Witch Hunts! Psychics! AGW Deniers! Hindu Nationalists!

So I had originally thought of calling this regular column This Week In Fucked Up Religious Shit, but a few problems came to mind. For one thing, there are lots of non-religious infuriating, hilarious, or otherwise crazy shit I would have to ignore: psychics, alternative medicine, fringe politics, conspiracy theories, North Korea, and a lot more. Also, I’d eventually collide with the problem of trying to delineate between what does and does not qualify as a religion, which can be tricky at times. I’d rather leave that problem to the IRS.

Anyway, I’m going to try to regularly write about some of the craziest shit that happens throughout the week. When I’m feeling more patient, I’ll try to actually explain how people’s thinking has gone wrong and how we can actually know that, but there will be plenty of mockery too. Sometimes that’s the most appropriate response.

So let’s get to it:

My Apostate Dog and Me

How I Won The War On Terror For America By Adopting A Dog (You’re Welcome)

I don’t want to be one of those internet writers who write about their pets and do “Sundog” blog posts, but there’s a pretty weird story which needs to be told about how I got her. This is my new friend Darwin:

“Allahu Akbar!”

Even though Darwin sounds more like a name for guys, she’s a mixed beagle so I thought it was appropriate. Sometimes I call her a muggle.

Anyway, I got this dog from a lady who works with my sister. She was dog-sitting her for a friend of her’s who went to Afghanistan. Apparently he isn’t in the military and didn’t go to work for a contractor. He just decided to go to Afghanistan. And now he’s decided he’s not coming back, so this friend of my sister wanted to get rid of this dog since she already has two others.

5 Fundamentalist Movies You Should Watch

GATES OF HELL

I learned about this movie from Right Wing Watch, which is an organization that watches the right wing. And they watched the right wing pushing this movie, and it looks awesome.

You might have heard about how conservatives have been trying to sell African-Americans on the idea of being against legal abortion lately. They’re putting up these nutty billboards (some of which imply that blacks are a distinct species) and running goofy political ads on the radio. See, they’re not racist anymore! They’re really concerned about black babies and how letting black women have abortions is like genocide. And that breaks their hearts. They are very concerned about black people. That’s what they’re pushing. It reminds me of how neo-Nazis like David Duke will pretend to be so compassionate to the Palestinians, when in reality they’re clearly more motivated by hating Jews than anything else.

Let Us All Compare the President to a Human Penis

So Megan Fox Mark Halperin got suspended from Transformers 3MSNBC for calling Michael Bay President Obama Hitler “kind of a dick.” But the only thing I could find unprofessional about his saying that was that it’s a comment which is way overdue.

There’s nothing wrong with calling the President a dick, especially when he is one. And there are plenty of reasons to call this President a dick. Here is an unfortunately all-to-abbreviated list of reasons why.

5 Religious Organizations You Should Hate

A common response to criticisms of religion is that its adherents can sometimes do good things, even if it’s for irrational reasons. That’s fair enough, but at the same time it’s useful to remember that while some good can be mixed in with the bad, sometimes religions create institutions of pure evil. Here are a few of them:

Killing For God in India

From the Washington Post:

NEW DELHI – A bomb blast in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, during the height of the daily sunset prayer ceremony Tuesday, injured at least 32 people and killed a 2-year-old child, officials said. Authorities said the blast was a terrorist attack.

One of the survivors later took to the Twitter in order to blast the Supreme God in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism Vishnu for its negligence:

Juan Williams, Not Quite As Much of a Dick As You’d Think

I like NPR. A lot. I like NPR probably more than is healthy. But this whole Juan Williams thing is kind of disturbing. He was fired from NPR for comments he made on Bill O’Reilly’s show about the Mohammmedans. Here is the quote as it appeared in the original video edited by ThinkProgress:

Anwar al-Awlaki

UPDATE: The Department of Justice is now considering filing charges against al-Awlaki.

Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen thought to be living in Yemen who makes videos praising al Qaeda. He’s also had an e-mail exchange with Nidal Malik Hasan at some point before his shooting spree at Fort Hood last November.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration authorized the targetted killing of al-Awlaki. From the NY Times: