Julia Grey: The Nine Billion Links of God

Mini-Carnival of the Wingnuts on World O Crap

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:45:57 GMT

Don't miss the theological threepio at World O'Crap today, including this quote from Tamara Wilhite trying to out-Malkin dear Michelle:

Anyone who chooses Islam is to be considered a threat to this country and put in confinement. Call it a concentration camp. Guantanomo Bay is more comfortable than Afghanistan, and I’m not suggesting we send them all to Cuba. Old Japanese interment camps work. Remember, extremism is a belief system. If Dad thinks he has a right to blow up Jews for the sake of Jihad, odds are that Junior does, too. Remember: Islamicists are equal opportunity suicide bombers these days. Mom has no qualms about sending her daughter off to school in a suicide bomber belt these days, either. Children tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents. And all children should be interred with the parents. All relatives of those in internment should be interred as well.

As was noted by one of the commenters on WOC, it's kinda creepy that she uses the term "interred" instead of "interned." Ms. Wilhite's strategy is obviously to get attention, à la Malkin and Coulter, but as WOC snorts, "she doesn't have the hair or the legs" to be the next nutjob wankababe.

Afterwards, there's a delicious little ramble through the mind of a Protestant dingbat who presumes to not only judge the filthy soul of John Kerry against that of the merely "flawed" Bush, but to pronounce (in his infinite, Pope-like wisdom) that John Kerry is extending his sins by daring to take Communion. Wank, wank, wank.

Then there's Frank Gaffney. WOC quotes him:

Using innuendo and a steady stream of (often recycled) press leaks, the names and reputations of a number of people — including several who are senior officials in the United States government at the moment — have been sullied.

There is no need to repeat their names here.

Gaffney's talking about the investigation of Pentagon neo-conservatives Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle et al., and members of Vice-President Cheney's office who may be involved in some very serious kinds of espionage.

Today [Gaffney continues], anti-Semitic witch-hunts can be dressed up as ideological conflicts between the Bush Administration's so-called "hardliners" and "moderates." The former are increasingly caricatured as "neo-conservatives." For many who use this ill-defined term, though, it serves as an unmistakable, pejorative code word for "Jews."

"Funny," WOC says, "Dick Cheney doesn't look Jewish." Never mind that many neo-conservatives use the term for themselves, it's pejorative. Trust me.

If the conduct of hostile bureaucrats and Democratic partisans, reprehensible as it is, can at least be easily understood, the behavior of the FBI is less comprehensible. It would be one thing if law enforcement were filing charges and presenting compelling evidence of wrongdoing — and clarity as to who engaged in it.

Oh, I see now. Prosecuting a spy ring is comprehensible, but investigating possible spy rings prior to filing charges against them is a sinister plot by hostile bureaucrats at the FBI.

Hyprocrisy, thy name is Wingnut. For them it was not only a perfectly legit but saintly cause to spend 70 million taxpayer dollars and provide the press with constant leaks and "innuendo" (read: stenographic dictation) regarding the terrifying, life-threatening, Republic-endangering horrors they were uncovering in Clinton's ancient land deal and sexual adventures. But to let anyone in the press know that there is a current ongoing investigation into ESPIONAGE, the actual compromise of national security is ... wait for it ... "anti-Semitic."

Because, you know, Robert Novak, the columnist who outed that CIA agent, is Jewish.

...uh....well...

He's actually Catholic now, but, hey, everybody knows he was BORN Jewish. So that's why he's ~~a material witness~~ being persecuted in this horrible ~~investigation~~ Democratic plot within the FBI.

Dr. Omed's Sermon on Metaphor

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 21:35:07 GMT

Living by Fiction

An Apology for Atheism and Poetry

Money line:

"The aim of metaphor is to make the sum of our falsehoods equal truth."

Laurence Peter Quote

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 15:36:20 GMT

Laurence J. Peter. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe." [Quotes of the Day]

Nine Billion Archives: Dr. Laura's taking her ball and going home

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 03:52:33 GMT

Thursday, August 14, 2003

"Dr. Laura" is no longer the most famous Orthodox Jew in America:

Schlessinger [who converted to Judaism with much public fanfare about 5 years ago] began her August 5 program by noting that, prior to each broadcast, she spends an hour reading faxes from fans and listeners. "By and large the faxes from Christians have been very loving, very supportive," she said. "From my own religion, I have either gotten nothing, which is 99% of it, or two of the nastiest letters I have gotten in a long time. I guess that's my point -- I don't get much back. Not much warmth coming back."

In other words, "Doctor" (Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology) Schlessinger's measure of the value of a religion appears to come down to "What's In It For Me?"

Schlessinger even hinted at a possible turn to Christianity -- a move that, radio insiders say, would elevate her career far beyond the 300 stations that currently syndicate her show.

Hmmm.....

TBOGG comments in his inimitable fashion:

Faced with the prospect of Ms. Schlessinger coverting to Christianity, leaders of all the major Christian churches cleared their throats, went inside the house and pretended they weren't home.

God had no comment either...as usual.

Archives: Great Moments in Movie Religion

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 03:51:04 GMT

Friday, August 15, 2003

Great Moments In Movie Religion

In Cousins, when old crank Lloyd Bridges' character is asked at the cemetery why he didn't come to his brother's funeral in the church, he says,

"God makes me nervous when you get him indoors."

The Nine Billion Archives of God: The Evangelical General

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:39:39 GMT

More on why "Military Intelligence" is an oxymoron

Here's some official response to last night's jaw-dropping NBC feature on Lt. Gen. William "Crusader" Boykin. Is it any wonder the Pentagon's evaluation of Iraqi intelligence was the very definition of "faith-based"?

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Pentagon leaders on Thursday spoke up in support of a top general who has told church audiences that the war on terrorism is a battle with Satan and that Muslims worship idols.

Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin has made several speeches -- some in uniform -- at evangelical Christian churches in which he cast the war on terrorism in religious terms. Boykin said of a 1993 battle with a Muslim militia leader in Somalia: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

(Apparently General Boykin hasn't heard that even Arab Christians call God "Allah," and that idolatry is such a major sin in Islam that they do not permit any kind of representation of any person or being -- in contrast to Christian churches, festooned with paintings and sculpture, some of which even purport to represent God himself.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday he had not seen Boykin's comments, but he praised the three-star general, who is the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Of course Rumsfeld says it's a free country and he can't possibly limit the controversial, internationally impolitic speech of his subordinates -- unless, of course, they are mere non-com G.I.s bitching about dangerous policies, unspeakable conditions, disgusting equipment, and feckless political leadership.

General Boykin has also said that he believed George Bush was "chosen by God" to lead the country. And how does he know that? Bush didn't win the popular vote and yet he still ended up as president. Clearly the Hand of God was at work.

Breathtaking, innit?

Oh, I'm so sorry...you found out what I was doing

General Boykin has issued a standard non-apology apology, saying only that his remarks before religious audiences were "misunderstood." The most important thing he should have apologized for was the deeply flawed judgment he displayed. Boykin, resplendent in his uniform and the high government position that he holds, proudly said that other countries "have lost their morals, lost their values. But America is still a Christian nation."

(If you don't know what's wrong with claiming Christianity as the national religion, we have to talk.)

Boykin was also quoted as saying that "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian Army." Excuse me, General, but the Army is no more Christian than the nation is. (However, given the recent Schwarzeneggar victory in California, I don't necessarily dispute the point about Satan being out to destroy us. Heh.)

So now the general has apologized. Sort of. Well, anyway, he has attempted to explain himself. He says that he didn't mean to say, when he claimed that his God was "bigger" than the God of the militia leader in Somalia, that he was comparing Jesus and Allah. No, he was saying that the man's "god" was really wealth and power, not Allah at all. However, Boykin's claim that his God was bigger was apparently in response to the man's boast that "They'll never get me because Allah will protect me." Ooops.

Boykin also claims in his non-apology apology that when he said that God had placed Bush ~~on the throne~~ in the presidency to lead us in this desperate hour of our spiritual need, he didn't mean that there was anything particularly holy or special about Bush, per se. God chose other Presidents to lead America, too, including Clinton, Boykin said (wow, that must have just about strangled him!)

However, it's clear that Boykin's remarks regarding Bush were in fact meant to indicate that Bush was extra special, otherwise Boykin wouldn't have made so much of the fact that Bush ascended to the White House in spite of not even having gained a majority of the vote. That fact was part of Boykin's mystical proof that the Hand of God had intervened to anoint this particular man for this particular spiritual job. So this "God appointed Clinton too" gambit is simply dishonest backpedaling.

The Nine Billion Archives of God: Icon Kills "Common People"

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:35:53 GMT

WeirdNet Daily: Religious Icon Kills "Common People"

An article from everybody's favorite tabloid, World Net Daily:

A museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has removed an ancient icon depicting Jesus Christ from display because the piece of art's "energy field" reportedly has killed several staff members. ...

The 'killer' icon (Photo: London Telegr

"It's an inexplicable phenomenon and it started long ago," Boris Sapunov told the paper. "Three or four people died of diseases, and the coincidence began to make me wonder. When the [supervisors'] seats were moved away, all the trouble stopped. It won't be exhibited any more.

"The icon was created by several artists, but it is the middle section, painted by an apprentice, that has a negative bio-field." ...

The professor first drew attention to the problem by contacting a Russian tabloid, the Komsomolskaya Pravda. After the publication of a story headlined "Killer icon in the Hermitage," the museum began to receive complaints from worried members of the public.

Vyacheslav Gubanov, a local doctor, reportedly conducted an analysis of the icon.

"This is a wonderful icon, a very powerful one," Gubanov told Russia's Pravda. "It is not guilty of making people feel bad. It produces the power, which makes the human brain vibrate at a high frequency. Not every human being can stand that. Most likely, the icon was meant for the elite, not for common people."

Bwahahahahahaha.

Maybe this icon used to belong to Tsar Nicholas II and it's now wreaking the "elite's" revenge on the Bolshie hoi polloi.

Or maybe, dear doctor, you left your brain on the counter at the split-pea store.

The Nine Billion Archives of God: God the Welfare Queen

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:30:56 GMT

Sunday, September 7, 2003

God the Welfare Queen

Richard Cohen launched this fascinating diatribe last week, but I missed it until it came up on the Morons.org's daily list of queued links that didn't make it into stories.

I do not mean to be either cavalier or sacrilegious, but it occurs to me that the God so often discussed nowadays seems as dependent on the government as a welfare mother. For some reason, the Almighty needs government assistance to make his presence known. Either the schools must have prayer or government buildings must have a religious reminder -- say, the Ten Commandments -- or else, somehow, he will be banished from our lives or our consciousness. ...

Religion can have a hard time being tolerant. To many adherents, the stakes are too high.

I am at a loss to explain this mentality. But I am at a loss, too, to explain why the all-powerful deity needs some schoolteacher to lead a prayer -- why, for instance, the religious do not tend to this matter before their children leave for class. I do not understand why a God who once smote with abandon and authored miracles that science could never explain needs a statue here or a display there to remind us of his omnipresence.

The only explanation is that these are not just subtle reminders of a higher authority -- higher than the law, for instance -- but not-so-subtle attempts at using government to set things straight: Yours is a misguided religion, a back-of-the-bus belief that is not quite what the state prefers. Get with the program.

My own thought is that religious organizations who are trying to get a piece of the government pie, or who believe that the government should actively "encourage" (if not actually "establish") particular kinds of belief or expression, should think twice. On mature and prayerful reflection most will come to realize that they don't really want to be locked into a partnership with government, that becoming dependent on government largesse or -- worse yet -- counting on gaining new converts via constrained, half-assed government evangelism, is extremely dangerous, spiritually speaking.

