Here in the United States of America this Thursday, May 1st is the National Day of Prayer.

New York City Atheists has made a tradition of donating blood as a group on that day. A reminder that actions speak louder than words, especially magic words uttered to an imaginary friend.

A National Day of Reason has been proposed as an answer to the National Day of Prayer. The website lists events that different groups are hosting. As far as I can tell no representatives of the White House will be making appearances.

I will be in the air much of that day flying halfway across the country. I hope that the pilots, controllers, ticket agents, baggage handlers, mechanics, flight attendants, and everyone else involved in getting me safely to my destination isn't wishing but reasoning, otherwise I don't have a prayer.

Those kooky clerics which administer that kitschy tourist destination that is the Holy Sepulchre are at it, and each other again according to this from the BBC:

"Israeli police had to break up a fist fight that erupted between Greek and Armenian Orthodox clergymen at one of Christianity's holiest sites.

The scuffles broke out at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Orthodox Palm Sunday."

You might remember that the priests made the news in late December when they wailed on each other (instead of the wailing wall) with brooms, rocks, and I would assume a little wizardry, in a demonstration of Christmas spirit.

So are these organizations placing their beefier priests to this site? Maybe a little hand to hand combat training before being airlifted in? Maybe they should take what their priests are handing them and start advertising regularly scheduled melees for the muscular religious tourist.

A tip of the Homburg to Ayrshire Blog.

"The eternal spirit of Freethought is the spirit of doubt. Freethought never ceases to inquire, to question, and to deny. It utterly abhors faith. It makes no terms with a submissive mind."

-Samuel P. Putnam

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."

-Anon.

If you are looking for more about the fundagelical phenomenon that is the movie "Expelled" the National Center for Science Education has set up a page called Expelled Exposed with a list of links following some of the excitement and the offer of more to come.

I spotted the following on the sign in front of a small town Iowa church:

"Waiting on God"

Sleeping in shifts maybe.

Arthur C. Clarke

Today from the AP:

"ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) — A U.N. tribunal has extended the sentence of a (Roman Catholic-g) priest to life in prison after upholding his war crimes conviction for ordering militiamen to burn and bulldoze a church with 1,500 people inside during the 1994 Rwandan genocide."

It continues:

"Seromba (the priest-g) was convicted of leading a militia that attacked the people and poured fuel through the roof of the church, while police threw grenades inside. After failing to kill everybody inside the church, Seromba ordered it to be demolished, the tribunal found."

and he wasn't alone:

"Priests, nuns and followers were implicated in the killings and some churches were sites of notorious massacres."

So yesterday the Scotsman reported:

"One of Scotland's most senior Catholics has launched an attack on the "gay lobby" in Scotland, claiming there is a "huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy" against Christian values.

The Rt Rev Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell and president of the Catholic Education Commission, said gay rights organisations aligned themselves with minority groups, such as Holocaust survivors, to project an "image of a group of people under persecution".

The following however has to be Joseph Devine's money shot: wherein he laments that homosexuals are not simply jailed like in the good ole days:

"In this New Year's honours list, I saw actor Ian McKellen being honoured for his work on behalf of homosexuals, when a century ago Oscar Wilde was locked up and put in jail. "It's a very small group of people, but very active and organised – and extremely indulgent. The opposition know exactly what they're doing. We don't."

If you want to read the words of a truly awful person read the whole Scotsman article and everything Joseph Devine says.

And just a few days ago the venerable old church of Rome published a list of very very serious old sins like stealing, coveting your neighbor's wife...or his ass, some of the same ones Poppy continually hammers on like contraception (really...I know) and abortion, and some new ones like polluting and dabbling in DNA.

Of course pedophilia is mentioned and ya know, it's bad. Why it has even infected some of the clergy (just in the last few hundred to one thousand years)! But hey, the church is dealing with it. Anyway the media is mostly to blame though for reporting on it in the first place-right?

I'm impressed that this organization still feels it is up to telling others how they should live. Big balls man, big balls.

Five Islamic leaders and Five Vatican officials are getting together to talk about getting together later. According to Radio Free Europe:

"The preparatory talks are the result of a Muslim call for dialogue that followed a controversial 2006 speech by Benedict that seemed to link Islam with violence. That speech, in the German city of Regensburg, angered Muslims worldwide.

