Religion - Cult

Perry Supporter calls Romney's Religion a Cult.

I'd agree but lots of groups qualify as cults. Here's Webster's definition: [Cult]

1. formal religious veneration : worship
2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3. a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4. a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator 
5. great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad. the object of such devotion. a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

Based on that I'd say the following are cults.

• All religions
• The "Tax Cuts are the Answer to Every Economic Problem" crowd.
• The "Gold Standard" group.
• The "Government is always bad" crowd.
• The Tea-Party is a cult of the Constitution (their interpretation only) or maybe the "Cult of Fox News"
• The extreme environmentalists
• The Hard-core Apple devotes's.

Cults are a lot like dictators or terrorists, if they're ours they're OK but if they're the other-side's, well, then they're evil as hell.

tnb

Saturday Morning Links

[Stonekettle Station on those crazy Christians]

You know, our christian fundamentalists are just as crazy as those Islamic fundamentalists. They need to be kept as from from the control buttons of this country as possible.


[The Tea Party is the Enemy – Make no Apologies] . 

No I would say the Tea Party is just one small faction of the enemy. The real enemy are the corporate/lobby owned politicians on both sides of the aisle. It's this group who create the policies that favor big money corporate interests over the individual and make it easy for multinational corporations to control our media, markets and elections, ship jobs and technologies overseas, pollute our land, exploit our resources and people, and generally run roughshod over the less powerful all in the name of profits and free markets.

The Tea-Party is just a low-information, angry mob built and encouraged by propaganda from the right-wing of the corporate party and used as a tool to help them in the battle for power. Naming the Tea Party as "the enemy" looks to me like an attempt to build an off-setting, angry-mob tool for the left-wing of the corporate party.

[Gov. Barbour's; Disadvantaged Relative Masterminded $100 Million of Post-Katrina FEMA Fraud | Crooks and Liars]

This sort of corruption is rampant in our government, crony capitalism at its finest.

tnb

The Earth and gods

The earth and the moon as seen from Space. Picture and quoted text found here [badastronomy.com]

"Ah, but that picture shows so, so much. It shows everything!

That’s us. You, me, everyone. That fuzzy blob on the left? That’s Earth. The one on the right: the Moon.

In this one simple picture, you can see everywhere humans have ever been; hundreds of thousands of years spent on Earth, and a few brief days on the Moon. And this picture was taken from much farther than anyone has ever traveled.

This view of our home worlds was seen by Juno, a spacecraft launched on August 5. By August 26th, when it took this snapshot, it was already nearly 10 million kilometers (6 million miles) away. And yet this is merely a baby step compared to its total journey: it will take a long, sweeping path to Jupiter, traveling nearly 3 billion kilometers before arriving at its destination."

Yep, If I were the supreme being, that God guy, and I had a chosen people to put somewhere in the universe, that's exactly where I'd have put them.

tnb

The US is not a Christian Nation - 2

Another opinion about the right's view that the US is a "Christian Nation", this time from CNN.

[CNN - The US is not a Christian nation]

tnb

US - not a Christian nation

Here's a good post, with several good comments, on the Rights push to define the US as a christian nation.

Infidel753

One of the more repugnant memes circulating on the right these days is the idea that America is a "Christian nation". It's true, of course, that a statistical majority of the population is Christian in some sense (often not a very meaningful sense), but to call our country a "Christian nation" on this basis is no less offensive than calling it a "white nation" because a majority of the population happens to be white. As anyone can see, that latter appellation would imply that only white Americans are real Americans, with everyone else being not-quite-Americans, second-class, here on sufferance.

Lets take our godless nation back.

tnb

Atheists vs Believers

Here's a good exchange between a religious crank and an atheist. Read through these and ask yourself who the reasonable one is? Who want to have an open and honest discussion? Who would you want teaching your kid?

The bible-banger posts this, [Nine Year Old Challenges NASA], basically bragging that he's proud his teachings are reaching kids and helping them discover what stooges these science-types are. (Actually, I'll bet the whole episode was setup by the mother. The kid could have played a part but it sounds like the mother was the driving force to me.)

My favorite atheist, [P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula] responds with this, very good, [letter-he-wouldn't-actually-send] to the kid.

[The bible-banger responds]", well, sort of, as he hides the atheist's arguments from his readers and paints all atheists and the letter as evil.

Then the [Evil Atheist responds].

