Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

More awesome mail

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I got this email from Joel who has been listening for a while and felt “inspired” by some of my “be a dick” rants.

Jake,

I’ve been a loyal listener for a few months now and I’m proud to say I seized a perfect opportunity to “be a dick” today. As I was boarding my subway, headed home from an afternoon in Manhattan, I saw three guys in suits carrying Bibles and pictures of a crucified Jesus. I thought, “here we go.” As soon as the doors shut, the tallest guy started talking and I interrupted him, shouting above him to take his religion away from a public space so we didn’t have to listen to them. This was met with approving glances from other commuters. One of the guys launched into the “the human eye is so complex that it must have been made by God” spiel, which I also rebutted, informing them they knew nothing about evolution. One of them jeered and said “we didn’t come from any monkeys,” to which I responded, “evolution doesn’t say we come from from monkeys, which further proves you don’t know the first thing about it.” These types of exchanges continued. I trotted out all sorts of evil from the Old Testament and the guy to whom I was directly talking said “Oh, that’s the Old Testament, you’re supposed to pay attention to the New Testament. That I forced him to utter that phrase aloud and admit that their brand of christianity picked and chose what to espouse was one of my most satisfying moments of the interaction. Yes, I was loud, yes I peppered my speech with the occasional expletive and even said something about being an intelligent gay atheist. But it was oh so satisfying. As soon as they got off at their stop, more than one person thanked me and said “Thanks, you said what all of us were thinking.” The subway car then returned to peace and quiet and I went back to reading my book.

Thinking about your “be a dick” rants helped inspire me to say something, and once that cork had popped there was no stopping it! Thanks again for the show, the interviews, etc. I’ve enjoyed the free bonus shows this month. it might be time for me to finally subscribe!

Do I love the fact people out there are kicking ass because of something I said? Does a bear shit in the woods?

Astrology drives me crazy

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Of all the pervasive superstitious traditions, the most popular has to be astrology; I can’t think of one American or Canadian newspaper that doesn’t have a section devoted to this nonsense. Like an immature religion, astrology makes a series of bold claims which have been shown, time and time again, to be based on nothing more than fantasy. That hasn’t stopped millions of suckers, however, from believing the positions of planets during their birth somehow affects their personalities and lives.

From the moment of its inception, there have been hard nosed skeptics who rightly objected to the fanciful claims of astrology. Muslims scholars in the 11th century rejected it on scientific grounds (lucky bastards). Early objections to this pseudoscience included the very legitimate question of “why don’t twins share the same horoscope”, which has since been “explained” by the ever increasing complexity of this stupid idea. And yet, the one thing that still eludes them is actually attempting to prove astrology has any predictive power.

Enter science, which has put astrology to the test countless times and found it no better than chance at determining any aspects of a person’s personality and future. It turns out there is a well understood phenomenon that explains why some people think their own horoscopes say something specific about them: it’s called the “Forer Effect“. In the late 1940’s, psychologist Bertram Forer gave his students a personality test, asking them to rank how accurate it was on a scale of 0 to 5 (5 being excellent, 0 being poor). Each student was actually given the same generic analysis:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.

The average rating was 4.26, which does more to explain how astrology works than any idiotic model astrologers purport to use. All the mystery and wonder of this pseudoscience died a long time ago when it was replaced by the science of astronomy. The last true scientist to claim to be both was Kepler, who eventually had to abandon his superstitious beliefs in favor of observational science.

Despite being bitch-slapped by science repeatedly, this bullshit persists. How many times have I heard some ignoramus tell me the alignment of planets was somehow going to affect my life? Astrology is simple enough to debunk, and yet people continue to believe in it. How can we hope to fight the evils of superstition when we can’t even be rid of this kind of nonsense? Did you ever get the feeling sometimes the battle for rationality is already lost? I’m still waiting for my horoscope to say “your futile quest to fight superstition will be met with abject failure”.

Don’t ever change, Bubbles

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The Trailer Park Boys know how to deal with obnoxious religionists who can’t keep their dumb beliefs to themselves. If you’ve never watched the show, it’s 14 carat Canadian gold.

Church of Ireland loses millions after collapse of AIB shares

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I don’t normally take pleasure in the failures of others, but I’m willing to make an exception when it comes to corrupt institutions. That’s why I cracked a little smile today when I read the Church of Ireland lost over 17 million dollars when the value of their shares in AIB plummeted.

Of course, what sucks here is the near collapse of this bank has ended up costing Irish taxpayers a bundle (since in today’s modern world, we can’t let “banks fail”), but if it’s any comfort, the Church now has less money to pay the pensions of retired priests that raped children. Small comfort, I know, but I try to take joy in the little things…

Chat it up with a Mormon, get a prize!

