Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1850

Anti-Gay Group Puts Up Billboard With Stock Photo of “Twin” Brothers… Only One of Whom Exists… and He’s Gay!

A billboard along I-95 near Richmond, Virginia, erected recently by PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays), has come in for derision after the man depicted on it contacted local news to say the roadside ad takes serious liberties with the truth.

South African model Kyle Roux clarified that he doesn’t have a twin brother, and that he is himself an out-and-proud gay man:

“It just seems like there no place in today’s world for an organization that is promoting this as being some kind of deviant or distasteful lifestyle, because I’ve lived my life openly gay and happy for my entire life.”

PFOX claims that homosexuality is a choice and encourages gay people to become straight through sheer willpower, which the Lord Jesus could provide if only gay sinners would embrace him.

Speaking via Skype [with the NBC news affiliate in Richmond], Kyle Roux said he was shocked his image was used. Especially since he calls himself an “out and proud” gay man… Roux hasn’t thought about that photo shoot in nearly a decade. He says the pictures used on the billboard were part of a stock photo shoot he did. Roux signed away the rights and was told the pictures would be used in commercial and corporate ads and brochures.

If PFOX’s “science” were true, the organization shouldn’t have a hard time coming up with actual identical twins of the “one gay, one not” variety. That the gay-hating group had to resort to double fakery says more about PFOX than the message on the billboard ever could.

Your Conservative Family Members Will Love Your New Cross Necklace Until They Realize What It Really Is…

Designer Tom Ford is currently selling penis necklaces on his website. Fancy gold and silver phallic pendants that look, from a distance, like Christian crosses.

I don’t claim to understand fashion, or why anyone would spend nearly $800 on a dickoration, but I guess it could be worth it for the moment when your Christian relative praises that lovely cross you’re wearing…

I’m gonna guess the large ones sell out before the small ones.

***Update***: Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has responded in typical, hateful fashion:

When we learned of this item, I said to the staff that I bet this guy Tom Ford is a homosexual. I was right. He even thinks he’s married.

(via Bustle. Thanks to Matt for the link)

Conservative Congress Looks to Further Reward States That Teach Abstinence-Only Sex Ed

Facing a(nother) looming budget showdown, conservatives in Congress wasted no time in steering negotiations toward conservative goals, like so-called “pro-life policy” such as focusing on abortion coverage and promoting abstinence-only sex ed.

Nevermind that abstinence-only ed is a monumental failure; nevermind that abstinence educators often mislead and degrade students. It’s part of the Christian conservative social agenda, and legislators are (predictably) pursuing it.

You won’t be needing these anytime soon…

Under a provision added in 1996 to the Social Security Act, Congress allocates $50 million annually in matching funds to states that provide abstinence-only education. Each year, some states reject that money, either because they don’t want to match the funds or because they only want to teach comprehensive sex ed. The leftover money has, until now, gone back to the U.S. Treasury to be spent on other things.

Conservatives propose changing that, however, to allow states that do not implement comprehensive sex education to receive the unclaimed funds — usually between twelve and fifteen million dollars a year. The conditions? States have to implement the entire abstinence education standards, which includes stipulations that a program must, for instance

[h]ave as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;

And

Teach that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.

Now, to be clear, we’re not talking about ensuring that information about abstinence is included with other medically accurate information; this money is available only for those programs where abstinence is all young people learn. This is $50 million we set aside each year to provide incomplete sex education; and conservatives in Congress want to ensure that every penny goes toward that worthy goal this year.

Which is terrible sex ed, but, you know, it apparently makes Jesus happy.

The bill passed through the House 219-206 last night.

(Image via Ekaterina_Minaeva / Shutterstock.com)

Photo of Nude Pregnant Woman Upsets City Council President So Much, He Wants Museum’s Funding Pulled

No, this is not a story from Lahore or Riyadh.

Welcome to Jacksonville, Florida.

Jacksonville City Council President Clay Yarborough objected Wednesday to a photo of a nude pregnant woman at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, saying it “works against our efforts to promote a family-friendly Jacksonville and downtown.”

Won’t somebody please think of the widdle cheel-drunn!!!

