Secular effort to fight AIDS in Kenya?

Rotarians are secular. It is easy to forget that there are secular groups in America who are mainstream and not religious in any way. I applaud their effort to fight AIDS. We need to present a secular face to the world in this fight. My question is, “Are we presenting a secular face to the world?”

A press release today announced that a  Rotary Action Group Helps Launch Major Public-Private HIV Prevention Initiative in Kenya. On the surface I am happy.  It is deep down where I feel my discomfort. Something is not right here.

The Rotarians have partnered with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). And partnering with the Bush Administration comes with a few strings attached. Like limits on what services can be provided. Here is an example of the help Kenyan children between the ages of 10 and 24 years of age will receive.

For example, one partner, a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, has worked with PEPFAR to create an interactive, multi-player computer game, "Pamoja Mtaani" ("Together in the Hood") to show teens how to identify and avoid risky behaviors. Another partner, the toy manufacturer Hasbro, will carry the message to the younger set with specially designed toys and games.

A video game that teaches what? Abstinence?

The game features five characters brought together through random circumstance, each having lost what is most precious to them; together, they must seek justice and recover what was taken, as well as help an injured woman and seek guidance on their quest from the mystical Mama Africa. "As they work their way through various neighborhoods, they uncover and experience barriers and facilitators to behavior change,"

I video game in economically challenged Kenya where 40% of the population is out of work and poverty is a fact of life. I don’t get how this makes sense. Also, the video game teaches a child how to behave – is anyone else bothered by the overt attempt at evangelism? It feels like the fudie effort to replace Evolution with Intelligent Design in public schools. You know, just don’t call it religion.

The program suggests that we can prevent AIDS by preventing children from having sex until they are married… Say what? If you don’t call it abstinence, then it is not a Christian effort to control behavior. Condoms work better than abstanace programs.  Where are the condoms? 

Oh, and call me a cynic, but this also smells like market development. No?

Technorati tags: AIDS, Bush, Africa, Abstinence, Kenya

Atheism 101: A Reading List revisited

Vjack continues to refine his Atheism 101 post on developing an Atheist Reading list. I've send dozens of people to his post when they ask for help via email or in comments.

I wanted to add a book that was important to me when I first became an atheist. Asimov's In The Beginning, Science faces God in the Book of Genesis.  It is all but forgotten today. And by today’s standards the book  is fairly unsophisticated.  Back in the day it sparked my first stirrings of intellectual curiosity. I was an atheist by 1979, but an atheist who had lost his faith and was adrift intellectually.  The book came out in 1981. I checked it out from the library and was reading it at the time my son was born. I distantly remember becoming interested in science, reason, and logic after reading it.

On a side note – I remember the day Asimov died. I had the book Robots of Dawn in my back pocket. I was standing in the Science and Industry Museum in Los Angeles when I overheard another guest talking about Asimov’s death. I remember feeling very sad. 

Go read a book.

Technorati tags: Atheism 101, Reading, Asimov

My condolences

A long time friend of my family, a man named Omar, lost his brother this morning. The death was tragic and untimely. The deceased leaves behind two young children. It is truly a tragedy. I offer my condolences to Omar and his wife Imogen. I am sorry for your loss. 

An interesting church experience

I attended a Sunday night church service to watch my niece  participate in a Christmas play. My niece came out of her shell to perform beautifully. Her infection smile and enthusiasm made the event special. My wife and I enjoyed the show. The kids were entertaining. It was a truly a wonderful family event. I enjoyed myself. I took the normal good natured ribbing that comes with an atheist attending a church service in stride. There were smiles for everyone.

The Christmas play was held at Cypress Church. It is a nice place. The people were friendly and I felt welcome I expected an alter call, but there was none. The play was a musical spelling bee where children competed in an effort to spell the many names of God. The music was well written and performed to the best of the ability a group of eight year old children could muster.

We experienced a brief message from the pastor after the play. He invited anyone who was interested in learning more about the church to accept an information packet from one of the children. That was it. A no pressure event which I would gladly re-experience if my niece were to participate in another event. 

