Cross Partially Removed from Water Tower ??

A while ago, I highlighted the case where the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the town of Whiteville, Tennessee, requesting they remove the cross the town had erected on the top of the water tower.  The mayor, James Bellar, called it an act of terrorism.

Well, to avoid losing what could have been an expensive court case, the town has indeed removed the 'cross' . . . sort of.  They simply cut off one of the arms.



Now it's not a cross, it's some abstract symbol or something.

Mayor Bellar had this mature thing to say:

"This brings to close a sad chapter in the history of Whiteville that can best be described as terroristic, cowardly and shameful! The fear and terror caused our older people here is shameful. So shame on your client and your firm!"

Yes, what a perfectly appropriate response to someone requesting you obey the law.  Shake your finger at them and cry, "Shame, shame shame!"

More Jack Chick weirdness

Jack Chick has a new tract, always a source of amusement. 



This one's called "The Awful Truth," and it by turns rehashes old Chick material and goes deep into new unfathomable territory.  This one focuses on how Satan rules the Earth and that the Catholic Church is behind every evil deed in the history of ever.

While I'm no fan of the Catholic Church myself, I'm not convinced they are behind the rise of Islam and the assassination of JFK.  But it seems strange to me that God is supposed to be all-powerful, and is the creator of a universe that's over 30 billion light-years wide, but can't prevent Satan from having free rein on Earth.

Separation of Church and State equals Terrorism

James Bellar, mayor of Whiteville, Tenn. feels that his community is under attack by terrorists.  Is this based on any violence waged against town residents?  Any intercepted communications involving plots to construct explosive devices or stage attacks?

No, it's because he got a letter in the mail. The Freedom From Religion Foundation warned Mayor Bellar they would sue if he didn't remove a cross erected on a town water tower eight years ago.

“They are terrorists as far as I’m concerned,” said Mayor James Bellar about the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “They are alleging that some Whiteville resident feels very, very intimidated by this cross..."

“A terrorist is more than a guy that flies the planes into the building,” he said. “It’s anyone who can disrupt your way of living, destroy your lifestyle, cause you anxiety. It’s more than killing people. If they can disrupt your routine in life, that’s what they want to do. They are terrorists as far as I’m concerned.”

Yes, because expecting other people to obey the law is just like flying planes into buildings.

While the cross was paid for by private funds, that it was erected on public property is a government endorsement of religion, says Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who received notice of the cross from an anonymous Whiteville resident. Even the Jackson Sun editorial called for the town to remove the cross. "God doesn't call governments to be Christians, he calls Christians to be Christians,” the newspaper wrote.

But Mayor Bellar shows the homogenous thinking typical in fundamentalist conservatives. He doesn't believe that the complaint originated locally. “As a matter of fact, I don’t even think it’s a Whiteville resident,” he said. “We don’t have people of that belief here and if we do they’re not going to raise that kind of ruckus for the rest of the town.”

Mayor Bellar would do well to both brush up on both the law and the diversity that can be found even in conservative Tennessee.

Pastor burgles parishioner for drugs

So it seems a woman noticed some of her prescription pain meds were missing.  Who do you suppose would be the culprit?

Prescription painkillers kept disappearing from her house, so a few months ago Jean Harris set up a surveillance camera outside. What she found was her minister, Pastor Rickey Alan Reed, 55, of First Free Methodist Church, trying to get inside her home.

This is the part that intriques me:

The day after she caught him on video, she said she called a church meeting and confronted Reed. He said he would get help. She said church members pressured her not to go to the police.

Police have charged Reed with aggravated burglary. Reed is free on bond, tensions are high at church, and police are investigating whether he may have broken into other homes looking for drugs. Harris, who has attended the church for 55 years, says church members have ostracized her.

I recall a song from church camp that went something like, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love."

Pastor Orders Flock to Beat Gay Couple

I've been told by Christian conservatives that their faith in Jesus makes them more loving and accepting, even of people whom they believe are engaged in sinful behavior like homosexuality.  The phrase, "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin," has been often used to summarize their position.

Too bad it didn't work in this case:

[W]ho could imagine the hate and rage that would motivate a Pastor to instruct deacons and members of his congregation, Grace Fellowship Church in Fruitland, TN. to physically attack a couple arriving in the church parking lot last Wednesday?