Yarborugh says that he photo is so unpalatable, and exhibiting it so irresponsible, that the museum should suffer financial consequences to the tune of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Yarborough asked Mayor Alvin Brown’s office to pull $230,000 of taxpayer money that was awarded to the downtown museum through the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, which screened grant applications for the money. Yarborough said he objected in part because the image could be seen by anyone, including children, coming to the museum.

He’s right. Everyone knows that kids, if given half a chance, will flock to museums to gape at smutty nudes. The li’l ones sorely need protectors like Yarborough to shield them from a Vermeeresque travesty such as this (the controversial photo in question, by artist Angela Strassheim):

We could instead show them wholesome pictures like this.

Now that‘s what I call art.

“I am trying to promote a positive moral climate in our city,” Yarborough told the Times-Union by email, “and though some will defend the pornography by labeling it ‘art,’ we need boundaries in order to be healthy, especially where it concerns our children.” …

Strassheim’s photos are displayed in many fine museums, and there have been no other complaints, but many positive comments, since an exhibit of her work opened, said Marcelle Polednik, MOCA’s director.

Mayor Brown has politely told Yarborough to buzz off, noting that, under case law, censoring or punishing the museum would be a First-Amendment violation that “could subject the City to injunctive action and financial sanctions.”

(Bottom image via Shutterstock)

Is God Thumbing His Nose At Us? The Problem of Evil and the Florida Lottery

In your literary wanderings, you may have come across this quote, attributed (perhaps wrongly) to the Greek philosopher Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

The Epicurean paradox is an early version of the problem of evil. For thousands of years, people have been asking why an all-powerful deity does nothing to prevent disease, cruelty, and horrible deaths.

Pondering the problem of evil is challenging enough when good people suffer. It’s worse when good people suffer and the perpetrators barely do (or not at all).

And it becomes an exercise in pure frustration when this happens:

Timothy Dale Poole, a convicted sex offender, has won $3 million in the Florida lottery. The 43-year-old was arrested in 1999 and accused of sexual battery on a 9-year-old. He eventually pled guilty to attempted sexual battery in a plea bargain and is currently listed as a sex predator in state records. …

Poole was sentenced to 13 months in jail and 10 years of probation, but was sent to prison for 3 years when he missed his mandatory sex offender counseling sessions.

And now, in a big cosmic joke, he’s receiving a million dollars for each year behind bars. A celestial reward for raping a kid, and other criminality:

The Sentinel said he’s been arrested 12 times on charges that include grand theft and forging a check.

Commented a friend of Poole’s:

“He was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe it.” … “He’s a very positive person. Very kind. Giving. I think that’s why he won,” Snyder said. “It’s Christmastime, and the dude deserves a break.”

Yes, for Jesus’s birthday, child rapists should get millions. It’s only fair.

Meanwhile, the victim is entitled to bupkis.

And while the 450-pound Poole will be able to order any food he pleases for as long as he lives, and as much of it as he likes, this is what life has in store for millions of others:

God is a standup guy, isn’t he?

(Bottom image via topnaz)

According to the Egyptian Government, There Are Precisely 866 Atheists in the Country

According to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, atheists (who use that label) comprise 1.6% of the population… If there are about 316,000,000 Americans, that means there are about 5,056,000 atheists in the country.

The key word in all that is “about.” There are undoubtedly a lot of Americans who don’t believe in God but who don’t use the “atheist” label. There are probably lots of atheists who lie and just say they’re religious because of the stigma. We also have to consider the margin of error for the survey. In other words, what we have are strong estimates at best. And every survey reveals slightly different numbers.

But not in Egypt. They don’t do estimates in Egypt:

Alber Saber, an Egyptian atheist who was arrested for his public non-belief

… senior government clerics are quite sure of one thing: there are exactly 866 atheists in Egypt — roughly 0.00001% of the population.

This suspiciously precise figure means Egypt harbours the highest number of atheists in the Arab world, according to claims by Dar al-Ifta, an official wing of government that issues religious edicts, citing research released this week by a regional polling group. Morocco came in second, with supposedly only 325 atheists. Yemen is meant to have 32.

