Wear a “positive costume” or don’t dress up (but don’t NOT wear anything at all or the SWAT team will take you down); but definitely do not wear a scary or creepy costume on Halloween, cuz someone might get scared or take offense or get their religious panties up in a bunch.

With Christmas and Hannukah coming, let’s avoid controversy altogether by banning religious (and anti-religious) and nongovernmental displays at the state capitol. A democracy cannot countenance controversy. A free exchange of ideas and points of view is simply too much for adults to handle.

Sarcasm aside, I find the “culture wars” aspect of the holiday season to be almost as irritating as the commercial exploitation and religious indoctrination aspects. Last year Freedom From Religion posted a display at the Washington State Capitol mocking religious belief. Naturally people were offended. Fine, be offended, but FFR has as much right to mock religion in a public space as your local church, synagogue or mosque has to promote its religion.

This year, the Washington State bureaucrats chose to avoid controversy and national attention (understandably) by barring all religious and nongovernmental displays inside the Capitol campus. Here is where I, an atheist, find myself more in agreement with the religious than the anti-religious:

“It’s a shame that the state is basically shutting down 95 percent of Americans that celebrate a federal holiday, which it is,” said Ron Wesselius, a Thurston County Realtor who put up the Nativity the past two years. “They are not letting them celebrate.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, said she was pleased about the new rules but added that they don’t go far enough.

“I don’t think Nativity scenes belong on the outside of capitols either,” Gaylor said.

Maybe because I’m an artist, but I think more expression is better than less. Mr. Wesselius probably puts more creative effort into his nativity display than FFR did with their snarky placard last year (which I criticized along with another suit FFR brought against “so help me God” in the Presidential oath of office.) If FFR is out of ideas, I would happily create a satirical nativity or a Flying Spaghetti Monster sculpture or even something more positive, like a commemoration of great atheists. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, for example, who used the holiday season to promote peace, charity and social equality.

What bothers me about Ms. Gaylor’s position is that it shuts down conversation and debate. The public space is where people should be able to convene and exchange ideas with all the passion, brilliance, silliness, ignorance, rudeness or politeness they can muster. FFR should not approve of the Washington State Capitol ban; they should oppose it and advocate for the right of atheists to express their beliefs in the company of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Wiccans, Rastafarians, Scientologists, and whoever else I forget to mention. Right now a ban on “nongovernmental displays” means all we get are governmental displays. Wheeee.

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Certainly puts a twitch in my bomb-throwing arm. But the recent movement of atheist churches has provoked thoughts similar to that anti-anarchist canard. Isn’t an atheist religion kinda, I dunno, a contradiction in terms?

Given the past 8 years, which were really a topper to the past 30 years of ascending fundamentalist Christian political power, I understand why my fellow atheists would start to band together.

More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).

Check out that note of surprise: “even here.” More like “definitely here.” Atheists feel surrounded — besieged — in The Bible Belt, so it’s only natural they would seek each other out for comfort and security. And I really appreciate the likening to the queer rights movement:

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

Emphasis mine. All well and good. Getting politically organized and active in defense of true religious freedom — including the freedom from religion (pace Mitt Romney) — via groups like the Secular Coalition for America or the United Coalition for Reason is long overdue. The ACLU can’t do all the heavy-lifting.

My reservations kick in when I start thinking about joining such a group. Granted, I am not much of a joiner (a condition common to cartoonists and, um, cranks alike.) Occasionally I like to hang out with a fellow atheist and gripe about creationism or fundamentalism or The Pope. Yet I like myths, gods and rituals. The problem with creationism is not the creation story itself, but the insistence that it replace science in explaining origins of the universe. Yet myths have a cultural, symbolic explanatory power that can be useful. The question is, to what use is a powerful myth being put? Or in whose interests? I am much more in sympathy with raging liberation theologian and Marxian critic Terry Eagleton, who insists on viewing Jesus as a revolutionary against exploitation and for the poor, than, say, Christopher Hitchens, who is an asshole.

The challenge for atheists is not an argument of absolute truth or the infallibility of science. Everyone loses the first and only an idiot believes in the second. The challenge is storytelling. What is the atheist myth of creation? Of righteous living? Of a “purpose-driven life” (to borrow a popular homophobe’s phrase)? If that can get sorted out, another challenge lies down the road: How do you prevent that from ossifying into dogma? For any new movement, I cannot recommend enough periodic viewings of Monty Python’s great film on religious and political organization, The Life of Brian.

Splitters!

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Meanwhile thousands of Christian, Jewish and Muslim charity organizations are providing food, shelter and clothing for needy individuals and families struck by economic and environmental disasters. Granted, these same religions foment violence, intolerance, and abuse.

