Yeah, Sure Phil, Whatever You Say

"If you can’t reconcile some of the things Phil says with his otherwise friendly demeanor—perhaps because you are gay, or a duck—I don’t blame you. And I don’t blame Duck Dynasty for keeping the show safely apolitical, ensuring smooth digestion for a mass audience."

By now, the choicer tidbits of GQ's interview have been widely disseminated.  Here's the whole article, in case you'd also like to read the interviewer's reactions to Phil's bible-thumping.

First things first:  Phil Robertson is a goddam-fucking homophobic bigot.  When you compare a sex act between consenting adults to asshole-religious-fanatics flying planes into buildings, you're an asshole-religious-fanatic who hates gays.  When you literally tell people that allowing sodomy is the the start of allowing anything and the source of America's problems, you're a fucking homophobic bigot.  Period.  When Trent Lott told us that integration was the start of modern-day American problems, people correctly assumed that meant he favored segregation.  Trent Lott ended up resigning, because acting like you like Black people but still want them to use different drinking fountains is just no longer credible.  However, claiming that you love homosexuals while telling them their sex acts should be as criminal as blowing up a pizza joint, and that you hope that they renounce their "lifestyle" so they can be your "brothers" is somehow, still, supposed to be a rational opinion.  

Phil, what if we don't want to be your brothers and sisters in Jesus?  What if the Christian family just has no appeal for us?  Phil's greatest asshole tendency in this article is to assume that everyone wants to be saved like him.  No, we don't.  We don't want to be involved in this man's life of control freak antics over his family.  We don't want anything to do with a man who won't even apologize to people he's beaten up before becoming saved.  We don't want anything to do with a white Southerner who insists that he certainly never saw any Black people being mistreated.  

And now we get to what's been ignored:  Phil is basically saying the same thing Germans said all through the summer of 1945.  We didn't know it was happening.  We didn't see it.  No one complained to us.  That lasted until Nuremberg.  Hey Phil, does the North really have to stage a version of a war crimes trial documenting Jim Crow?  Could you not have cracked open a fucking book to learn that Black people who complained or tried to change the situation in any way got lynched, run out of town, or beaten?  Will someone please drag this asshole motherfucker to a room, tie his beard to something, and make him watch Mississippi Burning? 

I'm tired of hearing Southerners' lame ass excuses for why it never occurred to them that Black people might not have liked segregation, no voting rights, and a constant campaign of terroristic violence to completely smother anything resembling free speech. Oh, wait, that would get in the way of their own persecution complexes.  

To white Southerners (and some white Northerners, I'll admit), the abdication of power whites were never entitled to is seen as some sort of oppression.  So, I'll clarify:  Phil, you and your ilk were never entitled to keep women and non-white men from voting.  You were never entitled to keep them ignorant.  You were never entitled to keep them out of professions you wanted to preserve for your own status.  You were never entitled to outlaw consensual sex between people of the same sex.  You were never entitled to keep homosexuals from marrying.  You were never entitled to do any of these things, so taking these powers away from you is the opposite of persecution.  

Preventing you and your ilk from persecuting others is the key to everything other ethnic groups, women, the disabled, and the LGBT community have achieved.    I know you think the law shouldn't protect the freedoms they need to achieve.  I know you think the law should protect a non-existent "right" you think you have to treat others any way you want to. 

Phil's fans may think he's been unfairly silenced to keep him from preaching his faith, but what about the Dixie Chicks?  What about Helen Thomas, Martin Bashir, and Alec Baldwin?  I guess only preaching their bible is the only free speech that shouldn't have any consequences.   

Phil's fans think he is being punished unfairly for just stating what their sacred book says.  Legally, they have no leg to stand on.  So they just argue that the decision came from some sort of gay mafia that doesn't want any Christian to say anything, ever.  Last time I checked, your homophobic rants were still safe in your own churches.  Phil's fans ignore one thing that is lacking from the First Amendment:  there's no obligation, for anyone, to listen to anything Phil wants to say.  A&E doesn't have to be a megaphone for someone trying to convert people, or convince them that "love" can be found, but only if you agree that Phil is right and you must live just like him.  Phil, my advice is to find a small island just for yourself.  Preferably one that is being slowly taken away by rising sea levels.  The ocean will never tire of your preaching.

