Category Archives: Atheist

A paranoid conspiracy theory has taken over parts of the Left. It has found its clearest expression in an extremely vile op-ed at the Washington Post by author and filmmaker Brian Broome.

The heart of his argument is this little pile of slander and hate: that the Buffalo shooters mindset is the same as the mindset of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The same sort of thinking about race and birthrates now dominates the conservative Supreme Court," Broome writes. "The leaked draft opinion isnt about protecting babies. It is about protecting Whiteness. Specifically, White babies.

These two sentences are an insane fever dream with no grounding in reality. Either Broome is a liar who hopes his readers dont notice, or he is truly mad, living in a paranoid delusion in which powerful people are engaged in dark conspiracies disguised as normal politics.

To believe what Broome espouses, you first need to believe that Justices Clarence Thomas (formerly a black baby) and Amy Coney Barrett (mother of adopted black babies) dont care about black babies.

But thats not even the most absurd part of Broomes argument.

If you reduced the number of abortions, the ultimate aim of all pro-lifers, you would increase the number of black babies and the black share of the U.S. population. Black babies are three times as likely as white babies to be aborted. Hispanic babies are twice as likely as white babies to be aborted.

Anyone trying to end or curb abortions is working to make the population less white, not more. That is just statistics. And this is why white supremacist Richard Spencer is pro-abortion.

"The people who are having abortions are generally very often black or Hispanic," Spencer explains. Like Spencer, racist eugenicists have always favored abortion. Even the abortion lobby today agrees that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, peddled birth control and abortion because she wanted fewer nonwhite babies.

Nevertheless, Broome repeatedly asserts, using the fallacy or argument by assertion, that any concern about birthrates is part of the great replacement theory.

This is, frankly, idiotic. Birthrates are falling in every country, and the United States has been in a baby bust for 16 years. The result is small towns shuttering and schools closing. Eventually, it will mean an economy with not enough people to make things and perform services needed to keep the world running.

There are a million reasons to care about falling birthrates that have nothing to do with "replacement" conspiracy theories. That's why the New York Times ran a front-page story in May 2021 warning of a demographic time bomb.

All over the world, the New York Times news story warned, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust.

Broome points out that the Buffalo shooter worried about white birthrates. Thats true the Buffalo shooter was a racist who believed in baseless conspiracy theories. Conservatives like myself who worry broadly about birthrates are not fixated on white birthrates. We are happy to see more black babies, more white babies, more Hispanic babies, more Asian babies, more Native American babies, and so on.

Im not on the same side as the murderer. Maybe Broome is. The shooter, probably like Broome, believes in human population control for environmental purposes. There is no Green future with never ending population growth, the atheist shooter wrote in his manifesto.

Broome's slanderous dishonesty comes in a piece about want[ing] the hate to stop. But Broome's entire op-ed is nothing but hate.

Because the data and facts cut against his tendentious thesis, Broome rests his entire argument on what he somehow knows to be the secret motivations of a shadowy cabal running America. The real reason Clarence Thomas opposes abortion, he surmises, is that he wants more white babies, etc. Never mind all the data!

Those secret intentions, Broome tells us, are evil, and they will result in something like genocide. Never mind that abortion has dramatically limited the nonwhite population.

Broome's argument, grounded as it is in paranoid conspiracy theories and bigotry against entire classes of people, sounds a lot more like the Buffalo shooters thinking than anything else you're going to find in print these days.

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The Washington Post just published a paranoid racist conspiracy theory - Washington Examiner

Dylan Godwin as Will and Matthew Amendt as Kit in 'Born With Teeth' at the Alley Theater

A few years back, computer analyses came up with a tantalizing theory: William Shakespeare may have collaborated with fellow playwright Christopher Kit Marlowe on the three Henry VI history plays. This qualified as a bombshell in the literary and dramatic worlds. Marlowe, who died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 29, is widely considered Shakespeares equal, or even superior. The possibility that they put their heads together for a cycle of plays, no matter how weak that cycle may be, is a bloody big deal.

Born With Teeth, Liz Duffy Adams new play that had its world premiere at the Alley Theatres Neuhaus Theatre last Wednesday, puts the two writers in the same tavern for 90 minutes and lets the speculation, much of it based in the historical record, run wild. The play is above all a showcase for a couple of heroic performances by Matthew Amendt, as Kit, and Dylan Godwin, as Will. Theyre onstage for every moment of the production, thrusting and parrying, seducing and repelling, and even, on occasion, writing. This is daunting piece of work, intellectually and emotionally, and Amendt and Godwin ace it.

It helps that the writers personalities are so different, the better to set the stakes of their collaboration. Will is a pragmatist who seeks popularity and stability; he wants nothing to do with the dangerous currents of Elizabethan England, during which time an atheist and, depending on the exact period, a Catholic, could end up with his head on a spike.

