Going To The Chapel

maybe you could poll the various churches interested in the First Attendant and identify a question of interest to them for the next presser.

Amy, the real story is not about the chapel, it’s about the chaplain, the pastor at the chapel. As the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has found, Lt. Carey Cash is a member of Bob Dees’ Campus Crusade for Christ’s (CCC) Military Ministry, part of a campaign to evangelize and theocratize the military as a means to theocratize the nation.
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This Is Not Good.
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You can find more of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s reporting on this insidious cabal here here.

More on Lt. Cash saying “First we get the military, then we get the nation” here.

Amy Sullivan:
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If the White House had wanted to call into question my reporting, it certainly could have. The reason it didn’t is that…your reporting on this subject is mindbogglingly irrelevant in terms of the issues facing this Administration and the country.
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Although I continue to find it odd that there was so little press interest in whether or where Bush attended church…
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The only interest any of us in this blog’s community (pro or am) has in the details involving the private faith of government officials is you, Amy Sullivan. I hope that “It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear” that no serious person finds your reporting to be useful in terms of connecting to their government and its policies –the purpose of a free press in a democracy. Playing gotcha over whether the Bush family was sufficiently pious enough to warrant their self-righteous image as “regular, church-goin’ folk” isn’t really the point. It’s not the attendance record at Camp David, or the robustness of its worship facilities that should call into question the professed religiosity of the former President, it’s issues like the moral relativism necessary to his having established an official torture regime. Only a shallow imbecile with a total lack of self-awareness could confuse the two for being equally important.
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The only possible value in exposing facts for or contrary to the public confessions of faith on the part of politicians would be if such observances were the declared the sole basis of policy decisions, which should be examined in the light of officials’ commitment to pluralist democracy, and their oaths to the Constitution.
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Other than indications that particular church doctrine supplies the framework for decisions made on behalf of all citizens, there’s no use whatsoever in a supposed political journalist examining whether or not “Camp David chapel could provide a robust worship community” for anybody, except perhaps in ridiculous, tabloid, personality-profile fluff pieces cloaked in pseudo-solemnity –ones like the faux-pious, empty-headed rot with which you routinely bore Time’s readership, Amy Sullivan.

” ..I continue to find it odd that there was so little press interest in whether or where Bush attended church, I was far too skeptical of the idea that the Camp David chapel could provide a robust worship community for the president.”

Pardon me, it it is patently obvious.
Why should a president, or anyone else attend or be a member of a church, let alone a “robust” one – whatever that means?
Why is the issue worth noting – if an atheist can be president of these secular USA?

Stuart – but haven’t we learned, explicitly from Republicans and especially the last president, that faith experiences and points of view do affect policy decisions? That is probably inevitable, as our world view affects how we think governance should happen.
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I think in general the jockeying for the Obamas to attend a church, and what seems to me the just sub rosa suggestion that they must attend a church to, you know, prove they’re Christians, is an interesting political issue, and worthy of a post here.
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At least Amy admits to being “too skeptical,” – something she often is but rarely admits.

Amy – a “robust worship community?” Are you serious? I have belonged to several worship communities over the course of my life, some for many many years. They have been many things in themselves and many things to me, but “a robust worship community” wasn’t something I required. At best it conjures up victorian images of bracing cold showers. At worst it’s theological sophistry. Having children and two choirs makes it “robust”???? In truth I suspect I wouldn’t disagree with what I suspect you meant – that it is an ongoing community of some commitment, rather than an ad hoc “let’s meet for worship because the president’s here” sort of thing. But you cannot seem to write without some judgmental crap about other people’s religious approach. I hope you’ll take your own “mea culpa” seriously.

this wasn’t something the White House was looking to publicize
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ooh, Amy, did you “break” the story wide open?
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It used to frighten me that Bush asked god for advice on governing, but lately I really don’t care how or who a president gets spiritual advice or refuge from, as long as they ultimately own the decisions they make. Unless we can get inside their hearts and their heads, we don’t have control over their beliefs anyway. They could worship a potato, talk to a psychic, or go to the chapel at Camp David, I don’t care as long as they govern the way I elected them to.
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Any church that lobbies someone important to attend is just another example of why organized religion is such an unfunny joke.

Amy – oh and kudos for reassessing your prior position, and being willing to say so here.

