tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35071746621077486192024-03-07T20:39:53.407-08:00To Hell with BettyFeminism.
Atheism.
Optimism.Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-50445853332118565312010-09-11T11:32:00.000-07:002010-09-11T11:32:32.670-07:00Yikes.<table cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr><td class="sqtdq" colspan="2">"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens. Nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George Bush</td><td class="sqtdq" colspan="2"><br />
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</tbody></table>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-2269683402774380192010-09-10T14:30:00.000-07:002010-09-10T14:32:22.757-07:00Westboro Baptist Church Feels, Like, Totally Left Out<h3 class="UIIntentionalStory_Message"><span class="UIStory_Message">Dear Pastor Terry, We here at the Westboro Baptist Church feel that you are stealing our media spotlight and endangering our reputation as the craziest Christian extremist organization in America. We raise you three Qurans and two American flags:</span></h3><h3 class="UIIntentionalStory_Message"><span class="UIStory_Message"><a href="http://www.godhatesfags.com/letters/20100909_Open-Letter-WBC-to-Burn-the-Koran-and-American-Flag.pdf">Westboro Baptist Church: Open Letter to Burn the Koran and American Flag </a></span></h3><h3 class="UIIntentionalStory_Message"><span class="UIStory_Message"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Of course, I for one am excited about the prospect of "Beast Obama" becoming "King of the World." James Cameron has held that post for far too long.)</span> </span></h3>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-76640662554135502892010-09-05T15:56:00.000-07:002010-09-05T15:56:22.644-07:00The Tennessee Mosque Burnings: Christian Extremism versus the Gospel of Niceness (Part 1)I’m traveling in Tennessee this week, and in my time here I have been overwhelmed by a couple of issues in the media. The first has been this article,<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html#comment-72694519"> “Author: More Teens Becoming ‘Fake’ Christians,” </a>published by CNN.com, about a Methodist minister, Kenda Creasy Dean, who has written a book entitled, <i>Almost Christian.</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=tohewibe-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0195314840&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=FFFFFF&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> In it she argues that young people today have adopted a “mutant” or “imposter” Christianity. According to Dean, teens are “inarticulate about their faith” and many seem to believe little more than that God wants them to “feel good and do good.” Espousing a simplistic “gospel of niceness,” they believe that “faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers.”<br />
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Dean believes teen faith is “spineless”: “The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted.” I assume Dean believes the teens aren’t spending enough time "witnessing," or proselytizing to strangers in public places as I was taught to do as an adolescent by my own (Methodist) church leaders. We would walk up to people in a mall or on a beach, tap them on the shoulder, and ask them if they knew Jesus. If they said, “yes,” we didn’t bother them anymore. If they said, “no,” then we were supposed to talk them into accepting Christ. Often I was too shy to push too hard, and I guess this is what Dean means by calling teen faith “spineless.” But I just didn’t want to annoy people. Maybe that’s what Dean means by saying that young people want to avoid “ruffling feathers” -- yet this also seems like simple politeness. Even back when I was a born-again Christian, my Southern upbringing wouldn’t allow me to obnoxiously harass strangers while they were trying to do their shopping.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>What really put me into a huff when I read this article were the words “mutant” and “imposter” to describe the faith of these young people who were not actively bothering anybody. In response, I posted these comments to the CNN article’s comments thread:<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">“As a teen, I was one of those kids passionate and articulate about Christianity. Then I read the Bible all the way through for the first time and found it to be filled with hatred against women and gay people. And what is wrong with a "gospel of niceness"? It's so much better than what the Bible has to offer, which is a gospel that tells us to ABANDON our family members who don't believe in the Christian god. I grew up watching conservative, born-again Christians do just that. And what on earth is a "mutant" Christianity? Catholics think Protestants developed a "mutant" Christianity and Protestants think Mormons developed a "mutant" Christianity. What right do these people have to tell others what kind of Christianity is THE authentic one? If that lady eats shrimp, then I say she is the one who has adopted a mutant Christianity. See <a href="http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/">http://www.godhatesshrimp.com</a> to see just how far you have strayed from God's laws, you Red Lobster loving heathens!”</span></blockquote><br />
As you can see, as a former born-again Christian, when I get my own feathers ruffled I have a tendency to threaten people with hell, even though as an atheist, I no longer believe in it. <br />
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Yet aside from my tongue-in-cheek argument about the abomination of shrimp-eating, what strikes me now is the fact that there are a whole lot of Christians who would say that if Kendra Dean, a woman, dares to be a preacher, then she is breaking Biblical laws that prohibit women from teaching men. She herself is a kind of “mutant” (in this case, read: liberal) Christian, according to the more conservative Christians, like those of the Church of Christ, who do not allow women to speak in church in the presence of men and who can recite numerous Bible verses to back up their position.<br />
