Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Jesus, the Easter Bunny and other Delusions: Just Say No!

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Skip ahead to minute 10 if you want to avoid the painful introductions that always come with this kind of event. Is there a way to communicate to the intellectual community that we need to sexify our videos a little? Dr. Peter Boghossian’s talk is entertaining and funny, but you would never know that if you hadn’t bothered through the slog at the beginning. Worth watching!

The people who posted this decided against allowing other sites to display their video (which explains why only 12k people have seen it). Hey guys, sharing on the internet is the best way to get views!

If you can’t Stand the Heat…

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Internet fame is not always desirable. Take these two: they just released a little song about how great it is that Rick Santorum despises gay people and abortions (cheerfully dubbed “doing what’s right”), and they received so many “dislikes” (about 10k) that they had to remove that feature entirely. The comments are also moderated, so as to avoid any discontent that isn’t to their liking. How brave!

You can read the whole story here.

Mother gets probation for imprisoning and torturing daugter

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What do you do when your uppity, independent minded 19 year old daughter has the gall to refuse an arranged marriage with a stranger twice her age? Why, you burn her with a hot spoon, that’s what! What better way to preserve your cultural heritage than by torturing your loved ones into submission. Hey, isn’t that what Islam means?

Yusra Farhan won’t be winning any “Mother of the Year” awards, especially considering this isn’t the first time she’s been caught abusing her daughter. In Feb 8th, the whole troop was arrested after they tied the poor girl (who has not been named) to a bed and beat her mercilessly after she was caught talking to a boy. Since this violates their “Iraqi culture”, they decided that the best way to solve the problem was through ritualistic abuse. You know what they say: families that commit felonies together, stay together.

Jesus, Don’t Let Me Die Before I’ve Had Sex

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When’s the last time you saw any boobs in a movie? They used to be everywhere in the 80′s. You could always count on some no-name Hollywood actress with top knockers to walk across the screen and remind your penis that it was still alive. That’s changed recently. While the instances of violence have gone up in movies, nudity and sexuality has declined. America, it seems, is getting more stuck up when it comes to sex, and to find the culprit, you needn’t look very far:

It’s why this documentary, “Jesus, Don’t Let Me Die Before I’ve Had Sex“, sounds so fascinating. Billing itself as an honest, non-judgmental look at Evangelical Christianity, the movie aims to mix interviews and stop motion animation to tell the story of young Americans and their quest to find their own sexuality among the confusing messages of their faith. The movie is currently looking for funding on kickstarter, so if you have a few bucks lying around, I suggest heading over to their page pronto: in a little over a week, their fundraising campaign will come to a close. Please be generous if the project sounds interesting to you.

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Christians use data-mining to rally voters

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Are you starting to feel as though we’re losing this war of ideas? Sure, we keep growing day by day, but when push comes to shove, we can’t hold a candle to our religious counterparts when it comes to getting organized. Take, Bill Dallas for example. After spending half of his 5 year sentence for embezzlement, Bill was “born-again” while in prison. Rather than try and defraud people out of their money through real-estate, Bill has decided instead to get into politics (next logical step, right?) He managed to convince a bunch of rich Silicon Valley executives to fund a company that data-mines the internet looking for unregistered voters with a religious bent. The company, called “United In Purpose“, awards “points” for individuals in their massive database which strongly indicate conservative values. If you’ve ever watched Nascar, gone fishing, or subscribed to any anti-abortion newsletter, odds are you’ve scored high on their system, and you might just get a call.

The company buys lists to build a profile of each citizen, and then assigns points for certain characteristics. You get points if you’re on an anti-abortion list or a traditional marriage list. You get a point if you regularly attend church or home-school your kids. You get points if you like NASCAR or fishing.

So far, UIP claims their database comprises some 180 million adults, and that number continues to grow as UIP keeps buying up mailing lists from anyone willing to sell information. They then compare anyone with high scores on their close-minded scale and then attempt to get these people to register to vote, sometimes even showing up at their door.

Can you even imagine something of that scope happening on our side? How are we supposed to compete with companies who get set up specifically to find morons and get them to vote ultra-conservative on everything? How can we hope to win this war if we’re still acting like a bunch of unherdable cats? Fuck me these guys are organized…

Miley Ray Cyrus angers fans over “atheist” tweet

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I’ve been trying very hard to not like Miley Cyrus, but it’s starting to look like this may be impossible. Maybe it’s the fact that she keeps smoking pot even when the LA times gets all preachy about it. To top it all off, she recently re-tweeted an atheist meme on her twitter courtesy of Laurence Krauss:

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

Now, while the important message is actually the fact that we are made of stars, her Christian fans were quick to jump on the “forget Jesus” line in there. She’s been getting tons of negative comments from these douchebags. These assholes even managed to “flag” the image as inappropriate in an effort to suppress it (hey, it’s their M.O. after all), so if you’re trying to view the image she tweeted, you won’t be able to (although can head on over to Friendly Atheist if you’re that curious). Did you expect anything different from these people? That’s what happens when a significant portion of your fanbase believes in fairy-tale nonsense: as soon as you call them on it, they lose their fucking minds.

