Category Archives: Blog

We’re the ones with magical thinking?

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When trying to defend your religion, you’ve to pick your battles. In today’s modern world, defending the Bible is a full time job. If you aren’t busy arguing that the supposed genocide of the Canaanites or Hittites was justified because a bearded sky-deity told the Jews to do it, you’re hopelessly defending things like homophobia and slavery. What else can you expect from a series of books written thousands of years ago by ignorant herdsmen?

Take Mark Shea. He’s a new writer for the National Catholic Register, and if this article of his entitled New Atheist Magical Thinking is any indication, we’re bound to get more hilarious gems out of this clown. He’s trying to argue that the recent tactic of American Atheist to quote immoral Bible verses is leading us inextricably towards ‘magical thinking’. Here he is answering a letter from a fellow Christian upset that he can’t find a biblical passage declaring slavery to be evil. His response is worth a laugh.

I think that atheists like your friend really need to break free of fundamentalist magical thinking and learn to read books written by and for grownups.

Yeah, you silly atheists! Your books are full of unbelievable magic, like a talking snake or donkey, or bits of food that fall down from heaven to feed hungry Jews. Oh wait, that’s not our books…

People who read the Bible looking for more than Selected Ammunition Verses, would realize that contained within the New Testament is, ultimately, the only thing that succeeded in finally extirpating slavery: namely, the insistence that man is made in the image and likeness of God and that Christ loves the slave as much as the master…Of course, the New Atheists are stone blind to this in their deep ignorance and arrogance and so fail to realize that the first result of extirpating Christianity is the return of slavery

Never mind the fact the Southern Baptist Church fought tooth and nail to keep segregation for as long as it could (arguing that forcing civil rights on them violated their religious freedom…sound familiar?): if you eliminate Christianity, according to this moron, people will be enslaved again. Never mind the fact the Bible specifically condones slavery, and was one of the main tools used by preachers to fight abolition. Like every Christian before him, Mark has chosen to interpret his religion to match his pre-existing belief structure. Facts or history are irrelevant to him, so long as they contradict his specially formed Christianity.

As for the accusation that atheists engage in ‘magical thinking’, how can you convince someone who believes without question that his imaginary friend is real he’s the one living in a delusion? All we can do is shake our heads, impolitely tell these idiots they are wrong, and remind them that accusing us of ‘arrogance’ is not really an insult. We understand reality better than they do, and that merits a little pride, don’t you think?

Cancer is a fungus, says David Icke

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If you’ve never heard of David Icke, then consider yourself fortunate. The man has been giving me migraines for years. While I would like to describe David as a conspiracy theorist, it would be more appropriate to call him THE Conspiracy Theorist. He’s written 18 books, most of which focus on the idea that a Global Elite of (basically) Jewish lizard-men are behind everything that’s ever gone wrong with humanity, from religious division to global wars. Like all CT’ers, David relies on pseudo-history. In the early drafts of his book And the Truth Shall Set you Free, his extensive writings of the great hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion and his denials of the Holocaust prompted his publishers to drop him.

When he isn’t busy arguing that the moon is actually a space-craft that beams a false reality to us (think a combination They Live and The Matrix), he’s taking on ‘Big Pharma’, and their effort to suppress the evidence that cancer is actually caused by a fungus, and not the runaway mutation of cells:

Big Pharma has no desire to cure cancer when it is making vast fortunes from treating the symptoms with devastating drugs and cell-killing, people-killing poisons like chemotherapy. But it is not primarily even about money. The bloodline families want people to suffer and die earlier than necessary as a way of culling the population.

This is why when anyone outside the Big Pharma cabal discovers an effective way of treating cancer they are immediately targeted by the medical establishment and government agencies.

The fungus he’s referring to is Candidia, lives in the body and is mostly harmless or (in some cases) helpful. Like all inter-species relationships, things can sometimes get complicated, and Candidia can cause yeast infections or even death for people with compromised immune systems. Icke claims all cancer is in fact caused by this fungus alone, and a treatment of baking soda alone would cost almost nothing and cure this deadly disease. This idea was ‘pioneered’ by an Italian scammer named Tullio Simoncini, who has already sent people to early graves peddling this nonsense.

I wonder how many minds David Icke has poisoned with his insanity? Perhaps in his deluded mind he sees himself as the good guy, but when you peddle this kind of dangerous nonsense for a living, there are terrible consequences for those too foolish to see through the lies.

