Iowa GOP Leader: Atheists Are Lying By Quoting Me Verbatim

I mentioned yesterday that Iowa Republican National Committee member Tamara Scott was furious that atheist Justin Scott was allowed to deliver an invocation at a recent meeting of the Oskaloosa City Council.

In addition to trashing his excellent speech, she claimed that removing forced prayer from public schools several decades ago resulted in plummeting test scores, increased violence, more parents divorcing, everything in Ferguson, riots, Antifa, and the Resistance.

(That logical fallacy is so bad it has a special name.)

Well, she’s not happy with my post and went on a Facebook rant last night.

(Update: Tamara Scott deleted her Facebook post. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about blogging about Republicans or Christians I’m criticizing, it’s that I should always take a screenshot. So her post is below.)

Let’s break this down because the post is full of more lies.

Well, if only they cared enough to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me, God… Oops, therein lies the first problem. No God, no set truth.

I literally quoted things she said in an interview. I didn’t make them up. I don’t need to.

And if those “godly” Christians cared so much about the truth, they wouldn’t have elected someone whose lies are so numerous, they received their own small-font spread in the New York Times.

She continued:

I don’t plan to read the blogpost and give an inept writer any underserved views when the title alone proves the writer doesn’t care about accuracy or truth.

Reading: It’s kryptonite for Republicans.

And dammit, I need those underserved views. I mean, they have so little already…

As for that title, she writes:

For kicks, I will correct the title. I didn’t say the atheist’s prayer was to destroy Christianity, the atheist Justin Scott admitted it in the original story.

She didn’t say that? Really? At one point in the interview, host Jeff Angelo compares Justin’s invocation to someone with a booth urging people to sign up not to run a 5K. His ridiculous point is that atheism is the absence of God, so what’s the point of the invocation?

Tamara Scott’s response at the time?

… This goes along with those bumper stickers we see that say “COEXIST.” Can we coexist? No, you can’t. Because those who come against Christianity want to destroy Christianity.

That’s not out of context. She was speaking about Justin — and other atheists — when she said that.

Justin never said he wanted to destroy Christianity, by the way. What he told a reporter was that, if invocations are allowed at city council meetings, he hoped that people would see enough diversity in speakers that no one would expect a Christian prayer every time. Maybe the city council would even get rid of that part of the meeting altogether.

Making atheist invocations more normal than prayers at city council meetings is a personal mission of Scott’s.

“I want to get to the point where nobody cares about it anymore. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have these prayers going on anymore, but as long as they’re legal and as long as cities keep insisting that we have them, I just figure let’s go and challenge each one,” he said.

Justin did not say he wanted to destroy Christianity or prevent Christians from praying if they wanted to. He wanted the government to do the work of the people. If elected officials wanted to pray, they could always find time for that before or after the meeting.

To say that Justin wants to destroy Christianity makes as much sense as saying Tamara Scott wants to destroy Democrats. They hold beliefs that many people disagree with, and they want to persuade people to see the world as they do. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s incredibly hypocritical, then, for Tamara Scott to accuse Justin of doing pretty much the same thing she does all the time: Fight for her beliefs.

Tamara Scott later issued a follow-up post saying, once more, “The sloppily reported hit job of a blog story (which I’m not posting) incorrectly blames me for atheist’s statement…”

It wasn’t sloppy. It wasn’t a hit job. It wasn’t incorrect.

It’s amazing how much she hates that I quoted her directly.

If she doesn’t like the way she comes across, she should stop saying idiotic things. It’s as simple as that.