Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1910

License? Registration? Have You Accepted Jesus as Your Personal Savior?

This past August, when Ellen Bogan was pulled over by Indiana State Trooper Brian Hamilton for supposedly passing another car illegally (which she denies), she was expecting him to ask her for her license and registration… but she wasn’t expecting questions like these:

Did she have a home church?

Did she accept Jesus Christ as her savior?

“It’s completely out of line and it just — it took me back,” Bogan, 60, told The Indianapolis Star.

… [he later] handed her a church pamphlet that asks the reader “to acknowledge that she is a sinner.”

Hamilton gave her a warning ticket before asking these questions, but given the situation and the blaring sounds and flashing lights, Bogan didn’t feel that she could just drive away. I don’t blame her. Hell, if I were in her shoes, I probably would’ve just lied, said I accepted Jesus, and hoped that’s what the cop wanted to hear.

Bogan and the ACLU are now filing a lawsuit against Hamilton for overstepping his bounds:

Bogan’s complaint also claims that Hamilton asked if he could give her something and that he went to his car to retrieve a pamphlet from First Baptist Church in Cambridge City.

The pamphlet, which was included in the lawsuit, advertises a radio broadcast from “Trooper Dan Jones” called “Policing for Jesus Ministries.” It also outlines “God’s plan for salvation,” a four-point list that advises the reader to “realize you’re a sinner” and “realize the Lord Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins.”

“I’m not affiliated with any church. I don’t go to church,” Bogan said. “I felt compelled to say I did, just because I had a state trooper standing at the passenger-side window. It was just weird.”

Bogan spoke with the Indiana State Police and was told that Hamilton would receive “supervisory action,” but there were no more specifics which is why she’s filing the lawsuit. She’s asking for attorney’s fees and “damages after a trial by jury,” which seems rather excessive to me but that’s for a judge or jury to decide.

The Indianapolis Star asked a representative of the American Family Association of Indiana what he thought about the situation… and he gave the expected ridiculous answer:

“I have people pass out religious material all the time. Mormons come to my door all the time, and it doesn’t offend me,” [executive director Micah] Clark said. “(This case) might not be the most persuasive time to talk to someone about their faith, but I don’t think that a police officer is prohibited from doing something like that.”

Who wants to bet Clark would have a different opinion if it were a Muslim cop stopping him?

And that’s really the point here. If there’s any ambivalence about how this story should end, it’s because the cop is a Christian. If he believed anything else, this would be a no-brainer. It’d be pretty universally condemned. Preaching salvation through Christ shouldn’t be an exception to bad behavior. And, unlike what Micah Clark said, this isn’t like Mormons coming up to your door on their own. This is a government agent proselytizing to someone who neither requested it not has an escape route. It’s not like she could slam the door in his face or say she wasn’t interested.

(Image via Anne Kitzman / Shutterstock.com. Thanks to Christian Nightmares for the link)

God Healed the Hamsters… and Everyone with Diarrhea

British comedian Robert Popper recently called a faith-healing call-in talk show to tell them about how him hamsters (and those affected by his hamsters) were saved from diarrhea because he watched the show… and, well, have a listen:

The squeak at the end was priceless.

And the hosts, while their facial reactions might have given them away, never stopped praising the Lord.

Because why question the healings when the money’s rolling in?

(via Joe. My. God.)

Two Problems with Eastern Religions

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses two problems with Eastern religions:

A rough transcript of the video can be found on the YouTube page in the “About” section.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Secular Group Showcase: Freethought Society of the Midlands

We asked you to tell us about your local secular group in an attempt to encourage the start-up and growth of “good without god” communities. We’ve received a lot of responses already (Thanks!) and here’s a glimpse at our next group: The Freethought Society of the Midlands in Columbia, South Carolina:

The group’s leader offered this advice to other groups struggling to grow or just starting up:

Be patient. I was the only one to show up to the first two meetings over ten years ago. Now we have over 50 active members (attend at least one event per month) and hundreds of people signed up on our social media sites. Meetup is a good tool if you can afford it, we got in while it was still cheap and pay a grandfathered price. Remember the 80/20 rule: about 20% of the people who sign up show up, and about 20% of those who show up are willing to go the extra mile to support the group.

You can read more of our interview here!

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Want to be featured in this series? If you can fill out most of the questions below, your group is probably a good candidate to be showcased on our page. We hope to hear from you! E-mail submissions to SecularGroups@gmail.com!

Group name:

Location:

Mission Statement:

Links to group’s Facebook. website, Twitter, etc.:

When was your group established?

What does your group do for fun to connect with each other?

What community/volunteer activities does your group participate in, if any?

