Behold, the amazement that is religious dogma: here we have a man who is trying to argue that the Earth is flat, and it rotates around the moon. He believes in these things unquestioningly because his religious tome proclaims it. Any evidence to the contrary must be denied, since according to him, “Anything not indicated in the Koran is false”.
To be this ignorant, you really have to be a believer. How else could you entertain such astonishingly stupid and wrong ideas with such conviction?
I’m not a parent, so it’s difficult for me to comprehend what it feels like to actually have to take care of one of these screaming whelps. As far as I can tell, they smell, they cry and jump around a lot, and when they get older, they get all “angsty” and totally hate your guts. I’ve been told, however, the experience is rewarding enough to put up with the mega hassle.
One thing I do know for certain is your own brain is changed when you have a kid, and your affection for said child can border on scary. I know a lot of parents would jump in front of a speeding bus filled with rabies infested tigers to preserve their genetic legacy, so it surprises me whenever someone disavows their own progeny for obscure religious reasons.
Last Tuesday, a 5 year old child was admitted into the Eduibiase Government Hospital in Ghana, and was in desperate need for a blood transfusion. Despite the parent’s protest, the doctors decided to save Jepheth’s life, and as a result, the family has disowned the boy.
There are those that refuse to believe parents could disown their children over such a seemingly trivial thing, but this kind of tragedy happens all the time. Some parents can even try extreme measures to prevent their kids from receiving any treatment.
The root cause of all this brouhaha is the archaic belief blood should only be reserved for atonement (the rather disgusting idea people need to be sacrificed to appease gods is something we’ve been stuck with for a long time, unfortunately). Silly me; I actually thought the primary purpose of blood was to carry oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in your body!
Another tragic example of the divisive power of religion, tearing families apart over their stupid fucking theological dogma bullshit.
Typically if you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar (a rather generous metaphor considering these pederast pieces of shit were raping kids), it’s not a good idea to blame someone else for your crime. Not only does it give everyone the impression you are incapable of admitting to your guilt; it totally undermines people’s future trust in you. That’s why I find the continued denial of the Church regarding sexual abuse scandals so baffling; surely they must secretly want the public to slowly turn on them or something.
How else can you explain the baffling shit they keep on saying? Take the latest statement from Archbishop Dadeus Grings; he claims adolescents are “spontaneously gay”, and society at large is pedophile, not their institution.
“When sexuality is trivialized, it’s clear that this is going to affect all cases. Homosexuality is such a case. Before, the homosexual wasn’t spoken of. He was discriminated against.
“When we begin to say they have rights, rights to demonstrate publicly, pretty soon, we’ll find the rights of pedophiles,” he said.
Today’s scapegoats have pink triangles on their shoulder rather than stars of David, but the idea is still the same: blame all of your problems on someone else so no one has time to realize you’re really the one who is corrupt, evil, and twisted. If you think I’m painting with too broad a brush, consider the fact this douche also claimed the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust has been grossly exaggerated, and more Catholics were actually killed in the whole affair. Yeah, these guys are really interested in being factual and truthful, don’t you find?
Remember the wannabe Christian terrorist group that was arrested in March for plotting to murder a police officer (and subsequently bomb the funeral)? The members of the militia have been released while they await for their trial, on the order of District Judge Victoria Roberts who claims federal prosecutors failed to properly make a case for their incarceration.
The Government relies on the seriousness of the charges as well, to argue that Defendants must be held without bond, because they present a danger to the community. While the Government argues that the Defendants are also a flight risk, its reasons are not persuasive. Importantly, the Court’s Pretrial Services Agency concludes that the Defendants do not present such a risk.
All 9 have been ordered to stay home with an electronic tracking device on their ankle, but a part of me wonders if a bunch of antigovernmental wackos are really going to honor the court’s decision and stay put. This is especially true for anyone facing a possible life sentence. Luckily these guys don’t seem like the brightest bulbs in the bunch, so if they do try take a run for it, I don’t think it’ll be too hard to track them down.
What’s interesting about this case is these wackos didn’t end up actually doing anything, so it’s possible they might argue their First Amendment rights were violated. It’s hard to say how this one will go: they were hoping to kill a lot of cops, and that’s not something which will win you a lot of points with a jury of your peers.
Let’s picture a little scenario, shall we? Imagine for a moment you are the co-founder of a blatantly anti-homosexual group, and one day you accidentally get caught with a 20 year old male escort from a site called “RentBoy.com”. Do you:
a) try to play it cool and pretend you only hired the guy to carry your luggage?
b) Claim you are doing research into the homosexual lifestyle?
c) Finally come out of the closet and admit your everlasting love for raging hard boners?
If you chose A, then you have something in common with George Rekers, co-founder of the Family Research Council, who was caught at Miami airport with a callboy who has, according to his profile, a “perfectly built 8 inch cock”.
Obviously this guy is totally finished as a spokesperson for bigotry, so one wonders if he’ll spend the rest of his life like Ted Haggard, needlessly denying what is blatantly obvious to everyone with half a brain, or if he’ll simply embrace his homosexuality.
