Category Archives: Blog

Can you believe this guy?

Posted on by

I don’t often get trolled, but when I do, it’s usually something epic. Take this “Marcus” character for instance: he commented on an article I wrote about a ridiculous book written called The Pink Swastika, by a religious fundy who claims Hitler and his thugs were actually a gang of ‘homofascists’, intent on corrupting the world with their ‘gayness’. This revisionist history completely ignores the fact that some 100,000 gay men and women were executed in concentration camps, although I’m sure such a shitty historian probably doubts the reality of Hitler’s Final Solution as well.

I’ll let Marcus explain why this piece of shit book isn’t a total fabrication:

The Southern Poverty Law Center IS a hate group. Hitler’s Brown shirts were exclusively homosexual. You fascist neopagans only attack the religious to divert attention from the fact that you share Hitler’s Marxist views. Nothing you say can erase Hitler’s own words and policies. Just because Hitler was a national socialist instead of being a communist doesn’t change the fact that he persecuted Christians, Jews, the elderly, the deaf etc. long before the Night of the Long Knives and that he used tactics now seen in Occupy and the public sector unions and the Nazi party in NY and CA, which are groups populated primarily by angry queers. The fact is, Hitler persecuted the Jews and Christians because of their objective views on morality, views which stand contrary to post modernism, subjective morality and savage pre-enlightenment practices such as euthanasia, eugenics and the final solution to the human condition- industrialized mass murder. Ya’ll are accusing the majority of being secret Nazis when your Nazi buddies are in public view, announcing their views which mirror your own. No wonder you try to convince yourselves of lies on [sic] teh interwebs when your entire “worldviews” are wrapped up in a lie so contradictory to the truth. Your tiny socialist brains can’t handle your hypocrisy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in case you were wondering, is an organization that’s been fighting white supremacists and anti-gay hate groups since 1971. Calling them a hate group is like calling the Red Cross an invading army.

Now, if you’re trying to make any sense of the rest, there’s something fundamentally important you have to consider: the American right thinks communism is fascism. The confusion has multiple sources: first, it seems as though most Americans are unfamiliar with their own respective political spectrum. They are also seemingly confused by the fact that Hitler’s political party had the word ‘Socialist’ in it.

As for this strange tactic that the ‘Occupy’ movement was somehow inspired by Hitler, it would do well for this uneducated moron to read a little history: Fascism is in fact anti-union, and believes a strong relationship between government and business leaders is necessary in order to achieve self-sustainability and to ensure that businesses maintain a high degree of profitability. Fascism rejects individuality and favors a strong national identity. Adherents are unquestioningly patriotic (sound familiar?), and view violence as a means of preserving their national vitality (kinda like sending drones to kill civilians, no?).

Of course it’s not difficult to imagine that this Marcus fellow is an angry, bigoted man with zero understanding of history or political movements. But he also represents the new face of American Fascism: one that is unaware of its own identity, blinded by a conflation of terms and ideologies, and motivated primarily by the same forces that inspired those brown-shirts to mold the world in their terrifying image. When Sinclair Lewis said when fascism came to America, it would be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution”, he failed to understand the ones carrying that flag would be totally unaware of the consequences and significance of their own actions. Driven primarily by their own hatred of others, American Fascists are in denial about themselves. They accuse others of being communists for even the slightest hint of socialism, and then do everything in their power to hand over the keys to their country to the rich Oligarchy, promising them Christianity and the repression of homosexuals. If that doesn’t sound at all familiar to you guys, then I suggest you hit the library. Clearly, Marcus never has.

Egyptian atheist facing blasphemy sentence

Posted on by

Every religion claims to be the one and only truth, but when confronted with conflicting reality, their true colors really come out. Faith is actually a fragile thing: it persists due to ignorance, and is fueled by a raw hatred of anything contrary to its pathetic narrative. Nowhere is this more true than with Islam. This religion is possibly the most insecure religion of them all. Dissent is not tolerated, and apostasy is a real crime in their eyes. If God truly is on their side, why does ‘He’ need to be defended so much?

While we non-believers know the real answer (i.e., that one ridiculous superstition is as unworthy as the next), the faithful have tried to justify their persecution as piety. The latest in a series of injustices brought to you by the world’s most violent and misogynistic faith involves an Egyptian man by the name of Alber Saber. He’s accused of being an atheist and spreading ‘sectarian ideas’ (which you quickly realize are two conflicting charges), and faces up to 5 year in jail for the crime of speaking his mind.

