Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1860

Alabama City Was Going to Hold “Keep Christ in Christmas” Parade but, Under Pressure, Officials Changed the Theme

Last week, we learned the city of Piedmont, Alabama was having a Christmas parade on December 4 with the theme “Let’s Keep Christ in Christmas”:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote a letter to city officials warning them of the constitutional problems:

The theme “alienates non-Christians and others in Piedmont who do not in fact have a ‘strong belief in prayers’ by turning them into political outsiders in their own community,” wrote Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel.

“The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from endorsing, advancing or promoting religion. A government celebration of Christmas is only permissible because courts have ruled certain aspects of the holiday, such as Christmas trees, to be secular symbols. The sentiment of ‘Keeping Christ in Christmas’ does not qualify” as a secular celebration, Seidel explained.

And just like that, an attorney for the city responded, letting FFRF know that the theme would be changed immediately. It’ll now be known as the Piedmont Christmas Parade, and at least one city’s website already reflects that.

The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue was all excited about the original name. Wonder if he’ll still be proud of the city for merely celebrating Christmas. Or is that not good enough for him anymore?

(Image via elina / Shutterstock.com. Portions of this article were published earlier)

FFRF’s “Natural Nativity Scene” Goes Up in Wisconsin Capitol Building, Near Their Winter Solstice Sign

For the fourth straight year, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up a “natural nativity scene” in the Wisconsin Capitol building:

Today also marks the fourth return of FFRF’s “natural nativity scene,” which was unveiled in 2011 to counter a nativity scene placed by a Religious Right group in the Capitol. The unique display recognizes the rebirth of the Sun, not baby Jesus. FFRF’s symbolic baby is black and female (for egalitarianism) and to acknowledge that humankind was birthed in Africa.

FFRF’s “wise persons” depict atheists and scientific giants Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, plus wise woman Emma Goldman — with humorist Mark Twain and founding “father” Thomas Jefferson thrown in for good measure. Venus, like Mary, represents a mythical fertility symbol, but also our solar system. FFRF’s “angels” are likewise natural — the Statue of Liberty and an astronaut. The playful display was crafted by FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel.

“FFRF would vastly prefer that government buildings and seats of government be free from religion — and irreligion,” said Co-President Dan Barker. “Religion in the Capitol is divisive, and the rotunda is getting very cluttered. But if a devotional nativity display is allowed, then there must be ‘room at the inn’ for all points of view, including irreverency and freethought,” said Barker. “In celebrating the solstice, we celebrate reality.”

As I’ve said before, that last point is key. You might criticize FFRF for taking part in something it deplores, but I don’t see it as hypocritical at all. They’re just taking advantage of an opportunity that legally extends to them. They’d be just as happy (more happy, really) if that opportunity were taken away from everyone.

And since an atheists’ nativity scene isn’t enough, FFRF also put up their Winter Solstice message nearby (for the 19th time):

[On Front]

At this season of
THE WINTER SOLSTICE
may reason prevail.
There are no gods,
no devils, no angels,
no heaven or hell.
There is only
our natural world.
Religion is but
myth and superstition
that hardens hearts
and enslaves minds.

…

[On Back]

The World’s Need

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Keep State and Church Separate!

Cue the obligatory Fox News segment in 5… 4… 3…

(Large parts of this article were published earlier.)

Secular Coalition for America Appoints Interim Executive Director and Announces $250,000 Matching Grant

After a lot of internal turmoil that involved the firing of it’s previous Executive Director, the Secular Coalition for American announced earlier today that Kelly Damerow (below), the group’s Director of Federal and State Affairs, would serve as interim Executive Director until a permanent replacement is found:

Damerow joined the Secular Coalition as the Research and Advocacy Manager in March 2012. In February 2013 Damerow was promoted to Director of Federal and State Affairs. Damerow oversaw the launch of the Coalition’s 50 state chapters and secured the mention of “atheist and agnostic” in a Presidential Proclamation for the first time in history.

