Category Archives: Blog

FFRF sues IRS for failing to enforce tax-exempt rules

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Now that the election is over and President Obama no longer has to be afraid of Evangelicals bent on his destruction, it’s time to put aside petty politics and enforce the law in regards to religious institutions and their supposed neutrality when it comes to politics.

We all know countless religious organizations have been violating the rules of their tax-exempt status, which stipulates pastors are not allowed to specifically endorse a political candidate. The logic behind this rule is simple: religions hold a lot of sway and power, and the last thing you want is for that power to be used to dictate who their followers should vote for. It makes an implicit statement about the role of church in politics: kindly stay the fuck out of it, or we’ll take away your privileges.

Unfortunately, the IRS has gone out of its way to ignore any attempts to challenge it, even when over 1500 pastors openly defied them in the hopes they could then turn around and take this issue to the courts (and ultimately end up costing everyone a lot of money to determine they don’t have a legal leg to stand on). If you thought there might be some kind of reasonable explanation from the IRS as to why they’ve so consistently failed to uphold the law, you’ll be shocked by how much they are tripping over one another trying to get their bullshit story straight:

“We are holding any potential church audits in abeyance,” IRS official Russell Renwicks said.

The IRS later disavowed the statement, insisting the agency intended to investigate the many complaints it had received once it revised its regulations.

“The IRS continues to run a balanced program that follows up on potential non-compliance, while ensuring the appropriate oversight and review to determine that compliance activities are necessary and appropriate,” IRS spokesman Dean Patterson clarified.

Talk about backtracking; in the past three years, there hasn’t been one single investigation, despite the fact thousands of pastors continually violated this law like it was Jodie Foster in The Accused.

Dissatisfied by the lack of balls in the organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the IRS for its failure to comply with their own law. If you think this is a worthy cause and want to support them (hint: I think we all should), then go to their site and make a donation. Let’s hit these religious fuckers where it hurts the most: the pocketbook!

Religious whacko stabs husband because Jesus told her to

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A few days ago, I debated two religious dudes on a show called “Faith and Skepticism” (they might as well call the show oil and water considering how incompatible those two things are), and the one thing they couldn’t seem to grasp is the idea that “hearing the voice of God” is usually a sign of insanity. Obviously, the degree of this insanity can be measured by analyzing what is being communicated. If the little voice inside your head is telling you that you’re a good person and need to donate more money to whatever religious institution you’re part of, we would rank this as fairly low on the nut-job scale (though medical treatment should still be sought). If the voice tells you to stab your husband because Jesus and Mary told you he’s Satan spawn, you’ve probably reached the point where serious medication is your only “salvation”

A woman who allegedly stabbed her husband said she did it after, “Jesus and Mary told me to kill him because he is Satan’s spawn!” according to a police report… Horry County Police deputies were called to [Tammy] Estep’s residence at approximately 6:45 a.m. on the day of the incident. When they arrived, Estep told officers that “She was sent to save the world,” according to a police report.

What better way to save the world than by stabbing your partner repeatedly? My question is how long had she been over the deep end, and were there any other signs people ignored up until that point, convinced that her scary nonsense was just religious fervor. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s not a coincidence…

Pedophile priest blames God for making him this way

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I’ve heard a lot of tortured explanations from the Catholic Church over the years as to why so many priests are sexually abusing children. Pope Benedict XVI claimed it was increased secularization that somehow made their theists behave so immorally. Homosexuality has also been blamed, despite the fact that as many female children are abused as males. Finally, though, one pedophile priest by the name of David Edwin Rapson in Australia has finally used a novel defense I think makes a bit more sense: He blamed God for making him that way:

A former Catholic priest accused of molesting boys at a Victorian school said, “God made us this way and it’s his fault” when a fellow priest urged him to resist

When he was finally confronted by a fellow priest, he responded to his accuser with “You’re one to talk. You’re the same as me….You know what we do here”, prompting me to think this must be yet another way these bastards get away with abuse for so long. Who’s going to report them? Their fellow molesters? Yeah, that fucking seems likely.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has recently OK’d a royal commission to look into the abuse after a police detective named Peter Fox wrote a letter to his premier begging him to open up an investigation. Fox felt both the police department and the Church had actively sabotaged any investigation into the matter, and an independent body needed to look into the matter. Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the government to spring into action (yeah, I know how weird it is to even write that down). Now we only need to sit back and watch the horror unfold before our eyes. I hope you have a strong stomach, Aussies, because you’re about to be put to the test in the coming months.