Church stages kidnapping, facing charges

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When your main weapon in the war of ideas is fairy-tale nonsense, I can see how some religionists might feel a little intimidated with reality. Unlike those ‘heady’ days in the past when any old idea passed muster so long as a man of the cloth gave it a thumbs up (like the 17th century edict that declared the beaver a fish), our modern understanding of the natural world has only served to further marginalize faith. As church attendance continues to fall throughout the Western World (32% of us are faithless, according to this recent Gallop poll), desperation is beginning to set in. How else can you explain this story: a Church in Pennsylvania, called ‘Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church’, is facing charges after members staged an elaborate kidnapping hoax in an effort to ‘inform’ kids of the dangers of ‘religious persecution’.

Adults, including an off-duty cop, brandished weapons and put bags over the heads of the children, ages 13 through 18, and forced them into a church van. The group was driven to the home of an assistant pastor, who was presented before the group with a seemingly bloodied and bruised face, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo.

One of the adults used a real AK-47, though the gun was unloaded, Chardo said.

One of the teens, who can’t be identified, seems to be genuinely messed up from the experience (that’s religion for you). If you’re wondering exactly what these morons hoped to accomplish by brandishing weapons and threatening physical harm to children, the explanation from the pastor Pastor John Lanza won’t do much to enlighten you. He tries to justify it by claiming this staged kidnapping would…

secure the shock value of it and to make it much more real because those who are threatened don’t have a warning. It was a youth event to illustrate what others have encountered on a regular basis.”

Well, considering that holding a minor without their consent is a crime punishable by 10 years in jail, perhaps these adults should be given a taste of things to come by staging an elaborate ‘prison’ scenario so they can benefit from illustrating what they can expect on a regular basis in the big house.

No purity tests needed for Reason Rally

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With only a few days until the big event, there’s a few people fuming about some of the guest speakers coming to the Reason Rally. PZ Myers is upset that Bill Maher will be there because of some of his anti-vaccination statements in the past. Also in attendance is Senator Tom Harkin, a Catholic and a believer in alternative medicine, who plans to address the crowd. Myers is convinced that the very name of the Rally should discourage any person who holds some kind of foolish belief from speaking.

Problem is, if we did that, it might discount most of the crowd. In fact, it might mean that no human could ever hope to meet the criteria of being truly rational, and everyone should probably just stay home. Why? Because humans suck at being rational.

We aren’t a rational species to begin with. Decisions we make tend to be driven by emotion, and if our higher brain (our flaunted prefrontal cortex) does have something to say about it, it tends to only service our emotions by crafting elaborate rationalizations. (You can read all about this in the book: “The Upside of Irrationality“) This explains why extremely intelligent people can believe in utter nonsense: clever minds can rationalize well enough to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. The rest is easy; since we all have a natural bias towards any opposing views (who wants to spend all that effort changing your mind?), they will never be exposed to the flaws in their thinking.

Problem is, it would be hard to find someone who didn’t at least share some of those tendencies. I’m not sure everything I believe in is squeaky clean of the subtle manipulation of a mind which craves certainty and clarity. Are all my assumptions true (at least more conducive to reality, given our current understanding)? In Michael Shermer’s new book “The Believing Brain“, he explains how our awareness of our own biases often makes us overestimate our capacity to look beyond them. In other words, even when we think we have a handle on our irrationality, it tends to only make it worse. Is that what I do as well?

It’s all the objections to this I find irrational. The Reason Rally is a bit of an oxymoron to begin with: swept up by the emotion of the crowd, how can anyone hope to act rationally? The whole purpose of this meeting is a “prep” rally to encourage people to think for themselves, to question their own cherished assumptions, and to hold no truth as sacred. Are we now making purity tests for what constitutes a rational mind? There’s something I profoundly dislike about that idea, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Creationist files lawsuit after being laid off from NASA

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For those of us not blinded by faith, Intelligent Design is nothing more that the “intellectual” leftovers of creationism. While its proponents will argue that there is no specific mention of God, once you read ID literature and listen to its defenders, a clear pattern emerges: ID is simply creationism that’s been dressed up for the prom.

Part of the reason ID’ers fight so hard against this creationist label is pragmatic: their goal is to undermine scientific education, but since being overtly religious has a tendency to get your materials excluded from public education, they’ve taken the approach of claiming to be an alternative theory to Evolution. Under the guise of intellectual freedom, they maintain that evolution is only a theory and that their “explanation” (that some super-intelligence started it all) is as valid a theory as any other.

