It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.
Upset at the number of secular stories that end up on the consensus news site Digg.com, some Christians have set up a similar news ranking website called DiggChrist. The irreverent satire website Paliban Daily has submitted its articles to DiggChrist… which currently ranks 7 of them in its top 10.
Is this a hilarious trend to be aided and abetted by your own votes on the website? Is it an indication that when it comes to Christian reconstructionism, satire and sincerity are indistinguishable? Is it a tacky invasion of a website from the outside? What’s your reaction?
Popular religious writer Neale Donald Walsch has been caught in a plagiarism scandal trying to pretend that the words someone else had written were his own.
Writer Candy Chand had written a sappy Christmas story called Christmas Love back in 1999. Neale Donald Walsch liked the treacly nature of the story so much that he started telling people that he had written the story himself, and that, what’s more, the story had actually happened to him and his family. He started giving lectures during which he talked about how it felt when he had the experiences behind the Christmas Love story, and then recently even cut and pasted the story onto his blog, claiming authorship.
Remember, all along, it was Candy Chand who had written the platitude. She was surprised, therefore, to find that her exact words, copyrighted in 2005, were being claimed by Neale Donald Walsch.
Walsch’s explanation is that he did it all by accident, that he told the story so many times that he really started thinking that it had happened to him and his family, and so he didn’t realize he had plagiarized another writer’s work… word for word.
Walsch said that he had “somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”
Here’s what the Associated Press article won’t tell you, and I don’t know why, because it wraps the story up rather neatly, with a bow on top: Neale Donald Walsch has made his career out of doing this sort of thing - only in reverse.
Walsch gained prominence by writing a series of books entitled Conversations With God. It’s a series in which he claims to be actually speaking with God, by just sitting down and writing a question, and then waiting for inspiration to write the answer. He came to realize, he says, that it was God who was really writing the answers to his questions.
It was Neale Donald Walsch who kept the profits, though.
For Walsch to commit plagiarism by convincing himself that another writer’s words were his own should not be surprising. After all, Walsch had already convinced himself that his own words were the words of God.
It’s not racist at all. No, really, it’s not! When the phrase “Whip A Nigger Today” appears on the $3 Bill, it is not intended to endorse racism or the re-establishment of slavery, but instead to acknowledge the nation’s heritage of slavery dating to the days of America’s founding fathers. Really. That’s all the phrase means: an acknowledgment of this nation’s history! Why would anyone want to remove the phrase? What do they have against history? Why do they hate heritage? Why do they hate America?
…phrases like “One nation under God,” “In God We Trust,” and “So Help Me God” aren’t intended to endorse or establish religion, but instead acknowledge the nation’s religious heritage that dates to the days of American’s founding fathers.
As the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist opined on the issue of God and the Pledge of Allegiance: “It is a secular act rather than an act of indoctrination in religion or expression or religious devotion.”
Gianfricaro is so right. Historical phrases like “In God We Trust” have nothing to do with the endorsement of religion or the expression of religious devotion. They just happen to pop up everywhere because they’re part of this nation’s historically historic history of heritage! Just like the heritage of slavery, hence “Whip a Nigger Today” on the $3 bill. Heritage! Just like “Women: Insufficient Non-Voting Chattel” on the $6 bill. By putting the declaration on the nation’s money, it’s not like our government is insulting women. No, no, no. It’s just a statement of this nation’s heritage.
February 12 is Darwin Day, a celebration of the legacy of the work of Charles Darwin. February 12 was the day of Darwin’s birth - 200 years ago, in 1809.
It’s remarkable that, 200 years later, many Americans are still trying to refute Darwin’s main contribution to science: The development, along with Alfred Wallace, of the theory of biological evolution through natural selection.
A theory is an idea that is empirically testable. Over the last century and a half, Darwin’s theory has been tested over and over again. Every year, the theory grows stronger, with new bits of information supporting Darwin’s ideas.
There has not been a similar growth of data among those who oppose Darwin’s theory. On the contrary, Creationist challenges have grown progressively limited and weaker. In all this time, not one single Creationist theory has emerged - none of the Creationist challenges to Darwin’s ideas even qualify as theories.
Yet, many people continue to teach, without genuine reason, that Darwin was just a big liar. They’re teaching that theories of evolution through natural selection are the work of the Devil.
