I pulled this title directly from a post at Rightly Concerned, a blog published by the American Fundie Association. I’m so glad there is an organization that officially decrees what religion people are allowed to be.

I wonder if there is an application form I have to fill out? Maybe it’s like Candid Camera. All I have to do is go about my normal day, and sometime, somewhere, when I least expect it, Alan Fundie jumps out and says “Smile! You’re a Muslim!”

The article is written by some guy named Bryan Fischer. Let’s have a look:

Someone who calls himself a “Christian” must, at a bare minimum, have some allegiance to the teachings of Christ.

I agree completely. For example, let’s consider the matter of medical waste. What if that waste could be used to find cures for painful, debilitating, or terminal diseases? It would be immoral to insist on throwing that material away, wouldn’t it? Somebody who advocated allowing millions of people to suffer instead of trying to cure their affliction could not possibly be a Christian.

I just knocked the ground out from under Bryan Fischer. The rest of his article is completely discredited on this fact alone. Let’s skim through the rest of it, though, just to see what his point was.

He said something, in his own autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, that makes it impossible for us to think of him as a Christian. He may call himself one, but just because I call myself a 1963 Jaguar XKE doesn’t make me a car.

Or just because you call yourself intelligent…

In a telling excerpt from his memoir, he writes about being asked by his daughter a question regarding what happens when we die.
…
Here, in our pseudo-Christian president’s own words, is his answer to the question of the ages: “I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn’t sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang.”

OK, Fischer, what’s your problem with that answer?

This is an answer that no Christian could possibly give.

Because it’s honest?

It’s an answer that could only be given by someone who does not believe in Christ, his mission, and his teaching. It’s an answer an agnostic could give, an answer an atheist could give, or an answer a spiritual inquirer could give.

Actually, atheists don’t believe in souls, so no, they couldn’t give that answer either. If Christians and atheists are incapable of giving that answer, then Christians and atheists must believe the same thing. Atheists don’t believe in God, so ergo, ipso facto, Q.E.D., Christians don’t believe in God!

It’s even an answer a Muslim could give since a Muslim can’t know he’s going to paradise unless he blows up some infidels.

Likewise, some Christians can’t know unless they shoot an abortion doctor.

Now we can’t be sure exactly what Mr. Obama meant when he confessed ignorance regarding “what existed before the Big Bang,” but the Scripture leaves no doubt on that score: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”(Genesis 1:1).

That same book tells us that the Earth is flat and that day and night existed before the sun was created. Are you sure you want to be using that as a reference?

Is President Obama a Christian? Nope.

If Bryan Fischer is a typical member of that club, I can only hope that Obama isn’t a Christian.

Why, no. Just when I think I’ve seen all the weirdness the fundies can create, something like this comes along.

What’s truly inexplicable is comments for this video have been turned off. I wonder why that could be?

So, umm, I guess by drinking Pepsi we’re helping to bring on Armageddon?

I’m not an expert on economics, but I think I know enough about it to be able to come to reasonably-informed opinions on the issues.

I’ve been warning about the national debt to anybody who would listen since the late ’70s. You can’t run on deficit spending forever, yet that’s what we we’ve been doing.

That course was heading us to eventual disaster, but then GW Bush was installed as president by the Supreme Court and pretty much sealed our fate. Bush massively ratcheted up the already obscenely high national debt. His cronies (e.g., Haliburton, Blackwater, Goldman Sachs) looted the public treasury. He got us into two protracted, unfunded wars. His policies destroyed our manufacturing base, shipped many of our jobs overseas, and damaged the economy in numerous other ways.

Given our massive debt, enormous budget deficits, gargantuan military, and runaway spending that neither party is willing to curtail, it looks to me that a crash is inevitable. I hope I’m wrong. I tend to be a fatalist about life in general, so that might be coloring my assessment of things.

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, is making the rounds these days warning of the bleak days ahead. He wrote an op-ed at the New York Times titled “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse”. Here are some excerpts of what he says:

[T]he new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.
…
When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt.… This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.
…
The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.
…
The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore.
…
The day of national reckoning has arrived.… [I]t’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.

Stockman was also interviewed on All Things Considered recently. I’ll try to embed the interview below.

Bottom line: We’re undertaxed and overspent and have been so for decades.

Unlike the woman in the above picture, the only pain in my ass is how many hours I’m working these days. It has been difficult to sit on the sidelines while Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional. The fundies are throwing a fit! They’re having a conniption! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the fundies this worked up! Oh, happy day!

They’re upset for a lot of reasons. For one, they somehow think that their religion gets to make the laws of our land. The last time I checked the Constitution, that wasn’t how it’s done.

There are a lot of other reasons they’re upset. Most of them you’ve probably heard. I was thinking about this, and I may have come up with another.

The fundies object to gay marriage, because it legalizes anal sex.

