This is the time of year when Evangelical soothsayers, psychics, and Nate Silver (ESPN 538) make predictions for the coming year. I thought, in keeping with the spirit of the New Year, that I, the atheist version of Carnac the Magnificent, would make a few predictions of my own. Here’s my 15 Astounding Predictions for 2016.
Richard Dawkins will say something stupid.
Neil deGrasse Tyson will say something brilliant.
The Pope will not get laid.
Evangelicals will continue to say the rapture is nigh.
At least three Evangelical preachers will be arrested and charged with molesting children and 25 others will be accused of sexual misconduct.
Evangelicals will continue to say atheists hate God and secretly want to have wanton, immoral sex.
Franklin Graham will be exposed as a cross dressing transvestite.
Evangelical Calvinists will continue to say their critics don’t understand Calvinism.
Donald Trump will say bat-shit crazy stuff and his followers will love it.
Evangelicals will continue to think that Christianity is under attack and that secularists are trying to make Christianity illegal.
Tea Party Republicans will continue to think that the lame stream media controls America and that Muslim socialist Barack Hussein Obama is coming to take their guns.
The day after Thanksgiving, Fox News will say that there is a War on Christmas.
One Million Moms will continue to be outraged over nudity, cursing, and gay kissing on TV. This year they will find their lost remote and learn that if they push the channel button it changes the channel.
Democrats will win the presidency, a sure sign that the Antichrist is preparing to usher in the new world order.
Bethany Baird is a writer for the Lies Young Women Believe website. In a post titled 8 Ways to Fight For Purity, Baird gives sexually aware young women eight ways to sex-proof their lives. If young women follow Baird’s advice, they can be certain that they will never get laid until their wedding day. Isn’t that good news? Here’s Baird’s prescription for a sex-proof life:
Get in the Word.
Pray for strength.
Take up your shield of faith.
Confess when you fail.
Get rid of the bad.
Fill your mind with good.
Find a solid group of girls.
Get accountability.
Girlfriend, are you dating a young man who wants to get in your pants? Read the Bible, pray, and take up the shield of faith. How does this work? Evangelical Suzie is out with Billy Bob and Billy starts getting frisky. Should Suzie call a time out for Bible reading and prayer? In what universe would this EVER happen? As study after study tells us, Evangelical teenagers and young adults engage in sexual intercourse at roughly the same levels as their unsaved counterparts in the “world.” Instead of teaching sexually aware young women to be responsible for their sexuality and to plan for sexual intercourse, Baird presents a voodoo-list of spells she hopes will extinguish raging hormones. Spells, by the way, that do not work.
Baird should be honest with her readers. The only sure way to make certain young Christian women never, never do the dirty is to avoid any contact with the opposite sex, the same sex, or their index finger. If young men are the problem, shouldn’t young women just stay away from these horn dogs? Why not cut the temptation off at the source? Of course Baird won’t suggest this because she knows that young women want what young women want: boyfriends.
Baird, thanks to her fundamentalist indoctrination, lives in denial of basic human biology. Instead, she suggests that young women spiritually cross their legs, blocking access to their vagina. The minds of young women, honed by evolution, naturally desire to mate. If this wasn’t so, our species would have perished long ago. Instead of preaching the failed gospel of purity, people like Baird would better serve their readers if they talked honestly about human sexuality. Of course they can’t do this because the Bible says that any and all sexual activity (fornication) before marriage is a sin against God.
I’m all for teenagers understanding everything there is to know about sex. From biology to contraception, teenagers need to know the facts. Far more effective than Baird’s eight steps is sexual knowledge. Equipped with this knowledge, young adults can then determine when or if they want to have sex. Telling them to Just Say No (and No including masturbation) is setting up young adults for failure. Baird knows this, but she has to justify the continuation of her ministry, so she continues to guilt young women unto ignoring their sexual desires.
Let me finish this post with several of the comments that appeared on Baird’s 8 Ways to Fight for Purity. I think most readers will find these comments heartbreaking illustrations of what happens when young women buy into Baird’s guilt-inducing purity gospel:
(All grammar errors in the original. Each paragraph is a new comment)
I had sex outside of marriage. I feel so ashamed even if I prayed. Please pray for me. I know our God is a good and forgives but the guilt inside me is killin’ me and making me feel unworthy of God’s love.
I don’t know what to do… i masturbute. I know its wrong but I don’t feel sorry when I’m done. I don’t feel anything. I feel like I can’t stop. Pray for me!!!!’