Benedict later tried to make amends when he visited Turkey and prayed in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul together with its imam. A year later, a Jordanian prince, Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, brought together 138 Muslim scholars and leaders from 43 countries to issue an unprecedented open letter to the pope urging peace.

The current talks are the result of that letter, which stated that "the very survival of the world itself" might depend on dialogue between the two faiths."

I can't imagine how two peace loving faiths each containing the absolute truth could be a danger to the world.

Maybe upon looking at and discussing their respective ideologies they will discover that both are nonsensical and quit their former positions. They will then devote their time to working up a set or two of speed metal tunes extolling the virtues of rationalism and freethought. Next will be the world tour with shows in Rome, Mecca, and Budokan.

Or maybe they will argue about unprovable and unfalsifiable assertions after which they will issue a press release about how we can all be friends. Once they return home they will lecture their people on how we can all be friends and also how those other guys are extremely dangerous to world peace and are going to Hell.

Have a good Rationalist Day everyone.


-g

A week ago in the LA Times:

"For the second time in six months, Buena Park pastor Wiley S. Drake has called on his followers to pray for the demise of leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Last week, Drake learned that the IRS had launched an investigation into his endorsement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential bid, an inquiry that Americans United had urged."

And the article continues:

"As he had in August, Drake quoted Psalm 109, which speaks of wicked and deceitful people and asks God to let such a person's days be few and let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

"In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God, I ask the children of God to go into action with imprecatory prayer," he wrote. (End Quote)


So why is there not a warrant for the arrest of this mad man for laying down a vicious prayer threat against his enemies at AU?! For Peter, Paul, and Mary's sake! He has asked his true believing followers to call down upon his enemies and their descendants the wrath of the most powerful being in or outside of or whatever, the Universe! Oh the tragedy that will befall those who are magically attacked by curse wielding radicals, surely something must be done by the civil authorities!!

I know, maybe the authorities are hesitant to take action against this powerful Baptist shaman and his legion of wish warriors out of fear for their own families and their own safety.

Or maybe we as a society just don't believe that curses have any effect whatsoever. Maybe even those who give lip service to such medieval notions know that it would be ridiculous to take imprecatory prayers seriously. If one were to run out into the street screaming in fear for their life due to a prayer attack directed at them they would be treated as someone with psychiatric problems and not as the victim of any real world threat and rightly so. Hopefully they would get the help they need, which incidentally doesn't include prayer.

If a prayer threat were to be accompanied by an actual real world threat of violence it would be a serious matter but a curse, with maybe some King James English for effect, is only disgusting and laughable. We accept this or else there would be a stronger reaction when some nutball called for a prayer war against his enemies and their families.

It is a criminal act for a pastor to call for his followers to physically assault his adversaries. By calling for prayer assaults our religious leader demonstrates to the rest of the world that his ideology is nothing more than hate filled superstitious bullshit. We as a society demonstrate that we recognize the nonsense of his position by granting it the consideration it deserves.

My wife’s sister is in her first year as Drama teacher at a Catholic High School in the Kansas City area. The school has a tradition of high quality theater and I, like the rest of her family, am proud of my sister-in-law and her accomplishments.

Their latest production was “The Laramie Project” which wrapped up on Saturday, my wife and I attended the last performance. If you aren’t familiar with the show, “The Laramie Project” deals with the aftermath and reactions to the brutal killing of a young gay man, Matthew Shepard, in Laramie Wyoming in 1998. Matthew was killed because he was gay. A playwright and a theater troupe traveled to the area and talked to locals about the killing and what it meant then turned parts of the actual interviews into the show. The characters are actual persons using their actual words.

The set was unobtrusive; just platforms creating multiple levels draped with white cloth and three black chairs. Characters walked on and off stage to deliver short monologues, conduct bits of interviews, or recreate short scenes such as press conferences. Each actor played multiple roles. Normally a spot would fall on the part of the stage where the action was while the rest of the stage was left in relative darkness.

