Ayaan Hirsi Ali is Critical of Islamic Fundamentalism – Not Muslims

It seems Ayaan Hirsi Ali was quite prophetic in Infidel when she spoke of how anyone who is critical of Islam is often given the label of “anti-Muslim.”

After praising Hirsi Ali’s autobiography Infidelin a post, I received an opposing response.  The point was that by discussing the female genital mutilation, denial of women’s rights, and unjust patriarchy imposed by traditional Islam, Hirsi Ali apparently paints a “blanket negative” about the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world.

I disagree.  From her book (as well as interviews of her I’ve seen and read), it is clear that she is not censoring Muslims at all, but the fundamentalist Islamic law under which many of them suffer.  There is a distinction, and it’s not as fine as some would believe.  Attacking a belief system that is oppressive and unjust to women is not the same as attacking the adherents to that belief system.  Nor does Hirsi Ali’s criticism extend to the Sufis and other Muslims who espouse a more moderate view than the fundamentalists.

Islam never went through the Enlightenment as Christianity in the West did.  I was told that neither did orthodox Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, or Sikhism.  So what?  Are there Buddhist states enriching uranium and threatening to “wipe Israel off the map?”  Are there international Sikh terrorists blowing up embassies, planes, and Israeli couples in cafes?  Are there orthodox Catholics training terrorists in desert camps?  And Jainism – you have to be joking.  These are the people who are so pacifistic that they sweep the ground in front of them to avoid stepping on bugs.

I was told that honor killings and female genital mutilation can be found among other religions such as the Ethiopian Jews, Sudanese animists, and Jordanian Catholics.  We should be speaking out against those, as well, and I’m glad this information was brought to my attention.  We should criticize any and every belief system that advocates such injustice.  But how does that negate the fact that honor killings and female circumcision are also happening among Muslims?  And for the record, in Infidel, the author brought up the point that genital mutilation predates Islam and not all who do it are Muslims.

I was told that Ayaan Hirsi Ali should not be regarded as a reliable source, that it’s all too easy for non-Muslims to read her book and automatically assume that she is an “insider” with privileged information.  Very well, then.  What of Ibn Warraq and his book Why I Am Not a Muslim?  Is he unreliable, as well?  He presents a very precise and detailed critique of fundamentalist Islam and the Koran.  What of Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Prize winner for human rights and author of Iran Awakening?  Another “insider” – is she wrong in her assessment of the human rights violations in post-Islamic-Revolution Iran?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is critical of a dangerous ideology.  Are there others?  Of course.  But are there others so pervasive, and wielding so much political power?  Is there another religion that rules countries like Iran and Syria, both of which sponsor terrorism?  Is there another religion that inspires worldwide holy wars, civilian murder, and utter intolerance for Israel and the West?  Is there another religion whose holy law states that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s?  Is there another religion that spurs riots, violence, and flag burning when someone lampoons their faith or names a teddy bear after their prophet?

Hirsi Ali has never attached Muslims; she has attacked the oppressive belief system to which some Muslims subscribe.  She points out that in general, governments controlled by Islamic law lag in civil rights and economic stability.  She condemns the awful things happening under traditional Islamic law; she does not say that there are onlyawful things.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not anti-Muslim – she is anti-injustice.  That she happens to speak against injustice in the Muslim world seems rather incidental to me.

The Rad Girls as Role Models

I’m curious as to what passes for role models for young girls these days.  I hear a lot about who should not be a role model:  Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, any woman who has appeared on a Girls Gone Wildvideo, et al.  In this, the conservatives and feminists are on exactly the same page, which is both heartening and frightening.  Maybe the conservatives could offer up Condaleeza Rice, and the liberals Hillary Clinton.  Angelina Jolie is one of the most generous people in the country – where does she rate?

I read an article by feminist author Naomi Wolf espousing Tyra Banks.  Maybe as a male prisoner, I’m ignorant in this, but how does a supermodel who now runs an incredibly lifeless show mainly concerned with makeovers and how to attract a man with your new waistline qualify as a strong female role model?  I get that Tyra Banks sometimes deals with issues that are important to women, but most of the topics seem to center on how to be a sassy, trendy magnet for cute guys.

