About Roe v. Wade being overturned

[thewayne]

Which is likely to happen later this year, with potential follow-on effects possibly endangering mixed race marriage and gay marriage.

Roe v. Wade was decided during the NIXON presidency. That was NINE administrations ago, 1973. I wouldn't be surprised if some of my readers weren't alive then. Ignoring Watergate taking Nixon down, Nixon was a very mixed package and a definite man of his time. He had his race problems, his anti-semitic problems, etc. He also had some amazing positive traits and did some very positive things that went under the radar.

Here's something he said about Roe v. Wade:

"I admit, there are times when abortions are necessary, I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."
-- President Nixon to aide Charles Colson the day after Roe v. Wade, January 1973

So even Tricky Dick, when Republicans were actual Conservatives and not whatever idiocy is infecting them these days, recognized that "there are times when abortion is necessary", such as rape. If you were to have interviewed him, he might have acknowledged incest, woman's life in danger, etc. Women's rights were becoming a ground swell at that time and weren't much on his radar at that time.


You may or may not know about the web site Quora. Sadly, you can't browse it without signing up. It's a question/answer/rant site where you can ask questions and get answers on a huge variety of topics, sometimes the questions are deliberate trolling, sometimes the answers are thoughtful, sometimes stupid, sometimes equally trolly and ranting.

I came across an amazingly good answer in an Athiest feed. Here's part of it, the rest is under a cut as it's kind of long, with a link to the source at the end.

If you’re an atheist, what would be your motive in spreading atheism, and why would you care what others believe?

If you ask me a week ago, I wouldn’t care less about spreading atheism. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even answer this question at all, considering plenty of atheists had expressed similar feelings. Atheism is often compared to not collecting stamps, which really isn’t something you need to “spread”.

However, something happened this Monday and I had changed my mind about my entire indifference to atheism, or more precisely about my view on Christianity.

I have always seen the religion of Christianity as an organization of great power, and the organization is capable of using it for good and for bad. And despite all the atrocities committed by the Church (Christian or Catholic), I’ve always been willing to give the religion the benefit of doubt. I’ve always been willing to accept that the core teachings, love, tolerance, and compassion, are good. But people twisted its message to justify their evil deeds.

I no longer believe that. I think the core teachings of Christianity are not love, tolerance, or compassion. The core teaching of Christianity is obedience. Christianity as a religion, Christianity as an organization, had done more harm to our society than good, a LOT more harm than good. It’s not about evil people using religion to do harm. It is good people doing good deeds, and some of them just so happen, are Christians.

As I’m writing this answer, the evangelical Christian conservatives had collectively decided that women do not deserve bodily autonomy. They have worked their way up to the supreme court and applied their Christian Canon Law to every woman in the US, regardless of our individual religious beliefs (or the lack of).

Sure, you can argue that American evangelical Christians do not represent Christianity.

My question is, where are the good Christians? WHERE ARE THE FUCKING GOOD CHRISTIANS?! Why don’t the good Christians come out in droves to condemn these people? Why aren’t they protesting against it?

The thing is, if you read the Bible, I mean, really, REALLY read it. you would not be a Christian.

You would not love a God who flooded the world, killing all the people and animals because some people in a small area of the middle east had done some bad shit. You would not love a god who tortured his followers just to win a bid. Afterward, Job got some replacement children and a replacement wife, as if that somehow makes losing his family OK. You would not love a god who let two women be brutally gang-raped because the guest must be protected. You would not love a god who is omniscient and omnipotent and yet let people die in entirely avoidable natural disasters and birth defects. You will not love a God who would condemn people to eternal torment simply because they don’t follow him.

The fact that you’re a Christian, means you either didn’t read the Bible, or you choose to follow a sociopath sky father who lies to you about his love and compassion.

It’s OK. If people want to be in an abusive relationship with a supernatural entity, that’s their choice. before Monday, I didn’t care. But now, I do care about what others believe, because what they believe, now directly impacts me and my freedom.

