The civility dogwhistle

When I was young, I had it drilled into me that I was always supposed to do what my mom called "not sinking to their level."  Bullied?  Ignore it.  "Don't react, it's what they want."  Hear gossip about a friend?  Stop listening.  "Don't pay any attention, if you argue it'll just call attention to the gossiper."  Witness prejudice, bigotry, general nastiness?  Walk away.  "You can't change the minds of people like that, you're wasting your effort even to try."

It's taken me over half a century to recognize that for the bullshit it is.

The way this is playing out today is usually couched in calls for "civility."  I hear well-meaning people -- often people I agree with on many points -- mourning the loss of civilized discourse in our society, implying that if we could just have a nice conversation with the bigots, the intolerant, the racists, the homophobes, that would fix everything.

The ultimate conclusion of this line of thought is the claim that we have to "treat all opinions with respect."  Which is not only wrong, it's downright dangerous.  I am under no obligation to treat the opinions of white supremacists with respect.  My moral obligation, in fact, is to shout them down, make sure that they hear loud and clear that they cannot get away with denying someone's rights, safety, or personhood.

The words "respect" and "civility," in fact, have become dogwhistles.  No matter how poisonous the claim, you can't call it out as such, because that would be "disrespectful" or "uncivil."  It's pulled the teeth from our capacity for confronting intolerance and prejudice unequivocally and forcefully, made us question ourselves when in fact we're the ones on the moral high ground, we're the ones who should be able to say, "No.  This is wrong, and I will not let it go by unchallenged."

For example, what do you make of this?

I saw this posted on social media, along with a link about how the negative press it's getting is pushing the company that owns the sign -- Burkett Outdoor Advertising -- to take it down.  But the three times I've seen it, it's always been in a positive light.  "Damn straight," one person wrote.  "You don't like who's running the country, get the fuck out of America."  Another said, "I wish we had one of these in Louisiana."

So what you're saying is that if I disagree with you politically, I have no right to live in the same state as you?  Or, according to the first person, no right even to live in the United States?  Forget civility.  If that's your opinion, go to hell.  And if that response bothers you, causes you to unfriend or unfollow me, or whatever, good riddance.

Then there's Mark Chambers, the mayor of Carbon Hill, Alabama, who posted on Facebook, "We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights and socialists lecture us on economics!...  The only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it's bad to say but with out [sic] killing them out there's no way to fix it."

When he began to get backlash, he deleted the post and then lied, denying he'd written it.  (A tactic Donald Trump is finding out doesn't work so well.)  Then he said that, okay, he wrote it, but it didn't mean what it explicitly and obviously meant.  "Although I believe my comment was taken out of context and was not targeting the LGBTQ community," he wrote, "I know that it was wrong to say anyone should be kill [sic]."

This mealy-mouthed non-apology is unacceptable.  Here we have an elected official who has suggested a Final Solution for the "LGBTQ problem."  This should be loudly, forcefully, and repeatedly challenged -- and Mark Chambers should resign.  Now.

Then there's Trump himself, who tweeted the following on the first day of Pride Month:

As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation.  My Administration has launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality and invite all nations to join us in this effort!

No, sorry.  You do not get to undo protections for LGBTQ individuals, allow for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the name of "religious freedom," bar transgender individuals from serving in the military, and even ignore the existence of LGBTQs by refusing to identify them as such on the 2020 census, and then say you're "standing in solidarity."  You do not get to speak at the virulently anti-LGBTQ Values Voters Summit, saying you are "honored and thrilled" to speak at "this incredible gathering of friends, so many friends," and then say that you're "celebrating LGBT Pride Month."  You do not get to claim to be an advocate and still hobnob with vicious homophobes like Franklin Graham, who said:

[LGBTQ protection] is a full-scale assault against Christianity and the followers of Christ.  When prayer is banned from the public square, when our President fails to defend biblically defined marriage, and he openly and zealously advocates for gay rights; when legislators rush to overrule existing laws to promote gay marriage; when schools and courts consistently suppress religious freedoms; we know we are locked in a war against the Christian faith, not culture.  The architect behind this offensive is none other than Satan himself.  The Scripture says that the devil, our archenemy, is bent on as much destruction as possible.

We've tried "civility" with people like this.  Civility doesn't work.  These bigots interpret civility as weakness, and go right ahead hating and discriminating and ridiculing.  The only thing that works is standing up, every damn time, and saying, "No.  Not here.  Not now.  Not on my watch."  Also, always remember that the individuals who are the victims of these people might not be able to speak for themselves -- a lot of them are, quite rightly, afraid to defend themselves.  This means the rest of us have to speak up that much more forcefully.

If this loses me some friends, so be it.  I'm not going to make the mistake I've made for most of my life, of saying "oh, well, you have a right to your opinion," or "I'm not going to argue, it's disrespectful."  A lot of opinions don't deserve respect.  A late realization, and one I wish I'd come to earlier, but we all learn at our own pace.

It'd be nice if we could use a kinder, gentler approach, but as the rise of white supremacy and homophobia and racism in the last three years has shown, staying silent in the face of evil simply doesn't change anything.  So be warned: you can count on me to be an ally for the voiceless, to stand up and say no every time I see injustice, to counter bigotry with steadfastness.  If because of that you want to label me a "social justice warrior," go right ahead.

Game on.

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As will be obvious to any long-time readers of Skeptophilia, I have a positive fascination with things that are big and scary and can kill you.

It's why I tell my students, in complete seriousness, if I hadn't become a teacher I'd have been a tornado chaser.  There's something awe-inspiring about the sheer magnitude of destruction they're capable of.  Likewise earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires...

But as sheer destructive power goes, there's nothing like the ones that are produced off-Earth.  These are the subject of Phil Plait's brilliant, funny, and highly entertaining Death From the Skies.  Plait is best known for his wonderful blog Bad Astronomy, which simultaneously skewers pseudoscience and teaches us about all sorts of fascinating stellar phenomena.  Here, he gives us the scoop on all the dangerous ones -- supernovas, asteroid collisions, gamma-ray bursters, Wolf-Rayet stars, black holes, you name it.  So if you have a morbid fascination with all the ways the universe is trying to kill you, presented in such a way that you'll be laughing as much as shivering, check out Plait's book.

