Epic #Pastafarian Defeat: #TracyMcPherson loses the battle (but not the war?)

I wrote about this just a couple of posts ago, and despite my hope for the best, namely that McPherson’s group be allowed, per the First Amendment, to put up a holiday display of their own on public land, it seems, for now, it’s a no-go.  From A-News:

“Despite many phone calls and emails of support, as well as statements by Pastafarian supporters for Holiday Tree and from atheist supporters for the Tree of Knowledge, commissioners Farrell and Costello rejected the motion to nullify Resolution 58-10 which was passed in 2010 and stops all displays except the Jewish menorah, the Christian nativity, and select “secular” christmas symbols picked by the commissioners such as a wreath, a tree, candy canes, santa, and a choo-choo train.

Commissioner Cozzone courageously voted to nullify the resolution in favor of a more inclusive display. We thank her for that. However, since her two colleagues voted against it, the motion did not pass.
As your minister, I am now exploring legal options to bring equality to this county.”

–Tracy McPherson

This is wat I think is gonna happen. McPherson, maybe with a little ACLU help, will sue. It’ll move up a notch It’ll make news. It’ll piss off pundits. People will piss and moan about the rights of “real” religions as opposed to “made up” ones. (A total aside: How was the LDS church, when it began, any different from what the FSM church is now??) After all the hot air has spewed, what this commission will decide to do, rather than recognize Pastafarian rights, will be what Santa Monica did recently, and just say no to all.

It may surprise you to read that I’m in favor of that. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to put up every display possible for the holidays. What it inevitably turns into is a free-for-all of ideas, including intentionally pissy ones, which, let’s be honest, is not in the spirit of the holiday season. The fact is, even for us non-believers, we want to celebrate the season, not just poke our fingers in people’s butts. So rather than force the government to recognize all faiths (oh, yes, we really mean “all”), we need to just say, if the kids can’t play well together, nobody gets to have recess.

Thank you, @MittRomney, for being such a great, #magicunderwear-wearing dick!

I don’t usually get political on this site, mainly because it’s not called “Atheist Political Asshole”, but also because, well, politics isn’t always relevant to atheism.
But now…

(This may be a bit of a nonsensical rant, so please be patient.)

I left the Democratic party in ’04 after a lifetime of near-undying loyalty (which I can’t fully explain beyond parental indoctrination) because, with W’s colossal fuck-ups, the donkeys still managed to be colossal pussies and lose the election. I’ve since learned that it’s usually very difficult to unseat an incumbent president, but at that point, I was just pissed.

• I was pissed when Kerry wouldn’t take a public stand against homophobia.
• I was pissed when Kerry didn’t immediately deal with that whole bullshit swift boat hogwash.
• I was pissed that Kerry seemed to react rather than act.

(I have a point.)

And when election night was done, so was I. I was sick and tired of the Dems seemingly taking votes like mine for granted. (Interestingly enough, since then, I’ve received Republican solicitations–which is awesome because in their attempt to gain one’s vote, they’re honest about their policies since they assume you’re a ultra-right-wing whack job–but not a single Democrat one.) I figured they’d have to bray to get it back (get it? “bray” rhymes with “pray”?).

Then Obama showed up.

At first, I was like everyone else. No way in fuck was America EVER gonna elect a black president, especially when the Democrat base was so fiercely loyal to the Clinton machine.

I was wrong.

So ’08 went down and all was joy. When the current race began, I paid the Republicans little mind. They were offering up clowns like Michelle “pray the gay away”‘ Bachmann, Rick “pray for rain” Perry, and Rick “JFK makes me wanna puke” Santorum. I knew none of those pug-fucks had no chance on the national stage. When Bachmann won that straw poll, all I was thinking was “go ahead, hand the bitch more rope.”

Then the loons dropped out. The insanity whittled and watered down. At some point, I knew Romney was the choice. But then what was delightful was that even diehard Republicans were talking shit about him. Like when Palin gave him her less-than-enthusiastic endorsement. When Gingrich called him a liar. Ha!

(I swear I have a point.)

And then, perhaps due to necessity, they all got behind him and pretended to be excited. And the polls started to reflect that. Then Obama said he was for gay marriage. And the Republicans couldn’t do that because, shit, hating gays is part of their platform.

Then Obama tanked in his first debate. Then he didn’t in his second. Maybe he wouldn’t lose?

(Here’s my point:)

Last night, I finished filling out my ballot. For the first time in a very long time, I was proud to do it. Yes, California will almost certainly go blue. And LA county will almost certainly do the same. But in a time when it’s still somewhat socially acceptable to act like denying rights to any of our population based solely on religious convictions is good, maybe Obama didn’t always do the greatest job, maybe he should’ve been this, should’ve been that, but right now, what’s important to me is rights. And when one candidate believes in magic underwear, that it’s okay that the LDS church was publicly against blacks serving in their silly organization right up until the late ’70s, that it was okay for his silly organization to almost single-handedly finance an out-of-state campaign to limit rights to millions of Californians, and the other candidate yes, may be a Christian, but not only does none of those things, but in fact publicly supports or represents the opposite, my choice is clear.

