With conservatives still freaking out over the fact their president is still black, you can expect some of the nuttier flavors of the Religious Right to step up their rhetoric. Glenn Beck, straight off his prediction God had promised the White House to a Mormon, has advised his aged listeners that the world will soon end, and their only recourse is to buy plenty of farmland and guns.
Inflation is coming, the fiscal cliff is coming, the dollar fell last night in the news… your health-care costs are going up [lie], your religion is going to come under attack [by reality maybe], gas, coal and energy is going to be more expensive [but please don’t buy a fuel efficient car, that’s un-American]…may I recommend that if you have a chance to buy farmland, you buy farmland… find a place where you are surrounded by like minded people [sounds like a cult]. Get your kids away from schools that are indoctrinating them with socialism [instead of Jesus]. May I highly suggest you get grandfathered in to the second amendment today [i.e. buy the biggest and most dangerous gun you can]. And don’t forget the ammunition.
I expect to see much more of this kind of reaction: conservatives becoming increasingly more isolated with the realization that they are no longer the majority. The solution? Move somewhere where everyone agrees with you and become even more extreme in your views. Sounds like a great plan, Glenn!
I know the big news story today is President Obama being re-elected, but I hope this bit of news doesn’t get buried under all the brouhaha: it seems as though the tiny state of Maryland has legalized same-sex marriage by approving “Question 6″ on the ballot. Now, before you celebrate this victory, you should know a few important details:
Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.
Can you imagine any civil rights legislation that still protected religious institutions from their blatant racism? I know I should be happy for gay couples finally getting the same rights as everyone else, but I can’t help but feel like this toothless referendum further legitimizes institutionalized homophobia. It’s no different than allowing churches the right to deny interracial marriages, since those too are specifically condemned by the Bible (remember when Lot’s daughters rape him in order not to have to take on foreign husbands?). I realize this was a necessary concession, but we should recognize the major barrier to marriage equality is still religion, and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it like it is.
This week, my special guest is Dr. Andy Thomson, author of the book Why We Believe in Gods, and a psychiatrist with his own private practice in Charlottesville, VA. When he’s not also teaching students at the University of Virginia, he’s also a forensic psychiatrist and writes on evolutionary psychology. We talk about his book, Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK conspiracy, and the future of psychology.
1) Harvard University is Jesus’ #1 enemy, because there’s learnin’ going on there.
2) America apparently elects people that like killing babies (he may be referring to abortion, but I think their ICBM’s do a better job.
3) You can’t be a good Christians unless you can instantly kill somebody with a gun.
4) Secular progressives have abandoned God (that’s why they’re called secular, genius).
5) Everyone who doesn’t believe in his version of Christ is a Marxist.
This week, my guest is fellow podcaster George Hrab of the Geologic Podcast. We discuss the pros and cons of Internet stardom, Why Iron Man is better than Batman, and how we can change our image among believers.
This week, part 2 of our Bible Stories Book of Samuel, featuring David, his bromance with Jonathan, the fight with Goliath, and King Saul tries to kill him. Come and get your fix!
This week, we confront my ‘Ageism’ and discuss ‘generational theory’ and why the world is as crappy as it is. Plus, more on the Tea Party and who comprises their ranks. It’s a must for any political junkie.
SHOW NOTES
Introduction: Lecture on Tea Party by Prof. Theda Skocpol lecture at Oxford:[5]
1980-2000 – Millennials or Generation Y
1965-1979 – Generation X
1946-1964 – Baby Boom
1925-1945 – Silent Generation
1900-1924 – G.I. Generation
What are generational differences dependent on? What factors influence generations?
First, members of a generation share what the authors call an age location in history: they encounter key historical events and social trends while occupying the same phase of life.[3]
Generations tend to go through cycles
– High: Period of strong institutions but weak individualism. Things get comfortable, but people begin to tire of such strong social obligations and the stifling of creativity and expression
– Awakening: Period when institutions are questioned. Boomers make up this demographic. Individualism is strong, (sometimes referred to as summer).
