Category Archives: Blog

Winnipeg gives millions to evangelical youth group

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Ever heard of an organization called “Youth for Christ”? It’s an evangelical youth group that seeks to convert people to Jesus, and like any evangelizing organization, it isn’t content to sit by and let people live their own lives. Recently, the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba voted to contribute 2.5 million dollars towards a faith-based recreation center. This hasn’t sat well with some of the locals who are upset that the city, which is broke, is giving money to a private religious organization that sets out to convert people.

The Mayor, Sam Katz, isn’t sure why everyone thinks it’s a big deal:

My understanding is the majority of our youth who attend those facilities are not Christian — anybody can go there.

Luckily, some people actually have their heads screwed on right; local MP Pat Martin has argued that their mandate to convert young people makes “Youth for Christ” ineligible for public monies. How would people react, he argues, if the money been given to a group called “Youth for Allah” instead? Not too well I assume.

These kinds of organizations always bill themselves as open to everyone, and for good reason; they are on a mission to convert fertile young minds to their insane doctrine. The fact that the city is actively helping them accomplish this goal is totally unacceptable, especially in light of the fact that other more worthy organizations have been denied funding. It’s quite obviously religious pandering, and Winnipeggers (I think that’s what they call themselves) should be outraged.

Religious parents beat adopted child to death

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You know, in life, you have to appreciate the little things; a nice sunset, a good meal, and the subtle joys of disciplining your children with large plastic tubes. About 3 years ago, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz were punishing their adopted daughter for being silly, and because their religion puts heavy emphasis on using physical domination to make children more obedient to God, they decided it was time to really teach her a lesson. They held her down for hours, and beat her with a plastic tube. She died from internal injuries.

If you’re a parent and want a little glimpse into their fucked up belief system, visit the site of their religious guru, Michael Pearl, who states the foolishness of children (you know, when they act silly and shit, like most kids do) needs to be beaten out of them so they can be more obedient to God. The site loves quoting the Bible as proof of their claim, and as you might guess, it’s some pretty scary stuff:

You must also condition their bodies to obedience by seizing many opportunities throughout the day to walk them through acts of obedience. As the military drills their soldiers, you must drill your children.

As a rule, do not use your hand. Hands are for loving and helping. If an adult swings his or her hand fast enough to cause pain to the surface of the skin, there is a danger of damaging bones and joints. The most painful nerves are just under the surface of the skin. A swift swat with a light, flexible instrument will sting without bruising or causing internal damage. Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument.

That’s exactly what 7 year old Lydia was beaten with, and so was her 11 year old brother for supposedly being a bad influence.

I hate this kind of sadistic shit. It reminds me of the Protestant edict that children “should be seen and not heard”, as though the laughter and exuberance of children is an annoyance rather than a blessing (I’m taking that word back). If you can’t let kids be kids, opting instead to beat the “silliness” out of them, you deserve the fucking beating.

Read your damn Bible, atheists!

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It’s not often I’m in agreement with believers regarding religious education, but I have to admit that I found myself partial to the arguments of one William Ingram. In this article, he argues atheist should be carefully studying the Bible. It’s also extremely necessarily to have Bible literacy, as Ingram points out, to understand the narratives fundamentalists subscribe to.

So much of our society is awash in Biblical parables and metaphors that a proper scholarly pursuit of the Bible is highly desirable. The difference between Ingram and I, obviously, is I approach this book the same way I do the Iliad, or the Koran. All of these texts are nothing more than mythological and allegorical, and many of their moral tales are antiquated and even cruel by today’s standards. It does not mean, however, they have no value. They are a window into a different world, and the very fact the Bible still has so much sway in society is a testament (pun intended) to the reverence we place on traditions or anything that’s “really old”.

So if you haven’t yet read your Bible, but want to have a great analysis along the way, try reading the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. It almost makes the job bearable.

Hasidic Jews want to ban Internet for believers

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It can’t be a normal day without some religious organization trying to censor the materials their flock is exposed to. Today’s unreasonable ban comes from Hasidic Jews in Israel who want to ban or heavily restrict the Internet for their congregation.

Although I’m not surprised these religious idiots would be so scared by the information super highway (remember when we all called it that?), I do find it telling they apparently think their own members aren’t mature and disciplined enough to control their own consumption. Do they not trust their own fellow Jews NOT to visit licentious sites on the World Wide Web? I think it’s telling just how paranoid and distrustful the religious sect is of their own flock. Better in their view to outright ban anything that might open up their eyes to the wider world; it’s sad, really.

