I have some urgent news to pass along to my readers:

If you have any vacation time accrued, you may want to use it before May 2011.

Why, you may ask? Well, because the world is ending - again:

I learned this important news from a pamphlet that a street preacher was passing out at the Veterans' Day parade the other week. (You can read the full thing if you're really interested: pages 1-8, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7.) This information was brought to you by Family Radio, the "Bible-based Christian broadcasting ministry" whose founder, Harold Camping, has been slowly but surely getting crazier as the decades pass. One of his more notable eccentricities is his belief that the "church age" has ended and that all faithful believers should therefore stop going. Needless to say, this hasn't endeared him to his fellow Christians.

Camping last predicted the end of the world in 1994, as I wrote in "Coming Soon to an Apocalypse Near You" - but hey, we all make mistakes, and this time he's really sure he's got the date right. How can he be so confident, you ask? Well, Mr. Smart-Aleck Atheist, just you try to argue with this irrefutable logic:

See? All you have to do is take the date of Noah's Flood (which really happened, and the date of which Harold Camping knows precisely, down to the day), add 7,000 years, and there you are. Just try to find a logical hole in that!

Since he seems so confident about himself the second time around, I wonder if I could interest Mr. Camping in the purchase of a Rapture Bond, or otherwise making some sort of wager on his certainty. I tried, but failed, to find contact information for him on his website, which also looks like it was designed circa 1994. If you care to look and have more success than me, please do let me know.

If Camping was just one lone kook, I wouldn't bother discussing him. But he's still the president of a large ministry on dozens of radio stations nationwide, which means he must still have thousands of followers willing to fund him, despite his 1994 failure. That's the way it usually is: to believers enraptured by prophecy mania, even repeated failures of their prophet are no discouragement. When 2011 comes and goes and nothing happens, Harold Camping, if he's still alive, will probably just pick a new date, and his true devotees will faithfully follow for as many times as this charade is repeated.

In their never-ending quest to elevate every ranting wingnut to the same status as genuine experts, the Washington Post has given a guest column to Bill Donohue - the extreme right-wing Catholic bully whose sole purpose in life is seeking out things to be offended by. Whether it's The Simpsons, the "secular Jews" who run Hollywood and hate Christianity, store greeters who say "Happy Holidays", or monogamous gay couples who want to adopt children, no insult or indignity against the Catholic church is too minor for Donohue to ignore - except, that is, for priests who sexually molest children and are protected by the church hierarchy, which he views as no big deal.

Let's consider Donohue's column one point at a time, starting at the beginning:

There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom...

Yet as I mentioned, Donohue has no qualms about using his own "offense" as a club to beat others. He successfully used this tactic to get two well-known feminist bloggers fired from the John Edwards campaign in 2008. Clearly, the source of his complaint is that he's no longer the only one who can dictate to others what they can and cannot say in order not to offend him.

...artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity... Today's radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place.

If this is what Donohue considers "sabotaging" America, then the First Amendment sabotages America. Citizens of this country have always had the right to speak their minds, to criticize, and to parody. And that doesn't make us "cultural nihilists", it makes us people with a different value system than the scrunched-up wad of indiscriminate rage that apparently constitutes his entire worldview.

Sexual libertines... have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, "Thou Shalt Not." But they continue with their death-style anyway.

The Washington Post, ladies and gentlemen. Is this gibbering, spittle-flecked screed really the sort of garbage they want gracing their editorial pages? (If you don't think so, e-mail onfaith@washingtonpost.com and let them know your views.)

Self-awareness is not a strong trait of the religious right, and this passage shows it. Donohue whines at length about how secularists mock him, but that's only because he makes himself an irresistible target for mockery. Just think of the gigantic ego required to seriously argue that the world revolves around your personal likes and dislikes, and that everyone who believes or acts differently than you is doing it on purpose, just to be spiteful. What satirist could resist the chance to puncture such ludicrously inflated pretensions? How could one not tweak a nose that's so invitingly bulbous and red?

This rant does illustrate a larger point, however. When it comes to religion, many expert pundits and theologians solemnly aver that we atheists are the nasty, rude, uncivil extremists who are making our cause look bad. Why is that criticism never applied in the other direction? Why are bigots like Donohue allowed to rant on about "death-styles" and "perversions" without condemnation, while we secularists are condescendingly chastised just for standing up and calling this delusional nonsense what it is? If the gatekeepers had their way, this debate would be reduced to Donohue and those like him standing on the ramparts and hurling bombs down at us, while we'd be forbidden to reply.

There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult.

