Category: Religion

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Atheist sells self on Ebay

Hemant Mehta, chair of the board of the Secular Student Alliance, offered himself on Ebay. Well not himself, per se, but his beliefs. He had an auction offering to the highest bidder, Mehta’s time to visit a church of the winner’s choice. Mehta is an Atheist and he found out that there are many Christians looking to convert anyone who offers them a chance. The winning bid was $504 and led Mehta to visit several churches in the Chicago area. The money bid went to the SSA as a donation.

His efforts also received a good deal of media attention including making the front page of the venerable Wall Street Journal on March 9th.

His auction leaves me conflicted. While on one hand I liked the media attention he got, I was also bothered by the whole concept. It reminded me a “sucker’s bet” because Mehta never considered converting to Christianity and his auction played on the one major flaw of someone with sincere religious beliefs – that they can convert others even Atheists.

Committed believers will grasp on any bit, no matter how small, to “prove” that those who hold differing beliefs can 1. change on a dime and 2. A simple visit to a church or quoting Bible verses will do it.

Does everybody remember recently when respected Atheist, Anthony Flew, commented he did think some unknown force was behind our universe making things work. Christians had field day, reporting that an Atheist now believed in God. Of course a closer reading of what he did say had nothing to do with the God of Christians.

Then there is the constant myth that there are no Atheists in foxholes. No matter how many examples we provide that such a myth is false it still endures in the Christian community.

It isn’t the first and probably not the last time Christians would pay to try to convert people. When I was a teen and still a believer I use to get invited to my friends church on many occasions for a pizza party. The price I had to pay was to listen to my friend give his testimony to me. I had no intention of joining his church. It was an evangelical Baptist church where it was a good thing to rise during a service and speak in tongues. That goofy scene caused me to cross that church off my list.

I think some caution should be exercised about the point of the auction. Mehta himself has said he didn’t intend for the auction to become what it did. He said he didn’t think anyone would bid. His comments suggest that it was started as a joke and that is what most Atheists would think as well if you really think about it.

It may have shed a bit of light in our theistcentric media about Atheists but at the end of the day nothing would have changed and may have reinforced the believer’s idea that Atheists are just smug and arrogant.

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The God Game: Who’s side is God on?

During times of national stress the prayer birds come out of the wood work. Not only religious leaders, but political leaders, and media talking heads ask people to pray or offer prayers.

On Tuesday I read where Kathleen Blanco, governor of Louisiana, called on people to pray for the victims of Hurricane Katrina that slammed into the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi on Monday August 29th. President Bush said he and First Lady Laura Bush were praying for them as well.

By Thursday all hell had broke loose in New Orleans as victims snapped under the strain of going 4 days without much food and drinking water. But hey, we are praying for you.

I kept thinking “Get off your asses and get help into the city. Stop wasting time praying!”

Some religious right nut jobs even suggest that the hurricane was God’s way of punishing “us” for “our” sins.

Pat Robertson, one of the nut jobs, said once back in 1998:

“I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you.”

He said it in response to Orlando hosting a Gay Pride Festival and Disney World having a Gay Day.

But attributing a natural storm to the will of a “God” is not a rational way to explain coincidences. In Robertson’s case, no hurricanes went through or near Orlando. So does that mean God was ok with the Gay Pride Festival?

If you want to play the “God” game one could also draw a conclusion that God hates Republicans.

Katrina slammed into Alabama, home to Judge Roy Moore who ignored a federal court ruling forcing him to remove a 10 Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building.

The storm leveled coastal towns in Mississippi, whose Governor is Haley Barbour, formerly the national chairman of the Republican Party. The state is also home to Senator Trent Lott who use to be Senate Majority Leader before his mouth forced him to step down from that job.

Katrina previously had hit Florida, whose Governor is President Bush’s brother Jeb and is thought to have helped his brother “steal” the 2000 election for the President. In fact God must really hate Jeb because Katrina is the 5th hurricane to hit Florida in two years.

A religious conservative writer pointed out that Katrina hit New Orleans just before it was due to host the Southern Decadence festival which was described as “a six-day public homosexual orgy.” But Katrina didn’t hit New Orleans. The rule of the God game is that it has to hit the object God hates and Katrina turned to the right before making land fall, missing the city with a direct hit. It turned to the right and hit Mississippi directly.

Why doesn’t God send hurricanes to hit bigger places of sin like Las Vegas, New York, or Hollywood?

I guess he thinks those places and people are ok, but he must really hate the Bible belt and Republicans.

I think I like the God game.

Correction:

In my last post I mentioned how FEMA was changed after the mess of the Hurricane Andrew relief effort in 1992. Like everyone else I expected to see massive efforts on the ground to help those who were vicitms of Hurricane Katrina.

I guess I spoke to soon and assumed too much. It is Friday, 4 days since the hurricane blew through and FEMA and the Federal Govt. is JUST NOW getting the machine going. I am shocked and disgusted with the foot dragging. The effort so far is a disgrace for the US.

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New blog about the Secular Left

Once again, proving I have no active social life, I have spent my holiday weekend creating another project where I can rant.

It all started when someone posted an article about a term called “Secular Left” that conservatives and the religious right are now using in their name calling program for those who disagree with them.

