Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Hitch’s little brother is religious

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This may surprise you, but it turns out Christopher Hitchens’ little brother is religious. So religious in fact he wrote a book called The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. It’s basically a repudiation (heh) of his big bro’s book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and it argues religion keeps shaky civilizations from collapsing (maybe on Opposite Day) and prevents the horrors of utopianism as seen through communist regimes such as Russia and China.

The first half of the video is spent showing his accomplishment dick is just as big as his brother Christopher’s, and then around the 4 minute mark he starts talking about his conversion (“I realized one day I might be judged”), his relationship with his brother (not good, considering their father’s deathbed attempt to reconcile them), and his thoughts on atheism’s shortcomings.

It’s an interesting glance into the Hitchens family and the cool things they have all accomplished. You can read a pretty thorough breakdown of his book and the claims he makes on its wiki page. It’s a pretty good way to dust up on the newest style of attacks from religious people, aka the myth that ‘Atheism would do it worse.’

Jesus wants to give you Hepatitis

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When you’re a Catholic priest, one of your supposed powers is the ability to transform wine into the blood of your dead Savior. This supposed divine skill is called “transubstantiation”, and it’s about the lamest power you could confer on anyone. I’ve always been surprised parishioners believe this happens, since they should be able to tell it’s definitely wine they are drinking during Communion. I guess you can’t under-estimate the power of delusion.

The other problem with the whole act of Communion: everyone is drinking from the same cup. It sounds like a gigantic health hazard, and surprise: it turns out a few hundred people in New York may have contracted Hepatitis A during Christmas Mass.

So what are the symptoms of Hep A?

While hepatitis A often has no visible symptoms in children, in adults it often exhibits itself in the form of flu-like symptoms. Other symptoms include tiredness, nausea, vomiting, pain in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, jaundice, dark-colored urine and, in severe cases, liver failure.

Wow, that sounds like it sucks hard. Surely there must be a treatment for this other than praying, right?

There is no treatment for hepatitis A once one has developed the infection, though if you know you’ve been exposed, Mahan recommends getting a vaccine promptly

The Lord works in mysterious ways!

Conservapedia proves Atheists are Fatty Fattersons

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Oh Conservapedia, you’re the gift that keeps on giving. We recently donated some money to Wikipedia, the reality-based crowd sourced encyclopedia, so I suppose it’s only ‘fair and balanced’ we give its right wing la-la land equivalent some love too in the form of a post. On its front page next to such fine articles as “Is Barack Hussein Obama a president, or is he a dictator?” and “More than a thousand scientists have issued a report calling man-made global warming what it actually is: a fraud” sits the Article of the Month: “Atheism and obesity”

Amongst other things, this article says:

  • non-religious are more prone to being obese than very religious individuals (sounds like someone needs a lesson on causality)
  • gluttony is a sin, hence why very religious people are skinnier (and poorer, right?)
  • look at how fat the American Atheists board of directors, PZ Myers, Christopher Hitchens, and lesbians are (for more on that last one, check out conservapedia’s helpful ‘Lesbians and Obesity’ article)
  • atheists get married less often, probably because they’re fat fucks
  • atheists are more likely to kill themselves, again, because a life with gut instead of God is too horrible to bear

The article really is great for lols, but just in case you’re sitting there worried your non-belief is making you fatter, here’s the crux of why this whole thing is dumb: according to the Gallup poll this is all based on, the ‘fat unbeliever’ group makes up 29.7% of the population. You may be surprised atheism has grown so much recently, considering official numbers put the atheist population in the US at somewhere around 6%.

The reason for this sudden quadruple growth in our numbers? Gallup considers anyone where “Religion is not an important part of daily life and church/synagogue/mosque attendance occurs seldom or never.” as part of the 29.7%. Seems to me that definition allows a pretty huge number of fat / lazy believers to get lumped in with us atheists.

The Pink Swastika

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Leave it to fundamentalist Christians to completely rewrite history to serve their own ends. I recommend you check out this article  about a book by evangelical loon named Scott Lively called “The Pink Swastika“. Scott is the president of the ultra conservative “Abiding Truth Ministries” who describes himself as “one of the most knowledgeable opponents of the homosexual agenda in America”. He’s also one of the unbelievably evil pieces of shit behind the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda. You could not have a more sinister opponent than this man.

He’s got some real gems in his book; specifically, he believes that Nazism was really a homofascist conspiracy, claiming Hitler’s top men were really bottoms. Of course, Scotty doesn’t need to bother with having to prove his insane claim: he just has to constantly repeat his lie until some idiot believes him.

“While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” the authors write. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.”

I’m sick and tired of Christians accusing Nazis of being everything BUT Christians. What was the slogan emblazoned on the belts of the SS soldiers who whisked away Jews, gays, the mentally handicapped, and countless other minorities into the gas chambers? “God is on our side”. It’s a fucking fact the majority of Nazis were Christians. Of course they were; Germany was a heavily Christian country at the time, and their antisemitism was a direct consequence of their religion (remember that the charge of “Jewish Decide”, blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus, was only revoked by the Vatican in the 1960′s). Yet conservatives want people to assume fascism is a conspiracy of the left rather than one of the right, all to divert attention away from the fact that it’s much closer to their end of the political spectrum. The fact that the religious tend to be completely ignorant of world history makes books like “The Pink Swastika” the successes that they are.

We can’t let these revisionist liars continue to spew their hatred without consequence. We need to shame these morons before they brainwash their ignorant religious zombies into believing their ludicrous revisionist history. We cannot let fuckers like Scott and his ilk try and re-brand history to and whitewash the culpability of their faith in the murder of millions of innocents.

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!