Atheists Want God Booted From Inauguration

Perhaps it is fitting in a way, that Humanists and Atheists demand the Courts ban any mention of God at the Inauguration of Obama to the Presidency January 20th.  After all, why should The One, who has been hailed as messiah himself by his worshippers, share the stage with The Almighty God of the Universe?   He did not wish to share the stage with his Veep or family after he won the Nomination or the Election, so perhaps it is a sign that Obama Rules alone from day one – and there is scant little need for God when The One, will lower the ocean levels, reverse climate change and bring world peace by simply wishing it himself.

 

Atheist will attempt to boot God from inauguration

A well-known California atheist says he and 17 others, plus atheist and humanist organizations, will file suit Tuesday in D.C.’s District Court to strip all references to God and religion from President-elect Barack Obama’s January inauguration ceremony. Michael Newdow, of Sacramento, Calif., says he wants to remove the phrase “so help me God” from the oath of office, plus axe the invocation prayer from Pastor Rick Warren, already under fire from the left for his opposition to gay marriage.

According to Newdow, any reference to God or religion violates the Constitution.

“Equality is important to me,” Newdow told The Examiner. “We should show equal respects for all of our citizens, regardless of their race, gender or religion.”

The draft of the lawsuit contends: “By placing ‘so help me God’ in its oaths and sponsoring prayers to God, government is lending its power to one side of perhaps the greatest religious controversy: God’s existence or non-existence.”

Newdow has tried this before: he sued to remove religion from the 2001 and 2005 presidential inaugurations, but lost both times.

In 2005, U.S. District Judge John Bates denied his effort to obtain a preliminary injunction to keep the president from uttering the words ‘so help me God’ as he takes the oath of office.

Nonetheless, Newdow thinks his odds are good.

“It depends on if they decide to uphold the principles of the constitution or not,” Newdow told the Examiner. “If they do, they’re 100 percent.”

Prof. Ron Allen, a constitutional law expert at Northwestern University, disagrees.

“You can understand the impulse, it seems as though it’s a governmental activity imbued with religious symbols and a certain sect of religious symbols, Christian obviously, in particular,”Allen said. “No one thinks the government is establishing a church by the president saying ‘so help be God’ at his own initiative when taking the oath. I don’t think the courts will intervene.”

We Don’t Need No Stinking God To Keep Us Safe!

Atheist group suing the state of Kentucky over a law proclaiming God’s all-important role in protecting the state from homeland security threats.

“Because I have called and you refused to listen, I have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.

 Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, they would have none of my counsel  and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,and have their fill of their own devices.

For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them” – Proverbs 1:24-32

Idiocy knows no boundaries in this day and age of terror, corruption and tyranny.  While the world reels in the aftermath of yet ANOTHER Jihadist massacre, this time in India over the Thanksgiving weekend – the Secularists and Atheists in this country are busy waging their own stupid jihad – against God, and any reference of Him in conjunction with our safety and security.

Of course the good people of Kentucky would quickly shout down this tiny and miserably angry group of miscreants that have nothing better to do but strip free exercise from Americans, which is why these cretins always run to the courts to have their religion crammed down our throats by having our right to acknowledge God stripped from us by the pound of a gavel.

One must wonder why God in His benevolent mercy, keeps the hedge of protection up around us when the systematic effort to remove God from our lives, our practice and our acknowledgment goes on unabated and relatively unchallenged by the church and the faith themselves.

At some point, Proverbs 1 is going to play out here on this soil again, and in that day – God will have every right to laugh and mock us in the day of our terror and calamity and refuse to hear our petitions for aid.

Who is going to stand up for God and oust these meddling tyrants from interfering with our rights to worship and acknowledge God in all our ways and institutions?

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
–Thomas Jefferson 

Does God Run Homeland Security?

(AP) A group of atheists filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can’t keep the state safe without God’s help. 

American Atheists Inc. sued in state court over a 2002 law that stresses God’s role in Kentucky’s homeland security alongside the military, police agencies and health departments. 

Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state “cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God” and to stress that fact through training and educational materials. 

The plaque, posted at the Kentucky Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort, includes the Bible verse: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” 

“It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I’ve ever seen,” said Edwin F. Kagin, national legal director of Parsippany, N.J.-based American Atheists Inc. The group claims the law violates both the state and U.S. constitutions. 

But Democratic state Rep. Tom Riner, a Baptist minister from Louisville, said he considers it vitally important to acknowledge God’s role in protecting Kentucky and the nation. 

“No government by itself can guarantee perfect security,” Riner said. “There will always be this opposition to the acknowledgment of divine providence, but this is a foundational understanding of what America is.” 

Kentucky has been at the center of a series of legal battles involving religious issues in recent years, most involving displays of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. One case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that such displays inside courthouses in two counties were unconstitutional. 

Kentucky isn’t the only state dealing with religious issues, but Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists, said it’s alone in officially enlisting God in homeland security. 

“I’m not aware of any other state or commonwealth that is attempting to dump their clear responsibility for protecting their citizens onto God or any other mythological creature,” Buckner said. 

State Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, said the preamble to the Kentucky constitution references a people “grateful to almighty God,” so he said he sees no constitutional violation in enlisting God in the state’s homeland security efforts. 

“God help us if we don’t,” he said.

Blaming Christians For All Problems In The World, Then Killing Them

I’ve been documenting over time the rising level of anti-Christian sentiment sweeping the world , and in our own country.

Whether this disturbed gunman was moved to kill because he was scorned, or whether he always held animus, or was goaded into acting we may never know. What we do know is that he hated Christians, and wanted to kill as many of them as possible, even if he died in the process. His own personal jihad.

Sadly, his comments are familiar and the causal blame of the worlds woes on Christians populates internet forums and chat rooms to a rising chorus of agreement.

Colorado gunman posted anti-Christian manifesto: report

DENVER, Colorado (AFP) — The gunman responsible for shootings at two religious centers in Colorado warned of his plans for the rampage in anti-Christian rants posted on the Internet, it was reported Tuesday.
Matthew Murray, who shot dead four people in separate attacks on a missionary training center and mega-church on Sunday, published more than a dozen writings online prior to his shooting spree, KUSA TV reported in Denver.

“You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray reportedly wrote on a Web site for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations, shortly before the second of his two attacks.

“I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. … God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out.
“All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

KUSA reported that the wording of Murray’s rant mirrored language used by one of the Columbine High School gunmen, Eric Harris, before the 1999 massacre that left 12 students and a teacher dead.
Meanwhile it emerged Tuesday that Murray had killed himself following the shootings, rather than being shot dead by a security guard at the New Life evangelical church as had been previously thought.
A Colorado Springs police spokesman said the investigation by El Paso County Coroner’s Office showed that Murray died from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” following the rampage.
Murray was armed with two handguns, an assault rifle, around 1,000 rounds of ammunition and several smoke grenades as he began his assault on the New Life church, which was packed with around 7,000 worshippers.
In other postings made on the day of the shootings, Murray says goodbye to people he has corresponded with in recent months.
“You guys were awesome. It’s time for me to head out and teach these (expletive) a lesson,” he wrote.
“Thanks for listening and all … even though even many of you ex-Pentecostals don’t understand …… (sic) See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place.”

The website address was not published by KUSA TV, which reported that Murray’s writings were removed on Monday.

It emerged on Monday that Murray had been expelled five years ago from a program run by the Youth With a Mission training center in the Denver suburb of Arvada, the scene of his first attack where two workers were shot dead.
Police said on Monday forensic evidence found at the two shooting scenes showed both attacks were carried out by Murray acting alone.

No Offenses Allowed, Unless You Want To Insult Christian and American Traditions

In the upside-down bizarre reality of the emerging Brave New World it seems that if it’s Christian, Baseball, Apple Pie or Chevrolet it is open game for intimidation and elimination – but everything anethema to American Culture, values and principles are to be embraced, “accepted” or at minimum, left untouched and un-offended.