That’s… weirdly specific. And in a country where Islam is a powerful force, and there’s backlash against atheists who are open about it (including possible prison sentences), how many atheists just keep quiet in order to stay safe?

“They are in denial,” said Rabab Kamal, a spokesperson for The Secularists, a small but vocal group that lobbies for a secular state. “I could count more than that number of atheists at al-Azhar university alone,” she added, referencing the Cairo-based institution that is widely regarded as the seat of global Sunni learning.

What’s even worse is that the definition of atheist, according to Dar al-Ifta, was even broader than it should be. Their definition includes Muslims who converted to a different faith.

There’s just no way 866 is an accurate number. They rounded down… by a factor of everything. One estimate puts the number closer to 2 million (in the country of about 87 million).

The report said social media was partly to blame for the high number of atheists. They’re somewhat right on that end. The more these lies are spread and people are made aware of it, the less seriously people will take their leaders and their leaders’ faith.

Arizona High School Softball Players Allege They Were Kicked Off Their Team for Refusing to Pray

A team captain and two other players on a Mesa, Arizona public school softball team are suing after allegedly being booted from the team for refusing to lead team prayers.

The students claim that local Mormon parents and students, as well as coach Joseph Gordman, painted the girls as bullies who were jeopardizing “team morale and unity” over religious issues. The supposed offenses included not conducting and participating in team prayers, playing hip-hop music that “offended [the] religious sensitivities” of one student at a tournament, and one plaintiff’s social media postings.

While the school claims that its actions were justified to preserve team unity, their defense is curiously lacking anything resembling evidence. In the ruling allowing part of the case to proceed, U.S. District Judge John Sedwick notes that Gordman provided no justification to his claims that the students acted in an offensive or objectionable fashion.

… [T]he complaint does not describe the music that was played at the tournament, the content of [plaintiff] B.H.’s tweets, or any facts showing how either could be considered objectionable…

If Gordman did indeed oust the girls for a lack of participation in team prayers, this is a clear violation of their rights.

The plaintiffs additionally outlined a number of other troubling practices — including releasing Mormon students from class time to attend seminary with a lack of oversight as to departure and return times, allowing tardiness from LDS students returning from seminary but not other students, etc. Judge Sedwick did not allow these complaints to proceed as they did not directly affect the students involved, but the allegations are nonetheless concerning.

It will be interesting to see how the case proceeds. These allegations might be hard to prove, but if they are with merit, I hope they are successful. Students should be able to engage in school and extracurricular activities without fear that they will be punished for not sharing the beliefs of their coach or a majority of their peers.

(via ThinkProgress. Image via Jan de Wild / Shutterstock.com)

How Do We Know That Santa is Imaginary?

This is a guest post by Marshall Brain. Marshall is best known as the founder of HowStuffWorks.com. He is also the creator of popular websites like WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com and GodIsImaginary.com. His new book How “God” Works will be available in January from Sterling Publishing.

…

In the United States, December means that hundreds of millions of people are preparing for the big day on December 25. We see the preparations all around us: People are putting up trees in the living room and wreathes on the door, we see lights on buildings and bushes, and then there is the huge retail frenzy that is impossible to miss.

Mixed in with all of this is Santa Claus. You can sit on Santa’s knee and talk to him at the mall, and see Santa in parades all across the country. There are TV specials about Santa, songs about him, cookies in Santa shapes, posters, books, ornaments, etc. Santa has one of the best PR departments on the planet.

Even so, and even though many of us believed Santa to be real as children, I do not know a single adult who believes that the actual Santa Claus exists. You probably find yourself in the same position. You do not believe in Santa, even though you see him everywhere, and neither does anyone you know.

How does this happen? Have you ever thought about that? Because it really is quite remarkable. How can you, and I, and just about every adult in America, know that Santa is imaginary with 100% certainty? What gives us that level of confidence? Why do we have not a bit of doubt?

If you think it through, you will realize that Santa has one big problem when it comes to his PR department — they over-promise and under-deliver. In other words, there is a definition of Santa that has been widely distributed to the general public, and this definition just does not stand up to scrutiny.

