Christian Supremacy:
Dangerous Thinking
Chris Basten
Cliff had responded to an article Chris had sent speculating as to what kind of government President Bush had in mind to replace the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The blasé and accustomed attitude about this practice is deliberate sarcasm, continued from the previous round.) |
From: Chris Basten
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: October 07, 2001 4:45 AM
Subject: Re: Holy war
Is the puppet Bush wants to install a Christian?
Bush seems to support installing anything Christian. I think American Christians are playing with dynamite if they think they can change the history books and make the Muslims "happy Jesus people." The history between Muslims and Christians is a tentative one at best and a bloody one at worst.
Why don't religions take world history into consideration when dealing with each other? Apparently, Bush envisions installing his brand of propaganda into Afghanistan and changing the world for his king and savior, Jesus Christ. Isn't that the exact same logic Osama bin Laden used in killing thousands of people in New York and Washington for his buddy ol' pal, Allah?
To make matters worse, the Taliban is trying to blackmail the U.S. into backing off if they agree to release a few Christian prisoners who were arrested in Afghanistan for prostyletizing. Now a severe conundrum exists. Americans will have to make critical decisions based on the foolish choices of a handful of religious people who couldn't keep their Biblical beliefs to themselves. Ultimately, this becomes a religious decision instead of a political one. If Bush and the Taliban keep pushing each other's buttons, I predict more innocent people will have to suffer and die. Many, many more.
Sadly, history has a way of repeating itself.
What a deadly game we play when religions think they know the way.
Chris Basten
From: "Positive Atheism Magazine"
To: "Chris Basten"
Subject: Re: Holy war
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 04:35:19 +0100
If Bush fudges for the missionaries, there will be pandemonium in the West and in the Middle-East, because he'd be showing favoritism for Christianity and because he'd be instrumental in allowing blasphemers to escape their just punishment (which is intricately tied in with justice, the Muslim equivalent of redemption, much the way the firing squad is tied into the Mormon idea of a criminal redeeming himself through his own blood being literally spilt). Executing blasphemers is not about punishment or retribution but about justice and redemption. It pays to know a little about how they think. My grandma wanted to be a Muslim but she couldn't because they won't let atheists join.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: Chris Basten
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: October 07, 2001 6:11 AM
Subject: Re: Holy war
Cliff:
In response to Kathleen Parker's ignorant article about atheists, I wrote to the editor of USA Today and expressed my disappointment with her transparent message of "Christian supremecy" in America. To be American means to be a Christian in her narrow-minded world. I'm willing to bet she wrote this article after hearing an emotionally charged sermon from her pastor on a Sunday morning. Without thinking clearly, she may have gathered all her stewed emotions from this service and tried to find fault with something other than religion which continues to get a bum rap (and deservedly so). Since journalism seems to be an outlet of passion for a lot of writers, she vented, from what I gathered in her writing style, about a group of people she knows little, if anything, about. So instead of getting the facts straight, Ms. Parker found atheism to be a prudent guinea pig for her emotional outlet. Of course my allegations are absolute hearsay but I found more than meets the eye in her article and I wanted to hypothesize what her frame of mind may have been like when she wrote her little diddy.
As a former Christian who likes to write as an extension of who I am, I put myself in her shoes and imagined myself thinking in my old Christian ways: "I'm going to show the world that this is a Christian nation, damnit, and anyone who disagrees is not a true American!" That is dangerous thinking but I've been where she is at. The article touched that former-Christian bigot inside of me that threatens to paralyze rational thinking.
Kathleen Parker has no evidence to support her claims. She didn't interview atheists about their opinions and she sure didn't check out any atheist websites to confront her irrational views. Perhaps her treacherous thinking may have been dispelled and would have led to a more tolerant article about the fact that human beings are complicated and fragile and that no amount of religious garbage or finger-pointing will ever unite us.
"The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself." |
(I got this from your quotes section and found it too appropriate not to include).
Chris Basten
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Chris Basten"
Subject: Re: Holy war
Date: October 07, 2001 7:14 AM
I think it's amusing that both Richard Burtons said pretty much the same thing!
