Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

We Stand Defeated, People

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So let’s surmise this man’s arguments.

  • I think God is a better explanation because I clearly don’t understand cosmic evolution.
  • The complexity of the environment is best understood by belief in an even more complex and mysterious strange force that exists outside of time and space
  • I see design everywhere, therefore a designer best explains what I see.
  • The alternative to my theory is the Universe popped out of a desert
  • Ethics and morality never existed before the Bronze Age
  • The mind can’t come from matter because that sounds less favorable to my opinion.

Irrefutable, really. I should just pack up my shit and start my new life in the service of an ever-loving man-god figure who’s sole interest in life is the absolute sheepish devotion of an ape that walks upright and takes itself way too seriously.

Islam is totally reasonable

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You remember Pakistan right? It’s the country currently being ruled by a military dictator who happens to be nice and chummy to Islamic groups who like to get women sentenced to death for blasphemy.

They seem to be profoundly confused about what to do regarding the sacredness of the name “Muhammad”, as they’ve recently arrested a man for throwing out a business card of someone who shared the namesake. You can’t make up something this fucking ridiculous.

The case began Friday when Muhammad Faizan, a pharmaceutical company representative, visited Valiyani’s clinic and handed out his business card. He said when the doctor threw the card away, Faizan went to police and filed a complaint that noted his name was the same as the prophet’s.

Pakistan’s minister for minority affairs has said the law is being examined to prevent widespread abuse.

Yeah, you wouldn’t want anyone to just arbitrarily use this law to jail people for absolutely no reason.

It would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact this is a country which has plenty of nuclear warheads to go around, and they get a huge itch every time someone starts drawing a cartoon of their “prophet”. The very fact they even contemplate executing a man for the offense of throwing out a business card with the name Muhammad on it goes to show just how reasonable people are when it comes to their indefensible beliefs. These are the same folks who want everyone else on earth to respect their beliefs. Respect is earned, not given away.

Scooby-Don’t

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I’ve gotten a few emails asking me why I bothered to feature a comic section when most of them appear to be dated last October. Well, that’s because the comics are making a comeback in 2011, and I thought I might give you a little preview. Since I talked about Joseph Ratzinger on my last Bonus show (I refuse to call this guy by his role-playing nickname, Benedict XVI) in light of all the new revelations of priestly abuse in Germany, this comic needs to go up.

The Salvation Army sucks

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You want to know why you shouldn’t donate money to religious charitable organizations? Because they end up doing this kind of shit:

The Salvation Army says it refuses to distribute Harry Potter and Twilight toys collected for needy children because they’re incompatible with the charity’s Christian beliefs.

The policy has alarmed a Calgarian who volunteered to sift through a southeast warehouse full of unused, donated items and was alarmed when he was told by Salvation Army officials that the two kinds of toys are “disposed of” and not given to other charities.

“I asked if these toys went to another charitable organizations but was told no, that by passing these toys on to another agency for distribution would be supporting these toys”

Some of you might recall the intense hatred and mistrust Christians have against the concepts of wizards, vampires and werewolves. Generally speaking, serious Bible literalists contend their holy book makes special mentions about how anyone practicing witchcraft should be killed. See, they actually took this nonsense seriously, rather than just chilling out and enjoying a little fantasy. This same maniacal need to listen to revelation resulted in the systematic murder of countless women in Europe during the period we call “The Inquisition”.

They may have chilled out a bit since then, but how fucking ridiculous is it people are still concerned stuff like Harry Potter and Twilight will send their children into the arms of Satanists eagerly awaiting the corruption of their young souls. It’s just more fiction, except in this case, people actually take it seriously.

Quackery claims another victim

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If you’re a regular podcast listener, you might remember a show I did a few weeks back on The Lorne Trottier Science Symposium, and I talked at length about one speaker, Dr. David Gorski (who looks a lot like the guy with glasses from ER) who’s busy fighting superstition on his blog, Science-Based Medicine. David specializes in breast cancer, and over the years has constantly battled the dangers of pseudoscience and quackery. He sees the direct consequence of people listening to “The Secret” and other junk ideas rather than medical doctors.

