Creepy Christian Slant on the Stars and Strips

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I don’t know about you, but this bizarre “Cross Spangled Banner” version of the US National Flag seems a little creepy to me. Perhaps it’s because the only place where you ever see serried ranks of crosses like that are graveyards — especially military cemeteries like the World War One cemeteries in northern France.

There isn’t anything else of note on this one-page web site except for a new variation on the incredibly annoying use of “for a minimum donation” commonly used by conservative Christian web sites with something to sell (if there is a minimum, then it’s not a donation).

This time it’s “Please allow $5 S&H” if you order a flag. Given that you can’t order the flag without the $5 shipping and handling fee being added to your bill, it’s not a question of “allowing” anything, you are required to pay it.

Spawning Satan

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Andy Hamilton, one of the geniuses behind the brilliant BBC sitcom Outnumbered, has a new documentary out about the Devil himself, called Andy Hamilton’s Search for Satan. Those of you who live in the UK (or, ahem, if you have access to a UK proxy server) will be able to watch it on iPlayer for the rest of the week, but someone has conveniently (and rather naughtily) posted the entire thing on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:

It’s a very entertaining hour, chronicling the evolution of Satan over the centuries from his mythological beginnings in pre-Christian religions to how he is depicted in the popular culture of today. Especially funny are the clips of three medieval monks discussing how best to cobble together all the little bits of Biblical and extra-Biblical Satanic lore into a cohesive and passably convincing whole. Not surprisingly, that is not an easy undertaking.

Going Viral

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I’ve been watching, with morbid fascination, a developing news story about a video that shows an Aransas County Court judge beating his daughter for illegally downloading a video game from the Internet.

The seven minute long video was recorded by the daughter, Hillary Adams–who clearly knew what was about to happen to her–back in 2004, but she had always kept it to herself until she uploaded it to YouTube on Thursday of last week (27th Oct 2011), apparently in response to some recent harassment by her father, Judge William Adams.

There it sat on YouTube, virtually unnoticed, until last night (1st Nov), when Hillary herself posted a link to the video on Reddit. (If you want to watch the video, follow the link. It’s too disturbing to embed into this post.) By the time I became aware of it this morning, via a news story on TorrentFreak, it had already garnered over 500,000 views. I suspect it will have been viewed by well over a million people by the end of the day.

It was interesting to see how news of the video spread through the Internet. When I first searched for the story on Google News, there were just a couple of dozen link to reports, most of them in blogs, or at sites that specialize in dredging up the latest viral story to hit the web.

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Herman Cain Deploys Religion To Combat His Campaign Woes

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If one could sum up the place of religion in American politics in one short clip, then it would be tough to do better than show Herman Cain breaking out into song at the end of his speech at the National Press Club yesterday:

After enduring what was without doubt the toughest day of his campaign, what better way to reassure his supporters of his innocence and resoluteness in the face of the sexual harassment charges and to remind them of the deep Christian faith he shares with them, than to sing something written by Dottie Rambo, the patron saint of emotive spiritual songs in the evangelical community?

What is amazing is the contrast between that and, say, the last General Election in the UK, where the religious beliefs of the three main candidates for Prime Minister, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, and Nick Clegg, went almost completely unremarked upon by the press and by the candidates themselves, and played no factor in outcome of the election (even though Nick Clegg is a self-professed atheist).

If any of them had broken into song the way Herman Cain did, it would have been dismissed as naked pandering, at best, and a worst, it would have disqualified them as suitable material for the role as Prime Minister in the eyes of a majority of British voters.

Of course, nothing Herman Cain does comes close to naked cynical use of religion Newt Gingrich has had to employ just to get himself into a position to run for the Republican nomination (with a large assist from the Catholic Church). Ironically, it’s Newt Gingrich who likely stands to benefit the most from Herman Cain’s recent travails. It’s possible that in a couple of months we’ll be missing the time when Cain used his folksy religious shorthand to establish his conservative credentials.

Hell, It’s Just Not That Complicated

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PZ Myers just posted some comments about the a video that’s making the rounds at the moment from a British talk show which was discussing the question “Does Heaven Exist?”

