From the article:

Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think.  “His name is so close to Osama I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn’t recognize Christ,” Pastor Byrd said.

and:

Pastor Byrd told News Channel 7 he would ask his congregation to vote on whether to keep the sign.  They voted unanimously to keep the sign up Sunday night.

Jonesville Church of God does not have any African American members.

You know what really infuriates me about this? Not that these assholes do this, but that it works. A good percentage of Americans probably “have a feeling” that Obama might be a Muslim, simply because of his name. How stupid can you get?

(via Friendly Atheist)

Just as reports of thousands of Republicans switching to the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania came streaming in this week, Gallup says Democrats are equally intent on crossing over to the GOP and voting for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) if a candidate they do not support wins the Democratic party nomination.

The pollster said 28 percent of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY)supporters and 19 percent of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) supporters would vote for McCain if their candidate lost the party nomination.

I have one little question for these 28% of Clinton supporters and 19% of Obama supporters:

Are you retarded or something!?!?

Do you have any idea of what the consequences of such petulance, such stubbornness, such “I’m taking him/her down with me” sore losing, such stupidity are? Do you hate your candidate’s Democratic rival so much, so irrationally, that you’re prepared to condemn your country to 4 more years of neoconservatism? Do you have any idea what the party of war, torture, tax cuts to the rich, wiretapping, and the Religious Right, emboldened by a third victory in a row, can do to your country and even to the rest of the world?

Do you honestly think — that is, assuming you think at all, which I find doubtful — that the Democratic candidate other than your favorite is as bad, or even worse, as McCain, even though he or she has positions on the issues much closer to your candidate’s than McCain?

Have you even considered the fact that, regardless of whether Obama or Clinton wins, the administration will be filled with Democrats, while McCain will keep the Republican thugs who have done so much damage?

I don’t like Hillary myself. I think she just cares about power, about getting elected, and that she should have conceded already. But I’d never, in a million years, say I’d rather have McCain, or that they’re as bad as each other. And anyone who claims that much, who supports McCain out of childish, unthinking spite, is a complete imbecile, and shouldn’t even be considered mature enough to vote.

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…

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.

It doesn’t happen all the time (for instance, there have been some very articulate and educated Christians commenting right here on WotM), but, quite often, on discussion forums and blogs, Christians tend to be some of the worst writers. Terrible spelling, grammar, coherence, and so on. Their arguments are also always “original”: you’re going to hell, I’ll pray for you, you’re a slave of Satan, you’re stupid if you can’t see God’s signature in everything around you, etc..

Besides their poor communication skills, another typical characteristic of such Christians (again, not all of them) is their hate. For a group that believes “God is love”, a lot of Christians spew forth such hatred, spite, cruelty and wishes for others’ harm, that it’s difficult to take anything else they say seriously.

Still, it can be a laugh to read some of their hate emails and comments. For instance, the Flying Spaghetti Monster site has a hate mail section where the website owner posts emails he receives. It’s amazing what those people believe… and what they’re capable of writing.

Depending on your mood, reading those mails will either be hysterically funny… or a bit scary. Either way, they should be more than enough evidence that Christianity doesn’t make people “better” or “more caring”.

I know, I know, not all Christians are like that. Still, there are a lot of those… and they certainly make the most noise. It’s amazing how so many people have a need, when they see an opposing voice, to email someone and say how they are going to laugh from heaven when the recipient dies and goes to hell for all eternity.

I also loved one of the replies to one of the “I’ll pray for you” mails:

Please do not pray for us, go outside and pick up some garbage or help the elderly. Do something for others rather than praying so you will feel good about yourself.

I’ll have to start using this one.

Yesterday, I did what any blogger or webmaster shouldn’t ever do: I clicked on an ad on my own site. Well, doing it once shouldn’t make a difference… and I had to click on it. I don’t remember the exact text of the ad (refreshing the page isn’t showing it anymore), but the destination page is this: The Bible reveals next and last Pope will be a devil impersonating John Paul II.

How could anyone resist that?

That page, which is actually very well written, shows how Revelation 17 “tells” us some curious facts. It starts with an historically interesting part, about how the Papacy lost temporal power in 1798, and several Popes were “prisoners in the Vatican” for several decades, until the Vatican City was given to the Papacy, to be a sovereign country. This has prompted me to read more about it in Wikipedia (start here if you’re curious) about it. I found it quite interesting… and just because I’m an atheist, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like to learn about religion and its history.