Nintendo rejects game due to “questionable religious content”

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According to the game’s developer, Edmund McMillen, Nintendo has rejected his game, “The binding of Isaac”, due to what they called “questionable religious content”. Luckily, this awesome little game (which I would honestly buy if I wasn’t such a broke-ass) is available on Steam for you PC lovers. I’m curious about the story behind the making of this game, and I’ve asked the developers if they would be interested in an interview. For those of you interested in playing the demo, simply click here.

Judge dismisses sectarian assault on Atheist, blames him instead

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Imagine you get physically assaulted for speaking your mind, and when it was time for your attacker to face justice, he’s sent merrily on his way by a Judge who shares his specific religious convictions. Would you not regard this as a gross miscarriage of justice?

Well, that’s exactly what happened to fellow non-believer Ernest Perce, who was assaulted last October during a parade. Representing the Pennsylvania Non-Believers, Perce donned a zombie Mohammed costume intent on making a statement about Islam. Talaag Elbayomy (a recent immigrant to the US) saw Perce and immediately began attacking him, convinced that this blasphemy was actually a crime. The incident was caught on tape, and the police officer at the scene reported that Elbayomy had indeed admitted to the assaults. Perce pressed charges, and what should have been an open and shut case instead turned into a farce when the judge threw the case out. District Judge Mark Martin, a Lutheran, refused to allow the video as evidence. He even had the audacity of lecturing the plaintiff on what constitutes an appropriate use of his First Amendment Rights:

Here in our society, we have a constitution that gives us many rights, specifically, First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers really intended. I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did.

I’m sure the Founding Fathers, a bunch of rebellious intellectuals who decided to overthrow their government to form their own, didn’t intend for people to be offended by free speech. The only form of effective revolution is to politely keep your opinions to yourself, right?

Some of the more dramatic headlines suggested that the Martin had used “Sharia Law” to reach a verdict. I wouldn’t go that far, although I am glad that other serious professionals are calling out this moron for showing a complete lack of understanding of basic principles of free speech. I think this clown allowed his religion to cloud his already shitty judgement, and I believe that despite a miscarriage of justice, we’ve at least succeeded in showcasing how disturbing it is when sectarianism creeps its way into the courts. Thanks for taking one for the team, Ernest!

NOTE: The judge is in fact a Lutheran. The statement he made in court saying “I am a Muslim” was not meant to be taken literally. Thanks Alex for pointing that out.

Creationist Alert!

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It’s only been a few days since it’s been up, but already the forums* are lighting up like the fourth of July. One topic that immediately caught my eye came courtesy of user DexM felt too important not to promote:

The Christian club at my high school has invited creationist Bill Morgan from http://www.fishdontwalk.com/ to speak at one of their meetings. Needless to say I’m organizing a rapid response team to kick his ass with words – including trying to get one of my school’s biology teachers in on the action – but I really have no idea on how to go about doing it. There’s no shortage of atheists and skeptics on campus but getting them organized well enough to go toe-to-toe with a seasoned creationist debater is pretty dangerous. Any thoughts or advice?

Taking on a creationist, eh? I like your moxie, kid. Just understand that debating creationists can be a tricky business. Many intelligent individuals have been caught totally off guard in these kinds of debates, and looked foolish as a result. Academics are often unprepared for the kinds of tactics creationists employ to try and win arguments. One of these include what I like to call “The Seed of Doubt”. This strategy usually involves undermining some scientific theory they poorly understand. By focusing on some tiny minutia of a theory that isn’t very well understood, they try to convince the audience that “science doesn’t really know what it’s talking about”. Rather than attempt to construct an argument based on evidence of their own, creationists instead try to exploit uncertainty, masquerading their obvious disdain for scientific discovery as skepticism. And because science invites this process on itself, we must be honest when admitting that there are many unknowns and a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to human knowledge. These are not concepts a religiously minded person like Bill Morgan is willing to accept.

A a quick glance at Bill’s website, hilariously named “Fish don’t Walk” (a quick youtube search easily destroys that false statement) reveals that the guy doesn’t seem to have any real clue as to how evolution actually works. Here he is explaining the supposed difficulty of sexual reproduction in nature:

if the theory of evolution is true, the male and female would have to evolve their reproductive systems at the same TIME. Imagine the female is fully evolved, but the male is not. Does she start hen pecking him by telling him “hurry up and evolve, we are going to be dead in a few years?”…Creationists believe in “instant chickens.” Creationists believe a Creator with a lot of power and intelligence instantly made males and females at the same time, and put them at the same place.