Historically, the whole Santa persona was consolidated by the poem ”‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” first published in 1823 in a New York magazine called the Sentinel. That poem has since been republished and sung millions of times, to the point where most Americans can recite all or parts of it from memory. In this poem, which is less than 600 words long, all of Santa’s major attributes get cast in stone because of the poem’s huge popularity. Here we learn about the flying sleigh, the eight reindeer (including their individual names), the chimney as the point of entry, the sack of toys, the white beard, and the round belly. This persona was amplified by widespread Coca-Cola ads and other illustrations in the twentieth century. If you notice, Santa is dressed in fur in the poem, but Santa’s suit is now universally red with white trim — identical to the colors on a can of Coke.

Thus, you, and everyone in America really, has a set of attributes for Santa stored in our collective memories. In addition to the sleigh, the reindeer, the chimney, and the sack of toys, there is the workshop at the North Pole, the elves, Rudolph, and so on.

The problem is that, as we grow up, we come to understand that none of these attributes are true. There is no such thing as flying reindeer, for example. Everyone knows that. Thus there is no flying sleigh. And even if there were, there is no way for the sleigh to hold all the toys for all the good girls and boys around the world. Nor is there enough time for the sleigh to alight on every rooftop in one night. Furthermore, the poem is based on the model of single-family detached dwellings with fireplaces, and that model does not really apply to millions of apartments and their missing rooftops and chimneys. We also know that there are not giant factories at the North Pole, nor enslaved elves making toys, especially since most of the toys today come clearly marked with their Chinese point of origin. And so on.

What we all realize as adults is that none of Santa’s key attributes hold up in reality — in fact they cannot possibly be true. Therefore, we know that Santa is imaginary, and we are quite certain in that judgment.

What we have described here is a technique that can be used more generally to disprove things.

Step 1 is to make a list of the attributes or properties of the thing.

Step 2 is to look at each attribute in Step 1 and see if it holds up to scrutiny in the real world.

Step 3 is to then look at the status of all of the attributes together after step 2. Using this technique on Santa is easy because all of the attributes end up failing in step 2 and therefore we are left with the null set in step 3. Santa is obviously imaginary.

What if we apply this same technique to the God of the Bible? It really is an interesting exercise. We would need to make a list of attributes, but that is easy to do by looking at things like the dictionary, the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed. For example, omniscience is one of God’s well-known attributes, so we ask: Is God omniscient? It is possible to find places in the Bible where this clearly is not true. Genesis 2:18-20 is one good example. Genesis 3:9-11 is another. So the omniscience attribute is not true.

God supposedly answers prayers. But if we take the time to scrutinize this attribute, we find that in reality, every “answered prayer” is actually a coincidence. We note, for example, that if we pray to God to heal an amputee by restoring a lost limb, these prayers always fail. Because we have eliminated the possibility of coincidence in a case like this, coincidence cannot create the illusion of an “answered prayer” and so the prayer never gets answered. After studying prayer in detail, we realize that the belief in prayer is in reality a superstition.

If we make a list of all of God’s major attributes like these, we come to understand that they all fail, and that’s why we can be just as certain that God is imaginary as we are that Santa is imaginary.

This really is fascinating if you think about it. If God and Santa are equally imaginary, and certifiably so, how can billions of people on planet earth believe that God is real? The first reason is because most believers have never taken the time to do any sort of analysis, in part because they may have no real desire to know the truth. For example, if you currently believe in life after death, and if you are planning to meet up again with your beloved Aunt Sally when you die, you may have no desire at all to prove to yourself that God is imaginary.

The second reason is that there are a number of fallacies and biases that work together to prop up the belief in God. For example, if you are not trained to be a critical thinker, you can use confirmation bias and coincidences to make it seem like prayers are being answered. You can also make use of the placebo effect. The post hoc fallacy creates the appearance that prayers are having an effect when in fact they are not. And so on. If you succumb to all of these mental derailments, you are left with the illusion that prayer works. Then when large groups of Christians get together in the echo chamber at church, groupthink takes over and everyone in the community thinks prayer works.

