Separation of church and state in the EU

“There is a movement in the European Union that wants total religious neutrality and can’t accept our Christian traditions,” said Archbishop Zvolensky, [the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Slovak capital] bemoaning what he sees as a rising tide of militant secularism at a time when Europe is struggling to forge a common identity. 

There go those "militant" secularists again. What an irritant they must be, huh? So what made Zvolensky so upset?

[T]he National Bank of Slovakia announced that the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, had ordered it to remove halos and crosses from special commemorative euro coins due to be minted this summer. The coins, designed by a local artist, were intended to celebrate the 1,150th anniversary of Christianity’s arrival in Slovak lands...

Ah, I see. The nasty old EU won't let Slovakia plaster government-issued coins with halos and crosses, thus blocking the god-given right of Christians to place their religious symbols wherever the hell they please. Those darned militant secularists! They're always ruining everything.   

Yup, it's the same old story. Christians want to paint the world with crosses and gods and mentions of heaven and grace and sin. But those nasty secularists keep stopping them! To deluded Christians, this is "religious persecution". Horrors!

Christians will never understand that they can't force the world to worship their god. They see their pushing of religious iconography into the public sphere as a god-given right. It's not. It's religious piggery.

Feel free to worship your stupid, nonexistent god, but leave the rest of us alone. That shouldn't be so hard to understand. But to religiously damaged minds, apparently it is.

“I need to voice a serious and disturbing suspicion: that the E.U. is under the control of Satan or Satanism,” said Rafael Rafaj of the Slovak National Party, a far-right nationalist party. 

The view that the European Union serves Satan has become a popular theme for some extreme Christian fundamentalists, who cite the Bible’s Book of Revelation as proof that dissolving national boundaries signals an approaching apocalypse. 

Sigh.

From Jason Rosenhouse

Rosenhouse carves up the religious wingnuts in his post, "Responses to Newtown":

Typical is this statement from James Dobson:

I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.

Charming God they worship. He did not allow judgment to fall upon “us.” He allowed it to fall on a group of young children and the adults trying to protect them. Apparently it’s not enough for God to settle up with apostates in the afterlife. He has to allow children to be murdered in this one.

Well said. I love Jason Rosenhouse. I only wish he'd post more often. Because when he does, he invariably hits the nail on the head.

Smoking pot is just like gay marriage

On his blog yesterday, Ed Brayton made fun of a Christian's authoritarian ways. David DeWolf was apparently upset by Washington's decision to legalize marijuana.

To David DeWolf, who teaches law at Gonzaga University, a Catholic institution in Spokane, the votes reflect individuals disconnecting from the rest of society, “elevating the desires of the individual over the needs of the community.”

Yes, someone else doing something you don't like...affects you, somehow. This reminds me of the inane argument that gay marriage somehow diminishes straight marriage -- though the two never meet in any way. Wingnut logic. It's all over the religious landscape. These people want to paint the world in their own, drab colors.

Ah, but there's more. In the same post, Brayton mentions another conservative Christian wingnut, Steve Beren, whose argument is no less unhinged:

He sees the votes as giving license to people to do other things he considers wrong. Each time something “clearly wrong or obviously immoral” is given sanction, celebrated or even ignored, it implicitly sanctions other immoral acts, he says — for example, President Clinton’s sexual transgressions.

These people just don't get the concept of logical connections.

The stupid things religious wingnuts say

I know, I know -- it's a broad topic. But you have to start somewhere. For me, one of the most irritating things religious loons do is when they place themselves in cosmic dramas. They're just so important, doncha know.

For example, you're watching a TV report about a rape that was stopped when a woman happened upon the perp and victim as it was going down. The rapist runs; the woman is saved. Hallelujah!

But when the hero is interviewed, she says: "Do I think I was in the right place at the right time by coincidence? Do I think it was an accident that I arrived in time to stop this? No, I was supposed to be here."

That's right, dear. All the goings-on in the cosmos are about you and your random walks through the neighborhood. Makes perfect sense. It wasn't just that your hemorrhoids hurt so much that you had to stand up and walk around, and stumbled upon these two. That can't be it. No, it's God hisself who put you there.

I swear, these twits make me ill.

What drives you crazy about the things religious nitwits say? Again, I know: it's a hugely broad topic. But if you had to pick one thing that drives you batty, what would it be?