Pat Robertson needs to shut up. He needs to stop talking and go away and stop spewing his obnoxious hate-filled messages. Jesus, if he existed (and I’m not sure on that point), would probably be disgusted at the hypocrisy, lying, and spitting in the face of innocent victims that Robertson has done in his name over the decades. As it is, I’m disgusted enough. Robertson is no more respectable or deserving of attention or esteem than someone’s crazy, senile, racist old grandpa, and that’s really all he is. He is the racist old grandpa of evangelical Christianity, and he needs to shut up and keep his obnoxious opinions to himself. Or, if he won’t do that, maybe we can just stop pretending what he has to say matters.

Let’s all just not give Pat Robertson the validation and attention he seems to crave. He’s like a petulant child, and we need to stop acting like his immature little outbursts matter.

In an unrelated note, I was at the bookstore yesterday and spotted a book called The 10 Biggest Lies About America. Sadly, instead of the book of “neat historical facts they never taught you in grade school” I had hoped it was, it turned out to be some conservative wingnut blowhard’s attempt to assert that America was, in fact, founded as a Christian nation and… actually, at that point, I think my brain shut down. The justification for that first claim was just so convoluted and idiotic that I had to put the book down and go buy Richard Dawkins’s new one, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Which, by the way, is very shiny. I haven’t opened it up yet, but it’s very pretty and I can’t wait to read it. Knowing Dr. Dawkins’s previous work, I’m sure I’ll love it.

A couple years ago, Marcus Ross received his Ph.D. in paleontology from the University of Rhode Island. His dissertation was “impeccable,” according to his advisor.

The topic: “the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that… vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago.”

The problem was that Ross was a Creationist and believed the world was only a couple thousand years old to begin with. Therefore, he didn’t believe the very subject he was writing about.

Ick. Creationists at my alma mater.

I suppose it’s no surprise that creationists are getting doctorates as window dressing. Now this idiot is offering prizes for essays written to support the moronic and objectively false claim that human physiology supports a “biblical account of creation” rather than being obvious evidence of evolution. It’s tempting to submit an essay demonstrating all of the evidence for evolution found in human anatomy, but it would also be a colossal waste of time. There’s no convincing someone so deluded that they’ll slog their way through a Ph.D. program in paleontology.

Screenshot from OBJECTIVE: Ministries

Go ahead, explore the site. It’s huge and it just gets funnier the more you browse around. They even have a page about how they’re out to get Landover Baptist shut down (here).

1. But you’re so nice! You’re not like those other atheists.
2. You don’t say bad things about religion, do you?
3. Hell yeah, religion sucks! Religious people are so dumb, lol invisible sky wizard blah blah blah…

Point 1: Who are these “other atheists” I keep hearing about?
Point 2: Yes, I do. Strangely enough, I get this complaint more often from non-religious people who are terribly offended on behalf of believers who they think should be left to their beliefs and never criticized. Isn’t it incredibly condescending—not to mention ridiculous—to attack someone on behalf of a belief you don’t even share, claiming that people can’t handle having their ideas criticized?
Point 3: If I didn’t know several people who were exactly like this, I wouldn’t have brought it up, but being idiotic about the matter contributes nothing to the discussion. I even know someone who thinks religion has never contributed anything of worth to humanity and that all churches should be burned.

It’s not fair to assume that all theists are fundies any more than it is fair to assume that all atheists are liberal intellectual snobs. Stereotypes are moronic and people who claim to be rational thinkers ought to know better.

Then again, we atheists are a diverse lot, and diverse opinions are not surprising except to people who don’t bother to think about it.

A Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut has invoked the First Amendment’s separation of church and state in a request to the US Supreme Court to let it keep clergy sexual abuse documents under seal, a move that appeared to contradict the church’s recent pledges of openness.

I missed the part where “separation of church and state” grants religious groups the right to violate the law. The Establishment Clause forbids the government from protecting any establishment of religion. In other words, the government isn’t allowed to give any special privileges to a religious group over a secular group, for one. Would a secular group that had records of child abuse within its ranks be allowed to hide their records from the authorities? I don’t think so.

On Thursday, two days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denied the Diocese of Bridgeport’s request to keep the documents under wraps despite a recent ruling by the Connecticut Supreme Court, the diocese said the dispute raises fundamental constitutional issues and asked the full US Supreme Court to review the case.

The only constitutional issue being raised here is the fact that the diocese has the audacity to demand protection from the government after knowingly sheltering and protecting dangerous criminals.

So, why does God allow his children to suffer? Is it because they deserve it? Is that really the kind of morality we want, in which we blame the victims of disasters or crimes for “bringing it on themselves”? That is not only wrong, it’s repulsive. If we follow it to its logical conclusion, we see that the implication is that the tens of thousands of children whose childhoods were ruined by Irish Catholic priests deserved the constant rape, torture, beatings, and humiliation; we see that the women tortured and slaughtered by the medieval Church for being “witches” deserved it somehow even though we now know that witches do not exist; we see the suggestion that the Jews murdered by medieval Christians under accusations of having caused the Black Death somehow brought it on themselves. Disgusting.

So, Christians, what makes you so special that God should favor your prayers while tens of thousands of people starve to death every day? What makes you so special that you should be granted blessings while innocent children are kidnapped and sold into slavery or forced to fight wars? Why does God allow child abuse, rape, and murder?

You would have to be completely depraved to claim that not only is there a being pulling the strings of the universe, but that said being actually loves humanity. Why must we love a tyrant who clearly doesn’t care, and yet demands complete submission? The God of Christianity is not good. He is a psychotic, obsessive, blood-thirsty control-freak.

Or, you know, he’s just fiction, and people should stop surrendering their intellects and decency to a morally repugnant Bronze Age myth.