But the reality of the situation is obvious to every rational, unbiased observer: prayer is a superstition. And God is definitely not omniscient. And God did not write the Bible. And so on through all of God’s attributes. And thus we know, without any doubt, that God is imaginary. Not a single attribute of God is left standing after analysis.

Now what? The challenge comes in educating the general population so that they can become critical thinkers. It really would be worth our while as a society to do this. First, if the general population were trained in this way, it would inoculate all of us against confirmation bias, superstition, the placebo effect, groupthink and the post hoc fallacy, especially when they are used in the political realm. In addition, it is not healthy to have a society filled with millions of citizens who believe in and talk to imaginary beings on a daily basis.

God is imaginary. He is as imaginary as Santa and Rudolph. The sooner we can create a society where the large majority of the population can think critically and understand this, the better off we will all be.

(Image via Shutterstock)

PA School District Says Ten Commandments Monument at Junior High Isn’t Religious Because It Includes a Bald Eagle

This is a picture of Connellsville Junior High East in Pennsylvania… with a Ten Commandments monument right in front of it. It’s been there since the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated it in 1957:

A couple of years ago, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote letters to the district to have it taken down, and it resulted in the monument being boarded up with plans for it to be donated to a local church.

But then, following a lot of local backlash, district officials unboarded the monument… and nothing has changed since.

Yesterday, FFRF (and local plaintiffs) asked a federal court for summary judgment. In essence, they just want a judge to decide this thing once and for all.

The Connellsville Area School District filed its own request for summary judgment, but their argument to the judge is just ridiculous:

… the Eagles’ Monument is undeniably part of a secular display. The inscription of the Ten Commandments is simply one element in a display with an overall secular message…

See? The Ten Commandments isn’t religious because there’s a bald eagle included in the display.

That’s seriously their argument.

I can’t understand how any sensible judge could rule against FFRF here.

10 Reasons Why Rick Santorum Should Never Make It To the White House

Rick Santorum hasn’t given up dreaming about the presidency, and this time he’s extra-serious, he says.

Where he had to build his operation from the ground up in 2012, Santorum now has a grass-roots operation called Patriot Voices, which boasts 150,000 activists across the country. … He is retooling his message, hoping to appeal beyond his socially conservative base and reach blue-collar voters who are being left behind in the economy.

“I don’t think I’ve met a ‘suit’ yet,” Santorum said of his travels around the country. … That is a theme he has sounded for years, though it often got overlooked in the 2012 campaign, where most of the attention was on Santorum’s culture warrior credentials. “Part of what I had to do last time was lay out my bona fides” on moral and social issues, Santorum said. “That’s done.”

Mediaite, under the headline “Rick Santorum Announced He’s Running For President and Nobody Noticed,” writes that Santorum’s declaration about entering the 2016 race “landed with a thud.” The candidate claims that he likes it that way, so he can be the come-from-behind underdog.

As a quick reminder, the following feats of faith are part of Santorum’s record. You could also see this as a top-10 list of why he doesn’t have the mental fitness to ever get within a Bible’s throw of the Oval Office.

Calling a pregnancy resulting from rape a present from God — a broken gift, “but nevertheless a gift”;Not being sure that separation of church and state isn’t some nefarious communist notion;Falsely believing that it’s illegal to pray in U.S. public schools;Stating that “antagonism to Christianity” is ruining the nation;Opposing contraceptives, which facilitate “do[ing] things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be”;Literally applauding the notion that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to America being a Christian nation should leave the country;Claiming that the Crusades were not in any sense evidence of Christian anti-Islam aggression;Injecting president Obama’s race into the abortion debate;Promoting an energy policy that Santorum summarized with the phrase “Drill everywhere”;Believing that Satan is out to get America (obviously, Santorum thinks: “If you were Satan, who would you attack?”).

I’m not a fan of the current president, but at least he’s managed to keep the religious bullshit emanating from the White House within tolerable levels. We won’t soon get that lucky again — least of all with candidates like Santorum and his almost equally insufferable fellow God botherer, Mike Huckabee.