The fact that one of the gay men attacked happened to be the Pastor’s own son, Jerry Pittman, Jr., no doubt contributed to Pittman senior’s noxious edict. According to Pittman Jr., after hearing his Dad yell, “SICK’EM!:”

“My uncle and two other deacons came over to the car per my dad’s request. My uncle smashed me in the door as the other deacon knocked my boyfriend back so he couldn’t help me, punching him in his face and his chest. The other deacon came and hit me through my car window in my back.”

The situation was made worse when a Deputy Sheriff arrived.

Once the barrage of punches ended, the Deputy refused to let the two victims press charges.

I can't fathom how preventing someone from pressing charges after they've been assaulted would be legal. Maybe someone with a better legal understanding could enlighten me.

ACLJ: Money funnel for lawyers in the guise of religious liberty

Fred Clark of Slacktivist has a new piece on the the ACLJ, the American Center for Law and Justice, or the ACLJ.  The ACLJ poses itself as an alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, except the ACLJ doesn't stand up for anyone whose religious freedoms are being curtailed in America, only those who are evangelical Christians.

Not only does the ACLJ have the freedoms of only one religious group in mind, but it also stands against the freedoms of other competing religions, such as when it joined the resistance against the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (which is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque.) 

But Clark has highlighted how perhaps the true purpose of the ACLJ is to keep its head, Jay Sekulow and his family, rolling in the dough.  Sekulow also runs charities, and according to Bob Smietana writing for The Tennessean:

Since 1998, the two charities have paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities’ federal tax returns, known as form 990s.

One of the charities is controlled by the Sekulow family — tax documents show that all four of CASE’s board members are Sekulows and another is an officer...

Who knew that pretending persecution could pay so well?

Do Well by Doing Good

Do Well By Doing Good : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Chris Rodda, in an perhaps futile but ultimately admirable attempt to counter the lies of pseudo-historian David Barton regarding his Christian nationalism and the religious views of the American founding fathers, has decided to give away his her first of three books debunking this revisionist nonsense.

Well done, Chris, and thank you.


Edit: As correctly noted, Chris Rodda is female.  I've only read her writings, and perhaps my male chauvinism assumed that anyone with a name like Chris has to be of the male gender.  My apologies.

Lee Strobel's Easter Story

Last week the Wall Street Journal published Lee Strobel's story of how he pulled himself out of atheism to become a Christian.  It's a familiar story to anyone who's read his apologetic books.  Essentially, when his wife converted to Christianity, he studied the religion in order to debunk it and wound up convinced himself.

For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.

I'm curious what facts he evaluated other than the New Testament.

Was Jesus really executed? In my opinion, the evidence is so strong that even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann said his death by crucifixion was “indisputable.”

I've never heard of Lüdemann but Strobel was kind enough to link to his Wikipedia page, where we learn that Lüdemann was no mere 'atheist historian' but was in fact a German New Testament scholar. He wrote that "only about five per cent of the sayings attributed to Jesus are genuine and the historical evidence does not support the claims of traditional Christianity." For that bit of heresy he was dismissed as Chair of New Testament Studies. Wiki also cites that Lüdemann was convinced that 'his previous Christian faith, based as it was on Biblical Studies, had become impossible: 'the person of Jesus himself becomes insufficient as a foundation of faith once most of the New Testament statements about him have proved to be later interpretations by the community'.

So when exactly did Lüdemann say that the crucifixion of Jesus was 'indisputable'? Was it before, or after, he published his book on the historicity of Jesus? Is it possible that this 'atheist historian' no longer believes the crucifixion is on firm historical grounds? Sadly, Strobel doesn't say, and I'll wager that not very many of his readers are eager to find out.

Was Jesus’ tomb empty? Scholar William Lane Craig points out that its location was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. So if it hadn’t been empty, it would have been impossible for a movement founded on the resurrection to have exploded into existence in the same city where Jesus had been publicly executed just a few weeks before.

This of course assumes that the only reason a tomb can ever be empty is because a dead person walked out of it. Who confirmed beforehand that a dead Jesus was actually buried there? Who can confirm that the body of Jesus wasn't stolen or deliberately moved elsewhere before the tomb was discovered to be empty? If we find an empty hole in the ground at a graveyard, our first assumption isn't 'Resurrection!'

