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My Conversation With God
by Noah Lugeons
Late last night, God spoke to me.
“Noah…” he said in a rumbling whisper. I rolled a bit in my sleep, unsure if I was dreaming or awake.
“Noah…” he said again.
“Ben Affleck?” I asked, hoping against all odds that he was finally abiding by the restraining order.
“No, it’s God,” he explained.
I sighed warily and sat up, glancing quickly to my wife to see if I’d awakened her. “God?” I asked.
“God,” he clarified.
“Look, I don’t mean to be a dick, but is this something that can wait until morning? I’ve been drinking…”
“I had nothing to do with Bieber winning that VMA.”
“What?”
“I actually prefer Bruno Mars.”
“Who?”
“But I’ve got plenty of problems dealing with the drought in Africa. I didn’t even get to watch the VMAs this year.”
“God, I’m really tired,” I complained, but I knew this wouldn’t shut him up.
“Yeah, I guess that’s kind of off topic anyway. Sorry. Just wanted to make that clear. I’m so sick of Justin Bieber that I’m about ready to smite him. Could you imagine? One piece of brimstone… BAM. One more lonely girl if you know what I mean.”
“You know I’m an atheist, right?”
“Yeah, that’s actually why I’m here.”
Convinced that this conversation wasn’t going to end any time soon I reached to the bedside table and grabbed a cigarette.
“I notice that your not blogging lately,” God said, followed by a forced and unconvincing cough as I lit my smoke.
I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break, God, you’re not even corporeal.”
“I know, but smoke still bothers me. It’s a disgusting habit.”
“I know, I know,” I uttered. “Can we just get to the point?”
“I want you to start blogging again.”
“Really? You know I write an atheist blog, right?”
“And podcasting. You need to get back on that.”
“But… I blog and podcast about the fact that you’re just a figment of the cultural imagination. I blog about the logical incoherence of your existence. I talk about the denialism of science and atrocious lapses in morality that are justified under your name. I write about the sheer stupidity of holding bronze age beliefs in the modern-day.”
“Yeah, but the world needs more of that.”
“I agree, but I’m kind of surprised to hear you say it.”
“I want humans to be the best they can be, Noah. I’m not going to get that if people are busy stifling discovery and retarding social progress. I created disease and strife so that humans could come together against a common banner of necessity. I put the obstacles there so that you could climb over them. The idiots that believe in me are, forgive my language, fucking things all up.”
“You’re forgiven,” I said with a hint of irony. “Do you realize how many atheist blogs are on the internet? Do you really think that one more is going to make a difference? Hell, nobody’s really reading it anyway.”
“I’m reading it,” God said reassuringly.
“Yeah, but you don’t show up on Google Analytics.”
“If you tweet it, they will come.”
“Are you stealing lines from Kevin Costner now?”
“I loved that movie. I was awesome in it. Not like Bruce Almighty…”
“So if I promise to start blogging again, will you let me go back to sleep?”
“And podcasting.”
“Fine. I’ll get to it first thing in the morning… or afternoon probably. I’ve got some errands to run in the morning.”
“Okay. So what, Tuesday on the next episode?”
“Sure. Tuesday’ll work.”
“Alright. Night, Noah.”
“Night God,” I said, snubbing out my cigarette and curling back into my pillow. Rudy made a brief nocturnal purr as I threw my arm around her and in an instant I was unconcious once more.
Gay Christians Ask the Pope to be Christian
by Noah Lugeons
Before you ask, no, homosexual Christian is not an oxymoron. While the percentage of gays that are Christian are somewhat lower than the general population, it only correlates to about an 8% drop. That is a far smaller correlation than we find with age or political affiliation. It seems vexing to an atheist that one would voluntarily belong to a group that believes they themselves are evil, but there are enough liberal churches around and the promise of eternal paradise is too strong for the overwhelming bigotry to outweigh the decades of indoctrination.