Born and raised in Florida, Kelly received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Education and her Juris Doctor degree in law from the University of Florida. She was admitted to the Florida Bar in the fall of 2011. Prior to joining the Secular Coalition, Kelly was a Legal Fellow in the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center.

SCA also announced a $250,000 matching grant in which all donations made in December would be matched up to that amount. So if you were hesitant about giving before, you may want to consider doing it now.

No word yet on whether donors who were upset by the firing of Edwina Rogers have started to donate again.

HBO Assigns “Probably 160 Lawyers” to Work on Legal Aspects of Scientology Documentary

HBO is planning to release a documentary next year, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright‘s best selling book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. (You can read the New Yorker article that spawned it here.)

CNN reports that the film

… digs into the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and the influence his church has had on its believers, many of whom have close ties to Hollywood.

Since Going Clear explores, among other things, allegations of abuse, controlling tactics, and other unsavory conduct, the Church of Scientology has been none too keen on it. The church roundly denounced the claims in the book, calling them “lies concocted by a small group of self-corroborating confessed liars,” and upon the book’s publication in the United States, the New York Times wrote, Wright reportedly received multiple threats of legal action from both famous Scientologists as well as the church itself.

His UK publisher, Transworld, subsequently canceled a planned release of the book in Britain, “though a spokeswoman insisted that the decision was not made in response to threats [of litigation] from the church.”

Whatever the cause, HBO is taking the prudent approach and hiring legal counsel in advance of what will likely be inevitable backlash from the infamously litigious church. Quite a bit of counsel, as it happens.

“We have probably 160 lawyers” looking at the film, HBO Documentary Films President Sheila Nevins told The Hollywood Reporter.

This way, Nevin says, when the church’s response comes, “we’ll be ready.”

The Indie Game Developer Behind Five Nights at Freddy’s Explains Why God is Responsible for His Success

Scott Cawthon spent more than a decade as an independent game developer working to create Christian video games (and movies) and they went absolutely nowhere:

Despite good reviews, my Christian projects were all financial failures. I came to a point where I was very disillusioned and frustrated with God… actually it was more like a broken heart. I felt like I’d squandered so many years of my life, years that could have been spent going back to college but were instead spent working on Christian projects that went nowhere. I came to the conclusion that I could not have failed so miserably unless God himself had been holding me down. Either God didn’t exist, or God hated me. I didn’t know which was worse.

It got so bad that even his life insurance policy was cancelled because he was seen as too much of a liability.

And then he came up with the idea for a completely different kind of game. A scary game — with no religious references at all — revolving around what happens with the animatronic creatures you might see at a Chuck E. Cheese’s after the store closes for the night.

That game, which, along with its sequel, has been ridiculously popular in the App Store and on Steam, is called Five Nights at Freddy’s.

In an interview with Joe Morgan at Geeks Under Grace, Cawthon explained how he still thanks God for his success… even though all of his games praising God were commercial failures:

I don’t regret a single moment that I spent working on those Christian projects. I feel like God had commissioned me to make them, and I had an absolute duty to make them, even at the cost of my job and a comfortable life (which it cost me).

Success comes on God’s terms, in His time, and in His way. God only allowed me to have success after I’d been broken, after I’d stopped seeking success for myself, and after I’d come to terms with the idea that my labors for God might not ever bring me a penny. It was only after I’d lost everything that God was able to get my heart right to the point where He could trust me with success.

There’s something to the idea of crediting your failures for eventually helping you become successful. But this is a perfect example of where Cawthon alone deserves credit for the game. Yet he’s handing the baton to someone else who had nothing to do with it whatsoever. It’s frustrating. Especially when anyone could offer very different explanations:

God was telling you to stop preaching Christianity.God wanted you to create a game that was so far from Christianity, it’s downright demonic.God wasn’t telling you anything, and inspiration struck only when you had nowhere to go but up.People like games that are simple and creative, not preachy.

But none of those explanations are even considered by Cawthon. He knows creating a scary game for the iPhone was just part of God’s plan for him…

It’s also a reminder of why Christian movies rarely do well in theaters. Sure, there’s the occasional anomaly (like God’s Not Dead), but most bomb at the box office. The reason? Christian movie writers tend to be more interested in shoving a message down the audience’s throat than they are in telling a good, plausible story.

