Why Do Presidents Promote 'National Prayer Days'?

Obama - maybe praying for expeditious  passage of fast-track TPP.

The news that NONES - those without any religious affiliation - now make up 23 percent of the American populace (2nd only to evangelicals) ought to get everyone and especially our poltroon politicians to sit up and take notice. But likely as not they won't and they'll keep on peddling their bullshit including the 'National Day of Prayer" and other baloney.

One salon.com writer (Jeffrey Tayler) has recently exposed Obama's role in this pandering by observing:

"What concerns me now is what President Obama has just wrought to insult that most aggrieved (yet steadfastly growing) American minority, the advocates of reason, those who insist on evidence before accepting the truth of a given proposition, especially grand propositions about the origins of the universe and our species.  On Wednesday, President Obama marked the deeply pathetic traditional outrage to rationalism that is the National Day of Prayer (since 1988 the first Thursday of May) with a proclamation bearing the stark, yet somehow comically august, title “A PROCLAMATION.”  Ecumenically irrationalist, he urges us to pause and immerse ourselves in incantations addressed to a magical celestial despot, be He Judaic, Christian or, presumably, even Muslim, and thank Him for the fruits of our labor and for fortuitous events that have proved conducive to our contentment."

Tayler, not to be deterred, goes on, after referencing  "verbiage that sounds mostly like boilerplate pol-speak and preacher-talk":

"After a bland preface, Obama reminds us that we Americans “cherish” religious liberty at home, and exhorts us to “recommit to standing up for religious freedom around the world.”

But there is a contradiction inherent in Obama’s act of “proclaiming” from the White House on National Day of Prayer; namely, that such a day should not exist, but since it does, the president should not avail himself of it to militate for the cause of faith.  In 1952, in the depths of the Cold War confrontation with the atheist Soviet Union, Congress birthed the noisome basilisk of a law establishing the NDOP, which the Freedom From Religion Foundation valiantly (but unsuccessfully, of course) challenged in 2008 on (obvious) First Amendment grounds. 

 Fresh challenges should be mounted until the NDOP goes the way of Jim Crow.  To do my part in the fight for true secularism, I hereby contest the constitutionality of Obama’s issuance of Lord-positive declarations from his podium as the chief officer of our officially godless republic, if only because such declarations menace the mental health and intellectual development of children.  After all, in 1962 the Supreme Court decided against allowing prayer in public schools, so how is it that the president can use his office as a platform to call on us to beseech the “Almighty”? "

 Children might be exposed to such corrupting speech and suffer the same retardation religion has historically inflicted on science and education.  If nothing else, the White House Web page displaying the Proclamation should carry the warning “CONTAINS RELIGIOUS SPEECH — NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS.”

Terrific take down and well justified! We need LESS religious and superstitious bollocks in our political space and not more.  In a post five years ago I noted the efforts of the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. to get rid of the "National Day of Prayer" malarkey. Recall the group had sued the Bush and then the Obama administrations in an effort to block presidents from making their annual proclamations inviting Americans to "set aside a day for prayer or meditation". (Who do these presidents think they are, Mullahs, or maybe Ayatollahs? We don’t need any proclamations! If people want to pray some entity emanating from their own temporal lobes, fine – but don’t make a national deal out of it!)

At the time Anne Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, heralded one federal judge's (Crabb's)  decision as courageous, and further observed:

“It's an invasion of the freedom of conscience of Americans to have their president direct their prayer or tell them to pray".

Again, so true. What the hell are Americans? Toddlers who need nurse maids in the guise of Presidents to try to keep them in line? Indeed, the very efforts each year tell me the politicos of every stripe are trying to use religion as a quasi-Neoliberal force to keep Americans in check. The more prayer declarations, I guess, the less the chance Americans will go bonkers and riot because of the increasing inequality, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/piketty-capital-soaring-stock-markets.html


This is what we expect the Mullahs in Afghanistan or Iran to do. Crabb’s decision still  stands as exceptional and courageous since most judicial districts and judges in any capacity remain cowed by the religious zealots and their political well-wishers who still hold this country in their feverish, frenetic grip. Indeed, Jordan Sekulow of The American Center for Law and Justice (which filed an amicus brief at the time on behalf of 31 members of Congress), said he was "confident the decision would be overturned on appeal." (It was.)

