UNR Students for Liberty » Religion

Leaders with ‘Biblical Worldviews’

Barry Belmont — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:49:18 +0000

Former Governor-turned-political-commentator Mike Huckabee is a man of whom I am not a fan. And it is not just him personally, but everyone he represents: the new conservative Christian Right. The kind of people who want to see In God We Trust on every public building. The kind of people who want to have the ten commandments in every courthouse. The kind of people who want to teach intelligent design in public schools. These people are wrong and wrong in a very significant way.

But I bring Mike Huckabee up because in a recent interview he said that he would “love the world to be lead by people [politicians] who have a biblical worldview.” Now given many of the fundamental tenets lurking away in the Bible, that’s just an extraordinarily outlandish statement in and of itself. Square that with the fact that this nation (and many like it) strive for religious toleration and you can see that Huckabee’s craving for a pseudo-theocracy is rather disturbing.

Anyway, I did some digging and it turns out that in this country you actually cannot hold office in many states if you do not believe in God. That’s right a country whose Constitution says “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” has at least seven — that’s right, count ‘em, seven — states within it who expressly do not allow atheists/agnostics/nones to hold public office. They are as follows.

Maryland’s Declaration of Rights

Article 37 – “That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God.”

Mississippi’s State Constitution

Article 14, Section 265 – “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.”

North Carolina’s State Constitution

Article 6, Section 8 – “Disqualifications of office. The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

South Carolina’s State Constitution

Article 6, Section 2 – “No person who denies the existence of the Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.”

Tennessee’s State Constitution

Article 9, Section 2 – “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.“

Texas’s State Constitution

Article 1, Section 4 – “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

And to top it all off, in Mike Huckabee’s home state of Arkansas:

“No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.”

The only thing preventing Huckabee’s ~~Sharia~~…~~Theocratic~~…~~Christian~~…Biblical law from being fully implemented is the apparent reluctance to enforce the laws already on the books. These are terrible laws and if implemented would make for terrible politicians. To prevent someone from holding a job based on religious beliefs is just as bad as not allowing Democrats or Republicans or libertarians from attaining public office. It punishes and excludes people on what is essentially a ‘thought crime’.

No harm comes to A if B does not believe in a god. There is only the mutual harm of not mutually benefitting from one another’s interactions. A and B can both bring much to the political table, they just have to check their religious inclinations at the door.

Lawrence O vs. Glenny B on the Book of Revelation

Barry Belmont — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:50:49 +0000

Politics and religion have a very nuanced and complicated relationship with one another, historically speaking. This is especially true amongst those figureheads who feel comfortable straddling both fields with impunity. I have in mind the talking heads of Fox News in particular, though many political pundits have at the very least strong religious feelings. And of those pundits and Fox News types, Glenn Beck stands astride it all with his oddly mixed intermingling of new age Mormonism and quasi-libertarianism.

Recently, Beck has put forth the begging-the-question notion that perhaps we are living during the ‘end times’ saying that while he does not know the divine plan of the creator of the universe, a huge earthquake/tsunami combo in one of the least religious countries in the world has got to mean something. This is in line with the belief that some Christians espouse that the world will end on May 21 of this year.

Now, you may be asking, what has all of this got to do with political philosophy? The reason I bring this up is that Glenn Beck is not alone and that a great many people actively believe that the world will end during their lifetime almost exclusively for religious reasons. And the world ending (at least in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim conception) would be the start of the most glorious time that humanity has ever known. As Sam Harris points out, It is no exaggeration to say that if New York were suddenly replaced by a mushroom cloud a not insignificant portion of the population would see a silver lining. They believe this because such horrific disaster is cataloged in the Book of Revelations of the Christian Bible.

How exactly are you to convince people that they should invest in the future, respect the private property rights of others, not sink so heavily into debt when they can rely on a few sheets at the very end of a book to claim that the world will be burned to ash and the righteous glutted on the pleasures of paradise?

Well, MSNBC host, Lawrence O’Donnell has tried one approach, and that is to call out Beck (and thus his supporters) to fess up to the fact that they do not believe in the entirety of the Bible and to cop to the fact that they pick and choose the good parts. His explanation of the situation is nothing short of poetic.