Yes indeed, the days of the Hays Code are long gone. That self-imposed industry code of censorship required that "no film... may throw ridicule on any religious faith", nor could ministers be presented as comic relief or as villains. Doubtless, Bill Donohue looks back fondly on those days. But for the record, it also banned films from presenting "sex relationships between the white and black races". Donohue is silent on whether he's nostalgic for that rule, but since it seems clear that he views the Hays Code as a net positive, one would have to conclude, at the very least, that he considers anti-miscegenation laws an acceptable compromise if he also gets anti-blasphemy laws out of the bargain.

I want to emphasize this point, because I think it's important to notice how religious conservatives consistently whitewash the uglier parts of our history when speaking of the past. They pine for the good old days, the era of perceived respect and civility, while steadfastly ignoring the virulent racism, sexism and prejudice of all kinds that ran rampant. This is a subtle form of racism in itself, and we shouldn't let it pass unchallenged. Ask one, the next time you encounter them: Do you believe that the civil rights movement was a good thing? And if so, doesn't that disprove your claims about the moral decay of civilization by showing that, at least in some ways, our society is morally better today than in past generations?

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech.

Quite true, but there most definitely is something in the Constitution (that pesky First Amendment again!) that forbids the government from endorsing or supporting any particular religious view. This is a distinction that the religious right consistently fails to grasp. As Donohue already admitted, his desire is that Catholicism be the only belief system protected from attack or criticism, while everyone else is fair game.

Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge.

The irony is, as pointed out in a comment on Donohue's column, Catholics hold many top positions in the Democratic party - including the Speaker of the House, the Vice President, and last election's presidential nominee - and are actually overrepresented relative to their share of the population as a whole. Indeed, Catholics voted for Obama over McCain by a nine-point margin. This just goes to show that Catholic laypeople are more progressive than the stultifying views of their self-appointed leaders.

And finally, in closing, comes this truly incredible wingnuttery:

The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

While Donohue dreams of a rosy future overpopulated by desperately poor and uneducated Catholic faithful, the sad truth is that every reliable survey has shown rates of atheism, freethought, and support for gay rights rising in every generation.

It is remarkable, however, how openly the right-wingers have given up on winning the battle of ideas. Instead, they've set their hopes on outbreeding their enemies. Clearly, the only people they expect to be able to convince are young, susceptible children. This in itself is the best sign that we're winning the culture war. Donohue's shrill, vile rant is the swan song of a demagogue who's fading into the dust of history, and knows it.

Over the past two weeks, an individual calling himself Steve Leone has attempted to leave about half a dozen variations of the following comment on my thread about the "miracle" of Fatima:

"Oh yeah? Well, how did three illiterate Portuguese peasant children know that some strange atmospheric phenomenon was going to appear in the sky over Fatima at the exact date and time they predicted? Answer that, you smarty-pants atheists!"

Here's an entirely typical example from my moderation queue:

Author: Steve Leone (IP: 205.188.117.11, cache-dtc-ae07.proxy.aol.com)
Comment:
Whatever the thousands of people witnessed at Fatima, one has to ask: How did 3 peasant children know that something would occur at that time? Among all those in that varied crowd of people there was present newspaper reporters from Lisbon who witnessed and so reported the phenomenon that occurred. Agnostics, Atheists, Fanatics, yes even Fools were also present in that crowd of THOUSANDS. There can be no question that a spectacular event occurred. Without computers, 3 children alerted all to the event at the predicted hour. Solar activity was not in the mind of that crowd at that hour since it was rainy and overcast. The children did not fantasize, did not profit materially, did not conspire etc. Make of all this what you want but logic must prevail at the end.

While I don't demand that commenters agree with my viewpoint, I do insist that people who disagree with me take the time to read my posts and respond to the arguments I make. Since it was obvious that this person hadn't bothered to read or comprehend the Fatima post - if he had, he would have known that his criticism is completely irrelevant to the explanation I actually propose - I didn't approve any of these comments.

Then, in the past few days, I've started getting comments of a much more disturbing nature, submitted by someone calling himself "White Power Atheist". Here's one example of the kind of garbage this individual routinely submits:

Author : White Power Atheist (IP: 205.188.117.11, cache-dtc-ae07.proxy.aol.com)
Comment:
We must assassinate all believers

For even more obvious reasons, none of these comments made it out of my moderation queue. But it seems that "White Power Atheist" has suddenly become active on a variety of atheist blogs, as you'll see if you do a Google search for his handle. See this thread, for example, to understand the sort of filth he spews. (These comments were posted on Words of Wrath, a site run by an atheist blogger of color, which I'm sure was intentional.)

Now, if you look closely at the header information for those two comments, you may notice something: Steve Leone and "White Power Atheist" have exactly the same IP address, an AOL proxy server. Their comments also started being sent in to my site within a few days of each other.

Since AOL users all access the internet through these proxies, it might happen by coincidence that two separate people could leave comments from the same IP address. That would be a reasonable explanation if this had only happened once. But my suspicions were up, so I went back and scanned comments submitted to my moderation queue for the past two weeks. Here are the IP addresses used by Steve Leone for the comments he submitted:

64.12.116.69   [18 August 20:21]
205.188.117.11 [24 August 17:03]
205.188.117.11 [24 August 19:45]
205.188.117.11 [25 August 11:07]
205.188.117.11 [25 August 15:10]
64.12.116.69   [5 September 16:14]
205.188.117.11 [6 September 12:50]

And here are the IP addresses used by "White Power Atheist":

205.188.117.11 [4 September 22:15]
64.12.116.69   [6 September 16:00]
64.12.116.69   [6 September 16:03]

I also checked the database of existing comments. These are the only two commenters any time within the past month who have used either of these IP addresses. The fact that both of these commenters appeared within the same general time interval, as well as the fact that they both use these two IP addresses and no other current commenter on my site uses either of them, leads me to conclude that they are the same person. The fact that the Christian-apologist comments appeared first, and with greater frequency, indicates to me that their subject material is the author's primary concern, which leads me to conclude that the Christian persona is the true one and the racist-atheist persona is a masquerade. The implication is that this is a Christian pretending to be a racist atheist in an attempt to smear all atheists with the taint of racism.

I don't usually post on purely political issues, but this one has become impossible to ignore. In the last few weeks, the American right has worked itself into a fever pitch of insanity over the prospect of healthcare reform.

If you've been watching the news, you've seen the shouting, raging protestors disrupting town-hall meetings, screaming at their representatives about how the healthcare bill is tyranny and fascism. These people are almost loud enough to drown out all other debate over health care. And their concerns, almost without exception, are pure, undiluted insanity. Take this right-wing protestor (who was subsequently invited on Fox News, naturally) to spout blithering hysteria about how President Obama is "sentencing our families to death" by trying to get a bill passed that would cover the uninsured.

Until a few weeks ago, I would have thought claims like this were too absurd to need refutation. But it's not just random nutjobs who are saying these things: the very leaders of the Republican party, its spokespeople and elected officials, have thrown their weight behind them. Whether it's Sarah Palin making ludicrous claims about "death panels", or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggesting that health care reform would lead to mandatory euthanasia, or U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx saying on the floor of Congress itself that the healthcare bill would result in "seniors... being put to death", or Senator Chuck Grassley saying that the government would "pull the plug on Grandma", the Republican Party as an entity has fully committed itself, with every outward indicator of sincerity, to defending these delusional lies. And the media, which can be relied upon to reduce every political debate to a he-said-she-said collision of talking heads, has dutifully given airtime to these claims as though they were serious and thoughtful arguments, rather than the ravings of maniacs.

The flood of brazen lies and hysterical fearmongering is the latest symptom of the sickness that's taken the Republican Party. It first manifested itself in the "birther" movement, the right-wing conspiracy theorists who insist in the face of all evidence that Barack Obama was not born in America. Now it's reappeared in the form of the "deathers", who took a single provision in the healthcare bill making provisions for voluntary end-of-life care directives (a provision that was introduced by a Republican senator), and somehow decided it meant that President Obama was planning to institute mandatory euthanasia on a massive scale.

As I said, this would sound too crazy to need refuting, if it hadn't become the sole focus of the frothing mob that the conservative movement has become. I'm aware that this kind of craziness has always been an undercurrent in American politics. But never, to my knowledge, has the tinfoil-hat-and-black-helicopter brigade gotten control of one of America's major political parties. (Along the same lines, Steve Benen has an insightful post on the motivations of the various groups that oppose reform.)

The raving fury and willful denial of reality that has the GOP in its thrall should be familiar to every reader of this blog. These are the same traits that are always seen in doomsday religious cults, the kind that are convinced the whole world is out to get them and everyone who's not part of the cult is an agent of the evil conspiracy. One could well argue that the virulent strain of Christianism that's taken root in the Republican Party, a religious sect already especially prone to such delusions, has accelerated the party's slide.

The most important lesson that liberals and progressives need to learn here is that there's no point trying to appease people who engage in this sort of behavior. They don't come to the table in good faith; they don't want to negotiate; their only goal is to obstruct and destroy.

