This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at The name’s Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but everybody calls me Psycho.

Why would a robust, enduring worldwide faith pay any mind whatsoever to assorted pesky critics? Don’t their conniptions over the blasphemies of infidels betray weakness rather than strength? What good is respect for one’s religion if it’s maintained through the fear of violent retribution and, in many countries, imprisonment?

Here’s another question: Why would a robust, enduring worldwide faith pay any mind whatsoever to a YouTube video? From accounts, The Innocence of Muslims is an implied porn flick with anti-Islamic overdubbing. Protesting it is the equivalent of protesting an obscene marker drawing of Muhammad scrawled on the wall of a public restroom.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Don’t Muslims Have Something More Important To Do?

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at Disappointed!

As for readers of this blog, I expect to see all of you still here come Sunday morning.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at See Ya

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

The culminating event of this weekend uprising was their leader Jesus himself rising from his grave to lead his army into the city of Jerusalem in an effort to rebuild their ancient temple which had previously been destroyed. The followers of the Great Zombie Jesus refer to him as the “Messiah” which is an ancient Hebrew word for “Great Warrior” and “King of Kings”. He was believed to be a direct descendant of a previous warrior, credited with leading great bloody battle campaigns, called David.

The army of zombies, lead by this messianic zombie warrior Jesus, was driven back by the valiant Roman soldiers protecting the good people of Jerusalem. The Zombie Temple was not restored, and no one has heard from Jesus and his zombie army since that fateful weekend in Jerusalem.

Zombie cults, however, don’t die out easily, as is evidenced by the many incarnations of Resident Evil. Despite the defeat of Zombie Jesus and his Army of Zombies, his followers kept the idea alive that someday, he would rise again, leading a new army of two hundred million to destroy not just Jerusalem, but one third of the entire human population. From the Book Revelations, chapter 9, verses 13-17:

Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.

The modern Zombie Worshipers of today are still hoping for this apocalypse, and pray for the day that the Great Zombie Jesus will wreak his vengeance upon the people of Earth. To this end, they practice a variety of strange rituals which are supposed to help bring this destruction about. It’s no surprise that one of these zombie rituals involves symbolic cannibalism, whereby they drink red wine and eat bread which they believe has been magically transformed into actual human blood and human flesh. If you sneak into one of their temples, you can actually see them stand in line, eager to rip into bits and pieces of what they believe to be the zombie leader Jesus.

Another disturbing ritual is the coloration of dead chicken embryos which are hidden all about by adults. Cult members think that these embryos will hatch into undead chickens, recreating the Great Jewish Zombie Uprising on a smaller scale. With chickens.

Undead chickens.

They send their children out to find and retrieve these dead embryos, counting them up. If the number of embryos retrieved is less than the number hidden, it’s proof that at least some undead chickens were hatched, and that the power of the zombie Jesus is still strong. Special clothing is often purchased just for these events.

Anthropologists believe this particular tradition was started when the zombie followers believed that rabbits were actually undead chickens. The rapid increase in the number of rabbits was credited to the hatching of the dead chicken embryos.

After the ritual of the Hidden Embryos, zombie worshipers usually hold a feast where they roast the largest short pig they can find, which is the closest they can legally get to roasting long pig and eating of their flesh. Since the quality isn’t as good, they make up for it in quantity, often roasting enough meat for several meals. Eventually, sated on short pig, they doze off dreaming of zombie uprisings.

The truly amazing thing is that, except when playing hide and seek with chicken embryos in the bushes, these cult members manage to fit in surprisingly well into modern society. Yes, it’s likely you may even know one of these cult members yourself! Perhaps you stood next to one in the grocery line. You may even work next to one without even realizing.

Just like the zombies they worship, zombie followers are harmless individually or even in small numbers. A small chainsaw, or a simple katana hiding behind a nearby drainpipe in your local shopping mall, will dispatch a few zombies, or zombie sympathizers, quickly and easily. They know this as well which is why you can safely have lunch with them in the cafeteria without being worried about their cannibalistic urges.

