The Top 10 Anti-Christian Acts of 2009 (Fact-Checked)

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has put out a list of the Top 10 Anti-Christian Acts of 2009.

Dave at An Ethical Hedonist has done an excellent job of fact-checking their list and found that (surprise!) many of their claims are untrue.

My favorite “debunking” from Dave is below. I think his last sentence tells you everything you need to know about how seriously you ought to take the CADC’s list:

8. The Claim: HBO’s program “Curb Your Enthusiasm” aired an episode where the main actor urinates on painting of Jesus. When confronted HBO would not apologize.

I saw this particular clip when it first aired and I found it somewhat amusing, if maybe a little puerile. Here’s the setup: Larry David has taken a medication that makes him pee. A lot. Whenever he goes to the bathroom they set up a water hose to just spray water wherever he’s looking. So one day, when he’s visiting his very religious employee’s house, he goes to the bathroom to pee, and notices a picture of Jesus on the wall. His pee is so forceful that a little drop gets on the painting, but because Larry David is such a schmuck, he leaves without cleaning it up. The employee notices it, and long story short, believes that a miracle has occurred and that her painting of Jesus is crying.

So yes, it’s shocking to be sure, and only funny if you have a three-year-old’s sense of humor. (Guilty as charged.) But is it:

Defamation? No. The only person in the setup who is seen negatively is Larry David himself, because he’s so uncaring and socially maladjusted that he wouldn’t even wipe off the painting.

Bigotry? No. There is nothing at all being said about Christians or Christianity here.

Discrimination? No. Doesn’t even qualify.

The CADL is upset because HBO didn’t apologize. But I don’t think they have anything to apologize for, and neither do they. I am of the opinion that art should never be apologized for, but I further think that the only people who would be offended by this program are the ones who think that no one should be allowed to say anything negative about Jesus, ever.

(Oh and also, guys? A little drop bouncing onto a painting is not the same as “urinating on a painting.”)

By the way, that item was #8. Which I assume means it’s more “anti-Christian” than #9.

What was #9?

Rev. Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.

So the CADC thinks that a fictional comedy show is more anti-Christian than a murder.

That makes perfect sense…

(via An Ethical Hedonist)

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TychaBrahe

#8 was that the Gay Men’s Chorus sang at Obama’s inauguration. So, I seem to remember that singing is actually promoted in the Bible (“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,”) and I don’t remember anything about “except gay men” in there.

Aren’t we told that Christians “hate the sin, but love the sinner”? Then, aren’t gay men OK unless they are actively having gay sex? So isn’t gay men singing–a time during which they clearly aren’t having sex–a good thing? Or should I have actually watched the inauguration, which turned out to be quite a bit more interesting that I thought it would be?
Tony

One thing that stood out to me was:

And then using his vaguely feminine sounding first name, which he has never used in a professional context? The only reason for including it would be to make the uninformed think Gene Robinson cross-dresses.

Well he IS a bishop….
PrimeNumbers

Don’t Bishops, Popes etc. generally wear dresses anyway?
Trace

# 7 lame.

# 4 captious.
Ron in Houston

“Truth” can be such a slippery concept.

This reminds me of the Mormons and their concept of “lying for the Lord.”
keddaw

How do these guys get to keep playing the victim?

I actually agree with one of the ten, but I won’t say which one as it could take this way Off Topic. Also I agree with them but for almost the opposite reason they tink it.
Trace

“…but I won’t say which one…”

Oh man! 😉
Ubi Dubium

Wait, how is the Gay Men’s chorus being allowed to sing “My Country Tis of Thee” in any way discrimination against xians? That’s like saying that inviting a chef to prepare a pork dish to be served at inauguration is discrimination against Jews and Muslims. – No,wait, it’s really more like saying that allowing a chef, who sometimes prepares pork but isn’t preparing any today, to cook for inauguration is discrimination against Jews and Muslims.

They keep using this word “discrimination”. I don’t think it means what they think it means. Somehow, they have gotten it into their heads that “disagreeing with us” or “refusing to let us run your life” is the same thing as “discriminating against us”.
cypressgreen

What a load of crap! I (and most other atheists, I’d bet) am familiar with most of these “news” stories and know the real details behind them. When I went to read them, a box popped up saying,

To view this article and hundreds more about Christian bashing, please take a moment to register.