President Obama was elected on a promise of bipartisanship and consensus-building, and I don't expect him to change that philosophy. Nor do I want a mirror image of the totalitarian behavior of the last administration, which sought to suppress any opinion contrary to its own. But I do hope that elected Democrats will see the futility of trying to bargain with Republicans who promote fear and hysteria, and consciously make an effort to shut them out in favor of the increasingly few reasonable conservatives remaining. If we're going to extend health care to the millions of uninsured Americans, pass a carbon cap-and-trade bill, reform our nation's energy policy, or achieve any other major progressive goal, the doomsday-cult conservative shriekers need to be marginalized and pushed to the lunatic fringes where they belong.

The last time I did a post like this, it was to share some of the more uplifting and inspiring e-mails I received. This one is headed in a different direction. Here, for your reading pleasure and amusement, enjoy this selection of kookery culled from e-mails I've gotten, as well as the occasional preaching comment I've rejected from Daylight Atheism.

First up, there's this from "wayofthegoldenlion", which starts off as standard creationist drivel but builds up steam as it goes, until it suddenly blasts off into awesome heights of lunacy:

As for myself, I believe that science has proved that there has to be a creator (The best mathematicians, physicists, biologists, astronomers,etc all admit they cannot explain how the DNA data gets into each cell/gene and can only be put there by intelligent design. But a campaign of disinformation from the atheist scientific communtity was exposed on British TV (I have the documentary), that proves that even the atheists admitted in secret scientific unpublished journals that all organic life in the universe had to come from a designer creator, and cannot appear randomly. The documentary exposed these findings and carried the atheist scientists through to their final statement and conclusion (which was pretty weak) that all artificial intelligence can appear randomly, but they admit that all organic life has to have a creator. THAT WAS THE COVER UP! THIS WAS EXPOSED AND THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY WERE INFILTRATED BY OCCULT SECRET SOCIETIES AND PAID TO NOT PUBLISH THEIR FINDINGS. (MOSTLY HIGH RANKING FREEMASONS, ROSICRUCIANS, ORDER TEMPLAR ORIENTALIS,ETC). tHE DOCUMENTARY PART 2 STATES THAT 90% OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY DO NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION BUT AGREE WITH CHRISTIANS SCIENTISTS THAT NATURAL SELECTION IS A CORRECT THESIS, BUT THEY CANNOT ADMIT THIS, BECAUSE THEIR FUNDS WILL BE STOPPED BY POWERFUL INSTITUTES CONTROLLED BY THESE OCCULT FREEMASONS/BUSINESSMEN WHO OWN MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

"Secret unpublished scientific journals". Gotta love it. There's considerable potential here for a Christian-fundamentalist version of The Da Vinci Code - our brave hero races against time to find the secret journals and uncover the scientific conspiracy! If only we could find some bold author who's equal to the task.

Next, this comment from "John", who evidently doesn't think that preaching the gospel is important enough to justify spellcheck:

hey why dont u guys jsrt stop hating on everything and chillax and read about Jesus (whose da bomb) cuz otherwise when ur dead ur gunna be like "man that dude on the athiest website knew his stuff."

The translators of the King James Bible must be turning over in their graves. Whatever else we can say about that book, its language is often beautiful and poetic as only Shakespearean English can be. This comment - not so much. ("Verily, Jesus spake unto the multitude: 'O ye fools and blind, can ye not discern that God the Father is da bomb?'")

There's also this anonymous commenter, whose keen insight allowed him to divine the true reason so many people are atheists:

WOw.. you guys are amazing. except for one thing. even if GOD did exsist you'd never know it, cause if ever He did something you'd justify and explain it away. and the reason for this is simple. most of you are addicted to porn or masturbation or alchohol or whatever(please don't reply with what good people you are or what great things you do or how noble you are). and you want to keep doing what you are.

Curses! Found out! And we'd have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling Christians!

Finally, there's this e-mail I got a few weeks ago from someone with the disturbingly Naziesque handle of "The Cure". He starts out with the usual apologetic blather, but then suddenly decides to veer in another direction and start preaching about abortion and homosexuality, despite saying he has no idea what I believe about either (it's not hard to find out if you look). I can only surmise that the thought of "atheism" rattled around inside his brain until it activated the more general category of "things I dislike". And why do so many homophobes target their invective at gay men and rarely, if ever, mention lesbians? Could it be that they focus on the topics they find simultaneously the most fascinating and repelling - and if so, what does that imply about them?

