Author Archives: Jacob Fortin

Confused article accuses atheists of being boring

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It seems like every time I read an article about atheism from an obviously religiously motivated individual, I’m always looking for the punchline. We’ve been accused of everything from spoiling everyone’s good time to being overly dramatic, and now in this LA Times article, of being terribly boring. Charlotte Allen is the writer of the book: The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus. The title should already indicate just how fair and unbiased she must be towards atheism, does it not?

The whole article itself is the typical fanfare we’ve become used to over the past few years: that atheists are making a big deal out of nothing, and that this whole “prosecution” thing is really all in our minds. No one hates atheists, even though this entire article is nothing more than a big middle finger to anyone who has ever had to hide their non belief out of fear of lost job opportunities, family hardships, or simple acceptance from the community.

Charlotte seems as though she’s never actually had a proper debate with a non believer, so I’ll answer some of her basic complaints concerning our refusal to debate the ‘metaphysical’ aspects of God’s existence. She believes the claims made by theologians need to be addressed, such as free will and the problem of evil. She does not seem to understand, however, that the problems of evil, free will and all the religious hoopla is easily solved when one accepts the fact that extraordinary claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. And when the concept of God becomes so broad one can no longer make any meaningful predictions about his existence, the subject now becomes impossible to describe, and therefore not worthy of debate. One might as well try and argue as to the meaning of the ‘perfect dessert’.

I’ve been accused of many things as an atheist, but never of being a bore. I make a living thanks to the fact I’m entertaining, so I really take offense to that statement. What the hell does she know of “‘un’ anyways. Does arguing God exists and he had sex with a virgin to produce a man/god who was later tortured and crucified somehow make you the life of the party or something? I’m sorry we tend to annoy you so much, Charlotte. Obviously you feel as though we are ruining everyone’s good time with our logic, our reason, and our sensible world view. We’ll try to keep it down so the mean atheists won’t hurt your feelings anymore, promise!

Open letter to Oprah

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If you don’t watch her show or buy her stupid magazine, you might not be aware of the reigning endorsement Oprah is currently giving to her friend, Jenny McCarthy. Jenny used to be hot shit, but then she got preggers and disappeared from the limelight, only to emerge as one of the main anti-vaccination spokespeople. You may recall there are still some unfortunate people who think there is a connection between vaccinations and autism. Only a few weeks ago I tore Jim Carrey a new anus for even trying to pretend he understands the issue. His movies may occasionally be funny, but let’s not forget the painful fact the man is poorly educated.

I could spend all of today writing a scathing letter to Oprah condemning her new endorsement, but luckily this charming and intelligent woman has already done so. I think this letter pretty much sums up how we all feel about her support of bad science (I still remember how much of a big deal she made over The Secret). Here’s a quote from the article:

Surely you must realize that McCarthy is neither a medical professional nor a scientist. And yet she acts as a spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement, a movement that directly impacts people’s health. Claims that vaccines are unsafe and cause autism have been refuted time after time, but their allure persists in part because of high-profile champions for ignorance like McCarthy. In fact, ten of the thirteen authors of the paper that sparked the modern anti-vaccination movement retracted the explosive conclusions they made due to insufficient evidence. Furthermore, it is now clear that the study’s main author, Andrew Wakefield, falsified data to support these shaky conclusions.

Shaky conclusion? That’s a nice way of saying the guy made a bunch of stupid shit up.

Cheezus Christ!

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I’m sick and tired of people making toast and suddenly declaring their blurry burn marks are the divine image of Jesus. Here’s one woman claiming her cheese toast has the profile of the King of Kings. It looks a lot like Eddie the Head from Iron Maiden to me, but what do I know? I’m just a silly naked ape just trying to make my way in a confusing world. I’d just eat the damn thing and go about my business, like the millions of other normal, intelligent human beings who don’t automatically assume their Gods are somehow trying to communicate with them through food.

Now I finally understand why the image of Muhammad is forbidden; the early mullahs must have gotten pretty damn annoyed at every stupid claim that their prophet was appearing in all kinds of places. Best to just recognize these things as false idols and get back the the business of praying, or whatever it is they did for fun back then.

