Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

I received another email

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A fan of the show sent me this letter:

I recently observed a “lunch-table” debate regarding religion, which I thought had a slightly different twist on morals. The debate quickly heated between a Muslim woman and a Christian man over why hard alcohol cannot be purchased on Sundays. The Muslim women, seeming a lot more level-headed, asked how this was not an affront to the separation of church and state. This was followed by several back-and-forth comments, but one of the comments made by the Christian man really intrigued me and I thought I would see what you thought. In defense of this absurd law, he said that all politicians bring in their own morals that are based on their own world views. He continued that whether you are an atheist, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or anything else, that you have certain beliefs that make up your worldview. Thus, because these individuals are being elected, means that people want them to govern with their world view. It isn’t about separation of church and state to him because he views it as just another alternative background for moral teaching. I think he was trying to separate laws that are specifically indicative of the religion, like posting the 10 commandments at public buildings, or prayer in school, and those that are more disguised like, no alcohol on Sundays, no gay marriage, no abortions, etc. Not wanting to inject myself into a conversation with several colleagues, I sat back and listened.

Do you have any insights on how to address the Christian man’s assertions, or how to address the moral authority of the religious in general, specifically in a quick, succinct argument?

First of all, I have to fundamentally disagree with the Christian man’s opinion. In most countries, politicians are usually elected because they belong to a specific party, or because their political platform appeals to voters. It’s mostly in America that you find “value voters”, and these are merely religious folks masking their theological ambitions. The rest of us take a much more pragmatic view of politics.

Once they are elected, politicians have a duty to serve the interests of all their electorate, not just the people that voted them in office. Politics is about compromise; the ability to get the best results for the most people. Ideologues are the dangerous ones. The already fragile gears of bureaucracy can quickly come to a grinding halt if people refuse to play ball because of their “convictions”. That’s why your government has effectively stopped functioning. Rather than try and reach a consensus, the portion of American politicians who were voted in based on their “values” continue to undermine the system trying to square off their beliefs with the way politics works. As a way of leading, it’s an unmitigated failure.

If you’re engaged in an argument about religion “as an integral part of morality”, you’ll simply get caught in a different discussion altogether. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain and a proper education in history that religion has NOTHING to do with morality. If it did, witch burnings, genocides, pogroms, infanticides et al would never have been a problem at all. How many religions can claim to have no blood on their hands? Why have they failed to provide the answer to such a simple question?

The simple fact is the separation of church and state is the only way that our society can work for the good of more than the people in charge. What is their alternative to secularism? How would they feel if a religious minority dissimilar to them was suddenly in power? I bet you they would be much less excited about their “moral views” then…

Dead nun credited for medical marvel

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With all the bad press they’ve been getting recently for harboring child-rapists, continuing their campaign to prevent contraceptive use in AIDS-ridden Africa, and saying generally hateful things about gays, the Vatican is looking for a bit of good news. Their deliverance has taken the form of a disfigured young boy, saved from the clutches of death by medical science and a combative immune system. His parents happened to be Catholics, and the child’s “miraculous” recovery was seen as an opportunity to thank the wrong people for saving their son.

Catholics believe in the ability of dead people to intervene in prayer. Often this is referred to as “intercessory prayer”, a kind of bureaucratic way of talking to God. Because you’re a worthless ant, someone dead but far worthier of God’s love can attempt to compel this capricious entity to be merciful. In the case of Jake Finkbonner (yes, that’s a real last name), this apparently involved him being saved from one of God’s loving flesh eating viruses.

At the trauma unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Craig Rubens, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, instantly suspected a flesh-eating bacteria called strep A. It was consuming Jake’s face with terrifying speed.

“It’s like lighting one end of a parchment paper,” he says, “and you just watch it spread from that corner very fast, and you’re stamping it on one side, and it’s flaming up on another.”

Dr. Richard Hopper, chief of plastic surgery at Seattle Children’s, had never seen a case so dire.

“It’s almost as if you could watch it moving in front of your eyes,” he says. “The redness and the swelling — we would mark it and within the hour it would have spread another half-inch.”

While surgeons struggled valiantly to save Jake’s life, his parents busied themselves with superstitious nonsense.

