Archive for October, 2009

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Abortion Anxiety

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, biological traits, faith, humanity, medical, nature, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , on October 29, 2009 by chouck017894

Thoughts in regard to news that an extreme fringe group of anti-abortionists is trying to drum up cash for legal defense of Scott Roeder, killer of Dr. George Tiller who tried to provide for women seeking safe abortion.

Ask most anti-abortion supporters where in the Bible it is stated that inducing abortion is forbidden and they dutifully allude to three or four selected biblical verses, especially the sixth Commandment forbidding killing.  Other verses cited are in regard to the conceiving of one special person such as a man who is allegedly meant to be a “prophet” or who is to become king.  Because God is referred to as having worked in the womb of some certain woman for God’s special purpose, none of the verses used as authority declare or even imply that God is the active participant in every conception.

A favorite bit of anti-abortion propaganda is a phrase in the first chapter of the book of Jeremiah, verse 5, that goes; “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee…”  If these Bible pickers would just read the rest of the passage, the words there do not support their argument.  The phrase held in such fanatic respect was allegedly spoken to Jeremiah personally, to whom God also allegedly said, “…before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet of nations.”  The soliloquy continues through verse 10 and elaborates on Jeremiah’s call as “prophet.”  So, unless everyone is to play the role of “prophet” to nations it cannot be said of them, “…before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”

Another favorite bit of cherry picking the Bible is Psalms 139:13-16, supposedly composed by King David, that alludes, “…thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.”  And, “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.  Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”  So, once again, only one particular pregnancy was personally activated and it does not support the claim that every conception is God-ordained.

The third popular selection of holy word ferreted out by anti-abortionists comes from Luke 1:39-41 that describes the unlikelihood of a fetus (who was to become John the Baptist) carried in Elisabeth’s body leaping in his mother’s womb when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, greeted her.  That passage is taken by anti-abortionists to imply that all gestating fetuses are sentient persons; but once again the account is in regard only to a “prophet” allegedly ordained by God. 

Religious dogma too often celebrates ignorance, such as the untruth that self-aware physical personhood begins at conception.  A fertilized egg—a zygote—within a woman’s abdomen becomes active with 23 chromosomes from her egg and 23 chromosomes from a man’s sperm.  The resultant single cell that evolves then contains all the DNA to initiate a cellular glob, but that cellular mass has only the potential to evolve into a physical independent being.  The unproven assertion that a cognizant human exists is not a scientific or holy fact.

During the gestation period, a simple cell amoeba becomes activated by drawing upon nutrients and oxygen supplied by the carrier, which then converts (evolves) into biological energy which causes cells to divide, multiply and grow.  The developing energy-substance, although containing all 46 chromosomes for a potential human being, is not yet endowed with consciousness of self.  It is still simply a growing amoeba, meaning that it is without consciousness of personhood.  This is the indifferent method as described in Genesis by which all life in nature was programmed to renew itself.

Although a zygote, the fertilized egg, does contain all 46 chromosomes that can involve and evolve as a potential human, it is alive only as a mass of cells that are multiplying as an energy substance which continues to lack any consciousness of self.  That energy-mass will react to stimulus around itself just as “dead” tissue can be made to jerk by electrical stimulation, but it does not and cannot exist except by drawing all necessary life stimulants from its carrier.  Until the developing mass can breathe and take nourishment with a smattering of consciousness, it remains only a potential person.

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Abandonment of Life

Posted in culture, humanity, life, meaning of life, random, thoughts with tags , , on October 26, 2009 by chouck017894

(In memory of a 17-year-old boy who committed suicide because he was made to feel guilty about being gay.)

There is little spoken in the  media or in social conversation about the quiet desperation and depression that leads people to commit suicide.  That seems an odd avoidance when one considers that in the United States alone more than 33,000 persons kill themselves every year.  That is the eleventh leading cause of death in the US.  It is estimated that twelve to twenty-five attempted suicides occur per every suicide death.  Statistics show that nearly four times as many males as females die by suicide, with the age group of 15 to 19 year olds figured into the research; and more than six times as many males as females commit suicide in the age grouping 20 to 24.  That should be alarming enough to accept that suicide is a major health problem—a preventable health problem and is a subject that needs to be more openly addressed.  Most suicide attempts are not attempts for attention, but are commonly due to extreme distress. 

