Theology in the News

I posted recently about atheists suing for the removal of the World Trade Center cross. As a result I received the following email from a Christian who thinks I’m an atheist.

I’m leaving this one completely unedited:

If you stupid people do not like the fact that a huge cross has been made and placed at the museum then please do us CHIRSTAINS a huge favor.Do not go anywhere near it.Your beliefs of Christmas also stinks,what makes you think that you take our beliefs away,our country was built on CHRISTAINITY!!!!You take prayer out of school and that is our fault cause we sat back and did nothing but listen to this we still have prayer,you want In God We Trusttaken off of our money but you spend it don’t you?You want One Nation Under God taken out of our pledge then pi– on you don’t say it.What you Wierd and Stupid people need to do is go an island where you rule it and leave us alone and when you go take the gays and lezies with you,they are such a sinner as you are!
Krinkle from Texas(God’s Country)

Oh dear.

I’ve also become aware of this:

FOX News Facebook Page on 9/11 Cross Generates Death Threats Against Atheists

This is unacceptable and counterproductive behaviour by Christians in my opinion.

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On that bright September 11th morning almost 11 years ago, Muslim terrorists took down the World Trade Center, and amid all the heartbreak, dust, and rubble two intersecting steel beams stood impossibly in the shape of a cross giving comfort to a confused and bewildered country.

Now, a group of atheists is suing to take down the cross.

On Saturday Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan Monk who blessed human remains and ministered to Ground Zero workers after 9-11, blessed the cross at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at the WTC site.

The lawsuit which aims to have the cross removed from the memorial, names pretty much anyone it can name including the state of New Jersey, the city of New York, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

American Atheists, which filed the lawsuit in state court, argues that keeping the cross at the memorial is “government enshrinement of the cross” and “an impermissible mingling of church and state.”

….continue

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is facing a federal lawsuit as a state/church watchdog group consisting of atheists and agnostics attempts to block his involvement in the Day of Prayer and Fasting organized for Aug 6.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a watchdog group consisting of 16,600 members, filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District Court of Texas to keep the religious event from occurring, arguing it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The legal complaint says the plaintiffs are “nonbelievers who support the free exercise of religion, but strongly oppose the governmental establishment and endorsement of religion, including prayer and fasting, which are not only an ineffectual use of time and government resources, but which can be harmful or counterproductive as a substitute for reasoned action.”

….continue

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Get ready, America. This upcoming July 4 is about more than simply celebrating our nation’s founding. Apparently, it’s also an opportunity for Atheists to set the record straight about their patriotism. Thus, on Monday, people in 27 states will have the opportunity to look up in the sky and see airplanes flying banners that proudly say “God-LESS America“ or ”Atheism is Patriotic.” The campaign, being organized by the New Jersey-based American Atheists, is sure to stoke the fires of controversy.

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But, the campaign hasn‘t even been implemented yet and it’s already off to a rocky start. According to Justin Jaye of Fly Signs Aerial Advertising, the guy who helped organize the nation-wide blitz, of the 85 people in the nation who are able to fly these banner-bearing planes, only 17 agreed to participate. The fear of public reaction and the confines of personal religious belief led the majority of these individuals to refuse service.

[.....]

American Atheists claim that the campaign is about showing the country that atheists are patriotic people too. But, these signs may end up being the catalyst for more friction between non-believers and religious adherents.

….read all

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Don’t often come across an article of this nature and so thought I’d post it here to see what you think:

Many of the millions of Americans who do not believe in the supernatural have had enough of being targeted by unremitting discrimination. I know this because of the telling reaction to a Washington Post opinion article I wrote last month.

After the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it occurred to me that gays were making greater strides than atheists and agnostics in popular acceptance. Support for gay marriage is now at majority level. Houston, of all places, has a lesbian mayor. No one considers sexual orientation of guests entering the White House, yet it remains an event worthy of comment when the president remembers to note Americans of non-faith along with those of faith, The subtle bigotry begins in childhood, when atheist kids are asked to recite “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or are unable to join Boy Scouts. If Jews or blacks were being excluded in the same ways, there would be indignation.

The bum deal American atheists have constantly received is extensively documented in “Atheists as Other” published in the journal American Sociological Review. American anti-atheism that sees the nonreligious as a dangerous foreign element dates to the early years of the republic, with Christians being the main perpetrators. Never mind that a number of founders, including crafters of the Declaration of Independence, were deists, or that the writers of the Constitution were careful to state that the power of the government derives from “We the people,” not “We the people under God.” And the Cold War did not help matters, causing many Americans to conclude that being ungodly meant somehow being in league with the atheistic commie Reds, while true-blue Americans (before blue meant liberal Democrat) were faith-based churchgoers.

But the history of the matter is moot. The “crime” that the nonpious are committing is nothing more than declining to believe in supernatural beings and forces that lack sufficient verification of their reality. There is no excuse for discrimination that is as under the radar as it is persistent. So I wrote an op-ed that, in the tradition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, would put the nation on notice by calling for the societal civil rights of Ameroatheists.

….continue reading

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This one really made me smile:

A self-confessed atheist has become a believer after mocking God by sarcastically praying for his mother to win the lottery. However, his joke prayer was amazingly answered as the next day his mother won $1 million on the New York Lottery Sweet Million game.

Sal Bentivegna, 28, who did not previously believe in God, had sarcastically asked his mother to “ask your God for a million dollars”.

However, his mother Gloria Bentivegna, follows the Catholic faith, and staying true to her belief refused to ask God for such a thing.

Taking his joke further, Sal then prayed out aloud saying, “God, I don’t know if you’re real or not, but if you are there, please let my mother win a million dollars.”

