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.
Author Archives: Jacob Fortin
Uganda ready to kill gays again
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
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
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
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
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.
William Lane Craig tries to defend Biblical genocides
A few weeks ago I posted a video of a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig. The video made it clear that Craig is no dummy, despite believing in absurdities. He’s been particularly busy recently defending the faith, and one of his latest articles tries to justify the genocide and infanticide in the Bible. It’s pretty messed up, actually:
According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1-2; 20.16-18). The destruction was to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed.
The command to kill all the Canaanite peoples is jarring precisely because it seems so at odds with the portrait of Yahweh, Israel’s God, which is painted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Contrary to the vituperative rhetoric of someone like Richard Dawkins, the God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of justice, long-suffering, and compassion.
We’ve obviously read a different book. God doesn’t strike me for one second as having any kind of compassion at all. He kills people for burning incense improperly. He commands his “people” to kill all the other tribes who happen to live around them. This whole “God is love” shit is a pretty recent phenomenon. Just ask Pope Innocent III.
According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are.
In other words, if the commands of an all loving God sound evil, it’s only because good and evil are not really concepts he has to worry about, since he’s not subject to his own moral laws. In other words, if God does something we consider evil, like command the Jews to slaughter innocent people, it only seems that way to us because we’re subject to moral laws, not God.
So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their own initiative, it would have been wrong.
Wow. So if I kill my neighbor, I’m committing an evil act. However if a voice in my head told me to do so, it’s kosher. Good to know!
God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel.
Yeah, clearly little children who remember nothing of their parents equally stupid religious beliefs would have been a major threat. Better that they should all be smashed against rocks, right?
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation.
See, that’s the kind of ignorant shit that drives us crazy. You’re literally suggesting they were in fact saved by being brutally murdered. That’s just fucking ignorant.
Muslim actress threatened over Playboy pictures
When I think of someone famous taking off their clothing for money and more attention, it’s rare that I compare their actions to those of great revolutionaries. Of course, that’s probably because I live in a society that values freedom of expression, and where the female form isn’t something we like covered up (which is why winter sucks so hard). That’s why I had to take a few moments to appreciate the fact that a German Muslim actress named Sila Sahin has received death threats after posing nude for Playboy.
Her Turkish parents are apparently uber-conservative and called her all kinds of nasty names for doing what she wants with her own body.
“For years I subordinated myself to various societal constraints. The Playboy photo shoot was a total act of liberation.”
You know you’re on the side of good when you’re trying to defend a society that has citizens who feel liberated when they show people their naughty parts!
Kiwi youths uninformed about Easter
How did your Zombie Jesus Weekend turn out? Personally I stuffed myself with food and partied way too hard, but it’s pretty much the only way most people I know tend to celebrate. In fact, it looks like most of New Zealand has no fucking clue what the holiday is actually about. According to a super unscientific survey they did, kids are generally ignorant as to the history and purpose of Easter. It’s hilarious:
The 10-question survey, which asked basic questions about Christ’s death and resurrection, returned a mean test score of 5 out of 10…The question as to whom betrayed Christ confused a number of others, with one young respondent believing it was his dog who was disloyal. Another was hazy about the entire concept of Easter.
I remember that part in the Bible when Old Yeller betrays Jesus too. Bastard.
A 16-year-old believed Christ was referred to as “King of the World”, and was crucified wearing a “halo made of bunnies”.
A halo made of bunnies.. How does that even work?
All of this is a positive sign that no one really gives a damn about Christianity enough to pass on their stupid stories to the next generation. So while some may lament about this, the rest of us secularists can take comfort that the world is slowly losing its religious flavor. It might take a while, but it looks like we might be on the winning side after all.
Negligent mother thanks invisible friend for rescued baby
Imagine you’re a shitty parent, and your unsupervised 16 month old falls through the balcony railing of your 4 story hotel room and into the arms of a resourceful passer-by. Is your first instinct to thank your invisible friend in the sky for the rescue?
Jah-Nea Myles, 16 months, apparently slipped through the balcony railing and fell into the arms of Helen Beard.
Ms. Beard, of Worksop, was at the pool at Orlando’s Econo Lodge hotel when she saw the baby hanging from the railing and ran underneath, she said.
Ms. Myles told Reuters: “I’m thanking the Lord above right now for saving my child’s life. I’m also thanking that lady because she was an angel sent from heaven.”
It wasn’t your Iron Age God, or one of his sexless servants who saved your kid; it was a young woman from Worksop, England with a head on her shoulders.
I received another email
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
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.
Richard Dawkins and the rise of atheism
Here’s a speech by Richard Dawkins from last year’s Global Atheist Convention Melbourne. As always, his talk is poetic, inspiring and beautiful. A must watch for any fan.
Fighting Irrationality is hard
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
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?