Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Student refuses to graduate with ceremony held in church

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I love these kinds of stories. They help give courage to young people who want to fight for what they believe in. Nahkoura Mahnassi has taken a stand: her school is planning on holding their graduating ceremony in the controversial New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. You might remember that its pastor, Eddie Long, had been accused of sexual misconduct with 4 young men (which was later settled out of court. Money solves all problems apparently).

Mahnassi has no religious affiliation, and rightly feels that the school has no business holding their ceremony in a church, especially one mired in so much controversy. Despite her impressive grades, she’s decided to stand up for what she believes in. This is exactly the kind of act that we should be supporting as a community. It’s people like Mahnassi that are out there fighting the good fight, taking all the risks. They should not be alone in their struggle! Share this story with anyone you think will care, people.

Pay the tithe and tell your wife to get back in the kitchen

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You hear that fellas? You’re the “high priest” of the household, which means you can do whatever the fuck you want. Wow, what a great deal, and all because I have a penis! If you’re a misogynistic, gullible idiot who would rather give your money to a bunch of scammers than pay your bills and take care of your family, then the Church has room for you, my friend!

It Doesn’t Get Better – Mormon Edition

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When Dan Savage started his “It Gets Better” Campaign in September of 2010, he hoped it would let bullied teens know life improves over time, and the bullying they experience in school is only temporary. For the most part, these videos are meant to speak to young gays and lesbians in high school, where the majority of bullying takes place.
One serious exception to this rule is Brigham Young University, one of the few Universities in the country that has an honor code that specifically prohibits any gay behavior:

“Homosexual behavior is inappropriate and violates the honor code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings”

The video above was made independently by gay, lesbian and straight supporters of the school. While the video seems to suggest to gays at the school there are people around them that “love them”, the truth is the campus is still extremely unfriendly to gays. Since any student can be expelled for engaging in any homosexual behavior, it seems pretty obvious to anyone watching this video the real culprit in all this terrible hate is Mormonism itself. One cannot help but feel as though their message “it gets better” has a hollow ring to it when the very institution has such animosity towards the gay and lesbian community. It would be more accurate to say it does get better, but only if you leave the faith.

The school isn’t very happy about the video, but has decided to take no action, since it claims that:

The honor code…is “based on conduct, not on feeling, and if same-gender attraction is only stated, that is not an honor code issue.

If the message of the religion is still that homosexuality is wrong, then no, it does not get fucking better. Religion, as always, is not the answer.

Shitty journalist thinks ‘militant atheism’ must be fought

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How to spot a poorly written article about atheism. (1) The words ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘militant’ are used in the article without any real justification (i.e., do these words have the same meaning for our religious counter-parts, I wonder) (2) ‘Atheistic’ regimes are blamed for the worst human rights offenses (3) We’re told that secularism is an imposition rather than redressing a clear inequity.

It’s clear religious people have absolutely no idea what secularisms really mean. If it isn’t Romney trying to scare people into believing it’s a new religion being imposed by the state, it’s some close-minded Canadian journalist trying to argue militant atheism must recognize the primacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition*. Here are my favorite tropes:

True wars have been started including the crusades but wars have been started for all kinds of reasons including women – we haven’t done away with women have we?

Well, the Catholic Church did try it’s darndest during the Inquisition, with over 100,000 women burned at the stake for witchcraft. The way the Catholic Church fights against contraception, abortion rights, or even historically their right to property, it certainly feels as though full scale war is being waged on women, doesn’t it?

Did you know why we don’t execute people that are mentally ill? That goes back in the ages and was established because those not in a proper state of mind would not be able to make a proper confession of their sins and therefore killing them would also be condemning them to hell. It was seen as the compassionate thing to do.

Actually, if you were to ask most Canadians if they thought the death penalty should be re-instated in Canada, you’ll find a disproportionate number of religious people in favor of capital punishment. This tends to be a fairly universal phenomenon: highly religious people have no problem with this kind of final solution, and to claim that religion itself is the reason Canada no longer has the death penalty is just plain ignorant. This guy also seems not to really give a shit if the person who gets executed isn’t missing a chromosome, but I digress.

I believe the theory is live and let live. I can put forward my views, you can put forward yours and we can all make up our own minds. From pushing for God to be dropped from our national anthem, trying to make sure you can’t mention Easter or heaven forbid Christmas in a school to now conscience rights – trying to force doctors who have religious convictions to perform abortions against their will – there is no rest for the other side.