It’s especially disappointing that this year, of all years, the incoming President of the United States has chosen to give a Creationist, anti-Darwin preacher the special honor of starting the Inauguration with an official religious ritual. Rick Warren encourages America to erase the biological insights gained since the early 1800s, by rejecting all the improvements to our way of life that have been made possible by Darwin’s insights.
One way to respond to Rick Warren’s role in the Inauguration is to participate in this year’s 200th birthday anniversary celebrations of Darwin Day. You can find a Darwin Day event near you at the Darwin Day web site. We’ve also got a small collection of Darwin Day gear that we’ll be expanding as the big day approaches.
Just before the new year, VJack issued a call for gays, lesbians and atheists to find common cause and to…
suggest that an alliance between the atheist and GLBT communities might be worthy of serious consideration. We have a great deal in common. We also share a common “enemy” in Christian extremists, a group determined to treat us as second-class citizens with restricted civil rights.
I agree that one place for atheists and members of the gay community to find common cause is in the recognition of civil rights — rights guaranteed under the equal protection clause of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, which mandates that “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” But Proposition 8 in California denied exactly that, and a major proponent of Prop 8 is being given special status in the Inauguration of our next president. Across the country, fundamentalist churches are trying to push preferential language for Christians and Christian institutions into the law, also subverting the equal protection clause… and President-Elect Barack Obama is in turn promising to funnel more government money to those churches. Rick Warren, the same preacher who pushed Prop 8 and is being given a special role in the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, answered the question: “Does a person have to believe in God to be President?” with the answer: “I would say so.” Atheist Americans understandably feel the need to push back with the message that as guaranteed by Article VI, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
The bottom line is that gays, lesbians and atheists find their constitutional liberties threatened on some of the same fronts, and that provides a common front for gay, lesbian and atheist political action.
For gays, lesbians, atheists and their allies in promoting equal protection under the law, there’s a space for you to make your voice heard during the Inauguration. An “Oath of Office” demonstration has secured a permit right in front of the Department of Justice building on the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route — and the purpose is to advocate for a return to constitutional governance. Equal protection for all — in marriage, in pursuit of public office, and in other areas of life — fits perfectly under the constitutional umbrella of this activist event. So please, go ahead and use that space. We all belong there.
Oath of Office Demonstration for a return to Constitutional Governance January 20, 2009, all day Outside the Department of Justice Building, south side of Pennsylvania Avenue west of 9th Street Web link: http://irregulartimes.com/dcoathofofficedemo.html
Some thematically-appropriate banners if you’d like to spread the word:
There was no religious benediction or invocation prayer at the Inauguration of America’s first President. George Washington’s Oath of Office did not include the words so help me God. Neither did Abraham Lincoln’s Inauguration ceremony include these religious elements. In fact, the use of Christian preachers to give prayers at the Inauguration, and the addition of the phrase so help me God to the Oath of Office didn’t really take hold until the 1930s.
If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln didn’t need to insert Christian religious rituals into their inaugurations, why does Barack Obama feel the need to break with the weight of American tradition, as well as the Constitution, in order to do so?
Sadly, the reason Barack Obama is mixing Church and State with his very first act as President is that he’s seeking to build a political coalition with activists on the Religious Right. That’s a sad statement on the difference in stature between Barack Obama and America’s truly great presidents.
Barack Obama ought to remember that the Oath of Office is a promise to uphold and defend the Constitution, which includes passages outlawing religious tests for public office and banning the government establishment of religion.
Well, okay, this isn’t really a message from Rick Warren. It’s an imagination of what Rick Warren might say to American liberals duped into thinking that Barack Obama would represent their values… if Rick Warren were an honest man, and not just a self-serving political climber using his religious power as a tool for his ambition.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a lawsuit in order to force the removal of Christian religious rituals from the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. These rituals include the addition of the phrase “so help me God” to the Oath of Office, as well as a Christian invocation ritual and Christian benediction ritual, to be delivered by Christian preachers Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery.
I wholeheartedly endorse this lawsuit. At the same time, I do not trust that the majority-Christian Supreme Court will act to protect the rights of non-Christians. The Christian justices on the Supreme Court will certainly judge the Christian rituals in the Inauguration to be “benign”. That’s easy for them to say - they’re Christians after all. Most non-Christians regard the official government support of these Christian rituals to be far from benign, and a highly offensive corruption of the USA’s secular democracy.
