Carnival of the Godless #87

Its up at Ironwolf and SHUFFL has a post that “pillories another seedy preacher in The Seedy Seed of Greed. Mike Murdock Goes a-Farming For a Harvest. ” I like that word, “pillories”. I will have to do more of it!

I haven’t had a chance to go through all of the posts in the Carnival this time, but I did really enjoy Disillusioned Words‘ Why Sheltering Any Faith from Criticism is Dangerous.

I make no claim to know what any given theist believes, but once a theist makes a claim—whether to knowledge of reality or morals or any other claim—their claim is fair game. The one who makes the assertion is the one who must prove the assertion, and the theistic or atheistic nature of the assertion is truly beside the point. When a theist claims moral knowledge and imposes those morals on others through legislation or action, they have stepped out of the land of innocuousness and must be held accountable for their claims. To allow them to hide behind a force-field of political correctness is to turn a blind eye to anything and everything that is committed in the name of religion, including murder, rape, and mutilation, regardless of whether they are interpreting their sacred texts correctly or incorrectly.

I couldn’t agree more!

Another great post is by The Happy Human who finds that yes, indeed, people who believe in hell and are cool with the idea that people  will be tortured forever in it are assholes.

I think you’re an asshole because you believe that some people deserve to be tortured for an eternity.

I think you’re an asshole because you actually label your god good, despite your belief that he has been and will be torturing people’s souls for eons.

But most of all, I think you’re an asshole because you think such a being is worthy of any kind of respect or is owed any sort of gratitude.

Loads of good reading!

The next carnival is March 30 hosted by Atheist FAQ . If you see a post you like here or anywhere else, you can nominate the post using the handy dandy “Carnival of the Godless” badge on the sidebar. The deadline is the Friday before the Carnival is posted.

Carnival of the Godless, March 2.

Its up at Life Before Death! AS usual, Dr. Jim doesn’t have a SHUFFL post on it, but our good friend and part-time SHUFFLer, Natasha, from Homo Academicus does.  Its her “This Atheist” post in which she discusses her own lack of belief in the sky-guy, earth energy, and assorted quackery.  But check out all the posts.

Carnival of Carnal Godless…

The recent Carnival of the Godless was posted a few days ago, and I have post on it. YIPPEE!!

It up on Greta Christina’s blog and, clever girl that she is, she posted two versions. The clean version and the dirty version, the difference being the picture that accompanies each submission.

My post was pretty dirty, being essentially about Global Warming; polution, heat, dirty and hot… oh yeah…

Anyway, here is the clean picture:

And here is the dirty one.

Lucky bloody rats…

Anyway, my favourite post is the very Onionesque article on Avant News on God’s contrition over the nasty tornado a few weeks ago.

God Contrite About “Collateral Damage” in Huckabee Tornado Smite Attempt

God, ruler of the universe and supreme arbiter of the weather, said today He was “deeply sorry” for the many casualties incurred during His attempt to smite Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee with a tornado during Super Tuesday primary election voting earlier this week.

Brilliant stuff!

Carnival of the Godless

 

Carnival of the Godless #83 is up at Tangled up in Blue Guy.  I didn’t submit anything this time around.

There are some great posts, though. Lots on the US election. The host takes on “peer reviewed” creationist papers, finding them “Kind of like Bible Study“.  Since I’m an Old Testament kind of guy, I liked the discussion of “Dildos in the Bible” at anarcho-Judaism.

My favourite is on Greenbelt and is called “Taking the ‘name’ in vain“. After discussing how easy it is to offend the faithful by casually referring to God when something surprising happens: if only in acronym form OMG!, the post moves on to criticize the prevalenc of God-talk in US sports. It ends with this:

Bodybuilder Darrell Terrell:

I just want to thank God first of all for giving me the ability to do what I’m doing.

Ack, enough. Next time an athlete or performer trots out this tired old trope, I’d love to hear a reporter ask, “What is it about (football/boxing/basketball/track and field/gambling/American Idol) that makes it so important to God?” and “So, are you giving God the money as well as the credit?”

And, “Isn’t invoking God in public like this against the guidelines on prayer laid down by Jesus, if not actually calling God’s name in vain? What are your thoughts on that?”

Hopefully I will have a post in the next carnival at Mind on Fire.

If anyone wants to submit one of my posts for me, go here.

A Witch Worth Blowing Your Whistle Over?