Roe V. Wade is not the end. It is the beginning.

The same evangelical Christians are going after other rights, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, women’s right to contraception…

So perhaps we atheists should take a good like at what is happening around us and take a more active role in spreading logical thinking, scientific methods, critical reasoning, and fact-based education. Fewer people believe in this ridiculous sky father who occasionally floods the fucking world, the better off we all would be.

So I have a few “Good Christians” coming over to clear their good name.

You know it’s funny.

When Christians take people’s right’s away, you lot are quiet.

When people condemn Christianity, all you “good Christians” all crawl out of woodwork and telling me how you have helped the poor or you have voted.

You voted.

That’s your fucking civil duty! That’s the fucking bare minimum!

I’m not a fucking Christian and I don’t go around telling people I voted as if I’ve done something extraordinary.

You helped the poor by giving them some cheap food? You sure feel quite superior about yourself, aren’t you? Your god must be very proud. LOL. I would rather your fucked up church pay some taxes and that tax money goes into homeless shelters and low income housing.

If you’re a Christian, please don’t come here and tell me what a good Christian you are.

I don’t fucking care.

And let me, an atheist, remind you of Matthew 6:1-4.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

https://www.quora.com/If-you-re-an-atheist-what-would-be-your-motive-in-spreading-atheism-and-why-would-you-care-what-others-believe/answer/Feifei-Wang-6?ch=10&oid=354178113&share=ade43807&srid=3tdxI&target_type=answer

Comments

[lilysea]

Roe v. Wade was decided during the NIXON presidency. That was NINE administrations ago, 1973. I wouldn't be surprised if some of my readers weren't alive then

Yup, I was born in 1976...

[thewayne]

My family and I took a big driving vacation through the South and up the Eastern seaboard right around '73, plus or minus.  Must've been the summer after this, though I didn't have a clue.  I would have been 11ish.  Not long before Nixon's big fall.

[mtbc]

Quite. Jesus is crystal-clear about compassion for the poor and needy, even if they are not from one's community, and about the costs of hoarding private wealth. Look at what resources we have in the US, then all of the people going without even the basics, and that tells you a lot about how many Christians we really have here.

[thewayne]

I'm not religious, but I was raised as a Christian and have a pretty thorough knowledge of the Bible.  I've always applied the Beatitudes and the Woes as a barometer as to whether a person claiming to be a Christian is actually one, and an overwhelming majority fail miserably.

[mtbc]

A good choice of barometer. (-:

Having said that, I have to hand it to the evangelicals in one regard: if, as is usual, Christians accept a fairly Pauline interpretation, then at least some of them are bothering to have their church elders actually heal people! That's another bit most other denominations appear not to have read. The monks typically manage the poverty bit but I don't notice them attempting the faith healing. But happy to focus more on what we imagine might be in the NT had the Jerusalem church been the dominant influence.

[dewline]

Jesus has never been forgiven his virtues, has he?

[thewayne]

That's the size of it.  And we're completely eliding Jesus wasn't the blue-eyed pasty white dude in all the paintings and statues over here!

[lilysea]

And you're right about

Christianity = obedience

look at all the priests/ministers/pastors saying that divorce is never okay even when the husband is violent to his wife

My parents had a Christian book on childraising which explicitly stated that if your children are disobedient
"physical pain is a wonderful purifier of disobedience"
and this was a book published in the ****1980s****

[thewayne]

Yep.  I was born in '61, and I had a belt applied to my butt on more than one occasion.  And I never made the same mistake twice!  At the same time, I wouldn't say it was child abuse because there was never any verbal or any other form of abuse.  I screwed up, I was punished, end of story.  I knew what I did wrong, and there were consequences.  Now, if I had had kids, I wouldn't do it, but I also don't know what I would have done. My sister's first marriage (divorced two or three times, can't remember) was incredibly abusive.  First guy was a physical abuser, she was a verbal hothead, so they set each other off really easily.  She went to the church elders for advice, and all they offered was the 'woman must be obedient to the man', and she left that church.

