Defense Exhibit showing why instilling Abrahamic religion is tantamount to littering the streets with loaded handguns: consider the 8-year-old (search for “poppy” on that page) who says, “I really do wish that I could go to heaven with him [my hamster], but I couldn’t.”

Exactly how many steps is this away from a suicide bomber?  We have a little British girl wanting to off herself to be with a rodent in an imaginary hereafter.

Holy shit.  And on my birthday, too.  What a slap in the face.

Whereas Christmas, a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

Whereas Christians Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization;

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds much in its history that points observers back to its Judeo-Christian roots;

Whereas on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ;

Whereas for Christians, Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God’s redemption, mercy, and Grace; and

Whereas many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world, celebrate Christmas as a time to serve others: Now, therefore, be it

      Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

            (1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

            (2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

            (3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

            (4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

            (5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

            (6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

Only nine “nays”.  Only nine people willing to call shenanigans and say that the United States House of Representatives should not pass a resolution “Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian Faith”.

Wall.  Separation.  Church.  State.  Fuck.  You.  All.

Creepy — the priest stalks Conan O’Brien, demanding to hear his confession before he offers “absolution”, refers to himself as a “stalker” and a “dangerous fan”, and even contacts O’Brien’s parents.

Too good not to post: unsolicited personal email, probably in reference to Number of the Beast:

Hi, while watching a show on the road of death between Kuwait amd Iraq They talked about the large machine gunin the planes that killed all the Iraqies and vehicles. When they mentioned how many bullets a second I calculated the number per minute and got 666. I then went on the internet to see how many barrels the weapon had, there are seven.
    the number of the beast is 666, It has seven heads. All the things coming out of the head are the result of war!  3-14-2007

                                                    Peter Rosenholm
                                                    treelaw45@yahoo.com

Apparently the show taught him that the machine gun fired 11.1 bullets per second.

Article XI

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.  (Translation from the Arabic.)

Signed in Tripoli, subsequently unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams.

I was on hold to 911 for three minutes today.  This is unacceptable.  That is more than enough time to mean the difference between life and death.

I remember several years ago I found a book on Amazon called Dial 911 and Die, via a review the author had written about a legal humor book I had purchased.  His conclusion, as far as I can determine, is to equip oneself with a firearm.  While I’m a lefty gun control advocate, the three minutes gives one pause.  This time I was reporting a witnessed auto accident — but next time?

The book, by the way, is distributed by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, self-described as “America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership.”  Their website includes the essay Some Judaic Sources on the Right to Bear Amrs:

The common thread in [Biblical] narratives is that being disarmed when danger threatens is seen as a national disaster and a cause for lament. Disarmament of individual citizens is a problem — not a solution … We indeed yearn for the time of the Final Redemption when “They shall beat their swords into plowshares” but it is a very poor idea to do this unilaterally before that point in history!

“Bad Catholic!  Bad catholic!” scolds the Vatican, hitting Catholic politicians on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.  “No human flesh for you!”

If they’re going to be dicks about it, excommunicate the guy and deal with the fallout. But the Pope’s not going to do that. He’s just going to let Arinze grandstand, because maintaining theocratic PNTR with Africa is too important to Rome these days. Africa is too big a market a market to ignore. There’s talk of an African as the next pope, with Arinze (Nigerian) at the top of the list. This will yank the Catholic church viciously to the right, undoing any little reform that can be credited to the current administration. No, better to keep the membership rolls flush. Support the Nigerian church as it teaches that watching porn gives you AIDS.

Nigeria is one of the most religiously screwed-up places in the world.  Boys’ eyes are being plucked out for use in witchcraft, and Sharia law is sentencing women to death by stoning for adultery. The climate offers a great chance for the Catholic church to be a moderating, modernizing, progressive force. But that’s not going to happen. The Catholic church will respond to religious radicalism with — surprise! — more religious radicalism. They can disagree with abortion; that’s fine, even though I disagree with it. But they’re not just doing that. They are shunning American politicians for their views, while American clergymen abuse over 10,000 children.

The mcgees.org AutoPost Generator has composed the following:

“Blah blah blah, complaint, complaint, cynical observation about hypocrisy, baiting of Bob Mike into a defense of his religion, supercilious attempt at cleverness, blah blah blah.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Terrance Cottrell was an autistic 8-year-old boy.  His mother was a member of a storefront fringe Christian church called Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith.  Believing the boy to be possessed by evil spirits, the pastor of the church crushed the boy to death during an exorcism service while his mother held his legs down.  While the death was ruled a homicide, the pastor was only charged with (and convicted of) felony child abuse rather than murder, a decision made because the pastor believed he was helping the boy.

