I grant that not all Christians are closed-minded bigots. The question is why do so many close-minded bigots think of themselves as Christians? Is it something about Christianity (or religion in general) that attracts them to it?

I was debating with someone yesterday about who is and isn't a "true" Christian. I was told that a "true" Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. But isn't a Christian someone who is a member of a Christian religion, I countered? Isn't that a more useful distinction? Wouldn't a follower of Jesus's teachings be better labeled a Jesusist? Otherwise what do you do with all those misguided souls who love Jesus for his "only way to heaven" side but ignore the "liberal" pacifist epigram-spouting side that inspires lefties? Well if you call those people Christians, my worthy opponent said, then you'll make the mistake of painting the followers of the teachings with the same broad brush when you criticize "Christians" or "the church" for sending members out to vote en masse to repeal marriage equality acts (for example).

Fair enough, I thought to myself. (I wasn't able to express it because the thread was locked before I could. ) But that doesn't change the fact that those right-winged bigots are Christians, does it? Or does it? Why do so freaking MANY of these misguided souls who can't make themselves love the poor or welcome immigrants or praise marriage between two people in love regardless of their gender--why do they flock to Christian churches? What is up with that? Shouldn't we make a distinction then between followers of the epigrams and people who call themselves Christians?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/nyregion...

By MICHAEL POWELL 9:25 PM ET
New York’s Democrats are pointing fingers at President Obama, who did not campaign for their mayoral candidate, and the City Council speaker, among others.



You fucking phonies! If you wanted to win, yoi should have fucking thought of that months ago!

Especially from those twits of my race and gender in Mississippi and Alabama.

I don't think yesterday was necessarily a referendum on Obama. But I do think Obama will be in trouble if people don't start feeling a real change. We're sick of the rotten, Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Gingrich-DeLay corrupted, festering swamp of American politics. People want a sea change. Obama should think about how to deliver that. Now, before it really is too late.

Pointed out by "captainhowdy of AK" in the comments to Comfort's reply to Eugenie Scott on the US News blog "God and Country," which is running a dialogue between Comfort and Scott about the Comfort-sponsored edition of The Origin of Species with a creationist "introduction." Comfort's organization is planning to distribute hundreds of thousands of copies to college students for free this month to mark the 150th anniversary of the book's publication:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/god-and-countr...

Ray just apologized on his blog for misrepresenting biology!
On November 2nd, Ray in his reply to Dr. Scott tells us that:


"Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female."


Then on his blog, THE VERY NEXT DAY, MIND YOU, Ray apologizes for misrepresenting the Darwinian account of the evolution of sexual reproduction. Here it is:




You can read it yourself on his blog: http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com /


Oh, as far as his agenda goes, Ray's already told us what his agenda REALLY is, also on that very same blog:


"I have never hidden my agenda. All I want is for people to doubt evolution enough to re-examine the claims of the gospel."


--Ray Comfort 9/27/2009


Ray Comfort, a smarmy televangelist, is lecturing an actual biologist about biology, and in mid-debate actually apologizes for misrepresenting biology in another venue.


I hope Dr. Scott is reading this. Ray Comfort will say absolutely anything to gain a convert to his religion. Ray Comfort is the Billy Mays of televangelists.

We all have our theories, I'm sure. What interests me, however, is what people who believe in the God of today think about this, assuming they agree that there was some evolution from those gods to this one. (Or do you agree? If you think this God is sui generis, then why do you think so many make the mistake of seeing an intellectual lineage between belief in the early gods and belief in this one?)

This is what has been bothering me lately and maybe you can help me with this: We have an image, correct or not, of ancient or early "theology," if you will, as being rather concrete. The volcano blows, therefore, the god who controls the volcano must be angry; we must propitiate the god to appease his anger and make the volcano stop blowing. The Greeks and Romans, if you read their myths and epic poetry, had just such an idea about the gods. Judaism apparently also grew out of a tradition in which you made offerings to God to keep him happy. Prayer is a direct descendant of this view of god as able to be bargained with. Clearly, our ancestors viewed God, or the gods, as persons of a sort--not humans, of course, but as intentional beings.

We now know that volcanos can't be propitiated by spilling chicken blood or what have you--or most of us in the modern world know this. And many of those who believe in God no longer feel comfortable using the word "person" to describe it. They've become very sophisticated in their view of God's intentional stance and "mind." They are careful to remove as many crumbs of personhood as possible from their description of God so as not to be mistaken for the primitives, if you will, who literally believed the gods heard them with something like ears and could be bribed with things the gods "liked" or "wanted" into not doing things that harmed humans and their property.

So what bothers me is this: If this sophisticated modern God is real, where was it for all those years of human history when people were worshiping things that weren't really God? Why is this age privileged with the first view into the real God? What's so special about the modern theist that he or she can see this real God when all those other poor saps couldn't? Looked at another way, how can the modern theist be certain that they're not just as much of a sap as all those pious ancestors?