In fundie-land, any form of sexual activity outside of marriage is forbidden. Certain activities (the ones they refer to as “unnatural acts”), though, are so heinous that you’re guaranteed a trip to hell just for contemplating them.

You’re also guaranteed a trip to prison. Most states, in fact, used to have laws against sodomy (some states still do). They’ll throw your ass in the slammer if they catch you, which, ironically, just guarantees you’ll be having a lot more anal sex.

But once you’re married, all of the taboos are lifted. You’re supposed to have sex. It’s your moral obligation. God is watching you have sex, and if he doesn’t see enough of it, you’re in trouble!

You can see what the problem is. Legalizing gay marriage legalizes gay sex. That probably bothers many fundies more than the idea of two men playing house together.

Speaking of people not qualified to be raptured, here’s a YouTube video from some loony. Since I know none of you will be able to watch this thing all the way through, I’ve set it to start at the part about Barack Obama. Did you know that God told the nomadic goat herders who wrote the Bible 3000 years ago that Barack Obama would be elected president of the USA in 2008? It’s true! That’s not all he told us about Obama:

(Found via Picture is Unrelated. In this case, more like brain is disconnected.)

In other news, we’ve entered another one of those silly crunch times at work. Rather than budget the actual amount of time the project will take, management thinks we can do it in half the time! This is the sort of brilliant planning that causes people to burn out and quit. Seems counterproductive if you ask me. Anyway, my time will be very tight for the next six weeks. I’ll try to post at least once a week anyway, although they will probably be shorter posts.

Surely you must be gay by now. After all, the homosexuals have been promoting their agenda and shoving their lifestyle down your throat for several decades now. If the conversion hasn’t stuck yet, well then, I guess it never will!

I was reminded of this agenda by seeing an article on Yahoo that Constance McMillen just won her court case and turned the whole country gay.

The article states:

[T]he American Civil Liberties Union won their case against the Itawamba County School District on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen!

To recap, McMillen wanted to bring her girlfriend to her senior prom but was denied this right by her Mississippi high school. School staff and students then put on a decoy prom for McMillen and other “less desirable” pupils while the majority of the student body partied 30 miles away at the real prom.

Today’s ruling means that school officials are required to implement a policy banning discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and they’re paying McMillen $35,000 in damages as well as her attorneys’ fees.

Maybe $35,000 doesn’t sound like much, but you have to read between the lines. You know, like the geniuses who left comments on that article. Here are just a few:

Jesse wrote:

Thats sweet let gays go to prom. U kno wat lets let daughters be sexually active wit their fathers and bring them to prom. If i started datin someone in jail for murder robbery or watever could they let them so i could bring them to prom. They better of il get a sh*t load of money out of it. Wat if im eighteen and im attracted to 8 year olds could i bring them to prom. U cant judge me i have my rights huh. This is sick and a bad move from this selfish D*ke. Peace i hope u sleep good knowin your rewarded for having no values.

MStoneManiac said:

Another example of the Gay Agenda and how its forcing the hetero majority to accept and affirm a lifestyle that is abberant by social standards, perverse by moral standards, an abomination by religious standards and a mutation that is essentially genocide by biological standards. Thanks gay people for shoving it down our throats!

Patriot1 wrote (and you know anybody calling himself “Patriot1” is going to be a model of intelligence and tolerance):

So yet another gay/lesbian trying to force their lifestyle on everyone else, and say “accept it and okay it, or I will find a way to force you to, because I don’t like that you don’t care for my lifestyle choice.” And yet then they have the gall to call US intolerant.

I’m sorry. I’m a little confused right now. Which millennium are we in?

I’m sure you’ve heard the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” at some point in your life. It’s allegedly the longest word in the English language. This Wikipedia article tells us there are longer words, but they don’t count.

I remember looking up the definition years ago and not really getting it. I looked it up again today, and found it related to this blog. Wiktionary explains it well:

Said by Weekley to be first recorded in Gladstone’s “Church and State”, in reference to a scheme directed against the Church of England. From establishment in the sense of the ecclesiastical system established by law; the Church of England.

establish
to set up, put in place, or institute (originally from the Latin stāre, to stand)

dis- + establish
ending the established status of a body, in particular a church, given such status by law, such as the Church of England

disestablish + -ment
the separation of church and state (specifically in this context it is the political movement of the 1860s in Britain)

anti- + disestablishment
opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishment + -arian
an advocate of opposition to disestablishment (alternatively, but less likely and quite similar in meaning, “opposed to disestablishmentarians”, depending on what “anti-” is taken to belong to)

antidisestablishmentarian + -ism
the movement or ideology of advocates of opposition to disestablishment; the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment (simply not wanting a separation of church and state)

Whew! That’s quite word. So the official definition is:

antidisestablishmentarianism
A political philosophy opposed to the separation of a religious group (“church”) and a government (“state”), esp. the belief held by those in 19th century England opposed to separating the Anglican church from the civil government.

