Category Archives: Blog

New Scientist sees through the deception in Texas

Posted on by

There’s more info from the New Scientist about the proposed changes to the science textbooks over in Texas, and it doesn’t look too promising. The Board voted to completely remove the age of the universe from the textbooks, and more importantly, they claimed students will not be penalized if they subscribe to a specific opinion on science. In other words, if a student answers on a test that the earth is 6000 years old, his answer won’t be considered wrong.

The article also goes on to say the real brains behind this is obviously the Discovery Institute. They desperately want teachers to get sued for teaching religion in science classrooms, especially in a state where they have a strong chance of getting a different outcome than the Dover trial.

Luckily, it’s not all gloom and darkness. Senator Rodney Ellis and Representative Garnet Coleman are trying to introduce a bill that would transfer the authority of textbook adoptions to an organization run by people who actually know something about science. The Texas School Board of Education is also having elections next year, so hopefully they put a few more scientists and a few less real estate agents and dentists.

Exchange student nightmare

Posted on by

Think about how paralyzing it must be to go to another country as an exchange student only to learn your host’s parents are crazy fundamentalists trying to convert you. That’s what this kid had to live through, and despite the annoyance, he seemed more upset at the fact he had to escape their clutches and leave them feeling hurt. One part in particular was telling about the true motivations of some people:

They wanted me to help them set up a Fundamentalist Baptist church in my home country of Poland. It was God’s will, they said. They tried to slip the topic casually into conversation, but it really shocked me — I realized that was the only reason they had welcomed me into their family. They had already started construction work in Krakow — I was to help them with translations and with spreading their faith via the media.

Not too surprising really. Evangelicals are always looking for new flock members. They must have figured they could just expand their religion and spread evangelism to Poland. Didn’t some German guy take over Poland once before? How did that turn out again?

On a side note, I admire the kid’s patience. I would have flipped the fuck out, personally. Being woken up at 6am every Sunday morning to go to church is a special form of torture.

The Godfather Dilemma

Posted on by

I don’t have very many religious friends, so I haven’t often been put in a position where my beliefs were really challenged. I received an email from a friend recently concerning a very interesting dilemma he’s facing (I’m including most of the letter intact since James is an excellent writer):

[T]here’s something atheism-related that I’d be interested to get your input on. In fact, if you feel it’s a topic worthy of discussion on one of the podcasts, please feel free to bring it up. Basically, a lifelong friend of mine (he’s my Karate instructor, who I’ve known since I was six) is having his kid Christened, and asked me to be a godparent. Obviously, as an atheist, there is something of a conflict of interest there.

At face value, I have no problem with it, and don’t take my own anti-theism so seriously that I can’t stand there in the house of our lord, chuckle a little bit at the biting irony, and just spout the Biblical gobbledegook for the sake of ceremony. What matters is that I’m pledging to do right by this kid, to set good examples and make sure he turns out to be good peoples – all the Christian mumbo jumbo is just that. I don’t feel the need to be militant and tell my friend that, “Your religion is full of shit and I want nothing to do with putting this poor little bastard on the evil path of the Church,” even though that’s basically how I feel.

But here’s the thing; my other half is a Zen Buddhist (essentially Buddhism without a lot of the mumbo jumbo – it’s basically more like Taoism). She finds Christianity just as ludicrous and offensive as I do, but she was asked earlier this year to be the godparent of her brother’s newborn baby. She felt a lot more conflicted than I did, and was initially going to refuse on the grounds of her own beliefs. But when she saw how cool I was about being a godparent for my Karate instructor’s kid, she decided that she’d likewise just chuckle at the irony of it all and do her part.

So, I’m sitting there in the Church, watching her stand there in front of all the gaudy trappings of Christianity while some crossdressing kiddy fiddler talked about how the godparents were pledging to “surrender to Our Lord Jesus Christ” and all this crazy shit, and I’m thinking to myself, “Fuck me – if I was her I’d probably have to walk out right about now, because this is just bullshit.” It was one thing to play it cool in principle, and say that I would bite my tongue to service the message, not the missive, but seeing my other half standing there while all this pantomime morality was going on… it made me feel genuinely queasy.

