An Excerpt from My Narrative

As we all know, nowadays it’s not sufficient for a presidential candidate to stand on the right side of all the issues. He has to have a narrative, a story of a life dedicated, from infancy, to the themes that appear in his present-day speeches. His campaign staff must produce a stirring, motivational documentary, intoned by a rich and resonant voice, showing how the candidate’s childhood helped shape the youngster into the dynamic adult force he is today.

Unfortunately, in my case, I’m afraid that the filmmakers would have to resort to a heavy dose of fabrication. I didn’t have any themes as a kid, except for maybe wangling to get my mother to buy Sugar Pops instead of Shredded Wheat. Still, I know that if The Exterminator/Chaplain ticket is going to be a viable one, the audience at our convention deserves to see an inspirational movie. We’ve already invested in plenty of buttered popcorn, so what the hell, huh?

OK, then. It’s your lucky day, because here’s a short excerpt from The Man From “Bullshit”: A Word We Can Believe In.

Imagine, if you will, a Gregory Peck type reading the following rousing script, as a montage of appropriate Bronx childhood pictures, bathed in a warm and surreal glow, flickers on the screen.

When that young boy's mother, struggling, as all American mothers did, to make sure her children grew up happy and healthy in a world that cared about everyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual preference, or sports affiliation ...

... when that mother looked up at her inexpensive clock, the only clock the family could afford, with a second hand that took more than a minute and a half to make its poor but proud circuit ...

... when she looked and saw that it was time for her son to get his much needed, life-enhancing rest in his humble, but red, fireman pajamas ...

... pajamas which were made by American workers toiling in American factories on American soil with American needles and American thread, and paid for with American credit that accumulated American interest ...

... when that young boy’s mother would see him in those pajamas, rather than his street clothes, she’d know in her heart, even then, how well she had impressed upon him the crucial need for change ...

... and when she would summon up the meager energy she had left after a grueling day of working in an office for an uncaring boss who actually made her work in that office, although he never did manage to pronounce her name correctly ...

... when that mother would whisper, "Ex, it's time for you to go to bed" ...

... then ...

... then that young boy, with the spark of greatness already deep in his non-soul, would say, "Ma" ...

... and that word “Ma” would be imbued with the lovely loving love and the hopeful hoping hope that all boys in this beautiful and free land of beauty and freedom feel when they speak their mother’s name ...

... "Ma," he would say, in the same strong and ringing tones, and in the very same straight-talking phrase he might still use today when faced with a similarly difficult problem ...

... “Ma,” he would say. "I'm not convinced."

Dangerous Link: Proceed at Your Own Risk

The link at the bottom of this post will not take you to a Web site specifically of interest to atheists. In fact, atheism isn't even an issue. Be warned, too, that clicking on the link, which will bring up a story from the Phoenix New Times, may subject you to various degrees of data-mining. You could well be included in the government's attempt to find out:

A) which pages visitors access or visit on the Phoenix New Times website;

B) the total number of visitors to the Phoenix New Times website;

C) information obtained from 'cookies,' including, but not limited to, authentication, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users (site preferences, contents of electronic shopping carts, etc.);

D) the Internet Protocol address of anyone that accesses the Phoenix New Times website from January 1, 2004 to the present;

E) the domain name of anyone that has accessed the Phoenix New Times website from January 1, 2004 to the present;

F) the website a user visited prior to coming to the Phoenix New Times website;

G) the date and time of a visit by a user to the Phoenix New Times website;

H) the type of browser used by each visitor (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, etc.) to the Phoenix New Times website; and

I) the type of operating system used by each visitor to the Phoenix New Times website.

Now, I must admit that I don't read the New Times and I don't live anywhere near Phoenix. But a friend of mine sent me this article, which alleges such a gross, unconstitutional usurpation of the justice system that I thought I should pass it on. Because we atheists must be vigilant to outrages like this, even when they fall outside our immediate realm of anti-theocratic concern, I just had to get involved.

After the article was published yesterday, its writers, both executives of Village Voice Media (the parent company of New Times), were arrested.

I'm not going to tell you anything further about the situation. The long report does a fine job of laying out the facts without needing my help. Perhaps, though, it won't even be available by the time you get around to looking at it. If it is, just be aware that you're endangering your privacy if you do choose to click.

