religion – Scripturient

August 9, 2020

The Talibangelist Conspiracy to Rule America and the West

Talibangelists (aka (aka the pseudo-Christian, far right) would love to force everyone believe in and obey their highly-adulterated pseudo-religion, and to punish those who don’t. Or won’t. Punishment is big on their agenda: unbelievers, those who stray, followers of a real faith, scientists, intellectuals, people of colour, gays, people with an “R” in their name — they love to punish anyone not among their small circle of authoritarian theocrats (aka theocons, because their pseudo-religious ideology is conservative-far right) and enablers (cue the theme music from The Handmaid’s Tale).

In order to bring their authoritarian ideology into public policy and ramp up the punishment machine, they must infiltrate and then replace the governments of the world with their own theocracy. In the USA, where they are strongest and most numerous, they already have a running start: numerous Talibangelists are active in the Trump administration, close to the president, on the supreme court, and among the justice system (Attorney General Barr being one). They are close to success and have had much of their agenda made into US public policy already. They intend to rewrite the very Constitution to enable their goals, especially that irksome Establishment Clause that says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” that prevents religious (or in their case, pseudo-religious) control over the government.

They can’t do it without their religious disguise. Any similar attempt to overthrown the government would be seen as what it is: a rightwing, authoritarian coup d’etat. They’d be rounded up and jailed. Charged with treason. But by pretending to be religious, they can make everything they do about religious freedom, about biblical law, about god, and make themselves look like champions of Christians (particularly the Evangelicals and other rightwing religious sects who seem most gullible to this con). But in fact they are as deeply anti-Christian as they are anti-democracy.

They would have all national laws based on or subservient to biblical laws — including, they note with anticipatory glee, stoning homosexuals. Talibangelist laws have been compared to Islamic sharia law, but the comparison is unfair: Talibangelists ideals are much more aggressive, punitive, unforgiving, and oppressive. Despite that, theocons get offended and shirty when you compare their biblical laws with sharia laws.

Of course, they don’t want all the bible’s laws enacted: only those that are convenient for them or that fit their homophobic, misogynistic, racist, nationalist ideology. And also because, for all their codswallop about the bible and their morality, they simply can’t obey the vast majority of them (where, for example, would they even find the silver trumpets that must be sounded at feasts, at the new moon, and also “in times of tribulation, to call the congregation together”?).

They wouldn’t want, for example, the death penalty for adultery (Leviticus 20:10) because that would mean their better-than-Jesus president would be stoned to death for his many sins in that category. Or for liars to be punished as Proverbs 19:5 demands, because he’d suffer every time he tweets or holds a press conference. What about the law not to fail to repay a debt (Lev. 19:13) or not to steal money stealthily (Lev. 19:11) or not to overcharge or underpay for an article (Lev 25:14) or not to work people oppressively (Lev. 25:43), not to covet and scheme to acquire another’s possession (Ex. 20:15), not to bear a grudge (Lev. 19:18)… Trump has broken so many mitzvot, not just the ten commandments, that even the theocons have lost count.

Nor do the Talibangelists want to obey all laws themselves. They ignore the dietary laws in Leviticus 11 because it would mean no more bacon or shrimp. They don’t want to obey the law in Numbers 15:32-36 that forbids work on the Sabbath on penalty of death because it would mean they wouldn’t have places to dine or shop that day (it’s okay if other people have to work on the Sabbath because their deaths don’t matter). As the LA Times pointed out,

The Hebrew Bible enjoins us many times not to mistreat or oppress foreigners, and it offers provisions for the care and feeding of strangers. Leviticus says, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born,” and the book of Hebrews reminds us to “show hospitality to strangers.” I didn’t see the memo, but God must have revised his thinking on immigration before his endorsement of Trump.

So many biblical laws are just plain inconvenient to the Talibangelists, or threaten their power base, so they ignore them. Surely it’s not hypocrisy to demand others obey laws you refuse to even recognize? Or to forgive your president the same sins you would have others put to death for?

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August 7, 2020

Trump plays the god card

For a nation that allegedly separates church and state, Americans sure love to splash religion all over everything, their elections especially. So this week, Donald Trump made headlines by accusing the frontrunner, Joe Biden of being “against god.” Cue the angels with trumpets.

Americans make big oompah sounds about their politicians having religion — Christian religion specifically and preferably protestant — although curiously, as Trump has proven, the voters don’t seem to give a rat’s ass whether that same politician has any ethics or morality.

Trump didn’t say which god, of course. I’m pretty sure it would be accurate to say Biden is “against” Marduk, or Baal, or Ganesh, or maybe even Thor, if by “against” you mean he doesn’t recognize these gods as those he worships or recognizes as a supreme deity. By that definition, Trump himself would be against these gods. Both candidates would likely be against the Flying Spaghetti Monster, too. Which god, though, is left up to the imagination, but in Trump’s case, I’d guess it was Mammon.

