Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Utlra-Orthodox Jews wear grab that offends in protest

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You can always count on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to do something crazy. If they aren’t busy showing up at a Holocaust denier conference, they’re harassing little girls for dressing “immodestly”. All of this bad press has intensified resentment for these fundamentalist weirdos, so in an effort to fight this image problem, they decided to parade around town in uniforms similar to the ones worn by Jews in concentration camps.

Demonstrating against what they viewed as incitement against the ultra-Orthodox in Israeli media, about 1,000 men marched through the streets of their neighborhood, many of them dressed in concentration camp uniforms and wearing yellow Stars of David, which Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Well, that should convince everyone that you aren’t a bunch of out-of-touch, religious douche-bags without a clue.

I admire this woman

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It takes guts to stand up to Muslims and tell them their faith is hopelessly antiquated, backward, barbaric, and a threat to our modern values. It takes even more guts to do so when you’re an Arab. That’s why I’m in total admiration of this woman. How brave is she? How many of you would be willing to say what she said, in light of the danger it presents? That’s courage, folks!

Why do good things happen to bad people?

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Alright, the video is a little long, but it’s still entertaining, and he’s right in saying the answers to this fundamentally important question are all completely inadequate. I think theists should just admit if there is a God, he/she/it is certainly not “All Loving”. A simple look at Hell would quickly demonstrate that fact. No matter how cruel the real world is (with people and animals suffering untold pain), at least eventually it’s over. But in the supposed “supernatural” realm, pain supposedly continues for eternity. This is not the action of an all loving God, but rather those of a revenge-hungry maniac. Good thing it’s all bullshit, right?

Religious hospitals scare me

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I can’t imagine the kind of terror I would experience if I was a woman and suddenly was faced with a complication in my pregnancy at a Catholic Hospital. The Church’s dogma concerning abortion is one that causes the misery and death of countless women, all because they’re convinced babies are all miracles of a male God, and conclude abortionists are worse than child molesters (you can’t rape what doesn’t exist, right?). Scientifically though, a pregnancy is similar to being invaded by a parasite, and there are often cases where the life of the mother is in imminent peril.

In 2009, St. Joseph hospital was faced with a rapidly dying pregnant woman, and they did the only thing they could do to save her: they aborted the 11 week-old fetus:

The woman who underwent the procedure is in her 20s and had a history of abnormally high blood pressure when she learned of her pregnancy. After she was admitted to the hospital with worsening symptoms, doctors determined her risk of death was nearly 100 percent.

As a consequence, they were stripped of their “Catholic” status by their local Dungeon Master Bishop, and now the hospital is not allowed to celebrate Mass and other useless religious rituals.

That’s actually great news, since it means one more hospital won’t be making any decisions based on some ancient, ridiculous dogma. The fact there are even medical facilities run by experts in nonsense is disturbing: a hospital is a place of science, not superstition. The fact the staff was punished for doing what any other medical establishment would do is telling, isn’t it?

40% of Americans are creationist idiots

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Hey America, how do you know whether or not your public education system is failing? How about the fact almost half of your adult population is convinced the Earth is about as old as the Agrarian Revolution (when we went from hunters to farmers). Nice, huh? If you’re wondering what other Western country has such abysmally ignorant people, the answer is Turkey, a similarly religious country that also has a significant portion of its population swearing fealty to an anthropomorphic God.

The rest is divided into two categories: about 38% think that God directed evolution (proving only these folks know slightly less than nothing about the process). The good news (yes, there’s a slight sliver of hope) is the percentage of Americans who think Evolution has only a secular explanation went from 9% to 16%, demonstrating the hard work of smart people is starting to pay off. While it would be impossible to shift that 40% anytime soon, if we can convince the remaining 38% who aren’t completely retarded that God is merely an invention of our deluded minds and has no business in science, we’d actually be a slight majority.

Until that fucking “miracle” happens, however, you can feel proud no first world country would boast this kind of pathetically low score when it comes to scientific awareness. So if you want to be #1 at something, America, you can always take the prize of “Most Ignorant Modern Country in the World”. Congrats, y’all!

Pope blames pedophilia on society, not church

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Here’s a typical Vatican strategy: when scrutinized, employ a tactic of obfuscation, and outright lies in order to avoid having to accept responsibility for immoral acts. While report after report continues to find the Vatican secretly harbored known pedophiles to keep them safe and out of jail, the world’s largest religion is busy trying to blame everyone else for the child abuse that happened under their watchful gaze.

