Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  What’s your favorite deadly sin?

- Piz-ope Griz-egory

Dear P.G.,
  As far as I’m concerned, overuse of commas is far more heinous than a little sloth. If I had to pick, I’d go with lust. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all fun, but lust is the only one that could conceivably lead to a Bastard getting a little action. If pride or envy could get me laid, I might change my tune.

  Meet Ken Ham, president of biblical literalist foundation Answers In Genesis. On Monday, Mr. Ham shared this insight with the world. Science class leads to hopelessness, which leads to rampant abortion, which leads directly to EVERBODY MURDERS EACH OTHER OMFG!!1!

  In his own words:

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

  I wonder how Mr. Ham would react to this piece by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. First published in March by The New Republic, the essay ties together conclusions from several studies which suggest that the modern world is far less violent that it was in the past. But Mr. Ham, shouldn’t a society like we live in now, founded in part on the separation of church and state, and excluding religion from the science classroom, be a more violent, awful place to live?

  I’ll be the first to admit that a correlation between greater respect for and belief in science and the increased civility of the world doesn’t mean that one has caused the other. Still, it’s at least noteworthy that the world has become an empirically less violent place as science has supplanted religion in our education.

  It also flies in the face of the typical fundy claim that nonbelievers are inherently amoral, because we don’t have a supernatural being handing us our codes of conduct on a stone tablet. Surprise, Mr. Ham. Im in ur society, not believing in ur god, and yet millions of people just like me manage to get through every day without going on a murderous rampage. Apparently, the world has become a far less nasty place since our ideas have gotten more influential. The next time you’re tempted to connect horrible violence to the teaching of evolution by drawing a line through abortion, try to keep that in mind.

  I’ve decided that, in situations where a believer would invoke an omnipresent deity, I’m going to start swearing to astronauts.* After all, astronauts are the only beings that I know for sure have been smiling down on us from above the clouds.

*For purposes of this exercise, “astronauts” will include Russian cosmonauts, Chinese taikonauts, and any whatever-nauts from future manned space programs. My admiration for those who’ve flown in space is not bound by anything so silly as nationality.

  For the love of astronauts, DO NOT wear flip-flops to work and then complain about injury or discomfort of your feet. That’s what they make shoes for. You’re basically wearing a dry sponge held on by a rubber thong. Of course it’s going to be uncomfortable. By choosing to wear such impractical (and onomatopoeic) footwear in a professional environment, you’ve forfeited your right to complain about the state of your feet.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Is this all there is?
- Desperately Seeking Soothing

Dear Desperately Seeking Soothing,
  I like to think so. Who wants to slog through life hoping for a reward after it’s over?

  The concept of a post-off-mortal-coil-shuffling reward is one of the oldest tools of religious authority. If the faithful believe that there’s a fabulous reward coming later on, they’ll shoulder their burdens (or strap on their dynamite corsets) and trudge on until it’s their turn as the bug on the cosmic windshield.

  It’s tempting, when my faith in human nature is at its lowest ebb, to believe that the concept of a reward in heaven is nothing more than a carrot, meant to keep the masses quiet as they bear the burden of crushing poverty, while their church amasses a sizable (an non-taxable) fortune. But I suspect that the truth is a bit more complicated.

  If people knew that this was the only life on the agenda, they might work a lot harder trying to make this life as good as possible: taking chances, trying new things, helping out their fellow short-timers. If you die and there’s no there there, then the journey finally becomes more important than the destination.

  Then again, some of us might use that as an excuse to treat the world and our fellows even more callously, if that’s possible. If you’re not going to punished in the afterlife, why should you care about whose feelings (or face) you stomp on?

  All of that was a roundabout way of saying yes, this is all there is. You get one life, just like everybody else. Don’t wait around expecting to get all the things you want once your body lies mouldering in the grave. Planning for retirement is daunting enough; planning for eternity is impractical and unnecessary. Just try to keep in mind that everyone else is living their one life too, and it’s not a zero-sum game.

  I’ll ditch the philosophy and get back to the snark next time, I promise.

One Thing Athiests Never Do:
Pray for the deaths of people who disagree with them.

When Wiley Drake, pastor of a Baptist church in Buena Park, California, used church letterhead and a church-affiliated radio show to endorse former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s candidacy for president, it raised some red flags. Under federal tax law, non-profit organizations (religious or not) aren’t allowed to endorse candidates. Those that do so risk losing their non-profit status, and the attending tax benefits.

There’s a minor piece of oft-ignored legal jargon called the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It’s supposed to keep religious zealots from interfering in government, and vice versa. Despite the creeping theocratic bent of the current administration, maintaining federal tax benefits for a religious organization that endorses candidates is still a no-no. So, a group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the IRS to investigate the church’s non-profit status.