His arguments against Eugenie Scott at US News over his project to give away free Origins of the Species with his lame-brained creationist intro tacked onto it is astonishingly, brazenly, proudly ignorant. There simply is no better word for it. His ideas are like those of the smartest six-year-old in Sunday school, on the order of, "If we evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys, huh? Huh? Answer me that!" I'm sure he's asked that classic "stumper" before, but his latest bullshit is hardly more to the point:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/god-and-countr...

...

Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.

Nor does any evolutionary believer adequately address the fact that all those 1.4 million species managed to evolve into maturity together in our lifetime. Nothing we have in creation is half evolved. The cow has a working udder to make drinkable milk. The bee has working apparatus to make edible honey. We don't find a half-evolved cow or bee. None of the 1.4 million species on the Earth has half an eye. All have the necessary functioning equipment, from the brain, to the teeth, to the eye, to limbs, to reproductive necessities. Everything that we see in creation is in full working order—from the sun, to the mixture of the air, to the seasons, to fruit trees and vegetables, to the animal kingdom—from the tiny ant right up to the massive elephant.

But not only do we see this mature completion in creation; we see it displayed in the fossil record. It reveals that each animal was complete. Historical and present creation stands as a stark testimony to the folly of Darwinian evolution.

Darwin was certainly on to something when he said, "Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy."


....

etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam!


RAY, YOU DIMWIT: You've been told again and again and again by people who know a lot more about this shit than you do that evolution works GRADUALLY OVER TIME. Get this through your and your sidekick Kirk Cameron's pea brains and stop consuming resources with arguments you've had blown to bits over and over and over!


(PS: If everything is in full-working order, what's the matter with your brain? More to the point, why do some cows develop with udders that do not work? Why are some individuals among those species born with half an eye, or no eye, or stumps for limbs, or with limbs growing where they shouldn't be growing. You fucking moron!)

I know this is awful, but I can't wait to hear what Stephen Colbert has to say about it:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8339...



By Altaf Hussain
BBC News, Srinagar


A Himalayan black bear strolls in Dachigam National Park, 25kms from Srinagar, on Oct 16, 2009
The bear population has grown in Kashmir in recent times




A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

The militants were armed with AK-46s but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.

It is thought to be the first such incident since Muslim separatists took up arms against Indian rule in 1989.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/sports/0...



As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?

But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.

The debate reveals what some academics say are common assumptions and stereotypes about race and sports and athletic achievement in the United States. Its dimensions, they add, go beyond the particulars of Keflezighi and bear on undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced.

“Race is still extremely important when you think about athletics,” said David Wiggins, a professor at George Mason University who studies African-Americans and sports. “There is this notion about innate physiological gifts that certain races presumably possess. Quite frankly, I think it feeds into deep-seated stereotypes. The more blatant forms of racial discrimination and illegal forms have been eliminated, but more subtle forms of discrimination still exist.”

There are few cases parallel to Keflezighi’s in American sports. Some are noteworthy because of how little discussion, by comparison, they generated over the athlete’s nationality. For example, the Hall of Fame basketball player Patrick Ewing (Jamaica) and the gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin (Russia) were born abroad, but when they represented the United States in competition, they seemingly did not encounter the same skepticism that Keflezighi has.

Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said the argument about Keflezighi “tells us there are people that still have racial red flags go up when certain things happen.”

...

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/200...

It's an awful feeling, watching your heroes turn on you. That's how Birther leader Orly Taitz's followers seem to feel about a brief segment Fox News' Bill O'Reilly did earlier this week about the $20,000 sanction that a federal judge hit Taitz with a couple weeks ago.

The Birthers have been somewhat disillusioned with O'Reilly and some of his colleagues before -- there's the lack of investigative journalism done by the network that would prove, once and for all, that President Obama was in fact born in Antarctica, for instance. And O'Reilly previously mentioned the fact that Obama has already released proof of his birth in Hawaii; they weren't happy about that. But calling Taitz a "nut"? My God, it's like that whole "Fair and Balanced" thing isn't really true!

So e-mails have been pouring in to Taitz's Web site lately, denouncing O'Reilly and starting whole new branches of the conspiracy theory (apparently one of the legal analysts who participated in the offending segment worked, long ago, for Perkins Coie, the firm that employs Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign's general counsel -- and about 700 other lawyers, too). And now they're organizing a protest against O'Reilly, slated to be held outside the Fox News building in New York City on Nov. 11.

On her Web site, Taitz explained, "Keep in mind, what OReilly did, is more dangerous, more harmful then what some idiots like Rachel Maddow or Keith Obertmann (sic) did, since people believe O’Reilly to be fair and balanced."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_god_button_h...

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 28, 8:35 am ET

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A former cashier for The Home Depot who has been wearing a "One nation under God" button on his work apron for more than a year has been fired, he says because of the religious reference. The company claims that expressing such personal beliefs is simply not allowed.

"I've worn it for well over a year and I support my country and God," Trevor Keezor said Tuesday. "I was just doing what I think every American should do, just love my country."