I hope you will. I also hope you'll publish the link on your own blog. Here it is:

Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution

[Update - Saturday, Oct. 20, 11:58 a.m. edt: All charges against the Phoenix New Times have been dropped. The threat against your e-privacy, what little you have of it in Bush's America, has been removed — for the time being.]

Who Cares What That Idiot Thinks?

In its continuing campaign to confer legitimacy on the creationism and intelligent design movement, The New York Times has today published an opinion piece written by Senator Sam Brownback. "What I Think About Evolution" is the kind of essay so blatantly dishonest that it isn’t even worth dignifying with a comment. You might want to read it though, bearing in mind that this lying ignoramus is running for president.

Here’s a taste:

...I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

Brownback — or, more likely, his ghostwriter — really went to town to obfuscate his meaning, eh? But in plain English, what that last sentence implies is: If a scientist doesn’t accept the concept of intelligent design or purpose, you've got to wonder if he or she is really being scientific. This, as everyone with half a brain knows, is the final unutilized product of the digestive process excreted from the anus of male bovines whose sexual and reproductive organs are intact.

About-Face the Nation

Reporter Bob Schieffer is a great example of exactly how useless — and potentially dangerous — the mainstream media are. On today’s Face the Nation broadcast, he helped theocratic candidate Mike Huckabee spread misinformation that, if accepted by enough viewers, would lead the country backward into the church-dominated Middle Ages.

Huckabee, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is a Baptublican who served as a pastor from 1980-1992. That should make him no stranger to bilking money from the gullible. But, so far at least, Huckabee’s candidacy doesn’t seem to have a financial prayer.

A graduate of Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the candidate is a firm believer in a woman’s right to have a baby whether she wants to or not. He also supports a Constitutional ban on unbiblical gay marriage, and opposes federal funding for soul-killing stem-cell research. His view of science education was enunciated a few years ago on “Arkansans Ask,” a radio call-in show:

I think that students should also be given exposure to the theories not only of evolution, but to the basis of those who believe in creationism....I do not necessarily buy into the traditional Darwinian theory, personally.

No, what he necessarily buys into, personally, is a collection of unsubstantiated fairy tales. The sad thing is that if he had his way, it would be U.S. citizens’ taxpayer dollars that he uses to make his purchase.

In introducing this medieval crank, Schieffer twice told viewers how remarkable Huckabee was.

SCHIEFFER: Even he would admit he’s at the back of the pack, but he is among the most interesting of the candidates this year.

SCHIEFFER: He is also a candidate who says what he thinks, and he is one of the more interesting people around politics, if I do say so.

Schieffer’s idea of “interesting” sets an unprecedentedly low standard for the usage of that word.

During the interview that followed, the reporter kissed the candidate’s behind so hard, that Huckabee will have trouble sitting down for a week. Schieffer spoon-fed the blandest of questions at the interviewee, and accepted without question the predigested answers. An early response of Huckabee’s showed the audience just how interesting he is:

HUCKABEE: ... [T]hose who claim that they represent a certain branch of our party, primarily the Christian evangelicals, got into politics because of adherence to certain moral principles. Now, if those moral principles no longer are the driving force, they render their whole purpose for being in politics irrelevant ...

At least Huckabee was honest in this blatant endorsement of a taliban-style state. But Schieffer was so uninterested in the implications of Huckabee’s statement that he let it go.

The most infuriating interchange during the interview was this one:

SCHIEFFER: Well, let’s talk a little bit about what you’re for and what you’re against. I noticed that you said at one point, “We have to stop driving god out of the public square.” You are an evangelical, I take it?

HUCKABEE: Yes.

SCHIEFFER: What is the connection between government and god in your view?

Notice that Schieffer gave Huckabee yet another opportunity to thump for theocracy.

HUCKABEE: Well, the First Amendment’s pretty clear, and it’s simply this, that government should neither prefer or prohibit the practice of religions. Government shouldn’t go and tell people how to worship or even that they should worship. Government ought to have a hands-off attitude. [Correct so far: The Exterminator] But what government shouldn’t do is tell people that they can’t, or put restrictions. And so I think we’ve made something complicated out of something that the founding fathers really made very simple in the First Amendment. You neither prefer one religion over another, but you don’t prohibit the free exercise thereof. And so when there are efforts made, whether it’s because of political correctness or court decisions that have run amok, where you say you can’t have a nativity scene or a menorah on capitol grounds, that’s absurd ...