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If you listened to yesterday’s podcast, you may have heard we have 5 memberships to give out for free, and I decided the first contest is to see who can have the best conversation with a Mormon. Since they are working diligently to spread their hilariously dumb message, you can go and have an insta-chat with Mormons right now if it tickles your fancy!

Now, while I can’t win my own prize, I did try to see if I could get some interesting answers out of my Mormon hosts:

Me: what is the most convincing thing about mormonism to you

Merisa: That we know that this is Christ’s true church on the earth once more, restored by a prophet

Me: what do you find is the most solid piece of evidence for your belief.

Merisa: We don’t need evidence. We have faith and prayer and peace and happiness

Me: so prayer is a type of evidence for you?

Merisa: yes

Merisa: We have evidence in the way we feel God’s love in our life and since we are answering your questions will you answer ours?

Me: I want to understand people, what makes them tick, what makes them believe in certain ideas

Merisa: Ok well as missionaries we are here to teach people, so what we would like to do since you are so interested in learning is send local missionaries to help you better understand these things

Me: So far it seems as though there are two main reasons for your own belief: 1) an emotional reaction to premises you’ve accepted as true, and 2) seeing pattern or direct results of your prayer. Is that a good summary?

Merisa: No

Merisa: please come back when you are willing to answer our questions

That’s when they kicked me out of the chat, so I failed at my first attempt to get them to say something interesting, but it doesn’t mean one of you can’t pull it off!

(Update: The service has since been discontinued)

This guy is pleasant

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Never heard of A. Whitney Brown before, but I think I’ll check out more of his act. I liked what I saw. It’s twisted in just the right way.

British Humanist Association launches “no religion” campaign

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Ok Brits, here’s the deal: a number of you nonbelievers have been filling in “Christian” in your census boxes, and this has to stop. The British Humanist Association has launched a campaign aimed at encouraging atheists and agnostics to fill in “no religion” in order to send a clear message religion is becoming increasingly marginalized in society.

With the growing confidence we’ve been feeling recently, I’m confident the supposed “37 million Christians” will shrink faster than the polar icecaps. And for those of you who think it doesn’t really matter what you fill out, consider the fact your country has thousands of faith schools funded by your taxes, all because of perceived religious needs of Britain.

So do your part and tell the government you have no religious affiliation, and faith schools are a waste of fucking time.

Christian Prof wants to disrupt atheist organizations

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Christians are sore losers. Every time they lose a court decision (say, like Roe v Wade), they continue to try to fight it with every ounce of their being. It would be admirable if it wasn’t inspired by the insipid fantasy of religion. A recent ruling from the Supreme Court has them all fired up again. It ruled Christian campus groups could not continue to benefit from equal access to school facilities if they practiced discrimination against gays. Although they said any healthy society must tolerate the existence of such groups (since it’s their legal right to exist), the government should not be in the business of helping these organizations in any way.

As you would expect, fundies aren’t too happy about this ruling, and one UNC Wilminton teacher by the name of Mike Adams has vowed to seek revenge on – wait for it – atheist organizations.

…when I get back to the secular university in August, I plan to round up the students I know who are most hostile to atheism. Then I’m going to get them to help me find atheist-haters willing to join atheist student groups across the South. I plan to use my young fundamentalist Christian warriors to undermine the mission of every group that disagrees with me on the existence of God.

That means an invading group can turn a smaller, weaker group into second class citizens on campus. That’s what I intend to do to those groups who do not believe in God.

I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

Well, at the very least he’s honest about his intentions. It’s surprisingly refreshing when religionists stop pussyfooting around and correctly point out that they seek to have power and dominion over others who don’t see the world the way they do. So at the very least, I’d like to officially thank Mikey for his honesty.

Before you panic at the thought of your group being taken over by religious fundamentalists, Daylight Atheism points out that if Adams and his religious posse really want to join these secular groups, they’ll need to pay the fees and abide by the charters of these specific groups. If things got really bad, these atheist groups could openly discriminate against non-believers and suffer the same timid penalties that their religious, discriminatory counterparts do.

I actually have a pretty simple solution that would ensure that these religious wackos would think twice about joining: just make it so anyone who joins has to take a specific pledge that they deny the Holy Spirit. It might not mean much to us non-believers, but the Bible is pretty clear anyone who specifically denies the Holy Spirit is condemned to Hell (no take-backs). That should be enough to keep these fundies at bay, honestly. Remember these morons know very little about us, but we know how they operate, and more importantly, how they think (since so many of us used to be religious at one time). Advantage atheists!