Cawthon only saw success when he focused on making a game tapping into people’s fears (scary noises, very little lighting, security cameras, large killer rats out to get you) and ignoring the urge to push Jesus onto the players. That God of his sure must love reverse psychology.

Five Nights at Freddy’s, by the way, is a major departure from his other games, one of which suggested a very pro-life message:

The Desolate Hope has only recently been getting more attention because of the popularity of Five Nights at Freddy’s, but has come under fire for having a pro-life message. The game itself was not designed with abortion specifically in mind (the word is never mentioned.) However, the game’s story focuses on the protagonist’s quest to save a human fetus that was intended as a scientific specimen. The game places a very high value on human life, even at it’s smallest, and that draws a lot of anger from some people.

I can’t imagine why that one wasn’t successful…

(Thanks to Crow for the link)

Bollywood Star Slapped During Reality Show Taping by Man Who Said Her Dress Was Too Short for a Muslim Woman

This past Sunday, Indian model, reality TV star, and actress Gauhar Khan (below) was taping the finale for the show Raw Star (a reality TV singing contest), when a member of the audience took umbrage with her outfit. It was, in his opinion, too revealing for a Muslim woman to wear.

The BBC reports that this moral champion subsequently spent some time harassing the star; and, when that didn’t produce the desired effect, he attacked her. After slapping Khan, the unnamed assailant was overpowered by security and arrested. The police quote him

… as telling Khan that “being a Muslim woman, she should not have worn such a short dress“.

Somehow, this rationale for attacking another person failed to persuade the police, who have charged him with assault.

Khan is not the only Bollywood star recently to find herself the unfortunate target of the pious outrage of overzealous religious people. Just last week, Terry Firma wrote about the outrageous 26 year sentence handed down to Pakistani star Veena Malik by the country’s anti-terrorism courts — for the Orwellian crime of “malicious acts” of blasphemy, for “[a]ppearing in a pretend wedding scene, staged on a daytime show… based on the marriage of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter.”

Fortunately for Khan, at least, Mumbai police were not persuaded that religious belief or offended religious sensibilities were a valid excuse to inflict harm on another person. Hopefully Pakistan’s higher courts will agree in Malik’s case.

(Image via Wikipedia)

Canadian Family Kept Dead Father’s Corpse in Bedroom for Six Months in Hopes God Would Resurrect Him

When 52-year-old Peter Wald‘s left foot began suffering from the effects of diabetes in 2013, he didn’t go to a hospital. He just prayed to get better. Turns out prayer doesn’t cure diabetes… and Wald died in March.

But his family held out hope that he would come back to life. So they kept his body in an upstairs bedroom in their house, waiting for him to resurrect. And no one knew about the rotting corpse until six months later…

The family’s van (via Google Maps)

[Wife] Kaling [Wald] sealed in the door and the vents with duct tape to protect her family from the smell of the cadaver. And then for six months, life went on and they prayed for their dead husband and father in the bed upstairs as they awaited his return.

It was Sept. 17, 2013 when the body was finally discovered. The sheriff had arrived to evict the family from the… house after they had defaulted on the mortgage.

Yesterday, Kaling Wald pled guilty to not telling the police or coroner about the dead body, but her penalty — 18 months of probation and mandated counseling — amount to a slap on the wrist because there was no criminal intent. As she admits, she just didn’t know any better. She was putting her trust in God, after all:

As assistant crown attorney Janet Booy put it, the devout Christian woman’s faith had “tainted and warped her better judgment.”

Huh. Religion warping someone’s judgment. Never saw that one coming.

The biggest concern here is for Kaling’s kids. Are they in safe hands?

The Children’s Aid Society was called in too but they found no concerns for the well-being of the couple’s children and the case was closed.

I guess that’s that. Unless, of course, one of them gets sick…

And despite the court proceedings, Kaling clearly hasn’t learned anything:

… she still believes strongly in resurrection, and says there have been many “documented” cases of it around the world. Her faith was not shaken by the legal consequences, she says.

