Godidiot of the Week
Godidiot of the Week: Con Artist Robert Frey
January 8, 2004 | 22 Comments
This week’s Godidiot is a nasty, fraudulent, arrogant, fear-mongering, greedy, lying piece-of-shit con man named Robert Frey who’s such a big crybaby that he’s threatened a blogger with a libel suit (and eternal damnation) for exposing his little scam.
As Brent of Unscrewing the Inscrutable explains, Frey’s hustle is hawking Ten Commandments signs to help gullible Christians “defy” the evil forces that brought down the grandstanding Roy Moore. As a news story linked from Frey’s site demonstrates, he’s encouraging his marks to overwhelm the ACLU’s litigation machine by putting the signs on their lawns:
Now, instead of worrying about a single granite display of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of an Alabama courthouse, we can watch as the ACLU and its deceived followers go absolutely crazy over the thousands, if not millions, of Ten Commandments displays cropping up all over the American landscape.
But what’s the ACLU’s official position private religious displays on private property? Not quite what Frey suggests:
The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech; thus, all private parties have the right to display religious symbols on their own private property. So, for example, churches have a right to display the creche on their land, as do individuals in their yards.
And did the ACLU go “absolutely crazy” after residents of a small Louisiana town
Godidiot of The Week: Vox Day of Vox Popoli
November 19, 2003 | 21 Comments
This week’s godidiot, Christian Libertarian Vox Day of Vox Popoli, has a lot to say about the relationship between God and ethics for someone who knows so little about either:
Without God, there is only the left-hand path of the philosopher. It leads invariably to Hell, by way of the guillotine, the gulag and the gas chamber. The atheist is irrational because he has no other choice
Godidiot of the Week: Fiona of The World Wide Rant
October 3, 2003 | 47 Comments
All Godtalk is babytalk, but this week’s Godidiot, Fiona of The World Wide Rant, has raised incoherence to an art form. Not only are her words about God — or about anything, for that matter — incomprehensible, but the very thoughts upon which they are based are a meaningless, static buzz. No need, in her mind, to define terms or shape concepts into any recognizable form. For all the sense that comes out of her drooling little mouth, she might as well be spitting out strained carrots.
Beneath it all, however, lies the same vicious, nasty, selfish theology that drives the worldview of every racist, sexist, homophobic creationist monkey. Galileo was persecuted for suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe — but Fiona would have burned him at the stake for denying that everything revolves around her. And Fiona sees prayer as the answer to everything; she just lies on her back gurgling and whining at the ceiling, as if expecting that some giant omniscient sky-daddy — who knew her needs before she started crying — will come rushing to her aid and make everything better.
Although it may seem as if I am picking on a little infant, Fiona’s youth is no excuse. She perceives the world with the same five senses, and the same brain, as any other human being. There’s no reason what bubbles out between her lips should be the same as that which oozes out of her little pink bottom. Whether she spews it now, or when she is 100, it will still be the same old stinking shit.
So “tolerance” is not the answer. Miscreants like Fiona should shut up, sit down in their high chairs and let us educate them, or be confined to cribs until such time as evolution transforms them into something more civilized.
Godidiot of the Day: Dawn &%$# Of Up $&#@
September 25, 2003 | 12 Comments
Ghwh adsjhe djhjhwi Godidiot Dawn Olsen fwiutes:
Jjst mshgt ie thnt, RA blsnch tortured for eternity in hell, drjkjdfk jk a lake of fire hghje blah ngf Saddam, Hitler, Eva, Osama, Kafkaesqui, June and Ted Bundy, bjsoiu but Bob Hope, Vicky Drachenberg, Warren Zevon, Steven Den Beste and Austin Cline dfjng fg Heaven asikjg aigj.
Bh yeah???? F aksd soooooo scared. Jjjdf jk ne gs waaah waah waah boo hoo. Hj adfht Dawn hsdg jehg stupid.
Jgj alg fg God ajdfk aj er ominbenevolent?. Tnsh why ajjk ge ghnso ghlwie burn yn sdj a sjd Hell fgkjs etakhtg???