While I personally do not observe Christmas traditions, the assault on those traditions by the Secularists, Muslims and other religions that are ‘offended’ by them is an excellent barometer of how our culture and country is devolving into something that will soon abolish the liberties we have taken for granted.

There is a real talent to call out truth with biting sarcastic wit, and Mark Steyn is definitely a talent. There are alarming truths to consider behind the humor of his latest column.

‘No offense’ is no defense

By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist

The holiday season is here, and that means it’s time to engage in the time-honored Christmas tradition of objecting to every time-honored Christmas tradition. Australia is a gazillion time zones ahead of the United States – it may even be Boxing Day there already – so they got in first this year with a truly fantastic headline:
“Santas Warned ‘Ho Ho Ho’ Offensive To Women.” Really. As the story continued: “Sydney’s Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say ‘ha ha ha’ instead, the Daily Telegraph reported. One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use ‘ho ho ho’ because it could frighten children and was too close to ‘ho’, a U.S. slang term for prostitute.”

If I were a female resident of Sydney, I think I’d be more offended by the assumption that Australian women and U.S. prostitutes are that easily confused. As the old gangsta-rap vaudeville routine used to go: “Who was that ho I saw you with last night?” “That was no ho, that was my bitch.”

But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world.The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared with the universal right to freedom from offense. It’s surely only a matter of time before “sensitivity training” is matched by equally rigorous “inoffensiveness training” courses. A musician friend of mine once took a gig at an elevator-music session, and, after an hour or two of playing insipid orchestral arrangements of “Moon River” and “Windmills of Your Mind,” some of the lads’ attention would start to wander, and they’d toot their horns a little too boisterously. The conductor would stop and admonish them to bland things down a bit. In a world in which everyone is ready to take offense, it’s hard to keep the mood Muzak evenly modulated.

For example, when I said the right not to be offended is now the most “sacred” right in the world, I certainly didn’t mean to offend persons of a nontheistic persuasion. In Hanover, N.H., home to Dartmouth College, an atheist and an agnostic known only as “Jan and Pat Doe” (which is which is hard to say) are suing because their three schoolchildren are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Well, OK, they’re not forced to say it. The pledge is voluntary. You’re allowed to sit down, or, more discreetly, stand silently, which is what the taciturn Yankee menfolk who think it’s uncool to sing do during the hymns at my local church. But that’s not enough for “the Does.” Because the pledge mentions God, their children are forced, as it were, not to say it. And, as “Mr. and Mrs. Doe” put it in their complaint, having to opt out of participation in a voluntary act exposes their children to potential “peer pressure” from the other students. U.S. courts have not traditionally been sympathetic to this argument. The ACLU and other litigious types might more profitably explore the line that the Pledge of Allegiance is deeply offensive to millions of illegal aliens in the public school system forced to pledge allegiance to the flag of a country they’re not citizens or even legally admitted tourists of.

Let us now cross from the New Hampshire school system to the Sudanese school system. Or as The Associated Press headline put it:
“Thousands In Sudan Call For British Teddy Bear Teacher’s Execution.”
Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crumbiest basket-case dumps on the planet – whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world – anyway, Mrs. Gibbons was sentenced last week to 15 days in jail because she was guilty of, er, allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed.” She wasn’t so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she’d let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed.
Big mistake. There’s apparently a whole section in the Quran about how, if you name cuddly toys after the Prophet you have to be decapitated. Well, actually there isn’t. But why let theological pedantry deprive you of the opportunity to stick it to the infidel? Mrs. Gibbons is regarded as lucky to get 15 days in jail, when the court could have imposed six months and 40 lashes. But even that wouldn’t have been good enough for the mob in Khartoum. The protesters shouted “No tolerance. Execution” and “Kill her. Kill her by firing squad” and “Shame, shame to the U.K.” – which persists in sending out imperialist schoolmarms to impose idolatrous teddy bears on the youth of Sudan.

