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Today’s Kinda Loaded Question – How Do You Read a Bible?
Posted by Dan Wall on September 4, 2015 at 4:00pm
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Today’s Kinda Loaded Question – How Do You Read a Bible?

I always wonder what it means to ‘read the Bible’. The question comes to mind when people tell others to read the Bible; when they say they’ve read the Bible, and when they ask others if they’ve read the Bible. These questions and comments often seem intended to pack an extra bit of punch; something of value always seems to rest on them. But the phrase ‘read the Bible’ could mean anything from reading random passages to a kind of epic cover-to-cover journey...

Views: 156
Tags: Bible, Context, Religion, reading


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 Comment by Loren Miller yesterday
If someone does set themselves the goal of reading the bible (a task I have never taken on myself and am not horribly interesting in), I would say the traditional "cover-to-cover" technique, but with one very important exception: the four canonical gospels.  Those should be read in PARALLEL.  Such an approach will highlight the lack of continuity, conflict and errors in reportage between them, which is one of the single biggest problems with the new testament by itself, never mind the bible as a whole.
I also heartily recommend The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, which has done a great deal of the groundwork in debunking that sad excuse for a holy book.
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 Comment by Christopher Cosgrove on Monday
I don't how anyone can read the bible in this day and age. You can understand how when most people couldn't read or have much else available as to why it was forced down their throats by priests, etc. and why it was seen as a work of literature. Today you have so much good writing to enjoy. How the hell you can wade through such a poorly written book is beyond me. To voluntarily read it just boggles the mind. And then if you analyse the contradictions as in the annotated sceptics site Skeptic's annotated bible it leaves you speechless. Other than an artifact from darker times it has little value for me.
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 Comment by Michael Penn on Saturday
I like the fact that believers have a dead person instantly in hell burning forever. One of my pet peeves and not even in their bible. Christianity has evoled into such a fear of death today that nobody is ever dead even when they die. Hitch and Robin Williams are said to be "burning in hell." Do they ever read the bible? The devil isn't in hell, he's going trough the earth like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour. Nobody is ruling over the firey kingdom because nobody is there! They don't get it.
The opposite is the ones in heaven. The cemetery service is over and someone says "he's up there in heaven looking down on us now." No he's not! They just lowered his body into the ground in a casket and covered him with dirt.
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 Comment by tom sarbeck on Saturday

Most modern believers have not read it....
Michael, I've tried to embarrass them with Matthew's saying to go into a closet and pray, or with Paul's saying to give up the things of a child.
They don't embarrass easily.
Is that because embarrassment requires something they don't have?
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 Comment by tom sarbeck on Saturday

Maybe more Believers SHOULD read the entire bible....
FT, that would be cruel and unusual punishment for people with brain power as low as theirs.
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 Comment by tom sarbeck on Saturday

The bible readers I've spoken with are impressed with all the gore and vengeance....
Gerard, where do you find those people?
One guy I know tells me I'll be on my knees to "what's his name". But he's had a stroke and there's no telling what part of the brain a stroke will damage. I don't reply.
More often I'm asked if I believe in god. I get out from under that by answering that but for 12 years in RC schools I might still believe in one or more gods. Most of them agree that RCism is no good.
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 Comment by Gerald Payne on Saturday
The bible readers I've spoken with are impressed with all the gore and vengeance, they seem to see it as justified that Lots wife was turned into a block of salt, rather like the people of Oz with the wizard.
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 Comment by Freethinker31 on Friday
Maybe more Believers SHOULD read the entire bible....Then they will see the many contradictions, and that will force some to rethink the whole religious thing, and become  Non Believers....:-)
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 Comment by Michael Penn on Friday
Most modern believers have not read it and only have the word of their preacher as to what it says. This guy probably isn't any smarter than anyone else either, but they believe him.
When studying for the ministry in any faith you have books and passages to read in order to complete the lessons. There are also many "plans" you can find on the Internet for how to read the bible in one year. These plans do not encourage reading cover to cover as one big story. Doing that would make you discard the book out of boredom.
I have studied and read the entire "holy bible" and believe me, it is full of holes. You can not satisfactorily explain this away, but apologists attempt to. The fact that the book is "holey" is in part why I am atheist today.
Back to the average believer. They haven't read the book and they tell you to. Strange.

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Today’s Kinda Loaded Question – How Do You Read a Bible?
Posted by Dan Wall on September 4, 2015 at 4:00pm
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Today’s Kinda Loaded Question – How Do You Read a Bible?

I always wonder what it means to ‘read the Bible’. The question comes to mind when people tell others to read the Bible; when they say they’ve read the Bible, and when they ask others if they’ve read the Bible. These questions and comments often seem intended to pack an extra bit of punch; something of value always seems to rest on them. But the phrase ‘read the Bible’ could mean anything from reading random passages to a kind of epic cover-to-cover journey...

Views: 158
Tags: Bible, Context, Religion, reading


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 Comment by tom sarbeck 2 hours ago

I was going to lay the blame of the states you lived in [ going crazy right after I left ]  squarely at your feet!
Kathy, you opened my eyes to a truth I hadn't seen. Thank you..
It was either my ex-wife or I, while we lived there, who kept them on the sane left.
I knew my ex-wife was talented.
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 Comment by Daniel W 18 hours ago
Mike your biblical scolarship slways impresses me.
 I think the bible should be read while the reader is stoned on drugs. Not being a drug user myself, it's difficult to mske a more specific suggestion. Maybe, the beatitudes while on extasy. Marijuana for Genesis and Exodus. Definitely, LSD for Revelations.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan 18 hours ago
I think you're right, Tom. That's why Nietzsche cast his thought beyond good and evil.
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 Comment by tom sarbeck 18 hours ago

(I wonder if [the RCC] were smart enough to realize that it's too full of contradictions and absurdities to place it center stage as the other nutjobs do.)
Bertold, I've told many people the RCC had almost 2K years to find ways around the biblical stuff that trips so many non-Catholic xians, such as the too-simple struggle between good and evil.
I more easily saw that those two words serve political purposes--those of people who would control others.
The words say nothing about reality; they describe what would-be controller like and dislike.
They are dangerous when people who need leaders follow blindly.
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 Comment by k.h. ky 18 hours ago
Thank you Bertold. Yes Tom. I was going to lay the blame of the states you lived in squarely at your feet! Lol
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 Comment by tom sarbeck 19 hours ago
k.h., you're right. I haven't been to ky since the middle 1960s.
But I'm puzzled. The three states my wife and I lived in before I came without her to California--Florida, Texas and Arizona in that order--were moderate when we lived there but went to the crazy right. 
Other states went crazy right too so the blame isn't all mine.
I'm happy to say California's legislature and statewide offices are in Demo hands.
Democrats can be corrupted by money but the 98% get some of the loot.
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 Comment by Gerald Payne yesterday
It seems that the more horrid the god the more subservient the worshipers. It's quite amazing how primitive people can be when deluded.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan yesterday
Kathy, you couldn't have described the ghastly suffocation of fundamentalism more vividly than by noting that the light broke through for you at a Catholic institution! While I agree with Bertrand Russell that the RCC is the most evil organization on the face of the earth, at least they don't take the Bible all that seriously. (I wonder if they were smart enough to realize that it's too full of contradictions and absurdities to place it center stage as the other nutjobs do.)
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 Comment by k.h. ky yesterday
Tom, you asked where you find the kind of people who focus on the most gruesome stories in the bible? You haven't been back to ky lately have you :)
 Having been raised RC you missed the full impact of the hellfire and damnation sermons that the fundies focus on. Attending a catholic college broke the spell for me. It was the first time l had ever heard anyone say they weren't certain of many things in the bible.
 Granted the things they are certain of l don't agree with.
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 Comment by Gerald Payne yesterday
We shall have to organise a proper bible class. Maybe we'll all get converted. 
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On the rhetoric of The Donald and the stupidest thing he’s ever said – so far
Posted by Alan Perlman on August 27, 2015 at 9:00pm
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“It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.”
- Sophocles

“Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.”
- Ben Franklin

Preface: On the surrealness of the Trump candidacy
The Trump candidacy is giving me a creepy reality-warping experience.  Some portion of my brain, the business-as-usual, pattern-seeking lobe, believes that a typical Presidential election is underway, as the candidates jockey for position and poll numbers, bloviating about jobs, pretending to be interested in the problems of “everyday Americans” (Hillary’s phrase; I guess I qualify, since I’m an American every day).
That part of my brain notes that this is an unusually interesting silly season (WHY can’t we take a lesson from the Brits and limit campaigns to six weeks?).
The Democrats, fixated on identity politics, will probably nominate a female candidate, even though she’s sleazy and morally compromised in a dozen ways.   The other party has an unusually large number of contenders, ranging from religious morons (most of them) to tough-guys selling their persona (Christie) to near- libertarians (Paul), something the party has not seen in a long time.
Which of the 15+ contenders will take on the woman, unite the Republican Party, and win the White House (or not)? 
The boring primary process will grind itself out and eventually produce two opponents, who will make unfulfillable promises to the voters.
After the election, either victor will use government to repay contributors and punish opponents, while ignoring the nation’s problems, as America slowly becomes a Third World country (in a number of measures, including incarceration rate, we already are).
But then, as the election season gets underway…a high-concept movie, a dark political satire, is released, much more entertaining than reality!  Much more!
In the movie it’s also Presidential election time, and into the above political mix with no clear leader, onto the political stage, debarking from his private plane, is a famous real-estate mogul, his name on everything he owns, with his own reality TV show. 
Colorful, unrehearsed, operatic in affect as opposed to the self-imposed behavioral limits of his opponents, he will say what no politician has dared to say.  People flock to him and his simplistic message.
Then it hits me, about once a day: this is not a movie.
_______________________

Not a speech
I watched The Donald’s performance here in NH earlier this week.
It was not a speech, but a rambling free-form monologue, full of theatrical shrugs, laugh lines, self-aggrandizement, and complaints about the state of the nation, with no solutions.
He has defined political rhetoric – down.  WAY down.  He wants to ban teleprompters.  They aren’t the problem.  It’s speakers with low energy and enthusiasm.  It's poorly-written speeches.  Plus, speakers are too time-pressed to memorize their speeches (though most of them develop a stump speech they can riff on).
They should memorize as much as possible, though. Memory was one of the basic rhetorical skills, going back to ancient Greece.
There’s nothing wrong with delivering a prepared script with the appropriate energy and emotion.  Actors do it all the time.  Reagan was superb at it.  Obama’s good too.
Cheap laughs
And – lesson for The Donald -- if you actually PLAN what you’re going to say, you might have real communication, instead of getting cheap laughs and cheers.  We’re all mad as hell and not going to take it any more.  Wow, what a thoughtful consensus!
As a libertarian, I cringe when I hear The Donald’s plans for our country.   Whether it’s a 2,000-mile wall or forced deportation of 12 million people, there’ll have to be a massive increase in government power.
Can’t we solve our problems with LESS government?  Here’s where Rand Paul needs to come out strong against such increases in government.  Trump is selling the Dictatorship of The Donald.  George Will calls it “Caesarism.”  That’s not what the Founders intended.
The myth of “greatness”
The content of Trump’s campaign is equally disturbing.
The promise to make America great again is dangerous.  It makes the national government much more powerful and important. When you predicate your policies on national greatness, you risk tipping people into a collective, “mythic” mode, a mob mentality that leads to irrational aggression and militarism, and much worse, in the pursuit of “greatness.”
The same goes for his talk of “victories.”  We haven’t had any victories for too long.  What are we, an NFL team?
Donald, do me a favor, and don’t make America great again.  Make it FREE again.
Government is already doing 100 things that aren’t in the Constitution, and you want to make it worse.
Instead, simplify the tax code.  Phase out the income tax and the vile IRS.  Get rid of mountains of unnecessary regulations.  End the drug war, the cause of endless misery and carnage.  Get the government out of education.  Downsize the military; we cannot afford world empire.  Eliminate all cabinet departments but State, Treasury, and Defense.  (Not so hard, is it, Rick Perry?)
The stupidest thing he’s said
I was already long gone after only a few moments of treacly, rabble-rousing performance art, but Trump’s literary criticism (is there anything he doesn’t know?) sealed the deal, with the stupidest thing he’s said (so far).
According to The Donald, the two greatest books ever are The Art of the Deal (#2, predictably) and the Bible (“nothing even comes close”).
I gagged at the pandering.   He’s obviously never read it and is unaware of what a mishmash of non-history, fantasy and primitive morality it is.  He’s just kissing the asses of the masses who revere the book, mainly because they’ve been told to.
That’s when I knew he’d say anything to ingratiate himself while he builds his political persona, piece by piece.   No wonder evangelicals love him.
I can’t wait to see how this political reality show plays out.  Will he simply fire the rest of the candidates?  He did say he wished the election could take place right away.
Hail, Caesar!

