The impious Founding Fathers could not get elected today

Today's presidential elections are contests to see who can act the most pious. The Founding Fathers wouldn't have a chance, as spelled out by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Unlike many of today's candidates, the founders didn't find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn't vote for an atheist for president because nonbelievers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a "war on religion") and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).
The thing that really annoys me is that I don't have the power to expose these pseudo-religous clowns. I'd like to take them on stage, one by one, to see how much they know about bible history and theology. I'd like to see what they actually know about their own religions. I'd like to quiz them, and I would expect that they would know embarrassing little about their espoused beliefs. I would suspect that we would have results comparable to this.

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Republicans boo the golden rule

Many Christians I have met believe that Jesus invented the Golden Rule. This is not true. The Golden Rule has been adopted by ever major religion in the world. It has been around for many hundreds of years prior to the life of Jesus. Jesus certainly embraced the concept of the golden rule, however:

Do to others as you would have them do to you. —Luke 6:31 Whatever you want people to do for you, do the same for them. —Matthew 7:12
We now know that If Jesus showed up to urge South Carolina Republicans to love their enemies, he'd be booed off the stage. Maybe he'd even be dragged into a back alley and gotten beat up. What else can you conclude from this stunning exchange involving Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul? An excellent analysis is offered at a new site titled Bible Funmentionables, in an article titled "Boo! Unto Others."

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Conservative Fantasy Role Playing

I wonder sometimes how a modern conservative maintains. Romney has won the New Hampshire primary.  All the buzz now is how he’s going to have a much tougher fight in South Carolina, primarily because of the religious and social conservatives who will see him as “not conservative enough.”  There is a consortium of social conservatives meeting this week in Texas to discuss ways to stop him, to elevate someone more to their liking to the nomination.  And right there I have to wonder at what it means anymore to be a conservative. I grew up, probably as many people my age did, thinking of conservatism as essentially penurious and a bit militaristic.  Stodgy, stuffy, proper.  But mainly pennypinching.  A tendency to not do something rather than go forward with something that might not be a sure thing. I suppose some of the social aspect was there, too, but in politics that didn’t seem important.  I came of age with an idea of fiscal conservatism as the primary trait. That doesn’t square with the recent past.  The current GOP—say since Ronny Reagan came to power—has been anything but fiscally conservative, although what they have spent money on has lent them an aura of responsible, hardnosed governance.   Mainly the military, but also subsidies for businesses.  But something has distorted them since 1981 and has turned them into bigger government spenders than the Democrats ever were.  (This is not open to dispute, at least not when broken down by administrations.  Republican presidents have overseen massive increases in the deficit as opposed to Democratic administrations that have as often overseen sizable decreases in the deficit, even to the point of balancing the federal budget.  You may interpret or spin this any way you like, but voting trends seem to support that the choices Republican presidents have made in this regard have been supported by Republican congressmen even after said presidents have left office.) [More . . . ]

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Tebow, schadenfreude and blasphemy

I barely follow professional football these days, but I've heard enough about Tim Tebow to be annoyed. I'm not annoyed that he has played well this season or that he appears to be a generous and kind-hearted fellow. I'm annoyed because he insists that the alleged Creator of the Universe cares about American football. If this were at all true, what does that say about this "God," given that He has a lot of unfinished work to do healing the sick and helping to feed starving children? How would you characterize an allegedly omnipotent and omniscient God who would choose to watch professional football while even one or two children were dying from preventable causes such as the lack of food? The word "miscreant" comes to mind, because it's not only one or two children: More than 16,000 children starve every day. And how difficult should it be for an adult quarterback to figure out that the Creator of the Universe wouldn't actually hover around at American sports stadiums on the third planet from the Sun on Sundays? For the above reasons only, I was delighted to hear that Tebow and his team were thrashed by the New England Patriots yesterday. Maybe Tebow can figure out during this off-season that what he does for living is merely entertainment--it isn't notable by any cosmic standard. Maybe he can figure out that if the Creator of the Universe has a to-do list, it doesn't include caring about football games. Perhaps it's not fair to pick on Tim Tebow, because he's merely the most recent prominent athlete to assume that God cares about his performance on the field. But he has done an especially good job of bringing attention to himself based on his allegedly close relationship with "God," so I'll continue with this rant. [More . . . ]

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Blemished, blind, lame, flat-nosed deformed preachers need not apply for work.

In a post titled "Discrimination is Divine," at  a new website called Funmentionables, Michael G. Morris points out if one reads the bible literally, God is stunningly discriminatory.

Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron, saying, ‘Whoever he be of your seed throughout their generations that has a blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatever man he be that has a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that has a flat nose, or any deformity, or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or crook-backed, or a dwarf, or that has a blemish in his eye, or is scurvy, or scabbed, or has his stones broken. No man of the seed of Aaron the priest, that has a blemish, shall come near to offer the offerings of Yahweh made by fire. He has a blemish. He shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.’”
—Leviticus 21:16-21 The above post combines this bible quote with a brand new decision by the United State Supreme Court that invites blatant discrimination by churches, Hosanna-Tabor Church v. EEOC.  The above post by Michael Morris squarely fits the formula announced by Funmentionables:

Whereas a religious authority may try to explain away difficult passages, Morris’ refreshing man-in-the-pew perspective allows the Bible’s authority to speak for itself, as he complements each passage with his own humorous and thought-provoking commentary.

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