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Bruno tried to make fun of Christians, but he didn’t score many points. Score this one for Christians.

I love this post. It involves a governor, an Argentinian mistress and God. How can you lose?

My editor at HarperCollins sent me an e-mail telling me that my memoir, “Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America–and Found Unexpected Peace,” is now in its fourth printing.

Boo-yah!

In my opinion, most of these pastors should be put in jail. Or at least banished to an eternity in hell.

My friend, ex-evangelical Christian Daniel Florien, has a Father’s Day provocative post on his site, unreasonablefaith.com. It’s titled “The Worst Father Ever Imagined.” Some excerpts:

I had a pretty terrible father growing up. He was a violent drunk who treated my mom badly and made me feel miserable.

I hated him.

Some people have worse fathers. But none of them can hold a candle the “Heavenly Father” in the Bible.

That is the father who put his children in a garden, and set them up to fail. Then, he punished them for falling into his trap, cursing them with death and hard work. After a time they turned away from their cruel father, so he drowned them all — except for one family. Then, in his great kindness, he promised to never do such a thing again. What a guy.

[snip]

Eventually God decided to create a “chosen people,” and when they didn’t live up to his expectations, he let them be enslaved by the Egyptians. After a long period of pain and suffering, he decided to listen to the cries of his people. He chose a leader, Moses, to get them out of slavery. Moses succeeded, but the people rebelled, so God made them wander around in a desert for 40 years, until everyone of that generation died, including Moses (because Moses struck a rock with a rod instead of just speaking to it).

He told his people to capture the towns of other nations, to kill them all and their animals, but keep the virgins for themselves to rape. He would command them to make slaves of other nations. He even let them sell their own daughters into sexual slavery.

He made an entire book full of laws of things they were not allowed to do. They couldn’t touch menstruating women, they couldn’t eat shrimp or pigs, they couldn’t mix fibers for garments, they couldn’t kill their slaves — only beat them until they’re almost dead, and thousands of other things. It was an impossible list to follow, and he knew it. He was just making a point that they were worthless scum and couldn’t match his wonderfulness.

I’m guessing an evangelical Christian group from Anaheim that has filed suit in federal court, demanding that its members be allowed to work the sidewalks and distribute pamphlets during an upcoming Arab festival, will win its case. Story here.

The group, Arabic Christian Perspectives, says police are violating its free-speech rights by attempting to confine its members to a “designated corner” of the festival in Dearborn, Mich. Its lawsuit names the city and police of Dearborn and seeks an order blocking any such restrictions.

Organizers describe this weekend’s 14th annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn as the largest of its kind in the nation, and expect it to draw more than 300,000 people. An attorney for Arabic Christian Perspectives said the group does not want to cause trouble at the festival or even enter the main festival grounds.

But its members do want to mingle with festival-goers on the sidewalks outside, attorney William Becker Jr. said. “It’s where you and I can go walk and say anything we want,” he said. “Why should (group members) sit in a booth?”

The lawsuit is based on conversations that the group’s pastor, George Saieg, says he had with police in Dearborn. It describes one officer telling Saieg that his group will have to stay in one place – denying it “the right to use the public sidewalks to hand out its religious materials.”

A new-found friend left this comment about my original post on why does God hate amputees?

I’ve grappled with this question on a fairly personal level, being an amputee myself. You can find her personal story here.

My amputation was due to bone cancer. At the time I was Mormon and received several blessings saying that I would be healed (meaning: the cancer would disappear and my leg would not be amputated) if I had enough faith. When my ‘faith’ wasn’t strong enough to eradicate the cancer, it was suggested that it was God’s will that I lose my leg, because of previous sins.

I was 13 then and I can’t even begin to explain the world of hurt that I experienced in the ensuing years as I grappled with my lack of faith, my inherent sinfulness, and my eventual departure from Mormonism.

I heard you speak several years ago at the Sunstone Symposium and appreciated your candor about your own faith journey. Thank you.

Highlights from her moving personal story:

… I’ve long thought about the dilemma that once my leg was taken, no amount of prayer would ever bring it back, would ever heal me. I realized that I’d never heard of someone miraculously being healed from amputation. Never.

Unlike with my father’s cancer, where we felt that an exercise of faith could bring healing, there was never a mention of praying back my leg once it was cut off. Of course, many people prayed that my bone cancer (the reason for the amputation of my leg) would not spread. And it didn’t. And many people prayed that I would learn to walk skillfully with a prosthetic limb, and this has more or less happened, too.

This courtesy cartoon of my friend, the Friendly Atheist. It harkens back to a website that haunted me as a believer: Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? I think it’s a simple but unanswerable question.

There’s an interesting article on The Politico website today about atheists’ reaction to President Obama. An excerpt:

While the atheist community appreciates the shout-outs, George W. Bush offered similar acknowledgements of nonbelievers during his presidency. And like Bush, Obama has repeatedly invoked religion in his speeches. The latest dose came Thursday in Cairo, in his speech to the Muslim world, during which Obama talked of the “Holy Quran” and invoked this Quranic supplication: “Be conscious of God, and speak always the truth.”

But while atheist advocates railed against Bush, they seem willing to give Obama a pass on his God talk — at least for now.

Nathan Bupp, director of communications for the Center for Inquiry, says that many nonbelievers view Obama’s invocations of faith as nothing more than a “symbolic gesture” used to aid his quest for social justice.

“There is a sense where secularists are politically savvy enough to do this,” says Bupp. “They realize [Obama] is not doing what he’s doing for Pat Robertson-type reasons.”

Say it ain’t so!