(Note 31 October 2002: This came about a bit more harshly than it should have.  Sorry about that.  I have left it up unedited as it has already been discussed at QuickTopic, where a good discussion is going on.)

From the Christian Charity Department of mcgees.org:

If you don’t like Christianity, [t]hen why don’t all of you leave America, this country was founded by Christians for Christians. And if you don’t like it then go to a Godless heathen nation that agrees with your retard tinged philosophy. Their are way more of us Christians than you losers. Their is NO separation of church and state and you heathens will lose. Thankfully you are old and I hope you get a painful disease like rectal cancer and die a slow painful death, so you can meet your God, SATAN . . . .

There’s more.  You can view other hate mail filled with intolerant diatribes, racist, misogynist, and anti-gay messages, and anonymous death threats.

I am told frequently by Christians that while Christians might say hateful things and perform horrific acts, this is not the fault of Christianity.  Besides echoes of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, it is simply untrue.  Racism, intolerance of homosexuality, misogyny, and death threats are what the Bible excel at.  The book has taken these sentiments to dizzying heights.  Yes, I know that the Bible also attributes to Jesus the sentiment that we should love our neighbors.  But accepting that in light of other Biblical tales requires either a very diseased notion of love or a very limiting definition of neighbor.

Talk some time to a mainstream Christian and try to discern his or her criteria for determing whether something in the Bible is custom, a fallacy of man attributed to God, or truly God’s word.  A woman wearing men’s clothes is an abomination to God: that’s just a custom, you will be told, especially by a woman in slacks and a shirt.  We’re allowed to keep slaves: whoops, that’s a fallacy of man attributed to God, because we know slaveholding is wrong.  You must believe in God or you will go to hell: tada, that one’s God.

If the Christian is a non-fundamentalist with even an gram of education or understanding of physical processes, ask about the six day creation story.  Umm, must be a customary story, or a metaphor of some sort.  A woman who commits adultery, or a son who disrespects his parents, should be killed: yikes, that’s a fallacy of man, because, after all, God is Love.  One should love one’s neighbor as oneself: yep, God.

A pattern emerges quite rapidly.  If your conversation partner has already decided something is right, that’s the will of God.  If he or she has already decided something is wrong, that’s the will of man.  And if he or she has decided something is absurd, that’s custom.  In a way you have to respect the logic of Orthodox Jews more, who follow jaw-dropping, staggeringly pointless rules such as a hamburger being OK to eat, and a grilled cheese sandwich being OK to eat, but a cheeseburger being an abomination to God.  For the mainstream Christians, it’s all ad hoc justification.  It’s just each person’s prejudice given selective support by a deity.  (I’m not, by the way, saying Christians should logically follow kosher laws.  In their “New Testament” kosher laws are explicitly overturned.  “Yes, I know that eating pork was an abomination last Tuesday,” God says, “but it’s not any longer.”)

Rather than send hate-filled, death-threat-laden, and badly spell-checked missives to people in their communities, this group of Christians should grow spines, stop threatening that their invisible friend will beat people up, and begin to come to grips with their own hate, bigotry, and closed-mindedness.  We are all neighbors, folks.  Put down your Bible, unload your shotgun, and start acting like it.

Ever type a sentence fragment into a search engine to see what sort of sentences people are formulating?  No, me neither, but looking for something specific I typed the phrase “than other religions” into Google.  Of the first ten matches…

• Two pages mention an ABC News poll reporting that 38% of Americans say Islam has more extremists than other religions.
• A Pew Forum poll reported that “a plurality” of Americans believe that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions.
• An article from the Jan-Feb 2002 issue of “Military Review”, a U.S. Army journal, discusses “the possibilities of U.S. forces being deployed as peacekeepers and nationbuilders in Muslim nations,” and states that “Unlike many other religions familiar to American non-Muslims, Islam inserts itself into the body politic far more aggressively than other religions.”  The nationbuilders are also reminded that to “some Muslims … westernization and globalization are threats.”  (The Army have since removed the page, but is still cached at Google.)

• ReligiousTolerance.org explains that it covers “Christianity in greater detail than other religions” because in the U.S. and Canada it “outnumber[s] the next largest organized religions by about 40 to 1.”

• Two quote Nietzche as saying that “Buddhism is hundred times more realistic than other religions.”

• Cartoonist Tim Kreider explains that he mocks Christianity more often than other religions because he was brought up Christian and has personal resentments.