Views: 315
Tags: Bible, Trump, government, politics, religion


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 Comment by Michael Penn on August 29, 2015 at 1:00am
I keep thinking that the purpose of Trump in all of this is to gain clout. I don't think he will even be the Repub choice, but he will tell the one that is what he wants done and they will go with certain ideas. In the meantime we have to see what the public wants to follow the Donald on in order to know what this might be.
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 Comment by Glen Rosenberg on August 29, 2015 at 12:18am
His popularity is an indictment of the US. He is despicable on so many levels. He is an aspiring Hitler and quite the accomplished demagogue. He uses slander the way a good lawyer uses logic. Imperious,asinine and pontificating and altogether ingratiating if but only if you are a first class lowlife.
Trump was asked why he had flip-flopped on abortion. He answered that he knew a woman who had nearly decided to abort the fetus and instead decided to have the child. The child turned out splendidly. He gave no arguments apart from the aforementioned (if that can be construed as an argument) and of course the interviewer failed to follow up with Trump while i began to shout at the tv. I will refrain from giving a critique of Trump's position. I hope it is as transparently outrageous to others as it is to me.


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 Comment by Pat on August 28, 2015 at 3:32pm
Trying to winnow it down to the dumbest thing Trump has said, even thus far, is like trying to determine the most cornball, goofy, groan-out-loud joke Moe, Larry and Curly ever used.
Executioner: "You can either get beheaded or be burned at the stake."
Curly: "I'll take getting burned at the stake."
Moe: "Why?"
Curly: "A hot steak is better than a cold chop. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
What we heard - Trump to Jorge Ramos: "Go back to Univision."
What Latinos heard: "Go back to Mexico."
After the church shootings in Charleston: [African-American youth had reached} "a point where they've just about never done more poorly, there's no spirit, there’s killings on an hourly basis virtually in places like Baltimore and Chicago and many other places."
And many, many more. Trying to pick his sleaziest and stupidest remark is like a diabetic picking out a pound of treats treat in a candy store. It's all toxic to anyone with a functioning cerebrum.
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 Comment by Loren Miller on August 28, 2015 at 2:55pm
As someone said on The Diane Rehm Show this morning, "Trump knows how to do TV," and he does.  What I seriously doubt he knows how to do is govern or compromise, traits which are rare enough currently in the Legislative Branch as it is.  Can anyone begin to imagine the logjam come 21 January, 2017, should Trump somehow manage to get the top job?
The crap that Obama had to go through will look like a milk run by comparison.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan on August 27, 2015 at 9:57pm
Maybe he'll have his name legally changed to Jesus Christ. (Nah, he was only the SECOND-best purported human being ever.)
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On the rhetoric of The Donald and the stupidest thing he’s ever said – so far
Posted by Alan Perlman on August 27, 2015 at 9:00pm
View Blog
.


“It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.”
- Sophocles

“Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.”
- Ben Franklin

Preface: On the surrealness of the Trump candidacy
The Trump candidacy is giving me a creepy reality-warping experience.  Some portion of my brain, the business-as-usual, pattern-seeking lobe, believes that a typical Presidential election is underway, as the candidates jockey for position and poll numbers, bloviating about jobs, pretending to be interested in the problems of “everyday Americans” (Hillary’s phrase; I guess I qualify, since I’m an American every day).
That part of my brain notes that this is an unusually interesting silly season (WHY can’t we take a lesson from the Brits and limit campaigns to six weeks?).
The Democrats, fixated on identity politics, will probably nominate a female candidate, even though she’s sleazy and morally compromised in a dozen ways.   The other party has an unusually large number of contenders, ranging from religious morons (most of them) to tough-guys selling their persona (Christie) to near- libertarians (Paul), something the party has not seen in a long time.
Which of the 15+ contenders will take on the woman, unite the Republican Party, and win the White House (or not)? 
The boring primary process will grind itself out and eventually produce two opponents, who will make unfulfillable promises to the voters.
After the election, either victor will use government to repay contributors and punish opponents, while ignoring the nation’s problems, as America slowly becomes a Third World country (in a number of measures, including incarceration rate, we already are).
But then, as the election season gets underway…a high-concept movie, a dark political satire, is released, much more entertaining than reality!  Much more!
In the movie it’s also Presidential election time, and into the above political mix with no clear leader, onto the political stage, debarking from his private plane, is a famous real-estate mogul, his name on everything he owns, with his own reality TV show. 
Colorful, unrehearsed, operatic in affect as opposed to the self-imposed behavioral limits of his opponents, he will say what no politician has dared to say.  People flock to him and his simplistic message.
Then it hits me, about once a day: this is not a movie.
_______________________

Not a speech
I watched The Donald’s performance here in NH earlier this week.
It was not a speech, but a rambling free-form monologue, full of theatrical shrugs, laugh lines, self-aggrandizement, and complaints about the state of the nation, with no solutions.
He has defined political rhetoric – down.  WAY down.  He wants to ban teleprompters.  They aren’t the problem.  It’s speakers with low energy and enthusiasm.  It's poorly-written speeches.  Plus, speakers are too time-pressed to memorize their speeches (though most of them develop a stump speech they can riff on).
They should memorize as much as possible, though. Memory was one of the basic rhetorical skills, going back to ancient Greece.
There’s nothing wrong with delivering a prepared script with the appropriate energy and emotion.  Actors do it all the time.  Reagan was superb at it.  Obama’s good too.
Cheap laughs
And – lesson for The Donald -- if you actually PLAN what you’re going to say, you might have real communication, instead of getting cheap laughs and cheers.  We’re all mad as hell and not going to take it any more.  Wow, what a thoughtful consensus!
As a libertarian, I cringe when I hear The Donald’s plans for our country.   Whether it’s a 2,000-mile wall or forced deportation of 12 million people, there’ll have to be a massive increase in government power.
Can’t we solve our problems with LESS government?  Here’s where Rand Paul needs to come out strong against such increases in government.  Trump is selling the Dictatorship of The Donald.  George Will calls it “Caesarism.”  That’s not what the Founders intended.
The myth of “greatness”
The content of Trump’s campaign is equally disturbing.
The promise to make America great again is dangerous.  It makes the national government much more powerful and important. When you predicate your policies on national greatness, you risk tipping people into a collective, “mythic” mode, a mob mentality that leads to irrational aggression and militarism, and much worse, in the pursuit of “greatness.”
The same goes for his talk of “victories.”  We haven’t had any victories for too long.  What are we, an NFL team?
Donald, do me a favor, and don’t make America great again.  Make it FREE again.
Government is already doing 100 things that aren’t in the Constitution, and you want to make it worse.
Instead, simplify the tax code.  Phase out the income tax and the vile IRS.  Get rid of mountains of unnecessary regulations.  End the drug war, the cause of endless misery and carnage.  Get the government out of education.  Downsize the military; we cannot afford world empire.  Eliminate all cabinet departments but State, Treasury, and Defense.  (Not so hard, is it, Rick Perry?)
The stupidest thing he’s said
I was already long gone after only a few moments of treacly, rabble-rousing performance art, but Trump’s literary criticism (is there anything he doesn’t know?) sealed the deal, with the stupidest thing he’s said (so far).
According to The Donald, the two greatest books ever are The Art of the Deal (#2, predictably) and the Bible (“nothing even comes close”).
I gagged at the pandering.   He’s obviously never read it and is unaware of what a mishmash of non-history, fantasy and primitive morality it is.  He’s just kissing the asses of the masses who revere the book, mainly because they’ve been told to.
That’s when I knew he’d say anything to ingratiate himself while he builds his political persona, piece by piece.   No wonder evangelicals love him.
I can’t wait to see how this political reality show plays out.  Will he simply fire the rest of the candidates?  He did say he wished the election could take place right away.
Hail, Caesar!

Views: 316
Tags: Bible, Trump, government, politics, religion


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 Comment by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on August 31, 2015 at 10:49pm
Trump is selling the Dictatorship of The Donald.
Indeed.
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 Comment by Glen Rosenberg on August 31, 2015 at 10:48pm
Thanks for the warning Daniel. Life imitating art. Projectile vomit. Words can not convey...
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 Comment by Daniel W on August 31, 2015 at 10:18pm
Loren - giving the Trump presidency over to his vice president, means we'll have the Trumpette as president.
 And I think Dubya showed how low Americans are willing to sink themselves. No one is too vapid to be elected president in post-apoplectic America.
 Every generation seems to get its protest candidate. We got Reagan, we got Dubya, next... Dumbo. I hope not.
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 Comment by Daniel W on August 31, 2015 at 10:09pm
That might be the stupidist thing Trump has said.  Here's Trump in the perfect storm of stupid.  I cried after watching this, it hurt so bad.  Warning:  First watch with volume off, to see if you can handle this.  Then watch with volume on.  I'm not responsible if you can't take it.


Now give Sarah Playin a blue dress, and Don tRump a cigar, and you have the makings of something special..
 Comment by Loren Miller on August 31, 2015 at 9:40pm
Alan, Trump doesn't care.  I suspect that, at some level, he thinks he can run America like he runs his corporations.  In that regard, he is in for a massively rude awakening, especially as regards the Democratic party.  If Obama thought he faced obstructionism during his two terms, what he faced was a walk in the park compared with what The Donald will be confronted with.
Between his egotism and imperious nature, I would figure he might have until after the midterm elections (and subsequent loss of both the House and Senate) before impeachment proceedings would start on his sorry ass, possibly simultaneously against his VP (whoever s/he is) as well.  Maybe I'm being excessively optimistic, but I think the US has a limit on just how much blatant bullshit it will tolerate in the front office, especially after Dubya.
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on August 31, 2015 at 8:11pm
Reply to Michael,
So why has no member of the press, much less a member of his fawning audience, have the balls and common sense to ask just that?  Mr. Trump, you do realize that many of your superhero quick-fixes are unconstitutional and beyond the President's powers?

jay, you are so right.  I have long argued that freedom is too advanced a concept for most people.  It involves choices! And responsibility!  They would much rather be led, and clergy and politicians are all too eager to oblige.  The Founders were too optimistic.
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 Comment by Michael Penn on August 30, 2015 at 8:15am
Trump may have a lot of clout (and a big mouth) so to say, but if he ever was elected POTUS he would find out that there are many of his ideas that he could not do legally. Right now he is like the one in a western movie who comes out with a gun and fires it at someone's feet and says "dance." All the Repub candidates are dancing.
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 Comment by jay H on August 30, 2015 at 7:55am
I must say you've probably nailed it in a lot of ways.
It's too bad that his ideal are so shallow, because the one thing he has that is lacking in the field, is the willingness to say something and stick with it. Compare that with O'Malley who, when he was criticized for not being sufficiently politically correct in his wording, grovelled and apologized, instead of calling out those idiots for what they were. It's one thing to change your position if actual circumstances change or your facts prove to be wrong, but dancing around depending on which pressure group is screaming the loudest demonstrates unsuitability for the office. (of course the other extreme is to play the Hillary echo chamber game and assume that her voice is the only one to be heard).