As you can see, it arose out of an effort to disentangle church and state in 19th century England. This definition also implies that it can be used more generally.

That means that I am a disestablishmentarian (21 letters), and my philosophy is disestablishmentarianism (24 letters). The modern fundies, therefore, advocate antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters).

But I study the behavior of these people. You could say that what I do is antidisestablishmentarianismology (33 letters). This, of course, makes me an antidisestablishmentarianismologist (35 letters). Beat that, fundies!

Just a few of the annoying fanboys are Sci-Fi Obsessives (29th), World of Warcraft Junkies (11th), Linux Geeks (9th), Audio Snobs (8th), and Bill Gates Apologists (6th).

These rankings are the result of a poll they took. Internet polls are always skewed, of course, but they do reveal something about perceptions. I think a lot of people would agree that audio snobs are more annoying than science fiction fans. Shut up! Nobody can hear the difference between a $5000 speaker and a $10,000 speaker!

So here are some of the other annoying fanboys.

Coming in 7th are Anime Aficionados.

They had this to say about them.

Coming in 2nd and 3rd are Twitter Twits and Conspiracy Theorists.

Number 1 by a wide margin is Apple Acolytes.

With a couple of accurate comments.

But here is the most interesting result. Ranked 5th, with almost 5% of the vote, is Richard Dawkins Zealots.

The first “fact” they have listed under “Did you know” is an example of their sloppy research. The whole “because it says so in a book” claim doesn’t apply to any atheist I’ve ever met.

But like I said above, in a situation like this, the facts aren’t relevant. People don’t react to facts they don’t know. People react to what they think they know about a subject. The perception here is that the vocal atheists are no different from obnoxious Christians.

Brazil? Brazil? It’s a predominantly Catholic country. That causes no end of problems, but they’re usually not as bad as those caused by the American-style Protestant fundies.

Anyone know what’s going on there? I thought maybe “fundie” was Portuguese for something else (maybe “camel sex”), but Google Translate says no.

Also on the Google Insight page was this table of most-frequent search terms:

I’m not sure what those numbers represent, but it looks like I have a large share of the mindset. When people want to know more about fundies, they come here!

Troubled by fundies? Have no fear, Bay of Fundie is here! He can’t stop them, but he can piss them off so much that they whine like the mental children they are and threaten to sue.

I received an email from the “Family” Research Council (and “Family” is probably an accurate description). The email states:

When the North Carolina legislature asked Ron Baity to serve as a guest chaplain at the state house, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church said it was an honor. What he didn’t know was how short-lived that honor would be!

Short-lived? It shouldn’t have lived at all! A legislature has no business establishing a state religion, which is exactly what they are doing every time they open their session with a prayer.

During the last week of May, when Pastor Baity was scheduled to open the session in prayer, a House clerk asked to first review the text.

Well that sounds a little ominous. Why would a government bureaucrat need an advance look at the text of the prayer?

When she noticed the last line, she said, “We would prefer that you not use the name of Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.”

It doesn’t matter to me whether Jesus is mentioned or not. I’m offended that it mentions God. So what this bureaucrat is telling us is that the state of North Carolina only worries about offending one branch or another of the Abrahamic religions. They all pray to the same god, so as long as we only talk about him, it’s OK.

Well what about non-Yahwehans? I guess the Constitution doesn’t protect Hindus, Jains, and Wiccans. They’re also ignoring the non-religious completely. After all, there are only 34 million of those in America (a mere rounding error!).

But it was Pastor Baity who was most offended.

No. It’s the scores of millions of Constitution-lovers who are the most offended.

When the clerk raised the issue with House Speaker Joe Hackney,[…] Hackney decided that the pastor could offer his prayer—but that it would be his last one. After that, Baity’s services would “no longer be needed.”

Wrong tense. Try “never were”!

But I think Baity is about to have a revelation:

A stunned Baity told Fox News Radio, “When the state tells you how to pray, that you cannot use the name of Jesus—that’s mandating a state religion. They talk about not offending other people but at the same time, if they are telling me how to pray—that’s the very thing our forefathers left England for.”

Now you get it, moron! That is why you keep religion out of government! It isn’t just so “a few people won’t be offended”. It isn’t even because mixing one religion with government imposes that religion on people of other faiths. It’s because the contamination goes both ways! The taint of religion ruins government, and the taint of government ruins religion!

Now get your taint out of my face. I’m tired of smelling it.

When I was growing up, I spent some of my summers on my grandfather’s farm in South Dakota. It was a fantastic place to run around, although my mother was convinced I’d get maimed.

