There’s a petition at Petition Online that you can sign, demanding that Justice Scalia recuse himself from all church-state cases due to bias. The most recent public remarks from Scalia prompting this are cited in this piece from the Jerulsalem Post: Scalia in shul: State must back religion. Some tidbits:

Scalia said that the founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state and that America has prospered because of its religiousness…. “There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality,” said Scalia… “[it] is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion”… America believes in “a personal God who takes an interest in the affairs of man,” Scalia said. Quoting a line from Psalms that says the faithful will surely prosper, he added, “I think it is no accident that America has prospered.”

Language Log is usually a fun read; the post there on Thanks Giving is no exception, and also has a nice quote from Thomas Jefferson on Presidental “declarations” with respect to matters religious. Apparently, in 1808, when Jefferson was asked to “to proclaim a national thanksgiving day devoted to fasting (?) and prayer”, he responded with the kind of wisdom we can only dream of from a contemporary president:

I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. … But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.

Why can’t we have one of those again?

Just so it doesn’t seem that all we ever do it berate and belittle the people of the lord, I offer the following rerun from last year. Happy T-day, everybody.

Thanksgiving and reflective appreciation

Hey, Happy Thanksgiving. As an atheist who doesn’t celebrate either Xmas or any of the mini-pseudo-Xmases, I still do embrace T-day. It’s the American holiday of home and hearth; and in spite of the name, a holiday where religious content seems — quite rightly — utterly optional. Lots of people take the opportunity to give literal thanks to their own flavor of imaginary friend; but the generic heart of the idea of thankfulness for the good things in your life seems pretty independent of whether you think that there’s anybody or thing to whom thanks are due.

Of course, you can be thankful to other people — like parents, friends, etc. — for things they’ve done. But there is a more generic notion of thankfulness or gratitude or something that is hard to say in the language we have without expressions that imply some agent as the one you’re thanking. (Not surprising, given the dominance of religion during the evolution of English and other Indo-European languages.) Surely the inclination to be reflectively appreciative of the good things in life — many of which are due to the random chaos of the world, like not being born into abject poverty, or having children who are by and large healthy, and so on — is an inclination that seems like a fine and healthy part of our human flourishing. I don’t think it should be cast aside just because some of the more obvious ways to state the impulse (”thankful”, “grateful”) are ones that seem to imply on the surface an agent who’s being thanked, or to whom gratitude is being given.

I’d be happy to have better ways to say it. (Suggestions?) But “giving thanks” isn’t so horrible — after all, I can believe that Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth without thinking that there is a fountain of youth that he sought, can’t I? Be careful with “quantifying in”, then, and enjoy yer turkey — and the other good things of your lives.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled sarcasm, cynicism, and ridicule.

I always have mixed feelings when I post something about the fringe wackies of the Xian world. On the one hand, there’s the pleasure of making fun of them. On the other, it opens up the door for the smug “But I’m not like that” response for “enlightened” Xians. It’s like making fun of Pat Robertson: I’ll do it, but it’s usually just too easy, and seems to let the center of Xianity off the hook.

But in the end, funny is funny. In that spirit, I give you The Christian’s Guide to Small Arms, “developed in response to the fact that most American Christians have fallen into ignorance concerning the responsibilities and skills required of the Christian freeman… a primer for the Christian who is beginning to reject the false theology that requires him to be a pacifistic patsy in the face of heathen hordes.” This is wack enough to be a fake; if it is a fake, hats off. It has the smell of verisimilitude, right down to the bad 90’s-style frame-based construction.mp3 above beyondole ole mp3 1130abused mp3 majestyaccompaniment mp3 operaacceptence different mp3law jude mp3 abroad semestercadabra mp3 abraclique 116 carry mp3 mine Map

Hey Kids, let’s all go to Dinosaur Adventure Land, where we can all see how the flood of Noah created the Grand Canyon, and how humans and dinosaurs lived together! That’s right, we got that Darwin on the run now!

An actual theme park devoted to stupidity — in the panhandle of Florida, no less! What are the odds?

And speaking of race (and xianity, of course)…

Convicted Church Bomber Dies in Prison

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted of killing four black girls in a racially motivated bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963, died Thursday in prison. He was 74.[...]

Cherry was among three former Ku Klux Klan members convicted in the bombing, which killed the four girls as they were preparing to take part in a Sunday morning service.

God bless the KKK. “But they’re not REAL xians!” Sure, whatever. And while we’re on the topic, I also just found out about (what seems to be) an interesting book: Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. Might be worth a look, for those interested in such wacky and off-the-wall things.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s The Faith Factor (from The Nation) isn’t really anti-religion, but it’s worth a read anyway, as it’s a decent comment on religion and politics in the moment. A quick taste:

Of all the loathsome spectacles we’ve endured since November 2 — the vampire-like gloating of CNN commentator Robert Novak, Bush embracing his “mandate” — none are more repulsive than that of Democrats conceding the “moral values” edge to the party that brought us Abu Ghraib. The cries for Democrats to overcome their “out-of-touch-ness” and embrace the predominant faith all dodge the full horror of the situation: A criminal has been enabled to continue his bloody work with the help, in no small part, of self-identified Christians.

Just so we know who it was that elected God’s little sock puppet, and what their “moral values” lead them to: Alabama Finds Whole New Shade Of Red

…a state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1956… mandate[d] racially segregated schools… This year, the Alabama Legislature referred Amendment 2 to the voters to take out of the state’s constitution the three most egregious vestiges of racism in its segregation amendment. They were that schools must be segregated, that a poll tax had to be paid and that a right to an education at taxpayer expense did not exist for an Alabama child…

With nearly 1.4 million votes cast, it appears that Amendment 2 failed by about 2,500 votes… You’re asking how this could happen. The Legislature referred the amendment unanimously. The governor endorsed it. The answer is that professed Christians, those of supposedly superior moral values, beat Amendment 2. The opposition was led by the state’s Christian Coalition…