There’s a comedy group calling themselves National Banana. Here are two of their videos.

Priest Off

(YouTube page is here)

The Politics of Stem Cell Research

(YouTube page is here)

Thomas Jefferson was probably the biggest proponent of religious liberty among the nation’s founders. Near the end of his life, he instructed that three of his accomplishments be listed in his epitaph:

• Writing of the Declaration of Independence
• Founding of the University of Virginia
• Co-writing (with James Madison) the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

Notice anything missing? How about being the third President of the United States! That’s quite an accomplishment. The fact that it’s missing from the list shows the importance Jefferson placed on the items that are included.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States were based largely upon the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. We can, therefore, look at the Virginia Statute for insight into the First Amendment.

Wikipedia has a good summary of the statute:

The 793-word statute is divided into three sections.

In Section 1, Jefferson argues that the concept of compulsory religion is wrong for the following reasons:

• The imposition of anything on a human mind, which God made to be free, is hypocritical and wrong.
• …God never coerced anyone to follow him, and the imposition of a religion by government officials is impious.
• The coercion of a person to make contributions—especially monetary—to a religion he doesn’t support is tyrannical and creates favoritism among ministers.
• Government involvement in matters tends to end in the restraint of religion.
• Civil rights do not depend on religious beliefs….

You’ve probably heard many of us say that “Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion”. In fact, we’ve said it enough that some fundies are sick of hearing it. I recently saw a bumper sticker that said “Freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion”. That’s similar to the way the Christians like to make a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish. They think they’re so clever!

As you can see by the first few items in that list, freedom from religion is clearly one of the intentions of the Virginia Statute and (by extension) the First Amendment.

Fundies would be well advised to read the fourth bullet item carefully. I don’t know why that concept is so alien to them. History has borne it out repeatedly.

Finally, look at that last bullet item. The actual text from the Statute is:

…that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry…

One fundie argument I hear a lot is that God has granted us these rights. No. Show me where in the Bible that the Bill of Rights, or anything like it, is laid out. The only thing approaching a Bill of Rights is the Ten Commandments. That isn’t a Bill of Rights for humans; it’s a Bill of Rights for God! It’s what he gets out of the deal! What do the people get?

We have granted these rights to ourselves. We got together and determined what the basic human rights are. Freedom of (and from) religion is one of those.

Sections 2 and 3 are fairly short, so we can look at them in their entirety. The text is written in that tortured 18th Century bureaucratic prose. I’m going to separate Section 2 into bullet items, just for ease of comprehension:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly,

• That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever,
• nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods,
• nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;
• but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion,
• and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

That first bullet item seems extremely clear to me. That means no prayer in the public schools. No form of creationism taught in the schools. No prayers at high school football games or graduation ceremonies. No private-school vouchers. No Ten Commandments hanging in courthouses. No “faith-based initiatives”. No “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Section 3 begins:

And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law;…

That’s a very long-winded way of saying that they can’t stop future assemblies from mucking up this document; however, they would like to make the following very clear:

…yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

That’s an interesting statement. I don’t remember anything comparable in our own Constitution. They’re making it clear to succeeding generations that if they tamper with the rights specified here, they are going against the very principles that their state was founded upon. It’s a warning to be very sure of what you are doing. Rights should not be surrendered lightly.

In fact, that is one of the things I like about the Virginia Statute. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is only 45 words long, and it covers:

• Establishment of religion
• Free exercise of religion
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of the press
• Freedom to assemble
• Right to petition for redress of grievances

That’s a lot, and it’s only 45 words! That’s why we’re always fighting over what that amendment means. It’s too vague. What exactly is an “establishment of religion”? What exactly is a restriction on the press?

The Virginia Statute goes into great detail in spelling out what it means and the rationale behind it. If only our Constitution were as detailed. I mean, come on! What the hell does this mean:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Are they saying that the right to bear arms is dependent on the need for a militia? Or are they merely saying that a militia is one of the benefits of the right to bear arms? You can read it either way, to completely opposite conclusions! If the Second Amendment had been as verbose as the Virginia Statute, we wouldn’t be arguing over this.

Fortunately for us, the religion clauses of the First Amendment were based on the Virginia Statute. At least for this one amendment, we have the luxury of seeing what the Founders meant when they wrote what they did.

Appendix

Section 1 of the Virginia Statute has some good stuff in it. If you fancy yourself a Constitutional scholar, it’s worth reading the whole thing, which I’ve reproduced below. The rest of you can run along now.