What political/social activism does your group do, if any?

Does your group have a favorite charity to fundraise for or promote?

Do you have any stories to share about your city having a positive reaction to your group?

What are some challenges your group has faced?

What advice would you like to share with other groups struggling to grow or are just starting up?

**Please attach some photos of your group as a whole, in action, and having fun**

I’ll Be Speaking in Pittsburgh and DeKalb Soon

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be speaking at a couple of places. All the details are below. Both events are free (though donations to the organizations are always welcome) and open to the public!

Who: Carnegie Mellon Humanist League
Where: Pittsburgh, PA
When: Tuesday, October 7 at 5:30p in Doherty Hall 1212

Who: Northern Illinois University Secular Student Alliance
Where: DeKalb, IL
When: Tuesday, October 21 at 6:00p in the Holmes Student Center

Hope to see you there! Other upcoming events are listed here.

Newly-Elected Texas State Senator Compares Roe v. Wade to Holocaust

Texas State Senator Charles Perry (below) decided his swearing-in ceremony last week would be a capital opportunity to invoke Godwin’s Law in his quest to force (his) God into the public square.

Describing his theocratic ambitions as part of a “spiritual battle for the spirit of this nation and the soul of its people,” he emphasized that abortion and same-sex marriage will be key issues.

“Roe v. Wade condemned 55 million innocent and defenseless souls that cried out for righteousness from a God who is just — we will answer for that as a nation…”

Pastor Jeff McCreight, of Rock City Church, mirrored the anti-abortion sentiment at the ceremony, invoking the Holocaust in a particularly disturbing fashion:

“The value of human life is continually being attacked by a 41-year-old Holocaust called abortion, which makes Hitler look like a humanitarian,” McCreight said.

But the pastor was joined in shockingly insensitive and downright bizarre Holocaust invocations by the senator, speaking about “laws that lead citizens away from God” as he remembered a trip to a Berlin concentration camp.

“There were 10,000 people that were paraded into a medical office under the guise of a physical. As they stood with their back against the wall, they were executed with a bullet through the throat. Before they left, 10,000 people met their fate that way,” Perry said.

“Is it not the same than when our government continues to perpetuate laws that lead citizens away from God? The only difference is that the fraud of the Germans was more immediate and whereas the fraud of today’s government will not be exposed until the final days and will have eternal-lasting effects.”

Perry might be onto something if he wasn’t wrong about pretty much everything. Like, for starters, shooting people in the throat has a pretty obvious, demonstrable negative impact. And unlike laws that allegedly “lead citizens away from God,” you don’t have to wait until a supernaturally wrought “end times” to expose the harm of killing people…

Senator Perry also complained that he was having trouble recognizing the “nation that was founded on the eternal and never-changing values of a loving God and the desire to share that.” And while that’s probably because it never existed, the senator seems to think this is a new and deeply troubling development.

But probably the most perplexing factor of this story was not the disregard for constitutional separation of church and state, not the extreme hyperbole, and not even the callous hijacking of the Holocaust for political and religious reasons. Rather, it’s this:

Perry… was elected to the state Senate in a September special election. After gaining momentum during early voting, the new state senator maintained a strong lead and avoided a runoff in the six-person race by more than 23 percentage points.

Even in Texas, it’s never reassuring to see such disregard for the Constitution, rather than being censured, warmly embraced and elected to public office…

Freedom From Atheism Foundation Trolls Atheists By Falsely Accusing Them of Trolling

Here‘s a roundup of two studies about Internet trolling, courtesy of Live Science:

“Trolls” — people who intentionally incite discord in online communities — may have a lot in common with real-life sadists, new research suggests. In two studies conducted online, researchers examined personality traits and the online commenting styles of 1,215 people. The investigators found that Internet trolls tended to have personality traits related to sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – a term used by psychologists to describe a person’s tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain. The link between trolling and sadism was the strongest out of all three traits, the researchers said.

So what could explain the links between trolling and sadism? Simply put, some people seem to enjoy being argumentative and purposefully disruptive, according to the researchers. “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others,” the researchers, from the University of Manitoba in Canada, wrote in the study. “Sadists just want to have fun … and the Internet is their playground.”

There are no apparent data that show that the ultra-religious do more trolling than the moderately religious, or vice versa — or that the non-religious like trolling better than believers. Neither atheism nor theism/deism are mentioned at all in the piece, because religious feeling, or the absence of it, wasn’t a focus of the studies.

But here‘s how the Freedom From Atheism Foundation spun the Live Science article.