Zombie worshipers are only dangerous in large hordes. Once they are in large enough groups to form a voting bloc, they turn on you and try to eat the brains of your children. Fortunately for mankind, the cult, over the course of 2000 years, has split into smaller warring sects, limiting their ability to form into large hordes.

So, on this Easter Day in 2011, feel free to partake in some of these quaint customs of this unusual group. Maybe color and hide some embryos of your own, or steal some of the hidden embryos you find, throwing off the count of the zombie worshipers. Roast up a nice pig and stuff yourself to the gills (or whatever part of your throat is a remnant of when your ancestors had gills) and laze around for the afternoon.

Just make sure you keep an eye on how many zombie followers may be around you. The difference between a “group” and a “horde” is often not easy to discern. Have fun today, but remember to play it safe and always know where the nearest shopping mall is in your area.

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at Happy Easter!

An inspiring quote attributed to Gagarin is:

“I saw for the first time the earth’s shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word–joy.”

For more information about what it must be like to orbit Earth, check out Ethan Siegel’s Orbiting Earth 101: What You’d See / What You’d Do.

Given the propaganda uses of both Soviet and American astronauts, many stories about Gagarin and quotes from him are apocryphal. I’m sure many are true as well. Either way, my favorite Gagarin quote is:

“I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.”

It was a message from the hero of an officially atheist nation directed towards America which, at the time, was busy differentiating itself from the USSR by promoting Christianity as part of the Cold War. America had just added the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance seven years earlier in 1954, and adopted the official motto “In God We Trust” in 1956. That motto had first been placed on some American coinage to introduce the notion that God was on our side during the Civil War. Starting in 1957 all paper money started to printed with that motto as well.

Previous to that, our money and mottos tended to be remarkably deity-free, embracing the notion of a secular state. Benjamin Franklin supposedly designed our first penny with the motto “Mind Your Business” in it which was also used as the design for the Continental Dollar. The motto “We Are One” was also incorporated into the designs of money at that time, followed by “E pluribus unum” after ratification of the Constitution.

War, though, seems to breed insecurity and fear, which apparently sends Americans running to God. Laws are adopted in these times of war which otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed. The Americans of 1865 understood the Establishment Clause, yet chose to ignore it because they were afraid and insecure while the nation was at war and in peril. The rush to God became even more extreme in the 1950’s during the Cold War. States started forcing all children to openly pray to the Christian God. The official public school prayer in New York State was

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.”

Following those wars, however, we never seem to fully shed the unconstitutional trappings adopted in those times of crisis. The Cold War, after all, dragged on for 40 years. Americans couldn’t let their guards down for two generations. By the third generation after the start of the war few Americans remember that America didn’t always have a Christian government, but was, in fact, founded as a secular nation and operated as a secular nation (except in times of war).

We have now reached the point where the Supreme Court has decided that the phrase “In God We Trust” is secular and not religious. If that’s the case, perhaps we should change the motto of the United States of America to “In Gods We Trust”. That is, after all, a more accurate secular phrase. Somehow I’m guessing that the most religious people in the nation would complain about such a change the most. That alone should be enough to demonstrate that the phrase is indeed religious and then, maybe, we can get rid of it.

But that won’t happen because we are at war. It’s once again time for all fearful and insecure Americans to look to God to smite our enemies. Never mind that this Forever War will last longer than the Cold War; the people are afraid and need their God running the country, not mere mortals. The problem is that not every American has the same God or, indeed, any god at all.

If only some really smart people would have thought to create a secular government and constitution that protected all citizens by preventing the government from respecting the establishment of any religion while still allowing the practice of all religions in the nation. Our founding fathers must have been idiots if they couldn’t have come up with an idea like that. Maybe we should add an amendment to the US Constitution along those lines.

Oops, I forgot about the Forever War.