Doctors refused abortion because “it’s a Catholic country”

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Ireland may be quickly de-converting to atheism faster than any other country, but that certainly doesn’t mean the fight against superstition and religious indoctrination is over. If anything, the stakes have gotten higher, especially when it comes to certain key issues which don’t seem to go away. A young woman by the name of Savita Halappanavar was told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, asked for a medical termination. This was refused, her husband says, because the fetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

By the time the fetus’ heart had finally stopped, many of Savita’s organs had already begun to shut down. When they began operating on her, it was already too late, and she died.

the hospital extended its sympathy to the family and friends of Ms. Halappanavar but could not discuss the details of any individual case.

Somehow, a “sorry your wife died because our bullshit doctors think life begins at conception” doesn’t cut it. How about a “we’ll make sure no other woman has to die needlessly because we still think we’re living in the 18th century”. Ireland, I think it’s time for you to clean house and prove why you’re in the Top 10 atheist countries. Do it for the future Savitas’ of the world.

Shocking: Atheist kids dare to express themselves

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If you’ve never heard of The Blaze (like probably 99% of the population), it’s a creation of Glenn Beck and his conservative production company, Mercury Radio Arts (the irony of naming your production company after a metal that makes one insane is probably lost on these people). If the site isn’t regularly scaring people into buying gold, it feeds them pseudo information that plays into people’s fears and prejudices. Their latest fear mongering article is about the American Humanist Association’s new website, KidswithoutGod.com, which they think aims at “converting kids over to the secular religion of atheism“

The atheist activist community in America has taken an increasingly-active role in trying to convince citizens with doubts about their faith to fully evolve into non-believers and to “come out,” publicly proclaiming their anti-theism. Think of it as a form of secular evangelism. Already, non-believers have attempted to reach clergy who are in doubt through The Clergy Project. Additionally, there’s a humanist church service each week in Tulsa, Oklahoma (and these are only two examples). Now, in addition to reaching adults, atheist activists have their eyes set on converting kids and teens.

The website, which dares to encourage kids to be nice to other people, eat well, tell the truth, take responsibility for one’s actions, to take care of the environment, and to think for themselves, probably seems to ignorant theists as some kind of effort to ‘indoctrinate’ kids (funny how they don’t seem to mind at all when it’s their shit they are trying to inculcate). In reality, it’s merely a place for kids who weren’t brainwashed at an early age to realize they aren’t the only disbelievers out there. One article is even entitled “No Name Calling” when referring to believers. You can’t get more milk-toast than that, folks.

Their over-reaction is kind of hilarious, don’t you think?

Italians want to finally tax the Catholic Church

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With all the belt tightening happening in Italy, the general population is putting into motion a plan to tax the Catholic Church’s many holdings and tax exempt businesses. The total amount of revenue this would generate for the country is estimated to be about a billion dollars annually.

Following their government’s latest austerity measure package, more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church’s tax exempt status to be revoked. Since 2005, church-run groups and organizations have not been classed as official commercial bodies and have been exempt from paying property tax.

Now, before you go jumping for joy, keep in mind Italy would only be taxing property that doesn’t have a specific religious intent. Tax authorities will need to scrutinize all of the Church’s holdings to determine which category they fit in.

So, it’s still pretty weak-sauce, but it’s a step in the right direction. Here’s hoping Italy’s austerity measures (another nice way of saying “fuck the poor”) continue to drive the idea that the Church has been getting a free ride for way too long. Enjoy your privilege while you can, Vatican. Eventually, they’ll be coming for your gold plates and jewel encrusted cutlery.

All Uganda wants for Christmas is to kill the gays

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It was only a matter of time before Uganda – oblivious to international pressure – would pass their notorious ‘kill the gays’ bill. Claiming homosexuals pose a ‘serious threat’, the government has decided to pass the law by the end of December. The speaker of the Cabinet, Rebecca Kadaga (seen above waving a fucking Bible, what else?), said this would be a Christmas present for her constituents. This barbaric bill is divided into two parts:

‘Aggravated homosexuality’ is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people, pedophiles and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty.

