patrickumsted.com

I have a deal for you Mr. Zimmerman.  If you can provide scientific evidence that a Judeo-Christian god created the world in 7 days then I will have no problem with a science textbook teaching Creationism.  Until then, those books will continue to call Creationism a myth.  Period.

[hattip: Civil Commotion]

A judge in Tennessee(my home state) thought it appropriate to arrest a spectator in his courtroom and force the “accused” to submit to a drug test for no other reason than a hunch.  Wow.

While the judge did not get off unpunished, the fact he is still allowed to stand in judgement of others with such disregard or ignorance of the rule of law defies logic.

A judge in Dickson County, Tenn., had officers pull a spectator out of his courtroom “on a hunch,” held him in custody and made him submit to a urinalysis for drugs, the man claims in Federal Court. Benjamin Marchant claims that General Sessions Judge Durwood Moore admitted that he “routinely drug-screens ’spectators’ in his courtroom if he ‘thinks’ they may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.” Moore allegedly called it the “routine policy of the court.”

…who happens to be an atheist.  This time its from the Charlotte Observer.  Of course, we get more quotes from the insane H.K Edgerton:

“My father was a Baptist minister. I’m a Christian man. I have problems with people who don’t believe in God,” said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, a group that promotes the interests of black Southerners.

2 points to make about that quote.

1) Good for you. Your father was a Baptist minister. You are a Christian. You have a problem with me. That’s great. My father was a sane man. I’m an sane man. I have problems with people who have a tenuous grasp on reality.

2) Since when is Southern Heritage 411 a group that “promotes the interest of Black Southerners?” Really? Go to their site and show me anything to do with the advancement of the interests of Black Southerners. Anything.

Civil Commotion is, and has been, a must read.  Bob Felton truly goes after the hypocrites and demagogues of our society.  His latest post on Lottie Moon is no exception.

Just now is the height of the Southern Baptists’ annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and today is the anniversary of her birth in 1840. A missionary to China, she is routinely described as “the nearest thing Protestants have to a saint.”

Famously, she broke off her engagement to the scholar Crawford Toy because he doubted the literal truth of Genesis, and she has ever since been held up as the exemplar toward which all believers should strive. Budding pastors are encouraged to cite her example to their congregations, to steer, and be steered, by it.

Almost never do they remark that acute loneliness was the central theme of her life, a constant refrain in her letters home.

The thinly-veiled, Evangelical Christian twist on the burgeoning American victim culture known as the “War on Christmas” has its own Yelp knockoff site.  At Stand for Christmas, anyone with a computer, Internet connection, and penchant for moral indignation can rate stores based on their level of Christmas spirit.  In reality, it is nothing more than ranting and raving based on stores having the audacity to recognize that not everyone of there patrons are Christian.  To really get the full effect of the nuttiness you really need to read the comments.  They would be laughable if not for the seething anger oozing from their keyboard to your screen due to the slightest of PERCEIVED slights.  Some of favorites below:

GAP-(some really whoppers)

…Don’t you guys understand that taking Christmas out of your store is discriminating against most Americans?

I agree that the ads, in the interest of being “inclusive” are actually offensive to people of faith. …

WTF!!!!!

…offensive that they would compare the BIRTH of our SAVIOR to other “holidays”….

How dare they!!!

Just heard about Gap deciding against Christmas. They are comparing Christmas to cults and witchcraft and encouraging folks to celebrate the “holiday” in whatever manner they see fit. Come on, Gap, take a stand for what is RIGHT – you benefit from our Christmas dollars for Christmas gifts. Because of their stand on Christmas, I won’t be buying anything from Gap this year. Come on Gap! Celebrate Christmas! Jesus died for EVERYONE!

Their adds(sic) offend me – Christmas is lumped into all of the other “winter celebrations” like Kwanza, Hanukkah, winter solstice…

The horror of having to be compared to cultish holidays like……Hanukkah.  The horror.  The absolute horror.  How will they ever survive?

Best Buy (Muslims beware)

At a Cairo or Bagdahd Best Buy, I would understand a recognition of a Muslim holiday of sacrifice. However, in AMERICA, it is Pilgrims and Christians who sacrificed for THIS country …

Because no Muslim, or Jew, or Hindu, or Atheist has ever sacrificed for this nation. FYI, the Pilgrims were Christian.

As a USMC vet and college professor my wife and I have been excited to go to Best Buy and purchase a new sound system for our home. Now that I have reviewed the Christmas and Christian offensive language they use to draw in customers they have lost our business now and in the future. I hope more people will begin to see the real light and spend their money where Christmas is honored. Dr.T.

Christian offensive language? Best Buy acknowledged the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha which celebrates the horrific act of Abraham sacrificing his son on orders from the man in the sky. Isn’t that story in the Christian Bible as well?

Best Buy included the Muslim greeting for their day of sacrifice with their Thanksgiving flyer. I wrote and told them it was offensive to Christians and plain old Americans. They responded that their customers and employees represent a variety of faiths and denominations and they choose to greet customers and employees in ways that reflect their traditions.

Do these people not realize or accept that we live in a pluralistic society where people of many faiths(or none), ethnicities, races, and mindsets live. Not everyone chooses to live the way they live and there is nothing they can do about it. You can lash out like a child–which seems to be these people’s response– or act like an adult and get over it.