Similarly the leading Repub candidates Bush, Cruz and Rubio are running scared, constantly 'restating' their positions

Rand's potential problem, even though he's not a full out libertarian, is that the US public doesn't even understand freedom, to most of them it's just a word used on the 4th of July. They still think it's important that the government coddle them and make sure that other people don't do things they don't like.
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on August 29, 2015 at 10:51am
Thanks to all commentators.  As a speechwriter/rhetorician, I heartily agree with Glen's analysis.  Trump is so outrageous -- and the similarities so disturbing --  as to merit a temporary suspension of Godwin's Law.  I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of one of Hitler's speeches with Trump's ramblings.  One would find the same themes, minus the humor and false disclaimers ("Don't get me wrong - I love the Jewish people.").
I loved all the helpful Bible comments.  My nomination:  Deuteronomy 25:11-12 -- if two men get into a fight and the wife of one, in an effort to help her husband, grabs the other guy's genitals, you must "cut off her hand.  Show no pity."  The Donald:  "I believe in a fair fight.  A wife has to keep her hands off the other guy's junk.  Period.  But I cherish women, I really do."

   
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 Comment by Pat on August 29, 2015 at 6:23am
While on the subject of Trump's inability to formulate a sentence without chewing on his foot wear, he recently stated his favorite book was the Bible. So, when asked what his favorite Bible verse was, he of course couldn't answer. However, many have come to his "rescue," via Twitter, at #TrumpBible. I got a chuckle out of these over morning coffee, and hope you do too.
Two examples. I'm sure you can find more. Here and here.
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On the rhetoric of The Donald and the stupidest thing he’s ever said – so far
Posted by Alan Perlman on August 27, 2015 at 9:00pm
View Blog
.


“It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.”
- Sophocles

“Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.”
- Ben Franklin

Preface: On the surrealness of the Trump candidacy
The Trump candidacy is giving me a creepy reality-warping experience.  Some portion of my brain, the business-as-usual, pattern-seeking lobe, believes that a typical Presidential election is underway, as the candidates jockey for position and poll numbers, bloviating about jobs, pretending to be interested in the problems of “everyday Americans” (Hillary’s phrase; I guess I qualify, since I’m an American every day).
That part of my brain notes that this is an unusually interesting silly season (WHY can’t we take a lesson from the Brits and limit campaigns to six weeks?).
The Democrats, fixated on identity politics, will probably nominate a female candidate, even though she’s sleazy and morally compromised in a dozen ways.   The other party has an unusually large number of contenders, ranging from religious morons (most of them) to tough-guys selling their persona (Christie) to near- libertarians (Paul), something the party has not seen in a long time.
Which of the 15+ contenders will take on the woman, unite the Republican Party, and win the White House (or not)? 
The boring primary process will grind itself out and eventually produce two opponents, who will make unfulfillable promises to the voters.
After the election, either victor will use government to repay contributors and punish opponents, while ignoring the nation’s problems, as America slowly becomes a Third World country (in a number of measures, including incarceration rate, we already are).
But then, as the election season gets underway…a high-concept movie, a dark political satire, is released, much more entertaining than reality!  Much more!
In the movie it’s also Presidential election time, and into the above political mix with no clear leader, onto the political stage, debarking from his private plane, is a famous real-estate mogul, his name on everything he owns, with his own reality TV show. 
Colorful, unrehearsed, operatic in affect as opposed to the self-imposed behavioral limits of his opponents, he will say what no politician has dared to say.  People flock to him and his simplistic message.
Then it hits me, about once a day: this is not a movie.
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Not a speech
I watched The Donald’s performance here in NH earlier this week.
It was not a speech, but a rambling free-form monologue, full of theatrical shrugs, laugh lines, self-aggrandizement, and complaints about the state of the nation, with no solutions.
He has defined political rhetoric – down.  WAY down.  He wants to ban teleprompters.  They aren’t the problem.  It’s speakers with low energy and enthusiasm.  It's poorly-written speeches.  Plus, speakers are too time-pressed to memorize their speeches (though most of them develop a stump speech they can riff on).
They should memorize as much as possible, though. Memory was one of the basic rhetorical skills, going back to ancient Greece.
There’s nothing wrong with delivering a prepared script with the appropriate energy and emotion.  Actors do it all the time.  Reagan was superb at it.  Obama’s good too.
Cheap laughs
And – lesson for The Donald -- if you actually PLAN what you’re going to say, you might have real communication, instead of getting cheap laughs and cheers.  We’re all mad as hell and not going to take it any more.  Wow, what a thoughtful consensus!
As a libertarian, I cringe when I hear The Donald’s plans for our country.   Whether it’s a 2,000-mile wall or forced deportation of 12 million people, there’ll have to be a massive increase in government power.
Can’t we solve our problems with LESS government?  Here’s where Rand Paul needs to come out strong against such increases in government.  Trump is selling the Dictatorship of The Donald.  George Will calls it “Caesarism.”  That’s not what the Founders intended.
The myth of “greatness”
The content of Trump’s campaign is equally disturbing.
The promise to make America great again is dangerous.  It makes the national government much more powerful and important. When you predicate your policies on national greatness, you risk tipping people into a collective, “mythic” mode, a mob mentality that leads to irrational aggression and militarism, and much worse, in the pursuit of “greatness.”
The same goes for his talk of “victories.”  We haven’t had any victories for too long.  What are we, an NFL team?
Donald, do me a favor, and don’t make America great again.  Make it FREE again.
Government is already doing 100 things that aren’t in the Constitution, and you want to make it worse.
Instead, simplify the tax code.  Phase out the income tax and the vile IRS.  Get rid of mountains of unnecessary regulations.  End the drug war, the cause of endless misery and carnage.  Get the government out of education.  Downsize the military; we cannot afford world empire.  Eliminate all cabinet departments but State, Treasury, and Defense.  (Not so hard, is it, Rick Perry?)
The stupidest thing he’s said
I was already long gone after only a few moments of treacly, rabble-rousing performance art, but Trump’s literary criticism (is there anything he doesn’t know?) sealed the deal, with the stupidest thing he’s said (so far).
According to The Donald, the two greatest books ever are The Art of the Deal (#2, predictably) and the Bible (“nothing even comes close”).
I gagged at the pandering.   He’s obviously never read it and is unaware of what a mishmash of non-history, fantasy and primitive morality it is.  He’s just kissing the asses of the masses who revere the book, mainly because they’ve been told to.
That’s when I knew he’d say anything to ingratiate himself while he builds his political persona, piece by piece.   No wonder evangelicals love him.
I can’t wait to see how this political reality show plays out.  Will he simply fire the rest of the candidates?  He did say he wished the election could take place right away.
Hail, Caesar!

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Tags: Bible, Trump, government, politics, religion


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 Comment by Alan Perlman 6 hours ago
Thanks, Bertold.  As a longtime PR person, I'm well aware of how politicians trade in images and feelings.  I even recognize that quote - saw it years ago.  GOP has no monopoly on this crap. Remember when Obama was elected, he said that "this is the moment when the seas stopped rising."  Who the f does he think he is, Moses? 
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan 19 hours ago
Heather Cox Richardson wrote an excellent article for Slate outlining the history of GOP strategy that has culminated in the candidacy of Trump.
How did this monster get created? The decades of GOP lies that brought us Donald Trump, Republican front-runner
 Donald Trump did not happen overnight. He's the product of a dangerous, cynical GOP strategy that dates back years
She quotes a Nixon media adviser: “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we… seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable….”

The Nixon campaign hired a young TV producer, Roger Ailes (name ring a bell?) who proceeded to stage totally controlled town hall meetings. The rest is sad history.


Ailes arranged applause, the set, Nixon’s answers, the camera angles, the crowd cheering the candidate, the careful shading of Nixon’s makeup. “Let’s face it,” he said. “A lot of people think Nixon is dull. Think he’s a bore, a pain in the ass.” But carefully managed television could “make them forget all that.”
It did. And so, after 1968, Republicans increasingly relied on their apocalyptic redemption story. America was in terrible trouble, because grasping minorities, women and workers wanted government policies that would suck tax dollars from hardworking white people. Democrats backed those policies because they would do anything to buy votes. It was up to Republicans to restore America to its former glory. In a time of dramatic economic and social upheaval, this story reassured voters left behind in the new conditions that the answers to their problems were simple, and that coming up with those answers required no great education or thought. It simply required the right principles.

. . . To avoid niggling fact-checkers, in 1987, President Reagan’s FCC abandoned the Fairness Doctrine, a decision that meant that public broadcasters were no longer required to provide their audience with opposing viewpoints. Within a year, talk radio had taken off, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh hammering home the vision of a nation gone to ruin, awaiting redemption from the latest Movement Conservative candidate. In 1992, Limbaugh began to broadcast a television show, produced by Roger Ailes, to take the story to viewers. By 1994, the show was carried by 225 television stations. Two years later, Ailes would become the CEO of a new media channel, Fox News, which used the same formula—albeit updated—that Ailes had used to package Nixon’s story almost 30 years before.


By the time of the George W. Bush administration, the Movement Conservatives had erased the line between image and reality. In 2004, a senior adviser to Bush famously dismissed “the reality-based community” to journalist Ron Suskind. Gone were the days when politicians could find solutions based on their observations of the careful study of discernible reality. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. When we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do,” he said.

. . . . . . Perhaps most disturbing is that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Scott Walker and surgeon Ben Carson, Republican candidates all, have taken to attributing false quotations to the Founding Fathers. They deny the reality of America’s founding principles and claim instead that America was conceived in the image that they have constructed, the same image that has given us Donald Trump as a leading candidate for the presidency.
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on Monday
Reply to Loren...Your scenario of a Trump Presidency sounds gruesome for the republic but is probably correct.   I must regretfully disagree with your last sentence:  if he's even elected, it proves that even after Dubya, there are no limits, and the American sheeple will once again fall for a clown, albeit of a different sort ("fool me once...").
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on September 2, 2015 at 9:25pm
Reply to Grinning Cat: ostracism, scapegoating, and ethnic cleansing are as old as humanity itself.  We just keep getting better at it and never unlearn it. The Nazis were the best, tho Mao and Stalin killed more.  But the Nazis had better weapons and leather.
Now, does anyone want to compare contemporary America with 1920s Weimar: dithering politicians, debased currency, inflation, debt, economic stagnation, problems ignored, decadence, anomie? 
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 Comment by Daniel W on September 2, 2015 at 9:10am
It's ironic that christian conservatives are deserting their biggest panderers - Cruz, Rubio, Jindahl, Carson, Santorum - for a known adulter and serisl marryer eho can't wuote the bible. In the case of the first 4, it could be racism and that anti-immigrant thing. With Santorun, maybe it's the long tradition of protestants and catholics hating each other except when there's no one else to choose from. Personally, I would vote for a one-eyed purple Zoroastrian Aztec Buddhist, if they had a record to stand on, a temperament towards intelligence and information / evidence based policy, and dome good solid concepts.
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on September 1, 2015 at 10:30pm
I got through 10:51 of the video before my gag reflex kicked in.  OF COURSE the ignorant fuck can''t cite his favorite Bible verse.  He hasn't read it!   "Too personal" -- what BS!  Every real Bible lover has a favorite verse (usually many) that they're all too willing to share with you.
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 Comment by Alan Perlman on September 1, 2015 at 5:45pm
Glad to see the emotions are just as strong among skeptics as among the Trumpoids.  We too are angry -- to see America's blame-the-dirty-foreigners malady rear its ugly head yet again.  We are also angry at the substitution of rabid emotion for political discourse.   We are angry that the masses do not see demagoguery for what it is.  We are angry to see the bar for leadership of our country lowered even farther. 
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 Comment by Daniel W on September 1, 2015 at 3:00pm
It's temporarily not politically correct in many circles, to vilify African Americans or gays. Someone is needed, and Mexicans - I mean Immigrants - are a momentarily convenient scapegoat for the demogogically inclined. It least Cruz, Rubio, and Bush (via Hispanic wife and hunky son George P Bush) must all be uncomfortable about the hispanic-bashing, and Jindahl, and the others need to be very careful how they tread re: Immigrant bashing. Of course, being Cuban-American, two of them can look down their noses in private about Mexicans. Two of Trump's three wives are also immigrants, but being blonde white Eastern Europeans - they dont count.
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 Comment by Grinning Cat on September 1, 2015 at 2:03pm

It's so fuckin' miraculous that no one ever thought before to scapegoat one group and order their purging. It cures all that ails a nation, no?
Despite the popular perception of Godwin's Law, comparisons to the Third Reich occasionally are quite appropriate.

we have to seriously contend with the hatred from which they spring and the hatred that they provoke. We have to seriously understand that a large contingent of the Republican Party is no longer hiding its racist anger.
Exactly!
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan on September 1, 2015 at 8:51am
Thanks for sharing the video, Daniel (I think; keeping breakfast down will be a daunting task.) I'm oozing with sympathy for BOTH Donald and Sarah over all those nasty "personal gotcha questions" all those nasty "radical activist" press people ask them.