But wouldn’t it be great if there were recognizably atheist organizations that performed similar acts of charity and humanitarian service to the people suffering misfortune? What if in July of this year we had a huge push for giving and soup kitchens and all those other displays of generosity we so often see during the winter holidays? After all, it’s not like the homeless and the poor go hungry only between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

For me this is not merely a rhetorical concern – that is, what messages such stupid lawsuits send about the values of atheists and secular humanists. What about where laytheists like yerz truly can donate his dough? Or get more seriously involved? Our society promotes selfish values of materialism and consumption that induce just enough guilt for religionists to purge at the holiday season without seriously addressing the fundamental inequalities of our economy and democracy that make poverty so difficult to escape. There are religious people working all year long to right such wrongs, but where are the atheist and humanist organizations with similar missions? We need to get beyond these petty activities that just piss off taxpayers, regardless of their religious affiliations. Surely I am not the only atheist who saw this article and thought “frivolous lawsuit.”

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But an unrepentant Fr. Bottino called it his duty to set the record straight.”I told the children that Father Christmas was an invention that had nothing to do with the Christian Christmas story,” he said.

“And I would repeat it again, if I had the chance,” he added.

Then he gave his parishioners communion.

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An American Carol is basically a Scary Movie-style spoof of American liberal politics, starring every famous conservative entertainer. Which is pretty much just, um, Kelsey Grammar, Jon Voight, James Woods, and Dennis Hopper. Oh, and Kevin Sorbo. Clint Eastwood, apparently, still wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror afterwards. The cast is rounded out with conservative commentators and country music stars like Bill O’Reilly and Trace Adkins. And basically they seem to have just made a movie where they all run around saying liberals are stupid! for an hour and a half. We’ll see how that turns out for them.

The movie stars Chris Farley’s little brother (Larry the Cable Guy was busy, seriously, not a joke) as “Michael Malone”, a hefty anti-American documentary filmmaker out to ban the pledge of allegiance, with the help of the dastardly movealong.org. He gets visited by the ghosts of George Washington (Jon Voight), John F Kennedy (some soap star named Chriss Anglin), and General Patton (totally Kelsey Grammar, I’m not even kidding), and they show him the error of his ways. Hence the “Carol” part of the title, I guess. Michael Moore is Scrooge.

Read the rest of the post, because it only gets stooopider. Emphasis on “der.”

Tags: Christmas, Bill O’Reilly, American Carol, war against christmas

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Click to see the whole cartoon.

Tags: incontempt, cartoons, politics, comics, religion, reverend jeremiah wright

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On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything — even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

Atheists and agnostics who have discarded the religious teachings that dominated their youth tend to be close, personal friends of mine. Many come from Catholicism and Judaism, walking away with a conflicted sense of relief and new burdens. They dropped the old prejudices and the blind faith, yet picked up a sense of guilt and disquiet. They love the old rituals, the artifacts of cultures borne of struggle, sacrifice, love and family through histories of persecution and perseverance; the teachings of love, forgiveness, tolerance and charity – and a commitment to social justice – influence their outlooks, dispositions and actions to this day. But they’re out of the group. They’re not going back to church or to synagogue, save for a family function (baptism, briss, wedding, funeral) where some aunt or uncle inquires about the state of their soul.

I come from no religion. My mother escaped the Southern Baptists and raised me on agnosticism and the more commercial trappings of the goyische holidays, with an occasional visit to a Jewish Passover or a Catholic Mass. My grandparents attempted to “rescue” me. They took me to church every Sunday morning and evening during month-long visits to their Tennessee home in the Summer. They sent me to a bible camp for a week in 1979 that left a deep, lasting impression on my psyche quite contrary to what they intended: no spiritual uplift, no awakening, no submission of faith; rather I came to view Christianity and all religion as fascistic enterprises of mind control, psychological abuse, ignorance, hate and fear. The place was run militarily, with sermons every morning, religious instruction classes right after, and sermons in the evening. It was like going to church every day, all day for a week. Yet for all the talk of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice, I saw no evidence of its influence on his follower’s behavior. Instead, I got my Yankee-talking ass kicked. I saw good ol’ boys ignore fights, yet punish errant invocations of the Lord’s name “in vain.” (It always seemed appropriate to me to call out to your deity during moments of pain, but hey, what do I know?)