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So it seems everyone’s living in a glass house when it comes to the “real-or-fake” religion game, and for an atheist, watching Christians fight over whose interpretation of the Bible is “real” and whose is “fake” is like being on one of those Lost fanpages where diehards engage in endless comments thread arguments over what the hell happened in the final episode. And you’re an outsider looking in and you just want to scream, “Who cares! This plot got so convoluted so long ago that it hasn’t made any sense since the first season (or in Christianity’s case, the first century) anyway! And even then it didn’t make a whole lotta sense!”<br />
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On a more serious note, the other issue saturating the Tennessee news this week shows us how this business of determining who is a “real” and who is a “fake” Christian can lend itself to more dangerous rhetoric, such as the attempt to determine which non-Christian faiths are to be considered “real” religions and which are to be considered “fake.” Consider the recent comment by Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, who questioned whether the state should classify Islam as a “real” religion (in which case it would be afforded the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom) or as a cult (in which case it would not be afforded Constitutional protection):<br />
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Ramsey’s sentiments are shared by many other Tennesseans, some of whom even won themselves a spot on Jon Stewart’s <i>The Daily Show</i> by protesting against a mosque under construction in Murfreesboro, Tennessee: <br />
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But this story got worse. A few days after this segment aired, someone actually <a href="http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100904/NEWS01/9040321/+20+000+reward+offered+in+arson+at+Murfreesboro+mosque+site+">torched the mosque construction site in Murfreesboro. </a><br />
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On Friday the feds confirmed that it was arson. Ok, one might say, this is just all in response to the Muslim community center being built two blocks from Ground Zero. Soon enough it will pass. But here’s the interesting part. During the news conference at the site, a Rutherford County school bus passed by, and from the bus window, a student yelled, “White Pride!” at those gathered at the mosque site. (Apparently this kid has never watched Dave Chappelle or he would know that the proper phrase is “White Power!” -- but maybe this new phrase is a trend among the up and coming KKK tween set. I don’t know.)<br />
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Now, there are people who would argue that the mosque attacks in the U.S. are not about race, but I think the kid on the bus yelling “White Pride!” at mosque congregants serves as a reminder that here in the South, even the schoolchildren know what this shit’s about.<br />
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I mean, down here, we have a long history of burning down the churches, businesses, and homes of minorities. There are still plenty of “good ol’ boys” who want to, as the Tea Partiers say, “restore America” -- to about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church">1963. </a><br />
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And this is not nearly the first time a mosque has been targeted in Tennessee. In 2008 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330504,00.html">another mosque was burned, this time in Columbia.</a> In addition, the walls of the mosque were defaced with swastikas and the words, “White Power.” (Obviously, these racists were more seasoned.)<br />
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The arsonists were three men who described themselves as members of the Christian Identity Movement, a Christian extremist organization that claims (like the Christianity of the Nazis) that white Europeans are God’s chosen people. One of the arsonists told authorities that “What goes on in that building is illegal according to the Bible” and that within his Christian organization, “stripes or promotions are earned for committing acts of violence against ‘enemies.’” It seems to me that what we have here is a sort of Christian al Qaeda that, like the KKK (a fiercely Protestant organization) or the Nazis themselves, will rarely be mistaken for representing the majority of Christians.<br />
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But like the KKK and the Nazis, the Christian Identity Movement shows the deep connection between Christian extremism, white supremacy movements, and domestic terrorism.<br />
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Now, I imagine that Kendra Dean along with most Christians will argue that a white supremacist, terrorist Christianity is not a “real” Christianity. It is fake, mutant, imposter. But what would happen in a world where Christians felt constantly put upon to remind everyone that “not all Christians are violent” just because of the Christian extremist violence of the Christian Identity Movement? I wonder if maybe then more people would realize that it’s not Christians-against-Muslims or Muslims-against-Christians. It’s sane, nonviolent people against the crazies – of all religions and creeds. <br />
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And maybe more people would realize that this so-called “gospel of niceness” might be something much more profound than Kendra Dean seems to recognize. Dean says she wants a faith that can take risks, that avoids being “spineless” -- but a kid yelling hate speech out the window to a group of people that included the county sheriff is certainly not spineless. It is in itself a kind of risk-taking behavior. Burning down a mosque because what goes on inside is “illegal according the the Bible” is certainly one way of answering “the Christian call to take risks.” But that’s the thing about a hardcore religious belief. In a world where you know you are right about everything, you don’t feel like it’s wrong to “witness” to strangers while they’re trying to do their shopping. And maybe there are other things -- meaner, crueler things -- that you don’t feel like it’s wrong to do.<br />
