You know when Dr. Gordon "Assless Chaps" Klingenschmitt, court-martialed former chaplain and candidate for Colorado's House District 15, is about to say something extraordinarily batty, when he says "Let us discern the spirits."
This time, Klingenschmitt said something that is kind of personal to me, as I am an atheist. He suggested that because I don't like mixing church and state, that I need an exorcism.
Come below the fold to discern Klingenschmitt's spirits (you might want to drink some spirits on the way...)
So you don't have to give his web site any clicks, this clip is courtesy of Right Wing Watch, which continues to take one for the team, despite Klingenschmitt's previous attempts at censorship.
Again, Dr. Chaps makes the error of thinking that just because we atheists don't believe in the Deity, that means we automatically hang out with his eeeeevil nemesis.
Quoting Dr. Chaps using Right Wing Watch:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/...
Gordon Klingenschmitt, who is currently the Republican candidate for a state house seat in Colorado, weighed in on the Supreme Court's refusal to hear this case on his "Pray In Jesus Name" program where he offered a novel solution: atheists who don't want to attend their public school graduation in a church should just undergo an exorcism to rid them of the Devil so that they'll be comfortable attending church and "free to enjoy the worship of Jesus Christ."
"If the atheist complainer is so uncomfortable when they walk into a church that there's something inside of them squirming and making them feel these feelings of hatred toward the cross of Jesus Christ," Klingenschmitt said, "don't you think it's something inside of the atheist complainer that's wrong?"
"I have a solution," he continued. "Let's do an exorcism and cast the Devil out of them and then they'll feel comfortable when they walk into church":
Dr. Assless Chaps obviously hasn't remembered any of his Civics lessons, or has any knowledge of church-and-state issues or the First Amendment. That is especially terrifying, considering that he's running for public office in my state.
Objecting to having an arm of our government, namely our schools, having ceremonies with religious trappings, be they prayers, or blessings from religious figures, or readings from religious books, or holding them in places of worship does not mean that we atheists are repelled from such things like vampires are repelled from garlic. No, we don't catch fire when splashed with holy water...
Oh, and many of us atheists have indeed read the Bible. We just concluded that it's a bunch of bullshit. We don't take the writings of Bronze Age tribal goat-herders as literal truth. We don't believe in God, and we don't believe in demons, for the same reason we stopped believing in Santa Claus. Because it's a fantasy.
No, our objections have to do with preserving a very wise thing that the Founding Fathers did when they formed this country and wrote it's Constitution. They made a deal: Keep the government secular, and keep it out of the god business. This isn't just to protect government from religion, it is to protect religion from government. Let the government have power over religious matters, and sooner or later, they will start throwing people in prison, or worse, for the crime of worshipping the wrong sky daddy, or failing to worship a sky daddy.
It's the wall of separation of church and state which is why America's not like the Middle East and having wars here for the stupidest fucking reason to have a war, religion.
The deal is this. Everyone has the freedom to worship the deity of his or her choice, including none. But do so on your own time, and on your own dime. Government stays out, and keep your mythology out of public policy! The wall's there for a reason.
I don't want to worship Dr. Chaps's deity. He sounds like an asshole! And it looks to me like Dr. Chaps wants to use the coercive power of the state to make me worship his asshole deity.