Good luck, kids.

(Thanks to Ehren for the link)

Illiterate Hasidic Jew Sues Quebec Because His Religious Education Taught Him “Nothing of Use” in the Real World

Four years ago, Canadian Yohanan Lowen, then 33, left his Hasidic community behind. That move allowed him to take stock of his religious schooling. Lowen quickly began to see that, due to his education having consisted mostly of studying religious texts, he was woefully under-equipped to deal with life in secular Canada.

A 37-year-old former Hasidic Jew is suing the Quebec government for $1.25 million (U.S. $1.1 million) for allowing the ultra-Orthodox schools he attended in the province to teach him nothing of use in the non-Haredi world.

“I feel like a child of six years old, alone in the world, who doesn’t have parents, who doesn’t have somebody to take care of him. … I feel even worse than that child because that child only has to take care of himself, but I have to take care of my four children,” Yohanan Lowen told thestar.com.

Lowen, who left Quebec’s Hasidic community in 2010 and moved with his family to Montreal, says he is illiterate in French, doesn’t know the alphabet, and understands only the most basic math. He earns a little money teaching Aramaic at a secular night school, and otherwise supports his family on his monthly welfare check.

Lowen says the Hasidic schools he attended didn’t require him to learn French, English, math, science, history or any other secular subject. School officials told him that any time spent studying anything but Jewish religious texts was time wasted, he added.

I wish he’d sic his lawyer on the schools in question, too, but they may not be long for this world:

These schools are privately- or semi-privately funded, and as a rule are not certified by the Quebec education system. Education Minister Yves Bolduc has pledged to shut down such private schools.

For someone who seems to understand the value of education, it’s a little odd that Lowen apparently hasn’t learned to read and write over the past four years.

That said, if his allegations are true, his religious cult did cheat him out of a proper education, as did the government that failed to supervise the education standards of religious schools.

One unanswered question: how many more adults like Lowen there are, well-versed in the Torah but utterly bereft of the most basic secular knowledge.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Richard for the link)

New Disturbing Document Details How Raif Badawi Was Punished for Questioning Islam and the Saudi Government

30-year-old Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was punished last year for starting a progressive website that called for, among other things, religious tolerance and women’s rights. That was insulting to Islam, said his critics, and he now faces 10 Years in jail along with 1,000 lashes.

The Center For Inquiry just got its hands on English-language text of the Saudi Arabian judicial document detailing what Badawi did… and it’s disturbing. Really disturbing. Because when you go through everything they’re charging him with, he didn’t do anything that warrants his punishment.

Only under Islam are his non-crimes considered punishable by violence.

“This opinion is an example of theocracy at its worst, and reads like something out of the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI’s president and CEO, and author of the new book The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do. “The Saudi court declares Western liberalism to be incompatible with Islam, but it is Saudi Arabia’s medieval system of justice that is incompatible with civilization in 2014.”

…

Michael De Dora, CFI’s UN representative, as well as the newly-elected president of the UN NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion and Belief, has been working on Badawi’s case.

“We’ve been acutely aware for some time that Saudi Arabia harshly punishes religious and political dissent,” he said. “But this document lays bare just how arbitrary and appalling its system truly is. Raif is not only being punished for founding a website, but for a host of non-offenses, such as not properly honoring his father, for believing that all persons should have the right to free speech regardless of their religion, and for expressing a desire to be away from Saudi Arabia, for which he can hardly be blamed.”

To those who say faith is a virtue, go ahead and defend this. I don’t know how you can. All Badawi did was express his thoughts, which didn’t fall in line with a certain interpretation of Islam and was critical of the government. And based on the reaction he got, Badawi was right. It’s just appalling what’s happening to him.

CFI says it will continue to work to secure Badawi’s freedom.

The Nativity Story, As Told Through Pop Music Lyrics

I can’t wait for a church to put a Nativity story like this, using pop music lyrics instead of Bible verses:

There are only a few weeks left! Churches, get to work!

(via Christian Nightmares)