I’m now very torn on the matter. One half of me is still of the opinion that the guy (who, incidentally, really doesn’t like religion or the church at all – I think he’s just doing the Christening because it’s “what people do” with a new kid) should do what he wants, and his intentions are honourable, and I don’t want to be as bad as a Christian missionary by throwing my own beliefs in his face, especially on such an occasion. But on the other hand – thanks to my increased awareness of atheism and the atheist community, which is entirely the fault of you and your site – I really don’t want to be the one to let the side down by cowtowing to this Christian bullshit. And of course, there’s the fact that my Buddhist partner only stood there with gritted teeth because she knew her atheist boyfriend was going to do the same thing…

Seeing as how this is mostly a consequence of poor James being tuned into atheism, it seems more than fair that I should answer the man. For starters, I understand exactly what you mean when you refer to the quiet rage you felt listening to these guys talk. When you’re off the bullshit wagon, you begin to see all the subtle and manipulative things the church does and says. So yes, in that regard it can be pretty damn difficult to suffer through it.

In regards to your friend, you probably both realize that the purpose of the ceremony is merely to make something as personal as the status of godfather seem more concrete. Say what you will for their dogma, but Christianity has always had a stellar reputation in understanding how to help foster the bonds of trust. A ceremony is nothing more than a way of making sure everyone involved is on the same wavelength. Think of these guys as the equivalent of a bunch of bureaucratic lawyers with a religious bent.

You mention being confident in your beliefs, but there is obviously a part of you that still feels threatened by the whole affair; the lone atheist surrounded by believers who demand that you conform to their ceremony. You can change that by adding your own part to the process so as to reclaim it. In other words, if you find a way to create your own form of bonding ceremony that is not religious with your friend, you won’t feel cheated out of the experience. Your time in church listening to the sermons will seem quaint.

The tough part about being an atheist is that we have no real ceremonies and custom that allow us to connect with other human beings the same way religions do it. It is ultimately what makes them infinitely more popular. It does not mean that we cannot find our own ways of expresing the most beautiful of human emotions; we just have to work a little harder at it.

Saudi women are becoming bold

Posted on by

I am not a rebel. Although I like to think I am controversial, in reality if push came to shove, I would probably retreat to the safety of conformity rather than suffer an ignoble fate. It’s why I find the following story so striking: It’s an article in the Saudi Gazette about all girl coffee shops, which is where today’s young Saudi girls are going to let loose, have fun, and enjoy life. All of this is highly subversive, and there are lots of people who want to see them shut down.

Women have no real rights in this country. They instead have duties and responsibilities, most of them unpleasant and restrictive, that do not allow them to truly enjoy life. Although they make up about 70% of University graduates, they make up only 5% of the workforce. So to escape their shitty lives, young women are retreating from this cold reality by going to these all girl coffee shops, putting on makeup, and smoking shisha until their throats hurt.

Government officials and religious clergy are aghast at this type of behavior, which they see as the corrupting influence of the west. They aren’t wrong. We believe individuals are free to pursue their own interests, regardless of gender. But to the Saudi, this type of rebellion is usually met with swift and brutal action. I wouldn’t be surprised if these types of places were soon shut down, and the women who frequent these establishments were punished. It’s just the way things are in that part of the world.

The human need to rebel is strong, and some of these women may not realize to what degree they are challenging their country’s social mores. I hope this all ends positively, but considering women still aren’t allowed to drive in that part of the world, it doesn’t look too promising.

More religious tragedy

Posted on by

Your average, moderately religious person is deathly afraid of cults. It’s not the brainwashing they are afraid of, but rather the type of brainwashing that is used. After all, the most distinguishing characteristics of cults is that they usually take a very literal approach to their religion, and this uncomfortable reality often reminds the faithful there is a dark side to their own belief system.

Consider the following case in Baltimore: a mother denies her 16 month old son food and water because he did not say “Amen” at mealtimes. This of course may seem harsh by modern ethical standards, but in most old world religions, this type of stuff happened all the time. It’s not uncommon for parents to commit filicide (murdering your own child has a name, so you know it happens quite a bit), and the Bible has special rules about disobedient children that demands they be stoned to death.

If this was the end of the craziness, it would be only another sad tragedy brought to you by religion, but this case is special: The mother along with other congregants of the ‘One Mind Ministries’ prayed over the boy’s body for days thinking they could resurrect him. The court psychiatrist concluded before the trial the mother was not insane since she was following religious doctrine, and her beliefs were shared by others who also participated in the neglect of the child (see, if one person believes they are Napoleon, he’s crazy. If 20 people agree with him, he’s a prophet). If this sounds like a massive cop out, consider what their ‘expert’ psychiatrist said before the trial:

Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.

“At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion,” said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. “It’s a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system.”

