Religion Archive

The Real Purpose of the Church?

"You can't just go around fucking boys in the street. People get mad"

(for those on FB, here's a link to the video.)

Daily Show reruns are dancing in my head! Thanks for the link, Bri.

Here's a good chance. Just have a listen to Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins, author most recently of the God Delusion. I caught the tail end of his appearance on City Arts & Lectures on my way home from work, but sadly, they don't post their audio online. You can hear some of his other recent appearances here:

• Talk of the Nation Science Friday
• KQED's Forum
• You Tube

To me, Dawkins is the quintessential voice of reason, who breaks down religiosity with the cold, methodical logic that it deserves. He debunks myths about the nature of morality and the idea that nobie acts by humans cannot exist without the framework of organized religion. He debunks the myth that atheism is a religion. He's not wild-eyed. He's not crazed. He's the personfiication of cooly analtyical. Most importantly, he tries to raise awareness of the dangers of not just harboring irrational beliefs in systems of myth, but using those beliefs to make decisions about how we govern our world.

Very much like Sam Harris, he comes in for a lot of criticism for "rocking the boat" or lending aid and comfort to the creationsists, but that doesn't matter. It's all just noise. Dawkins is more concerned about being focused on what's true, what can be proved, rather than engaging in tactical, political battles to score points with irrational thinkers.

He's fascinating and worth a listen even if you find his ideas repugnant.

Here are two videos, the first a reading of The God Delusion and the second the accompanying Q&A. These are from the Philip Thayer Memorial Lecture at Randoph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, VA.

Part 1: Reading

Part 2: Q & A

Why they deny the Holocaust

On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it.
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a Somali immigrant who served in the parliament of the Netherlands until earlier this year, is the author of "Infidel," an autobiography to be published in February.

ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My half-sister couldn't.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.

What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed -- that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust -- not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.

This is very instructive to help understand why the deniers deny. There's no real excuse for it, but if you going to have one, I suppose ignorance is as good as any as a starting point to being to understand the roots of this problem

Hirsi Ali is a fascinating individual. Her Wikipedia entry makes an interesting read.

thanks to Jason for sending this to me.

*Ignorance is not bliss

More than 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who don't believe in God. 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious."

"A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying."

44% of Americans think Jesus Christ will return in the next 50 years. (22% are "certain" that he will, another 22% think he "probably" will.)

"According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution (and two-thirds of these believe evolution was "guided by God"). 53% are actually creationists.

"Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue."

87% of Americans say they "never doubt the existence of God."

"Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn't have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces, but a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God."

28% of Americans believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. 49% believe that it is the "inspired word" of God.

"We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)."

80% of Americans expect to be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for their sins. 90% believe in heaven. 77% rate their chances of going to heaven as "excellent" or "good."

"In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don't know what is like to really believe in God."

65% of Americans believe in the literal existence of Satan. 73% believe in Hell.

"It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion-to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources-is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity."

83% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. (11% disbelieve. 6% don't know.)

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."

These are quotes from Sam Harris' new book, Letter to a Christian Nation, written in response to feedback he received following the publication of his first book The End of Faith. I read the former over the weekend (it's quite concise) and finished the latter last week. Both are at the same time frightening and heartening.

They are frightening because Sam Harris in his brilliant points out the quite obvious problem that many of the most important decisions being made in the world today are being made by people who firmly believe their holy books are the literal word of god. They are heartening because Sam Harris is articulating what many people like me who live in a reality based world where evidence trumps faith is leading the charge against the dark age thinking that drives this country and much of the rest of the world.

One of the main problems with faith, and there are so many, is that the underlying beliefs are used to justify some of the most egregious affronts to humanity--the Crusades, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, suicide bombing. Each of these has a single common thread--they have been justifyed in the mind of the perpetrators by a firm belief that they were doing god's will.