And how would a skeptic show off a non-empty tomb? Exhume someone's private property? Parade a rotting corpse through the streets? Better hurry with that--after only a few weeks the body's decomposition would make it unrecognizable. Most of all, why would a resurrection skeptic bother? Who gets worked up over the wacky claims of cultists enough to go to the trouble of trying to debunk them? Oh sure, after decades and centuries, when Christianity became a strong political force, someone might have wished they could produce the dead body and snuff a powerful religion, but of course by then it would be too late.

But in the weeks and months after the crucifixion, when the first written account of it didn't appear for decades afterwards, what non-Christian would even bother? Strobel and Craig want us to assume that within hours of the resurrection, Christianity was gaining converts by the thousands, and that if someone had only produced the body soon enough the whole religion would have been nipped in the bud. But that's not what happened. Christianity was a tiny fringe cult in a culture littered with them, and curiously enough, the early evangelists like Paul had better success planting churches in non-Jewish regions. It seems the farther away from Jerusalem Paul went, the easier time he had convincing people of his faith. Could that be because people in Jerusalem knew something that, say, those living in Rome did not? And of course, by the third and fourth centuries, when Christianity was strong and powerful, no debunking was possible.

For a modern-day illustration, the members of the Heaven's Gate cult were led to believe that an alien spaceship was hiding in the tail of comet Hale-Bopp which was on its way to Earth. They made this claim publicly, and shortly afterward they collectively committed suicide so that their souls would be transported to the UFO and taken to points unknown. But mark my words, if in three hundred years, Heaven's Gate becomes a major world religion, its apologists will ask critics why NASA didn't launch a probe to investigate the comet. Of course the answer is simple--because NASA has better things to do than to make sure that no one anywhere makes a false claim about the universe.

Besides, even Jesus’ opponents implicitly admitted the tomb was vacant by saying that his body had been stolen. But nobody had a motive for taking the body, especially the disciples. They wouldn’t have been willing to die brutal martyrs’ deaths if they knew this was all a lie.

This is non-starter argument. Grave robbers steal bodies all the time, particularly of those who may have had mystical powers or significance. And its possible that the body wasn't stolen but merely moved. After all, according to the gospels, Josephus had to bury Jesus quickly because it was almost sundown before the Sabbath. Suppose that on Sunday morning he moved Jesus' very dead body to his final resting place before the women arrived. Wouldn't that be an explanation for an empty tomb?

And the "martyrs don't die for a lie,' argument doesn't hold water. There's little to no evidence that the disciples were martyred, and those that we do have a record of dying a violent death were not put to death for seeing a resurrected person but for other reasons, such as encouraging heresy or political meddling. Executing someone doesn't make their religious convictions suddenly become true, particularly since we have no idea what would have happened if they *had* renounced their religious convictions in order to save their own necks. Suppose Peter had said, "Okay, I admit I made some parts up." Would he have suddenly been granted a reprieve, with a firm swat on the bottom and an admonition not to go around telling stories? I hardly think so.

Did anyone see Jesus alive again? I have identified at least eight ancient sources, both inside and outside the New Testament, that in my view confirm the apostles’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them.

Again with the lack of sources. In the New Testament, there are eye-witness sightings, most of them curiously involving a case of mistaken identity. What's more, as each gospel was written, the amount and complexity of the sightings becomes greater and greater, which looks like the growing of a legend.

Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet, according to the Bible, Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions – including 500 at once!

Collective hallucinations are not impossible, particularly in stressful situations. Here's just one recent account of 5,000 people, told that Mary would appear, who then reported they saw the sun dance in the sky. As for the reliability of 500 people seeing Jesus? Strobel quotes Paul's account in I Corinthians 15, but he wasn't one of the 500. Likely he got this suspiciously round figure from Peter. So a long line of unknown editors, copyists, and redactors have said that Paul said that Peter said that 500 people said that they all saw the exact same thing--namely a resurrected corpse standing on a hill somewhere. Except for the eyewitnesses who looked the risen Jesus in the face and doubted it was him, but neither we nor Strobel get to hear their side of the story.

In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.

If your atheism is based on faith, then you're doing it wrong.

The End of the World - any year now

Here's a fun site.  Pick your favorite year--past, present, or future--and find out which folks predicted the world would end in that year.  Who knows--maybe one of these years they'll be right!