In the wake of the Catholic Church’s increasingly central role in worldwide homophobia, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) is pressuring the Pope to publicly denounce this increasingly rampant bigotry. They’ve endorsed an open letter that simply asks the Pope to stop pressuring gays into “reparative” therapy and to respect the human rights and basic dignity of same-sex couples.
Before we move on to what a heartless jackass Benedict will eventually be when he decides to complete ignore this letter, let’s take a minute to reflect on the stakes here. In the US, this kind of thing manifests itself when, for example, the Catholic Churches in Illinois threaten to shut down their orphanages rather than abide by a law that would give equal rights to gay couples. But in places like Africa it manifests in laws that would make being gay a crime, punishable by death.
Could a few words from the Pope bring all of this to a screeching halt? Of course not. Would a strong Christian voice calling for gays to be treated equally and fairly be a powerful message? Would it reach the right ears? Would it make a difference? Of course it would.
One of the chief problems with empowering religious institutions is the fact that they’re slow to move. The Catholic Church is struggling to catch up with the 18th century at this point so it’s hard to imagine that they’ll adopt any of these new-fangled “modern views” about equal rights and eclectic human dignity. They’re quick to forgive their own priests for torturing and raping children of both genders, but a simple word condemning executing gays is probably too much to ask for.
The failure of the Christian community to rise up with a powerful voice that condemns the worst elements among it is the primary reason why I feel that the world needs atheist activists. We need to be there to say what they won’t. We need to be their to criticize those voices that the religious community holds above criticism. We need to embrace the handle of “anti-Christ” and wear it as a badge of courage. Given what Christ represents in the modern world (homophobia, intrusive policies, inhibition of scientific progress, historical revisionism, massive ignorance and misogyny), I’m happy to be as far on the other side of the spectrum as I can get.
God’s brother Mikey
by Noah Lugeons
Not many people know the story of Mikey. The less ambitious of the two brothers, Mikey was gifted with the same omnipotence as Jehovah but found himself less inclined to direct it in any meaningful way.
On the first day, Mikey was playing a video game. His omniscience had already seen all the video game consoles that the future had to offer and despite the vastly superior graphics of later systems, he still preferred the old school gameplay of the Nintendo Entertainment System. At the time that God interrupted, he was playing Ghosts and Goblins, a game that required omnipotence to beat.
“What the fuck is that?!” Mikey asked, shielding his eyes as the door swung open.
“I call it light,” Jehovah said excitedly, “I’ve got a whole plan… heavens, seas, animals… it’s gonna be crazy.”
Mikey reluctantly paused his game and followed his brother outside. A pair of sunglasses (the first pair, to be exact) phenomenized in his hands and he donned them as he glanced up at God’s creation. “Whatever,” he said dismissively, “I’m going to bed.”
On the following morning, Mikey awoke violently as water splashed onto his face. “Now what?!” he grumbled as he stormed outside through knee-deep liquid. “What the fuck are you doing?” he called out as he swung open the door.
“I call it water. Don’t worry,” God said with a passive wave, “I’m going to create solid ground next.”
“Well can you hurry the hell up? It’s kinda hard to sleep with all this churning and rolling.”
“Yeah, I should be done with the ground tomorrow sometime.”
“Tomorrow! Why tomorrow?”
God waved his arms in a sweeping gesture, as though to convey the enormity of the project at hand. “I promise… I’ll get to it as soon as I can. I’m still separating all these seas.”
Mikey rolled his eyes and a canoe (the first canoe, to be exact) phenomenized before him as he made his way back to his bed. He tried creating a stable platform on which to sleep, but it churned with the waters and he was ripped back to consciousness each time a splash of the cold liquid splattered onto his skin. He tried a few more constructs before eventually settling on a large enclosed space that would roll comfortably amongst the new waves.
He slept through the day and awoke on the following morning with his enclosed structure blissfully beached on steady ground. He stretched and a cup of coffee appeared in his throat. He considered seeing how Jehovah was doing, but he almost feared whatever monstrosity might await him outside so he remained inside his boat and played a few games of Mario Kart. Later he phenomenized a pizza and a bong and before he knew it, he was asleep again.