Spreading the Gospel, for example, is something that Christian churches should carefully guard as their own prerogative, because it is the one thing that neither business or government can really do properly, and encouraging "government-sponsored" evangelism can quickly hijack religious doctrine into the service of secular ambitions.

Oh, wait...that's already happening.

Nine Billion Archives of God: Death Comes to the Archdickmutt

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:22:58 GMT

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

Death Comes to the Archdickmutt

This Paul Hill person, the anti-abortion guy who 9 years ago deliberately and with malice aforethought took a shotgun to abortion provider Dr. John Britton (69), his security escort Lt. Col. (AF, Ret.) James Barrett (74) and Barrett's wife June, was a real piece of work.

Carl Hiaasen wrote about Hill today for the Miami Herald:

Crackpot websites are hailing him as a patriot and a hero, and warn that his death will bring bloodshed to other abortion providers, judges and politicians. Last week, single rifle bullets were anonymously sent to prison officials, Attorney General Charlie Crist and the judge who sentenced Hill. ...

If mowing down senior citizens with a 12-gauge doesn't seem especially courageous or noble, remember that Hill was only following God's orders. That's what he said, anyway.

Hiaasen correctly notes that Hill's headcase stunt was a "nightmare" for the mainstream anti-abortion movement, which claims as their central principle a reverence for human life. Hill may have actually set the movement back, but he remained totally unrepentant to the last. Of course.

In a letter to the editor of the Herald the former Presbyterian minister claimed that "The Lord is giving me a generous measure of peace and joy as I anticipate my departure." Well, isn't that special? He expects a heavenly reward after he's sent One Toke Over The Line (Sweet Jesus), but if there is any kind afterlife, I think he is going to be VERY surprised, don't you?

Hiaasen notes that "Hill's sparse following has found a nest on the internet, where the dumb notion of mailing bullets to public officials first caught on. ... In one online diatribe, an antiabortion activist even compared Jeb Bush to Pontius Pilate."

Yes, words do fail.

If you don't see the parallels between Hill's rhetoric/activities and that of certain other violent religious types abroad in the world these days, you've been living under the Rock of Ages. Hiaasen nails it:

Like Hill, all wannabe martyrs claim to be true believers. And they all try to justify their cowardly deeds with selected quotes from holy books -- the first refuge of hypocrites, and the oldest alibi for slaughter. ...

Paul Hill is no better than any common terrorist, pious, unrepentant and blind to his own hypocrisy. The guilt-free, inner serenity that he claims to enjoy is precisely what you'd expect from a malfunctioning moral compass.

Sing it, Mr. H.

(Carl's latest novel is Basket Case.)

COMMENTS ON THIS POST:

I don't believe in capital punishment, mostly because I believe that killing a killer means that we've determined he or she should not have the opportunity to repent, that we've decided to cast them into the abyss (or whatever) as is. But that said, I don't mourn when an evil person is killed.

jonathank • 9/4/03; 6:19:14 PM #

Individuals like Paul Hill present a real challenge to anyone's beliefs, anyone's ability to deal with ambiguity, anyone's ability to forgive. I believe Paul Hill was horribly wrong in what he did, and I believe he was horribly wrong in his persistent belief in and expectation of a reward in the afterlife for murder. At the same time, I have to believe that it is certainly within God's power to show mercy to Mr. Hill. It isn't up to me to judge him. I hope that in the instant before he died, Mr. Hill realized how terribly wrong he was, repented, and asked to be forgiven. I hope the rest of us are given the same chance, and the wisdom to avail ourselves of that opportunity, even at the last moment.

Life, and the afterlife, are simple to understand, but not easy to control. The problem with dogmatic approaches is that they try to make control easy and the outcome certain. As the gunnery sgt used to tell us, "The easy route is the dangerous route. That's where they put the landmines."

The only thing that stood in Mr. Hill's way was his own stubborn pride.

Bill Brandon • 9/6/03; 11:13:48 AM #

I feel deep anger at the man and his death dealing and the manner of his death. It's taken me several days to sort out my feelings and what I might have to say about him here. At first, my thought was something along the lines of "They shoulda dusted off 'Old Sparky' and let Hill ride the lightning to home to the Lord." But Hill didn’t deserve to die that way; in fact Paul Hill did not deserve to die.

No, Hill did not get what he deserved. Like Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, he got exactly what he wanted, to play the martyr in the last act of a self-scripted passion play. Paul Hill deserved to spend 23 hours per day in a windowless box the size of a large broom closet for another 30 or 40 years growing old, irrelevant, and forgotten, in the admittedly faint hope that he might develop some capacity for reflection, compassion, or remorse.

I oppose the death penalty for criminals like Paul Hill precisely because I believe such murderers should have the opportunity for decades of solitary reflection upon what they have done. It is their only chance for redemption.

In his own statements to the press and on the Army of God website, Hill was fond of comparing abortion to genocide and the Pro-Choice movement to Nazism. Like many of his ilk he appropriated the word "holocaust" in particular to put all of its powerful and horrible associations in harness to his rhetoric. The meaning of the word "holocaust," leaving aside the connotations it has acquired in the past half century, is "burnt sacrifice," more specifically an offering that is burnt whole and entirely consumed by the fire.

I think it likely, judging by his own words, that Mr. Hill would not have been uncomfortable thinking of himself as the unblemished lamb of god sacrificed on the brazen altar of a sinful nation. He certainly had a mind unblemished by doubt, and it seems to me a heart unblemished by pity or compassion for any but unborn human beings and those obedient to *his* Lord.

Paul Hill flung himself into the volcano of his "god of love" as a self sacrifice not to forstall but to provoke an eruption, and forced the state to collude in his unholy suicide. Hill committed a crime I name "soul arson," a perversion of the human spirit and an atrocity against our common humanity. That it was his last crime and his own soul won't provide much consolation to his victims.

Now he is an angel of damnation burning behind the brows of other pious killers-for-Christ. Allah akbar.

Dr. Omed • 9/7/03; 1:30:34 PM #

I'm reminded of a headline that graced the front page of the Onion shortly after 9/11/01: "Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell."

