Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Love wins, Christianity loses

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Is there objective morality in the Universe?

Posted on by

I received a number of emails about the Harris vs Craig debate, and I thought it would be fun if we had a forum to discuss a question that’s been on my mind since listening to the debate: does objective morality exists?

We’ll start with one of the letters I got from a fan of the show:

Hi there TGA,
I just thought I’d say that I really enjoyed the debate you posted between Sam Harris and Something Craig. However, as an atheist I was surprised to find that I was disappointed by Sam’s showing. It seemed to me that he spent most of his time rehashing arguments he’d made at previous talks rather than addressing the statements made by Professor Craig. Specifically, I felt that the Prof adopted an almost pantheist or deist framework, refusing to acknowledge the sectarian beliefs we all know he holds, while Sam spent the debate firing heavy artillery at those very sectarian contentions, thereby missing Craig’s assertions entirely.

There are a lot of flaws in Craig’s argument that weren’t discussed and it’d go along way in satisfying my urge to shake some sense into him, in a way Sam didn’t, if you’d address them in your next podcast.

Before I talk about this on the podcast, I think it’s important for me to say that I’m not entirely convinced there is such a thing as “objective morality” in the Universe. That’s not to say I don’t believe in right or wrong; I’m just not convinced there’s any empirical evidence to suggest human morality is somewhat built on the premise certain actions are Universally wrong and Universally right outside our own species.

So I’m presented with a bit of a dilemma: while I think Craig’s argument – this objective morality is grounded in the concept of a morally perfect God – fails to address a number of issues, Sam similarly fails in my view to demonstrate how an objective morality exists outside of our own framework.

Still, I haven’t yet read his book, and his argument may be simply incomplete. So while I try and spend the next few days securing and analyzing his tome, I want your opinions on whether you think objective morality in fact exists!

Accommodation or confrontation?

Posted on by

Since arriving in Calgary, I made a simple promise to myself. I vowed that I would further my involvement in the local atheist community. It was therefore fortuitous that after only of few days of adjusting to my new surroundings, an opportunity to meet up with other atheists presented itself in the form of a lecture. Held at the University of Calgary last night, it was entitled “The Evolution-Creation Controversy“. Dr. David Eberth presented a stimulating discussion on the framework of Creationism, and argued the real ‘debate” is a political and cultural rather than a scientific struggle.

Dr. Eberth was coming into his approach from an admittedly accommodationist angle. You’re all probably terribly familiar with my thoughts on the matter by now, and can venture to guess I had a few things to say about it. Specifically I focused on one of his metaphors: that of a pendulum illustrating the tendencies for movements to shift from side to side. My argument was perhaps it would be in our favor to put as much emphasis on “our end of the spectrum” rather than concentrate on those who’s opinions were unformulated (the overly solicited “middle ground”).

While I admit it may seem strange one becomes more popular the more you alienate others (to a certain degree, of course), this paradox is undeniably true. Perhaps it’s because the unconvinced masses are impossible to sway, and so they require a “flash-point” in order to be compelled to choose (the safest thing, after all, is not to do anything). The “proles”, Winston observed in George Orwell’s dystopic masterpiece, were simply incapable of grasping the idea they were being oppressed. The experience was so pervasive, it was essentially invisible to them.

Delusion functions similarly. And while Eberth expressed no real interest in what people believed – since in his view it didn’t influence the process of science – it nevertheless interferes with the perception of science. This may be cultural, but it is the systematic irrationality on the part of everyone involved (at all levels) that creates fertile grounds for the controversy. Like any other poisonous concept such as racism, bigotry and sexism, there are no institutions that vanguard these antiquated and dangerous ideas; they are merely the subtle manifestation of a broader set of shared beliefs.

In other words, what you believe really does matter. The importance of belief leaves me unmoved by the limited reproach we give to bad ideas. Even worse, if we try to seduce people to see reality, the truth is we do provide a far less tempting offer. Religion entices followers with a host of promises we couldn’t begin to match. Instead we offer the bitter reality, like all offers which are too good to be true, it really was that and more. What our species accepted in the bargain of religion was the formation of an idea whose very existence created culturally dominant forces which withheld at bay our growing curiosity. Only in the light of reason, a glacially slow process many have perished to preserve, have we wrested away control from these institutions.