The ‘offense of homosexuality’ includes same-sex sexual acts or being in a gay relationship, and will be prosecuted by life imprisonment.

So, it’s either the death penalty or life imprisonment, depending on just how ignorant the prosecution is. Kadaga even suggested that the whole of Africa, a continent in the grips of religious revival, should pass similar laws to needlessly torture, imprison, and murder individuals whose only crime is to have same sex attractions.

American Evangelicals must be jumping for joy at the thought of all the anti-gay shit they keep spewing is being taken seriously by some people.

The Catholic church really is full of pedophiles

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It’s difficult to actually assess just how corrupt the Catholic Church is, but judging by the testimony of Father Kevin Lee, the accusation often lobbied at the church – mainly that it provides an attractive employment opportunity for sexual abusers – seems legitimate. Lee, who was fired for marrying a woman (the nerve!), had been documenting allegations of abuse for years, and found himself frustrated by the inaction of both church officials and police. Even the press wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

In the course of my life as a priest I became aware that some of the other priests were actually pedophiles, and not necessarily becoming priests because they wanted to help people. They were pedophiles that were looking for opportunity… I saw a system of cover-up, a system of blind-eye turning and just ignorance of the fact is was happening.

You don’t need to be a cynic to understand the reasons for this. Since the very inception of the church – a creepy old boys club breathlessly anticipating the destruction of the world in a sea of blood – there’s been something fundamentally wrong with this organization. As early as 60 AD, reports of child abuse could already be found in a document entitled The Didache, which stipulates quite plainly that the priestly class is not to seduce young boys (guess it was a real problem after just a few years doing their shtick).

Even in the 11th century, when a priest wrote the Book of Gomorrah (a book largely condemning homosexuality), the author complained of a systematic cover-up of the rape of young boys. Evidently, this institution has a long and practiced history when it comes to providing shelter and attractive opportunities to offend (and get moved around for a fresh batch of innocents). If you wanted to offend and avoid going to jail, what career would you chose? How many other organizations provide this level of comfort and protection to people who sexually abuse children?

Help strip politically bent religious institutions of tax exempt status

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Remember a few weeks back when over 1000 preachers openly defied the IRS and began politically endorsing Mitt Romney? Well, it certainly wasn’t the first time these guys broke the law, and it certainly won’t be the last. This stunt was in an effort to repeal a law that until now, the IRS has refused to enforce. Gutsy, this was not.

“Pulpit Freedom Sunday” has been staged annually since 2008 by a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. Its aim is to provoke a challenge from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in order to file a lawsuit and have its argument out in court.

In response to this outrageous affront to a simple rule allowing them not to pay taxes (effectively making us all sponsors of their nonsense), there’s an online petition aiming to put pressure on the Obama Administration to actually enforce this tax code on offending religious institutions.

In recent years, the IRS has turned a blind eye to offending Religious institutions that mix religion with politics. By not enforcing the qualifications & disqualification’s of 26 U.S.C. § 501(c) of the United States tax code, the IRS is doing a diservice [sic] to both the American people & the vision of our forefathers.

I know most of you think petitions aren’t worth the paper they are printed on (especially ones with a typo in a three paragraph pitch), but keep in mind that with the election over, Obama no longer needs to tip toe around Evangelicals anymore. And if he wants a Democratic congress in 2014, the best way to ensure that is to stop preachers from using their immense power to essentially control the vote of their congregation (who almost always vote conservative).

They still need about 21,000 signatures, so if you’re as ass pissed off as I am that religious douche-bags keep abusing their tax exempt status, why don’t you take 3 minutes out of your day and sign the damn thing?

New South Wales Premier OKs inquiry into clergy abuse

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Tell me if this doesn’t sound like a kick ass movie: a police detective -convinced the police force has been helping clergy cover up sexual abuse- sends a letter to the premier urging him to open an investigation into the whole affair. If it wasn’t actually happening in New South Wales, I’d think maybe it was a cheesy John Grisham novel.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox (sounds like a movie name, right?) sent a letter to Premier Barry O’Farrell challenging him to open a royal commission to look into multiple abuse cover-ups by the Catholic Church, along with the co-operation of certain corrupt police officers. It appears this Australian Serpico has been investigating these abuses for over a decade, and found so many cases of abuse that he’s lost count.