I’d like Ms. Wolf to recognize the three stars of Rad Girls, the reality show on Fuse.  If you haven’t heard of it, think Jackass, only replace Johnny Knoxville and his buds with three young women named Ramona Cash, Munchie, and Darling Clementine.  After all, what is modern feminism if not women participating in stunts that include farting in people’s mouths, bathing in hot sauce, and competing in Fear Factor-esque gross-outs?  How about Cementine horrifying bystanders by pretending to have a yeast infection and coming up with goo on her fingers after scratching between her legs?  Or Ramona giving herself a bikini wax by pressing her crotch to the bumper of a car and having the driver speed away suddenly?

Seriously, though, the show is great for this reason alone:  The three ladies transcend the gimmick by a mile.  Most guys who tune in expect to see three hot chicks doing crazy things, but they quickly discover something else.  The show has nothing to do with the sexuality of its three starts, any more than Jackass presents Steve-O as a sex symbol.  Ramona, Munchie, and Clementine don’t dress to impress the boys, they don’t come off as irresponsible party girls, and they aren’t vapid giggly brats who bat their eyes suggestively.  They seem to revel in making a mockery of what is normally expected behavior for both good girls and bad girls.  They’re individuals, not jokes or caricatures or dolls.

The episode where they competed against (and completely crushed) three supermodels in events like push-ups, arm-wrestling, and a chicken-wing eat-off should go down in feminist history.  Not only were the rail-thin models superficial, shallow, and image-obsessed, they also displayed a complete lack of self-confidence – something all young women need and which the Rad Girls never failed to display.  As the theme song cheered, “Supermodels, you’re so weak/Rad Girls have the best physique.”

But the point here is not to ridicule the supermodels, as easy as that may be.  And neither is the point that these young ladies can be sexually attractive despite acting so outrageously opposite to what femininity generally entails.  Most of the guys I know have watched an episode or two of Rad Girls, and the verdict is: “Those chicks are too gross to be hot.”  They don’t have much interest in watching it again, though they’ll gladly tune in for shows featuring men doing much nastier things.  They’re missing the point.

The Rad Girls aren’t concerned with looking “hot” for their male viewers – they’re doing what they want to do because that’s who they are.  They’re having an insane amount of fun; this is obvious from two minutes of watching the show.  In a media that rewards young women for being shallow, boring, drunken twits who teeter between performing porn for free and destroying their individuality for trend, who define their worth by their sexuality and their sexuality by the amount of money invested in their bodies – the three confident, capable stars of Rad Girls are a welcome bastion of reality on reality television.

Evolution Changing One Species into Another

I want to know what the deal is with this “micro-evolution” business.  Creationists often have such a problem understanding this basic concept.  They constantly state something like this:  “We accept natural selection can make small changes like alter the shape of a bird’s beak, but there’s no way it can morph one species into another.”

First of all, “species” is just a term scientists use for classification.  It means two animals that can mate and have fertile offspring.  There’s nothing mystical about this boundary between species, and it can be blurry.  For example, tigers and lions can mate and have ligers, but ligers can’t mate with each other.  Horses and donkeys can bear mules, but mules are sterile.  Now, did a designer intentionally make animals that can mate and have offspring but not propagate themselves – or are creationists willing to admit that their “micro-evolution” changed lions, tigers, horses, and donkeys enough so that they exist in a limbo zone between species classification?  And if such a limbo zone exists, why is it so hard to think that horses and donkeys might one day, through genetic changes wrought by natural selection, be so different genetically that they can’t even produce mules together anymore?

Speciation events are generally hard for us to measure because they take so long.  But scientists have artificially produced such limbo zones of genetic isolation in fruit flies.  Another species of fly introduced to North America a couple hundred years ago has produced a hybrid species that now has populations of its own and can mate with neither of its “parent” species.  The goatsbeard plant has evolved into two separate species before our eyes.  Ring species (most notably the example of the herring gull and the black-billed gull) show a group of animals whose extremes of variation are different species, but those extremes are also linked by geographic intermediates.  These examples might not seem glamorous, but they are clear instances of species evolving into other species.