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at Yuri Gagarin and the War on Terror

The number of people (and legislators) over-reacting to this incident, however seems to have reached an intensity I haven’t seen before. I’m hoping it will die down without any further stupid actions, but, baring another nuclear meltdown somewhere soon, I’m concerned it will not.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here about free speech, so I’ll skip the lessons about the Heckler’s Veto and importance of protecting unpopular speech beyond simply reaffirming that popular speech rarely needs protection in a democracy.

One element in this story that seems to have been neglected in the rush to ban such speech is that the original demonstrations over the Qur’an in Afghanistan were small and peaceful; similar to the kinds of protests I see in Chicago over immigration policies. The trigger that seems to have set off the violence and killings is President Hamid Karzai deciding to use the Qur’an burning in a speech of his as a political tool. It seems he wanted to show how much he cares about some of the fundamentalists in his country.

The reaction to that was, apparently, the Taliban deciding to cash in politically as well, and they joined one of the peaceful marches, broke off from the main group, and committed pre-meditated murderous acts. Their motive was, almost certainly, a political reaction to Karzai’s stumping.

The incident in Afghanistan seems to have been far more about politics than religion.

Now we cut to the reaction in America. Senator Reid would like to start Congressional hearings to look into ways he can protect people in other nations by banning speech in America. Senator Graham would like to invoke wartime powers (in our Forever War) to directly ban speech which could “inspire the enemy”. When can I expect politicians to start accusing each other of being soft on book burnings?

The reaction in America seems to be far more about politics than religion.

Let’s pretend, however, that this really is all about religion and free expression. There seem to be a few different arguments out in the community about why this type of speech should be banned. They all seem flawed. The problem is that I’m not a Constitutional scholar, and may have some very wrong ideas about free speech, so I’ll go over some of the common arguments I’ve been seeing and present my understanding of them even though I may be wrong. If anyone knows better, please enlighten me in the comments.

The most common argument I see is that America “restricts” speech anyway all the time, so we don’t really have free speech, so why are you complaining about just one more restriction in the name of saving lives? The basic problem with this argument is that there is a difference between restricting speech and banning speech. As far as I can tell (not being a Constitutional Scholar) is that America only outright bans one type of speech, regardless of time or place. You cannot directly incite violence. Period.

Some commentators have latched onto this idea and simply accuse Jones of incitement and proceed to call for banning of such speech on the same grounds. I consider this to be a most insidious and worrisome argument. If Congress were to ban speech by broadening the definition of incitement, we could run head first into the problems of the Heckler’s Veto, but I fear it would be used simply to ban speech the majority considers unpopular. I truly fear the majority in a democracy, for they can be more difficult to overthrow than a dictator.

Beyond incitement, though, I can’t think of any other speech that is outright banned in America. There is a variety of restrictions, but not a banning of speech beyond incitement. I suppose libel would be the speech with the most restrictions that is not outright banned. Even so, as I understand it, there are situations where libel is allowed, or perhaps isn’t legally called libel in America. I know it’s nearly impossible to stop someone from knowingly lying about a public figure, such as a celebrity or politician. I wonder if this blog is enough for me to be considered a “public figure”. I imagine there are legal debates going on right now about how that definition is changing in the new media.

Another form of speech that seems to be cited as heavily restricted is when conspiring to commit a crime. In this case it is not the speech that is illegal but the conspiracy. From what I have read, the speech is the evidence used to prove conspiracy. The situation and intent is all important here as Rod Blagojevich has been trying to prove. If you say the words in jest, they are not evidence of a conspiracy.

That leaves the various “time and place” restrictions. The thought experiment generally cited is the classic “yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater”. The speech “Fire!” is not banned in America. The time and place of that speech makes creating the ensuing dangerous panic illegal.*

The other time and place restrictions such as getting your bullhorn out at 3:00 am in front of a hospital are, just like the “yelling fire” example, not banning speech, but placing reasonable restrictions on speech. The same speech is allowed in most places at most times. Saying you want to restrict burning holy books just like America restricts people from yelling “fire” is not at all the same. You can yell “Fire!” outside of the theater, or even inside when the theater is not crowded. Banning book burnings is not a time and place restriction.