Raging Bee • 9/8/03; 10:54:37 AM #

Nine Billion Archives of God: Koranic Hoax

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:16:11 GMT

Saturday, September 27, 2003

The Koran predicts Bush's invasion of Iraq?

Here's one of those dunderheaded right-wing emails that's making the rounds these days:

Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The following verse is from the Quran, (the Islamic Bible)
Quran (9:11) -- For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.

Note the verse number!!!!!

Give me a break.

Why is it that these lying email freakazoids always count on people NEVER looking this stuff up?

Dear Reader, this "verse from the Koran" is a total fraud.

Ironically, the verse in question (link shows it in context) is actually about the Muslim practice of giving charity to the poor as a way of repentance for apostates who have "made agreements with idolators."

Here's how it actually reads:

[9.11] But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and We make the communications clear for a people who know.

Who starts these totally bullshit things, these politically useful urban legends?

Maybe a better question would be: why is anyone ever credulous enough to instantly believe something like this when it hits their inbox, given that this is an era of non-stop internet hoaxing?

Towing Jehovah and Bible Stories For Adults

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:59:18 GMT

This looks like a good one.

Bible Stories for Adults, by James Morrow

This is what Booklist's Carl Hays had to say:

Morrow's Towing Jehovah (1994), which has just won the 1995 World Fantasy Award for best novel, wickedly satirizes orthodox religion by recounting the journey of an oil tanker towing God's immense, decaying corpse to its final resting place at the North Pole. The stories in Morrow's new collection run in a similar vein, deliciously skewering not only Judeo-Christian mythology but other sacred cows of modern society, from capitalism to New Age spiritualism. In the Nebula-winning "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge," Morrow presents a prostitute who is rescued by the ark's crew from a flood but who shouldn't have survived, for she inevitably helps revive the evils God meant to destroy. "The Confessions of Ebenezer Scrooge" delightfully exposes the flaws of corporate charity when Marley's ghost returns with another round of rebukes for a disconcerted Scrooge. In Bible stories numbers 20 ("The Tower") and 31 ("The Covenant"), respectively, Morrow gives us God's own amendment, in His own words, to the Tower of Babel story and describes a computer's reconstruction of Moses' tablets. Morrow's brand of mordant wit invites comparison with such master satirists as Vonnegut and even Swift, and he deserves to share an audience with them that sprawls beyond the bounds of genre fandom. Not to be missed.
Towing Jehovah was the first of a trilogy which also includes:

Blameless in Abaddon
In this book, God is discovered to not be dead after all. The angel who announced his death in the first book was, just, well, Wrong, and God is only comatose. The Vatican has run out of money to maintain the Corpus Dei, and they sell the the two-mile long body of God to the American Baptist Confederation, who set it up Florida as the Main Attraction at Celestial City. Meanwhile, in Abaddon Township, Pennsylvania, a freak auto accident claims the wife of justice of the peace (and recently diagnosed cancer victim) Martin Candle, who decides it's time to put the Main Attraction on trial for His actions.

and

The Eternal Footman

...Footman tells the story of what happens after God is undeniably dead. If His giant, deteriorating corpse in the first two novels wasn't enough, now His holy skull stares down from orbit like a melancholy moon, offering daily proof to the Western world that there's nobody left to pray to. ...
Depressing? That's not the half of it, as Judeo-Christians, sure at last that nothing but blackness awaits beyond death, become "Nietzsche-positive" and are stalked by the leering embodiments of personal apocalypse. Nora Burkhart's son Kevin is the first of millions to succumb to the awful symptoms of abulia, the fatal result of death-awareness. Western civilization crumbles while Nora struggles to take her comatose son to a legendary clinic in Mexico, where a strange, powerful man is rumored to have a cure. Meanwhile, a spiritual sculptor finds inspiration in a new pantheon after his masterpiece is mangled by the Vatican--but the new gods may require the ultimate sacrifice.
This is James Morrow, after all, and despair is always accompanied by enlightenment in his satirical morality tales. Taking cues from Dante, the legend of Gilgamesh, and an imagined debate between Erasmus and Martin Luther, Morrow finds redemption for humanity in the simplest acts of decency. Giant stone brains, God's evil intestines, and the still-guilty captain of the oil-spilling tanker Valparaiso make memorable appearances in The Eternal Footman, a worthy finish to Morrow's trilogy, and a fair but passionate defense of "the West's greatest gift to the world, the miraculous faculty of rational doubt."
--Therese Littleton (Amazon.com)

The Nine Billion Archives: Sound Familiar?

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:51:41 GMT

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Sound Familiar?

"Except the Lord built the house they labour in vain.... The truth of that text was proved if one looks at the house of which the foundations were laid in 1918 and which since then has been in building.... The world will not help, the people must help itself. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it we may wage the battle of our life.... The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty -- of Him Who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.... We are all proud that through God's powerful aid we have become once more true Germans."

--Adolf Hitler, 1933

Nine Billion Archives of God: Haiti Declares Voodo a Religion

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:40:58 GMT

Sunday, April 13, 2003

Haiti's government decrees Voodoo a religion

The AP's Michael Norton writes:

AP Photo
Many who practice voodoo praised the move, but said much remains to be done to make up for centuries of ridicule and persecution in the Caribbean country and abroad.
Voodoo priest Philippe Castera said he hopes the government's decree is more than an effort to win popularity amid economic and political troubles.

"In spite of our contribution to Haitian culture, we are still misunderstood and despised," said Castera, 48.
In an executive decree issued last week, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide invited voodoo adherents and organizations to register with the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
After swearing an oath before a civil judge, practitioners will be able to legally conduct ceremonies such as marriages and baptisms, the decree said.
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, has said he recognizes voodoo as a religion like any other, and a voodoo priestess bestowed a presidential sash on him at his first inauguration in 1991.
"An ancestral religion, voodoo is an essential part of national identity," and its institutions "represent a considerable portion" of Haiti's 8.3 million people, Aristide said in the decree.
Voodoo practitioners believe in a supreme God and spirits who link the human with the divine. The spirits are summoned by offerings that include everything from rum to roosters.