Lee Papa (aka The Rude Pundit - motto: Proudly lowering the level of political discourse) has weighed in on the Donald. He noted that if you go to Donald's Website, under the Issues section there's only one item: immigration reform. And the "research" backing his "plan" repeatedly cites "conservative news port-a-potty" Breitbart.

That's it. And if you read it, you'll see that Trump fully believes (or doesn't - it's hard to tell what shit he actually believes and what shit is just expediency for the moment) that "solving" the problem of undocumented workers will solve pretty much every other problem in the country, from terrorism to poverty. It's so fuckin' miraculous that no one ever thought before to scapegoat one group and order their purging. It cures all that ails a nation, no?
. . . Sure, sure, we can pretend that these are serious proposals. But if we do, we have to seriously contend with the hatred from which they spring and the hatred that they provoke. We have to seriously understand that a large contingent of the Republican Party is no longer hiding its racist anger. Instead, it's out in the open. We thought that would make it less frightening, if we could see its face and hear its awful words. It doesn't.
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Pope Makes Annulment of Marriages Faster, Easier and Cheaper
Posted by John Jubinsky on September 8, 2015 at 1:22pm in ORIGINS: UNIVERSE, LIFE, HUMANKIND, AND DARWIN
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The Pope announced today that as of December 8, 2015 the annulment of marriages by the Catholic Church will be faster, easier and cheaper. Per the article:

The three main changes announced on Tuesday are:
• Eliminating a second review by a cleric before a marriage can be nullified.


• Giving bishops the ability to fast-track and grant the annulments themselves in certain circumstances -- for example, when spousal abuse or an extramarital affair has occurred.
• The process should be free, except for a nominal fee for administrative costs, and should be completed within 45 days.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/07/living/pope-francis-annulments-preview/
Tags: Catholic Church, Jubinsky, Marriage



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 Permalink Reply by Joseph P 14 hours ago

This is one of those screwed up things with Catholic hierarchy, isn't it?  Divorce is evil, but annulments are fine and dandy.  This might be a backhanded method of dealing with the reality of divorce being more and more accepted throughout the world ... not that the Catholic church has ever been particularly good at dealing with reality.
 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 14 hours ago

Sounds like manner from heaven.
 Permalink Reply by Pat 14 hours ago
Hmmmm. I can't help but wonder how much the "nominal fee" is. Got to be a buck or two in it for the RCC, or JC wouldn't approve.
 Permalink Reply by Joseph P 14 hours ago

“... or JC Peter wouldn't approve.”

Wasn't Peter the first pope, according to church mythology?
 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 8 hours ago

Didn't Peter take over from JC? Or wasn't that a church?
 Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo 12 hours ago

I know why the church and marriage licenses began, but for the life of me, I see no reason for either religion or the public to be involved in such rituals and regulations.
The most interesting wedding ceremony is when the bride and groom pick a place because of their feeling about the spot and invite loved ones to share the moment. 
 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 8 hours ago

You are right Joan. Why should a religious organisation require or want anything to do with marriage? Bert had it right when he said that they cause a problem and then try and sell you a cure. As Pat mused, I wonder the price of the nominal fee.

http://atheistnexus.org/group/originsuniverselifehumankindanddarwin/forum/topics/pope-makes-annulment-of-marriages-cheaped-faster-and-easier?commentId=2182797%3AComment%3A2642691&xg_source=activity&groupId=2182797%3AGroup%3A109911


















John Mackay, Australian Creationist Loon, with a Creation Museum, named, "Jurassic Ark".
Posted by Dyslexic's DOG on September 4, 2015 at 2:44am in Introductions
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Australia has one as well.
So we cannot just scoff at America being a land of stupid, naive drongos.
As we have John Mackay taking over from Ken Ham on our territory and he pretends to know about fossils.
Like all Creationists, he pretends that there are no intermediate fossils, completely ignoring the fact that we have more than enough intermediate fossils to link birds to dinosaurs and mammals to fish and humans to fish.
In the last 50 years there has been an exponential growth in intermediate fossils found.
All of which John Mackay and Ken Ham deny, arrogantly.

It is so obvious that both Ken Ham and John Mackay are blatant liars.
Because publishing lies and selling nonsense to suckers is big business, even in the Bible belt of Queensland, Australia.
Though his Jurassic Ark, will never reach the scale of the "Creation Museum".
But, the sad thing is: They have schools visiting their nonsense crusades.
The Queensland government is too stupid to ban schools from using the Jurassic Ark as an educational source.
So it appears that we also have Theistic Loons infiltrating our state governments, but, our Prime Minister (Tony Abbot) is also a religious bigot, such as his dislike of same sex marriage, which is faith based, not knowledge based.  Yet his own sister is openly gay.
So America, you are not alone at being a stupidly naive religious nation.
Australia is not that far behind.
We have our own ridiculous GOP like bigoted conservative politicians in the Liberal Party.

Though the Jurassic Ark, is a festering boil on the intellect of Queensland.
If the Queensland government had any rational sense, it would lance that boil.
John Mackay's video is full of idiotic fallacies.
Mackay is obvious a blatant liar, making money from such lies.

Creation Research is obviously the world's most Insanely Stupid Research Organization. They really don't do any genuine scientific research.

Tags: Ark, Creation, John, Jurassic, Mackay, Queensland, Research



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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Friday

Here is John Mackay pretending he knows much more than he does.
When in fact, he knows so little that he demonstrates in this debate with Richard Dawkins that he is an idiotic  Megalomaniac.

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 Permalink Reply by Christopher Cosgrove on Monday

Wow - what a remarkably stupid man. Couldn't get past 6 minutes. And he has a degree? The level of cognitive dissonance is remarkable.
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG yesterday

Yes, he apparently has a Masters Degree in Cognitive Dissonance! 

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 Permalink Reply by Christopher Cosgrove on Friday

Reminds me of the whatsapp message I have "Educate don't indoctrinate" - no desire to educate at all. Amazing the hoops you have to jump through to when a geologist sticks to this line of thought. And the fact that in this day and age you send stuff through the mail and use cassette tapes pretty much says it all.
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Friday

Yes Christopher, they are archaic and banal.
It's so obvious that he has found telling lies more profitable than teaching or researching genuine knowledge.
Others who have denied their geological training, are Andrew Snelling who works for the American creationists movement as a Peer Reviewer for journals in the Discovery Institute, so creationism now has peer review documents.
John Mackay is not really qualified as a palaeontologist, a geologist is not a palaeontologist.
So he is actually pushing nonsense he is not qualified.
So like Andrew Snelling, they are both arguing our of their field, so they have no authority.

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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Friday

Notice John Mackay extensively uses fallacious, equivocation fallacies including quote mining to make his stupid points.
Essentially he is a con artist.
:-D~
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Monday

Here is a debate of Johh Mackay vs John Polkinghorne (A Catholic Theologian and evolutionist).
Note the fallacious arguments of Mackay, who has filled Ken Ham's shoes in Australia, since Ken migrated to the U.S.
He is constantly exalting his own importance (I always tell students), and quote mining scientists to give the wrong impression of their ideas.
So, listening to Mackay is no different to listening to Ken Ham.
Same fallacious, circular reasoning.

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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W on Monday

In the movie, "Jurassic Park" and the movie "Jurassic World", the assholes got eaten by dinosaurs.  And of course some of the nonessential characters.

Too bad that won't happen in "Jurassic Ark".  Leave out the ""P" and everything changes.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne on Monday

These things are OK in an amusement park but they shouldn't be allowed educational status. I here there are Christian fundamentalists in Africa at the moment looking for extant dinosaurs!
Is it Walt Disney or Walter Mittie?
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 4 hours ago

Couldn't resist including this classic from Thunderf00t.
It's well worth watching, just for the scientific anti-creationist knowledge alone.
Every child old enough to laugh at human stupidity should watch this set of debunking creationist arguments.

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Christian ethics and mental sewage.
Posted by Gerald Payne on September 7, 2015 at 10:24am in Ethics & Morals
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After Constantine had advised that it was wiser for Christians not to be taught in the Greek traditions it was all but over for Christian education and all but ready for Christian ignorance. The thought that a system of values, that regards ignorance as its highest achievement is a template for a universal moral code is breathtaking. Christians simply can’t reason without reference to dogma, making their conclusions all but worthless in liberal democracies. The thought that a witch doctor’s advice was an essential part of a 21st century Indian reservation’s ethical logo would be laughed at in the halls of power. Yet when it comes to their own discredited witch-doctors ideas they have no problem beholding the advice as the epitome of wisdom.
 Far from appearing an ethically superior worldview, Christianity’s obsession with sexual activities and other people’s life-choices gives it the look of a perverted washed up mind-set, totally out of touch with a civilisation that’s increasingly oblivious to its message. Having no recourse to moral consequences religious thinking is full of warnings and taboos yet bereft of the moral conscience needed to make ethical judgments; the idea that the church has a contribution to make to the moral debate is a joke.
 Moral command ethics chains the human evaluation of the church to a population of licensees, allowed, but not free, to act according to their conscience. If people’s lawful idiosyncratic preferences differ from a handful of prescribed dogmas, there deemed ‘’theologically’’ unlawful, and worthy of punishments society wouldn’t feel justified in administering to a mass murderer.
 With shattering world events like the Asian tsunami seemingly insignificant when compared to gay marriage, or masturbation, and contraception considered more dangerous than the aids virus, the idea of moral law is a dead duck. Such deranged values can never even masquerade as an ethical worldview.
 In reality the problem lies with trying to impose a system of archaic judgmental restrictions on law abiding citizens who simply have no interest in them. Christian ethics is two thousand years out of date.
 I advise that sin is the most ethically pure life-style available.
Tags: Happiness, hope



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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan yesterday


>the idea that the church has a contribution to make to the moral debate is a joke.
So true Gerald!
Anyone who takes a moral stance against abortion AND contraception can't even make a claim to sanity, much less morality. They've proven this over and over, such as by teaching the flock that condoms don't stop the spread of the AIDS virus, or the bishop in Minnesota who spend $800K to fight the marriage equality law there as he was coercing priests into having sex with him. Hypocrisy is an art form to these people. And they crown it these days by claiming THEY'RE victims of persecution. It's hard to have much sympathy for people dim enough to fall for their line of crap.
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 Permalink Reply by Plinius yesterday

Why sympathise with hypocrits? I was raised by such people; they believed themselves to be moral and better than anyone else and they never understood the damage they did to their children. I remember their talks against any personal freedom, abortion and contraception - the horrible women clad in persianer furcoats. Don't ask how that fur is made...
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn yesterday

Christians cannot reason without reference to dogma. A slight re-work on your words there and very true. I'm always being asked which philosophical system or "teacher" that I follow. The very question shows that a theist is doing the asking and that their narrow views do not agree with mine. I don't care about Socrates or Plato, or about "teachers" of logic. If a person can reason without dogma entering in he can be true to science and himself. The absurdity that we are following someone for our logic and morals is extreme ignorance at its best. Time for a new model.
Recently I discovered the Genesis Science Channel. Not surprisingly they are using the ideas in Genesis to try and counter evolution. With not much real science here, they go round and round and round. Their best science idea is that nothing has been observed in the lab on evolution. They seem too dumb to understand that if evolution was declared wrong tomorrow it doesn't mean that "god did it." Christian answers are so very cut and dried. Everything is yes or no. I find that strange because we live in an era where nobody will admit what the evidence shows on anything. Racists, murderers, and even murdering cops claim they "didn't do it" when the evidence has been filmed. In every situation what you just saw did not happen and yet, they want you to believe religious bullshit!
Religion and ethics just do not mix, so once again it's time for a new model.

