Posted inPolitics

Donald Trump’s “spirituality” makes a mockery of that word

I used to think that I knew what it meant to be "spiritual." Now, I don't. (See here and here.)  But whatever the word means, I'm pretty damn sure that Donald Trump doesn't have any sort of genuine spirituality -- unless we twist the definition of that term to include incessant lying, habitual displays of egotism, and insults directed at minorities, women, political opponents, and anybody else who incurs the Wrath of Trump. So when I came across a story in TIME magazine, "Meet the Pastor Who Prays With Donald Trump," I was curious to learn more about Trump's personal…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Government shouldn’t be guided by irrational religious concepts

It's a pleasure to share a churchless opinion piece by my wife, Laurel. It was published yesterday in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly. Laurel was impelled to write this after going into the belly of the beast -- attending a large Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) religious rally at the state capitol grounds here in Salem.  Government shouldn't be guided by irrational conceptsby Laurel Hines Recently evangelist Franklin Graham visited Salem to urge Christians to vote their “Christian values.” But does basing government on religious beliefs supported by a book written in pre-modern times make sense? The Bible condones…
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Posted inMorality Politics

An atheist Supreme Court justice would be great for the U.S.

Being a member of an oppressed minority -- atheists -- I'm totally on board with physicist Lawrence Krauss' call to put one of us on the Supreme Court, now that Antonin Scalia's death has created a vacancy.  Three per cent of Americans say that they are atheists—which means that there are more atheists than Jews in the United States. An additional four per cent declare themselves agnostic; as George Smith noted in his classic book “Atheism: The Case Against God,” agnostics are, for practical purposes, atheists, since they cannot declare that they believe in a divine creator. Even so, not…
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Posted inGod Politics

No, Ammon Bundy, that voice in your head isn’t God

Religious craziness is a form of socially-acceptable insanity. Case in point: Ammon Bundy is one of the militants who have taken over buildings at the federal Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon.  Here's a short 90-second excerpt from a longer video Bundy made where he talks about what led him to try to help Dwight and Steven Hammond, ranchers in Harney County who were convicted on arson charges when they burned rangeland illegally -- endangering hunters and firefighters.   Somehow Bundy believes that when he needed to clear his mind about what to do, it was the Lord who did…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

“Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!”

FEMEN International has a good slogan -- the title of this post.  Recently they made good on those words, as described in "Topless female protesters manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France."  Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process....Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as…
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Posted inPolitics Reality

Naturalism needs to rule public policy debates

Below is an essay that I wrote for the Spiritual Naturalist Society (I'm a contributing writer), but which struck them as too political for their tastes -- politics and policy-making apparently not being part of what they consider to be a "spiritual practice."  So, boo-hoo, it was rejected for their site. I'm going to present some arguments to the Spiritual Naturalist Society folks about why no bounds should be placed around a naturalistic worldview. If there is no supernatural realm, it doesn't make sense to me to consider some aspects of a naturalistic person's life to be spiritual, and some…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics

More quotations from “Nature’s God,” a marvelously insightful book

I can't describe how much I enjoyed reading Matthew Stewart's book, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. It isn't the easiest book I've ever read, to put it mildly.  Stewart dives deep into historical and philosophical waters in the book's 435 pages. At times I wondered why he was paying so much attention to a certain subject. But by the end of "Nature's God" I understood, pretty much, how each chapter contributed to his literary goal. Which, basically, was to dispel the myth of the United States being founded as a Christian nation. Or more broadly, as a religious nation.…
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Posted inPolitics

America’s founders reasoned their way to a secular republic

How did the United States come to be the secular constitutional republic -- arguably also termed a democracy -- that it is now? Why aren't we ruled by a king or queen? Why aren't we a theocracy? I've vaguely been interested in these sorts of questions, but I'm not a big history buff. So reading Matthew Stewart's book, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, is pretty much my first serious venture into learning about my country's revolutionary origins. In my last post I shared a bunch of quotations from the book. Here I want to take a stab at relating…
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Posted inPolitics Science

Neil deGrasse Tyson on religion vs. objective truth

The headline on this Daily Beast piece is a bit misleading: "Neil deGrasse Tyson Defends Scientology -- and the Bush Administration's Science Record."  Sure, both statements are true. But only in a certain context. Here's some of what astrophysicist Tyson says about Scientology. So, you have people who are certain that a man in a robe transforms a cracker into the literal body of Jesus saying that what goes on in Scientology is crazy? ...But why aren’t they a religion? What is it that makes them a religion and others are religions? If you attend a Seder, there’s an empty…
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Posted inPolitics

Indiana legalizes religious discrimination. Glad I live in Oregon.