The Nine Billion Archives: Tennessee Monkeybrains

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:38:18 GMT

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Science books rejected for not teaching Creationism

From Erin Hudson, reporter for the Daily Times of Maryville, Tennessee:

The Blount County Board of Education denied the adoption of three new biology textbooks because they teach evolution but do not cover creationism.

The vote to deny the texts passed by a 2-1 margin Thursday night. Four board members did not vote.

COWARDS!

... Treadway said he had reservations about the approach to the theory of evolution in the three texts. He said he does not want people to believe he is against evolution, but wants it to be taught as a theory along with creationism.

"With the overwhelming references to evolution, I don't feel comfortable with (adopting these texts),'' Treadway said.

Maybe the "overwhelming references to evolution" have something to do with the fact that you are looking at a SCIENCE text and not a SUNDAY SCHOOL WORKBOOK, Treadway.

Simerly said she is concerned with how evolution is approached in the selected biology texts, because creationism is not addressed.

"I do not believe that we evolved from anything other than human beings,'' she said.

So just because YOU choose to believe something (sweet little chump that you are), that BELIEF should be taken seriously in a SCIENCE text? What if I were to say that I believe the world is flat and is balanced on the back of a turtle? Should my fervent and illogical beliefs be incorporated into the science curriculum? No? Then why are you trying to incorporate YOURS?

McNelly said he shared those concerns, though he is not against evolution as a theory.

Big of him, innit?

Like Treadway, he said he believes students should be taught both creation and evolution theories. "With creationism not presented as a theory, there's a large gaping hole in the books,'' McNelly said.

Listen up, dingy: creationism is not a theory in the sense that evolution is a theory. Creationism is a statement of belief that people are trying (without success) to make fit the (mostly very inconvenient) facts on the ground, and the only way they can do that even marginally is by throwing out whole classes of data and artifacts. Evolution, on the other hand, is a theory that pretty thoroughly incorporates and explains the data and artifacts as they EXIST in the real world.

McNelly said he voted against the motion to reject the textbooks because he believes the teachers could address creationism when covering the material in class.

NO. Since science is an attempt to explain what IS rather than what "could be," creationism doesn't come anywhere near passing the "science" test. So keep it the hell out of the science classroom. Exclamation point.

The next course of action would be for the matter to be taken back to science instructors at the high schools and have them write a curriculum that includes creation being taught beside evolution. With that curriculum in place, the board would be content to adopt the three texts, according to Bell.

Cheese Louise on Pumpernickel.

shaking head in disbelief

The four nonvoting board members apparently were reluctant to get involved in the discussion with memories of the Scopes' Monkey Trial in the not so distant past.

In other words, they have no gonads whatsoever. Fire them, too.

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Reader Mail: Tennessee Monkeybrains Redux

"Laurie" writes:

Your rant about Blount County, Tennessee, Schools choice of textbooks is predicated on an error in reporting. The choice to reject the textbook which mentioned Evolution as a fact and the only possibility was made by a 6 to 1 vote. Here is what one of the Board said later about the matter:

"The board wanted the textbook to say that the theory of evolution is a theory. Many other books say that.
We know the law. We don't intend to violate the law. The law has to do with: "the public schools shall neither advance or inhibit religion (TCA 49-6-2902)."
You will certainly disagree with their decision, but you may decide they are at least not lacking in courage nonetheless. The Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times have been apprised of their mistake, but have elected not to issue a correction.

I thank Laurie for her correction to the vote count as reported. However, it only makes me more angry. It means that only one member of that board deserves to be making educational decisions for the Blount County schools.

A scientific "theory" is not a "theory" in the sense Laurie and the board members seem to think it is (or wish it was): something that is "just a guess" and/or is not proved. We all know what is going on here. The board members are insisting on the word "theory" to provide an opportunity for teachers in the classroom to deliberately skew the word's real meaning in the scientific context and tell students that they don't have to accept evolutionary science because "it's just a theory."

The board member Laurie quotes makes this intention clear by essentially saying, "We won't approve a science book that doesn't give teachers an opportunity to dismiss science and push religion."

(I think it's fascinating that Tennesee has a law that guarantees that the public schools can't ever tell kids anything that might "inhibit" their religion. Does that go for the religion of Hindus and Buddhists, too? What if a kid were to claim that his religion was Atheistic Evolutionism...would he get to object to the teacher who promotes Creationism as an alternative "theory"? What? Oh, yeah, silly me, I guess I am assuming that serious lawmakers would THINK THINGS THROUGH.)

Evolution is about as proved as a scientific theory ever gets: it and its corollaries are the best fit to the processes we observe and artifacts as we have them. Creationism, on the other hand, is cobbled together out of IGNORING the preponderance of the evidence (forced, for example, to say that God put dinosaur bones in the ground to "test our faith"), and consists of little more than desperate efforts to fit minor disputes or datapoints into an ancient STORY that was never intended to be taken literally in the first place. That is the very antithesis of science, and as such it does not belong in a textbook or in a science classroom. Period. No: Exclamation point.

I repeat: Blount County voters should fire that school board at the earliest opportunity. People who are effectively plotting to sneak Creationism into the science curriculum -- or are too scared to stand up to those who have that intention -- shouldn't be making decisions about what color to paint the gymnasium walls, much less deciding which textbooks to buy.

The Nine Billion Archives of God: Catholic Fiction

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:36:15 GMT

Friday, April 4, 2003

Heart Murmurs

There was interesting talk about Catholic fiction over at Chronic Murmuring the other day (be sure to check out the Comments thread, too).

I wrote up the description of a book club for my church at the beginning of last semester. I entitled it, "The Sacrament of Story." Basically, the idea behind it was to read fiction that dealt with faith, and ... I wanted to do something that brought the personally reflective focus of a "bible study" together with something that was imaginative, as I think that that might be a more dynamic experience.