[dewline]

The strap was still torture.

[motodraconis]

I'm not religious, but I have read the New Testament many times when I was younger, and parts of the Quran and the Old Testament, and er... reading such things really puts you off religion, some really nasty shit and hypocritical stuff. It was so horrible I had to stop reading or risk turning into an active religion hater.

Christians... surely they are supposed to follow Christ? Yet his stories and opinions seem to be glossed over in favour of tiresome rules and regs from Paul who never even met Jesus. It's been set up to control the masses, and squeeze money out of them.

If you actually read the Jesus bits, the whole thing can be boiled down to "don't be a dick" and anyone can follow that, yet few do, and there are apocrypha where the role of women is much more equal, hints are there in the gospels, but watered down by Roman patriarchy when the "official" New Testament was collated and put together to bolster the papacy, hundreds of years after Jesus died. The history of the New Testament is... awkward when you look into it.

[thewayne]

Spot on! Thomas Jefferson edited a bible where he basically excerpted what Jesus supposedly said and the context around it.  Cut out all of the things of people who came after, such as Peter and Paul.  The Jefferson Bible.  Jesus was a pretty cool, relaxed philosopher.  As you said, don't be a dick, be good to people regardless of their station.  Reminds me of John Lennon's line, something about 'Jesus was pretty good, but some of his followers are awfully thick.'  Or Ghandi's 'Western society would be a very good thing.' As you said about the bible being edited to support the papacy, in the early days they had female priests/pastors, had married priests, etc.  Then the organized church, i.e. Catholicism came along, and they realized there was money to be had.

[richardf8]

I'll confess that I have very short patience for so called atheists who make it very clear that there is a specific god that they don't believe in, and then go for the verses that ground every anti-Judaic trope in the New Testament from which Christian anti semitism is derived.

The overarching point; that Christianity is about obedience, is valid. But I cannot help but think that such people aren't Atheists so much as disaffected Christians.

That being said, the truth of the matter is that bans on abortion violate both the establishment clause and the practice clause of the First amendment, though the McConnell Court will never admit it.

The establishment clause because religious answers to both the question of when does life begin, and under what circumstances can/should a pregnancy be terminated vary from religion to religion, and sect to sect. Establishing one religion's answer to this questions as law is thus contrary to the Establishment clause.

As for freedom to practice, there are religions - and Judaism is one - that require that a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother be terminated. Note that I said "required" not merely "permitted." So any law banning abortion interferes with freedom of practice.

As for the person who wants to spread Atheism- well, evangelism doesn't necessarily require a god, but, as John McWhorter notes in Woke Racism it does require a devil. And the God of the Bible is a poor choice for that role because, despite the laundry list your poster provides (lifted straight out of Dawkins, iirc), the laws given are not uniformly evil, and on the matter of abortion, the Christian prohibition of it relies on post-hoc interpretation of the text, not the text itself. It is not fair, in short, to blame God for shit people make up that is external to the text.

[thewayne]

I dislike proselytizing atheists as much as proselytizing religious people regardless of faith.  Just leave me alone and practice your faith elsewhere, I'm not interested.  Excellent points, well stated.

[disneydream06]

So Nixon may or may not have been accepted by the Republican Party today. :o
Hated Black and Jews, but accepted abortion. WOW........

It's sad what so many Americans have done to Christianity. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Reagan and Bush Sr. may not have made the grade, either!

[disneydream06]

The Ruling Party has a new god. :o :o :
And I thought Reagan was bad. :o

[thewayne]

Reagan was the beginning with getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine and then the ownership/market rules that allowed massive monopolization of broadcast stations and later newspapers.