On the fourth day he finally came forth from his protective encapsulation. He stepped on to the upper deck of his refuge and glanced down. “Yo, Joey!” he said, calling to his brother.
“My name’s Jehovah,” he muttered.
“Digging that big orange ball of flame… it’s nice. I’d have put it a little higher up, but hey, that’s just me.”
“It actually rises and falls back over on that side. It moves kind of slow. I’m trying to get it to exactly 24 hours but it’s a pain in the ass.”
“How close are you?”
“I’m within a minute.”
Mikey shrugged. “Close enough.”
That was often Mikey’s solution to a conundrum, but God decided that in this instance he was probably right. “I like your ark,” he remarked as he took in his brother’s improvised shelter. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
“Loving what you did with the sky, little bro,” he said as he climbed down from his perch. By the time he reached the sandy shores a beer had appeared in his hand. “Little white patches floating by… nice touch.”
“Clouds, I call ’em. You should see it at night. I did stars and everything.”
“Nice,” he said as he cracked open the beer. “So what are you planning with this whole thing?”
God smiled and Mikey could tell by his expression that his brother had been dying to lay the plan out since this whole thing started. It had taken a few days for Mikey to take the bait and he could tell immediately he was in for a long story. He phenomenized a chair and sat back as he drank.
“Well… I still gotta finish the moon, but then the next couple days I’m working on animals.”
“What the fuck are animals?”
“Little living, sentient things that’ll eat each other and compete for limited resources. It’ll be fun to watch.”
Mikey wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like a pain in the ass. Are you gonna take care of all those things? You know… take ’em for walks and stuff?”
“Nope. They’re on their own in a cruel world, bro. But hold on, I haven’t told you the…”
“Wait… a cruel world? Why would you create a cruel world?”
“Cruelty will act as a lesson about the vastness of my power. I’ll creating suffering so that they can enjoy bounty in its absence.”
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
“No… it does. See, you can’t have good without evil.”
“Yes you can,” Mikey said, finishing the last swallow from his beer, “You’re omnipotent, remember? You can have anything you want.”
“Anyway, don’t worry about it. That’s not even the best part. I haven’t told you about ‘man’ yet.”
Mikey caused his sunglasses to reappear just so that he could slide them down his nose and glance skeptically from behind them. “What are mans?”
“Men.”
“Okay, what are mens?”
“No, man, but when you pluralize it, you say ‘men’.”
“See, that doesn’t make any sense either.”
“I work in mysterious ways, Mikey.”
“Whatever… fine. So what are ‘men’?” he asked, forcing an overly sarcastic emphasis onto the word.
“Okay… this is so cool… They’ll be like little versions of us. My own image and everything. And I’ll give them free will and I’ll stick them in a garden paradise…”
“Well that’s nice of you…” Mikey started, but Jehovah wasn’t finished and simply spoke over him.
“… but I’ll put a tree in there with really delicious fruit on it and I’ll tell them not to eat it and when they do… and you know they will… anyway, when they do, I’ll curse them for all of eternity.”
Mikey offered only a glacial blink.
“And then I’ll fuck with ’em for a few centuries and totally remove myself from their world. And if they don’t believe I exist after that, I’ll condemn them to spend eternity burning in a fiery pit.”
“What’s a fiery pit?”
“It’s something I’m going to create just to be a miserable ass place to spend eternity in.”
A long moment passed as Mikey tried to absorb all this information. Several times he started to speak and then realized he lacked sufficient words to express his disbelief. He looked into his brother’s eyes and saw the hint of madness he’d always suspected was there.
Finally, he responded with a single syllable, the only syllable that seemed remotely appropriate under the circumstances: “Why?”
“Because I want them to see how awesome I am,” he answered with a straight face. “They’ll love me or they’ll burn in hell in an unending orgy of tragic pain for all of time. It’ll be great!”
“Dude… you’ve lost your fucking mind. I’m sorry to just lay it out there like that, but you’re fucking crazy. That’s the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard. Seriously… I should create mental asylums just so I could lock you in one.”