Yeowzah! I’ve just “discovered” an advert for the Whistleblower magazine’s January issue on the Ultra-Right Political and Religious site World Net Daily. A witch, and what a witch! A very western womanly witch. Apparently witches are not simply fictional characters but:

The real thing – that is, the stunning phenomenon of more and more American housewives, students, professors, and even soldiers self-identifying as “witches” – is the topic of the January edition of WND’s elite monthly Whistleblower magazine…

What is witchcraft? … Is magic real? Why do witches often perform their ceremonies naked? And most of all, why do so many people today aspire to be witches?

Wicca is an official, legal religion in the U.S., and a fast-growing one at that…Witches in the armed services have even formed covens and routinely “worship” on U.S. military bases.

How did this happen – and why?

“Witchcraft, sorcery, magic and idol worship have been around since the earliest days of man,” said WND Editor Joseph Farah. “They do, indeed, pre-date Christianity as we know it today – just as their practitioners like to point out with pride. But they do not pre-date the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the one who created the universe. They are, in fact, part of a rebellion against Him and His laws.”

Added Farah: “Ever since the 1960s, this rebellion has been growing. It’s kind of the spiritual side of the political and social rebellion that took place in the latter part of that decade. Yet, this spiritual rebellion has continued unabated since then, and has grown exponentially faster and darker with each succeeding decade.”

Holy Jebus B. Gobley! What kind of government would allow nikkid witches to do stuff that isn’t Christian? Perhaps the same government that allows Christians to do stuff that isn’t Jewish, or Hindu or whatever.

A lot more is going on in this magazine and its cover, though. The woman on the cover is presumably not a wiccan but she is terribly good-looking, done up to the nines, and is posed rather “invitingly”. I actually like the picture a lot (ahh… I give away too much). But is it right for the cover of a magazine that purports to be defending a “Christian” way of life?

The magazine links the idea of ‘naked’ witches to this beautiful young woman. They are really perpetuating a stereotype of femininity that links women’s sexuality with religious apostacy and, indeed, an out-right society wide rebellion against God. The link between women and “dangerous” social behaviours and “destructive” religious activities has been with us for thousands of years and is a very prominent theme in some biblical passages (Hosea 1-3 anyone?).

A lot of Wiccans (and other folks who tend towards feminist perspectives on culture) would decry popular culture’s obsession with representations and idealizations of glamourous and amourous women (I will admit to being influenced rather a lot by those kind of images). The Whistleblower’s cover girl is presumably at ease with those kinds of styles and constructions of feminine beauty and the photographer has used them for all they are worth (without being too revealing). I don’t want to defend these stereotypes or the unrealistic expectations they create in the minds of self-conscious girls and women, but by linking this kind of image to what is considered “bad” the magazine is really shooting itself in the foot.

Indeed, in employing this kind of image to seduce readers to pick up the magazine (and that is what cover photos are for, aren’t they?), the publishers are trying to combate one percieved “social” problem while reinforcing another. They are marketing women as sexual objects to sell their publication. The reading public gets their fix of sexualized women vicariously through playing the ’self-righteous’ card. One can imagine countless Christian men thinking in the back of their minds:

Ohhh look at her! Wicca is so bad! Wow, I can see how people are drawn to this, she is gorgeous, this is awful! Look at her eyes, sooooo seductive. Must resist… Maybe if I buy the magazine I can resist, especially if there are more pictures of her inside…. ooooh, look, the ad says she will probably do her “rituals” naked! Imagine that, I better read more!

Certainly Christian women are as adversly affected by the media’s over active use of women as a marketing tools as are women of other religious/philosophical dispositions. Now, tell that to David Kupelian and the marketing genius behind the cover of his book that is also sold on World Net Daily:

The image, of course, evokes the second of the Bible’s creation stories (beginning in Genesis 2:4) in which the first women, Eve, ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and convinced her hubby, Adam, to do the same. The biblical story has a LOT of sexual connotations and it has has often been used throughout history to blame society’s ills on women who don’t do what they are told or keep their libido in check. I wonder if the irony of this has ever struck Kupelian. The advert says of the book:

Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents’ generation – from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers. Does that mean today’s Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian. But they have fallen victim to some of the most stunningly brilliant and compelling marketing campaigns in modern history.

“The Marketing of Evil” reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold to them as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America’s founding regarded as grossly self-destructive – in a word, evil.

In this groundbreaking and meticulously researched book, Kupelian peels back the veil of marketing-induced deception to reveal exactly when, where, how, and especially why Americans bought into the lies that now threaten the future of the country.

For example, few of us realize that the widely revered father of the “sexual revolution” has been irrefutably exposed as a full-fledged sexual psychopath who encouraged pedophilia. Or that giant corporations voraciously competing for America’s $150 billion teen market routinely infiltrate young people’s social groups to find out how better to lead children into ever more debauched forms of “authentic self-expression.”