Ah yes, this new trope from the religious that we’re trying to ‘impose’ our secularism on others. As though removing what is already government mandated religion out of our anthem, or allowing for non-denominational holiday celebrations is automatically a threat to their advantaged position. Damn right. Secularism is about removing God from the public forum, and making it entirely a private belief again. I share his live and let live attitude, which is why I want his God out of my fucking face.

(Update: The site thankfully no longer exists, and was never web archived)

Do we need religion to be a moral society?

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Honestly, this is a silly question. It would be more accurate to ask “can we still be a moral society despite religion’s influence?” Let’s remember for a moment the world is still made a more miserable place because of sectarian infighting. How many regions of the world are currently engaged in immoral acts of violence against one another specifically in the name of their religion?

When the Catholic bishop chimes in his pointless opinion, he tries to argue religion is needed to provide a framework. Perhaps a few thousand years ago – before the advent of ethics and philosophy – this may have been true. But we’ve made leaps and bounds in our moral understanding since then, and there’s very little in “old world religion” that is in fact compatible with our modern sensibilities. When this pastor says of morality that “We start to make it up as we go along”, you’ve got to wonder if he’s even aware of the terrible irony of the statement he just made. Probably not.

Speaking of delicious irony, did you catch that black guy trying to argue that society is worse than it’s ever been? His audacity to cite his grandparent’s long standing marriage as an example (despite them living during a time of great racial prejudice) is a shocking degree of historical blindness. Try reading a fucking history book instead of the Bible, pal! And what about that woman claiming Islam encourages critical thinking…is that why the woman beside her was draped in a suffocating blanket? Lots of fucking critical thinking going on there, I’m sure.

Romney attempts to use fear of secularism to gain votes

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Oh religious people: you can never be sure if they love religion or secretly despise it. Why else would they resort to calling our free-thought movement “a religion” if not to criticize it? Obviously they recognize the fact that by definition, a religion is a creepy organization intent on pushing through their wacky agenda. While I agree this is a definite aspect of all religion, conflating our lack of belief with their dogma is both insulting and totally untrue. If atheism is a religion, than bald is a hair style.

That hasn’t stopped Mitt Romney from trying to scare the bejesus out of his faithful base. He recently tried to argue that Obama is intent on establishing a “new secular religion” that would reject all doctrine:

“I think there is in this country a war on religion,” Romney replied. “I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism…an attack on one religion is an attack on all religion.”

Framing it this way makes sense for Romney: he needs a bunch of denominations that have hated each other for centuries to band together and help him fight the evils of scientific materialism. What is hilarious to note is the government is already in the business of establishing religion, albeit unofficially. Tax exemption, government funded abstinence programs, and religious organizations receiving government monies for their programs amounts to the same thing. For us “secularists” to compete, we would need to receive millions of dollars in subsidies, never pay any taxes, and have government sponsored student assemblies “preaching” common sense and rationalism. As you can probably guess, it’ll be a cold day in Hell when we get this kind of assistance. Hey, we’re the underdogs in this fight, but it won’t stop these fuckos from trying to paint us as the bad guys.

Fire breathing dragons explained!

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Isn’t it fun to pretend to be educated? All you need is a suit, a power-point presentation and a few hundred idiots willing to give you money as you attempt to merge your fantasy bullshit with reality. The key to faking it is simply to make bold assertions, and not to be afraid of the ludicrous. Take Dr. Richard Kent. He believes in Kent Hovind’s insane literal interpretation of Genesis, complete with 6 day creation. He also subscribes to Hovind’s special contribution to idiocy: a floating water canopy, a physics defying explanation for where all the water from the great flood came from.

With all that light having a hard time penetrating this floating liquid ocean (space must have been warmer back then), it also caused the atmosphere to have a lot more oxygen. Once the canopy disappeared, according to this moron, the dinosaurs were breathing so rapidly that they began to expel fire out of their nostrils due to friction. Tada! Isn’t it fun just making shit up?

We’re the ones with magical thinking?

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When trying to defend your religion, you’ve to pick your battles. In today’s modern world, defending the Bible is a full time job. If you aren’t busy arguing that the supposed genocide of the Canaanites or Hittites was justified because a bearded sky-deity told the Jews to do it, you’re hopelessly defending things like homophobia and slavery. What else can you expect from a series of books written thousands of years ago by ignorant herdsmen?

