Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Rapture failure, Harold Camping a no-show

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Well, the 21st of May has come and gone, and as we all predicted, nothing happened. Now, a number of Harold Camping‘s followers are trying to cope with having been duped.

Some believers expressed bewilderment or said it was a test from God of their faith, after the day passed without event.

Meanwhile, the evangelist at the center of the claim, Harold Camping, has not been seen since before the deadline.

I would lay low for a little while if I was Harold too. I mean, it can’t feel good to fail AGAIN, and there’s only so many times you can cry “Rapture” before none of the other shepherds believe you. It also doesn’t help when some of your followers also spent their entire life savings advertising your stupid shit:

Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired transportation agency worker in New York, said he had spent more than $140,000 (£86,000) of his savings on advertisements in the run-up to 21 May to publicize the prediction.

It’s difficult to ascertain the financial devastation wrought on these poor fools, especially so soon after their little failed End of Days. How many families will lose their homes because of this? How many kids have lost their college fund, and their hope for a better future?

So, did anyone learn a lesson from all this?

…followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith.

What a big surprise.

Kirk Cameron thinks Stephen Hawking has “absurd Ideas”

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Guess who managed to weasel his way into the news? It’s everyone’s favorite “ex-atheist”, Kirk Cameron, criticizing Hawking for declaring that Heaven is a fairy-tale. He posted this on his Facebook page:

to say anything negative about Stephen Hawking is like bullying a blind man. He has an unfair disadvantage, and that gives him a free pass on some of his absurd ideas.

That’s not passive aggressive in the slightest. He’s right: science must seem absurd to someone as ignorant as Cameron. Black Holes deteriorating over time? The Universe not needing a prime mover in order to exist? It’s enough to make anyone’s head explode, especially when that head happens to be jam packed with crazy bullshit.

What really irritates me is when clowns like Kirk are given a spotlight for regurgitating the same old tired non-arguments. Faith is not evidence. Belief is not evidence. Yet the likes of Cameron would dilute objective truth to fit their narrow world views, and the media gladly provides them a platform to accomplish this. How many gullible fools have been lured by their promises of eternal life and a paradise awaiting the obedient? Presumably a few more now.

This other passage really irritates me:

(Hawking) says he knows there is no Heaven. John Lennon wasn’t sure. He said to pretend there’s no Heaven. That’s easy if you try. Then he said he hoped that someday we would join him. Such wishful thinking reveals John and Stephen’s religious beliefs, not good science.”

What the fuck does he know about good science? This is the same brilliant mind behind the “crocoduck” anti-evolution argument for god’s sake. And if he thinks Lennon’s “I hope some day you’ll join us” message is religious in nature, he’s only proven how hollow his “ex-atheist” claim is.

No Time for a Party at Rapture

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Saturday is just about to roll around, and as many of you know, the failed prophet Harold Camping has been gathering a following of unbelievably gullible idiots, all of whom look forward to being teleported up into the clouds. Since his beliefs are so fringe, it’s invariably led to family members having strained relationships. This one story, about a Mom losing her fucking mind and dragging her teenage kids all around to tell others about their make-believe bullshit, made me particularly angry.

The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to “sound the trumpet” on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a parent turn all “fundy” on you., ignoring your future in the hopes that the End of the World will take care of all their problems.

My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

It should still be upsetting, girl! You’ve just done what everyone else in your position would have done: you decided to ignore the hateful and stupid beliefs of your mother in order to save the relationship. you’re braver than I am, I’ll tell you what.
I love my parents to death, but if they suddenly turned extremely religious, dragged me all over the country trying to “spread” the message about Armageddon, we would invariably have to part ways. Religious dogma is so incompatible with my life. I have no time for such ignorance and blatant stupidity, and have no interest in watching my loved ones get caught up in this kind of dangerous nonsense.

Kevin Brown, a Family Radio representative, said conflict with other family members was part of the test of whether a person truly believed. “They’re going through the fiery trial each day,” he said.

