Merit-bound Alley

I’ve taken my shots my shots at religion, and even a holy book or two. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to do it for many years to come. Of course, I use the phrase “taking shots” figuratively unlike a U.S. Army sniper who quite literally used the Koran for target practice.

The Koran in question was used as a target at a police station firing range in Radhwaniya, where it was found bullet-ridden two days later. The offending soldier was relieved of duty and shipped back to the U.S., where he issued an official apology. There are a few things about this incident that bother me:

1. That it happened in the first place. Soldiers are under a supreme amount of pressure and stress that no civilian will ever truly understand. Because of this, they can do some pretty assholish things. However, there’s a big difference between taking a photo of an Iraqi holding a derogatory sign that you’ve written and desecrating the symbol of everything the vast majority of Iraqis hold dear. Not only that, the U.S. military has lost face in the eyes of the very people we’re supposed to be out there helping.
2. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond’s quote, “The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior.” While the tribal leaders see this as a crime, Hammond does need to keep in mind that this is not criminal behavior in the U.S. Back home, that sniper could have propped that Koran up against the King James bible, shot them both full of hole, set them on fire, and pissed on them to put the fire out, and more power to him! Shooting people is criminal behavior, shooting books is certainly not!
3. Hammond presented a gift of a Koran to the offended Iraqis, but also kissed it. Unless Hammond is muslim, he has no business showing such deference to that book. Respect for the book would be to refrain from shooting it, and Hammond crossed a line in his show of humility.

Another small point, but we have to take a broader look at the state of the world when things like this happen. If you have an unused hunk of paper that holds little value, you still have to treat it correctly.

Recycle, people. Trees are a dwindling resource.

UPDATE: Check out Delaware Liberal for a different perspective on the kissing.

South Carolina state government is getting into the religion business, and hardcore, too according to this story from the Charlotte Observer.

One creates license tags with “I Believe” in front of a cross; a second makes clear prayers can be offered before public meetings and a third allows set public displays of key historical legal foundation documents that would include the Ten Commandments.

Well, that runs the gamut, doesn’t it? Promoting Christianity specifically by offering only a cross on the license plate, promotion of religion in the government with a prayer, and allowing display of religious “legal” documents on public grounds.

Offering only the cross is pretty blatant, but the other two seem pretty general and maybe all-inclusive, don’t they? Yes, until we understand where the government is coming from on religious views:

What about Wicca, commonly referred to as witchcraft? “Well, that’s not what I consider to be a religion,” McGill said. And Buddhism? “I’d have to look at the individual situation. But I’m telling you, I firmly believe in this tag.”

Interesting. So, some small-minded bureaucrat will be making the decisions as to what counts as a religion. It’s good to see that they are putting so much thought into this. It’s plainly evident that the people creating and supporting these bills will be using them to put their particular brand of Christianity into the government. Should these unconstitutional bills pass, and somewhere down the line a Buddhist or a Wiccan wants a pentagram or fat guy on their license plate, the same people purtporting this as all-inclusive will be fighting the petitioners with the standard cry, “This is a Christian Nation founded on Christian principles!”

This is why complete separation of church and state is necessary. As soon as it even cracks a little bit, the religion with the most clout will take a sledgehammer to it, and in the process destroy the rights of everyone not part of the In Crowd.

In this continuation of the Vatican’s failing bid to be socially relevant, the Catholic church now okays belief in aliens. See Steve Newton’s post on Delaware Libertarian on the Holy See’s previous reactions to one of their own for hypothesizing other worlds. Here’s a summary: torture and murder!

Well, I feel so much better about their policy of hiding and avoidance of culpability for legions of child molesters now that I know I can safely believe in the possibility of life on other planets!

Whew!

The Age brings us some news that is some fucked-up concoction of funny, stupid, and sad. Seems like some Americans, fed up with the rising price of gasoline have begun prayer circles around the ol’ gas pump.

“Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices,” Twyman said to a chorus of “amens”.

“Prayer is the answer to every problem in life. We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high,” Twyman said on the forecourt of the petrol station in a neighbourhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

“Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world,” he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, We Shall Overcome.

“We’ll have lower gas prices, we’ll have lower gas prices,” they sang.

In a time where there are wars going on, massacres in Darfur, tsunamis and earthquakes killing thousands, poverty, hunger, and disease, do these people really think that their god is going to prioritize their wallets while millions suffer needlessly? Isn’t this just the most arrogant and thoughtless thing you’ve ever heard?

I would like to hear some commentary on why this may not be supremely ignorant behavior, because for the life of me, I can’t get past it.

