What an amazing display of privilege. It must be nice to live in a society where religious belief isn’t being injected into the public and our government.

They passed separate aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. They could have done all the aid packages in one lump, but House Republicans voted it down on Trump’s orders.

The speculation is that with Trump’s criminal trial in session in New York, he doesn’t have the capacity to micromanage Republicans on the Hill. So this was Magic Mike’s first opportunity to pass the bill unobstructed, even if it required Democrats to assist.

Sorry, I was slow in removing this one.

And they’ll kill to get it.

MAGA is disgusting, yes. But sacrilege, like blasphemy, is a victimless crime. So what’s the problem?

Yes, and?

That verse is too vague. Every Christian thinks it applies to them, especially conservatives.

I don’t agree with that statement, because both on paper and in practice, Christianity is no better or worse than Islam. The only reason Christians aren’t slaughtering homosexuals and transgender people the same way is because they’ve been leashed by secularism. It’s not that they haven’t or don’t want to again. It’s that they know they can’t get away with it – yet.

Look at organizations like Seven Mountains and other Dominionist groups promoting Christian Nationalism. It’s not a coincidence that Kevin Swanson regularly sees Republican office holders at his “Kill the Gays” rallies. They don’t hate Islamic theocracies because of the theocracy part. It’s that they’re jealous of their religious power and want to surpass it.

The real tragedy is that we have some real world examples of exactly this attitude.

https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706

Dawkins stopped representing us a long, long time ago. He made some good points for a while, and then got so enamored of his own celebrity that he stopped being skeptical of his own thoughts. It’s sad to watch his decline, but he’s no longer relevant.

How do you mock your enemy if you don’t know who they are and what they’re doing?

Did you know about them before reading this? I didn’t.

Know your enemy.

That’s the story they’ve been telling themselves so long that nobody really knows for sure. They certainly didn’t allow any other narrative once they took control of every government they could.

I don’t see how they aren’t both rotten at the core. They both spring from the same Abrahamic religion. They both cite extremely fallible and frequently inaccurate texts as scriptures. They both cherry-pick what they want from scripture and knowledge. Neither is better than the other. The only reason that Christianity isn’t just as violent as Islam today is because most of the Christian world is leashed by secularism, which the Islamic world rejected a thousand years ago.

In fact, Jesus was very pro-war/conflict and anti-immigrant. Shall I quote the gospel verses demonstrating it?

Well, yes and no. Yes, during the Islamic Golden Age they successfully introduced a lot of valuable knowledge. There’s a reason our numbers are called “Arabic” and most of the stars we can see have Arabic names. However, the idea that they’ve been strictly defensive is not accurate. After the fall of the Golden Age, when clerics took back their power and declared mathematics to be satanic they began their campaign to establish a global caliphate. They’re brutal with anyone they consider sexually deviant or violate gender norms, and they’re not above attempting to invade a neighbor if they think they can get away with it in the name of Allah.

Just like Christianity throughout history.

The difference is that they have a lot of catching up to do before they can equal the atrocities of Christianity. And from the look of it, this lag isn’t from lack of trying. They just haven’t had as much time as Christians to commit all of the atrocities.

It’s possible, but we’ve been talking about that for at least fifteen years to counter the “the Founders intended us to be a Christian nation” nonsense.

They were always jealous of Muslim theocracy. They didn’t object to the practice so much as the flavor.

“Rules for thee but not for me.” Which brings us around to Wilhoit’s observation:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

You can always tell someone is about to kick the stuffing out of a straw man when they target “new atheism.” This appears to be no different.

The Horsemen helped raise awareness and give voice to atheist skepticism. They did not speak for atheism or all atheists. Yes, polemicists like Hitchens had some toxic agendas, but he certainly didn’t speak for me when he called for the Middle East to be glassed.