Shotgun to the face... probation

Why a 23-year-old pastor would possess a sawed-off shotgun, let alone show it to children, is beyond me. There is something about a sawed-off shotgun and pastor that just does not fit. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps its that something so inherently violent would be in the hands of a man who is supposed to preach a message of peace.

Anyway... "Pastor" Keith Owens was given house arrest and probation for allowing a 15-year-old girl to die by a shotgun blast to her face. Probation seems so inadequate.

Twenty-three-year-old Keith Owens, of Duquesne, was sentenced Monday to two years of intermediate punishment, of which 18 months will be on house arrest, for his guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter.

Source: W.Pa. youth pastor gets probation in teen's death

Technorati tags: Hypocrisy

Why did the ATF get involved?

I keep track of Church fires. My reason is simple. The perception of the public is that bad actors are burning down America's churches. The facts are very different. There is no doubt that people are burning down churches. The problem is that many of these cases find the people who owned/operated the church to be at fault. These stories never get out to the public. Instead, high profile cases are paraded in the press as examples of the nonexistent war on religion.

Take the case of the fire at Sarah Palin’s old church, the Wasilla Bible Church. An arsonist ignited a fire on December 12. Nobody was hurt, but the building suffered and estimated $1 million in damage. My question is, why did the federal government get involved in a simple fire?

The ATF issued a press release today. ATF Joins Church Arson Investigation. The arson investigation team now includes the Alaska State Fire Marshal, The Wasilla Police Department, the Central Mat-Su Fire Department, and the Anchorage Fire Department. I am sure more resources will be applied to the problem as the case progresses. But why? Does the fire somehow get special status because it occurred in a church?

I have a heart. If this were to happen in my own community I would want to see it investigated and those responsible held accountable. Since it is a church, I would not waste my money donating for its repair. If you want to help. You can send a donation to this address.

I’m not going to link to my source – I don’t like Michelle Malkin very much.

1. Please make your check payable to: Wasilla Bible Church

2. Mail your check to:

Wasilla Bible Church
1651 W. Nicola Avenue
Wasilla, Alaska 99654

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Technorati tags: Arson, Sarah Palin, ATF, Religion

Lubbock is in Texas, right?

The first time I met somebody from Lubbock was back in the early 80s. I was in the service leaning my craft at tech school. I was in charge of a floor in my dorm. One night while making my rounds I investigated noises coming from a dorm room. I open the door to find two men in what they claimed was consensual sex with a woman. Except that the woman had her hands pinned behind her and they were using a hammer handle to violate her.

The nice thing about the service is that I got to beat the crap out of them before the MPs got to beat the crap of them. In the end, neither man was seriously punished. The woman took a voluntary discharged.

Both the men were from Lubbock. Two weeks before they had tried to get me to go to an off base church. They were both devout Baptists. They promised that if I went to church, I could get off of Sunday lawn duty. I declined. I was such a screw up, I knew they could not make good on their promise.

Over the years I’ve met many people from Lubbock, with a few exceptions, most were no better than my two acquaintances from my days in the service. Take the intellectual dishonesty of Arnold H. Loewy. He suggests that Intelligent Design should be taught in school because it will help our children learn to think. In his introductory paragraph, he claims to be an academic but leaves out his religious affiliation.

Currently, a national debate is raging over whether or not to teach intelligent design in public schools. For the most part, fundamentalist Christians support the idea while scientists and most other academics oppose it. Despite my status as an academic, I think intelligent design should be taught in public schools, if it is done the right way.

He is an academic. But the position he stakes out is dishonest. He aligns himself with the forces of science and reason when he is in fact a Christian legal activist.  He also paints the picture inaccurately. The is no raging national debate, there is only religious activism and the forces who oppose it. Plus, he leaves out that the U.S. Constitution sides with science. By painting the picture the way he wants us to see it, he can control the context and the content of logically flaw argument which follows.

Read it for yourself, and then weep for the people of Lubbock. With educators like this, there is little hope for their future.