Take Mark Shea. He’s a new writer for the National Catholic Register, and if this article of his entitled New Atheist Magical Thinking is any indication, we’re bound to get more hilarious gems out of this clown. He’s trying to argue that the recent tactic of American Atheist to quote immoral Bible verses is leading us inextricably towards ‘magical thinking’. Here he is answering a letter from a fellow Christian upset that he can’t find a biblical passage declaring slavery to be evil. His response is worth a laugh.

I think that atheists like your friend really need to break free of fundamentalist magical thinking and learn to read books written by and for grownups.

Yeah, you silly atheists! Your books are full of unbelievable magic, like a talking snake or donkey, or bits of food that fall down from heaven to feed hungry Jews. Oh wait, that’s not our books…

People who read the Bible looking for more than Selected Ammunition Verses, would realize that contained within the New Testament is, ultimately, the only thing that succeeded in finally extirpating slavery: namely, the insistence that man is made in the image and likeness of God and that Christ loves the slave as much as the master…Of course, the New Atheists are stone blind to this in their deep ignorance and arrogance and so fail to realize that the first result of extirpating Christianity is the return of slavery

Never mind the fact the Southern Baptist Church fought tooth and nail to keep segregation for as long as it could (arguing that forcing civil rights on them violated their religious freedom…sound familiar?): if you eliminate Christianity, according to this moron, people will be enslaved again. Never mind the fact the Bible specifically condones slavery, and was one of the main tools used by preachers to fight abolition. Like every Christian before him, Mark has chosen to interpret his religion to match his pre-existing belief structure. Facts or history are irrelevant to him, so long as they contradict his specially formed Christianity.

As for the accusation that atheists engage in ‘magical thinking’, how can you convince someone who believes without question that his imaginary friend is real he’s the one living in a delusion? All we can do is shake our heads, impolitely tell these idiots they are wrong, and remind them that accusing us of ‘arrogance’ is not really an insult. We understand reality better than they do, and that merits a little pride, don’t you think?

Cancer is a fungus, says David Icke

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If you’ve never heard of David Icke, then consider yourself fortunate. The man has been giving me migraines for years. While I would like to describe David as a conspiracy theorist, it would be more appropriate to call him THE Conspiracy Theorist. He’s written 18 books, most of which focus on the idea that a Global Elite of (basically) Jewish lizard-men are behind everything that’s ever gone wrong with humanity, from religious division to global wars. Like all CT’ers, David relies on pseudo-history. In the early drafts of his book And the Truth Shall Set you Free, his extensive writings of the great hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion and his denials of the Holocaust prompted his publishers to drop him.

When he isn’t busy arguing that the moon is actually a space-craft that beams a false reality to us (think a combination They Live and The Matrix), he’s taking on ‘Big Pharma’, and their effort to suppress the evidence that cancer is actually caused by a fungus, and not the runaway mutation of cells:

Big Pharma has no desire to cure cancer when it is making vast fortunes from treating the symptoms with devastating drugs and cell-killing, people-killing poisons like chemotherapy. But it is not primarily even about money. The bloodline families want people to suffer and die earlier than necessary as a way of culling the population.

This is why when anyone outside the Big Pharma cabal discovers an effective way of treating cancer they are immediately targeted by the medical establishment and government agencies.

The fungus he’s referring to is Candidia, lives in the body and is mostly harmless or (in some cases) helpful. Like all inter-species relationships, things can sometimes get complicated, and Candidia can cause yeast infections or even death for people with compromised immune systems. Icke claims all cancer is in fact caused by this fungus alone, and a treatment of baking soda alone would cost almost nothing and cure this deadly disease. This idea was ‘pioneered’ by an Italian scammer named Tullio Simoncini, who has already sent people to early graves peddling this nonsense.

I wonder how many minds David Icke has poisoned with his insanity? Perhaps in his deluded mind he sees himself as the good guy, but when you peddle this kind of dangerous nonsense for a living, there are terrible consequences for those too foolish to see through the lies.