Atheists who spend their time trolling religious facebook pages, comments sections, etc. were found to have personality traits related to sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Perhaps its time for these atheists to realize that they have a problem that needs to be fixed.

Note that the FFAF even changed the headline (“Atheist Behind the Screen: the ‘Internet Troll’ Personality”) — maliciously replacing the word ‘Sadist’ with ‘Atheist’ and passing that new title off as the Live Science original.

If that isn’t trolling (and bearing false witness to boot), I don’t know what is.

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P.S. A little potpourri of the responses:

(Top image via Shutterstock)

The Supreme Court Will Soon Hear a Case Involving Religion and Facial Hair

Last month, we mentioned a Supreme Court case involving religious facial hair. With the case being heard this week, Georgetown Law professor Jeffrey Shulman has an insightful piece up on Yahoo News about the promotion of religious belief over the law of the land. While the most obvious example is the Hobby Lobby ruling (and related decisions and cases based on it), Shulman points to this less well known case:

Abdul Maalik Muhammad, who will enter legal history as Gregory Holt, wants to grow a beard in accordance with his Salafi Muslim faith. Though obligated by his understanding of Islamic law to leave his beard entirely uncut, Mr. Holt seeks to grow only a half-inch beard. The problem is that he is in an Arkansas state prison, where he is serving a life sentence for burglary and domestic battery, and state prison officials have their own set of hair dictates.

Holt argues that he should be able to grow his half-inch beard, because to do otherwise would infringe on his religious beliefs. And while the state Department of Correction allows quarter-inch beard growth in cases of medical necessity, beard growth of greater length or for alternative reasons is prohibited. These are not arbitrary rules, but rules based on a number of legitimate concerns, including beards providing a “hiding place for contraband,” the ability for an escaped prisoner to alter his “appearance by shaving his beard,” and the possibility of breeding resentment by making exceptions to the rules.

As Shulman points out, however, this is likely not enough, as the case is not being argued on Constitutionality, but as a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. RLUIPA is a statute introduced after our old friend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby) was overturned in 1997 “insofar as it applied to the states” (leaving the federal portions intact). Where RFRA cannot, RLUIPA “applies strict scrutiny to claims of religious burdens involving prisoner rights or discriminatory land use.”

Shulman explains the importance of this distinction between rational basis review and strict scrutiny:

Most laws (or other forms of state action) receive a deferential review from the courts, despite the fact that they might impinge upon a host of personal prerogatives. Under “rational basis review,” courts presume the constitutionality of legislation. The party trying to overcome this presumption must show 1) that the law serves no legitimate purpose, or 2) that the means employed by the law has no rational relation to the law’s stated goal.

But laws (or other forms of state action) that impinge upon rights considered to be “fundamental” get a far more skeptical judicial reception. Under a “strict scrutiny” standard, courts will presume that such a law is unconstitutional. To overcome this presumption, the government must show 1) that the law serves a compelling purpose, and 2) that the means employed by the law are as narrowly tailored as possible to achieve the law’s stated goal.

Because the hurdle of strict scrutiny is so difficult to clear (“strict in theory and fatal in fact,” it is commonly, if not entirely accurately, said), the level of review employed by the court can easily determine the outcome of a case.

RFRA, and later RLUIPA, were introduced as a reaction to the 1990 Supreme Court ruling Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, which found that use of the prohibited substance peyote was not a protected act despite use being a product of religious belief. (RFRA, it should be noted, was a bipartisan bill, crafted and supported by a host of well-meaning people… illustrating that there is some truth to the old adage about the road to hell being paved with good intentions). In that decision, the justices argued that strict scrutiny was not applicable to such attempts at exemption from the law.

Shulman poses the crucial questions:

Was Justice Scalia wrong in Smith to warn that strict scrutiny review of neutral and generally applicable laws would “make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect… permit every citizen to become a law unto himself”? And should we not ask — indeed, some have — what business Congress has in telling the Supreme Court that it must apply strict scrutiny where the Court has already decided it is inappropriate to do so?

I think the answer is already clear and will continue to become even more so as more of these cases are brought: if the law can only be enforced if the government demonstrates that there is simply no other way to achieve the same means, we will be left with a bizarre and ultimately unworkable legal maze that exempts almost anyone professing almost any belief (regardless of its basis in reality) from almost any law. If closely held religious belief is all that’s needed to exempt someone from “neutral and generally applicable” laws, the law essentially loses all value, and every citizen indeed becomes “a law unto himself.”

You can read more about the case, Holt v. Hobbs, here.

