A guest blogger wrote of Religious Freedom Day in yesterday’s Washington Post. I’ve taken the liberty of rewriting the opening paragraph to reflect reality.

The original:

Across the globe, religion and belief continue to matter deeply in the lives of people and their cultures. From worship to prayer, births to funerals, weddings to holy days, almsgiving to thanksgiving, religion is a central source of identity, meaning, and purpose for billions of human beings.

The reality:

Across the globe, religion and belief continue to worm themselves dangerously into the lives of people and their cultures. From self-abasement to talking to oneself instead of taking action, physically deforming male and female children without their consent to delusional thoughts of deceased loved ones being in a better place, from fighting to allow only a man and a woman to commit to a life together to strange ceremonies concocted by imaginative goatherds of old, giving huge sums of money to support the very system that seeks to control their lives to giving credit to superstition instead of science, religion is a central source of pain, suffering and misery for billions of human beings.

You’re welcome!

Growing up in the home of fundamentalist Christians left many painful marks on my psyche, but the fabric of religion wasn’t without its funny patches. On Sunday mornings, while we were all getting into our Sunday best, me putting Greasy Kid Stuff in my hair to create the perfect wave in my hair to match Dad’s, the radio was always tuned to a gospel program on a local AM radio station.

One Sunday a traveling preacher was being interviewed by the host about his travels through the Appalachians. The preacher told a story of being invited to preach at one particular church to which he’d never been.

He spoke of coming, along with his assistant, from the preacher’s office, through a curtain at the side of the sanctuary, walking up to the dais and taking his seat in front of the congregation. Only after sitting down and arranging his bible on his lap did he lift his gaze to the congregation.

It took a moment for the reality of what he saw to sink in, but it was true, this was a church of snake-handlers.

He looked over at his assistant and said “do you see what I see?”

The assistant, clearly scared out of his wits, said “yep, I do. Do you see a back door up here?”

The preacher looked over the dais side-to-side and behind him and then back to his assistant and said “No. Where do you suppose they want one?”

Contemporaneous Accounts of Jesus?

I’ve been challenged on my assertion that there are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus’ existence. The proof offered was Cornelius Tacitus and Josephus. I’m not a history expert, but here’s what I find:

Cornelius lived from 56 C.E. to 117 C.E., instantly disqualifying him from this challenge, but I’ll give a quick summary of what I see.

Here is the passage in question:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.^[31]

So we have Tacitus mentioning “Christus” or “the messiah” in passing in one of at least 16 books in the Annals group on the Roman empire.

What’s curious to me is that, in this mention, Tacitus is referring to Christianity not as a positive group but describes them as promulgating “a most mischievous superstition” from Judea “the first source of the evil” to Rome “where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre.” What a glowing report!

Historian David Fitzgerald discusses this passage in his book “Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All.” He points out that Tacitus is discussing the beliefs of these cultists as background for a different point of Roman history.

At the time of this mention, 116 C.E., this was a story any Christian-on-the-street would have known, it is not in any way based on an eyewitness account. He almost certainly didn’t find this tidbit from historic documents. The Romans did not keep detailed records of the great number of crucifixtions carried out and any records that may have existed at all were undoubtedly destroyed in one of the repeated burnings-to-the-ground of Rome in the intervening years. 

And the Romans would hardly have referred to Jesus Ben Joseph of Nazareth as “Christus”, or “The Messiah!” He also points out that Christ is the Greek translation of a Jewish religious title.

Josephus, or Titus Flavious Josephus, lived from 37-100 C.E. disqualifying him also from this discussion, but, what the hell. Let’s see what he had to say.

Josephus fought in the first Jewish-Roman war and is an early claimant of divine revelation. He correctly predicted that Vespasian would become emperor. After this actually happened he wrote that his revelation had taught him three things: “that God, the creator of the Jewish people, had decided to “punish” them, that “fortune” had been given to the Romans, and that God had chosen him “to announce the things that are to come”

Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews was written in 93 or 94 C.E., was widely read and had the additional feature of being disingenuous in how it presented Jewish history. The passage in question does not even appear until the 4th century. There are no mentions of this passage, the “Testimonium” until 300 years later.