I took a close look at the year 1988.  I was attending a Christian college then, and I remember the fuss that was made over a booklet passed around by the cartload.  It was called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988, by Edgar C. Whisenant.  Fellow students of mine were getting swept up in the hysteria.  Some of them accelerated their religious evangelizing, since the end was nigh.  Others expressed fear that they were going to get raptured before they could get married and have babies!  I looked at the book myself and didn't follow the logic, but the anticipation was infectious.  My friend was disgusted by the whole thing, and declared that if Jesus happened to be kicking off the Rapture in that year, he would now have to switch the date simply because the thing wouldn't have the same effect if everyone was anticipating it.  In other words, Jesus can't be outsmarted by some guy with a Bible and a Gregorian calendar.

At any rate, the fateful weekend passed, no heavenly trumpet sounded, and our lives continued unabated.  Whisenant responded to the press that the reason he was wrong about the Rapture year was because he had made a miscalculation somewhere--something to do with some ancient culture's calendar not having a year zero or somesuch--and that the Rapture really would happen, only the same time the following year, and this time was for certain!  But I don't recall anyone taking it seriously.

But that hasn't stopped others from making predictions of their own, as this site clearly demonstrates.

Christianity - An Irreverent History

Tim DeLaney writes a humorous monologue for the Secular Web Kiosk:

There is an omnipotent, omniscient God who has always existed. How do I know this, you ask? Well, I just do. Your mommy and daddy probably told you this; who are you to doubt them? Of course, the notion of omnipotence is a bit strange. Where did we get the idea of a God with infinite power? Why not just a God with great power, or one with quite a bit more power than we can imagine? I get the impression that theologians aren't very smart when it comes to infinity. It's probably better if you don't think too hard about it.

One day, presumably after having existed for the eternal past, He decides to create the universe. Why did He wait so long? For a negative eternity, He just sat there; we can only guess what He was thinking. Maybe He was counting down the integers, starting with the largest, and when He got down to zero, He did the creation thing. This seems as good a theory as any. Actually, the stock answer is that God is not subject to time. Well, maybe, maybe not. But it seems like a suspiciously convenient answer that was just made up because of the awkward question. Like the omnipotence thing, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to suppose God exists beyond time.

The rest is worth a look. Who made all this stuff up, anyway?

Billy Graham: Atheists argue because they are unsure of their unbelief

In the Kansas City Star, a reader asks Billy Graham a question about an atheist friend:

DEAR BILLY GRAHAM: My friend claims to be an atheist, and I don’t know what to say to him. I am a Christian, but he bombards me with questions I can’t answer and I feel stupid. He really needs Jesus because his life is kind of messed up, but I’m afraid I’m not a good witness. What can I do? — P.G.

I'm not sure how "messed up" is being used here--is the atheist messed up due to personal or financial difficulties, or because he isn't a Christian? At any rate, Billy Graham's answer is enlightening:

DEAR P.G.: The most important thing you can do is to pray for your friend. You can’t change his heart and mind; even if you answered every argument he threw at you, he’d probably still keep clinging to his unbelief.

I'm also not sure how someone clings to an unbelief any more than someone stubbornly refuses to collect stamps. But when Christians hold true to their faith, come what may, that's supposed to be virtuous.

The Holy Spirit is far greater than we are, and he is able to break through even the hardest heart. The Bible says that “When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8).

In this case, 'sin' is probably, 'not believing in the existence of the Holy Spirit.' So we find ourselves in the situation where the Holy Spirit will some day induce guilt in atheists for not believing in the Holy Spirit's ability to induce guilt in atheists due to a lack of evidence of the Holy Spirit inducing guilt in atheists.

The other thing you can do, however, is to be an example to your friend of Christ’s love and transforming power, both by your words and your life. Even the strongest argument can’t stand up to the reality of a changed life. The Bible says, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity” (Colossians 4:5).

Now that's good advice, and a decent scripture verse as well. Be wise to outsiders and live a good life.

I suspect that down inside your friend is unsure of his convictions; otherwise why would he feel compelled to argue so much?

Says the preacher who argued for his faith before millions.

Don’t be discouraged, and don’t give up on him. Some of God’s greatest servants over the centuries were once atheists.

And many notable atheists were raised Christian, but perhaps they fall under the category of 'messed up.'

Freedom is Wonderful, but Only for Me

Fred Clark of Slacktivist responds to the Southern Baptist hierarch spokesman Richard Land's complaints that certain judges or administration officials may make rulings that are "against the will of the people."  Clark writes:

Implicit in this is a notion of democracy that we've encountered again and again among American evangelical Christians attempting to engage in politics. It is the idea that democracy means everything is subject to the will of the majority -- including the rights of minorities, which therefore aren't rights at all, merely privileges permitted or withheld by the sentiment of the majority. It is, bluntly, the idea that democracy is just a fancy word for mob rule.