In the article called Sticks and Stones and the “Secular Left”, author David Benjamin comments about the first time he heard the term while watching “Meet the Press” on May 8th. Conservative talking head Mary Matalin used the term in describing the opposition during the manufactured filibuster crises over Bush’s judicial nominees.

Benjamin wrote:

“Civil liberties,” a term that embraces such basic American prerogatives as privacy, consumer rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and, yes, freedom of religion, are seen today as the purchased privileges of a “liberal elite.” This distortion is the linguistic legacy of the same American right wing that now cubbyholes its foes as the “secular Left,” and seems happy to gather at the river under the big (revival) tent of the religious Right.

“Secular Left.” Yeah, maybe it’s just a couple of words. But it’s coming from the people who today, in American politics, get to make up all the words, and then make everybody else repeat them endlessly, like “Hallelujah,” and “Praise the Lord.” And the only opposition is a tongue-tied cluster of Democrat/ liberal/ progressives whose only articulate utterance in the political and semantic struggle of the last decade has been a strangled bleat that sounds a lot like “Uncle!”

I agree with him and I decided to do something about it.

Using a portion of my meager salary I purchased the domain secularleft.us and put up a blog to defend not only secular humanists, and atheists, but also anyone with a secular bent who disagrees with the conservatives and their buddies the religious right on matters of church vs. state.

Opening today http://www.secularleft.us will be a counterpoint to the shrill sounds of the right. I intend to expose the lies and myths they express about those who choose the secular path and I don’t plan to be nice about it.

Today’s entry deals with the ruling the US Supreme court made today regarding religious practices in prison.

Feel free to stop by for a visit.

Secular Left

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Brief thoughts on the passing of Pope John Paul II

Couldn’t avoid the death watch the past few days. CNN had wall to wall coverage since Friday.

I just shook my head as millions of Catholics prayed for the Pope’s recovery then of course it was changed to praying for the Pope as he makes his way to Jesus.

John Paul II was an interesting person. Very active and he traveled a lot.

I didn’t and still don’t agree with his religion but respect him more than some of the political leaders during his 26 year reign.

Read some interesting comments about him. One was that he despised totalitarianism (having lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland and the Soviet domination) and he called it false religion yet he made his own decisions that are seen just as dictatorial. He wanted to improve the status of women but dictated that no women could be priests and came out against abortion for example.

Then there is the continued road blocks the Vatican has put up when trying to work on the issue of population control.

His Papacy set back US Catholicism 30 years and aligned it with the evangelical Christians.

Saw a quote in an AP article this evening that pretty much explains why someone like me could never be a member of any church:

“The church cannot be an association of freethinkers.”

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Michael Medved shouldn’t be a film critic

The job of a film critic is not easy. You have to sit through some awful movies but on the other hand you might get to see a great film.

One code of the critic is to write about a film and give your view of it in such a way that you don’t spoil the plot for those who haven’t seen it yet. Of course it is hard to do that when a film has a surprise twist but most of the decent critics do a good job of not giving away the whole plot.

Michael Medved use to be a film critic. He also use to have a film critic show on PBS called “Sneak Previews”. The interesting bit about the show was it took over the spot after Siskel and Ebert’s “At The Movies” left PBS to be syndicated nationally on commercial television.

Something happened to Medved. It is the same thing that happened to ABC TV’s John Stossel. Medved became a cranky conservative. He now is referred to in the press as “conservative commentator and cultural critic”. He still feels he must review movies from his conservative perspective.

Medved gives good reviews to family and religious themed films and hates anything not in those two categories.

To be fair Roger Ebert, a noted critic, seems to love any foreign film and has a hard time seeing anything good that comes from the major studio.

Medved, like some other conservative media types, decided to spoil the plot twist for Clint Eastwood’s recent film “Million Dollar Baby”.

The marketing comes across as a female “Rocky” type movie but the twist, from what I’ve read, is totally shocking to an audience use to the “Rocky” kind of formula movies. I respect films and the work that goes into them so I won’t say what the twist is but Medved and other conservatives spoiled the plot to their audience because the twist offended their political and religious beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong. If Medved or any other conservative critic hates a movie because it offends their political or religious beliefs, they have a right and a duty to tell their audience. I’m fine with that. But what Medved did crossed the line. Giving away the twist was a deliberate attempt to damage the potential box office receipts.

He tried to justify his action:

“there are competing moral demands that come into the job of a movie critic. We have a moral and fairness obligation to not spoil movies. On the other hand, our primary moral obligation is to tell the truth.”

Spoken like someone who is full of their own importance. He could have told the truth without giving away the twist in the detail he did. Real critics, who still have some objectivity, did that.

He pointed out he didn’t say which character is involved in the twist but that doesn’t matter. He gave away the twist.

He also said:

“It is dishonest in its marketing. They didn’t want to tell people what it is because no one would come.”

He makes the classic conservative mistake – believing that everyone thinks just as they do. It isn’t his job to decide what people will see.

A critic gives a review to help people decide if they wish to see a film. People should make up their own mind about any so-called moral issues presented in the movie. The critic isn’t a moral arbiter.

As Clint Eastwood said in response:

“The picture doesn’t really sum up any policies one way or another. It just happens to be the ultimate drama for one particular person. How people feel about that is up to them.”

I agree.

Medved needs to give up being a film a critic.

For the a full article on the issue see:

‘Million Dollar’ mystery

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