Church stages kidnapping, facing charges

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When your main weapon in the war of ideas is fairy-tale nonsense, I can see how some religionists might feel a little intimidated with reality. Unlike those ‘heady’ days in the past when any old idea passed muster so long as a man of the cloth gave it a thumbs up (like the 17th century edict that declared the beaver a fish), our modern understanding of the natural world has only served to further marginalize faith. As church attendance continues to fall throughout the Western World (32% of us are faithless, according to this recent Gallop poll), desperation is beginning to set in. How else can you explain this story: a Church in Pennsylvania, called ‘Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church’, is facing charges after members staged an elaborate kidnapping hoax in an effort to ‘inform’ kids of the dangers of ‘religious persecution’.

Adults, including an off-duty cop, brandished weapons and put bags over the heads of the children, ages 13 through 18, and forced them into a church van. The group was driven to the home of an assistant pastor, who was presented before the group with a seemingly bloodied and bruised face, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo.

One of the adults used a real AK-47, though the gun was unloaded, Chardo said.

One of the teens, who can’t be identified, seems to be genuinely messed up from the experience (that’s religion for you). If you’re wondering exactly what these morons hoped to accomplish by brandishing weapons and threatening physical harm to children, the explanation from the pastor Pastor John Lanza won’t do much to enlighten you. He tries to justify it by claiming this staged kidnapping would…

secure the shock value of it and to make it much more real because those who are threatened don’t have a warning. It was a youth event to illustrate what others have encountered on a regular basis.”

Well, considering that holding a minor without their consent is a crime punishable by 10 years in jail, perhaps these adults should be given a taste of things to come by staging an elaborate ‘prison’ scenario so they can benefit from illustrating what they can expect on a regular basis in the big house.

No purity tests needed for Reason Rally

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With only a few days until the big event, there’s a few people fuming about some of the guest speakers coming to the Reason Rally. PZ Myers is upset that Bill Maher will be there because of some of his anti-vaccination statements in the past. Also in attendance is Senator Tom Harkin, a Catholic and a believer in alternative medicine, who plans to address the crowd. Myers is convinced that the very name of the Rally should discourage any person who holds some kind of foolish belief from speaking.

Problem is, if we did that, it might discount most of the crowd. In fact, it might mean that no human could ever hope to meet the criteria of being truly rational, and everyone should probably just stay home. Why? Because humans suck at being rational.

We aren’t a rational species to begin with. Decisions we make tend to be driven by emotion, and if our higher brain (our flaunted prefrontal cortex) does have something to say about it, it tends to only service our emotions by crafting elaborate rationalizations. (You can read all about this in the book: “The Upside of Irrationality“) This explains why extremely intelligent people can believe in utter nonsense: clever minds can rationalize well enough to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. The rest is easy; since we all have a natural bias towards any opposing views (who wants to spend all that effort changing your mind?), they will never be exposed to the flaws in their thinking.

Problem is, it would be hard to find someone who didn’t at least share some of those tendencies. I’m not sure everything I believe in is squeaky clean of the subtle manipulation of a mind which craves certainty and clarity. Are all my assumptions true (at least more conducive to reality, given our current understanding)? In Michael Shermer’s new book “The Believing Brain“, he explains how our awareness of our own biases often makes us overestimate our capacity to look beyond them. In other words, even when we think we have a handle on our irrationality, it tends to only make it worse. Is that what I do as well?

It’s all the objections to this I find irrational. The Reason Rally is a bit of an oxymoron to begin with: swept up by the emotion of the crowd, how can anyone hope to act rationally? The whole purpose of this meeting is a “prep” rally to encourage people to think for themselves, to question their own cherished assumptions, and to hold no truth as sacred. Are we now making purity tests for what constitutes a rational mind? There’s something I profoundly dislike about that idea, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.

The Genesis Code looks awful

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Movie premise: a Christian girl finds her faith and her budding career as a scientist conflicting. A young hockey player, who has lost his belief in non-sense, will find his way back to magic when a group of students discover that The Bible doesn’t conflict with science (even though it fucking obviously does). Liberal academics attempt to erode their faith, but luckily God wins and an old woman is disallowed from having her brain-dead body terminated. So much drama!

I love the whole premise of the movie: What if both science and faith were true? Well, then we would live in an extremely confusing world that would make no sense, of course! Miracles would regularly challenge the known laws of nature, making any attempt to measure them effectively useless. It would also mean that our ancestors were the result of multiple instances of inbreeding, a sure fire way for any species to book a ticket to Extinction-Ville. It would also mean that diseases were the result of evil spirits and not germs, that witchcraft is real (remember, even Moses’ brother Aaron did some magic), and that the sky is a giant ocean (remember how God parted the waters?). Yeah, not so much.

