Pat Robertson is Retiring (and Depriving Us of Quoting Him Verbatim)
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Pat Robertson is Retiring (and Depriving Us of Quoting Him Verbatim)
Alas, there's no shortage of prominent Christians saying horrible things.
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After 54 years of hosting The 700 Club, Pat Robertson has announced his retirement. He won’t disappear from the show entirely, but the day-to-day hosting gig will now turn over to his son Gordon, who, historically, has found a way to keep his foot out of his mouth.
Is that good news? I’m not sure. Atheists may have just lost one of their greatest “recruiting” tools. For decades, for better or for worse, Robertson was one of the most prominent evangelicals in the country… as well as one of the most embarrassing. Pointing to the insane shit he said over the years was a simple way to show people the irrationality of his faith.
Robertson, after all, is someone who said feminism led women to “leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” He called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. He said towels carry AIDS, that mass shootings could be blamed on godlessness and liberals, and that he’s being dominated by homosexuals. And I haven’t even mentioned the alleged 2,000-lb. leg press.I know anti-abortion activists lie. And I know everyone associated with Jim Bakker lies. But it takes a lot of gall to go on Bakker’s show and claim your prayers brought a child back from the dead like Janet Porter did recently:
Speaking of lies we can check, Pastor Kent Christmas (his actual name) said he was planning a trip to Florida to heal a woman in a vegetative coma. Which means we should be seeing headlines saying “MIRACLE OCCURS” any day now, right?
This is incredibly infuriating. Two Christian pastors created a well-produced video in which they shared advice on how to best spank their children. Truly disturbing stuff.
Nothing to see here. Just two fundamentalist Christian pastors bragging about how they hit their kids and why everyone else should do it too. "If you're spanking your children, and it doesn't hurt, you're not accomplishing anything."It led me to do a deeper dive into the world of Christian discipline and the book “To Train Up a Child”:
It’s like she’s halfway there…
Does the thought of seahorses mating bother you? Congratulations. You’re a mature adult. These right-wing mothers, on the other hand, are not. They tried to get a local school district in Tennessee’s Williamson County to ban a number of books that they claimed were inappropriate for children... including ones about civil rights, Greek and Roman mythology, Galileo (who was persecuted by the Church), the devastating effect of hurricanes, and mating seahorses.
You can even see the seahorse book below. Good luck finding anything problematic.Creationist Kent Hovind is so bad at filing documents that an appellate court tossed out his $536,041,100 lawsuit against the government because he didn’t get the proper paperwork in on time. Which is disappointing since it deprives us of watching that court dismiss his appeal on the merits, like it ought to be.
This was controversial in some atheist circles. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York was speaking to a Christian audience last Sunday when she spoke in the language of faith to encourage people to get vaccinated.
She said “God did answer our prayers” by giving scientists and researchers the ability to develop a vaccine. She criticized people who “aren’t listening to God and what God wants” when it comes to getting their shots. You get the idea.
Should she have spoken in that language, though? Personally, it didn’t bother me. There’s a difference between proselytizing — which this wasn’t — and just speaking to fellow Christians and encouraging them to do the right thing.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, however, urged Hochul to “refrain from using her public office in future to make ‘proselytizing and exclusionary religious remarks.’” They said she was “assuming her constituents are all Christian” but I didn’t see it that way at all. She was just speaking to a Christian audience and using rhetoric they’d understand. It didn’t bother me any more than Joe Biden using the language of faith when expressing his beliefs.
The moment politicians put dogma over reason, or demand others accept their faith-based reasoning for anything, they deserve pushback. But this speech wasn’t that, even if she was wearing her governor’s hat in the process.In 2018, the city of Boston said it would not put up a Christian flag outside City Hall Plaza at one man’s request… so the man sued. He lost. He appealed. He lost again (unanimously). He appealed. And now the Supreme Court has decided to step in and hear the case. Which means we know exactly how this story will end. We just have to wait until June to make it official.
It’s bad enough that a politician is blaming school shootings on the lack of forced religion in public schools… but it’s especially troubling when that politician is the Lt. Governor of North Carolina.
I’m leaving this here because the screenshots are glorious:
I know, I know, all of you have been wondering whether it’s okay to role-play in bed with your partner. Don’t worry! Preacher John Piper has your answer: Not a chance, you dirty heathen.
He added: “fantasized sin is sin, no matter how many people agree on it... playacted sin is sin.”
I don’t think he needs to worry. Listening to him speak will lower anyone’s sex drive. But he’s also harmfully wrong on substance. Thought crimes aren’t crimes, even in the bedroom. Certainly not with your partner. Absolutely not when it’s consensual.The Ex-Muslims of North America have updated their “Persecution Tracker,” which keeps tabs on “accounts of hate and violence motivated by Islamic intolerance.” In other words, they’re cataloguing instances of where criticism of Islam — or perceived criticism of it — is met with punishment by people who believe their faith ought to be immune from it.
This may be my favorite story of the week. Kris Vallotton of Bethel Church in California reposted an old sermon on YouTube a few weeks ago. He didn’t realize that sermon contained outdated and harmful ideas about Purity Culture — the kind of things many Christians have been speaking out against for years.
After a TikTok user called him out on it by featuring some short clips of what he said, Vallotton pulled down the video from YouTube, said the clips were taken out of context, and said his team was reviewing the video. (Sure.) He later posted a roundtable discussion about sex-related topics… but chose not to reupload the video. Which is strange because that would give everyone a chance to hear his words in context.
But I got my hands on the original sermon. *Evil laugh*
It turns out the relevant portion lasts all of three minutes… and all the criticism was fully warranted. I can’t post the whole thing online, but here’s a longer compilation:He talks for 35 minutes. But the relevant portion takes up all of 3 minutes at the very end. Because of Twitter limits, here it is in two minutes.Vallotton represents everything that’s wrong with the evangelical world when it comes to Purity Culture. He owes a lot of people an apology.
Some advice for churches: When a pastor who used to work at your church gets accused of inappropriately touching a child… and then gets arrested for it… and you decide to hold a prayer vigil… make sure you’re not rooting for the pastor accused of being a sex creep.
This is everything you need to know about Steven Pinker’s latest book:
“Still, Pinker is troubled by what he sees as rationality’s image problem. ‘Rationality is uncool,’ he laments. It isn’t seen as ‘dope, phat, chill, fly, sick or da bomb.’”
It’s nice of the Times to review a book that was written in 1991. At least they bring up Pinker’s troubling work to help Jeffrey Epstein.
Tell me you belong to a cult without telling me you belong to a cult.
How dumb are the people who work for Newsmax? This dumb.
Newsmax's White House correspondent is urging people to avoid the vaccine because it contains "luciferase." 1) Not true: reuters.com/article/factch… 2) The word comes from the Latin for "light" and "carry," nothing evil. 3) Fireflies glow b/c of the same class of enzymes.
I regret to inform you hate-preacher Greg Locke is still spreading insanity wherever he goes:
A Texas lawmaker wants to make the Bible the “Official State Book.” In other news, the Bible was not already Texas’ Official State Book.
Being married for 10 years after a life of celibacy does not make you a sexpert.
Finally, I’m so sorry you have to watch this. But I had to, therefore you must suffer.
Want to see the full video? Sure you do. You’re welcome.
