Humbugalicious

It's evil- sparkly, shiny, delightful evil!

My father was a rapid-cycling bipolar with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You can imagine what my childhood was like, and what it was like for my mother to be married to him. She turned herself into a cipher, concerned only with what he wanted and keeping him happy- except when it came to Christmas.

My mother loves Christmas. She listens to Christmas music all year round. She goes to the Hallmark store and buys expensive ornaments year round. She has three artificial trees that she decorates, beginning the day after Halloween. And she never let my father touch Christmas. There was joy in my house- a bit ruthlessly enforced, perhaps, but joy- during the Christmas season.

I think you can see why I love Christmas.

Tom, at Just Truth, does not. In fact, he hates any Christmas that is not entirely focused on Jesus, and Santa can suck it. He even has a picture of Santa as a horrible, fanged creature, which I found a little upsetting. Tom, commits what I consider a sin, in the way atheists use that word: he assumes that people who think differently do so for malign reasons. I think Santa is great, I celebrate in a secular way, but I do so not because I am a different person with different ideas, but because I am greedy and evil.

The other Christmas, is the one most of the world, and an ever-growing number of Christians celebrate. The Christmas of greed, getting the best deal, plowing over people in target to get grandpa the $200 plasma TV. Knocking out the neighbor for the last pack of silly bands, or going ever deeper into debt so little suzy can have “the best Christmas ever” and only briefly (if then) do thoughts turn to Christ..His birth, His gifts of eternal life, or even dying on the cross for us. This is the Christmas the world knows and loves the one where adorable, obese; grandpas are exalted, and worshipped. How many people would stand in line for hours to get their picture taken with Jesus? How many would stand in line to see Jesus?

You missed the third option, Tom. You missed my Christmas. I like pretty lights and red and green decorations. I like baking cookies and giving them to people who don't expect them: the bus driver, the convenient mart clerk, the Dunkin' Donuts crew*. I like Christmas carols and teasing my nieces and nephews about their gifts ("you didn't want a big, red inflatable plastic pig? That is such a shame!"). I like A Christmas Story and Christmas cards and Christmas dinners with everyone crowded around a table for four and kids hopped up on sugar bouncing around the house eagerly anticipating Santa. I don't give a shit what I get or great deals or anything else. I just like Christmas.

Yeah, I'm not you, but it doesn't make me evil. It also doesn't make my enjoyment of Christmas, different though it may be, any less sincere or any more evil.

*Guess who gets to loiter at the convenient mart? That's right, this woman!

Not. A. Religion.

You made kitteh double facepalm and headdesk.

Did you know that at one point, 30% of conservatives thought Stephen Colbert was serious about the Colbert Report? Almost 1 in 3 failed to see the obvious satire right in front of them. Hell, at one point, people thought Jonathon Swift was totally serious about eating Irish babies.

So it should come as no surprise that an awful lot of Christians think the Darwin Fish is the same sort of symbol as the Jesus fish.

Yet here I am, simultaneously headdesking and facepalming. (Easier on your head, harder on your hand.)

Despite its anti-religious stance and lack of a theistic belief, Secular Humanism is a religion just as Christianity is one, argued [David Noebel].

. . .

For starters, Christianity has the Christian Ichthys as one of its religious symbols while Secular Humanism has a developing religious symbol: the Darwin Fish. And like Christianity, Secular Humanism has clergy members that perform social ceremonies and preach a faith that is just as dogmatic: theological atheism, naturalism, spontaneous generation, and moral relativism, among other beliefs, Noebel points out in his book.

The Darwin Fish, or evolve fish, is not a religious symbol. It's satire. If you were to ask a group of atheists/secular humanists what the symbol of atheism is, you'd get a blank look. Some of us, online, have adopted such things as the scarlet A, but it's not an agreed upon symbol of all secularists. (Trying to get atheists to agree on anything is like herding cats. I once participated in a discussion about whether or not a nonsymbol is as symbolic as a symbol and if it is, is it still a nonsymbol. Don't ask.)

As for clergy members: lol wut? I assume he means people like Hitch, Dawkins and Myers, but clergy? You'd have to stretch the definition of clergy to meaninglessness to consider any of the more famous atheists to be clergy. And dogmatism? See above. Plenty of atheists have little to no opinion on spontaneous generation, we're all (religious or not) morally relative and naturalism? I'm calling that science, and if you post things on the internet, you like it, too.