The book list, in the end, consisted pretty much entirely of Catholic writers. The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter by Greene, Silence by Endo, Love in the Ruins by Percy, Brideshead Revisited by Waugh, Diary of a Country Priest by Bernanos, and Wise Blood by O'Connor was the entire list. It wasn't purposeful to make it only Catholic, but when I started thinking about the kinds of books I wanted to read, these were the books I wanted. What is the connection between 20th century Catholicism that it managed to produce so much great literature?

I can particularly recommend Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, in which a previously uncorruptable colonial cop betrays everything he believes in for love -- even though he's sure he's going to go to hell for it. Oppressive West African ambiance, a murder mystery, moral despair...what's not to like?

The Nine Billion Archives of God, Part 4

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:28:16 GMT

April 3, 2003

Don't miss Lucifer's Spam....

From Pesky the Rat:

God converts to Microsoft Windows, experiences salvation failure; distraught Christians lament not having Saved themselves more often
In a shocking turn of events, sources in Heaven report that God has made a crucial error in the management of His IT infrastructure. ...
All over Heaven, The Servers crashed. Total Salvation Failure.

The recriminations flew faster than cherubs on cappuccino. Gabriel said, "It must be a bug."

"But this is Heaven!" said God. "There are no bugs, only Features!"

On Earth, Christians shuddered in horror as word spread that their eternal souls would revert to their Last Save. Jerry Fallwell reverted to the age of fourteen, and ditched his ministry to spy on college girls in the shower. ...

Guess who's The Angel of Microsoft?

------------------------

Famed "Afterlife" Experiments Debunked

In an article in the January 2003 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, Ray Hyman, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon, outlines many methodological and logical failures in Dr. Gary Schwartz's supposedly scientific research into the survival of consciousness and the ability of mediums to communicate with the dead. Schwartz's claims in The After Life Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death are based on experiments he conducted with psychics doing "readings" for sitters who are described as "predisposed" to belief in the validity of psychic contact with the dead.

Hyman, whose lifelong research interests include examination of alleged psychic readings and the psychology of deception and self-deception, points out that Schwartz's one experiment with a double-blind protocol (the scientific gold standard for validating data with the potential for unconscious signaling or subjective flaws) in fact repudiated his thesis.

"Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one," says Hyman.

Archival Antonin

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:05:30 GMT

"...this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority..."

Antonin Scalia, the author of the remarks quoted below (from an article in the religio-conservative journal First Things, and drawn from remarks he made at a conference sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life at the University of Chicago Divinity School) is being touted by some as the next Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I leave it to you to figure out from the following why I think his appointment to that post would be an unmitigated disaster for American jurisprudence.

In my view, the major impetus behind modern aversion to the death penalty is the equation of private morality with governmental morality. This is a predictable (though I believe erroneous and regrettable) reaction to modern, democratic self-government. ...
Few doubted the morality of the death penalty in the age that believed in the divine right of kings. ... It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God -- or any higher moral authority -- behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our own will. ...
Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the church-going United States. I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. ...
The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible.

Nine Billion Archives: Chazztown Follies

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:00:38 GMT

March 30, 2004

How Long, O Lord, How Long?

This kind of time-wasting government nonsense goes on in Chazz (my hometown) ALL. THE. TIME.

Invocation by atheist prompts walkout in Charleston [SC]

Some of the half-dozen or so Charleston City Council members who left Tuesday said their religious beliefs compelled them to leave.
But Herb Silverman, who noticed the walkout when he rose to speak, said it was rude.
"I think it's outrageous behavior," said Silverman, a College of Charleston math professor. "What would we say if the first time an African-American got up to speak at City Council, a bunch of whites walked out, or if a rabbi got up to give an invocation and a bunch of people got up to leave?"
But councilman Wendell Gilliard said the idea of an atheist giving the invocation was particularly wrong when war is going on in Iraq.
"We've got young men and young women over there fighting for our principles, based on God," he said. "I think it's about time we started standing up for something in this country."

"Fighting for our principles," the man says. And "It's about time we started standing up for something in this country." I couldn't agree more, Councilman G. But I suspect we are talking about standing up for entirely different principles.

Among the many, many reasons I will be glad when (or should I say "if"?) the war in Iraq ends is that it will no longer afford right-wing dick-wavers an immediate, emotional opportunity to identify American "principles" with their twisted, exclusionary, self-righteous, warmongering fundamentalism. Isn't it bad enough that this war is effectively demolishing our future ability to preserve and enforce the principles of international law? Isn't it bad enough that our supposedly Christian leadership has cynically attempted to make pre-emptive violence look like a moral imperative.

Do we also have to pretend that God wants us to do these things IN HIS NAME?

-----------------------

Friday April 25, 2003

Congressman Gilliard is at it Again.....

Today's Charleston, SC Post and Courier ("The South's Oldest Daily ~~Right Wing Rag~~ Newspaper") headlines (see above) Councilman Wendell Gilliard having the vapors over the immoral horror of college girls sunbathing in Marion Square, the central downtown park.

No, I'm not kidding. Mr. Gilliard is upset because the arrant hussies are wearing -- gasp -- bikinis! Two-piece bathing suits are a tooooool of the devil, you know.

It's Charleston's own version of "shock and awe:" scantily clad sunbathers soaking up the rays in Marion Square.

writes P&C staffer Jason Hardin. (One hopes his tongue is buried deeply in his dimpled cheek.)

One city councilman says the display is inappropriate in a place frequented by families and surrounded by churches. Councilman Wendell Gilliard says he is ready to take a stand, comparing the activity to the hot-selling "Girls Gone Wild" videos of college students in various stages of drunken undress.

Methinks the councilman is terribly agitated about some videos that, surely, he's only HEARD about. Such an upright man (you should excuse the expression) would never have actually watched such a thing, or even polluted his pristine mind with the thought of other people buying it and watching it and getting turned on and playing it over and over and over again, right?