As an avalanche of cases of pedophile priests came to light, church officials frequently defended their previous practice of putting abusers in therapy, not jail, by saying that was the norm in society at the time. Only this year did the Vatican post on its website unofficial guidelines for bishops to report pedophile priests to police if local laws require it.

In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the pope said. “It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than.’ Nothing is good or bad in itself.

I don’t know what kind of 70′s experience this fucking guy had, but I don’t recall society suddenly embracing pedophilia. The reason the Vatican never really sent any of its child rapists in jail has NOTHING to do with society, and everything to do with the way the organization functions. Ever since they first realized the sexual abuse of minors was rampant in their organization (during the 2nd century), they’ve always considered it something internal. Their own Canon Law has specific rules to “punish” this behavior, which includes community service (some even were put to work in children’s hospitals), a retreat in New Mexico where they can repent their sins, and occasionally, defrocking. You can count on one hand how many of these guys were excommunicated. It’s pathetic.

Benedict has previously acknowledged that the scandal was the result of sin that the church must repent for, and make amends with victims.

Here’s a thought: you could make amends by sending all these child rapists to jail, fuckface. Empty words don’t mean shit!)

This is the real problem: The Vatican thinks child abuse is a sin, while the rest of society thinks it’s a crime. And because this organization is given pseudo-statehood, known criminals have been allowed to escape prosecution on countless occasions. Oh, but it’s society’s fault though, cuz the Pope said so, and he’s infallible!

It’s rather hilarious that on the same day the Pope issues this statement, the Italian government seized over 23 million euros from the Vatican Bank they suspect was being laundered for crooked businessmen and gangsters. The Catholic Church has plenty of experience laundering money: they got plenty of practice doing it for the Nazis, although I’m sure they would also claim it was society’s fault they did this too.

Harry Potter Actress beaten, threatened for dating Non-Muslim

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There’s an interesting Cracked article entitled “5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam“, and while I thought it fair to point out religion hasn’t always been a gigantic problem for this world, it fundamentally glosses over the fact in many parts of the world, the dangerous combination of faith and tradition leads to the suppression, torture and murder of women. It’s true Christianity, on a whole, has been more cruel and oppressive than Islam in the past. But abuse, scandal and the maltreatment of minorities and females is something inherent to most religions. It’s part of their very “DNA”.

What frightens people about Islam is the West seems to have no affect on modernizing Muslim’s attitudes about women and their right to choose how to live their own lives. Take Afshan Azad, a sexy 22 year old actress who appeared in the Harry Potter movies: when it was discovered by her family she was dating a Hindu man, she was beaten and called a prostitute until finally being threatened with death for the “crime” of shaming her family.

The reason for the assault, apparently her association with a Hindu young man, that apparently being disapproved of by her family who are Muslim.
‘Specifically she spoke not only of assault but also threats to kill, made jointly by her father and brother.’

Afshan and her family are British citizens, but seems not to matter to her brother and father, who feel compelled by their tradition to murder a girl who has chosen to date outside of her family’s faith. And while it can be argued that this tradition is far older than Islam, the fact it maintains itself is a direct consequence of the extreme conservative nature of Islam. It doesn’t matter at one time Muslim scholars were the most educated and progressive in the world: that time has passed, and the religion has never transitioned into the modern world. I think the guys over at Cracked should have watched this debate before writing their article.

This song blows

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So diversity is bad? Were they also trying to say everyone needs a gun too? I’m confused…

The Pope goes on the offense

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The best defense is a good offense, and no one knows this like the Catholic Church. The Vatican is busy trying to get everyone to forget they’ve been raping kids en masse, so they’re going for the same strategy they’ve always employed when things get dicey: Find a scapegoat.

The key to finding a good scapegoat is to first find someone who is less popular than you are. What’s less popular than child molesters? Well, not much really, but it depends on where you live. There’s still one group around the world generally despised for no good reason: non-believers.

Pope Benedict voiced the Catholic Church’s deep concern over “hostility and prejudice“ against Christianity in Europe on Thursday, saying creeping secularism was just as bad as religious fanaticism…The Pope put what the Vatican has termed “aggressive secularism”, such as gay marriage and restrictions on religious symbols such as crucifixes, nativity scenes and other traditions, on the same level as religious fanaticism.