'Born With Teeth'

When: Through June 5

Where: Alley Theatre, 615 Texas

Details: $49 and up; alleytheatre.org

Marlowe, on the other hand, is a libertine, and a spy, who courts danger and thumbs his nose at bourgeois morals. As the play begins, the swaggering Kit sees Will as a middling talent and a slave to convention. Will is drawn to Kit like a puppy dog but also wary of his collaborators reckless ways. Gradually, they let down their guards. Kit praises Will for making us fall in love with villains. I cant help loving them, Will replies. Somewhere, down below, Richard III smiles.

Chasing each other (literally and figuratively) around a long rectangular table, Kit, decked out in leather and spikes, and Will, looking more like a peasant, always find themselves returning to the hazards awaiting them in the world. Kit has dangerous friends, including Sir Walter Raleigh, one of those aforementioned atheists. Another was the playwright Thomas Kyd, referred to throughout the play as Tom, who, upon being arrested and tortured, betrayed his friend Marlowe. The specter of naming names looms large throughout Born With Teeth.

This is a play of ideas but also of passions. Kit and Will bicker and boast, but they also talk of settling down together and even share an impassioned kiss. Identities are in flux here, more so for Kit, who seems bored by the idea of settling on one persona. We can see that his self-destructive impulses only lead one way; less obvious are the lessons Will gleans from his writing partner, maneuvers that might lead to his survival. In the end, we know which writer history smiled upon. Born With Teeth has a great deal of fun postulating how that might have come to be.

Chris Vognar is a Houston-based writer.

Chris Vognar is a reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

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Review: Alley Theatres Born With Teeth has a wicked bite - Houston Chronicle

When we first meet Vishwas Pethe in his memoir, Gay Crow, he is 62 and ready to end his lifenot because hes depressed or angry but because hes tired of fighting. In 2016, the Indian-American computer engineer (he was one of the original developers of Grindr) suffered a debilitating stroke and fall. Whats more, these setbacks arrived after hed been diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and then non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer, in 2001. Thats a lot of fighting.

At the insistence of his partner of 30 years, husband Joe Hennessy, Pethe agrees to see a psychologist. The conversations between Pethe and his therapist, Carl, constitute the bulk of book. Through this unconventional Q&A format, Pethes amazing life story unfoldsgrowing up in India; coming out; surviving his first partner, who was lost to AIDS; enjoying career successes; marrying Hennessy; and much more. Along the way, Pethe and his therapist matter-of-factly explore deep philosophical questions about what constitutes a happy and healthy life. POZ spoke with Pethe, who turns 67 in June and lives in Falls Church, Virginia, via email and Zoom. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

First off, tell us about the books title.

Gay Crow is a pun on the famous Indian childhood story called Happy Crow. The gist of the story is that there was a crow living in the jungle who was always happy. A king hears about it and decides to make him unhappy. He tells his soldiers to capture the crow and put him through different punishments. But the crow finds something in each circumstance to be happy about. So finally, the king lets the crow go and says we should all be happy like the crow. My uncle called me a happy (gay) crow watching me play with others when I was a kid because I was always happy.

What were your goalsfor yourself and othersin writing the memoir?

I noticed that being happy made me forget the bad things that come by in life. I always found something to be happy about and never remembered the bad things. When I talked to the therapist, it became clear to me that it might be a secret to my survival. Then I thought, Why not document this and let others in similar situations find a way out? My memoir can help people coming out, adjusting to a different culture or dealing with health problems.

What was your rationale behind considering suicide?

The left side of my brain was gone, my right arm was not working, my right leg was not working and my speech was disabled. My last fall put my left arm in plaster, and my jaw was twisted. I was on a liquid diet. My sharp mind and intellect were gone. This is on top of the years I had spent fighting AIDS. I was tired of fighting. Thats why I was choosing suicide. What kept me from doing that was my love for my partner. I imagined what his life would be with me gone. I wanted to spare him the trouble. What changed my mind is that Carl kept up my interest in psychology and that bought time while my condition improved to the point I could manage it. At no point was I depressed.

Your HIV journey has been challenging as well. In 2006, you developed resistance to HIV meds and were diagnosed with Kaposi sarcomaan AIDS-related canceruntil you got into an Isentress (raltegravir) trial, which gave you a second life. How is your HIV now?

My viral load has been undetectable since 2006. But after having a number of treatments and each having its side effects, it has taken a toll on my system. I have osteoporosis [bone loss, a potential side effect of certain HIV meds], adrenal insufficiency, hypogonadism [low testosterone], weakness in the right ankle (a result of the fall in 2001) and other age-related problems.

Is there a specific outlook or physical trait that helped you persevere?

My gay crow attitude is the thing that kept me going. As I look back on my life, I only remember what a wonderful life I had. I take notice of the negative things and deal with them, but they dont stay in my mind once they are gone.

That sounds like sthitapradnya, which you mention in the book. How would you describe this?

Sthitapradnya has various meanings. The one I go by is the state of mind that is not disturbed by good things, nor is it disturbed by bad things. You separate the mind as the inner mind and the outer mind. The outer mind reacts to good or bad things, but the inner mind stays stable. It has helped me handle the HIV and the stroke as things that happened outside but didnt affect me inside.