Do you think that God still might call some young women/girls to be like Jephthah’s daughter and be dedicated to God to never marry and remain abstinate?
Love it! Sadly for me I have no Goddly girls in the area! I do have some that I have met, who are close with the Duggar family! A year ago I decided to come out of public school, and do an online school, and I am so thankful God put opportunity in my life. After a while, with all the time I had, I found the show 19 kids and Counting! They helped me to change my life (before I started to date because everyone was doing it!) So glad!!!! They helped me to realize that you don’t HAVE to do everything that the world does. God loves you, and you need to think about the future. Then I started a CHRISTIAN online school, and boy did that help! Anyway, excuse me for the long backstory. I, one day decided, to get one of my special rings that my Grammie gave me, and have it be my “purity ring!” Every time I look at it, I remind myself that God DOES care what I do and think about!!! The kind of purity I keep for myself is more on the moral side, and less on the physical purity side (because I don’t plan to date for a while, I’m 15!) So maybe you could just have your own purity ring, and wear it as a reminder! Mine isn’t fancy or anything! Hope it helps someone!
Letter to the Editor of the Bryan Times. Published 2003. I thought posting this letter here might help readers understand how much my religious and political views had changed by the early 2000s. This particular letter was written after the county prosecutor declined to prosecute a cat killer.
Dear Editor,
A cat killer is loose in Williams County. He is known by our local authorities. He even boasts of his cat killing and the enjoyment it gives him. Why should this be a concern to anyone? After all, he is just killing cats, right?
The Humane Society spoke of prosecuting the man because cats are considered property, and by his actions he violated the property rights of the cat owner (s). Do they have any moral standing apart from their relation to their owner?
All animals are a part of God’s created order. They were endowed by their creator with life, and with that life given certain rights. Animals have a right to be respected as created beings within the context of the order of Creation. While it is debated whether or not animals should be eaten for food, there should be no debate concerning the care of, love for, and responsibility to animals. Factory farms, factory slaughter houses, trophy hunting, and abandoned, mistreated animals are all abhorrent testimonies to the depravity of man. The wicked man cares not for the life of his beast (Proverbs 12:10).
The man who killed these cats should be prosecuted. Prosecutors who hide behind their prosecutorial discretion should be reminded of voter discretion at the next election. We need government leaders who recognize that cruelty to animals is just as abhorrent as a crime against a human. If we do not prosecute when it involves the “least” of us, who is to say we will not turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other immoral behaviors deemed more serious by the powers that be?
If this man can not be prosecuted, how about a sign in front of his house that says “Beware, cat killer lives here!”
This is the seventy-fourth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is High in Church by Trevor Moore.
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
Oh Lord forgive me
This is the worst
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
Oh God please help me
This is the worst
Went home for Christmas
And Brian came over, I was nervous
Cuz he brought a bag of shrooms and pot
And I’m new to this, I’m just learnin’
Got a little too high on accident
Yeah that’s right, not on purpose
Then mom busted in my room
And said we have to go to midnight service
We’re in the minivan
And my friends don’t understand
I’m freaking out here man
Trying to remember who I am
My mom is talking to me
And that’s just making it worse
We walk into the lobby
Oh shit, I’m high in church
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
Oh God please help me
This is the worst
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
I’m high as hell
This is the worst
Went to go grab a pew
I’m freaking out, don’t know what to do
There’s an old war vet snoring next to me
And I think he’s been here since World War 2
I’m peaking here
I’m wigging out
They know I’m stoned
There is no doubt
Brian is reading the Bible and laughing
I plead for him to cut it out
But he’s giggling loud, he starts to cry
He’s turning red, I don’t know why
He’s like a goddamn neon billboard saying “Hey y’all, we’re super high”
I ask him what his problem is
And what’s making him laugh
He points to a verse that says
The Lord opened up the mouth of an ass
Oh my God, that’s super gross!
Why the hell is that in there?
My mom shushes both of us
And people turn around and stare
I take the book from Brian
The choir begins to sing
It dawns on me that I’ve never actually read this thing
I opened up the pages, and then start flipping through
I find it calms me down and gives my mind something to do
It says some beautiful things about forgiveness and love
’til I get to the end when God comes back
Wilds out, and straight up fucks Earth up!
Holy shit, did you know this?
Read this last part, what the fuck?
Spoiler alert, God comes back with dragons
And murders everyone!
What happened to the lovey-dovey stuff from the other verse?
Oh shit man, I can’t handle this right now, I’m high in church!