The author also references in his book the 1943 decision by the Second Circuit to grant conscientious objector status to Mathias Kauten, not on the basis of his belief in God, but on the basis of his "religious conscience."

"Secular Humanism is a religion. It's just as religious as all the other religions in the world," Noebel asserted to students.

"Now, they deny it to the last drop only because they were caught. They caught themselves on conscientious objectors so they had to declare themselves somewhat of a religion."

So, I looked up the Kauten case, and I can't find the original decision, only commentaries on it, or references to it. According to several references, this case is sealed until 2020, so I don't know where Noebel got this from.

EDIT: (big h/t to [redacted])

Noebel is something of a liar, it seems. [redacted] got me a copy of the Kauten case, in its entirety, and the Court stated outright that Kauten was not a religious man:

We hold that Mr. Hardy's interpretation was well founded. [HN3] In order to avail himself of his privilege a registrant must establish that his objection to participation in war is due to "religious training and belief." It must ex vi termini be a general scruple against "participation in war in any form" and not merely an objection to participation in this particular war. Moreover, the conviction that war is a futile means of righting wrongs or of protecting the state, that it is not worth the sacrifice, that it is waged for base ends, or is otherwise indefensible is not necessarily a ground of opposition based on "religious training and belief." Though the registrant may have been entirely sincere in the ideas he expressed, his objections to reporting for induction were based on philosophical and political considerations applicable to this war rather than on "religious training [*708] and belief." They, therefore, were properly overruled, but not because he lacked membership of any sect or organization whose religious convictions were against war. Such a status was necessary to obtain exemption under the Act of 1917, but the provisions of the present statute are more generous [**10] for they take into account the characteristics of a skeptical generation and make the existence of a conscientious scruple against war in any form, rather than allegiance to a definite religious group or creed, the basis of exemption. We are not convinced by anything in the record that the registrant did not report for induction because of a compelling voice of conscience, which we should regard as a religious impulse, but his declarations and reasoning seem to indicate that he was moved by convictions, however sincere, of quite a different character.

In other words, while Kauten was believed to be sincere, and to hold beliefs that one would normally associate with religion, he was not religious. Atheism is not a religion.

In fact, the Court did define religion in its decision, and secular humanism ain't in it:

It is unnecessary to attempt a definition of religion; the content of the term is found in the history of the human race and is incapable [**11] of compression into a few words. Religious belief arises from a sense of the inadequacy of reason as a means of relating the individual to his fellow-men and to his universe - a sense common to men in the most primitive and in the most highly civilized societies. It accepts the aid of logic but refuses to be limited by it. It is a belief finding expression in a conscience which categorically requires the believer to disregard elementary self-interest and to accept martyrdom in preference to transgressing its tenets. A religious obligation forbade Socrates, even in order to escape condemnation, to entreat his judges to acquit him, because he believed that it was their sworn duty to decide questions without favor to anyone and only according to law. Such an obligation impelled Martin Luther to nail his theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg and, when he was summoned before Emperor Charles and the Diet at Worms, steadfastly to hold his ground and to utter the often quoted words: "I neither can nor will recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do other. God help me. Amen." Recognition of this obligation moved [**12] the Greek poet Menander to write almost twenty-four hundred years ago: "Conscience is a God to all mortals"; impelled Socrates to obey the voice of his "Daimon" and led Wordsworth to characterize "Duty" as the "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God."

Mr. Noebel, you are a liar.

END EDIT.

Mathias Kauten sought conscientious objector status to avoid the draft in 1940 not from religious belief, he admitted to being an atheist or agnostic, but because he distrusted the Roosevelt administration and disagreed with the war.

During and since World War II, political objectors have appealed to the courts for c.o. status, The most significant case has been that of Matthias Kauten, an artist of "atheist or at least ...agnostic" persuasion. In addition to challenging Congress' right to pass laws like the draft which infringe upon the "individual qualities of a person," he disliked the Roosevelt administration and viewed the draft as its answer to unemployment. Further, to quote a Department of Justice Report, "he has stated it is not right to act unfriendly to Japan and now to seek to protect ourselves from the consequences of our wrongdoing.... During his travels [he] has witnessed the animosity which exists among the different peoples of Europe and this has strengthened his opposition to war."