Dgjskd Dawn jks js nice jasdfk jnd but she ijs fj ajksdf fj. Ths dfjsa gdg God jsk adfj ee square circle sne an invisible pink asj. Desn hes thsgs that 1+ 1 = 3???
And jasdkj jd Dawn jafdjks this:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I hajk vhask;lj fnyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. J jdsafkj much smarter athj sadf her hsdajh.
Godidiot of the Week: Vicky Drachenberg of Liquid Courage
September 24, 2003 | 83 Comments
Nothing enrages The Raving Atheist more than decent, kindhearted people who are otherwise sensible — but when it comes to religion, refuse to see the truth even when it is biting them in the face. Although they have the rational faculties to distinguish sense from nonsense, sanity from insanity, they suspend belief whenever someone gurgles about God. Knowing better, they declare the God debate a draw, inevitably chiding the atheist for being a cruel, mean-spirited bully out to pick a fight.
In such a manner this week’s Godidiot, Vicky of Liquid Courage, weighs in on the debate over the conflict between omniscience and free will. She clearly understands the underlying issues, noting that 1) “there is a serious problem in this world between the concept of human ‘free will’ and the concept of an omniscient god who knows what one is going to do even before one does it” and 2) that there’s little use in praying if everything’s “a done deal stamped with God’s approval in the first place.” But then she quickly goes mushy and veers off course:
I am, by nature, fairly divided on this issue. I don’t really believe in God, but I do, for some reason (even if it’s a leftover from my childhood), believe in a greater Good. Consider this: In your young lives, your parents were like omniscient beings — perhaps for no other reason than they “let” you do what you felt was “right,” so that you might learn the necessary lessons of discretion and responsibility. They may have known better — known right from wrong — as they had more life experience, but they may have chosen not to interfere with your “free will” to learn those vital lessons for yourself.
In times of turmoil and trouble, this argument has proven to be very satisfying to me and, I’m sure, to many others, but of course, it cannot ever really be valid without empirical evidence that God actually exists. It’s comforting, and it’s pleasant, but is it true?
Don’t get me wrong. I want to believe it, with all my heart. But who can actually PROVE it to me?
But the issue is not whether an omniscient being might let us act freely. It is whether an omniscient being’s absolute and certain knowledge of the future is compatible with any notion of freedom at all. Parents who merely refrain from intervening so that their child may learn from experience do not know, in advance, the child’s every thought and choice and act, or who the child will marry and the day it will die. If they did, the child would plainly be little more than a robot. And any requests or prayers it made would be futile, having been anticipated and answered before they were even uttered.
So there’s nothing to be “divided” over. The question is open and shut. But yet when one of my readers addressed the insult to the intelligence that contrary hypothesis represents, he’s accused of acting from “a very strong, very deep and very immediate need to rain on [a] happy little parade.” Why does he get psychoanalyzed? Why not examine the person who’s propounding the crazy theory in the first place? Why not address the maddening double-talk inherent in this sort of theology — the notion that God wills the good, wills the bad for the greater good, but wills nothing at all so that we may have free will?
I think part of the answer is that Vicky knows that the theory is crazy, and that to attack it would be like stealing a balloon from a child. But if — if she truly believes the debate is a fair fight between equals — why brand only the atheist as the bully? One interesting thing I’ve noticed about agnostics of Vicky’s stripe is that despite their protestations that “god can’t be proven one way or the other,” they rarely accuse the theist of trying strip the non-believer of his dearly-held illusions.
Finally, if I were truly mean, I’d post gratuitously cruel graphics about this incident:
Remember, Vicky: God knew I’d do that before either of us was born. It’s debatable, right?