Several factors can figure into suicide risk, from mental disorder, substance abuse, family violence—which may include physical or sexual abuse, or peer pressure that makes one feel less than “normal.”

For anyone that seems to be coping with suicidal thought, please consider:

  • Talk with someone, a friend, family member, a therapist—even if you may not feel social.
  • Avoid any form of substance reliance.
  • Make friends with sunlight for at least 30 minutes: bright light can ease the shadows of depression.
  • Set aside at least two 30-minute periods a day for some activity that gives you pleasure and relaxation.  Avoid things at which you might fail.
  • Set priorities; they give a sense of control, even of predictability.  Keep a list of your accomplished self-administered tasks.
  • And finally, give attention to your physical health—which means attempting a well balanced diet, not skipping meals, doing some form of exercise for 30 minutes a day, and get all the sleep you need.

For anyone who has experienced the suicide of some family member, friend, or even a casual acquaintance, the emotional scar remains for a lifetime.  There is always the nagging question of why?  And it is common to keep the questioning locked up inside, where it festers with remorse, anger, guilt at not having better communicated with them—and it all gets salted with resentment at the echoing emptiness that is sometimes felt.  There is always that question, why couldn’t someone have seen the warning signs?  If we had just noted  the little warning signs we could have spoken up, we could have made a difference.  Even now, knowing all we know of suicide rates, our silence can be deadly.

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Victimizing Gays is to Mock Jesus

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, biological traits, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, humanity, life, logic, random, religion, sex, sex taboos, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2009 by chouck017894

There are attitudes of religion, and an attitude, we should remember, is not a given truth, it is simply an affectation of cultured disposition.  This assessment was spawned by the recent news that opposition to same-sex marriage had been whipped up in the state of Maine by the very same bigots that managed to pervert equal justice in the state of California.  Behind the scenes those Christian groups claiming to hold exclusive access to Heaven’s discrimination list were, by their practiced intolerance, mocking the teachings of the one they claim as their savior.  In their self-absorbed practice they intentionally subvert the early teachings credited to Jesus in the New Testament of love one another and have canonized prejudice instead.  Jesus’ words of love and tolerance simply are not good enough for them!

There is, of course, extreme hypocrisy in their attitude.  This is most glaringly apparent in those known collectively as the Religious Right or Fundamentalists who love to pick and choose Bible verses out of context to stir up hatreds.  For some unexplainable reason they seem to believe that their sins will be  forgiven by God’s grace, but that some other persons who by circumstance of their “intelligent design” chromosomal makeup are inclined to same-sex attraction are held to be rejected by their designer.  In spite of the man-written Bible verses of God’s supposed “laws,” the chromosomal arrangement of a person cannot truthfully be said to run counter to those “laws,” nor is the resultant lifestyle of those persons merely their “choice” to live rebelliously.

Perhaps we should note that research on marriage has shown that around fifty percent of those who subscribe to the religious right happen to be divorced and have remarried.  And of that category over eighty-five percent of those who divorced have remarried.  According to the man-composed book of Luke 16:18, “Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”   In other words, those using the Bible as a weapon have themselves chosen a sinful lifestyle according to that interpretation of spiritual worthiness.  So the right-wingers choose to indulge in hypocrisy to gratify their ego but demand that gays must turn from their “sinful” lifestyle.  It is much more blessed in their opinion to “go forth and multiply” and contribute to world overpopulation.

The earlier NT account of the teacher (as given in Mark and Matthew) that became restructured into corporate religionism said this: “Judge not, that you be judged.  For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:1-2)

Shouldn’t the devotees of “my way only” religionism explain just how homosexuality is a greater “sin” than the unholy adultery indulged in through divorce?  How are gays such a threat to “family values” or a menace to children?  Very few homosexuals are actually pedophiles, except maybe in the church.  Since the bulk of those who divorce remarry, the result is that over fifty percent of the children in the nation are victims of torn-apart families and endure the trauma of having to merge with strangers as “family.”  Add to this that step-parents are too often the culprits in a high percent of child abuse cases.  That is a lot of abuse, and it is not due to gays in society.

