Area Man Passionate Defender of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

Courtesy of America's Finest news source

ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.
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Kyle Mortensen would gladly give his life to protect what he says is the Constitution's very clear stance against birth control.
"Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. "It's time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are."
According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left "traitors" to strip it of its religious foundation.
"Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: 'one nation under God,'" said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. "Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top."
"Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation," continued Mortensen, referring to the "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. "The words on the page speak for themselves."
According to sources who have read the nation's charter, the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments do not contain the word "God" or "Christ."
Mortensen said his admiration for the loose assemblage of vague half-notions he calls the Constitution has only grown over time. He believes that each detail he has pulled from thin air—from prohibitions on sodomy and flag-burning, to mandatory crackdowns on immigrants, to the right of citizens not to have their hard-earned income confiscated in the form of taxes—has contributed to making it the best framework for governance "since the Ten Commandments."
"And let's not forget that when the Constitution was ratified it brought freedom to every single American," Mortensen said.
Mortensen's passion for safeguarding the elaborate fantasy world in which his conception of the Constitution resides is greatly respected by his likeminded friends and relatives, many of whom have been known to repeat his unfounded assertions verbatim when angered. Still, some friends and family members remain critical.
"Dad's great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head," said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. "He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn't even know that it guarantees universal health care."
Mortensen told reporters that he'll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.
"The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes," Mortensen said. "In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life."
"Don't just take my word for it," Mortensen added. "Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime."

Absurdities in Genesis: Resurrection!

So, I'm trying to get back into the habit of updating again, so I think I'll start with some easy stuff.

This comic suffers from what I call desperate relevance, which is a problem that in my experience seems to be plagueing the Christian community, particularly those with the inerrantist view. Just look at them trying to conflate things like expiration dates with the mythical fruit in the garden. Sure, you may say they're jut trying to be cute or funny, but this isn't even clever. It is simply desperate. They have nothing relevant to say, so they slap a meaningless picture trying to make a joke, which barely gets a chuckle if that. Hell, even the Kid in the picture looks like he's rolling his eyes.

So, lo and behold it took me two seconds to come up with what I think is much funnier:

Mr Mabus Vs the telemarketers

Random, I know. For context see discussion here


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The Death of telemarketers at hand!
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Telemarketers don't even believe in *SALES*!!
Lacking completely *ANY GROUNDING* in economic theory!

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The Premium package is a Lie!
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This package has nothing wanted *BY CONSUMERS* simply being an upsell item boosting REVENUE without actually givng anything!

Saleseople, see the folly of the SHAKY GROUND you stand on. The *ECONOMY* of your method of business could come CRASHING DOWN at any moment...TODAY!

If I were as ugly as *JOHN MEYNARD KEYNES* I'd believe in active fiscal policy too.

The CONFLICT BETWEEN KEYNSIANISM AND MONETARISM destroys the very ethos of the telemarketing!

Holy Crap I've Been Busy

Sorry for the disappearance all, I've been crazy busy at work, I've been planning a wedding (which may get scrapped for purely financial reasons), and most of my internet time has been sucked up into the World of Warcrack.

All in all though, things are getting better, and calming down a bit, so I may actually post more often. Shock! Awe!

All in all though, its been fairly quiet on the religion front for my part. I've not seen much politically that has shocked me, and other people like Personal Failure and Ziztur seem to get to the good stories significantly faster than I find them. I'll find something. Might even get that book review done.

Once again, I am alive

Wow... its been way too long since I've updated this. The problem is, I usually update this when its slow at work, and it hasn't been slow for about 3 months. I do plan on getting back to the blog, I swear. It isn't a dead blog, and I am hoping I will get back to very regular updates. The only issue I'm running into right now is material. The subject of religion, irreligion, counter-religion, non-religion, has been pretty well covered by many people, so its often difficult to feel like one is bringing fresh material to the plate. As a result I'm considering doing some things more anecdotally, and going more into the history of religion. That is of course once i really get things moving here again.