Dean Esmay, Godidiot (Part II)
July 10, 2003 | 15 Comments
The very essence of Godidiotism is to defend a moral position for the sole reason that it is supported by some religious dogma. Dean Esmay’s stance on abortion is a classic example of this:
For years, certain feminist organizations have been upset to note that support for abortion-on-demand as a no-questions-asked absolute civil right is not particularly prevalent among women generally. Worse, the younger women are, the less likely they are to view it that way. This particularly irks feminists who believed that, somehow, all those nasty reactionary pro-life women (who typically make up the majority of the crowds at pro-life rallies, by the way) would die off while the young hip women, freed from the bondage of patriarchal oppression, would see the “real truth.” Unfortunately, it ain’t happening: the younger a woman is, the more likely she is to consider herself pro-life, and bumper-sticker catch-phrases like “a woman’s right to choose” and “women’s health issues” aren’t working the same magic they used to, either in opinion polls or in the voting booth.
The radical pro-choice crowd is shrinking, not growing, and it’s certainly not because evil fundamentalist religious types are taking over the country, or because men are trying to put women “back in the kitchen” — although some anti-Christian and misandrist bigots would like you to believe that.
* * *I have had the experience of seeing my son Jacob moving around in his mother’s womb, and hearing his heartbeat at the same time.
I deeply, deeply, DEEPLY resent people who tell me I have no right to an opinion on this matter because I “just can’t understand what it’s like,” or who suggest that I’m some sort of frothing fundamentalist fascist simply because I am unwilling to make a religious issue out of “a woman’s right to choose.”
And by the way, for those of you who make “a woman’s right to choose” your formulation for all that is right and just in the world? Thank you so very much for marginalizing the fathers of the world so callously. We all appreciate that. No really, we do. We can’t get pregnant, so what we think is utterly irrelevant, right? We matter not a whit. We’re really, seriously, glad to know you think so little of us. It makes us feel very special.
Don’t be fooled by Dean’s claim that abortion isn’t a religious issue for him. His impassioned defense of the pro-life movement is based on nothing except his concern that its supporters might be “victimized” by anti-Christian bigotry. Abortion is not a moral issue for him at all; his only concern is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion on religious grounds — however specious some their supporting reasoning may be — receive immunity from criticism for expressing their “faith.” That, and nothing else, is the basis of his respect for their position.
Because, you see, Dean Esmay is pro-choice. Radically pro-choice. Despite his rhetoric, he’s “abortion-on-demand as a no-questions-asked absolute civil right” pro-choice. He makes this clear elsewhere in the above-quoted post and accompanying comments, and throughout his blog. And, for some perverse reason, he views his advocacy of the right to rip the beating heart out of his very own child as a sign of principle rather than abject moral depravity.
But because conservative Christians base their opposition to abortion on religious grounds, he must respect that too. What he really likes, though, is the misogynistic, anti-feminist aspect of that religiosity. So he milks it for what it’s worth, all the while reserving his right to rip the beating heart out of his very own child.
Godidiot of the Week: Dean Esmay of Dean’s World (With Update)
July 9, 2003 | 28 Comments
Atheism and rabid secularism start with the presumption that all values are equal and entirely [a] matter of opinion.
* * *On Mondays I’m an atheist, on Tuesdays through Saturdays I’m a confused agnostic deist, and on Sundays I try to take the day off.
* * *I’m not an atheist. I am agnostic about God, but not about everything because I believe things like astrology, voodoo, witchcraft, and satanic powers are all nonsense, and I loathe flim-flam artists like John Edward and Uri Geller.
* * *I’ll come out of the closet and just say it: I am a Bright.
* * *These quotes neatly sum up the confused workings of the mind of this week’s Godidiot, Dean Esmay of Dean’s World. As his own words demonstrate, he knows nothing about either atheism or religion and even less about himself. But while he may not know what he is, I do. Dean Esmay is a thin-skinned homophobic racist who believes that the best public policy is based either upon insane religious reasons, or no reasons at all.
Dean’s first rule is this: hatred, if religiously inspired, is beyond criticism. It’s not nice, he explained last year, to call conservative Christians to task for their homophobia:
Most of the bashing anymore seems to come from political commentators, Hollywood celebrities, journalists, and gay rights activists who equate saying “we believe that is sinful” to “we want you thrown into Concentration Camps.”