The Justice Department supported the local board's decision to deny Kauten c.o, status. "There is no doubt that the Registrant is sincerely opposed to war but this belief emanates from personal philosophical conceptions arising out of his nature and temperament, and which is to some extent political." An Appeals Court in turn supported the local board's decision, both because Kauten's opposition was to one war and not to all wars, and because "his objections ... were based on philosophical and political considerations ... rather than on 'religious training and belief.'" It observed in passing that "in the early days of the draft, many thousands of the American people distrusted our foreign policy. If men holding such views had been ipso facto classed as conscientious objectors, the military effort might have been seriously hampered."

The significance of the Kauten decision is not that the draftee was denied c.o. status, but rather that in doing so a court ruled that "a conscientious objection to participation in any war under any circumstances ... may be the basis of exemption under the [1940] Act." Kauten's humanitarian convictions might have qualified him for exemption because of a broad definition of "religious training and belief." The Kauten court viewed religion as "a response of the individual to an inward mentor, call it conscience or God that is at the present time the equivalent for many persons of what has been thought a religious impulse." Operating under this definition, that court later reached its verdicts about Phillips and Brandon where humanitarian convictions were also at issue, and the Supreme Court drew on the Kauten reasoning in its broadened definition of religion in the Seeger verdict. Kauten's convictions did not exempt him, however, because "Congress intended ... not to give exemption to the great number of persons who might object to a particular war on philosophical or political grounds." A c.o. may thus be one who opposes all wars on humanitarian grounds but not one who objects to a particular war on political grounds.

Here's what Noebel is hanging his hat on:

The Kauten court viewed religion as "a response of the individual to an inward mentor, call it conscience or God that is at the present time the equivalent for many persons of what has been thought a religious impulse."

So, basically the Court didn't know how to qualify an atheist/agnostic for the purposes of conscientious objector status, so they defined religion broadly enough to include conscience. Um, I kinda fail to see how that makes atheism (Kauten did not identify as a secular humanist, though Noebel does seem to use atheism and secular humanism interchangeably) a religion.

Let me put it another way. Current law regarding abortion puts the woman's right to choose above the rights of a fetus inside her body. Does Noebel believe that to be true? I'm going with no. He's cherry-picking what Court decisions mean to him. Roe v. Wade proves nothing, Mathias Kauten proves I am as religious as the Pope.

Sadly, no.

Now I see Noebel's obsession though, and it ain't Jesus, unless Jesus is spelled m-a-m-m-o-n:

Secular Humanism is among the worldviews taught at one of Summit’s Student Worldview Conferences, a two-week program that teaches young evangelical Christians how to defend their faith and Christian worldview against major competing worldviews.

He makes his money this way. Of course secular humanism must be a religion. Otherwise, he can't charge for a two week program on how to defend against it.

Noebel noted that while the worldviews associated with Christianity and Islam have the largest number of adherents, it is Secular Humanism that has caused more Christians to walk away from their faith.

He attributed the trend to the dominance of secular humanist ideas and teachings in public schools, saying secular humanists "run" the public school system from elementary school to graduate schools.

"Out of Secular Humanism, the one big appeal has always been Darwinism," he said. "More Christians have probably stumbled in their faith over Charles Darwin than just about anyone else, more than Karl Marx."

Oh, you mean science! Okay, then. Sure. As the slacktivist has pointed out, a religion based on the denial of basic science is a brittle faith indeed. You need only to learn the lie of one portion of it, i.e., creationism*, for the whole thing to fall apart. That's not Darwin's fault, asshat.

pic link

*Sadly, it's not just creationism. Watch in amazement as one person defends their faith by positing that our eyes create light, clap with delight as another claims the earth is flat and accelerating, or expanding at quite a fantastic rate.

Then What Am I Celebrating?

christian, christmas, secular, atheism, atheist, obama,

From what I understand, the White House is very busy with 17 "holiday parties" before the Obamas leave for their annual vacation in Hawaii. Did you know the Obamas don't celebrate Christmas? And that the Nativity Scene was almost banned from the White House this year?

This bothered me. At first, I scrolled by it on the reader after briefly skimming it. Then I returned to it, read it and moved on. I couldn't stop coming back to it, but I couldn't figure out why.

Apparently, if Obama doesn't want to put a nativity (religious scene) in the White House, he doesn't want to celebrate Christmas. The fact that he does, indeed, celebrate Christmas is irrelevant unless he celebrates Christmas exactly the way Barbara does.