When I picked up your book, I expected to learn more about a Hindu view of the LGBTQ and HIV experiences, only to discover youre an atheist.

First of all, you must understand that Hinduism has nothing to do with God. You can be a God-fearing/-loving Hindu or an atheist Hindu. As someone said, Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Many Hindus dont believe in God. So my being a Hindu did not affect my being gay, but the societal attitudes did. I knew that society would not understand it, so I kept it my secret. Coming out was the same thing. I only came out to people that I thought could handle it, though I never lied about it.

I get the impression that youve not struggled with hang-ups and shame regarding being gay.

Yes, that is very correct. I have never met anyone that shamed me for my sexual preferences. Its surprising that not one person [I know] has any problem with the gay thing, including my extended family and friends here and in India.

Youre up-front about having open relationships with your long-term partners. Have you received any push-back about that in the age of marriage equality and heteronormative, monogamous relationships?

All men (not women, I am not qualified to analyze them) are promiscuous (in a good way). Men want security and freedom. Having a relationship gives them security, but they lose freedom. Being single gives them freedom but no security. An open relationship achieves both. I have not had any pushback from anyone. A more heteronormative, monogamous gay lifestyle is a fantasy. I dont know any gay person who follows that. In every relationship that I have seen, there is cheating. So take the cheating out of the relationship. If you find it beneficial to you and your partners to have a closed relationship, then do that. But you shouldnt keep someone else caged in marriage. If he meets and desires someone else, let him go. He was never yours anyway. I got married to receive the 1,000-plus benefitsfinancial and otherwise.

You worked on the original development team doing coding for Grindr, the gay dating app. You mention that folks thank you for that contribution to the gay community. What would you say to someone who counters that the app promotes hook-up culture and devalues face-to-face interactions?

Grindr made connecting with other gay men easier [and more normal]. It does facilitate the hook-up culture, but it does not devaluate face-to-face interaction. With these apps, you meet new people, which would have been impossible otherwise. Those who dont want them are free to avoid the apps.

Your therapist noted that you thrive when you have a challenge. For example, you took up painting at his suggestion, even when you had to use your nondominant hand because of the stroke. Whats the next project?

Dealing with the aftereffects of a stroke takes up my time. But painting gave some meaning to life. Meanwhile, since the stroke, [my husband and I] have become world travelers. And Im thinking of writing a new book.

Any last words of advice?

Dont let your HIV status get in the way of what you want to do. Being HIV positive is just a thing that you deal with, like many conditions other people deal with. Dont dwell on it. Maybe a gay crow attitude will help you.

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Advice From the Gay Crow - POZ - POZ

You are a member of a very peculiar species. Of all our quirks, the human religious impulse may be our most distinctive one. We build skyscrapers? Big deal, bowerbirds construct ornate decorative nests and they have brains the size of almonds. We live in really big societies? Great, so do ants, whose brains are even tinier. We can do math problems? Wonderful, but so can slime molds, and they dont even have brains!

Where humans often appear unique in some regard, a closer look usually shows us to be a mere outlier, rather than a genuine exception. This does not seem to be the case for religion. Most people who have ever lived believe in some sort of god; they are as certain of their gods as of their breath. But not a single organism outside our immediate evolutionary lineage has ever contemplated the existence of a god. Think about that for a moment: as far as we know, every single sentient being in the universe that has ever believed in a god is a member of our odd little species, and almost every member of our species has believed in a god. To scientists interested in evolution and human nature, religion is a puzzle that screams to be solved.

On closer inspection, religion is not an evolutionary puzzle so much as two evolutionary puzzles. First is the puzzle of faith: the puzzle of how Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens alone came to be a religious species. Second, there is the puzzle of atheism: how disbelief in gods can exist within an otherwise religious species. If belief in god(s) is truly an evolved human universal, how is it that millions or maybe billions of people today dont believe in any? How can a defining feature of our species (which religion most definitely is!) not be a defining feature of our entire species?

We scientists are increasingly learning that the puzzle of faith cannot be solved without also solving the puzzle of atheism. And as we learn more and more about atheism and nonbelief, they are forcing us to rethink some of our bedrock assumptions about how both belief and disbelief work.

A commonly offered solution to the puzzle of faith is that religion just comes naturally as a sort of cognitive byproduct. A suite of specific mental adaptations helped our ancestors solve recurrent challenges, and these adaptations interact in such a way that religions are just good fits for how we think. We are born believers, per the title of a recent book. Religion comes so intuitively and naturally, per this cognitive byproduct view, that atheism is a rare exception and must require cognitive effort to be sustained. In the words of Pascal Boyer, penned in a prominent summary:

Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions hardly the easiest ideology to propagate.

This notion that religion comes naturally has proven influential within science and has also attracted surprising support from New Atheist cheerleaders (perhaps because it situates their own rationality and cleverness as a key ingredient in their atheism). But just how rare is atheism?