Party Jesus causes stir in India

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I need to get my hands on this book: Apparently a publishing company in India released a book with a picture of Jesus holding a beer and a cigarette in the state of Meghalaya in India. Government officials have been busy confiscating all the textbooks, and making sure everyone know just how offensive this is.

Personally I want to ask why they included this awesome image. Was this an accident, or a hilarious jab intended for Christians? Either way, I suddenly wish I had a few more fans in India so I could get my hands on it. They’ll probably destroy them all and punish the publisher for their blasphemy.

Now I know for a fact few Christians have much of a sense of humor when it comes to their Messiah (probably also because their own religion suggests blasphemy is a sin), but why would God punish you for having a good laugh? Lighten up, God!

Belief in God makes you more racist

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Perhaps it can be said at one particular time (although I’m unaware of exactly when), religion offered a way for individuals to feel some degree of community with others who did not share any direct family lineage. Whatever advantage religion conferred to our ancient ancestors, the inevitable tendency for religionists to favor only those with precisely the same belief as them has fostered some of the most genocidal racism and xenophobia. For proof of this, look no further than the Old Testament, which proudly boasts the genocide of the Canaanites and other small tribes unfortunate enough to live in the land of the “chosen” people.

A new study recently found a person’s religiosity is often a very good indicator of their racism. Both conservatives and fundamentalists tend to share the same degree of prejudice, although the orthodox are usually far better at trying to mask it.

All this is nothing new for the rest of us rational enough to have long ago abandoned the divisive clutches of religion. The fact that this same study found those with no religious affiliation tended to be less racist does not surprise us, for we know full well the acidic rhetoric of the faithful. How hollow is the accusation of moral failure on the part of atheists? Shallow and uninformed indeed!

Young Americans are less religious than their parents

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Religionists are going to lose their shit when they read this: a new Pew poll conducted recently found today’s younger generation isn’t as religious as their parents, and a full 1/4 of those interviewed identified themselves as either atheist, agnostic, or simply “non-religious”.

I’m not entirely surprised by these results, although I did like how the CNN article tries to reassure readers by saying people tend to become more religious with age. It kind of sends the message that “well, they’ll wise up eventually and embrace God”, but I think they underestimate just how non-religious we really are. The reality is without religion being shoved down our throats, fewer and fewer individuals are subscribing to it. If it’s up to 25% now, what happens when these young people have kids? I’m not suggesting it’ll mean the end of religion, but it’s interesting to consider just how fast people are jumping off the religious bandwagon.

Does that mean that within my lifetime a significant portion of the population will cease to believe in fairy tales? Probably not, but it’s good to know we’re all getting a little bit wiser.

Catholic Church doesn’t want people being married at sea

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I don’t get these guys. You would think it doesn’t really matter where people get married; so long as it’s a Catholic wedding, the folks over at the Vatican should be happy, right?

Well, It looks like Jesus hates water, as the Church has issued their latest guideline for priests on cruise ships, and one of the stipulation is that they are not to perform wedding ceremonies on these open waters:

Among its provisions, the document stipulated that priests should not celebrate Catholic weddings on a cruise, but they should be available to offer blessings for newlyweds or couples celebrating wedding anniversaries.

I figure this move is more practical than ecclesiastical; with church attendance at an all time low, weddings are still a big money maker, and I have to think cruise ship weddings would cut into their revenue pretty seriously. So what better way to avoid this than by issuing an edict that, at face value, makes no fucking sense whatsoever. You have to LOVE the infallibility of the church sometimes!

Senator Shultheis wants to open schools to proselytizers

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Religious proselytizers have a new buzzword their throwing around to try and justify their renewed efforts to break down the wall separating church and state; they are arguing that their religious freedoms are being threatened. Take this example: Sen. David Schultheis is proposing a new bill that would allow students and faculty members to actively try and recruit on school grounds.

Schultheis, a Republican from Colorado Springs, believes school administrators hamper expressions of faith because the issue can be controversial and they don’t always have a clear picture of a student’s or a teacher’s constitutional rights. “This is designed to make students, parents, teachers and administrators aware that they can’t be denied religious freedom,” he said.