I’ve broken it into bullet items at each semi-colon, for your comprehension pleasure.

Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free;

• that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do;
• that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;
• that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;
• that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
• that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry;
• that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right;
• that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it;
• that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
• that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
• that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
• and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

Here’s a short piece from Channel 6 News in Florida:

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida teens who believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy have prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.

Another myth is that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant, Local 6 reported.

State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida’s abstinence-only sex education, Local 6 reported.

They are proposing a bill that would require a more comprehensive approach, the report said.

It would still require teaching abstinence but students would also learn about condoms and other methods of birth control and disease prevention.

Abstinence-only sex “education” strikes again.

(via The Wild Wild Left)

I was really hoping we had managed to lose this retard, at least for another four years. But like all bad ideas, he keeps coming back. Here is Mike Huckabee shilling for Ben Stein:

(YouTube page is here.)

He claims there is “growing evidence of intelligent design”. Really, Huck? Then why didn’t you provide any? In fact, why don’t they provide any in Expelled? They have an entire movie. From what I have heard (and I’m willing to stand corrected), they don’t spend any time in the movie providing any evidence for ID creationism. They spend all of their time whining about not getting a seat at the grown-ups’ table. Then they throw a tantrum and falsely link the fact of evolution to the horrors of the Holocaust, as if the latter somehow disproves the former.

Tell you what, Huck. When you learn what real science is, then we’ll “open the doors”.

Holy crap! This guy was a viable presidential candidate!

The American Life League, which is dedicated to destroying Planned Parenthood, puts out a weekly “STOPP Report” about its efforts. This week’s report examines Planned Parenthood’s 2006-2007 annual report. ALL writes:

The report shows that PP has killed 289,750 preborn babies and had a total income of over $1 billion. These numbers again mark an increase over the previous year.

Actually, PP didn’t kill any babies. It terminated pregnancies long before they reached that stage.

PP received $356.9 million in clinic income, $258.7 million from private donations and a whopping $336.7 million of our own tax dollars. It had a total profit of $114.8 million. [emphasis in original]

That’s what I want to focus on today. This presumption of profiting off of abortions. It’s a claim a see a lot in the anti-abortion screeds. Fundies keep screaming about how Planned Parenthood performs abortions, because it’s such a profitable business for them. They really say this (when they aren’t claiming that PP is hellbent on eugenics). ALL continues:

In effect, $114 million of taxpayer money went right into Planned Parenthood’s savings account. It is clear that PP does not need all of this money.

Since PP is a non-profit, there are no stockholders or fatcat executives taking home all of that money. It’s going to be available for running the organization in the future.

ALL then presents the financial details in the PP annual report. I decided to go to the Planned Parenthood site and see the report for myself. Here’s the truth behind what the anti-abortionists are claiming.

Here’s a pie chart showing how their services were distributed. This is number of services performed, not dollars.

So of the 10.5 million services provided, abortion only makes up 3%, a mere pittance. The way the fundies talk, you’d think that PP is a ravenous baby-eating monster roaming the countryside, instead of a provider of many fertility-related services, of which abortion barely even registers on the chart.

Look at that chart again. What’s the biggest piece? Contraception, at 38% of all services offered. They also point out in that legend that 81% of all patients seen are provided contraception. That means that PP is preventing many pregnancies from ever happening. PP is actually reducing the number of abortions needed, because many of their patients won’t get pregnant in the first place!

This is an example of unintended consequences. If the fundies succeed in shutting down Planned Parenthood, the number of unwanted pregnancies will definitely go up, and the number of abortions will probably go up as well. If the fundies want to reduce the number of abortions, they should leave PP alone.

Now let’s look at the Revenue pie chart:

As you can see, their health center services generated 35% of their income, just over one third of their revenues.

Now take a look at the Expenses pie chart:

Medical services make up 65% of their expenses, almost two thirds of their entire budget. What this means is that Planned Parenthood isn’t making any money on their medical services. It isn’t a profit center; it’s a cost center! Contrary to what the fundies are telling you, PP is not pushing abortions because they’re making money off of them. They’re providing abortion as one option out of many services, all of which are costing the organization a huge amount of money.

But Abortion Really Is Profitable!

So if PP isn’t making any money off of abortions, does that mean nobody is?

Not by a longshot! Abortion is a hugely profitable business. For the fundies!