Within the U.S., about 2-3% of people explicitly identify as atheists. But, to show up as a nonbeliever in polls like this, respondents both have to disbelieve in a god and also be comfortable voicing these doubts to a random pollster. Thats not a given. Atheism is heavily stigmatized, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

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For example, my lab has studies in which we describe a villain engaging in some sort of immoral action they kick a puppy, or dabble in cannibalism, or experiment with incest. We then subtly gauge participants intuitions about the perpetrator. In study after study, our respondents intuitively assume that people doing immoral deeds like these dont believe in gods. In one study, we described a villain who tortures animals as a child before turning into a full-blown serial killer as an adult, with dismembered bodies buried in the basement. Participants from 13 countries, including even atheist participants in some highly secular countries, intuited that the murderer cannot believe in god(s).

Not only do people readily infer atheism from described immorality, it turns out that they also read immorality into atheism. In a project with Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi and Steph McKee at the University of Virginia, we used a clever experiment to see how people mentally represent atheists. Think of the experiment as a fancy computer task that acts as a police sketch artist, pulling an image from our participants minds. Hundreds of people in the U.S. did this task for us, and these images are the results: one is what they spontaneously think about atheists, the other a spontaneous mental image of a believer. Can you guess which is which?

A separate group of participants, viewing these faces, felt that the atheist composite face (the second one, if it wasnt clear) was less religious than the other face. But even more than that, they rated the atheist face as less moral, less trustworthy, and more generally hostile and unpleasant.

Results like these people inferring that serial killers dont believe in God, or assuming that atheism leaves an indelible stamp of immorality even on peoples faces are the context in which polls of atheist prevalence exist. Poll respondents might be motivated to conceal their atheism, which would systematically downwardly bias our estimates of global atheist prevalence.

In 2018, Maxine Najle and I estimated how many atheists there are in the U.S. using a task that lets people indirectly indicate their atheism to us, without them having to say it. Using this sneaky indirect measurement technique, our best estimate is that 26% of American adults do not believe in god(s) more than twice as many as Gallup and Pew estimated at the time. If this underreporting is not unique to the U.S., this means that we have probably been vastly undercounting atheists worldwide.As it turns out, atheism probably isnt all that rare.

How about the other major claim about atheism made by the byproduct account: Does atheism require cognitive effort? Anecdotally, public atheists posit that intelligence, rationality, and science (all effortful cognitive endeavors) are the root cause of their own atheism. A classic example here would be Richard Dawkins, who credits early reading of Darwin for his atheism, and whose public rhetoric tries to use science as a wedge to drive people from their faith.

Around 2009 or 2010, Ara Norenzayan and I sought to scientifically test the idea that atheism is underpinned by effortful cognitive reflection. In an initial study, we found a correlation whereby folks who are better able to reflectively override their hunches reported being less religious. We also had a bunch of experiments in which we found that people nudged to think more rationally also tended to report lower levels of religious belief. Our eventual paper was accepted for publication in the journal Science, and two other research teams independently published similar studies in other outlets. Our papers attracted widespread news coverage and were widely praised by the New Atheist set. Here was seemingly solid evidence to vindicate their central claim that atheism was all about rationality!

But the plot thickened. Rigorous follow-up studies repeatedly have been unable to produce similar results to our initial experiments. I have now accepted that the experiments in our initial Science paper were fatally flawed, the results no more than false positives. Beyond the experimental failures to replicate, the correlation between rational thinking and atheism turns out to be both weak and fickle across cultures.

Even in the U.S., my team found in a large and nationally representative sample that effortful cognitive reflection doesnt at all predict atheism among people strongly exposed to religion as kids. The very dynamic posited by New Atheists of churchbound kids using science and rationality to free themselves from faiths shackles could not be found in the most rigorous exploration to date. There is little scientific reason to believe that rationality and science are key causal contributors to atheism in the aggregate. This makes it all the more ironic that public-facing atheists who speak so reverently of science tend to be the most vocal advocates of the faulty notion that rationality is a prime driver of atheism. Theyve got the science wrong.

Religion is no less an evolutionary product than is a raptor or a ribosome, worthy of the same scientific awe. Through the processes of genetic evolution, we have been endowed with minds capable of imagining gods, and through the processes of cultural evolution, we have evolved intricate structures of beliefs and norms that have helped propel our species to greater and greater cooperative heights. The seemingly bizarre religious rituals that many deride as irrational may in fact be cultural evolutionary tricks that help create cooperative societies.

To me, this intricate cultural evolutionary play is infinitely more fascinating and fulfilling than the shallow, wholesale dismissal of religion offered by vocal public atheists. And to appreciate it, all you need to do is open yourself up to the possibility that over the millennia, religions may have survived and thrived in part because they served an evolutionary purpose. Of course, atheists need not subscribe to a given religious faith to appreciate it; one neednt accept or praise something simply because it was useful in cultural evolution. But everyone including atheists, which I am can have a more mature, scientifically literate, and fulfilling relationship with religion if we are open to the possibility that it doesnt poison everything.