The latest victim of this terrible and tragic new phenomenon of trying to use “positive thinking” to fight malignant tumors is a woman by the name of Kim Tinkham. She was diagnosed in February 2007 with stage 3 breast cancer, and every doctor she talked to gave her the same diagnosis: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. It’s not a pleasant process, but the odds of survival were still relatively good.

Instead of opting for surgery (I still like David’s “nothing heals like surgical steel” line), Kim watched the movie “The Secret”, and fell for their pathetic “think positive and you can have shit” shtick: she even appeared on Oprah to explain her decision:

I watched The Secret for the first time back in 2006. Shortly after The Secret aired on Oprah, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was shocked, but most of all, I became mad. Not because I had cancer, but because most of the doctors that I’ve spoken to -three so far- have all said that surgery was absolutely necessary within the next month. I would have to undergo a partial radical mastectomy of the right breast, followed by treatment. After much thought, I’ve decided to heal myself.

To be fair, Oprah did try to convince her to seek real medical treatment, but backed down a little when Kim suggested this was a life affirming decision on her part. Besides, “The Secret” was a movie that Oprah had recommended to her female zombies, and once the genie was out of the bottle, it’s kind of hard to put it back.

The problem here is Kim didn’t like the reality of her diagnosis, and was particularly afraid of surgery. Instead of accepting the reality of her illness, she chose to believe the fantasies that were presented to her as facts. When countless doctors gave her the same medical advice, she searched on the fringes of alternative “medicines” until she found some opportunist piece of shit (a dick by the name of Robert Young) who made her believe diet and wishful thinking would be enough to cure her.

I don’t think I need to tell you what happened next: as the cancer continued to spread, it was eventually too much, and according to her Facebook account, she recently died. While Kim had a good change to survive her cancer had she listened to her doctors, the trendy “alternative” treatments offered by quacks and charlatans gave her the idea cures can be found in your head rather than with science based medicine. Since it’s unlikely either Oprah or Robert Young will be held accountable for their culpability in this woman making such poor life choices, it’s up to us to keep fighting the forces of irrationality and pseudoscience.

Military Chaplains worry about inability to discriminate

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Evangelical chaplains in the military are suffering! They’re worried the eventual repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” will jeopardize their ability to openly discriminate against gays and lesbians who might come to them seeking spiritual help. Now while I generally feel homosexuality and religion mix about as well as oil and water, you can’t deny the fact statistically, gays are actually more religious than their straight counterparts. I blame this on their tendency for self-hatred.

A group of about 60 chaplains sent a letter to President Obama asking him not to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell”, framing this as a huge contentious issue of theirs:

Put most simply, if the government normalizes homosexual behavior in the armed forces, many (if not most) chaplains will confront a profoundly difficult moral choice: whether they are to obey God or to obey men. This forced choice must be faced, since orthodox Christianity—which represents a significant percentage of religious belief in the armed forces—does not affirm homosexual behavior. Imposing this conflict by normalizing homosexual behavior within the armed forces seems to have two likely—and equally undesirable—results.

In other words, they are claiming they wouldn’t be able to preach hatred for homosexuality from their pulpits anymore. Since this kind of activity is quite common for evangelicals to engage in (here’s a random example), it must feel like this “right” is being threatened! Rather than face the possibility of evolving and getting over their fear and loathing of gays, they want homosexuals to stay in the closet and stay ashamed of who they are, just like the Bible says they should!

Daniel Blomberg, an attorney for the conservative legal group Alliance Defense Fund, wonders: What if a soldier confides to a chaplain that he’s gay?
“What happens when the chaplain responds according to the dictates of his faith and says that type of behavior — like other types of sexual sins — is not in accordance with God’s will?” he says.