The authors go further, though, and “show” how Revelation (a book that shows every sign of having been written under the influence of some bad mushrooms) tells us that the current Pope is the 7th of a list, will reign only for a short while, and the next one will be… a devil impersonating John Paul II. They also say that the Church will regain temporal power, then, with the Pope being above presidents and kings.

Now, I can perfectly accept that Benedict XVI will be there only for a short time: he’s been elected Pope while already quite old. But the John Paul II doppleganger… somehow, I have a problem believing that.

I could write much more about how absurd all of this is, but I don’t think it deserves that much. I’ll say this, though: unlike many other “prophecies”, this one is actually testable, and has a limited date: indeed, the current Pope will almost surely die in less than 15 years. Most of us will still be here, then. When the next one doesn’t look, act and talk exactly like John Paul II, including saying he’s actually John Paul coming back from the dead (I’d be amazed to see such a character be elected Pope, anyway…), what will the authors of that page do?

Admit they were wrong about that, and that they are, quite likely, wrong about other things as well? Admit that the Bible can’t be taken literally, if it can be “taken” at all?

I doubt it. They’ll do what theists always do in these cases: say they were “misunderstood” and meant something completely different, or pretend that they never said anything like that at all. Remove all traces of that page from the web, and, if confronted, deny everything.

Oh well. It was an excuse for learning a little bit of history…

What is it? It’s the belief that what is good are the “simple people”, the “common people”, who are supposedly more honest and “real” than so-called “ivory tower” intellectuals.

It’s also the belief that thinking and learning are trouble, that they lead people to unhappiness, sinfulness, asking too many questions, and such.

It’s geeks, or more intelligent students, being called “brainy” or “nerds” and harassed by classmates. It’s science being seen as a waste of time and money. It’s a political candidate winning an election because he successfully depicted his opponent as an “egghead”. Incidentally, it’s likely that one of the reasons America currently has one of its worst presidents ever is that, by being less educated and articulate than Gore or Kerry, he appeared “more in touch” with the common man (of course, one should then wonder if you really want the village idiot in charge of the most powerful nation in the world… but I digress.)

There are several sources of anti-intellectualism. Religion is an obvious one, of course, since being intelligent and learning makes one less likely to accept arguments from authority, and to question unproven assertions. An intelligent, learned man has no need for religion – therefore, we don’t want any intelligent, learned men (to paraphrase The Fountainhead‘s Elllsworth Toohey).

Besides “normal” religion, there’s also the usual mystical, new age thinking, according to which the mind is “flawed” and imperfect, incapable of perceiving any real “revelations”, which you supposedly can only grasp with “your heart” or “your spirit”. The mind is human, and therefore imperfect, while the heart/spirit are filled with “the cosmos’s love” or any other generic, meaningless terms.

Another reason is populism, the belief that the honest, hard working “masses” are oppressed by the corrupt, privileged “elites”. While they certainly are, sometimes (in dictatorships, for instance), populism is wrong because of its belief of “the lower, the better”, and its worship of ordinariness. Populism, like most forms of collectivism, punishes people for ability and for success – therefore, it promotes mediocrity and sameness. And a populist certainly hates and feels threatened by anyone with more “brains” or education.

Dictatorships (communism, fascism, etc.) always strongly promote anti-intellectualism, for mostly the same reasons as religion does: an intelligent, educated person is much more likely to question, and to see “what’s rotten”. The “unwashed masses” are much easier to keep in line. Higher education is seen as “dangerous” and “subversive”.

Finally, a lot of people simply believe the lie that intelligence causes unhappiness, and stupid people are happier. Even today, at breakfast, I had this conversation with a co-worker, who strongly believes that lie: that most people are dumb (true) and happy (false), that most geniuses suffered their entire lives (if they did, which was not always the case, it was usually because they were persecuted), that intelligence and learning are mostly “theoretical” and are of no use in the real world, and can’t be used in order to improve your life, and so on. And I know a lot of people who think like her.

An intellectual isn’t necessarily someone more intelligent or with more knowledge than the norm. It just means that the person highly values the mind, thinking, and the pursuit of knowledge. And it’s frightening, to me, how few intellectuals (by that definition) I personally know. Anti-intellectuals (people who deride the mind, who pride themselves on not thinking, on not using their reason), on the other hand, are everywhere.

Among other gems:

According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever — with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006.

And, of course:

Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees.

The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.

A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.

“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children.

As usually, any bothersome fact that contradicts their narrow view of the world is ignored. “La la la, I can’t hear you, you evil secularist enemy of religion…”

I guess that idiotic woman believes the moon is actually a source of light?!

Really, how can people be so stupid?