What is the number one issue that fundies have been pushing for the last several decades? Anti-abortion, of course. Every fundie organization has anti-abortion as one of their main issues, and many fundie groups are devoted exclusively to this one subject. Millions of fund-raising letters go out every single week, warning the faithful that God will come down out of heaven and smack them personally if they don’t give a gob of money to fight abortion.

Fundies make millions off of this one issue. It’s the cash cow of the radical right. The only people profiting off of abortion are the fundies themselves.

Today we finish our examination of the cartoons published on the website of Hal Lindsey. Lindsey was all the rage in the 1970s with his books and movies about Bible prophecy. He’s still around today (at age 78), peddling his special brand of rage.

Lindsey thinks that we’re in the End Times, and all major current events were predicted in the Bible. He expects Jesus to return any moment now, so you probably don’t need to bother feeding the dog tonight. I’m sure he’ll be raptured up with you in two or three hours.

In part 1, we looked at how these cartoons portrayed politics and church/state separation. In part 2, we looked at what they think of secularists. Today, we will look at how the cartoons depict Bible prophecy.

It’s All About Israel

Jesus isn’t coming back until the “restoration of the Jews”. Christian Zionists such as Lindsey believe that the establishment of Israel in 1948 fulfills that prophecy. Now that that’s taken care of, all we have to do is dot a few “i”s and cross a few “t”s. You know, simple things such as rebuilding the Jerusalem temple and starting World War III.

The state of Israel is central to all of this happening, so we (the United States) cannot allow anything to happen to Israel before these events occur. It isn’t clear to me why this is the job of the United States, especially since Hal Lindsey himself has said that the U.S. is not mentioned in the Bible (I wonder why that is?), so we will not be a major player in the events of the End Times.

This cartoon tells us that we need to expand the so-called War on Terror beyond protecting GW Bush’s daddy from a Saddam Hussein assassination attempt. We must set the security needs of the United States aside and spend our money and soldiers’ lives on the security needs of Israel. Jesus would want it that way.

G.O.P. = God’s Own Party

Here you see that every Muslim alive today is part of Satan’s plan to conquer God’s creation. The only people standing in their way are our brave troops in Iraq. The Democrats are trying to save themselves by surrendering America, freedom, and Jesus to the Islamic hordes. Ahh, but that is a fool’s bargain! As you can see, the Democrats’ path leads to destruction.

One of many things I find distressing about this attitude is that it leaves absolutely no room for compromise or attempts at finding a peaceful solution. To the Christian Zionists, it’s as if world history is on rails. We’re zipping through events toward everyone’s eventual destruction, and that’s the way it is supposed to be! This headlong rush to Apocalypse is good and desirable.

We’re God’s Right Hand

The Biblical quotation on this shows that Lindsey’s Christian Zionists believe that God is using us to carry out his wrath against those who would destroy Israel. That means everything we do in the Middle East is righteous. Well, certainly the destruction and mayhem that the U.S. has wrought upon Iraq and its populace is consistent with the behavior of the Old Testament God, where he would destroy entire towns because of a perceived slight.

I Can’t Wait!

Finally, this is what they want. It’s what they pray for and have wet dreams about. They want everything to get so far out of hand in the Middle East that it triggers WWIII. Look at how this cartoon glorifies that event.

Many people argue that radical Christian fundamentalists are not as dangerous as radical Muslim fundamentalists. The worst that Christian fundamentalists have done in the last 20 years is kill the occasional abortion doctor or torture a gay guy and then tie him to a fence post to die. That’s nothing compared to killing 3000 people in one day.

Or is it?

The radical Muslims usually kill a few dozen people at a time. Even the 3000 dead of September 11 is a relatively small number. What do these Muslims think they will gain? Six dozen virgins for themselves, plus a little bit of fame as a martyr. That’s all.

The Christian Zionists are actively trying to induce World War III. If they ever manage to pull it off, it will mean billions of people dead. Their reward will be the return of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Satan, the banishment to hell of everybody they don’t like, the resurrection of everybody they do like, and total heavenly bliss for themselves.

The Christian Zionists are playing for much bigger stakes than the radical Muslims. The destruction will be far greater, and they have the political influence in Washington to nudge us closer and closer to their dream.

Radical Christians are (potentially at least) much more dangerous than radical Muslims.

Fundamentalist Christians are quick to claim that the United States was founded on Christian principles. For one piece of evidence, they point to the Declaration of Independence. The very first sentence of our founding document states, in part:

…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…

The very next sentence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Hot damn! God is mentioned in the first sentence and then again in the second! That settles it!

The problem here is that the god is completely undefined. Intentionally so, because that defers to the personal beliefs of each citizen. The founders were not about to set forth in this document a declaration of what the citizens believed or should believe.