In conclusion, let me reiterate a point I’ve made before. It’s just a friggin’ book! It’s paper, ink and some binding material. The words and ideas within cannot be destroyed by burning a copy of a book. I once suggested the correct reaction to such situations was to burn the holy books of as many religions as possible all at once to demonstrate this fact as well as show that it’s not just about religious penis envy.

I now realize, however, that’s so 20th century. We should instead organize a mass deletion of holy e-books. I want to not just delete them, however, since I know that all of the words will still exist. We need to destroy those magnetic bits so they can’t be reconstructed. On PC’s it will be easy to download software to overwrite that Bible with random electronic signals, utterly destroying that copy forever. In other e-book devices you may need to erase that Qur’an then upload new, larger books in its place, then delete that and repeat enough times to make the original words vanish into digital oblivion.

Buddhavacana, Norse eddas, the Four Books of Confucianism, the Book of Enoch, the Tabula Cortonensis and many, many more. Let’s get digital copies and erase them en masse! Mash those Holy Ones and Zeros together with such a fury that even the NSA couldn’t put them back in any semblance of order. Grab your old book reader loaded with all these texts and turn on that giant electro magnet you built years ago but never had a use for! Listen to that glorious buzz as the memory chips are hopelessly cleansed of Bronze Age rituals and misogynistic rules!

What the world needs now is a Holy E-Book Demolition Party! Can you still book Comiskey Park?

*By the way, I think it’s time for the scholars to update that thought experiment. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater today would, most likely, just result in a head full of popcorn and getting yelled at to sit down and shut up. The fire codes are so good (not saying they couldn’t be improved at all) that most people would no longer be panicked by such a statement barring secondary indications of a conflagration such as smoke and a fire alarm going off. Perhaps we can use “Yelling ‘Muslim!’ in a crowded Tea Party Convention”.

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at Burning Books is So 20th Century

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at That’s a Lot of Candles

New computer simulations have shown how a glass slipper, as described in Grimm’s Cinderella, could have been created using a unique combination of quartz-rich silicates found only in northern Germany. When heated to just the right temperature, as was available in primitive furnaces of 14th century middle Europe, the model demonstrated that glass could have annealed by chemicals from nearby dung fires forming a unique matrix. Early cobblers could have used this glass to construct a slipper durable enough to be worn by a young stepdaughter destined to become a princess.

The actual headline I read was Computers show how wind could have parted Red Sea. The first line of the article reads “New computer simulations have shown how the parting of the Red Sea, as described in the Bible, could have been a phenomenon caused by strong winds.” It’s a summary of an actual scientific article from the journal Plos One. Normally I just ignore crap like this, but it’s shown up in the top ten most read articles on the BBC for more than 24 hours now, and Plos One is an up-and-coming journal that has some level of respect in the science community.

This post by Ken Gibson at Windypundit was originally published at Scientists Model Early Glass Slipper Technology

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at If You Were There, Why Didn’t You Stop It?

Well, Obama gave his speech, and it didn’t rain.

The problem with such a public and specific prayer request is that if nothing happens, Shepard’s got some awkward explaining to do. I mean, doesn’t one of the following five statements have to be true?

1. God doesn’t exist.
2. God can’t make it rain.
3. God doesn’t respond to prayer.
4. God likes Obama more than he likes Focus on the Family.
5. God thinks Stuart Shepard is a jerk.

(Hat tip: Kip)

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at So I Guess There Was No Rain…

I’m especially impressed with how she explains the advantages of being a Christian to her Jewish host:

Well, it’s a lot easier, it’s kind of a fast track. You have to obey…You have to obey, we have the fast track program…ours is more like Federal Express.