As an individual, Barack Obama is free to practice whatever religion he wants. However, Barack Obama is not free to make his Christian religion a part of his official acts as President. Doing so is a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In particular, making Christian religious rituals a part of the Inauguration gives the impression that adherence to Christianity is a qualification for the Presidency. This violates both the First Amendment and the original body of the Constitution.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, the majority of presidential inaugurations have not included religious prayers of any sort. The first time such an inaugural prayer was performed was in the 1930s. If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln didn’t need any official prayers at their inaugurations, Barack Obama certainly does not.
It is particularly troubling that preacher Rick Warren has been selected to give a government-endorsed Christian invocation prayer for the official Inauguration ceremonies. Warren presided over a shamefully-rigged theological testing of both Barack Obama and John McCain last year - live on TV from the Saddleback Church. Remember the lies about a fake “cone of silence”? It was Rick Warren who perpetrated that hoax. Rick Warren also has declared that he believes that only people who believe in God should be allowed to become President of the United States. Placing him at a place of honor at the Inauguration in 2009 is a purposeful slap in the face to non-Christian Americans.
Furthermore, placing the words “so help me God” in the official Oath of Office also establishes a religious test for public office. That’s clearly unconstitutional. Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution states: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The phrase “so help me God” was never used in any presidential inauguration until 1881, and has been used consistently for less than a century. It has not an integral part of the inauguration at all, but a corruption of the original inaugural ceremonies.
If you want to embrace religion, that’s your right. However, no one simply embraces religion - they embrace a particular religion. Without absolute freedom from religion, no religious American has the right to choose, with equality under the law, which religion to embrace. That’s why the addition of Christian religious rituals to the inauguration are offensive, not just to non-Christians, but also to Christians who believe that the Constitution, and not an official church, should be the foundation of law and freedom in the United States of America. As long as Christianity is favored above all others, in the highest important civic ceremony our nation has, there is no true equality under the law.
Christians are being placed on a level above everybody else in the USA. That’s illegal. It’s unconstitutional. Most significantly, it’s just plain disrespectful. Barack Obama says he wants to use the Inauguration to bring Americans together, but with his Christianity-only Inauguration using a bigoted extremist like Rick Warren, Obama is driving Americans apart.
We’re both betting. He’s betting his life that he’s right. I’m betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he’s right, I’ve lost nothing. If I’m right, he’s lost everything. I’m not willing to make that gamble.
Actually, if Rick Warren is wrong and there is no Christian God, then when he dies, then he has lost a great deal: the content of the only life he has, all spent following a series of fictional dictates dreamed up by a religious bureaucracy.
Rick Warren is right in a superficial sense when he says he’s not “willing to make that gamble” that “Jesus was not a liar.” But Rick Warren is more fundamentally wrong, since he has been making just the sort of gamble he mocks atheists for making over and over and over again throughout his life. Rick Warren is willing to gamble that Vishnu is a liar. Rick Warren is willing to gamble that Odin is a liar. Rick Warren is willing to gamble that the gods and goddesses of Olympus are liars. Rick Warren is willing to gamble that Zoroaster was a liar. Rick Warren is willing to gamble that animism is a pack of lies. Rick Warren is willing to shove all sorts of religions down the crapper. He’s willing to make the bet that hundreds of religious authorities and supposed deities with their rules and systems are complete bullshit. Christianity is the only religion exempt from his scorn.
What kind of moral exemplar is Rick Warren at the inauguration of the next president? He’s the kind of man who would for reasons of self-interest reasons pick one out of hundreds of evidence-less religious dogmas, then seek to impose the terms of his wild and arbitrary gamble on an entire country. Is that kind of reckless gambling habit the sort of moral example Barack Obama really wants to promote?
Writing for the New York Times, Olivia Judson observed yesterday that more than one luminary’s birth has been pegged to the day of December 25: Isaac Newton was also born on that day, at least under the older Julian calendar. That makes today Isaac Newton Eve.
Judson somewhat jeeringly suggests that supporters of science give one another Happy Isaac Newton Birthday cards in place of Christmas cards. I endorse that idea sincerely. Do you value calculus over churches, gravity over a 2,000 year-old grave, the Third Law of Motion over the Trinity? Do you know someone else who feels the same? Then consider an exchange of Isaac Newton birthday cards.