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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 10 hours ago

Didn't you know, gay sex and masturbation causes tsunamis? So of course they are more important moral dilemmas.  :-D~

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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan 9 hours ago

While we're on the topic of mental sewage, this has been posted here before, but the dire warning bears repeating:
Neither plague, nor war, nor small-pox have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism.
--Dr. John Kellogg
[Of course in addition to being batshit crazy, he was wrong, as the "sin: (sic) of Onan" was actually not masturbation but early withdrawal.]
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn 8 hours ago

Correctly said, Bertold. Somehow to this day the church world wants to politely think Onan was a jackoff. Apparently John Kellogg believed it and around that time we had doctors into circumcising the male to prevent masturbation. They pushed ideas of cleanliness but this medical butchery was supposed to cure masturbation and acne. We were appalled as a nation that our children might play with themselves.
I got a lot of laughs one day and didn't know exactly why. Too young I guess. My cousin was inside the house and I wanted her to come out and play. She didn't want to. In front of several adults I announced that if she didn't come out to play I was "going to go play with myself."  Years later I finally got it.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 7 hours ago

What with this Kim woman and the Pope decreeing all sorts of solutions to non existent problems, I get the impression of a kind of computer virus with clothes on.
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan 7 hours ago

I hope to hell you're not suggesting Kim should remove her clothes! That might make me gay(er).
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan 7 hours ago

The Catholics teach second-graders how to go to confession by giving them a list of potential sins, the Examination of Conscience. Pre-pubescent children are taught to scour through the list and memorize any sins they've actually committed to confess to the priest. By far the most captivating sin on the list is I touched myself in impure places. How can supposedly normal adults teach this shit to anyone, let alone children, with a straight face? There's no way in hell all those intellectual Jesuits are stupid enough to believe their own fairy tales.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 7 hours ago

As you say Bert their probably racking their theological brains to bring it all out of a demonic Noddy land and into reality. Without going blind!
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne 7 hours ago

Let's be quite honest about it, if someone doesn't enjoy masturbation they have a problem with their loins not their principles.
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 3 hours ago

True Bertold, Onan simply refused to give his brother's wife a child.  That had nothing to do with masturbation.  His seed fell to the ground instead of in her when he withdrew.
 Thus sparking the Catholic song: "Every Sperm Is Sacred" by Monty Python.

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Make a Statement: Quit--Kim Woods Jailed
Posted by Donald R Barbera on September 3, 2015 at 10:34pm in Introductions
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I was doing something important, when I got one of those news posts that made me stop my important task (finishing off my bottle of wine.) and take no
tice. Those Right Wing idiots are now crying about the “Criminalization of Christianity” after a federal judge jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
If Kim can’t do the job she was hired to do, then she should quit. Only politicians give a shit about Kim and once they figure out that Kim’s jailing won’t make a difference, they’ll find another windmill to joust. Two pharmacists also refused to issue birth control and the morning after pill because of their religious beliefs. This is still a democracy and people are allowed their opinion despite differences in belief and behavior.
Employees serve at the behest of their employer, not the other way around. Those who feel that strongly about a particular issue should step down or quit their job. Perhaps, employers and politicians might do well to understand the groups they belittle have 9 million votes to not vote for them. Christianity is not the issue, it is the use of religion to block another’s rights, As a side bar, it should be noted that Ms. Wood has been married four times. Oops! “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
Tags: Denial, Gay, Marriage, licenses, marriage, of, votes



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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W 18 hours ago
I wonder what goes on in these people's heads. i have known a gay man and in snother place and time, a Lesbian, who converted to and became devout Muslims. Back when I lived in Indiana I had a boyfriend for a while who was devout and became an AME minister. Tortured souls, I think. Indiana for some reason was a clergy stage for me - I also knew two bi or gay Methodist ministers on the downlow.
 I mean "soul" in metaphorical sense of course.
 Maybe Kim is horrified by the thought that, if she wanted to now, she could marry a woman. And somewhere deep in her psyche, wants that very much. So the combination of forbidden desire and lack of a social barrier, lead her to the security of a rigid religious structure. In order to more effectively impose that structure on herself, se feels she must impose it on all others.
 Armchair psychosnalyst here.
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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky 12 hours ago
Daniel, l agree with your armchair psychoanalysis. I honestly believe the people who have the biggest problems, and proclaim it loudly, with gays have some issued themselves.
 Otherwise why would they even care? It's not as if it effects them.
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG 12 hours ago

LOL, Sometimes I think the Westbro BC, is a spoof on Christianity.  Who needs Christian comedy when the U.S. has the WBC. 
:-D~
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn 12 hours ago

Right on. Notice in this case that they do not like gays but have claimed it is Kim Davis' marriage practices that have brought America trouble with gays wanting to be married. At another time they want to "protest a funeral" either of a gay, a soldier, or who knows what the fuck else. In my mind a funeral should not be protested. What are you saying -- that the person should not be buried? Why would anyone allow situations of conflict at a funeral? WBC or anyone else causing trouble should not be allowed to be there unless they want to be arrested.
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 Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat 5 hours ago

"Protesting a funeral" might actually imply that the person should not have died!  Usually that's exactly what the family, friends, and others inside, attending the funeral and paying their respects, are thinking.
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan 12 hours ago

Yeah, you gotta love the My Christianity is better than your christianity schtick! It just goes to prove the accuracy of John Shelby Spong's contention that “Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up."
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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky 8 hours ago
Bertold,don't you know every christian is better than everyone!
 Just ask my, once divorced, third time living in sin, neice. Yet she still has the nerve to post anti-gay remarks from their bible.
 Just where do they get the nerve? From their fellow hypocrites is my guess. Such nice folks those WBC people. Wonder if I can get them to protest her. :)
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Make a Statement: Quit--Kim Woods Jailed
Posted by Donald R Barbera on September 3, 2015 at 10:34pm in Introductions
View Discussions
.





I was doing something important, when I got one of those news posts that made me stop my important task (finishing off my bottle of wine.) and take no
tice. Those Right Wing idiots are now crying about the “Criminalization of Christianity” after a federal judge jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
If Kim can’t do the job she was hired to do, then she should quit. Only politicians give a shit about Kim and once they figure out that Kim’s jailing won’t make a difference, they’ll find another windmill to joust. Two pharmacists also refused to issue birth control and the morning after pill because of their religious beliefs. This is still a democracy and people are allowed their opinion despite differences in belief and behavior.
Employees serve at the behest of their employer, not the other way around. Those who feel that strongly about a particular issue should step down or quit their job. Perhaps, employers and politicians might do well to understand the groups they belittle have 9 million votes to not vote for them. Christianity is not the issue, it is the use of religion to block another’s rights, As a side bar, it should be noted that Ms. Wood has been married four times. Oops! “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
Tags: Denial, Gay, Marriage, licenses, marriage, of, votes



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 Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on Monday

"What do you think of Western civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea."
(attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but  
"not well-supported and may be apocryphal")
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan on Monday

I think it was John Platt whose characterization was the man who crossed the planet against the prevailing winds.
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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W on Monday

Matthew Trewhella is a christian antiabortion activist, self described "Missionary to the Preborn".   He is associated with "The Faithful Soldier School of Evangelism".  I wouldn't trust him to be an authority on whether it's raining in his front yard, let alone the role of religious belief as something that "trumps" secular law.   "Western man" and western woman has probably been fighting that religious tyranny for over 1500 years.  With mixed success, and 1 step forward to every two steps back, and a lot of blood, torture, torment, and silent and vocal opposition.  The "Western man" might be a dickhead, but Matthew Trewhella is another part of human anatomy, around the corner and only slightly lower.
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 Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on Monday

Hey! That's an insult to a perfectly useful and essential (if sometimes stinky) orifice!
(A fun fact that bears repeating: humans are deuterostomes: as in other vertebrates and a few other animals, the first opening in early embryonic development goes on to become the anus. In other words, at one point each of us was nothing more than an asshole. Fortunately, most people outgrow that stage.)
(image source)
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera yesterday

I love it! People on the piece giving us all a lesson in anatomy and development.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne yesterday

That 1000, per cent is some percentage.
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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Monday

It looks like she has spent too much time in the kitchen and not enough time doing rational critical thinking about her employment.
Nor has she put much of the same critical thinking into her relationships.
She's a total loser, every which way we look at her.
Jail time won't fix idiots.
It only makes them more devious and desperate.

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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera yesterday

I didn't want to go there, but now that you mention it doesn't appear that she missed any meals. Jail time make the dimwitted even more so as they think other ruses.
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne yesterday

Only religious dogma could make marriage such a contentious issue. The same goes for alcohol drinking, Sunday shopping, and masturbation. Trivialities.
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn yesterday

The latest on KIm Davis is that she (and her lawyers) expect the governor of Kentucky to save her. They claim he is directly over the marriage license issuing so he could make a "special" provision for Kim so she would not have to issue any gay marriage licenses and the rest of the clerks could then issue gay licenses legally. That way poor Kim could "practice her religion in peace."
None of these morons seem to see that Kim is using her job to force everyone else to practice her religion. The real solution is for her to resign because she refuses and does not recognize the law of the land.
Meanwhile, the Westboro Baptist Church has condemned Kim Davis as a hypocrite and says she "has helped bring this gay crisis upon us." This is because Kim is not married to her husband and she must leave him to make everything right. That's because Kim has been married 4 times (twice to the same man) and the Bible says you can only marry once. Poor Kim must leave them all OR go back to her first husband. In her defense Kim has argued that she only became a Christian 4 years ago. That doesn't seem to work because she was a Baptist before that and just 4 years ago became a Pentecostal Apastolic member. It means Kim knew the biblical law before divorcing and her "sin" is not covered under the forgivness of Jesus. Poor Kim.
I'm laughing my ass off here. (LMAO) This is all trucked up!
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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W yesterday
She doesn't need for the governor to save her. Jesus already did.
 Technically, from a fundamentalist christian bible point of view, WBC sounds right to me.
 She cant claim that her pre-conversion marriages, fornication, and children dont count now that she was born-again-again. That would be having her wedding cake and eating it too. Married is married, according to Jesus. She really should divorce her 4th husband and remarry her first. Unless her first was married to someone before her. Then she should become a nun or stone herself or something. I dont know what the bible says should happen to the kids she had by her 3rd husband before marrying her second - does god say they should be stoned, too?
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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky 19 hours ago
Let's get them all stoned and see if they have a change of heart.
 Including; the devout muslim flight attendant who refuses to serve alcohol even though it's a job requirement.
 And the Indiana (?)judge who stopped performing marriages a year ago trying to circumvent the gay marriage law when it came into effect.
 How many more are going to try to hide their prejudices behind the cloak of their religion?
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Make a Statement: Quit--Kim Woods Jailed
Posted by Donald R Barbera on September 3, 2015 at 10:34pm in Introductions
View Discussions
.





