Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, arguing that President Obama’s re-election placed the country on a path to destruction.
Maybe God will have to bring our nation down to our knees — to where you just have a complete economic collapse. And maybe at that point, maybe people will again begin to call upon the name of almighty God.
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Pat Roberson, starting this year’s so-called war on Christmas.
Atheists don’t like [Christians’ Christmas] happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable. They’re miserable so they want you to be miserable.
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Jesse Choper, a University of California-Berkeley law professor who specializes in church-state issues, on partisan politicking by churches.
There are lots of laws that aren’t enforced. This is one of them.
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Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, encouraging the Republican Party to double-down on religious-right issues to win elections.
I have a proposal for all Republicans. Instead of nominating a candidate who is mute or malleable on social issues but intransigent on political issues, let’s try the reverse. Let’s find a candidate who has a history of consistently and courageously embracing the social views of the majority of the Republican Party.
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Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican, on whether students should exclusively use print textbooks. Not using print books “dehumanizes” learning, she says.
I did pretty well with textbooks. Benjamin Franklin did pretty well with textbooks. Are they going to say reading books is not effective? Should we all stop reading our Bibles?
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Teenage actor Angus T. Jones of the comedy Two and a Half Men apologizing for calling the sitcom for which he is reportedly paid $350,000 per episode “filth.”
Even though it’s my job to be an actor, I have given my life to God. I am very comfortable and firm in that, but I still have to be on this show. It’s the No. 1 comedy, but it’s very inappropriate and the themes are very inappropriate. I have to be this person I am not.
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Pat Robertson, televangelist and host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club, in surprise comments in favor of sound science.
If you fight science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling it the way it was.
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Bill O’Reilly in a discussion with David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, on the religious right’s “war on Christmas.”
Christianity is not a religion, it is a philosophy.
It’s interesting that religious people let their imaginations run away with them. Atheists have no interest in waging a “war on Christmas.” All we ask is that our taxpayer funds not be used for promotion of somebody else’s religion.
There are churches on every corner. What’s wrong with adorning the churches and the grounds of churches with religious (i.e. Christmas) displays? Keep those displays off public (i.e. taxpayer-owned) property, such as public parks, government buildings/lawns/etc. What’s the point of insisting that the only place to put Christmas displays is in/on taxpayer-funded public locations?
What are churches for? Apparently, they’re not for celebrating Christmas. People decorate their private property with lights and displays. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I like to drive around and look at all the lights.
How would Christians feel if the Muslims were to decorate public spaces for their holy days? And when was the last time that Jews put up displays on public property for Rosh Hashanah? Or Yom Kippur? Or Hannukah?
Would it be appropriate to decorate public parks in honor of Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s birthday? The Christians would be screaming at the top of their lungs.
A few years ago, the Wiccans reserved (and paid for) a public park in my little hometown for a festival celebrating some solstice or equinox or something. The Christians were beside themselves. Why? Because they don’t want anybody else to be permitted to celebrate their religion — or atheism.
BTW, atheism doesn’t mean “against” god(s). It just means without a belief in god(s). Atheists don’t worship the devil. Atheists don’t worship anything. How can that be so bad? What is it that causes the Christians to get their panties in such a wad? It would seem that Christians want to be permitted to force their religion on everybody else and make everybody else pay for it.
Marsisi:
I think it is a matter of what the anthropologists call “reification,” which I believe refers to the mutual social and cultural reinforcement of different aspects of a culture. Throughout human history, religion and government have been used to strengthen each other. In other words, it is not enough to just leave religion in the church. The idea is that the church has to reach out to emphasize and magnify the legitimacy of the prevailing government. In turn, the government remphasizes and magnifies the legitimacy of the church. The common people look around and say, “Hey, the church is not just in the church alone. The government recognizes and affirms what the church says. Therefore, what the church says must be right–and the government must be right too. Whew!!! I feel safe now because all the metaphysical bases are covered now, and I can be absolutely certain that I am believing, saying, and doing all the right things in life and that everything is going to be okay.”
For the first time in all of human history, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formally decoupled the two, thus functionally ending the reification function. The human need to see this reification in order to feel safe in the universe has been around so long that it may be in our genes now. For some reason, human beings have an overwhelming need to KNOW beyond any shadow of a doubt that what they believe is right and true. When multiple aspects of a culture all emphasize and re-emphasize the legitimacy of some particular idea, concept, or belief, it provides great relief to that portion of us that hungers for a strong degree of certainty. Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are people whose brain wiring has a very low tolerance for ambiguity in life.
No one man ever knows another man’s heart. However, with that said, I have long suspected that Franklin Graham, the hard drinking, motorcycle-riding, devil child of the great preacher, just gave up all the rebellion to come back and take over daddy’s empire (and all the benefits thereof), which appears to have been given to him on a silver platter. I do not detect in him the honest spirituality that was obviously the hallmark of his dad. In other words, I have long thought that he is “faking it” and not doing a very good job of it at that. This is why we hear all of these weird statements and attitudes, many of which I feel sure that Billy Graham would have personally rejected in his own younger and more lucid years.
Just sayin’.
Atheists tend not to start or perpetuate holy wars either. As John Lennon said in his song, “Imagine”: “…imagine no religions too…”
No Crusades. No Muslim-Christian enmity. No wars of Protestantism. No religious war in Ireland. No Holocaust in Germany. No internicine religious battles.
Imagine.
Vern: Well put….. imagine…. All these wars & conflicts must be lining someone’s pockets. As Yoda might say “….. dark agendas, they have….”
I could bring myself to put up with a little “filth” for $350,000 a week. Angus may be “uncomfortable,” but not so much that he’s quit yet, huh?
One little correction: It wasn’t the Wiccans who reserved the park for a celebration. It was the Pagans. Sorry for that error. Everything else was accurate.