Trump also warned his audience (who were expecting him to speak on the economy, not make a self-serving campaign rant) that Biden had “no religion, no anything,” and would “hurt the Bible, hurt God.” He didn’t specify how Biden would do these things or how a mere mortal could actually hurt an immortal, omnipotent, incorporeal being.

But this isn’t just Trump’s usual word salad, full of lies, incomplete sentences, and contradictions. While it’s always expected Trump will lie and bluster — as he does daily — by bringing god into the picture, he seems to be more desperate to beat the drum as the election approaches. *

Trump is playing to his base of pseudo-Christians (aka the Talibangelists) — pretty much all the support he has left after four years of horrific mismanagement, incompetence, lies, and blunders. The Talibangelists react to any accusation that someone is “against god” or doesn’t like the bible, or has no faith (their definition of faith) or is of another religion with a hair trigger into frothing anger and vituperation. Unlike Trump, the Talibangelists have a very definite idea of who their god is: a tall, English-speaking, blue-eyed, vindictive, Caucasian of Northern European descent, who hates gays, lesbians, Jews, and Muslims, but lets his followers eat bacon and shop in box stores on the Sabbath, and encourages viewers to send televangelist preachers all their money.

In 2016, Trump — a confessed adulterer who paid porn stars for sex, who has been accused of sexual assault and even rape by dozens of women, and who has mocked the disabled — won 81% of the “white evangelical” vote, which says a lot about that segment’s gullibility and disdain for basic moral principles. Their continued support only underscores their willingness to ignore the truth of his unethical and immoral behaviour to keep him in power. But to be fair, they are CINOs —Christians In Name Only — so they have an opportunistic code for themselves.

This comes from a man who claimed the bible was his “favourite book” yet in an interview could not identify any book, verse, or story in the bible (admittedly, no one can really imagine Trump actually reading any book, let alone the bible) , who has an openly grasping and venal looney as a “spiritual advisor,” who praises a batshit crazy doctor-pseudo-christian pastor who claimed “alien DNA was being used in medical treatments, and that scientists were cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.” And it’s the same guy who had peaceful protestors tear-gassed so he could walk across a street for an awkward photo op with someone’s bible held backwards. As noted in Raw Story, Trump admitted it wasn’t even his own bible (no one, it seems, can confirm he even actually owes one):

By saying “it’s not my Bible,” Trump in effect winked at the press, letting White House correspondents in on the joke he’s been playing though the joke required gassing peaceful protesters out of the way for the punchline to work. This, in combination with holding the Bible as if it were a Trump Steak, may have had the effect on twice-born Christians of draining the holy from the moment. By telling the truth, the president broke the fourth wall to confess to playing a fake Christian on television.

Of course, Trump is hardly new to hypocrisy or using religion and people for his own ends. He doesn’t even attend church, although the Talibangelists overlook that. Before the 2016 election, Pope Francis commented about Trump the candidate, that,

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.

Trump responded by blaming — his usual response to anything negative is to blame someone else — the pope’s comments on the “Mexican government convinced him that Trump is not a good guy.” I suppose that’s the same Mexican government Trump promised his followers would pay to build the wall between the two countries. To date only “16 miles of the 194 miles that have been constructed were built in places where fencing didn’t already exist.” (167 miles of primary wall replaced existing structures). Mexico hasn’t contributed a peso towards it and never will. But I digress.

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July 20, 2020July 21, 2020

Can an atheist be a good citizen?

The answer to the headline’s question is no, at least according to the late Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus in a podcast in the Socrates in the City series (Sept. 22, 2004; I came across it as one of the chapters in the 2012 book from the podcast, Life, God, and Other Small Topics. Neuhaus’ talk was actually based on a 1991 piece he wrote.) To which response I must respond: codswallop.

Not that I expect religious employees like Neuhaus to defend atheism, but to suggest people can only be good under the influence of the supernatural — and even then only their particular version of the supernatural — is an arrogant, ideological statement, not one of fact. It’s been debunked by much better minds than mine (Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Robert Buckman come to mind).

Interestingly, the Catholic League weighs in on the debate, Can We Be Good Without God, without entirely refuting Neuhaus, but rather by expanding on several points of the argument. However, the conclusion the author of that piece reaches is that “Ultimately, yes, one individual here, another individual there could be really sweet and fine without God, but a system that obliterates the religious basis of morality will ultimately consume itself.” To which, I again say, codswallop.

Neuhaus’s perspective is regrettably narrow: Christian, Catholic, and American. He takes pot shots at Protestants, especially recent ones, doesn’t comment on other world religions at all (as if they were invisible), ignores non-theistic philosophies, doesn’t talk about levels of governance aside from the US federal, rambles about the American founders, and ignores the experience in other countries. Even in context of his American perspective, he blithely sidesteps the vexing Constitutional separation of church and state by not raising it at all. For such a big issue, his answer is a peashooter response that misses the target entirely.

Yet for all my disagreement, this is the sort of philosophical debate I love to read about and engage in (not that there’s a lot of opportunity to actually debate these days; Facebook is just a noisy echo chamber). So my participation is mostly limited to reading the works of others and blogging about my own perspective. So here goes.