A good point: prison, not concentration camps, was all that conservative Christians required (until two weeks ago) as punishment for gay sinfulness. But, as he more recently explained, those who disagree with them are “titanic jackasses”:
So let me be very clear: if you’re one of my friends who enjoys baiting or mocking Christians, I hope you realize that I think you’re being a titanic jackass when you do that, and that I wish you would stop it.
Then there are the people who suggest that if a Christian believes homosexuality is sinful, he’s an intolerant bigot who contributes to the murder of gay people. Let me just tell you: that belief is not only wrong, it’s hateful and hurtful and deeply ignorant. If you think that, you seriously need to grow up, and to educate yourself. Ditto if you think someone in public office should be forbidden to testify about his faith when asked about it, or when speaking to a group of his fellow believers.
Recently, in Friday’s controversy, some of you mentioned a hateful “preacher” named Fred Phelps, of “God Hates Fags” fame. Mr. Phelps, the last I heard, has a congregation of less than 100 people, and seems to mostly in the business of making himself famous by saying hateful things–aided by a press eager for something inflammatory to publish. If you honestly believe that he is representative of any significant form of Christianity, you’ve got an ugliness in your soul that you ought to clean out.
Being an engine of Love powered by Truth, I tried to gently correct Dean in the comments section:
The Vatican glossary defines gays as being “without any social value.” Unlike Fred Phelps, the Pope has a congregation of approximately one billion people.
I don’t how me telling religious people they’re wrong is any more “baiting” than you telling your racist and homophobic friends that they’re wrong.
It’s perfectly insulting for you to compare my atheism with a bunch of false, superstitious, sky-god babytalk beliefs. It’s like comparing astronomy to astrology. They aren’t remotely on the same plane.
You simply haven’t examined atheism in the way that I have examined theism. You’re the one who’s prejudging things.
You’re the bigot.
Even though I was kind enough not to point out his hypocrisy in declaring John Edward and Uri Geller to be frauds while not condemning the alleged “miracles” of Benn Hinn, Lourdes, and the deceased Mother Teresa, Dean didn’t thank me for this education or respond to my comment. However, after a reader provided a link to a story from the Guardian about the glossary, a co-blogger with whom Dean shares the site had this response:
I’m a bit skeptical of the story and the existance of the “glossary” without more proof than a story. Considering the paper of record can’t it’s crap straight – how do we know the Guardian can? Any other proof besides a news story?
I’m a Catholic and I’ve never heard of this – and I’m pretty well read…
Well, no proof other than the Vatican’s own website. But the point became somewhat academic a few days later when the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ anti-gay sodomy laws. Disguising his love of theocratic mob rule as respect for democracy (I’ve discussed this ruse before), Dean termed the decision “unfortunate”:
The Supreme Court struck down a Texas sodomy law today. I’m glad to see the law gone, but I’m sorry about the decision anyway. Democratic freedoms are still being regularly eroded by the Supreme Court, and this is just another example of it.
In the 1980s, the Supreme Court declared that states have a right to have such laws. That decision was correct, in my view. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be in the business of deciding whether it “likes” or “agrees with” a law. The Justices are not supposed to decide that their commute is too long and rule speed limits unConstitutional. There are all kinds of laws I don’t like, but I’d be horrified if the Supreme Court simply started throwing them out on my behalf.
* * *I just want to add my voice to those who note that it’s sad when we celebrate democracy being trampled once again by the courts.
So throwing people in jail for scriptural reasons is like enacting a speed limit. Again, in the comments, I patiently explained to Dean the error of his ways:
Alas, gone is the democratic freedom to imprison others for conduct that’s none of your business and doesn’t affect you. I hate to see freedoms like that trampled on. The next thing you know, nobody’s going to be able to imprison ANYONE on a whim — and isn’t imprisoning people on whims what democracy is all about?