Here’s a great article debunking this crappy movie and any pathetic claims they make. Worth the read!

Creationist files lawsuit after being laid off from NASA

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For those of us not blinded by faith, Intelligent Design is nothing more that the “intellectual” leftovers of creationism. While its proponents will argue that there is no specific mention of God, once you read ID literature and listen to its defenders, a clear pattern emerges: ID is simply creationism that’s been dressed up for the prom.

Part of the reason ID’ers fight so hard against this creationist label is pragmatic: their goal is to undermine scientific education, but since being overtly religious has a tendency to get your materials excluded from public education, they’ve taken the approach of claiming to be an alternative theory to Evolution. Under the guise of intellectual freedom, they maintain that evolution is only a theory and that their “explanation” (that some super-intelligence started it all) is as valid a theory as any other.

The problem is that Intelligent Design isn’t a theory. It doesn’t offer any model or make any predictions. While it does make claims about the natural world (mainly that life is just too complex to have started on its own), it offers no way of testing them. In fact, their premise that the natural world is too complex or well organized to be the result of undirected processes is the very antithesis of science. It gives up on trying to find a material explanation to any phenomena. If something isn’t well understood, then it must be magic!

Believing in such non-intellectual nonsense can often result in conflict, as former JPL employee David Coppedge recently learned. He was laid off in 2009 and decided to sue the company for religious discrimination. During his time as a team lead, he was often reprimanded by his supervisors for distributing his DVD “Unlocking the Mysteries of Life“, a rather shoddy crapumentary about the “growing consensus among scientists that Darwin was wrong”. His fellow employees also complained that his political views (supporting Prop Eight) and religious proselytizing did not belong in the office.

The Discovery Institute helped him build a case, arguing that his beliefs did not conflict with the general goals of a scientific organization. They even try to argue that Intelligent Design is not creationism:

Intelligent Design and creation science use different methodologies and assumptions and proffer different objectives, Coppedge explained. Creationism starts with the Bible, the book of Genesis, with God having created the heavens and the earth in six days. From there, creation scientists see how science fits in.

Intelligent design, however, begins with observations of the natural world and uses well-known tools of science to draw the inference to the best explanation or phenomenon, he said. It has no religious presuppositions and makes no religious assumptions.

Reliance on the supernatural is, by definition, a religious assumption. Sure, they aren’t specific about what kind of “intelligent agent” was at work, but unless you’re a Raelian, odds are you favor a big, bearded creator in the sky when talking about this kind of “magic”. It’s true that creationism starts and ends with the Bible, and that believers will only believe in any science that confirms their pre-held notions. How is this different than ID? Given the fact that all of the examples ID proponents have used over the years have all been shown to fit our current understanding of Evolution (the bacterial flagellum is a good example), I find it hard to see a distinction here. What conditions would be necessary to disprove Intelligent Design? What “science” infers that a problem is simply too complex to have an answer?

Pope denounces Maryland legalizing gay marriage

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Pope Benedict XVI, a celibate man who controls a vast fortune and an army of delusional homophobes, has criticized Americans for granting all their citizens the same rights in the state of Maryland.

“He added that the traditional family and marriage had to be “defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature” because, he said, whatever injured families injured society.

So many ruined lives because gays are marrying one another! Think of all those poor heterosexuals who have to live knowing that somewhere, out there, a gay person is having gross butt sex with another man. Can’t you understand that families can’t possibly survive this “assault”?

Benedict called on American bishops to continue their “defense of marriage as a natural institution consisting of a specific communion of persons, essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation”.

If you aren’t straight and fucking to produce children, you’re sinning against God! It’s that simple folks. You see, once upon a time, a man named Onan refused to ejaculate in his brother’s widow, and magical sky man killed him instantly for this transgression. Since that day, all sex that isn’t about producing babies makes God angry. Luckily, his sexless avatars are here on earth to ensure that no one is having a good time.

Over the last few years, the Vatican has been busy trying to scoop up any remaining bigots that feel uncomfortable with their own church’s lenient stand on homosexuality. So far, this wedge issue is the Catholic Church’s main focus, and while they’ve made some new friends, their strategy is bound to continue to marginalize this outdated institution. The trend is clear: enlightened societies recognize that same sex attractions are normal. Anyone who wants to continue to preach ignorance and hatred knows where to go…