Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Billy Ray Cyrus is afraid of atheists

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I don’t expect celebrities to be beacons of rational and coherent thought, especially when their claim to fame is a terrible song and an equally terrible TV show. Billy Ray Cyrus was recently interviewed by GQ, and he claims Hollywood has destroyed his perfect family life. He believes the root of all of this evil has something to do with a freeway sign they would pass by on their way to the Hannah Montana studio that said:

ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY
ATHEISTS UNITED

Just before moving out to Los Angeles, the whole family had been baptized together by their pastor at the People’s Church in Franklin, Tennessee. “It was Tish’s idea,” he remembers. “She said, ‘We’re going to be under attack, and we have to be strong in our faith and we’re all going to be baptized…” And there, driving to work each day in the City of Angels, was this sign. “A physical sign. It could have easily said ‘You will now be attacked by Satan.’ ‘Entering this industry, you are now on the highway to darkness…”

Yes, the evil influence of Satan has finally compelled atheists around the world to pick up trash and to keep their highways clean! Mighty is the Dark Lord!

I’m going to go out on a limb here, but perhaps the reason his life sucks right now has more to do with the fact he cheated on his wife while she was pregnant, and he pimped out his daughter to the Disney corporation. Of course, that would require him to admit his own mistakes, so it’s easier to blame a bunch of trash picking atheists for all your fucking problems.

Anti-Gay State Rep used Craigslist to find male prostitute

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I’m beginning to think there are more closeted gay Republicans than there are open Democrat ones, since it seems as though every other day some anti-gay rights crusader gets caught trying to have sex with someone of the same gender. Today’s totally disgraced hypocrite is Indiana State Rep. Phillip Hinkle, who was caught trying to hire a male prostitute on Craigslist.

I say try, since the entire ordeal was just weird, uncomfortable for everyone, and fraught with crazy drama:

The young man told The Star that they met, but that he tried to leave after the man told him he was a state lawmaker. He said the lawmaker at first told him he could not leave, grabbed him in the rear, exposed himself to the young man and then later gave him an iPad, BlackBerry cellphone and $100 cash to keep quiet.

Ok, first lesson is free Phil: if you’ve got a high profile job, don’t cheap out last minute trying to buy someone’s silence. Also, it’s generally a bad idea to give them your fucking cellphone with all your contact information, genius.

Megan Gibson [the sister of the young man] said that on the drive back, she began receiving a series of calls on the BlackBerry, including one from a woman who said she was Hinkle’s wife. “I was like, ‘Your husband is gay,’ ” Megan said.

The wife eventually tried to buy her off for 10 grand (at least someone was thinking straight), but by then the cat was already WAY out of the bag.

So what’s left for this guy? I’d love to believe that perhaps Phil will take this opportunity to embrace his love of cocks and balls and quit living a lie, but by now I think we’re already painfully familiar with how these things turn out: denial followed by admitting to a “moment of weakness” culminating into some kind of “pray the gay away” retreat. Meanwhile, the fact that this hypocrite piece of shit co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to prevent gays from marrying gets conveniently forgotten. Fantastic.

Evangelicals starting to question Adam and Eve

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About 40% of adults in America believe that Adam and Eve existed. This means that almost half of your population is functionally retarded. And you wonder why your economy is tanking…

In an effort not to ignore scientific truth forever, some evangelicals are starting to question the existence of Adam and Eve in order to finally catch up to the rest of us who have embraced the methodology of science. They naively believe -as Francis Collins does- that science and faith are compatible. I’m sure it appears to them this way, but only so long as their cognitive dissonance is in full swing. The twisted logic at work trying to rectify religious believe and the evidence of our evolution is astounding. It’s a step in the right direction, perhaps:

[Brian] Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says it’s time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.

Yeah, if you do that, you have a major problem: without the fall, Jesus’ sacrifice is pointless (well, it was always pointless, but now more so). Original sin is of paramount importance to the faith. Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of these people starting to accept that our species evolved from other primates. The problem is that they’ve simply refused to accept the conclusion of evolution. Of course, most evangelicals realize that abandoning this dogma would have serious repercussions to their belief:

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, says that rebellious choice infected all of humankind.