Soft pats on the back and a Scooby-Snack will not be enough to entice people to reason. We must instead appeal to the need that all humans share: to wrestle against the absurd. It is in our nature to fight the confusion of enigmatic forces acting upon one another. That struggle creates order to the world we experience. If you doubt this, a simple test can be arranged: simply try and manage that monster struggle after a only few days of sleeplessness. Our capacity for reason is the ultimate triumph of this struggle, but it is a delicate thing, difficult to maintain, and often contrary to our more potent instincts.

We must dissuade them as strongly as we can not to surrender this fragile capacity for reason simply for wishful fantasy. At the end of the day, I believe it is our desire to win the struggle for reason that will make us triumphant, and it is not one we should mask in an effort to be polite.

The evils of Missionary work

Posted on by

A recent article on haveyoureadthebible.com* on missionary work left me both angry and disgusted. If you’ve got the time, I highly recommend reading it if you want your blood to boil a little (especially the pictures of these morons on dune buggies and hiking trips).

I never grew up in a particularly religious environment, thanks largely to my anti-theist father, so my interactions with missionaries occurred only in my young adulthood. Until then I never really thought about what it was all about. No doubt if I had met any in my youth, they would have filled my head with romantic images of the struggling humanitarians trying to “save the souls” of the damned to create a better world.

The reality of missionary work, however, differs vastly from the carefully crafted image religions try to portray. The problem can be understood this way: any actions intended to change the mind and culture of another society comes with a number of risks. The first, and most obvious, is the corrupting influence of wealth; for how can an African child, offered a piece of life-saving bread at the edge of starvation, not be unduly influenced by those giving out their aid? At the least sinister (and this is rarely the case), charity alone pressures those receiving food or shelter to play along for their own good. Much more often, the gift is a bargaining chip to entice converts, and a strong deterrent for departure.

The danger lies also in the twisted reason for their pilgrimage. Rather than a result of merely the kindness and goodness of their hearts, the missionary is on an ordained mission from God, told by scripture to spread the word, regardless of its consequences. The influence of which has transformed Africa into a proxy war between Christianity and Islam. Conflict follows religions wherever they go, since their own ideologies require a totalitarian control over the entirety of existence. It isn’t enough they control the actions of millions of people, the externalities of belief demand even family members turn on one another. Like Matthiew 10:21 so clearly opined,

“brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.”

*(Update: The site no longer exists)

Hitchens on the afterlife

Posted on by

Here’s a nice video for you late risers that is part of a complete breakfast: Hitchens being asked if the prospect of death has caused him to “rethink” his position on the “afterlife”. His response is both eloquent, and satisfyingly vulgar. Enjoy!

Sam Harris vs William Lane Craig

Posted on by

William Lane Craig is perhaps one of the few powerful debaters left on the side of zombie Jesus, so I strongly recommend you listen to what he has to say and determine for yourself how wrong he is about the concept of God being the superior objective moral standard.

My 2 cents? Is something good only because God determines it to be good? If there is a definite moral objectivity, how is unquestioning authority a solution to this? If he admits morality changes over time, then how does this reflect the image of a never changing God?

The Evolution Handbook is a joke

Posted on by

Today’s creationist idiot is different from his forebears. For starters, he is far more cognizant of science, and often appropriates very select information that confirms his crackpot theories. He desperately wants the legitimacy of science without actually having to do any.

The latest loon is the author of a “book” entitled “The Evolution Handbook“, written by a young-earth creationist by the name of Vance Ferrell. The majority of it is available online, and you can get an idea from the introduction what he intends to “prove”:

The scientific facts presented here will help insulate you from the desolating effects of evolutionary theory.

Yes, please insulate me from knowledge!

Life evolution is founded on the twin theories of spontaneous generation and Lamarckism (the inheritance of acquired characteristics);—yet, although they remain the basis of biological evolution, both were debunked by scientists over a century ago.

Lamarkism? Is this guy stuck in the 19th century or something? For those of you unfamiliar with this long ago debunked evolutionary idea, it proposed that species would pass on traits that it had developed during its lifetime. In other words, if an animal lived somewhere cold, it would “evolve” a fur coat and pass on this trait to the following generation.*

As for spontaneous generation, I think this fool may have it confused with abiogenesis. Regardless, despite some few hundred pages of absolute drivel, Vance can’t get over the fact that the origins of the Universe are still very mysterious. He seems entirely focused on the fact the Cosmos may have originated from nothing, and then becomes incensed this must somehow mean the Big Bang is impossible. His solution is, of course, far more ludicrous: a bearded entity created everything the way it is less than 10,000 years ago. The proof? Science is wrong, that’s why!