This is the new rhetoric that you’re going to see being used to justify the increased involvement of religion in politics. It hasn’t occurred to any of these clowns that the Separation of Church and State is precisely WHY America is such a diverse religious nation; the promotion of any religion (in particular, Christianity) threatens the religious liberties of other faiths. Look, I’m not a big fan of any religion, but I recognize the fact that everyone has a right to believe what they will, so long as the rest of us aren’t forced to. Religious freedom isn’t threatened by secularism; if it was, there would be no religious diversity in America to begin with.

Expect more of this kind of rhetorical nonsense in the future, if only because it appears to be extremely effective; there’s no better way to scare Christians than to make them believe that their religious freedoms are threatened, even when these fears are totally unjustified.

You mean Religions aren’t allowed to dictate civil rights?

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In case you were unaware, Mormons typically don’t like gays. They hate them so much they devoted a significant portion of their resources to pushing for Prop 8, using all kinds of ridiculous fear mongering and veiled bigotry to convince people that allowing marriages between individuals of the same sex would somehow torpedo their own unions. It didn’t matter to them this was a complete and utter fabrication; remember, these are the same folks who believe Native Americans were actually cursed Jews .

The religious authorities of the Church, known commonly as “Elders”, have been pretty clever with their use of rhetoric to mask their bigotry and disdain for civil rights, but recently one of their old fogies started complaining about Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the court case challenging the legality of Proposition 8. Elder Lance Wickman believes this case will specifically erode the “liberty” religions have in influencing politicians, something he believes is the fundamental right of all crazy conservative religions:

I believe that the greatest challenge faced by the church,” Elder Wickman said, “is the challenge to religious liberty that is growing worldwide. … A battle is looming over the effort to acquire civil social rights at the expense of civil religious rights. This battle, I believe, represents the acceleration of a disturbing slide downward in the law regarding the place of religion in the public square.

Perry seeks a court declaration that, as a matter of law, religious views may not be used to justify the denial of a social civil right.

Wow, I guess that says it all, doesn’t it? The fact this idiot actually BELIEVES religions have a right to impose their twisted and bigoted world view on the rest of us is telling. Finally, a little bit of honesty coming out of the Mormon camp. Luckily, Americans still benefit (for now) from the separation of church and state, which dictates quite plainly religions have absolutely no fucking business in politics, for exactly the reasons outlined by Elder Wickman; they seek to impose their limited view of civil liberties on others, and that simply isn’t acceptable.

This Valentine’s Day, submit to your husbands, ladies!

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What better way to show your love than by submitting to your husbands? Rev. Angus MacLeay, a member of the General Synod of the Church of England recently sent out a pamphlet in time for Valentine’s Day containing the not-so-subtle message the Bible specifically outlines a need for women to be subservient to their superior male counterparts. MacLeay, who is fighting against all the reforms in his church, is a hopeless romantic:

Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church. This is the way God has ordered their relationships with each other and Christian marriage cannot function well without it.

It would seem that women should remain silent….if their questions could legitimately be answered by their husbands at home.

Not every woman listening to his sermon was impressed by his loving respect of the Bible:

One disenchanted female parishioner said she was “disgusted” by the sermon.
“How can they talk that way in the 21st century?” she said. “No wonder the Church is losing touch if this is the kind of gobbledygook they want us to believe in”.

Gobbledygook? Is this how modern women feel about the Bible? What sacrilege! The word of God is quite clear about the role of women in society, and the fact some seem disgusted by the sermon only goes to show what little attention people actually pay to their own holy scriptures. God doesn’t mince words when it comes to the ladies:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I don’t permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner”
(I Timothy 2:11-14).

…[F]or man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head” (I Corinthians 11:3-10).

What’s wrong ladies? Can’t stomach the fact God’s infallible word makes you a second class citizen? If you want to be a good Christian, don’t you think it’s time you put aside all influence of modern society and live according to the word of the Lord? Or, you could join the rest of us who recognize the inherent misogyny of the Bible is further proof of its entirely terrestrial origins.

Iran executes enemies of God

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Iran is still a mess politically, and even after jailing, torturing and intimidating protesters, it hasn’t stopped young people from wanting a radical change in their government. Now, out of desperation, the government has turned to calling political dissenters “mohareb”, or enemies of God. Because the country is under Sharia law, the greatest crime is apostasy, and since the penalty for this “crime” is death, it’s rarely been used since there is no real defense against it. If the government decides you are an enemy of God, it’s best to make your funeral arrangements.