The problem is that Intelligent Design isn’t a theory. It doesn’t offer any model or make any predictions. While it does make claims about the natural world (mainly that life is just too complex to have started on its own), it offers no way of testing them. In fact, their premise that the natural world is too complex or well organized to be the result of undirected processes is the very antithesis of science. It gives up on trying to find a material explanation to any phenomena. If something isn’t well understood, then it must be magic!

Believing in such non-intellectual nonsense can often result in conflict, as former JPL employee David Coppedge recently learned. He was laid off in 2009 and decided to sue the company for religious discrimination. During his time as a team lead, he was often reprimanded by his supervisors for distributing his DVD “Unlocking the Mysteries of Life“, a rather shoddy crapumentary about the “growing consensus among scientists that Darwin was wrong”. His fellow employees also complained that his political views (supporting Prop Eight) and religious proselytizing did not belong in the office.

The Discovery Institute helped him build a case, arguing that his beliefs did not conflict with the general goals of a scientific organization. They even try to argue that Intelligent Design is not creationism:

Intelligent Design and creation science use different methodologies and assumptions and proffer different objectives, Coppedge explained. Creationism starts with the Bible, the book of Genesis, with God having created the heavens and the earth in six days. From there, creation scientists see how science fits in.

Intelligent design, however, begins with observations of the natural world and uses well-known tools of science to draw the inference to the best explanation or phenomenon, he said. It has no religious presuppositions and makes no religious assumptions.

Reliance on the supernatural is, by definition, a religious assumption. Sure, they aren’t specific about what kind of “intelligent agent” was at work, but unless you’re a Raelian, odds are you favor a big, bearded creator in the sky when talking about this kind of “magic”. It’s true that creationism starts and ends with the Bible, and that believers will only believe in any science that confirms their pre-held notions. How is this different than ID? Given the fact that all of the examples ID proponents have used over the years have all been shown to fit our current understanding of Evolution (the bacterial flagellum is a good example), I find it hard to see a distinction here. What conditions would be necessary to disprove Intelligent Design? What “science” infers that a problem is simply too complex to have an answer?

Pope denounces Maryland legalizing gay marriage

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Pope Benedict XVI, a celibate man who controls a vast fortune and an army of delusional homophobes, has criticized Americans for granting all their citizens the same rights in the state of Maryland.

“He added that the traditional family and marriage had to be “defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature” because, he said, whatever injured families injured society.

So many ruined lives because gays are marrying one another! Think of all those poor heterosexuals who have to live knowing that somewhere, out there, a gay person is having gross butt sex with another man. Can’t you understand that families can’t possibly survive this “assault”?

Benedict called on American bishops to continue their “defense of marriage as a natural institution consisting of a specific communion of persons, essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation”.

If you aren’t straight and fucking to produce children, you’re sinning against God! It’s that simple folks. You see, once upon a time, a man named Onan refused to ejaculate in his brother’s widow, and magical sky man killed him instantly for this transgression. Since that day, all sex that isn’t about producing babies makes God angry. Luckily, his sexless avatars are here on earth to ensure that no one is having a good time.

Over the last few years, the Vatican has been busy trying to scoop up any remaining bigots that feel uncomfortable with their own church’s lenient stand on homosexuality. So far, this wedge issue is the Catholic Church’s main focus, and while they’ve made some new friends, their strategy is bound to continue to marginalize this outdated institution. The trend is clear: enlightened societies recognize that same sex attractions are normal. Anyone who wants to continue to preach ignorance and hatred knows where to go…

Mother gets probation for imprisoning and torturing daugter

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What do you do when your uppity, independent minded 19 year old daughter has the gall to refuse an arranged marriage with a stranger twice her age? Why, you burn her with a hot spoon, that’s what! What better way to preserve your cultural heritage than by torturing your loved ones into submission. Hey, isn’t that what Islam means?

Yusra Farhan won’t be winning any “Mother of the Year” awards, especially considering this isn’t the first time she’s been caught abusing her daughter. In Feb 8th, the whole troop was arrested after they tied the poor girl (who has not been named) to a bed and beat her mercilessly after she was caught talking to a boy. Since this violates their “Iraqi culture”, they decided that the best way to solve the problem was through ritualistic abuse. You know what they say: families that commit felonies together, stay together.