Ignoring the inherent arrogance of proclaiming that you can decide the legitimacy of other people's holiday celebrations, which does bother me, I think what really bothers me is that by Barbara's definition, I do not celebrate Christmas.

First of all, if I'm not celebrating Christmas, what is it that I do every December 25th? What purpose does my Christmas tree serve, precisely, to what end do I display delightful light up deer? Why do I buy presents and wrap them with care? (I wrap presents with such precision that people feel bad opening them and ruining the wrapping. The secret is tape. Lots of it.) Why do I host and cook dinners and bake 8 different varieties of cookies? (The cherry ones are to die for, but the candy canes are my sentimental favorite.)

Secondly, it struck me that Christmas in this country (and probably all over the West) is like marriage in this country: the secular and the religious intwined in an uncomfortable union at best. Christmas traditionally has two sides to it: the secular gift giving and feasting elements, and the religious "O hai, teh savyur iz born" element. Trying to say that one half of that is more legitimate than the other is just silly. The religious element might be more important to you, but you leave my precisely wrapped presents and light up deer alone!

To say nothing of the fact that even if you remove the secular, Santa, presents-n-feasting elements from Christmas, you still have the problem of one religion's celebration being pasted over another religion's preexisting celebration. I think once early Christianity slapped the celebration of the birth of their savior over the pagan Solstice celebration, they lost the right to bitch and moan about secular celebrations occurring on the same date as Christmas. Hello, you already stole the holiday and half its traditions, you can't whinge if someone else does it to you!

So, yeah, I'm an atheist, and yeah I celebrate Christmas. And if you want my light up deer, you can pry them from my cold, dead hands.

A Call to Theocracy

theocracy, religion, jesus, gospel, christian, christianity, god, atheism, atheist, secular, humanism,
Right now, there are six theocracies or countries with theocratic aspects in the world*: Iran, Andorra, the Tibetan Government in Exile, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Vatican City. Given those examples, I can't quite figure out why the Disciple Nation's Alliance wants to change our fine representative democracy into a theocracy.





I suspect their reasoning goes something like this (you may remember this meeting from various tea parties): I was fine with big government and removal of civil liberties until a democrat/black guy/muslimTERRORIST!!!1!!one!! became president, and now I want to burn it all down.





As a result, I can't figure out if I'm more offended/disturbed by the following on the basis of patriotism, aversion to racism or atheism.

The Lordship of Christ Over All over everyone, including people who totally don't worship Jesus, aka Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, atheists, agnostics, and well, everyone who isn't christian. You know, about 1 out of every 4 USians. Yes, let's make them all subject to a Christian Theocracy. That totally makes sense.

The first of our DNA Core Beliefs i'm going to click on that after taking a valium. is the “Jesus is King.” good for you. it's not my core belief, and I'm every bit as USian as you. It is first, because it is the very foundation for everything we believe, write and teach. again, good for you. leave me out of it. As pastor Barry Seagren says in this powerful sermon, the Lordship of Christ is: for christians?

. . . one of those things that no [sincere Christian] can object to. not even an entire sentence and we've got a logical fallacy: No True Scotsman. No one believes in the Lordship of Christ over half of life. wtf? But it is not as straightforward as it may seem. i'll give you that, theocracy is a rather straightforward concept. Why not? Because in Western culture there is a dichotomy, a sharp division which has affected us deeply. separation of church and state.

The most common is the division between the sacred and the secular. believe what you want, leave it out of lawmaking. oh, no, that's not all that complicated. Religious or spiritual things are on one side of the line; normal, everyday matters are on the other. for a good reason. Another way to express the split is the private versus the public. Religion is fine, but it’s a private matter, and it must be kept private. To let it impinge on the public sphere is known as “shoving your religion down someone’s throat.” i liken religion to genitals: it's fine to be proud of them (mine are fabulous!), but you keep them hidden unless someone asks to see them. Christopher Reeve, the actor, made this comment about stem cell research: When matters of public policy are debated, no religions should have a place at the table. In other words, you can have your religion, if you need that sort of thing, but keep it to yourself. seems obvious to me. Reeve’s statement is a big con, picking on the dead and disabled guy. classy. because what it actually means is that only one religion gets a place at the table, namely secular humanism. secular humanism is not a religion. not. a. religion. To give another example, perhaps someone has said to you, “Well, that may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” exactly.

