WHITE House officials yesterday met with leaders of the atheist community to discuss their concerns about privileges given to religious groups by the government.
According to the Secular Coalition of America, the meeting was:
The first time in history that a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American non-theist community.
The issues addressed, according to this report, included religiously based child abuse; so-called faith-healing and religious child care being exempt from some health and safety laws; the “pervasive” religious atmosphere in the military and ways in which troops “with non-theistic views are made to feel unwelcome”; and faith-based initiatives.
Predictably, the meeting generated howls of fury from the fundie camp – even before it took place.
One ridiculous outfit, In God We Trust, issued a statement saying:
It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation.
IFWT chairman Bishop Council Nedd fulminated:
Tina Tchen, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, will meet with representatives from groups that comprise the Coalition. The Coalition’s sponsoring organization’s include American Atheists, founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair and the Freedom from Religion Foundation which is campaigning to stop the post office from issuing a stamp honoring Mother Teresa.
The posturing ninny with the improbable gnashers added:
Bishop Council Nedd, after a close encounter with an air brush
President Obama seems to believe that it is a good idea to have a key senior aide plan political strategy with people who believe faith in God is a disease. Some of the people in this coalition believe the world would be better off with no Christians and no Jews and they aren’t shy about it. The fact that this meeting is happening at all is an affront to the vast majority of people of all faiths who believe in God.
And he quoted the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s President Dan Barker as saying:
Christianity is an enemy to humanity, and the antithesis of freedom.
He also repeated Barker’s claim that:
Religion also poses a danger to mental health, damaging self-respect, personal responsibility, and clarity of thought.” (Losing Faith in Faith Page 217.)
Nedd added:
The President should tell the American people whether he believes these groups’ hate-filled views to be ‘mainstream’ and worthy of his supposedly inclusive administration.
The White House has sought to downplay the meeting, with spokesman Shin Inouye saying:
The White House office of Public Engagement regularly meets with a wide-range of organizations and individuals on a diverse set of issues.
In God We Trust, by the way, is running a poll which asks “Should Military Chaplains Be Allowed to Pray As They See Fit?”
It’s not going the they way they would like, with over 74 percent saying they believe that the prayers of military chaplains should regulated by the government. Get your vote in now.
Hat Tip: Dr Harwood
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 27th, 2010 at 10:47 am
The US Constitution forms a secular document, but I guess the fundies don’t know since all they read is the old dusty book for idiots.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:02 am
I heard part of a BBC World Service programme which included a recording of an interview with a voluntary hospice worker visiting a dying man at home. The hospice guy decided to read a few lines from the Dalai Lama which, I must say, seemed neutral and OK to me even as an atheist. He asked the man waiting to drop of the perch what he thought of them and he heard of the Dalai Lama. Yes he had heard of him and he thought the lines “like a load of gibberish and hot air to me.”
He was asked what he believed. (OK, here it comes, and you will not be surprised as he is a devout Christian.) “I believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost and I am putting my trust there. God is responsible and arranges everything.”
“Even Americans bombing Afghanistan and Iraq and blowing the legs off an innocent young girl?”
Patient replies, “Sure even that.”
“Even George Bush and what he did?”
Patient, “Yes, in fact even you with your stupid notions.”
This is not word for word as it is from memory. But that is the gist. Even the mild voluntary hospice guy commented that the patient was “Completely rigid and fixed in his views. No room for another opinion.”
With so many of these fundie clowns around you really do have to wonder where the USA is heading. The lesson for the UK is to resist and hit back hard.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:05 am
There’s no need for this Nedd to worry. The President himself won’t be attending this tête-à-tête with the ‘Anti-Christs’. I don’t know why, but he prefers being seen with the likes of you. America: land of the bigots, home of the morons, seems a better description.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Council Nedd seems to be showing too much gum above these polished gnashers. However, the well practised religious simper indicating smug self satisfaction is perfect. This look, which gives me the dry heaves, fronts an ignorance and bigotry which hits depths that are only achieved by believers in the literary truth of his stone age bible.
February 27th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Supernaturalists often confuse ‘hatred’ with criticism. It can also be argued that, in the minds of supernaturalists, criticism is hatred, because there is no defense for the existence of supernatural beings and bringing up the matter is threatening to them. We can be thankful, though, that we’re dealing with Christians. One day we’ll be dealing with Muslims, and they only tolerate the sound of their own delusion-spouting voices.
PS: that pic gives me the heebie jeebies.