“When Adam sinned, he sinned for us,” Mohler says. “And it’s that very sinfulness that sets up our understanding of our need for a savior.”

Humanity “infected” by sin? That’s the Christianity we know and despise. As far as Jesus-lovers are concerned, humanity is a filthy pile of sin that’s barely worthy of God’s love. Only those slavish enough in their devotion to ignore reality can enter super-magic-fun-playland-in-the-clouds when they die. The rest, those unbelievers, will be tortured forever in a lake of fire for denying the divinity of someone who, if they existed today, would be put in a sanatorium. Christianity isn’t really a “people first” doctrine. As far as they are concerned, we’re all pieces of shit that disobeyed God at one time or another and have been punished ever since.

Let me put this another way: if Adam and Eve didn’t exist, then according to a bunch of very sexist Bible-belt assholes, there would be no justification for men ruling over the lives of women. That means that ladies would be able to control not only their own lives, but their reproductive cycles as well. Do you have any idea how terrifying that prospect is for an old white guy?

TV Channel cleared of blasphemy charges

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If you’re like me, you might be wondering what it takes to get arrested on blasphemy charges in the UK (I have a vested interest in this question, after all). Well, not a hell of a lot as it turns out. Last November, Rowan Atkinson (of Mr. Bean fame) did a fairly innocuous sketch on ITV for the Prince of Wales’ 60th Birthday. His act involved dressing as a vicar and making a few milk-toast jokes about Jesus (including one where after turning water into wine, he’s asked if he does kid’s parties).

As a result, the station received over 500 complaints from humorless Christians wishing to use Britain’s pussy blasphemy laws to silence any mockery of their ludicrous beliefs, and because it’s now illegal to “entice religious hatred”, overly sensitive religious rubes can now use the long arm of the law to silence any criticism of their belief. Luckily, he’s been recently cleared of all charges.

This isn’t the first time Rowan has been fighting against this ridiculousness. In 2004, Rowan was battling the Serious Organized Crime and Police Bill that included measures against “inciting religious hatred”:

But Mr. Atkinson and his fellow critics oppose part of the bill which will create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred to protect faith groups, particularly Muslims, from attack.

Mr. Atkinson told a meeting at the House of Commons on Monday night there are “quite a few sketches” he has performed which would come into conflict with the proposed law.

No Shit.

The blasphemy elements were expunged from the bill, but later became “The Racial and Religious Hatred Act” passed in 2006. While the drafters claimed it would only be used to stop people from stirring up religious hatred, it’s instead being used to censor guys like Atkinson who “upset” overly sensitive Christians who can’t bother to defend their beliefs themselves.

Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said: “It is about protecting the believer, not the belief.”

Protect them from what? Reality? Can we stop making it a crime to speak your fucking mind already?

1 in 6 Clergymen non-believers in Netherlands

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Times are desperate for Christians in the Netherlands. One in every 6 clergymen is either an atheist or an agnostic, so in an effort not to lose his job, the Rev. Klaas Hendrikse has invented a special form of Christianity that:

a. Doesn’t believe Jesus existed historically [the Gnostics beat him to it though]
b. Doesn’t believe in the afterlife [ditto the Jews]
c. Doesn’t believe a God exists at all [that one’s new]

It’s kind of like serving Kool-Aid without any of the flavoring, and then claiming that while the liquid you’re drinking certainly isn’t Kool-Aid, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from our property destroying friend, Oh Yeah! Of course, the difference here is that the Kool-Aid Man (who now wears pants, btw) only condones slavery to flavor, not human beings. He is also, judging by his new digs (purple shoes, Hawaiian shirt) clearly OK with man-on-man love.