It’s only difficult because we refuse to admit all religious convictions are a form of delusion. Most of the time these delusions are benign, but when books like the Bible are suddenly taken literally, the result is often sad, tragic, and terrible. To some degree or another, all religions are cultist in nature; how much devotion and uncritical thinking they encourage will determine whether or not they can coexist with society. Personally, I find them all equally revolting, but for vastly different reasons.

Another sad death caused by religious stupidity, gullibility, and the unenlightened words of the Bible. Why are we still reading this fucking book in the 21st century? If it’s any comfort, the woman in this story agreed to cooperate, but asked that the sentence be reduced if her son is resurrected during her incarceration. Yep, totally sane woman here, doc.

Texas education down the drain, again

Posted on by

I thought the whole Texas Board of Education nonsense was over when the creationists were narrowly defeated, but it looks like they are introducing another amendment allowing teachers to tell students there is some ‘debate’ as to the age of the universe. If you think a debate amounts to every serious scientist on this planet accepting the modern estimates at 13.5 billion years versus a group of undereducated religious morons who think it’s 6000, then yeah, it’s a debate. By that logic, I think every class should also debate if the earth is flat, and also whether or not women should be allowed to be in a public building when they are menstruating.

Unless some miracle happens, this will be allowed to pass, and then the floodgates will burst open and allow every religious whackjob with a soapbox to demand that more dogma be introduced in the science curriculum. Get your shit together, Texas. You’re literally dragging humanity down.

Britain gives grant to psychics

Posted on by

Deborah and Paul Rees make their living by scamming people. They probably aren’t fully aware of the fraud themselves, convinced that they are helping families by their cheap ‘psychic’ act. The British government seems to think the practice is kosher, and has awarded a ￡4,500 grant for them to teach other people how to talk to the dead.

I hate to rain on their parade, but if these two clowns really want to prove their psychic abilities, they can apply to the JREF and win a million dollars if they can display even a speck of psychic abilities. I bet the house that it won’t happen. If James Randi has proven anything with his prize it’s that none of these guys are interested in proving what they do is real specifically because it’s all make believe bullshit.

What annoys me is this business grant went to two scamming quacks who charge 65 pounds for their ridiculous workshop. The money should have gone to people who actually contribute to society, not two parasites who prey on sad individuals whose only wish is to talk to their relatives one last time. Lots of psychics think they are helping grieving families, but they only cause more confusion and make it difficult for people to accept their losses.

Let’s hope the government takes a second glance at this grant and does the right thing here. Give the money to a real business, not some fucking scam, please.

Wired is worried about Texas too

Posted on by

Who isn’t? Now just two days away from deciding what will constitute the standard science textbook in Texas, everyone should be paying attention. This is especially true since many other states often base their own curriculum on what Texas does. I didn’t know this, but these guys produce most of the teaching material for much of the south. So in that sense, this whole issue just got a lot more intense.

It seems obvious evolution is only the first of many targets for creationists. There are plenty of other subjects that would seriously be undermined under their tutelage. Cosmology, physics, and medicine are subjects these guys also feel really strongly about, and not in a good way.

I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but if you live in Texas and you aren’t ready to explode, something has to be wrong with you. When will the madness end?

Archbishop tells people “Don’t turn to God for help”

Posted on by

I understand the reasoning behind the Archbishop of Canterbury warning that humans are the ones who need to clean up the environment. It’s logical, and I certainly won’t argue with the logic. What I will argue with, however, is that Christians fundamentally believe the world going to shit is actually a good thing, since it means their Lord will come back, send all the good people to heaven, and fix everything on Earth eventually.

Revelations is one of the main attractions of Christianity. It’s the promised land; it’s the false hope they’ve been selling to ignorant and desperate people for two thousand years. It wasn’t supposed to last this long. Jesus told his apostles he would be back in their lifetime, but after being 20 centuries late, there are still rubes who think he will return before they die.

Half of the voting population of the US believes the Rapture will occur within their lifetime. I’m sure the hard core Christians in England feel the same. How can any of these people be motivated to do anything towards conservation? These are the same guys who think God put all the animals on the earth for us to eat and dominate. It’s not exactly a very environmentally enlightened position.

I appreciate what this guy is trying to do, but it’s going to fall on a lot of deaf ears. You’ve been telling these sheep that God is all good, all powerful and loves mankind, and in the same breath say he won’t lift a finger to help you. No one’s going to believe you. Funny, huh?

**NOTE** Thanks Courtney for pointing out they are Christians, not Catholics (I’m too used to shitting on the Catholics to notice them creeping into my writing).

