{"id":186749,"date":"2013-10-24T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/24\/religion-as-an-excuse-for-mindless-hate\/"},"modified":"2013-10-24T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T01:17:00","slug":"religion-as-an-excuse-for-mindless-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/24\/religion-as-an-excuse-for-mindless-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion as an Excuse for Mindless Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2013\/10\/24\/south-carolina-soup-kitchen-refuses-to-allow-atheists-to-volunteer\/\">South Carolina soup kitchen has refused to allow atheists to volunteer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A group called the <a href=\"http:\/\/upstateatheists.org\/\">Upstate Atheists<\/a> in Spartanburg, South Carolina <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/friendlyatheist\/2013\/10\/23\/south-carolina-soup-kitchen-director-bans-atheist-volunteers-saying-they-would-be-a-disservice-to-this-community\/\">were rebuffed<\/a> in their efforts to volunteer at the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI told [the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen] we wouldn\u2019t wear our T-shirts.  We wouldn\u2019t tell anyone who we are with. We just want to help out,\u201d  Upstate Atheist president Eve Brannon <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goupstate.com\/article\/20131023\/ARTICLES\/131029846\/1083\/ARTICLES?p=1&amp;tc=pg\">told<\/a> the <i>Spartanburg Herald-Jounal<\/i>. \u201cAnd they told us that we were not allowed.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Lou Landrum, the Soup Kitchen\u2019s executive director, told the same  paper that allowing the atheists to work at the facility would be a  \u201cdisservice to this community.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe  stand on the principles of God,\u201d she said. \u201cDo [atheists] think that  our guests are so ignorant that they don\u2019t know what an atheist is? Why  are they targeting us? They don\u2019t give any money. I wouldn\u2019t want their  money.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search?q=shelby+spong&amp;max-results=20&amp;by-date=true\">repeatedly quoted Bishop Shelby Spong saying<\/a> too many people use religion as a, &#8220;Veil under which anger can be legitimatized.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Landrum who cannot see beyond religion as a club to justify her hate while maintaining her thoroughly undeserved sense of moral superiority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A South Carolina soup kitchen has refused to allow atheists to volunteer: A group called the Upstate Atheists in Spartanburg, South Carolina were rebuffed in their efforts to volunteer at the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen.\u201cI told [the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen] we wouldn\u2019t wear our T-shirts. We wouldn\u2019t tell anyone who we are with. We just want &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,969,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-evil","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}