And there’s nothing here that strains credulity.  I’m sure most creationists don’t understand genetics very well.  That’s fine; neither do I.  But due to modern science, all of us know that the difference between two organisms – between a human and chimpanzee, a flower and a flatworm, a platypus and a mushroom, or whatever - is nothing more than the sum of differences in their DNA.  The four-letter code embedded in the genes of every living thing on earth.  Picture a short line of DNA code, a bunch of combinations of those four letters strung together, to represent the shape of bird’s beak.

Now, creationists all accept that natural selection can change something like the shape of a bird’s beak.  To pull of a minor alternation like that, natural selection might switch a couple of those letters in the DNA code.  But if creationists can admit natural selection is capable of that much, why is it such a leap to imagine a whole bunch of those littler alterations adding up over time?  That is, if a short period of time can alter a couple of letters, why can’t a longer period of time alter a hundred, or ten thousand?

What is the stop sign that prevents such an accumulation of genetic changes?  What is the mechanism that allows just a few here and there, but puts the brakes on at a specific point?  Where is that specific point?  Where are the instructions in the DNA code that limits the number of mutations that can occur?  How does it limit the mutations?  Does it count them, or keep track of time, to know when too many have occurred?

The theory of evolution would be destroyed forever if this mechanism was found.  But if such a stumbling block in genes exists at all, it hasn’t been located yet – except in the minds of creationists.

Bill O’Reilly and the Slippery Slope

I like watching The O’Reilly Factor.  I think people who shriek endlessly about how cruel and dishonest O’Reilly is are wrong.  I don’t think this guy is disingenuous.  I think he’s egotistical and he always believes his opinions are best, I think he has a traditional axe to grind, but I don’t think he’s dishonest in the least.

I do, however, love to argue with some of his bullshit.

For instance, a little while back O’Reilly had two guests on his show talking about monkeys being cloned in Oregon for the purpose of stem cell research.  One of the guests was a doctor explaining the reasoning behind the research, and the other was decrying the cloning because it could lead to humans being cloned (which in her view was immoral).

First, I feel it’s a good idea to remind all the opponents of human cloning that identical twins are clones of one another.  The only difference between a human cloned in a lab by scientists and an identical twin is that the twin was cloned at a much earlier point (the embryo stage).  Further, I see at least one perfectly viable – and quite moral, if I may say so – reason to clone a human being:  It would give sterile couples the option to have a child biologically linked to at least one of them.

But the main point here is O’Reilly’s response.  He stated quite clearly to his guests that he never takes the slippery slope position, because it can be applied to anything.  He stated that the United States will simply make laws against human cloning, and that will be that.  he vehemently rejected the slippery slope argument that any cloning will inevitably lead to human cloning.

Now examine O’Reilly’s position on gay marriage.  He is in favor of civil unions for homosexuals, but he has repeatedly stated one of his main objections to gay marriage.  This is the idea that if homosexuals are allowed to marry, it will open the door for polygamists, people who want to marry animals, and so on.  That’s right, it’s the old slippery slope argument!  Indeed, one could go so far as to say this is O’Reilly’s principal argument against gay marriage.

Rarely is hypocrisy so revealed.  As O’Reilly pointed out on the cloning issue, we live in a country with laws.  There is no barrier to legalizing gay marriage and retaining a law that prohibits people from – for example – marrying animals (which raises ethical and health issues anyway).  As a moral, secular society, we decide where to draw the lines.  We do it all the time.  Maybe we’re not always correct, but there’s nothing wrong with endeavoring to draw such lines.

Amy Winehouse is a Bad Influence?

So Amy Winehouse won five Grammies.  I heard this on The O’Reilly Factor.  Of course, normally O’Reilly wouldn’t care about a pop singer winning Grammy awards, but in this case he turned it into a cultural issue.  Apparently, Ms. Winehouse has had a lot of trouble with drugs, public intoxication, and violent behavior.  Oh, and she has tattoos, which O’Reilly couldn’t help bringing up.

His problem was that the Grammies were rewarding Ms. Winehouse’s bad behavior.  They were sending the wrong message to kids, saying that you can do drugs and act like a moron, and still be a wonderfully respected artist who receives the highest music accolades.  O’Reilly even went so far as to suggest that Ms. Winehouse was only marginally talented, and thus he couldn’t understand why she would win five Grammies.  He stated that there was “something else in play.”

Yes, it seems O’Reilly believes that Grammy committee wants to reward drugged-out, rebellious, counterculture types because … well, I don’t know why.  I guess I’m to dim to fully understand O’Reilly’s “culture war” arguments.  I’m sure he can trace it back to George Soros funding the Grammies to reward drug addicts so Soros can push his drug-legalization agenda into the heartland, turn kids away from clean Christian living, and brainwash them all into getting tattoos.

Luckily, Bernie Goldberg was a guest on the Factor that night, and he provided a voice of reason to O’Reilly’s nonsense.  Hey, O’Reilly, try to realize something here:  A Grammy is not a morality award.  It’s not a clean-living award, and it’s not an award we give to people who best fit Bill O’Reilly’s idea of traditionalism.  It’s a music award.  The woman made some music, and they thought it was really good.  Case closed.

Honestly – as Bernie Goldberg pointed out – do we want the Grammy Awards becoming the morality police?  How would that even be fair?  Should they study a musician’s background before they make the final decision to grant him or her the award?  How would they rate whether a musician deserves an award or not, and who gets to make the final decision?  Maybe they could call up Bill, since he seems to know best.

Rewarding bad behavior.  This is absurd.  If the Grammy nomination had been for “Best Drug Bender” or “Best Incriminating Photo” or “Best Dismissal of all Self-Respect,” that would be rewarding bad behavior.  But they didn’t do that; they gave the drunken ditz an award because they liked her song.

I’m just throwing this out there, but here’s something that could be construed as an example of rewarding bad behavior.  Ann Coulter has said some pretty cruel things in her quest to sell books and make money.  She accused 9/11 widows of enjoying their husbands’ deaths, she called Arabs “camel jockeys,” she insinuated that John Edwards was a “faggot.”  O’Reilly has admittedly called her out on these statements, and he gets points for that.

However, O’Reilly also continues to have Ann Coulter as a guest on his show.  He allows her to speak her piece and promote her books, giving her exactly the attention she desires, and most of the time he is quite accommodating and cordial to her.  A “softball interview” is the term I’m looking for.  I mean, that’s great that he can at least tell her he doesn’t agree with her juvenile gimmick, but if he keeps bringing her on the show anyway, isn’t he rewarding her for bad behavior?

God and Wife Swap

I doubt there is a more telling piece of evidence that the authors of the Bible were men than the manner in which women are treated.  Seriously, just read the Bible with an objective eye.  It’s great if you’re a progressive Christian and you don’t take the Bible literally, and you believe that since God is just and loving, He meant for men and women to be equal.

But this is clearly not what the God of the Bible intended.  I used to ask question like, “How could any self-respecting woman subject herself to the misogynistic bullshit of the Bible?”  Then last night I saw an episode of ABC’s Wife Swap, in which a fundamentalist Christian housewife switched households with a liberal Christian mom – and I realized that it’s easy if you just subtract the “self-respecting” adjective.

The fundamentalist mom’s existence was an affront on credulity.  I don’t just mean the fact that she considered her proper role to be a housewife.  She stated up-front that she follows the will of God, which for her included the notion that women are the weaker vessel, women are only fit to serve their husbands, and that a woman’s role as “helpmate” to a man included an obligation to make him happy and do her duties with a smile.  Having read Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I was struck by the similarities to a proper Muslim woman’s place in a traditional Islamic household.  I would never call this man and his wife “radical” Christians.  On the contrary, they’re doing exactly what the Bible recommends, from the first few pages when the woman was created to be Adam’s helper.

Hey, this woman has a right to live her life however she chooses.  I’m not saying she’s a slave or that she needs to be liberated.  I’m not even saying she’s necessarily unhappy.  She appeared genuinely content in her role.  Perhaps she’s the happiest person on earth.  She has a choice, and she chose this life for herself.

But in my view, it’s pathetic.  I don’t look at it from a feminist’s perspective.  I just wonder how a human being could think so poorly of themselves, why they would submit to a God who considers them the weaker gender, the helpmate of men, and the vessel for all sin.  In what universe is this fair and loving?  Even if that God is real and He’s your creator, why would you worship such a piece of garbage?  It’s time we decided for ourselves that this type of fundamentalist, discriminatory thinking is evil, and every freethinking person should reject it.