After Dean attempted to obsfucate the issue with more poly-sci doubletalk (e.g., the Supreme Court lacks the power to strike down bad laws, whereas it is a proper legislature function to enact them), I tried to drive the point home another way:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
That was a judge in 1959, upholding the Legislature’s democratically enacted miscegnation laws. The Supreme overruled it in 1967. What a terrible blow to democracy — allowing people who love each other to marry.
I’m still having a wee bit of trouble determinng how YOUR rights were “trampled” by the rejection of the sodomy laws — do any of you know what “trampled” means? The person who is thrown in jail is generally the one having his rights trampled.
This logic was apparently too much for Dean. After all, he thought that Bob Jones University
Godidiot of the Week: Clubbeaux
May 7, 2003 | 52 Comments
“It really amazes me how devoid the most religious Atheists are of any positive human qualities such as tolerance, compassion, humor, intelligence and the like,” says this this week’s Godidiot, Clubbeaux, speaking of Yours Truly in his post The sad Atheist strikes again. Atheists like me, he asserts, are “unusually bitter, decayed stumps of people”; we’re “shallow” and “unreflective,” we’re “empty, hollow, miserably crabbed creatures” and “the first cousins of leaf-nosed bats with the brains of a garden implement.” Atheism is “the religion of scowling unthinking misery” and The Raving Atheist himself is an “emotionally deficient loon” who spreads “vicious gutterwash” and “sick hatred.” Indeed, he notes, one of my submissions to the Carnival of the Vanities at his site was “unbelievably cruel juvenilia” — a fake news story mocking the grief of Laci Peterson’s mother.
Clubbeaux, on the other hand, is Mr. Tolerance himself. He has engaged in “enjoyable, and courteous, and pleasant” discourse with members of every faith tradition — with Orthodox Catholic and Protestant Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and even atheists — some of it “over a beer or two.” Indeed, even one of his “really good friends” is an atheist, Andrea Harris of Spleenville, and like the rest she’d be “a riot to go grab a beer with.” And he even took pity on The Raving Atheist, trying, unsuccesfully, to spare me the embarrassment of having the world see my cruel words in print.
I explained yesterday my reasons for the Laci Peterson post. Since Clubbeaux believes that God grants people eternal life, why did he consider the post so cruel? Didn’t agree with the premise — that God specially chose Good Friday to return the bodies? Indeed, doesn’t the choice of that day prove the existence of the Christian God (and refute the existence of the Jewish, Muslim and all other Gods)?
And was it really the cruelty of the post that upset him? Did he really think there was a chance that Laci’s mother would see it, and, if so, why did he increase that chance by reprinting it? Interestingly enough, Clubbeaux himself composed a parody of one of Great White’s songs, “Rock me,” which deals with the club fire that killed over 95 people. Does he think they’ll be playing that at any of the memorials? Does he think that any of the relatives of the victims would laugh at it if they came across his blog? Of course not — but he knows that there’s not the slightest chance that they’ll see it, and that it’s perfectly legitimate satire.
And let’s examine Clubbeaux’s objection to the parody of mine that he did elect to post in the Carnival. My story criticized the decision of the Orthodox Churches in Toronto to continuing the sharing of spoons at communion — despite health department warnings against it, and despite the fact that the communicable disease SARS had already claimed 20 lives in that very city. He found my mockery of the notion that God would draw the disease out of the communion cup to be “lame,” but thought it was “funny” that the priests were engaging in such irresponsible behavior. However, as noted here, churchgoers are wearing surgical mask and gloves during communion in Hong Kong, and at least one church in Toronto has limited communion to bread only. And amazingly, just the day before Clubbeaux posted with approval this report criticizing lax security at local hospitals in the face of the epidemic. But when I questioned him about the Orthodox churches’ conduct in the comments section to the Carnival, his glib, dismissive response was “[b]y the way, just out of curiosity, did any of the parishioners catch SARS? I didn’t hear of any who did. Not that it’s relevant or anything.”