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Perhaps from this point of view a “gospel of niceness” begins to look more like something to be embraced and celebrated rather than something to be reproached. After all, a “gospel of niceness” can be shared by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and even those godless atheist heathens like me, and frankly, it might be the only thing that keeps this country from being completely, totally fucked.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs211.ash2/47401_111918732199229_100001433094226_87833_5393567_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs211.ash2/47401_111918732199229_100001433094226_87833_5393567_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-57783212963689828542010-09-01T21:55:00.000-07:002010-09-01T21:55:52.551-07:00Things they forgot to teach you in KKK school:1.) Only intimidate minorities when you are in the majority. <br />
2.) Guys who smoke hookahs are badass.<br />
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<a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/09/as_weve_been_reporting_there.php?ref=fpblg">Fists Fly at the Hookah Bar @ TalkingPointsMemo.com</a>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-59953539006524167352010-08-30T22:25:00.000-07:002010-08-30T22:25:42.536-07:00God Hates Shrimp<a href="http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/">http://www.godhatesshrimp.com</a><br />
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Yay! This just means more shrimp for the godless heathens like me. Yum!Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-73378103489439100652010-08-24T19:56:00.000-07:002010-08-24T19:56:55.723-07:00Finally! Proof that prayer doesn't work, in 5 seconds.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/comedyjesus">http://www.youtube.com/comedyjesus</a>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-74969943827186174722010-08-19T15:57:00.000-07:002010-08-19T15:57:19.643-07:00Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, full show on the NY Islamic Community CenterThis is such a great discussion of the "mosque" issue. Goodman interviews a mother of a Muslim EMT who was a 9/11 victim at Twin Towers. Another interviewee reminds us that the entire premise of the question of whether the community center should be built is bigoted because it asserts that all Muslims are guilty of the actions of the 9/11 attackers.<br />
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</script>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-128678362945593132010-08-18T14:31:00.000-07:002010-08-18T16:20:33.532-07:00Introductory Post, Part One: A Born-Again Christian Questions Her Faith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs375.snc4/45777_107305755993860_100001433094226_60141_7215079_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs375.snc4/45777_107305755993860_100001433094226_60141_7215079_n.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I grew up in a Southern small town, where the churches were filled with people who never missed an opportunity to tell you what God thought of things. My parents were not excessively religious, but going to church every Sunday was just what decent people did. It is called Southern Protestantism, and it’s kind of hard to explain to outsiders. To be decent, to be well-respected in your town, you had to go to church every Sunday. If you did not, you were looked down on, like the parents of the kids who lived in the run-down duplexes in the poor part of town, whose fathers were not married to their mothers and whose teachers did not know their names. My father came from that side of the tracks, and he had no intention of returning, and so we went to church. In the South, going to church is as much a class thing as a religious one.<br />
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I remember one Sunday morning, sitting in a packed church service at age ten wondering to myself, “Do all these adults around me really believe this shit? That an invisible being controls everything and tells us what to do?” I was ten! But even then all that getting up at 6 a.m. and singing hymns about a preggo girl who told everybody she was a virgin (yeah, right!) just seemed dumb. <br />
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But hell, I thought, these are grown-ups. They must know something I don’t know. I will trust them. <br />
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Soon I was ushered off to the church youth group, where I was given all kinds of arguments that swayed my natural skepticism: <i>Christianity is the only religion that has a savior who died and then rose to life again. The Bible was written by God. The fact that Christianity has survived for so long proves that it is the true faith. God wants you to have faith in him; that is why you cannot see him. Men are made in God’s image and so that is why you should forget about the fact that you are smarter than most of the boys in your class and devote your life to cooking and cleaning for them. You ate the apple and so that is why you have menstrual cramps. You were created by God to serve men. People who are not baptized go to hell, even if they were good people all their lives.</i><br />
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And so I became a born-again Christian, because I did not want to go to hell. I did not want to piss off this “god,” who seemed to be very easy to piss off. I also became a born-again Christian because I loved Jesus. I was truly in awe of the sacrifice someone would make so that I could escape my "original sin" (even though I didn't remember committing it). But in all my years as a born-again Christian, I never accepted the argument that I was inferior because I was a woman. My parents had instilled in me a belief in my own self-worth that contrasted sharply with what the church told me. Even though it was stated clearly over and over again in the Bible, I figured God must not really mean it. There must be some mistake. There was no way you could convince me I was inferior to the boys in my class, many of whom spent the whole school day sniffing glue.<br />
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When I went to college I was president of my campus religious organization. I had a close friend who was gay. Before I met him, I was as homophobic as any other eighteen-year-old campus crusader, but the fact that he was a great person created another dilemma for my Christianity. Why would God send such a nice guy to hell, just for being born with a desire for other males? Again, I figured God just must not really mean it when he wrote in the Bible that gays should be put to death.<br />
