AMURICAN ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM: The Amazing Atheist / “An Olympic Feat of Ignorance”
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Category Archives: Indoctrination
ARROGANCE OF IGNORANCE: Staks Rosch / “Another Example of Christian Arrogance”
Earlier this week, Gore Vidal died. For those who don’t know, he was a giant intellectual and a vocal atheist. I wrote about his death on Examiner and some Christian had to chime in on it in the comments section. She writes:
“It’s so sad to me to realize the genius of Gore Vidal yet somehow he had such an ignorance about what is heaven and the hereafter. However it will be God’s grace that will get him into heaven. Wow I bet he is surprised now.”
Related articles
- IN MEMORIAM: Gore Vidal / “Gore Vidal, American Writer And Cultural Critic, Dies” / (AUDIO) (alwaysquestionauthority.com)
SCIENCE: Evolution / “Evolution Theory vs. Creation Myth”
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Louisiana Lunacy: Tens of Millions to be Spent on Faith-based Education
SCHOOLS run along faith guidelines have hit the jackpot big time following Louisiana’s decision to siphon tens of millions of tax dollars out public schools and into religious institutions where only creationism will be taught.
In what is described here as “the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education”, the state will pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.
Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.
Said Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who muscled the plan through the legislature this spring over fierce objections from Democrats and teachers unions:
“We are changing the way we deliver education. We are letting [some of the most notoriously uneducated] parents [in the country] decide what’s best for their children, not government.”
Jindal is a [converted] devout Catholic, and this is what he believes:
“As Christians, we’re secure in the knowledge that in the Book of Life, our God wins. He gets off that cross. He beats Satan. We’re not called to be despondent. We are called to be salt and light and to be planting the seeds of the gospel.”
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Zinnia Jones / “Governor Bryant, There Is No “Non-Denominational” School Prayer”
“Without school-sponsored prayer, students are still free to pray on their own while in school. But where school prayer is mandated, students from all walks of life have often been required to acknowledge an “Almighty God” or “Heavenly Father”, whether through regulation or just social pressure. Such an arrangement is clearly antithetical to genuine religious freedom in schools.”
Video transcript: http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones/2012/06/governor-bryant-there-is-no-n…
Related articles
- Mississippi Governor on school prayer: “It is what we should continue to do” (secularnewsdaily.com)
- Mississippi Governor touts ‘non-denominational’ prayer in public schools (secularnewsdaily.com)
- Mississippi Governor Endorses School Prayer (msatheists.org)
- Zinnia Jones: Gov. Bryant, There Is No ‘Non-Denominational’ School Prayer (huffingtonpost.com)
- Congressional support for school prayer? (secularnewsdaily.com)
IN MEMORIAM: Ray Bradbury / “‘Fahrenheit 451’ Author Ray Bradbury Dies At 91” / (AUDIO)
Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chroniclesand Fahrenheit 451, died Tuesday. He was 91. Bradbury was known for his futuristic tales — but he never used a computer, or even drove a car.
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn’t imagine the future, and his active imagination made him stand out. He once told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.
“As soon as I looked up, there it was, and it was horrible,” Bradbury remembers. “And I would scream and fall back down the stairs, and my mother and father would get up and sigh and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, here we go again.’ “
Bradbury dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells captivated Bradbury — and made him dream of becoming a great author. So he started writing, churning out a short story every week during his teens. After his family moved to Southern California, he would escape to the basement of the UCLA library. There, he’d focus on his craft.
Related articles
QUOTE: Eric Hoffer, On Intellectual Sterility
Eric Hoffer a.k.a. “Longshoreman Philosopher” (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983)
American Social Writer, Author, Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength (he sees no obstacles), but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony. The fanatic is also mentally cocky, and hence barren of new beginnings. At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula – his formula. His is thus without the fruitful intervals of groping [uncertainty], when the mind is as it were in solution – ready for all manner of new reactions, new combinations and new beginnings. (Between the Devil and the Dragon. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982, p. 287)
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Film / “In God We Teach”
A film by Vic Losick, “In God We Teach” tells the story of a high school student who secretly recorded his history teacher in class, and accused him of proselytizing for Jesus. The teacher, in danger of losing his job strenuously denied it. The specifics of the controversy lead directly to the church & state arguments that are in the news this election year. With Stephen Colbert, Alan Dershowitz, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others.
QUOTE: Oscar Wilde, On Disobedience
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)
Irish Writer, Poet, Classicist, Spokesman for Aestheticism, and Atheist.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.
Fascist America: Have We Finally Turned The Corner?
The author offers one of her periodic assessments of America’s potential to go fascist. And the news is better than it’s been in years.
Political Research Associates estimates that, at any given time in our history, roughly 10-12 percent of the country’s population has been bred-in-the-bone right-wing authoritarians — the people who are hard-wired to think in terms of fascist control and order. Our latter-day Christian Dominionists, sexual fundamentalists and white nationalists are the descendants — sometimes, the literal blood descendants — of the same people who joined the KKK in the 1920s, followed Father Coughlin in the 1930s, backed Joe McCarthy in the early ’50s, joined the John Birch society in the ’60s, and signed up for the Moral Majority in the 1970s and the Christian Coalition in the 1990s.
[…]
The conservatives know that the demographic trends are not on their side, and that whatever limited advantages they enjoy now are receding with every election cycle that passes. Right-wing America is old, white, rural, and religious — a cohort that’s shrinking with every passing year, and is even now in the process of being swamped by a tide of voters who are younger, urban, ethnically diverse, and largely non-churchgoing.
Always Question Authority 