“Donny and I went off to the chapel and just surrendered Jake back to God,” she recalls. “We just said, ‘God, he is yours. Thy will be done, and if it is your will to take him home, then so be it.’ “

Jake is of Native decent, so the local priest instructed his parents to pray through a dead Mohawk nun by the name of Kateri Tekakwitha. Born in 17th century America, Kateria had horrible scars from small pox (brought on by God’s love no doubt), and took an interest in Christianity, fleeing to a convent in Quebec. Her faith took on a masochistic element; she would often perform acts of self mortification such as sleeping on thorns or cutting herself while praying for the salvation of her people. This insane woman, who died at the age of 24, would later become the subject of Leonard Cohen’s second novel, Beautiful Losers.

And guess what? The doctors pull it off, and the kid gets a new lease on life:

Surgeon Richard Hopper says after two weeks and a dozen surgeries, the team of doctors had little hope they could get ahead of the bacteria. And when they realized they did, he says, it was breathtaking.

So where exactly is this fucking miracle, you ask? It seems pretty clear that the surgery worked, and yet purveyors of nonsense are tripping over themselves trying to congratulate a confused and isolated nun who died over 3 centuries ago. Congratulations, guys: you’re all fucking geniuses.

Fighting Irrationality is hard

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A fan of the site sent me this depressing letter, and it’s just another example of the difficulty we have fighting stupidity in today’s society:

Hi Jake,
Your stuff is always entertaining. This is connected with your latest tirade (and well-justified, I might add!) about so-called psychics. I have been trying to get something done about them here in the UK but am having little success. I did get an ad. feature pulled from our local paper for this guy*, who was making blatant claims about his service that could not possibly be substantiated, but the main man I am trying to put out of business is here*, if you can stand the excessive use of Flash! His website is good for a laugh, if nothing else!

See “shop for goodies”. I have reported him to our ASA. (Advertising Standards Authority) now they can investigate web ads, with a view to stopping him selling his so-called “healing cream” and other items (see also “quartz stone”) with his preposterous claims about them, but they came back with:

“Thank you for your recent complaint about claims made by Quintin Smith on his website. I understand you challenge whether they can be substantiated. We have assessed the specific claims you highlighted but have concluded that there is insufficient grounds for ASA intervention on this occasion. Whilst we appreciate your views and acknowledge that many people will be skeptical about services of this kind, the claims you mentioned seem to convey the marketer’s own opinion and are unlikely to be mislead consumers to their detriment. We do not consider that they require objective substantiation and do not propose to investigate your complaint further on this occasion. I realize that this outcome will disappoint you, but thank you for taking the time to contact us with your views.”.

Total whitewash, in my opinion. It seems to me that he’s making quite clear, nonsensical statements about the products that can’t possibly hold water. Also tried our medicines regulatory authority. (After all, what IS the stuff? No provenance quoted. Could be anything). Answer: “We would expect these products to be regulated by the Trading Standards Services” Had a go at them, but an auto reply and nothing further. Seems I’m banging my head against a brick wall here!

Man, I feel like we’re fighting this war on idiocy with blanks! We can’t even get a bunch of scammers to stop selling their dangerous products to the public. How can we ever hope to win this thing?

*(Update: Both sites are thankfully no longer active)

Doug Stanhope on making up your Christianity

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If you picked up the Bible and tried reading it cover to cover, it’s doubtful you’d make it past Exodus before you’d put it down, utterly disgusted by the characters and their evil actions. If anyone was later to tell you this was a moral guide to live your life by, would you believe them?

Psychic steals $250,000 from victim

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It takes a special kind of scumbag to be a psychic. Seriously. I mean, your job is basically to manipulate people who are at a low point in their lives. Lonely, sad, desperate and terribly uneducated people are seduced by these charlatans intent on bilking them out of their hard earned money.

It’s easy to feel judgmental about the suckers, like the case of “Jane Doe”, defrauded to the tune of 250,000 dollars by Lisa Debbie Adams. A self professed psychic, Adams told her that a curse had been placed while she was still a baby inside her mother’s womb. Despite how utterly stupid that may seem to us, people like Jane are susceptible to these superstitions. In the end, Adams succeeded in convincing Jane to give her entire life savings in a series of increasingly wild spending sprees (including the “spiritual” benevolence of Mercedes-Benz, a feeling perhaps familiar to some owners).

Should we punish the ignorant? Shall we forget they are victims merely because they were vulnerable, improperly educated dolts who had the misfortune of falling for a scam artist? It’s a cruel world if we can’t feel at least some sympathy. Reading the stories of victims reminds me how easy it is to fool desperate people wanting any easy answer to solve their problem. It’s a sad reality, a reminder that reason – the shield that should have protected these people against fraud – was paper thin.

