Killing Bin Laden UnChristian, Illegal?

The user "LiberalViewer" over at YouTube raises some interesting points about the recent killing of Osama bin Laden, and our President's faith. Whereas I personally have no issues with the fact that Osama bin Laden was killed, I also do not claim to be a god fearing Christian...

 


When Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time" referenced President Barack Obama's recent "60 Minutes" interview to argue that killing Osama Bin Laden was not consistent with Christianity, it also raised the question of the legality of going into another country and shooting an unarmed man in the head, as discussed in this video.

The clips used of Bill Maher come from the New Rules segment on HBO's May 13, 2011, broadcast of "Real Time with Bill Maher" currently available online at http://itsh.bo/jOfFuA

The clip used of President Barack Obama comes from his interview on CBS's May 8, 2011, broadcast of "60 Minutes" currently available online athttp://bit.ly/kzyCav

So, what do you think? Does supporting the use of military force in self-defense disqualify someone from calling himself or herself a Christian?

Does the September 2001 Congressional authorization for the use of military force and the self-defense justification make it legal for the U.S. to enter another country, without their consent, and kill Osama bin Laden?

Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

About that whole rapture thing...

It seems at least one church found a positive way to get their message out, after yesterday's big let down...

Judgement Day Looms...

Could the whackos be right?

The craziest of the right-wing whackos are telling us that Judgement day is tomorrow, Saturday the 21st of May 2011. Evidently, tomorrow, Jesus Christ will make his triumphant return and begin judging us all, and because the Christian god is an omni-benevolent, all loving god, this will also mark the beginning of 5 months of torture, death and torment around the globe. After all, that is how an omni-benevolent  deity would conduct himself, right? So if all goes according to plan, the dead should start rising from the grave tomorrow. I for one am a HUGE fan of this idea for two reasons...

1) A zombie apocalypse would at least be something interesting to do for a change.

2) I could finally meet this god in person and point out the many many flaws in his design to him. I understand he likely has no formal education, but I might recommend to him that rather than destroying the world, he might want to enroll in a top notch physics / engineering program.

Alas, I know as well as all other sane people, that there will be no glorious zombie apocalypse... In all likelihood, absolutely nothing interesting will happen tomorrow... Unless you get a thrill out of the notion of me taking my mother to the market to buy cheese. But we can dream, and we can all sit back and enjoy laughing at those zany religious whackos...

 

I'm Dreaming of a Christless Christmas

Once again, Pat Condell manages to capture the basic common sense that seems to allude the majority of the world. I hope his yuletide wishes all come true. As for those of us at QuixoticJourney, myself and those who help me keep things running, we'd like to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday Season, and I look forward to bringing forth healthy helpings of reason well into the New Year and beyond!

Religion as a Mass Delusion

Theistic religion is a Delusion that holds billions of people in it's grip around the world. People en mass are willing to accept the teachings of ancient goat-herders despite the fact that many of those teachings directly conflict with reason and demonstrable science. C'est la vie. That people would choose to believe in a delusion is not harmful at all, in and of itself.

The fact is, most religious people are far from devout, and even the most devout people tend to cherry-pick their favorite bits from their respective holy books. Christians are the best example of this. They will use passages from the book of Leviticus to make an argument against homosexual marriage, yet they  ignore the passages in the same book that dictate that they should not eat shrimp. The fact that they do choose to cherry-pick the bits of the Bible they believe in is overall a good thing, lest we have people stoning their children to death for dishonoring them...

The real problem comes when we encounter the people who DO follow their Holy Books verbatim. They are the ones we refer to as "Extremists" despite the fact that they are the only ones who are not religious hypocrites. These are the people who kill doctors who administer abortions. The extremists are the ones who fly planes into buildings. These are the people who engage in genital mutilation and who prosecute women for having been raped.

So why then do we choose to accept these water-downed mass delusions? What purpose do they serve? In some sense they do link us with our own past, but that does not mean that we need to continue to believe. Greek theology richly links us with the people of Ancient Greece, yet few if any people today worship Zeus. In fact, the very idea of worshiping Zeus would likely seem laughable to most Christians and Muslims, even though they have no reason to believe that their god is any more real than Zeus.

So why then do we put religion on a pedestal and hold it up, and protect it from ridicule? Why is it that in the United States I Chris Rock can joke about race using words like "Nigger", people can joke about being poor, and people can even make fun of the handicapped, and it is generally accepted, but making fun of religion is seen as "going too far"? Why should we be dissuaded from making fun of teachings, books and ideas that scream out to be made fun of?

What really bothers me is that people claim the Bible is the basis of their moral virtue. That in and of itself is laughable. If you literally modeled yourself after the morality of the god of Abraham, you'd be a mass murdering nut job. I mean really, the bible speaks for itself in this matter. Everyone is so afraid of Satan, but if you take a look at the statistics of who did more killing in the bible, the results are pretty clear... (click here for figure) God was a genocidal maniac. If we use the bible as our standard of morality, Hitler should be sainted for being so god-like. But then, we like to cherry pick the teachings of the bible don't we?

Here are two biblical lessons I think we can pick out to hold up; "Live and let live" & "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Let's keep those, and trash all the other nonsense in the bible and the koran. Just imagine how much we could acomplish if we did not waste so much of our energy toward these mythological beliefs which only serve to divide us.



What do you think? Feel free to open a dialog in the comments.