I’d Really rather you didn't act like a sanctimonious holier-than-thou ass...

Keller Council Members Deny Atheist Chance To Speak:

Moments before a city council meeting, Keller scrapped plans for an atheist to deliver its invocation.

The mayor offered a prayer instead.

Zachary Moore, representing Keller Humanists, was set to speak.

“The things I like to invoke are our shared values. I like to invoke the democratic process,” he said.

Moore has given the invocation at Keller city council meetings three times in the last year. It comes with a condition, though.

Moore’s invocations are always followed by a prayer given by Pastor John Salvesen of the Bear Creek Bible Church.

“I was fine with that too for a while, but it occurred to me that what happened was also a form of discrimination,” said Moore.

Last week, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for separation of church and state, sent the council a letter.

“If the Council insists on continuing to host prayers at public meetings, it cannot discriminate against any person wishing to give a prayer. The nonreligious and members of minority religions must be permitted to deliver invocations on an equal basis. This not only means permitting them to be in the invocation rotation, it also means not making a special show of diluting their message with a subsequent Christian prayer,” reads the letter.

Pastor Salvesen, who oversees the invocation, sees one problem, though. Moore, he claims, isn’t praying, since he has no one to pray to.

This is so wrong.

There are many different versions of the Our Pasta prayer:

Our Pasta,
Who "Arghh" in colander,
Draining be thy noodles.
Thy serving come,
Thy food be yum,
In restaurants, as it is in kitchens.
Give us this day our daily sauce,
And forgive our messes,
As we forgive those who mess against us.
And lead us not into hunger,
But deliver us some pizza,
For thine is the spaghetti, and the meatballs, and the sauce
For ever and ever.

R'Amen

Religious people aren't praying to anyone either, anyone real that is.

Begone Ye Potholes, Begone!

Only in America: Praying the potholes away:

Facing a need for $743 million worth of repairs to crumbling infrastructure, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, has told residents the city can fix its many potholes through the power of prayer. "Yes, I believe we can pray potholes away," said Mayor Tony Yarber, who is also a church pastor, on Twitter. "Moses prayed," he said, "and a sea opened."

Perhaps Mayor Yarber has a special affinity with potholes since both potholes and the space between his ears are full of empty space.

Palin's Picky Praying

From Palin's prayer remark angers former staffers by Peter Hamby:

Some of Sarah Palin's former campaign aides are frustrated with the Alaska governor for remarking in a lengthy, freewheeling speech that she had refused to pray with them before last October's vice presidential debate.

Palin told the story in a speech to a GOP dinner in Alaska last Friday.

"So I'm looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra," she said of the moments before the debate. "And the McCain campaign, love 'em, you know, they're a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray."

As the audience laughed, Palin noted that she meant no disrespect to the McCain campaign and that ended up saying a prayer with her daughter Piper.

A handful of the McCain campaign staffers who traveled with the former vice presidential nominee nearly every day for two months caught wind of Palin's remarks on Thursday morning — and they aren't thrilled with her quip.

Read the rest here.

Illogical?

I love it when someone claims that atheists are the ones who are supposed to be illogical, as if faith is the epitome of logic.

From Atheists' view illogical by Marty Dhabolt:

The barriers to truth on this issue regarding prayer by government officials are primarily psychological, not logical. Most of the confusion is born from a misunderstanding of proper “church” and state separation, along with two logical impossibilities — actual neutrality in government and genuine religious pluralism. Both assertions are nonsense.

Our local cadre of atheists have a Godless goal in mind. Atheists, including The American Gestapo, aka the ACLU, are intellectual hypocrites; their bankrupt worldview has been beaten like a drum on philosophical, historical and even pragmatic grounds. Although their arguments are tired they remain tenacious out of desperation. It’s been almost 50 years since it was determined that atheism actually presupposes and surreptitiously relies on theism to even have the appearance of cogency.

As no world renowned atheist has ever intelligently answered, let alone refuted that reality, what chance is there that local atheists are encumbered by any justification or coherency for their views based on their atheistic presuppositions?

Anyone care to translate this for me? Mr. Dhabolt seems to like to write in some form of George Will derived dialect that I am not familiar with. I will, however, do my best to try to understand this and give my thoughts.

How can one separate logic from the psychological? Psychology is generally defined as the study of the human mind. Where exactly does Mr. Dhabolt think that logic comes from? Perhaps he meant to use the word emotional? If so, I must ask if it is actually the atheists who are the ones being emotional here.

What exactly is “proper” church and state separation? One that is polite and has good manners? Perhaps Mr. Dhabolt could give us some proof as to why “actual neutrality in government and genuine religious pluralism” are nonsense and logical impossibilities. Perhaps something with a little more weight than “because I say so.” (Ahh, the basis of all religious belief and all religious argument: "Because I say so.")

From Myth: Religious Neutrality is Hostility toward Religion & Religious Beliefs by Austin Cline:

…the most devoutly religious people should also be the staunchest defenders of government neutrality in matters of religion. Given the awesome power of the modern state, religious people should want to do everything reasonable to reduce the risk that the state will interfere with their religious institutions, and that would include the state coming down against them in theological matters. Accomplishing this requires removing from the government the authority to support them in theological matters as well. How does a ban on government support of religion inhibit people from acting as individuals to express their religious beliefs? Christians have been expressing themselves quite well for millennia, and not always with the government supporting them. Just how weak is Christianity that it requires government backing today? The government doesn’t help atheists express their views, but you won’t hear atheists arguing that this a sign of government hostility towards atheism.