[Note:  If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Going down with the ship

This past week I've been watching with frank bafflement as Donald Trump and his cronies try to steer their ship back into the harbor of evangelical Christianity, after a month that has been, all things considered, disastrous for this administration.  A government shutdown accomplished nothing but losing a shitload of money, and ended with Trump receiving a big old dent in his "I'm a champion negotiator who always gets what he wants" persona.  His support is dwindling in pretty much any demographic you choose, and one of his staunchest supporters -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- gave his own party an inadvertent punch in the balls a couple of days ago by admitting publicly that if it were easier for American citizens to vote, more Democrats would win.

In other words, his strategy for Republican victory is voter disenfranchisement.

All in all, it's been a tough month for the Right, so I suppose it's only natural they'd retreat toward a group who has been doggedly loyal -- the evangelical Christians.  First we had a rather baffling non sequitur from Trump himself, that there were efforts in "many states" to have biblical literacy classes in public schools.  "Starting to make a turn back?" he said on Twitter (of course).  "Great!"

Then we had White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that God "wanted Donald Trump to become president."  "I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about," Sanders said.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

As I said, on the one hand, this is a pretty logical strategy; the ship is foundering, so hitch it to the solidest thing you have handy.  But on a deeper level, it's puzzling that anyone who claims to believe in the basic tenets of Christianity could still support Trump and his policies.  The bible's kind of unequivocal on a few points, you know?  Love thy neighbor as thyself.  Care for the poor and oppressed.  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Then there's that awkward "judge not, lest ye be judged" part, most poignantly described in Matthew 7:5: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

But more peculiar still is that the Religious Right continues to think that Trump is the next best thing to the Second Coming of Christ, despite his being a serial adulterer who lies every time his mouth is open and whose biggest claim to fame is embodying all Seven Deadly Sins in one person.  The pastor of the church Trump at least nominally belongs to said last week, "I assure you, he had the ‘option’ to come to Bible study.  He never ‘opted’ in.  Nor did he ever actually enter the church doors.  Not one time."  So Trump's crowing about bible studies classes in public schools is kind of strange, especially considering that during the campaign in 2015 he said that the bible was his favorite book, but when pressed couldn't remember a single quotation from it.

I mean, hell, I'm an atheist and I'd have been able to come up with something on the fly.  Maybe a verse from Two Corinthians, I dunno.

But Sarah Huckabee Sanders's comment is the one that bugs me the most, because it's obvious that she (and presumably a lot of other evangelicals) don't see what thin ice they're skating on when they start claiming to know the divine will.  How does she know that God wanted Trump to win?  Because he did, obviously.  So I guess God also wanted Obama to win.  Two terms, no less.  Any time you say something's God's will simply because it happened, you're going to have some explaining to do.  Did God intend the Holocaust?  The Stalinist purges?  The massacre of Native Americans by the European colonists?  The Inquisition?  Frankly, I'd be happier with a shrug of the shoulders and the response, "God works in mysterious ways" than I am hearing that God actually intended the horrible deaths of millions of innocent people at the hands of amoral monsters.

So I don't get how even people who buy the main tenets of Christianity can stand there and nod when Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she has a direct pipeline to the divine will.  Or when evangelist Franklin Graham says that he can excuse the 8,100-plus documented, fact-checked lies that Donald Trump has uttered because "the president is trying to do the best that he can under very difficult circumstances."

If I didn't know better, I'd think that the Religious Right was callously and cynically supporting the Trump presidency because it achieves their ends -- pro-life legislation, eliminating equal rights for LGBTQ people, and ensuring the hegemony of white Christians -- and honestly don't give a rat's ass whether the president himself is Christian, or even moral.

I know it's presumptuous of me to try to parse the motives of a group whose beliefs I don't accept, but the whole thing still strikes me as baffling.  I keep wondering when the Religious Right will finally say, "Enough with this guy already," but at this point, I don't think it's going to happen.  I can't help but think that this strategy is going to backfire badly, and sooner rather than later.  People are at some point going to wise up and start asking how they can support this administration and still claim to be the moral arbiters of the United States, notwithstanding any kind of mealy-mouthed "God can work with a broken tool" nonsense.

The evangelicals, I think, are in the unenviable position of having hitched their rowboat to the Titanic.

**********************************

In 1983, a horrific pair of murders of fifteen-year-old girls shook the quiet countryside of Leicestershire, England.  Police investigations came up empty-handed, and in the interim, people who lived in the area were in fear that there was a psychopath in their midst.

A young geneticist from the University of Leicestershire, Alec Jeffreys, stepped up with what he said could catch the murderer -- a new (at the time) technique called DNA fingerprinting.  He was able to extract a clear DNA signature from the bodies of the victims, but without a match -- without any one else's DNA to compare it to -- there was no way to use it to catch the criminal.

The way police and geneticists teamed up to catch an insane child killer is the subject of Joseph Wambaugh's book The Blooding.  It is an Edgar Award nominee, and is impossible to put down.  This case led to the now-commonplace use of DNA fingerprinting in forensics labs -- and its first application in a criminal trial makes for fascinating reading.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Odd eulogies for a great mind

The Earth lost one of its most brilliant minds last week -- British physicist Stephen Hawking, who expanded our understanding of everything from black holes to the Big Bang.

Hawking's death also attracted attention for another reason, which is that he was an outspoken atheist.  In an interview in 2014, Hawking said:

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.  But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by "we would know the mind of God" is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t.  I’m an atheist.