The American flag button Keezer wore in the Florida store since March 2008 says "One nation under God, indivisible."

Earlier this month, he began bringing a Bible to read during his lunch break at the store in the rural town of Okeechobee, about 140 miles north of Miami. That's when he says The Home Depot management told him he would have to remove the button.

Keezer refused, and he was fired on Oct. 23, he said.

"It feels kind of like a punishment, like I was punished for just loving my country," Keezer said.

A Home Depot spokesman said Keezer was fired because he violated the company's dress code....

Of course not. Some atheists, myself included, have suggested that liberal Christians enable their right-wing brethren and sistren to commandeer their religion and define it by having no means to effectively counteract them. I don't necessarily blame liberal Christians for that. I think it's inherent in the religion--possibly in all religions, but certainly in the so-called revealed ones--that the most aggressively zealous and loud-mouthed of the believers essentially own the property. But I wonder what would happen if, instead of whining about "fundamentalist atheists," liberal Christians actually went after the fundamentalists in their own tribe and actively worked to discredit their ideas and deconvert their innocent flock. You've got right-wing fundies coming after lapsed New Englanders. Why don't you move into Alabama and go to work on that demographic?

I'll tell you why I think you don't. You don't really give a shit what they do to your religion. I honestly don't blame you. I wouldn't give a shit what they did to it either.

Steve Clemons of the Washington Note was keeping track of this vote in the UN today. The US and co. lost:


http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/... /

The U.S. lost a whopping vote at the United Nations on bringing rationality back to America's Latin America portfolio and finally ending the last refuge of the Cold War.

187 nations voted against the United States. Israel and Palau voted with the U.S. Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.

Looks like America is the isolated party here.

President Obama needs to turn this around.


An earlier post explained the absurd position the US finds itself in:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/... /


CUBA United Nations Vote Today: US Should Abstain


Increasing numbers of national security leaders of the likes of Brent Scowcroft and George Shultz have said that the US embargo of Cuba makes no sense and harms American interests.

Republican Congressman Jeff Flake -- the hunky Arizona Congressman who recently spent five days alone on a remote Pacific island -- has reminded Americans that it is COMMUNIST governments that are supposed to get a kick out of restricting the movements of its people -- not DEMOCRATIC governments. Congressman Bill Delahunt has been leading in the House along with Byron Dorgan in the US Senate in calling for an end to all travel restrictions on Americans.

President Obama himself is a believer in people to people exchange -- and that opportunities arise from engagement -- not from isolation.

And yet, the United States today is going to vote in the United Nations against a measure condemning the US embargo of Cuba....

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/200...

There are a lot of questions out there about just how seriously people should be taking the promise of a pro-filibuster vote that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., made on Tuesday. But for now at least, the self-styled "independent Democrat" is sticking to his guns and saying that he won't vote for cloture on any bill that includes a public option.

During an interview on Fox News Wednesday, Lieberman was asked, "What gets your vote, then? What can Sen. Reid offer to you?"

Lieberman responded, "Well, just so much of the rest of the bill. Just take this government-created, government-run health insurance company that will cost the taxpayers, premium payers and the debt a lot of money -- take it off the table." He added, "We can come back in three or four years if the reforms -- the other reforms we adopt are not working. But I think they will. And so, that's -- that's my position, and I'm sticking to it, because I think it's best for our country and my constituents."

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/som...


The reason this is a little scary for Democrats is because the usual things that serve to motivate a Congressman don't seem to motivate Joe Lieberman.

Would voting to filibuster the Democrats' health care bill (if it contains a decent public option) endear Lieberman to his constituents? No; Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31.

Would it make his path to re-election easier? No, because it would virtually assure that Lieberman faces a vigorous and well-funded challenge from a credible, capital-D Democrat, and polls show him losing such a match-up badly.

Would it buy him more power in the Senate? No, because Democrats would have every reason to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

Is Lieberman's stance intended to placate the special interests in his state? Perhaps this is part of it -- there are a lot of insurance companies in Connecticut -- but Lieberman is generally not one of the more sold-out Senators, ranking 75th out of the 100-member chamber in the percentage of his fundraising that comes from corporate PACs.

Are there any particular compromises or concessions he wants in the bill? He hasn't stipulated any, at least not publicly.

Might he have a legitimate policy objection to the public option? Certainly there are some legitimate objections -- whether or not you agree with them. But Lieberman's objections don't make any sense. He says he's worried about blunting "the economic recovery we’re in" even though the public option provisions wouldn't kick in until 2013. He says he's worried about debt-reduction when the public option would make the bill more deficit-neutral. And he campaigned on a public-option type alternative called "MediChoice" in 2006.

What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention. He wants Harry Reid to have to stand up and say things like : "I don't have anyone that I've worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe Lieberman." He wants face time on Meet the Press. He wants to make liberals feel some pain -- especially those who tried to get Ned Lamont elected in his place. He wants everyone to know how maverick-y he is.

But even if Lieberman will probably cave, this creates real problems for Democrats....