Attacking a small percentage of society to cover up their  own transgressions is an appalling way to demonstrate an alleged faith in higher wisdom.  Making war on a minority segment of society that simply loves their own does nothing constructively for society.  Slogans such as we love the sinner but hate the sin” is nothing more than empty, pompous rhetoric.  As Einstein observed, “You cannot simultaneously say you love someone and use your power against them.”  And why do the right-wingers consistently ignore the famous quote attributed to Jesus: “Let ye who is without sin cast the first stone”?  To indulge in the attempt to rationalize their own sins away while spouting hatred for other lifestyles “in god’s name,” the Right Wing and Fundamentalists choose to mock the one they claim as their savior.

It is written in Mark 12:31 that Jesus said, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no greater commandment.”  Not only are a percentage of neighbors probably homosexually inclined, but so too it is likely that one or two are in your immediate family as well.

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Freedom of Faith & the UN

Posted in Atheist, belief, culture, faith, history, humanity, life, politics, random, religion, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on October 25, 2009 by chouck017894

Freedom of faith—the awareness that every being in Creation has their own link to the Creative Source—is not an ideology favored by persons hungry for worldly power. Unlike the United States where freedom of faith and of speech was set down as two of the cornerstones of democracy, many other regions of the world have not been blessed with such an intelligent approach to government.

After World War II, as nations sought intelligent means of cooperation among nations, the ideals that had led the United States into the world’s major power became the model upon which the United Nations was established in 1948.  Freedom of speech and faith was recognized as the premium means of encouraging understanding and tolerance among nations.  Thus these principles of man’s equal rights became enshrined as a universal Declaration of Human Rights to which every member nation must set their sign of approval.  And guided by that Declaration the United Nations has continued to function as the forum where promotion of peace and human rights have been honored and upheld.

But there is an upcoming annual attempt by some member nations to slyly undermine those noble principles which they declared to have accepted.  The cover for that annual move to curb religious freedom bears the innocuous sounding title The Defamation of Religion Resolution.  Buried beneath that headstone, however, is the intent to silence the words or actions that are judged to be detrimental to a particular religion—and that religion just happens to be Islam.  In other words, the true purpose of that annual proposal is the attempt to silence anyone who might hold a differing faith, or no faith at all. 

The driving force behind that annual move to savage the UN Declaration of Human Rights is none other than the Organization of Islamic Conference composed of 57 countries with a heavy Muslim majority.  Their objective, when analyzed, is hardly a peaceful one.  It is clearly, as Leonard A. Leo, chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom observed, a deceitful attempt to “create a global blasphemy law.”

Certainly the Muslim proposed Resolution is not concerned with genuine religious freedom; it is concerned totally with protecting their own  man-conceived religious practices.  Tolerance, charity and love are not exactly the strong points of Islam, as is indicated by their repressive governments where anyone deemed as offensive or who dares to speak out against a favored sect or religious practice is punished severely—even with death.

Questioning the Quran and its contradictions, for example, is enough to allow gross violations of human rights.  There are “blasphemy laws” in Pakistan, as an illustration, that are routinely used against Christians and other minorities as reason for arrests and inhumane treatment.  If the UN ever voted in favor of the deceptive Defamation of Religion Resolution, the world would then find the blasphemy laws held up as justification for selectively restricting religious speech of minority communities.  It is then but a tiny step toward selectively curtailing civil dissent and  muzzling any criticism of the political structure in power.

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Sex Attraction, A Bogus “Spiritual” Dilemma

Posted in Atheist, biological traits, Christianity, culture, freethought, humanity, life, logic, medical, naturalism, random, religion, science, sex, sex taboos with tags , , , , , , , on October 19, 2009 by chouck017894

(There was enough sex-charged spam feedback on a previous post, Thoughts on Gay Marriage, to merit a few other comments.)