He offers a brief overview of every creationist scientist who agrees with him, and as you might have guessed, most of them perished before your grandparents were even born! That’s when all the good science got done, right?

The most telling chapter of all is one entitled “Evolution, Morality, and Violence” which claims that evolutionary science is ruining modern civilization:

Evolution is nihilistic in regard to morals. First, the clear implication is that people are just animals, so there is no right or wrong. Second, it teaches that all evolutionary progress has been made by some at the expense of others.

Ah yes, I can still remember the good old days before people started to study evolution. Black people lived freely and without fear of lynching. Women were treated with respect and dignity. Minorities were celebrated for their diversity and unique contributions to society. Yes, in my deluded mind all of these wonderful things happened until the wickedness of science destroyed our peaceful utopia.

Enjoy yourself while this complete fuckwad tries to convince you all the best science in the world points to a 10,000 year old earth!

*Interestingly enough, Lamarkism has seen a kind of resurgence with the field of epigenetics (some genes can become dormant or expressed depending on certain environmental conditions, although this theory is still in its infancy). So perhaps there is something to the theory after all!

Pharmacists in Illinois can refuse Morning-After Pill

Posted on by

Did you know that of all the states in the Union, none played a bigger role in the birth of the nuclear age than Illinois (the first sustained nuclear reaction took place at the University of Chicago)? I found that out when I was trying to do a little research about it. Needless to say, the above headline made me shake my head in disbelief.

As the fifth largest state, it’s often considered a microcosm for the rest of America, and if that’s the case, I have some pretty grim news. Turns out a circuit judge recently ruled that pharmacists can refuse to sell women the “morning-after” pill based on their religious objections.

“The judge’s decision makes clear that religious people don’t have to give up their religion, don’t have to check their conscience at the door, to enter the health care profession,” Rienzi said.

Actually, you do need to check your nonsensical beliefs when you’re part of the medical profession, buddy. What’s next; someone refusing to perform surgery because the patient is gay? Religious faith has no fucking business in medicine, and access to contraception is a vital health service that has nothing to do with people’s religious convictions. Let’s hope the state attorney has some success fighting this bullshit, otherwise I might advise every young woman from that state to pack your bags and get ready to move somewhere that isn’t still living in the 19th century.

Interview with Jessica Ahlquist

Posted on by

Yesterday I posted a video of Jessica and her fight with Cranston West High School in Rhode Island over a prayer banner she sued to have removed. I thought she was so brave for doing this she deserved to have her interview posted, especially after I noticed that it only received 30 views so far. Surely we can do better, people!

Conservative Christians are hypocrites

Posted on by

When it comes to the right to practice their religion the way they see fit – which includes complaining whenever they aren’t allowed to openly discriminate against gays – Conservative Christians take that shit pretty seriously. Unfortunately, they’re also a bunch of annoying hypocrites who think every other religion is dangerous idolatry, even when it’s a bunch of innocent people dressing up like characters from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings:

Fans dressed as Wookies and vampires will be among the throng to hear passages from those bibles of fantasy The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at a “Sci-Fi and Fantasy Friendly Church Service”.

But traditionalists have slammed the service’s irreverence and lack of emphasis on scripture…”I don’t have a problem with people enjoying sci-fi, but church isn’t the place to encourage escapism and fancy dress,” Mentone Baptist minister Murray Campbell said.

Wow. So your average church service, complete with a dude in a dress waving around burning incense and encouraging his flock to pray to an imaginary being, doesn’t encourage escapism and fancy dress, huh? Take a look in the mirror, morons. If you weren’t so used to all the weird stuff you do to please your vengeful God, you’d think it was just as ridiculous as the rest.

While the service is meant to introduce more people to Christianity, I think at the end of the day everyone coming out of this kind of service will realize it’s all just a bunch of fairytale nonsense. What better way to erode faith than to show how common and utterly played-out these stories are. If you think the story of Jesus is original, you’re just lucky modern copyright law wasn’t around at the time, otherwise the early Church fathers would have been sued by the Egyptians, Babylonians, and every other culture they blatantly plagiarized.

