Party of Christian Values?

[Paul Tjaden]

Hi Guys,

Lauren and I are major supporters of Obama and consequently, we have become somewhat politically active and are helping with volunteer work such as registering voters at various weekend venues. Yesterday, we placed an Obama sign in our front yard. Within 4 hours it had been stolen. I guess that the "values" of being anti-pro choice and anti-gay rank higher than the idea that stealing is wrong. What a shocker.

On the same vein, I think it wrong to denigrate Palin because her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. This has little to do with her ability to govern. It does, however, point out a major flaw in the Republican and Christian Right's position of teaching abstinence only and ignoring other ways of birth and STD control. My sister's step daughter is an evangelical Christian also. Two of her three daughters became pregnant and had children before graduating from HS. Abstinence doesn't work.

[Gene]

I don't know about the sign but I got a guess on the other "Artificial Insemination".
Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't resist Mathew. LOL
Gene

[Marco Zee]

I am certain that an avid Barak Hussein Obama disciple was so desirous of having an Obama sign in his frontyard, that he decided to "convert" your sign to his yard. It wasn't stolen, just converted.
What does Lauren think of Sarah Palin?
Marco

[Paul Tjaden]

Hi Marco,

I know you were just trying to be "cute" with your comment about "converting" our sign but the truth is that we both know what type of person stole our sign. It was a hypocritical McCainiac who preaches about Christian values while not realizing that the Democrats are the ones who show true compassion for all our brothers and sisters, even those who have the name "Hussein". You wouldn't be bigoted towards those of other races or religions, would you Marco?

While registering voters the other day, I had a real sweet guy suggest that Obama wasn't even an American citizen just because he has a name normally associated with Muslims. I find the exact reverse of this moronic and devisive attitude within the Democratic party. As an example, the local Democrats Club is having a fund raiser next week and have invited a Hindu Priest to deliver the invocation. They are doing this to celebrate the diversity of our local population. Let me know when you here of a Republican group doing something like this.

Regarding Palin. Lauren (like most women we know) is incensed and feels insulted that McCain dug up this anti-choice, creation teaching, book banning, wacko Christian Fundamentalist with the idea that Clinton supporters would come over to their side. What a joke.

Paul

[RedBaron]

Regarding Palin. Lauren (like most women we know) is incensed and feels insulted that McCain dug up this anti-choice, creation teaching, book banning, wacko Christian Fundamentalist with the idea that Clinton supporters would come over to their side. What a joke.

But listening to some hindu priest who "believes" in cows is not? See, I don't care what you believe in, cows, jahweh, allah, man with white beard in the sky, ID, spaghetti-monster whatever, it's all the same in my book. If you want to be tolerant of cow lovers you've got to be tolerant of anti-choice Christian fundamentalists as well, or I'll call you a liberal hypoocritical democrat
I'd also like to give you a piece of my mind on "celebrating religious diversity". I don't know about the US, but in Germany a large percentage of Muslims you want to celebrate with go home and oppress their wives. Sometimes they beat them up. I've seen it with my own eyes. They're cowards, they do it behind closed doors, they make me sick. Women are pieces of shit with no rights in islamic culture. Tolerance enables them. Republicans seem to be less tolerant of Islam than Democrats, here and in Germany. I like them for that and gladly turn a blind eye to all the Christian BS.

[Gene]

Yeah! Yeah! Boom chaka laka, Boom chaka laka! Go team go. This is what makes the USA a great. Thank a Vet so that you can say what you want whenever. I beat my wife real good and she likes it, oh wait, I dream it and I think she beats me if I don't behave I am so confused. But you have to admit Palin, is hot.
Gene

[Paul Tjaden]

Hey Janni,

Lauren and I are both atheists and certainly agree with your comments about religion in general. I'm not certain that all Muslims are wife beaters but they certainly are way up there on the scale of male dominance ( although some Fundy Christians and LDS groups come close to being as bad). If I had my way, religion would be seen as the fairy tale it is and the world would shed it's skin of it. Problem is, I don't see that happening soon. The best we can hope for here in the US is to keep the Fundamental Christians from creating a Theocracy. It is for this reason that I support what our local Democratic Club is doing with the Hindu Priest. It's pretty unlikely that the Hindu's will be taking over our Country soon but I don't know if I can say the same about Palin and her Dominionist friends.

Paul

[Paul Tjaden]

To Gene about Palin being a hottie:
I dunno.....Looks to me like she's got a fat ass but she does have that sort of "Sexy Librarian" thing going for her.