The case against Saber, who is charged with ‘contempt of religion’ for being an atheist and for allegedly spreading ‘sectarian ideas’ after being accused of disseminating the anti-Islam film that sparked protests across the Islamic world in September, is a battle for belief, or no belief, and is riding high on activists’ minds.

Amnesty International has asked that people write to the Egyptian government urging them to release Saber, whose only crime is having a controversial opinion about God. Unfortunately, with the growing power of Islamic fundamentalists in the country who demand a hardline stance against any perceived insult to Islam, it’s doubtful Saber will be released. It’s far more likely, in fact, that he will be found guilty this December and spend 5 years behind bars for daring to question the validity of the world’s most insecure religion. I would also seriously question his safety inside the prison: he was apparently threatened with sharp blades and some neck slashing before he ‘confessed’ to the crime. This was after an angry mob had attacked him in his home. None of these violent vigilantes face any kind of punishment for taking the law in their own hands. This is the double standard of Egypt, and it’s not about to change any time soon.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews harass sexually abused girl

Posted on by

It’s hard for individuals unfamiliar with Orthodox Jewish culture to fully understand the scope of isolation in that community. For starters, a large number of Orthodox denominations were a direct response to the assimilation of Jews in society near the end of the 19th century. Believing integration with society was leading to impiety, Orthodox Jews adopted a rather extreme position when it comes to the outside world. Everything is forbidden, and the whole community basically operates outside of the laws you and I typically follow.

Every once in a while, a scandal erupts even the community cannot hide. After a young woman came forward to authorities with her abuse story, a number of Ultra-Orthodox men were arrested when it was discovered they had tried to make the charges against Rabbi Nechemya Weberman disappear by offering the victim 500,000 dollars for her to leave the country. When the couple refused, the 4 thugs damaged his restaurant, tearing up his kosher seal.  The move has angered his fellow Jews:

Orthodox Jews are supposed to adhere strictly to the laws and ethics of the Torah (Bible) – and clearly the Torah abhors behavior like this. These people’s acts are neither religious nor Orthodox – and it infuriates me to hear them referred to by the media as “religious”, or Weberman referred to as a “Rabbi.” Rabbi is a title of respect, even reverence, and surely someone who allegedly fondled a young girl and forced a 12-year-old to perform indecent acts is not worthy of this label.

This is simply another variation of the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy. Any religious leader caught abusing their power must not be a true believer! The problem with that analogy, of course, is it essentially ignores the fact the very power and reverence they receive is part of the problem: with this level of control over their congregation, combined with the ultra-secretive nature of the religion, abuse is almost a guarantee. Just ask the Catholic Church what that combination leads to.

So ineffectual is government to create some kind of oversight for these loonies, that just the other day, the New York City Board of Health put together a regulation which would ‘force’ parents who still allow mohels to suck their infant’s circumcised penis to sign a consent form beforehand (essentially doing nothing to stop the dangerous practice that has already claimed lives). That toothless piece of legislation will undoubtedly do nothing to change their outmoded and dangerous practices. You won’t see the government bending over backwards for any other group, but the raw political power of Orthodox Jews in New York is considerable, and there exists no political will to change things. So long as isolated religious communities thrive, so too will stories of their concealed abuses.

Mark Driscoll thinks Twilight is evil

Posted on by

Ok, I’ll admit I think the Twilight series is terrible, but is it evil, sinister, or sick and twisted? It reads more like the kind of book you might expect a desperately lonely fat high school girl to write, with the added murderer/rapist fantasy thrown in. While you can argue about the merits of the story, you can’t argue with the sales figures: Stephanie Meyer’s series has sold over 116 million copies worldwide and has been translated in 38 languages. You may not like it, but you cannot deny its popularity.

It’s that very popularity which seems to anger the patriarchal, domineering man known as Mark Driscoll. The head of Mars Hill Church is convinced that isolated incidents of vampire-related assaults and sex-orgies are undoubtedly caused by impressionable teens reading a book with the words ‘per se’ used over 100 times.