Mr. Dhabolt says that atheists are the illogical ones and that anyone who believes in “neutrality in government and genuine religious pluralism” believes in nonsense. This is, of course, nonsense. Actual nonsense runs through everything that Mr. Dhabolt has written. According to Mr. Dhabolt the idea of civil liberties is “bankrupt” and “tired.” Does Mr. Dhabolt want the Bill of Rights to be repealed and abolished? Why is Mr. Dhabolt arguing against his own self interest? Let’s remember that the Bill of Rights begins with: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The “American Gestapo” vows to “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country." Mr. Dhabolt throws around many big words, yet he does not seem to know the meaning of many of them. He claims that the ACLU as a group are intellectual hypocrites. The dictionary says this of the word hypocrite: “1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.” How anyone can describe the ACLU as a group of hypocrites is beyond belief!

There is even more illogical nonsense from Mr. Dhabolt. Mr. Dhabolt gives us the completely meaningless belief that atheists only exist because of non-atheists. (I find the response by Zephyr to this to be humorous: “Next, they’re going to prove that Christ exists because they found the Anti-Christ.”) Dhabolt then claims that “no world renowned atheist has ever intelligently answered, let alone refuted that reality.” Mr. Dhabolt should write his own dictionary so that we all would know what he means when he uses words like atheist and reality. Clearly his “reality” is simply not real.

It seems that there are nearly as many definitions for the word atheist as there are people. Of course the reason for that is because there are nearly as many definitions for the word God as there are people.

From Atheism:

Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining atheism arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like deity and god. The plurality of wildly different conceptions of god and deities leads to differing ideas regarding atheism's applicability.

As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God." Similarly, George H. Smith (1979) suggested that: "The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist."

It appears that Mr. Dhabolt thinks that he has scored a few points by writing: “It’s been almost 50 years since it was determined that atheism actually presupposes and surreptitiously relies on theism to even have the appearance of cogency. As no world renowned atheist has ever intelligently answered, let alone refuted that reality, what chance is there that local atheists are encumbered by any justification or coherency for their views based on their atheistic presuppositions?” Writing something so pointless does not entitle anyone to any points at all.

Who was it exactly that “determined that atheism actually presupposes and surreptitiously relies on theism to even have the appearance of cogency.”? If those damn sneaky atheists are so clandestine and stealthy, how did anyone notice this? Does something have to exist for someone to have no belief in it? One source describes the etymology of “atheist” as deriving from the Greek word “atheos” (a- "without" + theos "a god"). “Without a god” does not seem to me like it is dependent on the existence of a god. One definition of the word "nothingness" is “void.” As in “no thing.” Does the word "nothingness" depend on there first being a thing before there was nothingness? Of course not. It all depends on what your definition of "is" is”. Or in this case it all depends on what your definition of “atheism” is.

All of this points to one of the dangers of faith. Faith is the actual barrier to truth. By the way, that is a logical statement, not a psychological one. Faith allows you to believe whatever the hell you want to without having to think about it. It also allows you to think that you have won the argument, when actually you haven’t made one at all.

Who really is the illogical one here?

"Pick boogers and of course, pray if they choose"

In boogers we trust.

From Atheist Family in Texas Challenging Neutrality of a 'Moment Of Silence' by Nikki W:

The neutrality of a mandatory Texas law that requires all students take a minute of silence every morning to reflect, meditate, pray or engage in whatever silent activity they wish is under attack. This time, its round 2 by a family of Atheists.

Created to allow all individuals an opportunity to do what it is they want to do, quietly, during that mandatory "one minute" time frame following the Pledge of Allegiance, the 2003 legislature is once again under attack for what is said to be a waste of time.

A family who lives in a suburb of Dallas, TX has filed an appeal to a lawsuit they actually filed but failed at victory back in January of this year. The judge presiding over the case found no evidence that the minute of silence, required in all Texas public schools, had any kind of religious foundation.

Read the rest (including the part about the boogers) here.

A Typical Assumption

Why do religious people assume that all people pray? I myself am offended by this. It is arrogant to think that all people are just like you. One shouldn’t assume anything about another person.

From Dear Prudence: Advice on manners and morals:

Dear Prudie,
I have been an atheist for the last several years, ever since losing my (Christian) faith following a close friend's untimely death. Recently, my boss's mother told me about a serious and risky surgery that her other child would soon have. After I said to her, "I'll keep him in my thoughts," she responded, "Oh, would you please pray for him?" I said yes, and she began talking about her belief in the power of prayer, a belief I once would have shared. At the time, I wanted to comfort her in any way that I could, so I agreed with what she said. Also, it hardly would have been appropriate to launch into a "Why I'm an Atheist" speech. Later, though, I felt very uncomfortable with the fact that I'd lied and acted as if I shared her beliefs. Is this kind of thing a no-win situation?

—Not a Believer

Dear Not,
Maybe when you said you would keep your boss's brother in your thoughts, you were telling a white lie because you didn't intend to really think about him again. I agree, people should not be shanghaied into professing beliefs they don't have, and there are times that if you feel pressured to do so, you simply have to say, "I'm sorry I don't share your point of view." Additionally, when someone says they'll keep an ailing person in their thoughts, instead of their prayers, it should be a tip-off that they don't do prayers. But in this case, by going along you've simply tried to console a woman in distress. You're right: If you had responded to her request with, "I'm sorry, but I don't pray," she would have felt worse, and by causing unnecessary awkwardness, so would you.

—Prudie