WTF? They have hundreds of articles about christian bashing, and this is the top 10 examples??? How weak are the other hundreds then?
cypressgreen

@Keddaw Perhaps you should start a thread on the F.A. Forum…
Jeff

From reading the list, one would think that Christianity is just another word for homophobia.
Mark

I haven’t seen the show but you described it this way:

…he goes to the bathroom to pee, and notices a picture of Jesus on the wall. His pee is so forceful that a little drop gets on the painting…

Sure sounds to me like it was a total accident.

I also find it funny that Christians think it was “a picture of Jesus” when no one knows what Jesus looked like. Thus its not Jesus but only a fictional representation. In other words ITS A FAKE! What do the Ten Commandments say about worshipping Graven Images?

Check out Exodus 20:4 where God said:

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath…

And it gets even funnier when a Christian puts his “idol” in the bathroom but then bitches when some pee gets on it!

Don’t get me wrong. I think true Christianity is great. The Bible is the most profound document ever created and Jesus is totally cool but most Christians are so self-serving, greedy and arrogant and so jaw dropping stupid it just amazes me every day.
Thornavis.

“The Bible is the most profound document ever created”, really ? Can a self-contradictory collection of Bronze and Iron age folk tales really be that significant ? I prefer Homer ( no not that one ) myself.
Eamon Knight

#7 is yet another example of thin-skinned Christians crying Persecution whenever someone they hate is not getting persecuted.
LK

@Eamon: Precisely. Couldn’t have said that better myself.

That was a wonderfully researched list. It’s just sad that they felt the need to outright lie in order to play martyr. Almost makes me want to actually persecute and discriminate against some Christians so they have something legitimate to complain about. Almost.
Casimir

#7 is a real standout. The mere presence of gays at an event is considered “anti-Christian discrimination”.
Phrosty

I have a habit of accidentally urinating on my imaginary friend (Roberto) as well. These things happen.
Ross

I figured killing Doctor George Tiller, their fellow brother in christ, in church would have been on the list of top 10 anti-christian acts. I guess not…
medussa

Ross, I was just about to post the same. Killing a believing, practicing Christian in his church on Sunday during worship doesn’t make the list??!! But the Gay Men’s Chorus at the SECULAR inauguration of the President does make the list?!!

I wanted to post a comment about this oversight, but I can’t quite bring myself to join the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition, or whatever they call themselves. I feel like I might start lecturing about what real discrimination feels like, because clearly, they are a little confused about it.
ursulamajor

Somehow, they have gotten it into their heads that “disagreeing with us” or “refusing to let us run your life” is the same thing as “discriminating against us”.

That’s it in a nutshell.
Sharmin

It’s really amazing what some religious people and groups consider discrimination. There is, of course, real discrimination and fake claims about it are frustrating.

Some people think that the existence of people who are different from them (but who are not hurting anyone) is discrimination. On top of that, they think that their own actions, which are discriminatory, really aren’t, since they can find justification in some holy book.

Thanks for posting this!
monkeymind

It certainly seems that the Taking of Umbrage has become a religious rite for some christians.
Allytude

Considering that #1 on their list is the fact that they cannot express their homophobia and not be punished for it in public, what did you expect?
hippiechick13

Wow, I love to see all the references to us gay people on there. I guess us being included is discrimination against them.
bruce

According to their site, it seems that just being gay is in itself an act of anti-Christian defamation. If being gay were a choice I’d consider it just for the joy of knowing that I’m defaming them.
mark

Thornavis wrote:

“The Bible is the most profound document ever created”, really ? Can a self-contradictory collection of Bronze and Iron age folk tales really be that significant ?

Yes! And when you read it with the understanding that it was written by people who only had a Bronze and Iron age understanding of the world then the Bible becomes all that more amazing.

Be sure to not confuse the real actual Bible with all that stupid stuff that the ignorant self-serving Christians claim the Bible says. When you clear away all that Christian invented CRAP, the Bible is awesome.

As just one small example of the Christian fraud concerning that Bible, the ten commandments do not say that falling in love with someone of the same sex is a sin. I have read all ten and NONE of them say that. Also, Jesus never bothered mentioned homosexuality as a problem during all the years he walked the Earth yet today’s “Christians” have invented homosexuality as the biggest crime against God ever imagined. Its all a lie, its all a fraud. When you read the Bible for yourself you realize that todays so-called Christians are almost pure evil and total liars.

Don’t confuse the Bible with Christians. They really have nothing to do with each other.
Tony

Be sure to not confuse the real actual Bible with all that stupid stuff that the ignorant self-serving Christians claim the Bible says.

