Christians Claim FEMA Discrimination

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I came across an article by Paul de Vries in the Christian Post.  Before proceeding, it would only be honest if I point out how loathsome I find de Vries.  For those of you who do not recall he wrote a passionate piece in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting that blamed the entire event on the secularization of society—in short, he doubled down on Mike Huckabee’s nonsensical statement.  I wrote a post on that topic at the time with you can read here.

As a member of the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals, de Vries is not interested in promoting anything resembling the truth.  Rather, his goal is the preservation of Christianity—at all costs.  Today, we shall once again see his dishonest nature.

de Vries is upset that in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, FEMA is withholding federal relief aid from Churches.  He is correct in pointing out that this is occurring.  FEMA is not providing federal money to rebuild churches or any other house of worship.  de Vries acknowledges that it is not just Christian churches that are the being excluded.

He goes on to write another very passionate piece about all of the good things that many churches do and did in the aftermath of Sandy type natural disasters.  He describes how, in times like this, churches (Pastors and members) are often among the first responders.  They provide shelter, food, and other sorts of relief that are desperately needed.  In this he is correct.  It is one of the good things that many churches do.  de Vries then lists four reasons why the exclusion of churches from FEMA aid is an “injustice”.

de Vries writes”

“FEMA’s policy is ugly because it treats churches as outsiders individuals, families, retail stores, family businesses, manufacturing companies, government agencies, schools, clubs, restaurants, charities – everyone but churches!”

This is where we see the fundamental mistake that he makes throughout his piece.  de Vries never mentions that churches do not pay taxes.  He never mentions that churches contribute exactly zero dollars to the pool of money from which FEMA is funded.  He fails to notice that, “individuals, families, retail stores, family businesses, manufacturing companies, government agencies, schools, clubs, restaurants, (and some) charities” all pay into the system!  Each of those groups is entitled to federal money in times like this because they pay for the privilege!  FEMA is not a charity.  Receiving federal money is not a right.  It is, in a way, something like insurance.  We all pay in, and when disaster strikes, receive some aid back.  Churches do not do this and therefore should NOT receive one cent of the money that the rest of us worked hard to contribute!

de Vries’ second point is pure rhetoric.  He writes that this exclusion creates a “slippery slope” for excluding Churches from other things such as “fire department aid, police protection, and other long-established government services”.  There are two things to note here.  First, he actually uses the term “slippery slope”.  He is assuming that his reader is unaware that such arguments are, by their nature, logically fallacious.  This is not an argument at all, it is just rhetoric.  However, let’s pretend that it is a legitimate point.  First, he does not describe what “long-established government services” are, so we can ignore that part.  Second, fire department and police aid are emergent services.  We call the fire and police departments in times of imminent danger.  People’s lives may be at stake.  Rebuilding from a disaster does not fit this description.  No one’s life is in danger if a church is not rebuilt.  We see two major logical fallacies in this one point alone: a) slippery slope arguments are fallacious by nature and are not arguments and b) his comparison to police and fire department aid is a red herring argument at best.

By the time he gets around to his third argument, it is clear that de Vries really does not have a solid argument at all, and is just trying to play on the emotions of his reader.  His third point is really just a reiteration of his opening statement.  He writes that by not providing aid to Churches, FEMA (and the federal government) do not value all the “immensely positive roles the churches have already played after Superstorm Sandy”.  Again, this is not even an argument, nor is it true.  One can certainly acknowledge the good work that many Churches did post-Sandy—President Obama was falling all over himself doing just that in his speech in Newtown.  de Vries feels that this exclusion is in effect stating that we do not care if the Churches are up and running prior to the next disaster.

This is an absurd argument.  The only way that de Vries could possibly be seen to be correct is if the only way that we expressed appreciation for “good deeds” was with financial rewards.  No one is denying that many churches played (and play) a positive role post Sandy (and other storms).  This does not entitle them to federal money raised through taxation that they do not participate in.  In fact, and correct me if I am wrong, providing aid in times like this is often a huge part of the mission of many churches.  They were just doing what they were supposed to be doing, according to their own words!  Truthfully, it is hard to argue against this point of de Vries, because his point isn’t really an argument at all.  It is just emotional rhetoric that is easily dismissed.

His fourth point is not much better than his last two.  de Vries writes, “blocking FEMA grants to churches is to pretend to be ignorant of the continuing soul care needed by the many and various victims of Superstorm Sandy.”  There is no plainer way to say this:  Our government is not in the business of “soul care”.  That is the business of religions not governments (at least in this country).  Second, de Vries posits the existence of a “soul” as if it were a real thing.  This is not the time or place for that argument, but prior to any federal money being doled out to “soul care” that conversation must happen.

Once again we find that this point is not really an argument at all.  Once again, we find it to be nothing more than religious rhetoric designed to pull on the heartstrings of his reader.  This will not do.

In truth, de Vries does not make even one valid point.  His failure to even discuss the tax exemptions of churches makes his article nothing more than religious rhetoric.

The problem that I have with articles like this is the sense of religious privilege.  So many religious leaders, like de Vries, feel that their religions are entitled to a privileged place in society simply because they are religions.  Why in the world should a group (in this case a church) be entitled to federal money—money that we all contribute towards except for them, simply because they are religious?  What gives them that right?  No matter how hard we look for answers to that question, we continuously will find only one.  There is no reason that they should be receiving FEMA money.  It is for this reason, that de Vries cannot levy one serious argument in his entire article.  The notion of Christian privilege must end in this country.  Christianity and its various organizations have every right to exist.  However, it is time that they play on the same field as the rest of us.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

—-John

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God in Schools Is NOT The Answer, Secularism Is NOT to Blame

Most of you are probably familiar with Mike Huckabee’s nonsensical comment last week.  Sadly, he is not the only person spreading such messages. I came across a story that is a monstrosity of stupidity by Paul de Vries in Today’s Christian Post.  His post is titled, “Godlessness Fails, Again” .  He basically doubles down on Huckabee’s idiotic comment.   De Vries, who is the President of New York Divinity School, illustrates that he is certainly not a historian or political philosopher, either that, or he demonstrates tremendous dishonesty.  The entire first half of column details the evils of the former Soviet Union.  Naturally all of the blame for its failures, according to de Vries, were due to “godlessness”.

