He made some comments in an interview recently that I imagine most of the readers of this site can appreciate; “From my point of view I would ban religion completely, [...] organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.” I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve never really liked Michael Medved, and now he’s given me yet another reason. Here’s an excerpt from his reaction to Sir Elton’s comments.

Despite that “hatred and spite,” religious leaders actually express more tolerance to homosexuality (and non-believers) than Sir Elton expresses toward organized faith. Imagine the indignation if a religious leader suggested that we need to “ban homosexuality completely” — or urged an outright prohibition on atheism? It’s true that many believing Christians want to persuade gays to overcome their same-sex urges, or try to get non-believers to replace their doubt with faith, but no factions in the varied array of conservative religious groups has called for “banning” ideas with which they disagree.

Is he serious? He’s either supremely naive, utterly stupid, or intentionally deceitful. Just in case he reads this site (it could happen), and assuming that he’s just ignorant of the actual “hatred and spite” of many religious leaders, I thought I’d help him out by posting just a few headlines about gay bans from the past couple of years. Three things about this list are worth noting; I didn’t include any references to gay marriage (too easy), it’s in no way comprehensive there’s much more out there, and this short list makes it apparent that the only thing preventing actual bans on gays are the courts.

Drives to ban gay adoption heat up in 16 states
Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors
Texas May Ban Gay Foster Parents
Vatican to Israel: Ban gay parade
Utah lawmaker seeks to ban gay-straight clubs
Behind the Vatican’s Proposed Gay Seminarian Ban
CBS, NBC ban church ad inviting gays
County Rescinds Vote to Ban Gay Residents
Tennessee County Wants to Ban Gays
Drives to Ban Gay Adoption Heat Up in 16 States
Hong Kong court upholds rejection of gay sex ban
Gay pride challenges Moscow
BYU Student Poll: Ban Gay Students
State Baptists to meet, may ban churches that back gays
Homosexual Group Slams Bishops for New Stance on Gays

and of course we can’t forget…

GodHatesFags.com

The last headline above actually speaks better of the “tolerance” Medved claims is common amongst religious leaders. However, I think the Catholic Church, in releasing a more tolerant position on gays, is really just covering their ass because they’ve finally realized just how many of their clergy are already in fact “celibate” homosexuals.

Medved also drops this little gem towards the end of his rant.

“In the bitter debate about teaching our children about the origins of life on earth, religious activists make no attempt to block the teaching of Darwinism or random natural selection, but it’s pro-evolution fanatics who fanatically resist any messages or questions that even hint at Intelligent Design.“

Maybe it is intentional?

LBBP

Well, I was wrong, but I didn’t have long to wait for a religiously motivated school shooting. Yesterday, another lunatic went into an Amish schoolhouse with a gun, resulting in six fatalities, including the lunatic in question. It is believed that the attack occured because the shooter was “angry at god” because he had lost a daughter a few years ago. So, to get back at the almighty, he took the daughters from five other families. Logical.

This post is not about the religiously motivated killing. It’s about the response that I find, in many ways, even more upsetting and indicative of some of the more easily forgotten problems with religion. In an article on MSNBC, I just read that the mother of one of the victims “holds no ill will toward the shooter.” “Even last night, there was no anger toward the shooter.” Why? Christ. A possibly mythical figure from 2,000 years ago told her she shouldn’t be angry at the man who killed her daughter. Now, I’m no therapist, but that anger is there. She’s simply not allowing herself to express it, and it will eat away at her until she does. This means that she has to suffer even MORE than she would have because of some Judean hippie from antiquity and his denial of human nature. At least she’ll go to heaven.

By the way, do you think they have phones in heaven? They sure don’t have them at the Amish schoolhouse. If someone hadn’t had to “run to a farmhouse to call police,” maybe things would have worked out better. Maybe not, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt. I bet they also have planes in heaven, but they don’t have them in Lancaster. The families of the victims who didn’t die on the scene found it more important to avoid big scary machines in the name of their religion than to be at their daughters’ sides during the most difficult hours of their lives. They had to be driven to the hospitals, and some of them wound up at the wrong ones for a while.

So, it’s awful that some nutjob killed five young girls because he’s angry at god, but it’s unconscionable that the families let a fairytale stand between them and their duty to their children and that their faith causes them to outwardly deny the anger that is rightfully theirs, preventing them from really dealing with it.  It’s easy to find religious violence and talk about that as the downside to religion, but it’s certainly not the only one.

~I AM~ 

“They were right here.” says Surely Deranged of suburban La La Land.

“Well you are 81 years old, you don’t think maybe you misplaced them?”

“No, no, they were right here on the shelf, and now they’re gone.”

“Uhm, are these them over hear on the table?”

“Well no, they couldn’t be, my marbles were up on the shelf!”

“OK, what if I just put these marbles on the shelf?”

“Oh my, look you found my marbles!”

“Well, not all of them.”

–

Woman Believes What She Wants to Believe

“The sky is red.” says Klinically Insane of Wacko, TX.

“Actually, it’s a beautiful blue with white puffy clouds.”

“Now your just being silly”

–

Woman Sees Virgin Mary on a Turtle“I told some of my friends, you know, ‘I got a turtle,’ and I said it has the image of the Virgin Mary on it, and I said it’s getting plainer and plainer.”

“Oh, Shirley, you’re getting nuts; you’re 81 years old.”

“There’s no doubt,” McVane said. “You can’t doubt it’s the Virgin Mary. You know it’s there, and that’s all.”