I was doing something important, when I got one of those news posts that made me stop my important task (finishing off my bottle of wine.) and take no
tice. Those Right Wing idiots are now crying about the “Criminalization of Christianity” after a federal judge jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
If Kim can’t do the job she was hired to do, then she should quit. Only politicians give a shit about Kim and once they figure out that Kim’s jailing won’t make a difference, they’ll find another windmill to joust. Two pharmacists also refused to issue birth control and the morning after pill because of their religious beliefs. This is still a democracy and people are allowed their opinion despite differences in belief and behavior.
Employees serve at the behest of their employer, not the other way around. Those who feel that strongly about a particular issue should step down or quit their job. Perhaps, employers and politicians might do well to understand the groups they belittle have 9 million votes to not vote for them. Christianity is not the issue, it is the use of religion to block another’s rights, As a side bar, it should be noted that Ms. Wood has been married four times. Oops! “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
Tags: Denial, Gay, Marriage, licenses, marriage, of, votes



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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky on Sunday
Mitch McConnell's seat for senator won't be open until 2020.
 Jack Conway is the democratic candidate for governor in Nov and is running ads bragging about suing Obama previously for something. Probably the affordable care act. I can't keep up with these fools!
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera 11 hours ago

You are correct. Didn't they send Mitchie Boy back to Congress. Tooter Turtle!
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera on Sunday

Old Tooter's Turtle's place.
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn on Sunday

I posted this in another forum a minute ago and it was off topic for that one. I'll try it here.
I'm reading that a small Texas town is placing "In God We Trust" on their police cars and that Missouri will soon follow. They say this is because there have been a lot of cop killing recently. This way they are showing support and also being patriotic at the same time. I'm not buying that. Now if you say you are doing this to show support for Kim Davis it makes a lot more sense. I believe that is what they are really doing here.
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 Permalink Reply by Pat on Sunday

Michael, the Sheriff's Department already did it in Jefferson County, Illinois. 1 hour drive east of St. Louis. They claim (and I don't believe it) that the bumper stickers were 'donated.' It has been protested by a local atheist group. However, I suspect no amount of logic or rationality, short of a lawsuit, will change it. Even there, since that phrase is on US currency, I doubt a lawsuit will change it either.
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn on Sunday

There we go again with the country "founded on Christian principals." Why don't people stop listening to their pastors and read some real books on this matter to see how we were founded. The Constitution might even be a good start.
My guess is that religion sees itself as losing so it has to make some bizarre claims to religious freedom. Unfortunately that claim is usually "Christian" and doesn't take in any others. This very fact makes it hypocritical. It also makes it unjust and unfair because the bumper stickers are so one sided. Thor, Allah, Ra, and Visnu are not on that bumper sticker.
I'm saying that believers saw this coming with the gay marriage issue and they want to give an impression that our police support "the laws of god" so that they can gear up for a fight on this thing. The brewing storm may be a long time in passing. Otherwise, the meaning of these stickers at this time is very unclear to me. Maybe someone can use better words than mine to define it.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera yesterday

The illiterati never read a book or study the source. Never. They take someone's word for it as truth. Even the highly educated read only six books a year. Anyway, a document known as the Treaty of Tripoli  signed barely 20 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, stated unequivocally that the " . . . Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." That pretty much says it all. Now there can be a discussion of deism and its role if any, but deism is not Christianity in any sense. The separation of church and state came about because of experience with the Church or England, which caused enough agony that many left the country to go to an unknown land. 
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 Permalink Reply by Gerald Payne yesterday

The separation of church and state has had a negative effect on the freedom of the civil authorities in the USA to implement its edicts. European countries that have state religions can rely on the subordination of the state church to parliamentary authority. The USA while wisely having church state separation has no such control.
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan on Monday

I love the "donation" excuse. You just know that if someone had supplied police precincts with gratis In Allah We Trust stickers, they'd be plastered all over those police cars too.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera 11 hours ago

Aha! You said the magic word. READ!!! College graduates read only 30--40 books a year--average. High grads about 10. No diploma-4. No these are the people politicians make their living from. As we know, an educated population is a dangerous population.

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 Permalink Reply by Jessica Chen on Monday

Quoting from an article in today's newspaper I got:
"She said that she was doing this under God's authority. She is 1,000 percent correct. She is echoing what western man has said for over 1,500 years now. And that is that divine law trumps human laws." -Matthew Trewhella

First thought that came to my mind - where is the evidence she's doing it under God's authority? Did God appear to her and told her to turn away these people? Show me the evidence!!
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan on Monday

I'd like to meet this "Western man." He sounds like a real dickhead.
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Make a Statement: Quit--Kim Woods Jailed
Posted by Donald R Barbera on September 3, 2015 at 10:34pm in Introductions
View Discussions
.





I was doing something important, when I got one of those news posts that made me stop my important task (finishing off my bottle of wine.) and take no
tice. Those Right Wing idiots are now crying about the “Criminalization of Christianity” after a federal judge jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
If Kim can’t do the job she was hired to do, then she should quit. Only politicians give a shit about Kim and once they figure out that Kim’s jailing won’t make a difference, they’ll find another windmill to joust. Two pharmacists also refused to issue birth control and the morning after pill because of their religious beliefs. This is still a democracy and people are allowed their opinion despite differences in belief and behavior.
Employees serve at the behest of their employer, not the other way around. Those who feel that strongly about a particular issue should step down or quit their job. Perhaps, employers and politicians might do well to understand the groups they belittle have 9 million votes to not vote for them. Christianity is not the issue, it is the use of religion to block another’s rights, As a side bar, it should be noted that Ms. Wood has been married four times. Oops! “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
Tags: Denial, Gay, Marriage, licenses, marriage, of, votes



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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on Saturday

A recall election may be in order here.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera on Sunday

Although Right Wing Evangelicals of politicians may kick this football a long way, they might find it will come back to bite them in the ass. I would be very care of pissing off any community while playing to another. She works at the behest of the state, the very same one that offers freedom of religion and freedom from religion. In the end, she broke the law. It's that simple. She should be removed.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera on Sunday

Dyslexic's DOG,, I didn't want to go there, but you said what I was thinking. However, I think others considering marriage might consider marital expertise. They say the fourth time around is the charm. Or is that the fifth time. Maybe it's the third time. I was never good with numbers.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera on Sunday

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" [Matthew 22:21] Perhaps, Mrs Davis is unfamiliar with this quotation from the Bible and when and how it was used.It is a direct reference to secularity and it's relationship with Christianity. Although the verse has been applied a number of non Christian applications, it still means much the same. Religion? A red herring foor political gain.
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 Permalink Reply by Donald R Barbera on Sunday

A recall! I like that.
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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W on Sunday

Here's an entertaining take on the incarceration of Kim Davis.


 Kinda catchy!
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 Permalink Reply by Freethinker31 on Sunday

Thank you Daniel, for sharing this hilarious  video with us....The words  could not have been better to explain this situation......If she can't do her job, then she does not deserve  the 80 thou.  and a recall does sound like a plan....
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan on Sunday

This is Kentucky, folks. There's a pretty good chance she would survive a recall, just like sleazoid Scott Walker did in Wisconsin.
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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on Sunday

I'd love to be making 80 large a year to spend my time with my thumb up my tailbone, doing shit which takes about as much brainpower as it takes to sneeze (if that much).  Freaking spoiled brat thinks she can pull this kind of crap because she's in Kentucky and the Born Again-ers will have her back, eh?  WRONGO!
So yeah, Kimmy - shut up and do your motherfucking job!
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 Permalink Reply by Daniel W on Sunday

What about pharmacists who won't dispense birth control pills due to religion?
What about pharmacies that won't provide "medications" for execution?
How about doctors who will not provide prescriptions for lethal medications, for physician assisted suicide  in states where that is legal?
These questions are not meant to be challenges.  I'm wondering where we draw the lines on issue of conscience.  I certainly don't expect Burgerville to hire a vegan who won't touch meat, or expect a pork sausage factory to hire an orthodox Jew who won't touch pork.

What I do feel sure about, is this person is a government employee, who refuses to do her government assigned duties, and also refuses to quit her job.  And she so amazingly hypocritical, all I can think is she is too stupid to know her own inconsistencies.
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 Permalink Reply by Pat on Sunday

Christian Science Pharmacist Refuses to Fill Any Prescription


News From TheOnion
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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky on Sunday
A recall election during an election year in Kentucky? I'm afraid that will never happen my friends. People are already saying it will be too expensive. And the right wing is salivating with excitement over this religious, four times married, three times divorced, crazy woman, defying the courts who demand that she do her damned job. I'm sure the collection plates at her church are overflowing with support.
 I know the governor is running for re-election. What I can't recall or get signal out to learn is how many offices fall into this years cycle. Since I haven't seen any ads for local elections l believe we have those during presidential elections. I'm still trying to get signal out to be sure.
 As I always add; l may be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
 WOULD somebody who actually gets a reliable signal help me out please??
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Make a Statement: Quit--Kim Woods Jailed
Posted by Donald R Barbera on September 3, 2015 at 10:34pm in Introductions
View Discussions
.





I was doing something important, when I got one of those news posts that made me stop my important task (finishing off my bottle of wine.) and take no
tice. Those Right Wing idiots are now crying about the “Criminalization of Christianity” after a federal judge jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
If Kim can’t do the job she was hired to do, then she should quit. Only politicians give a shit about Kim and once they figure out that Kim’s jailing won’t make a difference, they’ll find another windmill to joust. Two pharmacists also refused to issue birth control and the morning after pill because of their religious beliefs. This is still a democracy and people are allowed their opinion despite differences in belief and behavior.
Employees serve at the behest of their employer, not the other way around. Those who feel that strongly about a particular issue should step down or quit their job. Perhaps, employers and politicians might do well to understand the groups they belittle have 9 million votes to not vote for them. Christianity is not the issue, it is the use of religion to block another’s rights, As a side bar, it should be noted that Ms. Wood has been married four times. Oops! “If you can’t stand the heat—get out of the kitchen.”
Tags: Denial, Gay, Marriage, licenses, marriage, of, votes



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 Permalink Reply by Dyslexic's DOG on Friday

Maybe she could lose some weight in jail.
Might be the best thing for her health! 
A chin or two less won't hurt her!
Just demonstrating my bigotry against obesity!
LOL!

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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on Friday

You've pretty well said it all here, Donald.  Kim and others like her want to think that their beliefs supersede the requirements of their job.  Thing is, an essential part of most government job descriptions can be summed up in two words: SERVE PEOPLE, regardless of who they are, because that is the essence of the raison d'etre of government.  In 30 years of field service, I've been forced to deal with the occasional asshole, but then no one said that all my customers would be sweetness and light.  Had I told my boss that I didn't want to service a certain account because my contact there offended me, I would have been out on my ass before you could blink.  The situation with Ms. Wood should be handled no differently.
If she can't do her job, if she can't serve the people of Rowan County, Kentucky, then she needs to yield her position to someone who can and will.
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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky on Friday
I totally agree with you Loren!
 Fire her.
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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on Friday

BTW, I think the clerk's last name is "Davis" and not "Wood" as stated in the post title.
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 Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on Friday

I don't know whether or how she changed her name for her four marriages to three men. (I think #2 and #4 are the same guy.)
Perhaps "True Christians"[tm] should condemn her for hypocritical bible-thumping while she "commits adultery" by divorce and remarriage... but that's actually irrelevant here. Someone observed that Davis expecting a "reasonable accomodation" in order to refuse to do a central part of her job is just as reasonable as an Amish person expecting to keep their job as a bus driver.
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 Permalink Reply by Bertold Brautigan on Friday

Esquire columnist Charles Pierce has predicted that she'll be speaking at the Republican National Convention next year and receiving a six-figure book offer.
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 Permalink Reply by Pat on Friday

Bertold, Pierce is probably right. The book will be a best seller the Ken Ham Creation Museum.
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 Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on Friday

I put this up on my own post about this, but what the heck: it deserves to be spread around!