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October 2, 2017October 4, 2017

Prayer isn’t stopping the violence

An acerbic piece in Maclean’s Magazine from June had the title “America’s mass delusion.” The subtitle read, “Surprisingly, the strategy of praying to God is not stopping the mass shootings in the U.S.” That piece was recirculated when the news of the latest and largest mass shooting in the USA broke. Fifty nine (so far) people were killed and more than 500 wounded by one homegrown American terrorist with an assault rifle. A terrorist who, police found later, had more than 20 rifles in his hotel room (some reports say “more than 10”). He owned more than 40; 10 of them reportedly assault weapons – a weapon designed solely for mass killing of people.

Prayer didn’t stop him getting into a hotel with all those rifles. Prayer didn’t stop him owning and firing military-grade automatic weapons into the crowd. (And why aren’t the media telling us his religion, when they gleefully announce the religion of every non-Christian who so much as farts in a subway?)

Despite the flurry of “prayers and thoughts” for the victims that erupted when the news of the massacre broke, not a single one of those shot came back from the dead. Even the prayers of that uber-fundamentalist, VP Mike Pence, failed to move his deity to act on anyone’s behalf and you’d think he had pull with his god. So who are they praying to, if no one is listening?

Curiously, no one seems to be praying to have the NRA held accountable for its pro-gun lobbying that led directly to this and every other mass shooting in the USA. No one seems to be praying for stronger gun control legislation, for background checks or to ban assault rifles. Americans are too obsessed with their guns to pray for anything that resembles sanity about gun ownership.

Meanwhile, an NRA-backed bill to permit silencers on personal weapons is being presented. The conscienceless-GOP is pushing ahead with it despite the news of this latest shooting – feckless minions of their NRA masters. Is anyone praying that won’t pass? Why isn’t anyone praying the GOP will disappear so the country can find some peace?

Or Bill O’Reilly? The neo-fascist former Fox host apparently claimed that the shooting in Las Vegas is “…the price of freedom” for America’s sociopathic lack of gun control laws. Such an NRA shill should not go unprayed for… pray he vanishes, just like the NRA does.

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June 19, 2016June 20, 2016

Moses Revealed

He was a murderer, a sorcerer, a slave owner. He betrayed his adopted family and led a rebellion against them. He was a charismatic firebrand, an oracle, and a misfit. He fluctuated between fits of rage and periods of meekness. He led his forces to commit what today we’d call war crimes and acts of genocide. He gave out laws and yet he ruled autocratically.

He was disfigured and wore a mask to cover his face for the latter part of his life. He brought down biological warfare on his enemies, and battled among them in a duel of magic. He had dissenters among his own people buried alive or hacked down by his armed supporters. He disappeared from history for 40 years, his whereabouts unknown, only to reappear in time to die within sight of his life’s goal.

We never even learn his father and mother’s names, nor those of his older brother and sister, until long after we’ve been told about his birth and abandonment. Yet we were earlier led to believe he was the firstborn. It’s a life filled with opposites and contradictions.

Pretty interesting character, Moses. Not at all like the heroic, troubled character played by Charlton Heston in the 1956 movie, itself a dramatic whitewash of the actual tale.

Full of contradictions, Moses’s story is replete with drama and passion, tragedy and pathos, murder, divine intervention and magic. And this troubled, driven man changed the world.

Or so the story goes.

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May 26, 2016

The Myth of Persecution

I just finished reading The Myth of Persecution by theology professor Candida Moss (Harper One, New York, 2013). I picked it up because of my general interest in theology, but also my more specific interest in early church history. I didn’t realize when I started to read it that this book was at the centre of a huge kerfuffle in the Christian community over its message and its accuracy.

In short, Ms. Moss argues that while the early Christians in the first four centuries were often the victims of violence, and even some persecution, they were not the targets of systematic persecution by the Romans for the duration. In fact, the periods of legislated persecution were short and intermittent. She tries to distinguish between persecution and prosecution, and identifies situations where Christians were among the groups, but not singled out, targeted for oppression by various Roman emperors and their edicts.

Further, she argues that the majority of stories of martyrs from this time are fictional, not historic records, created to serve a political or social purpose. She deconstructs some of them, looking at historical records, literary records and internal logic.

And, she concludes, the modern cult of persecution – such as the faux ‘War on Christianity’ promoted by several right wing commentators recently – is based on both a flawed view of history and a dangerous perspective on world events that prevents dialogue and compromise between people. That perspective, Moss writes, is based on the defensive and dangerous notion of persecution and martyrdom. In a film review posted on The Daily Beast, Moss called modern Christian belief in its own persecution a “paranoid fantasy.”

With which I pretty much agree. While not by any means a scholar, what I have read over the years about the creation of the early church, the battles between sects and cults to frame orthodoxy, the arbitrary way the canon was cobbled together, the exclusion of the Gnostics, and the whole business of pseudepigrapha and fake documents supports her contention that the early stories of martyrs were part of this process.

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