Dear Atheist,

I came across your website and wonder why someone would be so driven to disprove the existence of God? Perhaps your lifestyle does not line up with religious people who believe in God propagate? Just curious. Or perhaps you think hypocracy in the church disproves the existence of God. That is a fallible argument. If a man has been faithful to his wife, provided for his children, and has lived by good moral standards (although I know this is probably subjective to you), but then has a son who gets married, cheats on his wife, and abuses the children, does that disprove the existence of the father? Seriously, a hypocrite does not prove God does not exist, it just proves the Devil does!

I agree that every person is inherently designed to be able to judge between issues of morality on some level; therefore, even you could make some good judgments. But to deny the existence of something greater takes more faith than those who believe in a God.

Two topics that I believe are important to this society and its existence are homosexuality and abortion. I do not know what you believe about these, yet, by natural law even aside from any religious basis they can be judged as wrong!

I am a religious person and I do not want to be vulgar; however, I am sure you are adult enought to handle this statement. Does not common sense tells us that if two different kinds of the same species have different genitalia, and that if used together reproduction is accomplished, then they are made to live together and have a family? The rectum region is existent for both man and women. It is used by both for the same purpose. Yet, the genitalia region is used for another purpose in general; that is to reproduce. Although, the rectum region can be used between man and man to have sensual pleasure, it does not appear to have been "created" or in your terms "evolved" for that use in specific. The main use is to excrete waste. Does not common sense also tells us that since a man and women's genitalia are in same location but are different and fit together like a puzzle, then do you not think man and women belong together? Not man and man, women and women. For just a moment, let us say that everyone decided to be in homosexual relations without the ability by modern science to reproduce in a test tube. If that had happened during the "dark ages" we would not even be here today! The homosexual life style does not promote a constructive foundation of the existence of the world, it brings it to an end!

Abortion is murder. To defend one's life is not murder, that is justice. Capital punishment is justice. Can a baby defend itself? I think not, therefore, abortion is murder.

Perhaps you believe aborition and homosexuality to be wrong. If you do, then you have proved my premise. Even atheists can make some good jugdments. Yes, I believe you can have values; however, this society will crumble if we do not change. Our values need to be based on a higher standard, the Bible! The Roman Empire fell because of the lack of values! Two of their immoral practices were homosexuality, and senseless killing!

My purpose in writing this was to show aside from the Bible, one can prove something to be wrong by its own nature!

The Cure

I knew the Catholics were having trouble finding enough people to be clergy, but I didn't think things had gotten this bad (HT: Pam's House Blend):

I believe that the historical evidence — the historical evidence — is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolph Hitler... I believe there were no gas chambers.

Those are some choice words from Richard Williamson, one of four bishops excommunicated 20 years ago after being appointed by the breakaway archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and whose excommunication Pope Benedict has now lifted. Here are some other viewpoints of Williamson's. First, there's the ever-popular "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" meme:

By lies, Judeo-Masonry brought about the first two World Wars... By lies, Judeo-Masonry is preparing for the Third World War. (source)

He says that homosexuality naturally evokes a "violent repugnance", that homosexual behavior is a sin "crying to Heaven for vengeance", and favors us with the following quote, which I swear I'm not making up:

"Oh, but Our Lord had chawity, (unlike thumwun we know who wath tho nathty to Pwintheth Di!). Our Lord loved thinnerth, and faggotth, and tho thould we!!" So runs the objection! (source)

Predictably, he thinks that women should not receive higher education:

...because of all kinds of natural reasons, almost no girl should go to any university!

The deep-down reason is the same as for the wrongness of women's trousers [yes, he's also against those —Ebonmuse]: the unwomaning of woman. The deep-down cause in both cases is that Revolutionary man has betrayed modern woman; since she is not respected and loved for being a woman, she tries to make herself a man. Since modern man does not want her to do what God meant her to do, namely to have children, she takes her revenge by invading all kinds of things that man is meant to do. (source)

And just for good measure, how about throwing in some 9/11 conspiracy lunacy as well?

None of you believe that 9-11 is what it was presented to be. It was, of course, the two towers came down, but it was absolutely for certain not two airplanes which brought down those two towers. They were professionally demolished by a series of demolition charges from top to bottom of the towers. (source)

Make no mistake about it: By personally lifting this man's excommunication and welcoming him back into the fold, Benedict has sent an unmistakable message that he, and by extension the entire Catholic church, condones sentiments like this. His decision signals that these views are acceptable ones for a Catholic bishop to have. (Meanwhile, Catholics who believe that women should be ordained or that being gay is not a sin continue to be persona non grata to the leadership.)

Based on decisions like this one, it appears that whatever progress was achieved by John Paul II, this pope intends to roll it all back and then some. Even as the world advances, Benedict is deliberately moving the church backwards, as if intending to position it as a bulwark against modernity. And if that's what he wants, so be it. Nothing could better support the atheist contention that the Catholic church is an archaic and obsolete institution.