Christians use data-mining to rally voters

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Are you starting to feel as though we’re losing this war of ideas? Sure, we keep growing day by day, but when push comes to shove, we can’t hold a candle to our religious counterparts when it comes to getting organized. Take, Bill Dallas for example. After spending half of his 5 year sentence for embezzlement, Bill was “born-again” while in prison. Rather than try and defraud people out of their money through real-estate, Bill has decided instead to get into politics (next logical step, right?) He managed to convince a bunch of rich Silicon Valley executives to fund a company that data-mines the internet looking for unregistered voters with a religious bent. The company, called “United In Purpose“, awards “points” for individuals in their massive database which strongly indicate conservative values. If you’ve ever watched Nascar, gone fishing, or subscribed to any anti-abortion newsletter, odds are you’ve scored high on their system, and you might just get a call.

The company buys lists to build a profile of each citizen, and then assigns points for certain characteristics. You get points if you’re on an anti-abortion list or a traditional marriage list. You get a point if you regularly attend church or home-school your kids. You get points if you like NASCAR or fishing.

So far, UIP claims their database comprises some 180 million adults, and that number continues to grow as UIP keeps buying up mailing lists from anyone willing to sell information. They then compare anyone with high scores on their close-minded scale and then attempt to get these people to register to vote, sometimes even showing up at their door.

Can you even imagine something of that scope happening on our side? How are we supposed to compete with companies who get set up specifically to find morons and get them to vote ultra-conservative on everything? How can we hope to win this war if we’re still acting like a bunch of unherdable cats? Fuck me these guys are organized…

Miley Ray Cyrus angers fans over “atheist” tweet

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I’ve been trying very hard to not like Miley Cyrus, but it’s starting to look like this may be impossible. Maybe it’s the fact that she keeps smoking pot even when the LA times gets all preachy about it. To top it all off, she recently re-tweeted an atheist meme on her twitter courtesy of Laurence Krauss:

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

Now, while the important message is actually the fact that we are made of stars, her Christian fans were quick to jump on the “forget Jesus” line in there. She’s been getting tons of negative comments from these douchebags. These assholes even managed to “flag” the image as inappropriate in an effort to suppress it (hey, it’s their M.O. after all), so if you’re trying to view the image she tweeted, you won’t be able to (although can head on over to Friendly Atheist if you’re that curious). Did you expect anything different from these people? That’s what happens when a significant portion of your fanbase believes in fairy-tale nonsense: as soon as you call them on it, they lose their fucking minds.

Judge dismisses sectarian assault on Atheist, blames him instead

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Imagine you get physically assaulted for speaking your mind, and when it was time for your attacker to face justice, he’s sent merrily on his way by a Judge who shares his specific religious convictions. Would you not regard this as a gross miscarriage of justice?

Well, that’s exactly what happened to fellow non-believer Ernest Perce, who was assaulted last October during a parade. Representing the Pennsylvania Non-Believers, Perce donned a zombie Mohammed costume intent on making a statement about Islam. Talaag Elbayomy (a recent immigrant to the US) saw Perce and immediately began attacking him, convinced that this blasphemy was actually a crime. The incident was caught on tape, and the police officer at the scene reported that Elbayomy had indeed admitted to the assaults. Perce pressed charges, and what should have been an open and shut case instead turned into a farce when the judge threw the case out. District Judge Mark Martin, a Lutheran, refused to allow the video as evidence. He even had the audacity of lecturing the plaintiff on what constitutes an appropriate use of his First Amendment Rights:

Here in our society, we have a constitution that gives us many rights, specifically, First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers really intended. I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did.

I’m sure the Founding Fathers, a bunch of rebellious intellectuals who decided to overthrow their government to form their own, didn’t intend for people to be offended by free speech. The only form of effective revolution is to politely keep your opinions to yourself, right?

Some of the more dramatic headlines suggested that the Martin had used “Sharia Law” to reach a verdict. I wouldn’t go that far, although I am glad that other serious professionals are calling out this moron for showing a complete lack of understanding of basic principles of free speech. I think this clown allowed his religion to cloud his already shitty judgement, and I believe that despite a miscarriage of justice, we’ve at least succeeded in showcasing how disturbing it is when sectarianism creeps its way into the courts. Thanks for taking one for the team, Ernest!

NOTE: The judge is in fact a Lutheran. The statement he made in court saying “I am a Muslim” was not meant to be taken literally. Thanks Alex for pointing that out.

Creationist Alert!

