@atheismfuckyeah / atheismfuckyeah.tumblr.com
God hates Texas? Leading evangelicals try to turn Hurricane Harvey away from Texas using the power of prayer, and fail. In a predictable effort, leading Christian evangelicals tried to “command” Hurricane Harvey “to dissipate in the name of Jesus.” However, Harvey refused their request, as did their imaginary God, and the dangerous storm slammed into southern Texas, forcing residents to flee. --- As an aside: I hope y'all in Texas are ok. ~M
Seriously. WTF. Are the courts now deciding that the Rapture is a True thing? Because that’s the only thing I can think of that would actually allow this nonsense to go ahead.
~M
Thanks in part to a demand letter from Americans United, four crosses have been removed from a tower on the new Texas A&M University-San Antonio campus.
On Nov. 17, AU sent a letter to San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro and City Manager Sheryl Scully, as well as Texas A&M University-San Antonio President Maria Hernandez Ferrier, explaining that even though the Christian symbols were on private land, the project was funded by the public. The letter also pointed out that the developer planned to one day gift the tower to the city.
According to a Nov. 19 article in the San Antonio Express-News, university adjunct criminology professor Sissy Bradford was the first to raise concern about the crosses. She expressed no joy at the removal of the religious symbols, telling the newspaper only, “If, indeed, they have been permanently removed some campus and community members will feel a loss. Respect is the only appropriate response.”
At least one graduate student, Cresencio Davila, doesn’t seem to understand what a respectful response would be. According to the Express-News, he said “If [any people] sincerely feel offended, they have a choice. They can use the other entrance if they like.”
With opinions like that, it’s no wonder Bradford was subjected to criticism because she spoke up. University graduate student Rachel Kusama told the newspaper that the debate over the crosses turned ugly and that “I had much higher expectations for the ethics and integrity of our educational community.”
Ralph Lampman of VTLM Group, which built the tower, doesn’t seem to understand why anyone was bothered by his work.
“The whole idea was to create an icon that reflected the area’s history,” Lampman told the Express-News. “And it’s beautiful.” He added that the tower was designed by an artist to look like the Spanish missions on San Antonio’s South Side.
The newspaper also reported that university spokeswoman Marilu Reyna expressed a similar sentiment.
“[We] allowed [VTLM Group] to use our university seal on the tower, understanding that the symbols on the tower are a part of its Spanish mission theme,” Reyna said
Some people just don’t get it. As AU Assistant Legal Director Alex J. Luchenitser and AU Staff Attorney Ian Smith said in our demand letter, “the federal courts have repeatedly struck down governmental displays of crosses” and this tower amounted to a governmental display of a cross. It’s about as straightforward as it can be.
I’ve been to San Antonio, there is quite a bit of history there, and there is certainly a way to incorporate the area’s history and beauty into something the entire public can enjoy without bringing religion into it. It’s unfortunate that time and again, some people feel the need to construct a sectarian symbol in public spaces where everyone should feel welcome, and it’s even more unfortunate that they rarely understand why anyone would have a problem with that.
Most unfortunate of all, perhaps, is the ugly nature of the debate among the student body. Academia is supposed to be a place for sharing ideas and considering points of view with which we may disagree. There’s nothing wrong with criticism as long as it’s productive and civil. Ugly debate, however, has no more place on a public college campus than do crosses.
From Secular News Daily
Texas watermelons blessed by Jesus (Found at Jesus Needs New PR)
A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to be the next president took pen in hand and went to work:
“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”
Then the governor prayed, publicly and often. Alas, a rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history. Day after pitiless day, from Amarillo to Laredo, from Toadsuck to Twitty, folks were greeted by a hot, white bowl overhead, triple-digit temperatures, and a slow death on the land.
In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Nearly all of Texas is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history.
Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish. Farmers cannot coax a kernel of grain from ground that looks like the skin of an aging elephant.
Is this Rick Perry’s fault, a slap to a man who doesn’t believe that humans can alter the earth’s climate — God messin’ with Texas? No, of course not. God is too busy with the upcoming Cowboys football season and solving the problems that Tony Romo has reading a blitz.
But Perry’s tendency to use prayer as public policy demonstrates, in the midst of a truly painful, wide-ranging and potentially catastrophic crisis in the nation’s second most-populous state, how he would govern if he became president.
