Glenn Beck Denounces Jesus’ Values
Glenn Beck at CPAC 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore CC
Hard to believe, but mad Mormon Glenn Beck has publicly told Christians to give up their churches if they hear anything there about social justice, as reported in the New York Times:
Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they heard any preaching about social or economic justice because, he claimed, those were slogans affiliated with Nazism and Communism.
This week, the Rev. Jim Wallis, a liberal evangelical leader in Washington, D.C., called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.
“What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show,” Mr. Wallis, who heads the antipoverty group Sojourners, wrote on his “God’s Politics” blog. “His show should now…
Jesus Hates Klingons
The video you’ve been waiting for, if what you’ve been waiting for is a low-budget version of Star Trek in which the Enterprise crew are Evangelicals. From Everything Is Terrible:
American Family Association Calls For Stoning Of Whale
It sounds like a joke, yet isn’t; leading fundamentalist Christian organization American Family Association is calling for the stoning of a whale that killed a trainer at Orlando’s SeaWorld two weeks ago. From Huffington Post:
The American Family Association, a religious right group, is urging that Tillikum (Tilly), the killer whale that killed a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, be put down, preferably by stoning. Citing Tilly’s history of violent altercations, the group is slamming SeaWorld for not listening to Scripture in how to deal with the animal.
However, the group is going further and laying the blame for the trainer’s death directly at the feet of Chuck Thompson, the curator in charge of animal behavior. According to Scripture, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it…
Christians Want To Change Name Of Mt. Diablo
A devout Christian wants to change the name of Mt. Diablo. Maria L. LaGanga writes all about it for the Los Angeles Times, below, but first BREAKING NEWS from Claycord.com,
Just seconds ago, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors decided against the requests to change the name of Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan, and also decided not to support a last minute request to change the mountain’s name to Mt. John Muir.
The Board doesn’t have the final say, however, so it could still happen…
Reporting from Mt. Diablo State Park – Arthur Mijares never saw it coming when he filed the federal paperwork to change the name of Contra Costa County’s most famous landmark from Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan.
It’s not that he’s such a big fan of the 40th president…
Kentucky Approves Bible Classes For Public Schools
LEX18.com via the AP reports:
FRANKFORT (AP) — Kentucky may follow the lead of Texas and a handful of other states in allowing Bible classes to be taught in public schools.
The Senate Education Committee on Thursday unanimously approved legislation that would effectively return the Bible to classrooms across Kentucky.
“The purpose is to allow the Bible to be used for its literature content as well as its art and cultural and social studies content,” said state Sen. David Boswell, D-Owensboro, chief sponsor of the bill that is modeled after a Texas measure.
Under the Kentucky proposal, Bible courses would be offered as electives, meaning schools could choose whether to offer them to students as a social studies credit and that students could decide whether to take them.
Boswell said he believes the legislation is constitutional…
The Ten Commandments We Always See, Aren’t The Ten Commandments
The following is the first chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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First Amendment battles continue to rage across the US over the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places — courthouses, schools, parks, and pretty much anywhere else you can imagine.
Christians argue that they’re a part of our Western heritage that should be displayed as ubiquitously as traffic signs. Congressman Bob Barr hilariously suggested that the Columbine massacre wouldn’t have happened if the Ten Commandments (also called the Decalogue) had been posted in the high school, and some government officials have directly, purposely disobeyed court rulings against the display of these ten directives supposedly handed down from on high.
Too bad they’re all talking about the wrong rules. Every Decalogue you see — from the 5,000-pound granite behemoth inside the Alabama State Judicial Building to the little wallet-cards sold at Christian bookstores — is bogus. Simply reading the Bible will prove this. Getting out your King James version, turn to Exodus 20:2-17. You’ll see the familiar list of rules about having no other gods, honoring your parents, not killing or coveting,
and so on. At this point, though, Moses is just repeating to the people what God told him on Mount Si’nai. These are not written down in any form.
The Coming Christianizing Of Public School Textbooks
The New York Times asks, “How Christian were the Founding Fathers?” The Texas State Board of Education will be rewriting the standards for public school textbooks, and there’s a good chance that the resulting books (used across the country) will teach that America is a “Christian nation”:
The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however, some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.
As Cynthia Dunbar, a Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”
…
Christians Claim Hate Crimes Law an Effort to ‘Eradicate’ Their Beliefs
Stephen C. Webster reports on RAW Story:
A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.
Far from the intended purpose of severely punishing criminals who commit unspeakable acts against a persecuted minority group, the religious activists claim the laws are a guarded effort to “eradicate” their beliefs.
Filed by the Thomas More Law Center — which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union — the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people “is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.”
The suit…
Idaho Baptists Charged With Kidnapping 33 Haitian Children
Wow, talk about breathtaking arrogance. Evangelicals from Idaho thought it’d be alright to abduct some Haitian children for Jesus. From the NY Times:
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Members of a Baptist congregation…were charged Thursday with abduction and criminal association, according to prosecutors.
The Americans were arrested as they tried to take 33 Haitian children to what they had said was an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. A Web site for the orphanage said that children there would stay in a “loving Christian environment” and be eligible for adoption.
But several of the 33 children had at least one living parent, and some of those parents said that the Baptists had promised simply to educate the youngsters in the Dominican Republic and said the children would be able to return to Haiti to visit their families.
…
Haitian Earthquake Survivors Get Solar-Powered Bibles
Reported by Reuters via news.au.com:
As international aid agencies rush food, water and medicine to Haiti’s earthquake victims, a US faith-based group is sending Bibles to Haitians in their hour of need.
Not just any Bible.
These are solar-powered audible Bibles that can broadcast the holy scriptures in Haitian Creole to 300 people at a time.