We see this in things like the absurd annual ritual of the so-called "war on Christmas" and in a thousand similar obsessive resentments of imagined offenses. We see it in the ugliness of the anti-mosque movement. We see this in the fear that equality under the law for GLBT people will somehow constitute an infringement of the religious liberty of those who regard homosexuality as a sin (this despite the hard-to-miss fact that Fred Phelps remains free to say whatever vile things he wishes, whenever and wherever he wishes). We see it in the aggressive sectarian impulse to piss on trees and mark territory by erecting officially sanctioned sectarian holiday displays or Ten Commandments plaques or official prayers and other ostentations of sectarian allegiance.

Would that every Christian believer understand the difference between the rule of law, and the rule of the mob.

R. Albert Mohler: Evolution Makes Atheists

R. Albert Mohler, commentator for the Christian Post, explores the so-called "New Atheists" and explains for his readers how Darwin's theory of Natural Selection has led directly to the up-front-and-center status of famous atheists, specifically Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, etc.

Atheism has appeared in some form in Western cultures since the midpoint of the last millennium. The word “atheist” did not even exist within the English language until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

While this is true, it's misleading. "Atheism" has been in use in Ancient Greece since at least the fifth century BCE, and the English word atheism was derived from the French word athéisme. Mohler makes it sound that no one had ever heard of the word atheism until the sixteenth century, but by the same token, the words theism and deism didn't enter the English language until the seventeenth century. Should we conclude that theism--the belief in God--is a relatively modern concept? That no one believed in God until the 1600s?

The word “atheist” did not even exist within the English language until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The earliest atheists were most often philosophical and theological skeptics who denied the existence of any personal God. Nevertheless, the God they almost always rejected is the God of the Bible – in other words, a specific rejection of Christianity.

I'm not sure of Mohler's point here, assuming that it's even true--how many other religions were prevalent in Elizabethan England? Is Mohler suggesting that atheists are merely Christian bashers?

Mohler continues by noting that early atheists failed to gain intellectual ground because they don't have a Creation Mythos:

As even the ancient Greeks understood, one of the most fundamental philosophical questions is this: Why is there something, rather than nothing? Every worldview is accountable to that question. In other words, every philosophy of life must offer some account of how we and the world around us came to be.

They must? I'm not sure how that is enforced. At any rate, I agree that it appears to be universal to wonder about our origins. However, that some thinkers were forced to honestly conclude "I don't know" does not mean their other ideas must inherently be wrong, as Mohler implies. When a jury fails to convict a murder defendant due to the prosecution's weak case, it is not required for the jury to provide an alternative suspect.

What Mohler and many religious defenders don't understand is that atheism is a response. It is the second-half of a two-part dialogue. When someone makes a claim and can provide no evidence for it--or bad evidence--all anyone else need do is evaluate the claim and either believe or disbelieve. It is not necessary for that person to then come up with an alternative claim that is equally satisfactory to all concerned. The claims--whether they are about the existence of ghosts, of God, or of the efficacy of homeopathy--should stand on their own, not be immune to criticism until some other claim can be safely erected in their place. Bad ideas should be purged at once, regardless if there are no other alternatives.

Next Mohler attributes the rise of atheism to Darwin's influence, and makes much of Dawkin's remarks that evolution allows atheists to be "intellectually fulfilled":

Prior to the development of the theory of evolution, there was no way for an atheist to settle on any clear argument for why the cosmos exists or why life forms appeared. Darwin changed all that. The development of Darwinian evolution offered atheism an invaluable intellectual tool – an account of beginnings.

Mohler is confused. Evolution has nothing to say about the origins of the universe, the sun, the planets, or of life on Earth. Those are all topics of other scientific disciplines, and isn't it interesting that they all independently point to the same conclusions, whereas if you ask three religious people about the nature of God you get six answers. All that Evolution by Natural Selection attempts to explain is the diversity of living species on this earth. That this explanation runs counter to Genesis is not the fault of the evolutionary scientists nor the atheists who accept their theories.