"This is one district court judge," bellowed Sekulow, an attorney with the public interest law firm founded by evangelist Pat Robertson. "It's not like it's happening all over the country. In no way do we think this is the mainstream of judicial thinking in the United States."


He may well be correct. But the “consensus” or unified position of  all other federal or state justices – or even the Supreme Court- doesn’t make their appeals decision right or in concert with the Constitution. Very often, it is the voice crying in the judicial wilderness – like Judge Crabb’s – which embodies the true perception and ruling. Crabb warranted praise for having the mettle and spine to come out with her decision in a god-besotted nation where even presidents jump on the god bandwagon to score cheap political points. (And again, to distract the hoi polloi from their Neoliberal agendas, like the TPP - which will take even more jobs away. Here's a radical thought, Mr. Prez, how about less prayer mongering and more efforts to prevent future job loss - such as form NAFTA on steroids?)

But let's be honest, few presidents possess the backbone to reject the tide or refuse to play the game. Even presidents who are detested in all other aspects of the national tapestry – from politics to economic policies. Obama is hated as a “socialist” or Hitler clone by much of the country, but this will not stop him from playing the god card. Indeed, he may be convinced doing so confers an added layer of protection – though most of those in nut country (as JFK once put it) don’t accept he’s a real Christian any more than a legitimate citizen. (It's that middle name, "Hussein",  that betrays him!)


Do I have some overarching objection to prayer? No, not at all, even though it's a totally vacuous, empty activity more to the benefit of the pray-ER than its object of worship, or extended purposes. (The claim that prayers helped sick people in hospitals was proven to be fraudulent some years ago, after the papers were subjected to further statistical tests and analysis. In particular, the thresholds for confidence in the z-tests and t-tests were way too open-ended and the sample sizes either too small or too infected with selection bias).

The majority of "nones" and I simply say let people pray on their own, in private, and for their own benefit if they must- or feel a need to. We don't need the odious spectacle of presidents grandstanding on their special perches or platforms (in public places that are supposed to be free of religious influence). Thereby squandering time and capital on vacuous appeals for a national entreaty to the supernatural.  Obama, funny enough, is often compared to the character "Spock" from Star Trek, but this is something Spock would never do. In fact, Spock often poked fun at the crew's superstitious habits which happened when they were in trouble.

Is Obama really trying to use this prayer spiel to deflect attention from his odious, legacy-wrecking stance on the TPP? We don't know but the signs are not auspicious, especially when he tears into truly liberal Dems like Elizabeth Warren!

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/18/barack_obamas_shocking_tpp_paradox_why_the_gargantuan_trade_deal_undermines_everything_he_says_he_cares_about/

Balkanizing Business Via "Religious Freedom" - The Best Way To Destroy the Nation's Economy

Denver 850 KOA talk show host Ross Kaminsky is like too many millions of other lamebrains who just don't grasp the reasons why it would be sheer madness to balkanize American business and allow every religious business owner to run amuck - deciding which customers they will serve or not. Writing in the Sunday, April 5th Denver Post ('Do Liberals Really Care About Rights?') this asshole shows he really has no clue what rights mean or how they exist in the context of the Constitution, and especially in the private enterprise domain..

Kaminsky spends most of the first part of his op-column bellyaching how "the American left, their media allies and the gay rights movement" don't care about genuine rights because they haven't stood up for those of the wedding baker and photographers or pizza makers, who don't wish to serve gays".   But as usual, he has it all ass -backwards.

First, he mixes up free exercise of religion and freedom of association, with freedom to  trade and engage in commerce. No one told or educated this dummy that the two spheres cannot be connected in one to one correspondence, as I noted before. That is, if indeed one has received a license for public commercial trade all "freedom of association" goes out the window.  By the commerce laws of our land, including the commerce clause of our Constitution, the buyer is free to associate his business with any establishment BUT the establishment - as a cornerstone of business - cannot exclude buyers unless they display unbecoming conduct.  As I observed in my prior post on the Indiana RFRA:

The restaurateur or trader is afforded certain privileges (via licensing) to trade or provide services (such as food) in the public domain. Hence, his so called "freedom" is limited to do whatever he wants- and hence that can't include refusal of service unless there are extenuating circumstances, i.e. the customers enter drunk and disorderly. The trader doesn't have the latitude to refuse service on the basis of  skin color, the other person's own beliefs, sexual orientation, pro-choice stance or nationality.