– Unraveling: Institutions are weak, distrusted, (Reagan era of individualism, ‘small government’). This is the generation, shortly after the boomers, which have now come of ‘voting age’. This generation leads inevitably to
– Crisis: (My generation) Institutional life is rebuilt, stock market crash, the 2008 market crash all happened in Crisis eras. These are moments that redefine national identities (perhaps global identities with the coming of the Internet. Rising civic engagement, (winter).
In these times, Archetypes appear –
Prophets: come of age as self-absorbed young crusaders of an Awakening, focus on morals and principles in midlife, and emerge as elders guiding another Crisis
Nomads: born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. These were shrewd realists who preferred individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems.
Heroes: Tend to be more militaristic, strong political leaders. They are overly confident, having grown up as cocky young adults during a time of crisis. This tends to shape them into leaders.
Artistic: The strong, political overbearingness makes the previous generation more prone to compromise and pragmatism.
Prophet Nomad Hero Artist
High Childhood Elderhood Midlife Young Adult
Awakening Young Adult Childhood Elderhood Midlife
Unraveling Midlife Young Adult Childhood Elderhood
Crisis Elderhood Midlife Young Adult Childhood
We share more in common with the old. Hence, now the fashion of our grandfathers become present day affectations. What is old is fresh again. We reject those values of the midlife of our parents, cling to those of our grandparents instead, but influenced by the different phases.
If Generational theory is correct, that would mean 66 million people are 55 or older
Voting and registration rates tend to increase with age. In the United States in 2010, only 21 percent of 18 to 24 year old citizens voted, compared with 61 percent of those 65 and older.
Many Generation Xers came of age during the Reagan-Bush years (1980 to 1992) or the ‘Republican Revolution’ marked by the 1994 midterm elections. Today’s Generation Y has reached maturity in a time period largely marked by the administration of George W. Bush, and certainly for many the nascent Obama administration is a major formative factor in their political orientation.[1]
Perhaps the most striking change since 2004 has come among voters born between 1956 and 1976 — the members of Generation X and the later Baby Boomers. People in this age group tended to be more Republican during the 1990s, and the GOP still maintained a slight edge in partisan affiliation among Gen X and the late boomers in 2004 (47% identified with or leaned toward the GOP while 44% described themselves as Democrats or leaned Democratic).[2]
Among racial demographics, Asians have the worse voting record (30%), as did Hispanics (31%)
I hate the 33-47 year old Generation (Gen X) and The Silent (who share both politically conservative views, and who are now overwhelming voting majorities. Their combined voting strength will undoubtedly lead to a crisis.
Americans who tend to have more income, slightly more educated than average, and of 65- years and older increasingly dissatisfied with these institutions that they nevertheless have benefitted from, considering their wealth.
Coddled children of the Post War high and the coddled children of hippies who went the other spectrum politically.
Misc:
– Cool Pumpkin carvings [6] [7]
– Very unemployed people less likely to get work [8]
Catholics are hilarious. It’s been 60 years since the invention of the pill, and these dinosaurs are still trying to argue that it’s the most evil invention since the guillotine.
Abortion and birth control are two sides of the same coin. The currency of which is the prevention and/or the destruction of nascent human life. While some forms of contraception, such as the condom or the diaphragm, are not themselves capable of destroying human life, (as are many chemical contraceptives, including forms of the Pill, the patch, and IUDs) they are a kind of “gateway drug” into the abortion mentality.
Ah yes, the gateway drug argument. If it worked to make a harmless drug like marijuana illegal, surely an illogical statement like this can prevent women from having full control over their reproductive cycles. The very fact that she’s even trying to prevent ovulation must mean she considers any potential child to be an enemy:
What I am saying is that the very act of using “birth control” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) pits prospective parents against prospective offspring.