The New Atheists have emerged as potent public voices. They write best-selling books, appear on major college and university campuses, and extend their voices through institutional and cultural influence. The movement is new in the sense that it differs from the older atheism in several respects, and one of these is the use of science in general, and evolutionary theory in particular, as intellectual leverage against belief in God.

Much in the same way that modern astronomers differ from their older, medieval astronomer counterparts by using the latest scientific tools which provide more accurate results. Mohler uses the products of modern science (computers, electricity, the internet) to criticize other people for doing the same thing.

Daniel Dennett, another of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism, has argued that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a “universal acid” that will burn away all claims of the existence of God.

This is a deliberate misquote. The "universal acid" comment comes from Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" where Dennett writes that evolution "eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.” For an example of this "revolutionized world-view" compare a modern-day Theistic Evolutionist such as Michael Francis Collins** or countless other Christian believers--who believe that God's finest tool of Creation is Natural Selection--with a eighteenth-century uneducated Christian farmer. Both believe the same thing--"God created the Heavens and the Earth"--but the latter former* also accepts that perhaps bronze-age Biblical authors didn't have quite the understanding of reality as we do today, and that therefore our expression of our "Creation Myths" could perhaps stand some tweaking.

The New Atheists would have no coherent worldview without the Dogma of Darwinism. With it, they intend to malign belief in God and to marginalize Christians and Christian arguments. Thus, we can draw a straight line from the emergence of evolutionary theory to the resurgence of atheism in our times. Never underestimate the power of a bad idea.

How curious that Mohler doesn't spend one word explaining why evolution is a bad idea. It leads people away from simple-minded dogmatic belief in God, so it must be evil, and anyone who likes evolution must be just as evil--which would be a curious idea to the millions of Christians who have no problem accepting the major tenets of evolution, even if they disagree whose hands are at the wheel. Mohler would prefer that his readers close their minds, open their Bibles, and believe what they're told.

* Mistaken modifier.
** Wrong name.

Walter Hudson contradicts himself on atheist politicians

Walter Hudson, co-founder of Minnesota's North Star Tea Party Patriots, is surprised at Teresa Scanlan, the 17-year-old young woman who won the 2011 Miss America title.  The beauty queen was asked during competition if she would vote for an atheist, and Scanlan replied, 'Yes.'

Hudson cites an online poll at the website God Discusssion, where a refreshing 93% of respondents agreed with Ms. Scanlan, and 5% replying they would not vote for an atheist.  But he takes pride in siding with the extreme minority:

I must admit, I am among the 5% who, in this hypothetical context, would not vote for an atheist. There is a very practical and wholly irreligious reason.

Hudson goes on to cite the old canard that atheists can't enforce law because they don't acknowledge the source of Natural Law--meaning Hudson's version of God--as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. What Hudson doesn't appear to realize--or doesn't want his readers to know--is the the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document for the United States, and thus has no bearing on our laws or lawmakers. The Declaration was little more than a letter written to a king, establishing a moral argument why the American colonies should break free from English rule. It's an important historical document, to be sure, but no one should be citing it for legal arguments anymore than they should be perusing it for baked chicken recipes or how to construct a windmill.

So having set up a strawman for him to take a firm stand against, Hudson goes on to contradict himself by saying that despite one's religious views, a candidate's political views trumps all:

Again, we’re talking about a hypothetical situation where all else is equal. Surely, if my choice were between a professing believer who is also a socialist and an atheist Tea Party candidate, I would vote for the latter.

I suspect Hudson is confused. He'll vote for the Tea Party candidate, even if he believes they don't know right from wrong.

Superstition in the Supreme Court

Sadly, one can graduate from law school while still believing in Satan.  No word yet on whether the belief in the Tooth Fairy, Cthulu, or leprechauns is required to pass the bar exam.

"What do you think about Satan?" That's not a typical question at the Supreme Court, but those words were indeed uttered by Justice Scalia on January 10. The question drew a near belly laugh from the packed gallery, leaving one to wonder whether the Devil has become nothing more than a joke in modern America...

As I bowed my head to pray, I asked the Almighty (who now is publicly replaced by silence if not yet laughter) to bind a Devil who seems to be quite actively at work (as evidenced by the actions of a deranged young atheist in Tuscon) even while the real possibility of his evil existence is ignored in the hearts of men and the halls of earthly power.

If Satan was a real evil entity, the United States government would have sold him weapons long ago.

Bill O'Reilly: God of the Gaps explains what I don't understand

Bill O'Reilly knows God exists.  Why?  Because there are tides. 