Mr. Harris writes with far more eloquence and intelligence on this topic than I will ever be able to muster. I urge you to Check is books out of the library, go down to you local book monger or buy them from Amazon today.

And to the 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" of my atheism, I say, wholeheartedly, FUCK YOU. My faith that your belief system is irrational and dangerous will never kill a single human being. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

*Irony

My buddy Peter writes:

So, in an effort to reach out to new constituencies and bridge the growing divide between Catholic fundametalists and everyone else, the Vatican cardinals have elected... a hard-liner former Nazi. Nicely done, fellows.

It seems more like they were reaching out to John Stewart, David Letterman and Jay Leno. Anyway, he's an old guy so it looks like we might be do this all over again in the not too distant future.

A new pope has been elected. I'm listening to the coverage on NPR. The white smoke went up and the bells of St. Peter's started ringing about 50 minutes ago. The curtain on the balcony has opened. Three men are up there announcing the new pope. (Habemus Papum - We have a pope!) The crowd is going nuts. Still no one outside the College of Cardinals knows who the new pope is.

Update 9:44. The name of the new pope is the 78 year old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany named Benedict XVI. The front runner, slighty boring, a little bit of a disappointment. Oh, well. There's always the next conclave. Congratulations and best wishes to all my Catholic friends.

Want to get some action on the conclave? Just head over to paddypower.com, check out the odds, the candidates, fill yourself in on the process and the history of papal elections.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria is the front runner, but I suspect this is mostly wishful thinking. As cool as it would be to have an African or Latin American pope, I suspect when the voting is all done, we'll find a return to traditional Western European, if not Italian, pontiff.

As a Jewish atheist, I shouldn't find this all that interesting, but I can't help but be fascinated. The papacy is such a huge part of our world culture. There's even a genre of fiction devoted to the topic. The secrecy, the pomp and circumstance, the rituals of burning the ballots, the visuals of crimson robed cardinals congregating beneath Michaelangelo's Last Judgment. It's all so intriguing.

There have been several votes so far and only plumes of black smoke have arisen from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to signify a lack of consensus on a new pontiff. Eventually the Papal Interregnum will end and we can get on with our lives, but in the meantime, the world waits as a few old men chose a new leader and decide on the future path of the Catholic church.

Here are the odds for you punters who are thinking of placing a bet or putting together an office pool.

You know how the ancient Greeks believed in the pantheon of gods? Zeus, Hera. Apollo. Athena. et al. For thousands of years, people built temples and worshipped at the altar of polytheism. And not just the Greeks. The Romans. The Vikings. Many other civilizations, too. Nowadays we look at that on their beliefs s quaint "mythology". We read their stories as children. And some of them are great. Not just because they are great literature, but because they impart certain values and reflect upon human behavior. But make no mistake, this is just mythology.

I believe that the same will be said of these generations of monotheists. Christianity is just mythology writ large and in your face. The greatest story ever told? Maybe. But just a story. That's it. It's becoming problem at the moment because the people who believe that that New Testament is not just a story, but rather the unaltered word of god are emboldened by the current political climate. It's becoming a problem because these people are trying to take this mythology and force their mores on the rest of this country and the world. It's not just Christianity, by the way. Militant Islam is doing the exact same thing, just using different methodology.

What makes the story of Jesus so insidious is that he was actually alive. He is an historical figure. Of that I have there can be no doubt. He was a rabbi, a carpenter. He preached in Jerusalem. You can go to Israel. You can visit his birthplace. You see where he lived. You can see, roughly, where he was crucified. I did. I cycled around the Sea of Galilee. I visited Capernaum where he lived. I stopped at the Church of the Beatitudes where he supposedly gave the sermon on the mount. I explored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I saw the faithful carrying crosses up the Via Dolorosa. It's all amazing. There's no doubt about it.