Obviously, there are a number of annoying “traditionalists” trying to ruin his good time by claiming everything that defines Christianity gets thrown out the window in his “non-version”. I’m inclined to agree with them. We’ve all heard the trope that “Jesus was a good moral teacher”, but aside from telling folks a few nice things others had figured out a long fucking time ago, the rest of his teachings are either insane or terrifying. Consider the threat of hell for disbelieving his nutty claim. How would you react to any moral tutor who placed such restrictions on doubt?

Our morality has evolved since the Bronze Age, and yet Christianity continues to try and argue “they had it right all along”. For that to be true, you would need to erase roughly 20 centuries of murder, abuse and genocide committed in the name of some various offshoots of the doctrine (there are over 30,000 of them). Even if you did that, you’d notice a suspicious lack of evidence unbelievers are morally depraved individuals. In fact, on average it seems though atheists actually commit fewer crimes than Christians. So what the fuck is the point in carrying all the loaded garbage of religion if you think its claims are bogus anyways? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that guys like Klaas have spent their entire lives preaching nonsense, and have no marketable skills in the real world. They can either quit and get a real fucking job, or keep pretending that the life of a dead Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago was an event of such importance that people should give their hard-earned money to a bunch of old dudes in dresses that talk to an imaginary being.

Seriously, in that position I’d probably choose the latter. Does that make me a scumbag?

Gay marriage: a sign of End times

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Oh crazy bigoted religious people…I’m not sure they know what they want, sometimes. Take this clown, Pastor Scott Lively. Last year he came under fire for publishing a book called “The Pink Swastika“, where he claimed Nazi Germany was being run by homofascists (his word). He was laying low for a little while, but now he’s back to blaming gays for everything. This time, he believes they will bring about the end of civilization and what he hopes will be the Second Coming.

We are probably all familiar with the oft-cited fact that the collapse of numerous civilizations prior to our own were heralded by a rise in sexual immorality, especially homosexuality. That alone should alert us to the grave situation we find ourselves in today. But there is a deeper spiritual significance beneath that statistic. God has chosen rampant homosexuality to be a key warning sign for judgment of the world as a whole, and not just of individual nations.

Yeah, I remember reading all about how ancient Sumer was destroyed by sexual impropriety, and everyone knows that the Aztecs were obliterated not by not the Spanish, but rather from all the butt-fucking they were doing on the side. History is a lot more interesting when you get to make shit up, isn’t it?

Genesis is the book of beginnings which sets the tone and lays the foundation for all of our theology. It is there in the first chapter that God establishes the “one flesh” standard for human sexuality which is lifetime, monogamous heterosexual marriage.

We must have been reading a very different version of Genesis, since in the one I read, Eve has to bang her own sons in order to propagate the species. I would hardly call that monogamy! Does he forget that his own religious forefathers like Jacob and Isaac had a plurality of wives?

Homosexuality is not mentioned specifically as an aspect of the pre-flood corruption, but we can assume that a society of men and women whose thoughts “were only evil continuously” (6:5) were involved in every form of sexual perversion.

To be fair, the main reason God thought his creation had become an abomination was because they were fucking his angels and creating a race of super-giants. There’s no mention of all the crazy hot sexual shenanigans they were up to, though. Hey, if my creation was getting all mixed up like that, I might be tempted to nuke that shit and start from scratch.

I have made this point before, but it bears repeating. I am 53 years old. When I was born homosexuality was illegal throughout the entire world. In the space of just half a century this tiny 1-3% of the population have made themselves a global political power with greater influence in the courtrooms and legislatures of the world than the Church of Jesus Christ. This astonishing transformation surpasses that of Darwinism, Marxism, and even Islam in its speed and breadth of reach. To my thinking, this can only have been accomplished by the god of this world (Satan 2 Cor 4:4) who knows his time is short and is making his move.

Yeah, men and women were being jailed for the “crime” of banging people they were attracted to. Eventually, to the great dismay of bigots like Scott Lively, we had to stop incarcerating our own citizens for their sexual preference. Rather than believe that society has progressed, this moron is convinced that only Satan could have expediated the gay rights movement.