As you can see, he’s got a rather weak grasp on the sexual theory. He’s apparently completely unaware that sex is a relatively recent “invention” in the history of life. So his “bombshells” are really just indicative of poor education on his part, most likely the result of his religious upbringing (surprised?). Remember, Bill’s “dude with a lot of power and smarts” explains everything he doesn’t understand, and that seems to encompass quite a bit.

My prediction is that if he’s shown his ignorance on the matter, he will turn to the remaining scientific mysteries that we haven’t yet solved as a final means of sowing doubt in scientific theories. I wouldn’t attempt to try and explain these. I would merely point out that he’s creating a false dichotomy; he’s attempting to reason that because we don’t know the answer to A, B must be true.

Time is not a scientific explanation, it is blind faith. I call it “the magic wand of time” When I ask an Evolutionist “how did birds evolve from reptiles?” I imagine them waving a magic wand as they say “It took millions of years!”
Believe whatever you want to on Creation vs. Evolution, but base your belief on observation (Science) not blind faith (time).

Translation: I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, so God did it

Finally I would end by trying to make it clear what degree of acceptance in any given theory is acceptable. It should be contingent on how much evidence each one relies on. The more lines of evidence which converge, the more likely it is to be true. Genetics, geology, paleontology and a host of other sciences are all consistent with Evolution. The important thing for people to remember is that science is a set of tools we use to decode the laws of nature. It allows us to construct models to help explain how objective reality behaves. Creationism is merely poor rhetoric meant to substantiate baseless supernatural claims. It has no predictive powers, and any statements it does make about nature contradict all the observations we’ve already made. If this clown is trying to argue that he’s only trying to “make people decide for themselves” what is true and what isn’t, then I would instruct him to continue to educate himself: he’s obviously not done.

(Update: The forums no longer exist)

Gingrich tells evangelicals “we need to defend ourselves”

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In a continued effort to try and still be relevant, Newt Gingrich recently spoke to a modestly sized crowd in Cumming, Georgia assuring them of his (false) piety, and warning his dwindling support base that it was time for evangelicals to “defend themselves”:

“The other side will fight back and they will fight back on two fronts. You will have radical Islamists who want to kill us and you will have secularists who want to coerce us, and that’s why, for example, recently you saw the Obama administration trying to coerce the Catholic Church because it is the inevitable nature of the left to use government to impose on us their values,” said Gingrich.

Imposing values is uniquely left, you say? I suppose if we ignore governmental legislation trying to ban abortion, draconian anti-immigration laws that treat Hispanics as second class citizens, or the myriad of ways that religious douchebags use the government to impose their own values, then yes, you could claim that with a straight face.

As for this paranoid assumption that secularists “coerce” people, what he really means is that we’ll effectively change people’s minds and make them abandon their foolhardy beliefs. I do love, however, how we’re on the opposite spectrum of Islamic fundamentalism. I take that with a badge of pride.

A lesson we can learn from David Albo

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Ladies, I know how frustrated, angry and terrified you are about the current “War on Contraception” that the Right is currently engaged in. You have every right to be, especially when it’s being framed not as a reproductive rights issue, but rather as a “religious freedom” issue.

The solution comes from an unlikely source: Virginia Rep. David Albo. In the above video, this moron describes his failure to bang his wife after watching the Rachel Maddow Show, which focused mainly on the very bill he had been debating the day before. Despite his best efforts to seduce her with wine and some soft music (what is this, an 80′s movie?), she refused him entry. Unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Albo has provided the perfect solution to this crisis: it’s time to get frigid, ladies.

This isn’t the first time the idea was suggested. In the Greek play Lysistrata, women use this tactic to stop their husbands from continuing to fight in the Peloponnesian War. Tired of not having any say in political matters, they decide to exercise the only power they do have over men: sex.

Now before you accuse me of being silly, I’d like to point out that sexual selection is one of the driving forces of evolution, and in most species, it’s the female that exerts this pressure. The reason for this is because of something called “Bateman’s Principle“. It basically states that the organism that has to expend the most resources will typically get to call the shots. Do you hear that ladies? Despite the fact that you’re the ones in our culture who does most of the “displaying” (i.e., doing more than simply wearing jogging pants all the time), you’re still the ones with the ability to determine who gets to pass on their genes, and who doesn’t.

On the big scale, this can have profound consequences. For some species, it means investing tremendous energy in totally arbitrary and sometimes deadly displays of physical health and prowess (why is the peacock’s feathers blue? Because the ladies like it that way). Our species needs a different focus now: we need humans to be more compassionate, understanding, kind, and thoughtful, all qualities that can breed true if women select the right mates.