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Atheism is not as rare or as rational as you think - Big Think

Is Pemphero Mphande the latter days Biblical Saul who converted into a believer and became Paul? Pemphero, a self confessed atheist, has now dumped his atheism beliefs following a prophecy that his days on earth are numbered.

Mr Mphande who claimed to have been an atheist since 2012 is fasting and praying to God to spare his life.

I have argued with hundreds of people, been in public debates, written tens of articles on atheism and theism- its always the same arguments or analogies from believers, said Pemphero on Twitter on 14 January in 2020.

However, since the prophecy that the socialite made public on 17 April 2022, Pemphero has been praying unceasingly. He has even visited pastors and prophets for intercession.

The prophecy from a mysterious woman that Pemphero shared on his Facebook page claims that he would die this coming Friday.

I dreamt you were on a stretcher in a hospital and doctors were rushing you to the theatre. You had alot of blood on you. Then some moments I was reading a newspaper and it said Pemphero Mphande no more dated Friday, 22 April. I woke up and I have been praying for you, reads a post on his Facebook page.

Since then, Mr Mphande an atheist, has converted into a belieber just like Paul. But who wouldnt?

As we give power to the lord and confess that death is not our potion, I invite you all to special prayers for Pemphero at Word of Faith Temple International this evening at 5:30pm reads his recent post, asking people to join him in prayers.

However, there are others who believe that Pemphero, the latter days Paul, is performing a stunt.

Pemphero Mphande wapempha omutsatira amuthandize kupemphera chifukwa mayi wina walota iye atamwalira

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Pemphero Mphande quits atheism over death prophecy: Prays to God to spare his life - Malawi24

Rev. David Wilson Rogers| Carlsbad Current-Argus

Today is Easter SundayIt is a day filled with memories of empty tombs, shouts of He is risen! worshipful parents, family gatherings, searching for hidden treasures, and time-honored traditions which many people love. For all the beauty, memory, pageantry, and tradition surrounding the day, it is important that Christians take a moment and put the day in perspective.

Arguably, Easter is the heart of the Christian faith. Without the Empty Tomb, Jesus is nothing more than a miracle-working, inspirational-preaching, radical Jewish martyr. Christs triumph over death marks the fundamental premise of Christianity. Far from being a simple miracle of resurrectionwhich, in-and-of-itself is incredibly significantthe resurrection is a fundamental premise of why Christianity matters.

Easter reminds us that even though our human mortality is something none of us can escape in this life, our inevitable death and the death of those whom we love, has no ultimate claim on our eternal relevance. The Psalmist in Psalm 146 states that the ambitions of people fade into oblivion when they breathe their last. Yet the miracle of Easter reminds us that death has no permanence. Resurrection not only matters, but it also defines the critical significance of the Christian life.

In the early decades of the United States of America, two ideologically opposed debaters famously debated the merits of Christian faith versus the increasing popularity of Atheism. Acknowledging the rational relevance of the Atheists argument that God does not exist and that the Christian claim on everlasting life was meaningless, the Christian in this debate asked the Atheist a question. Assuming you are right and I am wrong, what will happen to you and I when we die? the Christian asked. Everything that we are would cease to exist, the Atheist confidently answered. Understandably so. Now, may I also ask, if I am right, what would happen to you and I when we die? Respectfully, the Atheist answered that if Christian doctrine were actually correct, the Christian would have everlasting life and the Atheists future would likely be oblivion at best, and eternal condemnation at worst. In response to the Atheists confident answer, the Christian then challenged the Atheist with the their mutually established assumption that if one was to wager on the future knowing that if Atheism is correct and everyone ends up in the same place or that if Christianity was right, the Atheist would absolutely lose, the only safe bet would be on Christianity.

Easter reminds us thatright or wrongChristians have a degree of hope that non-Christians do not have. That is not to say that God does not save people who have not ascribed to the doctrinal decrees of the Church. Certainty Christs compassionate judgment evaluates the heart and not ones religious practices. Yet, the miracle of the resurrection reminds the world that there is more to this life than the finite years by which ones biological existence is present on the planet we call Earth. We are fundamentally spiritual beings that may live beyond biology and know a reality defined in love.

It is that love that ultimately defines the reality of Easter. Johns gospel famously reminds Christians that God loved the world so much that Christ was sent to the Earth that Gods love may be manifest through Jesus. The Resurrection celebrated at Easter is fundamental proof that Gods love is our shared hope that we are all more than our momentary life, our biological existence on this planet, or our religious doctrinal beliefs. We are spiritual beings who can live and love today and beyond this life into an eternity defined by Gods love.

Continued here:

Easter is the perfect time to reflect on God's love - Carlsbad Current Argus

On April 8, 1966, the pictureless front cover of TimeMagazineasked a bold and direct question: Is God Dead? This was just two days before Easter Sunday, and in the decades that followed, it became increasingly common for anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-Bible essays to be featured in various secular publications at this time of year.