Paul

[Gene]

Fat bottom girls make the world go round......yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love you guys. Lauren, spank Paul with a wet noodle.
Gene

[Marco Zee]

Hi Paul,
The fact is that neither you, nor I, know who took your yard sign.
For you to "assume" it was a "McCain Christian" who stole it only reveals your ignorance and bigotry towards Christians and towards McCain followers (btw, many Christians do not support McCain, and vice versa). I guess your "true compassion for all brothers and sisters" does not include Christian brothers and sisters. And have you heard that B. Hussein Obama is a Christian...have you heard any of his pastor's speeches...now that's scary....and yet you support BHO.

Most likely, it was teenage pranksters who stole your sign, as well as others in your neighborhood, if you ask around. Stealing and defacing yard signs is a long practiced tradition in American politics, especially amongst teenagers and teamsters.

And if you are a true Atheist, why bother to invite any priest, much less a Hindu, to your precious Dem gathering? Talk about being hypocritical.

As for the conversion, it is a reference to the Clinton's, when they hijacked truckloads of White House furniture and artwork on their way out of office, and claimed them as conversions, not stealing.

Can you enlighten me on what are Atheist Values, if any, since you seem to have disdain for Christian values.

Marco

[Gene]

I love this - eat crow, I mean cow, nah' just go Boca. Stealing is a bad word, I think it was borrowed.
Gene

[Paul Tjaden]

Marco writes:

"And if you are a true Atheist, why bother to invite any priest, much less a Hindu, to your precious Dem gathering? Talk about being hypocritical."

If it were my decision, there wouldn't be any religious invocations, incantations or any other form of fairy tale's involved in our government OR our politics. Unfortunately, many people in our country continue to believe in such nonsense. For the mostly Christian Democrats Club to invite this Hindu shows remarkable and exemplary tolerance of other views. How about you Marco....do you have tolerance for other religions or are you certain that they will all burn in Hell?

Marco continues:

"Can you enlighten me on what are Atheist Values, if any, since you seem to have disdain for Christian values."

First, Let me say that I do NOT disdain Christian values. What I despise is the highjacking of this term by the Right wing Republicans who's only real agenda is to win at any cost. Their obvious attitude is that the end justifies the means so if they need to lie about their opponents to win, of even just steal a few campaign signs then what the heck, it's all good if they win, Right?

Regarding Atheist values: Well... Atheists don't have an all powerful sky daddy to watch over them and punish them for any failure to submit to his dogma and rules that might include great wisdom like stoning your new wife if you find her to not be a virgin or killing your son if he is rebellious but we stumble along as best we can without this help from an imaginary friend. To sum it up quickly, my experience with Atheists has shown me that most of us tend towards treating others as we would like to be treated. Pretty simple, huh? This way, we don't have to hate and stone our gay friends and call them abominable. We can just accept that they are somehow different from us but not in a threatening way. Why should I care what these people do in their bedrooms. How can this possibly affect me? How can this destroy marriage between a man and a woman should we choose to legally legitimize their unions?
So.....we don't bother with a bunch of religious taboos that make no sense, we just live our lives in a way that doesn't hurt others to the best of our ability.

Paul

[RedBaron]

Christian values? Which ones? Old testament or new testament? I like the old testament. A gruesome, furious, jealous, vindictive and sadist god who dictates genocide against any people worshiping a different god. The new testament is pretty good, too. We're all born with original sin because someone ate an apple. Makes sense, no? What about Taliban values? What if they got it right?
The problem is, good-mannered, liberal and humanistic atheists (some of whom are democrats) have proven ineffective in fighting fundamentalists. You can't confront fundamental faith with the soft-belly approach of respect, reason and evidence. Tolerance and the immunity of religion provide the ground for fundamentalism to rise, thrive, infest and kill.

[dbodner]

Janni, you got the first paragraph right. But your conclusion in the second is wrong.

No one can win a war against a fundamentalist faith. There are far too many people involved. Fortunately, we don't have to. The vast majority of fundamentalist Moslems have far better things to do than make trouble for us. It's the very radical few that we have to worry about. A hard approach toward the few people creating trouble may be warranted. But war-like rhetoric and overt actions tend to alienate the massive middle of the Moslem world, further replenishing the ranks of the relatively few true radicals. The Moslem world is going through a bad adolescence right now that's exasperated by a demographic bubble. (Christianity did the same in centuries past. No doubt Judaism would've, too, if it ever had the numbers.) Quiet, covert actions are what's called for now. Loud public proclamations that can be interpreted as inpugning Islam itself ("Islamofascism") will only help the other side increase its ranks.