“I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church,” he wrote in his letter.

As you can imagine, his failure to follow the proper chain of command has angered a lot of people in his department, and his police department is throwing him under the bus (claiming the church has been co-operative, like we fucking believe that for one second). Still, it seems as though he’s managed to create enough of a stir that the premier has agreed to the idea. Now we simply have to wait and see all the horrible stories emerge. Just one more reason for Aussies to abandon this poison called religion.

Maryland gets Marriage Equality

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I know the big news story today is President Obama being re-elected, but I hope this bit of news doesn’t get buried under all the brouhaha: it seems as though the tiny state of Maryland has legalized same-sex marriage by approving “Question 6″ on the ballot. Now, before you celebrate this victory, you should know a few important details:

Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.

Can you imagine any civil rights legislation that still protected religious institutions from their blatant racism? I know I should be happy for gay couples finally getting the same rights as everyone else, but I can’t help but feel like this toothless referendum further legitimizes institutionalized homophobia. It’s no different than allowing churches the right to deny interracial marriages, since those too are specifically condemned by the Bible (remember when Lot’s daughters rape him in order not to have to take on foreign husbands?). I realize this was a necessary concession, but we should recognize the major barrier to marriage equality is still religion, and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it like it is.

Contraception is a gateway drug to abortion!

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Catholics are hilarious. It’s been 60 years since the invention of the pill, and these dinosaurs are still trying to argue that it’s the most evil invention since the guillotine.

Abortion and birth control are two sides of the same coin. The currency of which is the prevention and/or the destruction of nascent human life. While some forms of contraception, such as the condom or the diaphragm, are not themselves capable of destroying human life, (as are many chemical contraceptives, including forms of the Pill, the patch, and IUDs) they are a kind of “gateway drug” into the abortion mentality.

Ah yes, the gateway drug argument. If it worked to make a harmless drug like marijuana illegal, surely an illogical statement like this can prevent women from having full control over their reproductive cycles. The very fact that she’s even trying to prevent ovulation must mean she considers any potential child to be an enemy:

What I am saying is that the very act of using “birth control” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) pits prospective parents against prospective offspring.

Not sure if this guy actually knows what an oxymoron is, but this definitely doesn’t qualify (my example of an oxymoron would be ‘honest religion’, but I digress). Does he honestly believe that every woman who tried to regulate her ovulation is at war with her own body?

What I do believe, however, is that people who choose to contraception are damaging their consciences and hardening their hearts in a very real way, whether or not they acknowledge or comprehend the sinful nature of their actions. Sin, you see, has consequences. Whether or not we acknowledge our actions as sinful … heck, whether or not we even believe in sin, reality stands. And the reality is, contraception and abortion are about as intrinsically linked as are sugar and cavities. One doesn’t always cause the other, but it sure as heck predisposes the midnight snacker to more frequent trips to the dentist’s chair.

Snacking on all those birth control pills have made you into coldblooded killers, ladies. Can’t you just feel the genocide inside your womb every time you take your medicine? Man, I wish there was some kind of study that might actually attempt to answer the question of whether or not birth control reduces rates of abortion. Oh wait, here’s one:

Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concludes….There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women overall in the St. Louis region, Peipert calculated. That’s lower than the national rate, too, which is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women. In fact, if the program were expanded, one abortion could be prevented for every 79 to 137 women given a free contraceptive choice, Peipert’s team reported in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

So, not only is that jackass wrong, his very objection to birth control actually allows more abortions to take place, and it’s not an insignificant number: the rates of abortion are double for women who don’t take the Pill, regardless of what particular nonsense faith they belong to.

See, this is the problem when you allow non-thinking persons to try and dictate the health of our citizenry: their well meaning stupidity notwithstanding, health issues cannot be dictated by people who get their cues from the Bronze Age.

There’s a reason, after all, that Planned Parenthood is fighting so hard to keep Obamacare and its promises of subsidized hormones alive.

Their bottom line depends upon it.

To uninformed Americans, Planned Parenthood is a Henry Ford style abortion factory. Ignore for a moment that abortions are merely a fraction of the services the organization provides: if money is supposed to indicate an organization’s true motivation, where does that leave the Catholic Church in all of this?