I don’t get these guys. Don’t they want the “End Times” to begin soon? Isn’t this good news? Remember how jubilant Harold Camping and his army of dumbass followers were when they though that Jesus was going to rain down fire and brimstone? They were positively BEAMING with excitement at the thought of 99.9% of all humanity being slaughtered by a dude with a sword in his mouth. You’d think that anything that actually speeds up the process would be welcomed. But no, these douchebags are never going to be happy unless we all fuck each other the way they want us to, and with an extremely limited amount of partners.

Catholic priest in charge of sex scandal caught with kiddy porn

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It’s beginning to look like any effort to “clean up” the Catholic church of pedophiles is an impossible task. Consider this: Pope Benedict XVI’s right hand man in charge of helping him track down pedo priests, Father Riccardo Seppia, was arrested last May when he was caught trying to arrange sexual encounters with his drug dealer. Now, it seems as though another priest in charge of investigating pederasts has been arrested of actually being one. Married Jarvis [Not a name but a title for some reason] was recently commissioned by the Diocese of Plymouth, England to ensure that pedophiles would not have access to children. He’s been fired from his job after police found over 4000 sexually explicit pictures of minors. Way to clean house, guys.

It’s become almost normal for this kind of thing to happen. We should be utterly shocked and dismayed at the carelessness displayed by the Catholic Church. It’s the equivalent of putting Ted Bundy on a FBI serial killer task force and being surprised when all the women on your team keep disappearing.

Why should we trust this institution to do the right thing? It’s been covering up sexual scandals for the past 20 centuries, and I doubt they’ll stop anytime soon. If you want them to stop fucking little children, we’re going to have to convince a billion of their followers to stop giving them billions of dollars every year. We’d also need to take the huge sums of money they have in the bank and give it to the countless kids who have been scarred for life by these bastards. Sure, it won’t give them their life back, but I think a life of material comfort courtesy of the very institution that covered that shit up sounds like a bit of justice to me.

Check out this cool video below exposing how long the church has known about sexual abuse in its own organization. Educational, to say the least.

Australia and Sharia

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Sharia: providing a framework for the subjugation of women for over a thousand years, and with the help of misogynistic clerics, perhaps a thousand more! Hey Australia, that’s the second time in two days that you make it on my site. Not a good sign…

NOTE: I’ve been informed of the low reliability of this so-called “news” program. I wonder, is it owned by Rupert Murdoch by chance?

Francis Collins thinks atheists improperly use science

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I’ve never understood scientists who are also believers. Sure, you can argue that science is a way of understanding the natural world, and that God (by their own definition, of course) exists outside of these laws. This is the idea that both science and faith can co-exist peacefully. You may have heard of the term NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria), first coined by Stephen J. Gould. It’s the rather incorrect assumption that somehow the two deal with entirely different realities.

Francis Collins is a head of the National Institute of Health, formerly the head of the US Human Genome Program. He’s also an evangelical Christian, convinced that there is no incompatibility between the belief in a Christian God and the Theory of Evolution. He also thinks that “angry atheists” like Steven Pinker are attempting to use the scientific theory to demonstrate its incompatibility with the notion of an all powerful creator God.

“angry atheists are out there using science as a club to to hit believers over the head.” He expressed concern that prominent researchers suggesting that one can’t believe in evolution and believe in God, may be “causing a lot of people not familiar with science to change their assessments of it.”

Yeah, don’t you hate when people “hit you over the head” with reality? How dare we reject the idea of an improvable supernatural entity that leaves no evidence of its existence? Why can’t we all believe and stop ruining their good time?
Hilariously enough, Collins has actually rejected NOMA in the past, arguing that in many cases the two do overlap. And then the man wonders why we bother fighting against his irrational ideas…

Here’s the think about evolution and God: they aren’t compatible. If you agree that evolution is true, then you admit that the process is undirected, the result of chance mutations that give their genetic carriers a greater chance to leave offspring. It’s a process of gradual change influenced by the forces of nature, not the will of a deity. Sad believers like Ken Miller attempt to explain this inconvenient fact with the childish notion that the process was “directed” in some invisible way, but this only serves to show God as an incompetent fool who leads the majority of his creation to extinction.