Tennessee Faith Schools excel at failure

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If you think reading, writing, and mathematics are tools of the devil, you should consider moving to Tennessee. It turns out a loophole in the state constitution allows faith schools to be exempt from mandatory testing, which means kids attending these schools tend to have terrifyingly low reading, writing and math comprehension skills. Parents who send their children to these dummy institutions often find out too late their offspring rank in the lowest percentile in all educational disciplines.

It gets worse; apparently the teachers themselves don’t even need a high school diploma to teach their special brand of nonsense, so there’s no telling what kind of “education” these kids are getting. There aren’t even any official numbers indicating how many children are getting the “shaft” going to these places.

One of the idiots trying to defend the fact faith schools have no government oversight is Rob Shearer, who is part of a private organization that oversees faith based schools in Tennessee (they seem to be doing a great job so far). He thinks that

“…the average home-schooled mom is as qualified to teach her children as the average public school teacher is to teach her class. I’m opposed to any sort of blanket requirement that teachers have to have some level of certification because nobody’s ever demonstrated that it makes any difference in teacher’s effectiveness.”

I hate this kind of bullshit appeal to “motherly wisdom”. No, the average mom is definitely not as qualified to teach when compared to real certified educators. There’s a reason teaching is a job and not a fucking hobby.

If guys like Shearer are so convinced of the effectiveness of their own curriculum, why are they afraid of the possibility of government oversight? All they would be required to do is have their students tested the same way kids all over the country are. Put your fucking money where your mouth is, Robby! I’d be willing to bet money most of the students at these faith schools would perform so terribly the public would have a collective freak-out. Better to be invisible, right?

French Muslims demand state schools make changes

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France has a problem; it seems as though Muslims are not integrating well in their country, and many are making unrealistic demands of secular schools, including adding halal to the cafeteria menus, sizing down courses that teach about other world religions, and an opt-out option for classes about the evolution, the Holocaust, or France’s war in Algeria. In other words, they want an education that matches their anti-Semitic, revisionist, and creationist point of view.

Anti-Semitism … surfaces during courses about the Holocaust, such as inappropriate jokes and refusals to watch films” about Nazi concentration camps, it said. “Tensions often come from pupils who identify themselves as Muslims.”…Teachers found they could discuss the transatlantic slave trade but met criticism from pupils when they brought up the history of slavery within Africa or in the Middle East. Reflecting the promotion of anti-Darwinist thinking in Muslim countries, “evolution is challenged by pupils who posit divine or creationist action without any argument for it.

The country is desperate to figure out how to integrate Muslims which now number over 5 million. This problem isn’t limited to France; other countries are also feeling frustrated over the fact even second generation Muslims are refusing to properly integrate into the culture. The backlash, of course, is all Muslims are seen as potentially subversive and viewed with suspicion, something that’s likely to be returned in kind. So what’s to be done?

I’d suggest any student who has a problem with secular curriculum can simply stay home and remain ignorant; there’s no reason to allow the kind of inappropriate distraction to continue, and students who are there to actually learn and benefit from a free education are the ones really losing out. Attempting to humor the ridiculous demands of religionists only makes them want more power and control. Despite the fact moderates are convinced their specific religion is only interested in helping people with spiritual issues, the real M.O. of organized religion has always been to dominate the lives of everyone here on Earth. We live in a historically unique time where we’ve managed to marginalize their political influence here in the West (mostly), but there’s no reason to assume it’ll be like that in the future, especially if we humor their ludicrous demands. If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.

Baby Dies after group jumps out of window

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Another tragedy in the name of superstition:

A four-month-old baby is dead and 10 other people are injured in the small town of La Verriere, west of Paris, France after they jumped out of their apartment’s third-storey window after believing to have seen the devil.

The story is still a bit of a mess, but it goes something like this: in a crowded apartment, a bunch of naïve superstitious dummies mistook the baby’s father for the devil (who was naked at the time), and they all jumped out of a 3rd story window to get away from him, baby in hand.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Wow, I’m convinced!

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There’s nothing like drawing a bunch of circles to convince an atheist God exists, am I right? Now before you pull your hair out watching this creepy, glass-eyed woman as she tries to convince everyone her advice on converting atheists is useful, let’s examine her little claims. It all basically boils down to one thing:

“Is it possible for God to live outside your circle of knowledge”

I don’t think there’s an atheist out there who would deny such a slim possibility exists, but we’ve never really fallen for the “God in the Gaps” argument. It tends not to fulfill a very important role: namely, to prove a point! The same argument could be used to justify anything from unicorns to fairies, so it doesn’t tend to hold much water.