Whether or not the British are best placed to defend Mrs. Gibbons is itself questionable after a U.K. court decision last week: Following an altercation with another driver, Michael Forsythe was given a suspended sentence of 10 weeks in jail for “racially aggravated disorderly behavior” for calling Lorna Steele an “English bitch.” “Racially aggravated”? Indeed. Ms. Steele is not English, but Welsh.

Still, at exactly the time Gillian Gibbons caught the eye of the Sudanese authorities, a 19-year-old Saudi woman was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail. Her crime? She’d been abducted and gang-raped by seven men. Originally, she’d been sentenced to 90 lashes, but her lawyer had appealed and so the court increased it to 200 and jail time. Anybody on the streets in Sudan or anywhere else in the Muslim world who wants to protest that?

East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying “Ho ho ho,” teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the “war on Christmas” and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West’s litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.

Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there’s a woman who’s genuinely offended by hearing Santa say “ho ho ho” just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they’ve established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.

Banning Roadside Memorials – Can Arlington National Cemetery Be Far Behind?

The Secularists never stop, and it’s a battle they will wage until all public view of God is removed from society.

The question remains, will Christians just let them without a fight?

Well, not in Utah, thank the Lord.

Families of Fallen Utah Highway Patrol Troopers Fight Atheist Group Over Roadside Cross Memorials

If a national atheist organization has its way, a series of 12-foot-tall memorial crosses that adorn Utah’s highways will be taken down.

But not if the families of the people those crosses honor — state Highway Patrol troopers killed in the line of duty — have anything to say about it.

American Atheists Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the 13 white, steel crosses represent the death of Jesus Christ and therefore violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits government establishment of religion.

But the families of the fallen heroes say otherwise. They say the crosses, which bear the names and badge numbers of the troopers, were built strictly as memorials.

…”I think it’s ridiculous that a small group of offended atheists would seek to stop the family of slain troopers from honoring their loved ones as they see fit,” said Byron Babione, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents the Utah Highway Patrol Association.

The New Jersey-based American Atheists filed suit in 2005, arguing that the crosses symbolize Christianity and break state and federal laws against roadside memorials.

Isn’t it amazing how an Atheist Org out of New Jersey thinks it needs to meddle in the affairs of those citizens in Utah??

I’m sure that scouring the land there in Utah – they were able to find ONE SHMOE who was willing to complain so the full weight of Northeastern Scularists can be brought to bear on memorials in Utah.

“They know very well that the cross is a Christian symbol,” said Dave Silverman, spokesman for the group. “They are breaking the law by putting up memorials for fallen heroes.”

The Utah Highway Patrol Association, a private organization, designed and constructed the memorials with private funding in 1998. Private citizens can memorialize troopers who died in the line of duty, under Utah state law, Babione said.

“There’s nothing unconstitutional here because the memorials cost taxpayers nothing,” he said.

But Brian Barnard, a lawyer representing American Atheists, said the memorial is a Roman cross, which symbolizes Christianity.

“The use of those crosses constitutes and endorses Christianity,” Barnard said. “Although it’s an acknowledgement of the death of these troopers, it is also an endorsement of Christianity.”

Barnard said the highway association downplays the significance of the cross, claiming it is a secular symbol.

I think it does not help to give the Secularists ammo and make statements like that which will turn the argument into whether a cross is a Christian symbol or not. Everyone is aware that the cross symbolizes both faith and death as a marker. I think it would serve their interests better to simply say that it is indeed a cross – that is universally recognized as a memorial symbol that has both religious and cultural significance. Argue the point over whether having a memorial to fallen officers is an establishment of a state-run church rather than arguing over whether the cross is religious or not.

“There’s no question at all that these highway patrol troopers should be honored,” Barnard said. “We should all pause and thank them. But that can be done in a way that does not emphasize religion.”

The group is seeking the removal of the crosses and one dollar in monetary damages.

U.S. District Judge David Sam recently heard arguments in the case and will rule soon on the legality of the crosses.

If the secularists succeed in getting the Courts to ban these memorials, it will be a giant step in the high prize of getting rid of all the white cross memorials in our National Cemeteries.