The popularity of supernatural soap operas has inspired some real-life demonic trends. Overreaction? Tell that to the kids biting, cutting, drinking blood—sometimes while having sex—and sinking deeper into the occult:

Driscoll then proceeds to use isolated examples of weird assaults to draw a connection between teen obsession with vampires and the general degradation of society. Maybe you could make the case that print is dead, buried by the likes of Meyer and the 50 Shades of Grey guy, but this idea that everyone who reads this book will turn into a demon possessed monster is so ridiculous, it actually hurts my brain.

The problem with the occult is that it doesn’t actually exist. Oh sure, people will often pretend sinister, demonic stuff is happening, but because all that shit is totally made up, no one actually buys into it. The only ones who do are gullible Christians who think Satan is real and possessing people. The rest of us think all this crap is about as genuinely scary as Halloween (the other thing these whackjobs are also scared about). What do you expect from people who take their nonsense literally?

Atheists accused of declaring war on Christmas

Posted on by

I’m beginning to think it’s totally impossible to do anything secular in America without some religious jackass accusing us of waging a “War on Christmas”. This pathetic attempt to make Christians appear marginalized has the effect of making them all look like old fools, if you ask me. When there’s any kind of story that exploits this fear mongering, the media will trip over themselves to cover a make believe war while totally ignoring the reality of a present one.

One such annoying tale of over-reaction involves a simple complaint made by a parent at Terry Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas. She complained to the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers that the school was showing a screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” -effectively displaying, with taxpayer monies – a religious movie sponsored by a public institution. Worried there might be a backlash against her daughter if she removed her from the event, the parent in question asked that the children pay 2 bucks to cover the cost so the school wouldn’t flip the bill. Sounds like a non-story, right? Well, you obviously don’t troll conservative sites like I do:

The Daily Mail’s headline says it all, don’t you think?

Atheist group attacks elementary school over field trip to see ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ at local church claiming it ‘violates religious freedoms’

The problem, of course, is that no such attack took place. The parent who complained still allowed her child to go. She merely highlighted the fact A Charlie Brown Christmas still has a religious theme to it, and schools should not be in the business of endorsing any religion. The fact conservative ass-hats take these kinds of non-stories and blow them out of proportion goes to show it really doesn’t matter how politely you try to bring your objections to Christian privilege: we’ll always be accused of trying to destroy the hopes and dreams of people who want total religious homogeny in America.

Baby boy dies after botched circumcision

Posted on by

Ok, here’s the deal, folks; before you read this article, I have to warn you that you’re not going to like reading some of the details of this story. I’ve written a lot about male genital mutilation (colloquially known as ‘circumcision’) in the past, but for some reason, this one story sent visuals in my head that I can’t shake off. So, you’ve officially been warned.

The story begins in Manchester, where a young and naïve couple from Nigeria -having recently given birth to a baby boy – hired a nurse by the name of Grace Adeleye for the sum of 100 pounds to circumcise their infant son. Adeleye arrived with her own ‘medical instruments’: an ordinary pair of scissors and a bottle of olive oil. After asking for a bowl of hot water (an antiseptic in her eyes), she cut the foreskin without any anesthetic or disinfectant, and the resulting wound eventually led to enough blood loss that the baby died shortly after.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event:

The court heard up to three children a month are admitted to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital because of bleeding after home-based circumcisions – a danger the nurse should have been aware of.

Adeleye denies her negligence, but it’s obvious this idiot knew less than nothing about medicine. This kind of tragedy happens all the time to countless other children living in countries where their death is just another statistic, all in the name of religious traditions that have no place in the modern world.

The Salvation Army exec who stole Christmas

Posted on by

I hate the Salvation Army. First off, they aren’t a charitable organization. They are registered as a church, which means while some of the money and goods people give to them do go to the needy, they still run it like it is a business, buying expensive real estate, and more importantly, being exempt from needing to show where it uses its money and for what. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their mission statement:

“the advancement of the Christian religion… of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind as a whole.”

It’s that “and other charitable objects” which make us think these guys are a charity, but while they do offer some helpful services, it’s more of combination of a church/business than anything else. For instance, did you know they own a real estate portfolio worth in excess of 4 billion dollars? It’s difficult to know how much of their money goes to charity, since as a registered church, they’re exempt from financial scrutiny. Basically, the Salvation Army is like a gigantic mystery box filled with money, goods, and massive financing from the government.