However, and this is a big however, I believe that the man in reality bears little resemblance to the man in the gospels. I don't know whether the teachings of Jesus actually happened. I do believe that they are generally good things. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do under others... And if most people followed even those two basic tenets of the Jesus' philosophy, the world would be a far better place, but they can't even manage that.

I believe that the apostles, in their zealous drive to legitimize Christianity developed stories about Jesus, such as the resurrection, so recently celebrated, and the walking on water business, and the loaves and the fishes, amongst others so that potential converts would be drawn to the new religion by the apparent divinity. It was a far easier sell and they were great salesmen. Maybe the best ever.

Their message might not have been received right away, but it's being heard loud and clear right now. I'd love to see what their reaction would be to all they wrought. I doubt in their wildest imaginations could they have believed the extent to which the word of Jesus which they largely fabricated has spread. I think Samoa would knock them for a loop let alone South America, the Philippines or most of the rest of the world. Anyway, I digress, but I think you see the point I'm driving at.

America is going through a dark age at the moment where reason is losing ground to religion. As someone who is sitting on the sidelines, I can only hope that what I see going on is only a short term trend and that the backlash that whips us back to the sanity of reason will be sharp and harsh.

He wouldn't fucking eat that ham steak for one thing.

I shouldn't be surprised as I watch the Christian Jihad in America weave its nefarious way from one aspect of society to another, but this "debate" over evolution is shocking. I just saw a report on the NewsHour about the so called conflict over Evolution. I have no idea how PBS correspondent Jeffrey Brown could keep a straight face listening to high school students in Kentucky talking about how evolution is just a "theory". That kills me. It just a fucking semantic game put into the heads of these sad, sad victims of the absurdist right wing religious agenda makers.

A theory in science is not like a theory you or I might have about, say, why people in this country are such fucking idiots. (I have a theory that people in this country are devolving, by the way). It's not a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers.

Relativity. Gravity. These are theories. A theory is more like a law than a hypothesis, which is like a hunch based on previous observations. Thusly, Evolution, based upon a set of related observations based on proven hypothesis is a theory. In fact, a scientific theory is even more complex than a law. While a law governs a single action, a theory explains a whole series of related phenomena, such as, um, Evolution. There is no debate in the scientific community. None. It might as well be the fucking written in stone.

Unless, that is, you're an idiot who thinks that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, carbon dating is complete rubbish (perhaps even a theory) and that man was placed on the earth full form, like Adam and Eve. Someone exactly like Kevin Ham, who's building the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, as if people in this world needed another reason to think Kentucky is Darwin's waiting room. Why is this necessary, you ask? Well you can find the answer right in their handy FAQ. It turns out that our increasingly anti-Christian country must return to a belief in the authority of the Bible and be presented with the life-changing Gospel message. Evolutionary indoctrination has undermined the Christian foundations in America.

Our increasingly anti-Christian country? Is that some sort of joke? It's like these people are living in a bizarro world where the exact opposite of reality is happening. For more laughs go here or here.

Then there's the whole Intelligent Design scam. Basically Intelligent Design says that some "Creator" (not god, don't say god, but something omnipotent like god) created everything in the universe. Why? Well, darn it all, the universe is just too fricken complicated for it to have "evolved" to its present state. This is just a well funded attempt to try to hijack science in the name of religion and force creationism back into the classroom. Will it work? The fact that it's being talked about on the NewsHour is enough for me to want to keep my unborn children out of the public education system.

One thing is for certain. There's very little intelligent design evident in the classrooms in Kentucky. I weep for anyone who graduates from high school in this country and does not believe that Evolution is as true as Gravity, as true as the Earth revolving around the Sun. Clarence Darrow must be spinning in his grave.

It's a beautiful morning here in South Lake Tahoe. The sun is out. Ice is breaking up on the keys and water is flowing out to the lake. Canadian geese are flying around. I'm going to celebrate the resurrection, naturally, by hitting the slopes. Hopefully the faithful will be in church, rolling eggs and eating non-kosher foods with family and friends leaving the mountain open to us nonbelievers.