As far as death and the afterlife, he was equally unequivocal, something made more interesting still because of his fight against the depredations of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  You'd think that if anyone would have engaged in some wishful thinking about the possibility of life after death, it would be a man who was confronted daily with evidence of his own mortality.  But Hawking said, "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

And of course, the spokespeople for the God of Love and Mercy didn't even wait until the poor man's body was cool to start crowing about how he was currently roasting in hell.  I must admit that two people who are frequent fliers here at Skeptophilia -- Franklin Graham and Ken Ham -- at least had fairly measured and compassionate responses.  Graham, who is best known for his fiery vitriol and anti LGBTQ stance -- said the following:

I wish I could have asked Mr. Hawking who he thought designed the human brain.  The designers at HP, Apple, Dell, or Lenovo have developed amazing computers, but none come even close to the amazing capabilities of the human mind.  Who do you think designed the human brain?  The Master Designer — God Himself.  I wish Stephen Hawking could have seen the simple truth that God is the Creator of the universe he loved to study and everything in it.

Ham wrote the following:

A reminder death comes to all. Doesn't matter how famous or not in this world, all will die and face the God who created us and stepped into history in the person of Jesus Christ, to die and be raised to offer a free gift of salvation to all who receive it.

Which, considering some of their statements on other issues, is actually pretty mild.

But the response from other quarters wasn't even that measured.  The site Catholics Online claimed that Hawking had experience a deathbed conversion, similar to the (also false) claims made about Christopher Hitchens when he died in 2016:

Before he died, Stiph [sic] Hawkins [sic] who did not believe in God requested to visit the Vatican.  “Now l believe” was the only statement he made after the Holy Father blessed him.

Well, that may have happened to "Stiph Hawkins," but it sure as hell didn't happen to Stephen Hawking.

But that was far from the most outlandish claim made upon Professor Hawking's death.  That award has to go to Mike Shoesmith, of the conservative Christian PNN Network, who said that Hawking's amazing beat-the-odds lifespan after his ALS diagnosis was because Satan wanted to keep him alive long enough to fight against the message of Billy Graham:

So, in 1942, that is when Billy Graham’s ministry really takes off, and who do you think was born in 1942?  Stephen Hawking.  Stephen Hawking comes from a long line of atheists — his father and all these people — so I believe the devil said, "OK, this guy was just born and I’m going to use this guy. This guy is already primed to accept my message that there is no God. He is already primed for it, he is going to be awash, immersed in atheism all his years as a child, I’m going to take over this guy’s life." 

I believe Stephen Hawking was kept alive by demonic forces.  I believe that it was the demonic realm that kept this man alive as a virtual vegetable his entire life just so he could spread this message that there is no God.

Then when Billy Graham died a couple of weeks ago, I guess Satan just said, "Okay, I'm done with you," and let Hawking die as well.

Me, I'm kind of appalled that there are people who would try to score points off any person's death, much less an august personage such as Professor Hawking.  The whole thing gives lie to their claim of being on the moral high ground by comparison to us ungodly heathen slobs.  Be that as it may, I'd rather remember Stephen Hawking for his brilliance, his contributions to our understanding of the universe, his modesty, and his sense of humor.  As evidence of the last-mentioned, I direct you to this compilation of Hawking's amazing comedic chops, and encourage you to put aside all the people who are using his life and death for their own purposes and have a good laugh with one of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced.  I suspect that Hawking would really prefer our sending him on his way with a smile rather than a eulogy of pious platitudes in any case.

After school Satan

I don't know about you, but I get tired fighting the same battles over and over.

I'm all for treating people with respect regardless of whether or not they agree with me, but at some point, it's a sore temptation, after the 4,583rd time of explaining something patiently and calmly and receiving the same damn stupid response, to scream, "ARE YOU A MORON?  OR WHAT?" right in their faces.

This point has been reached with Franklin Graham.  Franklin is the son of evangelical preacher Billy Graham, for whom I've always had a lot of respect even though we see eye to eye on basically nothing.  The elder Graham always seemed to me kind and compassionate and well-spoken, and respectful of others even when he disagreed with them.  The younger Graham, however, gives every evidence of being a snarling, frothing religious extremist.

And also not very smart.  I, personally, don't think "Separation of Church and State" is that hard a concept.  Simply put, if it's government sponsored or paid for by tax dollars, religion should keep its nose out -- or, if one religion is allowed in, they all should have equal access (as should atheism and agnosticism).  But since the people who are for breaking down the barrier between church and state generally are only talking about one church (guess which one), that distinction has to be explained over and over and over again.

This time, the whole thing got started because of Child Evangelism Fellowship's sponsorship of "Good News Clubs" in elementary schools, aimed at getting the evangelical Christian message out to young kids in public schools.  This caused some secular groups to sponsor "Better News Clubs" about rationalism and skepticism, but those never really got much press.

What caught people's attention was when the Satanists got involved.

The Satanic Temple is now sponsoring "After School Satan Clubs" (affectionately known as ASS Clubs) in all elementary schools that have a Good News Club.  And lest you think it will involve sacrificing goats or something, here's their message:

It’s important that children be given an opportunity to realize that the evangelical materials now creeping into their schools are representative of but one religious opinion amongst many.  While the Good News Clubs focus on indoctrination, instilling them with a fear of Hell and God’s wrath, After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us.  We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.

To which I can only respond: Booyah.

I would attend solely on the basis of the fact that their poster kicks ASS.

Well, far be it from someone like Franklin Graham to get the point of this -- which is not to turn kids into practicing Satanists, but to (1) teach them about critical thinking, and (2) to illustrate why Separation of Church and State is there in the first place.  And it's not like this hasn't happened (lots of times) before, from Satanists and atheists pushing to give invocations at government meetings, to the guy who insisted that a rainbow-colored Festivus pole be erected in the Florida State Capitol Building alongside the Christmas tree.

Graham, however, does not appear to be intelligent enough to comprehend the fact that just as he would not want his kids railroaded into becoming atheists (or Satanists) in public school, I would not want mine sitting in a room with a Christian proselytizer.

"Pray for parents and school leadership to have wisdom to refuse these After School Satan Clubs!" Graham tweeted, along with a message that good Christians must work against "the devastating effects of secularism everywhere" and pray that Satanic Temple leader Lucien Greaves see the error of his ways and devote his life to Jesus.

