The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. Now, if he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ludicrous or more offensive.
— Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Try it yourself: the Church Sign Generator! 
… so when do I take their side? Why, when they’re attacked by homophobic fundamentalist Christians, of course! 
You can’t make stuff like this up (any emphasis is mine):
A black conservative Christian pastor of an evangelical megachurch has vowed to take over Microsoft by packing it with new shareholders who will vote against the company’s policy of championing gay rights.
He told Microsoft executives at a shareholders’ meeting last week that he would be their “worst nightmare” if they continued to defy him.
Antioch Bible Church attracts around 3,500 worshippers for its services and Mr Hutcherson is a powerful figure in the Christian conservative movement.
And…
An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.
Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.
“There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don’t scare me. I got God with me.
Not to mention, of course…
“I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”
Mr Hutcherson’s office is decorated with the heads of deer, elk and a buffalo – “when I run into animals, I kill them and bring them home and eat them” – as well as invitations to the White House and signed pictures of himself with President George W. Bush.
It boggles the mind. Any sane mind, that is. I’m sure there are those out there to whom this is perfectly normal…
While this post hasn’t got any replies so far (mainly, I believe, because the image has already been posted by other members of Planet Atheism, so it’s probably not new to readers of this blog), its equivalent on my technology blog did draw a few ones, which inspired me to write this (right here, because it’s really not appropriate for the other blog).
Consider the three Abrahamic religions. What do they have in common?
First, they tell you how the universe / world began, using a story that was clearly the best thing that some primitive desert nomads or shepherds could come up with. Most “sophisticated” believers, these days, don’t take those stories literally, and accept evolution, an old earth, heliocentrism, a huge universe, a round earth, and so on. Only American fundies and Muslims seem to take those stories literally, no matter the opposing evidence; they probably believe their god put that evidence there as “a test of their faith”.
Then, the religions give believers some rules:
1- the first kind are rules that, while not terribly original, are, in general, a good idea. Don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t kill someone just because you feel like it, and so on.
2- then come the laws that can be annoying to follow, but it’s not the end of the world. Don’t eat that type of food, don’t wear this, wear that, do this on that day of the year, and so on. As I said, these can be annoying (for instance, what if you’re forbidden to eat your favorite food?), but most believers can live with them and obey them.
3- finally, there are the “harder” rules. Kill people who do this. Kill people who do that. Stone to death those who don’t do this. Or those who do that on a particular day of the week. Fight tooth and nail against the “enemies of God / the faith”. In fact, giving your life for that is the greatest thing you can do, and with the greatest reward.
Now, it should be obvious that a “moderate”, as usually described, is someone who follows just 1 and 2, while an “extremist” follows 3 as well.
But… how can the latter be called an “extremist”? Doesn’t the term imply that he is distorting his religion, or using it as an excuse for something unrelated, or adding something to it? To me, it does. But that’s not the case at all…
… it’s the moderates who are distorting religion, by removing things from it! Either because they don’t want to end up in prison or dead, or because their morality has evolved beyond those of the holy books’ writers, and so they recognize the immorality of those parts of their religion, but are nonetheless incapable of applying that judgment to the rest.
Are Bin Laden, or the 9/11 hijackers, or American abortion clinic bombers, “extremists”? Not at all, in my opinion — unless you call call a man who pays his taxes in full “an extremist taxpayer”. They’re simply not ignoring the unpleasant parts of their faith. They’re the only devout believers out there.
Which really paints a nice picture of their religions…
Other people have already mentioned this review of Hitchens’ “god is not Great” by Richard Dawkins, so merely telling you about it is fairly useless. However, I just have to share this bit with anyone who didn’t read the full article:
The onus is not on the atheist to demonstrate the non-existence of the invisible unicorn in the room, and we cannot be accused of undue confidence in our disbelief. The devout churchgoer recites the Nicene Creed weekly, enumerating a detailed and precise list of things he positively believes, with no more evidence than supports the unicorn. Now that’s overconfidence. By contrast, the atheist says the humble thing: of all the millions of possible entities that one might imagine, I believe only in those for which there is evidence – trombones, pelicans and electrons, say, but not unicorns or leprechauns, not Thor with his hammer, not Ganesh the elephant god, not the Holy Ghost.
Lovely.