The Supreme Court heard two cases yesterday, one from Texas and another from Kentucky, about whether or not it's constitutional to erect monuments to the Ten Commandments on government property. Personally, I don't see how anyone could be offended by the Ten Commandments, so to me it's a non-issue whether they are displayed publicly or otherwise. What I don't understand is why this particular kernel of law from the Old Testament plays such a large role in the Christian world, while other Jewish laws are completely ignored.

The Decalogue is the cornerstone of Jewish law, not Christian law. As far as I know, there's no mention of the Ten Commandments in the New Testament. So why is it that the Ten Commandments has such a pre-eminent role in Christianity? There are tons of other laws in the Old Testament that Christians simply ignore. Christians do not keep kosher, but Jesus did. Christians don't observe the sabbath on Saturday, but Jesus did. Jesus was Jewish. He observed all sorts of laws, most of which are completely ignored by Christianity. So what gives?

I don't understand the neuroses of modern Christianity. I don't understand how you can cherry pick passages in the Old Testament that suit you, while blithely disavowing others. It doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps someone out there can sort it out for me, but I doubt it because no one ever wants to comment on religion here.

You might not be, but the folks at Rapture Ready certainly are ready. According to their calculations using "the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity", we're well above the 145 level which is "fasten your seat belts" territory. Jesus is gonna come a-knocking any day now.

So, the end times a-cometh. I look at this as a positive. If the rapture is going to get rid of the kind of sanctimonious ass holes that put together sites like these and, not incidentally, put George Bush back in the White House, how can I not give it my blessing? Let them rot together in heaven. I feel "blessed" to consider myself among the unsaved.

I absolutely love the FAQ where you can find answers to such burning questions as: Are angels real? Angels are absolutely real (fuckin' A). Is the pope the antichrist? Nope. The antichrist will be a Jew (those Jews!). Is the devil working overtime? You bet your sweet tuchus he is. Should a woman work outside the home? Good god NO.

This whole thing wouldn't bother me so much except people like Todd Strandberg (the author of this crap) perpetuate the anti-semitism that it inherent in the new testament. I've discussed this evangelical christian obsession with murdering Jews before. The big problem is there is a serious disconnect between reality and what is written in the bible. Most honest people know that the bible is a book made up largely of parables, but also includes myths that form the central core of the religion, the sine qua non, if you will. Jesus died for your sins. The virgin birth. Loafs. Fishes. Wine. Water. The Resurrection. You get the point. Where would Christianity be without these things? If Jesus is just a wise (Jewish) man looking out for the poor, where does that leave the religion? The apostles had to construct a grandiose mythology around Jesus to make him palatable to converts. The fact the new testament is built around a framework of historical fact, real people (e.g. Pontius Pilate, Caesar, Jesus) and real places (e.g., Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, etc.) makes it all too easy for delusional Christians to take the entire book literally.

As for the Book of Revelation on which Rapture Ready is built, I look at it as the ultimate boogeyman. It's the evangelical equivalent to "don't masturbate or your palms with grow hair". Better get your spiritual check book in balance or you'll be left behind with the rest of the world's sinners. It's complete and utter excrement.

Every once in while (more often these day's of Christian governance) you see something that makes you wonder how it's possible to have been born and live in the same country with some of my fellow Americans.

I was surfing the web this afternoon and I came across a post discussing a Scarborough Country show from last week on god and the Asian Tsunami (is there a connection? how can this possibly be a serious topic for a political show?). The gist of the segment was how could a merciful god allow such death and destruction.

First up, Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham, went on and about Jesus dying for our sins before saying that the victims of the tsunami were going to die anyway, eventually, so it wasn't a big deal. The important thing, to Anne, was "where are we going to spend eternity?" She concludes with "so, this is a tragedy and it's a disaster, but it's not a reflection on the fact that God doesn't love us, because God loves us and the proof of that is the cross." Yes, the cross. I see.

