By: Richard Dawkins [ENLARGE]
We know what caused the catastrophe in Haiti. It was the bumping and grinding of the Caribbean Plate rubbing up against the North American Plate: a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, un-premeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery.

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti’s tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today’s Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy.

Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable ‘mystery‘, or who ‘see God‘ in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti, or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God ’suffering on the cross’ in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah’s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for ’sin’. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock stock and barrel, as punishment for ’sin’. Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated Christian, your entire religion is founded on an obsession with ’sin’, with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the obnoxious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the ’sins’ of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the ’sin’ of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed? To quote the President of one theological seminary, writing in these very pages:

“The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe.”

You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who – as you tell your congregations even if you don’t believe it yourself – ‘cast out devils’. You even believe (or you don’t disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the ‘devils’ in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it.

But you?

Educated apologist, how dare you weep Christian tears, when your entire theology is one long celebration of suffering: suffering as payback for ’sin’ – or suffering as ‘atonement’ for it? You may weep for Haiti where Pat Robertson does not, but at least, in his hick, sub-Palinesque ignorance, he holds up an honest mirror to the ugliness of Christian theology. You are nothing but a whited sepulchre.

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Racists believe that God is a white man who looks like John Wayne.

But is he?

Is God white? In all the art over the centuries, including his representation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he is portrayed as white, in the case of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, a grey-bearded, fierce-looking giant floating on a cloud.

If God is truly a Caucasian, then racists and Southern Confederate fundamentalist Christians can take delusional heart thinking that they were created in God’s image, and thus are better than people of color. If you look like God and somebody else doesn’t, you must be better. Feeling better than someone else is important to a racist. Very important.

But is God white?

Adam was white according again to representational art. God created Adam. It follows logic that God would create the first man patterned on what God himself looked like. If God is white, and if God is a man.

It begs the question. If God is white and a man and created Adam in his own image, why did he (God) branch out and create so many other people who look very different ie. Africans, Indians, Eskimos, and so on? There are only two possible possibilities. Either God wanted to create non-God-looking people for his creation so Adam’s descendants could feel superior to them (you don’t look like God, I do). In other words, to promote racism. Or, he was dissatisfied with his look-alike doll, and created other types of people in a desperate attempt to find the right mold.

In that case, people of color could feel superior to whites. God didn’t like you. I’m Plan B.

All of this of course ignores the fact that science has proven that the first walking-upright ape-like creatures originated in the gorges of East Africa eons ago in pre-history. It’s always entertaining to see the reaction of religious zealot fundamentalists to the possibility that God looks like this first ape-like hominid.

That begs another question. Does God have to look like Charlton Heston? Very few people questioned would say that he in fact looks like Tiger Woods. Very few would disagree that God has to look impressive, and powerful. And white. No one has ever portrayed God looking like Woody Allen.

But what about women?

They got a bad rap. First of all, God created Eve for Adam, and then kicked them out of the garden because Eve listened to a snake and picked an apple. I mean, I need to eat something big guy. Excuse me for living.

God made a woman the same color as Adam. No one has ever suggested God created Adam and then gave him a black Eve, a mixed-race union. Adam swinging with a black chick? That would have been way too liberal and progressive for the Old Testament.

If, according to the New Testament, Jesus is the son of God, then God must be a man who looks something like Jesus, according once again to artwork, a pale-skinned, bearded Jewish man of the First Century who must have carried an ad-mixture of black blood in his veins. The Levant-area of that time was a polyglot meeting place of cultures and a mixture bowl of races through tribal interbreeding, trade route swaps and other contacts (exchanging your daughter for a prize goat).

This fact has always been a distinct disappointment to pink-skinned Nazis and Klansmen. To them, God looks better like John Wayne. Somebody you can either be impressed with, or afraid of.

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The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now?and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

From Newsweek: According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent.

A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008?roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.)

Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.) — [ READ MORE ]

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Count me in as ATHEIST — With double Exclamation Marks!!

Religion is the BIGGEST fraud ever perpetrated on man in the history of this world. It is a fairy tale for adults, a scam run by priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns, witch doctors, bishops and popes, so that suckers will pay for their big houses, fine clothes and BMW’s. As scary as it might sound, you alone are responsible for what happens in your life, not some imaginary spook living in a paradise in the sky . . . not some evil goblin living underground in a fiery pit . . . You!

•    Religion is the SCAM that fills the coffers of slimy Republican GOONS! RACISTS and RIGHT-WING BIGOTS.

•    Religion is the SCAM that oils the delusions of Jihadists — cousin brothers and sisters to Christian Right-Wingers.