Despite Clubbeax’s alleged “enjoyable, courteous and pleasant” discourse with the Rainbow Coalition of religions, his tolerance actually only goes so far. He fully agrees with “Rev. Jerry Falwell’s correct characterization of Muhammad as a ‘terrorist.” He finds it hard “to believe that any God worthy of the name would dictate a book truly accessible only in classical Arabic, and set up a lot of Arab-based earthly requirements if His interest was all humanity in all places at all times” (as if there’s any mention of China in the Bible). He criticizes Muslims as “always quick to see Allah’s hand in events” (although I’m apparently crazy for denying that God returns bodies on Good Friday or draws diseases out of communion cups). And, he says “[o]f course Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies and Unitarian/Universalists have nothing whatsoever to do with Biblical Christianity; leaving a Christian church to become a Moonie isn’t converting, it’s apostasizing.”
I can’t really comment on precisely what Clubbeaux does believe; there’s precious little serious theological discussion anywhere in his blog. He never states his basis assumptions like I do. In fact, he’s said that “it’s impossible to argue that the God depicted in the Bible could ever be completely comprehended by us anyway” and he can’t rule even rule the existence of a giant invisible turtle.
However, elsewhere he asserts confidently, “sooner or later it comes down to the brute fact that you’re a Christian because you believe that’s the only way to salvation.” But for Clubbeaux, this belief is useless for deriving any moral principle; he’s ” sick to death of cardboard [religious] leaders claiming to speak for me on the economy, the war with Iraq, school vouchers and now gas mileage.” Believing that Jesus died for you (whatever that means) is enough, and otherwise anything goes. He certainly never explains how a belief in a man dying on a cross guides his positions on abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty or any other disputed moral issue.
But he nevertheless does moralize quite a lot. In an intolerant, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and immoral kind of way. Let’s start with the racism. As we all learned yesterday, the ugly, offensive words comprising the entire second paragraph of my post yesterday were not my own. They were Clubbeaux’s. They were “plagiarized” (as he so delusionally put it) verbatim from his February 24, 2003 post, Running on empty and his accompanying remarks in the comments section. They constituted his only reaction to the trial of a Klansman who murdered a sharecropper to in an attempt to lure the Rev. Martin Luther King down to Mississippi for his own assassination. In case you missed Clubbeaux’s words yesterday, here they are again:
Is it just me, or are genuine racial crimes — ones where the victim’s black, anyway — so rare in America now that we’re reduced to prosecuting thirty-year old cases to maintain the beloved liberal fiction of blacks suffering en masse at the hands of the white establishment? You know someone I’d consider a true black leader? Someone with the sand to stand up and point the finger at the black community and say hey y’all stop committing so many crimes, y’hear? Get jobs and keep your nose clean and stop running around with hos and get married and raise a family and don’t give The Man anything to point his finger at. Someone who can sell that instead of hey, all your trouble be The Man’s fault, ain’t nothin’ you doin’ wrong bro, lookit what they done to Dred Scott, that’s what it’s all about.
.
Yes, I suppose there’s a defensible sociological point in there somewhere, but can you imagine the pathology that would cause someone to believe that the only motive behind prosecuting a horrendous, Klan conspiracy-murder would be that of maintaining a “beloved liberal fiction?” Doesn’t common human decency and a sense of justice call out for redress of such a crime?
I was willing to excuse this post as an aberration, and isolated incident, but a rather suspicious pattern emerges when one considers the rest of Clubbeaux’s writings on race. Whenever he defends free speech rights, it’s always the speech of white racists; whenever he attacks racist speech, it’s always the speech of blacks. He was positively gleeful last year when the D.C. sniper turned to be black; although he’d been rooting for it to be middle-eastener for weeks, it was an unexpected bonanza when the shooter turned out to be “a black anti-American Muslim — three of the very groups most cherished by the media today” (blacks shouldn’t be cherished?) And he couldn’t manage more than a half-hearted yawn when Trent Lott proposed that things would have been better with a segregationist president, quickly changing the topic to Al Sharpton’s racism and Senator Byrd former Klan membership.