"I've seen them pushing the limit. They have their breasts exposed, their ... rear end exposed, wearing a G-string bikini," he said.

And I just couldn't look away!

"This 'Girls Gone Wild'-type attitude has caught ahold all across the country. We don't want it to get to that point, but I'm sad to say I think it's at that point now."
Gilliard, who has led the city's effort to shut down a West Ashley adult video store, said he was disturbed by the sight of several sunbathers during a recent gospel music concert in the park.

He added that [the sunbathers] have caused other problems, including a recent traffic jam.

"Everybody thought something had happened, but these two guys in a truck were looking at the girls laying out on the lawn," he said.

Oh dear. Now this is a problem. Irresponsible boys are rubbernecking and holding up traffic. We can't have that. It Must Be Stopped. (While you're at it, arrest those lame-ass tourists who don't know their way around town. Why, only last week I was stuck behind a fellow who dithered for 12 whole seconds when he discovered he couldn't turn right onto a one-way street!)

The Rev. Carl Wiggins, pastor of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit in Ladson, said he wouldn't mind seeing a sunbather-free Marion Square.
"I'm here praying, and it's hard on a human being not to be distracted," he said.

Let me get this straight, Rev. You want the police to restrain these naughty college girls because you want to pray in the park and you don't want to be distracted from those prayers by intrusive visions of female loveliness. You can't avert your eyes because it's, ahem, TOO HARD.

Hello? Where does your own responsibility for avoiding temptation and restraining your own reactions come into this equation? Anywhere? Or should the world just be made safe for Christian fundamentalists so they aren't ever forced to exercise their spiritual strength? Hey, I've got an idea...let's put our women into BURKAS! Then men can pray in peace!

[Mayor Joe] Riley said he does not agree there is a problem.
"It's spring, and warm days after a cold, gray, dreary winter ... attract sunbathers," he said. "Frankly, I feel that it's a very positive thing that Marion Square, beautifully restored ... is attractive to our citizenry."
Police Maj. Herb Whetsell said officers would have a difficult time trying to enforce an ordinance against sunbathers, although public nudity is another thing entirely.
"If a person is standing out there peeing on the sidewalk, yeah, we'll lock them up," he said.

Figuring out what kind of swimsuit should be considered indecent would be difficult, he said.

Luckily for Councilman Gilliard's and the Reverend Wiggins's threatened moral security, this year's College of Charleston graduation is not far off.

The Nine Billion Archives of God, Part 3

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:56:19 GMT

Polka to Satori?

The NYT's Dick Teresi reviews Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, by John Horgan.

... Horgan, a former senior writer for Scientific American, sets out to find how trances, visions, satori and other mystical experiences work. The early civilizations that invented science also used religion as an intertwining path to the truth, and Horgan follows in this tradition. He is a seeker as well as a journalist, and his mission is personal as well as professional. It's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" meets "Siddhartha."

Oh dear. This does not sound entirely promising, does it? However:

The seers he encounters are as entertaining as they are maddening. He begins with a traditional religious scholar, the octogenarian Huston Smith, a propounder of the ''perennial philosophy,'' which holds that all the world's great religions express the same fundamental truths about the nature of reality, and that reality can be understood through a mystical experience.

Well, no actually, all the world's great religions do NOT express "the same fundamental truths about the nature of reality," nor do they all hold that "mystical experience" is necessary to understand reality. But never mind, if nothing else, there is definitely amusement to be had here:

We move on to the thriving field of transpersonal psychology, whose primary exponent, Ken Wilber, is so enlightened that he struck his sick wife because her breast cancer interrupted his spiritual growth. Wilber claims that his big satori happened in a German pub, while he was dancing the polka with a bunch of elderly men.

Did you have the same Bad Thought I did?

__________

March 27, 2003

Aggrandizing Illusions

An Arabic News article that quotes Syrian scientists claiming they have proved that "aggrandizing" (invoking the name of Allah) when slaughtering an animal will prevent bacterial growth in the meat. Apparently they have also proved (cough) that aggrandizement can cure epidemic diseases in livestock, such as "Mad cow, thrush fever and chicken plague."

He explained that the reason is because the cattle and the birds knew by their sensibility that mentioning Allah's name spread filled their spirit with ease and tranquility. As a result their organs and defense systems became active and disease causing factors are all eliminated.

Uh-huh.
.

The Nine Billion Archives of God, Part 2

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:51:54 GMT

A Creed for the New Millenium?

Is Christianity finally finished? Can it possibly remain relevant in this new century, approximately 2007 years after its founder was born?

Not if its institutional forms keep behaving in ways that make the satire of Betty Bowers (motto: "Love the Sinner, Hate Their Clothes") and Landover Baptist ("Where the Worthwhile Worship") so screamingly spot-on.

Landover Baptist has been taken seriously by huge numbers of its readers, and it's not hard to see why. This excerpt from a Landover Baptist "sermon" by one of Landover's "23 paid pastors" is only that much over-the-top when compared to actual pulpit rhetoric in some fundamentalist churches:

Friends, people look at us and laugh. Did you know that? They actually find Fundamentalist Baptists humorous. They think we are old-fashioned, and that we make up stories about Hell to scare people.

It is very upsetting to have someone laugh in your face when you are trying to explain to them that if they don't return Christ's love and accept Him as their personal savior that they are going to be tortured and have all of the flesh burnt off their body every day for all of eternity in a literal lake of fire. So upsetting in fact, that when witnessing to an unsaved Lutheran the other day, I responded to his laughter by saying, "I can't wait to see you burn in Hell!"