This puts school administrators in an interesting bind.  The ones who okayed the Good News Clubs are now in the position of having to approve the After School Satan Clubs, or deny them both -- else they're very likely to be facing a lawsuit from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  And for all of Graham's sputtering, nothing's going to change the fact that right now, any administrator who keeps the Christian clubs and denies the Satanist ones is in breach of Separation of Church and State.

But since Graham hasn't caught on to that the previous times it's happened, I'm not expecting him to now.

School board theocrats

I ran into two stories yesterday that were interesting primarily in juxtaposition.

In the first one, we hear that evangelical minister Franklin Graham thinks that all school boards need to be run by (surprise!) evangelical Christians.

In an interview with Fox News's Todd Starnes, Graham said:

I want Christians running the school boards.  I want the school boards of America in the hands of evangelical Christians within the next four to six years.  And it can happen and that will have a huge impact because so many school districts now are controlled by wicked, evil people, and the gays and lesbians, and I keep bringing their name up, but they are at the forefront of this attack against Christianity in America.

Implying, of course, that the "implosion of the morality in the United States" (Graham's words) comes, in part, from evil amoral secular people running the schools, and indoctrinating young people's minds in concepts like tolerance and keeping your damned nose out of what other people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

Franklin Graham [image courtesy of photographer Paul M. Walsh and the Wikimedia Commons]

But what places this into even starker relief is another story that appeared over at Patheos yesterday.  In this bit of news, we hear about an upcoming evangelical conference in Wichita, Kansas, sponsored by the Christian patriarchy movement Quiverfull, which is devoted to the topic of how parents can arrange marriages between their teenage children.

If this sounds too ridiculous to be real, here are direct quotes from Quiverfull's FAQ page:

Courtship denies the authority of the father over the marriage of their virgin children. While they often give a veto to the parents of the woman, they specifically deny the authority of the father of the groom or the bride to choose a spouse for their children. 

We believe that Scripture teaches quite clearly that the father does have the power to choose a spouse for their virgin child; and we see this in several Scriptural examples.

But isn't this a forced marriage?  Amazingly enough, in their minds apparently it isn't:

Emphatically, an “arranged marriage” (fathers binding their children in the covenant of betrothal) is NOT synonymous with “a forced marriage”, and sadly, secular sources are often more honest in this matter to recognize this clear distinction than other Christians are.  Unfortunately, this idea is far too common in our modern notions, and far too often we are accused of promoting this, either explicitly or implicitly.  When the “liberty” that moderns value (especially Americans) is contrasted with the type of authority and submissiveness that the Bible teaches and demonstrates, it is challenging to us, and this sharp contrast often leads people to jump to the idea of “forced” compliance.  It is difficult for the modern (again, especially Americanized cultures) to come to grips with the idea of willful, joyful submission.

So young ladies, submit to what we're ordering you to do joyfully, and it won't have to be "forced."

Anyway, how young are we talking about, here?

The ‘youth’ ready for marriage has breasts. A woman who is to be married is one who has breasts; breasts which signal her readiness for marriage, and breasts who promise enjoyment for her husband.  (We believe that ‘breasts’ here stand as a symbol for all forms of full secondary sexual characteristics.) 

Lest you think that these people aren't really doing the whole "biblical marriage" thing, here -- yes, they are even requiring that parents of boys pay a "bride price" to the parents of the girl:

A “bride price” is anything paid or given by the man or his representative at the time of his betrothal or receiving his bride. 

Scripture certainly teaches about it… The law concerning bride price (Exodus 22:16-17)
indicates that . . . the bride price was a normal part of the marriage process.  

The bride price plays a significant function: It shows the woman’s value, and the point isn’t that the father gets the money but that he keeps it for his daughter, if her husband should ever abandon her.

And if that's not twisted enough for you, they also go on and on about "The continuing authority of the father over the couple after marriage."

What struck me after reading all this (once I recovered from my nausea) is, "these are the sort of people Franklin Graham wants running our school boards."  In other words, the people he wants to be in charge of protecting the interest of America's youth.  The people into whose trust we should place the well-being of our children.

Who unfortunately are also the people who believe that Deuteronomy 21:18-21 should be followed to the letter:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’  Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

And, ironically, who the same people who are having a complete meltdown worrying about how children might be damaged by a transgendered person looking for a quiet place to pee.

So as far as agendas go, I'll take the LGBT agenda over this fuckery any day.  As far as I can tell, the LGBT agenda mostly is about making sure that people aren't discriminated against by bigots.  The evangelical agenda seems more to do with turning the United States into an Iranian-style bloodthirsty theocracy run on rules set down by a bunch of illiterate Bronze-Age sheepherders who thought god's first priority was making sure that damn near every natural human impulse was punishable by death.

And I know which one I'd want my own children living in.

Sharing the misery

I guess it was too much to hope for that the opponents of marriage equality would say, "Oh.  I guess it's the law of the land now, and we lost.   Bummer."  And disappear gracefully.

Things are never that easy, are they?  The dire threats of what's gonna happen to us, now that we've allowed LGBT people to have the same rights that the rest of us have always had and completely take for granted, are already ringing from the rafters.

First we had the ever-grim Franklin Graham, informing us that now that the Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, there's gonna be hell to pay:

I’m disappointed because the government is recognizing sin.  This court is endorsing sin.  That’s what homosexuality is – a sin against god...  Arrogantly disregarding God’s authority always has serious consequences.  Our nation will not like what’s at the end of this rainbow...  The President had the White House lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.  This is outrageous—a real slap in the face to the millions of Americans who do not support same-sex marriage and whose voice is being ignored.

Graham wasn't the only one who keyed in on the whole rainbow thing.  Over at Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham took a moment away from building a new Ark to make the following cheery assessment:

The president did not invent the rainbow; God invented it, and He put the rainbow in the sky as a special reminder related to Noah’s Flood.  God had sent the global Flood in Noah’s time as a judgment because of man’s wickedness in rebelling against the Creator...  (T)he rainbow was set up by God as a sign to remind us that there will never again be a global Flood as a judgment.  But one day there will be another global judgment—the final judgment—and it will be by fire...  (W)e need to take back the rainbow and worship the One who invented the rainbow, and every time we see it be reminded of its true message.