It’s time for us to ridicule psychics more, and I mean A LOT more. We need to expose them as the fraudsters and tricksters they are. There’s no need to make the belief in superstitions illegal; it’s far more affective to make it shameful, and object to ridicule. The funnier, the better. So you know what to do…

Suicide Bombings are not political in nature

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In a large Suffi shrine in Southern Pakistan, two young men with explosives strapped on their backs navigate nervously through a packed crowd. They are looking for an ideal place to murder as many of their fellow human beings as possible. The plan is surprisingly evil: the second boy is there to detonate himself the moment help arrives to care for the victims of the first attack.

As chance would have it, Umar Fidai‘s bomb didn’t discharge properly. It ended up only partially detonating, ripping away his left arm and tearing his insides apart. Before Umar could reach his grenade – a fail-safe given to suicide bombers allowing them a chance to still enter a martyr’s paradise – he was shot in the other arm by a police officer. Bleeding, incapacitated and watching the torment and pain of those around him, Umar felt shame and remorse at the sight of the medics and civilians rushing to their aid. Mere minutes before, all he could think about was the taste of the otherworldly fruits he would enjoy from such pious labor.

Young Umar is only 14 years old. What motivated him to commit his failed violent act was not political. It was religious. As I read his recollection of the events that led to his mangled state, I couldn’t help but feel that the seeds of his destruction, and of so many other victims, were planted long ago. The soil was fertile from a lifetime of indoctrination to dangerous and poisonous ideas. Umar’s targets were fellow Muslims, part of a different traditional set of doctrinal convictions, and therefore unbelievers. To the Taliban, the nearly endless supplies of human explosives – packed tight with anger, confusion, alienation, and ready to ignite with the mixture of religion- makes their task effortlessly easy. They need only light the wick and point.

You’ll often hear Muslim apologists refer to the problem of suicide bombing in political rather than religious terms. They do this to mask the terrifying reality of religious indoctrination, either deliberately or unknowingly. We ask why humans continue to commit atrocities – why we kill each other with impunity and cause untold misery and destruction – yet we refuse to accept the simple answer. It is unquestionably religion that creates the systemic barbarism, cruelty and ignorance of the world we live in. We have ample evidence of this. That it makes some happy is inconsequential. It should not enter into our minds as something worthy of consideration. Should you care if a drunkard is admittedly happier when he drinks if he later beats his wife and children as a result?

If you still cling to the notion of geopolitics as the root of the problem, why not ask the villains themselves? The very words of acolytes, saved from their own annihilation due to faulty mechanics, is a chilling wake-up call to apologists. It was their conviction paradise awaited them, not their political desires that motivated their actions. Until we stop denying the obvious, it’ll keep blowing up in our faces.

Bill Donohue blames gays for priestly abuse

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You’ve got to admire Bill Donohue – in a rather sick and twisted way – for his unique ability to always “up the ante” of shitty things to say. He’s really an artist of sorts, effortlessly dispatching the truth whenever it seems to be inconvenient, and compensating by making outlandishly false statements, all in a futile attempt to defend what is arguably one of the most corrupt institutions in the world. To defend monsters, one must become a monster.

The latest “Donohism” is a difficult one to top however: he’s accusing the media of improperly reporting the sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children. Most were willing participants, and the real problem was homosexuality:

“The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that ‘more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.’ In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia,” Donohue wrote.

“What accounts for the relentless attacks on the Church?” he asked in conclusion. “Let’s face it: if its teachings were pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy, the dogs would have been called off years ago.”

Don’t blame all these priests, says Bill, most were participants who enjoyed what was happening. The real villains were the sodomites, everyone! After all, they wanted to put their penises where God had strictly forbidden it, and we all know if you don’t listen to sky-daddy, he will send a tidal wave after you.

It’s in situations like this I wish I could produce a report that could explain the depth of all the sexual abuse that occurred to both men and women…Oh wait, silly me, it turns out there are a ton of them, with more popping up all the time. Perhaps the most comprehensive of which is the Ryan Report, a difficult and lengthy volume detailing all aspects of abuse of Catholic-run institutions in Ireland. So without needing to trust Billy-boy at his words, we can instead rely on the litany of statistics on female sexual abuse by clergymen. I’ll go out on a limb here and say it was definitely not consensual:

Reported abuse ranged from inappropriate fondling and touching to oral/genital contact, vaginal and anal rape. There were 128 reports of sexual abuse from 127 female witnesses (34%). One witness reported that she was sexually abused in two different Schools. Witnesses described their experience of sexual abuse as either acute or chronic episodes occurring throughout their admissions in the Schools. Witnesses reported being sexually abused by religious and lay staff in addition to other adults, the majority of whom were understood to be directly associated with the Schools. Witnesses also reported being sexually abused by co-residents.

