You know, I wish people who would opine on the Constitution would actually learn something about it first. Ditto for people who opine on Atheism and Atheists.

Founded on Christian principles, huh? Christian principles like separation of church and state and there being no religious tests for office? Yeah, you convinced me. What a powerful argument, etc.

And enough of the horseshit about Atheists – you are not only not qualified to talk about us, you are wrong in every particular, you obnoxious little religionist.

Meanwhile, in Wingnutopia…

… this is apparently what passes for a valid argument about the separation of church and state. Go ahead, read it; it’s not terribly long, or terribly hard to understand. Nor is it terribly well-argued – or indeed argued at all, other than via the equivalent of the numpty blogger sticking his fingers in his ears and screeching “Nyah nyah nyah I’m right because I say so leave me alone I CAN’T HEAR YOOOOOOOOOUUU!”.

A few points to consider:

1. Preambles are essentially non-operative introductions – in other words, they don’t mean shit about the separation of church and state.
2. The Supremacy Clause; if Federal law, the Constitution and case law say there is separation of church and state, there is. Need I say more? I think not, other than go suck it, wingnuts.
3. Finally, the idiot who wrote it tries to be clever, by saying that nowhere is Christian belief mandated, and promptly faceplants on the cold hard pavement of logic. If there is no mandate to impose Christianity, and Christianity is nowhere mentioned in the documents themselves, you have a constitution which is entirely secular in its operative parts; in other words, separation of church and state.

To summarise, Twilight’s Last Gleaming is run and read by people who couldn’t think their collective way out of a wet paperback with a map and a pair of scissors.

A Very Heartfelt and Honest Return to Jesus

Shorter Sean Robert Reid, Catholic to Atheist Then Back to Christianity, O Me of Little Faith
I was an Atheist, but I returned to Catholicism when I realised that my Christian wife wouldn’t sleep with me if I didn’t.

A lot of Christian conversion stories are pretty dire – most of them seem to hinge on meaningless coincidences which a person desperate for meaning converts into something significant, or to involve nascent schizophrenia (“I heard a voice telling me it was God so now I believe!”). This one, though, seems so blatantly self-serving that I just had to snark it, leading to…

Alternative Shorter Sean Robert Reid, Catholic to Atheist Then Back to Christianity, O Me of Little Faith
Jesus gets me laid! Go Jesus!

A ‘verse, a ‘verse, my brain for a multiverse!

The ability of Creationists to fool themselves into thinking they understand science always astounds me — they so obviously and plainly fail at it on every level. And yet they always seem to think that they are able to see something that actual scientists don’t or won’t, because there’s some huge anti-Creationist conspiracy of scientists who hate God or something equally ridiculous – and they, by golly, with their third grade level of science understanding, are just the ones to overturn all those thousands of hours of study and experimentation.

Or something.

School Vouchers: The Christian Right, Social Conservatism and Dismantling the State

This was intended to be Part One of a two-part series; instead, I’ve decided to meld the articles together because the second part flows so easily from the first.

It’s no secret that the Republican Party has become a little eccentric over the past thirty years or so. It seems more and more that the party which was initially against Federal government intrusion into areas of State politics has become the party against government of any kind, at least in a lot of its rhetoric.

While this is applied in varying degrees, it seems generally that in the following areas, the Republicans have remained consistent with their stated intent to dismantle the state: social and business policy.

We all know that massive deregulation of business, the monetarist experiment whose crows have just recently come home to roost, has been something of a failure, and hopefully the incoming Administration and Democratic majority will do something about putting appropriate regulatory measures back into place in this regard. While markets can and do spark innovation and growth, the unregulated market is not free, but lawless, and the only people who win are the robber barons.

-1 means he’s 11…

So this guy Twelve shows up here. I made a couple of comments on a post of his a while back, the comments of which turned into a Thread That Would Not Die! Presumably, he’s been led here by a referrer or by clicking on my name or something; that’s not really important. He then made a looooooooooooong comment on a post I wrote some time ago called Fools, Damned Fools And Christians.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the post in question until I looked at it, and found that it was dedicated to making fun of some Christian who posted a bunch of stupid stuff. How unusual.