Chromosomes and the chemistry of the brain determine a person’s behavior and their attraction to other persons functioning on a similar wavelength, so to speak.  The effect of sex chromosomes and the chemical sex hormones do not have an undeviating manner of lining up or assembling according to one’s general anatomical features as adherents of radical religious prejudices choose to pretend.  Furthermore, anatomists know there are considerable variations in the human brain—its shape, thalamus, structure of the cerebrum, etc.—that are extremely variable and are as individual as an individual’s fingerprints.  Mental and/or sensory properties connected with brain structure may align within widely diverse ranges, and no two person will ever be exactly the same—not even “identical” twins.

The chromosomes chemically control the total development of the body, the brain and intelligence.  These do so in a wide range of ways throughout a person’s life.  Within these God-allowable differences there is left open the allowance for great diversity of life and love expressions.  Therefore, for religious or political factions to pretend that only one narrow expression of life or love is expected by “god” to be striven for by all  individuals is contrary to the manner in which the physical human organism was created.  If one believes that “intelligent design” is at work and responsible for all manifestations, then religious or political demands for one-style-only expressions of personal affection amounts to sacrilege.

Those who wax with rigid divine certainty regarding same-sex attraction would do well to remember that studies in the difference in development of body and brain have shown that the brain needs considerable amount of body to function well.  On the other hand, it has been medically authenticated that the body needs very little brain to exist.  Radical religionists seem to be out to prove this.

The physical body differences of male and female provides personal consciousness with only a representation of the interactions that take place between the chemical code in the chromosomes and the chemical process that contribute to physical body differences.  In other words, the chromosomal and chemical “design” decrees great tolerance in human physical, mental and emotional expression.  This is problematic only for those who choose to work themselves into hysterical prejudice and hatred for anyone that finds personal expression in a differnent manner from themselves.

 No, Virginia, there is no “gay gene,” but there is something that is infinitely grand: the God-allowable differences for all life expressions.

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Government and Religion

Posted in Atheist, culture, freethought, Government, history, life, politics, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on October 17, 2009 by chouck017894

Thomas Jefferson—chairman of a committee of five to prepare a draft of the Declaration of Independence from England, elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776, Secretary of State under the first President of the United States, and himself the third President—was adamant that church and state must be kept separate.

Jefferson wisely rejected advice from religious representatives who sought to pressure him to institute days of prayer, and said that he believed that government officials did not have legal justification to call people to pray.  Jefferson spelled out his position and that of the nation’s Constitution with this observation:

  • “I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline or exercises.”   He further clarified this, saying, “Every religious society has the right to determine for itself the times for (religious) exercises and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets, and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the Constitution has deposed it.”

One of the numerous milestones during Jefferson’s two terms as president was the definition of treason by the Supreme Court—in the Justus Erich Bollman case (1807) which established an important precedent in the law of writ of habeas corpus and the crime of treason.  The principle laid down was that an actual levy of war, and not merely an intention to levy war, must be established to convict a person of treason.  Today we must ponder finer points of habeas corpus and treason, and whether this precedent covers the deliberate lying to lead the nation into an unnecessary war. 

A friend and colleague of Jefferson, James Madison, was an American statesman now recognized as the “Father of the Constitution,” and he served as the fourth president of the United States.  Madison had made the notable contribution to the Virginia State Constitution in a clause granting a “free exercise of religion”—one of the earliest provisions for religious freedom in American law.  Features of the Virginia constitution were later incorporated into the Constitution of the US.

Events led Madison to recognize the danger of too much central authority in a democratic government.  And being familiar with the Dark Age history of Europe, he recognized as well the danger to democracy of religion being mixed into government.  After he had been manipulated by religious representative into issuing a few religious proclamations, he found himself bitterly regretting that he had done so.  He later wrote, “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion.  Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.”

Today we in the United States find a relentless move by extreme religious factions to take advantage of the religious freedom that Jefferson and Madison championed, and they brazenly attempt to subjugate true democratic principles that elevated the nation to a world power. 

  •  Related post: Corporations Shaft America, Sept. 19, 2009.

