I may end up borrowing his words at some point - I’m taking a course on marriage in society this semester and there’s a lot of Christians (the cross is a dead giveaway) in attendance who were shaking their heads whenever “gay” or “lesbian” was uttered on the first day.

I have a new respect for Savage, so thanks for passing this along.

Right on, the fundies are more dangerous to democracy than the taliban could ever hope to be.

I’m a pretty avid reader of “Savage Love,” and Dan has written some very insightful political columns before. This one is no exception, and my respect for him grows and grows. I could not have put it better myself. Fundametalist Christians in America are not the ones being persecuted; they are the ones doing the persecuting, and it’s high time everyone realizes it.

Gee, I dunno, ricky.  I think of the Taliban took over tonight you might see the difference. 

But Savage is right on here.  This is beautifully said.

DOF, you missed the point. The liklihood of the Taliban taking over is amlmost nil, however that of the fundies is almost upon us!!!

The Taliban are just an extreme example of Islamic fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalism contains ideologies (such as Dominionism) that, were they to be fulfilled, would look markedly similar to the Taliban model of government (though they may not be quite as repressive toward women, and they would obviously be more “Western” in practice than the Taliban was).

Luckily, we have yet to see fundamentalists completely take over our society (though there’s no doubt that they would like to do so and that they would, given the chance); the people in Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere were not so lucky.

If Ricky’s point was that Christian fundies exert undue influence on our government and, in that sense, pose a more serious threat to our society than Islamic fundies (who, aside from a few of them threatening terrorist acts, exert virtually no real influence on our society and government), then I would say his point is accurate. If that was not his point, then I will not try to guess it as I am not a mind-reader.

On the other hand, the very threat of terrorism can wield such authority that, in the eyes of many people, Islamic fundamentalism would be more of a threat (or at least a more terrifying prospect) than Christian fundamentalism, which, aside from several extreme cases where doctors’ clinics or gay bars have been bombed, is largely carried out in lawful (or semi-lawful) terms.

Basically, I believe that fundie Christians pose a more real threat to our freedom, but that fundie Muslims would resort to more destructive means of carrying out their threat to our freedom, as they’ve demonstrated in the past.

**To get back on topic, I’ll just reiterate my view that Dan Savage is boss.

There’s a similar discussion over at Pharyngula, about a British television program in which Richard Dawkins, aka Darwin’s Rottweiler, takes on the Big Three in One- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  I haven’t seen it myself, but Dawkins does not suffer fools gladly, and it’s supposed to be entertaining.  Of course, lots of Christians are up in arms about it, but as Savage points out, there’s a difference between calling names and calling the shots.

For anyone who’s interested, the audio of the abovementioned program with Dawkins is available here, about 8.5 mb: The Root of Evil.
I’ve listened to about half of it.  Dawkins is blunt- it’s good to hear believers confronted with forthright atheism- too forthright for Ted Haggard, who chases Dawkins off the premises.

Zilch, thank you for the link!

zilch I downloaded the Divx rip of TRoE off a torrent site last night. Took about 2 hours. Watched it last night and I have to say it was pretty good. What was it Haggart said in his advice to Dawkins about talking to believers? “Just don’t be condescending?” That’s rich. Whatanass. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more condescending man in my life. He absolutely freaked out when Dawkins told him that he didn’t understand biology (which he clearly does not) ... Then he shouts at Dawkins: “He called my children animals!” as he boots him off the property. He actually rolls up in a pickup truck and shouts him off the lot. (You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy, I guess.) Dawkin’s off-premises reply was great (I’m paraphrasing): “His children are animals.” Nice to see an athiest get the last word for once. (Although I guess it happens around here a lot.)

Why do people fall into lockstep with this shit? Personally, I think it has more to do with wanting to belong to something than anything else ... even if it is a fabricated christofascist community like Haggart’s. You probably never saw it if you just listened to the show but they had all these crowd shots at Haggart’s church-plex ... grown men creaming themselves over Haggart like he was Paul McCartney or something. Bitches.

