Hmmm...

Why does Pastor Becky Fischer from Jesus Camp look like a huge honkin' dyke?

Atheists the new gays? Please say it isn't so!

Although I try to ignore everything that is posted on Townhall.com (or most of HuffingtonPost.com too, for that matter), I couldn't pass this one up. Apparently, Dinesh D'Souza takes issue with Richard Dawkins when he calls on atheists to start "coming out" of the closet just like the gays do. I deeply respect Dr. Dawkins and think he is a brilliant man, but I too take issue with him saying that atheists should be the new gays. Why? Because I would hope that atheists, a bunch of smart people, would pick a much better model than the gay rights movement, which, as we all know, is a total joke.

Where's Richard Dawkins when you need him?

Discipulus Legis took me on an impromptu date tonight to see For the Bible Tells Me So, a new documentary about fundamentalist Christians and the gays. It was good, but it was missing depth and the sense of angst that the interviewees were supposedly feeling about homosexuality and religion. There were abundant tears, but no sense of why people were crying (In contrast, Trembling Before G-d makes you understand why the film subjects were so upset.) The only truly effective and moving parts of the movie involve the story of Mary Lou Wallner and her daughter. She alone makes it worth seeing.

Of course, given my feelings about religion, I had strong feelings about the movie for other reasons. The opening credits of the movie show the usual "GOD HATES FAGS" imagery but it's intercut with commentary from learned religious academics. In response to these "simplistic" readings of the Bible, one academic says something like "you can have a 5th grade understanding of the Bible... when you're in 5th grade." A clever comment, but the Bible itself advocates a 5th grade understanding of life as a whole. You get a gold star for doing good, you get a time out for doing bad (albeit it a long and hot time out), when times get tough there's a fairy tale to make you feel better. My problem with what the Bible says about homosexuality has nothing to do with Leviticus 18:22; the problem starts at Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Um, what? The Bible contradicts or ignores what science has proven to be true (or has pretty good evidence to prove what is true). Who cares what it says about being gay? If it can't get the origin of the universe at least on the right track, it has bigger problems.

And yes, it was interesting to learn that in the original text of the Bible "abomination" meant "not customary," but would most people who believe in the Bible and seriously look to it for guidance understand this semantic hairsplitting? No! Dumb people read the Bible! Gays should embrace the fact that they've been excluded from religion. Embrace atheism and forge a new path not obstructed by all of this nonsense.

Nope, sorry, still don't get it

President Bush on the killings at Virginia Tech:

"We lift them up in our prayers and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering."

Oooor... you could ask that "loving" omnipotent [addition and emphasis mine] god to have prevented the shooting in the first place instead of comforting people after the fact. I've never understood the "god let man have free will" argument. It just seems like an easy cop out for when things don't go believers' ways (which they often don't). If god is omnipotent, but he supposedly let people have free will, then he just turns a blind eye to humanity's suffering, so why would he want to comfort you? He clearly abandoned you, and isn't that a total bummer?

Thanks but no thanks. I'll stick to atheism, which actually affirms and celebrates life.

Could there be a more fitting way to begin this blog?

For this inaugural post, I--the heretical half of the co-authors of this blog--have chosen to discuss the biggest pile of crap built on a lie ever: religion! The Associated Press reports that Pope Benedict XVI says that Darwin's theory of evolution can't be proven and that he "cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer."

Science may not be able to answer them--yet--but at least scientists don't say that they know the answer and that the answer is some magical sky being that supposedly controls everything even though the only "proof" of this is an old, dusty book that came into vogue 2,000 or so years ago and whose veracity is doubted by a whole lot of people (Muslims, atheists, etc.).

The article also said:

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

"We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory," he said.

But I thought the earth was only 6,000 years old?