Before you feel entirely too depressed over the fact such stupidity still makes the air on a regular basis, take comfort in the knowledge, so long as people like Bill speak for their churches, the job of demonstrating the poisonous nature of religion is made much easier. Bill is a cruel, stupid brute whose actions undermine the false idea that religion moralizes an otherwise evil creation. In other words, with fuckheads like Bill at the wheel, it’s a lot easier for these morons to careen off a cliff.

Buddhists are confused about everything

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A fan of the site sent me this Buddhist exchange that I had to say something about:

Curious Buddhist:

I have an odd question which was raised by a friend, who was asking me questions about Buddhism. They wanted to know how Buddhism deals with the concept of evolution? Are Buddhists creationists? Our teachings don’t seem to deal with such matters and I was rather at a loss as to how to answer them.

Lama Shenpen:

I suppose one would have to say Buddhists are evolutionists in the sense that they do not think God created everything in seven days.

That’s not really a good start. Creationists don’t all believe in that exact nonsense. Some are far more sophisticated in their stupidity.

The Buddhist view is that everything emanates from the Primordial expanse of Openness Clarity Sensitivity and is illusion-like, never really coming into existence but the illusion is created by infinite intricate connections that are not anywhere and not in time.

Wow, the bullshit train is riding hard right now. Am I to believe that the Universe is an expanse of Sensitivity? I would argue that stars exploding in massive gamma ray bursts might not be entirely too sensitive to the feelings of nearby planets.

Time and space are part of the illusion that is emanating from that Primordial expanse – so it’s all very mysterious. From the Buddhist perspective there is no problem with life on earth having evolved somehow – but evolution is not in itself a full story or full account of life on earth – it leaves quite basic questions left unanswered.

Yes, evolution leaves tons of unanswered questions for Buddhists, such as “how did the first human exist if we’re all reincarnated”, and “how can human beings be so fucking gullible”?

In a way one might want to argue Buddhism is closer to creationism because our world is created by awareness – the awareness of the beings that inhabit it – evolution only gives a kind of history of how that illusion unfolds.

They love their whole “illusion” angle, don’t they. It’s a great way to avoid having to explain anything concrete about your stupid belief system. Hey, how do protons and electrons work? It’s all an elaborate illusion, so don’t bother trying to find out!

Buddhist do indeed share much in common with creationists: for starters, they have no desire to discover the natural world, and rely on tradition and superstition to tell them about the Universe. While they smugly assert that all the Cosmos is Maya (or illusion), this impossible to disprove condition is just another example of the nonsense of religion. If they had their way, scientific progress would end as we know it, in favor of mumbling some shitty prayers and believing that justice is handed out by an invisible force.

Isn’t religion great?

David Cross is hilarious

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I’ve got to figure out a way to get David on the Show. Guess I’ll need to stalk him for a while or something…

US Rep thinks Einstein would be a creationist

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Is this guy for real? You think Albert Einstein would be a creationist? You think this Spinozan would consider your quaint little religion the only true one? What kind of ballooned existence do you experience to say such idiocies? You are either a liar, having fabricated your fictitious idea with the intent on making it stick, or a farcical imbecile who has never bothered to read anything that contradicted his limited world view. I suppose both are probable, but for the sake of humanity, I hope it’s the latter. I really do.

Love wins, Christianity loses

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The Evangelical world may not be as coherent and homogeneous as some would lead you to believe. For one thing, they can’t seem to properly contain the apostasy of Pastor Robert Bell, who has been preaching from Mars Hill a theology that takes special efforts to exclude Hell.

Bell credits a conversation he had about Ghandi. When a parishioner kindly reminded him he was slowly roasting in the fires of Hell, something changed in him, according to this Time article. He wanted to believe in a God who didn’t send people to Hell. What, the author argues somewhat saliently, is the point of believing if it doesn’t matter anyways?

If, in other words, Gandhi is in heaven, then why bother with accepting Christ? If you say the Bible doesn’t really say what a lot of people have said it says, then where does that stop? If the verses about hell and judgment aren’t literal, what about the ones on adultery, say, or homosexuality? Taken to their logical conclusions, such questions could undermine much of conservative Christianity.

