day (James Dobson edition)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From ABC News:

Dobson to Attack Obama Tuesday for Distorting the Bible, Having a "Fruitcake" Interpretation of the Constitution

Dobson's 18-minute radio segment has already been taped. It will air today. And, in it, he will say this: "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology."

Of course, that "traditional understanding of the Bible" underpins the fascist authoritarianism that is the core of Dobson's christianism, both in the home and in society in general.

In that christianist society, women ought to stay home, gays ought to be reformed, and children ought to obey: "By learning to yield to the loving authority... of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life -- his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers." And to be physically punished: "It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely."

Nothing tells you you're a good and decent human being quite like being attacked by the likes of James Dobson.