Not sure if this guy actually knows what an oxymoron is, but this definitely doesn’t qualify (my example of an oxymoron would be ‘honest religion’, but I digress). Does he honestly believe that every woman who tried to regulate her ovulation is at war with her own body?
What I do believe, however, is that people who choose to contraception are damaging their consciences and hardening their hearts in a very real way, whether or not they acknowledge or comprehend the sinful nature of their actions. Sin, you see, has consequences. Whether or not we acknowledge our actions as sinful … heck, whether or not we even believe in sin, reality stands. And the reality is, contraception and abortion are about as intrinsically linked as are sugar and cavities. One doesn’t always cause the other, but it sure as heck predisposes the midnight snacker to more frequent trips to the dentist’s chair.
Snacking on all those birth control pills have made you into coldblooded killers, ladies. Can’t you just feel the genocide inside your womb every time you take your medicine? Man, I wish there was some kind of study that might actually attempt to answer the question of whether or not birth control reduces rates of abortion. Oh wait, here’s one:
Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concludes….There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women overall in the St. Louis region, Peipert calculated. That’s lower than the national rate, too, which is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women. In fact, if the program were expanded, one abortion could be prevented for every 79 to 137 women given a free contraceptive choice, Peipert’s team reported in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
So, not only is that jackass wrong, his very objection to birth control actually allows more abortions to take place, and it’s not an insignificant number: the rates of abortion are double for women who don’t take the Pill, regardless of what particular nonsense faith they belong to.
See, this is the problem when you allow non-thinking persons to try and dictate the health of our citizenry: their well meaning stupidity notwithstanding, health issues cannot be dictated by people who get their cues from the Bronze Age.
There’s a reason, after all, that Planned Parenthood is fighting so hard to keep Obamacare and its promises of subsidized hormones alive.
Their bottom line depends upon it.
To uninformed Americans, Planned Parenthood is a Henry Ford style abortion factory. Ignore for a moment that abortions are merely a fraction of the services the organization provides: if money is supposed to indicate an organization’s true motivation, where does that leave the Catholic Church in all of this?
This week, Carisa joins me as we review the movie Prometheus. If you haven’t seen the movie, we recommend you do (unless you don’t want to waste 2 hours of your precious time).
What do you get when you take a bunch of religious fundamentalists and take them on a tour of America while challenging their faith? Well, you get people even more determined to believe in silly bullshit while accusing everyone else of fabricating evidence of things they don’t understand. Worth a watch if you’ve got the 54 minutes of spare time to throw around.
One of the most aneurysm-inducing quotes of 2012 had to be faux-atheist S.E. Cupp’s comment that she would never vote for an atheist president. Believing she had a point by saying she couldn’t trust anyone who didn’t have God as a moral compass, what Cupp and her similarly minded ilk fail to realize, however, is that beliefs predicated on violent nonsense have the tendency to reflect Bronze Age barbarism. Man, I wish I had some kind of super sweet example to illustrate exactly what I’m trying to say…like a the Republican candidate for Arkansas who believes rebellious kids should be put to death.
The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius[sic] children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:
I always laugh whenever people act shocked that some of their fellow human beings can believe in such dangerous absurdities, since so many of them have based so much of their own lives on similar idiocies. It’s only when the true stakes of belief are in play that they realize, often too late, that religious faith tends to mask serious social dysfunctions and psychopathic behavior. With the Republican party so desperate for votes, they’re too chicken shit to call this guy out on his crazy ideas, and that’s the really terrifying part.
This week, my special guest is Dan Fincke from the blog Camels with Hammers, and we discuss the level of discourse in the atheism community; and we voice our differences about the Atheism + movement.
So, what do you get for exposing the corruption of an organization like the Vatican? Well, how about an 18 month prison term handed down by the very institution you were trying to expose? Oh, and you can add the cost of the trial to the list of his expenses:
The pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted Saturday of aggravated theft for leaking confidential papal documents and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
He was also ordered to pay the costs of the trial at the Vatican City courthouse.