Mr. O'Reilly apparently worships a moon deity.

Jack Chick tract: Uninvited

I never fail to be amused by the hateful self-righteousness of Jack Chick tracts.  A new one is up called Uninvited.

In summary: All homosexual men were molested as children.
All AIDS patients are gay.
God hates gays.

(Never mind that this would mean that all gays have AIDS.)

The Christian figure, a female nurse, having told the AIDS patients that their homosexuality is what put them into the hospital in the first place, retells her own conversion story.  At the age of six, she had been raped, and she staggered into a church for help.  She asks the pastor, "I want to die.  Can Jesus help me?"  To which the pastor answers, "Yes, child, yes!"  (Psst.  Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut.)

Then the nurse announces that if it hadn't been for Jesus allowing her to be raped and brutally beate--that is, for forgiving her of her dreadful sins . . . "I could have become a lesbian--or worse!"  Exactly what is worse than a lesbian is left to the imagination.

Jack Chick is an effective spokesperson for atheism.

Dear Charles Lewis: you just *think* you don't care

Charles Lewis, religion writer for the National Post writes an absurd attack piece against atheists, showing that despite the title "Dear atheists: most of us don't care what you think," Mr. Lewis does indeed feel threatened by them.  His message of "Sit down and shut up!" is not because atheists are taking up too much precious time of the national dialogue talking about trivia, but because atheists are finding a voice, and others are beginning to listen. 

He calls Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens "dreary," and that debating with atheists is a waste of time.  Why?  "Most atheists do not have a clue what religion is about."  Of course this is an outright lie, given that many atheists once were raised in religious households, and surveys show that atheists know more about religion than Protestants and Catholics.

Next he trots out North Korea as the quintessential atheistic society, while conveniently ignoring the Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway, countries that are largely peopled with atheists and are models of societal health.  Mr. Lewis, here's a simple quiz for you:

* Atheism plus Totalitarianism makes for an unhealthy society (North Korea, Stalin's Russia, etc.)
* Religion plus Totalitarianism makes for an unhealthy society (Nazi Germany, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

Can you spot what those two items have in common?

Lewis continues the strawman attacks: "Atheists are under the ridiculous illusion that religious people think that all they have to do is call out to God and help will be on the way."

Right, because religious people never pray when action would be more useful.  Parents never watch their children die because they chose to pray over a treatable illness rather than seek medical attention.  Jesus never said that whatever you ask for in prayer, just believe that you'll receive it, and it will be yours (Mark 11:24).

Lewis likes the monk Thomas Merton, quoting him twice:

Thomas Merton also said: “Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

He could have said the same thing about faith.

And he could have said the same thing about fetishism, mindless devotion, and superstition.  But why let facts get in the way of a baseless attack against atheists, backed with no supporting evidence?

Debate: William Dembski vs. Christopher Hitchens - "Does a good God exist?"

Last week I attended a debate between William Dembski and Christopher Hitchens, hosted by the Biblical Worldview Institute, a conference held by Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, Texas. The subject of the debate was "Does a Good God exist?"


William Dembski is a Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, and has authored several books on Intelligent Design.

Christopher Hitchens is an English-American author and journalist, a public intellectual who has written several books in politics and religious criticism.

The audience was primarily the middle-school and high-school members of the private Christian school, and by itself it is impressive that the administrators would invite a well-known atheist to speak to the students. They certainly wouldn't have allowed the same at the private school I attended as a teenager. The debate was also open to the public for those interested. The comment was made that given the younger audience, the debaters agreed to shorten their statements, although the entire debate was still nearly three hours long.

There are two aspects to the debate I'll address: content and delivery. Debates are unlike essays or speeches, in that they invoke a sense of theater. A debater can have a rock-solid message, but if his performance is lackluster the message falls flat. Conversely, a natural showman can whip a crowd into a frenzy with mere platitudes and buzzwords.

Hitchens had the opening statement, whose content did not address the topic, does a good god exist, but was instead more of a justification for disbelief. He correctly explained that an expanding universe is evidence that this universe was not created for humanity's benefit, and he recommended Francis Collins' book The Language of God as a Christian's embrace of the Theory of Evolution. Hitchens shared that he disbelieves in God because he's opposed to the notion a permanent authority, "a king who cannot be opposed, a judge who can not be appealed." He encouraged the students to shed the ideas that we are the purpose of the universe and that we should be in thrall to a dictator.