Anyway, this looooooooooooong comment of his was dedicated to criticising my post. That’s fine; I welcome controversy, and I’m always happy to be criticised, if only because it often helps sharpen one’s writing abilities.

In this case, however, it seems that I won’t need to strain myself too much.

A couple of drabbles…

Just to fill some space, more than anything.

I want to ride my bicycle
I bike to work. It’s two miles on lonely back roads. I started for fitness and continued for fun. There’s not much better than freewheeling alone down glossy blacktop, nobody in front or behind for miles.

It’s all uphill except the end; the only thing better than smooth roads is going downhill so fast that it frightens you.

There’s an intersection at the bottom of the hill which I speed towards, not knowing if cars are coming from either direction, or if I can stop in time, and I really don’t care – I just want to go downhill forever.

The Condensed Bible
The Old Testament: Some naked chick eats an apple on the suggestion of a talking snake. Ruination ensues. Many books of Hebrews follow. Lots of begetting, some angels, pregnant women dashed against rocks. Some weird shit about polycotton blends and shellfish, and what you shouldn’t do at the weekends. No buttsex at all, not even if you both want it really bad.

The New Testament: Some hippy walks around annoying people and being a smartass. Said hippy gets nailed to a tree or something and deserves it. “Jesus loves you. Here’s some fish.” Still no buttsex, and probably no lesbians.

Fools, damned fools and Christians

My wife is trying to kill me. She must be, because she keeps telling me to look at stuff which is so profoundly stupid that it makes my brain crinkle and go phutphut.

Like just the other day, when she was comment surfing and ended up at a blog called What I Really Think, which spectacularly fails to live up to the verb in its name, although the URL seems entirely appropriate. I swear, I keep expecting to look at the screen and see that it’s written in crayon.

Funnies, though – the writer doesn’t seem to realise that she has a pride flag in her header.

Spanking Sirius… Again

The other day, as I was browsing around http://wordpress.com/tag/evolution as I often do, I was reminded of an old but funny joke, which goes something like this:

A hunter goes into the woods to hunt a bear and takes with him his trusty 22-gauge rifle.

After a little while, he spots a very large bear, takes aim, and fires. When the smoke clears, though, the bear is gone.

A moment later the bear taps this guy on the shoulder and says, “No one shoots at me and gets away with it. You have two choices: I can either rip your throat out and eat you alive, or you can drop your trousers, bend over, and I’ll do you in the ass.”

The hunter figures that anything is better than death, so he drops his trousers, bends over, and the bear delivers on his promise.

After the bear leaves, the hunter pulls up his trousers and staggers into town vowing revenge.

He buys a much larger gun and returns to the forest. He sees the same bear, takes aim, and fires. When the smoke clears, the bear once again is gone. A moment later, the bear taps him on the shoulder and says, “You know what to do.”

Afterwards, the hunter pulls up his trousers and crawls back into town. Now he’s really mad, so he buys himself a bazooka.

He returns to the forest, sees the bear, aims, and fires.

When the smoke clears this time, the bear taps him on the shoulder and says, “You’re not REALLY here for the hunting, are you?”

Pullman Hits Back

The author of the book on which the new film The Golden Compass is based has hit back at critics who accuse him of peddling “candy-coated atheism”.

Philip Pullman dismissed as “absolute rubbish” accusations by the US-based Catholic League that the film promotes atheism and denigrates Christianity.

“I am a story teller,” he said. ” If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.”

The Golden Compass – which stars Nicole Kidman – premiers in London on Tuesday

BBC News

Interesting stuff.

Just a couple of thoughts on this one. While Pullman is avowedly Atheist, and the novels reflect that, they are not anti-Catholic. They are anti-religion. The Magisterium, while superficially Catholic, is used as a symbol for religion as a whole; the similarities lie in the fact that Catholicism is and was a large, powerful and repressive structure, and naturally any kind of similar structure will resemble it. Had Protestantism been the driving force in Western religion for as long as Catholicism, no doubt the Golden Compass would be attracting more fire from Baptists; had it been Mormonism, Mitt Romney would be speaking out against it during Presidential debates.

In short, while the Magisterium is a symbol for religion as a whole, it is not the symbol for any one religion. That it happens to resemble Catholicism, this is more a matter of cultural imprinting than anything else.