Ryan joins me as we reminisce about the long history of both our websites, and give you a tour through time.
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 300
Mark Driscoll thinks Twilight is evil
Ok, I’ll admit I think the Twilight series is terrible, but is it evil, sinister, or sick and twisted? It reads more like the kind of book you might expect a desperately lonely fat high school girl to write, with the added murderer/rapist fantasy thrown in. While you can argue about the merits of the story, you can’t argue with the sales figures: Stephanie Meyer’s series has sold over 116 million copies worldwide and has been translated in 38 languages. You may not like it, but you cannot deny its popularity.
It’s that very popularity which seems to anger the patriarchal, domineering man known as Mark Driscoll. The head of Mars Hill Church is convinced that isolated incidents of vampire-related assaults and sex-orgies are undoubtedly caused by impressionable teens reading a book with the words ‘per se’ used over 100 times.
The popularity of supernatural soap operas has inspired some real-life demonic trends. Overreaction? Tell that to the kids biting, cutting, drinking blood—sometimes while having sex—and sinking deeper into the occult:
Driscoll then proceeds to use isolated examples of weird assaults to draw a connection between teen obsession with vampires and the general degradation of society. Maybe you could make the case that print is dead, buried by the likes of Meyer and the 50 Shades of Grey guy, but this idea that everyone who reads this book will turn into a demon possessed monster is so ridiculous, it actually hurts my brain.
The problem with the occult is that it doesn’t actually exist. Oh sure, people will often pretend sinister, demonic stuff is happening, but because all that shit is totally made up, no one actually buys into it. The only ones who do are gullible Christians who think Satan is real and possessing people. The rest of us think all this crap is about as genuinely scary as Halloween (the other thing these whackjobs are also scared about). What do you expect from people who take their nonsense literally?
The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 299
In this lost episode, I had decided to quit the show back in 2012, convinced that I would be unable to continue to make a living. Will TGA survive (spoiler, yes it did!). Stay tuned for this piece of history!
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 298
This week, Ryan joins me to discuss the situation in Tennessee, and a bill saying teachers should teach the controversy on evolution and global warming
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 297
This week, Ryan and I discuss the Vatican, and the legal case against the Pope.
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 296
This episode, Ryan joins me to discuss the Book of Revelation, and other Bible inconsistencies.
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 295
This episode, Ryan joins me as we talk about my experience with visiting JW’s, and a special “God talks” segment, as well as the book “infidel”.
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The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 294
This week, Jeff joins me to discuss Mother Teresa, and the fight to get her off the stamp.
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The Good Atheist Podcast EP 292
This episode, I’m joined by special guest Brock Roberts to discuss “Intelligent Design”, which is creationism with a slightly scientific veneer.
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The Good Atheist Podcast EP 291
This episode, Carisa and I talk about evolution, and its implication with religious doctrine.
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The Good Atheist Podcast EP 290
This week, Ryan and I discuss why we hate religion, and a new poll that challenges people’s knowledge of the Bible, and attempts to put the 10 commandments in schools.
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The Good Atheist Podcast EP 289
In this lost episode, Ryan and I talk about Cardinal O’Connor, who claims that atheism is responsible for all conflict in the world.
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Hypocrite child actor urges fan not to watch show
I can’t stand TV sitcoms. Maybe it’s the fact their predictability is only surpassed by the insipidness of their jokes. Who knows. Generally speaking I tend to ignore the crap out of them and call it a day.
One of the chief perpetrator of nauseating trash on TV is the show Two and a Half Men. You might remember former star Charlie Sheen had a bit of a meltdown (give a junkie millions and watch what fun stuff he does), and was replaced with the even more obnoxious Ashton Kutcher. Now it seems another actor is drawing controversy.
Angus Jones, who plays the kid (well, now young adult) recently released a video about his religiosity, and apart from the regular tropes religious people can’t help but regurgitate, he also expressed remorse at his involvement with the TV show, which he called ‘Ungodly Filth’ due to its sex-heavy stories. He’s recently come out as a Seventh Day Adventist, and he urged his fan not to watch the show, lest the poor guy become corrupted by the message that sex is fun and awesome.