This is the most asinine argument against atheism that anyone can make.  Yet, we see it all the time.  Any student of history or political science will inform you that the Soviet Union’s failures and mass killings were largely the result of two things, a) Stalin’s insanity and b) economic failure.  Atheism has nothing to do with it.  History is chock-full of madmen taking control of governments and slaughtering people.  Here is a key point…we all acknowledge that they were madmen.  What allowed Stalin to massacre more people than say Nero?  Better weaponry.  Period.  Further, how many people did Stalin kill in the name of atheism?  The answer is zero.  Stalin killed in the name of power.  Oh, and de Vries slides Hitler into the mix briefly as well.  This of course is asinine as Hitler wasn’t an atheist.  People like de Vries make two errors.  They mix up or omit facts (like Hitler’s being Catholic and not atheist), so either they are ignorant or liars.  Second, they have no understanding of causality and correlation.  While communist ideology has an atheist component, that is not the cause of the mass murders.  No serious scholarship would ever conclude that it was.

De Vries makes his fundamental mistake in the first paragraph.  He assumes and writes that atheism has an ideology and mentions something called “official atheism”.  These are grievous errors, which are propagated by Christian groups all of the time.  Let me clear this up.  Atheism has no ideology.  Atheism is nothing more than a “no” answer to the question, “Do you believe a god exists?”  That is ALL it is.  Nothing more.  From that starting point, the ideologies of atheists are all over the map.  There are liberal atheists and conservative atheists.  There are equal rights atheists and racist, sexist, homophobic atheists.  There are capitalist atheists and there are socialist atheists.  To try to fit atheism into an ideology that they disagree with, theists such as de Vries only succeed in creating straw men.

The second error can be found in the notion of “official atheism”.  I have no comment to make on that other than there is no such thing.  Perhaps de Vries can define us atheists what that would be.

Communism had an atheist component to it, to be sure.  Yet, that is not why it failed.  Let us assume that a madman never took control of the Soviet Union.  That there were no mass killings.  Would communism have worked then?  The answer is no, it fails economically.  Look at China for a modern example.  (Yes I know China had mass killings, but they are not relevant to this point).  China has been forced to slowly abandon a communist economic system to remain viable in the world today.  If it had not done so, it would not be where it is today.  Communism fails for many reasons—not one of which is atheism.

After blaming atheists for the slaughter of millions of people in the 20^th Century, de Vries has no problem making the leap to Newtown.   This is an easy leap for him to make after writing several paragraphs detailing, completely incorrectly, why and how atheism leads to mass murder.  He apes Huckabee’s comments that these types of tragedies occur because we do not have enough god in our societies and in our schools.  This is pure rubbish—a pile of “hot garbage”.  There are naturally many reasons why events like this occur.  We could blame any one of or all of the following: guns, gun laws, mental health, poor school security, and violence in our culture, etc—none of these things has anything to do with not believing in deities.  Much like de Vries failure with communism, he fails here, as none of those reasons have anything to do with atheism.  Not one.  He has created and torn down a straw man.

De Vries complete lack of historical knowledge becomes evident to anyone who spends a few moment contemplating the behaviors of society that have A LOT of “god” as part of their cultures.  Let’s think on this a bit….in the modern world we can look at Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Uganda—just for a short list.  How are things working out for the majority of citizens in those countries?  Looking good?  Most certainly not, I am sure you all agree.  Why?  Unlike de Vries failures with communism, we can point to directly to religion and Yahweh for things like honor killings, war, lack of plurality, lack of freedom, and lack of equality for all citizens in those countries.  None of this has anything to do with their specific leaders.  These things are proclaimed from pulpits and holy books.

Let us go back a bit and look at Christian history…we find the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts (which still happen in large parts of the word by the way), and countless European wars.  I am sure that de Vries would argue… “that isn’t Christianity, it was politics or political leaders”.  He would only be partially correct.  Those leaders used his precious Christianity induce the slaughter of an untold number of people.  Many people were motivated to support those events because of their belief a particular sect of Christianity.  Further, a tremendous amount of support from the pulpit was present in each case.  Were the individual leaders perhaps motivated by politics and power and not religion?  Perhaps, yes (though not in all cases).  However, this does not remove all responsibility from Christianity.  The fact remains, and I will paraphrase the late Christopher Hitchens here, “we know what societies look like when Christianity is strong”.  Mr. de Vries….I’ll pass thanks.

De Vries is doing nothing more than spreading anti-atheist propaganda.  He is either not qualified to write such a piece or is being dishonest.  Either way, nonsense like this must be called out.  It cannot be tolerated.  Ah, yes there is that word… “tolerated”…no doubt some will now accuse me of an being of those “intolerant atheists”.  To that I say, “thank you”.  You are correct.   I will not tolerate the slander of an entire group of people (atheists).  I will not tolerate the absurd notion that things like Newton occur because of “atheist ideologies” whatever the heck those are.  I will not sit here at my desk and tolerate people like de Vries blame people like me for that shooting.  Would you?  Will you?

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

—-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?