If you were still thinking of donating money or goods after having been told how shitty they are, consider what happened in Toronto recently. Former CEO of the Toronto branch, David Rennie, recently surrendered to police after investigators found 2 million dollars in stolen merchandise he was hoarding in a warehouse. The search began after an anonymous tipster noticed there were over 100k in toys missing from inventory over the period of two years (I ran a warehouse, and I have to tell you, that’s a ridiculous amount of time for things to go missing, and a ridiculous amount of goods to go unnoticed).

The organization now claims it will work to avoid any further problems with the help of accounting firm KPMG. You might remember them for the brilliant audit they did of Bernie Maddoff’s ponzi scheme. Perhaps the Olympic bribery scandal is more familiar to you. How about something more recent, like their failed due diligence in the Hewlett Packard / Autonomy that cost the company 5 billion dollars in losses?

Yeah, I’m sure they’ll do a fantastic job of ensuring an organization that has no real accountability is doing right by us…

Answers in Genesis writes hilarious letter to atheists

Posted on by

For some odd reason, I love the idea that there are religious believers out there who try to convert atheists back to religion. I can’t imagine a more pointless exercise. They really think there must be some magical argument to ‘win us’ back to the fold. They can’t understand our decision not to believe in God is the result of years of slow and gradual change, ultimately leading to the conclusion that the provincialism of supernatural entities is a guarantee of their falsehood.

The most hopeless of these bunch of jokers has to be the Answers in Genesis folks. As the name implies, these deluded morons think everything in the Bible must be believed, despite the gargantuan effort it takes to reconcile reality with fantasy (they usually just end up ignoring most of the former). If you really want to know just how profoundly ignorant they are about non belief, take a gander at this open letter to atheists they recently wrote:

Are you tired of all the evil associated with the philosophy of atheism—Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and so on? After all, most murderers, tyrants, and rapists are not biblical Christians, and most have rejected the God of the Bible. Even if they claim to believe in the God of the Bible, they are not really living like a true Christ follower (who strives to follow God’s Word), are they?

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy  Never gets old, right? If someone does something you don’t agree with, it’s easy just to claim they aren’t true believers. I could try this same tactic to try and ‘defend’ atheism, but there’s really no point. People do all sorts of nasty things to one another, even when they don’t have the extra justification of thinking their actions are sanctioned by their private gods. As Stalin and Mao have shown, one does not need religion to start a cult: you just need the same uncritical thinking religious people are so fond of.

In fact, why would an atheist care to live one moment longer in a broken universe where one is merely rearranged pond scum and all you have to look forward to is . . . death, which can be around any corner? And in 467 trillion years, no one will care one iota about what you did or who you were or how and when you died—because death is the ultimate “hero” in an atheistic, evolutionary worldview. Of course, as a Christian I disagree, and I have a basis to see you as having value.

Lovely. The “atheists don’t believe in the afterlife and therefore don’t take it as seriously as we do” nonsense. It’s actually shocking how much they don’t understand what not believing in Disneyland in the clouds is really all about. While many former believers do express the initial grief and sorrow they feel from losing a love one, no one can claim atheists don’t have a full appreciation for this life. Unlike Christians, who think this life is merely a pit-stop in an otherwise lengthy vacation to magical Wally World in the sky where all your deceased loved ones are breathlessly anticipating your return. Why should one even bother with the hardships of this world if the next one, supposedly lasting an eternity, is so wonderful?

For professing atheists, these questions can be overwhelming to make sense of within their worldview. And further, within an atheistic worldview, atheists must view themselves as God. Essentially, atheists are claiming to be God. Instead of saying there may not be a God, they say there is no God. To make such a statement, they must claim to be omniscient

While there might be a few nonbelievers who make the positive claim that there can be no God, most of us instead chose to merely reject a claim made with no evidence whatsoever. In a sense, all religious people use this same method to reject the gods of other religions. No one would accuse them of omniscience for refusing to believe in Thor, Zeus, or Mithras. Atheism is merely the lack of belief in these and all other forms of religious superstition. It does not take omniscience to reject a bad premise.

Are you weary of looking for evidence that contradicts the Bible’s account of creation and finding none? Do the assumptions and inconsistencies of dating methods weigh on your conscience when they are misrepresented as fact? Where do you suppose those missing links have gone into hiding? Surely the atheist sees the folly and hopelessness of believing that everything came from nothing.

Yeah, it’s so hard to find examples of contradictions in the Bible…It must be easy not to see them when you’ve chosen to ignore the real world, right?