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Thoughts on Gay Marriage

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, history, humanity, life, politics, random, religion, sex taboos, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on October 17, 2009 by chouck017894

Not too long ago in our alleged “everyone is equal” USA democracy, the courts of many states justified bans on interracial couples marrying while still claiming that “persons of color” and whites were treated equally.  Many even pointed to the Bible, the alleged “word of god,” as their authority for the practice of racially inspired prejudice—a book that nowhere ever condemned slavery as immoral.

In later form religious inspired hatred, having been legally thwarted in their racial discrimination, was turned to same sex attraction as the ultimate no-no in their hate-wrapped assessment of what is required for spiritual purity.  The nation was forced  to witness the true colors of religious ethics when the proposal was presented in the state of California for granting same-sex couples contracts of marriage.  With multimillions of dollars pumped into the state of California from the Utah-based Mormon church, the lies were spread that in allowing two persons of the same sex to openly commit themselves to each other in a legal contract would somehow jeopardized heterosexual marriages, and that such legal recognition would in some unstated manner encourage homosexuality!

The Utah-based Mormon elders bought off the California residents with those fraudulent assertions and Proposition 8, allowing same-sex marriage rights, was defeated.  The Mormon elders wallowed in their ego-gratifying rationale, and gallingly insisted that the measure ensured that men and women were treated equally—they just couldn’t openly and respectfully pledge devotion and dedication to someone of the same sex.  Again the radical religionists pointed to the Bible as their standard of pretended virtues.

Oddly, Jesus, who is portrayed as having meandered around the country with a group of males whom he had instructed to abandon their families to follow him, said absolutely nothing about same sex attraction.  During their male-only three-year travel indulgence, apparently none of them did a lick of work.  Even so, prejudicial judgment can still be fired up with concocted divine disapproval.  The favored verse in the book of Romans used to fan hatred of same sex attraction happened to have been written c.100 CE, and was part of a social comment that was inspired by the  declining population in Rome at that time.  Making a huge issue out of  same-sex attraction—which happens to occur all through nature—as soul-endangering begs the question that if it is such a horrendous threat to spiritual purity then why was it not a concern put forth in the Ten Commandments, for example? 

The fraudulent religious-inspired indignation of same-sex couples avowing loving commitment to one another as being reason for denial of legal commitment is nothing more than spiritual pretense.  If that is the rationale for opposing loving same-sex unions, shouldn’t we also question the Court’s decision that allows such persons as tax evaders, deadbeat parents, hardcore criminals, and even Death Row inmates the right to marry?  There was never a “Proposition” ever put forth for public approval or disapproval—or Mormon intrusion—as to whether or not those persons should be allowed to marry. 

Apparently jimmying prejudice into the California State Constitution through pressure of lies of out-of-state rightwing religionists—whose founder just happened to indulge himself with fifty-two serial “wives”—was not recognized by the California voting citizens as a glaring example of dysfunctional democracy.

  • See related post: Breeding for God, Sept. 25.

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The DNA Lottery

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, history, humanity, Inspiration, life, meaning of life, prehistory, random, religion, science, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2009 by chouck017894

The key to all aspects of life and death are programmed in DNA.

Secrets of DNA were actually known to academic men in ancient cultures such as Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, the Indus Valley, etc.  This may seem to be an exaggerated claim, but the proof of that scientific knowledge happens to be recorded in many art representations of those ancient cultures.  That knowledge is even presented, although in a less persuasive version, in the Old Testament.

The most telling art alluding to DNA from those more ancient cultures—older than the priest-authors of “scriptures”—was  of the Mesopotamian region—Sumer/Babylonia.  The secrets of genetics and biomedicine are fully depicted in many wall sculpture and bas-reliefs—the images of entwined serpents—an emblem used to this day for the arts of medicine and healing.