The only benefit to an AS post is that they are rarely hijacked by the person who is ruining the Swamp IMO. Since I do twitter, I realize how many formerly regular commenters no longer bother here.
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The main reason I have been here since nearly the beginning is that I have learned so much from the commenters. For example, I am pleased that Exileathome (the former neorationalist) has recently posted very cogent discussions about his point of view. That sort of thing will help to keep things going in a way that allowing every thread to degenerate into irrational nonsense won’t.
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Some have begun their own very good blogs and pourmecoffee has truly found his metier, but even the bloggers would likely come back to the swamp if the discussion were interesting enough. We have some new commenters who had been lurkers and that’s great. I would like to see us get back to interesting posts and well thought out comments – with a share of welcome snark (I’m looking at you sacredh!)

Since it’s an open thread… I know that the Dixie Cups’ version is the most prominent, but I prefer Darlene Love’s Phil-Spector-produced version.
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What does everyone else think?

I realize how many formerly regular commenters no longer bother here
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I’ve noticed that too. Do you think it has something to do with the overall mood of the country? Some of the more current threads have a tone of frustrated argument rather than deep discussion. When I think back on the months building up to the election they seemed to have a passionate yet positive tone. I’ve never read comments as routinely as I do with Swamp, so I’m not sure if the comings and goings of commenters is average or if something else causes it.

duned – several have indicated that it has been the fact that so many threads have been taken over. If people don’t respond to provocateurs and focus on a real discussion, the discussion will be the point. The comments are usually dependent on the quality of the post, but…

Amy Sullivan: “I was wrong to dismiss it five years ago and would be wrong to do so again now.”

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Translation: Sullivan HATED Bush and thus produced a tale for the New Republic completely void of any evidence (what’s new?), but now that someone who shares her ideology is in the White House, it’s time to forgive and forget.

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In the linked New Republic tale, note Amy Sullivan’s use of fabricated quotes, alleged “prominent Bush partisans” and alleged defenses used by alleged “prominent Bush partisans”: “‘You don’t have to go to church to be a good religious person,’” argue his defenders. And they’re right. They have made much political hay, however, over polls that indicate Democratic voters attend church less frequently than Republicans, so even the most brazen feel compelled to offer explanations for Bush’s absence from church membership rolls.” The names of the “defenders” who uttered said words? None identified by Sullivan ….

“The first excuse conservatives provide is that Bush can’t possibly be expected to have time to go to church, what with being leader of the free world and all.” The names of the alleged “conservatives” using the alleged “excuse”? None identified by Sullivan ….

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I read Time magazine online, so I know that it is evidence free, but I was unaware that the New Republic was evidently as committed to publishing such unsupported garbage. I’ll keep a better watch in the future ….

Ivy –

A number of the comments aren’t just dependent on the quality of the post; they’ve been about the quality of the post. AS, of course, sees herself as above such concerns, as demonstrated by her persistent refusal to interact with commenters.
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Swampland continues to have good posts and good discussions, albeit not uniformly so in either case. My view is that it’s best to call “b*llsh!t” on junk posts, and to ignore junk comments entirely; chacun à son goût, though, I suppose.

When I Amy Sullivan wrote an entire Time’s story about the Obama’s attending church. My first thought was what would the Jesus General think about the fact that Amy wrote this story? Not an article, but a story. But, alas all Jesus General has up is a post about the Dickwhisper getting his own trading card.
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http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

FO – I agree, it has just become somewhat like having Question Hillary back but engaging other commenters rather than simply blathering.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/29/coups-interference-and-the-shifting-standards-of-obama/

I think the Obama’s are wise in using Camp David for their worship. There is far too much emphasis on where he should attend services. The whole objective is the message, not the site. The congregation at Camp Davis is military personnel and camp staff, all people involved in serving our country. I don’t know why he wouldn’t consider Camp David as the permanent site. No circus. No see and be seen. Just worship.

I miss some of the commenters who have disappeared from Swamp, but I still benefit greatly from visiting here. There are intellectual thinkers who express their opinions in a way I truly admire. It’s a source of daily empowerment to hear from people who care deeply about what’s happening to/in our government and the media. I see how trolls can stir up emotions and give commenters a great platform for arguing their points, but we all know a troll opinion cannot be swayed, so let’s stop bothering and get on with the discussion.

Thanks for the snark comment Ivy-B. So many of the politicians or newsmakers don’t deserve to taken all that seriously, so I don’t. Clowns make it easy to laugh at them.

Wow Tom, that is scary. For the same reason that I thought Mike Huckabee was scary.

apollyon07: I agree Huckabee was scary. I have a hard time believing he was a serious contender in the republican primary considering his statement about changing the constitution in order to allign more closely with the teachings of the Bible. He’s got his own show on Fox. Want to bet someone at the DNC isn’t recording every show just in case he runs again as President or would get a VP nod?