He does link to an amusing site depicting over-eager, presumably guilt-ridden whites trying too hard to impress their black friends with their liberality. But what sort of things does Clubbeaux discuss with his one black friend (he says that “nearly every white Southerner has at least one black friend”)? Perhaps The Seven Points of black victimology? The growing nostalgia for Apartheid? Or perhaps he leads them in prayers that God will reverse time and make the killer of Susan Smith’s children the mysterious black man she originally accused before herself confessing, much like Scott Peterson’s mother prayed for a body-switch to save her son?
Clubbeaux’s treatment of women continues the sad pattern. Writing on the Augusta National Golf Club, he writes that it “has a 100% gold-plated Constitutionally-certified all-American right to admit whomever it damn well pleases and exclude anyone it damn well pleases from its grounds.” But is that right? I, too, recognize the “100% gold-plated Constitutionally-certified all-American right” of the Boy Scouts to exclude atheists, but it’s clearly wrong, and there’s little point in blogging on something like that unless you’re going to express your moral position. But I guess Clubbeaux’s silence on irrational exclusionary club practices is a clear enough statement of his approval.
And gays? Although they can’t marry, and whether they can be legally imprisoned is still an open question in America, Clubbeaux only post about them is that they’re “more equal in Massachusetts.” Why? Because gays can get certain health benefits that unmarried straight couples can’t. Yes, believe it or not, gays aren’t required to get married like straight couples are. Why? Because it’s illegal.
“Vicious gutterwash” and “sick hatred” indeed.
Godidiot of the Week: William J. Bennett (Nominated by Zach Brewster-Geisz)
April 16, 2003 | 15 Comments
In Sunday’s Washington Post, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett offers a laughably half-hearted defense of the following statements that current Secretary of Education Roderick R. Paige made in an interview with the Baptist press:
All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith. Where a child is taught that there is a great source of strength greater than themselves.
In language Bennett understandably neglects to quote, Paige also said that “[i]n a religious environment the value system is set . . . [t]hat’s not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values.” So it’s pretty clear that Paige was advocating the teaching of faith in God, and specifically values derived from the Christian god as opposed to any other.
Bennett’s attempt at spin is rather sad: he notes that Paige “did not say ‘teaching Christian doctrine or theology,’ only the values associated with the Christian community.” And it’s comical how quickly Bennett retreats from even that modified formulation. Soon, he says that the public schools were created to “keep our society together based on common virtues, many of them Christian.” This quickly gives way to the concession that “the best of our ethics originated in religion — in either Judaism, Christianity or both.” By the end of that same paragraph, Bennett is fully aboard the multiculturalist bandwagon he so despises — he declares that the reference to the Creator in the Declaration of Independence is a message for all, “whether they be Jews, Christians, Muslims, pagans or anyone else.” You know, those “different kids with different kinds of values.”
One of the goals of education is clear expression through writing. One shouldn’t say “Christian” if one means to include pagans and “anyone else.” Reading comprehension is another objective: one shouldn’t claim that an author who refers to “Christian” values was writing about the values of “Jew, Christians, Muslims, pagans or anyone else.”
* * *
The Raving Atheist, of course, rejects any notion that “faith” or belief in a “great source of strength greater than [one's self]” is a proper guide to ethics. Rejecting actual human and scientific experience in favor blind adherence to ancient scriptures dictated by imaginary beings isn’t a reliable guide to anything. Nor is it a consistent one. I’m not aware of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Pagan-Anyone-Else consensus that Bennett applauds, or even a consensus within any of those faiths. Indeed, the only “consensus” I’m aware of that would mark a system of ethics as specifically religious is the consensus that one must achieve one’s goals by praying to an egotistical tyrant with a peculiar obsession with dietary and sexual preferences.
Bennett also decries the “dominant secular ideology of today’s public school system” . . . “this very crusading secularism that has served to undermine the consensus about basic principles of virtue that existed in the public schools before the reign of the modernist creed took over.” He seems particularly peeved that “[t]oday it’s called conflict resolution, anger management and school discipline.” Why? Because “[n]ot so long ago it was called loving your enemy, turning the other cheek and respecting your elders.” So his objection isn’t really as to substance — he’s just mad that the secularists describe moral principles in PC language to that doesn’t more closely resemble the phraseology of Jesus.