Kathleen Parker claims that she was commenting on all the (plastic?) religiosity to come about since September 11 (if this quip is accurate):
Why take it so personally? It wasn't about atheists. It was about the fact that everyone is talking about God all of a sudden when no one would have mentioned the word before Sept. 11. That was my real point. |
Assuming this is real (for a moment), I wouldn't expect a higher degree of honesty from someone who would write something like the very article she here defends, "God, Country Gain Fragile New Toehold." She must think we're monumentally stupid to think we'd buy that one! I included my reaction to this in my response to the letter, "Kathleen Parker's Website Abuzz With Furor About Her Article" with Kenneth Paolini, which is, for the most part, an exhortation to use our meager resources very wisely.
The only thing I might add to that exhortation (at this point) is to mention that some ideological opponents have been known to waste your time and resources by "forcing" you to respond to baseless and piddling criticism, or distracting you from the main point in similar fashion. She could be doing this with us, prompting us to jump up and down about her remarks when we have more serious matters to attend to, but I don't see her as being that sophisticated. While I don't think this is the weightiest matter before us, we do well to respond "hard, fast, and repetitively," as they say, but only to a certain extent.
This does happen, however. I have openly suspected that some of George Bush's Faith-Based Rigmarole may be partially about keeping us busy fighting on that front while he's off causing problems in Defense or Foreign Affairs. Who's to say he doesn't realize that his Faith-Based Hoopla doesn't have a snowball's chance in the Sahara of passing, but we can't simply let this go without a response. Similarly, I've caught more than a few Christians sending us page after page after page of mindless, baseless creationist drivel, cloaked in challenging sounding introductions which make it appear as if I don't believe in my position unless I respond to their attacks. They were just doing this to waste my time.
I've personally watched Bush Senior getting funny with his opposition: The first time Bush Senior came to Portland, they had it at the Downtown Hilton and it was pure pandemonium. I was even ashamed of some of the stuff that went on in the name of protesting this thing, but was still proud of the turnout. Bush dubbed Portland, Oregon, "Little Beirut." The second time they had it at the spacious Convention Center, where crowd control became not only possible but easy and (I'd wager) rather fun. Just when the crowd became big enough to do some small-time disruption, about fifty cops decked out in riot gear went running over past the north end of the property, as if something was going on over there. I knew nothing was happening, because that area was completely secure. I saw that it was a trap. But most of the youngsters didn't see this and followed the cops to go do some gawking. Sure enough, it was the ol' divide and conquer bit! The cops rushed in between the two segments of crowd and there was really nothing that could happen after that.
In the paper, they'd announced they were going to try out this newfangled juice on the crowd: Pepper Mace! Sure enough, the experiment went down on the curious kids who went and followed the cops running to the north. I'll bet that in-between the time Bush Senior got there and the time he spoke, they showed him footage of the "riot" as a way to pep him up for the speech. That's just like him, and I doubt Bush Junior is any different from his father except, of course, that he's much less sophisticated. He could never appreciate what those riot cops did, and they definitely wouldn't have bothered him with footage, but I promise you that Bush Senior saw footage of this action. He loves that kinda stuff, especially since the cops pulled such a stunning fast-one on the kids and especially after the serious problems the cops had the previous year at the Hilton.
Similarly, when Bush Junior mentioned in a campaign speech that there was a parody of his web site (making sure to mention the URL, of course), so many people logged on to the parody that the poor guy was hit with a bill for several thousands of dollars because of all the gigabytes he uploaded that weekend. Do you think Bush had been told that this would be a possibility if he merely mentioned its existence in a speech? I don't doubt it for a minute.
We've got to be very careful "stewards" of our resources (to use a Christian metaphor). Part of this is being on the lookout for them pulling stunts that are designed to get a reaction from you. One could be trying to get you to jump up and down just to make you look like a chump. Another could be egging you on to make a different mistake. A third could be distracting you to get your letter-writing campaign up and running on this issue while they're quietly off doing something that really warrants a letter-writing campaign! This happens, and we all do well to study how activism works and what has happened so we don't get caught off guard.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
Material by Cliff Walker (including unsigned editorial commentary) is copyright ©1995-2006 by Cliff Walker. Each submission is copyrighted by its writer, who retains control of the work except that by submitting it to Positive Atheism, permission has been granted to use the material or an edited version: (1) on the Positive Atheism web site; (2) in Positive Atheism Magazine; (3) in subsequent works controlled by Cliff Walker or Positive Atheism Magazine (including published or posted compilations). Excerpts not exceeding 500 words are allowed provided the proper copyright notice is affixed. Other use requires permission; Positive Atheism will work to protect the rights of all who submit their writings to us.