Religion

Skepchick Quickies 10.28

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Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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19 Comments

  1. I don’t condone violence, but whenever I hear someone saying “if you give someone else rights, you’re taking away my freedoms,” I feel like headslapping them. Hard. Do they also think that religious freedom should include the right to persecute heretics?

  2. Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place- science leads you to killing people. ” – Ben Stein.

    I still think of this quote every time that I read something horrible like what happened to that 11 year old girl.

    @Andrés Diplotti: I would be surprised if they didn’t think that.

  3. I suspect the “the uncle was trying to molest her” accusation has more than a small amount of truth to it.

  4. Sounds like he is cover his actions by claiming he is a “pious and upstanding muslim exercising his beliefs” as opposed to a disgusting paedophile who should be locked up and castrated.

    Is there anything religion can’t excuse?

    With the Obama ‘gaytopia’, who is James Dobson? He sounds like a complete lunatic.

  5. Teek – I agree.
    I also won’t be surprised if that’s his defense – in that by not wearing the hijab, she was being deliberately provocative, and that’s why those laws are supposedly in place. You know, to protect poor men from their …. umm… natural … ‘god-given’ urges.

  6. @Andrés Diplotti: Yes they do. If they were able to get the Christian Nation that they want so badly they would quickly move to outlaw jews, muslims, hindus, atheists, agnostics etc. Then they would begin to fight among themselves until they were able to have a single state sponsored religion.

    @tkingdoll: Agree.

    On the nice side amazing, just freaking amazing pictures. Why can’t the ghost chasers, ufo lovers, sasquatch sniffers provide pictures of this quality?

    So religous acts of kindness aren’t related to altruism but fear? Really, never would have equated religion with fear.

    Is Dobson mentally ill or is this just a last desperate power grab?

  7. @Lyc: James Dobson is the guy behind a ultra-right wing organization called Focus on the Family. He just spews hate and lies whenever he speaks in public.

  8. @AndresDiplotti: Yup. That’s exactly what they think. Freedom of religion to them means freedom to try to convert you. You don’t have the right to say, “no.” I agree with you that if they ever got their “Christian” nation, there would be an episode of repression, torture and death to rival Pol Pot’s regime. They would never get their dream nation, because they would cannibalize themselves trying to find sufficiently “godly” and “upright” leaders.

    @Imrryr: Ben Stein’s full of it. I think he even knows that he’s full of it. Like all too many people, he is making a great living at spreading manure. Since he probably has no conscience, it doesn’t bother him a bit.

    @GabrielBrawley: As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Dobson has come to beleive his own propaganda and is a great example of why churches that preaxh politics should lose their non-profit status. His “church” is a right-wing pressure group.

    @Lyc: No, there isn’t. You can cover anything with religion. It’s the same kind of “logic” as the psychics, UFOologists, etc. use. There’s always an excuse.

    @tkingdoll, lyc: I agree – I’m very suspicious of the uncle. In most fundamentalist Muslim and Hindu cultures, men totally dominate the legal and religious power structure. It’s almost impossible to get a conviction in one of these cases. The woman is wrong, just because she is a woman. No other reason applies. Apparently, no one teaches the men basic self-control as far as women goes.

  9. I always feel insulted by the political extremists of any ilk who try to convince me that voting for the other guy will ruin the nation. Have they forgotten that the nation is the people? Yes the nation can be ruined, but it takes a majority of the people to do it or to fail to stop others.

    Just to keep the shouting down, I’ll take a page from US history: Prohibition. A small fringe of activists convinced the leaders of the country that booze was going to ruin the nation. The politicians went along with it because there was no significant opposition. Anti-alcohol laws were passed. It was bad. The majority of people in the country woke up a little bit and told the politicians to stop it. (That’s the short version without the crime, violence, bigotry, and surprising re-distribution of wealth to the Kennedys and Bushes.)
    When I hear Dobson or someone else telling people that voting for “that guy” will ruin the nation, I can’t believe that they think anyone would be ignorant enough to believe them.

  10. SKEPCHICKS: looks like your jQuery script isn’t getting included; I can’t use the “reply” links.

    QuestionAuthority: you mean tax-exempt rather than non-profit, I think. But I do wonder if that’s a good argument. I mean, personally I would like to see all religious institutions pay their taxes. ; ) But that’s because I’m an amoral heathen bastard.

    But if religious groups don’t have to pay taxes, and that’s okay, then I think I would argue that they’re allowed to be politically active. Despite the separation of church and state (which, IMO is tenuous at best), it would be very difficult to preach morality without arguing that the nation should be doing it.

    You know, as I type that, I may have just convinced myself I’m wrong. :) Of course you can’t expect to legislate your own morality.

    Damn. I don’t know what I believe anymore!

  11. @JRice: You are correct. I meant “tax-exempt” there.
    I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last week or so…that just proves it. ;-)

  12. Hi there!

    Atheism + Altruism: Altruism was one of the FIRST things that occurred to me when I stopped believing in God. For a while, I was basically clinging to the belief in some sort of afterlife where I’d still be around and everything would be okay. I was still nice to people and gave money to charity because … well, you want to be sure that you actually GET INTO this afterlife, right?

    Then when I lost the belief in an afterlife, I realized that THIS is the only life we get, and that every human being who has every died is STILL DEAD, and every human being still living WILL BE DEAD.

    Shit!

    I wanted to run to a supermarket and buy enough sandwiches for every homeless person in my town. I realized that these people would DIE if no one did anything, and God wasn’t going to let them into some eternal paradise where they can sit a banquet table with their bottle of Mad Dog and feast forever. I wanted to go give a hug to everyone that I was ever mean to. I wanted to write a story, paint a picture, and kiss every girl I’d ever loved. I realized that we pathetic naked monkeys were all in this together, and that no one was going to “save” us. That if all of the religions of the world would realize this, they could work TOGETHER to save the poor and dying people of the world, in THIS life.

    Because it’s all we’re gonna get. :(

  13. @Draconius: That was wonderful. I have to nominate your comment for COTW.

    I had much the same revelation when I finally shed the last shreds of faith I had.

  14. “If Obama is president the whole world will collapse into a gay dystopian future”

    What often gets overlooked is that during such a collapse, the Earth’s gay-gravity (or, gayvity) will cause the electrons of the more masculine-colors like blue and brown to be stripped away from the visible spectrum in an orgy of tight-abs, vodka coolers and techno music, resulting in a super-gay dwarf-planet, where just an cubic-ounce of said material would make Larry the Cable-Guy sing show-tunes, and homo-phobia would instantly be converted into homo-mania!

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