There are quite a few things in this clip worthy of debate, like atheist Kate Smurthwaite implying that those who believe things on faith are idiots (I prefer to call their beliefs idiotic, not the people who believe them since we’re all prone to believing idiotic things at times), and the nonsensical arguments about “believing in money” as though that justifies belief in a specific vision of an afterlife. But I would like to focus on the very brief exchange between Smurthwaite and the (presumed) Christian minister who said that all aborted fetuses go to Heaven:
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Atheist Dreams of an Afterlife

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Several recent posts of mine have discussed various aspects of the fundamentalist Christian’s concept of Hell–that horrendous destination supposedly reserved for all but a select few lucky human beings when they die.

As an atheist, I don’t believe in all that nonsense–not Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nirvana, or anything like that.

When you’re dead, you’re dead, nothing more.

That viewpoint can seem pretty bleak, of course, but I can’t just believe in some fantastical afterlife because I want to believe in it. That would be indulging in wishful thinking.

But that doesn’t mean atheists never engage in speculation about the possibility of  life after death, even in a strictly material universe. Personally, I believe such a thing to be highly improbable (i.e. almost certainly not true, but not impossible) and of the ideas I have heard of, here are a couple of possibilities that sound quite intriguing:
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Did Steve Jobs Have a Deathbed Conversion?

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I was looking at my site stats the other day and noticed that the number one search engine result that brought people to this site was “steve jobs death bed conversion” which was taking them to the post I put up entitled “Is Steve Jobs In Hell?” To be perfectly honest, I realized as I was typing the title it would probably make good link bait, and it certainly proved to be (not that I get that many hits through search engines!).

But I was wondering why I just started getting all these “death bed conversion” hits in the last few days — the article I wrote is two weeks old. After a quick search I came across this article in the Christian Post about a conversation Steve Jobs had with his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he related on “60 Minutes” recently:

 ”I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God,” said Isaacson in the interview. “He said, ‘Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.’ Then he paused for a second and he said, ‘Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone.’ He said and paused again, and he said, ‘And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices’.”

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Our Future In Space

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Enough about religion, let’s talk about space for a change.

Here is an excellent panel discussion from the JREF TAM event, probably one of the most vigorous, interesting and entertaining debates I have seen in quite a while.

Yes JREF is the James Randi Education Foundation, one of the country’s foremost organizations of skeptics but the panel, featuring Pamela Gay, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson and chaired by Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy website, remains focused on the future of space flight and steers clear of any comment about religion.

Highly recommend viewing for believers and skeptics alike.

TAM Panel - Our Future in Space from JREF on Vimeo.

Rick Perry’s Brutalization Complex

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Apparently, Rick Perry and his wife now believe that the word “persecution” is wholly inadequate for the terrible way in which he has been roughed up by his opponents this Republican Primary season:

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has been “brutalized” because of his Christianity and Perry came out of the gates attacking Herman Cain’s now famous 9-9-9 plan.

“I’ll stand by my wife. I think she’s right on both cases. My understanding is that she said I’m the most conservative candidate in the race and ‘he’s a Christian.’ So I haven’t got anything I can add to that and she’s hit me on my mark both times there,” Perry said on “GMA.”

While campaigning for her husband in South Carolina Anita Perry said “We are being brutalized by our opponents and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him because of his faith. He’s the only true conservative. Well, there are some conservatives. And they’re there for good reasons.”

Seriously?

Clearly this is just sour grapes in response to Governor Goodhair’s poll numbers plunging off a cliff after a string of inept performances in the debates, but it doesn’t even make any sense given that every candidate whose name is not Mitt Romney is bending over backwards to demonstrate just how ultra-conservative and God-fearing they are.

But it certainly does fit the pattern of anointing oneself a martyr for your faith that Christian conservatives love to indulge in. Any criticism of their faith, no matter how mild, is cause for accusations of religious persecution, and we hear them so often that the p-word isn’t enough anymore, and hence the word “brutalized” is trotted out instead.

If nothing else, this type of language completely trivializes the real religious persecution that millions of Christians face elsewhere in the world, where people risk imprisonment, injury, and even death for practicing what they believe. Contrast that with American Christians–probably the wealthiest, most privileged and powerful bunch of believers on Earth outside the Vatican.

Hint: someone in the press calling your debate performances poor and unimpressive doesn’t count as religious persecution.

Pathetic, the lot of them.