Now, in keeping with this anti-God attitude during this sacred season, an April 15 op-ed piece for TheNew York Times was headlined, In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.

How deeply sensitive for the Times to post this anti-God essay on the day which is both Good Friday on the Christian calendar and the first day of Passover on the Jewish calendar! What a nice touch, editorial department! You have really outdone yourselves this year. (And a special shoutout to Liana Finck for her graphic, depicting God as an angry, Godzilla-like giant, marching through the city with terror on his mind.)

The author of this op-ed is Shalom Auslander, who was raised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Monsey, NY, before losing his faith. But even as an 8-year-old boy, he was troubled by aspects of the Passover narrative in which God poured out his plagues on the Egyptians.

Thats because it was not just Pharaoh and his soldiers that were afflicted. Instead, Egyptians young and old, innocent and guilty, suffered locusts and frogs, hail and darkness, beasts running wild and water becoming blood. Mothers nursing their babies, the rabbi explained, found their breast milk had turned to blood. (For the record, the Bible says nothing about milk turning into blood, let alone breast milk. But this is what Auslander remembers hearing as a boy from his rabbis.)

As for Pharaohs hardness of heart toward God and Israel, how was that his fault, since God was the one hardening him?

As for God smiting the firstborn sons of Egypt meaning, the firstborn of people and of cattle what could be more barbaric than that?

If he were mortal, Auslander opines, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be dragged to The Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate him. We implore our children to be like him.

Really now, what were we thinking?

He continues, Perhaps now, as missiles rain down and the dead are discovered in mass graves, is a good time to stop emulating this hateful God. Perhaps we can stop extolling his brutality. Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God to be as unlike him as possible.

And then, having kicked God out of our lives, we should throw our doors open to strangers. To people who arent our own. To the terrifying them, to the evil others, those people who seem so different from us, those we think are our enemies or who think us theirs, but who, if they sat down around the table with us, wed no doubt find despise the pharaohs of this world as much as we do, and who dream of the same d----d thing as us all:

Peace.

Having followed the stories of former, ultra-Orthodox Jews, I do understand how they can be so resentful of their upbringing that they throw out the baby with the bathwater, unable to separate human traditions from the God of the Bible.

In this case, however, Auslander would counter that it is the God of the Bible whom he so opposes and rejects. We need to be liberated from Him!

But if there is no God and we are simply the products of an unguided evolutionary process (rather than being created by God in His image), there would be no such thing as justice. Or goodness. Or absolute morality.

As C.S. Lewis reflected on his mindset as an atheist, My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?

He continued, Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality namely my idea of justice was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.Darkwould be without meaning.

Auslanders moral outrage actually undercuts, rather than supports, his whole argument against God.

He also seems to ignore the massive revelation of Gods patience and kindness and longsuffering and compassion found throughout the Bible and how He sternly judges those who take advantage of the orphan, the widow, the needy, and the stranger. Is the Lord really that schizophrenic, slaughtering the innocent with glee one moment and then grieving over the suffering of orphans the next? The Scriptures even declare that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but desires rather that they repent and live (see Ezekiel 18).

Even apparent injustices like the hardening of Pharaohs heart disappear upon closer examination of the Hebrew text. (For my video on this, see here.)

And what of the Lords ongoing mercy and compassion towards us? Do any of us with a recognition of the failings of our own heart dare to rail against God? Would any of us dare to stand before Him on judgment day and say, Give me exactly what I deserve?

Not only so, but for the Christian, the fullest revelation of God is found in the cross, where His own Son voluntarily died a shameful, agonizing, death to spare us from final judgment. In the words of philosopher John Kreeft, We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

It is my prayer for Mr. Auslander (and others who share his sentiments) that they will personally encounter the boundless love of the heavenly Father. Once we truly come to know Him in a personal and intimate way, even if we dont get answers to all our questions, we will get the thing Auslander is after: peace peace with God, peace with ourselves, and peace with one another.

As for TimeMagazine, just 5 years after that infamous 1966 cover (with the lead article declaring that God was, in fact, dead), circumstances compelled Time to put out a very different cover story. So it was on June 21, 1971, that Times cover announced, The Jesus Revolution.

I came to faith that very year as a heroin-shooting, LSD-using, 16-year-old, Jewish, hippie rock drummer, one of the countless thousands like me around the world. God was anything but dead!

I sense that He is about to reveal Himself afresh today. The story might even make it to the front page of the New York Times! Be assured that He is not going away.

(If you are struggling with some of the questions raised by Auslander, I have written two books you might find helpful. See here and here.)

Dr. Michael Brown(www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicatedLine of Fireradio program. His latest book isRevival Or We Die: A Great Awakening Is Our Only Hope.Connect with him onFacebook,Twitter, orYouTube.

Originally posted here:

From Times 'Is God dead?' in 1966 to The New York Times call to 'Give Up God' today - The Christian Post

OPINION:

The U.S. Supreme Court is due to hear at the end of this month a widely reported case of a high school football coach who was forced from his job after he refused an administrative order to stop praying on the field at the end of games.