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 Permalink Reply by k.h. ky on Friday
Perfect! It well deserves reposting.
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 Permalink Reply by Freethinker31 on Friday

Kim Davis is  testing our Separation of Church and State laws..As a government employee she is required  to uphold the laws of her state and Nation.......She said God prevents her from giving out marriage licenses, where as our Supreme Court demands  that she do just that.......Religion is not a higher authority than our civil laws......No government employee should disobey our laws and still be employed......
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 Permalink Reply by Michael Penn on Friday

Yes, the religious think that poor Kim has been discriminated against. She isn't allowed to act on her religious thoughts and therefore Christianity has been criminalized. Kim Davis herself said it is all about god's law and heaven and hell.
We find that it's neither and none of the above. Davis is an elected civil servant who isn't marrying anybody, but she also is not doing her job. That is the issue! God has nothing to do with this. If you want to deal with "god's law and heaven and hell" take your issue to church. You have no given right of protest by expressing your opinion. She is in violation of the law by not doing her job.
The solution is really pretty simple for Kim. RESIGN. God doesn't care and nobody is going to make an exception to the law for Kim Davis.
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 Permalink Reply by Freethinker31 on Friday

She refuses  to resign, and I understand it is difficult to fire her since she is elected by the people......However, resigning is the proper thing for her to do.....
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Church, State, and Marriage Licenses
Posted by Loren Miller on September 4, 2015 at 11:16am
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.


The preamble of the US Constitution reads as follows:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 In short, the purpose of the United States government, as outlined by the preamble, is to serve its people, and by that I would expect said service to cover all US citizens.
 One of those services is the management and dispensing of legal rights associated with marriage.  Marriage over the years has evolved into considerably more than the joining of two people in a socially recognized relationship.  Multiple rights, recognized at the local, state and federal level, attach automatically, including tax-free transfer of property, joint tax filing, next-of-kin status in the event of a medical emergency and multiple others.  These rights have considerable value, which is likely a considerable part of the reason why those who have been excluded from access to marriage, gays and Lesbians most recently, have worked so hard to persuade the federal government to their point of view.  Those efforts came to fruition when Obergefell v. Hodges came before the US Supreme Court, which ruled that same-sex marriage bans in those states which have enacted such laws are unconstitutional.  In effect, that decision erased any distinction between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage from the point of view of the government.  There is just marriage.
 Enter Kim Davis, a county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  She is an Apostolic Christian who sees marriage in the purely parochial view of her church, being between one man and one woman.  Certainly she is to be allowed this viewpoint without question.  However, as a representative of Rowan County, Kentucky and by extension, the United States, she is obliged by law to perform her duties as county clerk in accordance with those laws which pertain to her position.  I would rather suspect that she swore an oath to that effect upon assuming her office, an oath one would hope she would take seriously.
 Yet it probably comes as no surprise to any atheist that Ms. Davis was willing to exercise her own moral code when she was confronted with her first gay couple, applying for a marriage license, a few weeks back.  As with many believers of her ilk, she may hold that God’s Law holds sway over human pronouncements or that the US is a Christian nation and she therefore has the right to exercise her Christian beliefs as a right of her office.  In both cases, of course, she is mistaken.  Neither is her god a recognized authority by our government, nor is the United States a Christian nation, a fact affirmed by Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.  U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stated clearly in citing her for contempt that: “Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” adding that “Oaths mean things.”
So now she sits in a Rowan County jail cell until such time as she either relents in her obstinacy or is removed as a county clerk, with the latter being far more probable than the former.  Right now her subordinates are issuing marriage licenses for couples both gay and straight.  Any objections she may have to those actions are moot and ineffectual at this point; her office will function without her presence.  Much as Ms. Davis wanted to serve her god, her job required her to serve people.  She herself said: “God's moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”  That being the case, she should be relieved of her duties – forthwith – and her position given to someone who is willing respect and honor the law of the land and provide services to those to whom the Constitution has guaranteed such service.
 To Ms. Davis I would simply say this: “Your attitude does not befit your position – get out.”

Views: 215
Tags: David Bunning, Kim Davis, church, license, marriage, state


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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan on Friday
Amen, brother!
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Church, State, and Marriage Licenses
Posted by Loren Miller on September 4, 2015 at 11:16am
View Blog
.


The preamble of the US Constitution reads as follows:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 In short, the purpose of the United States government, as outlined by the preamble, is to serve its people, and by that I would expect said service to cover all US citizens.
 One of those services is the management and dispensing of legal rights associated with marriage.  Marriage over the years has evolved into considerably more than the joining of two people in a socially recognized relationship.  Multiple rights, recognized at the local, state and federal level, attach automatically, including tax-free transfer of property, joint tax filing, next-of-kin status in the event of a medical emergency and multiple others.  These rights have considerable value, which is likely a considerable part of the reason why those who have been excluded from access to marriage, gays and Lesbians most recently, have worked so hard to persuade the federal government to their point of view.  Those efforts came to fruition when Obergefell v. Hodges came before the US Supreme Court, which ruled that same-sex marriage bans in those states which have enacted such laws are unconstitutional.  In effect, that decision erased any distinction between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage from the point of view of the government.  There is just marriage.
 Enter Kim Davis, a county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  She is an Apostolic Christian who sees marriage in the purely parochial view of her church, being between one man and one woman.  Certainly she is to be allowed this viewpoint without question.  However, as a representative of Rowan County, Kentucky and by extension, the United States, she is obliged by law to perform her duties as county clerk in accordance with those laws which pertain to her position.  I would rather suspect that she swore an oath to that effect upon assuming her office, an oath one would hope she would take seriously.
 Yet it probably comes as no surprise to any atheist that Ms. Davis was willing to exercise her own moral code when she was confronted with her first gay couple, applying for a marriage license, a few weeks back.  As with many believers of her ilk, she may hold that God’s Law holds sway over human pronouncements or that the US is a Christian nation and she therefore has the right to exercise her Christian beliefs as a right of her office.  In both cases, of course, she is mistaken.  Neither is her god a recognized authority by our government, nor is the United States a Christian nation, a fact affirmed by Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.  U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stated clearly in citing her for contempt that: “Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” adding that “Oaths mean things.”
So now she sits in a Rowan County jail cell until such time as she either relents in her obstinacy or is removed as a county clerk, with the latter being far more probable than the former.  Right now her subordinates are issuing marriage licenses for couples both gay and straight.  Any objections she may have to those actions are moot and ineffectual at this point; her office will function without her presence.  Much as Ms. Davis wanted to serve her god, her job required her to serve people.  She herself said: “God's moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”  That being the case, she should be relieved of her duties – forthwith – and her position given to someone who is willing respect and honor the law of the land and provide services to those to whom the Constitution has guaranteed such service.
 To Ms. Davis I would simply say this: “Your attitude does not befit your position – get out.”

Views: 216
Tags: David Bunning, Kim Davis, church, license, marriage, state


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 Comment by Gerald Payne on Saturday
How can these religions teachings claim to bring peace and harmony when they clash head-on with civil society?
.
 Comment by Michael Pianko on Saturday
Suppose all taxes were eliminated and charity and everything and everything that can be provided by private organizations was provided by private organizations, which would have to earn their own money. Yes marriage for homosexuals makes sense as a nice gesture to show that the government is not prejudiced against homosexuals anymore. But suppose marriage doesn't need to exist in general for anybody. Marriage was invented by religion so that people would have to get permission from the religion before engaging in man- woman relationships, because religions want to increase the chances your kids will do your religion. Suppose that there was no such thing as marriage and no such thing as governments issuing marriage licenses, and people could just engage in man-man or man-woman or woman-woman relationships without having to get permission from the government. If there wasn't prejudice against homosexuals, people would just be able to designate anybody as next of kin without having to get special permission from the government.
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 Comment by Loren Miller on Saturday
You make a good point, Carl ... one I doubt any Republican would dare repeat.  More's the pity.
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 Comment by The Flying Atheist on Saturday
Not to go off on a tangent, but does the phrase "promote the general Welfare" mean universal health care?  [grin]
.
 Comment by Michael Penn on Friday
Yeah, I like that comment posted by Rachel Held Evans. Those words sum it up and they are golden. Idiots want to make this out that somehow Kim Davis is only practicing her legal right of public protest to the law.
WRONG! She is refusing to do her job. She is an elected civil servant.
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 Comment by Pat on Friday
Good article from the Daily Kos. Kind of goes along with what I speculated about. And, interesting website for the Kentucky Trial Court Review on Facebook. One blurb stated two guys walked into the Rowan County Courthouse and went to the Clerk's Office. They were being called perverts and others openly praying for them. They just wanted to get a couple of fishing licenses. I'll bet she's the most popular girl on the block, right about now.
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 Comment by Loren Miller on Friday
100% agreement, Pat.  Sadly, it's entirely possible that the ultra-right-wing Religious Reich may come to her support and lionize her to their own madhouse constituency ... and if they want to waste their money doing so, we can do nothing to stop them.
What is bothersome to me is that this is in large portion a direct result of the Hobby Lobby decision, though mapped onto a governmental venue.  I am encouraged that the Rowan County Kentucky Attorney wants nothing to do with her, will not defend her, and has wholly denounced her actions.
I'd like to think that, if such events repeat themselves in multiple locations, that those who would attempt to push their religion into the government using this technique would reconsider their actions.  Sadly, I suspect they are either not that smart or too bullheaded to do so.
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 Comment by Pat on Friday
In one sense (and a very narrow and limited one at that), I feel a bit sorry for her. I know, I know, she's a bigot hiding behind religion to call attention to herself. But I can't help but wonder if she had any idea what her intransigence would get her into. A county clerk in the poorest region of one of the less developed states. I suspect her only exposure to the national press, prior to this, was watching it on TV after work. But, once she crossed that line, the right wing god-bothering vultures were more than ready to swoop down and make her the poster child for the phony 'christian persecution' meme they go on, and on, and on about. And, I would give favorable odds that the gutter slime from the Family Research Council, Liberty Council, and every other christian hate group out there convinced her to stick to her guns, and not back off. "Be a martyr for Jesus." One minor problem. When the dust settles, and it will, it will be squarely against her. In contempt citations, the losing party usually has to pay the other side's attorney fees and Court costs. In a circus like this, they could easily mount up. The vultures who used her will be long gone when that bill comes due. And then Ms. Davis can see just what the cost of her 'deeply held beliefs' were worth. Especially, when here former 'allies' have flown the coop.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan on Friday
That is an excellent point!
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 Comment by Loren Miller on Friday
A further commentary, courtesy of The Daily Kos:

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Church, State, and Marriage Licenses
Posted by Loren Miller on September 4, 2015 at 11:16am
View Blog
.