This is also why American businesses like Apple, Starbucks have come out against this nonsense as well as the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in that state. Because they know the chaos that'd be wrought otherwise.  As salon.com author Jeffrey Tayler put it recently:

"Given that RFRAs don’t specify to which religion they pertain, if they do legalize discrimination, they will do so ecumenically, offering adherents of all denominations a chance to bully both rationalists and believers of other cults. "

Which is why the door would open to balkanized chaos. Pharmacies could refuse serving people they regarded as 'sinners'  - say denying birth control pills to young, single women or couples that they knew were living together but unmarried. Owners of home improvement stores could decide that they want no Jews around because after all, they "killed our Savior".   Orthodox Jews could even decide they no longer wish to serve the "unorthodox" and Catholics might decide they no longer wish to serve Protestants.  Private hospitals -operating as businesses - might decide that they will serve the needs of no declared atheists, or  known pro-choice folks or gays on their premises either. Restaurants would feel free to bar anyone who might wish to celebrate a known pagan festival at their venues.

What's wrong with this picture? If you can't see it, there's no point me trying to clarify it for you. And if you can't understand that the model of "everyone going to his own people to conduct business"  is a non-starter you have no business reading this blog. You need to stick to comic strips!   As Tayler humorously put it:

"Presumably followers of the Torah, say, could deny service to those who have performed any of thirty-nine types of activity forbidden on the Sabbath.  If so, beware — these include some pretty improbable things, like putting out fires, writing one’s name and erasing it, flaying a goat and separating threads.......Muslims, in turn, could deny service to Jews and Christians for having rejected the Prophet Muhammad"

Reductio ad absurdum, anyone? But you get the point - I hope. We'd have so much contretemps in trade and business practices that no uniform business basis or national -scale free enterprise would be feasible. It would be "I serve who I wish, when I wish and how". It is precisely for this reason Kaminsky ends up in a rabbit hole of unreason with no resolution because there can't be any. 

But this is why a free market implies total freedom on the part of choice for the buyer - not the seller! The seller is confined and limited not only by regulations (e.g. meat sellers can't vend month old rats with rabies and pass it off as veal) but by limits on his notions of free association. The latter may be fine for his garden parties but not with whom he does business, he must be open to ALL.

Second, Kaminsky makes the error of most right wingers by harping on "negative rights", e.g.

"Ours is uniquely a system of negative rights aimed at ensuring that Americans aren't subject to the whims of others"

Well, I guess unless  the whims emanate from a cartoon, tyrant deity in a magic book.  But the point is that a negative right implies that there are ‘x’ things the government can’t do to you, say take away your guns or deny you property ownership, disposal. By contrast, positive rights assert there are actual positive rights to which you are entitled, say under the Bill of Rights.

  Anyway, not content with his initial ignorant display he writes:

"Our constitution reiterates rights but does not grant them, rather it limits the power of government to infringe on them."

I will argue, however, that not only does a right to privacy certainly exist, but it underpins most other rights that inhere in the amendments to the Bill of Rights

For example, if the presumption to no right to privacy is valid, then the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights is meaningless. To restate that Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

But note, “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person possesses.

As to the limits on positive rights, Kaminsky clearly doesn't know where to look.  He, like other Reich nuts, needs to read Prof. Garry Wills (‘A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust of Government’, Simon & Schuster, 1999).  The chapter ‘Constitutional Myths’(p. 108). Wills notes that citizens alone possess rights, which neither the states nor the federal government share. Both the latter retain powers and prerogatives, but not rights. Hence, the subtext is that rights can only accrue to human individuals. And these are POSITIVE rights.

Hence, the term "state's rights" is bogus, in error. States have prerogatives, not rights, because states exist as governmental entities not a persons-individuals.

Wills goes on: 

"The Ninth Amendment states that the people retain unenumerated rights”

 "The people:" here refers to flesh and blood citizens, not to a bunch of contractual abstractions (states), or to corporations. .As Wills emphasizes and underscores (ibid.):


“The states have no natural rights. Their powers are artificial, not natural – they are things made by contract.”

