Religious Intolerance Alleged at Military Academy

Curtis Weinstein said he experienced this on the softball field from a cadet whose name he didn’t know. “He knew I was Jewish and referred to myself and my religion using the f-word, calling me, like, an f-ing Jew, and blaming me for killing Jesus,” Weinstein said. [...] The anonymous graduate, who says he is open about being an atheist, described what happened when he posted a poem about atheists in the military on the door of his dorm room. “Every day after class it was torn back down,” he said. “But I kept putting it back up until my roommate finally threatened: ‘If you keep putting that back up, I’m gonna ask for another roommate.’ ” His formal complaint contains a litany of charges, including that cadets who didn’t go to chapel after dinner were referred to as heathens; that mandatory events often include Christian prayers.

And here’s the funny part:

The recent graduate said that when he brought the charges to the academy’s Military Equal Opportunity Officer, the officer told him he was a Christian and that it was his duty to “bring him back” to the flock.

And the circuit is complete. Of course, legally, it all makes perfect sense — since we wouldn’t want to “censor” all the little xians:

He said the academy must not trample on the rights of Christian students in trying to fix this problem. “A cadet can constitutionally approach another cadet and even say, ‘I believe that my beliefs are the truth and the only way to go to heaven, and yours are sending you to hell,’” he said, “and that’s constitutionally protected.”

Well, sure. And so is (say) my turning to the latino female on my left and saying, “Why, hello, you little fucking spic whore.” Ummm, something wrong with this picture?

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Fun interview with Bill Maher, who is becoming the new George Carlin when he talks about religion: Bill Maher: Christians have neurological disorder (As reported by WorldNet Daily, who will report the best parts, although they think of them as the worst parts). A few tidbits:

I think religion is a neurological disorder…. When you were a kid and they were telling you whatever you believe in religion, do you think if they had switched the fairy tales that they read to you in bed with the Bible, you would know the difference? Do you think if it was the fairy tale about a man who lived inside of a whale and it was religion that Jack built a beanstalk today, you would know the difference? Why do you believe in one fairy tale and not the other? Just because adults told you it was true and they scared you into believing it, at pain of death, at pain of burning in hell.

Go Bill.

Old GifS pal Brent at Unscrewing The Inscrutable has captured the right mood for me: In I Can’t Rationalize It Any longer, he goes on a great tear about how

…the Neo-Christian Right cannot be coddled, or even treated humanely… From here on out I’m calling the Neo-Right what they have become; filthy disgusting scum. Torturers, depraved lunatics, immoral killers, and rapists now run the group. The teachings of Jesus are long gone from the Neo-Christian Right… [I'm going to] expose your immoral depravity and hold you up to the light of ridicule so as to watch your little insect legs working feverishly trying to scuttle back into the darkness where you belong.

Nice rant, Brent. Go read it.

It’s Carnival of the Godless time again, this time hosted at Science and Politics. Once again we’re honored to be represented there; this time, by our Mr. Bob’s excellently titled contribution “Dumb-Ass Xian Morons“.

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Bill Moyers used to be this soft-spoken guy from PBS. Now he’s out to oust all the xian fucking wackos. (Special thanks to Sean for pointing this one out to me.)

Check it out: Bill Moyers: There is no tomorrow

That’s right — the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the “Left Behind” series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. [...] Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre…: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its “biblical lands,” legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

Fucking nutjobs. (And I’m supposed to be the atheist weirdo.) The problem with all this, of course, is that our current theocratic foreign policy seems to be heading in that direction. Prophecy? Hardly. Self-fulfilling? Uh, yeah, Sparky.

Michael Behe, who Brian Leiter calls “The only academically employed and credentialed scientist to have ever written in support of Intelligent Design Creationism (though not in peer-refereed journals, needless to say)”, got a piece of pro-Intelligent Design crap published on the NYTimes op-ed page the other day (”Design for Living”), and the friends of irrationalism and magic everywhere are jumping for joy. Over at the always-worthwhile Pharyngula, MC PZ Meyers does a nice job of intelligently designing Behe and his invisible-daddy loving buddies a new asshole. Check it out: “Behe jumps the shark”

The second weekly Carnival of the Godless is up over at Pharyngula (which is worth reading the rest of the time too; it’s in my news aggregator). Lots of goodies, including our meager little contribution, Religious nihilism and compassionate atheism in the face of disaster.