Gee, take a few weeks off from the swamp and what do I find? Absolutely nothing. As usual Amy rants and raves about some “religious” diatribe or matter that really does not mean a hill of beans to anyone anymore.
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What you should be asking Amy, is why hasn’t Rev Wright been invited to Camp David to give a sermon. Not a sermon on the mount, but one of his pulpit humping, “down with whitie” sermons.
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But, I guess as time goes by, and you are President, you no longer need the likes of Rev Wright to ensure a political victory in South Chicago. It still never ceases to amaze me that no one reported on the fact that the only reason Obama was in Church to begin with was for political purposes, only.

Wow, I have forgot about rev wright. Welcome back Rusty!

*sigh* When is KT coming back?

Although I continue to find it odd that there was so little press interest in whether or where Bush attended church
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Now, there were certainly faith-related stories to be had with the Bush Administration. Their views on the Iraq War and the Crusades, for instance. Their treatment on Israel. Their domestic policy decisions. The way they sold a bill of goods to the Bible-thumpers and then sold them out.
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When and where Bush went to church is, at best, tangential to these things.

yutsano: I miss KT too. Even if she never tossed us another “1000 Words”, I want her back as soon as possible. pourmecoffee bailed, SZ bailed for awhile, sgw called it in today…you don’t think KT got fed up too, do you?

On the disrupted threads – it seems like it’s been worse than usual for the past two weeks. For some reason everyone started engaging the person in question again.
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I’m thinking there’s a learning curve. sgwhiteinfla caught on pretty quickly; it took me a while longer and I backslide every so often.
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I’m hoping here pretty quick more people will get the idea and just let it slide.

Cliff: I always had the mental picture of Dubya in a church with snakes being passed around, people shaking uncontrollably, speaking in tongues (He did that fairly often. It sure as hell wasn’t english that came out of his mouth), rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth.

“Cliff: I always had the mental picture of Dubya in a church with snakes being passed around, people shaking uncontrollably, speaking in tongues (He did that fairly often. It sure as hell wasn’t english that came out of his mouth), rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth.”
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Stay on topic, troll.

Joe Biden said he would advise his family not to fly because of swine flu. It was a Biden Gaff.
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Swine flu’s spread tracked through air travel
Study suggests just how widely — and quickly — a new disease can spread
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Scientists have long assumed a relationship between air travel and spread of the virus. But the new research for the first time confirmed the relationship, said Dr. Kamran Khan, who led the study. He is a researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
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For years, Khan and his colleagues have been working on a system to use air travel information quickly to determine how a new contagion is likely to spread around the world.
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Their data sources include the International Air Transport Association, an international trade association representing 230 airlines and the vast majority of scheduled international air traffic.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31632866/ns/health-swine_flu/

interesting “explanation” there Amy.

The title of your article was “The Obamas Find a Church Home — Away from Home”

The White House the said, “The President and First Family continue to look for a church home.”

Then you say, “Though nothing in the statement contradicts my reporting’

Nothing, except everything?

You may want to start looking for a new line of work. Because your credibility is zero now.

Admit it. You screwed up. Apologize for your error. Like a man.

i have realized that I made a mistake engaging the resident troll today. I regret that I enabled the evil beast to damage a thread, and I shall not repeat this error. It’s a shame we can’t do the disemvowelling that some blogs allow, or else simply delete the troll from our viewing space. I do apologize for feeding the addict.

I am also at fault here. I should not have indulged the desire for kicking spob’s ass. True, the target was large and tempting, and had a sign hung on it, but now, as I look at my shoes I regret the mistake. Could we get Friar Tuck to exorcise the demon? Or at least to pronounce a good anathema in ringing tones? Either way, as of now, I declare spob no longer to be read or response-worthy. And I second Basil’s apology with one of my own.

The Obamas’ faith or the how & where of their practice is of no interest to me, nor is at all relevant to any of the issues that stand before us as Americans or global citizens. But I’m strange like that–the separation of church and state isn’t that hard to get my head around. IMO, the above is akin to writing about their sex lives. It’s equally puerile and distractive.

And am I the only one alarmed by the fact that Time employs someone for their “politics” blog, in fact 20% of the Swamp workforce, whose nearly exclusive focus is on religion?

Where the President chooses to worship is news? I find it very troubling that the most powerful man in the free world chooses to worship a bronze-aged mythical figure in the sky. Where he chooses to do it is hardly news. I can only hope that he does not believe the literal interpretation of the man made books of fiction called the gospels.

jcapan: The evangelical movement is the driving force behind the republican party now. The religious element is a huge factor so it does make sense to have Amy use the religion perspective in her threads. She might not represent what our perspective sees as important, but she does have a more intimate knowledge of what drives the christian voters.

otis2003: Let me be the first to welcome a fellow heathen.

sacredh: I prefer the term “non-theist” but thank you

A “heathen” is considered to be “unsophisticated”, “uncultured”, and “uncivilized”, when in fact the very opposite is true.