C. S. Lewis wrote, in 1945:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
Now, I perfectly understand that, if natural science isn’t among your interests, then the fact that the world around you seems so complex, sometimes so beautiful, and “just made for us”, the fact that there is both a) a universe, and b) life, can be interpreted as evidence of a creator deity. As I said, this is understandable.
What isn’t understandable is to see all that as proof of Christianity. Why not Islam? Judaism? Hinduism? Native American creation myths? How on earth does the fact that the universe exists become evidence that, for instance, there was a Jew called Jesus about 2000 years ago who was the son of the Old Testament god and “died for our sins”? How does one follow the other?
Lewis is guilty of the same error as Pascal when the latter invented his famous wager: “it’s Christianity or nothing”. It’s a pity when you can’t see further than the limits of your own education and traditions…
Years ago, it was also a “slavery nation”. Your point…?
(inspired by vjack’s post, and a little of Peter David)
Science, much like species, evolves; it’s not based on dogma, so, when evidence contradicts a theory (even a cherished one), the theory must be discarded. This is science’s greatest strength, and, yet, according to creationists and other theists, it’s a “weakness”, since God’s words “don’t change”…
One of the theists’ arguments goes like this: “science explains 95% of it, but the Bible explains 100%! The Bible is obviously superior!”.
The problem is that the Bible doesn’t actually explain anything! Every “explanation” is either magical, or requires something else that is unexplained — and, often, by definition unexplainable. Furthermore, a lot of the available evidence contradicts the Bible’s claims: no, there was never a worldwide flood. No, it wouldn’t be possible for the Ark to carry all those animals. No, the universe isn’t just 6000 years old. No, species weren’t created as they are. And so on.
A variant of that claim (PZ mentions it here) is to say that, since science explains only 95% of something, to trust in science requires faith… and, not only that, it requires as much faith as the religionists’ explanation. What they don’t understand is that those 95% have survived every available evidence so far, while many “scientific” claims in the Bible have been disproved long ago — and only the most willingly blind continue to believe them. The Bible’s claims remind me of Chico (not Groucho, as many people mistakenly believe) Marx’s “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”, or of that claim from an ancient church father, that he would believe black is white if the church told him so.
The other claim by theists (especially creationists) is this: “science explains just 95% of it? Then the remaining 5% are obviously an act of God, and science will never be able to explain them! This proves God exists!”
Next year, that field of science advances another 1%, and you can guess exactly how the theists’ claim will change… and how they will scream it with as much certainty as the year before.
The sub-heading from the The Honest Doubter blog reads:
Jesus’ last words on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here.
Indeed.
Kent Hovind’s “email exchange” with God. You’ve got to see it to believe it.
Excerpt:
KH: Do you have time for a few questions, today, Lord?
GOD: Son, time has no effect on me. I created it. I am always here to help you and guide you in any area of your life. Go ahead with your questions, son.
KH: These last seven months in prison have been rather difficult for me, Lord. In fact, in the last month, I’ve been in five different facilities.
GOD: I know, son. I’ve been with you the entire time (Hebrews 13:5).
KH: Thanks, Lord. I felt your presence many times. But there were other times that I was very sad and lonely.
GOD: I know, son. I saw your tears. I was there, but you were too busy acting like Jonah. You were more concerned about your own problems than the future of those men around you. You need to work on that.
KH: I’m sorry, Lord. You are right.
GOD: I am always right. Go ahead with your questions.
KH: Well God, yesterday was especially hard. I couldn’t sleep the night before because I expected them to call me at 3:30 a.m. to pack up for the bus ride up here to South Carolina.
GOD: I know, son. I was right there with you. I heard your prayers throughout that long night. We had sweet fellowship, didn’t we? Thank you for loving me and talking with me.
KH: Thanks for being there and for listening, Lord.
GOD: I’m always there and always listening, son.
KH: Lord, I asked you to let me sleep, because I knew the next day would be hard and I would need my strength. Why didn’t you let me sleep, Lord?
GOD: I did, son. You slept great from 3:00 - 4:45 a.m. Who do you think it was that made the guard forget to call you at 3:30? Didn’t you wake up refreshed at 4:45 and even comment on how hard you slept and how good you felt?
KH: Yes, Lord, now that you remind me, I did sleep real hard and woke up feeling great.
Seen on Pharyngula.
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