Which brings up a point I've never understood.  How does the whole Flood thing lead anyone to think that Yahweh of the Old Testament is worthy of worship?  It's more the action of a genocidal maniac, in my opinion -- killing everyone and everything, infants and children included, because of some perceived wickedness that couldn't be fixed any other way.

Oh, but rainbows!  There are rainbows, so it's all okay!

Isn't this a little like saying, "Hey, dude!  I know I drowned your family and pets and livestock and all, but look, here's a pretty rainbow in the sky as my promise I won't do it again!"  *glowers*  "At least not that way.  I might still start a fire and burn them all alive.  But if you bow down and worship me exactly the right way, I might let you slide, this time."

Doesn't that make you want to shout hallelujah at god's infinite goodness?

But no one demonstrated quite so clearly the truth of the old definition of Puritanism as "the desperate fear that somewhere, people are enjoying themselves" as Wayne Allyn Root.  Root, you may recall, is the one who said that the only way that Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court is that the president blackmailed Justice Roberts.  And now, Root has made a rather bizarre pronouncement -- that same-sex marriage is wrong, because marriage isn't about happiness:

Marriage is the most difficult thing in the world.  I’m talking to you as someone who has been married 24 years, marriage is so difficult that if you do not go to church every Sunday and your whole life isn’t built on a bedrock faith in God and you don’t have kids and your whole life isn’t built around those kids and none of that’s in place and you’re married, the odds of you staying married are close to zero.  Divorces will now triple.  Gays will never stay married.  They just bought themselves the biggest bunch of unhappiness and legal bills that they could ever imagine.

"Go ahead, LGBT people," Root seems to be saying.  "I hope you're satisfied.  Now you get to be just as miserable as the rest of us."

You have to wonder what his wife thought when she read this, don't you?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Besides just being ridiculous, his statement is actually exactly the opposite of the fact.  The highest divorce rates aren't among atheists.  The highest divorce rate of any of the main religious affiliations is the Baptists, at 29%.  (Atheists are at 21%, tying the virulently anti-divorce Catholics.)  Regionally the highly religious Southeast and Midwest have the highest numbers of divorces, with Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma topping the list.  

Kind of funny, when the bible is even more unequivocal about divorce being sinful than it is about homosexuality.  Consider Luke 16:18: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery."  And adultery, recall, was punishable by being stoned to death.

And yet, the ultra-religious aren't pressuring the courts to make divorce illegal.  Funny thing, that.

So anyway, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this.  We'll be revisiting it frequently, not only when individual clerks of court refuse to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples (something that has already started) but every time there is a natural disaster, at which point we'll hear all about how it's "god's wrath."

I wonder what god will pick as a symbol this time that he still loves us even though he's willing to smite the shit out of us at the drop of a hat?  After all, he's already used rainbows.  Maybe flowers, you think?  Flowers are nice.  "I'm sorry you deserved being beaten to a pulp," he'll say.  "Here, have a dozen roses.  All better now?"

Love wins

I'm sure that most of you know by now that in a landmark 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal across the nation.

When I got up this morning, I noticed a few things that bear mention.

• The world still exists.
• God did not smite America.  No meteorites, no volcanic eruptions, no earthquakes.  Nothing.
• My marriage to Carol has continued, unaltered, since yesterday.
• Texas pastor Rick Scarborough has yet to set himself on fire.
• The bible-thumpers who threatened to move to Canada are still here.

I find the last-mentioned especially amusing, given that Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005.  If you people are looking for a place to move, a country where religion trumps the rule of law, homosexuality is a punishable offense, and everyone is expected to run their lives by the precepts of a holy book, I think Syria or Iraq might fit the bill better than Canada.

What gets me most about all of these people is that they're not just content to live their lives by their own religious precepts; they expect everyone else to follow those precepts, too.  Not satisfied with simply practicing their own religion to the best of their ability, they demand that the entire country has to do so as well.

It's not that hard.  If you want to marry someone of the same gender, do so.  If you don't, then don't.  

End of story.

Or would be, except for the likes of Glenn Beck, who thinks that giving people rights they've been denied amounts to persecuting everyone else.  Beck, who really needs to up the dosage on his anti-psychotic meds, had the following to say:

Persecution is coming. If this goes through, persecution is coming.  I mean serious prosecution.  Mark my words. …  If gay marriage goes through the Supreme Court and gay marriage becomes fine and they can put teeth in it, so now they can go after the churches, 50 percent of our churches will fall away, meaning the congregations.  Within five years, the congregations, 50 percent of the congregants will fall away from their church because they won’t be able to take the persecution.

Further, he says that there are tens of thousands of ministers who are going to face martyrdom because of the decision:

The number in the Black Robe Regiment [a group of conservative Christians Beck likes to talk about] is about 70,000 now.  The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000.  That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Because that's likely.  I think the Black Robe Regiment is going to be pretty frustrated over the next few months, wandering around looking in vain for someone to kill them:

[member of the Black Robe Regiment shows up at a gay couple's wedding reception] 

Black Robe dude:  "Aha!  Here we go!"  (throws his arms open)  "Go ahead!  Oppress me, torture me, and kill me!  I'm ready to die!" 

Guy at wedding reception (puzzled):  "Why would I do that?  This is a celebration.  Here, have some cake." 

Black Robe dude (triumphantly):  "I thought so.  This cake is poisoned, isn't it?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "No, sorry.  It's lemon cake with rainbow frosting."  (takes a bite)  "See? Delicious."

Black Robe dude:  "So you're not going to murder me for my beliefs?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "Nope." 

Black Robe dude:  "Rats."  (slinks off, looking for persecution elsewhere)

Beck, of course, wasn't the only one.  Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's less compassionate son, was grim yesterday evening.  "I pray God will spare America from His judgment," Graham said.  "Though, by our actions as a nation, we give Him less and less reason to do so."