•    Religion is the SCAM that compels the Pope to lie to helpless Africans that CONDOMS make HIV infection worse. Meanwhile his priests are pillaging the world fornicating young boys!

Some of the most religious beings live in Africa, yet there is incalculable suffering and poverty in the cursed continent.

For GOD to allow these things to happen while giving SEAN HANNITY and RUSH LIMBAUGH all the wealth — is a clear indication that GOD is either evil, insane or imaginary.

God does not exist. Religion is a DELUSION!! — A mental disease.

[ NOTES ]

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For the past few months we have been deluged with bad news: The Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan, unemployment rates up, millions of homes in foreclosure, stock market sets record low, Iran threatens to destroy Israel…

But finally some good news: According to a new survey secularism is gaining ground in the United States.

“The percentage of Americans who adhered to no particular religion jumped from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent last year, the third American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) conducted over 10 months last year by pollsters from Trinity College in Connecticut, showed.

When the survey was conducted in 2001, 14.1 percent of respondents said they were not religious.

‘Americans are slowly becoming less Christian… The challenge to Christianity does not come from other world religions or new religious movements, but rather from a rejection of all organized religions,’ said a report of last year’s survey, in which 54,461 people took part.” — AFP

The number of mega-churches has increased, you can find one of these colossal temples in almost every state in the union. But mega churches don’t have any permanence, they are based on a cult of personality and not on doctrine per se. These spiritual and financial empires are led by charismatic figures, and when the founder falls to old age or scandal, the ministry doesn’t always survive.

But most mainline Protestant denominations have been losing membership for decades, and that pattern doesn’t show any sign of reversing. Methodists, Episcopalians and Lutherans ministers don’t have any relevance in a postmodern society.

The Roman Catholic Church has been devastated by the pedophile scandal, scores of Catholic churches are closing because they aren’t financially viable. There is also a severe shortage of priests in America, many priests minister to more than one congregation.

Those who have turned away from Christianity aren’t embracing Islam or any other organized religion. Thank God they aren’t exchanging one poison for another, they are rejecting religion in all its manifestations.

Organized religion is a sham, it’s not necessary to belong to any denomination or sect to worship a deity. You don’t need a pedophile priest or a greedy televangelist as a mediator between you and God.

If you don’t believe in God that’s fine also, a belief in God is usually a hindrance and not an asset in living a godly life.

Dear friend if you’ve recently turned away from the faith of your childhood, don’t feel guilty. You are the wave of the future, and those who still cling to organized religion will soon be regarded as dinosaurs.

In a decade or two we will be resemble most Europeans nations where religion is an irrelvancy.

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Note – AfriQueOnline.com: Religion is a fairy tale for adults, a scam run by priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns, witch doctors, bishops and popes so that suckers will pay for their big houses, fine clothes and BMW’s. As scary as it might sound, you alone are responsible for what happens in your life, not some imaginary spook living in a paradise in the sky . . . not some evil goblin living underground in a fiery pit . . . You! — [ READ MORE ]
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WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele will announce Thursday that a dozen Republican National Committee members are whipping votes on his behalf to be the next leader of the national party, Steele political advisors tell CNN.

Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Reince Priebus will unveil Steele’s whip operation in a memo to supporters — though in a copy of the document provided to CNN, he stops short of naming other RNC members who have vowed to vote for the former lieutenant governor when the national party meets at the end of the month. Read the rest of this entry

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Poor Michael Steele is totally lost! He rightly belongs in The American Directory Of Certified Uncle Toms, and so does Justice Clarence Thomas

Read on,…below:

Mr. Steele is fighting to ‘lead’ people like these:

The McCain/Palin ‘Lynch Mobs’

| More ‘Straight-Talk Xenophobia’ Here |

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From EvilGOPBastards.com:

Therefore the assertion by National Black Republican Association (NBRA) that Democrats are ‘More Racist,‘ is utterly false. JFK and Lyndon B. Johnson “converted” the Democrats in the sixties, from a party of “Lynchers” to a party that cares a lot more about blacks than the current Republicans, who are still clinging on to, and exploiting America’s horrible racial past.

The hopelessly racist McCain/Palin campaign against Obama is clear testimony to the racial “thugism” in the Republican Party.

As the Democrats became more progressive, the Republicans, rushed in to fill the RAT HOLE vacated by southern Democrats — with Nixon the crook implementing the SOUTHERN STRATEGY — an extreme racial scheme that plays “White Fears” like a yo-yo. It has served Republicans well over the years, …..until November 4th 2008, when a majority of Americans rejected ReTHUGlicanism — with a resounding victory for Obama.

| Read More | – Sick Delusional Bastards!

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