Yeah, I’d be great with it, cause it sounds like a cool place for believers to be… but I’ve decided in recent years it’s not a healthy mode of thinking. If you relegate it to the point where it doesn’t interfere with your interactions with others, though, then there’s no point in having it at all. For some people, God exists for God’s sake alone (what would there be without him?). I think that’s sad.

There’s a link on Pharyngula to a torrent for Part II (at Mininova) of Dawkin’s “The Root of All Evil” in which Dawkins makes the case for faith being a virus. I just downloaded it (and continue to seed)...don’t think Dawkins would mind…

Anyway, for those without the resources to download the thing (which I recommened that you do)...I present some select quotes from Part II, typed by mine own hands:

On some believers’ claims that the Old Testament contains all that anyone needs to know about morality:

The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous, and proud of it. Petty. Vindictive. Unjust. Unforgiving. Racist. An ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide.

If God doesn’t set a moral example, who does? Abraham, the founding father of all three great monotheistic religions? The man who would willingly make a burnt offering of his son Isaac. Maybe not. How about Moses, he of the tablets which said ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ while the same man, it says in the Book of Numbers, was incensed by the Israelites merciful restraint towards the conquered Medeanite people. He gave orders to kill all male prisoners and older women. “Let all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.” How is this story of Moses morally distinguishable from Hitler’s rape of Poland?

On the New Testament:

The New Testament of Jesus, they claim, undoes the damage and makes it all right. Yes, there is no doubt that from a moral point of view, Jesus is a huge improvement because Jesus - or whoever wrote his lines - was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures with which he had been brought up. But then, it all goes wrong.

The heart of New Testament theology - invented after Jesus’ death - is St. Paul’s nasty sadomasochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin. The idea is that God had himself incarnated as a man - Jesus - in order that he should be hideously tortured and executed to redeem all our sins.

Not just the original sin of Adam and Eve. Future sins as well, whether we decide to commit them or not.

If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them? Who is God trying to impress? Presumably himself, since he is judge and jury as well as execution victim.

To cap it all, according to scientific views of pre-history, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of original sin, never existed in the first place. An awkward fact, which undermines the premise of Paul’s whole tortuously nasty theory.

Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic wasn’t it?

Symbolic? So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin, by a non-existent individual. Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than ‘barking mad’.

On religious moderates who focus on the “feel good” message of the bible:

It seems to me an odd propositiom that we should adhere to some parts of the bible story but not to others. After all, when it comes to important moral questions, by what standards do we cherry-pick the bible? Why bother with the bible at all if we have the ability to pick and choose from it what is right and what is wrong for today’s society?

On an evolved human proto-morality which is much older than any religion: 

Perhaps it is our genetic inheritance that explains why those of us with no allegiance to a holy book or a Pope or an Ayatolla still manage to ground ourselves in a moral consensus which is surprisingly widely agreed. As social animals, we’ve worked out that we wouldn’t want to live in a society where it was acceptable to rape, murder or steal. We have a moral conscience and a mutual empathy and it it is constantly evolving. Religious or not, we have changed in unison and continue to change in our attitude to what is right and what is wrong.

All of the above are quotes form Dawkins. Thought I would add one more quote from author Ian McEwan, who was interviewed in the documentary:

My starting point would be - the brain is responsible for consciouness. And we could be reasonably sure that when that brain ceases to be - when it falls apart, decomposes - that will be the end of us. From that, quite a lot of things follow, especially morally.

We are the very priviledged owners of a brief spark of consciousness. And we therefore have to take responsibility for it. We cannot rely - as Christians or Muslims do - on a world elsewhere, a paradise to which one can work towards and maybe make sacrifices - and crucially, make sacrifices of other people. We have a marvelous gift and you see it develop in children. This ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own. And this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.

This is an expansion on Dawkin’s point that indoctrinating children with fantastic stories about the afterlife and versions of history which are not true, amounts to child abuse.

Dawkins goes on to make the case that the only world we can be sure of is the one we live in now...but athiesm is not something to be gloomy about since we don’t have a fantasy afterlife to pursue. Instead, it is a motivation to explore the tremendously interesting world at hand, to learn the facts behind its awe-inspiring diversity and scale - knowing that we are truly fortunate to be able to do so at this exact moment in time.