Where atheists have no basis for logic and reason (or even for truth, since truth is immaterial), Bible believers can understand that mankind is made in the image of a logical and reasoning God who is the truth…Christians also have a basis to explain why people sometimes don’t think logically due to the Fall of mankind in Genesis

I guess the reason we can’t think logically is because Eve ate a magical fruit and the first humans were cast out of Adventureland, only to have a bunch of inbred, fratricidal children. See, it has nothing to do with our evolved mammalian brain! God is a gigantic, omniscient Ape who made you in his image, and in return, you need to give him all your money. Wow, sure sounds like I should eliminate the foundation of my beliefs and just go for the nonsense. I couldn’t possibly believe in anything logical if I didn’t!

Don’t believe in God in Kentucky? Get ready for jail time!

Posted on by

It’s not enough that religious folks are always shoving their religion down our throats; they also now want to enforce the ‘crime’ of not believing in their invisible friend. If you can believe this (and trust me, I’m still in shock), the state of Kentucky has effectively declared war on non-believers, threatening jail time for anyone who fails to “recognize the primacy of the Christian God”:

In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God–or risk 12 months in prison.

So what exactly does this law entail? Well, every Homeland Security office is obliged to have a plaque clearly displaying their preference for a specific, state endorsed deity with the following words on it:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents. These include Abraham Lincoln’s historic March 30, 1863, presidential proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy’s November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: “For as was written long ago: ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

The specifics of this strange and pointless proclamation is this: all Homeland Security offices in Kentucky must display a plaque admitting the US needs God to protect it against scary terrorists. Anyone failing to display these monstrosities faces up to a year of jail time. It’s patently ridiculous.

The law was drafted by a state rep/Baptist minister named Tom Riner who takes his job as a pastor way more seriously than he does his civic one. He’s also found a way past the pesky problem of trying to pressure your state rep into enacting grossly unconstitutional laws that oblige everyone to acknowledge their insecure deity. The big problem is while the ACLU has been fighting this in the courts to have it declared unconstitutional – achieving some success in the Circuit Court – it’s currently sitting in limbo after the State Court of Appeals reversed it while they try to bring it before the Supreme court (so many courts, so little time).

Effectively, this ridiculous law makes it mandatory to ‘recognize’ the primacy of someone’s make believe friend. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting fed up with the fact that you can’t even pretend there’s a dividing line between religion in politics. Religion has been dipping its toe in the government pool for so long, it’s permanently wrinkled.

 

Teen sentenced to 10 years of hard church

Posted on by

f there’s a time in one’s life fraught with tragedy, it’s probably the hormone saturated period in our lives known as our ‘teen years’. How many of us have done something so incredibly stupid it still haunts us today? Tyler Alred will need to live with the fact his drunk driving took the life of his friend and passenger, 16-year-old John Luke Dum. He’ll also need to spend the next decade going to church regularly, lest he break the conditions of his sentence:

An Oklahoma teen convicted of manslaughter has sentenced to 10 years of probation, with requirements that include regularly attending church….In deferring the sentence, the judge not only ordered Alred to a decade of church attendance, but also required him to finish high school and welding school.

Alred’s attorney and the victim’s family agreed to the terms of the sentence.

Now I know the family has actually agreed to it (mostly because it seems to oblige their son NOT to become a high school dropout loser), but it doesn’t change the fact even the judge realized how unconstitutional the whole thing was. Nevertheless, he thought it wise to include a sentence forcing the young man to attend church services for at least 10 years of his life. This sentence is obviously meant to give him structure and discipline, but it’s frustrating people still think religion helps you act more moral. It’s simply not true. In fact, religious can often make you act totally immoral, with the added ‘bonus’ of feeling simultaneously morally superior and thinking your invisible friend is on your side (killing others in his supposed name comes to mind). If anything, he should have ordered the kid to read The God Delusion, since the atheist prison population is disproportionately small. Could you imagine the outrage if he did? Fox News would have a fucking meltdown.

What a textbook in Louisiana looks like

Posted on by

You all know by now that the educational system in Louisiana is rapidly deteriorating thanks to Governor Bobby Jindal and his relentless crusade to institute voucher programs that end up benefiting religiously run schools. He may have come out recently begging for the GOP not to become the ‘stupid party’, but he’s actively working to ensure his constituents are ever more ignorant about the real world.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. So let’s take a look at a sample curriculum that someone going to school in this state is exposed to. Let’s start with facts about evolution and creationism:

Fact or Theory?