I have performed my civic duty.

I have voted for Barack Obama.

@leelem0n clears up #Pentecostal #glossolalia for me (and gives me a li’l shout)!

I love glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. I was first vaguely aware of it as a kid, but I didn’t then really understand that it was considered literally speaking the language of God or speaking with God. I thought, through my then-New-Age filter, that it was just some kooky, metaphoric thing people in fundamentalist churches did. You know, those crazy ones. Not at all like us crystal-helaing, aura-glow-watching, law-of-attraction-abiding God-is-love monkeys.

When I got a little older, I learned that some sects, like Pentecostals (and Mormons), took the whole thing seriously, and that the odd sounds they made were that language. Examples like this (The best part of which is when the pastor chides her flock for not doing it long enough):

I’d of course known it was all bullshit. I’d even looked up the facts of glossolalia. Like that though people use actual phonemes that exist in real languages, there’s no actual pattern or system of grammar rules or vocabulary. But I’d been fascinated by the practice.

By random chance, I happened on Lee Lemon on YouTube and asked her about it. Here’s her response:

And here’s her Tumblr post. Which I’ve of course since re-blogged on my semi-retired Tumblr account.

Thanks Lee! More questions coming!

The Great Poster of All Who Will Perish!

A friend sent me this:

That’s a lot of groups. And what makes the sign holder right? And seriously, am I missing something? Without fornication, how does the species continue?? Isn’t that counter to being fruitful?

Did they mean “Bahai”?

@CaraSantaMaria shows @secupp how it’s done!

This comes via AMB. Via The Point. Via TYT.

I’d enjoyed Santa Maria‘s visits on The Young Turks, but had no idea she was an atheist, let alone an out atheist (and recovering Mormon!). Then to see her do a show with other outspoken atheists and not apologize for it: sweet music.

Guests include Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine and my boy James Randi, who hates my guts.

Two big points that I’m glad they brought up were the notion of atheists talking about atheism and atheism not being a choice. Santa Maria explains that when thinking about doing this episode, some asked her if she were going to include the religious on the panel. She didn’t want to have a debate, but rather share atheist views, so no. This actually struck me. So often, there’s this pretense in the media of needing to get “both sides” of the debate, even if there is no debate or there aren’t two sides. I don’t know whether this is that media outlets don’t want to appear biased or what. But I’m glad that Santa Maria’s feeling was that since she wanted the show to be about atheists and atheism, she was under no obligation to get the religious take on that.

The other great point (among many) was that of atheism being a choice. Often, when we describe our cultural struggle, we’re told that it’s not the same as any other civil rights movement (and it’s not the same, but it is similar in some ways) because African Americans can’t change the color of their skin and women can’t change their gender (for all intents and purposes). We, however, can change what we believe. This has always seemed really odd to me as in my case, it wasn’t a question of choosing to believe something. I had chosen to believe Christianity, almost entirely due to the fact that I’d been raised in a Christian home, but once I compared the claims to the evidence, I no longer saw any reason to believe. So it wasn’t like before I’d liked chocolate and now I preferred peanut butter. It was that chocolate had been demonstrated not to exist so I couldn’t pick it anymore.

And the thing that people don’t get is that once something has been demonstrated false or in the very least highly unlikely, it’s really hard to maintain belief in it. Think about it. If someone told you they had a magic ball that they could hold up, let go, and it’d float rather than fall, that’d be a pretty crazy, but amazing claim, right? Gravity does not apply to this magic ball. But then imagine that upon request of demonstration of this amazing anti-grav ball, either the ball’s owner refuses to drop it or does so and the ball falls. In the first scenario, imagine asking the owner why they didn’t drop the ball and the owner becoming defensive and demanding that you simply have faith. Your not believing in the magic, anti-grav ball wouldn’t be a choice in this case. It’d be based on the lack of evidence for the claim made. Or imagine if the owner dropped the ball and it fell. You inform of them of this fact and they tell you that you’re wrong. It didn’t fall. You inform them that yes, it plainly did fall. They tell you that you weren’t really watching or you didn’t have faith. You ask for them to do it again and, as they let go of the ball, you record the event on your cell phone video camera. You play back the footage of the ball clearly falling. The owner says that the cell phone malfunctioned or that you manipulated the image because the ball DID NOT FALL.

In either scenario, it wouldn’t be a choice like the chocolate/peanut butter quandary. It’d be an inability to do what others wanted you to do, due to the fact that you simply could not. Kind of like skin color change. Kind of like sexual orientation change.