26 percent of Turks support honor killings

Posted on by

I always knew that a portion of Muslims in the world endorse honor killings, but I never realized until today just how big that number is. A new survey in Turkey shows just how chilling the response is, and how incompatible this cultural attitude is to modern societal values. 26 percent of adults and teenagers are in full support of honor killings. That’s a full quarter of their population.

I find it surprising there was almost no difference between the opinions of the older generation compared to the younger one. It’s a testament to the power religion has in this country, where something as frightening and deplorable as murdering your own daughter is considered a necessity.

According to the population, it’s the media that is mostly responsible for making this practice acceptable. I don’t speak Turkish, so I can’t accurately judge what kind of media coverage they have, but I get the feeling the blame isn’t being put on the right institution. At the end of the day, it’s the mosques and mullahs who have the real power, and I have serious doubts any of them publicly speak out against honor killings. It is, after all, a tradition to murder disobedient female children in this religion. Reformed this barbaric practice, it has not.

Prayer not part of emergency procedure

Posted on by

The last thing you want to hear on a plane that has a fuel gauge malfunction is the pilot praying out loud. It’s a clear sign the guy has lost his marbles. Turns out the pilot and copilot of a ATR turbo-prob aircraft which crashed at sea just off Sicily will have plenty of time to pray in jail, as both have been sentenced to 10 years for failing to follow emergency procedures.

Let this be a lesson to all you pilots out there: you have been trained not to freak out and start loudly praying to God while piloting a delicate aircraft. Otherwise, the only prayer you’ll be saying is the “please God, don’t let this guy rape me in the shower”.

Another senseless honor killing in Jordan

Posted on by

Every time I hear about a girl getting killed by her own family, it sends a chill down my spine. It seems inconceivable that anyone would put their loved ones in danger, and even more so that they would be their killers. Such is the reality of conservative Muslims in Jordan, where an average of 20 women a year are slain in ‘honor killings’. This week, it’s a 19 year old girl who was beaten to death by her father and brothers for simply talking to a stranger.

There’s a long tradition of honor killings that, unsurprisingly, date back to the Bronze Age. In powerful, patriarchal societies, the reputation of a family was its most valuable asset, and anyone who would threaten it was summarily executed. It’s now used as a way of threatening women into subservience. Each death is a cruel reminder there are some parts of the world that reject the idea of human rights.

The father and his sons are facing prosecution, but it isn’t for the reason you might think. The problem was there was no infidelity going on, but if it was, this law would have set them free:

he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty.”

Is your stomach turning yet?

Vatican insiders still frustrated by Pope

Posted on by

I often say the Catholic Church is dangerously out of touch with reality. How could they not be; here is an institution that still clings to most of its doctrinal roots dating back fourteen centuries. They are now stuck with one of the worst Popes in recent history, who seems so isolated from reality he can’t even be bothered to notice what everyone is saying about him.

The biggest threat they face are the mounting deaths in Africa due to AIDS. The Papacy’s stance on condoms hasn’t changed since they were first invented; they believe contraception is wrong and condoms encourage promiscuity. Obviously, these guys never used condoms in their lives. Anyone who has put a rubber sheath on their penis will tell you it’s not generally a pleasant experience. It is one, however, that keeps you alive.

No one in the Vatican knows what to do about Ratzinger, who thanks to modern medicine, will probably live for another decade. Already 4 years in, he is regularly engaged in some kind of controversy. One day it’s forgiving a Holocaust denier, the next it’s making inflammatory remarks about Islam. Still, they voted him in knowing full well he used to be a Nazi youth. It also doesn’t help that he needed to be immunized by President Bush from prosecution in the US following the hundreds of child molestation charges for Catholic priests in the US. Ratzinger was in charge of the committee that was supposed to monitor it, and his solution was simply to bury the evidence, convince the families to shut up, and then to transfer the molesters to other towns where they offended again.

That’s your new Pope, folks. Still think the Church knows what it’s doing?

Does it take faith to be an atheist?

Posted on by

I can’t tell you how many times I’m ‘accused’ by a person of faith that my label of atheism somehow implies I must have faith in the idea to the same degree they do. I want to try and clear the air here, and explain why my belief in the non-existence of God is not a position of faith, but is simply the most rational interpretation of the available evidence.