Because of Real Life(tm) I haven't been able to do much in terms of research for quite some time, and its about time I dusted off my academia.

I'm Back

Well, apparently I really needed a break from the religion topic, because a couple weeks off has done me wonders of good. It really is an interesting thing, because no matter how important it is to keep fighting the ideas of religion and theocracy, sometimes we need to step away. This seems particularly evident when one is surrounded by it. As many of you know, I live in Texas, and as far as religious saturation that's about as deep immersed as you can be in the US outside of Salt Lake City.

More than anything I think I tried to put out too much content too quickly and became a bit obsessive for a while. Hopefully things will start to pick up, but we'll see. I am still planning on doing my reviews, there have just been some life setbacks that have kept me from really getting into a new book.

Absurdities in Genesis: Don't Look, Your Irony Meter Will Explode

You're not serious... really? I mean wtf people? That's right, once again its the vast scientific conspiracy where there's a virtual consensus of nearly 100% of all the people who know what they're talking about that fossils can be dated. No, creationists have it right, and are NEVER twisting the facts or ignoring information to make their idiotic holy book right, despite all the contrary evidence.

I really will never understand how they think the idea of a massive global conspiracy of scientists is supposed to work. I mean, a large percentage of these scientific conspirators are Christian. How do you reconcile that? Oh, wait. That's right, the no true Sc... errr, no true Christain argument, that's right.

But really, what's the point? Once, again, After Eden is never funny, and never really informative except as a reference on the insanity of the fundies.

Personal Health

At the beginning of this year I finally committed myself to getting healthier. I was, and am still significantly overweight, but since January I've actually managed to drop from about 289 lbs to 263. I realize this is completely unrelated to my blog's subject matter, but I'm actually rather proud of this fact, since meeting my first goal would be getting down to 260.

You're an Atheist Because You Want to Sin

This has to be the thing Christians say to me that causes me to roll my eyes the highest and hardest. I mean, aside from the obvious problem that I, and pretty much all atheists, don't believe sin exists as a moral affront to a God we do not believe in, the entire argument on that basis is completely insconsistent.

I'll put it simply: If I wanted to sin and have no repercussions for it, I'd be an evangelical.

Sounds completely contradictory, right? Counterintuitive?

It certainly goes against the spirit of "the law," but according to the wackaloons in the evangelical mindset, as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior (Grace only theology) then you're cool. So, if I were trying to avoid repercussions for so-called sin (since you say i really do believe in God by implication) why would I choose the option where I don't really get away with "sin" in the end over the option where I get to sin all I like and get rewarded at the end of the race?

Absurdities In Genesis: Stupidity at its Finest

Alright... I think its no secret that I hate AiG's After Eden comic series, but this one in particularly im oddly amused by, but not the reason they want me to be. The main reason is the skin coloring on these characters, because they look grey, almost decaying corpse-like. And the second is the look on that guy's face like the banal crap the woman in the comic is spouting is somehow not only interesting, but shocking.

But really, the absolute best thing about this is it reminds us all that Christianity's greatest enemy is not atheism, but Christianity. All these denominations and silly doctrines and dogmas, and they all contradict each other on the basis of things like literalism, catholicism, protestantism, faith/works bs etc. The fact that the Christian comunity will never be organized as a single unit and is in fact undermining itself through group infighting on these issues as well as trying to steal members from each other only leads to disillusionment and apathy to the church as an organization.

It's no secret that this pleases me. Sure, education and understanding of philosophy and science contribute greatly to the growth of atheism and agnosticism, but I think we can give a good share of the credit to the Christian churches themselves as well.

Post Frequency

Regrettably, due to a significant increase in workload my post frequency will be staying lower for a while. I plan to continue posting regularly, just probably not every day, since I can pretty much only find the time during breaks right now.

I will be doing my new book review probably starting in early July.

Crazy Christian Lies

Thanking Slacktivist for the Link to the Site...I just had to say, I love this shirt. I mean, its so completely true. Except when it isn't.