Find out what the real actual bible says here.

As just one small example of the Christian fraud concerning that Bible, the ten commandments do not say that falling in love with someone of the same sex is a sin. I have read all ten and NONE of them say that.

The ten commandments don’t, specifically. But there are numerous prohibitions on homosexuality in the bible that are outside the commandments. In the New Testament as well. The bible is basically muddy and unclear on just about every subject it tackles, apart from one. There’s no way of reading the bible and concluding that god thinks it’s OK to be gay.
muggle

Um, Mark, the anti-gay rule is there in the Old Testament like the Ten Commandments and the hundreds of others Christians ignore because the Old Testament doesn’t apply since Christ came.

No, I don’t get why anti-gay and 10 Commandments also don’t get ignored then. One has to wonder why they’re not equally offended by people who don’t keep kosher.

Um, and I have read the “actual” Bible, two different translations thereof, three if you count the Torah. You must definitely be picking out only the nice parts if you think that it ain’t as depicted. Only certain platitudes are nice. And they’re not the greater part of it.

Read the translation of your choice cover to cover five times, skipping nothing even the boring begats on your own without benefit of some holy person telling you how to interpret it and see if you still think it’s awesome at the end of that. C’mon, I triple dog dare ya.
Lyvvie

I’m glad I’m not the only who spent the day fact checking that load of tripe! My husband called me a fanatic atheist for putting so much effort into my debunk that I didn’t get out of my PJs until 4pm – “But they’re lying!!” I cried while he giggled. He knows how to wind me up.
Mark

muggle wrote:
Um, Mark, the anti-gay rule is there in the Old Testament…

You are missing my point. I didn’t say the rule wasn’t there. I said that God didn’t bother to put it in the ten commandments and Jesus never bothered to mention it during all the years he walked the earth.

My point was: If homosexuality wasn’t important enough to God to put it in the ten commandments then what justification do so-called christians have for making it such a big deal today?

Do you follow my point now?

muggle wrote:
Um, and I have read the “actual” Bible, two different translations thereof, three if you count the Torah. You must definitely be picking out only the nice parts if you think that it ain’t as depicted. Only certain platitudes are nice.

You missed my point again. I never said the Bible was “nice”. I’m talking about understanding the deep and significant meaning contained in the stories of the bible. Did you really read the bible as a work of great literature or did you skim through it with only an intention of confirming some preconceived notion you already had?

Very few people bother to look for and understand the wisdom of the bible. Most people just lift a few lines completely out of context in order to bolster their pet political agenda. Its sad. Very sad.

muggle wrote:
Read the translation of your choice cover to cover five times….C’mon, I triple dog dare ya.

You have to actually read the bible and not just look at the words. Sadly the deep meaning and wisdom contained within the bible will go right over the heads of many people who are not equipped to comprehend the greatest literature that the human race has to offer.
Wayne Dunlap

Mark,
Unfortunately, there is something in the Old Testament that is negative about men lying with men. Wish I could remember the passage. Still, Science has determined that homosexuality is due to a mutation in a gene, not because the person consciously decided they wanted to be homosexual. It is sickening how right wing Christians will not leave these people along. Instead of hate towards these people, they should be extending love. After all that is what Jesus taught. BTW, if you are going to take the Bible literally, you must take into account that, in the Old Testament, it was A-OK to put your daughter into prostitution and Abraham, trying to save his life, claimed his wife was his sister and allowed her to be put into a harem.
Mark

Wayne Dunlap wrote:
Unfortunately, there is something in the Old Testament that is negative about men lying with men.

The bible is not a children’s kindergarten story book. Yes, there is a lot of negative stuff in the bible. There is also a lot of bad stuff in everyday life.

If you go looking for passages in the old testament about men lying with men be sure to take notice of the context. There are many references to homosexuality as part of temple prostitution. So is it the prostitution or homosexuality that is being cast in a negative light? There was also the issue of raw brutal survival back in the bronze age. In those days a homosexual relationship didn’t do much to help ensure the survival of family. The tables have turned in modern times and now we are dealing with overpopulation polluting the planet. I guess we could say that these days being gay is green. There is also a story in the old testament about handing over male guests from someone’s home to male rioters in the street to be raped. Is that story negative about homosexuality or rape? Would you want to argue that rape should be portrayed in the bible in a positive light?

Context. Its all about the context.

You don’t even have to believe in God to appreciate the wisdom of the bible.
Mark

Tony wrote:
The bible is basically muddy and unclear on just about every subject it tackles, apart from one. There’s no way of reading the bible and concluding that god thinks it’s OK to be gay.