This dichotomy is what keeps Christianity boxed up to a tiny religious area, i wish. totally private and completely innocuous and irrelevant. oh, yeah, you guys are so private, innocuous and irrelevant. in my dreams. This is what strips the Gospel of its power to permeate the whole of our lives, and strips it of its power to challenge and redeem the whole of our culture. because that's what the US has been missing: theocracy.

Well said. Read the rest of his sermon here. It is well worth your time!

-Scott D. Allen

what's really scary is these people vote. and they really want to vote to not be able to vote anymore.

*feel free to correct me, that's all I could find

A New Definition for Truth

Let's play a game, boys and girls! Say anything, anything at all, and it becomes a fact. I have wings. Obviously, I do not have wings, but I have said it, therefore I have wings. (20 points if you can convince someone of something equally ridiculous simply by stating it over and over again. -10 if you shout or otherwise intimidate your victim. 50 bonus points if you convince someone that John McCain and/or Sara Palin are direct descendents of Mohammad.)

When you define "fact" as "anything anyone says", then you get some really wierd philosophy. (Or you get a religion.) For an example of this, try a little crazy from the fixed earthers. (Haven't heard of the fixed earth theory? It's great fun! Try it yourself. (100 points if you can find the 3 DSM-V explanations for this website.)

The title of this is "Don't you love it when incredibly important Truths suddenly jell in your mind?" which then exhorts us to weigh these facts and see where you come out": I like that fixedearther has already italicized "facts" for me. Saved me the trouble.

"Secular Science"--by its very definition--rules out the miraculous when it attempts to explain all we see in the universe, on earth, and in mankind. True. False. There is no such thing as "secular science". Putting "secular" in front of "science" implies that there are other sorts of science. I'm guessing "religious science". Science is by definition secular, since it is entirely uninvolved in religion. Science is neutral. Neither science nor scientists concern themselves with any god or any religion. Which means, that neither science nor scientists concern themselves with disproving any god or religion. When a scientist (hundreds of years ago) proves that the earth goes 'round the sun, he isn't saying "therefore god doesn't exist and you all suck", he is saying, "the earth goes 'round the sun."

This means, for example, that "secular science" must supply a non-miraculous explanation for every single claim in the six "evening and morning" creation days found in the Genesis Account in the Bible. True. False. Science doesn't have to examine the creation story in Genesis at all. Science isn't concerned with an ancient creation myth. See, this is the egocentrism of fundyism. They are obsessed with their religion and can't imagine someone not being obsessed with it. Since scientists are atheists/communists/JEWS!(tm) to the fundy, the fundy believes that scientists have only one goal in life: destroy the bible. Ask any scientist how much of their time they devote to destroying religion and the answer you will get is, "What? Stop wasting my time, I'm trying to cure cancer here."

It then follows that "secular science" itself cannot have any identification with any belief system which incorporates any aspect of miraculous dependency. "Secular" and "Miraculous" are antithetical and irreconcilable. They can't be mixed. True. Actually, this is true. Sort of. Religion is antithetical to science. It is not antithetical to scientists. Scientists are people. Some of them are religious, some of them are not. Some subparticulate physicists look at their discoveries in the realms of quarks and bosons and say, "Look how amazing God is to have created such things!" Some cancer researchers view a discovery that saves lives and say, "How wonderful it is that God allowed me to discover something that will save lives and alleviate suffering!" This is another example of the "you are for us or against us" mentality of the fundy. Just because someone has a PhD doesn't mean they spend all their time giving abortions and disproving miracles.

Thus, since "secular science" eschews all religions having a miraculous component, ipso facto no religion can co-exist with "secular science" for the simple reason that all religions have miraculous components. True. This is funny. See, this guy, who says that his religion cannot co-exist with science, is using a computer to make the statement. (Note to Alanis Morissette: this actually is ironic.) I bet this guy also drives a car and lives in a house with indoor plumbing and electricity. I bet he wears clothes that were manufactured in plants and eats food grown, picked and processed with machines. All of which is the end result of . . . SCIENCE! Science is everywhere, kids. If you want to try living without science, go live with wolves. They don't have any science at all. They use no tools, create nothing, kill their food with their teeth and when they get sick, they die. That's a world without science. You're absolute welcome to it. Just send me your house keys and your car keys before you go.