(Image via Shutterstock)

What’s More Biblical Than the Rapture Movie Left Behind? Christian Blogger Nominates Shrek and Austin Powers

Patheos blogger and Jesus follower Benjamin Corey wasn’t expecting much from the new Nicolas Cage end-times movie Left Behind. And at the Friday premiere, that’s exactly what he got, he says:

The movie was impressively horrible — infinitely worse than I had expected. As I said yesterday on That God Show, there’s some really compelling events in the pre-millennial view of eschatology, and you could make some incredibly entertaining movies about it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them. Beyond being a movie with a lousy plot-line, cheesy stereotypes, and crappy special effects, the movie was simply unbiblical.

So Corey (who, full disclosure, is a good friend of mine) came up with a tongue-in-cheek list of 10 movies that are more biblical than Left Behind — including Shrek, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wedding Crashers, and Austin Powers.

What’s so biblical about Shrek? A talking donkey, that’s what. There’s a talking donkey in Shrek, and a talking donkey in the Bible (Num 22:28), so that makes Shrek more biblical than Left Behind.

Of course, many non-believers think that every religious book, Corey’s favorite one included, is essentially this movie title.

Reza Aslan is Wrong About Islam and This is Why

This is a guest post written by Muhammad Syed and Sarah Haider (below). They are co-founders of Ex-Muslims of North America, a community-building organization for ex-Muslims across the non-theist spectrum, and can be reached at @MoTheAtheist and @SarahTheHaider.

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This past week, a clip of Reza Aslan responding to comedian Bill Maher’s comments about Islamic violence and misogyny went viral.

Maher stated (among other things) that “if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.” Maher implied a connection between FGM and violence against women with the Islamic faith, to which the charming Aslan seems to be providing a nuanced counterbalance, calling Maher “unsophisticated” and his arguments “facile.” His comments were lauded by many media outlets, including Salon and the Huffington Post.

Although we have become accustomed to the agenda-driven narrative from Aslan, we were blown away by how his undeniably appealing but patently misleading arguments were cheered on by many, with the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple going so far as to advise show producers not to put a show-host against Aslan “unless your people are schooled in religion, politics and geopolitics of the Muslim world.”

Only those who themselves aren’t very “schooled” in Islam and Muslim affairs would imply that Aslan does anything but misinform by cherry-picking and distorting facts.

Nearly everything Aslan stated during his segment was either wrong, or technically-correct-but-actually-wrong. We will explain by going through each of his statements in the hopes that Aslan was just misinformed (although it’s hard for us to imagine that a “scholar” such as Aslan wouldn’t be aware of all this).

Aslan contends that while some Muslim countries have problems with violence and women’s rights, in others like “Indonesia, women are absolutely 100 percent equal to men” and it is therefore incorrect to imply that such issues are a problem with Islam and “facile” to imply that women are “somehow mistreated in the Muslim world.”

Let us be clear here: No one in their right mind would claim that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh are a “free and open society for women.” Happily, a few of them have enshrined laws that have done much to bring about some progress in equality between the sexes. But this progress is hindered or even eroded by the creeping strength of the notoriously anti-woman Sharia courts.

For example:

Indonesia has increasingly become more conservative. (Notoriously anti-women) Sharia courts that were “optional” have risen to equal status with regular courts in family matters. The conservative Aceh province even legislates criminal matters via Sharia courts, which has been said to violate fundamental human rights.Malaysia has a dual-system of law which mandates sharia law for Muslims. These allow men to have multiple wives (polygyny) and discriminate against women in inheritance (as mandated by Islamic scripture). It also prohibits wives from disobeying the “lawful orders” of their husbands.Bangladesh, which according to feminist Tahmima Anam made real advancements towards equality in its inception, also “created a barrier to women’s advancement.” This barrier? An article in the otherwise progressive constitution which states that “women shall have equal rights with men in all spheres of the state and of the public life” but in the realm of private affairs (marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody), “it acknowledges Islam as the state religion and effectively enshrines the application of Islamic law in family affairs. The Constitution thus does nothing to enforce equality in private life.”

And finally we come to Turkey, a country oft-cited by apologists due to its relative stability, liberalism, and gender equality. What they consistently choose to ignore is that historically, Turkey was militantly secular. We mean this literally: The country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, created a secular state and pushed Islam out of the public sphere (outlawing polygamy, child marriages, and giving divorce rights to women) through (at times, military) force. He even banned the headscarf in various public sectors and is believed by some to have been an atheist.

Only apologists would ignore the circumstances that led to Turkey’s incredible progress and success relative to the Muslim world, and hold it up as an example of “Islamic” advancement of women’s rights. In fact, child marriages (which continue to be widespread in rural Turkey), are often hidden due to the practice of “religious” marriages (Nikah) being performed without informing secular authorities. Turkey was recently forced to pass a law banning religious marriages with penalties imposed on imams for violations.