I Got... Physical Mail

So, today I got in the  mail a copy of both Ray Comfort's You Can Lead an Atheist... (complete with illegible "Autograph")  and The Atheist Bible courtesy of an anonymous donor to Ray Comfort's ministry. Since I have not gotten ahold of the next book I will be reviewing yet, my plan is to look through The Atheist Bible and, if there's anything notable, ripping the hell into its points while waiting to get ahold of the other book. Money just hasn't been there for adding to the blog of late. Just the way things go sometimes. 

McLeroy Nomination Rejected... Barely

So, its finally an almost respectable day to live in Texas. While I'm extatic that this guy won't be leading the SBOE, I'm highly perturbed by the margin by which the block was able to occur.

Ah well... take the victories where you can find them in Texas.

Darwinius Masillae: Seriously Overblown

Everyone's already heard all about Darwinius Masillae the 47 million year old primate fossil. While I agree with scientists that the find is incredible, particularly in its age and completeness, I have to agree with PZ Myers on this one. Incredible as the find may be, its not a missing link, and there really aren't any missing links. We already know pretty clearly that evolution happened. Its obvious when looking at even partial evidence. This find doesn't make or break the ToE, it simply adds to the growing list of transitional forms that creationists pretend don't exist.

I've said it before, but I'm no scientist. I simply find this subject fascinating, mostly due to the denialism and the recalcitrant idiocy of the fundy camp. Frankly though, I get far too frustrated with "teh stoopid". I mean, working on these people and trying to get them to understand that their claims about science and whatnot are wrong and ludicrous is completely a waste of time. They don't understand because they don't want to. We make concessions regarding the fact that we don't claim to have absolute knowledge god doesn't exist etc, and they will always twist it around into a claim of something its not. The cognitive dissonance is so harsh it hurts. So, I'm not sure I'll be dealing directly with the tools on their own blogs anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm done here.

Quickie Post

Your holy book "prediciting" that Christianity would face opposition and persecution with its doctrines against the status quo and being militantly evangelist is roughly as prophetic as me watching you walk into the rain and telling you you're going to get wet.

Absurdities in Genesis: Well, shit... that was quick.

So... yeah. Just post that I'm on a brief hiatus and BAM, I land on AiG and see this:







I mean... really? Come on, this is just beyond pointless. Do these whackjobs completely lack any understanding for what a metaphor is?


Derka derka. I mean, lets be honest here, nobody outside of various animistic pagan groups are you usually going to find someone who literally considers the earth their "mother." For the rest of us it is an obvious metaphor with clear implications regarding what the Earth is to us as a species, and to us as a biosphere. The earth takes care of us by providing us with what we need to survive, and we should be good children and not defile her. Whether you believe it is god causing those crops to grow or placing those animals there is of no consequence, nor does it detract from the metaphorical implications.


The only conclusion i can come to is completely unsavory and that is that these people literally believe that doing -ANYTHING- without the mention of god is implicitly bad or explicitly trying to deliberately sideline their god which is completely ridiculous with things like this that have, in common parlance, no religious connotation any more than me saying "goddamnit" means I believe in god.


And this is the kind of semantic bullshit that frustrates me about the religious debates. They nitpick the stupidest things, but then so do some of ours. How many times has an atheist tried to throw the "bats aren't birds" thing into an argument? The only classification systems that humans still use weren't even codified till thousands of years after the bible was written. Its silly semantic crap. I mean, pi=3 is a valid complaint, and so is the "pillars of the earth" and such. But lets keep it on the level here. If you want to argue semantics, they're going to keep throwing them back.

Taking a week off

Having made it to my hundredth post I'm going to take a little time off from the blog so I don't burn myself out. It'll give me some time to get my creativity back up. Might do some posts if I see something that screams needing a response, but other than that, I'll still be on SMRT.