Well, he could have spent a full three years in jail, but the judge felt there were ‘extenuating circumstances’. Like what, the fact that your organization is so corrupt it would rather jail tattle-tales than actual child rapists? Or how about the fact you aren’t legally your own state, having achieved ‘independence’ from Italian fascists in the 1920′s?
I suppose you could argue that it’s Paolo’s fault for getting involved in a creepy cult that seems to be able to create its own laws, jail its own adherents for daring to expose corruption, and do so as the rest of the world watches on.
When I was a teen, I bought into the bullshit that is Qi (sometimes spelled ‘chi’). I couldn’t help it: if you’ve ever watched the Shaolin Monks do their thing, you might understand why I thought their impressive physical feats were only made possible because of some superhuman element. Fueled by the mythology of comic book heroes, I desperately wanted it to be true (which I was to later learn is the first and most important reason to doubt any dubious claim). I wanted ‘super-powers’ to be a real, so that if any harm ever came to me, I thought perhaps I would simply learn their ‘tricks’ and I would be immune from the dangers of the world.
Like most childhood fantasies, they eventually crumbled under the full weight of rude criticisms, and I came to understand Qi as a method for ancient ignoramuses to differentiate living things from non-living things. In a sense, Qi was a magical invention that could supposedly account for life, and like all nonsense, over time it grew into an increasingly complex form of bullshit. Fast forward to today, where the evolution of Qi continues.
You can join this free distant energy healing session by using your intention to be included. If you wish to join, just close your eyes for a minute when you read this and mentally say that you intend to join the session and want to be included. That is all you have to do to connect with the energy and you don’t have to do anything else. Healing energy can begin to flow to you once you do this as many people who have done this before have reported.
How does it all work, you ask?
Many spiritual traditions teach that we are all connected and now some Quantum Physicists are saying the same thing.
Ah yes, the “We are all connected” trope that hippy weirdos love to throw around like it means something it doesn’t. Sure, it’s amazing that there is no functional differences between the atoms which make up a rock and the ones that make up my body, except perhaps I like mine better. This doesn’t mean, however, that the rock and I share a special connection. If someone threw it at my head, that ‘connection’ might not really be that great for my prolonged existence.
This annoying idea that ‘energy’ heals ignores the fact that most forms of energy in the universe produce violent reactions that forge new elements, turn regular matter into super hot gases, or blast unsuspecting, cooling balls of rock with deadly radiation. I doubt anyone is basking in the oneness of the universe when they get hit by a gamma ray burst, but I digress.
So, who is up for sending ‘positive’ vibes by sitting in your kitchen and having wishful thinking be your guide to reality? Not this fucking guy, I can tell you.
Christian fundamentalist Julia Lovemore, 41, killed daughter Faith by stuffing her mouth with paper then dousing her in white spirit and jumping up and down on her body.
She also poured wine all over her young daughter as well, before her husband finally showed up at the hospital with her dead baby in hand.
So, were there any signs that she was going to do something terrifying? You bet your sweet ass there were.
Lovemore’s aunt had reported her to authorities after becoming concerned over her ‘religious fervor’, saying she had distanced herself from her family, branding them ‘heathens’.
What can you do in a society that gives religion a free pass? The British press wants to blame the National Health Service for having failed to anticipate this woman’s actions, especially in light of the fact that she had already tried to kill her first child three years prior with a pillow.
I argue that it must have been difficult for them to properly diagnose her obvious mental illness for fear of interfering with her religious beliefs. How can one differentiate mental illness from religious piety? You can’t, really. The two have almost the exact same symptoms. I wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if a large percentage of fundies have some sort of untreated mental illness. So long as religion continues to mask serious mental health problems, these kinds of tragedies will continue to be fairly routine.