Go learn a little bit about evolution theory.

Homosexual creatures cannot reproduce offspring thus homosexuality means the death of that animal’s genetic code. Widespread homosexuality would mean the death of an entire species.

There’s no way of reading evolution theory and concluding that it’s OK to be gay.

It gets even worse because evolution theory says that homosexuals, being an aberration to the natural order of reproduction, are (and should be) destined to die off and make room for creatures that are more able to thrive and are more fit to reproduce their genetic code.

The bible, on the other hand, teaches that all people are valuable eventhough we all are fatally flawed.

Its an ironic twist to current political thinking when you realize that evolution theory is in fact much more cruel to homosexuals than Jesus is.
Brian

“Homosexual creatures cannot reproduce offspring thus homosexuality means the death of that animal’s genetic code. Widespread homosexuality would mean the death of an entire species.”

We’re not talking about widespread homosexuality here. We’re just talking about a few guys here and there being gay. It is probably actually better for the world and humanity for them to be gay because the world is overpopulated and they don’t reproduce, thus lowering the population and helping the earth
cathy

Mark,

“Homosexual creatures cannot reproduce offspring ” Really? Last time I checked, having gay sex did not cause sterility and I know more than one older queer person who had bio kids ‘the old fashioned way’.

Also, there is scientific literature and studies of queer sex and evolution. You get several results just by checking google. Here’s one explantation: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13674-evolution-myths-natural-selection-cannot-explain-homosexuality.html

Your rant clearly shows you have not read any scientific works about evolutionary theory and same sex sexual activity.

“The bible, on the other hand, teaches that all people are valuable eventhough we all are fatally flawed” Really? And here I thought that hell and calling for stoning suggested otherwise… Even if you were right about evolution (which you clearly aren’t), it seems that people dying out from failure to reproduced all on their own would be far kinder than executions, which is what the bible holds.

Leviticus 20:13 – “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Yeah, I really feel the love.
cathy

Back to the top ten list, I would say that 5 is the wrong response, given that the killer had killed another man (who owned a gravel yard) and planned to kill a real estate agent for very similar reasons. Besides, statements from his children do not suggest that the killer was in fact pro-choice. So “an intense dislike for what the activist was promoting” is not really accurate. He killed anyone who made signs he did not like, including those pertaining to real estate. That’s not bigotry, that’s plain old violent disconect from reality, which is further shown by the fact that the killer’s mental state is such that he is too out of touch with reality to be allowed to decide what plea to deliver.
Mark

cathy wrote:
“Homosexual creatures cannot reproduce offspring ” Really?

Really!

Its a simple basic fact of biology that two creatures of the same sex mating will not produce offspring and unless they change their behavior and engage in heterosexual relationships their dna will die out. I’m surprised that you are finding this concept so difficult to grasp.

There is nothing in evolution theory that says homosexuality is ok.

cathy wrote:
Last time I checked, having gay sex did not cause sterility and I know more than one older queer person who had bio kids ‘the old fashioned way’.

Giving an example of someone who “had kids” through heterosexual relationships is not what we are talking about. Please try to pay attention and follow the point.

cathy wrote:
Your rant clearly shows you have not read any scientific works about evolutionary theory and same sex sexual activity.

I wouldn’t call it a rant but rather several attempts to help a few shallow people follow what should be a simple and easy to follow point of view.

Your own posted article discusses bisexuality and not homosexuality. Perhaps you don’t understand the difference?

Your response really makes me wonder if you are unable or unwilling to follow the point.
Mark

cathy wrote:
…it seems that people dying out from failure to reproduce all on their own would be far kinder than executions, which is what the bible holds.

Actually… the Bible tells a profound story about how a ruthless and violent people were so willing to execute each other for so many different reasons that eventually they ended up “executing” their own god. You seem to have become so fixated on the first few chapters of the story that you completely missed how it turned out.

cathy wrote:
Leviticus 20:13 – “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Yeah, I really feel the love.

Its interesting that four thousand years ago the writer of this passage was certainly unhappy with homosexual men (nothing about two women lying with each other so maybe that was ok with him?) but it was common back then to marry and have sex with 13 year old children. These days homosexuality is not that big of a deal but men who sleep with children go to prison and then get put on a lifetime sexual offenders list. We don’t yet put them do death but that might be coming. Its funny how social values change over time and sometimes flip upside down.