As parishes shrink and the church fades, ultraconservatives like Benedict are bent on accelerating the decline, by promoting the attitudes that have led to so many people leaving in the first place. They may well wind up presiding over a tiny and hardened remnant, one that matches their medieval vision but is otherwise irrelevant, as the rest of the world progresses in its moral outlook and ultimately leaves them behind.

For whatever reason, I don't get as much entertaining e-mail from religious nuts as some other atheist bloggers I know of. If I were inclined to flatter myself, I'd say it's because they're silenced by the devastating power of my arguments. More likely, it's just because most of the notorious crazies haven't come across my site.

In either case, crackpot e-mail in my inbox is sufficiently rare that when I do get e-mail from genuine kooks, I can't keep it to myself. I just have to share it with you all. Following is a message I received the other night from a person whose hatred of atheists is evident, whose hold on reality is debatable, and who holds a unique interpretation of the death of Jesus. All spelling and grammar is as in the original. Enjoy!

To: ebonmusings@gmail.com
Date: 16 May 2008 11:22
Subject: Feedback: An Easter Blessing

One thing is sure. The devil has his ring in your nose and is controlling your every thought and action.

He has you convinced that there is no proof of Jesus. As with all of his other lies he is wrong.

I have proven the reality of Jesus for years. I live in perfect health because of Him. I live a life of miracles including divine protection.

I have seen Him as He hung on the cross. Because He had suffered the worst case of every sickness and disease that would ever touch a human body, His body was so grotesque rhat if the people had been able to see it, they could not have handled seeing it.

I have seen Him seated at the roght hand of the Father in heaven.

The devil has you so deluded that you are arrogant and condescending, thinking you are smarter than we who know Jesus.

Unless you rejest the lies of the devil you will spend eternity in hell with your father, rhe devil.

May God have mercy on your pitiful soul.

As a rule, I don't make fun of people who are clearly mentally ill (although I consider anyone who attracts a substantial following to be fair game). On the other hand, the line between excessive religiosity and psychosis is a blurry one. This writer's soteriology is a bit unorthodox, but his religious visions and his claims to be the beneficiary of miracles would not be out of place in many large, conventional churches. Nor, for that matter, would his denunciations of atheists.

Unfortunately, the way that religious belief exalts irrationality means that genuine mental disorders can go unnoticed. Primordial Blog tells the sad story of Blair Donnelly, a man whose untreated psychosis resulted in him murdering his daughter because he believed God had told him to do so. This tragedy might have been averted if Donnelly had received psychiatric treatment, but he was a member of a Pentecostal sect that viewed his constant claims of hearing voices and seeing demons not as symptoms of illness, but great spiritual gifts. I have no reason to believe that my correspondent suffers from any similar disorder, but the possibility cannot be completely dismissed.

I don't make it my mission to slap down every loudmouth religious-right crackpot on the internet. Really, I don't. If I wanted to make it my mission, I could do nothing else, but it wouldn't accomplish anything and it wouldn't make for a very interesting site.

However, the other day, this giant, flaming meteor of stupidity landed in my inbox, and it was just too tempting not to have a go. The author of this benighted epistle is Michael Medved, nationally syndicated right-wing radio host. In it, he applies his talents to the issue of why atheists are unfit to serve as president of the United States of America.

First:

Just as the Queen plays a formal role as head of the Church of England, the President functions as head of the "Church of America" – that informal, tolerant but profoundly important civic religion that dominates all our national holidays and historic milestones.

The "Church of America"? Good grief. Does Medved really think a vital part of the President's job description is to issue mushy ecumenical proclamations reassuring voters that God approves of us? I must have missed that line in Article II. Somehow, I think the nation could soldier on if the President didn't come out of the White House every so often to give us all a theistic pat on the head. The President is the President, not the Pope of America. His job is to faithfully execute the laws. That's all. I can assure Medved that those Americans who wish to go on believing have more than ample opportunity to find like-minded clergy members elsewhere.

For instance, try to imagine an atheist president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation–-the Indians in Massachusetts?

Oh, the horrors that would ensue if a president refused to issue a religious proclamation at Thanksgiving! Good thing we never had a president who dared such an impious act!

What? We did?

Who was he, some kind of liberal?

I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it... every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

Oh, yeah: it was the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Then there's the significant matter of the Pledge of Allegiance. Would President Atheist pronounce the controversial words "under God"? If he did, he'd stand accused (rightly) of rank hypocrisy. And if he didn't, he'd pointedly excuse himself from a daily ritual that overwhelming majorities of his fellow citizens consider meaningful.