“Go ahead. See if you ever figure out how the tides work, dick.”
God turned his back on his brother and Mikey retreated to his ark to play some more video games. It would be centuries before he came out again and by then, his brother had so irrevocably fucked up his experiment that he’d simply given up on it and moved on to a new project.
Mikey shrugged and went back inside to play some Gears of War.
Thus ends the gospel of Mikey.
Fred Phelps vs the KKK
by Noah Lugeons
Raise your hand if you liked “Freddy vs. Jason” (and yes, the people dumb enough to have liked that movie just raised their hands).
Once in a while we like to see our villains mixed together. All of us (of a certain level of geekery) have wondered which supervillain would beat which other supervillain in a fight and the media corporations have been happy to sell us those musings from time to time.
Well, something kind of like that played out in real life yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. According to a report today by CNN, members of the Westboro Baptist Church were counter-protested by the KKK before Obama’s Memorial Day address. The anti-gay firebrands of Fred Phelps’ church had apparently given bigotry a bad name and the KKK sent a few guys round to let them know.
This likely marks the first time that the KKK has ever been on the correct side of anything so I’m not sure I’m ready to get behind their counter protest. For all I know they’re just protesting the fact that the WBC doesn’t protest at more black and Jewish funerals. But the groups were separated and cops were everywhere keeping the peace so there was likely no direct interaction between any of them. And no… the KKK guys weren’t wearing their sheets, despite the fact that laws of fashion allow the wearing of white as of that day.
But it did bring to mind a pretty cool death match. All the members of the WBC taking on the KKK in a hand to hand battle royal in some kind of coliseum with electrified barbed wire and random patches of spikes. The WBC could fight with razor sharp “God Hates Fags” signs and the KKK would (obviously) use flaming crosses. We could broadcast the whole thing live; we could have sponsors and cheerleaders.
Obviously, the KKK would win out pretty quickly. They have a lot more members and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that more KKK members are veterans.
Alas, instead we get an awkward sound clip from CNN of an admitted Ku Klux Klan member saying “those guys are just being dicks” (That’s a paraphrase, by the way).
I don’t want to spend too much time pinning Fred Phelps to Christianity as a whole, but if I was a member of your club, I wouldn’t be satisfied until there were thousands of dedicated Christians that showed up to shout down Phelps message everywhere he went. It shouldn’t be hard to find a few thousand Christians in any area that vehemently oppose his message, should it?
Until you speak loudly against him, this diabolical asshole is speaking for your whole faith. It leads us atheists to believe that far too many of you are against his tactics rather than his message.
Chirstian Couple Neglect Medical Treatment for Their Child
by Noah Lugeons
If you follow these things closely, you’ve probably heard of the “Followers of Christ”. This extreme sect of medicine-denying faith healers has made news several times in the past few years over their policy of neglecting the medical needs of their children up to the point of death.
As far back as 98, authorities were citing statistics that suggested as many as 21 children within their sect had died from treatable and easily-survivable diseases. Laws were passed in Oregon to combat the clear danger that such a group presented, but apparently the laws weren’t enough to stop them.
Timothy and Rebecca Wyland were recently charged with criminal neglect and child abuse for choosing to treat their infant daughter’s tumor with prayers and the laying on of hands instead of genuine medicine. By the time authorities became aware of the situation, the six month old child had a tumor the size of a baseball on her face. It had grown to the point that it threatened her eyesight by dislodging one of her eyeballs.
Like many of the stories that we cover on this blog, this is a tragedy that does not remotely reflect the average religious believer. No doubt I will be accused of needlessly dredging up the worst examples of religion and ignoring the best. But that misses the point altogether.
Altruism can be obtained through simple observation. Charity is, ultimately, in one’s own best interest. The “good” side effects of religion can easily come from secular sources. But only faith can convince you to ignore a tumor that threatens the life of your child.