Moron thinks atheists would believe in God given enough “stress”

Posted on by

Have you ever felt as though everyone who isn’t a non-believer has absolutely no idea what it means to be an atheist? It seems like every other day some idiot starts pretending to know how we think, or why we’ve rejected the fanciful notions of madmen. The latest “guy who thinks he knows what the fuck he’s talking about” is Raj Raghunathan, who argues (in his pathetic article entitled “When the going gets tough, the atheist goes praying”) that all atheists are essentially pampered intellectuals who would run crying back to the fold of religion if the shit ever hits the fan:

Put differently, everyone–even the most hardcore atheists, I think–will start believing in God if put under a high amount of stress. Think of the last time you prayed to God, and I will bet that, for many of you (whether you generally classify yourself as an atheist or not), it would have been when you were under stress. For most of us so-called atheists, when things go horribly wrong, we think of God.

What the fuck is this moron talking about? When I feel “stressed”, the last thing that pops into my mind is “gee, I better pray to some kind of anthropomorphic God rather than try and solve my own problems”. It’s just another version of the argument there are “no atheists in foxholes”, something that’s been proven time and time again to just be baseless religious propaganda.

What this theory suggests, then, is that whether you believe in God is not as much a matter of how smart or educated you are, but rather, a matter of whether life has worked out in a way that makes you feel comfortable enough to be an atheist.

So according to this clown, if you’re an atheist it’s because your life has been too easy, and you haven’t had the need for the comfort of a deity. This would suggest that non-belief has nothing to do with intellectual integrity. Instead, your own thoughts about the existence, or non-existence of God is based mostly on how miserable your life is.

This means that no one is a complete atheist or, for that matter, a complete believer in God. Each of us has a propensity to be somewhere on that continuum. And even a hardcore atheist may exhibit belief in God if he feels his life is sufficiently broken.

So, if your life turned to shit, you would abandon your ideals and proceed immediately to believe in the immaculate conception of Jesus, or the many arms of Vishnu. Seriously? This reminds me of just how poorly we atheists are understood by outsiders.

I could argue, fact-free in the same manner that Raj does, that stress and misery would actually make someone cease to believe in God. After all, how could the death of a loved one, or some other cruel tragedy that befalls them, not convince a believer that his loving God was merely the figment of an overactive imagination?

I also find it interesting that for someone with a PhD in Marketing who fancies himself an expert in psychology (he says he took some classes in it while studying for his degree), he seems completely unaware of the notion he’s presented no facts to support his conclusion. He confuses correlation with causation (in his confused attempt to link life comfort with atheism), and he offers only his personal experience as evidence atheists are simply one tragedy away from coming back into the fold of religion. He seems completely unaware of people who have tried, in vain, to believe in a personal God. That would probably require a little research on his side, but it’s obvious from his content-free article he’s already made up his mind ahead of time, and any evidence to the contrary be damned.

Might I suggest you stick with trying to sell people shit they don’t need, buddy? You can also check out another great rebuke here.

Mike Huckabee is a nutjob

Posted on by

Behind his easy smile and non-threatening demeanor, Mike Huckabee is the worst kind of politician: he believes the Constitution should be amended to better “reflect” his own Biblical values. He sees religion as a primary source of both law and morality, and he even believes only those with a “Biblical world-view” should be governing:

He said that the kind of “Biblical worldview” taught at SCS [Statesville Christian School] was in the direction of unmitigated equality.
“I’d love the world to be lead by people who have a Biblical worldview,” he said.
“Wouldn’t it be an exciting thing to have leaders who believe all of us are equal?” he later asked.

Would this be the same “equality” that justified slavery for so many centuries? I wonder. In any case, his notion that leaders who have faith in the Bible would somehow hold hands and sing “kumbaya” is a joke: how many countries have gone to war over their own interpretations of the “good book”?

Huckabee also said when he grew up (in the town  of Hope, Ark., in the late 1950s and 1960s), folks were more open about their faith

During the 1950′s and 60′s, his Baptist brethren were still lynching black people and making them drink from separate water fountains. If anyone should have been ashamed of their beliefs, it should have been them.

Huckabee said part of such a worldview as is taught at Statesville Christian is the idea of absolutism that rejects moral objectivism and stipulates that some things “are always right” and others “are always wrong”.

Well, here’s a simple test of morality: if there is always an absolute right and an absolute wrong, then how would his great-grandparents feel about slavery being abolished? Why did our collective attitude about this “time honored” practice change if morality is absolute?