My advice….Get over it.

….your ass can’t cash.  Sarah, you would never debate Al Gore in anything unless he was hogtied naked in a cage with a ball gag in his mouth.  Yet, you spew this over the airwaves:

INGRAHAM: Would you agree to a debate with Al Gore on this issue?

PALIN: Oh my goodness. You know, it depends on what the venue would be, what the forum. Because Laura, as you know, if it would be some kind of conventional, traditional debate with his friends setting it up or being the commentators I’ll get clobbered because, you know, they don’t want to listen to the facts. They don’t want to listen to some reasonable voices in this. And that was proven with the publication of this op-ed, where they kind of got all we-weed up about it and wanted to call me and others deniers of changing weather patterns and climate conditions. Trying to make the issue into something that it is not.

INGRAHAM: But what if it’s an Oxford-style, proper debate format. I mean, he’s going to chicken out. I mean, if you challenge him to a debate, do you actually think he would accept it?

PALIN: I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh, he wouldn’t want to lower himself, I think, to, you know, my level to debate little old Sarah Palin from Wasilla.

And Sarah, no, I doubt that VP Gore would want to lower himself to talk to a known liar whose concept of reality consist only of what comes into her mind in any given moment.  It’s sad, really.  I would love to see someone of reason and learning debate Gore over climate change.  I really would.  It would be fabulous for a great many ideas and concepts to debated rationally in the public arena.  However, a rational debate requires rational actors.  Sarah and most of the current “conservative” movement are not rational, but rather cynical and emotive.  They have no interest in the truth–whatever that may be in the case of climate change–but only winning the debate.

Rick Warren doesn’t have enough faith to be an atheist.  Understandable.  If someone has no interest in reason or the pursuit of knowledge and has no understanding of basic science, it must be quite scary to go through this life without some magic spirit.

I, however, don’t have enough hate in my heart to follow Rick Warren.

I do not equate millions of gays and lesbians in this country who want to have  basic legal protections to pedophiles.

I don’t believe a “man of the cloth” should doublespeak when confronted with such obviously non-Christian activities as torture.

I don’t believe in using Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, or Chairman Mao and their followers as role models on how to organize and lead a “revolution”.

You, sir, are a hatemonger, demagogue, and a megalomaniac.  Instead of the salvation of your flock your true motivations–greed and power– are less altruistic and thinly veiled.

Cardinal William Levada:

“We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things,” he said.He said that while the Vatican did not exclude any area of science, it did reject as “absurd” the atheist notion of biologist and author Richard Dawkins and others that evolution proves there is no God.

“Of course we think that’s absurd and not at all proven,” he said. “But other than that … the Vatican has recognized that it doesn’t stand in the way of scientific realities.”

It’s not Richard Dawkins’ job to prove a negative.  We don’t think the Theory of Evolution proves there is no God.  We believe that there is no objective, verifiable evidence of a Creator God.  Big difference.

Asheville Citizen-Times:

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.

“I’m not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he’s an atheist, he’s not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

Article 6, section 8 of the state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution trump the restriction in the state constitution, said Bob Orr, executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law.

“I think there’s any number of federal cases that would view this as an imposition of a religious qualification and violate separation of church and state,” said Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice.

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Maryland’s requirement for officials to declare belief in God violated the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Additionally, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I don’t know too much about this situation other than it seems cut and dry.

1) Bothwell won the election.
2) It doesn’t matter what the North Carolina’s Constitution says because Article VI of the US Constitution states that there should be no religious test for public office and that federal law supersedes state law in instances where they conflict. Obviously, North Carolina is a signatory to the US Constitution.
3) Clayton Bigsby H.K. Edgerton could, quite possibly, be mentally ill.  This is Mr. Edgerton:

Mr. Edgerton was also on the Board of Directors of the Southern Legal Resource Center which has strong ties to the League of the South–an extreme right wing neo-Confederate organization.  Just in case you are unfamiliar with this group, here is information pulled off their own site:

‘The League of the South asserts that Southern society is radically different from the society impressed upon it by an alien occupier. American society today is egalitarian and Marxist and is devoid of any grace or charm.“

egalitarian-”asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, esp. in political, economic, or social life.”

Doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me. I don’t know…maybe I am crazy. Of course, the lack of “grace or charm” is on the same level as Marxism to these people. So maybe their priorities are off kilter.

“To be truly free and self- governing, the South must throw off the yoke of imperial oppression. Therefore, The League of the South advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.“

Treason.

“It is The League of the South’s assertion that the system of fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, unfair trade agreements, outsourcing of jobs, and confiscatory taxation imposed by the American Empire have reduced considerably the Southern people’s standard of living.”

You are telling me that since 1971(when the US went to a Fiat currency from the Bretton Woods system) that the economic quality of life hasn’t improved throughout the South….especially in the urban areas of Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Spartanburg, Northern Virginia, Houston, Dallas, etc. I’ll give you that Memphis and New Orleans have been stagnant at best, but overall, our tax system has been more beneficial to the South than to other parts of the country. Especially when you consider that the Southern states are net beneficiaries, monetarily, from our current tax system.

[emphasis is mine]

Words fail me.

[hattip: BoingBoing and New Left Media]