• A Canadian page on Hereditary Witchcraft states that most of their rituals are “spontaneous and less structured than [those of] other religions.”
• And as a final touch, ChristianAnswers.net, on its sure-to-be-objective “ANSWERS about RELIGIONS” page, asks if Christianity seems “to be supported by historical evidence more than other religions.”  I’ll spoil the end for you: It does because “Christianity and history have always been allies,” explaining that “twentieth-century archaeology generally reinforces Biblical history, including the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch … and the historical background surrounding the virgin birth, sinless life, vicarious death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  (Note the weasel phrase “historical background surrounding.”  I suppose what this means is that Caesar Augustus ruled around that time, that a place called Judea existed, and so forth.  As for the idea Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, this is rejected by most Biblical scholars.)

Beliefnet, as far as I gather, is a site that tries to serve everyone who posesses beliefs.  You may be amused by two of their quizzes: What’s your spiritual type? and the pretty cool Belief-o-matic.

Curious about mine?  The Belief-o-matic determined that, with 100% confidence, I am a Secular Humanist.  Its confidence that I am a Mainline or Liberal Protestant Christian (M-LCP) is 78%, 67% that I am Neo-Pagan, 27% that I am a Scientologist, and 18% each for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism.  I am actually judged more likely to be a Unitarian Universalist, Liberal Quaker, or M-LCP than a “Nontheist” (73%.)  This is because, under Beliefnet’s definition, “Atheists’ beliefs are similar to those of the Secular Humanists but do not necessarily include the emphasis on humanity’s ability to improve the human condition.”   Perhaps “Pessimistic Atheist” would be a better term.

I re-tried the test, trying to answer as I thought my father, a fairly liberal Lutheran (M-LCP) minister, might.  The Belief-o-matic reported 100% confidence in these responses corresponding to a M-LCP.  The confidence that these beliefs represent a Secular Humanist is 31%.

The Spiritual type quiz is perhaps more entertaining.  One is scored on a scale from 0 to 100, with 40-49 being an “Active Spiritual Seeker” and 90-100 being “Candidate for Clergy.”  The category called “Hardcore Skeptic, but interested or you wouldn’t be here” is the lowest category that has a name.  This covers 25-29.  I scored 15.

If you (the reader) have a few minutes, please visit to the quizzes, using the links above, and report your results in the new QuickTopic forum I set up.

I was reading the opinions of a well-informed poster at a technical site, a man who signs himself by the somewhat pompous title “software craftsman” (presumably contrasting a homespun, artistic, pride-in-one’s-work approach to all the ‘engineers’ doing impersonal number grinding.)  His posts were good, though, and I was sufficiently curious about the “software craftsman” bit to visit the homepage he linked to.

The gentleman is one Eric Sink.  The name did not originally spur my memory, but reading his About Me page I learned he was the original architect (er, craftsman) of the AbiWord project, a terrifically important and impressive semi-clone of Microsoft Word for Linux.  I have used this program extensively, and finding this, thought I would read more on his site.  I turned my attention to his Weblog.  On the navigation bar to the left of the page, there was a link to a post called Rebuttal to Richard Dawkins.

The thing I can truly thank Mr. Sink for is the pointer to a Guardian editorial by Richard Dawkins, published four days after the World Trade Center attacks.  Although I am an avid reader of The Guardian (as regular readers of this blog will know) I had somehow missed this article.  I read the editorial before reading Mr. Sink’s response.

Dawkin’s writing was (as usual) powerful and lucid, and I admired his bravery in discussing something that I have been somewhat reticent to discuss in mixed company: that it could be said to be an accident that the hijackers were fundamentalist Muslims.  In describing the zealous brainwashed state of the hijackers and the origins of this state, the reader is keenly aware that the words could apply to zealots of any denomination.  I think the his main thesis may be summarized in this excerpt:

Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster

Could we develop a biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a pigeon but with a man’s resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly?  What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn’t mind being blown up.  He’d make the perfect on-board guidance system.  But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was actually looming.  Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? … [C]ouldn’t we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? …

It’s a tall story, but worth a try.  You’d have to get them young, though… If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it… [I]t would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion.  To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns.  Do not be surprised if they are used.

I half forgot that there was an attempted rebuttal waiting for me, so I went back to see what the software craftsman had to say.  The tone of the attempted rebuttal was rather insulting, but I expect that Richard Dawkins is used to this, even if it offends me.  In his third paragraph, for instance, Mr. Sink writes “Beginning in paragraph eleven, may I assume that your local village idiot finished the article for you?”  Later in the essay he writes “As my eyes glazed over, I found myself unable to proceed past paragraph thirteen.”  I intend to extend to Mr. Sink two courtesies that he found unnecessary to grant Dr. Dawkins: politeness, and bothering to read a short article to its completion.  Let me begin with one of Mr. Sink’s statements:

First, you categorize all religions together, as if all people of spiritual beliefs are equally capable of the heinous acts committed last week… Did you really intend to dump Orthodox Jews, Christians, Mormons and others into the same contrived pigeonhole?