Gays, Glee, and Big-o-try

Barry Belmont — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:05:05 +0000

There are children, today, in the twenty-first century, in arguably one of the most advanced and civilized nations to have ever existed on planet earth, that will kill themselves, because they are ashamed they are gay. They are ashamed because for centuries, the notion of homosexuality has been treated with contempt and disgust and those individuals born with homosexual tendencies are met only with derision and hatred. Why? Because some book has a half dozen lines or so (out of literally hundreds of thousands) crystallizing the views of their historical authors about homosexuality. And unfortunately these authors put their lines into the mouth of an infallible character.

This belief is pervasive. The most recent example comes by way of Victoria Jackson (of SNL fame) who blasted the show Glee for showing two male characters kissing. Her response can be seen below (particular attention should be paid to the phrase “It doesn’t matter what I believe, it matter what God believes” as this is the exact problem):

Shows like Glee (and Pretty Little Liars, FTW) have tried to provide an outlet for teens going through that awkward point in their life where they are first learning of their sexual orientation. Rather than showing it in a shameful light, they show it as another of life’s little complications. Yeah, it’s tough, but it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Conversely, by showing it as a natural thing, it drops the stigma and reveals that there really isn’t anything too terrible about two dudes kissing. Acceptance, tolerance, and compassion: this seems like a perfectly fine thing to teach kids.

Bigots hiding behind the poorly chosen words of ancient bigots deserve no respect in this regard. I understand the desire to raise your children as you would like, I understand the need for individuals to believe in what they like, I even understand the uneasiness that might come about through any initial culture shock (and the desire to avoid this uneasiness). But if you dislike gays, immigrants, blacks, Muslims, you are a reprehensible human being. If you hate for no reason than but to hate, you are terrible. If you are a bigot, that’s who you are, and there’s no sugar coating it.

To parse a phrase from the ever verbose Christopher Hitchens, those individuals who hate others on such a basis as Ms. Jackson belong to the infancy of our civilization and deserve to be treated like children. But luckily those of us comfortable with tolerance do not feel our children should be ashamed. They should merely grow up and join the adult table when they’re ready.

In God We Trust: A Case Study

Barry Belmont — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:58:21 +0000

Some people, as it turns out, see absolutely nothing wrong with the national motto of “In God We Trust” appearing on all sorts of things, including the money supply, schools, public universities, etc. This is because their cultural and cognitive biases are blinding them to the actual offensiveness of such a statement by merely reaffirming their own belief. [For instance, someone like me might not mind seeing "Taco Bell is the Best" on all our printed Federal Reserve notes, but fans of Del Taco would certainly have a gripe or two.]

So in order to make it that much more apparent, please enjoy a few samples of how the motto could appear, and see if you’re still 100% A-OK with “In God We Trust” being on everything.

How do you feel when it's not 'your' god? This image by itself should reveal how highly cultural the belief is anyway.

Who says that we even need to trust in a god?

What about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Is he not a god you would like to see everywhere?

How about straight godless?

...I was kinda hoping for Dog the Bounty Hunter...but this'll do.

It's Peanut Butter & Jelly Time.

Do you get it yet?

Hopefully this gives something to think about. The endorsement of a particular religious doctrine has absolutely no place within the political sphere. Nor should the actions of a few simple-minded and marginally selected troglodytes with the hots for the beautiful simplicity of the the Church-mandated Dark Ages have any bearing on what we as free individuals believe with our own brains and think through with our own thoughts.

But there is a simple solution here: get rid of the public sphere. Privatize money, schools, courthouses. Then you can put whatever motto you would like on anything. Hand out gold bars with ‘Allah is Merciful’ scrawled all over them or straps of leather with “Thor is a douche” and do so with consenting people and I could not begin to care less. The problem stems ultimately from public goods, not from religious ideology. And unfortunately, very few people realize this.

In God We Trust

Barry Belmont — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:25:13 +0000

If you haven’t yet heard, Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) has put forth a House Resolution to reaffirm the national motto as ‘In God We Trust’ by posting this motto on many public buildings including court houses, schools, and practically all governmental buildings. The bill has over sixty co-sponsors and is advancing to the floor of the House of Representatives for discussion and a vote. Forbes has declared that he introduced the bill (several times at this point) because:

This sends a clear message to all these government departments and agencies that it’s all right to put up the motto on our buildings and in our classrooms. And I think it will stop the tide of the chilling effect over the past several years.
[...] We’re not forcing anybody to do anything, but at the same time, we want to stand there to protect people who want to say God in a public building. And we don’t want some government agency telling them that they can’t put the national motto in their buildings or classrooms.

