The God-forsakin' Blog

  Imagine that there's been an epidemic of arson in this country for the past couple of decades. Now imagine that this is the national conversation around it: Person A: Huh, most of the worst fires were started by people with a "Lite-em-up" flamethrower. We should ban those flamethrowers. Person B: That won't help, an arsonist would just find a different flamethrower. Person A: Okay, then let's ban all flamethrowers. Person B: No way. If we ban flamethrowers, arsonists will just use cigarette lighters, and then you'll want to ban those too.  Person A: That's... not what I proposed. I know that a person CAN commit arson with a lighter, it's just a lot easier to do with a flamethrower.  Person B: There are lots of law-abiding people with flamethrowers. Why should they be punished for the behavior of a few arsonists? Person A: Why... why the fuck does anyone need a flamethrower? Person B: I use it to set fires in my fireplace. Person A: Overkill much? Why...

  Yet again, the news shows that the right-wing people who are loudest about their "god-given right" to own any gun they want, are the last people who should be trusted with a gun.  Now, I've started to genuinely be swayed in my thinking by some reasonable people who want the shootings to stop but don't believe that banning specific guns will achieve that. They aren't NRA members, mind you, but they are gun owners and they do actually note some concerns that have given me pause. They advocate instead for such measures as closing loopholes in the law, ensuring that no gun can be sold without a background check, and ensuring that such people as domestic violence suspects do not get to have guns. But you know something? The people that right-wing gun owners sent to Congress could have proposed those solutions in a clean bill that doesn't include poison pills, and have steadfastly refused to do so. They could have worked with the liberals to at least tighten up ba...

  All my life as I read the Bible and attended church, I kept hearing this verse saying that a tree will be judged by its fruit. Judge a person by their behavior, not the ideas they claim to believe in. Judge those ideas by the behavior of their adherents, not by their claim to morality or compassion or truth. Well, the fruit of Christianity has always been this: Moral people who want to do moral things will use it to inspire them to do those things. But they are very much the minority. Immoral people who want power will use it to manipulate people into blind obedience. And once you have people trained to believe whatever you say because it's you saying it... you can convince them that voting for authoritarians really means voting for freedom. You can convince people that scientists are lying to them but snake oil salesmen are telling the truth. You can convince people that they're being pro-life and protecting babies even as they do things which harm actual babies. You can con...

   Conservatives: I may actually be starting to come around to your way of thinking. I may have to think seriously about whether I may someday need a gun to protect myself.  But not in a way that you'll like, or for a reason you'll like. I have never felt the need to get a gun to protect myself or my family from house breakers. Locking ourselves in our rooms and calling the police would be the far better option for our safety. (Because we're white, mind you; if we were black we might be safer with the robbers). I have never felt the need to get a gun to protect myself from gang members. I have walked alone and unafraid in Crip territory at midnight. I have never felt the need to get a gun to protect myself from left wing protesters. The violence comes almost entirely from the police and from armed conservative counter protesters, rather than the protesters. I have never felt the need to get a gun to protect myself from a mugger. I am much better off running than trying to...

  It's laughable when Evangelicals tell me that I'm going to Hell, and I counter that I'm not afraid of imaginary places, and they respond earnestly that it is real. But I already know Hell is real. Hell, by the definition theologians use, isn't about fire and sulfur. It's about eternal separation from (whichever god the religion says the damned have offended); and therefore it's about the final and irrevocable loss of all hope, joy, and love. And I have seen Hell. I have seen it in children who were traumatized by parents who were supposed to take care of them. I have seen it in adults suffering from incurable terminal diseases. I have tasted it myself in unexplained pain that wouldn't stop, in depression, in anxiety. But most of all, I have heard it rhapsodized by Evangelical preachers when they talk about the kind of country they want this to be, the kind of country they work tirelessly to build here. It's a place where the poor get no help but a few ...

Madison Cawthorn just lost his primary. Not because he's been credibly accused of sexual assault by dozens of women - that didn't stop Evangelicals from voting for Trump. Not because of his racism - that also didn't stop Evangelicals from voting for Trump. Not because of his chronic lies - yet again, that wasn't a problem for the people who still support Trump. Not because of his endorsement of insane conspiracy theories - see above. Not because of his ignorance, his inability to form coherent sentences, or his lack of any platform other than how much he hates the libs - see above. Not because of his homophobic or transphobic rhetoric, or his flagrant disregard for gun laws either - those were selling points in his FAVOR with this crowd. No, the thing that finally got Evangelical Republicans to change their minds was that they saw pictures of him dressed in drag, and sexually touching another man. None of the actual harmful things about him were a problem. The implicati...

It just occurred to me why the same demographic that believes so passionately in Biblical literalism and inerrancy ALSO believes in Constitutional Originalism: They're the same thinking error. They're BOTH a version of literalism and inerrancy. Both of them assume the following: 1. These documents written centuries ago (by people who were just fine with slavery and considered women to be property) are the pinnacle of morality, an infallible blueprint to how a society should function, and no possible improvement could ever be made on their ideas. 2. Rather than using reason and evidence and common sense to make decisions about what rules we should have as a society, we should use our best guess at what people who long ago decayed into dust would do in our place.

When I was being raised as an Evangelical, I was told that what we believed was all about love. I mean, the one Bible verse every Evangelical knows by heart begins "For God so loved the world". We were supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. My favorite hymn, often played at altar calls, was "My Jesus I love thee". Ask any Christian of any denomination what their religion is about - ask any member of ANY religion what it's about - and they'll say that it's about love. But in retrospect: Evangelicalism was NOT centered around love, but around fear and power. Fear of hell, fear of demons, fear of the Rapture, fear of our own "sin nature", fear of sinning and falling short, fear of our god, fear of death and what comes after. Power to heal the sick through prayer, power to speak in other tongues, power to cast out demons, power to overcome the evil within ourselves (which...

I'm finding that grieving is harder in a way now than it was when I was a theist... and not in the way I expected. Most readers are all too familiar with the stages of grief, and how anger and denial and bargaining are usually the first ones to happen. Well, back when I believed there was a god out there... there was a place to focus all that. I could be angry at my god for fucking things up so bad that this person was dying; I could try bargaining and asking him to fix his shit and heal the person; I could spend the denial phase convincing myself that a miracle was possible. But now... I feel the anger, but there's no one to be angry AT. I feel the drive to bargain, but there's no one to bargain WITH. I feel the drive to denial, but there's no false belief to retreat into, just the hard truth that the person is dying and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. So I really confronted for the first time the question: What do you do with those feelings when t...

  Now that we should in theory expect to see a lot more unwanted kids being born in red states each year: I'm looking forward to seeing all the people who called themselves the "Moral Majority" for the past four decades explain why they aren't going to adopt any kids and also don't want their tax dollars to pay for more foster care or social workers or child welfare or food stamps or public school lunches or contraception or pre-natal care or daycare or evidence-based sex education or... But I kid the "religious right". They know just as well as I do that the rate of abortions won't ACTUALLY decrease. We'll just see fewer safe and legal abortions in red states, and more of them from people who suddenly decide they need a couple days' vacation in a blue state. Also more unsafe and illegal abortions from people in red states who can't afford a trip across state lines. But go ahead and tell yourselves you "saved" a lot of "bab...