This year, it’s really too late for Irregular Times to get in on the Newtonian greeting card market, but here is an offering for next year:
The controversy over the plan to have right wing preacher Rick Warren give an official religious invocation to introduce Barack Obama’s Inauguration just grew another kink. It seems that Rick Warren’s church, the Saddleback Church, is engaged in a coverup designed to hide Rick Warren’s extremist ideology.
Soon after it was announced that its leader, Rick Warren, would be giving an invocation at the Inauguration, the Saddleback Church began taking down parts of its web site in an attempt to prevent people from seeing the kind of weird ideas that the church actually preaches. For example, on December 16th, the Saddleback Church web site had a page of questions and answers about its beliefs. Here’s what it looked like then:
rick warren ideology pre-deletion
Here’s what that same page looks like now:
Why the coverup if, as Rick Warren claims, truth is eternal? If Rick Warren is happy to preach these weird ideas to people at his church, then how come he isn’t willing to share them all with the rest of us? Come on, preacher Warren - let it shine, let it shine, let it shine! Truth is eternal, online. I discovered this coverup by looking at Google’s cache, and now, thanks to that, I’ve been able to save the page as a PDF, which you can see for yourself here. I’ve put it on the IrregularTimes.com server, where Rick Warren won’t be able to make it disappear.
What really tickles me is that this page is the Saddleback Church’s page of frequently asked questions. It’s right there in the name of the file: faqs_saddleback.asp - FAQs stands for frequently asked questions. But now, this page has been erased. What does that tell us about how Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church feel about questions?
Apparently, there are no frequently asked questions at the Saddleback Church. It’s not the kind of church where questions are appreciated. Rather, it seems that when church members bring up questions, they’re erased.
Actually, its not just the questions that are deleted from the Saddleback Church web site. Rick Warren’s answers to the questions are deleted too. Amongst those answers are the following nuggets:
- If you’re in debt, you shouldn’t stop giving money to the Saddleback Church, because you’re more likely to get out of debt if you give Rick Warren money.
- Stopping embryonic stem cell research is more important than curing grave and fatal illnesses. Rick Warren urges his followers to “speak out against overzealous stem cell research, even though you know it slows down the process of finding a possible cure for someone you love.”
- Jews should convert to Christianity, because the only sin for which we can go to Hell is “rejecting God’s saving solution in his son Jesus Christ.”
- Homosexuality is a sin, and so the Saddleback Church won’t accept homosexual couples as members. Church members ought to confront homosexuals and tell them that they’re sinners.
- Belief in evolution and belief in the Bible are incompatible.
- God gave human beings dominion over dinosaurs, which were around at the birth of human civilization - “Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.”
- Plesiosaurs might not be extinct at all.
But this isn’t all - there’s a lot more to Rick Warren and Saddleback Church than just this one web page. A further search for other coverup materials seems to be called for.
Mother Davis cowers after forgetting to call her husband sir, and resentfully notes,
A lot of people are still pretending that the only reason to object to Rick Warren’s official religious invocation to introduce the inauguration of Barack Obama is that Rick Warren has been a strident opponent of equal marriage rights for same sex couples. Those who have bothered to actually research Rick Warren know that Warren’s right wing homophobia is just the start of his offensive activity.
Let’s consider the position of women as an example. Rick Warren teaches that women are inferior to men to the same extent that the church is inferior to Jesus up in heaven. Rick Warren teaches that wives must be submissive to their husbands. Why? Rick Warren cites the Bible, specifically the Book of Ephesians, chapter 5, verses 22 to 23:
“You wives must submit to your husbands’ leadership in the same way you submit to the Lord. For a husband is in charge of his wife in the same way Christ is in charge of His body the Church. (He gave His very life to take care of it and be its Savior!) So you wives must willingly obey your husbands in everything, just as the Church obeys Christ.”
You know what this quote is? It’s not claimed to be the words of Jesus, or Moses, much less God himself. It’s just a part of a letter that church leader Paul wrote to some of his followers. It’s the ancient equivalent of an advice column.
Rick Warren claims that women are inferior to men on the basis of nothing more than a letter that some guy wrote almost two thousand years ago. Is that change we can believe in?
