Carrie Underwood had been simply an annoying Christian country star and the foremost proponent of faith-based driving (thanks Jay). However, her latest single makes her a wonderful symbol of the inherent hypocrisy of mainstream Christianity. Remember when you were a kid watching Sesame Street? Let’s play “One of These Things is Not Like the Others.” Here are excerpts from three Carrie Underwood songs that combine cars and god.

“Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can’t do this on my own
I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I’m on”

“Before you hit the highway
You better stop for gas
There’s a 50 in ashtray
In case you run short on cash
Here’s a map and here’s a Bible
If you ever lose your way”

“I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.”

So, she’s a Christian and a psychotic, vengeful vandal. She’s sending both of these messages on the same album. She wouldn’t want to mess up her own car, so she asks the king of the universe to drive, but this guy’s car is toast. Several questions…

1. What ever happened to turning the other cheek?

2. Will this song kill her record sales to evangelicals?

3. Will Carrie Underwood ever date again?

4. Why is it that Jesus can prevent a crash, but he can’t keep her gas tank full?

5. Should I be scared that my wife keeps singing that third song?

~I AM~

Perhaps you heard about the school shooting in Bailey, Colorado last week. I think a couple of channels may have mentioned it. It was certainly a topic of interest here, since that’s less than 20 miles from my house. (By the way, Columbine High School is about 45 minutes in the opposite direction, so I’ve moved to the school shooting capital of the world.) While the standoff was still going on, there was a lot of speculation about motive. As it turns out, Duane Roger Morrison sexually assaulted six girls and killed one before offing himself because his father yelled at him as a child, or some such nonsense, but we didn’t know that until the weekend. That night, I mentioned to my wife that it was probably religious in nature. She asked me why, and I told her that I always attribute violence to reiligion until I have evidence to the contrary.

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~ 

I normally find blog memes silly, and I’ve never been tagged before, but vjack just tagged me with the book meme. Since it’s vjack, I’ll participate. I will not, however, tag anyone else. If LBBP wants to do this and pass it along, he’s free to do so.

A book that changed my life:

The Bible. I was an agnostic until I read it for the first time. After that, I was a firm atheist.

A book I’ve read more than once:

The Bible. I’ve gone through it three times and counting. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it. It’s terribly entertaining. Imagine how much fun it would be to read The Silmarillion if Tolkien had claimed it all to be true.

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island:

Uh… probably something that teaches you how to build a raft. Call me a pragmatist. If we’re ignoring utility, I’d probably have to go with The Lord of the Rings if I were there alone. If I were shipwrecked with a Christian, I’d take the Bible. It’s only fun if you have someone with whom to argue.

A book that made me laugh:

The Bible. There are several bits that make me chuckle. I crack up when Jesus kills the fig tree.

A book that I wish I had written:

The End of Faith by Sam Harris. I had that book in me and was somewhat disappointed that it was already out there.

A book that I wish had never been written:

The Communist Manifesto. Communism is such a perverse idea, and so many have suffered and died in an attempt to bring about a utopia that in reality looks a lot like Havana.  Runners up include the Bible and the Qur’an.

A book I’ve been meaning to read:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. It’s a daunting volume. The United States of America operates based on a four page document. The Catholic Church needs a rule book as long as the Bible. Speaking of the Bible, isn’t that supposed to be the rule book? I think the Catholics had Talmud envy.

I’m currently reading:

Dune by Frank Herbert. I’m only half way through, but I’m enjoying the way Herbert uses religion in conjunction with politics in setting up the motivations and conflicts in his universe. I took out The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics from the library last night. That will be next. I read the first two pages of Mere Christianity, and I’ve already found at least four reasons Lewis was a jackass.

~I AM~

Little Old Lady Loses Her Marbles

“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

I stumbled upon an article at FindLaw, that highlights a new book by Michelle Goldeberg about the rise of Christian nationalism. I have not read the book yet, though I think I will order a copy, so I can’t really speak to the validity of it’s claims. However, the snippets from both the FindLaw piece and the authors site suggest that it may be worth reading.

The FindLaw piece starts out this way:

If more Americans would read works like Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, the longevity of our democracy, as we know it, would be more assured. I say this because the more people who understand the thinking and agenda of the growing forces of “Christian nationalism,” the less likely it will be that these forces will succeed. Not many people want to go where Christian nationalists want to take the country.

The last 6 or 8 years have already shown us what we can expect from a Christian nationalist government; holy crusades fought at the expense of the tax payers, the suppression of scientific and medical research in the name of perceived biblical doctrine, and the steady dismantling of individual rights. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg for what the Christian nationalists (CN) really want.

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ — to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.

- The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action by George Grant

This is the type of religious imposition that we need to guard against most stringently. Sure, being subjected to “in God we trust”, “under God”, or the Ten Commandments is annoying, but all that pales in comparison to what this country will be like if the CN succeeds in their quest for “dominion”.

How do they intend to do it? The strategy has already begun. They are systematically breeding, training, deploying, and installing judges into the US legal system in an attempt to adjudicate the conversion of our country from quasi secularism to full blown theocracy. Again, from the FindLaw piece:

Reconstructionist leaders see federal judges — probably correctly, Goldberg notes — “as the only thing protecting American secularism. They know that if they can take the courts, they’ll have the country.” Their strategy to take the courts is twofold, although, as Goldberg notes, it’s also “somewhat contradictory” — and it envisions a protracted battle.First, Christian nationalists plan to pressure politicians “to pack the bench with their ideological allies,” and they are “training a new generation of home schooled jurists who will approach the law with a Christian worldview.” […]

Second, accompanying the attempt at court-packing, Goldberg reports that Christian nationalists are “trying to strip the courts of much of their current authority” while “railing against judges who override the popular will.” Or as Goldberg nicely summarizes Christian nationalists’ strategy, they “are simultaneously fighting a war for the judiciary and a war on it.”

Goldberg cites two right-wing judges nominated by President Bush as the kind who would satisfy the court packing plans of the Christian nationalists. Both judges — William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown — initially provoked Democratic filibusters. Unfortunately, my quick search of the debate in the Senate on these two highly controversial nominees does not reveal that anyone in the Senate opposing these nominees was aware that behind them, lurked the hand of the Christian nationalists.

The CN is a small segment of our society, but they are very well funded. Millions of saps pouring money into the coffers of Pat Robertson and company, all in the name of “gifts to God”, generates allot of cash. I am certain that most of those people assume their money is going to feed little Misha or Alina or to help convert Godless “Moslems” in Indonesia. If they really understood that their money was also being used to fund a covert takeover of the American government, I wonder how many of them would still be so generous. The CN are well organized and hold regular meetings. No they don’t meet under the club name “Christian Nationalists”, but they all meet up every Sunday and receive their marching orders. They also control large segments of the media, many many blogs, have a plethora of radio shows, and several TV shows.

I have often thought that atheists need to get their own TV shows. It would be particularly good if it could come on right after the 700 Club. To be acceptable, it would have to have a title that’s more palatable to the general public, so the Angry Atheist Hour, or Religion Sucks!, though accurate, would probably not go over very well in our current society.

The CN is why I started blogging, and why I vote, and I encourage other atheists to do so as well. Atheists should never allow themselves to give in to feelings of apathy or inevitability. Every atheist should be a constructive, active, voice in their local community. There are quite a few atheists that prescribe to the notion that government itself is illegitimate and invasion of personal rights. Whether that is true or not, I will not try and argue in this post. However, I can say with complete confidence, that if we adopt and maintain an abstinence approach to government, the Christian Nationalists will step in and take over.

LBBP