Atheist Converts to Christianity for $1 Million
by Noah Lugeons
In the past, I’ve often been asked what it would take to make me believe in god. Normally I simply answer “a shred of objective evidence would help”, but from now on I’m going to add to that “a million dollars of Jesus’ money”.
Atheist Sal Bentivegna claims that he offered a mock prayer to Jesus that his mother would win a million dollars in the lottery. According to a widely disseminated report, on the following day she did. This was all the proof Sal needed and now he’s a Christian. Or so we’re supposed to believe.
Now, I won’t trip into the “no true Scotsman” fallacy here. It’s entirely possible that this story went down just as it was reported and it’s entirely possibly that Sal was a genuine atheist. But clearly he was no skeptic. And if he was, he was a really crappy one.
Skeptics learn early on that anecdotes like this are a dime a dozen. They’re unprovable so they have to be taken entirely on faith (something we atheists tend to lack), they’re not repeatable and most importantly, there is no measurement of success. Let’s suppose that mom had won only $10,000 on her scratch off ticket. Would Sal remain unconvinced? What if she’d still won the million but it wasn’t for another 3 days. Would Sal remain loyal to the ranks of the non-believers?
Now don’t get me wrong. If the report is to be trusted, the odds of his mom getting $1 million the day after he mock-prayed for it are pretty damned remote. I don’t know exactly how remote it was, of course, since we have no idea how much money mom’s pissed into the New York lottery up to this point. The report says she’d purchased a “Lottery Tree”, not a ticket, so it’s not like Jesus was only getting one crack at this.
For those not familiar with the term, this is a lottery tree:
Not to be too speculative, but I’m guessing that a woman who was talking about the lottery with her son the night before (to the point that he was belittling her faith over it) and then purchased a testament to poor math skills like the one shown above probably plays more than her fair share of lottery. So what were the odds that she would have won a million dollars at some point? Remote to be sure, but she might have narrowed them down to 1 in 1200 if she flushed enough of her income away on the things over the years.
This is one of those stories Christians love to trot out. Man prays for million dollars, man gets million dollars, ergo, Jesus. It’s a win-win argument for them because for some reason the people who pray for a million dollars and don’t get it aren’t counted in the “god is bullshit” column of their ledger. Remember the hits, forget the misses and ignore the fact that while Jesus was busy acquiescing to the greedy prayer of an atheist he was also ignoring a devout mother who was begging for the health of her child.
It would be pretty easy to test the claim scientifically, of course. Sal could just pray that mom wins another million tomorrow. If she doesn’t, he knows the first million was a fluke and there is no god.
There is an alternative theory, though, and I don’t want to be too quick to dismiss old Sal. When mom wins a million bucks in her will-writing years, it might be best to believe whatever the hell she wants you to believe.
Patron Saint of Genital Diseases Could be Yours!
by Noah Lugeons
Sometimes, I only wish I was kidding.
Next Sunday you will have the option of purchasing the decapitated head of Saint Vitalis of Assissi at auction. As if this wasn’t macabre enough, the head belongs to the patron saint of genital diseases.
Instead of focusing on what a post-mortem “fuck you” it is to be posthumously associated with genital warts, I’d rather take the angle that I don’t think the Catholic Church can really afford to be giving up that relic. Given the ever-expanding scope of the sexual abuse scandal, it’s only a matter of time before they really need this guy. Or, at the very least, their victims might.
Apparently St. Vitalis of Assisi was something of a player in his life (and with a name like “Vitalis”, how could he not be?). He spent the first half of his days fucking everything he could hold down and the last half atoning for those sins. No word on how many venereal diseases he managed to collect in his lifetime, but clearly it was enough that “genital disease” was the first thing that popped to mind when people thought about him after death.
But now, centuries later, his mortal remains have become something of a ghastly souvenir. The auction house expects his skull to sell for somewhere between $1200 and $1800 according to published reports. I can only imagine how bad your syphilis has to get before you’re willing to spend $1800 on a pagan relic to get rid of it, but that’s beside the point.
What is the point?