It’s not just the conservative side that gets bent out of shape once you expose people to the real nightmare that is the Bible, and the poisonous undercurrent of its theology. Given the authority society has granted this book, rather uncritically I might add, the Bible becomes the tool of bigots, racists, and sexists alike. We then find it surprising when the power and authority they command through their religions allow for the continued mistreatment of women, minorities, and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children.

Some, like Bell, have resolved to make the texts fit their own perception of the world. With delightful impunity he denies Hell, aware this idea alone –  eternal torture of the innocent for the crime of having chosen the wrong god – is morally repugnant. He attempts to save his favorite deity by endorsing the idea that everyone has been retroactively saved due to the torture and martyrdom of a middle-aged Nazarene some two thousand years ago. Asking why such a barbaric act is necessary in the first place is not something he’s yet ready for, since this too taxes a belief system already strained by the capricious and cruel blood thirst of Bell’s Abrahamic god.

With Bell’s attempt to stretch the foundations of his faith to encompass individuals outside his own organization, he in effect weakens the redemptive message evangelical preachers rely on to terrify their flock from questioning doctrine. What he and his cohorts fail to understand is for some, it’s the fire and torment they like. The “lovey-dovey” stuff is for sissies and liberals in their eyes. For many in the Evangelical right, it is the intensity of their hatred of people on the “outside” of their tight little Jesus circle-jerk that fuels their hellish fantasies. Recall in their eyes, we’ve already made our choice not to believe in their intellectually void ministrations, and the heavenly reward that supposedly awaits them includes the pleasure of watching the eternity of our torment for so much free-thought. If love was really the issue at hand, how could the so-called “righteous ones” not rebel against their God at the though of so many suffering in pain forever?

Of course that’s exactly the kinds of morally repulsive conclusions Bell has reached, and so he seduces those within Evangelism who have tired of the “brimstone mandate”. They are more numerous than the churches would ever admit. It is yet another kink in their already fading aura of supposed invisibility. Keep up the good work, Robby. Your attempts to civilize your religion will end up destroying it from the inside.

My kind of Zodiac

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One of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a long time. According to the Geek Zodiac, I’m a Spy. My qualities are “confident, patriotic, duplicitous, selfish and resourceful”. Can you guess which two attributes DON’T describe me? I bet you can’t…

Pat Robertson denies his hatefulness

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Behind the scenes of Larry King live in the 90′s, Pat Robertson simultaneously argues he’s said nothing hurtful, and as soon as the camera lights are off, his true feelings seep out like a leaky septic tank. I love how he thinks the producers are “setting” him up by having callers who sound gay. Pat, when can we expect you to finally kick the bucket and leave us in peace?

Woman botches home circumcision of infant son

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When Abraham is an old man, says the Bible, he enters a covenant with God that offers – in exchange for the tips of everyone’s penises in perpetuity – a guaranteed 400 years of misery with the promise of inheriting someone else’s land.

Abraham makes the rather undiplomatic agreement for the sake of his descendants, and proceeds to cut every male’s foreskin with a blade. Most of the men, the vast majority of them slaves, are all adults and the invention of anesthetics is still many moons away.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s probably you should avoid trusting what a senile old man claiming to hear the voice of God tells you. Unfortunately for a 3 month old in Portland Oregon, the Bible has received the greatest publicity campaign in the world, declared by educated and uneducated alike to be the definitive source of all Western morality.

When the boy’s mother – indoctrinated since childhood as to the benefit of reading this vile tome- decided to follow the same covenant Abraham made with God, she did so in much the same fashion. 29-year-old Keemonta Peterson circumcised her child, and after he cried in agony for 2 hours as the blood continued to flow out of his body, her malfunctioning maternal instincts finally kicked into high gear long enough to call the hospital and avoid him death. By the time he arrived, the child was listed as critical. The doctor testified the pain for the baby would have been immense.

He has since luckily recovered, although no details have emerged as to the condition of his penis. The mother is facing charges, and must now visit her children under supervision. Where did all of this misery begin? Did it start in her childhood, as the ludicrous concepts of religion were drilled into her impressionable brain?

I’m glad her lawyer didn’t try to argue endangering your child is a form of religious expression, like some people. It seems as though we’ve humored the nonsense of faith for so long we’re shocked people act on it. People like Keemonta may be crazy, but they got helping getting there.