Ray Comfort is annoying and wrong

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I feel sympathy for Scott, who tries his best to explain to Ray that a building or a painting are bad analogies to use when trying to prove something as intangible as God. Ray does the familiar shtick of trying to dumbfound Scott in order to slip in his ‘God in the Gaps’ bullshit. The question I always find the most insulting is Ray’s tactic of asking a person if they have ever stolen something in their lives. Sure, we all have, but stealing something once does not make you a thief, the same way fighting off a kitchen fire doesn’t make you a Fireman. Comfort is so used to throwing labels around he doesn’t even realize how poor an argument that really is. As for his statement that someone’s opinion does not affect reality, he’s absolutely right: objective reality doesn’t change simply because some poor delusional people believe the supernatural. Regardless of what Ray and his ilk believe, the Earth will continue to rotate around the sun long after this upright ape species dies off.

Stupid things smart Christians believe

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Here’s an article dealing with the ‘stupid’ things Christians sometimes believe will affect their faith. Pastor Osborne claims too many of his parishioners were complaining about having a bad life despite their Christian status. This often leads them, he says, to have a spiritual meltdown when they realize having faith does not protect them from harm anymore than unbelievers.

Now it’s nice of Osborne to tell everyone the truth here, but it sounds to me if you follow a religion’s rules, pray like a madman, and still get royally screwed over, it might be time to call it quits on their whole religion business. After all, they do claim your life will be improved by believing, and if that’s just not the case, then logically you can determine those making these claims are full of shit. Nothing too surprising about that, no?

Osborne takes the practical approach to faith. He says you shouldn’t expect God to lift one finger to help you, but rather your faith is essentially a lottery ticket you’ll be able to cash out when you die.

They all lived by faith “yet their faith didn’t fix anything,” Osborne points out. What faith does promise, however, is forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.

Yeah, I’m not convinced this God of yours who apparently offers no special protection or services to mankind will suddenly appear in the 11th hour and whisk me away to that big ‘House Party’ in the sky. How about I don’t waste my life pretending to understand what this confusing entity wants from me and instead live my own life the way I see fit. At least if I screw up, it’ll be my own fault!

Spark of life re-created in lab

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One of the final ‘bastions’ of religion is the notion life is inherently too complex to have formed on its own, and would have required the nimble fingers of creation to exist. It’s a popular notion that continues to be tested, and recently a team at the University of Manchester have successfully found a process that can transform organic molecules into a sequence similar to that of RNA.

The difficulty facing the team was understanding the sequence of events necessary for these molecules to be arranged in the right order. Their technique involved heating the necessary molecules in water, then allowing it to evaporate, and finally repeating the process. In these conditions, the building blocks of life appear to form quite naturally over time.

Religious folks have a hard time believing life can emerge from simple organic molecules, or non-life as they would call it, but that’s just how nature works. It doesn’t matter if you have a hard time accepting it.

I think we should feel excited at the prospect life can emerge from such a simple series of events. This bolsters our hope that life has developed on other planets. Is life inevitable if all the right ingredients are around? So far the answer is yes, and that is very exciting to us who don’t really need God in the mix. It means at some point in the future we might encounter other intelligent species out in the universe, and that’s a lot more exciting than the thought of a bearded father figure in the sky.

Another blow for Mormons

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One of the crappy things about being a fairly recent religion is without the benefit of long stretches of time, the claims made in your religious tomes can usually be tested. Take for instance the Book of Mormon and its claim Native Americans are descendants of Lehi, a prophet who immigrated from Jerusalem to the Americas. Despite the fact there is no archeological evidence to support this claim, many Mormon apologists have tried in vain to put the burden of proof on the scientific community (by stating Lehi’s wife was of unknown origins). The scientific community eventually responded by genetically testing native populations to see if there was any evidence that this was, in fact, possible. Unsurprisingly, the lab results have shown they did not descend in any way from Jews. Case closed, right?

Well, that’s never going to be enough proof for the faithful droves to abandon their silly religion. They already have way too much invested in their nonsense to care about the truth anyways. Of course, it must secretly burn their insides that so far every claim which can be tested historically, archeologically, or scientifically has shown unequivocally that Mormonism is entirely the product of Joseph Smith’s delusional mind. This is the same dude who claims to have done more for mankind than anyone who has ever lived. That honor actually goes to this man, but I still find it funny that the same guy who is arrested several times for fraud ends up becoming a religious prophet. It just goes to show the ultimate scam is, and will forever be, religion.