Well, once again, who would you want teaching your kids?

tnb

Michele Bachmann

It's scary to think that someone this far out there really could win the presidency.

[Michele Bachmann - Religious Nut]

tnb

The End of the World.

PZ Meyers at Pharyngula is pissed but he nails it.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/_the_world_didnt_end.php

It's the very same rot, the poison of religion that twists minds away from reality and fastens them on hellish bogeymen. They're demented fuckwits, every one, and the big lie rests right on the fundamental beliefs of supernaturalism and deities, not on the ephemera of one crank's bizarre interpretations.

I wished I'd said that.

tnb

Religious Cults and Kooks

A few links about the non-rapture and other religious crazies.

First, from my favorite Athiest Pharyngula

On the non-rapture: [Followers preparing for the end] and [Excuses, Excuses]

Believers, sheesh: [Forcing others to pray to your god] and [Forcing others to pay for your god]

No More Mister Nice on why a main-stream religious kook wouldn't make a specific rapture date prediction. [Rapture Fail]

Wy couldn't this (false rapture prediction) have happened to Pat Robertson or David Barton or John Hagee or any of several dozen prominent Christian rightists? I'd be thrilled to see those guys with egg on their faces. (Glenn Beck? What about him?)

But see, this would never happen to any of them, because however many kooky pronouncements those guys make, they never take their eyes off the terrestrial prize. Harold Camping, by contrast, really lost himself in this.

If someone died because of this crazy rapture prediction, Harold Camping and a few of his followers should go to jail.

tnb

Religious Kooks

People give away everything they have because some wacky preacher thinks a book can tell him when the world's gonna end. [The worlds gonna end]

So, Mitch Daniels, tell me again about all those evil athiests. [Mitch Daniels thinks athiests are evil]

Mellinger: Is there part of you that is bothered by the aggressive atheism of a [Sam] Harris, a [Christopher] Hitchens, a [Richard] Dawkins? And what I mean is... this atheism is a little different than atheism has been in the past because it does seek to convert people.

Daniels: I'm not sure it's all that new. People who reject the idea of a God -who think that we're just accidental protoplasm- have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications -which not all such folks have thought through- because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power.

And atheism leads to brutality. All the horrific crimes of the last century were committed by atheists -Stalin and Hitler and Mao and so forth- because it flows very naturally from an idea that there is no judgment and there is nothing other than the brief time we spend on this Earth.

Everyone's certainly entitled in our country to equal treatment regardless of their opinion. But yes, I think that folks who believe they've come to that opinion ought to think very carefully, first of all, about how different it is from the American tradition; how it leads to a very different set of outcomes in the real world

tnb

Religion

Pharyngula: [He was a nice guy, he went to church and everything]

and Mitch Daniels thinks [Athiests are evil].

tnb

Links

Gin and Tacos takes on [Christian Hypocrites].

[Sean Duffy] catches hell.

Mitch Daniels, playing a not-crazy, financially-responsible republican in the Washington Post. [Mitch the straight man] Problem is, he's not that financially responsible [Mitch as Budget director] and he is pretty crazy [Mitch the Christian Jihadist]

tnb

Liars for Jesus

Liars For Jesus - The Religious Rights Alternate Version of American History

This site takes on pseudo-historian David Barton and Fox News crazy-person Glenn Beck.

tnb

Pharyngula vs Newt

Pharyngula vs Newt

I think I understand, though — it doesn't matter what you do, all that matters is what you say. The Republicans support a version of marriage that rests on tradition, authority, and masculine dominance, and everything they do props up one leg of the tripod or the other. Public piety reinforces religious tradition; the insistence that there is one true form of marriage, between a man and a woman, which represents a legal and social commitment is part of the authoritarian impulse; and of course, if a man steps out of the matrimonial bounds, it's an expression of machismo and patriotism and entitlement.

(newt) There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing it. I found that I felt compelled to seek God's forgiveness.

Gingrich was cheating on his wife, but it's OK — because he also tells us that it was wrong and inexcusable, and then he wraps it all up in God and country to make excuses for it. Hypocrisy is acceptable as long as the right words are said to reinforce the public face of propriety.

Pharyngula wins.

The real power of religion. It allows believers to do anything they like and no matter how wrong it is, it's OK, because they're covered by their god. The rules apply to everyone else.

Thank god I'm an Atheist.

tnb

Pharyngula: On Religion

Pharyngula: Calvinball No More.