That’s kind of a funny question, Danny. I think I can answer it in a way which might make some sense to you: If a chaplain argued he couldn’t serve his religious duties because he couldn’t, in good conscience, work with a Jew (since they killed the Messiah) or blacks (who are the cursed sons of Ham), he’d get the same pink slip these bigoted douchebags will get. Pretty fucking simple, eh?

12 year old girl on why abortion is wrong

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What if I told you, little girl, thousands of women get abortions due to the fact nature is a cruel ass bitch who doesn’t behave like a Disney fairy tale where every pregnancy has no complications, and everything is hunky-dory?

Abortions are being performed on 5 month old fetuses all the time

Really? You have any stats to back that up, kid? Here’s a thought: what do you think we should do with women who get illegal abortions if you make it against the law (which happens all the fucking time in places where it’s illegal)? Yeah, I doubt you have a clever little prepared answer for that one.

You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, little girl. Just because your obviously religious parents brainwashed you into thinking abortion is morally equivalent to murder doesn’t make it so. I got 10 bucks which says your folks don’t have a problem with people getting executed by the state. Isn’t pro-life awesome like that?

The Universe is just like a hand bag

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It’s hard to quantify exactly how stupid Elisabeth Hasselbeck is. Let’s spend 2 seconds talking about the eye, and why it isn’t perfect. For starters, how many people have to wear glasses because of oblong or misshapen eyeballs? How about the fact we see upside down, and our brain literally has to flip it 180 degrees? Now the Octopus has an eye we should all be jealous of:

A unique characteristic of the cephalopod eye is its ability to rotate and maintain a constant orientation with respect to gravity. Using its statocyst, a balance organ common to many invertebrates, an octopus can always keep its slit-shaped pupils in a horizontal position. Consequently, the brain can always safely interpret visual information on the basis that the eyes are horizontally aligned, though the body may be at any angle.

Also, since when are babies “perfect”? I recall that most of the time, these screaming poop machines have deformed heads, chronic acid reflux, and are in constant pain as their little bodies sprout out. Also, their heads are so large they can often cause fatal hemorrhaging during childbirth. Fucking great design, am I right?

When the screaming hens at “The View” try to talk about evolution and religion, we all lose.

More Tea Party bigotry

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If you still think the Tea Party is a socially conservative, libertarian movement, then you need to pull your head out of your ass and actually pay attention to the shit they are pulling. The latest “so bigoted you’d think this was the 1950′s” move involves Tea Party activists sending robo-calls to warn Texans about their new House Speaker being a Jew.

John Cook is a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, which, as you may have guessed from the title, is comprised of fundie Christians who believe America is a “Christian Nation”.

When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions,” he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races.

“I want to make sure that a person I’m supporting is going to have my values. It’s not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right. … I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They’re the people that do the best jobs over all

Don’t worry though; he’s totally not an anti-Semite according to himself:

“They’re some of my best friends,” he said of Jews, naming two friends of his. “I’m not bigoted at all; I’m not racist.”

Bigots don’t know they’re bigots because people like you and me don’t spend enough time shaming them for having such obviously racist views. When someone tells you “some of my best friends are [fill in the blanks]“, then you know some racist shit is just about to spew from their ignorant mouths. Don’t ever let that stuff fly under the radar, people!

Christians: “We’re not going to take this anymore!”

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Christians are always feeling persecuted (it’s kind of their “thing”). If you bother to have a conversation with one and mention you think his beliefs are about as consistent with objective reality as Greek mythology, there’s no end to the huffing and puffing that will ensue. You’ll be accused of anything from intolerance to persecution. How dare you tell them their beliefs are unsubstantiated? How dare you be proud of your lack of belief in the supernatural?

Reverend Kyev Tatum of the Friendship Rock Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas has called on his obviously broke-ass parishioners to boycott public transport in protest of atheists putting up “Millions of Americans are Good Without God” ads on buses in Dallas. They seem to take offense at our message of “indifference”.

Although there are many who say they will partake in this 30 day boycott, in reality, they will probably have no choice. I mean, these people are poor, not terribly educated, and public transit is essentially their lifeblood.