Yeah, that’s the take home lesson of Christianity: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not not have to obey all those tiresome rules like the Jews.

(Hat tip: Kip)

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Ann Coulter Explains Why Christianity Is Better

Here’s what the real thing looks like, and not from one of those crazy Muslim countries, but from the United Kingdom:

A teenager has lost her High Court challenge to be allowed to wear a Christian “purity ring” to school.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, claimed the ban imposed by the Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, was an “unlawful interference” with her right to express her faith.

But lawyers for the school successfully argued that the purity ring was not an essential part of the Christian religion and contravened the school’s uniform policy.

Who cares if the purity ring is “not an essential part of the Christian religion”? All that matters is that the purity ring is an essential part of Lydia Playfoot’s religion. We don’t have freedom of religion for the benefit of religion. We have freedom of religion for the benefit of religious people.

(Hat tip: Kip)

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Whose Freedom of Religion?

I was in high school and my early college years during the heyday of the Moral Majority, a bunch of busybodies who seemed terribly worried that people were enjoying themselves in ways they did not approve. In particular, they seemed to dislike recreational sex, and they seemed to dislike popular culture—television, movies, and music—that promoted recreational sex.

(By the way, that link isn’t to the Moral Majority I knew, which was disbanded in 1989, but to the Moral Majority Coalition, which is a modern re-creation of the original. The website doesn’t even mention that Falwell is dead, so I’m not sure how active it is.)

Naturally, I thought Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority were a bunch of crazy people trying to impose their dreary opinions about morality on the rest of us. I know the Moral Majority stood for other causes important to evangelical Christians, and I know Falwell has done many other things, but the Moral Majority’s war on popular culture was all I ever needed to know about him.

I disagreed with his ideas, and I despised his urge to censorship. My youthful philosophical objections to Falwell’s moral crusade eventually lead me down the path to social liberalism and then to the broad anti-coercive freedom of libertarianism. Opposition to Falwell’s kind of cultural oppression helped make me the libertarian I am today.

However, I never really understood Falwell and his followers. I never understood why the things they wanted were so important to them. Neither, I think, did most other Americans. For most of the last 20 years Falwell’s followers have been losing the culture war, becoming less and less relevant as a result.

When he died it came as a shock to me how many people apparently still took him seriously, believed in the values he advocated, and now mourn his passing. Although I disagreed with his views, I’m not one of those people who’s glad he’s dead. I don’t mourn his passing, either.

Jerry Falwell’s death is not relevant to me because his views and values are not relevant to me. I’m glad my world turned out that way.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at If You Fall Well That’s Okay

A bunch of bloggers have chosen this weekend to host a Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm, with everyone posting articles opposing the mixing of church and government.

I’m against theocracy, but I just didn’t have the energy to come up with anything to say about it. (Besides, scheduling it on the weekend of Christianity’s most important holiday seemed a little rude. It makes it seem like people are being anti-Christian rather than anti-theocracy.)

So, while I have nothing, you might want to surf over to the Blog Against Theocracy website and read what they have to say. Kip Esquire has posted some classic Carl Sagan bits from Cosmos here, here, and here.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Blog Against Theocracy

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Sinful Blogging

As Lindsay Beyerstein points out, not everyone agrees with that assessment. In particular, David Warren of Real Clear Politics is being a bit of a dick about it:

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.)

Well yes, of course they must be cowards, I’m sure most reporters in a war zone are cowards, right?

It just gets weirder:

But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they’d be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

That’s right. Shame on those two guys for not martyring themselves for Mr. Warren’s religion. What were they thinking? How could they let David down like that?

David Warren is obviously a devout Christian, and I can see how he finds it abhorrent to convert to another religion. I’m sure that if he had been there (instead of dealing with no-doubt more pressing business in Toronto) he would have not only accepted death, he would have insisted on crucifixion.