“Nailed” mentions that historians also note that the paragraph is out of context of the preceding and following paragraphs, uses a different style and non-Josephean vocabulary. Josephus’ books were among the most widely read of that period in time. That there is no mention of this paragraph until the 4th century is wildly telling.

Fitzgerald points out that when the Testimonium begins to get mentioned it’s by Bishop Eusebius, against whom over two dozen complaints survive including poor scholarship, deliberate misrepresentations of history and lack of integrity.

So I’m going to stick with the incredulous and skeptical here and conclude that there are still no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus, let alone accounts of his miracle-working ways. History is a cruel taskmaster, ain’t it?

Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All

330 schoolgirls & teachers poisoned in 1 month in Afghanistan. #Islam keeps giving & giving. Or is that taking & taking lives & liberties from women. As described in Jonathan Turley’s article, Islamic men work to close schools that dare teach girls and women and, failing that, work to disfigure or kill them. 

Interesting then, the comparison with the US religious right and the zeal to inculcate youth with the poison of fairy tales and un-humanistic dogma. While the US right isn’t throwing acid on or outright killing girls, they do share the common goal of steering learning to insular private schools, many feeding off the public teat, where their crazed teachings can be passed on without the challenge of rational thought.

The US religious right is only better than the Taliban by a matter of degree, the goal is the same.

I’m having trouble with this article in Religious Dispatches, by Austin Dacey, representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and author of “The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights.”

In it he uses the plight of one Alexander Aan, imprisoned in Indonesia for the crime of “inciting hatred or enmity of a religious group, and under the country’s blasphemy provision, Article 156a, which criminalizes “hostility, hatred or contempt” and “disgracing” of a religion. Article 156a also prohibits attempts to persuade others to leave their religion and embrace atheism.”

A reminder, Indonesia’s Constitution stipulates that every person believe in a supreme being. Can you imagine being atheist and visiting Indonesia and what would happen should you have a couple of beers and get into a conversation in the wrong bar? Say goodbye to the return portion of your air fare!

For me the cognitive dissonance comes from statements like:

“In the West…The public debate is about how to balance freedom of speech with respect for religious belief.”

Dacey contrasts his view of the Western framing of the issue with that of predominantly Muslim Indonesia this way:

“Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. On both the West and Indonesia. There is no need to respect religious beliefs! To paraphrase someone, perhaps Hitchens, those with ridiculous ideas should be treated as such. Freedom of conscience is a veiled way of giving the religious the right to slap back at any perceived insult.

Then he puts atheism and religion on the same moral level:

“From a moral perspective, there is an important symmetry between the attitude of the believer who reserves special reverence for a deity, saint, or prophet, and the attitude of the secularist who asserts that every person is equally holy.”

He’s treating atheists and atheism as just equal to a religion, just another dogma lookin’ for respect. Nothing could be further from the truth. Atheism leads to humanism, though I admit one can get there from other vectors, but religion is full of the exact opposite of humanism.

Anywhere religion holds sway over a majority of the citizenry, and especially where religion is baked in to the government is a bad, dangerous place to be, for this is where only those with the facts on their side are persecuted. Respect for religion is the worst answer to the problems of the world and for the ability of every person to think for themselves and express their ideas.

I’m having trouble with this article in Religious Dispatches, by Austin Dacey, representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and author of “The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights.”

In it he uses the plight of one Alexander Aan, imprisoned in Indonesia for the crime of “inciting hatred or enmity of a religious group, and under the country’s blasphemy provision, Article 156a, which criminalizes “hostility, hatred or contempt” and “disgracing” of a religion. Article 156a also prohibits attempts to persuade others to leave their religion and embrace atheism.”

A reminder, Indonesia’s Constitution stipulates that every person believe in a supreme being. Can you imagine being atheist and visiting Indonesia and what would happen should you have a couple of beers and get into a conversation in the wrong bar? Say goodbye to the return portion of your air fare!

For me the cognitive dissonance comes from statements like:

“In the West…The public debate is about how to balance freedom of speech with respect for religious belief.”