SCHIEFFER: All right.

HUCKABEE: We ought to welcome the discussion of faith in the public square.

Now, Schieffer could have said any of a number of things here that would have gently — not adamantly, but amicably, and merely for clarification’s sake — pointed out how Huckabee’s reading of the First Amendment is wrong, wrong, wrong. He might have explained to Huckabee that Congress is forbidden to make “any law respecting an establishment of religion.” The clause does not say a religion, but religion in general, religion of any kind. Thus, according to the Constitution, the government is most definitely not prohibiting the free exercise of religion when it refuses to spend public funds supporting anyone’s beliefs.

Perhaps Schieffer might have at least said, emulating Huckabee’s phraseology on evolution: “I do not necessarily buy into your interpretation of the First Amendment, personally.”

Instead, here’s what he did say:

SCHIEFFER: And where do you come down on the war?

New subject. Huckabee’s antihistorical drivel went undisputed.

Shortly thereafter, the candidate ended the interview by pulling a familiar rabbit out of his hat:

HUCKABEE: Thank you, and happy Easter to you and all your viewers.

Schieffer did not remind Huckabee that at least some of his viewers — say, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Zarathustrans, and, of course, atheists — might not care for such a benediction. Instead, the great reporter replied:

SCHIEFFER: You bet.

Thus, in just a few short minutes, Face the Nation became a venue for unchallenged propaganda. The program helped a godpushing humbug hurl his half-truths without rebuttal. Is that an example of irresponsible journalism? To quote Schieffer: You bet.

Next: Kucinich as the Baby Jesus?

According to an AP story today, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has sculpted a papier mache figure of Barack Obama in full messianic regalia: white robe, orange drape slung over his shoulder, wide welcoming smile, and a big blue halo. His hand is raised in a benediction, or perhaps merely a vote-getting wave. Actually, the figure looks like an advertisement for a black cartoon version of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

To a sophisticated viewer, it should be evident that the artist, David Cordero, was making a sarcastic comment about media attention and pseudo-religiosity in politics. In fact, Cordero said that his work was a response to “the idea that Barack is a sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins.” The sculpture is clearly an indirect criticism of those journalists who assign, in Cordero's words, “all these inflated expectations.”

Of course, the media doesn’t see itself this way. Instead, newspapers and TV stations nationwide have slyly chosen to sensationalize the statue, despite the fact that it’s just, after all, a student project. But now, it’s big news. The AP story has been picked up by dozens of dailies all over the country, including The New York Times.

Never ones to miss a publicity opportunity, the Obama camp has chimed in. The candidate’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, released a statement supporting the artist’s First Amendment rights, but implying that the statue might be viewed as “art that offends religious sensibilities.” Interestingly, the campaign made no attempt to deny that Obama might, indeed, be a savior.

Of course, the mosquitoes in the reportial world immediately set about trying to draw blood. They contacted a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago, who wisely (surprise!) refused — at least for the time being — to comment. But why not stir up some religious trouble anyway? The article ends by comparing the student’s piece to the anatomically correct Choco-Christ sculpture banned last week from a New York City art gallery. As an atheist, I rarely find myself in the position of disparaging the media for trying to bait the theocrats, but come on. The reporter’s attempt to get the over-sensitive Christians whining again is pretty lame. After all, Obama’s privates remain demurely covered in Cordero’s work. Also, the senator’s sculpted body doesn’t appear to be edible.

So why am I writing about the thing? Because it’s quirky and funny, and the artist seems, implicitly anyway, to share my view that messiahs of all kinds should be kept out of government.

I wonder: will Hillary now insist that someone portray her as the virgin Mary?

Church Thanks God for 20 Dead, $Millions In Damage

The insanity of Christians is boundless. So is their smug lack of common decency.

In the early morning hours of Friday, February 2, tornadoes hit Central Florida, killing twenty people, destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and buildings, devastating property, and causing over $50 million worth of damage. One of the edifices that did not survive the intelligently designed weather was the Lady Lake Church of God.

Yet, on Sunday morning, the congregation of more than a hundred Jesus junkies arrived for an outdoor service led by pastor Larry Lynn. Local media covered this alleged feel-good story in a pious gush of enthusiasm. Lynn spread his idiocy standing in front of and between the church’s large broken wooden cross and an American flag, both icons looking as if they had been raised amidst the rubble of a momentous battle against the forces of evil. The significance of the flag was not explained, but perhaps the attendees were supposed to believe that an unnamed Middle Eastern cabal had attacked our great christian country with their faithless winds.