100th Post: The Septuagint and Eternal Punishment

So, I'm already at my 100th post. Arbitrary marker, I know, But I decided I'd make this an interesting one. I want to discuss eternal punishment with you. Why eternal punishment? Because eternal punishment in hell is one of the most commonly used methods of intimidating people into believing the lies of evangelical christians.

The evangelical christians love the idea of eternal hell. It puts the impetus on a potential convert to either choose to believe or be potentially tortured forever. Its a great big initimidation con, and no doubt gets alot of weak converts from those who are afraid of that potential torture. That said, even so, I will set out to show that the idea of everlasting punishment is not only ridiculous as a doctrine, but completely unbiblical.

In this instance we should look at both the New and Old Testaments, but first the new. Yeshua, in those scriptures, which as best we can tell were initially published in Greek used the words Aionoios Kolasis to describe the eventual comeuppance of sinners and unbelievers. Now, while kolasis does equate to some kind of punishment for a crime or the rehabilitation, aionios is a bit trickier,a nd far more at odds with the fundies.

Aionios means "long enduring" based on all the greek sources that I can muster. It does not imply everlasting, and can be as short as a few years or a few centuries, but it is not eternal even in its implication. The term aionios is used dozens of times in the Septuagint (which Yeshua quoted from) in fact, and every single time it is in its meaning of "long enduring" not eternal. At least, not until you get to the New Testament where translators in the late Roman era and early middle ages decided that it meant eternal.

Highly conservative churches of course hate this idea, because it smacks of Origen's ideas about universal salvation, and of course, if you're going to be saved in the end regardless, alot of people aren't going to back the church, and the church's purpose of getting people to their salvation is completely shot, and many people would lose their purpose of living while not actually having to contribute productively. The very idea of universal salvation was very prevalent in early Christian communities, in fact, and even Augustine makes note of such doctrines and their popularity.

So, maybe I've misread something, but I cannot find anything to dispute this. Even if hell were to exist, I would not fear it because I would know it to be only for some time. Of course, as I don't believe in hell at all I fear it even less. But I highly recommend hitting fundies with that one every once in a while, as they really need a reality check, and watching them twitch in the throes of their cognitivie dissonance can be terribly amusing.

While I was researching all this I came upon a book called The Jerome Conspiracy which I recommend people check out. Its not a long read, and puts this all in a more comprehensive narrative. I actually wish I had come upon this source first, since most of my information is also therein.

god is not Great: To Sum it All Up

So, that's everything I'll be covering for god is not Great by Chrisopher Hitchens. Anyone who wishes to look back at the archives to see all the various parts can go here. 

Overall the book was good. Hitchens is really an excellent writer, easy to read and never goes too cerebral. This I found to be positive mostly because it made the book very accessible while at the same time communicating some very complex ideas. Generally speaking I enjoy Hitchens' style. He's very matter-of-fact as well as putting forth a certain acerbic surety that gives the book a powerful and distinct voice.

That is not, of course, to say that the book is without its flaws. As was stated in various individual chapter reviews its often lacking as far as scholarship. That's also a side effect of what Hitchens did to make the book more accessible. Hitchens isn't really a historian or a scientist; Hitchens is a Journalist, and that's the style that works for him. Its a visceral, easy to pick up style that excludes nobody. However, due to his lack of background as a scientist or historian the arguments often lack alot of the punch that proof might provide, and the very limited citation I would also consider a weakness.  

The biggest weakness though, i'd probably say is that it tries to tackle too much for its scope. Its not a long book, only about 280 pages, but he tries to cover 3 holy books many world religions, and arguments both for and against them. This is really just too much for anyone in my opinion. I fully expect Hitchens to write more on the subject in the future, but I'm really hoping he'll choose a more focused method in his next attempt.

In the end it was enjoyable. In most cases I tend to agree with Hitchens which actually made it difficult at times to to be critical of him, but I think in the end I did a fair job with it overall. Please feel free to criticize or comment. I'd really like to know what people think of the final product.