If you want a clear example why political religions are dangerous, look no further than Iran. The toxic mixture of religious infallibility and political corruption destroys any hope of people being treated fairly and equitably. I’ve come to expect any system of government that relies on religious dogma to be evil and antithetical to human dignity and freedom, and it’s another reason why the efforts of religious conservatives in the US scares me. You know some of them envy other nations that get to use the weight of the government to impose their beliefs on others. Those of us without religious affiliation who enjoy the freedom that separation of church and state affords us need to make sure we aren’t passive in our resistance against their tyranny. Religion and politics don’t mix, and that’s a fact.

Happy Darwin Day!

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If you enjoy celebrating the birthday of dead famous people, then you’ll love today; 200 years ago, a spry little Englishmen named Charles Darwin was born, and to celebrate this momentous occasion, a number of different organizations are planning all kinds of cool and exciting tributes to the pursuit of knowledge, more commonly known as science.

It’s hard to believe we only started actually caring about this day roughly 15 years ago, but if you consider how religious folks still rue the day he ever wrote his famous book, “On the Origin of Species”, it’s not actually surprising. Everyone seems to love the quality of life science gives them, but not everyone is cool about the implications such discoveries have on our “spiritual” lives. Thanks to the pioneering work of men like Darwin, we have all kinds of ways of understanding nature without needing to rely on some omnipotent creator, and this isn’t such great news for religious folks.

Hey, they can always take comfort in the fact that if we ever get tired of knowing anything real about the world, we can always go back to being ignorant sheep following their every edict; sounds like a hoot!

Anti-Abortion group plays the race card

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It never ceases to amaze me the kind of tactics anti-abortionist groups will use to pressure people into not having abortions. Apart from picketing at clinics, airing ads during the Super Bowl, and even actively encouraging psycho vigilantes to take the law into their own hands, they’ll put this up: a billboard that tries to make it look like the “white man” is out to abort all black babies.

Statistically, African American teenagers actually have a higher teen pregnancy rate, and since the demographic is on average poorer than their light skinned counterparts, it’s true they are getting more abortions. But to suddenly paint this as a whitey conspiracy is both irresponsible and offensive; it ignores the fact many families in black neighborhoods are simply too poor to afford having another child, and in some cases, terminating their pregnancy is the only thing that allows them to break the vicious cycle of poverty.

I’m not expecting any honesty from anti-abortionists, but I’m not the only one who finds this ad offensive:

Loretta Ross, the executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta, said the billboards painted black women as either monsters intent on destroying their own race or victims of whites who control abortion clinics.

When will these douchebags stop? Probably when they stop thinking a lump of cells has the same rights as a fully formed human being, which is to say never.

Religious Right issues bullshit manifesto

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There’s a bit of an ideological war going on in the Christian faith, and if you weren’t paying close attention, you wouldn’t even know it’s waging. Take the “Manhattan Declaration” for instance (not the one on climate change), a frightening manifesto by religious conservatives that claims equality and anti-discrimination laws are destroying people’s freedom of religion. Their biggest issues, unsurprisingly, are gay marriage (which they equate to bestiality, polygamy and incest), abortion rights, and assisted suicide:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s [NOTE: are they referring to taxes here, cuz they usually hate that shit]. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s

The whole document is an attempt by Conservatives to paint themselves as martyrs fighting for people’s rights. In reality, they’re resisting the way society is changing; namely, how it’s becoming more tolerant and egalitarian. It’s taken a long time, but we’re finally beginning to understand human sexuality is not a covenant with a supreme being, but rather the product of biological impulses. You can no more chose your sexuality than you can your eye color, although there are plenty of ways people try to cheat this (think colored contacts and gay-to-straight “therapy”).

You want to know why it’s a bad idea to let religious institutions dictate what marriage is all about?

Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life…Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit.

You hear that? Marriage isn’t about romance, love or wanting to share your life with someone else. It’s all about procreation, and if you aren’t happy about that, too fucking bad! Your body was made by God to create offspring, and if you think otherwise, you’re committing a sin against him. So, rather than divorce the man who fathered your children and who lovelessly sticks his seed-squirter into your baby-receptacle, you should stick it out for the good of mankind; happiness and love be damned!