In ancient Egypt, too, entwined serpents symbolized life, and the “god” associated with that symbol was known as PTAH, the developer.  That the scientific principle of DNA was known in ancient Egypt is artfully presented in the myth of the half brothers Seth and Osiris.  Seth was the unscrupulous one, and sought the domain ruled over by his brother Osiris.  Seth made two attempts to dispose of Osiris, the second time by seizing  Osiris, murdering him and cutting his body into fourteen parts, which he scattered across the world.  Osiris’  grieving wife, Isis, managed to recover all parts of her husband’s body except for his phallus.  With the help of the god Thoth, the Divine Scribe, they managed to extract “the essence” from Osiris’ body from which Isis impregnated herself and eventually gave birth to the god, Horus.  It is the first known recorded case of artificial insemination!

In biblical myth the reference to life’s DNA connection is in the presentation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  A fertilizing gamete of a male (spermatozoon) is a long nucleated cell with a thin, mobile tail; which is to say it is serpentine in appearance, and is why in the Genesis myth it is the Serpent that awakens life-awareness in Eve. 

Later in the Genesis myth, the rivalry expressed in the Egyptian Seth/Osiris myth is echoed in the myth of Cain murdering Abel.  The later priest-authors dedicated to Yahweh, however, were a little fuzzy on the scientific particulars expressed in the Egyptian tale, and interpreted it as an underlying rivalry between agriculture and animal breeding.

The sacred Serpent of the pre-Jewish Hebrews was Nehushtan or Ne-esthan from the Hebrew root NHSH, which meant, “to decipher”or to make out the meaning.  Again the serpent was a reference to the life-awakening power symbolized with the squiggling fertilizing gamete.  Thus in the book of Numbers this is the meaning behind the story of Moses making—at God’s command—the Brazen Serpent that was to be placed upon a pole (Numbers 21:9).  The symbolism got lightly brushed with superstition by saying that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he would behold the serpent of brass, he lived.  

The point of mentioning these few examples is to show that the understanding of the Serpent figure as symbolizing the creative impulsion was worldwide in ancient times.  The accusation extended in the Judeo-Christian faith that the Serpent represents evil was therefore far from universal.  It demonstrates that in the competing divisions of religious politics it is common practice to use the competition’s emblems as representing evil.  Thus in Judeo-Christian myth the creative wisdom represented with the serpent became inverted.

  • See also related posts: Dressed for Sex, Bible Style, Sept. 08;  Breastplate, Sexy Biblical Garb, Sept. 09;  The Stringy Coil of Life, July 01;  Inner Relationship of All Things, July 27; Natural Equality, August 21. 

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Republican Rarities

Posted in Atheist, belief, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, Government, history, life, politics, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , on October 7, 2009 by chouck017894

Once upon a time, before the 21st century, the Republican Party had some worthwhile persons in their ranks who had at least a nodding acquaintance with responsibility to the nation’s citizens.  Of course there were considerably more of them before the religious right managed to infiltrate and pollute principles of even handedness, justice and honesty that was exemplified by the most noble Republican of them all, Abraham Lincoln.  For sure, there is no Republican in Congress today that could come anywhere close to filling  Mr. Lincoln’s shoes.

And there was Teddy Roosevelt who, despite his predilection for shooting up any defenseless animals, went out of his way to protect the nation against unscrupulous tycoons.  Roosevelt was sworn in as President in 1901 after President McKinley was assassinated.  One of Roosevelt’s first notable acts as president was to ask Congress to curb the powers of large corporations–called “trusts.”  His aggressive opposition to “trusts” during his two terms as President earned him the nickname of “trust buster.”

Calvin Coolidge, Republican President 1923-29, succeeded Warren G. Harding, and helped restore public trust in democratic government after the corruption and scandals of the Harding administration.  Coolidge observed: “No person was ever honored for what he received.  Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”  Doesn’t sound much like today’s Republicans, does it?

A bit closer to our own times, and something of a part-time prophet, was Senator Barry Goldwater.  By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan acting as president, there was a growing involvement of the religious right using less than noble means to commandeer the GOP and so-called conservative politics.  In 1981 Goldwater was more than a little alarmed at what religious radicals were doing, prompting him to give a speech about American politicians being bullied by religious organizations, and he would “fight them every step of the way.”  Unlike the radical right Republicans we see today in the early 21st century, Goldwater was a passionate defender of personal freedom and recognized that hard-line religions were an encroachment on individual liberties and personal privacy.