Historically, I can admit atheism is fairly new to the scene. Most human beings who have ever lived have believed in a variety of gods that manifest their presence in the world around us. It’s why many cultures anthropomorphize just about everything they came in contact with. The Greeks had all kinds of stories that tied mythical creatures with every day phenomena. Even in that day and age, however, there were those who preferred natural explanations rather than supernatural ones. One such man, Eratosthenes, calculated the circumference of the Earth by observing shadows were of different lengths in different cities at the same time of day. From that simple observation he realized the earth was round, and his calculation remained the most accurate for another 2000 years.

My belief in the circumference of the Earth is not faith, since I can verify his findings myself quite easily. History has proved his method to be sound. Eratosthenes refused to be satisfied with the facile explanations of religion and set off to discover its secrets using his deductive powers. This is something that occurs naturally through the scientific method. We observe, try and make predictions, and test them to measure their accuracy. Each new discovery adds to our collective understanding of the universe, which has only improved since the Renaissance.

Science is not about faith, since unreasoning belief is the precise opposite of its fundamental principle; everything must be challenged, proven, and measured. A religious person has faith there is a God simply because he is told there is one. He may think the Bible text offers some proof as to his existence, but even these tomes offer nothing in the way of evidence. To the contrary; they often strongly conflict with our modern understanding of the natural world. Jonah living in a fish for 3 days, Joshua stopping the sun to extend an important battle, or Jesus raising the dead are all phenomena we know to be impossible. There is no reason to believe these stories are true, but the faithful see it as proof of the supernatural powers of their deity.

It’s not something I have to trust, since the information itself comes from a highly dubious source. There are no other references to these events anywhere in recorded history. Why would there be? You would be as likely to find evidence of Christian myths as you would ancient Greek ones. They are all simply stories meant to be interpreted as moral homilies. Nothing more.

I don’t believe in God because there is no compelling reason. Although it is true there are many things we have not discovered, believing in something because of a lack of evidence is not a rational position to have. Like every human being, there are certain things I have come to believe without fully studying the question myself. I know the pyramids exist, but I trust the information because I have multiple sources which confirm their authenticity. If I was ever to doubt these myself, I have the opportunity to find out. Science is the same: if you want to know why the sky is blue, you can find it out for yourself. No need to just trust that it’s true.

Faith is a type of trust, but for religious individuals, they place that trust in the hands of individuals who have highly sophisticated interpretations of mythology, not reality. These ‘experts’ are still trying to answer the question of whether or not God can make a rock so large even he can’t lift it. Rocket science, this ain’t.

This is why I find the label so insulting. I refuse to be put in the same mold as they are specifically because the information I trust is more than plucked from the imagination of some theologian’s head. I trust in science because it’s a trustworthy method of uncovering facts about the world around you. More importantly, I recognize our understanding of the natural world continues to improve, and yesterday’s discovery may be different from that of tomorrow. The picture of the universe is still incomplete, but what a picture it is!

If you wonder whether or not it takes faith to be an atheist, ask yourself if it takes faith to turn on the heating in your home, or to take antibiotics. If you can provide strong evidence proving the existence of your god beyond the pathetic examples you already have, then I’ll change my mind . Until then, I’ll stick with atheism. It’s just more sensible.

Canadian Science Minister fail

Posted on by

As some of you may have heard, the Canadian Science Minister, Gary Goodyear, is an idiot. I mean this of course in the most literal sense. He was asked a few days ago whether or not he believed in evolution. At first, he refused to answer the question, but after being pressured by the PM’s office, he came back with “of course I believe in evolution”. Well, here’s what his interpretation of it is:

I do believe that just because you can’t see it under a microscope doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It could mean we don’t have a powerful enough microscope yet. So I’m not fussy on this business that we already know everything. … I think we need to recognize that we don’t know…

We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment.

Mr. Goodyear seems to be under the impression human beings are physically adapting to their environment in some crazy Lamarckian way. It’s like thinking in cold weather, you’ll grow long and luxurious fur to stay alive and pass it on to your offspring. It’s not how evolution works at all. Also, I have no idea how he thinks we observe it, but the power of your microscope doesn’t give you a better idea of what is going on. Might as well have said “I don’t know how many beakers you need to do science, but hopefully we have enough”.

This is why I hate when conservatives get in power. They put retarded sycophants in charge of science departments who have no understanding and appreciation of science beyond the types of technology it can produce. You can also see what a liar this man is, as he obviously does not believe in evolution, but considers his position far too luxurious to leave. He’ll lie through his teeth, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe him.

Someone of his extremely limited intelligence doesn’t belong in such an important position. He needs to be fired immediately. He was asked an important question about science, and he couldn’t even get it right. In my opinion, that should be reason enough to lose it.