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It’s only been a few days since it’s been up, but already the forums* are lighting up like the fourth of July. One topic that immediately caught my eye came courtesy of user DexM felt too important not to promote:

The Christian club at my high school has invited creationist Bill Morgan from http://www.fishdontwalk.com/ to speak at one of their meetings. Needless to say I’m organizing a rapid response team to kick his ass with words – including trying to get one of my school’s biology teachers in on the action – but I really have no idea on how to go about doing it. There’s no shortage of atheists and skeptics on campus but getting them organized well enough to go toe-to-toe with a seasoned creationist debater is pretty dangerous. Any thoughts or advice?

Taking on a creationist, eh? I like your moxie, kid. Just understand that debating creationists can be a tricky business. Many intelligent individuals have been caught totally off guard in these kinds of debates, and looked foolish as a result. Academics are often unprepared for the kinds of tactics creationists employ to try and win arguments. One of these include what I like to call “The Seed of Doubt”. This strategy usually involves undermining some scientific theory they poorly understand. By focusing on some tiny minutia of a theory that isn’t very well understood, they try to convince the audience that “science doesn’t really know what it’s talking about”. Rather than attempt to construct an argument based on evidence of their own, creationists instead try to exploit uncertainty, masquerading their obvious disdain for scientific discovery as skepticism. And because science invites this process on itself, we must be honest when admitting that there are many unknowns and a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to human knowledge. These are not concepts a religiously minded person like Bill Morgan is willing to accept.

A a quick glance at Bill’s website, hilariously named “Fish don’t Walk” (a quick youtube search easily destroys that false statement) reveals that the guy doesn’t seem to have any real clue as to how evolution actually works. Here he is explaining the supposed difficulty of sexual reproduction in nature:

if the theory of evolution is true, the male and female would have to evolve their reproductive systems at the same TIME. Imagine the female is fully evolved, but the male is not. Does she start hen pecking him by telling him “hurry up and evolve, we are going to be dead in a few years?”…Creationists believe in “instant chickens.” Creationists believe a Creator with a lot of power and intelligence instantly made males and females at the same time, and put them at the same place.

As you can see, he’s got a rather weak grasp on the sexual theory. He’s apparently completely unaware that sex is a relatively recent “invention” in the history of life. So his “bombshells” are really just indicative of poor education on his part, most likely the result of his religious upbringing (surprised?). Remember, Bill’s “dude with a lot of power and smarts” explains everything he doesn’t understand, and that seems to encompass quite a bit.

My prediction is that if he’s shown his ignorance on the matter, he will turn to the remaining scientific mysteries that we haven’t yet solved as a final means of sowing doubt in scientific theories. I wouldn’t attempt to try and explain these. I would merely point out that he’s creating a false dichotomy; he’s attempting to reason that because we don’t know the answer to A, B must be true.

Time is not a scientific explanation, it is blind faith. I call it “the magic wand of time” When I ask an Evolutionist “how did birds evolve from reptiles?” I imagine them waving a magic wand as they say “It took millions of years!”
Believe whatever you want to on Creation vs. Evolution, but base your belief on observation (Science) not blind faith (time).

Translation: I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, so God did it

Finally I would end by trying to make it clear what degree of acceptance in any given theory is acceptable. It should be contingent on how much evidence each one relies on. The more lines of evidence which converge, the more likely it is to be true. Genetics, geology, paleontology and a host of other sciences are all consistent with Evolution. The important thing for people to remember is that science is a set of tools we use to decode the laws of nature. It allows us to construct models to help explain how objective reality behaves. Creationism is merely poor rhetoric meant to substantiate baseless supernatural claims. It has no predictive powers, and any statements it does make about nature contradict all the observations we’ve already made. If this clown is trying to argue that he’s only trying to “make people decide for themselves” what is true and what isn’t, then I would instruct him to continue to educate himself: he’s obviously not done.

(Update: The forums no longer exist)

Gingrich tells evangelicals “we need to defend ourselves”

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In a continued effort to try and still be relevant, Newt Gingrich recently spoke to a modestly sized crowd in Cumming, Georgia assuring them of his (false) piety, and warning his dwindling support base that it was time for evangelicals to “defend themselves”:

“The other side will fight back and they will fight back on two fronts. You will have radical Islamists who want to kill us and you will have secularists who want to coerce us, and that’s why, for example, recently you saw the Obama administration trying to coerce the Catholic Church because it is the inevitable nature of the left to use government to impose on us their values,” said Gingrich.