“Uhm, it just looks like a regular turtle to me.”

“She came to a holy house. I think she came to visit us so God knows she’s happy and safe.”

“Yeah, ’cause if God wants to let us all know that the “Virgin” Mary is safe, he’ll announce it through a turtle, right.”

–

No, none of these are news. Yet somehow, at least one of these stories is making headlines.

LBBP

George W. Bush
September 16, 2001

Some of George Bush’s biggest gaffes happen when he accidentally says what he means. In the quote above, he used the word “crusade” to describe his newly minted war on terror, just days after the attacks of 9/11. This word stirs up a thousand years worth of animosity in the Muslim world like few others can, and he later expressed his regret at its use. He has spent the 4 1/2 years since talking about how we are not at war with Islam, and how it is a peaceful faith. It may not have been politically expedient to say it, but he was right the first time. The so-called “War on Terror” (which is an absurd idea as stated) IS a war with Islam. To George W. Bush, it’s a war between Islam and Christianity. What it should be is a war between Islam and secular modernity.

Unless we take action, we will lose this war. By “we,” I don’t mean the United States. I mean American atheists.

In one possible outcome, the Muslims prevail. If Muslim fundamentalism succeeds in breaking the spirit and then breaking the back of the United States, the world will become Muslim. I don’t mean to imply that this will happen in five years or fifty years, but it will happen eventually because Islam will never stop fighting. A person who reads and believes the Qur’an and Hadith has no choice but to spread Islam to the four corners of the Earth at the tip of a sword. It’s simply part of the DNA of the religion, as it were. I have written about this before, so I won’t get into quoting passages here.

Another possible outcome is that the west prevails. The United States that comes out of that victory will look quite unlike the nation that was attacked in 2001. The struggle against Islam is largely responsible for the resurgence of religious fervor and Christian fundamentalism in the last few years. Heartland evangelicals can be totally certain that god is involved and playing favorites in a war against Islam. They feel a calling that hasn’t been felt by such a large group of Christians since the 13th century… the call of crusade. And so, as churches multiply and grow to unprecedented sizes, and the Supreme Court looks more and more like Vatican II, the country is slipping closer to the edge. In a country of 300 million with 250 million Christian, the threat of theocracy (overt or covert) is real.

So if either result leaves the United States in the grip of religious madness at some undetermined point in the future, what hope is there? Given a choice between living under “modern” Islam or a violent, xenophobic and willfully ignorant Christianity resembling that of Europe in the dark ages, the choice makes little practical difference. Luckily, there is a third choice.

While Crusader and Saracen drench the sand in each other’s blood in this modern holy war, other forces are at work. There are those of us, though few in number, who are focused on the root of the problem. This should not be a war against a tactic or a belief system. As we have seen throughout history, no one ultimately wins that type of war. It is up to us, the evangelical atheists of the world, to make this a war against a way of thinking. It is our task to ensure that this clash of civilizations is remembered by history as the last great war of religion. We must wage our battle on the field of ideas under the banner of reason. If the United States that wins this war is one that has been ideologically transformed by our efforts, the future of our planet is bright.

The key to this victory is the children. While there is no doubt in my mind that democracy is the best system of government yet developed, it is not perfect. It only works properly if the majority is right. We disciples of reason suffer the tyranny of the majority. It is the same reason any attempt to democratize the Middle East in its current state will ultimately fail. Under the rule of the majority, a minority idea, no matter how valid or necessary, will be ignored or squelched. The only way we can rescue the world from entering another dark age of ubiquitous religious oppression (of whatever flavor) is to change the numbers. This second renaissance can only be achieved with an atheist majority, and that majority must be built over the next few generations.

Once the cancer of religious thought invades a host, the chance of a cure is virtually zero. Given a disease with this characteristic, the only reasonable course of action is to focus our efforts on prevention. All newborn babies are atheists. We must keep them that way in sufficient number to turn the tide.

For this reason, the religious issues that concern me most are those affecting our schools. The pledge of allegiance and intelligent design are infecting our children daily. For those who enter the classroom healthy, these may be their first exposure to the pathogen. For those who have been exposed at home, these references can strengthen the cancer, allowing it to metastasize to the point of inoperability. We must stop teaching faith in our public schools, and we cannot allow tax dollars to support private ones. For a teacher, who represents knowledge of the world to a young child, to lend credence to the superstitious drivel he learns from his family makes his acceptance of those ideas permanent and virtually irrevocable. On the contrary, if authority figures teach skepticism and the scientific method – teach our children how to learn rather than trust and memorize – that can change the world.

There are hopeful signs. The number of atheists in many parts of the world is on the rise. The transfer of religion from one generation to another is not perfect, and that trend will ultimately spell the end of religion in those places, though not quickly enough. I’ve seen a lot of American children participating in the online atheist movement, so clearly some of them are learning the right things and seeing the danger for themselves. Kingdom of Heathen is a perfect example. This is a blog formed when several atheist teenagers decided to join their independent, secular voices together to reach out to others their own age. Some of the things I’ve read from the contributors there give me a tremendous sense of hope. There are sensible, intelligent and thoughtful leaders already emerging from the next generation. It’s up to us to give them a shot at as many followers as we can in the time we have.

This post is already far too long, so I will sum it up and bring it to a close. If we fail to protect our children from superstition and substantially secularize the United States while the current war rages amongst the “peoples of the book,” it may well be another thousand years before we have another chance to stomp out religion and all of its hateful manifestations. Well, that may not be true. We may never have another chance.

~I AM~