“I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this,’” he said in a speech in May, explaining how some of the nation’s most serious problems could be solved.
That was a warm-up of sorts for his prayer-fest, 30,000 evangelicals in Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Saturday. From this gathering came a very specific prayer for economic recovery. On the following Monday, the first day God could do anything about it, Wall Street suffered its worst one-day collapse since the 2008 crisis. The Dow sunk by 635 points.
Prayer can be meditative, healing, and humbling. It can also be magical thinking. Given how Perry has said he would govern by outsourcing to the supernatural, it’s worth asking if God is ignoring him.
Though Perry will not officially announce his candidacy until Saturday, he loomed large over the Republican debate Thursday night. With their denial of climate change, basic budget math, and the indisputable fact that most of the nation’s gains have gone overwhelmingly to a wealthy few in the last decade, the candidates form a Crazy Eight caucus. You could power a hay ride on their nutty ideas.
After the worst week of his presidency (and the weakest Oval Office speech since Gerald Ford unveiled buttons to whip inflation), the best thing Barack Obama has going for him is this Republican field. He still beats all of them in most polling match-ups.
Perry is supposed to be the savior. When he joins the campaign in the next few days, expect him to show off his boots; they are emblazoned with the slogan dating to the 1835 Texas Revolution: “Come and Take It.” He once explained the logo this way: “Come and take it — that’s what it’s all about.” This is not a man one would expect to show humility in prayer.
Perry revels in a muscular brand of ignorance (Rush Limbaugh is a personal hero), one that extends to the ever-fascinating history of the Lone Star State. Twice in the last two years he’s broached the subject of Texas seceding from the union.
“When we came into the nation in 1845 we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation,” says Perry in a 2009 video that has just surfaced. “And one of the deals was, we can leave any time we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
He can dream all he wants about the good old days when Texas left the nation to fight for the slave-holding states of the breakaway confederacy. But the law will not get him there. There is no such language in the Texas or United States’ constitutions allowing Texas to unilaterally “leave any time we want.”
But Texas is special. By many measures, it is the nation’s most polluted state. Dirty air and water do not seem to bother Perry. He is, however, extremely perturbed by the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement of laws designed to clean the world around him. In a recent interview, he wished for the president to pray away the E.P.A.
To Jews, Muslims, non-believers and even many Christians, the Biblical bully that is Rick Perry must sound downright menacing, particularly when he gets into religious absolutism. “As a nation, we must call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles,” he said last week.
As a lone citizen, he’s free to advocate Jesus-driven public policy imperatives. But coming from someone who wants to govern this great mess of a country with all its beliefs, Perry’s language is an insult to the founding principles of the republic. Substitute Allah or a Hindu God for Jesus and see how that polls.
Perry is from Paint Creek, an unincorporated hamlet in the infinity of the northwest Texas plains. I’ve been there. In wet years, it’s pretty, the birds clacking on Lake Stamford, the cotton high. This year, it’s another sad moonscape in the Lone Star State.
Over the last 15 years, taxpayers have shelled out $232 million in farm subsidies to Haskell County, which includes Paint Creek — a handout to more than 2,500 recipients, better than one out every three residents. God may not always be reliable, but in Perry’s home county, the federal government certainly is.
From The New York Times
I am sincerely concerned that this man is running for President. If he gets in, it would be disastrous.
~Mooglets
Houston’s biggest gathering on Saturday didn’t see national television news crews. It didn’t draw out protestors. It didn’t spark its own Twitter handle. And the event — which attracted an estimated 100,0000 people to a convention center just seven miles down the road from Gov. Rick Perry (R) and The Response prayer rally — had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Texas families struggling through hard economic times:
“Some families camped out for hours to gain admittance into Houston’s first-ever, citywide back-to-school event at George R. Brown Convention Center, where free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations, and fresh produce were provided.
Others were turned away.
“It was getting beyond capacity,” [Houstan Independent School District] spokesman Jason Spencer said. “If nothing else, it shows the need.”