He added, “If Jesus wants me to believe in him, that’s what he’ll do”.

The following day his mother bought a “Lotto Tree” of unscratched instant win tickets from her Church’s charity auction. Sal was then left absolutely stunned when he found out his mother had won a million.

….continue reading

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This is the headline title of a CNN article which is being replicated throughout the atheistic blogosphere:

Ricky Gervais says atheism shouldn’t offend.

From this headline, if you’re under the impression that the premise of Ricky Gervais’ comments is that atheists shouldn’t be offensive, then you’d be wrong. He’s actually saying that we believers shouldn’t be offended by atheists mocking our God or our faith.

But what if atheists are deliberately offensive?

P Z Myers has a blog post up today with the title:

I have annoyed Jesse Bering

And his first comment is:

That’s what I do, after all.

Indeed.

Yesterday, in response to emails he has received following the recent revelation that a “Late-term” abortionist has been charged by prosecutors with killing seven new-born babies, this was P Z Myers response:

Secondly, the standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I’m a biologist. I’ve guillotined rats. I’ve held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I’ve used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I’ve opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I’ve been elbow deep in blood, I’ve split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I’ve extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I’ve scooped brains out of buckets, I’ve counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.

I don’t know about you, but I find these comments deeply offensive, and I have no doubt this was the intention of the post.

I’ll be the first to admit that Christians may be over sensitive at times, but when atheists set out to deliberately offend and provoke, are we not within our rights to be offended?

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Article by Joe Infranco – Mercatornet

In a much-publicized decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a memorial cross at the Mt. Soledad veterans’ memorial in San Diego violated the Federal Constitution. In particular, the Court looked at the First Amendment and examined the issue under the so-called “separation of church and state” mantra. The decision may not seem like much when reported as a news story, but its implications are staggering. Let’s see why.

Imagine a balance scale capable of weighing arguments, so that the weightier side prevails. Here’s the alignment of interests. On one side of the scale, we have a location where a memorial cross honoring veterans has stood, in one form or another, since 1913 – nearly a century. The current memorial has been at the location since 1954, and the area surrounding the memorial is filled with numerous walls of plaques honoring individual veterans. After nearly two decades of relentless lawsuits by the ACLU, the property with the memorial was taken by the Federal Government in an act of Congress to establish a federal memorial for all veterans. By Congressional standards, the action was a marvel of both speed and consensus. More than 80 percent of representatives in the U.S. House voted for it.  The Senate approved the transfer in a unanimous vote — seen many of those lately?

On the same side of the scale with a unified Congress, we also have overwhelming community support and the opinion of the largest veterans’ organizations in the nation, representing literally millions of veterans.  In fact, the veterans’ groups forcefully described the ACLU lawsuit as an insult to the honor and memory of veterans everywhere. They expressed the surprisingly easy-to-grasp concept that veterans should be able to say how they would like to honor their own. So, on one side we have long-standing tradition, Congress and the President, local residents, and veterans.

What could possibly be placed on the opposite side of the scale to tip the balance? The answer is a handful of individuals who claim to be “offended” by the sight of the memorial. This is not a misprint or misstatement, and now, if this three judge panel has its way, it will be the law for much of the country.

Groups like the ACLU have a long-standing dysfunctional relationship with memorial crosses. The military has long used the symbol of a cross to honor soldiers and veterans; consider, for example, the nation’s second highest military award, the Distinguished Service Cross. Offended observers irrationally see here a covert attempt to establish the Christian faith. The very suggestion defies common sense and experience.

Imagine you are driving down a peaceful country lane, when you round a curve and see a small cross with flowers planted on the roadside. What would be your first thought: someone perished at this spot, or would it be “someone is trying to establish the Christian religion roadside”? No rational person jumps to the second conclusion. And yet, according to this decision, the small handful of thin-skinned types who do must be accommodated.

The comparison is even starker when we look behind the arguments. The memorial cross stands in mute recognition of sacrifice, honor, and courage. These attributes were displayed by veterans, many of whom paid the ultimate price to protect our freedoms. In a grotesque use of those freedoms, a few individuals motivated by their personal offense and sense of self-importance, sued to destroy the symbol honoring those who fought for those freedoms. The easily-offended ACLU clients behind the suit try to cloak their actions with pretensions of constitutional dignity, but the arguments sound more like the yapping of irritated poodles in the presence of a solemn memorial.

Fortunately, the three judge panel is not the end of the road. The United States Supreme Court has an opportunity to hear this case and reverse the terrible injustice. In fact, the Supreme Court has already hinted about their views on memorial crosses. In another ACLU lawsuit against a memorial cross, only the year before, the Supreme Court reversed the same appellate court, though on a different issue. The majority decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy featured stirring language about memorial crosses, which I cannot improve upon, and so I will simply quote:

(A) Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, noble contributions, and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this Nation and its people. Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.

Unfortunately, three judges on the Ninth Circuit didn’t get the message.  Americans everywhere are hoping the Supreme Court will step in again and right this wrong.

Joseph P. Infranco serves as senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund at its headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. ADF is a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

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Some atheists in Europe are formally renouncing their faith through a process they call “de-baptism.” In effect they write to the parish where they were baptized and asked that their name be blotted out from the book of life, also known as the Baptismal Register.

There is actually an organization that exists solely to encourage and facilitate such renunciations called, the Apostasy Association.

Of course, this is nothing new and follows the trend for US atheists to be “offically de-baptized” in a ritual using a hair dryer.

Sad and remarkable that atheists should go to all of this effort.

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