Technorati tags: Science, Creationism, Intelligent Design. Texas

Why is this news?

Do we really need to pray for Blagojevich and is this really newsworthy? OK - so the Fort Mill Times is a small community rag, I get that. But do they need to manufacture feel good crap in order to sell papers?

Acree was one of the ministers who prayed with Blagojevich at his North Side home last week a few days after the Democrat was arrested on federal corruption charges. Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.

So Blagojevich prayed after his bust for corruption. Does that strike any of you as the height of hypocrisy? Now he’s sorry? If he plays the religion card does that mean we should forgive him because he’s just a misguided Christian? This whole thing makes my skin crawl.

Technorati tags: Blagojevich, Hypocrisy, Corruption

Blogroll Update: Lay Theism

Lay Theism has joined the Atheist Blogroll. The author has been kind enough to provide an introduction.

In the author’s own words:

After many years of reading, thinking, experiencing, observing, and even sometimes praying, I have finally settled into the belief that this life is all we have. I was brought up in a typical nuclear family with Bible Belt teachings and surroundings. I attended church and went to private, religious school. But, after nearly four decades on this amazing, beautiful planet, I have concluded that this is all there is& there is no after-life, no mysticism, no supernatural, no omniscience, no messiah, and certainly no god.

Whatever your beliefs, you are welcome at Lay Theism. More than anything I am looking for truth and wisdom, which is clearly not within modern religion. I hope you find something that you have been looking for too.

Drop in and say hi!

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Blogging

I never believe what Bush says

I’m not saying President Bush is a liar. No, I believe he presents a story in the best possible light, even when it's fictional. Take his radio address today. He talked about the war on drugs. He told a story in order to spin the 8 year effort as a success. He also took the opportunity to plug his faith-based efforts to cure drug addiction. The success of these faith-based programs are questionable at best.

Taken together, our efforts to reduce demand, cut supply, and help people break the chains of addiction are yielding measurable results. Over the past seven years, marijuana use by young people has dropped by 25 percent. Methamphetamine use by young people is down by 50 percent. And the use of cocaine, hallucinogens, steroids, and alcohol by America's youth are all on the decline. Overall, illegal drug use by Americans is down by 25 percent -- meaning we have helped approximately 900,000 young people stay clean.

Source: Radio Address by President Bush to the Nation

The problem is that Bush’s policies have also helped several million young people find their way into America’s jails and prisons. NORML keeps track for a reason. It’s because President Bush will never say we arrested eight hundred and seventy thousand people for marijuana offenses in 2007 alone, and several million people since he redoubled the government’s war on drugs.

Nor will he mention that the war on drugs has produced ruthlessly efficient drug cartels who routinely murder people in in Mexican border towns like Juarez, where 1500 people have been gunned down this year. We cause this by creating demand and limiting supply. In legal parlance, we are culpable.

Instead, President Bush shills for Christian fundamentalist who do not want to see the faith-based gravy train come to an end with the Bush administration. Our President acts as a Christian surrogate by delivering the testimony of Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers. I appreciate the story of Josh Hamilton. I like seeing people get their lives together. My problem is that Josh Hamilton has nothing to do with the war on drugs or with faith-based efforts to help drug addicts. Hamilton was a rich self-absorbed coke addict who cleaned his life up when faced with losing everything. He did it through religion. Great, whatever works. But Bush’s radio address was misdirection, plain and simple.

I think Bush’s radio address is government sponsored evangelism.It focused attention on Josh Hamilton’s ministry – Triple Play Ministries, while trying to link religion to our nations failed drug policies. It’s enough to make this life long libertarian vote for a democrat. I wonder if President-elect Obama will end the drug war by legalizing marijuana?

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Technorati tags: President Bush, Marijuana, War on Drugs, Josh Hamilton

A small victory in the fight against theocracy

Michael and Marla Sklars have a case working through the courts in an effort to have their children's tuition and fees claimed as a tax deduction. Their children attend a private Orthodox Jewish day school.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Sklars’ argument.

