If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.~~Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin

The situation of freedom of conscience in Nigeria is bad, very bad

Last October 10, 2007,on CNBC's The Big Idea, conservative writer Ann Coulter proclaimed that Jews need to be "perfected" and that they would be better off being Christian.

Kathryn Joyce is working on a book about conservative Christian women's movements, to be published by Beacon Press.

Between 1985 and 1990, three books were published by small, independent Christian presses that would have come to have a profound impact on Christian Right thinking on family planning, feminism and birth control. Charles Provan's The Bible and Birth Control, Mary Pride's The Way Home: Away from Feminism and Back to Reality, and Rick and Jan Hess's A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ. Together, these three books laid a comprehensive framework for the pro-natalist, anti-birth control movement today known as Quiverfull, wherein believers eschew all forms of birth control, natural and hormonal, and argue that Christian families should leave the number of children they have entirely in the hands of God.

As you know, much is at stake in our democracy these days - and my state of Ohio is now a major battlefield, and likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

My years in the Marine Corps taught me to view life strategically. With that in mind, we must think strategically and act strategically in attacking this political challenge that lies before us with regard to religious extremism in both Ohio and the United States at large. Along with similarly concerned friends, neighbors and colleagues, I am starting a new project called Operation Ohio to sound the alarm to the threat of the theocratic political movement here in Ohio.

This concerns all Americans not only because this movement has roots in all states across America, but because Ohio will determine the direction of our country in 2008.

I need your help to get the project started.

Here is the problem as I see it.

This is frightening on many fronts:

KABUL, Afghanistan Mar 19, 2006 (AP)-- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday.

The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

First, I'm concerned that the religious right in this country will try to match this hysteria by implementing a like sensibility in their newly aquired court system.

Secondly, is this the kind of democracy that BushCo. has spent three years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars exporting to the middle east?

Finally, today, we hear this from the Screw-up-In-Chief:

CLEVELAND - President Bush on Monday cited progress in stabilizing an insurgent stronghold in northern Iraq, saying he has "confidence in our strategy" and critics should look beyond the images of violence to see clear signs of progress.

Worst. President. Ever.

This is directed at anybody who thinks that their vote will not be important in the next election for whatever reason. It doesn't matter whether you are a Green disgusted at what you see as a lack of spine by the Democrats or a former Hackett supporter disgusted at what you see as an insular establishment who determines the candidates for Senate in smoke-filled backrooms. You are missing the key point as to why it is so important that you go to the polls and vote for a Democrat. You forget that a vote for a Democrat for Senate or the House is a vote for John Conyers as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

We are witnessing a great insult to the name of Muhammed and to the entirety of the religion of Islam. Across the world the name of Muhammed is being degraded and dragged the mud. Muslims around the world need to fight against this degradation of their religion. And it is NOT the Danish who are to blame.

What is Evolution Sunday ?

On 12 February 2006 hundreds of Christian churches from all portions of the country and a host of denominations will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science.   For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science.  More than 10,000 Christian clergy have already signed The Clergy Letter demonstrating that this is a false dichotomy.  Now, on the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, many of these leaders will bring this message to their congregations through sermons and/or discussion groups.  Together, participating religious leaders will be making the statement that religion and science are not adversaries.  And, together, they will be elevating the quality of the national debate on this topic.

This morning on local radio, a morning show team interviewed Shirley Phelps-Roker, the attorney representing Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church.  Phelps and his gang have gained recent attention in this part of the country from their presence at the funeral of a local soldier.  On par with their typical pattern, they held signs and tried to make the case that military deaths are direct payback from God for America's general immorality.

The audio from this interview has been posted, and I must warn you, it ain't pretty.  (MP3 format, 13M)

To paraphrase, Phelps-Roker opened with a predictable bang:

"What we are doing is, we are putting the cup of the fury of God's Wrath to your lips, and we are making you drink it.  We are helping you connect the dots from the filthy manner of life of this nation to the dead soldiers, to the whirlwind."

"God is punishing America, and his weapon of choice is the IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) that blow the fruit of America to pieces, punishing this nation."

"I am so sorry that those parents raised that child for the Devil, and sent him to hell early."

Finally, the stumbling, bumbling, outraged show host spilled out: "You are Osama bin Laden!  You have taken a religion and perverted it in a disgusting way!"

Countless words of condemnation have been heaped upon George W. Bush and his hard-Right regime – a crescendo growing louder by the day, with voices from across the political spectrum. But the most devastating repudiation of the Regime's foul ethos was actually delivered almost 2,000 years ago by the man whose birth is celebrated at this season of the year.

We speak, of course, of Jesus of Nazareth, whose Sermon on the Mount, as reported in the Gospels, called for a revolutionary transformation of human nature – a complete overthrow of our natural instincts for greed, aggression, and self-aggrandizement. This radical vision – erupting in the turbulent backwater of a brutal world empire – is the true miracle of Jesus' life, not the clusmy fables about virgin births, magic tricks and corpses rising from the dead. The vision's living force sears through dogma, casts down the pomp of church and state, and gives the lie to every hypocrite who evokes the name of Jesus in pursuit of earthly power.

In the beginning, God created man in his own image.  Sound familiar?  That idea has been circulating for at least four thousand years.

How about this one: in the beginning, man created God in his own image.  Not quite as old, but popular enough.  The exact formulation is essentially modern, but some Greeks and Romans were saying something very like it about their gods better than 2,000 years back.

So, option A or option B?  One or the other is almost certainly right, but it's unlikely that any of us will know the answers in our lifetimes (Warning: this statement void in case of rapture).  Does it matter which idea is right?  In a personal sense, there's little that could be more important.  In a political sense... maybe not as much as you think.

But even if you're B all the way, it would pay for you to have some understanding of the people in the A camp, who this God character is, and how he became such a pain in the keester.