I have a third alternative: why not say the Pledge as it was originally written, by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy, before a meddling Congress inserted the words "under God" in the 1950s to give themselves a talking point about how we were superior to those evil, godless commies?

Medved unintentionally puts his finger on a reason why the Pledge should be restored. It's quite true that the President should be able to participate in the patriotic rituals that unite us as a people. That's why the current, religionized Pledge is so unfortunate - because it divides us, and makes a large number of Americans reluctant to participate in this civic institution without being made to violate their own consciences or feel like outsiders. And that's why it should be fixed, so that all Americans, religious or not, can participate. Medved's solution is to preserve that bigotry and keep the atheists out; I would rather get rid of the divisive language so that atheists can enter fully into the fold of American citizenship.

Next, Medved says, the "United States remains a profoundly, uniquely religious society" and should have a leader whose beliefs reflect that. Yet at the same time, he says, a candidate like Mitt Romney or Joe Lieberman would still be qualified:

There's a difference between an atheist, however, and a Mormon or a Jew – despite the fact that the same U.S. population (about five million) claims membership in each of the three groups.

Uh, no. The most recent major survey done on this issue, last month's Pew poll, found that self-declared atheists and agnostics account for about 4% of the population. That's 12 million people. The "secular unaffiliated", very likely atheists in all but name, are another 6%. That's 30 million people, not five. Perhaps five million people seems like a small enough minority for Medved to safely ignore, but 10% of the population is pushing it.

For Mitt and Joe, their religious affiliation reflected their heritage and demonstrated their preference for a faith tradition differing from larger Christian denominations. But embrace of Jewish or Mormon practices doesn't show contempt for the Protestant or Catholic faith of the majority, but affirmation of atheism does.

This is the old canard that atheism is somehow intrinsically disrespectful of the religious in the way that other religions are not. It's hard to see how this claim can be sustained, though, because Mormonism and Judaism both deny fundamental tenets of Christianity: one rejects Jesus' claim to be the messiah, while the other asserts that he was just one in a potentially infinite line of deified humans. These faiths already deny so many of each other's major tenets: why does the one additional tenet denied by atheism make all the difference?

Finally, Medved asserts, only a religious president could win the war against "Islamo-Nazism" (yes, he actually calls it that; I cracked up laughing too).

Our enemies insist that God plays the central role in the current war and that they affirm and defend him, while we reject and ignore him. The proper response to such assertions involves the citation of our religious traditions and commitments, and the credible argument that embrace of modernity, tolerance and democracy need not lead to godless materialism.

Is Medved really saying that al-Qaeda would go away and leave us alone if only we prove to them that we hate atheists as much as they do?

I have a news flash for you, sir: Al-Qaeda devotes considerable time and effort to killing their fellow Muslims for practicing the "wrong" faith. Do you really think that electing a Christian of any denomination is going to appease them? And what about the Jews? You just said that a Jewish person could be qualified to be president. Would that choice ever satisfy the evil Islamo-Nazis? Or do you want to rethink your plan of selecting presidents based on whom our enemies hate the least?

In this context, an atheist president conforms to the most hostile anti-America stereotypes of Islamic fanatics and makes it that much harder to appeal to Muslim moderates whose cooperation (or at least neutrality) we very much need.

Uh-huh. Because presidents who call the war on terrorism a "crusade", and presidential candidates whose chief religious advisers openly preach that we are in a divinely ordained "religious war" against Islam, are not going to inflame Muslim sentiment in any way. Mr. Medved, you seem oddly open to diplomacy for a member of the right, but I have to break it to you: if you think that's how this fight is going to be won, then you're backing the wrong side altogether.

In sum: Like nearly all members of the religious right, Michael Medved's view of America is aggressively anti-historical, his idea of our enemies is an ignorant cartoon, and his beliefs about atheists are a load of smug tripe. His popularity shows the widespread and glaring lack of intellectual standards among the religious right. His opinions can be safely dismissed by people of intelligence and good sense.

There, I feel better. Sometimes you just need a little bit of catharsis. Now, on to more important subjects.

Some news from earlier this year you might have missed: James Randi is officially ending his million-dollar challenge to those who claim they have psychic or supernatural powers. The challenge will be offered for two more years, and assuming no one succeeds and claims the money, will be terminated in March 2010.