In case you were wondering what Seventh Day Adventists are all about (who can keep track of all these nutty religions?), they’re an offshoot of the Millerites, a Rapture-like movement who predicted the Second Coming of Jesus would occur between 1843 and 1844. When the prediction failed (something the Millerites called “The Great Disappointment”), most of the followers went back to their old congregations with their tails between their legs. A few decided that William Miller’s calculations of the Second Coming was something else entirely, and formed their own groups with different ways of justifying their total embarrassment in the face of reality.
The groups that eventually mutated into today’s modern Seventh Day Adventists focused on doctrinal differences with mainline Protestantism in 3 fundamental ways:
1) Immortality is conditional on belief in Jesus, who only grants you ever lasting life if he so chooses. Otherwise, you vanish into non-existence (no Hell)
2) Saturday is the day of rest, and not Sunday
3) Eat Kosher, and refrain from most of the fun stuff life has to offer
These former Millerites are all looking forward to the End Times and all that fun head chomping, wine-press full of blood shit fundamentalists are so fond of.
To recap, a kid who went to Christian schools his whole life (not a good sign or education) suddenly feels guilty that the 350k he makes per episode is leading to the moral decay of society; something he should actually be happy about, since this is but one of many supposed signs of the end times. Here’s an idea, pal: why don’t you quit the show, give all your money to charity, and sit on your roof waiting for your homicidal messiah to come down and kill all your enemies?
Atheists accused of declaring war on Christmas
I’m beginning to think it’s totally impossible to do anything secular in America without some religious jackass accusing us of waging a “War on Christmas”. This pathetic attempt to make Christians appear marginalized has the effect of making them all look like old fools, if you ask me. When there’s any kind of story that exploits this fear mongering, the media will trip over themselves to cover a make believe war while totally ignoring the reality of a present one.
One such annoying tale of over-reaction involves a simple complaint made by a parent at Terry Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas. She complained to the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers that the school was showing a screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” -effectively displaying, with taxpayer monies – a religious movie sponsored by a public institution. Worried there might be a backlash against her daughter if she removed her from the event, the parent in question asked that the children pay 2 bucks to cover the cost so the school wouldn’t flip the bill. Sounds like a non-story, right? Well, you obviously don’t troll conservative sites like I do:
The Daily Mail’s headline says it all, don’t you think?
Atheist group attacks elementary school over field trip to see ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ at local church claiming it ‘violates religious freedoms’
The problem, of course, is that no such attack took place. The parent who complained still allowed her child to go. She merely highlighted the fact A Charlie Brown Christmas still has a religious theme to it, and schools should not be in the business of endorsing any religion. The fact conservative ass-hats take these kinds of non-stories and blow them out of proportion goes to show it really doesn’t matter how politely you try to bring your objections to Christian privilege: we’ll always be accused of trying to destroy the hopes and dreams of people who want total religious homogeny in America.
Baby boy dies after botched circumcision
Ok, here’s the deal, folks; before you read this article, I have to warn you that you’re not going to like reading some of the details of this story. I’ve written a lot about male genital mutilation (colloquially known as ‘circumcision’) in the past, but for some reason, this one story sent visuals in my head that I can’t shake off. So, you’ve officially been warned.
The story begins in Manchester, where a young and naïve couple from Nigeria -having recently given birth to a baby boy – hired a nurse by the name of Grace Adeleye for the sum of 100 pounds to circumcise their infant son. Adeleye arrived with her own ‘medical instruments’: an ordinary pair of scissors and a bottle of olive oil. After asking for a bowl of hot water (an antiseptic in her eyes), she cut the foreskin without any anesthetic or disinfectant, and the resulting wound eventually led to enough blood loss that the baby died shortly after.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event:
The court heard up to three children a month are admitted to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital because of bleeding after home-based circumcisions – a danger the nurse should have been aware of.
Adeleye denies her negligence, but it’s obvious this idiot knew less than nothing about medicine. This kind of tragedy happens all the time to countless other children living in countries where their death is just another statistic, all in the name of religious traditions that have no place in the modern world.