bark, bugs, leaves, & lizards

“Not While I’m Lucid.”

Hey Joe

I accept I probably don’t fully grasp how prayer is supposed to work, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with communing with god, even as most people seem to approach it as they would a letter to Santa Claus.  Here’s where Joe “the unlicensed plumber” Wurzelbacher comes in.  He just got elected to some county Republican committee in Ohio and TPM interviewed him:

“I have a 14-year-old son that I want to spend as much time with as possible,” he said. “Once he’s gone to college I’m going to sit down and talk to God” about whether he should run for another public office. But he says he’s reluctant to surround himself with those “liars, cheaters and thieves” in government.

Bonus:

“I pray that he doesn’t want me to run for office,” Wurzelbacher said in an interview last night.

So Joe’s praying to god, asking god to answer “No” when, in a few years, Joe again prays and asks if he should run for political office.  But how do we know Joe hasn’t already prayed to god asking him to ignore today’s prayer requesting he ignore his future prayer requests to run for political office?

There’s Innocent And There’s Innocent

Stem cell research is “deeply immoral,” but a nine year old girl gets raped and aborting the fetuses–yes, twin fetuses–to save the girl’s life leads to  her doctors being  excommunicated?  You might ask, What gives?  Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re explains that “the real problem” is the fetuses were innocent.  The girl?  Not innocent enough to spare her life?

Maybe people who oppose stem cell research could sign a covenant with their doctors to decline any life saving treatments that may someday arise from stem cell research …

D’oh!

Stick to the crank calls, Bart.

Compassionate Weirdness [Updated]

I don’t want to get all fluffy about it, but acts of compassion, regardless of how they manifest, can change people, and that’s moving and humbling.  Even so, I must be getting soft because this story about Nancy Pelosi counseling Ted Haggard makes me think more of both of these characters (they are pretty much characters, right?).  Pelosi’s kindness and Haggard’s little epiphany about the struggles of regular folk make them more complex, if only a smidge (or two to three smidges), and that’s always a good thing.

Haggard:

As we were going through this time of pain, we received word through Alexandra that Nancy [Pelosi] was communicating to us, words like, “God is bigger than this.” She would repeatedly [say], “My mom wants you to know that God is bigger than this.”

…

Our view of what it’s like sitting in an emergency room and not knowing if your insurance card is going to work—I understand that emotion now. I know what it feels like to walk somewhere instead of driving somewhere to save gas. And so, I’m different. And I am optimistic about the new administration. This whole thing had changed me. I never dreamed I would be left out this quickly.

Update: Go figure …

Gainin’ On Ya

I thought Anthony Gottlieb made an interesting point at the end of his New Yorker review of Christopher Hitchens‘ book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Gottlieb notes that a sociologist has estimated there are between five hundred million and seven hundred and fifty million people in the world today who are unbelievers, excluding certain populated areas where data is sketchy and “making allowances for countries that have, or recently have had, an officially imposed atheist ideology.”

Even the low estimate of five hundred million would make unbelief the fourth-largest persuasion in the world, after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It is also by far the youngest, with no significant presence in the West before the eighteenth century. Who can say what the landscape will look like once unbelief has enjoyed a past as long as Islam’s—let alone as long as Christianity’s? God is assuredly not on the side of the unbelievers, but history may yet be.

If we make it that long. I’m not pointing fingers! I’m just saying …

You Can’t Find Atheists In Foxholes Because Their Fellow [Evangelical Christian] Soldiers Threatened To Kill Them

NYT:

People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America.

First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Thomas Jefferson:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

- letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

Christian Love, Republican Style

As both an atheist and a photographer, I may have dropped my non-violent ways to kick Colorado state representative Douglas Bruce in the face if he had pulled a number like this on me.

DENVER—Carrying a family Bible, a state representative-elect kicked a photographer who took a picture of him during a statehouse prayer — then was sworn into office.

Douglas Bruce went to the House floor Monday morning as a guest of Rep. Kent Lambert, a fellow Colorado Springs Republican.

When Rocky Mountain News photographer Javier Manzano took his photo during the traditional morning prayer, Bruce, who was standing, brought the sole of his shoe down hard on the photographer’s bent knee.

“Don’t do that again,” Bruce told him.

Later, Bruce refused to apologize.

(h/t The Boston Globe)

In mid-prayer he apparently told God, “Excuse me, dear Lord, hold on a sec, this photographer is bugging the shit out of me. There. That’s better, I kicked the little prick. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Thank you Lord for giving me the chutzpah to do anything I damn well please.”

Update:  Now that’s more like it.

Colorado lawmakers introduced the first-ever censure measure on Wednesday, accusing Bruce of bringing disrepute to fellow lawmakers for kicking a newspaper photographer on the House floor while he was waiting to be sworn in.