Atheist billboards and bus signs are spreading like a wildfire across North America so I suppose it’s about time some Christian said something so intensely stupid you just know they haven’t given two seconds of thought to what they said.
The Christian I write about is Bryan Fischer, executive director of Idaho Values Alliance, who issued a statement about the FFRF’s “Beware of Dogma” billboard going up in Boise, Idaho.
Here’s the stupid thing he said:
“The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”
The truth of the matter is that you can’t have freedom of religion without freedom from religion. No one, including Fischer, can practice their religion of choice if they are not free from other religions.
Think about it for a moment. Would a Christian woman have freedom of religion if she was not free to run around bareheaded? Would Jews have freedom of religion if they were required to show up for Mass? Would a Muslim have freedom of religion if he was required to eat pork?
Here’s some good news. It seems that even Christians are starting to doubt the continued existence of evangelical Christianity with one writing in the Christian Science Monitor that he expects it to collapse within our lifetimes (source):
We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.
Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group in my opinion. If there’s one group of Christians I’d described as bone-deep stupid and rabidly hateful – it’s the evangelicals. The author of the piece apparently agrees with the first half of that description as he lists ignorance as one of the reasons this is going to happen.
Here’s a fascinating (in a disturbing way) article about the push by Christian men to turn back the clock on women’s liberation and the women who are helping them do it.
As an alternative, the movement offers a "separate but equal" division of duties and authority. Men, the embodiment of Christ, are the breadwinners and spiritual [...]
Yesterday afternoon our daughter spilled a glass of soda on the floor and left it there while I was outside.
This has been an ongoing problem and to be honest, I was more than a little peeved about it.
I made her help clean things up and sent her to her room to pout about it [...]
The Mormon Church has decided that a bill in Illinois that will be considered tomorrow morning has to be defeated. Why? Because if it is voted out of committee and passes Illinois will join the ranks of the very few states that try to recognize the rights of their gay, lesbian and transgendered citizens.
And since [...]
I saw this over at Feministe and just had to share.
Retired barber Joe Godlewski says that when television chefs recommended kosher salt in recipes, he wondered, "What the heck’s the matter with Christian salt?"
By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available from seasonings manufacturer Ingredients Corporation of America. It’s sea salt that’s [...]
James Dobson has resigned from Focus on the Family (via Pam’s House Blend).
Conservative evangelical leader James Dobson has resigned as chairman of Focus on the Family but will continue to play a prominent role at the organization he founded more than three decades ago, The Associated Press has learned.
Dobson notified the board of his decision [...]
Here’s a video of Christopher Hitchin’s talking about how religion removes personal responsibility and how Christianity is a totalitarian religion that gives no one any say in the matter:
This video is one of the reasons I haven’t read his book, God is not Great. I really don’t need anyone to tell me that. The Bible [...]
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so. — Ernestine Rose