After his retirement in 1987, free to speak with total candor, Goldwater stated his alarm that the Republican party had been taken over by “a bunch of kooks.”  There were indeed a mounting number of abrasive “kooks,” among them Jerry Falwell, a fundamentalist Baptist pastor engaged in evengelical Christian-oriented political lobbying.   The nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court was publicly opposed by Falwell who said, “Every good Christian should be concerned.”  Goldwater went on public record to say, “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”  And Goldwater’s assessment of the  Reagan/Bush involvement with the Iran-Contra affair was summed up as,  “…the goddamned stupidest foreign policy blunder this country’s ever made.”

With the “kooks” in control of his Party, Goldwater was irritated at the shallowness of their alleged conservative patriotism. In the 1990s he was appalled at the waste and hypocrisy in their rabble-rousing over the Clinton Whitewater “scandal.”  And he had no truck with the military ban on homosexuals who wanted to serve their country.  He mused publicly on the point, “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”  He would later say to the right wing element, “You are extremists, and you have hurt the Republican Party much more than the Democrats have.”

If Goldwater were still alive, or Teddy Roosevelt, or Calvin Coolidge, they would be numbed to see those Republican extremists on TV as they systematically betray the citizens they are supposed to represent.

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Faith-Based Failures

Posted in Atheist, Bible, culture, faith, history, life, random, religion, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2009 by chouck017894

One might assume from the title of this post that we will delve into the Bush-era Born Again leadership fiasco, but that stands out only as a symptom of the radical right’s built-in tendency to self-destruct.  One of the great myths of the radical right religionism is the propaganda that they alone stand upon the highest moral ground: family values, pro-life, material profits prove god’s love, man should not love man, take the Bible literally—that sort of stuff.

So when it comes to the sanctity of marriage among the fundamentalists, there is a curious point to ponder.  With the passage of time after the exchange of “I Do’s” among the hard-nosed religionists, the ironic thing is that born-again fundamentalists can turn around and boast of having one of the highest divorce rates in the nation.  This is not made up for liberalist snickering.  In fact, some years back, around 2006, an evangelical pollster, George Barna, found a very high rate of divorce among conservative Christians.  Even more disturbing to the pollster, the trend had been in place for more years than they wished to admit.

To add to the embarrassment, an independent research outfit found that the “Bible Belt” states had higher divorce rates than did other regions of the country.  The hellish irony for the self-righteous Right was that states scorned by them as hotbeds of liberalism had the lowest divorce rates.

Most alarming for the hard-nosed evangelical ambassadors of god was the glaring proof that their much touted Bible-based counseling for couples was seriously flawed.  The alarm among the fundamentalists was not so much in regard to the many marital split-ups, but that the evidence of their counseling failure seriously threatened the (unconstitutional) channeling of tax monies into their religious programs—programs they constantly declared worked.  But their true success rate was in the toilet.  And worse, it was common practice among the Born Again “counselors” to stack statistics to conceal the ineffectiveness of their programs.

 Bible-based counseling included such fundamentalist dogma guidance as:  men should run the household and wives were meant to submit to their husbands; warning that wives are at risk of becoming jealous of their husband’s relationship with his mother; children are brought forth in sorrow; woman is commanded (by god) to be under obedience (as in 1 Corinthians 14:34); woman must learn from her husband at home (verse 35); and similar dogma inspired counseling.  They then feign bewilderment that using the Bible as a marriage manual had not brought the blessings of “practical and life-changing support for steadfast marriage” as they claimed. 

The guise of pervasively religious groups protecting marriage has brought considerable amounts of public money into the coffers such as the Northwest Marriage Institute.  Congress actually allocated over $100,000 to this group in 2006—the GWB era—for the alleged purpose of building healthy marriages and thereby hoped to lower the nation’s divorce rate.  We have seen how well that works out.

The Northwest Marriage Institute later ducked out of a court challenge of using tax money for Bible-based marriage counseling brought by Americans United, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church/state separtation.  NMI dropped use of Bible quotes in order to keep its public funding.  Apparently it had nothing at all to do with the commandment not to bear false witness.

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