The preamble of the US Constitution reads as follows:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 In short, the purpose of the United States government, as outlined by the preamble, is to serve its people, and by that I would expect said service to cover all US citizens.
 One of those services is the management and dispensing of legal rights associated with marriage.  Marriage over the years has evolved into considerably more than the joining of two people in a socially recognized relationship.  Multiple rights, recognized at the local, state and federal level, attach automatically, including tax-free transfer of property, joint tax filing, next-of-kin status in the event of a medical emergency and multiple others.  These rights have considerable value, which is likely a considerable part of the reason why those who have been excluded from access to marriage, gays and Lesbians most recently, have worked so hard to persuade the federal government to their point of view.  Those efforts came to fruition when Obergefell v. Hodges came before the US Supreme Court, which ruled that same-sex marriage bans in those states which have enacted such laws are unconstitutional.  In effect, that decision erased any distinction between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage from the point of view of the government.  There is just marriage.
 Enter Kim Davis, a county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  She is an Apostolic Christian who sees marriage in the purely parochial view of her church, being between one man and one woman.  Certainly she is to be allowed this viewpoint without question.  However, as a representative of Rowan County, Kentucky and by extension, the United States, she is obliged by law to perform her duties as county clerk in accordance with those laws which pertain to her position.  I would rather suspect that she swore an oath to that effect upon assuming her office, an oath one would hope she would take seriously.
 Yet it probably comes as no surprise to any atheist that Ms. Davis was willing to exercise her own moral code when she was confronted with her first gay couple, applying for a marriage license, a few weeks back.  As with many believers of her ilk, she may hold that God’s Law holds sway over human pronouncements or that the US is a Christian nation and she therefore has the right to exercise her Christian beliefs as a right of her office.  In both cases, of course, she is mistaken.  Neither is her god a recognized authority by our government, nor is the United States a Christian nation, a fact affirmed by Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.  U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stated clearly in citing her for contempt that: “Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” adding that “Oaths mean things.”
So now she sits in a Rowan County jail cell until such time as she either relents in her obstinacy or is removed as a county clerk, with the latter being far more probable than the former.  Right now her subordinates are issuing marriage licenses for couples both gay and straight.  Any objections she may have to those actions are moot and ineffectual at this point; her office will function without her presence.  Much as Ms. Davis wanted to serve her god, her job required her to serve people.  She herself said: “God's moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”  That being the case, she should be relieved of her duties – forthwith – and her position given to someone who is willing respect and honor the law of the land and provide services to those to whom the Constitution has guaranteed such service.
 To Ms. Davis I would simply say this: “Your attitude does not befit your position – get out.”

Views: 217
Tags: David Bunning, Kim Davis, church, license, marriage, state


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 Comment by Loren Miller 15 hours ago
Terrific - she's free to give interviews to Fox News and Pat Robertson and rant and vent about how unfair it is that she has to perform her duties regardless of whether she likes the person requesting services from the state of Kentucky or not.  The fact is: she never had that choice to begin with.  I have to wonder if christian county clerks had this same problem with interracial couples after Loving v. Virginia was passed.
.
 Comment by Bertold Brautigan 15 hours ago
Kim Davis is freed from jail, apparently with orders not to interfere with her clerks' issuing of marriage licenses.
.
 Comment by Michael Penn on Saturday
Maybe a BRONTO.
.
 Comment by Grinning Cat on Saturday

... surprise surprise, Ms. Davis is a registered Democrat.
She is a DINO in more ways than one.
.
 Comment by The Flying Atheist on Saturday
I couldn't resist.....


.
 Comment by Randall Smith on Saturday
Not that it matters, nor is it always the case, but, surprise surprise, Ms. Davis is a registered Democrat. Ah, Kentucky.
.
 Comment by The Flying Atheist on Saturday
The Religious "Right" is the only group supporting Kim Davis.  Non-fundamental and casual christians, who happen to make up the majority of the religious in this country, don't support Ms. Davis and want her to do her civil job.  As a result, I think (I hope) this has been a big wake-up call to the large, general population of religious folk who have been complacent in understanding the gravity of "Right to Religious Freedom" laws that are currently being introduced in several state legislatures.  I think they may begin to see now that these "rights" are nothing more than a sanctioned license to discriminate and not some innocuous confirmation of the freedom of religion.
.
 Comment by Loren Miller on Saturday
Equal treatment under the law is the whole point of Obergefell v. Hodges and this post.  It's not just a "nice gesture;" it's a necessary action if the ideals couched in the Preamble are to be fully realized.  And while I'm at it, yes, issuing marriage licenses without bias, being part of that equal treatment, becomes part of that requirement.  Davis is REQUIRED to issue those licenses, as a part of the oath she took when she became a county clerk.  When she refused to serve same-sex couples, she was in violation of that oath, and thus we have the current situation.
As for Davis being some latter-day Rosa Parks, from the fundamentalist christian point of view, perhaps she is.  I can't help but note a fair number of the current GOP presidential candidates offering her their verbal support, if nothing else, but that remains a minority opinion  From most everyone else's, she's a bigot who wants to perpetuate and justify her bigotry with her holy book.  Right now, that doesn't sell, nor is it likely too any time in the future.  I don't see that she compares with Snowden or Manning or Ellsberg.  She's not trying to correct a great wrong; she's trying to return us to the practice of a great wrong.  It would be one thing if homosexuality and same-sex marriage did demonstrable harm to society; it doesn't.  Far more harm is done in the name of mindless, unjustified dogma, which is her religion's stock in trade.
The US is slowly but surely getting out from under such dogma.  That it has been accepted without thought for so long makes that process difficult, and I shouldn't be surprised that more such incidents as that of Kim Davis will be found in our future.  That's no reason to quit ... or to cut people such as her any slack.
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 Comment by jay H on Saturday
Michael Pianko makes a valid point below. Equal treatment under the law is a constitutional requirement, issuing marriage licenses is not. Not to mention that the current ruling is extremely arbitrary in that it requires exactly two people be involved.



As for analyzing Kim Davis, it is necessary to try to view it from different viewpoints (even those you may disagree with)
Even though Davis will most certainly lose most or all of her appeals, she sees herself (as do her supporters) as a kind of modern day Rosa Parks... someone who is willing to risk everything when they see the government as wrong. Over the years various people have put themselves in legal trouble defying the government for something they feel is a matter of principle (for example the group of nuns and others who trespassed on a nuclear weapons facility, or the reporter working on a crime story imprisoned because he would not reveal his sources to the prosecutor on the case, or Snowdon, Manning and others like them). In each case, there are people who see them as brave fighters against the corruption of the state, others see them as misguided or even evil. On each of those specific cases and others, different people here might fall on different sides of the hero/villian dichotomy.
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 Comment by Loren Miller on Saturday
HUSH, Gerald!  Yer not supposed to ask questions like that!!!
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Church, State, and Marriage Licenses
Posted by Loren Miller on September 4, 2015 at 11:16am
View Blog
.


The preamble of the US Constitution reads as follows:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 In short, the purpose of the United States government, as outlined by the preamble, is to serve its people, and by that I would expect said service to cover all US citizens.
 One of those services is the management and dispensing of legal rights associated with marriage.  Marriage over the years has evolved into considerably more than the joining of two people in a socially recognized relationship.  Multiple rights, recognized at the local, state and federal level, attach automatically, including tax-free transfer of property, joint tax filing, next-of-kin status in the event of a medical emergency and multiple others.  These rights have considerable value, which is likely a considerable part of the reason why those who have been excluded from access to marriage, gays and Lesbians most recently, have worked so hard to persuade the federal government to their point of view.  Those efforts came to fruition when Obergefell v. Hodges came before the US Supreme Court, which ruled that same-sex marriage bans in those states which have enacted such laws are unconstitutional.  In effect, that decision erased any distinction between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage from the point of view of the government.  There is just marriage.
 Enter Kim Davis, a county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky.  She is an Apostolic Christian who sees marriage in the purely parochial view of her church, being between one man and one woman.  Certainly she is to be allowed this viewpoint without question.  However, as a representative of Rowan County, Kentucky and by extension, the United States, she is obliged by law to perform her duties as county clerk in accordance with those laws which pertain to her position.  I would rather suspect that she swore an oath to that effect upon assuming her office, an oath one would hope she would take seriously.
 Yet it probably comes as no surprise to any atheist that Ms. Davis was willing to exercise her own moral code when she was confronted with her first gay couple, applying for a marriage license, a few weeks back.  As with many believers of her ilk, she may hold that God’s Law holds sway over human pronouncements or that the US is a Christian nation and she therefore has the right to exercise her Christian beliefs as a right of her office.  In both cases, of course, she is mistaken.  Neither is her god a recognized authority by our government, nor is the United States a Christian nation, a fact affirmed by Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.  U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stated clearly in citing her for contempt that: “Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” adding that “Oaths mean things.”
So now she sits in a Rowan County jail cell until such time as she either relents in her obstinacy or is removed as a county clerk, with the latter being far more probable than the former.  Right now her subordinates are issuing marriage licenses for couples both gay and straight.  Any objections she may have to those actions are moot and ineffectual at this point; her office will function without her presence.  Much as Ms. Davis wanted to serve her god, her job required her to serve people.  She herself said: “God's moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”  That being the case, she should be relieved of her duties – forthwith – and her position given to someone who is willing respect and honor the law of the land and provide services to those to whom the Constitution has guaranteed such service.
 To Ms. Davis I would simply say this: “Your attitude does not befit your position – get out.”

Views: 218
Tags: David Bunning, Kim Davis, church, license, marriage, state


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 Comment by The Flying Atheist 8 hours ago
Some interesting comments raised below about the crazy, phobic, and discriminatory behavior of religious people.  It makes me wonder if religion is responsible for corrupting the minds of people or if corrupted people seek out specific religions because it validates their already-held beliefs.  These people have beliefs that are just not rational or reality-based.      
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 Comment by Loren Miller 8 hours ago
And while I think about it:

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 Comment by The Flying Atheist 8 hours ago
If god showed up in the form of kim Davis, I wonder what Satan looks like!
Bertold, you're priceless!!  :)
.
 Comment by Loren Miller 9 hours ago
For the record, said warning was as follows:
Defendant Davis shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples,” and that the deputies would report to him every two weeks. “If Defendant Davis should interfere in any way with their issuance, that will be considered a violation of this order and appropriate sanctions will be considered.

 Ms. Davis, I'd listen close, if I were you.
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 Comment by Loren Miller 9 hours ago
So she's out.  The $64 question remains: can she leave well enough alone?  She is still a civil SERVANT and her job continues to be serving the public - ALL The Public, without regard to race, creed or sexual orientation.  When Judge Bunning released her, he issued what I understand to be a stern warning regarding the conditions of her release.  If she wishes to be both in concept of court and in violation of her oath of office, despite being warned, I have no pity for her.
Not that I had any to begin with.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan 11 hours ago
If god showed up in the form of kim Davis, I wonder what Satan looks like!
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 Comment by Michael Penn 12 hours ago
I just clicked on Bertold's link about Kim Davis being freed from jail, and there's going to be more trouble with this on down the road, maybe sooner than we think.
1.  Note that Davis' lawyer won't answer questions directly but hints in this direction.
2.  Note again that the claim is still being made that without Kim's signature the changed and
     altered licenses are not legal.
Davis said of god that she "just wants to give him the glory." (For what? What glory?) Huckabee said that "god showed up in the form of Kim Davis." Look at all the people on the scene with crosses.
I'm telling you these are some strange people.
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 Comment by Bertold Brautigan 12 hours ago
True, Mike, and both are symptoms of a twisted form of narcissism that entails believing that anyone who isn't just like me is bad. What a sad, boring world it must be to live in.
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 Comment by Loren Miller 12 hours ago
I have to wonder if there isn't a proper term for a fear of "other," which is to say anyone not belonging to my group. Certainly, there are plenty of people out there with it, but the religious fundamentalists seem to specialize in it.
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 Comment by Michael Penn 12 hours ago
All of the people that have gay phobia today used to have interracial phobia just a short time ago. In fact, many of them have both phobias even today.
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