Do we truly want to invoke specious arguments on "religious freedom" or "free association" to fracture and balkanize our economy to the extent Jews only frequent Jewish stores, Catholics go to Catholic stores, Muslims go to their own stores, and atheists to atheist stores?  I would hope to hell not because, frankly - given the fragile condition our economy remains in - we can't afford that level of stupidity and short-sightedness to appease some magic man in the skies only given credence in magic books.

As Tayler aptly puts it:
.
"Such are the farcical dilemmas and rank absurdities with which religion threatens to swamp us if it infests our judicial system and trumps secular law, as any RFRA legalizing faith-based discrimination would do.  The ghastly morass to which RFRAs will one day probably lead speaks to nothing but the ahistorical ignorance of their drafters.  The Founding Fathers never meant for religion to play a role in our affairs of state.  If the First Amendment isn’t proof enough of this, doubters might check out other things they wrote."

Bingo!

Is Jeffrey Tayler Correct in His "Atheist Manifesto"?

Jeffrey Tayler, an editor at The Atlantic, has proposed a provocative set of ways atheists can "stand up for themselves". He calls it a "credo for atheists", posed as a list of "concrete responses to faith-based affronts, to religious presumption, or what Hitchens called clerical bullying.'"   I tend to see it more as a kind of atheist manifesto.  As Mr. Tayler puts it:

"The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others."

Which is a point  to which I'd have no objection. In general, I'm quite willing to leave people to their own devices and beliefs - whether it's a claim that God is all around them and helping them, or a claim that vitamins are useless garbage- but then, if it is brought up in a public arena I feel quite free to add in my two cents, and provide a rigorous debate. Of course, some nitwits can't be debated because they lack the neurons to do so intelligently, such as those who insist the agnostic atheist "is an oxymoron like an honest thief". Uh no, Einstein, it is a legitimate variation of atheist, first defined by George Smith in his book, Atheism: The Case Against God, viz. p. 9:

The agnostic atheist maintains any supernatural realm is inherently unknowable by the human mind. And further - not only is the nature of any supernatural being unknowable, but the existence of any supernatural being is unknowable as well

So we leave out semi-educated dunderheads because their IQ and their knowledge base are too low to justify extended interaction.


Anyway, let's examine Tayler's list and see if it is possible for the rational person to find concordance:
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Herewith, some common religious pronouncements and how atheists can respond to them.

1.  “Let’s say grace!”

No, let’s not. When you’re seated at the family dinner table and a relative suggests clasping hands, lowering heads and thanking the Lord, say “No thanks. I’m an atheist. So I’ll opt out.” Nonbelievers have every right to object when being asked to take part in superstitious rituals; in fact, if children are present, they are morally obliged to do so. Courteously refusing to pray will set an example of rational behavior for the young, and contribute to furthering the atheist zeitgeist.
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I completely agree with this take, and I also concur it's the atheist's bounden duty to spoil the expectation of uniform compliance at a meal if a Xtian unthinkingly -or deliberately - demands all those present say grace. The atheist who complies because he doesn't wish to ruffle feathers is basically a wimp and not fit to use call himself an atheist. Maybe he is a pretend atheist, or poseur.  Of course, the refusal needs to be done courteously, no one in his right mind is going to say "F*ck off, bozo!" But to refuse to do it is to become an accomplice to the expectation that Christianity dominates the nation and all minorities must kowtow to its themes and preferences.


2.  “Religion is a personal matter. It’s not polite to bring it up.”

No, religion is fundamentally collective, and since time immemorial has served societies in fostering union, but also in inciting xenophobia and violence (especially against “unchaste” women and “impure” minorities), often on a mass scale. Nonbelievers need to further advance the cause of rationality by discussing it openly; doing so, as uncomfortable as it may be at times, will help puncture the aura of sanctity surrounding faith and expose it for what it is.
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Again, I agree. Religion  (and faith) receives too much passive gravitas by no one challenging its presumptions. One of these is the social script that we are all to behave as good little do -be's and never bring it up for debate or discussion. On the contrary, all religions need to be held open to critical review and examination, no matter what the setting....dinner parties, family gatherings, picnics, whatever.....if the opportunity for robust engagement presents itself.