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
Oh God please help me
This is the worst
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
I’m high as hell
This is the worst
Need to get where no one can see
So I excuse myself to take a pee
But in the bathroom my old youth pastor
Comes up and stands next to me
Oh great, he’s probably gonna start yapping about how my soul is eternal
But instead he justs asks why my pants are down at the urinal
Oops, umm, sorry about that
Nice to see you, gotta go
Oh my God, I’m high as balls
And there’s no way he doesn’t know
Shit is getting out of hand
I’m getting higher
Need to make a plan
Maybe tell mom I’m sick
And try to get the keys to sleep this off in the van
I scoot back to my seat and notice everyone has stopped singing
The pastor asks if there is anyone here who is visiting
Mom gets excited, raises her hand
I tell her no, but she makes me stand
Pastor asks is I’m just here for Christmas
And I say “I am”
The congregation turns around
The pastor asks me how I’ve been
And that’s about when
The goddamn shrooms decided it was time to kick the fuck on in
“Trevor you’ve really done it now”
Holy shit, what’s going on?
What is that voice? I’m freaking out!
“This is Satan and you’ve summoned me to seal your doom”
Whoa, hold up, wait a minute
I don’t even think I believe in you
“I exist within subcounciousness down in your mind
But you did drugs and went to church, so now your soul is mine
For all eternity! You will never escape my clutch”
Okay uh, first of all I think that seems like a little much
A joint and couple caps and stems
Is that all that a soul is worth?
And God made everything I’ve done tonight!
All of it’s from the Earth!
The mushrooms and the pot, yo He made it all!
The nitrous, and the Adderall!
Muscle relaxers, maybe a little coke
But if that damns me for etenity
Then if you ask me the system’s broke!
Then Satan disappeared, and shrieked a shrieking sound!
I sent him back to Hell because I fucking stood my ground!
The church stares at me! Their eyes are open wide!
And the pastor asks if I’d stop shouting and please go outside
Uh, sure. Sorry, it’s just that…
I’m high in church
I’m high in church
Whatever man
I guess it could be worse
I’m high in church
That’s what I am
Sorry mom, I guess
I’ll be outside in the van
Whatever man
I’m gonna be out listening to the radio
Wake me up when you guys are done
This is the seventy-third installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Gays Got Married by Trevor Moore.
I grew up in an American town
No locks on the doors
When we all bedded down
To sleep
Met a pretty young girl, and made her my bride
After church on Sundays, take the kids for a ride
Down the street
Swimming holes, catching fireflies in jars
Spend the evening staring at the stars
Then the gays got married (gays got married)
And the plant shut down (plant shut down)
And the crops dried up (the crops dried up)
Everywhere around (Everywhere around)
Then the gays started kissin’ (started kissin’)
And the state said “Cool” (cool)
And they made all the kids
Be gay in school
’cause them gays got married (gays got married)
They announced it on TV
Jumped in my truck and slammed reverse
I had to get to my family
Before the gay could get there first
Hauling ass down the interstate
In my throat I could my heart
I didn’t know how much time I had
Before all the orgies would start
And they’re grabbing guys like me
And they’re pulling us out of our trucks
And they’re kissing our lips, and nibbling our ears
And all sorts of sexy stuff
And they’re taking us out to fancy hotels
And partying the night away
And they’re saying how good we look in their shirt
When we wake up the next day
No, I dare not look back
To see what’s behind
They almost got me once
When I was surfing online
But as strong and straight as I know I am
Every man can be pushed too far
I’ve seen the devil, and the devil looks like
Mario Lopez in jean shorts washing his car
I pulled up into my house
And I quickly ran inside
I grabbed my lovely spouse
But I felt no love when I looked in her eyes
The gay had gone airborne
And I didn’t make it in time
My family unit
Had already been undermined
Because
The gays got married (gays got married)
And released gay spores (gay spores)
And all the straight people (all the people)
Weren’t in love no more (never love no more)
’cause them gays got married (gays got married)
Been in this bunker three long years
Canned food and recycled air
Yet I shudder when I think about
What must be happening up there
A radioactive scorched desertscape
Ruled by roving biker gangs
With scary tattoos and muscley arms
Blue eyes and super cute bangs
So I’ll seal myself off from everyone
And hide here until I die
Confused and angry, sad and alone
And I know the reason why…
’cause the gays got married (the gays got married)
The gays got married (the gays got married)
The gays got married (the gays got married)
The gays got married
This is the seventy-second installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
We pray to you, o nothing
To the cold and heartless void
And though you cannot answer
We never get annoyed
We worship Richard Dawkins and
The lovely Brian Cox
Who sport their heathen head-gear
And put on godless frocks
From “The God Delusion”
We divine our moral code
And from Mr Hitchens
A sacramental for the road
We reject your sky-god for
A sinful life, it’s true
We just want to blaspheme and
Have rampant bumming too
Every Sunday morning
Science opens all our eyes
We watch Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” and
We bake fresh apple pies
Darwin’s theory is the
Sacred law by which we live
We denounce the profane
Creation hypothesis
Just one final thought we
Want to get in to your skull
This shit never happens ’cause
It’s not a faith at all
Atheism is the absence
Of belief in gods
It’s not a religion
Your argument’s a fraud …
This is the seventy-first installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Atheist Funeral by Dan Sartain.