In the short term, I think this tactic can be employed to silence men who use their power and influence to limit the rights of other human beings who don’t share their dangly parts. It has already worked to some degree; Republican lawmakers have announced plans to remove extremely controversial portions of their anti-women anti-abortion Bill.

Muslims in Afghanistan going nuts over Koran Burning

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Remember last year when 24 people died because a US pastor made a public display of burning the Koran? Despite President Obama begging the guy not to do it, Pastor Terry Jones held a mock trial for the book, found it guilty of 3 crimes against humanity and set it on fire. Huge protests erupted in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and like every crazy protest in these countries, a bunch of people got killed.

So despite everyone on Earth knowing how insane Muslims are regarding their fucking book, a bunch of NATO soldiers were discovered burning a few copies themselves. Admittedly, there was no malice in the burning; just the regular disposal of garbage. Of course, nothing done over there is ever simple, and when the locals discovered the fact that their shitty little book was getting cooked, they collectively lost it. Religious fundies were quick to stoke the flames, and the protest has spilled over to Pakistan (always looking for an excuse to burn American effigies, I suppose). So far, 2 foreign advisers have been killed (both by a armed Afghan police officer) and a number of protesters who tried to bomb a UN compound.

President Obama publicly apologized for what happened, but I have to wonder when we’ll stop feeding their insanity. The Koran is just a book; and like all religious tomes, it’s nothing but a collection of falsehoods and pointless platitudes. The fact that we continue to condemn any destruction of this book furthers their assumption that the Muslim faith is superior. Why else would the most powerful man on earth apologize for a few having been singed?

Richard Dawkins / Archbishop of Canterbury debate

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It still amazes me the way we let experts on nonsense babble on about their specific deity and its role in the natural world. What does super-magical-man-you-can’t-disprove have to do with evolution? The moderator made the mistake of claiming both Dawkins and the Archbishop knew for certain what the truth of the Universe was. Dawkins ended up admitting the limitations of his own understanding (and the obvious inability to disprove a negative), and yet this same humility in the face of the unknown is never displayed by our religious counterparts. How can the Archbishop be certain that his specific brand of fairy-tale bullshit is the right one? He just decided it was true, and the rest was easy.

The annoying thing in all of this is the fact that mouth-breathers couldn’t wait to point out the fact that Dawkins had to concede that he couldn’t fully be sure of the existence of God. It’s our honesty that gets the better of us when it comes to that question, because the truth is, this uncertainty is extremely overstated. Remember, religious people rely on absolute certainty to tell them about the world they live in. In their minds, doubt is a golden opportunity to convert someone. Religious folks just can’t understand the fact that atheists naturally accept the incomplete picture of nature we do have, specifically because that uncertainty has scientific value. How can progress ever be made if people think all of the answers to the questions of the Universe were answered a few centuries ago by illiterate animal herders?

Because Religious Dictators are so much better…

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“Our Freedom comes from God”

I’ve heard this argument before. Apparently when you’re living in a delusional bubble, only an all powerful entity can grant people the freedom to damn themselves to an eternity of hellfire. Wow, sure sounds like a fair deal.

A place for Atheists to grieve

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Death is hard on those who accept its terminal reality. There’s no magical playland in the sky, there’s no transference or retention of our thought patterns, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that the mind is anything more than the brain. Materialism may not be appealing to the majority of the population, but it’s undeniably the only reality so far to manifest itself. These supernatural fairy-tales we’ve constructed during the infancy of our species – a time when the tools for understanding the world had not yet been invented – should be treated with contempt, and yet we languish in ignorance in favor of comforting thoughts.

One of the hardest transitions into atheism is the acceptance that death is final, and this can be a powerful blow for those still partially wrapped up in the bubble of religious delusion. In many cases, dealing with the non-reality of Heaven (or some analogue) is like losing your deceased loved ones all over again. I can only imagine my reaction if this was compounded by trite, childish words meant for comfort. How can we convey the sorrow of reality to someone still living (quite literally) in a fantasy land?

Were it not for the fact that we occupy the same physical space, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Luckily, the Internet is exactly the kind of place where you don’t have to. There, grieving atheists like Rebecca Hensler have a place where they can express their sorrow. After her 3 month old child Jude died in 2009, Rebecca created a Facebook group called “Grief Beyond Belief“, a place where atheists can share their grief in an environment not populated by delusional idiots sharing their thoughtless platitudes. The story of this has since been picked up by the mainstream media and so far, there are a few trolls on both sides (a non-believer attempting to debate about some finer point of atheism, and a few Christian douchebags spewing hateful shit), so I strongly urge you to participate in shaming these morons. Also, there’s something beautifully melancholic of reading the stories of lost loved ones. Makes you appreciate what you do have, doesn’t it?