This should strike anyone with even a modicum of sensibility as a morbid idea. Not only should the ‘motto’ of the United States not have any religious connotations (whatever happened to the good ol’ E Pluribus Unum?) but there is absolutely no reason for it to be ‘reaffirmed’ except as a means do to some trolling for Christianity. But what about those 34+ million Americans who express no religious affiliation whatsoever? Put even more bluntly, what about those citizens who downright don’t believe in a god or gods, are they to be forced to endorse an opinion they cannot believe simply so they can enter a court of law? [Stay tuned for the article that follows, showing that in quite a few states, said individuals are not even allowed to hold office...]

All this bill does is reinforce the stigma of atheism, play up a religious streak which has no business in politics, and make its co-sponsors look like nuts. However, this stupidly divisive piece of legislation will at least be doing one good thing: wasting the time of politicians that might otherwise be doing other terrible things, like increasing tariffs or mandating healthcare.

Other than that silver lining this bill is still just a turd shaped cloud that’ll hopefully just go away before it makes a real mess of the place…

Saturday Night WTF: Pledge of All(ah)egiance

Barry Belmont — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 06:51:59 +0000

Dogmatism, whether it be political, philosophical, national, or religious, is generally a practice to be shunned. Rarely is a more terrible scourge created than when this unmovable frame of mind is coupled with an inexplicable sense of pride. At every turn it is up to those of us free of such traps of the mind to denigrate them at every turn, to expose to the light of reason the tragic fallacy of unwarranted belief perpetuated by unnecessary pride.

In this regard, there is perhaps nothing more sad and obstinate an obstacle in the path toward bettering the human condition than the sentiment expressed in this video:

Particular attention should be paid to the line “and I will die to establish Islam” for, indeed, what is there to say to such a person, to such a world view? How are we to convince those swearing to this oath (and meaning it) that it could possibly be flawed? And such a step is an absolute necessity along the road of progress [see diagram below]. No society has ever advanced claiming infallible certainty.

So, in summary, I have no idea what it would take to change the mind of the people saying that pledge (or any such pledge to an idea, a religion, a nation), but I do know that it is absolutely necessary if we are to make this a better world.

A ‘Prayer’ for Egypt (from the people you expect to spell it ‘Moslem’)

Barry Belmont — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:59:07 +0000

It’s remarkable that people can have literally the best intentions possible (for instance wishing to prevent WWIII) and yet with the wrong set of thoughts, facts, and theories about the universe come off as crazy, slightly prejudicial, and at the very least, a little silly.

This is a video of a Christian woman asking for prayers for the Middle East. She seems like she would be a nice lady, however, what she says throughout the video is a fascinating sort of “capture” of the rhetoric many (conservative, Christian) Americans use when talking about Islam and Muslims (or, as I pointed out, as they say, Moslems). Is this a facet of modern Islamophobia or something completely different?

Should Witches Be Put on Trial?

Barry Belmont — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:58:59 +0000

Gah…what is the solution to this?

Let’s say you wanted to show a porn of the Prophet Muhammad…

Barry Belmont — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:34:35 +0000

Certainly as libertarians one should be as free as the wind to show pornographic content of any kind (of consenting adults) with consenting adults. Presumably this includes porn of the Buddha, the god Vishnu, Jesus Christ, and a panoply of other divine figures (Thor, Odin, Hathor, Ra, too!). However, an artist in Sweden by the name of Lars Vilks in a lecture about free speech showed a video depicting the Prophet of Islam in a manner suggesting homosexual conduct (aka, his head pasted on naked men’s bodies) and was met with a fury well beyond that which would be caused by yelling “Fire” in the packed auditorium.

So, I ask you, is the libertarian stance on this as cut and dry as I assume it to be (free people are free to watch and disseminate whatever they want to whomever they want) or are there limits imposed on certain things (such as not being allowed to depict sacred individuals in gratuitous sexual positions)?

Nickel and Dimed and Offended

Barry Belmont — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:18:28 +0000

So I know a lot of you had to read that “Nickel and Dimed” book as part of your freshmen orientation and I also know very few of you actually enjoyed it. You thought it was biased or boring or only kinda true or what have you. But this is the first time I’ve heard this complaint:

To quote a commenter on YouTube:

Nytephyre – “Thank you Fox “News” for interviewing these idiots and making me feel more ashamed of being an American.”