Pastor Lynn intoned: "I'd like everybody to take a deep breath, and let everybody who has breath today praise God.” And before you could say, “moron,” there they were, mumbling their hosannas in the wake of a terrible disaster for which no one in his or her right mind conceivably could have been grateful.

“Hey, thanks a lot, pal. You did good. Sorry you murdered my neighbors while they were asleep, but I trust you must have had a reason, even though I can’t think of one. Maybe they didn’t pray hard enough, huh? By the way, I appreciate your sparing me. How much do I owe you?”

In one TV report, the minister did manage to find a bright spot among the wreckage. According to him, the church was in need of improvements anyway.

In other words, his deity massacred a score of innocents and caused financial and personal ruin to thousands of others, just so that the church could be given an excuse to expand. Not one so-called newsperson dared to point out that all the money spent rebuilding the church could, perhaps, be much better used helping people rebuild their lives.

Also in attendance at the prayer meeting was Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist (no “h”), who canceled his Super Bowl visit to show up for the photo op. Crist praised and congratulated the congregation for coming together, as if it would have been a cosmic catastrophe for them to miss their obviously worthless weekly worship. While the Southern states may not actually endorse a particular brand of Christianity, they do what they can to encourage any and all examples of religious mumbo-jumbo.

Despite dozens of TV and radio reports about the twisters, none of the interviews broadcast so far has reflected any sentiments other than those, like Lynn’s and Crist’s, that are routinely trotted out in the aftermath of natural disasters. Survivors assert that god must have been watching over them—unaware of the implication, of course, that he chose not to protect those dismissible others, the ones who died.

Not surprisingly, television viewers and radio listeners have yet to hear someone say: “Gee, now that I think about all this, maybe there is no god, after all.”

I've Just Seen a Face

On January 1, I spotted the head of a triceratops in a cloud. Immediately, of course, I called my local news media to alert them to the fact that dinosaurs had not really gone extinct.

Unfortunately, the press had no time for my story because they were all drooling over another fantastic sighting. It seems that Jesus’s face was seen on the bark of a tree—the specific kind was apparently not important enough to be mentioned—in the Arlington section of Jacksonville, Florida.

While my dinosaur attracted absolutely no attention, TV camera crews and reporters flocked into Daryl Brown’s yard to catch a glimpse of the Christ. Pictures of the holy plant presence were posted on the “News4Jax” and “Local6” web sites, so viewers could decide for themselves if they agreed with Brown: "Jesus don't just pop up like that. If you know the word of Jesus and you believe in Jesus, then there you go. He does exist." An unnamed neighbor was a bit more circumspect: “I can’t say what I feel, I just feel it.”

According to the story (which was earth-shaking enough to be repeated in a number of non-Jacksonville markets, like mine), a dog-walker was the first to spot the sacred timber. She said she’s comforted knowing that the Messiah is watching over her as she strolls with her pet through the neighborhood. The news report did not mention what, if any, images she sees in her pooch’s poop.

People who spy the paraclete’s puss in a tree – or a tortilla (1978 in Lake Arthur, New Mexico), rock (2005 in Hallettsville, Texas and 2006 in Long Island, New York), paint splotch on a wall (2005 in Detroit, Michigan), dental x-ray (2004 in Phoenix, Arizona), or Pizza Hut billboard (1991 in Atlanta, Georgia) – are experiencing pareidolia. Pareidolia is the illusory perception of a recognizable pattern in a random, vague stimulus. In other words, it’s the vision of god peeking out from the trunk of a tree.

A medical name for this phenomenon, coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, an internationally renowned neuropsychologist and psychopatholigist, is apophenia. According to Wikipedia, Conrad called apophenia "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness." Interestingly, Conrad’s original description of apophenia applied to the kinds of distortions of reality experienced by psychotics. The word is now used more often to describe the mirages of so-called normal persons, like those of us who see prehistoric animals in clouds or genitalia in seashells.