Dacey contrasts his view of the Western framing of the issue with that of predominantly Muslim Indonesia this way:

“Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. On both the West and Indonesia. There is no need to respect religious beliefs! To paraphrase someone, perhaps Hitchens, those with ridiculous ideas should be treated as such. Freedom of conscienceis a veiled way of giving the religious the right to slap back at any perceived insult.

Then he puts atheism and religion on the same moral level:

“From a moral perspective, there is an important symmetry between the attitude of the believer who reserves special reverence for a deity, saint, or prophet, and the attitude of the secularist who asserts that every person is equally holy.”

He’s treating atheists and atheism as just equal to a religion, just another dogma lookin’ for respect. Nothing could be further from the truth. Atheism leads to humanism, though I admit one can get there from other vectors, but religion is full of the exact opposite of humanism.

Anywhere religion holds sway over a majority of the citizenry, and especially where religion is baked in to the government is a bad, dangerous place to be, for this is where only those with the facts on their side are persecuted. Respect for religion is the worst answer to the problems of the world and for the ability of every person to think for themselves and express their ideas.

I’m first on the wagon to keep #sharia from being used here in the US and everywhere. But it seems to me to be a tricky strategy to go exclusively after sharia. 

When I think of sharia I think of it in terms of not just the worst options like beheadings, stonings, honor killings and loss of limb but the more insidious things like all the subjection of women to second class status. 

But what this all boils down to is that, by participation in the religion, voluntarily or less than voluntarily, a person subjects themselves to this secondary law, to which, in some countries, like the UK, civil courts defer. The “voluntary” nature of religion is a subject until itself as many are participants of a religion due strictly to the “inherited” nature of having been indoctrinated into the cult from the earliest days of childhood by the very parents whose job it is to prepare your mind for the big world.

Here in the US (and presumably elsewhere) a couple married in the eyes of civil and Jewish religious law and who want to divorce have to be granted divorce by both bodies if either party wants to be granted a new marriage under Jewish law. 

To me it seems that the most practical thing is to abolish ALL religious law in the US. It’s silly to have, or even condone, a secondary unelected, potentially coercively adopted, “legal” system for religions. Count me in the camp for abolition of ALL religious “law” in the U.S. at least. 

Beautiful Hitch Quote

“In order to be a Christian you have to believe that, for 98,000 years our species suffered and died. Most of our children died in childbirth. Most people having a life expectancy of about 25…Famine, war, struggle…suffering, misery. All of that for 98,000 years and heaven watches it with complete indifference. And then, 2,000 years ago, thinks, “that’s enough of that” it’s time to intervene. And the best way to do that is for someone to be a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the middle east. Let’s not appear to the Chinese, where people can read and study evidence. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. You can’t be believed by a thinking person.” 

Atheists have something in common with the extreme right wing, though we come at it from diametrically opposed starting points. 

Today we are presented with the curious case of Pam Geller, who came out in support of Rush Limbaugh in his battle to survive the fallout from his attacks on Sandra Fluke.

Geller’s no friend of liberalism or much of a humanist and she’d surely fight back if someone called her an atheist. But she does have the curious trait of spending significant effort in pointing out the folly of Islam. 

We both want that Islam should be pushed out of the sphere of influence. The right points out many of the same things atheists do, primarily the great danger posed by radical Islamists. (As with any religion, anytime we refer to a radical we are referring to someone who follows most closely the word of whatever “holy” text guiding their particular cult. Sobering when you think about it.)

Atheists point out that and go that additional step of asking the “where’s the beef” questions - where’s the proof of your god and why the fuck is yours, of the thousands of claimed gods, the one true god?”

I admit it’s uncomfortable to share this tent with a group that daily spouts such massive quantities of venom, especially as it’s generally in the name of radicalism inspired by their own religion, but I will take help from anybody that will get out the message that Islam is anything but a religion of peace.

What has SCOTUS previously decided that may inform the debate over contraception?

In a post from today, lawyer Jonathan Turley discusses past cases that shed light on how the court may view a case brought by religious folk saying that they cannot be forced to accommodate use of contraceptives. 

In discussing Employment Division v. Smith (1990) Scalia, writing for the 6-3 majority says “the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended.”

See the rest of his post for the full discussion…http://jonathanturley.org/2012/02/12/employment-division-v-smith/#more-45239

Peace