Next up was Jennifer Giroux, soccer mom (of 9) and web publisher of Women Influencing the Nation or WIN, a website subtitled (you can't make this shit up) "The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Child Is Another Sibling." Gasp. Well now, Jennifer starts off by saying, "Well, you know, throughout history and reported early in the Bible, God has always used plagues, floods and natural disasters as a source of punishment" and launches into an anti-abortion tirade about the "lost generation of 40 million aborted babies". Supposedly there's some sort of connection. In Jennifer's mind, god is punishing sinners (aka abortionists) in America by killing 150,000 South Asians. Makes perfect sense to me. Of course, Jennifer can't stand up to the grilling from host Joe Scarborough who simply asks, "So, are you saying, Jennifer, that God may be killing people in Asia because of the sins that Americans are committing here?", a more than fair assessment of her point (see above). She just replies lamely, "no, I'm not saying that at all, Joe." Right. If you're going to believe these things, and she clearly does, why not have the cojones to stand up for beliefs?

What follows must have made for some really absurd television. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach accuses Jennifer of blasphemy and they start arguing and accusing and arguing and such with Jennifer saying "Rabbi, you have a selective memory of the Bible" and the Rabbi responding, "God is not a terrorist".

What's the point of all this? The point is that people can discuss this all they want, it's not going to change the fact that god had nothing to do with the earthquake in Sumatra or the subsequent tsunami, nor did god have anything to do with killer mudslides in Southern California, nor did was he responsible for your toilet backing this morning. Even if god did, there's no way to prove it, so it's pointless and tireless to sanctimoniously argue that he did. End of story.

I'm glad I didn't see the show live. I probably would have thrown a brick through my TV.

I love The West Wing. The reasons I love The West Wing is that the writing is so smart, the acting is so sharp and the cast preforms well as an ensemble. The show also deals with a myriad of issues, albeit most of them from a progressive point of view, that other media outlets completely ignore. Here's one for example.

Last night I was watching the Bravo The West Wing and there was this episode from Season II called The Midterms which had the quintessential Jen Bartlet monologue.

The president of the United States was about to address a gathering of radio talk show hosts in the White House. As the president entered the hall, they all stood and applauded. All, that is, except one — a woman with strikingly blond hair, wearing a bright green suit. At first, her presence rattled the president. He lost his train of thought several times before he finally spoke directly to the sitting talk show host.

"Excuse me, doctor," the president said to her. "It's good to have you here. Are you an M.D.?"

"A Ph.D.," she retorted smartly.

"In psychology?" he pursued.

"No, sir," she said.

"Theology?"

"No."

"Social work?"

"I have a Ph.D. in English literature," she replied.

"I'm asking," continued the president, "because on your show people call in for advice and you go by the title 'doctor,' and I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology, or health care."

"I don't believe they are confused. No, sir," she responded.

"Good," said the president, raising his voice sarcastically. "I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination."

"I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President," she replied haughtily. "The Bible does."

"Yes, it does!" he shouted.

"Leviticus 18:22."

"Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?"

"While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it OK to call the police?"

"Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?"

"Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side?"

"Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?"

"Think about those questions, would you? One last thing. While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the ignorant tight-ass club, in this building when the president stands, nobody sits."

If you're interested, you can hear the interaction here.

This dialogue gets to the point of what I have been saying for a long time, namely that Christians, especially the bible-thumping, holier-than-thou types, tend to cherry pick from the bible and the teachings of Jesus what is important to them and them preach about it as if it is some sort of natural truth, which it clearly is not. Does "homosexuality is abomination" trump "love thy neighbor as thyself". I don't think so, but so many Americans don't agree with me. One of the many problems with organized religion is that it has an agenda. And that agenda doesn't take into account the needs of the people, or modern society, it only takes into account the needs of perpetuating the status quo of the church, temple or mosque.