Now they know how atheists feel every time we’ve had to ride a bus with one of their annoying ads on it. We acted like adults, let shit slide, and when we finally decide to grow a pair and put up our own, Christians flip out. So not only do we get to reach millions of “in the closet” atheists, we also get to expose the childishness of believers at the same time. Can you say win-win?

Pedophile priest told victims assaults weren’t against “God’s word”

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Need further proof human beings use religions to justify their own sick desires and fantasies? Take Simon Antony Jacobs, in North Sydney, who was recently arrested after it became known he sexually assaulted 2 boys repeatedly during the 1970′s and 80′s. One of the victims, 11 years of age at the time, confronted Jacobs during the abuse, saying the Bible seemed to take offense with the whole “man lying with another man” passage (that’s the “hate gays” one). Jacobs assured him since they weren’t trying to make babies, it was all good in the hood.

Were there any signs Jacobs may have been acting inappropriately? Well, his church shuffled him around a few times, which makes me think they knew exactly what was going on:

A spokesman for the Anglican Church said Jacobs had worked as a CEBS leader at Christ Church, St Ives, ”in various roles” from 1971 to 1981. In 1982 he moved to CEBS at St Swithuns in Pymble but left in 1984.

”The record is unclear, but at some point, possibly after leaving Pymble, a note was made that he was not to be issued with a leaders warrant, which he would have required in order to move to leadership in any CEBS group in another parish,” the spokesman said.

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all, does it? Yes, religion is truly the moral framework of society, don’t you agree?

NOTE: It says in the article that he’s being accused of “buggery“. Is that just simply sodomy? Can any of you Aussie fans clarify this for me?

Man assaulted for protesting prayer at Hawaii State Capitol

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Two activists, Mitch Kahle and Kevin Hughes, were assaulted and thrown out of the Hawaii State Capitol building for objecting to the morning’s prayer. After being thoroughly brutalized by security forces, Mitch was arrested for “disorderly conduct”. Luckily, there are still a few people with their heads screwed on right, and at his trial Judge Leslie Hayashi needed less than an hour to find Mitch not guilty.

“Number one, there was no disorderly conduct. Number two, he has a first amendment right to speak in a public forum such as he did. And number three, the legislature was violating our U.S. Constitution as well as the Hawaii constitution by having these invocations”

Harrison [Kahle’s lawyer] thinks this case may be enough to convince law makers to stop saying prayers during official state business.

“They make the law for the state, so they should recognize and understand what our constitution says. And in fact the court did express very much her (Hayashi’s) concerns with regards to invocations in this public forum. And so the legislature, the city council, any other public entity on public property should be concerned and should heed the warning of this court in its ruling”

Feels like a tiny victory, doesn’t it?

Only 169 days until Jesus returns

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Boy, am I excited. After nearly 2000 years of being a complete fucking no-show, Jesus has announced his glorious return on May 21st, 2011. This is according to a Nashville billboard paid for by fans of Family Radio Inc, which according to their website has the correct calculation for the return of the Lord:

Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.

Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.

How could we forget? Yes, the story of Noah proves the loving God of the Old Testament likes to roll around and basically annihilate his creation every time he’s unhappy with the outcome. I know how he feels: when I play SimCity and figure out halfway through my city just simply can’t support itself, I usually send a few natural disasters to “cleanse” the place, and allow me to start over. I’ve been waiting for the expansion pack that would include the crazy mouth-sword killer Jesus of Revelation, but so far it hasn’t come out yet.

So mark your calendars, people! Jesus is coming back, and he’s bringing a death sickle!

(Update: The site Family Radio has since been discontinued)

How to spank a creationist

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I like Ken, and I appreciate the hard work he does to fight creationism, despite sharing many of their beliefs. The saddest thing about him, however, is he still tries to reconcile his ludicrous superstitious beliefs with science. By the end of his book, Finding Darwin’s God, I had to shake my head in disbelief as he tried to use quantum indeterminacy as a mechanism with which God influences evolution. Fucking embarrassing to say the least.