But what’s truly sad about this is the kids.  These people are raising a boy and four girls.  For the girls, this “parenting” includes home-schooling, a literal interpretation of the Bible, training them to do their chores so they can one day serve their husbands dutifully and happily, and inundating them with the fact that this role is the only one for them.  One of the girls is eighteen and had never been on a date.  She’s following her mother and father’s credo that God will present her with a husband one day when He’s ready, so there’s no sense in dating if it’s destined to happen anyway.

Again I am reminded of the sexually stunted Muslims of traditional Islamic families, where the excuse is always the same: remain “pure” for the deity.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to remain a virgin until marriage, but the girl is eighteen freaking years old!  How can she have a healthy relationship if she can’t even interactwith the opposite sex?  But the, her chances of having a healthy relationship are pretty low already since she’s been indoctrinated with the idea that her only place in life is to serve her eventual husband.  This is how faith hurts people.

These peoples’ focus on their family, on virtue, and on a good stable home is great.  I’ve said that before.  But why can’t they teach their kids this message without demeaning them?  Why can’t they impress this way of life upon them, but still give them tools to make decisions for themselves?  Those little girls should understand that motherhood and servility is not predetermined for them, and that any god (or parent) that says so is unjust.  If they decide to take that route, good for them but at least give them the choice to begin with.

Conservatives vs. Global Warming

It’s funny when certain conservatives oppose the idea of global warming.  I’m not event alking about the evidence.  The evidence hardly matters because the conservatives will always find a few scientists here and there to tell them it’s not true, and that will be enough for them.  At the very most, they might admint that the planet’s getting warmer, but that humans aren’t contributing to it.

No, surely not.  Those billions of tons of carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere every year don’t ahve any effect whatsoever.  As Carl Sagan pointed out years ago, you can look at the planet Venus for a demonstration of what an atmosphere loaded with carbon dioxide does:  the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead.

Of course there is still debate about global warming.  There are many questions, the most important being just how much humans are contributing to it, how bad the effects will be, and how much we can do stop it.  People who look at the issue reasonably can at least talk about these things.  Others, such as Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, seem to think that global warming is some sort of liberal conspiracy.  I have no idea what this conspiracy is supposed to accomplish (and neither does Hannity or Coulter, I suspect), but there it is.

For instance, Hannity is endlessly fixated on painting Al Gore as a hypocrite.  Gore’s name can’t be mentioned without him bringing up his large homes, his private jet rides, and his preaching about how people should ride bikes to work.  This type of thinking is extremely common for ideologues like Hannity or Coulter – they base their level of credulity on which politicians endorce it, and whether it’s good or bad for the conservative agenda.

Guess what, Hannity?  Who cares about Al Gore?  You’re never going to take anything he says seriously, anyway, so forget him.  Listen to the evidence instead.  Don’t disagree with the idea of global warming just because you don’t like a guy who speaks about it.  Maybe Gore is a hypocrite.  Maybe he could do more to conserve and recycle.  We all could.  But that doesn’t make the evidence for global warming any less viable.

Both Hannity and COulter also seem to think that measures against global warming are laughable and would bankrupt America.  Of course there are foolish extremes out there, but no reasonable person is advocating that we return to the Stone Age.  No one realistically thinks we can just get rid of all our oil tomorrow.

If everyone in America conserved, it would make a difference.  We’re talking about little things: carpooling, turning off lights and appliances, recycling, driving fuel-efficient cars.  No one has to suffer.  No one has to read by candlelight and live in trees.  And guess what doing all of these things accomplishes, besides helping the environment?

It makes you money.  That’s right, you save hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, just from cutting back on electricity bills and gas.  And it doesn’t take a degree in economics to know that when people have more money, they spend or invest more money.  Thus, the entire country benefits.  How many billions of dollars would go into the US economy if every American household measurable conserved and recycled?