February 27th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
They want you to stop beating your children to death under the guise of religion?!? Those hateful monsters! And regulation of religious childcare to insure that it’s facilities and staff are equipped to take care of the children? I’m fairly certain the Nazis did the exact same thing right before the final solution. I read all about it in “Childcare Regulation: The Penultimate Solution”.
February 27th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
In his press release, Nedd never addresses the three discussion points of the visit. He just rails against secularism/atheism/anti-theism with the fervor of Ku Klux Klansman.
February 27th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Religion calling nontheism “hate-filled” is like Hitler calling Churchill a Nazi.
February 27th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
I don’t know that I’d describe faith in god as a disease, but I sure do describe most of these preachers as a plague.
February 27th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
“faith in god” is a highly loaded expression, implying that dogmatic belief in the face of overwhelming falsifying evidence is a virtue.
I do not have “faith” that unicorns do not exist, hypnotism does not exist, and multiple personality disorder does not exist. “confidence” might be an accurate term, although when the probability of being wrong is zero to a hundred decimal places, “knowledge” is equally justifiable.
Perhaps an incurable belief that right and wrong are whatever an imaginary Sky Fuhrer says they are, heads it’s a sin and tails it’s a virtue, is not a “disease” as that word is usually defined. But it is assuredly the kind of mental dysfunction that psychoquacks (except the teachable minority such as Thomas Szasz) call “mental illness”.
February 27th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Anonymous,
Isn’t that the collective noun for preachers? A plague of preachers?
Sounds about right to me.
February 27th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
So atheists are the most hate filled in the US.I
February 27th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Sorry scrub that last comment pressed the wrong button.
So athiests are the most hate filled people in the US.I know it shouldn’t but the lack of self awareness fundies have never ceases to amaze me, i mean right now there are a large number of these supposed loving and caring religious people rubbing their hands in glee due to the news from Chile-”oh goody more people killed and injured,surely a sign from our loving god that the end times are upon us”.
BTW i’ve not been out of hospital long after an operation and am probably still full of drugs-does that bloke in the picture really look that weird?
February 27th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
What a bunch of whiny douchebags. They’re so used to running the entire show their heads explode when anybody else gets two minutes of attention.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Looking up the lovely Bishop Council Nedd II, I came across this load of baloney:
http://councilscorner.com/
David Howe is neither a Prince nor a Royal Highness, as claimed here, but since when did little details like that bother men of the cloth?
February 27th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
None of these polls go the way that the organizers want, however carefully they are worded – you can see that time and again on the Mail Online site. However, Bishop Nedd appears to be a right shit-stirrer! He is actually a bishop of the breakaway Continuing Anglican Church, who believe that THEY adhere to the principles of the Bible, so refuse to use the new Prayer Book, and obviously refuse to ordain women or gay clergy, therefore he only represents a very small minority of “Anglicans”. He is, however very vocal!
http://www.ingodwetrustusa.org.....;Itemid=55
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ld.....41704.html
Quote: Anglican Bishop Council Nedd, chairman of the national advocacy organization In God We Trust, said in a statement today that Americans are “fed up with the President’s hostility towards faith.” Nedd also called Obama “the most anti-religious President in our nation’s history,” citing Obama’s anti-public-prayer nominations to leading positions, and atheist activists to advisory positions.
February 27th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
The more these religious ASSHOLES stick their collective SHIT into politics the more they should be TAXED!!!! Like any other sleazy lobbyist or corporate person. We have to pay our dues to do anything in this country, so should they.
Or they can go back to talking about g0d, heaven, and other myths and shut up otherwise.
February 28th, 2010 at 12:16 am
So let me get this straight. Fundies rally to block healthcare reform, yet when secularists attempt to stop the post office from issuing a stamp honouring Mother Teresa, it becomes an affront to theists? have I got that right?
February 28th, 2010 at 1:25 am
I didn’t even know I was part of an ‘atheist community’, to be honest, let alone that we had ‘leaders’.
When did *that* happen?
February 28th, 2010 at 3:13 am
Lol @ “posturing ninny with improbable gnashers”!!!
February 28th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Nedd’s stupidity makes me ashamed to be an African American. He really needs to give it a rest. Real quick. What p!sses me off about some of these fundamentalists is their blaring hypocrisy. In their public lives they give the impression of being holier than thou, but once the sun goes down, they’re into some things that I haven’t even thought of doing in my 50+ years on earth. They’re not following Biblical scripture when they rant and rave in an attempt to influence politics and public opinion. They’re the current day Sadducees and Pharisees and don’t even know it. Hypocrites. Sorry for the rant, but there’s very little I like about liars and/or hypocrites. And, FWIW, fundies are the most hate-filled people on the planet IMHO. Minding their own business doesn’t provide enough satisfaction, so they stick their noses in everybody else’s business, but they still aren’t satisfied. Oh, it would be so nice to be able to send all of them to live on their very own island. Hopefully, it would be as far away from the rest of us as possible.