I wonder if he also condemns the marketing of prayer-cloths, prophecies and so forth in the name of Jesus! Or the sale of Christian magazines with worldly images of beautiful women on the cover! His own marketing campaign is reinforcing a sexual stereotype the rest of the marketing industry relies on, too. OOOOOH, sorry, that one must be ok since it is biblical…

Getting back to Wicca, modern witchcraft, neo-paganism and so forth , what motivates a lot of people to get involved in these movements? For many there is a real ‘rebellion’ against the Chrsitian religion that construes society in ways these people do find acceptable. Many Wiccans reject Christianity because of the Bible’s construction of women as weaker, less moral or easily tempted into sin that will engulf all society. These biblical views are emphasized to a greater or lesser degree by varios denominations. There is a level of empowerment that “alternative” religions seem to offer. In many cases, there is a rejection of just those very kinds of images “Whistleblower” is employing to warn of the dangers of modern Witchcraft!

The sexualization of Christianity’s “enemy” and the feminization of the “enemy’s” human cohorts, are perhaps best seen in the witchhunts in which suspected witches were torturd until they confessed to submitting to Satan’s sexual advances, but it really goes back much further. Women bring death to the world, that is the message many Christian preachers have taught from the story of Adam and Eve. Eve the seduced and Eve the seductress:

Western society has been massively influenced by Christian ideas, and the gender constructions and “sub-cultures” that have developed in the West are no exception. Wicca would not be Wicca if Christianity (among other influences) had not shaped western consciousness and the western repertoire of symbols and images in the way it has. It is impossible to wiggle out from under the baggage of the past whether one is an atheist, a Wiccan, a Christian or whatever. The church has (however inadvertantly) given us a whole stock of symbols and ideas that people employ, redraw, celebrate and evolve into something else entirely in a myriad of unpredictable ways. It is part of our ever shifting cultural “language”, if you will. Wicca throws many of these concepts in the church’s face (not to mention the faces of other social institutions!). The reactionary response of the Christian right, however, only illustrates that behind the inventive and (at least to some oberservers) corney Wiccan and Pagan movements is a real commentary that shows us a lot about our society.

Annoying Fundamediaist Christian Jargon. Part 2 “Anointed”

Here is the second installment of my occassional series on the jargon bantered around by the fundamentalist media, and this one is dripping with the oil of a well lubricated shibboleth that really has a slippery meaning. (Part 1 “Shift in the Heavenlies”, is here).

Anointed Wikipedia’s definition seems useful enough:

To anoint is to grease with perfumed oil, milk, water, melted butter or other substances, a process employed ritually by many religions and races. People and things are anointed to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit or power. It can also be seen as a spiritual mode of ridding persons and things of dangerous influences and diseases, especially of the demons (Persian drug, Greek κηρες, Armenian dev) which are believed to be or cause those diseases.

In the Bible, people are anointed with oil to mark their elevation to a new, and religiously significant status, e.g., king, or priest. Most famously, Jesus is the “Anointed” (or Christ) of God.

Luke 4:18-19 reads “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”

Many Christian churches anoint its members from time to time. These include the “chrismation” of members just after baptism in the Orthodox church (this means the rite is most often performed on infants). In Orthodoxy and Catholicism, anointing rites are part of healing rituals.

In pentacostalism and some other protestant churches, anointing also refers to the outpouring of divine power or a commission to some individual or organization of the church.

Fair enough, but one wonders if God is pouring out more hydrocarbons than than Saudi Arabia. As in this, from a Florida church:

Pastor Stephen and Yvette have an Apostolic/Evangelical anointing on their lives that has
brought healing, deliverance and salvation to the Body of Christ.It is their desire to continue to bring an anointed word, through the preaching and practical teaching that would Restore, Rebuild and Release God’s presence in your life. (emphasis added)

They are anointed, the “word” is anointed. I wonder if anyone has slipped in anointed puddles in their church. Hey, the “anointing just flows”! All over the place. Here is an example from Singapore:

Hey church, it’s not works. It comes from a natural overflow of knowing God’s goodness and wonders in your life, and God’s anointing just flows in you, through you, of you from the Holy Spirit that is inside you.

It can reach pretty silly proportions, as in this well known video excerpt from a TV show making fun of silly Christian commentators by showing strategically chosen clips. About a quarter of the way through, the most convoluted and stupid exegesis of Hebrew term dabar (word/thing), “the anointing flows…” “Anointing” becomes highly metaphorized, as in this site:

it is our prayer that God will anoint you with fresh oil and His precious Spirit illuminate the Word as you go though this website. May He empower you to effectively communicate to others the vibrant hope that He has given you to persevere the struggles that you have overcome and continue to overcome. it is our prayer that God will anoint you with fresh oil and His precious Spirit illuminate the Word as you go though this website. (emphasis added)

Ah yes, “Fresh Oil” None of that stale crap.