Yeah, don’t forget that Jesus preached that you should abandon your family and friends if they failed to believe that he was in fact a God, so this whole “family division” is something Christians are more than familiar with. After this whole mess is over and a new “End Times” date shows up, will this family again experience more insanity? Let’s hope not…

Creationist Pimp Harun Yahya is back

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Remember Harun Yahya? He’s the Turkish creationist that published a book called “The Atlas of Creation”, his attempt to “prove” that animals were created spontaneously by his personal God. Most of the pictures in this massive 768 page monstrosity are ripped right off the Internet. One picture of a fly is in fact a metal lure. Yes, he’s that fucking incompetent.

Harun Yahya is the pseudonym of Adnan Oktar, 55, a preacher who keeps secret the sources of the ample funds that allow him and a group of followers to produce hundreds of thousands of slick and simple books on Islam under his pen name.

Harun has a following of young, wealthy religious aristocrats that fund his various schemes. He keeps them in line by filming them having sex with his various private prostitutes, and in exchange for their silence, they fund his various enterprises. Although he claims to have written a dozen books, all have been found to be ghost written, and he’s clearly authored none of them. He’s an opportunist, interested in the money, fame and power that comes from “defending the faith”.

Koran-based creationist views are traditional in the Muslim world. Advised by U.S. creationists, Harun Yahya has developed a series of books that have helped spread this view in recent years beyond the Middle East, including to France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe’s largest Islamic minority.

Right now, he’s on tour in Europe trying to “teach” students how to challenge evolution, which he believes is science’s way of promoting atheism. Is it our fault that evolution by means of natural selection does more to explain our existence than a 7th century book of mythology?

Kelowna atheist bus ads get stolen

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So, even though we expected this kind of juvenile behavior from some of our neighbors down south, Kelwona BC has the distinction of not only being the first city to have atheist ads stolen; they also failed to report the theft, so there’s no way to know when it actually disappeared. All in all, it’s pretty fucked up.

Raped Teen forced to apologize before church for being pregnant

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After Christina Anderson was raped by fellow congregationalist Ernest Willis and got pregnant as a result, the pastor of her fundamentalist Baptist church forced her to move to Colorado and read an apology letter aloud to her congregation before she left. Classy.

Ernest Willis is charged with forcibly raping Christina Anderson twice during the summer of 1997, when she was his children’s baby sitter and he was 39. Lawyers for Willis, now 52, say in court documents that he will admit having sex with the girl once but maintains it was consensual.

Ah, the old Polanski defense. Wonder how well it’ll work for him considering Willis’ defense team is also trying to bar Anderson’s testimony that he tried to offer to drive her to get an out of state abortion, and he also offered a “code 3“, effectively a punch to the stomach in the hopes of causing a spontaneous abortion. Why, those sound like the actions of a man engaged in a consensual affair, doesn’t it?

Pastor Phelps claims he helped the police investigation, but he’s obviously a liar since the cops only discovered where Christina was after friends tipped them off that she was living under a different name in Arizona, where she was being home-schooled by other fundy yahoos.

It’s a proud tradition in all Abrahamic religions that girls are to blame for everything. In the Bible, when Aaron and Miriam both complain Moses’ new wife is a foreign chick, only Miriam gets leprosy for her questioning of the prophet. How many females have been tortured, beaten to death, or immolated under the watchful gaze of the Church?

(Update: Ernest Willis was found guilty and sentenced)

Street Preacher gets PWNED

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See, to shut up these fools sometimes you just need a little music…

Rome braces for urban myth Earthquake

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Hey, if you’re going to be superstitious, you may as well embrace all the crazy and stupid shit you hear, right? That includes an urban myth floating around Rome that an earthquake is supposed to destroy them today. This quake was apparently foretold decades ago by a famous scientist by the name of Raffaele Bendandi, although there is no evidence that he actually did so. So basically, a number of citizens have “called in sick” believing today is their last day on Earth.

There are reports of an 18% increase in the number of city employees planning to stay away from work. “I’m going to tell the boss I’ve got a medical appointment and take the day off,” barman Fabio Mengarelli told Reuters. “If I have to die, I want to die with my wife and kids, and masses of people will do the same as me.”