In 2009, more than one-fifth of Houston-area residents lived below the poverty level, 3 percentage points higher than the state average. Given the scope of the need, the HISD event provided more than just school supplies; the City of Houston donated 20,000 boxed lunches, and the local Food Bank gave 25,000 three-pound bags of food.
The event planners, who had expected around 25,000 children to attend along with their parents, found themselves overwhelmed with nearly four times that number, forcing police to close the doors around 10 a.m., two hours earlier than expected. Every supply was distributed, every immunization given out, and yet still Texans came up empty-handed.
“They were supposed to have school supplies, but all we got was sweating and paid parking,” Houston mother Beatrice Jones said.
Only a few miles down the road from Jones, her governor prayed alongside 30,000 people for all those “who have lost hope.” He did not see fit to mention either the thousands of his constituents lined up for free back-to-school items or the multi-million dollar cuts his budget will inflict upon the Texas education system.
From Think Progress
Even in Texas, thousands of parents realize that school equipment is far more important that bending your knees.
~Mooglets
This is an update to the story/petition originally reported here.
The Texas Board of Education voted unanimously to approve mainstream middle school curriculum materials on Friday in a move seen as a victory for proponents of teaching evolution in public schools.
Conservatives had complained the materials up for approval did not adequately address “alternatives to evolution” such as creationism or intelligent design as a theory of how life began.
The board also voted to reject any inclusion of materials submitted by a New Mexico company, International Databases, which claimed Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was not proven and that life on earth was the result of ‘intelligent causes.’
“These two votes represent a definitive victory for science and the students of Texas, and a complete defeat of the far-right’s two-year campaign to dumb down instruction on evolution in Texas schools,” said Ryan Valentine, deputy director of the Texas Freedom Network, a liberal group that counters attempts by evangelical conservatives to affect public policy.
The vote followed several hours of emotional testimony on Thursday in which science teachers from around the state pleaded with the board not to require them to teach what they saw as non-scientific theories in their classrooms.
An online biology textbook up for approval by the Texas State Board of Education is drawing fire from scientific and education groups for tacitly pushing creationism. Created by the obscure, New Mexico-based International Databases LLC, the textbook seeks to justify the existence of a higher being while avoiding direct mention of God or the Bible. The Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the religious right in Texas, said in a press release that its adoption by the SBOE would be “a shocking leap backward.”
The textbook’s “Origin of Life” chapter details lab experiments that have failed to create life from inorganic materials, concluding that there is a huge gap between “life” and “non-life” (as crudely illustrated in the photo at right). But from there it makes the considerable leap that biological explanations for the origin of life are discredited. “[T]he legitimate scientific hypothesis,” it argues, is that “life on Earth is the result of intelligent causes.”
The notes to teachers accompanying the chapter leave little doubt that pushing a belief in God is the ultimate goal:
[A]t the end of the instructional unit on the Origin of Life students should go home with the understanding that a new paradigm of explaining life’s origins is emerging from the failed attempts of naturalistic scenarios. This new way of thinking is predicated on the hypothesis that intelligent input is necessary for life’s origins.
Of course, this is far from the first attempt to insert creationism into Texas classrooms; the issue has often been a cause célèbre for right-wing members of the State Board of Education, as well as Republican state legislators. The SBOE will vote on adopting the new science curriculum materials in July.
Annnnnd I’m back to hating Texas.
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that a high school graduation in a San Antonio suburb may not include an opening and closing prayer or the words “invocation” or “benediction.”
District Judge Fred Biery ruled that using those words would make it sound like Castroville’s Medina Valley High School is “sponsoring a religion.”
“We think that the district has been flouting the law for decades,” said Ayesha Kahn, an attorney for Americans United for Church and State, which filed the lawsuit. “We’re glad that the court is going to put an end to it.”
No appeal of the ruling is planned, and the invocation and benediction will no longer take place, said Chris Martinez, assistant superintendent of the Medina Valley Independent School District.
Christa and Danny Schultz, who describe themselves as agnostics, sued the district, claiming that their son might not participate in the graduation set for Saturday if he were forced to participate in religious activities.
Biery ruled that students who are speaking at graduation can still talk about their faith, or cite a belief in God as the reason for their success, but they may not say “amen” or “God bless you,” or have the audience rise and bow their heads.
Go Texas judges! (I never thought I’d hear that come out of my mouth…)