You hear that, gay marriage advocates? You’re on the same level as the terrorist who straps C4 and shrapnel to his body and blows himself up on a bus full of school children! By trying to get the rest of the world to stand by your deep anal dicking, you’ve thrown the whole world in peril, and it could even start a full blown global conflict. These recent attacks on nativity scenes remind me of when those poor girls in Afghanistan had acid thrown in their face for daring to educate themselves. The two are morally equivalent, don’t you know. Seriously, what did that little plastic baby Jesus ever do to you, atheists?

“The same determination that condemns every form of fanaticism and religious fundamentalism must also oppose every form of hostility to religion that would restrict the public role of believers in civil and political life,” he said.

“It should be clear that religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike in that both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the principle of secularity.”

Yes, the Church should know a thing or two about pluralism. Their belief in the supremacy of their own religion has never caused genocide, torture of women, random murder of thousands of Jews periodically in Medieval Europe, and a host of other terrible shit, right? Truly these religious leaders are the guardians of plurality! Secularism has never allowed people of different faith (regardless of how dumb they are) to coexist peacefully. No, for that to happen, we needed monotheistic religions to be in charge.

Seriously, can you fucking believe this guy?

Getting Harassed: Christian-style

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The difference between a bully and a Christian in some of these small towns is they feel vindicated for what they do when they “pray” for the souls of us poor heathens. Listen to the guy at the end: yeah, it must totally be our “militant atheism” that makes people hate us. I mean before Richard Dawkins and Hitchens wrote their respective books, the world was a better place for atheists, and we were treated like gold!

Apparently, we don’t understand faith

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Oh wounded Christians, when will you stop your belly-aching and stop acting like you are the victims of atheist aggression? It seems like every other day I have to read some theist’s article about how atheists are either 1) way too mean, 2) clueless about religion, and 3) completely dogmatic about their non-belief. While I could accept the first (in my case, although I’m one of the few very vitriolic ones), the second and third seems to completely ignore the fact that a significant number of non-believers were, at one time or another, believers.

A fan of the site sent me a link to this article, entitled “atheists: can we get along or whatever”, a follow-up to another article he had written called “Dear Atheists: most of us don’t care what you think”. As you might have guessed, after writing the latter (a long diatribe about how faith is unshakable and immutable), he was inundated by comments from non-believers, and decided that more clarification was needed. He was, apparently, unaware that the internet is made up mostly of malcontents like you and me, and felt that we didn’t really understand his religion enough to critique it.

The thesis of my story was this: that debates between the religious and atheists are useless because most atheists do not understand religion, particularly the idea of religious faith.

I’m getting a little tired of the accusation that atheists simple don’t understand religion. It’s obvious from most surveys that we are, in fact, on average much more educated about faith than our religious counterparts. This is usually ignored. We may understand the minutia of faith, but to religionists, our lack of belief must mean that we don’t actually “get it”. Why else would we refuse to accept God into our lives?

But faith is different. It is private. It touches on a different reality that either you get or you do not. Faith is like love and how do you debate love? Faith has driven untold millions, billions, of people through history and cannot be dismissed so easily.

I’ve always hated this line of argument. You might as well just say that millions of people used to believe that the earth was flat as a debate tactic. Simply because tons of human beings choose to believe in absurd things, and feel motivated to do things because of such absurdities does not in fact condon these ideas. If anything, it shows the profound vulnerability of ignorant humans to invent answers and explination when there are no certainties. This is not something we should be especially proud of.

I have no doubt that “faith” is a lot more difficult to hold on to than I can imagine. Objective reality does not conform with religious instructions, which is why faith is so important to guys like Charles Lewis. And while religionists want to pat themselves on the back for believing in the absurd, the rest of us just shake our heads in disbelief, saying simply: it would be a lot easier on you if you just stopped trusting in the nonsense you’ve been fed your whole life, pal.

Faith is not up for debate. I do not care whether Christopher Hitchens or the guy who sits three rows away thinks I am living in a fantasy. Why would I care? If faith could be broken by mindless criticism then it would not be faith.

I agree, which is why we find faith so troubling. If you cannot debate something, than what value does it have? It’s further proof that those with faith are secretly afraid of revealing even their inner-most doubts, out of fear that they may inadvertantly stop believing once they finally begin to question their deeply held assumptions. Any individual who refuses to question even his/her most cherished beliefs is not only weak minded; they are also cowards. If you think it takes more bravery to believe in the absurd, then I honestly feel sorry for you.