Man makes judgments about the evidence of fossils based on his beliefs. A man who believes God’s record of Creation and history will look at fossils one way. A man who believes in evolution will view fossils in a different way…

Creationist Viewpoint: God created the heavens and the Earth
Evolutionist Viewpoint: Earth and space were the result of a sudden explosion

Magic man done it, as most of you are aware, is not actually a theory. It’s a claim without proof, made by people who are convinced the book of fairy-tales they call the Bible is a factual account of the history of the world. Yeah, and the Iliad is totally true too…

Creationist Viewpoint: The Earth is thousands of years old
Evolutionist Viewpoint: The Earth is millions of years old

It’s pretty sad when creationists can’t even be bothered to learn the actual arguments. No, ‘evolutionists’ don’t think the Earth is millions of years old. Maybe Lord Kelvin thought so in the 19th century, but since then, we’ve learned it’s actually BILLIONS of years old. Get your fucking facts straight if you’re going to try and disprove one of the most tested scientific theories ever devised, morons.

Creationist Viewpoint: Fossils are probably the result of the great flood in the Bible
Evolutionist Viewpoint: Fossils show the great geological ages of the earth

If I was a creationist, I would try to avoid fossils altogether. You can’t really help but create suspicion in your own worldview when your explanation for weird and alien bones in the ground is a catastrophic flood that happened only a few thousand years ago. Eventually people will start to ask why there’s a predictable pattern of where specific bones are buried in distinct strata (their answer is usually “Satan put them there to trick people”). In any case, fossils show geological ages, but more than that, they consistently show different animals buried in successive layers of rock, pointing to a pretty obvious succession of transitional forms over time (besides, if you want to know more about geological ages, you look at rocks for that, not fossils). It’s like a gigantic puzzle that only requires a little bit of thought to put together.

Creationist Viewpoint: God created all kinds of animals in the beginning
Evolutionist Viewpoint: Different kinds of life have gradually evolved over long periods of time

So here at least the choice is simple: either all the animals were created magically in the span of a few days by Super-Dad, or organisms gradually evolved over time to better adapt to their environment and the struggle for survival. One you have proof for, the other is stated plainly in a boring book most people can’t even finish reading through. What a tough choice!

Creationist Viewpoint: Man is God’s special creation. He is different from the animals because he is created in God’s image
Evolutionist Viewpoint: Man is the highest level of animal.

I don’t know what shitty scientists the authors of this joke of a textbook met, but I can tell you anyone worth his salt wouldn’t dare say something that dumb. No, man is not the “highest level of animal”. We may be smart and a dominant predator, but we pale in comparison to the awesome power of bacteria. Without these little power factories, we wouldn’t be able to digest food, or even have a functional ecosystem. I won’t deny that we certainly are the smartest, but when a bunch of us write this kind of stupid drivel in the Age of Information, it doesn’t make a strong case for it.

Pakistan sentences man to death for blasphemy

Posted on by

The bravery of religion is yet again on display, this time in Pakistan where a man has been sentence to death for supposedly insulting the prophet Mohammed. There’s a familiar pattern that arises in these parts: the predominately Muslim population has a few altercations with other religious groups that are Christian, and suddenly the lone person is accused of blasphemy and is usually beaten, followed by the customary kangaroo court.

Hazrat Ali Shah, 25, was convicted of blaspheming against the Muslim Prophet Mohammed and the Koran during a quarrel in his village in northern Pakistan in March 2011.

Despite the fact that many in government are actually afraid of this law, no one has the balls to repeal it, since fundamentalists can easily stir up their violence base in order to execute anyone who opposes them. While it’s true that no one has actually been executed under this law (enacted in 1986), those sentenced are usually imprisoned and then forgotten about, only to be left in the hands of their Islamic fellow prisoners. It’s an invitation to daily beating and an unceremonious prison death.

Eric Hovind gets his ass kicked by 6th grader

Posted on by

So, what’s more embarrassing: not being able to properly answer the challenges of a 11 year old, or needing to try and bully your way out of answering his question? Here is Hovind’s argument in a nutshell:

1) If you don’t know everything, you can’t be sure of anything
2) God knows everything and tells me things
3) Therefore all true knowledge comes from God.