Only 90 minutes left for blasphemy

Happy International Blasphemy Day! We have only 90 minutes left. I spend most of my time mocking Christianity, but this gem from Islam cannot be ignored: apparently, Hamas has decided that girls who haven't reached puberty are marriagable. Seriously. Man,not even the FLDS sinks this low.

So here's my IBD question- in Islam why is pedophilia good, and alcohol bad? And can I really expect anybody following this religion to be sane?

Happy IBD! Go out and insult someone's religion, before one of those crazy believers makes it illegal!

maybe i don't want to seem nicer

some genius named nathan named his blog after a guy stupid enough to fall asleep on a window ledge and fall out to the street below. this makes nathan's blog worth reading for a reason that must occur only to christians. and nathan has decided he knows just how to make atheists seem nicer. because if there's one group of people whose opinions matter to me, it's the christians. oh wait, i meant the hell's angels.

nathan's first idea is that atheists need to stop feeling smug. i guess nathan doesn't like the condescending way we atheists roll our eyes at yet another recital of pascal's wager, or the first cause "argument". that eye-roll might have something to do with the fact that these arguments have been refuted, repeatedly and long ago. why should we pretend to care about bad re-runs?

i'll tell you what nathan- watch the south park episode where they explain what scientologists believe. and then tell me what our attitude should be with the people who actually believe it. then, make yourself, as a courtesy, sit with one of those weirdos at the times square subway station and get a stress test, and force yourself to listen to how the thetans are causing your problems, and what scientology's "evidence" is of this. do not tell me, with any expectation of being believed, that you don't feel the slightest bit smug about not having been hoodwinked into believing into some dreck l. ron hubbard dreamed up and sells in the mass market paperback section. and remember: one woman's dreck is another's "faith". try not to roll your eyes at the poor soul.

oh, and apply this to wicca, mormonism, and your smug knowledge that of course zeus and athena are false gods.

then, nathan wants us atheists to ignore christians' proselytizing, because they're not really trying to convert us anyway, just the people who haven't made up their minds. nathan, here's a fucking clue (christ, am i smug): we want to reach out to the people who haven't made up their minds too. we just do it by summarizing the "arguments" for the existence of a deity and refuting them. we also point out various contradictions in your "book", as well as the contradictions between the different things christians tend to believe about their deity. so, we have to address you whether you want us to or not. i know, your jobs are much easier when we don't . which is probably why you think it would make us seem nicer if we just let you spout gobbledy-gook with no rational, evidence-based response. it's like a football team's offensive squad demanding the other side not bother to defend their goal. i wonder what the ref would say?

nathan, dear, can intelligent and rational people believe in magic? and tolkien's elves? and tolkien's hobbits? can intelligent people there really was a cinderella, and spend their lives looking for that glass slipper? because that's all communicated by books too. your "book" is a collection of stories never meant to be taken literally as things that actually happened. it was people trying to forge a cultural heritage with a story of shared struggle and sacrifice. cute story, especially is you like killing innocent, firstborn children on behalf of the good guys. the god "communicating" through that book is a manipulative, vengeful, petty, jealous, bloodthirsty asshole who apparently has no problem planning our sins and then punishing us for them. and in order to forgive the humans whose sins he planned and plans to watch, he sent his "son" to earth to lead a blameless, sinless life. after this blameless, sinless life, this god then has the son's friends betray and abandon him, and then has the authorities of the patch of dirt the son lived and preached around force this son through the most excruciating, tortuous death humankind has ever devised (except, of course, suicide from watching general hospital). this horrific death then makes it possible for this god to forgive humans' sins. you call this intervention? here's a clue: this all-powerful god could have decided to just forgive people, but didn't. how do you rationally, intelligently explain why the tortuous death of someone who supposedly was himself perfect makes it possible for an all-powerful deity to forgive people for shoplifting? what was this god's thought process? what's rational and intelligent (not to mention ethical) about any of this crap?