Instead of defending his actions, Drake called on his flock to join him in praying to their god for the deaths of two of Americans United’s leaders. While I’m pretty confident that there’s no grumpy bearded man in the sky, grinding fresh points onto a pair of lightning bolts and aiming for Americans United’s headquarters, it does raise some interesting questions.

Drake is asking for help to petition the omnipotent creator of the Universe to kill two human beings. How is that substantively different from trying to hire a hitman? The question of there actually being an omnipotent creator of the Universe is immaterial; Drake believes a god exists, and he’s asked that god to pop a cap in his enemies.

It’s the belief that is the key here. If I believe that I’ve hired a hitman to kill someone, I’ve committed a crime. It doesn’t matter if my “hitman” is an undercover FBI agent, and my intended target was never in any real danger. I’ve engaged in a conspiracy to commit murder. In many jurisdictions, the penalty for this crime is on par with what I’d face if I’d actually done some killing.

I’ll say it again, because I think it bears repeating. Drake believes that he and his followers are asking an omnipotent (and not at all imaginary) being to kill his enemies. He has clearly shown the intent to cause the deaths of two people. This has to be a criminal act. If it wasn’t all so laughably stupid, I’d say Drake should be prosecuted for his threats.

ReligionNewsBlog
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
LA Times (registration required)

It brings the funny. I especially enjoyed this entry.

  You should know that I have a lot of problems with deism/religion. There is the usual complaint about the exclusiveness inherent in any belief system that purports to reveal the one true path to the divine. But when deists look to their patron spirit(s) as the driving force behind natural events, I start foaming at the mouth and gnawing on chair legs.

  The world is, almost completely at random, a stunningly beautiful and unfathomably horrible place. Invoking a supernatural explanation for unpredictable events is a double-edged sword. Also, both edges are coated in battery acid, and they’re aiming for your exposed throat at the same time.

  At best, ascribing events like these to the influence of magical sky beings fosters the belief that natural events occur because of the everyday behavior of the persons affected. (At its logical extreme, of course, is the delusion that these events can be influenced or even controlled by good behavior, dietary restriction, virgin sacrifice, etc.) At worst, a default deistic explanation makes us less safe, by acting as a disincentive to actual productive inquiry.

  Our only hope for minimizing the damage from pandemic illness and natural disasters lies with objective scientific investigation. Better prediction of geological and meteorological events. Structures built from modern materials and designed to survive extreme stresses. Efficient, workable evacuation plans. Vaccines to prevent communicable diseases. These things don’t just happen, no matter how humbly we petition or how hard we pray. They happen as the result of brain work and perseverance, and the underlying assumption that events that kill a lot of people should and can be prevented. If we call it the will of god(s) and trust in the power of prayer to save us, we’re leaving it to chance. Without the will to make our own way in the Universe, and the scientific diligence to learn how it all works, we’re signing on as the future test subjects in an experiment testing the power of fervent prayer to alter the trajectory of a civilization-killing asteroid. In that scenario, my money’s on the giant rock.

  And let me say, for a sprightly lass of 6,010, you’re still looking great. Don’t worry about that slight equatorial bulge. It happens to all of us after our mid-5,000s.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  What’s the best thing about being a blind, stupid, bleeding-heart, unrealistic, Satanloving, hellbound, hippie liberal cockface?
- One Nation Under GOD

Dear One Nation,
  I’d say it was the sense of smug superiority, but I suppose there’s plenty of that at every point on the ideological spectrum. Self-righteous boobs of every political bent succumb to the temptation to cocoon themselves in the silky softness of like-minded opinion. Of course, affirmation addiction strikes non-political types as well. Without it, Michael Jackson might still have a nose and the Star Wars would likely have been Jar-Jar free.

  There are a lot of good things about being a liberal/progressive/lefty. Our girls are hotter. Our scientists don’t waste time trying to prove that an invisible sky man made it all from scratch. Our gene pool tends to be broader and more diverse. We’re allowed to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance that comes from a living in a country that listed equality as a sacred principle while simultaneously enshrining slavery in its founding document.

  On the whole though, the most awesome thing about being on the ideological left is the inevitable approbation of history. The progress of freedom and justice is a little like the stock market. In the short term, there are ups (Brown v. Board of Education) and downs (the USA PATRIOT Act). In the long term, it’s all upward momentum. Social taboos evaporate and political barriers to individual expression erode. The doomsayers who warned that suffrage for women would ruin us, and that interracial marriage would destroy the American family, are dismissed as misguided fools. The uptight moralists claiming that gay marriage will tie “traditional” marriage to a stake and beat it to death with pink-handled hammers will eventually get the same treatment. Say what you will about self-confidence and the courage of your convictions, but it’s awfully pleasant that history, and hindsight, keep proving us right. Er, correct.