Usually, we enjoy our sessions of apophenia alone, or perhaps share them with a loved one: “Honey, this is amazing. My wine spill looks like Mickey Mouse.” It’s only when some religious kook sees Jesus or Mary in the spaghetti sauce that the vision becomes newsworthy. Whereas no one but a nut would believe for a second that the world’s most famous rodent had appeared magically in the merlot to deliver a message of hope, allegedly sane people do become stubbornly convinced that god has embossed his picture on their belongings to show how much he loves them.

It’s nice to begin the new year with a story about religious silliness that didn’t hurt anybody, except perhaps for the birds and squirrels who will be shooed away from the savior’s woody mug. But the truly delusional Jesus-tree-huggers are not going to evanesce the way my sky-dwelling dinosaur did. We must remember that the nation’s deranged god-worshipers are constantly experiencing apophenia, seeing and hearing imaginary dangers to their nonexistent deity. They deal with their hallucinations by trying to influence our kids’ education, our neighbors’ sexual behavior, the progress of science, and the direction of our government.

Johnny Jesusseed is coming soon to a yard near you.

You Had Me at Hello, but Lost Me at Hallelujah

Today’s New York Times Book Review contains an essay intriguingly entitled “God Fearing,” written by one John Wilson. Mr Wilson is identified by the Times as “the editor of Books & Culture.” It’s not a magazine I’m familiar with, but, gee, I like books. I like culture. Let’s see what Mr. Wilson has to say.

The beginning of the essay discusses the unfairness of evangelical stereotypes found in current fiction. In Wilson’s opinion: “... part of the job of a writer in 2006, so it seems, is to comment on evangelicals or ‘conservative Christians’ more generally, the way that many writers in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s ... felt obliged to weigh in on blackness, often with embarrassing results.”

That sentence is a ridiculous assertion, unsupported by facts. The author cites four context-free examples of anti-evangelism from current literature. The most noteworthy of these—a character’s 11-word quote in a forthcoming novel by Thomas Pynchon—is taken from a one-page excerpt that appeared in a publisher’s catalog. This bit of advertising is apparently enough to tell Wilson everything he needs to know about the Book and how it will affect our Culture.

In the same unsupported pronouncement quoted above, Wilson also fails to mention by name any writer who wrote on blackness so embarrassingly in the past, or to include a single literary example. The subtext of his innuendo is repugnant, a sneaky attempt to equate the evangelical movement with the movements for civil rights and black pride.

Wilson’s hyperbole propelled me onto the Internet, where a quick search revealed that Books & Culture is subtitled “a Christian Review.” The magazine does not even have its own Web address; it can be found – along with dozens of other holier-than-thou links – on a site called ChristianityToday.com.

To be fair to Wilson, he does confess his affiliation—about halfway through the article. Because of my own set of anti-evangelical prejudices, brought on no doubt by all those stereotypes I’ve been reading about in modern literature, I found myself doubting the intellectual and emotional honesty of the author throughout the rest of the essay. He does reveal, although probably not to anyone’s surprise, that evangelicals do not always agree about everything; he says that they are “notoriously riven by disagreement on matters large and small.” That loaded word “notoriously” is disingenuous. The divisions within the evangelical movement are not well-known to the rest of us because they don’t count outside the collection plate. Granting Wilson’s declaration that evangelicals’ opinions diverge on dozens of issues, we can still be certain that there’s one main belief they share unwaveringly: Jesus knows best. Between Christ and the Constitution, there’s not an evangelical in America who would pick the latter.

I managed to glean a few other points from Wilson about American evangelicals:
(1) They are not as dangerous as Mao Zedong’s Red Guards.
(2) Sometimes their children convert to other faiths or stop going to church entirely.
(3) Your mail carrier may be one of them.
(4) They do not proselytize any more than other proselytizers.

What is Wilson's essay, which is about neither books nor culture, doing in The New York Times Book Review? The author's motive in writing his insincere drivel seems to have been to reassure non-evangelicals that the mega-Christians pose no danger to the rest of us. I, for one, remain unrapturous.

Just look around: They’re all over the place, dragging their little metal fish behind them. They’ve taken over whole shelves in mainstream bookshops and CD stores. They jam the country’s airwaves. They use fear tactics to influence major retailers. Why, they’re even given space for their propaganda in eminent national newspapers.

No threat? Evangelists like Wilson remind me of the garden club ladies in "The Manchurian Candidate." The kind of thinking found in Books & Culture already pervades our society and it continues to spread. Soon, there will be very few books and no more culture.