Well, that’s hard to answer and it’s even harder to answer without the use of a dick-joke, but I’ll try:
There is a worldwide institution with about 1.1 billion members that thinks that the skull of some Lothario has the magical powers to rid them of their pubic lice. Nevermind that the same institution is guilty of a worldwide child-rape cover-up and continues to depress the availability of condoms in AIDS ravaged Africa. Nevermind that they illegally influence the sovereignty of other nations. Nevermind the fact that they suppress the truth about their perverse and demonic history. The pertinent fact remains that these are people that think a 700 year old skull has super powers, and there are a billion of them.
Just keep this in mind next time someone accuses you of being “disrespectful” to their faith. Does a group that worships the remains of a 14th century philanderer really deserve anyone’s respect?
Dear Bryan Fischer, Shut Your God Damned Mouth
by Noah Lugeons
The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer isn’t so sure about the whole “free speech” thing. He doesn’t think its bad enough that America hasn’t gotten around to wiping all the blasphemy laws off the books, he wants to see them enforced.
And don’t tell him about no Constitution. He don’t wanna hear it.
He makes his point in the eloquent, stumbling manner we’ve come to expect from the echo-chamber education of our bible college turnouts. You can hear it on this YouTube video if you want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ll save you the trouble, though I’ll be unable to convey the full extent of the verbal slapstick he falls into when trying to pronounce words like “Lord”.
His argument against the constitutionality of fining people for taking the lord’s name in vain is made in two misguided points. The first is about an NBA player who was fined $50,000 for using a bigoted term against gays (with a ‘fucking’ added as a modifier) and poor Ed Shultz, who finds himself on a leave of absence after insulting some slut.
If the first thing you thought when you read those examples was “well, those aren’t examples of people being fined by the government, but rather the enforcement of a contract to which both parties previously agreed”, congratulations, you’re smarter than the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer.
But nevermind the time-honored and proven foundations of our society, why not be more like Iran or Pakistan? Why not take our already overblown sensibilities to every potentially offensive word or phrase and add civil penalties? We really need to find something to keep that judicial system busy anyway, right?
This is typical theocratic extremism and it’s becoming more and more common from America’s Red State rebellion. They love to wrap themselves in the American flag; they like to perpetuate the myth that the founding fathers were all deeply religious; they love to sing patriotic songs and drive around with patriotic stickers. But when it comes to the principles upon which the country was founded, they get a little shakier.
What is America? Is it simply a space within a boundary? If America is no more than a geographical distinction, there is no reason to be patriotic or have national pride. But if America is a collection of ideas enacted, a forward thinking governmental construct that challenged the dogma of the age and revolutionized the social contract there is plenty to be proud of. If America is an ideal in itself, it makes sense to get teary eyed when you look at the flag.
But if America is just a tough word to rhyme into a country song, claiming patriotism is a platitude. You can not love the country if you fight against the ideal. We, the majority, would like to move forward as it is the manner that is consistent with the way our calendars work. If you want to move into the past, be my guest. Just don’t try to take the rest of us with you.
Normally I would have closed on that, but given the nature of the article, I can’t forget to blaspheme. So Bryan Fischer, you are a god-damned, jesus-jerking, moses-molesting whore of the holy ghost. Fuck you and your antiquated nincompoopery.
Even the Brainless are People in Alabama
by Noah Lugeons
According to the Alabama state senate, you don’t need a brain to be considered a person in their state. You don’t need a beating heart or a functional nervous system… hell, you don’t even need to be multicellular.
SB 301 passed the state senate by more than a 3-1 margin yesterday. The bill, which still has to pass in the House, would redefine the term “person” to include zygotes. In the bills own words, “The term ‘persons’ as used in the Code of Alabama 1975, shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb.”
This is actually a slight back pedal from the original wording, which would have defined personhood as beginning at fertilization with no requisite implantation. Luckily, they compromised to a position that is only 98.945% insane.