This is the seventieth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is The Agnostic Gospel Song by Andy Corwin.
Recently, Dr. Peter Scaer, an associate professor at Concordia Theological Seminary, a fundamentalist Lutheran Church-Missouri-Synod institution in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to the opinion page of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette to demonstrate his Bible-driven view of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Scaer wrote:
The First Amendment guarantees our rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion. Yet, college campuses have implemented speech codes and created “safe spaces” to protect people from opinions they find disagreeable. Corporations have followed suit, as have governmental agencies. Increasingly, differences of opinion are labeled “hate speech,” thus ending reasonable debate.
Now the Indiana legislature, through Senate Bill 100, is on the verge of weaponizing this politically correct movement by giving protected-class status to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. People with differing worldviews can coexist as neighbors who care for one another. This, sadly, is not where the politicized LGBT movement is leading. Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla Firefox, was stripped of his position simply for supporting a traditional marriage amendment. Kelvin Cochran, an African-American fire chief, lost his job for writing a book on marriage. ESPN commentator Craig James was fired for expressing his views on traditional morality. Government agencies and corporate America have grown inhospitable to people of faith.
I believe in marriage equality, but I hold to the definition of marriage that has itself defined civilization. Every child has a reasonable right to a father and a mother.
Parents are equal but not interchangeable. Not every couple has a child, but every child has a biological mom and dad, and for that there is marriage. While some disagree, this position is based on reason and love.
Meanwhile, as our society moves from same-sex marriage to legalized polygamy, polyamory, temporary, open and even incestual marriage, we do well to encourage public discourse. Together, we need to ask, “What is marriage?”
Our opponents seem to think that marriage is a societal construct, something we can change as we please. But any type of marriage that purposefully deprives a child of a mom or dad is unjust.
SB 100 is called a compromise by offering certain protections for churches and religious institutions. There are two basic problems to this approach.
First, SB 100 turns our inalienable rights into privileges and exemptions. Second, rights belong not simply to groups, but to individuals. The free exercise of religion is more than the freedom of worship; it is the right of every single person to live according to his conscience.
…..
While Scaer doesn’t directly mention the Bible (he is much too smart for that), make no mistake about it, it is, for Scaer and his fellow Missouri-Synod Lutherans, God’s infallible word that has the final say on human sexuality. The Lutheran Church-Missouri-Synod (LCMS) denomination officially espouses Evangelical beliefs such as creationism and Bible inerrancy. Missouri-Synod Lutherans vehemently reject homosexuality and same-sex marriage, considering both to be sinful rejections of God’s version of Masters’ and Johnson’s book on human sexuality (see LCMS position papers on human sexuality).
This post is designed to briefly show that Fundamentalism is not only the domain of Baptists and Evangelicals. Every Christian sect has a wing-nut division.
Writer Jeremy Wiggins, a frequent contributor to The Stand, the official blog of the American Family Association, suggests that non-Christians don’t believe in the existence of evil. Wiggins writes:
The world has a problem with evil in that it basically denies the existence of evil. Unless of course, you disagree with the world’s rejection of evil, then you are evil. Confused yet? I know I sure am.
….
Individuals commit acts of violence because of the evil within their hearts. Period. How do I know this is true? Because, without Christ, we are all evil. By refusing to acknowledge that evil exists, the world refuses to see when one religion teaches evil and another religion teaches to love one’s enemies. While the religion of Islam may teach the slaughtering of infidels, let us remember that Muslims, pagans, Buddhists, and all other people, religious or not, are going to face the judgment of God.
….