He was taken aback, and quite shocked. I used this opportunity to witness even more. I said, "You won't be laughing when you see demons using your testicles as ping-pong balls." ... Then I explained to him that I would be the one laughing at him when he was burning in Hell. "I can't wait to see the look of surprise on your face as Jesus drop-kicks you off the cliff of glory into the lake of fire!" I exclaimed.
After leaving the conversation, it dawned on me that I was actually expressing the way I really felt. Even before Lutherans and all other unsaved trash wind up roasting in Hell, God has promised colorful violence and torture for them, come Judgment Day. God will use fire, plagues and beasts to kill them, and what did he say good Christians like us will do in the meantime? We "shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts to one another" (Revelation 11:10). Well, I don't think Jesus will mind me getting a head start on the celebration. Since I am filled with the Holy Spirit and Jesus lives inside of my left ventricle, I was actually expressing the way HE felt to that Hellbound Lutheran!

Praise God!

Landover Baptist's mailbag is a revealing cross-section of religious opinion. Christians and non-Christians alike are unanimous in their disapproval of the Landover Baptist belief system.

This is a good sign. Even serious (albeit slightly dim) Christians can see that there is something very wrong with a "church" that emphasizes punishment, legalism, literalism, exclusion, pride and its own earthly establishment. Would that real churches which have strayed in those directions could see themselves as we see Landover Baptist.

__________

March 25, 2003

Religion in an Electrode?

According to an article in the Telegraph (UK), the BBC science program Horizon will feature a unique experiment meant to test the theory that religious belief can be induced by stimulating the so-called "God Center" of the brain.

Dr Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, has devised a special helmet that uses electromagnetic fields to induce electrical changes in the brain's temporal lobes, which are linked with religious belief. ...

Prof [Richard] Dawkins, author of [the upcoming A Devil's Chaplain : Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (September 2003)], was the ideal candidate for the latest test of whether science can now explain away religion, given his famously virulent views on religion, attacking it as a "virus of the mind" and an "infantile regression".

Apparently Dr. Dawkins had some strange experiences and "tingles" while under Persinger's "neurotheological" helmet, but alas, he was not converted to a belief in God.

In my Bette Davis Voice:

What. A. Dick.

Famed homosexual hater Fred Phelps, who notoriously brought his "congregation" (composed largely of his own extended family) to Mathew Shepard's funeral waving a sign that read, "God Hates Fags," is continuing his crapola crusade in Jefferson County, Texas. He'll be picketing the courthouse in Beaumont because 279th District Court Judge Tom Mulvaney granted a decree of divorce to two men who were joined in civil union in Vermont.

Instead of being glad that the two gay men were no longer married, Phelps is pissed that the divorce in Texas essentially validates Vermont 's same-sex union laws. Never mind that federal law requires states to recognize each others' marriages.

Shades of Falwell and Robertson, Phelps and Co. believe that all of the United States' recent disasters: 9-11; the Washington, D.C., sniper slayings; the shuttle explosion and the Rhode Island nightclub fire, were acts of God's will because he wants to punish gays.

"We have a message," Phelps told The Beaumont Enterprise," ... And the message is, 'God hates America,' and, 'God is through with America,' and, 'It is a sin to pray for America.' And the primary culprit behind the preachers are these blind judges. Primary culprit. They have the last word, and they have to take most of the blame."

The Southern Poverty Law Center's spring 2001 "Intelligence Report" described Phelps's group as an intimidating nuisance: "They have used daily pickets, an array of intimidating tactics, scores of lawsuits and a veritable flood of faxes that are so filled with slurs and sex that they rival the product of the most prolific professional pornographer."

The virulent and almost pornographic nature of much of Phelps's output is particularly interesting in view of the fact that there is compelling evidence that the most vehement male homophobes are the most responsive to homoerotic material.

I suspect the "Reverend" Phelps is not only sick, but sick in a very specific way. It's called self-hatred. The (understandable) hostility directed toward him by the gay community is probably a kind of validation of the way he feels about himself. Maybe it's what he's subconsciously looking for -- fierce and definitive rejection from the men he'd really like to diddle. Then he's safe, see?

So maybe gays should picket him with signs that say, "You know you really love us, Closet Man!" and "Come have your way with me, Rev!" His head might explode.

The Nine Billion Archives of God, Part 1

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:41:18 GMT

Over the next couple of days I'm going to be archiving some old posts from the previous "Nine Billion" blog. Bear with me.

The four posts of Alice Auneville's humanist take on Genesis have been gathered together in the sidebar story Alice Reads the Bible.

__________

March 12, 2003

At least he's prettier than Alanis Morrisette

The next Jim Carrey movie, Bruce Almighty (May 23), will feature Carrying-On as a dissatisfied guy given the powers of God for a weekend.

Given a similar opportunity, I'd raise George Burns from the dead.

And while we're at it, let's get a show of hands: who thinks "God" will talk out of his ass?

____________

March 14, 2003

Polygamists in Arizona

According to the Phoenix New Times, the state of Arizona has been allowing a "feudal" colony of fundamentalist Mormons to force underage girls into illegal polygamous marriages for decades.

The Prophet [of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 88-year-old Rulon Jeffs] controls the culture and economy in the Colorado City area for an overriding reason -- he is the only person under fundamentalist Mormon doctrine who can conduct plural marriages.

The Prophet decides which men get which wives, and how many. The addition of each wife to a man's family is called a "blessing." The more blessings a man has, the greater his prestige and power in the community. A minimum of three wives is required to enter the highest levels of the complex heaven called the Celestial Kingdom.

Women, according to the religion, can't reach the Celestial Kingdom unless their husband first achieves the lofty height and then agrees to bring his concubines into paradise. The chase for plural wives dominates earthly pursuits.

___________

March 23, 2003

No sex, please, we're religious

Robby Nichols, vice president of marketing for Covenant Communications, a publisher of books aimed at members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), notes that sex has absolutely no place in the relatively new publishing niche of LDS romance novels In fact, a couple's first kiss is likely to come only after they are engaged to be married. "There is no swearing, no graphic anything and we steer as far from innuendo as we can."

Anita Stansfield is the best-selling Mormon romance author, selling more than 600,000 books since her debut novel, First Love and Forever, in 1994. But she has noted that content standards are growing stricter these days. In a book published in 2000, Stansfield was forced to delete the one and only sentence describing a couple's wedding night: "He laughed and kicked the door closed."