From some of the characters came reactions one might expect such as (paraphrasing): “Laramie is a small town, things like that don’t happen here,” or “I don’t agree with that lifestyle but nobody deserves what happened to that young man.”

It seemed many of the characters were really doing some questioning of what they believed about their town, their society, and themselves. There were characters who voiced their concern that “people say that sort of thing doesn’t happen here...but it did.”

There were three clerics portrayed in the play. The first was a Baptist minister who reluctantly spoke a bit on the phone with the interviewers. He filled out the stereotype of the good ol’ regressive and judgmental Baptist preacherman that the Baptists must want to encourage since they continue to produce them. If you remember the Matthew Shepard killing you may recall that Matthew was savagely beaten and tied to a fence out on the prairie and left to die. The Baptist preacher told the interviewer that he hoped that Matthew had time to reflect on his lifestyle and repent while his life was draining away out there all alone. Blaming the victim is an old game.

The second cleric was a Unitarian. I think that he mentioned early on that he had just arrived in Laramie and so was already a little lost. He joked that his church was comprised of mostly humanists many of whom were atheists and who didn’t even know if theirs was a religion. He came off as overwhelmed and baffled by the whole thing, in his shoes I probably would’ve been as well.

The final cleric was a Roman Catholic Priest. He organized a vigil after the attack and he talked openly with the interviewers about the killing and the aftermath. He commented that he had considered contacting his Bishop before organizing the vigil but then just did it, saying that it was the right thing to do whether a Bishop agreed or not, rock on. He also said that most of the other faith hawkers in town were keeping quiet about the whole thing, waiting to see where things went. At least they were only being useless.

One thing the priest said that stuck with me was (again paraphrased) “the two young men who killed this boy need to be teachers. They need to show us where all of this came from.”

From the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church:

“Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Or how about this from the "Letter To The Bishops of the Catholic Church On The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition):

"Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."

Hmmm.

Chapman Cohen was the president of the National Secular Society of Britain from 1915 to 1949 (a pretty lengthy run dontcha think?) and one of the first writers I stumbled across when I began reading freethought literature on the web. Chapman Cohen was a steady writer turning out at least 6 or 7 books and a load of essays, most of which were published in the Freethinker, the NSS periodical.

Chapman Cohen's essays are great basic reading for the budding or even the grizzled freethinker. Cohen's takes on ethics, religion, and culture are clear, well reasoned, and while some deal with specific events and in these instances may be a bit dated they still pack a punch. He could be wry at times but used seasoning sparingly to good effect, a backhanded compliment here and there might raise an eyebrow.

You can read some of Cohen's essays at the Secular web, Positive Atheism, American Atheists site, and Christopher Hitchens has seen fit to include Cohen in The Portable Atheist. If you really enjoy Cohen's stuff I recommend the two volume set "Essays in Freethinking" produced by and available from American Atheist Press. The set is nice looking inside and out and contains an introduction by Madalyn O'Hair (she signed her name thusly in these volumes).

"God, today, no longer represents the same forces as in the beginning of His existence; neither does He direct human destiny with the same Iron hand as of yore. Rather does the God idea express a sort of spiritualistic stimulus to satisfy the fads and fancies of every shade of human weakness. In the course of human development the God idea has been forced to adapt itself to every phase of human affairs, which is perfectly consistent with the origin of the idea itself."

-Emma Goldman

According to Reuters the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief was in Jerusalem of all places, on Sunday to denounce religious violence:

Asma Jahangir has called on Israel and the Palestinian authorities to denounce all violence inflicted in the name of religion, the United Nations said on Monday.

Jahangir, a Pakistani human rights activist, also criticized Israel for laws barring non-religious people from marrying there, and condemned the mistreatment of women and "intolerance" of Christians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

She had plenty to say to many different parties. It is good to see the mention of rights of nonbelievers and the freedom FROM religion that is a fundamental human right. She had much to say about the plight of women:

In the Palestinian territories, "women seem to be in a particularly vulnerable situation and bear the brunt of religious zeal," she said, adding that she had heard "of 'honor killings' carried out with impunity ...in the name of religion."

According to these reports, she said, "some women in Gaza have recently felt coerced to cover their heads, not out of religious conviction but out of fear."