Mike Huckabee, of course, was considerably more verbose in his reaction, not to mention considerably less coherent:

The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do-redefine marriage.  I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. 

This ruling is not about marriage equality, it's about marriage redefinition.  This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many.  The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny. 

The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature's God on marriage than it can the law of gravity.  Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court.  If accepted by Congress and this President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.

Right.  Because that's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing; passing "god's law."

But no one was more butthurt than Justice Antonin Scalia, who said in his dissent, "Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms?" he wrote.  "And if intimacy is, one would think that Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage.  Ask the nearest hippie."

And the result was not what Scalia hoped, which was for people to sit up and amazement and say, "Good heavens, you're right!"  Instead, #AskTheNearestHippie has become a trending hashtag on Twitter, along with a brilliant new Twitter account to follow... @TheNearestHippie.

Because, Justice Scalia, mocking a ridiculous statement is a freedom.  It's called freedom of speech.

But despite all of this, the lion's share of the responses I saw yesterday were positive.  Facebook positively erupted in rainbows.  Even a conservative buddy of mine posted, "Let gays get married.  Let the rednecks have their guns.  Let atheists be atheists, and let Christians be Christians.  Because America is about freedom.  Freedom to live how you please, and be happy with your life.  So smoke a bowl, shoot your guns, cuss a lot, praise Jesus, and wish those two fellas next door a happy honeymoon."

To which I responded, "Amen, brother."

So there you are.  The law of the land.  And to my LGBT friends and their allies who have fought this battle for decades, I can only say:

Congratulations.  Love won.

Welcome to the persecution party!

It's a minor mystery to me why some groups seem to enjoy appearing persecuted.

Maybe they think it's some kind of bizarre pseudo-syllogism:

• Highly moral people often find that others reject their views.
• Having your views rejected is the same as being oppressed.
• Lots of people reject my views.
• I feel oppressed by this.
• Therefore I must be highly moral.  q.e.d.

Just in the last couple of days, we've had three examples from the fanatical evangelical wing of American Christianity wherein we learn that Christians in general are a persecuted minority, because, apparently, comprising 78% of the American citizenry and nearly 100% of the people who hold public office puts Christians in danger of imminent eradication.

Let's start with Franklin Graham, who's shown himself more than once to be an angry little man unworthy of the stature conferred upon him by his name.  His father, evangelist Billy Graham, was and is a thoughtful and moral man who participated actively in the Civil Rights Movement and worked against human rights abuses in the Eastern Bloc and apartheid-era South Africa.   So even though I disagree with his theology, I've always had a grudging admiration for him as a human being. 

Franklin, though, seems like a schmuck.  Not to put too fine a point on it.

In an interview with Gordon Robertson, son of noted wingnut Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham went on and on about the upcoming "storm of persecution" that Christians are facing in the United States.  He said:

We’re going to see persecution, I believe, in this country because our president is very sympathetic to Islam and the reason I say that, Gordon, is because his father was a Muslim, gave him a Muslim name, Barack Hussein Obama.  His mother married another Muslim man, they moved to Indonesia, he went to Indonesian schools.  So, growing up his frame of reference and his influence as a young man was Islam.  It wasn’t Christianity, it was Islam. 

There are Muslims that have access to him in the White House.  Our foreign policy has a lot of influence now, from Muslims. We see the Prime Minister of Israel being snubbed by the President and by the White House and by the Democrats and it’s because of the influence of Islam.  They hate Israel and they hate Christians, and so the storm is coming, I believe, Gordon.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that when Graham was asked last month by (of all people) Bill O'Reilly if he could name some of the Muslims who are influencing the president, he couldn't come up with a single name.  Not one.

Oh, but "he knows they're there."  That's enough, apparently, to make it a fact.

Next on the persecution hit parade we have radio talk show personalities Mat Staver and Matt Barber, who were offering their opinions on the Washington state florist who was sued because she refused to sell flowers to a gay couple who were getting married.  The florist, Barronelle Stutzman, has become something of a hero amongst the ultra-religious for her actions.  She said, "You are asking me to walk in the way of a well-known betrayer, one who sold something of infinite worth for thirty pieces of silver.  That is something I will not do."

Apparently in these people's eyes selling someone out to be tortured and executed is exactly the same as selling someone flowers.

But Staver and Barber, of the radio show Faith and Freedom, seem to have no problem accepting Stutzman's rather inflated opinion of the importance of her actions in the grand scheme of things.  Barber went even further than Stutzman, and issued the following dire warning:

If, God forbid ... the Supreme Court somehow defines and manufactures a constitutional so-called right to sodomy-based marriage this summer, in June, if they do that then the floodgates will be open.  There will be Christian persecution widespread across the United States and the so-called gay marriage agenda will be the sledgehammer used to crush the church and to crush religious liberty and the crush individual Christians, their finances, to ruin them.  That's what this agenda was always about and that's what we will see if the Supreme Court goes the wrong way in June.

Righty-o.  Apparently a few people finally being able to have public and official recognition of their committed relationships will lead to wild hordes of out-of-control gays running around smashing Christians with sledgehammers.

But even that is sensible as compared to what Gordon Klingenschmitt came up with.  Klingenschmitt is a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, winning in 2014 by a 70-30 margin of the popular vote even though he appears to have been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars.  Klingenschmitt decided to weigh in on last month's murder in North Carolina of three young Muslims:

An American atheist has killed three Muslims in North Carolina because they were like Christians.  This man obviously had something against people of faith, whether they're Muslim or Christian, and the three young Muslims were sadly found shot in their homes on Tuesday.  Well, the murderer allegedly of these three young Muslim students is an atheist man named Craig Stephen Hicks, who is not just a person who doesn't believe in Islam, but he is so radically atheist that he was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first-degree murder.  Hicks is reportedly a vocal supporter of United Atheists of America, and according to his Facebook page, was a fan of television shows like The Atheist Experience, and also the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Here's a radical left-wing atheist who is going around killing people of faith.  He's posted a number of anti-religious images and messages on his Facebook page.  One of the images he posted said, and I quote, "Why radical Christians and radical Muslims are opposed to each other's influence when they agree about so many ideological issues."  So he killed the Muslims because they think like Christians.  