Vintage Carl Sagan

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Back when Venus was still such a mystery. Looks like Sagan’s guess was a pretty good one, huh?

It’s not religion we crave, it’s connections

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A new study published in the American Sociological Review confirmed something most of us already know: it isn’t theology and spirituality that explains the positive relationship between religion and happiness; it’s the community element.

Our study offers compelling evidence that it is the social aspects of religion rather than theology or spirituality that leads to life satisfaction,” said Chaeyoon Lim, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study.

The benefits of religion (yes, there are some, admittedly) is largely due to the fact human beings are social animals. There’s nothing revolutionary about that statement, and yet it seems to be largely ignored by everyone. Understandably, religionists want to believe the benefits of religion is in the dogma and belief, since these serve as proof, in their eyes, that their religion is something special. In reality, the fact humans are interacting with one another AFTER the pastor finishes his little speech plays a far more important role in the degree of satisfaction of everyone in attendance.

As atheists we’ve been forced to admit we cannot hope to grow as a movement if we ignore the important fact our species is entirely dependent on being social and having a sense of belonging. We were always too afraid of being labeled as a religion to seriously consider organizing ourselves the way religions do, but in so doing we ignore a fundamentally important aspect of ourselves. The good news is no dogma or preaching is necessary. So long as people have a place to regularly meet and be social, the rest takes care of itself.

Absolutely stupid

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Hey, do you have a few minutes to kill and you want to see how a terribly constructed argument works (or doesn’t)? Well, head on over to “proofthatgodexists.org” and let them blow your mind with their irrefutable logic!

Basically the site has a welcome page that wants you to chose 4 different buttons to assess your belief. Depending on what answer you give, it’ll direct you either out of the site (if you chose the “I don’t give a shit” button) or into a little page with wordplay (asking you if it’s absolutely true no absolute truths exists). Once they have your feeble mind entrapped in this idiotic word game, and you decide to click the “There is Absolute Truth”, the sale is on to get you to believe in God.

It is true that God does not need anyone, let alone this website, to prove His existence. The Bible teaches that the existence of God is so obvious that we are without excuse for denying Him. No one needs proof that God exists, I simply offer these 8 steps to the logical proof of God’s existence in addition to what you already know (and may be suppressing).

Ok, so God doesn’t need to be proven because he’s so obvious, but there are a bunch of proofs anyways. Seems like a waste of breath if that’s the case, but who am I to argue? I didn’t write the damn thing.

What’s hilarious about this site is anytime you try to disagree with it on the concept of fundamentals, it asks you a completely loaded question which basically makes your mind up for you. When you dare question the idea of absolute moral laws, you get this:

1. Molesting Children for Fun is Absolutely Morally Wrong
2. Molesting Children for Fun is not Absolutely Morally Wrong.

If you chose the second option, you’re told you in fact have no morality since you’ve evidently made a bad choice! But wait, it gets more awesome as you travel deeper. When asked if the laws that govern the Universe are material or immaterial in nature, the obvious answer (well, to us materialists anyways) produces this hilarious gem:

If you believe that laws of logic, mathematics, science, or morality are made of matter, please show me where in nature these laws are. Can you touch them, see them, smell them, hear them, or taste them? Rather than have you produce a material, physical law I will narrow down the field for you… just show me the number ’3′ somewhere in nature. Not ‘three things,’ not a written representation of the number 3 but the real physical, material number 3.

It is my hope and prayer that you come to see the futility of trying find an abstract entity in nature, and return to seek the truth, otherwise your road to this site’s proof that God exists ends here.

Is there ultimately something ironic about the fact he wants someone to produce material proof of a concept? Maybe just a little. Remember, he’s convinced already he’s right, and he’s still trying to entice you with the ultimate proof.  In a weird way, it’s the religious equivalent of a “choose your own adventure book”.

Alright, it’s getting a little long after a while, and you start to wonder what the big payoff is, after a while. Finally, it’s the end, and the author wants to blow you away with this one:

The Proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove anything.

That sounds like something a burnt out stoner would think of. Your proof is that without this improvable being, there would be nothing to prove at all? Did this fucking guy feel like a genius when he said that? I almost feel like he only had a few educated friends who weren’t willing to be honest with him and inform Blaise Pascal here this is the very definition of one of the most basic of all fallacies: a tautology. There’s literally no value to that statement at all.