3.  “You’re an atheist? I feel sorry for you.”

No, please rejoice for me. I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven.

Again, this is a Xtianoid fancy that needs to be fought vigorously. Most high and mighty Xtianoids believe they're superior to atheists because they've already been granted "a seat at the Lord's table" before they even croak.  But as is my wont, all I tell them is they have purchased an afterlife insurance policy that is probably useless. They've suppressed their will and subjugated their reason, as well as sacrificed felicity, all to gain a 'pass' when the lights go out - not realizing that when death arrives the lights really do go out. (Think of the last time you had general anesthesia in surgery).

If the Christian foolishly plays the Pascal wager game, I have an answer for that too. He may claim that I ought to play the wager because if I lose (i.e. cast aside my disbelief and assume afterlife reality exists) I win by gaining heaven, whereas if I maintain unbelief I lose my eternal "soul".  But Philosopher Michael Martin actually turns the originally proffered Pascalian choice on its head in arriving at an alternative view of the Wager, based on a negative deity he calls the “Perverse Master” which (he imagines) acts in consistent contradiction to the “just God” of orthodox Christians.

For example, rather than rewarding belief or faith in itself, especially if such belief is predicated on fear of torment, this entity punishes it for any supernatural being (including itself) while rewarding disbelief with eternal bliss. (Clearly this “PM” prefers not to have millions of “yes men” surrounding it, who’ve only espoused belief to save their sorry hides!)

Apart from this, what does that say about the presumed Christian deity? That it would accept a craven human’s false belief (to save his or her eternal ass) over a courageous atheist’s integrity? If indeed it does so (as the Christian debaters imply) it is nothing but a mere cosmic joke, a petty tyrant too insecure in its being to tolerate unbelief. Yet it would accept a “yes man” in a nano-second!

Pascal's wager is bunk because Pascal rigged the medieval dice and weighted them -or loaded them- in his favor to make the 'wager' come out the way he wanted, while foreclosing all other alternatives.

4.  “If you’re an atheist, life has no purpose.”


This is another load of  religious bull pockey  and really discloses the religionist for being an existential sissy. He is so bereft of balls and vision that he has to formulate an invisible Being to direct his every waking hour  toward some "higher purpose", as opposed to forging his own purpose. I always laugh at this sort of baloney, because it definitely shows how religion has eviscerated people's brains. The problem for those who believe this BS is that can't fathom in a million years how a person could independently craft and direct his life apart from some superimpose hypothetical plan. In many ways, they remind me of the mammoth Powerball winners who, though they win $200 million, state they plan to stay at their boring ass jobs to "have a purpose". They are too pathetic to use their imaginations (and money) to travel, see other cultures, or expand their learning and vision.



5.  “If you abolish religion, nothing will stop people from killing, raping and looting.”

No, killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc.
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Again, it's amazing how many believers still bring this idiocy up when they ought to know - if they're the least bit educated - that human morality evolved with human culture, it didn't start from religion.
This sort of communitarian moral order became endemic as agriculture subsumed hunter-gatherer culture and human communities  became more organized and interdependent. It was this interdependence that formed the basis of settled societal laws, legal systems . No supernatural law or commandment ordained specific moral or legal behavior. Instead it was the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others was directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you compromise your own.  This was embodied in Hammurabi's code in the words,

 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Which "Golden Rule" or ethic of reciprocity became the basis for nearly all ancient, post-Bronze Age ethics. Incredibly, many Christians actually think Christ spoke these words!  The point is, a coherent morality pre-existed the Bible and Christianity and hence the claim made by the Christian is patented malarkey. I'd be more worried about a Christian going ape shit and slaughtering dozens of people, because "my God told me to do it".

 

6.  “Nothing can equal the majesty of God and His creation.”

Humbug! The universe is majestic enough with its many wondrous sights and objects, i.e.:


Neither of which can be said to have been "created" other than by natural, physical means, i.e. electro-magnetic and gravitational forces acting in concert with basic thermodynamics to shape the final result.