February 28th, 2010 at 4:05 am
.
Militant religious people are the original haters! This proves they are bigots!
.
February 28th, 2010 at 4:26 am
That poll really needs fixing. Who wants to send it over to Pharyngula?
February 28th, 2010 at 5:04 am
It is interesting, isn’t it, when the greatest minds on the planet agree that religion is not only bullshit, but a huge erosive influence on society, that religious pimples are offended that people in power are actually listening.
And notice that these same pimples can’t quote a history of a freethinker “crusades”, or a freethinker “inquisition”, or a freethinker “witch burning”, yet we are the hate mongers, hilarious!!! And their loving god, he so loved the world that he murdered every man, woman, and newborn child in the flood, because they forgot to worship him. Wow.
Yet, all christians love each other, like the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The most embarrassing stain on western civilization since the American Civil War. And on that vein, the Ku Klux Klan, the most inexcusable hate group that exists in the US, is white Protestant antisemitists.
I think that freethinkers have grounds to sue for rights to hate movements, because christians have a monopoly on all of them.
NeoWolfe
February 28th, 2010 at 8:27 am
I posted some more links and comments about Bishop Council Nedd II yeasterday, but they have not appeared yet – if they are going to appear at all! I wonder whether THIS will!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Nedd_II
February 28th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
But all faiths don’t believe in “God”, just the Jews, Christians and Muslims. This guy can’t even represent his own side properly.
February 28th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
“The most anti-religious president in our nation’s history”. Really? This guy seems to know very little about his nation’s history if that is his view. I rather think that at least the first four presidents were openly contemptuous of religion, or at least privately contemptuous while putting on a God face for the plebs.
February 28th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
I wonder if the ayatollah of the Christian Taliban realizes that, in (incorrectly) identifying Barack Obama as America’s least religious president, he is actually praising him? Is he unaware that “least relgious’ is the same as “least insane”?
The reality is that, while Obama doubletalks to retain the support of America’s 50 million nontheists of voting age, he is as godphuqt as any Republicanazi.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
For some inexplicable reason, the Rev. George Hargreaves, of The Christian Party, was being interviewed on one of this morning’s politics programmes, and made the outrageous claim, yet again, that, in a recent survey, over 70% of the British public stated that they were Christian! And this from a man who is calling for more “honesty” in politics – hahaha!!!
http://www.georgehargreaves4mep.com/
February 28th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
PS Like Bishop Neddy Seagoon, Hargreaves also stated his belief that everyone should be entitled to freedom of expression, mainly because that would leave him free to condemn all those with whom he disagreed, particularly homosexuals – but “IN LOVE”! He was mercilessly lampooned last year on Graham Nunn’s excellent, but, sadly now, defunct, Creative Year blog.
http://creativeyear.wordpress....../#comments
March 1st, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I do not believe their should be a ‘religious exemption’ regarding childcare, but our current regulated structure does indeed have the government going where it simply does not belong. It is up to parents, not the government to determine who watches their children, whether religious or not.
When I was young it was the norm for local mothers to watch a group of children in their homes for a small fee. It worked well for the stay at home mother, it worked well for the (often poor) working parents. It was simple, inexpensive, and a part of human history for centuries, if not millenia. It worked. But now, given the obsession with regulations and certifications, that low cost option is illegal and largely unavailable. The beneficiaries of this are not the children, not the parents, but the bureaucratic agencies, and the childcare industry, who’ve managed to drive the prices of childcare sufficiently high that low wage mothers essentially work for nothing after paying those bills (I know personally a mother in that situation).
So the state then has to step in and provide childcare ‘assistance’ (laundered through agencies including groups like Catholic Charities) to cover some of this cost (which is really a problem for women who for various reasons like inconsistent work cannot get on those programs), and it manages to make those parents even more dependant on the state’s ‘generosity’. Did it really improve anything? Certifications don’t mean a person is moral or qualified, indeed a parent is probably a better judge of that than a government agency. Problems occurred in the old system sometimes, they sometimes occur in the new. Replacing the parent’s judgement with the government’s is not a gain.
Thanks, regulators, for fixing what wasn’t broken.