Category Archives: Videos

It Doesn’t Get Better – Mormon Edition

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When Dan Savage started his “It Gets Better” Campaign in September of 2010, he hoped it would let bullied teens know life improves over time, and the bullying they experience in school is only temporary. For the most part, these videos are meant to speak to young gays and lesbians in high school, where the majority of bullying takes place.
One serious exception to this rule is Brigham Young University, one of the few Universities in the country that has an honor code that specifically prohibits any gay behavior:

“Homosexual behavior is inappropriate and violates the honor code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings”

The video above was made independently by gay, lesbian and straight supporters of the school. While the video seems to suggest to gays at the school there are people around them that “love them”, the truth is the campus is still extremely unfriendly to gays. Since any student can be expelled for engaging in any homosexual behavior, it seems pretty obvious to anyone watching this video the real culprit in all this terrible hate is Mormonism itself. One cannot help but feel as though their message “it gets better” has a hollow ring to it when the very institution has such animosity towards the gay and lesbian community. It would be more accurate to say it does get better, but only if you leave the faith.

The school isn’t very happy about the video, but has decided to take no action, since it claims that:

The honor code…is “based on conduct, not on feeling, and if same-gender attraction is only stated, that is not an honor code issue.

If the message of the religion is still that homosexuality is wrong, then no, it does not get fucking better. Religion, as always, is not the answer.

Do we need religion to be a moral society?

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Honestly, this is a silly question. It would be more accurate to ask “can we still be a moral society despite religion’s influence?” Let’s remember for a moment the world is still made a more miserable place because of sectarian infighting. How many regions of the world are currently engaged in immoral acts of violence against one another specifically in the name of their religion?

When the Catholic bishop chimes in his pointless opinion, he tries to argue religion is needed to provide a framework. Perhaps a few thousand years ago – before the advent of ethics and philosophy – this may have been true. But we’ve made leaps and bounds in our moral understanding since then, and there’s very little in “old world religion” that is in fact compatible with our modern sensibilities. When this pastor says of morality that “We start to make it up as we go along”, you’ve got to wonder if he’s even aware of the terrible irony of the statement he just made. Probably not.

Speaking of delicious irony, did you catch that black guy trying to argue that society is worse than it’s ever been? His audacity to cite his grandparent’s long standing marriage as an example (despite them living during a time of great racial prejudice) is a shocking degree of historical blindness. Try reading a fucking history book instead of the Bible, pal! And what about that woman claiming Islam encourages critical thinking…is that why the woman beside her was draped in a suffocating blanket? Lots of fucking critical thinking going on there, I’m sure.

Fire breathing dragons explained!

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Isn’t it fun to pretend to be educated? All you need is a suit, a power-point presentation and a few hundred idiots willing to give you money as you attempt to merge your fantasy bullshit with reality. The key to faking it is simply to make bold assertions, and not to be afraid of the ludicrous. Take Dr. Richard Kent. He believes in Kent Hovind’s insane literal interpretation of Genesis, complete with 6 day creation. He also subscribes to Hovind’s special contribution to idiocy: a floating water canopy, a physics defying explanation for where all the water from the great flood came from.

With all that light having a hard time penetrating this floating liquid ocean (space must have been warmer back then), it also caused the atmosphere to have a lot more oxygen. Once the canopy disappeared, according to this moron, the dinosaurs were breathing so rapidly that they began to expel fire out of their nostrils due to friction. Tada! Isn’t it fun just making shit up?

The Genesis Code looks awful

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Movie premise: a Christian girl finds her faith and her budding career as a scientist conflicting. A young hockey player, who has lost his belief in non-sense, will find his way back to magic when a group of students discover that The Bible doesn’t conflict with science (even though it fucking obviously does). Liberal academics attempt to erode their faith, but luckily God wins and an old woman is disallowed from having her brain-dead body terminated. So much drama!

I love the whole premise of the movie: What if both science and faith were true? Well, then we would live in an extremely confusing world that would make no sense, of course! Miracles would regularly challenge the known laws of nature, making any attempt to measure them effectively useless. It would also mean that our ancestors were the result of multiple instances of inbreeding, a sure fire way for any species to book a ticket to Extinction-Ville. It would also mean that diseases were the result of evil spirits and not germs, that witchcraft is real (remember, even Moses’ brother Aaron did some magic), and that the sky is a giant ocean (remember how God parted the waters?). Yeah, not so much.

Here’s a great article debunking this crappy movie and any pathetic claims they make. Worth the read!

Jesus, the Easter Bunny and other Delusions: Just Say No!

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Skip ahead to minute 10 if you want to avoid the painful introductions that always come with this kind of event. Is there a way to communicate to the intellectual community that we need to sexify our videos a little? Dr. Peter Boghossian’s talk is entertaining and funny, but you would never know that if you hadn’t bothered through the slog at the beginning. Worth watching!

The people who posted this decided against allowing other sites to display their video (which explains why only 12k people have seen it). Hey guys, sharing on the internet is the best way to get views!

If you can’t Stand the Heat…

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Internet fame is not always desirable. Take these two: they just released a little song about how great it is that Rick Santorum despises gay people and abortions (cheerfully dubbed “doing what’s right”), and they received so many “dislikes” (about 10k) that they had to remove that feature entirely. The comments are also moderated, so as to avoid any discontent that isn’t to their liking. How brave!

You can read the whole story here.