"We are pleased that the IRS's denial of the Sklars' claimed deductions was upheld by the Tax Court and the Ninth Circuit," said Nathan J. Hochman, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's Tax Division. "While taxpayers may choose to enroll their children in religious schools, the Tax Code should not subsidize this choice."

The implications if this case had succeeded were profound. Children would move from a secular education to a religious education in droves. The implications for American society would have been to increase sectarian religiosity. I don’t think we need more of that…

You can read the legal brief here and the Justice Department Press Release here.

Hat Tip PR Newswire

Technorati tags: Religion, Religious Education, Theocracy, Tax Law

Child Pornographers Beware

In a press release Thursday, the Justice Department announced an ongoing effort to capture international child pornographers. 60 people have been arrested, with more arrests likely. 11 children have been rescued so far.

The program is called Operation Joint Hammer. Law enforcement agencies from the United States and Europe are working together to target child pornographers working to distribute content over the internet.

In one case, European law enforcement officials discovered that a father was raping his young daughters and offering a photographer across the continent an opportunity to photograph these sexual attacks. Identification of the father led to the discovery of a commercial Web site maintained by the photographer, which he used to sell the images of the sexual abuse of those children along with many other images of other children whose sexual exploitation he commissioned. Law enforcement has determined that the customers of the Web site were located in nearly 30 countries around the world, including the United States.

I applaud the efforts of the Justice Department. Although I do not share the viewpoint that all pornography is bad, like most pornography involving consenting adults for example, child pornography is pure evil. I find pastors who prey on children particularly abhorrent, but the people who produce child porn deserve to lose their freedom for a very long time.

I know a few people who defend child pornography as a market driven force. They are hard core libertarians with ideological positions I find untenable. The problem with political and religious ideology is that they include or exclude people and behavior based on a position with with little basis in reality. The test for good or evil is replace with a definition that supports and ideology. It’s one of the reasons the catholic church fights against the distribution of condom in the fight against AIDS. It one the reasons Christian fundamentalists exclude gays from basic human rights, like marriage. And it is one of the reasons some libertarians include protection for child pornographers in their rhetoric. I tend to regard all ideological positions with suspicion, even my own.

Hat Tip: PR Newswire

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Technorati tags: Child Pornography

Mexican Playboy Publishes Nude Virgin Mary on Cover

Something tells me this Mary is not a virgin.

The December issue features model Maria Florencia Onori posing as the Virgin wearing nothing but an angelic white cloth.

I’m not going to publish the cover here. And not for the reasons you might think. The only image I could find is copyrighted. Go ahead and follow this link, it is SFW.

Technorati tags: Virgin Mary, Religion, Onori

What country has the lowest age of consent in Europe?

Vatican City - 12 years old. This explains so much.

16 is lowest age of consent is the United States.

I’m trying something new

For the last 25 year or so ,when I’ve been greeted with Merry Christmas, I’ve said the same in return. Over the last two weeks I’ve responded to these greetings with a simple, “I don’t celebrate Christmas”. When they ask why, I tell them that I am an Atheist and that Christmas is a Christian holiday.

Sometimes they respond with, “Everybody celebrates Christmas”.

I ask if the celebrate Chanukah, they typically answer , “No, I’m not Jewish”.

I say something like. “My point exactly”.

This normally leads to a dialog on the meaning of Christmas and the holiday season. I hear a lot of people say that Christmas is really just all about getting together with your family. I smile at this because they are talking about the secular Christmas instead of the religious one. The secular version is by far the most popular conversation topic.

I’ve never been an assertive atheist at work. People feel free to tell me what they believe all the time. I listen, but rarely tell them I am an atheist. I find it’s fun to engage with others on the topic. They are often open and interested in my point of view. The most interesting comment so far came from a devout catholic who was disturbed that my family does not put up Christmas lights. When I mentioned that a sting of lights on the front of my house is in no way even remotely Christ like, and that I would never hang lights. She asked why I was against Christmas lights if they were not a religious symbol. I told her that hanging lights would cut into my blogging.

Technorati tags: Christmas, Atheism