i know you hear this all time, but where was this intervention during the holocaust? why does a just god let this happen, to his chosen people no less? i notice that this god lets alot of shit happen that just wipes out hundreds of thousands of people with one big wave. why intervene for the ancient hebrews leaving egypt, and not for people on the hijacked planes on 9/11? how does this god pick his interventions? i notice most of them happened in this "book", with parts dating back 4,000 years ago, with these last interventions happening about 1,900 years ago. why no interventions now?

nathan, do you read what you type before posting? do you know that a hypothesis is based on a series of observable facts? oh, i visited all these islands in the pacific ocean and found species are similar to each other and yet still different species. and i found that each one is perfectly well suited to that particular island's environment. and other people have found fossilized skeletons of animals that no one sees anymore. why would some species die out, and some survive- and does the environment have anything to do with that? i guess i could come up with a theory that explained how attributes that make a species better suited to a particular environment make it easier to survive, and pass on offspring with those attributes. and over time, attributes that are not good for an environment cause those living things to die without offspring. i guess i could test the theory by examining other environments, and observing whether species are suited to those. and i guess scientists in later generations could find even more fossils, and figure out how to date the fossils and the rocks the fossils are in, and then i guess some future scientists could also examine genes to see how closely related different species are.

oh, i noticed that people who get cowpox don't get small pox. why is that? i guess, maybe, the cowpox is not as strong as small pox, but getting it makes your body somehow better at resisting smallpox. maybe i could convince a few brave souls to be injected with pus from cowpox blisters, and see if they too resist small pox. but that would be a combination of induction and deduction, and the christians have decided that that can't be the scientific method. guess i won't bother.

get it, nathan? someone sees observable facts without an explanation, then makes an explanation. this explanation (called a theory) is then tested by experimenting and collecting additional observed facts. this theory is used as an explanation for facts until some new, observed facts no longer support the theory. then a new explanation is thought of, or the original theory is revised, and this new explanation is tested. see? in the scientific method, no one is required to except a theory without experimental data to support the theory. this enables human beings to understand how the world operates with the best knowledge we have at the time. which is a fuck of a lot better than trying to figure out how to make the sun stop in the sky.

however, you are correct about one thing: science is easy to abuse. just tell people that it's a belief system that atheists have "faith" in, tell people that the dinosaurs lived with people in the garden of eden, and put a saddle on a triceratops. but please note, it tends to be your fellow christians who do the abusing. i guess, to reach the undecideds.

which leads me to nathan's last pearl of wisdom. millions of people claim to be mormons, and therefore christians. can i judge christianity by these millions? what about the christians following sun myung moon? might not be in the millions, but a lot of people anyway. which millions of christians should i judge the religion by? the ones who want to go back to forced pregnancy and childbirth? which sect got it right? i just want to know- who are the real christians, who are the fakes, and who gets to decide who is what? are you the decider? am i? is the pope? how 'bout pat robertson?

and what is the christological narrative? four conflicting accounts? is the part about jesus coming back to israel to give the jews one last chance to accept him a part of the christological narrative? is jesus appearing in north america part of the christological narrative? exactly how broad is this broad narrative? and who decides how broad it is? me? you? the pope? jim wallis? mitt romney? sun myung moon?

as for quoting old testament law: i'll make a deal with you: when conservative christians stop telling me that homosexuality is considered an abomination in leviticus, and that some prophet in the old testament told us god knows us in the womb and therefore abortion is murder, i'll stop with the shit about not eating shellfish and mixing fabrics. oh, and we can see how the laws were supposed to work- the punishment is usually right there in the text, and it usually involved throwing rocks at offenders until the offenders were dead. i'm sure the christians who you consider intelligent and rational because they just happen to believe the exact form of christianity you do are cool with this.

the right wingers' lord's prayer

in belated honor on the national day of prayer, which i will celebrate at about the time i get around to giving up my stuffed bunny.

our father, who art 100% straight,
american be thy birth certificate.
thy supreme court justice come,
limbaugh’s will be done,
in new york as well as san francisco.
let us take this day our service workers’ daily bread,
and forget that we trespassed, but let us bomb others for imagined trespasses.
and lead us not into socialized medicine,
but deliver us from michael moore.
for thine is the legislative, executive and judicial branches for as long as republicans can get the votes,
dittos.