While the world may not recognize evil, we, as Christians, know it exists; it exists very close by indeed – mostly within ourselves. We recognize the inherent wickedness of man, and that no one is righteous apart from Christ. We also recognize that the only solution to the problem of evil is the blood of Jesus. His sacrifice is the only thing that stands between our eternal destination and theirs.
I don’t know of one non-Christian who denies the existence of evil. Not one. Evil exists. We know this because we observe its work and influence. What non-Christians reject is not evil in and of itself, but Wiggins’ naive, simplistic view of the world. Wiggins, wanting to absolve Evangelical Christianity of its Islamophobic tendencies and the complicity of the United States in birthing modern terrorism, says that evil is a heart problem. People commit evil acts because their hearts are wicked. Instead of attempting to understand the reasons for terrorism, Wiggins reduces the matter to one of belief. According to Wiggins, ISIS terrorists recently slaughtered Parisian concert-goers because their hearts are evil. If the terrorists would only repent of their sins and put their faith and trust in Jesus, all would be well. His argument, of course, ignores the fact that many terrorist acts are committed by people who worship the Christian God.
Just recently Christian Lewis Dear shot up a Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic, killing several people, including an Evangelical pro-life police officer. Surely Dear’s murderous rampage is an act of terrorism? Yet, here’s a man, Dear, filled with the Holy Spirit, committing an evil act. Should we reduce Dear’s actions to a matter of the heart? (I suspect that many Evangelicals secretly applaud Dear for doing what he did.) Or should we consider whether the recent inflammatory Planned Parenthood videos and subsequent Evangelical rhetoric and hysteria played a part in Dear’s decision to commit an act of domestic terrorism?
Wiggins, a Christian Fundamentalist, believes every person is born into this world a sinner. We don’t become sinners, we are sinners. According to Wiggins’ inspired, inerrant Bible, every person is dead in trespasses and sins. Every person is at variance with God. Every person is the sworn enemy of God, and unless each accepts this God’s Evil Solution™–the blood of Jesus–all will die in their sins and go to hell.
Taking Wiggins’ theology to its logical conclusion, every non-Christian is a potential terrorist. If, as the Bible says: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it, doesn’t this mean that every non-Christian is evil? Of course, Wiggins doesn’t really believe this. No Evangelical does. Wiggins thinks certain people–Muslim terrorists (and perhaps Muslims in general)–are evil. Are there degrees of evil? Doesn’t the Bible say that God is no respecter of persons? Surely the Holy God of Evangelicalism doesn’t categorize sinners into different evil categories depending on their geographic location, ideology, and skin color? No, he doesn’t (actually he does, but I’ll leave that subject for another day), but Evangelicals like Wiggins certainly do.
While it would be easy to dismiss Wiggins’ words as the rantings of a simple-minded Evangelical, doing so misses the fact that his view has real-world implications. If terrorism is just really a matter of the heart, then the answer to the global terrorist threat is the slaughter of Middle Eastern Muslims. Kill the evil bastards, Evangelicals cry, and that will put an end to terrorism. (Oh the irony of the followers of the Prince of Peace advocating violence as the answer to anything!) Yet, despite the decade-and-a-half war on terrorism, the world is not one iota closer to eradicating terrorism.
While I have no objections to calling terrorists evil, I refuse to absolve Christian America of its own imperialistic, oil-driven terroristic tendencies. Crucial to ending the wars in the Middle East is getting Americans to understand the economic, social, political, and religious views that drive events in the Middle East. Simplistic views such as Wiggins’ reveal an ignorant understanding of how the world works. I wish everything were as simple as Evangelicals think it is. But it is anything but simple, so we must continue to dig deeply into the reasons why a small percentage of Muslims are hell-bent on destroying Western Civilization. And while we are at it, let’s take a hard look at how the Evangelical view of the world fuels domestic terrorism. We truly cannot understand the complexity of terrorism until we are willing look at ALL the facts, not just those that line up with a literalistic, Fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible.
Note
Jeremy Wiggins Bio: (link no longer active)
Jeremy Wiggins is a graduate of Liberty University with a B.A. of Religion and a Minor in Biblical Studies. A veteran of the United States Air Force, he and his wife were stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV, where Jeremy was an F15 Avionics Technician. He has written for the AFA Journal, One Million Dads, and has also had his work quoted in World Net Daily and Christianity Today. He has served as a guest host of AFR Talk’s Financial Issues, Nothing But Truth, Exploring the Word, and AFA Today. Since 2009, Jeremy has served at the American Family Association to help restore America’s Biblical and moral foundations.
