LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY greymalkini)

Just came across this: http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page from a poliblog I read with this bit of analyis for it:
A lot of the material that’s showing up on Conservapedia pages is being cribbed directly from A Beka texbooks.

A Beka textbooks are published by the same people who run Pensacola Christian College, a school that is so far out there, theologically and educationally speaking, that it cannot even get accredited. Kids who graduate from this school have a degree that is worth absolutely nothing.

This “Conservapedia” is part of the effort Dominionists are making to set up a sort of “shadow-America” or “shadow-reality” alongside what already exists. We have schools that teach children about reality in all of its complicated messiness, they have “schools” that teach children about the bright, clear dividing line in their dichotomous, black and white universe between God’s good and Satan’s evil. We have news organizations that deal - with varying levels of skill - with how screwed up the world is, they have Fox News. We have colleges where people are forced to confront ideas they disagree with (no matter what they come to college believing) in the belief that having your ideas challenged makes you a better thinker and a better person, they have Pensacola Christian College and Patrick Henry College.

None of this would really be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that their alternate reality is starting to take over our real reality. Go take a look at how many students from Patrick Henry College end up becoming Congressional staffers of one sort or another.

Sorry to keep banging this particular drum around here, but it just keeps coming up. Probably because the conservative theocratic Christians are winning the culture wars.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY shadomoon)

Or shoot you in the back...
If the bible is a book you love, why wouldn't you pass it out instead of chopping it up?

I transform books so they can evangelize their own relevance via their direct fusion of word and form. With my book guns, I find old books in dumpsters and thrift store bins and lovingly cut them into revolvers, automatics, and sub-machine guns. Vandalized and self empowered, they can assert themselves against the culture that turned them into debris.

Link via - http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/24/bible-gun-by-robert-the/

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The LA Times talks about the upcoming challenge to the faith-based government entities being taken to the Supreme Court:

SIGNIFICANT constitutional cases don't always arrive at the ball dressed up as such. Sometimes they come in the modest trappings of an obscure technical dispute too dull to capture public attention.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in just such a case. Hein vs. Freedom From Religion Foundation is unlikely to make headlines, but it could deal a sharp blow to the wall of separation between church and state.

The plaintiffs are ordinary citizens who object to their federal tax dollars being used to fund the president's program for "faith-based and community initiatives." In particular, they claim that several conferences sponsored by the program were propaganda vehicles for religion and therefore violated the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment, which forbids government promotion of religion.

The government defendants — "Hein" is Jay F. Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives — dispute the plaintiffs' claim about the conferences. But at this stage, the Bush administration is asking the court to throw the case out on grounds that ordinary taxpayers have no legal interest in how the executive branch spends public money.

It seems like the kind of dry, legalistic dispute that only a lawyer could love. But the appearance is deceiving. If the court grants the administration's request, it will eliminate what is often the only effective mechanism for challenging financial support of religion by the executive branch. The effect would be to grant the president and his staff, as well as the vast federal bureaucracy, a license to preach.

If you are the praying sort, pray that the Supreme Court will hear this case and not throw it out. The government should not be spending your money to promote Christian religion. And it is mostly Christian. No Pagan, Muslim, or Buddhist groups have been allowed to use the highly proffered government funding- only Christians and a handful of Jews.

( The rest of the article )