She was always telling me horror stories about how dangerous a farm is. Allegedly one of her cousins or a friend of a cousin or a cousin of a friend of a cousin of a friend was eaten by pigs. Supposedly this cousin was walking on top of the fence, slipped, and fell into the pig pen. The ravenous pigs descended upon her in a piranha-like frenzy. By the time her father could chase the pigs off, all that was left of her was her hair.

Mothers are full of scary stories.

Another such tale seemed to change a bit with each retelling. She didn’t want me to get too close to the grain elevator while it was running. That’s what she called it, but I guess it was actually a hay elevator. It was a conveyor belt. One end was at ground level. The other end was above a door in the roof of the granary. You shovel the hay onto one end, and the conveyor belt deposits the hay into the loft.

She told me that when she was in school, one of the kids at one of the other farms was loading the hay elevator and he got his arm caught on the belt. Ripped his arm clear off! She saw that one-armed boy every day at school from then on.

But then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the combine. Way back when she was in school, there was this kid at one of the other farms. He had been helping harvest the crop when he got too close to the combine. It ripped his arm clear off!

Then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the windrower, and, well, you can guess the rest. I assumed that her school was populated entirely by one-armed boys.

One day I discovered an old wagon out in one of the fields. This required further investigation, so I started climbing all over it. My grandfather came by and said “What are you doing in the manure spreader?”

I ran out of that thing faster than a creationist running from an evolution book.

Speaking of manure spreaders, I came across our old friend Kevin Wirth on the internet today.

I was searching to see what sort of damage Access Research Network has been doing lately and came across this thread in a forum at the Atheist Foundation of Australia.

One of the members there, who goes by the handle “Eccles”, discovered that ARN was giving away a screensaver of Hubble images. He didn’t really scope out the ARN website too closely. He just downloaded the program and installed it on his computer. He tells us what happened next:

When I downloaded it and ran it, to my horror the images were peppered with BS about “Intelligent Design”. I immediately uninstalled that screen saver, unsubscribed from the site and sent the director, Dennis Warner a nasty e-mail.

Before long, Eccles discovered a very large turd in his email box. It was plopped there, of course, by ARN’s “Director of Turd Disbursement and Misinformation”, Kevin Wirth.

Let’s see what manure Kevin has been spreading in Australia.

I was dismayed to read your email to Dennis (which he has requested that I respond to).
…
First and foremost, we do not exist to proseltyze [sic] religion or religious views. This is a huge, but unfortunately common mistake about our mission.

The only mistake is that they weren’t able to come up with a scheme less obviously religious than Intelligent Design creationism.

Meanwhile, you should read our mission statement at ARN.ORG. Nowhere in it will you find anything about our intent to promote religion.

Duh! If they told people they had a religious agenda, they wouldn’t be able to sneak it into the schools!

Secondly, we do not knowingly promote “lies” about Intelligent Design as you claim.

Sure you do, Kevin. You flat-out claim that Intelligent Design creationism is not religious. It is by definition. The designer has all of the characteristics of God. Ergo, he is God.

While it is true that ID is consistent with many religious views, we don’t exist to promote religion of any kind.

This statement is patently absurd. My best guess is that Kevin thinks that because ID creationism is consistent with many religions, it is therefore not a promotion of religion. This is the sort of logic that leads high schools to think it is OK to have a prayer at graduation ceremonies. (“It’s a generic prayer, so it’s OK!”)

Our focus is on providing resources related to Intelligent Design, and we are frankly not terribly concerned about the religious background of those who advocate for or against this position. We’re more interested in the scientific and philosophical arguments related to this topic, and are willing to allow others to think and talk about where they think the evidence leads.

There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism. And of course he’s willing to let others follow wherever it leads. The purpose of Intelligent Design creationism is to give the faithful a plausible-sounding excuse for rejecting science.

Our main concern here at ARN is that you are being given an opportunity to explore information options about ID not found at very many other web sites.

You know, web sites that are about reality and facts.

But it also seems to me that that the fact of the matter is, a reliance upon the Almighty was very much a part of the founding our nation. That’s just a fact, pure and simple.

It’s true. Many of the founding fathers were religious. In fact, there was quite a diversity of Christian sects throughout the colonies in those days. That’s why the First Amendment, protecting religious freedom, was so important to them. So then why is Kevin trying to circumvent that protection by getting creationism taught in the schools?

We also make a distinction between Creation and ID. Creationists openly advocate connections to religious texts while ID prefers to focus on scientific and philosophical considerations

We’re religious. We just don’t focus on it!

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that simply because Intelligent Design is consistent with the idea of a “God of the Universe” that we are attempting to shove that thought or any other religious notion down your throat.

That’s misdirection. He doesn’t have a specific religious goal. ID creationism’s purpose is to provide cover for others to get God into the schools and other government institutions. That’s just those folks’ “academic freedom”. Guess what, Kevin. Facts and data are academic. Religious beliefs are not. Nobody has the “freedom” to inject religion into the classroom.