The crime of praying. In America? In a nation founded on a quest for religious freedom, forged on the principles of the Judeo-Christian belief system and both rooted in and raised to a state of exceptionalism on a concept of individual rights coming from God, not government is there really such a thing as a crime of praying?

This is how far America has strayed from its foundations.

This is how far the secularist, humanist, atheist loons of the left have managed to transform the society from rugged individualism, based on God-given liberties, into obedient collectivism, driven by government commands.

Joseph Kennedy began his coaching position in 2008 at Bremerton High School in Washington. He began offering prayers post-game for players and coaches alike at a midfield point where they would voluntarily gather, shake hands, and in a spirit of commonality, give thanks for the competition, for the safety of players, for sportsmanlike conduct and so forth.

Nobody minded.

Nobody complained.

Then school administrators caught wind of what he was doing and sent him a stern warning about policy that said staff couldnt encourage students to engage in religious activity that is to say, then pinheaded bureaucrats in the district ran like frightened sheep from the possibility that someone might sue, so they knee-jerked and intimidated the coach into stifling his prayers. Yes, knee-jerked. They couldve rallied behind the coach; they couldve stood tall on the principles of free speech, free assembly, freedom of worship, freedom in America or just common sense: The prayers, after all, were voluntary. Vol.Un.Tear.Ee.

But in bureauspeak the language, obviously, of these Washington school administrators the logic goes like this: Christians are so much easier to shut up than, say, an angry atheist who might come along and make a call to the, oh, say, Freedom From Religion Foundation or to the, hmm, perhaps, American Civil Liberties Union, and then join forces and launch a lawsuit that will entangle the school in legal battles, in costly legal battles, in expensive, ugly, well-publicized legal battles for months and even years to come. School administrators hate that. School administrators will do whatever it takes to avoid these scenarios.

So they go the path of perceived least resistance.

They expect that Christians wont fight. They expect that Christians will go quietly into that good night. They expect that Christians will do the Christian thing and bow quietly to the authorities in the government the authorities, after all, that the Bible teaches were put in place by God. What Would Jesus Do, and all that good stuff.

Christians dont fight.

Atheists, on the other hand, do.

That logic? Thats been pretty much the battlefield in America for years now.

And heres the thing: Thats why Americas been facing so much peril from the left in recent years. That logic has worked in bureaucrats favor. Bureaucrats have expected Christians, by and large, to stifle and stay quiet and go away because Christians, by and large, with few exceptions, have done just that.

America has come to the point where the path of least resistance has become the one that gives atheists more power and authority than Christians, than Bible believers, than those of faith.

In a country built on God-given, that wont do.

This Supreme Court case is the eye of Americas storm. If justices rule one way, its the underscore and recognition of all thats great about America of all that America is of all that keeps this country rooted in freedom. If justices rule another way, its the end of all that America is of all that makes America, America. Think about it.

But think about this, also. Either way, the fact that this case is at the highest court in the land is a clanging bell for believers.

If freedom to worship is a human right, if freedom of religious worship is a constitutional right, if America is a country where rights come from God the right of a coach to pray on public school grounds does not even belong in the hands of the court, of any court, to debate. The government should not even have a say.

Once upon a time, we all agreed. Now we dont. And that is making all the difference.

Cheryl Chumley can be reached atcchumley@washingtontimes.comor on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast Bold and Blunt byclicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter byclicking HERE. Her latest book, Socialists Dont Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall, is available byclickingHERE.

Excerpt from:

America must fight for the right to pray, no matter what the Supreme Court says - Washington Times

As a Bay Area teen, I am lucky enough to live in a community that contains bountiful diversity in all forms, but particularly religious diversity within the Jewish community.

As a longtime attendee of Camp Tawonga, a camp that encourages campers to find their own spiritual paths however they affiliate with Judaism, I have grown familiar with the beauty and complexities that come with modern interpretations of inclusive religious practice.

At camp, I have befriended everyone from Modern Orthodox Jews to Jewish atheists to people who dont identify as Jewish in any regard, but still find meaning in the rituals and community that they have found.

It was, in part, this acceptance that inspired me to pursue my own understanding of how Judaism fits into my life and identity; the knowledge that I could question and grapple with my faith and still be embraced unconditionally in my Jewish community.

Not unrelated to my questions surrounding modern Jewish identity has been my journey into social justice work.

In mid-2020, at peak pandemic boredom, I applied to be a fellow with the Kol Koleinu Teen Feminist Fellowship, now called the Meyer-Gottesman Kol Koleinu Teen Feminist Fellowship (and run by the Jewish nonprofit Moving Traditions). Through this fellowship, I have learned what it means to be a feminist, an activist, and a Jew, all with the same aforementioned acceptance that makes this growth possible.

Integral to the Kol Koleinu Fellowship is the yearlong social-change project, in which an individual or small group is paired with a mentor to create something to better our world.