Look George, it’s really not uncommon for the biggest opponents of gay rights to actually be self-hating gays themselves; it’s still something frowned upon by many religious folks, and I can sympathize perhaps you too were brainwashed into thinking your same sex attraction is evil. I tell you though, now that you’ve been exposed, it’s time to find a new crowd to hang around with. You’ll find your old friends and colleagues are going to have some pretty harsh shit to say, and will do their best to distance themselves from you completely. You have the “stench” of gay in their eyes, and you’ll soon see the value of their “friendship”. Luckily, if you just come out of the closet and admit what you are, you’ll find a whole community of like minded people who would be happy to bring you into their fold. You just need to stop hating yourself first, man!
You all know I have a special disdain for homophobic Christians who go around trying to tell everyone that homosexuality is a sin. What I have more disdain for, however, is any government that grants police the power to arrest people simply for saying shit they don’t agree with. Take the Public Order Act in the UK; it was passed into law to supposedly help control soccer hooligans (football for you Europeans), but recently it was used to arrest a man for preaching that homosexuality is against God’s will:
Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.
Christian campaigners have expressed alarm that the Public Order Act, introduced in 1986 to tackle violent rioters and football hooligans, is being used to curb religious free speech.
This is also in the wake of an atheist being sentenced to time served and community service for leaving “insulting” materials in the prayer room of John Lennon Airport. What’s going on here, Britain? Do you have a problem with people speaking their minds? I hate to say it, but if you’re incapable of defending something as basic as free speech, what exactly do you think that says about your country?
I don’t like anyone being jailed for saying something I don’t agree with, even if sometimes the shit spewing from their mouths can be truly evil. Besides, do you really think it’s a good idea to make any of these bigots martyrs?
Just because you’re old, doesn’t mean you don’t have any fight left in you. Take Jose Saramago, (who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1998) for instance; he’s recently written a book entitled “Cain”, which is an ironic retelling of the story of Cain in the Bible. At 86 years of age, he’s still able to cause a media frenzy, especially after stating publicly the Bible itself is a “handbook of bad morals“. I officially love this crusty old SOB.
Saramago attacked “a cruel, jealous and unbearable God (who) exists only in our heads” and said he did not think his book would cause problems for the Catholic Church “because Catholics do not read the Bible.
Oh Snap! Until this day I was completely unaware of this guy, or the fact that he wrote a book in 1992 called “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ“. In it, God uses Jesus to try and control the world. Sounds like a fucking hoot! Looks like I need to add this author to my “must read their books” pile, which seems to keep growing even as my pocketbook shrinks…
A few weeks ago, a councilor named Gary McFarlane was sacked after he refused to assist a gay couple due to his religious convictions. McFarlane then tried to sue his former employer for religious discrimination (yes, the irony burns deep here), which has subsequently created a firestorm of controversy in the UK. In a way, this recent conflict is really a microcosm for the clash between secularism and sectarianism that is raging, which is why Lord Justice John Grant McKenzie Law’s recent ruling comes as a bit of good news. The suit was thrown out, and here is what McKenzie had to say about the whole thing:
Religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.” He added that to use the law to protect “a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified.”
No religious belief, said the judge, can be protected under the law “however long its tradition, however rich its culture.”
Finally, a bit of common sense for once. I think it’s important that religious people start to accept the fact that their personal beliefs are things that they can privately hold, but that society does not need to necessarily agree with. The notion that homosexuality is a sin and against “God’s will” is not a statement of fact, but rather an ancient prejudice that has been allowed to continue thanks to the tireless efforts of religious bigots from around the world. A country is no more obligated to respect this belief than it needs to respect a man’s right to sell his daughter into slavery.
Now, if you guys could just stop jailing people for no fucking reason, that would be great!
After all the very critical things he’s had to say about Islam with the recent South Park debacle, YouTube superstar Thunderf00t was recently “threatened” by a bearded yahoo who likes to feel big by uttering meaningless threats. He also seems to think non-Muslims support his call to action, despite the fact no other religious denomination seems bent on murdering anyone practicing their right to express themselves freely. It’s just you, guys, and the rest of the world is seriously not impressed.
Forgive us for accepting homosexuality, oh Lord! We should be busy hating gays more, but this terrible secular culture has totally brainwashed us into thinking you cannot condemn someone for having same sex attraction. Give us the power to smite these sodomites with your loving genocidal rage, oh sky-daddy.
Yeah, I’m sure the problem is these guys are actually too tolerant… Ah religion, you’ll never cease to amaze me with your stupidity.
The sexy and talented Carisa Hendrix was able to film Nate Phelps (of the Westboro Phelps family) when he came to visit the Center for Inquiry, Calgary a few months ago. She did a great job, and if you love the fact she did this out of the kindness of her own heart, be sure to give her a big “thank-you” shout. I demand it!