If they had meant the Christian God, they would have said “the Christian God”. Instead, they wrote “their Creator” and “Nature’s God”. “Their Creator” is the creator of the individual’s choice—the creator within that individual’s personally-held beliefs.

The phrase “Nature’s God” certainly doesn’t sound like Yahweh to me. It actually sounds pagan. How do we know they weren’t referring to an Earth deity? In fact, for all we know, they were referring to the Great Green Arkleseizure.

Well Since You Mentioned It…

The fundamentalist Christians have entered the Declaration of Independence into evidence. That means it’s fair game to further examine this document for clues. In fact, let’s take another look at that second sentence, specifically:

…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“Unalienable Rights”. That’s an interesting concept. Where did it come from? The phrase is more commonly referred to as “inalienable rights”, about which Wikipedia says:

The idea that certain rights are inalienable was found in early Islamic law and jurisprudence, which denied a ruler “the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being.” [emphasis added]

That’s right. This most basic of concepts, declared as “self-evident” in our founding document, is based on Islamic law!

Let’s read a little further in that same Wikipedia paragraph:

These ideas may have influenced John Locke’s concept of inalienable rights through his attendance of lectures given by Edward Pococke, a professor of Arabic studies.

There you have the direct line of descent. From Islamic law to John Locke to the Declaration of Independence. It can’t be any clearer.

The next paragraph elaborates:

In 17th-century England, philosopher John Locke discussed natural rights in his work, and identified them as being “life, liberty, and estate (or property)”, and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract.

In an early draft of the Declaration, Jefferson originally wrote “life, liberty, and property”. This was a direct incorporation of John Locke’s writings. Jefferson expanded the concept in the final draft into “the pursuit of happiness”, but its roots are unmistakable.

Therefore, by using the fundies’ very own logic of citing the Declaration of Independence as proof, we are forced to conclude that America isn’t a Christian country, it’s a Muslim country!

But wait! There’s more!

Many American Laws are Based on Islamic Law

America’s Islamic heritage is far greater than a few concepts mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Much of American law has been derived from English common law. Much of English common law has been derived from Islamic law.

The Wikipedia entry on Sharia has numerous examples. Here are just a few:

It has been suggested that several fundamental English common law institutions may have been derived or adapted from similar legal institutions in Islamic law and jurisprudence, and introduced to England after the Norman conquest of England by the Normans, who conquered and inherited the Islamic legal administration of the Emirate of Sicily, and also by Crusaders during the Crusades.

According to Professor John Makdisi, the “royal English contract protected by the action of debt is identified with the Islamic Aqd, the English assize of novel disseisin is identified with the Islamic Istihqaq, and the English jury is identified with the Islamic Lafif.”… These influences have led some scholars to suggest that Islamic law may have laid the foundations for “the common law as an integrated whole”. [emphasis added]

The section on English common law concludes with:

Other likely influences of Islamic law on English common law include the concepts of a passive judge, impartial judge, res judicata, the judge as a blank slate, individual self-definition, justice rather than morality, the law above the state, individualism, freedom of contract, privilege against self-incrimination, fairness over truth, individual autonomy, untrained and transitory decision making, overlap in testimonial and adjudicative tasks, appeal, dissent, day in court, prosecution for perjury, oral testimony, and the judge as a moderator, supervisor, announcer and enforcer rather than an adjudicator.

The article then lists numerous additional concepts that American common law grabbed from Islam. Here’s a big one:

Similarities between Islamic law and the common law of the United States have also been noted, particularly in regards to Constitutional law.

Want more? How about the effect of Islamic law on property law? Or civil law? (See the wikipedia article for long lists of both.)

Need even more proof? How about one of our most cherished of all principles:

Another influence of Islamic law on the civil law tradition was the presumption of innocence, which was introduced to Europe by Louis IX of France soon after he returned from Palestine during the Crusades. Prior to this, European legal procedure consisted of either trial by combat or trial by ordeal. In contrast, Islamic law was based on the presumption of innocence from its beginning…. [emphasis added]

Conclusion

Is America based upon Christian principles? There are probably some enshrined within our foundation. But as I have clearly shown, much of America’s founding is based upon, and owes a debt of gratitude to, the enlightened civilizations of the Muslims.

A Christian country? Maybe in parts. A Muslim country? Yes, very much so.

The Blog Against Theocracy is happening now! Go on over to the listings and find yourself some excellent articles on church/state separation.