All of this is pretty silly, since earthquakes can’t be predicted so far in advance. Turns out our mantle is a lot more unpredictable than we think. Just ask Japan. Point is, this is just another example of how gullible people are when they have such a poor understanding of science. I bet most of these people can name more patron saints than they can scientists. Is it any surprise that you would have a large radius of ignorance when the Vatican is next door?

Another beautiful Carl Sagan video

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How can anyone think that it’s we, the materialists, that lack imagination and poetry? What could be more poetic, more humbling than the natural world? I’m not sure how anyone who listens to classic Carl Sagan can imagine their own fairy tale bullshit is more “inspired”. Nonsense is never more compelling than objective reality, especially if you bother to actually study it.

Uganda ready to kill gays again

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It’s become exceedingly clear that it’s only a matter of time before Uganda passes their “kill the gays” bill, and while there are plenty of people trying to pressure President Museveni and his administration into not signing the bill, the people seem to be overwhelmingly for it. So while a site like allout.org is encouraging folks to sign a petition, I’m of the opinion that we need to give political asylum to all gays in the country. Only then can we ensure their survival. I don’t want to be mean or dismissive, but petitions don’t do shit, and the people of Uganda are out for blood. They blame gays for all of their troubles, and if that sounds vaguely familiar to you, that’s because every pogrom in history starts off like this.

Lame Pastor lies about being in Navy SEALS

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After being interviewed for a piece on the armed forces by the Patriot-News – a scrappy little Pennsylvania Newspaper that despite its small readership still manages to win accolades – it was discovered that Rev. Jim Moats was not in fact a Navy Seal, and that he had fabricated a story based on the movie “Under Siege”.

“We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy. It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up,” Shipley said.

I guess when you’re trying to impress your new flock, you’re bound to embellish things a little. In Moats’ case, he had his two sons make him a fake Navy Seals plaque and simply didn’t correct people who assumed that he must have fought in Vietnam as a special op. He didn’t, and when a real newspaper actually bothered to check up on the story, they found out that they had been duped. So they went back, confronted this lying moron, and got him to confess he’s been pretending all this time to be a hot shot when he’s merely a cowardly liar. Do you expect anything else from guys who make their living spewing nonsense professionally?

More Wife-Beating debates

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You’ve got to be impressed with any culture that has a televised debate on the merits of wife beating according to the Koran. Hey, here’s a fucking idea: stop trying to reconcile modern values with a book written in the 7th century.

Derek, I hardly knew you

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It’s a terrible shame when your only opportunity to know someone is on the day of their death. Derek Miller, an atheist blogger not unlike myself, died of cancer recently. His last post, from “beyond the grave” is a reminder of the fragility of life. Derek had been fighting a losing battle to colon cancer, and passed away a few days ago. Reading his archive, it also reminded me there are still tons of great atheist bloggers out there that haven’t been discovered. If you know of any we haven’t talked about in the past, and you would like others to know about it before these people expire, be sure to let me know!

*(Update: His site exists only in the web archives now)

Pastor busted for selling off baby formula meant for poor

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Isn’t it hilarious how religious people are utterly convinced believing in the absurd makes them better people? Despite plenty of proof to the contrary, it never seems to register that for the most part, religion makes people more xenophobic, more racist, more likely to support torture, and more ignorant. How are you supposed to be more moral when that’s the case?

If Christianity is supposed to make you more law abiding and moral (I chuckle every time I actually say that out loud), then we should expect the so-called “experts” in its theology to be shining beacons of moral rectitude. Of course, we all know that’s not the case. If they aren’t shoving their penises in inappropriate places or beating the crap out of orphans, some of them are just trying to get paid:

A 67-year-old Roman Catholic priest was arrested at his Queenstown church mission for allegedly selling baby formula meant to be given free to underprivileged children.

The priest was arrested on Thursday afternoon while allegedly selling the milk to the public, after police and the Eastern Cape health department were alerted to the trade, Daily Dispatch reported on Friday

Nice job, dude. Guys like you make disparaging religion easy.