Indeed, who wants an absolute moral authority? If you accept such an idea, then whatever that authority decides must therefore be moral, even if he condones slavery, murder, incest, rape and genocide. Do you not find it in the least bit ironic religious people who condemn us for not having a higher moral authority believe in one who so clearly violates our own basic moral compass? Do you put your trust in our modern secular society, or do you trust rigid theocratic dogma? I’ll let you visit other religious states and then make up your mind…
You get the impression sometimes there really are two Americas: one where the values of liberty, religious and ethnic diversity, the rule of law and a sense of fair play still reign supreme, and one where bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, rigid religious dogmatism and “safety” rules the day. It’s why you get places like Arizona where the government is hard at work trying to boot out every single illegal immigrant from the state. You’re probably already aware they’ve passed a draconian and fascist law that basically makes it mandatory for police to arrest anyone they suspect of being there illegally (as in anyone with brown colored skin). What you may not be aware of is they’ve also decided that speaking with a heavy accent is also unacceptable:
The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.
The very notion of America potentially becoming a bilingual nation has scared the living crap out of a whole bunch of really racist old white people who fear that “Jose” is going to take all their jobs while apparently also being on welfare (don’t try and understand how racist people manage to believe in this idiotic paradox; it’ll hurt your brain). Never mind the fact illegals account for roughly 20 billion dollars of revenue for the state, or that Mexican workers usually do the tasks everyone else refuses to do. I guess it turns out the safety and comfort of old white people is more important than honoring the very principles etched so poetically on the Statue of Liberty, which should now read as follows:
Give me your Caucasian, your rich,
Your huddled masses yearning to be mistreated for not speaking English ,
Turn back the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed back to their country of birth,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door (presumably to find any Mexican hiding in the dark)!”
Arizona, you fucking suck.
Here’s Answers in Genesis douche Ken Ham doing his best to misinform children about objective reality. We’re all aware of his refusal to accept Evolution, and he’s quite clear about exactly why: he thinks the idea was invented in an effort to undermine God. That’s what’s so great about it. Ken, unlike his more “moderate” counterparts, understands correctly the conclusion we are to draw from Evolutionary Theory; there is no master plan to life, and it arises simply as a function of natural laws. By admitting this, he shows the simple truth all deeply religious people often try to deny; there are fundamental incompatibilities between religious dogma and scientific facts. The only difference is he’s open about what he’s doing, while people like Ben Stein and his creationist ilk masquerade their theism as science. I ask you, which one do you find more contemptuous and subversive?
Before you flip your lid and worry Ken is causing irreparable damage to their minds, I’d rather you focus on the fact there’s really little way to reach these children with the facts “out there” anyway. As schools across the country continue to try and throw evolutionary science out the window, the ability to counter programs like the one in the video is starting to look impossible.
It’s not the 39% of the US population who refuse to believe in evolution that scares me, it’s the fact that 36% of them just “aren’t sure”. You’ll always have crusty die hard God peddlers like Ham pushing their idiot stories down all of our throats, and there’ll always be a large percentage of the population who just wants to bury their head in the sands and wait for the Rapture. You won’t convince them of anything they didn’t rigidly decide to believe long ago, and there’s really no point in trying. The evidence is out there, and if they want to accept reality, they are free to do so at any time. But the fact that a third of the country “isn’t sure” about a fundamental theory of science is the result of the subversive efforts of the religious right to undermine its teaching on a local levels. Let’s face it; if there is something religious people are good at doing it is ORGANIZING themselves. They tend to do that pretty well, surprisingly enough. It’s also the reason these people generally have any fucking power to begin with.
So the solution to this kind of problem requires a little bit more than shitting on easy targets like Ken, we can’t forget the more pressing issue these dogmatic robots are good at something it seems non-believers are not: getting organized. Fail at that, and you get fucked by the people who are.
Have you ever lied for sex? Perhaps in a way, we all have to some degree; after all, when you want to sleep with someone you’re usually on your best behavior, and you’re probably look, smell and dress a lot better than you normally do. And ladies, don’t get me started about all the things you do to make yourselves sexier; the push-up bra is just a subtle form of deceit I tells ya!
There are those that can stoop to historic lows, like this guy in Israel, who told women his semen had magical healing properties. So effective was his lying (well, until the ladies got wise to the scheme) he even got them to PAY him money to sleep with him. If you’re thinking of using this guy’s play-book, you might want to avoid doing it in the “holy land”; he’s been arrested and thrown in jail for 10 years for the crime of tricking dumb bitches into sex.
Aharon, who was arrested last August, “over many years presented himself as a righteous man, as a saint with healing powers, who exploited the naivity of women and teenage girls, while carrying out appalling sexual acts and obtaining large sums of money by fraud,” the Israeli Justice Ministry said in a statement.
Now I don’t want to condone his actions, but I have to wonder what exactly these women were thinking in the first place. Does religion really make you this vulnerable/stupid? If so, I think we should jail ANYONE who takes money from desperate and lonely people for their own personal gain. Catholic Church, I’m looking in your direction.