Responding to your previous post, fundamentalism is a different issue. Moslems in Europe are much less integrated into the surrounding society than they are in this country. We could speculate as to why. But, I would suspect the oppression you witnessed probably had more to do with issues of culture rather than religion. Religion tends not to have values. Rather religion is simply a justification for whatever pre-existing values a culture has. So Moslem men in Germany beating their wives don't need to stop being Moslem; they need to start be 21st century Germans.

[Gene]

Moslem or Muslim? All I know is that I have traveled the world and fear is always within the mind that they would do something radical. But then again I have been assaulted by civilized Christians, Atheists and Agnostics. I am just waiting for the Scientology dudes to tell me what to do.

[brianvh]

Word for word what David said.

I'd like to redirect the conversation towards Marco's question about atheist values (who I think is probably correct about who stole the sign).

My addition is religion can either prevent you from seeing people as other worthwhile beings like you, or help you. Quick test: if you think it's bad for someone not be be Christian, you're in the first category.

My experience with missionaries in Africa has been eye-opening. You'd think they'd be staunch church wedding defenders, anti secular humanists. But that way of thinking would put them in the soup pot in no time. Instead one old battle axe of a missionary told me that if two people are living together in an open committed relationship, in the eyes of God they are married. Another old priest responded to an old woman who was fuming against the non profit work of the secular humanists: "But they are clearly doing God's work. Why do you judge them harshly?"

To me religion veils reality, and for me personally that doesn't work. But it can be a beautiful thing if done right. A terrible thing if done wrong.

[RedBaron]

No one can win a war against a fundamentalist faith.

Wrong. Women in Afghanistan go to school now.

But war-like rhetoric and overt actions tend to alienate the massive middle of the Moslem world, further replenishing the ranks of the relatively few true radicals. The Moslem world is going through a bad adolescence right now that's exasperated by a demographic bubble.

Funny, I talk about fundamental faith and you think I've got Islam in mind. Not only. What about fundamental Christians who assassinate abortion doctors? What about the president of this very country who's frequently being visited by Jesus? Sounds like the US is going through a bad adolescence, too. But wait a minute, hasn't America arrived in the 21st century? An anachronistic anomaly or a powerful demonstration of religion at large in a pseudo-secular country that would make the founding fathers stir and shift in their graves? By the way, a frighteningly high number of Americans do take the bible literally.

Rather religion is simply a justification for whatever pre-existing values a culture has.

Those pre-existing values are derived from religion and indoctrinated into every new generation. That doesn't make religion a justification, it makes religion an abusive enabler.

[Paul Tjaden]

Janni beat me to the punch. I was also surprised that some assumed that when talking about religious radical extremism we were all discussing Muslims. Without question, radical Islam is a huge problem we must face but there are also many radical extremist Christians who are attempting to create the Christian States of America. Fundamental Christians are chipping away at our Constitutions "Wall of Separation" every day in numerous seemingly benign and innocuous ways. Through Faith Based Initiatives, your tax dollars are given to thousands of religious organizations every year. Much of this money is diverted from actual charitable work to proselytizing. Many of these groups won't allow employees that don't share their religious dogma. Local and state governments that have been strongly influenced by Fundamental Christians do everything in their power to remove evolution science from our classrooms and instead teach their creationism in the guise of Intelligent Design. Congressmen and Senators introduce ridiculous legislation trying to re-write our History and prove that our Deist Founders were instead Christians and that the First Amendment doesn't actually say what it does. All branches of our Military have been so infiltrated with these fruitcakes that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been created to help thousands of our soldiers to combat the injustices heaped upon them by their commanding officers if they don't conform to evangelical Christianity. This crap must stop.
I know I must sound like an alarmist but I have had the time to study this and all these people need to succeed is a bit of apathy from the rest of us. There's a great book written by Michelle Goldberg called "Kingdom Coming" that everyone should read. You can pick up a used copy cheap on Amazon. Check it out. It's very scary.

Paul

[Batman]

Shouldn't we be badmouthing the Rednecks in Florida instead of the Muslims? Remember, I went to flight school there.

My opinion is it was one of those pickup truck driving, confederate flag flying, shotgun toting, inbred breedin' Country bumpkins. Oh ... sorry, I wasn't talking about you Paul

[Joe Schad]

Our Obama sign was ripped out torn up and trashed in my yard also. I know who did it. They were two young conservative guys who were working on the house next door. No doubt they consider themselves Republican and I suspect figure they are saving their town from the liberal folks that happen to live her now. Hatred, intolerance, bigotry are all taught by parents who teach them what and who to fear. That includes who people look like, their religous and political views and where they come from.

Joe