2010: the year of the Bible

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When I think about the year 2010, the first thing that comes to mind is the sequel to 2001 A Space Odyssey. It makes me think about how optimistic Arthur C. Clark was in terms of the human race’s engineering skills. Let’s just say it’s doubtful we’ll be sending anyone to Jupiter. In fact, rather than being a scientific Mecca, the world seems to have taken a nasty turn towards superstitious belief. Case in point: there is currently a bill floating around in Congress that wants to make 2010 the ‘Year of the Bible’.

(1) to designate an appropriate year as ‘The National Year of the Bible’; and

(2) to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of Government, as well as its rich spiritual heritage, and which has unified, healed, and strengthened its people for over 200 years.

The text goes on to say the Bible has apparently “…inspired compassion, love for our neighbor, and the preciousness of life and marriage, and… healed and blessed our families, communities, and our entire Nation, especially in times of war, tragedy, and economic and social crisis”. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but anyone who thinks the Bible is an adequate moral guide has never actually bothered reading it. The wording makes reference to the moral teachings of both the Old and New Testament. You might remember that these same texts were used to justify slavery, and used to torture and kill suspected witches by the Pilgrims. Anyone who has any degree of moral fiber will admit the Bible is one of the worst ethical texts in history.

These kinds of stupid and unconstitutional bills are in direct response to the momentum and visibility of the Atheism movement, make no mistake; the Right is trying to show everyone the Bible is the true heart and soul of the country rather than The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, or The Bill of Rights. This is the kind of fight we have to be prepared for. These religious idiots will fight us at every turn. Each time a poll comes out showing that our numbers are growing, they will act with increasing impunity to destroy the separation of church and state. It’s going to be a long and hard battle against superstition, ignorance, and nonsense. Hope you’re all ready to fight the good fight!

Vatican denies Pope was a Hitler Youth

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Just a day after delivering a speech at Israel’s Holocaust Memorial (known as Yad Vashem) to a rather unimpressed crowd, the Vatican made a statement denying the Pope’s enrollment in the Hitler Youth, despite the fact Ratzinger had already admitted he had been a member of the Flakhelfer, the anti-aircraft auxiliary corps of the Hitler Youth.

The logic behind this obviously false statement is damage control after the Pope’s speech failed to make any impression on those in attendance, who felt the pontiff’s words were lukewarm, strategic, and generally uninspired. Many felt this may have been due to secret sympathies as a result of his previous Nazi connections. Although I won’t speculate as to the Pope’s true feelings, it does seem pretty fishy that he was so careful when choosing his words. It’s no secret a great deal of his flock are anti-Semitic, so it’s more than likely Benedict avoided admitting any serious culpability on the part of the Church.

Rather than issue a denial of something everyone knows to be true, the Vatican would be better off telling the truth rather than insultingly lie to everyone’s face. Of course, that would require honesty and integrity from the Church, and if you remember, this is the same institution that protected child molesters. Not exactly the best record for integrity, don’t you think?

More stupidity from the Creation Museum

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The Creation Museum apparently has a petting zoo, and one of the animals they have is a zonkey (usually referred to as a zebra mule). This creature is quite obviously infertile, but despite the fact the obvious conclusion as to why a zonkey cannot produce offspring should be that they are too genetically different to do so, the brilliant minds at the museum actually think this is evidence of creationism. They actually believes this proves all Equidae must have originated from the ones on Noah’s Ark.

The real reason zonkeys are infertile is because of the fact donkeys and zebras have a different number of chromosomes, a testament to the fact that although they share the same genus, they are not of the same species. This genus extends as far back as 54 million years ago, not six thousand as creationists would have anyone believe.

If donkeys and zebras had only split off from one another by less than 10,000 years, they would be able to create fertile offspring, since that is but a blip in evolutionary time. The fact they cannot is just another testament to the mountain of evidence supporting evolution. It’s frustrating to read their childish and brutally retarded statements that the zonkey ‘proves’ the creation myth. Can everyone stop giving these morons money, please?

Magnus Betner is funny

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Once you get used to his weird delivery, you’ll be laughing your ass off. I love how he points out Moses took 40 years to walk 300 miles. An all powerful God can’t get you a GPS or something? That would be a fairy tale!

Disparaging creationism violates the First Amendment

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I had never heard of James Corbett until today, when I read a letter he wrote in response to a judge finding him guilty of violating the First Amendment by speaking his mind. I know it sounds as though I wrote that wrong, but apparently disparaging creationism during class time is a big no-no in America. Corbett was sued by one of his students, and lost in a federal court that found he had violated the Establishment Cause of the Constitution by saying creationism is “religious, superstitious nonsense”.

