How stupid can these women be???? Has anyone ever heard of healing semen? Aren’t we all afraid of diseased semen? Ugh.

We hear a lot lately about how atheists are attacking religion. No, atheists are attacking crimes perpetrated by religious institutions. There is a difference. Regardless, it isn’t as if atheists have been immune to criticism or attack. I’ve heard everything from “atheists have no morals” to “atheists hate America.” That shit is tired.

In 1987 President George H.W. Bush went so far as to say, “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

We also get the daily attacks from the Religulous among us. Just the other day, I had a coworker say that I may as well have an affair with a married man. Why not? I’m atheist. What do I care about marriage or morals? Pffft. Morals schmorals.

In reality, belief in God has no effect over one’s moral perception. The world’s largest humanitarian aid organization, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, lacks religious affiliation. In addition to this, 25 of the 40 groups on the American Institute of Philanthropy’s list of recommended organizations for Haiti relief donations are entirely secular. Lack of faith in religion has not diminished my capacity for compassion, and, clearly, it hasn’t reduced that of other non believers.

Richard Dawkins began the Non-Believers Giving Aid organization to make the same point. Another example of heartless atheists is Kiva, a micro-lending organization working to eradicate poverty. Kiva has lending teams. Who’s leading the way? Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Free-Thinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.

So what if we eat babies? They’re delish.

The week started with Sunday School, obviously, at 8 am, followed by Sunday Worship Service (hand raising and alter kneeling, optional). Then there was the mad dash to beat the Methodists to the Dragon Den for lunch. We’d be back at church by 5pm each Sunday for Choir Practice and then Sunday Night Worship. (This is not the same as the Catholic concept of having multiple masses so you can attend whichever is convenient. Nope. You go to both services.)

Monday nights we had prayer meetings. Which could also be used as veil of good intentions for gossip. “Please pray for the Jones’s daughter. She’s having a baby, and she’s not married!” One such kind prayer request is how I found out that my eldest brother was gay.

Tuesday Nights, we had Sword Drill. No, we weren’t fencing. The Bible is a sword. (They’ve since changed the name to Bible Drill and replaced the command “Draw Swords” with “Present Bibles,” but it’s all the same. Really.) To compete in Bible Drill we had to be able to find each book of the bible in 10 seconds, find 10 Key Passages, and be able to recite 50 Bible Verses. I can still find any bible book in less than 10 seconds. It’s a great party trick which has won me many free beers.

Wednesday night was Church Supper followed by Girls in Action for me and Royal Ambassadors for my brother. I don’t know why were separated by gender except that it sets the expectation that the boys are Royal, and I, sans penis, was supposed to be active?? I didn’t get it then. I don’t get it now.

Thursday night would be church sports team practice – which always began and ended with prayer (to beat the giant Baptist girls from Locust Hill, SC).

Friday nights would be some highly supervised social activity – usually aimed at evangelism. (Although, one night it was a video about how man and dinosaurs coexisted!) Of course, Saturday morning we would have our basketball games. And it starts all over again the next week.

The church is still there and going strong. Growing its massive campus and filling the heads of another generation of children with idiocy. I get pissed when I think about my parents and how they took me to this place that believes women are second class citizens (A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church submits to Christ), that gay is a choice, that gay is wrong, and that the earth is 6,000 years old.

Fortunately, Gawker explains:

Anyway, Pedobear is friendly and creepy and creepily friendly—just like pedophiles—so people put him places where pedophiles will see him—like on or around kid porn—which is funny. Once you’ve got that concept down, you can put Pedobear in places that aren’t kid porn, and then it’s even funnier, because it’s like you’re saying “this thing is of or related to kid porn.” And that, Pope Ben, is what some Maltese graffiti artist would like to say to you.

Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen.

It seems as if she’s arguing that “True” religious beliefs would never marginalize women or set up oppressive power structures.  Plainly, this is untrue.  Although they are a few verses in the Bible and perhaps some in the Koran which may be read as pushing for equality, they sit nestled between verses calling explicitly for the subordination of women.

Instead of chucking Catholicism and belief in things unsupported by evidence entirely, Dowd’s cognitive dissonance between her feelings about Catholicism/Jesus and the Pope may be pushing her to mentally divorce the Pope from Catholicism.

I wonder what manner of horrors would have to be traced to Catholicism itself before she rejects the entire rotten edifice?

My emails so far:
Click to view slideshow.

But don’t let me have all the fun! And in case you get stuck, there’s the handy list of topics on the left.

He perfectly summarize the Catholic Church’s calling for Anglican priests to switch over, “Give me your homophobes, misogynists and pederasts. Send me your bigots yearning to be free of the shackles of humanity.”

He also proposes a proper response for the Anglican Archbishop, “”Send us your women, yearning to be priests, who could make a strong case for being the better-qualified fifty percent of humanity; send us your decent priests, sick of trying to defend the indefensible; send them all, in exchange for our woman-haters and gay-bashers.”

Sound like a great trade for me!

Dawkins touches on everything from transubstantiation to the church’s lies about condoms to AIDS riddled Africa. A must read.

I don’t know if Sherman will win, but I applaud him for bringing attention to this spending.

These guys are terrorists. Domestic. Christian. Terrorists. I’ve heard this militia described as “Christians who live in the woods with their guns.” They have an elaborate plot to kill law enforcement because Jesus wants them to do it. How can anyone excuse this as anything but terrorism? Oh I know why! Because Christians can’t possibly be terrorists? Terrorism is a strictly a Muslim thing…

“Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment,” the Web site says, adding, “The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it.”

That’s really effing scary.

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

On Sunday, March 28, Ratzinger alluded to the scandle in his Palm Sunday homily.

He leads us to what is great, pure, he leads us to the healthy air of the heights: to life according to truth; to the courage that does not let itself be intimidated by the gossip of dominant opinions…

Alright, aside from this being terrible speech writing, he’s trivializing child rape? Cute, Pope. Real cute. Coming forward as a rape victim is gossip? Puhlease. I do hope someone is intimidated enough to keep his penis in his pants dress.