Not in my case. I’m still amazed by fire.

otis
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You’re preference for “non-theist” over “heathen” parallels my preference for “God” over “bronze-age mythical figure.” But, fortunately, we do not get to create those distinctions in the rhetoric employed by others.

Sacred, I disagree. I think someone like Amy or the loathsome “God & Country” @ USN&WR does little other than validate these warped prisms. The fact that too many republicans & their voters view the world and public policy through a jesus-kaleidoscope is disturbing enough. What our discourse does not need is a media that fails to challenge such batsh!t insanity. And I’d have to disagree–AS doesn’t seem to convey intimate knowledge about anything.

*Your preference…
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Welcome, nonetheless…

I can’t honestly say that I care whether la famille Obama has a robust worship community, any more than I care whether they have fine taste in chainsaws. This Lieutenant Cash sounds highly undesirable, but perhaps Sasha and Malia can giggle pointedly at the right moments. Either way, we have more important matters to deal with than whose pews are pressed by the presidential buttocks. It’s the economy, stupid. Plus healthcare and the environment. Oh not to mention two wars. And trashing DOMA for good. If Obama does a good job on those matters, as far as I am concerned he can offer a hecatomb of goats to Apollo, or dismiss the gods as the fictions of mankind, and good luck to him. If the real issues are taken care of, I really don’t see that we need to worry about his taste in the department of flying spaghetti monsters.

The Camp David chapel is no doubt a military chapel. That is to say, it is either multi-denominational or non-denominational. That is what military chapels are. They are multiple congretions that meet in one place.
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I grew up in the military, served as a catholic alter boy in military chapels where there were also protestent services. Most posts had a catholic and a protestant chaplan, and most also provided some means for jewish services. The catholic chaplans were specific to roman catholism, whereas the protestant chaplans drew from many denominations.
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I think a military chapel is fine for the president. Beside the one at Camp David, there are no doubt many around d.c.
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Disclaimer: I have long ago abandoned religion of any sort, but hold no grudges.

Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo): A “non-theist” and a “heathen” are very similar. I only prefer “non-theist” because I do not consider myself to be “unsophisticated”, “uncultured”, and “uncivilized” (while a “heathen” is).

Now, if you’re saying that “non-theist” and “heathen” are parallel to “God” and “bronze-age mythical figure”, then what you’re saying is, “God” and “bronze-age mythical figure” are essentially the same thing.

Which is what I was saying in the first place!

“AS doesn’t seem to convey intimate knowledge about anything”
Would representative knowledge commiserate with the base be better?

formerlyjames: You grew up as a catholic altar boy? By any chance did you get a settlement? One of my great regrets of growing up as an atheist was that I missed out on the cash prizes as I grew older.

Otis
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Cute. No, just the preference for one over the other was a parallel. I normally wouldn’t respond on such a point like this, however, given that you employed a potentially offensive caricature of God and then proceeded to exclaim your own preference in how people characterize you it seemed a worthy enough double-standard to reply to. With that said, you are completely entitled to your views and you have the unfettered right to verbalize them, however in doing so you should not expect any concern by others as to how you would prefer to be characterized in response.

Looks like this thread picked up.

Easy, sacredh…

sacredh, I could make up some jaw dropping story about my altar boy career, but won’t because nothing special happened. I do sort of envy an atheist upbringing, but believe it should be informed by exposure to the various craziness of religion to provide context.
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Back to the military chapels and chaplans, they follow the same heirarchy as all military and wear the uniform of their service. They are commissioned officers, and instead of the battle insignia, wear the cross or symbol of their denomination. There is a chief of it all, the Chief of Chaplans in the pentagon, who is a major general.

AS please stay on top of this very important story.

formerlyjames: I was the only admitted atheist on either side of the family. We had some Bible thumping fanatics in our extended family. Our immediate family consisted of believers, but not church goers. Aunts, uncles, etc were a whole different story. One aunt cracked me in the back of the head once with a big Bible that almost knocked my ass out.

Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo):

Personally, I do not believe in labeling people.

I don’t believe in Thor, Zeuss or Apollo, and there are no words for the non-belief in those gods. I just thought that, in terms of the Abrahamic God, “non-theist” was a more accurate description.

I hardly think that is a double standard.