But if he’s right that these journalists aren’t very religious, then to expect the same from them is ludicrous. They probably see the whole Christian v.s. Muslim thing as kind of like the Tooth Fairy v.s. the Great Pumpkin. And when a whack-job with a blanket and an AK-47 wants you to swear allegiance to the Great Pumpkin, you swear allegiance to the Pumpkin and get on with your life.

These two journalists used guile and deception to get out of a dangerous situation and return to their families, whereas David Warren thinks they should have given up and died. Which of these approaches seems more like the American way to you?

I never heard of David Warren before this, but he now strikes me as a pundit in the same mold as Cal Thomas, who sees the cruelty and barbarism of our enemies and thinks, “We should be more like that.”

I don’t know enough early Christian history to guess whether Warren is right about the contributions of the martyrs to the survival of the church. But here’s something I’m pretty sure of: Christianity is a strong and vibrant religion today because its 2 billion adherents have helped create a world in which martyrs are no longer necessary.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Never a Martyr Around When You Need One

Even as the ties between Palestinian and Israeli politicians strained against the current crises in Gaza, religious officials from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities united Tuesday to oppose a gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

More than 50 prominent religious figures visited the Knesset’s Interior Committee to urge MKs to stop the World Pride event, scheduled to take place in Jerusalem next month. Several right-wing religious MKs brought the coalition to the Knesset, asserting that “never before has the Holy Land seen such a union of religious leaders.”

Of course, this being the middle east, everybody talks tough:

“I promise there’s going to be bloodshed – not just on that day, but for months afterward,” declared New York Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a representative of the Rabbinical Alliance of America.

…

“If gays will dare approach the Temple Mount during the parade, they will do so over our dead bodies,” said MK Ibrahim Sarsur (United Arab List- Ta’al).

The Christians are keeping their response a bit cooler:

Last week, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar wrote to Pope Benedict XVI asking for the church to issue an official condemnation. While the pope has not commented on the event, an ambassador from the Vatican told the committee that “as a representative of the Holy See to Israel, I believe… holding this event would contradict the sacred nature of Jerusalem.”

And then there’s this bit of wisdom, worthy of one of our own fine legislators:

MK Ibrahim Sarsur (United Arab List) told the committee that “these types of problems” don’t exist in Muslim society. “Every man has the right to do what he pleases, but not if it offends others,” he said.

I’m offended by that.

But there’s a silver lining. Mideast peace at last:

MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism promised that if organizers of the World Pride parade agreed to hold the march elsewhere, he would utilize the new coalition of Jewish, Muslim and Christian officials to promote peace and brotherhood in Israel.

Sometimes I think the people of the Mideast deserve each other.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at The Gay Contribution to Mideast Peace

After the movie we went to dinner and this time we got the parking space right in front of the restaurant door.

Normally when I get good parking, I quip that the parking space gods have smiled on me. Hey if the Romans had a god of boundaries and border markers—Terminus—why can’t there be a god of parking?

But then it hit me: Maybe finding good parking spaces is my mutant power! Now all I need is a mutant name. Parking Man is too campy, it sounds like a DC character, not Marvel. How about Spaceman? Still campy, but with a touch of irony.

Later, on the way home, I wondered if Roman Catholics have a saint for finding good parking spaces. They seem to have one for everything else. There must be a saint for migrants, looking for a place to settle. How hard would it be to adapt him or her for finding parking spaces?

Update: I looked it up. Of course there’s a saint for finding good parking places. That would be Mother Cabrini, also the patron saint for immigrants.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Gods, Powers, and Saints of Small Things

Abdul Rahman, 41, has been charged with rejecting Islam, a crime under this country’s Islamic laws. His trial started last week and he confessed to becoming a Christian 16 years ago. If convicted, he could be executed.

I have nothing against Islam, but what I’ve seen of Islamic law seems intolerant and dangerous.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Slipping Backward in Afghanistan

In Beirut, a day after violent protests in neighboring Syria, the thousands-strong crowd broke through a cordon of troops and police that had encircled the embassy. Security forces fired tear gas and loosed their weapons into the air to stop the onslaught.