The point? I can immediately access natural majesty just by taking my telescope out on a clear night and observing an object like the Orion Nebula or M13, the globular cluster in Hercules.  I don't need to invoke the phony construct of an invisible Being  to relate to the objects seen.

7.  “It is irrational to believe that the world came about without a creator.”

No, it is irrational to infer an invisible omnipotent being from what we see around us. The burden of proof lies on the one making supernatural claims,
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Again, Tayler is correct. Besides which a number of papers, research have been done (all the total embodiments of RATIONALITY) to show the cosmos incepted from a quantum vacuum.

Those interested can reference my detailed debunking of this argument here:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/09/debunking-anders-primary-cause-fantasy.html

One of the more hilarious analogies used by fundie dunderheads and dopes  to justify their faith in an unseen creator is: "if a plane is flying in the sky you can't see the pilot but you know someone is flying it". Uh, yeppers, Jethroe, but planes are PHYSICAL objects and pilots are physical (and biological) too in order to operate the aviation controls! BUT you're using a PHYSICAL analogy to justify faith in a supernatural entity, you dope!

8.  “I will pray for you to see the light.”

ROTFL!  

Typical palaver from supercilious, smug know nothings who mostly: 1) don't accept evolution, 2) think the Sun is "young" and 3) believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and 4) believe the fundie dope (Jason Lisle) who professes such BS is an "astrophysicist" .   If this constitutes the "light' they see I will happily remain beyond their "light"!


9.  “If you’re wrong about God, you go to hell. It’s safer to believe.”

Pascal’s wager survives even among people who have never heard the name of the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician.

And I already dealt with the wager earlier under No. 3. Again, expressing "faith" merely to save one's ass is the coward's way out. If belief isn't held sincerely but merely as an afterlife insurance policy one really doesn't deserve to call himself a man, certainly not an honorable man. He's a sniveling little skunk coward trying to use his "faith" as a ticket to a safe afterlife destination not realizing there's nothing that comes after you croak.  He's even more of sniveling skunk if he himself cowardly uses his faith shtick to try to browbeat others when he himself doesn't demonstrate the first principles of being a decent human being.



10.  “Religion is of great comfort to me, especially in times of loss. Too bad it isn’t for you.”

George Bernard Shaw noted that, “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
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Which I can't do much to exceed in terms of analogy. Besides, the existentialist isn't in need of "comfort". He doesn't regard the world as a giant 'comforter' to wrap himself in, but rather as an entity to be examined, scrutinized to explain by scientific principles. Loss, well it's to be expected. Life is a pattern of loss, and to believe one can surmount it or avoid it is magical thinking. Better to deal with it on the realistic plane than a magical, supernatural one which only allows false comfort.


11.  “As you age and face death, you will come to need religion.”

The truth, hard as it is for many to accept, is that with age comes a clearer, no nonsense grasp of reality and more likely becoming more atheistic, not less. By the time one is 70 he certainly ought to have put behind the things of a child, and that includes false beliefs in fairies, Santa Claus and everlasting lives - post death.

As Taylor aptly puts it:

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation.



12.  “You have no right to criticize my religious beliefs.”

Wrong. Such a declaration aims to suppress free speech and dialogue about a matter influential in almost every aspect of our societies.  No one has a right to make unsubstantiated assertions, or vouch for the truthfulness of unsubstantiated assertions on the basis of “sacred” texts, without expecting objections from thinking folk.

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Again, Tayler is totally correct. If the believer keeps the religious beliefs to him-herself, that's a different matter. But once they are publicly advanced then all bets are off, and it's game on. I will give as good I get, and I hope you are up to it. And that means a lot of rational criticism, unless you profess to be like ol' "Pastor Mike" who used to think he was above criticism  - and his KJV carried the solemn word of God (as opposed to the ravings of ancient madmen, lunatics and unethical copyists) Of course, one with the ethics and morality of a groveling pig (but who uses the fig leaf of faith and religion to disguise it) would do the things that would only make such a pig proud: i.e. like proposing a "National Atheist Registry" based on a sex offender registry!


13.  “Jesus was merciful.”