You heard it right if we get angry with people or we get offended with people, or we talk about people we are not led by the spirit. I believe what is missing from our churches is people having fresh oil when they come to the house of God. The Bible says we should be overflowing with the spirit of God. Being filled with the spirit does not mean that your speak a tongue that no one knows, it does not mean you get a second blessing, it does not mean that you now have the gift of healing. The whole reason for having fresh oil is so others trust Christ as Savior. (emphasis added).

If you want some, you can get it here. Yes, the “Saints of Fresh Oil” will sell you consecrated olive oil enfused with various herbs and spices bottled in fancy flacons for diverse scriptual purposes.

Very many charismatic and pentecostal preachers claim to be anointed.

E.g., Rickie G. Rush describes himself as an anointed “man” with an anointed “mission” and minstry”. As an “anointed author”:

God has anointed Pastor Rush with the vision to reach the masses on many levels: in person, by radio, and by television. He has now taken the ministry to yet another media: the printed word. In January, 2005, Pastor Rickie G. Rush published his first book, “May I Have Your Order, Please?” It is a step-by-step guide to getting what you want from GOD. Purchase yours today! “May I Have Your Order, Please?”, not just another book, it’s a Life Manual!

Apparently, every pastor should be anointed. It make sure yours is, Barbara Billett here in Lethbridge offers a prayer to that effect. It is basically a prayer that affirms that one’s pastor (just insert his/her name in the blanks) has all the qualities needed for the job.

I confess that no weapon that is formed against Pastor _____ and his marriage and family shall prosper and that every tongue that rises up against them in judgment shall be shown to be in the wrong. Thank you Lord for contending with that which contends against Pastor _____ and his family. When the enemy comes one way, he has to flee seven ways from Pastor _____ and his family, in Jesus’ name.

Ah yes, tell God that your pastor is beyond criticism! Pastors are anointed, they cannot be challenged by man or demon. Fittingly, the prayer does not include a hope that God would punish those pastors who abuse their position!

I found this interesting blog post by an ex-Pentecostal (and that is what the whole blog is about) turned Lutheran who seems rather bitter about his previous denominational choice. He, too, comments on the social control that is implicit in the notion of ‘anointing’.

Triggers of Alternate Personalities (Anointing) –(scroll down to the second post)

Let us illustrate how someone can be speaking normally and rationally to a Pentecostal, and then suddenly, the personality changes and they are in Robot Mode, spouting off strange sayings and making strange gestures that will sometimes frighten us or anger us. Imagine that you are talking about food and recipes to a loved one. You can be having fun talking about making coffee, tea, or your favorite dish. Then suddenly, you might slip and say that fine wine can go with the cheese or the chicken. If they are tee totaling Oneness Pentecostals, they might pause for a second. Their faces will change and their demeanor will change, and they might launch into an attack about alcohol opening your body up to demonic attack. They usually will begin ranting about their doctrines against alcohol. You have inadvertently TRIGGERED them from their Authentic Self into their Robot Self. You cannot reason with the Robot Self. Try to bring them off of this altered state by silence or changing the subject.

Sometimes Pentecostals will think of the Robot Mode as the “anointing” coming upon them where the “spirit of God” takes control and they preach to you about wickedness. Remember that this is not God’s anointing; this is a programmed response to religious conditioning.

Anointing is richly meaningful ritual in many Christian churches. In many Protestant churches it is a significant theological concept. In some, however, throwing the word around becomes a shibboleth, a term used to signify belonging. Control of its use is not egalitarian, however. There is a hierarchy involved, and for those with the power, the term is used as little more than a ploy for maintaining status and power. They use the concept to induce an emotional response, a heightened spirituality, and then claim a special status for particular church leaders whose own “anointing” seems to be ever replenished and of a higher order than the masses. The ones who control how and of whom the term “anointed” is used are beyond criticism.

Martin Luther once argued that the Roman Church strayed from the truth in establishing two classes of Christian: the regular believer, and the clergy who were of a special status who were necessary for the Church’s sacraments and hence indispensable for the working of Christian salvation. Luther severely criticized this and the status and power that went with it. While Protestants do not have the hierarchy of the Roman church, some denominations have their own special class of Christian who claim a special ‘anointing’, making them untouchable. They control the “fresh oil” poured on their flock. Martin Luther just might be rolling over in his grave.