Compliments of the Friendly Atheist, we have the target of the above referenced rage:

As a memorial to the painful, frightening and needless death of Madeline Kara Neumann, the Wisconsin Legislature needs to finally show some gumption, and remove from the statutes its callous exemption sanctifying child homicide in the name of faith. (link)

Wait, what? Surely there can’t be an exemption of homicide in any case! If you thought that, as I did, them you were wrong. From the Wisconson Code defining types of abuse:

EXCEPTION. Nothing in this section may be construed to mean that an individual at risk is abused solely because he or she consistently relies upon treatment by spiritual means through prayer for healing, in lieu of medical care, in accordance with his or her religious tradition.

Are we in the fucking Dark Ages? In what version of reality is it actually okay to let your child die as long as you prayed it didn’t happen? If a child is playing in the road and there’s a truck coming, can the parent pray that the driver swerves, even if the parent is a few yards away? If the child gets hit and killed, is the parent not liable for not trying to get their child out of the road?

At what point is a person’s trust in god not only irresponsible, but criminal? What is the limit of allowance the law can give to theists just because of their religion?

The siblings of Madeline Neumann, the 11-year-old girl left to die while her parents prayed, have been removed from their home while an investigation of the death proceeds. While I think that it’s commendable that these kids, aged 13 to 16, are being moved to safety, there are still some things that concern me.

The parents and social services experts agreed the move would be best for everyone, Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said. The children are staying with other relatives, though they were not in danger, he said.

Some might argue that the possibility of neglect resulting in death is a danger.

“There is no intent. They didn’t want their child to die. They thought what they were doing was the right thing,” he said. “They believed up to the time she stopped breathing she was going to get better. They just thought it was a spiritual attack. They believed if they prayed enough she would get through it.”

Gee, if only there was some kind of charge, like murder, but without intent that could be brought up against these parents-of-the-year.

Everything in my mind and heart screams that these people need to go straight to jail, and that their children deserve a more stable home than they can provide. Let’s hope that the law does not let us down.

A pair of Wisconsin parents let their daughter slowly die of diabetes while they declined to seek medical treatment in favor of prayer. The parents had this to say about their daughter’s condition:

“We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks,” she said. “And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering.”

Doctors, the people who could have actually saved 11-year-old Madeline Neumann, say that the girl had probably been showing signs of sickness for up to 30 days before she died. Said the murdering parents:

“our lives are in God’s hands. We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.”

Any outright fool knows that you bring sick children to the doctor, or at least give the doctor a call when symptoms of sickness persist. The above statement not only shows that the parents have no understanding of the fatal mistake that they made, but that they take no responsibility for their child’s death and will probably kill again given the chance. The most horrible part of this whole thing is that they will probably get out of any charges because of the religious angle. NEWSFLASH: If you are directly responsible for the death of a child, you are a child murderer.

What gives a more sinister light to this pitiful event is:

Officers went to the home after a relative in California asked police to check on the girl. She was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

A relative, obviously aware of the situation, didn’t feel that the parents were acting in a responsible way. Chances are that this relative had pleaded with the parents to seek medical attention for their dying daughter, advice that was ultimately ignored.

An hour at the doctors and one intital shot of insulin could have saved this poor girl’s life. A couple shots a day, and she could have led a normal life. Now, due to her parents superstition and failure as responsible guardians, she will never have that chance.

If footballers weren’t thugs, and all religious folk could refrain from using faith as apologetics for bad behavior.

The Steelers have had two incidents of domestic abuse in their team recently. One, Cedric Wilson, who plays… football, I guess , was arrested for punching his girlfriend in a bar last Wednesday. 11 days prior, James Harrison broke down a door, grabbed his gilfriend’s cell phone and broke it as she was trying to dial 911, and then slapped her. Why did he flip out and become a monster? He wanted to have his son baptized, and she didn’t. Pow! Bang! To the moon!

Wilson was released from the team, and Harrison remains. When asked about this apparent double-standard,  team charimn Dan Rooney was quoted to say:

“What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it,” Rooney said of Harrison’s initial intent with his son. “He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn’t want to do it.”

So, it’s okay to beat up on a woman if there’s religious intent involved. Got it. Good thing this is the first time religion was used to explain violence!

(h/t to skepchick)

One of the things that I detest about religion in America is it’s willful ignorance and hostility towards science. This is most vividly fronted in the creationist doctrine of intelligent design, and an upcoming movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I wasn’t planning on covering this, as it’s been done on some 40 other blogs and frankly the subject is beneath my contempt, but the idiocy of intelligent design and the slimy and underhanded tactics of the movement’s “leadership” have pissed me off enough to merit some writing time. In other words, I need to vent my spleen.

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Did my journey really end with a belief in nothing? Of course not! I can no more stop pondering morality and ethics in life than I can stop being a father. I wouldn’t even want to. The end of the search for a belief system was nothing more than the end of a chapter, and a successful one, at that. In fact, shortly after my epiphany about god, I found something that exactly matched what I do believe.

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