I have been fascinated by ideas of intergenerational traumas, conflicts and legacies, so I decided to begin a project focused on legacies within the Jewish community. My project became a reimagined Passover haggadah focused on legacy and inheritance from a deeply intersectional viewpoint.

For this haggadah, called Yerushah (inheritance), I collected interviews, writings and art pieces dealing with inheritance to connect Passover, a holiday that is intrinsically history-oriented, with a legacy and continuation of the Judaism that plays out around me today.

I am deeply proud of this haggadah. Perhaps my favorite piece is the one that I created for maror, the part in the seder in which we eat bitter foods to remind us of the suffering of our ancestors.

I felt called to think of bitterness in a new way; that is, bitterness that one may feel toward religion, or religious practices in general. In addition to interviewing my atheist Jewish twin brother and a Presbyterian pastor who is the father of a close friend, and researching residual religious perspectives of Holocaust survivors, I spoke with my unofficial step-grandfather, John.

Despite having no connection to me by blood or marriage, John has always been a close grandfather figure, and I wanted to speak with him due to his late introduction to Judaism.

Religion has never been a part of my focus, he told me. In fact, I have a very bitter approach to most formal organized religions that seem to wind up killing lots of people because they dont wear the right-shaped hats.

The section on maror continues thus: In addition to bitterness towards the oft-misused power and legacy of the religious structure, the loss of faith that may come after witnessing intense tragedy can evoke intensely bitter resentment towards the divine being that was supposed to protect its followers from harm I have come across a phrase over the course of my research that was anonymously carved into one of the cell walls at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria: Wenn es einen Gott gibt mu er mich um Verzeihung bitten, which translates as If there is a God, he must ask my forgiveness. Grappling with bitterness gives us an environment in which to question, disagree, or even resent faith, but it does not necessarily preclude faith itself, in environments where questioning is permitted. There is hope and dialogue in the grappling, whereas bitterness itself is a brick wall.

By bringing new voices to the seder table to grapple together with these intense questions, I hope the haggadah I have written makes the seder more accessible and approachable to those who may have felt left out or disconnected from traditional Jewish practice.

Go here to read the rest:

For questions about identity, I've written my own haggadah J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

There is perhaps no better day to respond to what columnist Harold Acemah wrote in this newspaper last Sunday than today, which is Easter Sunday.Religion remains an integral part of peoples lives, but if we continue to fail to question what it says, especially if what it says is demonstrably and patently false; if we continue to prioritise religion over logic, reason and science, we may remain a poor and underdeveloped country and, by extension, continent for decades to come.We need to learn to teach our children, the future leaders of our country/continent, to think critically and to believe that everything must be open to question even if it is regarded by millions of people as the gospel truth. That is one of the ways our formal education will set us apart from people who did not go to school. Mr Acemah claimed that the article I wrote on March 6 entitled Wars illustrate how God is irrelevant in human affairs annoyed, offended and outraged many Christians.I stated clearly that the views I was expressing were not meant to offend anyone. I wanted readers to reflect deeply and soberly on what they believe and, crucially, what they teach our children to believe.I will cite several verses from the Bible, including the oft-used verse that Mr Acemah quoted to bolster his argument, to show problems with what we believe and why we are wrong.Fools say to themselves, there is no God. They are all corrupt and they have done terrible things; there is no one who does what is right. Psalm 14:1 (GNB).Is it true that people who do not believe in God are fools? Are they corrupt? Have they done terrible things? Let us look at facts closely. Here are the countries with the highest possible ranges of atheists: Sweden (4685 percent), Vietnam (81 percent), Denmark (4380 percent), Norway (3172 percent) and Japan (6465 percent).If Psalm 14:1 is true and is the word of God, why is it that Denmark, Norway and Sweden have almost zero corruption, according to Transparency International, yet Uganda, South Sudan and Somalia (all highly religious) are mired in corruption?Which terrible things have the Danes, Japanese, Norwegians and Swedes done? Denmark and Norway run two relief organisations the Danish Refugee Council and the Norwegian Refugee Council respectively that look after millions of people displaced by conflict started by countries where the leaders and the led are religious.From 2010 to 2013, Uruguay was led by an atheist president named Jos Mujica. If what Psalm 14:1 says is true, Mr Mujica would have been one of the worlds worst leaders. Yet, as president, Mr Mujica lived exceedingly frugally, driving a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle in a world where non-atheist presidents and prime ministers have miles-long convoys of swanky cars. He rejected a luxury home provided by the state and opted for a farmhouse. There are more demonstrably false verses in the Bible. Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19 and James 5:15-16 clearly tell believers that they can get anything if they pray. Mark 11:24 says: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.Is this true? If prayer does work, as these verses say, can we pray and get rid of Ugandas rotten leadership, which we have failed to remove through elections? And can we succeed when we have Romans 13:1?We should not use religion to kill logic. Happy Easter!Mr Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk[emailprotected] @kazbuk

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The honest conversation we should have this Easter - Monitor