Imposing values is uniquely left, you say? I suppose if we ignore governmental legislation trying to ban abortion, draconian anti-immigration laws that treat Hispanics as second class citizens, or the myriad of ways that religious douchebags use the government to impose their own values, then yes, you could claim that with a straight face.

As for this paranoid assumption that secularists “coerce” people, what he really means is that we’ll effectively change people’s minds and make them abandon their foolhardy beliefs. I do love, however, how we’re on the opposite spectrum of Islamic fundamentalism. I take that with a badge of pride.

Muslims in Afghanistan going nuts over Koran Burning

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Remember last year when 24 people died because a US pastor made a public display of burning the Koran? Despite President Obama begging the guy not to do it, Pastor Terry Jones held a mock trial for the book, found it guilty of 3 crimes against humanity and set it on fire. Huge protests erupted in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and like every crazy protest in these countries, a bunch of people got killed.

So despite everyone on Earth knowing how insane Muslims are regarding their fucking book, a bunch of NATO soldiers were discovered burning a few copies themselves. Admittedly, there was no malice in the burning; just the regular disposal of garbage. Of course, nothing done over there is ever simple, and when the locals discovered the fact that their shitty little book was getting cooked, they collectively lost it. Religious fundies were quick to stoke the flames, and the protest has spilled over to Pakistan (always looking for an excuse to burn American effigies, I suppose). So far, 2 foreign advisers have been killed (both by a armed Afghan police officer) and a number of protesters who tried to bomb a UN compound.

President Obama publicly apologized for what happened, but I have to wonder when we’ll stop feeding their insanity. The Koran is just a book; and like all religious tomes, it’s nothing but a collection of falsehoods and pointless platitudes. The fact that we continue to condemn any destruction of this book furthers their assumption that the Muslim faith is superior. Why else would the most powerful man on earth apologize for a few having been singed?

A place for Atheists to grieve

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Death is hard on those who accept its terminal reality. There’s no magical playland in the sky, there’s no transference or retention of our thought patterns, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that the mind is anything more than the brain. Materialism may not be appealing to the majority of the population, but it’s undeniably the only reality so far to manifest itself. These supernatural fairy-tales we’ve constructed during the infancy of our species – a time when the tools for understanding the world had not yet been invented – should be treated with contempt, and yet we languish in ignorance in favor of comforting thoughts.

One of the hardest transitions into atheism is the acceptance that death is final, and this can be a powerful blow for those still partially wrapped up in the bubble of religious delusion. In many cases, dealing with the non-reality of Heaven (or some analogue) is like losing your deceased loved ones all over again. I can only imagine my reaction if this was compounded by trite, childish words meant for comfort. How can we convey the sorrow of reality to someone still living (quite literally) in a fantasy land?

Were it not for the fact that we occupy the same physical space, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Luckily, the Internet is exactly the kind of place where you don’t have to. There, grieving atheists like Rebecca Hensler have a place where they can express their sorrow. After her 3 month old child Jude died in 2009, Rebecca created a Facebook group called “Grief Beyond Belief“, a place where atheists can share their grief in an environment not populated by delusional idiots sharing their thoughtless platitudes. The story of this has since been picked up by the mainstream media and so far, there are a few trolls on both sides (a non-believer attempting to debate about some finer point of atheism, and a few Christian douchebags spewing hateful shit), so I strongly urge you to participate in shaming these morons. Also, there’s something beautifully melancholic of reading the stories of lost loved ones. Makes you appreciate what you do have, doesn’t it?

Quebec gets a “thumbs up”

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There aren’t a lot of opportunities to be proud of your government these days. As a beleaguered young(ish) male anxious to blame others for his failures, I see every incompetent bureaucratic farce (of which there really are too many to name) and forget that occasionally, they get something right. In this case, it was refusing the appeal of two unnamed parents who wanted their children pulled from a religious diversity class. Claiming that the education of their young ones would crumble their fragile belief structure (they called it “protecting their religious freedom”, a common tactic of today’s fundamentalists), the Catholic parents managed to make it all the way to the Quebec Supreme Court before someone finally called them on their shit: religious freedom has nothing to do with isolating people from other world views. Period.

With everyone’s heads screwed back on, these kids have a chance of actually learning something that isn’t founded on principles set out by a bunch of weird dudes dressed in overly elaborate robes. Who knows, maybe these kids have a chance in a province where 68% of the population believes in Evolution (compared to the national average of 59%).