The protesters, armed with stones and sticks, seized fire engines, overturned police vehicles and garbage containers for use as barricades, damaged cars and threw stones at a Maronite Catholic church in the wealthy Ashrafieh area—a Christian neighborhood where the Danish Embassy is located.

Flames and smoke billowed from the 10-story building, which also houses the Austrian Embassy and the residence of Slovakia’s consul.

Protesters waved green and black Islamic flags from the broken windows of the building and tossed papers and filing cabinets outside.

Witnesses said one protester, apparently overcome by smoke, jumped from a window of the embassy and was rushed unconscious to hospital. Security officials said he died.

If you haven’t been paying attention, these rampaging protests are over a series of offensive cartoons in a Danish newspaper. Most of them are just confusing to me, but I can see how some of them would be offensive. Actually, I’m more than willing to take Muslim protesters’ word for it that the cartoons are offensive. I think, however, that if you believe you must respond violently to offensive cartoons, there’s something wrong with you. You’re acting like a child.

In contrast, consider the ruckus raise in the United States by the release of The Last Temptation of Christ. Many Christians in the United States were upset by that movie and by what they saw as a perversion of Christian doctrine. They wrote letters, complained to the media, and held protests outside of theaters showing the movie. Defenders of the movie, or of the right to show it, wrote letters, complained, and staged counter-protests against those protesting the movie. The police, in keeping with the tradition of separation of church and state, didn’t take sides, and acted to protect the safety of protesters on both sides. There was a lot of argument, and a lot of noise, but not a lot of violence.

It wasn’t always that way, of course. Christianity has a long history of violence against other religions and against schisms within Christianity itself. But Christians learned lessons from the violence and terror, and the violent and tyrannical elements of Christianity have been reigned in.

Islam seems to be going through similar changes. There are 6 million Muslims in the United States, and they behave—at least as much as any other American—like civilized people. So do millions of other Muslims around the world.

That’s because they understand the rules of religious tolerance in a liberal civilization: Everybody has the freedom to follow the religion of their choice, to encourage others to do so, to express their objections to other people’s religions, and to object to the objections of others. Nobody has the authority to force anybody else to obey the rules of any religion.

It’s not always that way, but that’s how it should be. Everywhere.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at The Rules, For Religion

And no offense, but if I was the “Holy Father” in charge of an organization that demands celibacy from my employees, I would hesitate before charging someone else with threatening the future of the family.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Threats to The Family

To my teenage eyes he looked pretty old, so I expected him to die pretty soon too. But he didn’t, not even when he got shot. He just kept getting older. I’d catch a video of him and he’d be a little more stooped over than I remembered and walking a little bit slower. And I’d think any day now… Then I’d forget about it until the next time I noticed he’d aged some more. Any day now…

It feels like I’ve been watching Pope John Paul II dying all my life. At some point, I probably stopped thinking about it. But now that it’s finally happened…it’s a little surprising.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at John Paul II, RIP

Hey, that consubstantiation stuff is pretty important, but dead elvis has a point: I spent 13 years in the Lutheran school system, learning about Lutheran history and doctrine, and sometimes it was all about kicking the Catholic church’s ass.

Later, I noticed that Lutheranism is one of the most marginalized religions in America. Every time the news media talks about Christianity, it’s always about them Pope-lovin’ Roman Catholics. If they mention other types of Christians it’s usually the born-again folks or just “Protestents,” as if there weren’t many different kinds of Protestants–and there are many, many different kinds. (I’d like to give a big Lutheran Shout-Out to my homies in the Missouri Synod, especially the fine people of the English District. Righteous!)

From the Cheers episode:

Woody: “Ask her why she thinks the Book of Concord is not in line with the Scriptures!”

Kelly: “Because it’s not.”

Woody: “HERETIC!”

Trust me. Lutheranism doesn’t get much funnier than that.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at “A pastor walks into a bar…”