For Barack Obama to give Rick Warren the special place of honor of introducing his Inauguration is an insult to all the women who worked hard to elect him as President of the United States. If Barack Obama really believes in equality, he ought to say so, and repudiate Rick Warren, and take Warren out of the official inaugural proceedings.
If President-Elect Obama can’t summon the strength to do that, then all his talk about change and hope and equality was nothing more than a bunch of pretty talk.
Sunday morning was a nasty time to be out and about in New York, with cold rain falling hard… and yet 17 people got out of bed anyway, all with the same thought: “I shall go stand in the middle of an intersection in Brooklyn and bang on a drum.”
The occasion was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. It was a moment of great importance to ancient pagans, and to a set of spiritually inclined people intent on connecting with Mother Earth through the asphalt of New York. Sunday’s ceremony in Brooklyn was convened at Grand Army Plaza, at the mouth of Prospect Park. It was led by Donna Henes, also known as Mama Donna, a self-styled urban shaman and provider of “ritual services” that include weddings, funerals, house and office blessings and energy cleansings…
The stuff in question included a small cast-iron pot, coals, sweet grass and other herbs, drums, maracas, a roadside flare, a clock and long bolts of red fabric, which Ms. Henes twisted and shaped into a large “magic circle” that she lay on the ground a hundred feet or so from the plaza’s soaring arch.
A Christmas Celebration, Shorter Than Day’s Long By Carl Doely
Wednesday evenning was a nasty time to be out and about in New York, with cold rain falling hard… and yet 87 people got out of bed anyway, all with the same thought: “I shall go sit on a bench in a building in Brooklyn and stand up when asked.”
The occasion was midnight mass on Christmas Eve. It was not a moment of great importance to most Christians until the mid-1800s, but it was now of prime importance to a set of spiritually inclined people intent on connecting with Jesus Christ through the wooden beams of this building of New York. Sunday’s ceremony in Brooklyn was convened near Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park. It was led by Albert Henkes, also known as Father Albert, a self-styled conduit to Heaven and provider of “ritual services” that include weddings, funerals, house and office blessings and energy cleansings…
The stuff in question included a vessel of incense swung from a chain, a puppet impaled on wooden sticks, an organ, bells, an amplification system and a vessel of red wine, which Father Albert hoisted into the air to turn it into the “magic blood” that he asked his followers to drink.
Carl’s writing would never be accepted for publication in the New York Times. Cara’s writing was accepted. The language of oddity is reserved for the unpopular and unfamiliar.
Intolerant position: Rick Warren does not have the right to speak at the Inauguration of Barack Obama, and his name must be withdrawn. Fie! Withdraw in shame, Rick Warren! Go live in a hole!
Liberal position: Rick Warren has the right to say whatever he wants, and if Barack Obama wants to invite him to speak at the presidential Inauguration, I can’t stop him. But when Barack Obama — known for his thorough vetting — invites a man he’s had multiple contacts with to speak at his inauguration, and when that man has repeatedly expressed support for policies of bigotry along lines of gender, sexual orientation and religion — plus the whopper of God-Sanctioned Holy War — and when Barack Obama explains his choice with a reasonable-people-can-agree-to-disagree-reasonably argument, then such a choice sends a message that these bigotries are reasonable. It communicates to Americans that even if he does not exactly agree with Rick Warren’s positions, Barack Obama finds them to be within the realm of the reasonable. Americans like myself who believe religious discrimination, sex discrimination and anti-gay discrimination are unreasonable therefore find themselves distraught and dismayed, not just with the behavior of Rick Warren but with what Barack Obama’s choices reveal about his political compass. Considering Obama’s ever-lengtheninglist of concessions to politicalforcesalignedagainst freedom in America, Barack Obama should not be surprised that he is losing the benefit of liberals’ doubt.
Writer Candy Chand had written a sappy Christmas story called Christmas Love back in 1999. Neale Donald Walsch liked the treacly nature of the story so much that he started telling people that he had written the story himself, and that, what’s more, the story had actually happened to him and his family. He started giving lectures during which he talked about how it felt when he had the experiences behind the Christmas Love story, and then recently even cut and pasted the story onto his blog, claiming authorship.
Mother Davis cowers after forgetting to call her husband sir, and resentfully notes, 
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