Let’s play a game. I call it “spot the fallacies”. Since you guys are pretty savvy and tend to love picking at easy targets, I’ll get you warmed up with three of my own:

  1. Appeal to popularity: So many people already believe in God, so it must be true!
  2. Appeal to ignorance: We don’t know everything, so surely we don’t know there is no God. Therefore, there is a God!
  3. Appeal to a stupid drawing: Ok, this isn’t an actual fallacy, but I did find it comical how convinced she was her little drawing proved something. It would have been quaint if she didn’t seemed so convinced from her own bullshit.

Hey lady, if your nephew was a serious atheist, he would have simply stated although we don’t know everything, all the knowledge we have gathered offers no proof of your invisible sky-daddy. That’s all there really is to it! If you walk around trying to prove that you’re Napoleon, you’ll have to provide some pretty serious evidence to back up your claim. That’s what we want as atheists, and that’s what religionists continue to fail to deliver. Show us the proof, people!

No sympathy for murdered Pop Star

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In most Muslim countries, it’s impossibly hard to be a woman. For starters, men have all the power, relegating women to the role of caretakers and not much else. Men also absolve themselves from any crime or misdeeds; if a husband beats his wife, she is to blame for not having been servile enough or not having been mindful enough of his moods.

It’s so nutty that when a rich Egyptian real estate tycoon paid $2 million to have his former lover killed, public opinion was still on his side. Suzanne Tamim was a Lebanese pop star who caught the attention of Hisham Talaat Moustafa, and when she decided to leave him, he had her killed. For many Egyptian women, her story is a cautionary tale of what happens when you defy the will of a husband:

She made him kill her, and she deserves it,” said Sherine Moustafa, a 39-year-old Egyptian corporate lawyer, an opinion that was echoed by every woman of dozens interviewed. “If he killed her, this means she’s done something outrageous to drive him to it,” reasoned Ms. Moustafa, who has no relation to the convicted businessman. Both her sister and mother, who sat next to her, agreed.

It obviously doesn’t help that Tamim dressed less than modestly and had taken a career most conservative women would disapprove of. Still, this level of callousness is shocking to our Western sensibilities, mostly because we can’t imagine feeling sympathy for the murderer rather than the victim. This is the power and control men have in the Middle East, and it’s not something that will change overnight. Considering how much Iran fears human rights and women’s studies (because these are supposedly “western” ideas that are incompatible with Islam), we can’t expect the situation to change in that part of the world for a long time to come. Fun, isn’t it?

Don’t go hiking with religious nutjobs

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Imagine you fall down a ravine, and as you lay unconscious, slowly dying, your companions decide that instead of calling for medical help, they need to pray you back to health. If you’re anything like me, you’d will yourself out of your coma and strangle them with your own entrails. Of course if that doesn’t work, you could always try suing them (it’s less messy anyways).

As it turns out, this actually happened (well, minus the strangling part) about two years ago, when Jason Michael Carlsen fell (or was pushed; no one seems to be sure) down a ravine, his companions decided to try and pray for him to come back to life. Once that inevitably failed, they contemplated for hours whether they should call the police. He was left a total of 6 hours out in the open before being rescued, and spent a month in a coma. Now a paraplegic, he’s suing Sarah Elisabeth Koivumaki and Zachary Gudelunas, the two Bethel School loons who actually thought prayer could save him.

The Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry sounds like it wants to be the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, minus any actual super powers:

Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) is committed to the truth that God loves people, gave Himself for them and has given His Church supernatural power to bring individuals and nations into wholeness. BSSM is a Holy Spirit driven ministry school where students of all ages come to learn how to live in the Kingdom of God and extend its borders through a supernatural lifestyle

If you’re wondering what a “supernatural lifestyle” is, it basically boils down to teaching students prayer has the power to heal and even bring back people from the dead. It’s difficult to know if these deluded idiots actually thought they could solve the problem by wishing it away, or if they had simply panicked after their companion fell.  That’s the problem when dealing with people who have crazy beliefs; you never really know their true intentions. Koivumaki and Gudelunas claimed they waited for hours to call police out of fear they would be kicked out of school, but because they are accused of actually pushing him off in the first place, it’s equally plausible they were merely trying to get their stories straight.

I think the lesson here is pretty simple: if you go out drinking near the edge of a cliff (something profoundly stupid to begin with), don’t go with anyone who believes they have the power to heal you by wishing to their sky-daddy.