Pence Like Trump Has Alternative Facts

As in the case of Donald Trump, Mike Pence likes to make up his own facts. In his commencement address at Hillsdale College, Vice President Mike Pence said,. "Facts are facts. Faith is rising across America." Actually the opposite is true.

According to Gallup, church attendance is going down, belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God is going down, and belief in God is going down. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated are growing as a share of the American population, and according to Pew Research, they are now the second-largest “belief” group in the country at 23 percent.

In addition, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that the nonreligious now outnumber white evangelicals. Between 2003 and 2017, white evangelicals dropped from 21 percent of the population to 13. During that same period, the nonreligious swung the other way, rising from 12 percent to 21.

Mr. Diety

      Mr. Deity is a series of satirical short films that parody aspects of religion.  Premiering in December 2007, it was created by and stars Brian Keith Dalton. It is currently available on the Mr. Deity channel on YouTube. Dalton is a former Mormon.
     Mr. Deity often expresses annoyance with organized religion or human beings who claim to speak in his name.  As his character, he becomes very irate over being attributed as the author of the Bible, but not included in the editorial process.
     In a recent TubeCast, Evidence & Change, Part I and Part II, Mr. Diety asks “When the evidence for your beliefs is lacking, what then?”  After Part I was released, a viewer challenged Mr. Diety to respond to several criticisms, which Mr. Diety did in the following two videos: Response I and Response II.
     Only listen to these TubeCasts if you have an open mind willing to listen to logic.

CINO?

Christian In Name Only.  Donald Trump is hardly the first to wear that badge.  Some say he can wear it next to his RINO badge.  The issue to which "the Donald" seems oblivious is - participation goes deeper than "claims".   It also involves "practice". Pope Francis seems to question Trump's sincerity. 
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/politics/pope-francis-trump-christian-wall/

Trump is hardly alone in his ignorance.  Nevertheless, we are surprised that Trump who claims expertise in everything, missed the following Bible entry

15"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16"You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17"So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.…
Matthew 7:16

Will this change the mind of any Trump supporter?  We doubt it.  As in our experience in most matters religious, cognitive dissonance will prevail.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say (by Donald Prothero)

Freedom OF Religion Is Same as Freedom FROM Religion

      Kim Davis's refusal to issue marriage licenses in Rowan County Kentucky is a violation of the American Constitution.  She has every right to practice her beliefs IN PRIVATE, but she has no right to force those beliefs in her PUBLIC job.  Her claim that the Supreme Court ruling supporting the right of Gays to marry violates her religious beliefs is wrong and in direct violation of the civil duties she agreed to execute.  If she has trouble with that, she should resign her position.
     Her argument can be extrapolated to allow any person to discriminate based on some absurd claim it violates his or her "religion."  Does that claim extend to devout Hindus refusing to issue business permits to a steak house?  Does that claim extend to devout Muslims from issue liquor licenses to bars or taverns? Does that claim allow a Quaker pacifist from issuing permits of any kind to American soldiers?
     Likewise, when has it become a litmus test for PUBLIC office to be Christian?  Does any candidate for President, such as Ben Carson, who openingly claims that Muslims (and other non-Christians) should not hold that office have the right to run for that office, especially when he must that an oath of office to uphold the Constitution?  Does the OPEN discussion of religion have any place PUBLIC office, especially President?

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the God Question

Neil Tyson will be lecturing in Nashville on November 19'th.  Here is his stand on the God question

Published on Mar 2, 2015 Neil Tyson started feeling tired or perhaps impatient while talking to a religious interviewer on God only after 8: 05. I can't imagine how Richard Dawkins manages for a long time.

The God Distraction

Published on Oct 28, 2015: This is the introduction to my new ten part series, The God Distraction: I don't care if God exists, and neither should you. http://patreon.com/MrDeity

Should Public Dollars Fund the Teaching of Ignorance and Superstition?

. . Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies.

. . Politico.com reports

Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do. A POLITICO review . . . found that many of these faith-based schools go beyond teaching the biblical story . . . as literal fact. Their course materials nurture disdain of the secular world, distrust of momentous discoveries and hostility toward mainstream scientists. They often distort basic facts about the scientific method.

Bible Quotes for the Literalists

Old Testament scripture condemning homosexuality,
Leviticus 18:22 - “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”
New Testament scripture
Romans 1:26-27 - “… Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men. …”

Denying a woman’s ability to preach in church
Timothy 2:11-12 - “… I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”

Justifying slavery
Titus 2:9-10 – “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything. …”

Justifying anti-Semitism
Matthew 27: 25-26 - “Let his blood be on us and on our children.”

Separating the Gold from the Dross

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams dated October 13, 1813 said:

In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.

Jefferson cut out the superstitious parts of the Bible, and it was sent to new Congress members for over 50 years. Now the American Humanists Association is continuing the tradition by sending a newly revised "A Jefferson Bible for the 21st Century" to the 113th Congress.