Wow.  Where do I start?

First, Hicks was not arrested because "he is so radically atheist," he was arrested because he almost certainly murdered three people.  It seems unlikely that he did so solely because the three were Muslim; his ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, described Hicks as an angry and confrontational man who once watched a movie that involved a man going on a shooting rampage and found it "hilarious."

"He had no compassion at all," Hurley said about Hicks.

So Hicks was an atheist who didn't like Muslims, but he was also a violent man who is very likely to be mentally unbalanced.  He'd had repeated angry exchanges with his three victims over parking spaces, and it's thought that this might have actually been what set him off.

But Klingenschmitt doesn't like things complicated.  In a bizarre screed that should win the 2015 Pretzel Logic Award, Klingenschmitt has Hicks thinking, "Wow, these Muslims, they think just like Christians!  And Christians deserve to be killed, because that's what I found out from the Southern Poverty Law Center!  I think I'll go kill them right now."

Which may have edged out James Inhofe's Senator-with-a-Snowball act as the single stupidest thing an elected official has said so far this year.

So there you have it.  Between Obama and his invisible Muslim advisors, and crazed gays forcing florists to sell gay men flowers at sledgehammer-point, to people killing Muslims because they're so much like Christians, I give you: the evangelical pity-party talking points of the day.

Which brings me back to my original question of why this worldview is so appealing.  Is it because people are more likely to rally around the cause if they feel threatened?  It seems the only logical explanation to me.  Because by any other standard of rational discourse, these people are sounding increasingly like they've lost their minds.

Speaking up against the lunatics

It hasn't been a good week for reasonable, moderate Christians.

Which, allow me to point out, the majority of them are.  Even the ones who consider themselves very devout do, by and large, follow the most important of Jesus's dictums, namely, "Love thy neighbor" and "Treat others as you would be treated."  There are Christians whom I count amongst my very dear friends, and although we may differ regarding what we think the ultimate answers are to Life, the Universe, and Everything, we all get along pretty well by following the general rule of Don't Be An Asshole.

I can't help but think that the reasonable Christians, though, might oughta have a word with some of their leaders.  Because let me tell you, those folks need either to stick a sock in it or else get professional help, because lately the lot of them sound like they've lost their minds.

Let's start with our dear old friend Pat Robertson, who you'd think by now would have also lost most of his audience, given the way he blathers on.  He has variously claimed that Katrina was god's punishment on New Orleans, the 2010 earthquake was god's punishment on Haiti, and god was going to punish little kids for indulging in Halloween because the candy they were being given had been cursed by witches.  So old Pat has had a screw loose for some time, but for reasons that are beyond me that hasn't stopped people from watching his television show, The 700 Club.

And this week, Pat told his listeners something horrific; that what we saw with Katrina and the Haitian earthquake was peanuts.  God had something even worse in his arsenal, and it was going to happen soon.  God has had it with us.  No weaseling out of it this time.

An earth-destroying asteroid.

[image courtesy of artist Don Davis and the Wikimedia Commons]

Yes, based on Pat's extensive knowledge of science, he has concluded that wacky apocalyptic stuff in the Book of Revelation is all about an asteroid hitting the Earth.  I dunno how that accounts for the Mark of the Beast and the Scarlet Whore of Babylon and so on, but I guess his mind was made up (actually, he said he knew because god told him personally) -- sufficiently that Pat has written a book about it, called The End of the Age.

"I wrote a book!" Pat told his viewers.  "It deals with an asteroid hitting the Earth.  I don’t see anything else that fulfills the prophetic words of Jesus Christ other than an asteroid strike.  There isn’t anything that will cause the seas to roil, that will, you know, cause the skies to darken, the moon and the sun not to give their light, the nations terrified on Earth of what’s happening.  There isn’t anything that’s going to do that."

Well, alrighty, then.

Now, lest you say to yourself, "Well, that's just Pat Robertson, and we all know he's a loon," what about Franklin Graham, the pastor son of Billy Graham?

The elder Graham, however fundamentalist he is, always struck me as a compassionate and honest man.  His son, however, appears to be more cast from the "rant and rave while making random shit up" mold.  On Newsmax's "America's Forum," the younger Graham went on record as saying that Christians are being persecuted and attacked, especially by the media.

"Are we at a point now that is maybe unparalleled in history, about the amount of anti-Christian behavior and sentiment... rising around the globe?" the interviewer asked him, and Graham responded, "We do see it rising around the globe, no question about it, and it's frightening.  We see the anti-Christian position in this country, so much of it coming out of the entertainment industry, especially in certain segments of the news media.  Christians are being attacked...  We are living in a world that is changing, and it's frightening to see how quickly it's changing.  And I think we're going to see real persecution of Christians and Jews in the years to come."

Really?  Persecution?  Here in the United States?  Maybe you're confusing "no longer having carte blanche" with "being attacked," Reverend Graham.  And regarding the entertainment industry -- can I remind you that there have been two, count 'em, two movies so far this year that were biblical epics -- Noah and Son of God -- not to mention the rather defensively-titled God's Not Dead?

But the winner in the lunatic rant contest this week has to be Ray Moore, president of Frontline Ministries and candidate for lieutenant governor of South Carolina, who is trying to get Christian parents to take their kids out of public schools because he thinks that 40% of children are turned into atheists by the evil public school system -- by the end of elementary school.

"It’s our hope and prayer that a fresh obedience by Christian families and educating their children according to biblical commands will prove to be a key for the revival of our families, our churches, and our nation,” said Moore told a gathering of Tea Party activists on April 12.

"Christians must leave the Pharaoh’s school system, and seek out religious schools or home schools," he said, to wild applause.

