Both leaders hate and fear the mainstream media. Both men consistently scare and infuriate Jews. (Farrakhan has praised Trump for supposedly refusing to take large sums of money from Jews.) Both men are hyper-masculine patriarchs that use traditional religion to bolster their views. Both men hate affirmative action. Both men buy into and promote paranoid conspiracy theories. Both men are applauded and embraced by White separatists.
Ankh is tired of waiting for Jesus to return. He says that his family has believed that we have been living in the last days for four generations. He says that he is the fourth generation, and the madness stops here. He says that Black Christian and Muslim leaders should be “ashamed” of themselves for continually teaching Black people that Jesus will return or that Allah will save them. He says that if there is a God, it must be the “spirit” that dwells within each and every one of us.
Paranormal and pseudo-scientific beliefs are common throughout the world. Some of these ideas are rooted in culture and/or race. Among Black people, some of these notions have particular appeal. In Africa, Brazil and other parts of the world, voodoo or juju is practiced. In 1989, Isaiah Oke wrote the book Blood Secrets. He claimed to have been the biggest juju priest in Nigeria. He was initiated into the religion at the age of 13. His rites allegedly involved the drinking of blood and ritual murder. The book was published by Prometheus, a leading publisher of books on skepticism and humanism. However, Oke contended that the paranormal events he oversaw and witnessed were real.
Humanist writer Karen Garst has come out with the same kind of book by and for nonreligious women; and it does not disappoint. There is much to recommend here. However, Sylvia Benner’s “Of faith, feminism and master narratives” is especially noteworthy. Benner contends that “. . .third wave feminism . . . has no aspirational characters to offer for women (and certainly not for men.)”
Following Jean-Luc Nancy, “If you don’t have freedom and rights, I don’t have freedom and rights—all I have is domination. And domination isn’t freedom _or_ rights. Being exists because of being-with—I exist because you exist as a free agent in community exactly as I do, and visa-versa. That’s community. That’s freedom . . . . .It’s an American problem. Perhaps the US simply can’t reach consensus on this sort of social imaginary. Might one tiny little religion? Hmmmmm.”
David Mills’ book Atheist Universe, helps to demolish the strongest arguments that theists advance to support the extraordinary claim that God exists. For example, Dorion Sagan, son of Carl Sagan, writes in the foreword that: “…the discoveries by astrophysicists of hydrogen, carbon and other chemical elements in and around the stars shows that the ingredients of life exist throughout the universe. . . ” In other words, because the stuff of which life is made is so plentiful throughout the universe, the existence of life does not seem nearly as improbable as it once did.
“We will always be vulnerable to urges like revenge, anecdotal thinking, and demonization. The question is whether our institutions and norms can keep them at bay. The habits of journalism are to always focus on the present. We can be misled by the availability and vividness of current news, and the fading of bad memories, into an inaccurate picture of which way the world is going. Although I’m a political centrist, I apportion the lion’s share of the blame for the challenging of those norms to Trump and the Republican Party. The key point of the book is that the values of the Enlightenment embolden us to solve problems. Human nature allows for the possibility of cumulative improvement, even as it faces the constant drag of primitive impulses that work against it. It’s an ongoing struggle. . . . The position that we can’t solve the problem [climate change} is completely consistent with the denialist position that nothing should change whatsoever. Different premises, but they reach the same conclusion.”
Bad weather also hit other parts of the U.S. Storm Stella unexpectedly hit many parts of the country. Thousands of flights were canceled. Avalanches occurred in Pennsylvania. Some states were buried in snow and there were reports of several traffic accidents. Farrakhan claims to have predicted most of the mayhem. (Since 1930, the NOI has been predicting the “coming destruction of America.” Similarly, since WWI, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have maintained that “we are living in the final days.”)
Disney’s film Beauty and the Beast will star their first gay character. Not surprisingly, conservative Christians are not happy about it. Famous evangelist Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, has called on Christians to boycott the film. The conservative Christian Website LifeSitenews.com started an online petition calling for a boycott of the film that has garnered 110,000 signatures.
At least up until the 1980s, they claimed that Whites belonged to a race of devils. (They are the ones that coined the term “blue-eyed devils.” And does any theist really love devils?) They still insist that Whites stink, and that they have “stringy, dog-like hair.” They insist upon separation of the races and no interracial dating or marriage. Whites are generally not allowed to join their group, and certainly are not permitted to lead it.
The ISHV Cyber Think Tank is a digest of articles, interviews, and other musings compiled by ISHV Board Member Robert B. Tapp. Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation, by Leigh Eric Schmidt.
“. . . a cultural landscape in which “the struggle over God, revelation, and religious affiliation unfolded at the grassroots, rather than in universities or literary bohemias.” Perry: “Self-censorship in the face of overwhelming cultural pressure is as much a part of the American atheist experience as irreverent provocation….Compared with the violence wrought along lines of race, gender, and class, the challenges faced by atheists can seem minor, or quaint, or even funny. And the University of Miami will soon run a search for an endowed chair in “the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.” It took the donor more than 15 years and $2.2 million to get the university to agree to use the word “atheism” in the title, but the term might soon be an everyday presence.”
And other links to articles and videos and audio.
This year (2017), for the first time, Bob Jones University closed in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. The University’s long history of anti-Black racism is well-known, so this must be considered as at least a small step forward. (They did not even accept Blacks to the school until the 1970s and banned interracial dating until at least the year 2000.)
The ISHV Cyber Think Tank is a digest of articles, interviews, and other musings compiled by ISHV Board Member Robert B. Tapp. Articles including: James A. Haught’s The Long, Slow Death of Religion, and many others.
“All those factors undoubtedly play a role. But I want to offer a simpler explanation: In the scientific 21st century, it’s less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect, ludicrous. It’s not for intelligent, educated people.”
Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has once again praised President-elect Donald Trump. Speaking to a gathering at the State of the Black World Conference in New Jersey, the sinister minister proclaimed, “The white man is going to push. He’s putting in place the very thing that will limit the freedom of others. That’s what you need,” he added, implying that Trump will make conditions so harsh for Blacks in America that they will embrace Farrakhan’s separatist worldview.