[File this under funny if it weren't so damn scary]

There's this extraordinary story on CNN where the founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition Pat Robertson describes a conversation he had with George Bush prior to the start of the war in Iraq in which he delivers the following anecdote:

"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,' " Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now."

"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Then Robertson went on to say, "I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy. I warned him about casualties."

Now, who are we to believe here? Is "God" speaking to Robertson or Bush? Is he speaking to both but giving them opposite and contradictory information?

Based on this limited information it would appear that Robertson has the ear of "God" while Bush is still getting disinformation from the Almighty. What I want to know is has "God" told Robertson who is going to win Game 7 between the Yanks and the Sox?

I'm an atheist so maybe you can understand why I can't justify the "conservative" position on abortion, stem cell research and the death penalty. Presumably they all come from the 6th Commandment, Thou Shall Not Kill. I get that. And if there was a consistent position, I could at least disagree respectfully. But how can you, on the one hand, be pro-life and say abortion is murder, and be against stem cell research and say killing embryos is murder, and yet be for the death penalty?

On the other hand one can easily see how the argument could be made against the death penalty (it doesn't work) or for stem cell research (if an embryo is life then all the people who use fertility clinics are murders) or for abortion.

My argument for abortion is based on rational thinking which goes like this. Whether you are for abortion or against it, you have agree that legislating against will not decrease the demand. Instead it will criminalize women and doctors and put the health of poor women at stake because they can't fly off to Europe or Canada or anywhere else where abortion is legal. That's why it continues to be and should always be legal.

The story of Iranian world champion judoka Arash Miresmaeili has been bothering me immensely since it broke at the beginning of these games. What's bothering me is not that this guy, the world champion by the way, disqualified himself by showing up overweight rather than face an Israeli competitor. That's a perfect example of the stupid stunts that Iran has been up to for years. What's bothering me is that there isn't more international outrage over this.

Most of you know that I have been lucky enough to travel extensively around the world. During my travels, I have spent lots of time in muslim countries. I've been to Indonesia several times, Malaysia, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. During these trips, I spent countless hours in the company of muslims. I have read and discussed the intricacies of the Koran. I spent a lot of time contemplating my own faith and organized religon in general.

After long periods of thought and extenive consultation with my imam, I've decided that the time is right for me to finally make the conversion to Islam. I'm not going to do anything radical, like join a jihadi group. I don't believe in the jihad as it currently practiced by fundamentalists today anyway. But I am going to change a few things in my life, starting with my name. From now on, you can call me Ibn Battuta.

Don't think of this as a big deal. We're all descendants of Abraham, aren't we?. We're all Semetic peoples. We all don't eat trafe. Think of it as a new beginning.

Salaam Alekum and Allahu Akbar.

Hey, everybody, it's Ash Wednesday (as if you didn't know with the celebrated release of the Mel Gibson opus "The Passion of the Christ"). This means that it's the first day of Lent and time to give something up until Easter. (Isn't that right? I'm Jewish and I'm confused in the wake of my murderous rampage against your lord and savior). Anyway, I suggest you follow my lead and give up organized religion. You'll be happy you did. I know you will. Honest.

I'm not saying they did or they didn't (but we all know they didn't). What I am saying is, "So what?"

I had this epiphany when I was at the holocaust museum in DC the other day. I was watching this movie about the history of anti-semitism. The movie was over the top, but it expressed the largely held universal misapprehension that the Jews killed Jesus and that this was largely responsible for the anti-semitism that has plagued my people for the last 2,000 years. Probably true.

However, I find this whole notion very odd because the Christian religion is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had to die to expiate all of our sins, right? Therefore someone had to kill to him. Who cares if it was the Jews or the Romans or the Florida Marlins? If Christians really think it was the Jews who did the deed, then they should fucking love us because without us Jesus, the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, would have died a natural death somewhere west of the Jordan River. And then where would you be?