Called the “Proclaimer,” the audio Bible delivers “digital quality” and is designed for “poor and illiterate people”, the Faith Comes By Hearing group said. According to their website, the Proclaimer is “self-powered and can play the Bible in the jungle, desert or … even on the moon!”
The Albuquerque-based organisation said 600 of the devices were already on their way to Haiti. It said it was responding to the Haitian crisis by “providing faith, hope and love through God’s…
U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes
JOSEPH RHEE, TAHMAN BRADLEY and BRIAN ROSS write on ABC News:
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.
The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.
U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda…
Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian
Via the Onion:
LOUISVILLE, KY—At first glance, high school senior Lucas Faber, 18, seems like any ordinary gay teen. He’s a member of his school’s swing choir, enjoys shopping at the mall, and has sex with other males his age. But lately, a growing worry has begun to plague this young gay man. A gnawing feeling that, deep down, he may be a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Faber admitted to reporters Monday. “It’s like I get these weird urges sometimes, and suddenly I’m tempted to go behind my friends’ backs and attend a megachurch service, or censor books in the school library in some way. Even just the thought of organizing a CD-burning turns me on.”
Added Faber, “I feel so confused.”
The openly gay teen, who came…
Fox News’ Brit Hume to Tiger Woods: Turn to Christianity
I think Dan Savage makes a good point here in that by (Brit Hume) saying Christianity is “better” for atonement than Buddhism, he makes the religion a much more attractive option for adulterers everywhere (via Countdown with Keith Olbermann):
Passions Over ‘Prosperity Gospel’: Was Jesus Wealthy?
John Blake reports for CNN:
Each Christmas, Christians tell stories about the poor baby Jesus born in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.
But the Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona, preaches a version of the Christmas story that says baby Jesus wasn’t so poor after all.
Anderson says Jesus couldn’t have been poor because he received lucrative gifts — gold, frankincense and myrrh — at birth. Jesus had to be wealthy because the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for his expensive undergarments. Even Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, lived and traveled in style, he says.
“Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey,” says Anderson. “Poor…
Jesus of Nazareth Discusses His Failure
The following article “Jesus of Nazareth Discusses His Failure” is written by H. G. Wells, one of over 40 articles in the Disinformation anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick.
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Russ Kick writes: H. G. Wells is best-remembered as a late-Victorian pioneer of science fiction, mainly due to his 1890s novels The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds. He cranked out dozens of books in numerous genres of fiction and nonfiction, and 1945—the year before his death—saw the publication of his last two books to come out during his lifetime: The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life and Mind at the End of Its Tether.
The Happy Turning is a slim, strange work that gets even stranger as it continues. Wells sets it up by claiming that sometimes he dreams about taking his daily walk and coming across a pathway he’s never noticed in real life. Taking this turn (the “Happy Turning”) leads him to the utopian Dreamland (a/k/a the Beyond), where his body is perfectly fit, where society knows no war, poverty, or inequality, and where his “subliminal self” lets loose with a flood of “cryptic and oracular” symbols.
Wells then steps back in time to relate some dreams he had when he was young, including the one that “made me an atheist.” Having read about “a man being broken on the wheel over a slow fire,” the preteen Wells had a nightmare. “By a mental leap which cut out all intermediaries, the dream artist made it clear that if indeed there was an all powerful God, then it was he and he alone who stood there conducting this torture.” Upon awakening, he felt that he had two alternatives: go insane or stop believing in God. “God had gone out of my life. He was impossible.”
The Real Jesus Of The Bible: ‘Everything You Know About God Is Wrong’
The following is a small portion of the late Ruth Hurmence Green’s “The God From Galilee,” one of 41 articles in the Disinformation anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick. Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Rushkoff, and H.G. Wells.
In this 25-page article, this archetypal gray-haired granny simply reads the New Testament — particularly the Gospels — and reports what she finds about Jesus: his insults and angry words, his deceptions, his impatience, his contradictions, his hellfire and damnation preaching, his braggadocio, his purposely confusing parables, his refusal to heal a little Gentile girl, his failure to condemn slavery, his horrible treatment of his own family, etc., etc. The results will be shocking to most Christians, and even…
New Food Fad: The Jesus Diet
The Daily Mail reports on a hot new way to knock off the pounds: mimicking the diet of Christ. Because the scripture is all about weight loss:
Faith-based diets take the principles of Christianity and apply them to our overwhelming craving for chocolate, chips and cheese.
The trend began in America in the Eighties, but it’s finally taking hold [in Europe], with Christian weight-loss groups springing up, and dramatically increased sales of ’spiritual dieting’ books such as Hallelujah Diet and The God Diet.
What Would Jesus Eat? author Dr. Don Colbert explains: ‘Jesus ate…lots of vegetables, especially beans and lentils. He would have eaten wheat bread, fruit, drunk a lot of water and also red wine. And he would only eat meat on special occasions.’
Jesus Explained By Venn Diagram
Interesting. Jesus is the most powerful monster of all.
Obama Makes History By Omitting God
Daniel Florien writes in Unreasonable Faith:
This year was the first year that an American president has omitted a direct reference to God in the Thanksgiving proclamation:
The beneficence shown by God to America is a theme that traditionally defines the Thanksgiving holiday, and this theme is strongly emphasized in the original Thanksgiving Day proclamations and consistently acknowledged even by modern presidents.
Obama’s unprecedented proclamation, however, only makes indirect mention of God by quoting George Washington, stating: “Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed ‘by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.’”
The proclamation goes on to call Thanksgiving Day “a unique national tradition we all share” that unites people as “thankful for our common blessings.”
“This is a time…