I can’t imagine how my own beliefs could possibly be offensive to anyone, other than God himself I suppose, assuming that he exists. If he or she, or it does exist, then I suspect he or she, or it would hardly find something so trivial as this to be offensive …. but anyway.

Otis? The only Otis I’ve ever known was the drunk guy on Andy Griffith.

sacredh, I hear ya. I am the one and only nonreligious black sheep in my extended family. To even use the term atheiest is to cause short breaths and stares. I have said before that I don’t describe myself as that anyway, as I find the atheist movement to be somewhat religious of itself, although if a line were drawn, I would be on that side. In the meantime, I just stare and gawk at all of it, pure entertainment to me. One of my favorite programs is the 700 Club.

jcapan: Haha … Otis was the name of my late and great Lab/Newfie mix. Best dog ever!

Otis
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I find your beliefs in no way offensive. However, I can certainly see how your characterization of something that the majority of the world does believe in as a “bronze-age mythical figure in the sky” could be construed as offensive to any number of them. If you prefer that people refer to you as an a non-theist, common courteously would suggest that you can still reference God in the globally accepted term, whether or not you believe in His existence.

jcapan, I had a sort of friend-work acquaintance who used to refer to losers as “Wilbur”. I got so tired of it that one time I looked at him with a sad face almost to tears, and procalimed that my dearest, most beloved grandfather who recently passed away was named Wilbur, and would he please stop the reference. It stopped.

formerlyjames: I never try to convince anyone to give up their religion. If I think there’s even a slight chance that I might persuade someone that their belief is groundless, I refuse to discuss religion with them. My stepson’s biological is a minister and it’s only been recently that I’ve started discussing religion with him. It’s always him making the first move. We have books on several different religions in our library and he’s coming to the conclusion that none of them appeal to him. He lived here for almost 3 years before he even realized I wasn’t a believer.

Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo):

What you say makes little sense.

I personally believe that the God of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) began in bronze-age Palestine, and I also believe he, she, or it is a myth. There are hundreds of millions of other people in the world, including most Europeans (who are atheist), the Dharmic” religions of India and the “Taoic” East Asian religions, who do not believe in the Abrahamic God you speak of.

Now, you say that by expressing my honest opinion and my beliefs (or lack thereof) could be construed as offensive to others. How is that any different than me being offended by your opinions and beliefs? People who believe in an Abrahamic God deserve a higher level of respect than everyone else?

otis,

I have to believe that, willfully or not, you’re being incredibly dense. If your honest opinion and belief was that someone was an a**hole, calling a person such would be offensive. For me, referring to the “Democrat” party is offensive, whether or not someone “honestly” believes that is the correct name. I am a proud agnostic, but even I think that “bronze-age mythical figure in the sky” is patronizing. I agree with Neo 100% here: if you want other people to respect your chosen appellation (“non-theist” instead of “heathen”), then do others the courtesy of not belittling their religion. Acting in any other manner would certainly show others that you deserved any offensive moniker they chose to toss at you.

Otis, got ya. I was wondering, unless you were 94, how a man in 2009 could carry that name. And I’d forgotten “Otis loves us!” from Animal House, BTW. Formerly, the way your coworker probably looked when you told him that is the story of my foot-in-mouth life.

We must be bored as hell. This all started because I welcomed otis as a fellow heathen about 20 posts ago. Sorry folks. I’m off to sacrifice a chicken (McDonald’s McNuggets) and go to work.

anon76:

Calling someone an a**hole is most definitely offensive, as is calling someone incredibly dense.

My belief that the Abrahamic God is a “bronze-age mythical figure in the sky” is an honest belief. If you feel that stating my honest belief is the same as calling someone an a**hole, then I am afraid you’re the one who’s incredibly dense my friend.

Otis
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Expressing your honest opinion in adherence to agnosticism/atheism is entirely unoffensive. On the other hand, refusing to use the term God (in reference to any God, not simply the Judeo-Christian God) and opting, instead, for the highly-patronizing ‘mythical figure in the sky’ characterization is, if not offensive, certainly combative. Hence, if you wish to be cordially referred to as a ‘non-theist’ rather than a ‘heathen,’ you should be equally sensitive to the preferences of the religious. Seems a rather clear and unimposing suggestion to me.

love checkin in here on the far left Koskids posting here. Hilarious.. Sqob absolutely crushes everyone in here debating and makes you guys look silly and backs his arguments up with facts..and nobody can even debate him..except maybe SZ..so what do the tolerant libtards do in here..simple..they call him names and a troll..hilarious..if you don’t think like me,can’t debate me or post like me..you are a troll…lol

Am I allowed to say that ‘non-theist’ strikes me as being a little…pretentious?
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Why do you get a special label for yourself? (And I call it a special label because I’ve never seen someone ask to be called a non-theist before.)

Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo):

I think perhaps you need to get out your dictionary.

Look up the word patronize. To be patronizing, is to be condescending, which I was not.

I refer to the Abrahamic God as a “myth” the same way most people refer to the ancient Greek Gods as “mythology”.

I am simply saying that I believe the Abrahamic God, adopted by the Jews, Christians and Muslims, to be no different than all of the other Gods before him. In other words, mythical like the rest.

Over the millennia there have been many Gods, in many different cultures. There were Babylonian Gods, Egyptian Gods, Celtic Gods, Canaanite, Hindu, Aztec, Roman, Greek, and Norse Gods. ALL of these Gods are now considered (by most) as myths. At the time, had you called their God(s) a myth, these people would have considered the words “offensive”, “patronizing”, and “combative”.

I suppose I should expect no less from believers in an Abrahamic God.

However, I am not about to tiptoe around and refrain from saying something so innocuous as “I believe the Abrahamic God is a myth”, for fear of offending “believers”.

By the way, I could really care less what you refer to me as. Non-theist, atheist, heathen, whatever!

The Muslims were offended by cartoons! The Catholics were offended by “The Life of Brian”!! …. and the list goes on.

Who cares where the President goes to church? Why does this matter? He’s not the religious leader of the country. Jebus H Crackers, I look forward to the day when we, like the Europeans, just don’t even bring this personal stuff up. It is just as irrelevant as which political party one’s pastor (or rabbit or imam or whatever) belongs to.

SHEESH.

awesome fun:

Here here!! I’ll second that

Otis
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I would venture a guess and assume I am not alone in discerning quite a difference between merely expressing your belief that God is a myth and substituting a moniker akin to ‘the myth in the sky’ in lieu of the term God. I would liken that to such endearing terms as ‘flying spaghetti monster’ which undoubtedly smacks of condescension and patronization. However, if you’re honest position is that you did not intend to patronize, then I see no reason to continue this discussion.
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What I am sure we can both agree on is the substance of this story as entirely irrelevant to political discourse. I believe its time for a new thread…
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Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo):

No, I never intended to patronize, at all. And yes, I completely agree that the substance of this story is entirely irrelevant to political discourse.

Cheers.

Exiled_At_Home (formerly neo):

And incidentally, while I do not intend to incite another debate, I did want to just make one more point. LOL

I do not believe that the “flying spaghetti monster” was meant to be intentionally condescending or patronizing either. At least I do not believe that was the initial intent.

Many theists in the past have argued that while they cannot prove the existence of God, an atheist cannot disprove the existence of God either. Therefore God’s existence is at least as likely to be true as untrue.

The notion of the “flying spaghetti monster” was simply a way of using logic to blow holes in that argument.

In other words, just because I cannot disprove the existence of a “flying spaghetti monster” does not mean it’s existence is as likely to be so than not so.

That’s all.

“Either way, as of now, I declare spob no longer to be read or response-worthy. And I second Basil’s apology with one of my own.”
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Do you have any idea how absolutely ridiculous you sound?

When I went to work last night it appeared that we were going to adopt a more civil and tolerant attitude towards respecting the beliefs or non-beliefs of others. You can imagine my surprise when I saw this morning that the “flying spaghetti monster” was now the subject of ridicule. No caps even. For those of us inclined to worship the ancient Italian food deities, I ask “Where’s the love?”.
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It was bad enough to have to endure the atrocity that was the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee horror. A can of cherrio-like pasta thingies with a vaguely meat-like substance strewn about some vile reddish paste. Now our beloved Flying Spaghetti Monster has been dissed. If you want war, you’ve got it.

After 9/11, Christian fundamentalists could justify a Crusade against Muslims who were by definition non-believers. Non-theists could justify destroying Middle Eastern countries because they were inhabited by people who believed in a bronze age mythical figure in the sky.
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If we were attacked by delusional people who believed in a mythical God, would there be any reason not to curtail the rights of these demented people here in the US or launch a war against them in the Middle East?
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Christian fundamentalist or fellow travelers like GW bush and non-theists like Christopher Hitchens were of the same mindset on bringing down Saddam Hussein.

rmrd:

Last I checked, GWB was legally retarded. While Christopher Hitchens HAS supported the war in Iraq, to say he is or was of the same mindset as GWB would indicate that you’re at the very least naive, if not legally retarded yourself. I am done with this thread. Later!