Jesus, Don’t Let Me Die Before I’ve Had Sex

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When’s the last time you saw any boobs in a movie? They used to be everywhere in the 80′s. You could always count on some no-name Hollywood actress with top knockers to walk across the screen and remind your penis that it was still alive. That’s changed recently. While the instances of violence have gone up in movies, nudity and sexuality has declined. America, it seems, is getting more stuck up when it comes to sex, and to find the culprit, you needn’t look very far:

It’s why this documentary, “Jesus, Don’t Let Me Die Before I’ve Had Sex“, sounds so fascinating. Billing itself as an honest, non-judgmental look at Evangelical Christianity, the movie aims to mix interviews and stop motion animation to tell the story of young Americans and their quest to find their own sexuality among the confusing messages of their faith. The movie is currently looking for funding on kickstarter, so if you have a few bucks lying around, I suggest heading over to their page pronto: in a little over a week, their fundraising campaign will come to a close. Please be generous if the project sounds interesting to you.

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Nintendo rejects game due to “questionable religious content”

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According to the game’s developer, Edmund McMillen, Nintendo has rejected his game, “The binding of Isaac”, due to what they called “questionable religious content”. Luckily, this awesome little game (which I would honestly buy if I wasn’t such a broke-ass) is available on Steam for you PC lovers. I’m curious about the story behind the making of this game, and I’ve asked the developers if they would be interested in an interview. For those of you interested in playing the demo, simply click here.

A lesson we can learn from David Albo

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Ladies, I know how frustrated, angry and terrified you are about the current “War on Contraception” that the Right is currently engaged in. You have every right to be, especially when it’s being framed not as a reproductive rights issue, but rather as a “religious freedom” issue.

The solution comes from an unlikely source: Virginia Rep. David Albo. In the above video, this moron describes his failure to bang his wife after watching the Rachel Maddow Show, which focused mainly on the very bill he had been debating the day before. Despite his best efforts to seduce her with wine and some soft music (what is this, an 80′s movie?), she refused him entry. Unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Albo has provided the perfect solution to this crisis: it’s time to get frigid, ladies.

This isn’t the first time the idea was suggested. In the Greek play Lysistrata, women use this tactic to stop their husbands from continuing to fight in the Peloponnesian War. Tired of not having any say in political matters, they decide to exercise the only power they do have over men: sex.

Now before you accuse me of being silly, I’d like to point out that sexual selection is one of the driving forces of evolution, and in most species, it’s the female that exerts this pressure. The reason for this is because of something called “Bateman’s Principle“. It basically states that the organism that has to expend the most resources will typically get to call the shots. Do you hear that ladies? Despite the fact that you’re the ones in our culture who does most of the “displaying” (i.e., doing more than simply wearing jogging pants all the time), you’re still the ones with the ability to determine who gets to pass on their genes, and who doesn’t.

On the big scale, this can have profound consequences. For some species, it means investing tremendous energy in totally arbitrary and sometimes deadly displays of physical health and prowess (why is the peacock’s feathers blue? Because the ladies like it that way). Our species needs a different focus now: we need humans to be more compassionate, understanding, kind, and thoughtful, all qualities that can breed true if women select the right mates.

In the short term, I think this tactic can be employed to silence men who use their power and influence to limit the rights of other human beings who don’t share their dangly parts. It has already worked to some degree; Republican lawmakers have announced plans to remove extremely controversial portions of their anti-women anti-abortion Bill.

Richard Dawkins / Archbishop of Canterbury debate

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It still amazes me the way we let experts on nonsense babble on about their specific deity and its role in the natural world. What does super-magical-man-you-can’t-disprove have to do with evolution? The moderator made the mistake of claiming both Dawkins and the Archbishop knew for certain what the truth of the Universe was. Dawkins ended up admitting the limitations of his own understanding (and the obvious inability to disprove a negative), and yet this same humility in the face of the unknown is never displayed by our religious counterparts. How can the Archbishop be certain that his specific brand of fairy-tale bullshit is the right one? He just decided it was true, and the rest was easy.

The annoying thing in all of this is the fact that mouth-breathers couldn’t wait to point out the fact that Dawkins had to concede that he couldn’t fully be sure of the existence of God. It’s our honesty that gets the better of us when it comes to that question, because the truth is, this uncertainty is extremely overstated. Remember, religious people rely on absolute certainty to tell them about the world they live in. In their minds, doubt is a golden opportunity to convert someone. Religious folks just can’t understand the fact that atheists naturally accept the incomplete picture of nature we do have, specifically because that uncertainty has scientific value. How can progress ever be made if people think all of the answers to the questions of the Universe were answered a few centuries ago by illiterate animal herders?

Because Religious Dictators are so much better…

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“Our Freedom comes from God”

I’ve heard this argument before. Apparently when you’re living in a delusional bubble, only an all powerful entity can grant people the freedom to damn themselves to an eternity of hellfire. Wow, sure sounds like a fair deal.

Cindy Jacobs “mobilizing” thousands of morons to do nothing

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Mobilizing 10,000 people to pray! Wow, how amazing. Think of all the good you can do by sitting in a dark room and talking to yourself all day.

So, if you want God to interfere with human affairs (and apparently throw this whole “free will” idea out the window when it’s inconvenient), you just need to stop eating for several days, followed by imperceptibly mumbling to yourself. Sounds good to me!

“Imagine with me half a million people praying for a nation.”

Praying for what? The economy to recuperate? For the poor and indigent to finally get their due? Nope. She just wants to get rid of abortion and gay marriage. That’s the kind of priorities you can expect from someone who sits very still and begs their imaginary friend for shit they want.

If TV existed in Biblical Times

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I love the way this video is put together: it combines sharp visuals with brilliant satire. Be sure to read some of the captions at the bottom. My favorite so far is “Paper Just a Fad says Scribe.” Classic.

Spread the word about this video!