by Karen on January 28, 2008
If you’ve been an atheist for longer than five minutes you’ve probably heard the one about the stereotypical self-destructive atheist who after years of being an all around jackass finds himself* in a situation that is life-threatening. Despite being a cold-hearted machine that runs on pure reason said atheist decides that Jesus really does love him and the two of them walk off into the sunset holding hands.
So it should really come as no surprise that the deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy opposes the use of Narcan by non-medical personnel on the grounds that easy access to a life saving device will fail to scare the shit out of heroin addicts:
“Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services,” Madras says.
This is faith at it’s finest, not bad science. In fact the science seems to say that such access is good. But, then that would defeat faith’s cousin – punishment. Socially condemned people need to be punished in some manner to get them to “snap” into compliance with the majority. So what if they end up dead as a result of the punishment? It’s a great deterrent to the others who are thinking about being non-compliant.
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. – Devil’s Dictionary
The Democrats are again trying to court American faith supremacists in their race for the American presidency. What is a faith supremacist? It’s a person who believes that faith is superior be it explicitly or implicitly. The right is full of the explicit kind. The left is full of the implicit kind. They’re the ones who write books, articles and blogs about how they and their brethren are being completely rational when they threaten to vote against their alleged values because of the lack of respect their ‘faith’ gets from people with the same alleged values.
The sad thing is we’re all so used to them that we hardly think to question their adherence to their so called values. Take a post by A Guy in the Pew for example in response to the news about the faith forum (emphasis added):
As I have said before, I think that there is an opportunity for Democrats to attract a larger share of the Evangelical vote. the goal is not to attract the religious left–they already vote for Democrats. Nor is the goal to attract the single-issue abortion or anti-gay voters–they will not leave the Republican Party except in the rarest of circumstances. Instead, the goal is to attract the significant minority of Evangelical and Catholic voters who will be attracted by other issues.
Other issues? What other issues? The rights of women, people of colour and homosexuals? Global warming? Poverty? The fundy war on science and reality based sex education? Access to medical care for the working poor? Livable wages? Are these new found issues they were previously unaware of? Or – more likely – issues they claim to support at the dinner table but refuse to vote for because they got their belief in a two thousand year old zombie crucified at the water cooler?
If it’s the former, they’re bloody idiots if they managed to not notice that all these things have been major issues for years now. If it’s the latter – well they are unbelievable hypocrites who deserve far more than mere mockery over their silly little belief in risen dead men. They should be called hypocrites who are not deserving of the slightest ounce of respect they demand be theirs by default. Ask yourself something for me.
Would you actually cast a vote for someone who actively works to destroy the things you support because someone said your dog was stupid? That’s what these people do all the time. They claim to support racial and gender equality, gay rights, environmental measures, access to medical care for all Americans, solid educations and a mess of other things they say their faith informs them about – then insist they can’t/won’t vote for anyone who doesn’t respect their ‘faith’. Instead they cast their vote for the people who stand against all the things they claim to support when they’re whining about being mocked because that person publicly courts their unbelievable egos.
Hypocrites each and every one. I say let the Republicans keep them because lets face it – the Republican party is being eaten alive by the ‘people of faith’. We Democrats have enough problems without bringing their hypocrisy into it.
by Karen on March 17, 2007
It’s one thing to preach what you don’t practice, but what about preaching what you don’t know? This appears to be the case with a majority of Americans according to a quiz given by Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. We are not just talking about Americans being ignorant of other religions, but ignorant of Christianity and the Bible, of which 80 or so percent of Americans claim personal allegience to.
According to this article by Professor Prothero his students have told him, via a quiz he gives each year, that Paul led the Israelites out of Egypt and Moses was blinded on the road to Damascus. Other formal studies have shown that only one in three Americans can name the four major books of Christianity and that one in 10 think that French army commander Joan of Arc was the wife of Noah.
So, what’s the fix? How do we get Americans to actually study their own religious texts, much less the religious texts of other cultures? Many, including Professor Prothero, believe we should bring the religious texts into our secular schools and teach them from a secular, non-belief point of view. I, for one, consider this a pipe dream even though I support it in theory. Despite the general ignorance, the majority of Americans believe the stories to be factual accounts and they really don’t want to know anything about them.
I think the change has to start somewhere else and that somewhere else is the pews of religious institutions. Until these institutions quit teaching there views as 100% true and accurate as well as the exclusive owner of “The Truth”, we’re going to continue to be largely ignorant and there’s nothing we can do about it. Lets also not forget that many of a sect teaches that belief is the most important thing in the world.
Simply put, if faith and knowledge contradict, it is knowledge that must go, never faith. Faith must be guarded at all costs so even if we were to work out a neutral course on religious texts, it would be just a matter of time before someone threw a fit about having their faith in a particular text, sentence and/or story spanked by knowledge.
Heck, we’ve got people throwing a fit because people use BCE/CE instead of BC/AD. Do you think they could handle being exposed to the fact that Jews don’t believe in the factualness of the Christian texts, that Muslims do not consider Jesus the son of Allah and that some of us non-theists do not think Jesus existed in the first place? And that’s before we get to Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, Wiccans, Satanists, Raeliens, deists and so forth with their respective holy books and beliefs.
Yea, I just heard their heads explode too.