This experience, among many others, inculcated a prejudice that I have since striven to outgrow. Nowadays I read theological studies, inquire about people’s religious beliefs without challenging them, and enjoy learning of new rituals people use to reaffirm their faith. But my interest is anthropological. Culture and ideology inform and arise from human ideas and behavior in response to complex sets of historical circumstances and existential conditions in ways that are beautiful, strange, fascinating and sometimes horrifying and dangerous, yet I think ultimately driven by deeper evolutionary instincts for survival. We create – and need – ideas to survive as much as we need food. Philosophy and theology are ideological tools of survival, ways in which we self-reflecting creatures justify our existences and places in the universe. Concepts of God, Goddess, or many such deities are negotiations individuals make between themselves and the world around them. For some, these negotiations are cheap and easy (the simple, unquestioning faith that either drives “good works” or suicide bombers); for others, the negotiation is never complete, as doubt and conviction barter with each other over the price and weight of the soul, the breadth and depth of divinity, the duties and rewards of the mortal, and so on.

As an atheist, I don’t – and cannot – rely on such concepts. Instead I look at the world around me and see several competing demands of my intellect, talents, and attention. This is not a self-centered view, however; it’s merely the subjective level of the individual. It’s there that I make choices, none of them easy, though perhaps easier than choices made by others who lead bolder, harder and more significant lives (e.g., I’m not running for public office or leading a rescue mission.) Rising to a higher level of the human species, I am driven by an ethical belief that I should leave the world better than it was when I walked in, but I have no sense of certitude – no progressive conviction – that I will. Indeed, if I succeed, I will eventually die, and who knows what future generations will do to our society, our culture or our planet? There are no guarantees. For all our best efforts, the species may bring on its own extinction. Or we may survive all possible calamities, yet still not make it off the earth before the Sun goes red giant and consumes the planet.

When I express these views, the faithful call me “cynical” or demand, “How can you or humanity could go on with such knowledge?” Which is a weird question. Life is good, it’s worth living for its own sake, and it’s a damn shame so many people do so much to shorten it for others for no better reason than greed, prejudice, ignorance and fear. Many of my fellow atheists blame religion, and the religious have taken to blaming atheism, for the violence and destruction humans bring to each other. They’re both right, much as the partisan sniping between Clinton and Obama supporters are right in their claims that the opposition is “going negative” in some way during the campaign. Of course, the scale is exponentially larger – as are the stakes; religion has been a powerful organizing force in human society, regulating actions, emotions and morals in ways beneficial to our survival, even as it motivates war, oppression and other horrible instances of inhumanity. Yet atheist societies have faired no better. It leaves me to conclude that regardless of ideology, humans can and will be guided by more primal forces, some empathetic and cooperative, others competitive and fearful. We’re still apes.

So I don’t take any comfort, as have some of my fellow “nonbelievers” in the comments to Rice’s column, in deriding her testimony to faith as the “loony” product of the “vampire author.” To be sure, she has another book on Jesus to sell. Yet her commercial interests don’t necessitate the emotional force of her words. I don’t agree with her. But I don’t doubt her. I’m not even sure she is trying to convince anyone but herself that her experience was real. Indeed, she may never be intellectually convinced, as moments of divine awakening are not rational experiences, but overwhelm the senses, overcoming the believer’s ability to process the stimuli with our normal cognitive tools. The scientific method won’t help her here. She’s left on her own to make the negotiation with what tools she has as a writer, just as I do here on this blog, responding to her testimony with my own reflections. I’m negotiating, too.

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I think a lot of their popularity stems from a legitimate anger on the part of a lot of Americans toward the intolerance and chauvinism of the radical religious right in this country. Unfortunately, what they’ve done is offer a Utopian belief system that is as self-delusional as that offered by Christian fundamentalists. They adopt many of the foundational belief systems of fundamentalists. For example, they believe that the human species is marching forward, that there is an advancement toward some kind of collective moral progress — that we are moving towards, if not a Utopian, certainly a better, more perfected human society. That’s fundamental to the Christian right, and it’s also fundamental to the New Atheists. You know, there is nothing in human nature or in human history that points to the idea that we are moving anywhere. Technology and science, though they are cumulative and have improved, in many ways, the lives of people within the industrialized nations, have also unleashed the most horrific forms of violence and death, and let’s not forget, environmental degradation, in human history. So, there’s nothing intrinsically moral about science. Science is morally neutral. It serves the good and the bad. I mean, industrial killing is a product of technological advance, just as is penicillin and modern medicine. So I think that I find the faith that these people place in science and reason as a route toward human salvation to be as delusional as the faith the Christian right places in miracles and angels.

I’ve seen a few YouTubed lectures from Harris that I liked, but I was unaware of his suggestion that the West bomb the Arab-Muslim world. Does anyone else know about this? If true (and Hedges is a principled journalist, so it probably is), I’m pretty appalled.

As for Hitchens, well…he’s a prick. What else is new?

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