This is what you get for mixing religion and politics

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One of the most aneurysm-inducing quotes of 2012 had to be faux-atheist S.E. Cupp’s comment that she would never vote for an atheist president. Believing she had a point by saying she couldn’t trust anyone who didn’t have God as a moral compass, what Cupp and her similarly minded ilk fail to realize, however, is that beliefs predicated on violent nonsense have the tendency to reflect Bronze Age barbarism. Man, I wish I had some kind of super sweet example to illustrate exactly what I’m trying to say…like a the Republican candidate for Arkansas who believes rebellious kids should be put to death.

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius[sic] children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

I always laugh whenever people act shocked that some of their fellow human beings can believe in such dangerous absurdities, since so many of them have based so much of their own lives on similar idiocies. It’s only when the true stakes of belief are in play that they realize, often too late, that religious faith tends to mask serious social dysfunctions and psychopathic behavior. With the Republican party so desperate for votes, they’re too chicken shit to call this guy out on his crazy ideas, and that’s the really terrifying part.

Pope’s butler gets 18 months in jail for leaked memos

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So, what do you get for exposing the corruption of an organization like the Vatican? Well, how about an 18 month prison term handed down by the very institution you were trying to expose? Oh, and you can add the cost of the trial to the list of his expenses:

The pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted Saturday of aggravated theft for leaking confidential papal documents and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

He was also ordered to pay the costs of the trial at the Vatican City courthouse.

Well, he could have spent a full three years in jail, but the judge felt there were ‘extenuating circumstances’. Like what, the fact that your organization is so corrupt it would rather jail tattle-tales than actual child rapists? Or how about the fact you aren’t legally your own state, having achieved ‘independence’ from Italian fascists in the 1920′s?

I suppose you could argue that it’s Paolo’s fault for getting involved in a creepy cult that seems to be able to create its own laws, jail its own adherents for daring to expose corruption, and do so as the rest of the world watches on.

Get ready for some free energy!

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When I was a teen, I bought into the bullshit that is Qi (sometimes spelled ‘chi’). I couldn’t help it: if you’ve ever watched the Shaolin Monks do their thing, you might understand why I thought their impressive physical feats were only made possible because of some superhuman element. Fueled by the mythology of comic book heroes, I desperately wanted it to be true (which I was to later learn is the first and most important reason to doubt any dubious claim). I wanted ‘super-powers’ to be a real, so that if any harm ever came to me, I thought perhaps I would simply learn their ‘tricks’ and I would be immune from the dangers of the world.

Like most childhood fantasies, they eventually crumbled under the full weight of rude criticisms, and I came to understand Qi as a method for ancient ignoramuses to differentiate living things from non-living things. In a sense, Qi was a magical invention that could supposedly account for life, and like all nonsense, over time it grew into an increasingly complex form of bullshit. Fast forward to today, where the evolution of Qi continues.

You can join this free distant energy healing session by using your intention to be included. If you wish to join, just close your eyes for a minute when you read this and mentally say that you intend to join the session and want to be included. That is all you have to do to connect with the energy and you don’t have to do anything else. Healing energy can begin to flow to you once you do this as many people who have done this before have reported.

How does it all work, you ask?

Many spiritual traditions teach that we are all connected and now some Quantum Physicists are saying the same thing.

Ah yes, the “We are all connected” trope that hippy weirdos love to throw around like it means something it doesn’t. Sure, it’s amazing that there is no functional differences between the atoms which make up a rock and the ones that make up my body, except perhaps I like mine better. This doesn’t mean, however, that the rock and I share a special connection. If someone threw it at my head, that ‘connection’ might not really be that great for my prolonged existence.

This annoying idea that ‘energy’ heals ignores the fact that most forms of energy in the universe produce violent reactions that forge new elements, turn regular matter into super hot gases, or blast unsuspecting, cooling balls of rock with deadly radiation. I doubt anyone is basking in the oneness of the universe when they get hit by a gamma ray burst, but I digress.

So, who is up for sending ‘positive’ vibes by sitting in your kitchen and having wishful thinking be your guide to reality? Not this fucking guy, I can tell you.