Sorry you feel the need to leave. The point is that a person who believes in the Rapture and a person who believes that God is not great both came to the same conclusion about going after Saddam Hussein.
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It is easy to drop bombs on people who are different. Subconsciously, Bush has less turmoil about attacking Muslims. If Muslims believe in a mythical bronze age God, and need to be taught a lesson, Hitchens is all for it.
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One reason that Iraq got cluster screwed is that those in charge did not understand the culture and religion in the region. Shia and Sunnis are different. Even John McCain couldn’t remember the differences during the Presidential campaign.
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Rejecting or accepting religion is a cherished right in the United States. Ignorance of religion would be disastrous in dealing in the Middle East.

For those interested. here is Hitchen’s own opinion about the Iraq War.
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Did I get the Iraq war wrong? No

Christopher Hitchens | March 20, 2008
Article from: The Australian

AN anniversary of a war is in many ways the least useful occasion on which to take stock of something like the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq, if only because any such formal observance involves the assumption that a) this is, in fact, a war and b) it is by that definition an exception from the rest of our engagement with that country and that region.

I am one of those who, for example, believes that the global conflict that began in August 1914 did not conclusively end, despite a series of fragile truces, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is not at all to redefine warfare and still less to contextualise it out of existence. But when I wrote the essays that go to make up A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, I was expressing an impatience with those who thought that hostilities had not really begun until George W. Bush gave a certain order in the spring of 2003.

Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Iraq would have to know that a heavy US involvement in the affairs of that country began no later than 1968, with the role played by the CIA in the coup that ultimately brought Saddam Hussein’s wing of the Baath Party to power.

Not much more than a decade later, we come across persuasive evidence that the US at the very least acquiesced in the Iraqi invasion of Iran, a decision that helped inflict moral and material damage of an order to dwarf anything that has occurred in either country recently.

In between, we might note minor episodes such as Henry Kissinger’s faux support to Kurdish revolutionaries, encouraging them to believe in American support and then abandoning and betraying them in the most brutal and cynical fashion.

If you can bear to keep watching this flickering newsreel, it will take you all the way up to the moment when Saddam, too, switches sides and courts Washington, being most in favour in our nation’s capital at the precise moment he is engaged in a campaign of extermination in the northern provinces and retaining this same favour until the moment he decides to engulf his small Kuwaiti neighbour. In every decision taken subsequent to that, from the decision to recover Kuwait and the decision to leave Saddam in power, to the decisions to impose international sanctions on Iraq and the decision to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, stating that long-term coexistence with Saddam’s regime was neither possible nor desirable, there was a really quite high level of public participation in our foreign policy.

We were never, if we are honest with ourselves, “lied into war”.

We became steadily more aware that the option was continued collusion with Saddam or a decision to have done with him.

The President’s speech to the UN on September 12, 2002, laying out the considered case that it was time to face the Iraqi tyrant, too, with this choice, was easily the best speech of his two-term tenure and by far the most misunderstood.

That speech is widely and wrongly believed to have focused on only two aspects of the problem, namely the refusal of Saddam’s regime to come into compliance on the resolutions concerning weapons of mass destruction and the involvement of the Baathists with a whole nexus of nihilist and Islamist terror groups.

Baghdad’s outrageous flouting of the resolutions on compliance (if not necessarily the maintenance of blatant, as opposed to latent, WMD capacity) remains a huge and easily demonstrable breach of international law. The role of Baathist Iraq in forwarding and aiding the merchants of suicide terror actually proves to be deeper and worse, on the latest professional estimate, than most people had believed or than the Bush administration had suggested.

This is all overshadowed by the unarguable hash that was made of the intervention itself.

But I would nonetheless maintain that this incompetence doesn’t condemn the enterprise wholesale.

A much-wanted war criminal was put on public trial.

The Kurdish and Shi’ite majority was rescued from the ever-present threat of a renewed genocide.

A huge, hideous military and party apparatus, directed at internal repression and external aggression was (perhaps overhastily) dismantled.

The largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated.

Huge fresh oilfields have been found, including in formerly oil-free Sunni provinces, and some important initial investment in them made. Elections have been held, and the outline of a federal system has been proposed as the only alternative to a) a sectarian despotism and b) a sectarian partition and fragmentation. Not unimportantly, a battlefield defeat has been inflicted on al-Qa’ida and its surrogates, who (not without some Baathist collaboration) had hoped to constitute the successor regime in a failed state and an imploded society.