If he existed – and there is still, after centuries of searching, no proof that he did – he was at times a heartless prophet of doom for the sinners he supposedly loved, commanding those who failed to give comfort to the poor to “depart . . . ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
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Here, I have to correct Taylor as one must be totally aware of how words were often put into Yeshua's mouth by the unethical copyists I noted above. Ehrman in his book ‘Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why’, documents numerous copyist errors and multitudes involving deliberate mistranslation. As he observes (p. 209):

“The King James version is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus’ edition, which was based on a single twelfth century manuscript that is one of the worst that we now have available to us!”

Oxford scholar Geza Vermes (The Authentic Gospel Of Jesus) adds even more examples of how numerous passages represent words never uttered  by Yeshua, but put into his mouth. So  - I take most of the quotes that Tayler claims  are "vile" in the NT, to issue from the vile minds (and hands) of copyists and deliberate mistranslators, not from Yeshua himself. Having said that, the issue of Yeshua being "merciful" is still irrelevant - because the same passages that expose mistranslation, errors, also disclose he was no God-man. He was an ordinary flesh and blood human Rabbi, but with charisma and genuine heartfelt sympathy for fellow humans. So, yes, in this sense he was "merciful" but not in the sense of acting as a sacrificial deity (via crucifixion)  for the expiation of "sins" to secure "heaven" for one and all.


14.  ”You can’t prove there’s no God.”

Correct, at least epistemologically speaking. Reasonable atheists, “New” and old, would not argue with this. Richard Dawkins, for example, has told audiences that he is nominally an agnostic, since proving that something does not exist is impossible.
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But the crux of the matter, not brought out by Tayler  (at least under this header), is that it is always the positive claimant who is obliged to provide proof for his existence claim. Since the God-ist or theist is making the positive claim, i.e. adding to reality by postulating a supernatural mega-Being, it is HIS duty to prove its existence, not the atheist's to disprove it.

In the same way, if I postulate that invisible aliens from Tau Ceti inhabit the city of Manitou Springs, I have to prove it!  I would not be daft enough to think the good citizens of Manitou are obliged to disprove my claim!

It is unfathomable that Theists and religionists can't seem to get this into their thick noggins, but there it is. The problem always comes because before the debate is initialized the one making the actual claim isn't usually identified. This is extremely important to do, thus - as in a scholastic debate - you have to first identify which person speaks for the "affirmative" (the claimant) and who is speaking for the negative. Invariably it is always the atheist who take the negative, which means the proof must issue from the affirmative (existent claimant) side.


15.  “My religion is true for me.”

A soppy, solipsistic and juvenile declaration and cop-out bordering on the delusional and contradicting Christianity and Islam, neither of which recognize the other, and both of which espouse universalist pretensions. You will not find a scientist who will say, “quantum physics is true for me.”
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Again, Tayler is spot -on and I would only add here that we need to note the post-modern overtones of this type of statement, "true for me", which really says nothing of import.  The reason is that truth is only significant if universal. Thus, asserting the "Sun is extremely hot ionized plasma" is a universal truth in the context of its temperatures and substance relative to human experience. Same with asserting "the stars are distant objects".

While this sort of solipsistic statement is indeed vacuous, it's at least preferable to the fundie bigot or bully who loudly and brashly proclaims HIS truth must apply to all, and by god if you don't accept 'You is going to Hell, boy'!   Sadly, this 52-cards short of a full deck goober doesn't grasp that he's conflating a truth with his own twisted, personal belief.

16.  “Don’t take everything in the Bible literally.”

Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on “revealed truths”) literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.Pastor
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I will also add to this by saying it allows those who profess to take the good book literally, i.e. fundies, to weasel their way out of any debates by invoking "interpretation" and "hermeneutics" when convenient - e.g. trying to repel claims of biblical contradictions. But as I have repeatedly noted, they can't have their cake and eat it. If they therefore profess the bible is inerrant and that it must be taken literally, they can't also invoke "interpretation" because literalness is mutually exclusive with  textual analysis or hermeneutics.

That said, we can't expect extreme pseudo-religionists, especially argumentative fundies, to "play by the rules". Like robbers, brigands and other n'er do wells they will feel it their "right" to use their book any way they want to try to get the better of Materialists, atheists.

The problem for them is that we know what they're up to, and most intelligent observers do as well.

So, bottom line, with a few tweaks Tayler's points make a nice Atheist Manifesto, or at least a first approximation to one.