Well, yes (by the way, this is stated explicitly in the unread last paragraph of the essay.)  Breaking the argument into steps might give us a good place to start.

1. Valuing one’s own life is natural (except perhaps in extreme cases in which the life of one’s offspring is more likely to bring about survival of the agent’s genes; consider the fabled lioness protecting her cubs.)
2. Therefore, external education is necessary to have a rational agent select death.
3. The hijackers received an education that taught that death is not final and led them to choose death.
4. Therefore, this education devalues life in the eyes of the agent.

It follows that all religions that offer such an education devalue life to one degree or another.  Mr. Sink’s insertion of the word “equally”, as in “equally capable of the heinous acts”, is his introduction and does not appear in the original argument.  Sink maintains that the

willingness of an individual to sacrifice their own life for a cause is not evidence of the cheapness of that life.  On the contrary, martyrs understand the value of that which they are giving up.

One clarification: all that is necessary is that the value of an agent’s life is devalued in the agent’s eyes.  However, the main point that martyrs are making a considered personal sacrifice is not borne out by the evidence in this case, nor indeed in most cases of religious martyrdom.  In a non-theistic framework, or a theistic framework that teaches life to be finite, such acts may evidence altruism.  But this is not necessarily (and not likely) the case if the agent is expecting a reward.  An argument that an “eternal life” argument does not contribute to a person’s likelihood to martyr himself defies credulity.  Mr. Sink writes:

You offer no indication that you understand any of the actual intended functions of religion in society.  The world’s religions have brought hope and assistance to billions of individuals for several millennia.

To an extent I agree with Mr. Sink’s second claim here.  It is true that the role of religion at all times and in all places has not been to create homicidal sociopaths.  For instance, it has frequently served as a rapidly-instilled substitute for education (e.g., “allow your fields to lay fallow because you sin against a deity otherwise” versus “allow your fields to lay fallow because this will increase crop yields.”)  It has served as justification for social support by a community.  It has served as a convenient method to instill personal morality, using inexpensive fear as a motivator rather than time- and thought-intensive analysis and deliberation.  It has inevitably and largely unintentionally been passed as a meme along with other elements of group knowledge (“this is how to speak, this is how to make a fire, this is how not to piss of a fierce creature in the sky”).  But the only point where these considerations come into play is in a cost-benefit analysis, namely, “Are the benefits of religion worth the evident costs?”  It is not the case that Dr. Dawkins does not recognize the broader impact of religion in the world; his cost-benefit analysis convinces him that the world would be a better place without it.

Consider the following also:

You  identified yourself as a person who does not know the difference between religion and faith. And, you appear to be a person who is afraid of both.

I admit to some confusion here myself.  However I am in some company.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the terms as follows:

faith: belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion; firm belief in something for which there is no proof

religion: commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance; a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

Considering that the terms are mutually referential, the question is far from settled.  I have re-read Sink’s article and I cannot determine which he is eschewing and which he wishes to be associated with.  Would it be too obvious to note that “you disagree with it, you must be afraid of it” is a less-than-impressive argument?

On to another argument.  Those versed in formal logic will recognize the term Argumentum ad baculum, an appeal to force.  This is the classic but reprehensible technique showcased in “I’ve got a knife to your throat, still disagree with me?” arguments.  So when Mr. Sink writes the following, his argument inevitably deteriorates from unsubstantiated and rude to simple bullying:

I’ll defer discussion of [an afterlife] for the time being, but I would enjoy the opportunity to discuss this concept with you in person.  Let’s meet over coffee in a thousand years or so.  I’ll be living in a large city that is extremely well-lit.  If you need directions to get there, you should probably ask me soon, because you might want to get started on the journey.

The reader will surely recognize an irony here:  Religion is not here to brainwash people nor manipulate them with tales of a glorious afterlife.  Religion is not violent.  If you do not accept this, you will burn in hell forever, whereas I will be treated to an eternal life of luxury.

I cannot credit Mr. Sink with the invention of brute-force, logically fallacious arguments.  But we would be doing ourselves a disservice not to notice one here.

Here is a list of the ten most frequent four-word phrases in the King James Bible:

This is the sort of thing that would have taken years of scholarship even forty years ago, and yet I created this in less than one minute on a notebook PC (Clarification added 06 February 2002: It took less than a minute to run.  It took somewhat longer to write the script.  But not years longer.)  I used a home-baked Perl script to do this.  Perl can stand for “Practical Extraction and Report Language”; see why?