People like Hannity and COulter are so busy trumpeting about all the craziness and kooky alarmists out there that they’ve missed the real point.  I mean, at the very least, they must admit that there is a finite supply of natural resources on the planet, right?  That oil eventually becomes rarer and too costly to pull out of the ground?  I’m not a radical environmentalist – cut down all the trees you want.  We need them to build homes.  Just plant new ones.  This is about rationality, about looking ahead and saying, “We can’t just keep consuming everything in sight without a thought for future generations.”  That should be an intrinsic part of morality: to give some thought to those who will come after us.

Why the World Needs Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I just finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  It’s an autobiographical account of the woman who grew up a Somalian Muslim, was circumcised and forced into marriage with a stranger, and fled to Holland and later became a member of the Dutch parliament.  She’s now a very vocal opponent of Islam.  Not just radical Islam, but all Islam.  She has lived under constant security and death threats since a Muslim murdered her friend several years ago.  The killer left a note pinned to the man’s chest by a knife that also promised Hirsi’s death.  The reason?

The two of them had made a short film speaking about the plight of women in traditional Muslim households.  Hirsi is quite clear in describing that plight as hopeless and inhuman.  Young women are inferior beings, owned by their fathers and then their husbands, forced to submit, forced to hide their sexuality, and denied any access to education or job opportunities.  Little girls have their clitorises and inner labia shorn off, then their outer labia sewn shut to keep them “pure.”  Women are killed  by their male relatives if they are raped or have sex outside of marriage to “save the honor” of the family.

I think the book is important for two reasons.  The first is that it exposes the results of literally applying the Koran to one’s life.  Christianity went through the Enlightenment; Islam did not.  Part of Hirsi’s aim is to dispel the notion that Islam is inherently about peace and tolerance, and that only the extremists do these awful things.  As others have posited, she shows that Muslim “extremists” do not exist.  Despite peaceful messages in the Koran, the rank subjugation and mistreatment of women is also codified there, as are violent passages about the slaying the nonbelievers.  Islam is about peace and tolerance only for Muslims – and male Muslims at that.  The so-called extremists are just doing exactly what the Koran says.

Hirsi states repeatedly that the West has taken tolerance to a ludicrous level.  Respecting a Muslim’s religious beliefs is one thing, but respecting a Muslim father’s right to mutilate his daughter’s vagina or force her to marry is simply ignoring injustice.  In other words, it’s not okay to be tolerant of intolerance.  Hirsi rightfully laments that so often when these barbaric practices are criticized, a cry of racism and religious persecution frightens the challenger into silence.  No one wants to be seen as anti-Muslim, and furthermore, criticizing this “tolerant” religion is quite often detrimental to one’s health.  Nevertheless, Hirsi won’t be silenced.

The second message I took from the book is that of reason triumphing over blind fundamentalism.  There has been criticism that Hirsi is an atheist who reviles Islam because of how she suffered in childhood.  This is foolish and boring pop psychology.  Reading the book reveals that the author turned away from her unjust upbringing through a realization that no one deserves such treatment, and she turned away from God because of a realization that literal interpretations of sacred texts leave no room for reason.  She has dedicated her life to defending the Muslims suffering under Islamic rule, and she does so in the face of mortal peril.

As a child, because of indoctrination and negative, violent reinforcement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a true believer who even supported the fatwa of death against Salman Rushdie.  Now she is willing to risk her life to speak out against that belief system and to spare others the treatment she endured.  I have heard theists call such a transformation a “miracle” when the result is a new and total faith in their religion.  Hirsi didn’t need miracles or magic for her own metamorphosis; she used the tool of reason and the secular awareness that human beings have intrinsic value here, in this life.  For that, her story is as inspiring as it is eye-opening.

Charges to Level at God

Christians get so upset when someone challenges their faith.  This is understandable, as they consider it an integral part of their life.  But how are we to have honest discussions about faith and religion and skepticism if so many Christians inevitably retreat to: “You’re being disrespectful to my religion.  It’s cruel to attack my faith.”?

There are cruel skeptics out there, people who ridicule faith and insult the faithful – just as there are cruel, intolerant Christians out there.  None of that is conducive to rational discourse.

However, I think that many of the so-called attacks on Christianity are not attacks at all, but honest and arguable points.  Of course the delivery is important.  If a skeptic has a sneer and speaks in a condescending manner, not only is that insulting, but it undermines his or her argument.  Such skeptics should calm down – it’s counterproductive, anti-intellectual, and completely unnecessary.