Evolution explains how we came to be without the need for the added hypothesis of a creator. Any scientists who truly understands evolution and who still believes in God has done so only because the two are compartmentalized. I’m sure Collins can still do good science, but he still believes in two incompatible ideas, and no amount of “comfort” with is beliefs will change reality.

Ethics Classes under fire in Australia

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A few month ago, the government had promised to introduce “Ethic Classes” for students in Aussie schools that refused to take the mandatory religious education lessons. Since that time, the government has been trying to cap wage increases for government employees, and a clever politician by the name of Fred Nile is using this opportunity to pressure the government into torpedoing the Ethics Classes in exchange for his help passing this bill. So far, he’s described the response from his own government as “very positive” (not a good sign). He’s also got a few of his own “wacky” bills he wants to pass as well:

While he would not say which were being discussed, they include bills to repeal legislation allowing same-sex adoption, to ban the possession of X-rated films and to ban alcohol advertising. ”That co-operative spirit is well and truly in place,” Mr Nile said.

So, if Nile gets his way, children will be forced to take religion classes even when they have no religious affiliation, gays will no longer have the same rights as everyone else, porn will be made illegal (how the fuck would that work anyways?), and advertising billboards get a lot less sexy.

Don’t you just love the way these old fuckfaces keep on sending us racing backwards? Forget about trying to make any progress when these dinosaurs are in power. You can’t even get classes about “ethics” without jackasses like Freddy-boy trying every trick in to book to destroy these kinds of initiatives. Good luck, my friends down-under. With guys like this in power, the future looks bright for Christian bigotry!

Scientists figure key to “Tipping Point” of ideas

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How do ideas spread? Well, that’s what a team of scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute wanted to find out. Their experiments involved using social networks to see how opinions would spread and change over time. They discovered if 10% of the “population” (defined here as those involved within the network) held strong and intractable opinions, the rest of the group would eventually follow suit in order to avoid any disagreement with the group.

While the research is admittedly preliminary, the numbers make sense to me. I’ve always believed the opinions of the majority are in fact dictated by a small group of highly influential people who have no quandary about spreading their ideas to others. It’s interesting to note the authors suggest that ideas that fail to achieve higher than 10 percent, and believers who have too little conviction were doomed to being in the margins. There’s a lesson here somewhere for us. While we hate the idea of holding any belief too firmly (even a non-belief), it is nevertheless the primary way ideas are spread.

The good news is so long as we keep talking about our non-belief, and the better we get at dismantling the claims of religious people, the closer we get to the magical “tipping” number. Hey, we already know over 10% of the population thinks this religion bullshit is a waste of time. Now these people just need to start telling others a hell of a lot more.

Norway attacked by Christian extremist

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When innocent people are killed and the fog of war has yet to be lifted, it’s not uncommon for the press to assume that any terrorist actions must be the work of Islamic fundamentalists. As far as they are concerned, only the Muslim faith can indiscriminately kill innocent civilians. How easily they forget men like Timothy McVeigh or Scott Roeder; men motivated by their religion (in their cases, Christianity) to commit calculated murder. The Oklahoma City bombing was, until 9/11, the most devastating domestic attack on civilians, perpetuated by a home grown Christian fundy angry at the government for the slaughter of 76 people in Waco, Texas (he was not entirely unjustified for his anger. The Branch Davidians were massacred by the FBI). McVeigh saw the government as his enemy, and by extension, all those who had any connection with it were deemed enemies.

A similar angry brewed inside Anders Breivik, who viewed the left leaning political Labour Party as the enemy of European (i.e., white) hegemony. Multiculturalism – and in particular the Islamization of his country – were the enemy, and so he conjured a plan to attack a youth retreat organized by the party. He believed such an attack would act as a rallying cry for his fellow citizens to take violent action against their darker skinned citizens. In total, he (and perhaps an accomplice) killed 68 people and wounded 90 more.