I decided to read up on the history of the First Amendment to see if there were other instances of unfair rulings concerning freedom of speech issues, and was shocked to see how often the US government has created laws which utterly violate its spirit. During the 1800s, for example, the government created the ‘Sedition Act’, which made it a crime to disparage or spread scandalous writing against the government or any of its officials. They also created the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ which allowed them to detain any resident aliens if their home countries were at war with America. The Sedition Act expired in 1801. The Alien Enemies Act is still in effect today.

The particular precedent that found Mr. Corbett guilty was the ‘Lemon Test’, based on a case in 1968 which found that reimbursing the salaries, textbook cost and instruction materials for Catholic schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (making the establishment of any religion unconstitutional). The precise requirements of the test include:

1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

The courts now see this as applying also to any disparaging comments made AGAINST religion. The student who sued James Corbett had said, according to the court transcript, a “religion of secularism” was being promoted by Corbett, and that is was what violated the Establishment Clause. This clever twist is what made his statements unconstitutional, apparently.

The problem here is James was not promoting a religion at all. He was challenging the claims made by Christianity in the realms of science and morality, something the First Amendment is supposed to defend. The fact his student, Chad Farnan, was offended by the statement that creationism is “religious, superstitious nonsense” is unimportant. Corbett was making a factual claim. Although there will be some who think his statements were only meant to be offensive, the truth of the matter is creationism is nothing more than an incorrect and childish interpretation of the material world. There is no question it is religious in nature, and any statement as to its nonsense is an invitation of proof by those making the supposed factual claim.

Atheism is not a ‘secular religion’, and as such any statements made in regard to gods should entirely be protected under the Establishment Clause in the Constitution. This uncomfortable fact has unnerved the religious right, as they now see the threat posed by secularism in schools. They will continue to insist their superstitious beliefs be respected, despite the fact there is no reason to give them any special treatment. How would the courts have reacted to Corbett stating Zeus was simply a fictional character, and whose mythology was simply superstitious nonsense? Not too seriously, I imagine.

Stop indoctrinating kids

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Here is a great article on the Independent asking the British government to stop forcing kids to engage in prayer. Since I’m not from the UK, the fact this is mandatory is new to me. I suppose it makes sense; there was a time not so long ago where the majority of Britain was pretty religious. That time has now passed, however, and it’s time for a change:

I can understand why the unelected, faltering religious institutions cling to this law so tightly. When it comes to “faith”, if you don’t get people young, you probably won’t ever get them. Very few people are, as adults, persuaded of the idea that (say) a Messiah was born to a virgin and managed to bend the laws of physics, or that we should revere a man who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year-old girl. You can usually only persuade people of this when they are very young – a time when their critical and rational faculties have not yet been developed – and hope it becomes a rock in their psychological make-up they dare not pull out.

I also find the majority of comments are hilariously abusive; the writer is accused by one fellow of being a left wing ‘tosser’. You Brits are too funny.

Taste my Jesus!

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No, I don’t think this guy really understands what ‘evidence’, ‘science’, and ‘statistical probability’ is all about. Just another example of how crazy Florida is, I guess. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you just because Texas is out-shining you in the stupidity department.

Church tried to lure kids into creepy van for baptisms

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It used to be you only needed to warn your kids not to trust strangers trying to lure them into their vehicles for fear they might be kidnapped. Now parents in Colorado Springs have to worry about the Cornerstone Baptist Church luring their kids inside their creepy vans in order to baptize them. That’s what nearly happened to a 7th grader at Russell Middle School. Administrators immediately sent a warning out to parents to remind their kids that religious nutballs are scary and should be kept at a safe distance.

Personally, I find this almost as funny as hearing about Mormons baptizing the deceased. Do these clowns not realize a baptism is merely a symbolic gesture on the part of believers? If there really was a rule that every human who wanted to go to heaven was required to have water splashed on their face by a dude in a costume, how stupid would that be? Oh wait, the whole idea of heaven is pretty stupid, isn’t it?

Also, how desperate is this church for new members? I’m pretty confident parents would not respond positively to a their kids being temporarily abducted in order to perform a weird religious ceremony. Just a thought.