Actually, if I had to vote on it, I’d say the new language is better than the old. “Loving your enemy?” It’s pretty irrational to use a person’s “enemy” status as reason to love him. In fact, definitionally speaking, one’s “friends” are the people one loves, and one’s “enemies” are the people one hates. Similarly, it’s not good policy to use elderliness as the basis for respect, when respectability will do the job just fine. I probably don’t even have to explain why turning the other cheek is ineffective, and it’s not something that brass-knuckled bullies like Bennett believe in anyway, any more than they believe in loving their enemies.
Finally, Bennett complains that “[t]he new theology and creed has sought to stigmatize the virtues curriculum as well as to eliminate any vestige of religious influence in teaching reliable standards of right and wrong.” But other than the watered-down bromides about love and peace mentioned above, he doesn’t indicate in any meaningful way what standards he’s talking about. It’s a tribute to the new secularist creed that Bennett no longer feels comfortable saying aloud what standards are really on his mind, relating to those gays and women and other undesirables. Or maybe he decided that keeping quiet about it this time around was the Christian thing to do. Whatever the case, it was mighty white of him.
Godidiot of the Week: Professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy
April 9, 2003 | 21 Comments
This week’s Godidiot, Professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy, is a stupid and evil evangelical agnostic fucktard (but not otherwise unintelligent). He wins the award for his essay last Friday, Atheism and Tolerance, which criticizes my allegedly intolerant and contemptuous attitude towards stupid and evil religious jizwads. Our differences are actually more stylistic than substantive, as my views on religion and church/state separation coincide with his, as far as I can tell, in nearly every meaningful respect. But like an earlier Godidiot recipient, Nicholas D. Kristof, Volokh believes that “mockery of religious faith is inexcusable” — not to mention ineffective.
A bit of background is necessary. As one of my friends at the Tri-Llama Chat Board points out, Volokh is careful not to link to my site or mention it by name; consequently his post cannot be read in its proper context. But the Professor’s entire critique rests on a single line wrenched out from the second of two lengthy posts (here and here): my statement that Volokh “vastly overestimates the intelligence of religious people.” His response is devoted to the rather unexceptional observation that there are some very intelligent religious people, and that just because they’re wrong about religion doesn’t mean they’re wrong about everything else.
That much I concede, but it wasn’t remotely what I was talking about. In the first post, I challenged the Professor’s dubious assertions that (1) public policy regarding state-formulated prayers should be based upon what constitutes “good religion,” (2) privately-composed prayers are more sensible or effective or important than governmental-composed prayers, and (3) if the government does formulate prayers, they should be sincere and orthodox. I pointed out that talking to imaginary beings accomplishes nothing, and that the public has convinced over 40 state legislatures to allow prayer as a substitute for medical care for children. In the second post, I urged that contrary to Volokh’s supposition, that religious people who declare homosexuality to be “unnatural” are in fact relying on scripture rather than appealing to “a more objectively defined, uncontroversial authority called “nature.” The full context in which the offending quotation appeared was this:
As I said yesterday, Volokh vastly overestimates the intelligence of religious people. The “god said it, I believe it, that ends it” mentality does not lend itself to the fine distinctions that the Professor suggests. People who believe something merely because it is in a book tend to cut philosophical corners. The “objectively defined, uncontroversial authority” they ultimately appeal to is God, not nature.
So in each case I was mocking the stupidity of a very common religious mentality which manifests itself through belief in prayer and scripture, not generalizing about the IQ and S.A.T. scores of believers. And I maintain that when people complain about atheist “intolerance,” what they’re really offended by is the attack on the stupidity of their religious faith, rather than the suggestion that their intelligence is deficient in other respects. But rather than address the very serious criticisms of their religious idiocy — and the very real harm it often causes to others
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