"We cannot win this war we’re in as long as we keep handing our children over to the enemy to educate.  All of the symptoms, the things that we’re fighting and complaining about today has [sic] been caused because the culture has changed.  The culture has turned against God, against the Constitution, and against traditional values.  It’s fundamentally and largely responsible because of the public school system we’ve had (for) six or seven generations, when most of us have put our children in the godless, pagan school system.  It cannot be fixed, the socialistic model, and we need to abandon that.  As conservatives and Christians, if you think you’re going to win this war you’re in, and leave your children in those schools, it will not happen."

Right.  Because that's what I spend my time doing, along with teaching kids the parts of the cell and how the digestive tract works, in the hopes that they'll learn it well enough that they'll pass the state exams so I'll get a passing grade and actually have a job next year.  In all my spare time, I'm indoctrinating my students into godless paganism.

Whatever the hell that is.

You know, I think part of the problem here is that we're taught, in church, to listen to the leaders and mostly accept what they say.  I was raised Roman Catholic, and that was certainly my parents' approach; unless the priest did something to indicate that he really had gone off his rocker, you were supposed to just kind of sit there and listen and nod.  But I think the time has come that good, sensible Christians need to say to some of these leaders, "You are talking complete rubbish."  Better still, stop sending them money, and allowing these wingnuts to live a lavish lifestyle.  Because however they yammer on about what Jesus said and what Jesus wants people to do, evidently Jesus's comment about "give everything you have to the poor and follow me" never really sunk in.  Take John Hagee, the Texas pastor I wrote about a few days ago who claimed that the lunar eclipse was a sign of the End Times; his salary last year is estimated at $840,000, and he lives on a "$2.1 million 7,969-acre ranch outside Brackettville, with five lodges, including a 'main lodge' and a gun locker.  It also includes a manager's house, a smokehouse, a skeet range and three barns."

Not exactly emulating the Poverty of Christ, there, are you, Reverend Hagee?

Anyhow.  I know I'm to be expected to be critical, being an atheist and all, but what really galls me is that most of the Christians I know are as disgusted by these crazy pronouncements and royal lifestyles as I am, and so few of them seem motivated to do anything about it.  The problem is, I can't do much to fight this myself; as I said in a recent post, being an atheist is a one-way ticket to being completely powerless politically (despite what Franklin Graham would say to the contrary).  But if these nutjobs' constituencies and congregations stood up and said, "Look, knock it off, or we're cutting the purse strings," maybe they'd listen.

Well, most of them.  I doubt Pat Robertson would.  Anyone who thinks that Hershey's Inc. hires witches to curse Halloween candy is probably beyond help no matter what.

Franklin Graham, Islamic fundamentalists, and acting as God's mouthpiece

One of the (many) things I find mystifying about the very religious is their tendency to think that God agrees with them.

Not, mind you, that they agree with God.  Once you've accepted that some deity's dictum is your ultimate guide to life (whether it be the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, or whatever), it isn't strange at all that you would then follow the rules to the best of your ability.  So although I do wonder what could lead anyone to accept that a self-contradictory text that was pretty clearly written by people is the infallible, literal word of God, I see how (once you've done that) it becomes unassailable.

What is more curious is how many of the same people who think that God has spoken to humanity through a revelatory book then make the further leap that any other thing they believe must be God's opinion, too.  I've commented before on the wild meanderings of Pat Robertson, who (for example) decided that the people of Haiti were sent the devastating earthquake of 2010 because of their history of practicing voodoo.  The upshot of most of Reverend Pat's pronouncements is that God has decided opinions on what should be done about the wickedness of the world, and coincidentally, those agree exactly with what Reverend Pat himself would do, if he were God.

The latest in this long line of people who seem to feel like their whims must be God's whims as well is Franklin Graham, son of the iconic evangelical leader Reverend Billy Graham.  Now, while I don't agree much with Billy Graham's philosophical and political positions, I've always thought he was a good man, who tempered his religious fervor with a genuine love for humanity and a sense that he should follow Jesus' command to render unto God what is God's and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Billy's son Franklin, however, doesn't seem to be restrained by any such understanding, as was evidenced by a recent interview he granted to Newsmax.com, and which was summarized here.

"In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God," Graham said, in an obvious shot at the Obama adminsitration. "We have taken God out of our education system.  We have taken him out of government.  You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any kind of a public forum."  He went on to say, in a remarkable echo of Reverend Pat, that because of all of this God will visit upon America "a complete economic collapse" in order to bring us back to the "path to godliness."

I very much get the impression here that all of the fire-and-brimstone he's putting into God's mouth, and his prediction that God will smite the American economy with his Mighty Fist to teach us a valuable lesson, is not something he's abstracted from reading the Bible, but is what Franklin Graham would like to see happen because of his own particular bent toward Christian fundamentalism and political conservatism.  It's peculiar to observe someone who has so identified himself with the holy writ that he feels that he has the duty to pronounce God's word to the people -- as if he had become the mouthpiece of the deity, as if every word he said must be God's opinion as well.

This is a completely baffling stance to me, and I say that not only because I'm a secular atheist, but because I know how often I get things wrong.  I am far from infallible -- there are (many) topics about which I am partially or totally ignorant, I think illogically sometimes, I come to false conclusions.  Human minds only take you so far; our task, as far as I can see, is to hone and train our brains insofar as is possible, and always remember that we might not be seeing the picture correctly.  But what if you felt like you had, for one reason or another, a direct pipeline to the mind of God?  You would no longer doubt anything that came into your brain; surely God put it there, right?  You would lose that sense of perspective that keeps us all moving forward in our understanding of how the world actually works; and you would, scarily, have an instant justification for any action you took, any words you uttered.  Franklin Graham, I think, has crossed that line -- and that puts him in the same category as the British Islamists who just yesterday announced a fatwa against Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.  [Source]

I find the whole thing bizarre and frightening.  That anyone can stand up in a public forum, and say, "I know what God wants," without the entire audience simultaneously shouting, "How the hell do you know what God wants?" is deeply puzzling to me.  But, oddly, that does not seem to be a very common reaction.  Many people, for some reason, want a figure to act as God's spokesperson, and the question, "But what if he's got it wrong?" never seems to occur to them.