Religion has had a couple of millennia to make a case for its fundamental concepts: the existence of the supernatural, the existence of deities, the effectiveness of priestly intermediaries, etc. It has failed. It does not provide support in the form of evidence or logical consistency; it also fails to show any pragmatic utility. Religion never does what it claims to do. At what point do we learn from experience and simply reject the whole worthless mess out of hand? The abstract possibility that the god-wallopers will finally come up with a tiny scrap of evidence for their outrageous beliefs in the coming eon is not enough to win it credibility as a reasonable contender, either; you might just as well speculate that archaeologists could unearth artifacts from Middle Earth, or astronomers observing a galaxy far, far away will discover The Force. There is no cause to expect fictions and fantasies to manifest themselves as actual realities.

Religion plays Calvinball. There are no rules except what they make up as they go. You might think that maybe you ought to concede that they could get a score of 13 and beat your 12…but they are already convinced that their Q trumps your puny pair of digits. And if they get a score of Oatmeal-Sofa, they'll announce victory. Heck, if they somehow end up in the realm of numbers with you and get a 7, they'll declare that they win because they've got a Mersenne prime and we don't. Or because it's like a golf score. The mistake is to play the game in the expectation that the other side has the same respect for evidence that we do, or that evidence even matters.

well said

tnb

Yglesias on Huckabee

Matthew Yglesias on Mike Huckabee's stupid middle-east tricks.

Yglesias » Biblical Israel

tnb

Huckabee: Hypocrite

Huckabee: Palestinians Should Be Resettled In 'Muslim' Territory | TPMDC

Huckabee first said this....

"I cannot imagine as an American being told that I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English," Huckabee said. "I would be outraged if someone told me that in my country, I would be prohibited and forbidden to live in a part of that country, for any reason"

then a few moments later said this....

Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Huckabee said, should settle in "territory that [is] in the hands of Muslims, in the hands of Arabs," as determined by the "international community."

So he doesn't want anyone telling Christians where to live, "can't imagine it", "would be outraged", but he himself is ready to allow the international community tell Palestinians where they can live.

He doesn't seem to realize that most of the International community agrees that the Palestinains should live where they are and it is the Israelis that are on Palestinian land. Not the other way around.

Christian Hypocrite.

tnb

Sunday Sacrilege: Pharyngula

A good, short commentary on religion from Pharyngula Sunday Sacrilege: Simple things

tnb

The Liberals Killed Jesus?

Found here: The Commander Guy's Post: Life Inside the Bubble – The Liberals Killed Jesus?

For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check. Nevertheless, he completed all the work He needed to get done. He didn’t travel by private jet. He walked and sailed, and sometimes traveled on a donkey.

But they made Him walk when He was arrested and taken to jail, and no, He was not read any Miranda Rights. He was arrested for just being who He was and doing nothing wrong. And when they tried Him in court, He never said a mumbling word.

He didn’t have a lawyer, nor did He care about who judged Him.

His judge was a higher power.

The liberal court found Him guilty of false offences and sentenced Him to death, all because He changed the hearts and minds of men with an army of 12.

His death reset the clock of time.

Never before and not since has there ever been such a perfect conservative.

Via RedState contributor and Infotainer Hermann Cain

[Link to original at Redstate]

The religious right in this country is fucking crazy. If they ever get full control, this country will be a Christian version of Iran.

tnb

Ark Theme Park

Pharyngula takes on the Ark Theme Park here:

Pharyngula - Latest Ark News

There is some faint concern from the Kentucky governor that the Ark theme park will discriminate in hiring — I doubt that it will become a major sticking point. But still, it's true, they will be selective in their hiring based on religious belief. They say that isn't true, but one thing we know about creationists is that they lie.

"There will be positions that will require Bible knowledge because...we have certain things in there that are requiring biblical knowledge," he explains. "That doesn't mean, though, if you don't have that you can't work over in the restaurant or some other part of the facility."

Oh. Since atheists tend to know more about religion and the Bible than Christians, can we expect a larger proportion of them to show up in those jobs requiring biblical knowledge? No. Because they have a requirement that people sign a testimonial of their faith, which means they're actually going to discriminate on the basis of whether you agree with them or not.
....

I guess they can hire who they want, religious idiots rather than athiest who know the bible better, as long as they pay taxes and get no government support.

tnb