Dembski's opening statement was almost entirely an argument against evolution by natural selection. His remarks made it clear that evolution leads to atheism, so his method of proving that God exists is to discount evolution. Dembski mentioned several well-worn statements about Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution, such as the complexity of the cell and the patterns in nature.

Hitchens' rebuttal noted that atheism is nearly as old as humanity and has thus long preceded evolution. Hitchens wondered out loud why religious organizations are so hostile to scientific discoveries, and he also reminded the audience that millions of Christians around the world accept evolution as God's method of creation.

For Dembski's rebuttal, he agreed that atheism may predate evolution, but it doesn't predate naturalism, which is the larger threat to religion. Finally, Dembski began addressing the topic, the existence of a good God. First he claimed there are two problems we humans confront: a Problem of Evil, in which evil exists in a world managed by a good God, and the Problem of Good, the notion that good exists at all. Dembski asserted that the Problem of Good outweighs the Problem of Evil, but didn't spend much time defining the Problem of Good or why it is a problem at all. He also employed the time-worn argument that for us to declare God evil must mean that God violated a standard, but since God *is* the standard, the charge is incoherent. He also cautioned that our desire for evil to be eradicated *now* doesn't apply to a timeless God. Too bad for us time-bound humans, I suppose.

The debate moved to the Q and A section, where audience members submitted questions for the two speakers. Curiously, the Q and A devolved into a back-and-forth such that only a couple of questions were asked, but the moderator said that several of the questions were addressed during their repartee. However, the questions that the moderator asked also weren't related to the debate, but were questions about evolution or the Big Bang.

All in all, I was a little disappointed in Hitchen's content, although he certainly addressed the debate topic far more than Dembski. While Hitchens may have shortened his statements, I'm not sure he simplified his content for the young teenagers in the room. I've read several of his books and articles and while I can't fault his intelligence and sparkling vocabulary, given his British accent and obscure subject matter, I'm afraid most of his message went right over the heads of the Twitter-texting crowd.

However, Hitchens' performance made up for the obscurity of his message. Looking at him, you couldn't tell he was suffering from Stage 4 esophogus cancer with the exception of his fashionably hairless skull. He seemed strong and alert, and I was glad to see him strong and vigorous. Initially his performance was reserved, but grew more comfortable as the debate wore on, and his closing arguments were worth the price of admission. Dembski made the mistake of extolling the virtues of Mother Teresa (of whom Hitchens has a low opinion of) and by claiming the Nazis were secularists. These seemed to draw the ire of Hitchens, understandably not as comfortable arguing the ins and outs of evolution. Instead, he closed by encouraging the young people in the room to think for themselves and that any offer from God that you can't reject is not an offer but a threat.

However, all of my criticisms of Hitchen's content and performance are swept away in the lackluster display put on by Dembski. For starters, Dembski's comments were read directly from notes, and were about as interesting as you would expect when someone reads a speech at you. Furthermore, the notes appear to have been written for another opponent, namely Richard Dawkins. When arguing against evolution, Dembski quoted Dawkins several times, and even referred to Christopher Hitchens as "Richard . . . Hitchens" more than once. Dembski complained that once he started working with Intelligent Design his career began to suffer because, "Ideology rules the debate." Actually, Dr. Dembski, the reason your scientific career has suffered since you hitched your wagon to ID is because ID is bad science, not because you are a Christian. There are few countries in the world where it is more acceptable to be a Christian, so your martyr's plea falls on deaf ears.

In short, while both debaters' performance could have been more tailor-made for the audience, Hitchens won this debate handily. Dembski's performance was dull, barely addressed the topic, and was riddled with fallacies.

If Paul's Epistle to the Galatians was Published in Christianity Today

This is a funny article:

Dear CT:

I’ve seen other dubious articles by Paul Apostle in the past, and frankly I’m surprised you felt that his recurrent criticisms of the Church deserved to be printed in your magazine. Mr. Apostle for many years now has had a penchant for thinking he has a right to “mark” certain Christian teachers who don’t agree with his biblical position. Certainly I commend him for desiring to stay faithful to God’s word, but I think he errs in being so dogmatic about his views to the point where he feels free to openly attack his brethren. His attitude makes it difficult to fully unify the Church, and gives credence to the opposition’s view that Christians are judgmental, arrogant people who never show God’s love.

Ken Groener; San Diego, CA