Further afield, a perfectly defensible case can be made that the Syrian Baathists would not have evacuated Lebanon, nor would the Gaddafi gang have turned over Libya’s (much larger than anticipated) stock of WMD, if not for the ripple effect of the removal of the region’s keystone dictatorship. None of these positive developments took place without a good deal of bungling and cruelty, and unintended consequences of their own.

I don’t know of a satisfactory way of evaluating one against the other any more than I quite know how to balance the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, say, against the digging up of Saddam’s immense network of mass graves. There is, however, one position that nobody can honestly hold but that many people try their best to hold. And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it’s not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn’t count, and we are not involved.

Nonetheless, the thing that most repels people when they contemplate Iraq, which is the chaos and misery and fragmentation (and the deliberate intensification and augmentation of all this by the jihadis), invites the inescapable question: What would post-Saddam Iraq have looked like without a coalition presence?

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur.

Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say attempt rather than do, which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on “a war of choice”. But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited.

We were already deeply involved in the life and death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

Christopher Hitchens is an author and commentator for publications such as Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23404628-7583,00.html

I’m guessing that my commentary may have killed the blog.
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What was the offending comment, if any?

rmrd: If it wasn’t already dead it was twitching and feebling kicking. I’ve killed more than one myself. Sometimes you’re sad to see them go and other times you can’t get the rotting corpse in the ground fast enough.

I was going to ask why this blog was even running, but I guess it collapsed under it’s own superficial weight

May I direct everyone to the Los Angeles Times story titled “Time magazine wrong; Obamas still looking for church” at the http://www.latimes.com website. C’mon Time — drop this foolish Amy person and bring back Perry Bacon…All these errors from Amy Sullivan and Joke Line are embarrassing, almost as much as Washington writer Michael Weiskopf running his rat-infested tenement investment business out of the DC bureau or Michael Scherer blaming the Rush Limbaugh controversies on Democrats. Get a clue, people!

It is incredible to me this post still keeps generating so many responses. There are criminals and other matters which should be investigated.

I am an innocent Law abiding citizen have been illegally wiretapped by Shay Riley of the “Black Female Interracial Marriage blog” and not ONE investigative journalist has had to the courage of ability to uncover these digital hoodlums, these cyber fiends, these crass online Psychopath, Shay Riley aka Evia Moore aka Halima Sal Andersen.

Shay Riley of the “Black Female Interracial marriage blog” is a serial Predator who has illegally wiretapped my phone for years. This woman activates the microphone om my cell and home phones and uses it to listen to the conversations in my life. This woman runs very many interracial marriage sites pretending to be interracially married and using the lives of legitimately married women like me as fodder for her PREVARICATION.She is married to a BLACK NIGERIAN CROOK NAMED AKBAR SHABZZ of the “Project 21 site”-.

Why should the ability of these FELONS to access hundreds of legitimate websites and alter information enable them stay free. They continue to elude law enforcement and commit felony after felony.

This woman is a VILE PREDATOR who in all probability molests and abuses her own children. Why can this matter not be persistently and continuously investigated by an elite journalist and the truth found out???

Screaming BLACK POWER and running many various black power blogs should not be cover for this vile REPROBATE. But it is. Why is she not in jail Why is she free to write nonsense and scurry around committing unprecendented inavsion of privacy, felonies and probably sexually abusing and molesting her OWN CHILDREN!! WHY????

The FBI and the US Secret Service have not been able to route this woman. See her on ww.akbarshabazz.com. When people say they look ordinary, I say WHAT DO YOU EXPECT??? A sign on Shay Riley which reads, “I am a Felon and illegally wiretap and Send Trojans and spy ware to innocent law abiding citizens computers so that I can criminally stalk them, steal from them, co opt their lives experiences and oh, yes since I am a psychopath, I probably molest my children too.”!!! NO, she has to appear ordinary to lure and assault unassuming people online and elsewhere!

WHY SHOULD THIS WOMAN who runs hundreds of websites under numerous aliases, a fiend who listens to and records my calls even activating my microphones to follow my life and uses Trojans/spyware for my computers BE FREE?????

Must a crime INVOLVE A CELEBRITY FOR IT TO BE RIGOROUSLY AND CONTINUOUSLY INVESTIGATED???? WHat happened to truth in journalism. Can these CYBER Bots Shay Riley, her husband Akbar SHabazz and their accomplices be capable of deceiving the slew of so called ELITE TECHNOLOGY AND CRIME INVESTIGATORS???

No wonder the Obama’s didn’t hear the things J. Wright said, they didn’t go to church that often I guess. And here, from a Christian nation, we all thought he had the
Christian values (wink-wink) This guy really knew how to run for office, but can’t keep from lying about all he said.