Breivik counts Geert Wilders as one of his, a man recently acquitted of enticing violence against Islam (makes you wonder if perhaps there wasn’t something to the accusation. In any case, Norway is now deeply scarred by these events. It’s a reminder that terrorism is employed by all manner of religious fundamentalists. One does not the promise of 72 virgins to explode a car bomb: any old faith will do, so long as the principle tenants demand the destruction of unbelievers.

When will the headlines of such horrible tragedies finally read “Religious xenophobia (mixed with equally ignoble patriotism) claims more victims”?

Texas is now the “Prophet State”

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It looks like Governor Rick Perry and his religious posse are getting a little bit crazier every day. You might recall that Perry is organizing a massive prayer rally at Reliant Stadium with the intent of begging God to fix all of America’s financial problems. You see, rather than actually bother to come up with real solutions (like making sure companies like Exxon or General Electric actually pay taxes), Ricky and his theocratic buddies feel as though this is the beginning of an exciting new government that puts the focus on their favorite invisible friend, and to celebrate the unconstitutional marriage of religion and politics, they’ve declared Texas to be the “Prophet State“.

The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.

These religious nutjobs are hoping that Perry eventually runs for president in order to “restore” Christianity and make America a theocracy. Although you might think I’m being overly rhetorical (I am guilty of this on countless occasions), their mandate really is to fundamentally change the way government functions:

The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an “army of God” to commandeer civilian government.

You know how some people think that it doesn’t matter what you believe in so long as you keep it to yourself? Well, these people have no interest in keeping their insane beliefs private; they want everyone else to tow the same theocratic line. They have power, money, influence, and (worst of all), a fucking plan. And what do we have? A bunch of disorganized Internet keyboard warriors that can’t even agree as to what constitutes appropriate behavior at conferences.

We are so screwed…

Jesus and Mary-Magdalene are Aussies

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A couple living in Australia believe that they are Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and they’re taking donations! AJ Miller and his girlfriend Mary want you to know that the long wait for the Messiah is over! Rejoice, believers, for the Son of Man (also called “The Human One” now) has returned, and he lives down under.

I know what you’re thinking: what proof does AJ Miller have that he’s the messiah? Get ready to be blown away, people:

There’s probably a million people who say they’re Jesus and most of them are in asylums. But one of us has to be. How do I know I am? Because I remember everything about my life.”

Ah, well, that makes perfect sense to me. They can’t all be lying, right? One of them has to be an all powerful, all knowing creator of the Cosmos. Sure, he looks a little pedestrian with his flowery shirt and his super tired-looking girlfriend, but that’s because he’s been living off the donations of some 40 followers, so the money hasn’t seriously started rolling in just yet! Give him a few more years and he’ll have enough sheep shoveling him money to buy a really swinging wardrobe.

Your skeptical mind might be wondering why he’s chosen to come back now. Well, it’s obviously because every other church on this planet got his message wrong, and now he has to give seminars explaining how souls work. If you’re too busy to show up, then you can always download his shitty recordings for free (you can donate, but he’ll probably spend all that money of more ugly shirts) .

The main reason why I have returned to earth is to teach the Divine Truth that was lost, and to present to mankind the choice that we all have in front of us now, and this choice is: continue to follow the Natural Love path of progression until the 6th sphere state, or, learn and follow the Divine Love path of progression which will result in our infinite expansion.

Um, ok…So if you’re wondering what exactly the Divine Love Path is all about, picture the most annoying hippy bullshit and then infuse it with Christianity. The result is a confusing mess of platitudes and make-believe nonsense that will make your brain hurt. Can you believe how insanely gullible his followers are? They have “no reason” to doubt his claims? Honestly folks, I think you need to learn a little skepticism in life. It might save you precious time and money…