Aslan’s claim that Muslim countries “have elected seven women as their heads of state” is an example of “technically true, actually false” — a tactic we have often noted among religious apologists.

It is true that there have been seven female heads of state in Muslim-majority countries, but a closer inspection would reveal this has little to do with female empowerment and often has much more to do with the political power of certain families in under-developed parts of the world.

It is well-known that Benazir Bhutto, a woman, was democratically elected in Pakistan. What is not as well-known is that her advancement had much to do with her family’s power in her party (Pakistan People’s Party) and little to do with female empowerment. Her father was once Prime Minister of Pakistan, and she was elected to the position fresh from her exile in the West with little political experience of her own. After her assassination, her nineteen year old son assumed leadership of her political party — as was expected by many familiar with the power their family continued to hold.

Similarly, Sheikh Hasina (the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh) is the daughter of the founding father of the country, Sheikh Mujibur-Rehman. Khaleda Zia, the predecessor of Sheikh Hasina, assumed power over her party after the assassination of her husband — the second Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

In addition, Megawati Sukarnopotri, former President of Indonesia, was the daughter of Sukarno, the founding father of Indonesia.

To anyone familiar with women’s rights around the world, neither Pakistan, Bangladesh, nor Indonesia can be considered states with a stellar track record. It is likely that in these cases, the power of political dynasties was the key factor in their success.

Furthermore, female heads of state were elected democratically in Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, and Kosovo. But, as before, a closer inspection reveals a complicated reality. All three states are secular, where religion was forcibly uprooted from the government — due to Atatürk (in the case of Turkey) or Communism (in the cases of Kyrgyzstan and Kosovo).

Predictably, Aslan fails to mention any of this.

Finally, we get to Aslan’s claim that it is “actually, empirically, factually incorrect” that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a “Muslim-country problem.” Rather, he believes it is a “central African problem.” He continues to state that “nowhere else in the Muslim, Muslim-majority states is female genital mutilation an issue.”

This is an absolutely ridiculous claim.

The idea that FGM is concentrated solely in Africa is a huge misconception and bandied about by apologists with citations of an Africa-focused UNICEF report which showed high rates of FGM in African countries. Apologists have taken that to mean that it is *only* Africa that has an FGM problem — even though FGM rates have not been studied in most of the Middle East or South and East Asia. Is it an academically sound practice to take a lack of study as proof of the non-existence of the practice? Especially when there is record of FGM common in Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia? It is also present in the Bohra Muslim community in India and Pakistan, as well as in the Kurdish community in Iraq — Are they to be discounted as “African problems” as well?

We do not yet have the large scale data to confirm the rates of FGM around the world, but we can safely assume that it is quite a bit more than just an “African problem.” It is very likely that FGM *did* originate in the Middle East or North Africa, but its extensive prevalence in Muslim-majority countries should give us pause. We are not attempting to paint FGM as only an Islamic problem but rather that Islam does bear some responsibility for its spread beyond the Middle East-North Africa region and for its modern prevalence.

So is there any credence to the claim that Islam supports FGM? In fact, there is. To name two, the major collections of the Hadith Sahih Muslim 3:684 and Abu Dawud 41:5251 support the practice. Of the four major schools of thought in Sunni Islam, two mandate FGM while two merely recommend it. Unsurprisingly, in the Muslim-majority countries dominated by the schools which mandate the practice, there is evidence of widespread female circumcision. Of particular note: None of the major schools condemn the practice.

This isn’t the first time Reza has stated half-truths in defense of his agenda. In his book No God But God, he misleads readers about many issues including the age of Muhammad’s child-bride Aisha. Scripture unanimously cites Aisha’s betrothal at age 6 or 7 and consummation at 9. Similarly, he quotes Mariya the Copt as being a wife of the prophet when overwhelming evidence points to her being Muhammad’s concubine.

We believe that Islam badly needs to be reformed, and it is only Muslims who can truly make it into a modern religion. But it is the likes of Reza Aslan who act as a deterrent to change by refusing to acknowledge real complications within the scripture and by actively promoting half-truths. Bigotry against Muslims is a real and pressing problem, but one can criticize the Islamic ideology without treating Muslims as themselves problematic or incapable of reform.

There are true Muslim reformists who are willing to call a spade a spade while working for the true betterment of their peoples — but their voices are drowned out by the noise of apologists who are all-too-often aided by the Western left. Those who accept distortions in order to hold on to a comforting dream-world where Islamic fundamentalism is merely an aberration are harming reform by encouraging apologists.