Here are a few points that I would argue in a calm manner, with a genuine desire for honest discourse.  I consider these arguments to be valid questions, though I’m sure many Christians will not.

God is a facist dictator.  He requires that everyone worships Him.  He requires rituals of praise, He disallows the worship of any other, He murders when people don’t follow His rules.

God is a murderer.  Say that the Great Flood was a parable.  This still leaves plenty of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Old Testament.

God is unjust.  God sentences people to death for small infractions (such as the case of Lot’s wife) while letting others go free despite horrible crimes (such as Lot for offering his daughters to a mob of rapists), and meting out disproportionate punishments (such as sparing King David for his acts but murdering his newborn son).

God is a misogynist.  All women must suffer in childbirth and be less than men because of Eve’s so-called crime.

God condones rape.  In Judges 21, God grants his conquering followers the right to take ownership of the virgin women of the slaughtered people.  Deuteronomy 22.28 requires a rapist to marry his victim.

Please bear in mind that all of these things are what God did Himself or ordered in His sacred book.  I have no need of bringing up the multitude of horrors people have done in His name.  These acts are unambiguous and clear for anyone to read.  Each of the above statements are therefore honest questions to be asked in a debate about God’s morality.  I’m certain that Christians have explanations and answers for these charges, and as a skeptic, I am always willing to listen to them.

There’s no need for a skeptic to get nasty when bringing up these points: the evidence speaks for itself.  But neither is there a need for Christians to be offended and shut off discourse on the topic.  If you can’t even make a rational argument for why you think God is real and benevolent, why are you worshipping Him in the first place?

The Constitution Makes the Bible Obsolete

I love it when people try to say that America is a Christian nation.  Most of the time they go even further and quote the line from the Declaration of Independence about “our rights being endowed by our Creator.”

They never seem to get the point that the founding fathers used the word “creator” rather than “God” or “Yahweh” for the specific reason of including everyone, not just Christians.  Jefferson, Adams, and Washington were not even Christians, but deists.  The word “God” was deliberately left out of the Constitution because those men realized a secular state was require to grant everyone true freedom.

It was a grand vision that led to liberty, civil rights, tolerance, the greatest country on earth, and a complete breakaway from the patriarchal dominance imposed by Christianity in the past.  Of course, the founding fathers left quite a bit to be desired:  Their original plan gave inalienable rights only to white males.

But anyway, let’s take the “Creator” part and apply that.  Were our rights really endowed by a creator?  Perhaps, but it’s clear that creator couldn’t be the Christian God.  Take a look at the first four of the much-praised ten commandments.  Right from the gate, the very first one (no other gods) destroys freedom of religion.  Numbers two and three (no idols and no blasphemy) toss freedom of expression and speech out the door.  Number four (no work on the Sabbath) further drives the nail of a forced religion on others.

Why would a benevolent and loving God care whether we work on the Sabbath?  Why would He require such a ridiculous ritual of deference?  Human dictators enjoys those types of things, but God?  And how many Christians actually follow the fourth commandment, anyway?  According to the Old Testament, people were put to death for gathering firewood on the Sabbath.

Christianity is very clearly an exclusionary religion.  Jesus didn’t say, “Do good deeds and live a good life and be tolerant of others and you’ll go to heaven.”  No, he said that only through him will you receive everlasting life.  God does not give us freedom of religion, speech, and expression.  He gives us only one freedom, one choice: fealty or damnation.

There’s no doubt that Christianity is an intrinsic part of America, and has been for hundreds of years.  Those who are lobbying to remove all signs of religion from the public square are overzealous dingbats.  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  People should keep in mind both the former and the latter parts of that statement.  But most secularists don’t care about religious symbols in public; they just don’t want to live in a country where the law of land tells them they have to worship Christ and speak a certain way and refrain from work on a certain day of the week.  They don’t want to see ant-American rules sitting in a courtroom.

If Christians want to live by the ten commandments, that’s their business.  But it’s a joke to think those fascist regulations can grant us our rights.  Our freedom of religion, expression, and speech are American freedoms.  They demonstrably did not come from the Bible.