On the Daily Show Lewis Black tells it like nobody else can. But somebody’s got to say it to that moron Beck.

No, being a rich banker in the US is nothing at all like being a Jew in Nazi Germany about to be hauled off to a concentration camp. Cut that shit out.

Glenn, save yourself, before it’s too late!

The Maine GOP just came up with a brand new Tea Party oriented platform. It says a little bit about a lot of things, mostly wingnut talking points. There is no sign that anybody was thinking too hard when they put it together. My impression of the Maine Republican party is that it is so small that it would be easy to overrun with not very many warm bodies, which is why I suggested partly in jest last year that us progressives could swoop in there and take it over. We could use a party of our own. But who listens to me?

Although the document is chock full of wingnutty teabaggy whackiness, there’s one part I’d like to discuss.

II. To Establish Justice:
…
b. Reassert the principle that “Freedom of Religion” does not mean “freedom from religion”.

Wait, what? If they are saying that individuals do not have the right not to be religious, how will that be codified into law? What are they planning to force us to do? Who will they have enforce it?

How will they determine who does not believe, by home invasions by religious police belonging to a certain state-approved sect? Interrogations with torture?

When was this previously asserted, during the Dark Ages?

How will they force us to believe, on penalty of death by fire?

Of course their hope is to institute wingnut extremist religious education in our schools that all children would be forced to take, whether they belong to a sect that believes and practices that at all. Because, yanno, they’re right and everybody else is wrong.

People who don’t belong to their church would no longer have the right to raise their own children to believe as they believe. They hope to take over the curriculum and replace science with Bible worship.

God also told their leaders to tell them to hand over all their money so they could hire gay prostitutes over the internet build a powerful religious empire that will inspire non-members to accept that they are wretches who don’t deserve life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or the money they earned.

If God had intended any of them to be wealthy, he’d have made them wealthy.

God is responsible for everything. If you don’t have health insurance, it’s because he didn’t want you to. If you have Medicare and someone else is poor, it means you deserve it and they don’t.

Maybe what they have in mind is what I call “competing religious rights”, specifically where one person’s religion tells them to harass people until they convert them spread the joy of Jesus, while the presumed potential convert simply wants the right to be left alone. How about starting religious wars? Should the person who has heard a message from God telling them to kill those who worship what they consider to be false gods, as often happened in the Old Testament, have the right to do so?

Are those who appear to be worshiping money worshipping false gods?

Not permitting self-proclaimed “Christians” to indoctrinate our children with their wrong-headed beliefs is considered “persecution”. For atheists to speak up about their opinions is “persecution”. The fact that others are even permitted to exist is “persecution”.

I’m starting to think religion is insanity.

This woman has decided to define it for all of those of us who are unclear on the concept.

My email is still being bombarded by thoughtful posts on John Shore’s blog. A couple of thoughts:

Although many if not most of those who primarily identify themselves as “Christians” like to think that anyone who does not belong to their narrow sect is not also a “Christian”, in fact anyone who believes in Jesus as divine is by definition a Christian. I was raised a Lutheran, and we did not go out and try to convert anyone (though I can’t speak for other Lutheran sects or those in other parts of the country where attempts at religious hegemony are the rule, rather than the exception). The majority of Christians I know do not proselytize. To what extent is it a mandate to evangelize? Only within certain sects? Or is the proselytizing mandate something that is fulfilled by having some other sort of outreach that can be fulfilled by the minister or outsourced to missionaries?

I see true “witnessing” not as trying to preach to others but as setting an example in the way you live your life. If you can’t live your life according to what you preach, we don’t see you as a sinner who is “still working on it”, we see you as a hypocrite. We see “Jesus forgave me” morphed into “Jesus will forgive me no matter what I do, so I’m going to go ahead and do it” all the time. Otherwise your leaders would lead holy lives, or at least attempt to, rather than hiring gay prostitutes while working against gay rights and claiming to be straight.

The idea that we haven’t heard The Word is so laughable it is stupid. Seriously stupid, use your brains, please. After you walk away offended because we won’t listen, consider how many millions of other believers out there are waiting in line to harass each and every one of us who told them to go away. You’ve chosen to single out people who have no interest in what you are saying. In the very least you need to learn to live with rejection.

You’re out there trying to convince people that they lead wretched, impotent lives. Once in a while you find somebody who already feels this way. But aside from that, you are just trying to spread misery and apathy in the world by trying to make people who are doing just fine feel miserable.

The “good” you are trying to do is to convince people to be satisfied with their miserable lives and not take action against those who are responsible for their misery – rich politicians, usurious mortgage and credit card companies, larcenous banks, and churches who take their money and spend it on expensive buildings and lavish lifestyles. Your leaders are rewriting the Bible to edit out much of what “God’s Word” used to be, because it conflicts with their worship of money. If you are politically active at all, you are trying to make more people miserable by preventing them from getting the same government benefits you love to draw.

Go away. Your words are hollow, like the wind.

with the Christianists and the rest.

John Shore wrote a blog post on Huffington Post about 10 Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian. It’s not the kind of thing I would normally read, but it was really interesting. Each of his premises linked back to his blog, which has gotten a ton of traffic and posts. The only comment thread I actually subscribed to was the one for What Non-Christians want Christians to hear. That’s a good thing. I’ve gotten bazillions of notifications in my email on that one, and despite the fact that I enjoyed reading them, I would have been overwhelmed by more.

The post is 3 years old, but it has caught on fire. Believers try to figure out what they need to do to convert more of us without actually having to look at our comments and consider our beefs.

Whatever. I recall once being trapped at an airplane bathroom by a Native American woman in some kind of costume and really bad breath. I said nothing, hoping that whoever was in that toilet would come out so the line would move, and she just kept hammering me on her faith, trying to convert me. Oh, and she had really, really bad breath.

I don’t think you’re a “good Christian”, John. You are way too open-minded, thoughtful, and tolerant.

The real reason why religion doesn’t belong in schools.

And another of theirs on creationism:

Remember when Pat Robertson declared that Hurricane Katrina was God punishing New Orleans for being sinful? Remember when he said that the great tsunami was God punishing Thailand, Indonesia, etc, killing millions of people because they weren’t born Christian? Remember after the Haiti earthquake he announced on television that God was punishing Haitians for their ancestors having made a “pact with the devil” to free them from slavery, a combination of good old right wing historical revisionism, racism, and Christianizing?

Well, it’s clear to me. The winter storm of the century has hit Washington DC, and God is punishing Congress for listening to lobbyists and the assholes on C Street and failing to pass meaningful health care and economic reform.

So there. Somebody had to say it.

Did the fact that everybody didn’t pray hard enough for Senator Byrd’s death result in a member of the caller’s prayer group dying? Is this guy serious? You be the judge.