Indiana has passed a Freedom to Discriminate bill. That's the name Matthew Tully, an Indianapolis Star columnist, prefers over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Here's some excerpts from his "Statehouse Republicans embarrass Indiana. Again." Let's call it what it is. It's discrimination wrapped up in a legislative bow. It's divisiveness painted as something holy. It's tired and cynical politics weakly masked as a principled stand. Sure, it is cleverly labeled with a market-tested name (the Religious Freedom bill), but please don't be fooled: This is nothing more than a government endorsement of discrimination. Yes, in this land of liberty, our…
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Posted inPolitics

Contraception coverage dispute shows absurdity of religious belief

Beliefs are not equal under the law. At least, not in the United States. Religious beliefs have an edge over non-religious beliefs, even when the believer holds the same belief.  Which is absurd.  By their nature, beliefs are a matter of opinion. Otherwise we'd call them "facts." Gravity is a fact. God is a belief.  Favoring insurance coverage for contraceptives (birth control pills and other means of preventing pregnancy) is a belief. It can be founded on facts as well as ethical principles. But in the end, it is a belief. Most, if not all, governmental social policy decisions in…
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Posted inPolitics

Religious right got smacked down in U.S. 2012 election

We did it! Faithless, churchless, secular, non-believing Americans are on the political march. So says a fascinating story in the New York Times, "Christian Right Failed to Sway Voters on Issues." Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them. They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all…
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Posted inPolitics Reality

U.S. election a victory for reality

Reality won tonight! I've been glued to my television, laptop, and iPhone for about six hours, sweating out the results of our national election. Obama has been re-elected president. Democrats are going to maintain control of the Senate. Virtually every Republican I was hoping would lose, did.  I'm happy. Both for the political philosophy that I favor, and for the reality based community that I consider myself to be a proud member of. Because this was more than an election between Republicans and Democrats. Borrowing a fancy term from a highly respected political analyst, Nate Silver, who I like a…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

When is it OK to trash-talk a religion?

The recent killing of diplomats at the American consulate in Libya raises questions about the balance between freedom of speech and religious liberty. This subject is dear to my heart, since I've been blogging on this here Church of the Churchless for eight years, attempting to do the same thing -- speak my mind about the ridiculousness of organized religiosity while respecting the personal beliefs of individuals (after all, we all believe in weird things; weird, that is, from the perspective of other people; to us, we're absolutely normal). It's unclear what set off Muslims who attacked American diplomatic outposts…
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Posted inPolitics

Romney’s religion isn’t an asset. No religion is.

Nice people are just that: nice. Good people are just that: good. Compassionate people are just that: compassionate.  There's no need to ascribe their niceness, goodness, or compassion to their religiosity, as Jack Roberts did in an opinion piece, "Romney's religion should be an asset, not a liability," in today's Portland Oregonian.  I say this as a non-Mormon who from my Mormon friends has gained a deep appreciation for the positive values that church imparts to its members -- chief among them their obligation to provide support and charity for others. I could never join that church myself because their…
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Posted inGod Politics

Goddamn it — “God” is back in Democratic Party platform

Jeez, I was beginning to think that the Democratic Party to which I belong really was a coven of atheistic religion-haters who got their kicks from burning the Bible while high on illicit drugs (that'd be a good thing, of course). My hopefulness arose from reading that "God" had been dropped from the 2012 Democratic platform. The Christian Broadcast Network reported: Guess what? God’s name has been removed from the Democratic National Committee platform. This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform: “We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Linking religious faith and Romney’s tax returns

Ever since I started following the controversy over Harry Reid's claim that Mitt Romney didn't pay any taxes for ten years, I've had a feeling that deep philosophical issues relating to the validity of religious faith are involved. Here's my attempt to explain why.  It's fascinating, really. Reid and Romney are both Mormons, which is a weird variety of Christianity. Or to some, Mormonism is an independently weird religion. Regardless, Christians and Mormons believe in the Bible. The New Testament gospels were written by guys -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John -- with no direct knowledge of Jesus. So what they said about Jesus' life…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics

Mitt Romney, you’re wrong: this isn’t a Christian nation

There are lots of reasons for people in the United States to vote for President Obama rather than Mitt Romney in November. Romney's sucking up to evangelical Christians is just one reason -- but an important one. In a recent speech at a hotbed of Christian'ist fundamentalism, Liberty University, Romney told the assembled believers in an imaginary God the untruths they wanted to hear. In the same week that President Obama galvanized his base by endorsing same-sex marriage, Mr. Romney’s message was that evangelicals could count on him to operate as president under “a common worldview,” including his position that marriage…
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Posted inPolitics

Republicans want to establish a U.S. theocracy

I used to joke about the "American Taliban" -- fundamentalist Christians who say they want to make this country into a Bible-based theocracy. But now that every Republican presidential candidate has endorsed this crazy notion in one form or another, it isn't nearly as funny to me. Losing our constitutionally-guaranteed right of freedom from religion is a serious matter. And one worth fighting hard to prevent.  I've voted for Republicans in the past, and would consider doing so again if moderates of the sort we Oregonians used to elect came back into G.O.P. fashion. But nowadays Governor Tom McCall, Senator…
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