Radical Atheist

Hardly.

But hey, don’t strain yourselves.

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James Pinkerton, a contributing writer to the Fox News blog The Fox Forum, has decided to try a new tactic in discrediting Obama. Instead of barely believable innuendo, he’s stooping to bat-shit insane fantasy.

In an article entitled “The Devil Is In the Details: Another Obama Connection You Ought to Know About” he shares his delusions with whoever reads this crap and takes it seriously:

Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer.  That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea.

Do you think that admiring a Lucifer-admirer would make a difference to some voters?

If you’ve never heard of this true fact—and most Americans obviously haven’t—well, that might help to explain why John McCain is behind in the polls.

OK, you might be asking, where is this Lucifer stuff coming from? It comes from a man named Saul Alinsky, who devoted his life to left-wing agitation in Chicago.  He also wrote two seminal books, “Reveille for Radicals” and “Rules for Radicals,” still regarded as key how-to manuals for left-wing activists.

But Alinsky was more than just a leftist; he was a genuine out-there crazy, someone who loved to shock and stun, just for the helluvit. And so in the first edition of “Rules for Radicals,” published in 1971, he offered this astounding dedication: “Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgement of the very first radical, from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.”

This dedication is no secret.  David Freddoso wrote about it in his book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate;  and the inimitable Ann Coulter noted it, too, just last month.

I won’t subject you to the full article, I’m sure you value your mental health. If you’re interested and fully inoculated against rampant stupidity , follow the links for the full “story”. He got one thing right. Ann Coulter is indeed inimitable. No one else would willingly sacrifice their credibility and expose their ignorance by trying to imitate her.

I’m not even sure why anyone at Fox is still defending McCain’s candidacy. After all, Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody already posted that if the Ashley Todd story was a hoax, McCain’s candidacy was over. The fat lady has sung.

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With no disrespect to the mighty Flying Spaghetti Monster (PBTH), may I present a religion for the 21st century.

Say ‘Hebbo’ to Tarvuism!

Say Hebbo! from Torvakian on Vimeo.

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Islamic law isn’t based on a single interpretation of the Qur’an. “Islamic jurisprudence is not codified law: it is a series of formulations developed across generations by scholars and clerics. Depending on the Islamic school or historical era, these formulations can differ and even contradict each other.” (from the following article)

Iran follows a form of Islam that’s perhaps the most brutal and disgusting of any Muslim country. In 2005 two Iranian teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari (16) and Ayaz Marhoni (18), were both sentenced to death for what some human rights groups claimed was “consensual gay sex”. And now they are endorsing the killing of Christians and others they identify as apostates.

Eighteen years ago, Rashin Soodmand’s father was hanged in Iran for converting to Christianity. Now her brother is in a Mashad jail, and expects to be executed under new religious laws brought in this summer.

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled “Islamic Penal Code”, which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

Imposing the death penalty for changing religion blatantly violates one of the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the European Convention of Human Rights. It is even enshrined as Article 23 of Iran’s own constitution, which states that no one may be molested simply for his beliefs.

And yet few politicians or clerics in Iran see any contradiction between a law mandating the death penalty for changing religion and Iran’s constitution. There has been no public protest in Iran against it.

For one woman living in London, however, the Iranian parliamentary vote cannot be brushed aside. Rashin Soodmand is a 29-year-old Iranian Christian. Her father, Hossein Soodmand, was the last man to be executed in Iran for apostasy, the “crime” of abandoning one’s religion. He had converted from Islam to Christianity in 1960, when he was 13 years old. Thirty years later, he was hanged by the Iranian authorities for that decision.

Today, Rashin’s brother, Ramtin, is also held in a prison cell in Mashad, Iran’s holiest city. He was arrested on August 21. He has not been charged but he is a Christian. And Rashin fears that, just as her father was the last man to be executed for apostasy in Iran, her brother may become one of the first to be killed under Iran’s new law.

Not surprisingly, Rashin is desperately worried. “I am terribly anxious about him,” she explains. “Even though my brother is not an apostate, because he has never been a Muslim – my father raised us all as Christians – I don’t think he is safe. They assume that if you are Iranian, you must be Muslim.”

But six months later, the police came back and took her father away again. This time, they offered him a choice: he could denounce his Christian faith, and the church in which he was a pastor – or he would be killed. “Of course, my father refused to give up his faith,” Rashid recalls proudly. “He could not renounce his God. His belief in Christ was his life – it was his deepest conviction.” So two weeks later, Hossein Soodmand was taken by guards to the prison gallows and hanged.

Life for Rashin, her siblings and her mother became extremely difficult. Some Muslims are extremely hostile to people of any other religion, never mind to those who they consider apostates: Ayatollah Khomeini declared that “non-Muslims are impure”, insisting that for Muslims to wash the clothes of non-Muslims, or to eat food with non-Muslims, or even to use utensils touched by non-Muslims, would spoil their purity.

“After the revolution of 1979, Iran’s rulers wanted to turn Iran into an Islamic state, and to abolish the secular laws of the Shah,” explains Alexa Papadouris of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organisation that specialises in freedom of religion. “So the clerics instituted a mandate for judges presiding over criminal cases: if the existing penal code did not include legislation on whether a certain kind of behaviour is an offence, then the judges should refer to traditional Islamic jurisprudence.” In other words: sharia law.

There is another factor: President Ahmadinejad. “The President didn’t initiate the law mandating the death penalty for apostates,” says Papadouris, “but he has been lobbying for it. It is an effective form of playing populist politics. The Iranian economy is doing very badly, and the country is in a mess: Ahmadinejad may be calculating that he can gain support, and deflect attention from Iran’s problems, by persecuting apostates.”

The new law is not yet in force in Iran: it requires another vote in parliament, and then the signature of the Ayatollah. But that could happen within a matter of weeks. “Or,” says Papadouris, “it could conceivably be allowed to drop, were there a powerful enough international outcry”. (Source – The Telegraph)

As a non-religious humanist I denounce the killing of anyone for their religious beliefs. It’s not only inhumane but inefficient. You can’t kill a viewpoint.

It’s not only humanists who should be loudly opposing this violation of basic human rights. Christians and those of other, non-Islamic religions should be protesting this as well.

Islam will never be viewed by Western, may I say humane, societies as a peaceful and loving religion until these crimes against humanity have been forever renounced and abandoned.

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Why does the Religious Right demand that only abstinence should be taught to teenagers when according to their own Christian mythology Jesus was born of a girl who practiced abstinence. A whole lot of good it did her.

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