The kid’s response cuts through his second and third point and just re-iterates the first broken assumption:

1)If you can’t know anything without knowing everything, how do you know God exists

And what’s Eric’s response? Rolling up his sleeves and basically dodging the question to avoid answering it, belittling the kid for not being very old (making himself look even more pathetic), and shuffling around hoping this embarrassing moment will soon be over. The lesson here folks is creationists can be brought down easily. You just need to call them out on their dumb shit and watch them squirm.

Marco Rubio doesn’t know how dumb he is

Posted on by

f you weren’t already sick of the race to the White House, you’re going to hate the next 4 years of your life, as the media can’t help but trip over themselves trying to predict the possible candidates for 2016. One prospect for Republicans is a Hispanic Florida Senator by the name of Marco Rubio. He’s made the new recently for saying some profoundly dumb shit:

I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

It’s a great mystery how in the age of science someone could still be so profoundly ignorant about the age of the Earth. Maybe a few decades ago, before everyone had the Library of Alexandria in their fucking pocket, it would have been understandable not to know. Hell, we’ve only really known about the age of the universe for a few generations, and it can take time for something to really be known. But by now, not knowing is really an active choice one has to make. That ignorance must be embraced, since I doubt Rubio has never been confronted with the factual age of the Cosmos at some point in his life.

Sure, there are multiple ‘theories’ of how old the earth is, but only one of them is actually a scientific theory and not the dumb invention of ignorant sheep herders (keep in mind both definitions are entirely different as well). As for whether or not economies depend on knowing the age of the Earth, I would argue that a man who sits on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee should know by now you can’t actually have an economy without science, or its baby sister, technology. Knowing how old the Earth is should be a requirement if you’re on a committee with the fucking word ‘science’ in it, don’t you think?

Either two things are at play here: either Rubio is trying to a appeal to his science hating base, or he’s a fucking moron. And while all of this science denial is a part of the modern electoral strategy one has to employ, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rubio didn’t actually believe the evidence that the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old. That’s because this concept alone is terrifying to the provincialism of religious myths. How insignificant are humans if we represent but a blip in the history of Earth and the Cosmos, and what does it say about their unimpressive dead Jew?

Irish PM doesn’t want to feel rushed into changing abortion law

Posted on by

Since I first blogged about this a few days ago, the death of Savita Halappanavar has caused a lot of understandable outrage in Ireland. It seems her highly avoidable passing has rudely awakened a generation of young people who are shocked their own health could be threatened due to the persistence of religious dogma.

Even more shocking, they’re about to realize change is impossibly slow, given the ones holding the reins of power have no interest in making necessary change, lest it upset the old guard:

“This is a matter that has divided Irish society now for a great number of years, and I am not going to be rushed into a situation by force of numbers on any side,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told state broadcaster RTE.

I don’t give a damn if you feel abortion is wrong. That’s your own personal opinion, and as uninformed as it is, it doesn’t for one second change the fact they need to happen. Making them illegal or inaccessible places the lives of actual sentient beings at risk, whether it be from botched street abortions, or from countless medical complications caused by pregnancies. I don’t have to bring up the fact women were dying all the time before abortion was legal in America, do I?

Like drug prohibitionism, making something illegal doesn’t actually solve anything: it in fact compounds both the risk and the cost to society by making them the realm of black markets and underground economies. These are the real consequences of a confused sense of moral responsibility towards unborn fetuses (which tragically seems to end once they’ve taken their very first breath of air), and should not be ignored. Unlike our religious counterparts, it’s the material world we are concerned with, and the individuals who make up that physical realm. The supposed concerns of a make believe troll or bearded entity in the sky has absolutely no bearing on the procedures we undertake to save the lives of other human beings.

If there is any debate, it boils down to this: medical decisions should be pretty obvious considering one is based on simple logic, the other is based on the interpretation of a fairy tale about a guy pulling out on her brother’s widow, and getting killed by a vengeful deity.

It’s divided society alright: one side thinks people should have the ability to be treated for a medical condition based on science, and not religion. The fact some people are mad that abortions happen is irrelevant to their actual real need. And the victims of all this stupidity are women. Now, I wonder how a society still under the spell of a misogynistic, male dominated cult will react to the news there’s no real rush to ensure their well being is preserved so the feelings of superstitious ignoramuses can be spared?

“This is something that has to be dealt with rationally, and openly and truthfully and that is what will happen,” said Kenny.

Dealt with rationally? Do you honestly think the reason for these insane restrictions are logical and reasonable to begin with?