This is, of course, only one in a long list of anti-abortion measures that various red states seek to implement on this legislative calender. In a brazen attempt to fire up the base of their opposition, Republicans rode to majorities nationwide by promising fiscal responsibility and then used that victory to claim a mandate against women’s reproductive rights.
The fact that such a law is scientifically untenable and reduces a complex ethical dilemma into kindergarten logic left the senators unphased. In a 23-7 vote, they decided it was alright to classify abortion as murder. The bill makes no provisions for rape, incest or the safety of the mother.
It is also, of course, political masturbation. It likely won’t pass in the house and even if it did it would be quickly struck down even by today’s conservative leaning Supreme Court. It is a theatrical and inhumane way of courting religio-tards. It is a mere spectacle of Jesosity. And, of course, while the state senate pisses away resources debating the rights of the unicellular, the people’s work goes undone.
There is, of course, strong opposition to this bill from within the state. But the strongest opposition comes from the voices who say that the bill doesn’t go far enough. While there are certainly progressive voices within the state battling this draconian misogyny, they are being drowned out by those who say that life begins at fertilization, not implantation. They’ve gone so far as to cite extremely rare cases where women carry babies to term outside of the uterus.
But I say why stop there? Why should we wait for fertilization? I say that, in the words of history’s greatest comedy troupe, every sperm is sacred. I say that every thirteen year old boy with a bottle of hand lotion and an internet connection is a murderer. Hell, with the advent of cloning, every cell on the body has the potential to become a human being so shouldn’t scratching at a sunburn count as murder as well?
I think it’s safe to say that, as a general rule, if your position on an issue is so indefensible that it requires redefining what a human being is, you’re on the wrong side of the issue.
Man Arrested for Planning to Kill Abortion Provider
by Noah Lugeons
It’s happened again. Much to the surprise of the evangelical pseudo-radicals, their vicious and careless rhetoric about “killing babies” has spurred one of their half-baked followers to seek an “eye for an eye”.
63-year-old Ralph Lang was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin late Wednesday night when he accidentally fired off a round in his motel room. The motel was conveniently located near a planned parenthood center where Lang allegedly intended to take the Lord’s work into his own hands.
This was not the first time Lang ran afoul of the law with regards to his anti-abortion lunacy. He was arrested in 2007 outside another Madison Planned Parenthood facility, where he apparently told the police that everyone in the building should be executed. Because apparently when Jesus said “turn the other cheek” it was so that you wouldn’t get blinded by the muzzle flash.
This type of psychotic, self-righteous rampage is far too easy for the mentally unhinged to justify. When they hear the venomous rhetoric of “baby-killer” from the trusted lips of their clergy and the horrific growl of their favorite talk-radio host, one should not be surprised that they take it seriously. We are mere days from the second anniversary of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and yet the violent tone of the religious right’s balderdash has, if anything, amplified.
There is no doubt that we will hear from the apologists in the coming days. They will implore us not to paint every Christian or anti-abortion advocate with the same broad brush. They will accuse people like me of anti-religious bigotry (guilty!) for pinning blame on the mouthpieces that direct lunatics like Ralph Lang. They will distance themselves from this self-styled Christian warrior and say that they can’t be blamed for the actions of every lone lunatic out there.
But their arguments seem rather disingenuous. A few states away in nearby South Dakota and Nebraska the state legislatures have proposed laws that would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include the murder of abortion providers. Until I see the churches organizing rallies to fight these proposals and marching on the capitol buildings of both states, I will discard their objections. When you fill people’s heads with the notion that a medical procedure is tantamount to murder you deserve the blame when those people take you seriously.
Ralph Lang actually believes that abortion doctors are out there killing babies day in and day out. If I thought there was someone, or worse, an organized group of people murdering babies, I would take my gun in hand as well. I’d like to think that I’d have the sense not to accidentally discharge it in my motel room the night before, but that happens to every guy as they get older, I suppose. The problem is the rhetoric. The problem is the terminology. When you start by accusing your opponents of being heartless murderers it’s gonna be tough to slip into a level-headed negotiation later.
The Scathing Atheist 