[disneydream06]

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[warriorsavant]

Someone once said that most religious people accept the bible the same way most computer users check off the "agree" box on software downloads. We agree but don't actually read it. I don't doubt that if Jesus (or the founder of any other religion) were able to come down to earth today, with heavenly powers intact, he would whip, flay, or execute, most of the people following "his word."

Nixon had deep flaws, but also great strengths. As the Kligons say, "only Nixon could go to China." But indeed, he did it. He was a man of his times, but moved those times forward. I don't doubt he would be rejected by whatever passes for Conservatives and Republicans these days.

[thewayne]

There's a BBC Radio 4 podcast called Evil Genius.  It's very simple, reductive voting for comedy value.  A panel of three comedians vote whether a person was evil or a genius after a moderated discussion hosted by a comedian and opening three envelopes of "fact bombs".  They recently did Nixon, just this year.  AND I CAN'T REMEMBER THE RESULT!  But the facts of his life and presidency were quite interesting, he was a very complicated guy and did a lot of very good things, far away from the camera.

[thewayne]

And agreed re: studying the Bible.  Most people take what their religious leader says without question or reading the source material themselves.  Case in point: there's some controversy right now about the the OT passages about 'if a man sleeps with another man, they should both be put to death' anti-gay stuff.  With much newer translations, it's looking to be more accurate that it should be 'if a man abuses children, he should be put to death'.  And it was changed in the early 20th century to suit a particular agenda.  The way that preachers pick and choose from the Bible, they can make it say anything they want, and if you don't look at the context of individual verses, it's easy to distort.

[warriorsavant]

When Fundies cite that passage, I want to point out that they should therefore be fine with lesbians.

[thewayne]

Oooh, very good!  Also, no mention of trans in the bible.

[warriorsavant]

Even better.

Also, depending how you translate the creation story, “male and female alike He created he him,” which could be seen as God initially created a hemaphrodite, later split into male and female.

[thewayne]

HAH!  I like that!

[acelightning73]

I"m a fairly militant agnostic, and I believe that it's healthier for people to learn to puzzle things out by themselves, and understand why Abrahamic theology is illogical and leads to unwholesome behavior like sexism, homophobia, and prudishness. That's the only reason I care what others believe.

[thewayne]

That's largely my opinion.  Work it out for yourself, and I'm happy to help you with it.

[acelightning73]

I've had too many unpleasant encounters with devout monotheists. THere was one guy back in the BBS days who threatened to "pray that my GOddess would be revealed to me as the demon She is" and that "all my ceremonies should fail". I did reinforce the wards on my house after those threats. He said I was welcome to do the same to him, but mine wouldn't work because God is more powerful than any false gods. Obviously, nothing happened.

[thewayne]

What a sad, sad man.  Anyone who wants to force their religion on you wants to bring back the days of the Salem Witch Hunts, they just don't recognize it.  And that's how far back Alito had to go, apparently.

[acelightning73]

I told the guy who wanted to pray for me to lose my religion that I was bound by very old and powerful oaths never to use magic to affect another human being without their informed consent. (It was a requirement for the "branch" of Wicca I was trained in.) I tightened up the wards a bit for the sake of my husband and our son. But the bigot finally just went away.

[silveradept]

It's been pretty clear to me for years that there's a difference between the religion that comes from the Christian Foundational Writings and the civic religion of TurboJesus, the prosperity gospel, and the utter fidelity to the most reactionary of rightist nationalism. Unfortunately, because they're are so many marks that think they're smarks in this civic religion, there aren't enough Christians to shout them down and make them choose some other entity to pretend to follow.

[thewayne]

Civic religion.  Excellent demarcation point, I hadn't thought of it quite that way.  I've always had my litmus test of the Beatitudes and Woes, but Civic vs Foundational, you might even talk about Jeffersonian Bible-level if you wanted to exclude books written by people who came from timeframes after Jesus, is a great way of splitting them apart.