It's not hard to see why Randi would do this. After ten years without a single successful applicant, I think he's made his point. Unsurprisingly, the best-known, most prominent psychic pretenders (Sylvia Browne, John Edward, etc.) have refused to even come near the challenge. The people who do apply are usually either recalcitrant and uncooperative or obviously mentally disturbed, in either case forcing Randi's staff to spend inordinate amounts of time and effort trying to get them to commit to a clear, testable claim. Here are some typical applications from the JREF's blog:

There are alternate versions of myself in different types of highly evolved states that work interchangeably to form the time process in its phasic reflective capacitations of experiential transience.

I want to show the matrix. To prove solutions and cures are withheld. Prove manipulations of sinister intent exist.

This money can be more effectively used to promote the causes of scientific inquiry and skepticism, rather than being held in trust while its caretakers try to sort through this river of nonsense. If there were any prospect that high-profile psychic claimants would agree to be tested, then I would encourage the challenge to continue, since debunking their claims in a major public forum could attract attention and interest that would greatly advance the skeptics' cause. But of course, these famous psychic pretenders know full well that this would be the outcome, and so they steadfastly avoid Randi's challenge. From their perspective, sad to say, it's a rational decision: why risk near-certain exposure and embarrassment by going up against a canny skeptic, when they can make comparable sums by safely exploiting the credulous and the gullible?

Interestingly, Randi's challenge is not the only one of its kind. The Skeptic's Dictionary lists numerous similar challenges offered by skeptical groups around the world. So, to handle the inevitable flood of flimflam artists who will step forward just after the challenge ends and announce that they could have won it, I advise pointing them to one of these challenges instead. A person who could win one or several of them would have an excellent claim for having their powers scientifically validated. Randi has also said, I believe, that he'd consider temporarily resurrecting the challenge if a famous psychic wanted to apply - so we can rest assured that woo-woo advocates will not be able to wriggle away from those pesky requests for proof, either now or in the years to come.

Late last year on Freethought Radio, Dan and Annie Laurie played a remarkable clip from James Dobson, talking on his own radio show about their program:

The problem is that the Christian ethic is literally hanging by a thread. I heard just a few weeks ago that Air America, the very leftist radio entity... have come up with a program that will be aired across the country that is atheistic - admittedly atheistic in nature.

Freethought Radio was on the air for some time before it was picked up nationally by Air America, but never mind that. What I find most amusing is Dobson's claim that Freethought Radio's debut has left Christianity "hanging by a thread". When last I checked, there were more than 2,000 religious radio stations in America, many of which play Christian programming twenty-four hours a day - not to mention the Christian TV channels, magazines, book publishers, megachurches, private colleges, evangelism programs, political lobbying organizations, and so on. Who'd have thought that this multibillion-dollar infrastructure was so fragile that one hour a week of radio pitched explicitly to freethinkers could bring it all to the edge of ruin? Shades of David and Goliath!

Dobson isn't the only one making noise like this. Last year, Ed Brayton reported on a hysterical column written by Janet Folger of the right-wing site WorldNetDaily, in which she imagines a future where Hillary Clinton has become President and has outlawed Christianity. No, I'm not making that up. In a similar story, the creationist Discovery Institute complains about the "unprecedented wave of persecution" it has suffered from nasty, mean scientists - as if academia's refusal to take them seriously was the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone. And again, Greg Laurie of WorldNetDaily wrings his hands over "the ugly results of banning God from the culture".

Another right-wing site, Hal Lindsay's Oracle Cartoons, has comics with titles like "Jail For Jesus", in which the cartoonist fantasizes about Christianity being outlawed worldwide and himself and other Christians being jailed, persecuted and tortured. In fact, judging by his strips with titles like "Another Illegal Cartoon", he seems to have persuaded himself that this is already in progress.

This is not to say that fears about the restriction of speech are entirely meritless. There are some legitimate threats to free speech in the world, and these need to be treated with the seriousness and gravity they deserve. What we do not need is the shrieking hysteria of Christians who treat the situation all out of proportion to its seriousness, as if their entire religion was on the very edge of being stamped out. A rational person would take the view that, while persecution of individuals is still atrocious where it exists, Christianity constitutes one-third of the population of this planet and commands a substantial portion of its wealth and power; it is not in danger of dying out any time soon. Even worse is the odious, conceited belief held by many Christians that everyone is against them and that their religion is the only one whose free speech is under threat. (Most tyrants suppress differing views indiscriminately.)

There is no global tide of persecution poised to sweep down on Christians, as these people ridiculously imagine. They should recognize that protections on free speech have always been a patchwork at best. Some nations are strong bulwarks of free speech; others allow it in some cases but restrict it in others; and in a handful of totalitarian states, there is no free speech at all. Every infringement on free speech is serious, but to assume that Christianity as a whole is in dire peril or is prevented from communicating its message is a delusion in stark conflict with reality.