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I remember the very first moment when I allowed myself to truly question this religion I professed. I was in college, standing in my kitchen making Ramen noodles and reading the Bible. I had decided to read the Bible all the way through, from beginning to end, and it had gone fine through the first 18 chapters of Genesis. But then there was a problem. I got to Genesis 19. Here, two angels of God have come to Sodom and are staying in Lot’s house. When a crowd of men from the city surround Lot’s house, asking for Lot to turn the angels over to them, Lot offers the crowd his virgin daughters, to do with as they please. Here it is below, from the New Oxford Annotated Bible:<br />
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<blockquote>Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” (Gen. 19: 6-9)</blockquote><br />
Some have written that this passage is supposed to show how wrong rape is, but it seemed to me instead that this passage teaches us that rape is wrong only if it is rape of the two (male) angels. Lot is a “good” man in this story. He is the one guy in Sodom whom God chooses to save. Thus, the story tells us that you can give your daughters over to a bloodthirsty crowd for it to “do to them as you please” and still be considered by God to be a righteous man.<br />
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This story is repeated in Judges 19, except this time it is a Levite who is passing through Gibeah and who stays at an old man’s house. Again, a crowd of men surrounds the house, calling for the old man to turn over the Levite “so that we may have intercourse with him.” But the old man goes out to them and says, <br />
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<blockquote>“No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. (Judges 19: 22-26)</blockquote><br />
When the Levite goes out to get her the next morning, he finds her dead on the doorstep of the house. Yeah. You have to be seventeen to get into an R rated movie, but they put this kind of story in the hands of little children at Vacation Bible School.<br />
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These passages are not the worst of what the almighty Bible has to offer, but they are the ones that made me finally ask myself, <i>What kind of religious book teaches something so disgustingly immoral? What kind of deity would hate women that much, to portray as good a man who would put his own daughter out to a crowd of crazed men to be raped and killed?</i> Then I realized, <i>Hey, maybe this book was not written by a deity. Maybe it was written by regular old humans (and not very nice ones at that)! </i> I know that for most non-religious people, this will not seem like a major epiphany. But if you have been raised in a community that drills into your head that the Bible is the word of the Creator, and that it is the most important thing in life – more important than your job, more important than your own family, even – then that moment when you realize that it is all just a big lie is a pretty big moment.<br />
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As a Christian, I was constantly asked to “witness,” to give testimony about that moment I found God. When I was a teenager, we all had our “when I got saved” story that we would tell in church meetings. Now, though, what is so special to me is the moment I realized that all the religious stuff was just made up. This was the moment I started on my journey out of Southern Protestant Christianity and toward atheism (with fun and rewarding stops in Quakerism, goddess spirituality, and paganism).<br />
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I’m wondering if other atheists had moments like this? I’ve left the comments section below available to anonymous posts. If anyone would like to share the story of your own “moment,” I would love to hear it.Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-68458718108961998012010-08-17T16:22:00.000-07:002010-08-17T16:22:54.548-07:00The "Mosque" and Real Conservatism<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/08/16/100816taco_talk_hertzberg">This New Yorker essay </a>is incredibly helpful in understanding the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" issue. Apparently it is not even on Ground Zero and instead of a mosque it's a Muslim YMCA. The thing that jumps out at me when reading Hendrik Hertzberg's essay is that conservatives are so obsessed with local governance -- states' rights, shrinking government, etc. -- until it comes to New York City. Then suddenly, the opinions of those who actually live in and govern the Lower Manhattan area don't matter. If Community Board No. 1, the city council that represents the area, endorsed the Muslim center 29 to 1, then it seems that this is all a moot argument. IT'S THEIR CITY, isn't it? So I guess they can do whatever they want with it. Or at least, this is the point of view a real conservative would take.Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-65368519729663875832010-08-17T13:34:00.000-07:002010-08-17T13:34:16.606-07:00Here's my question: Should we ban all Christian churches within a certain distance of the Holocaust Memorial because Christians killed 6 million Jews? I mean, what would happen if someone proposed that? I don't see how it would be any different from saying that mosques can't be built because the 9/11 attackers were Muslim. What's the difference?Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3507174662107748619.post-4577971968800220542010-08-16T19:04:00.000-07:002010-08-16T19:04:10.691-07:00<b><a href="http://tinyurl.com/27xesw7">CNN article</a> on how the GOP is using the Ground Zero mosque issue to get ahead. Be sure to look at the comments section at the end. With all the argument over which religion's followers have killed more people, I feel it's a really good day to be an atheist.</b><br />
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</b>Bettyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03018730038577774138noreply@blogger.com0