This week, high school student Lincoln Rush joins me for a class project focusing on my ‘career’ as a podcaster. I try to answer his 23 questions and make sense of what it is I do. And so, because of the egotistical scope of the show, it’s for members only. Luckily, I’m weaning you off slowly, so you can listen if you join for free. It’s not addictive though. I swear.
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?
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?
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.
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.
This week, I recap my experience at the Reason Rally and Greydon Square’s wild after-party. {Notes will be made available after I awaken from my coma}.
This week, I make a special announcement, we discuss the ‘purity’ tests for Reason Rally, and why no one is actually rational. Be sure to check out the notes below for more content. See you all at the Rally Saturday
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.
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!
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?
This week, Ryan joins me for a cheery discussion about death, how Planned Parenthood wants to addict your kids to sex, and a trio of scary teenage girls who perform exorcisms on friends. We’re also proud to announce notes are included in all the shows now!
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…
This week, Carisa joins me as we talk about the viral video campaign known as ‘Kony 2012’, and we also answer a fan’s email asking “Where do you get all your information”.
Fan of the site George and his pals have been busy making hilarious videos, and this one was too good not to share. Their comedy troupe, called the Cult Comedy Picture Show, is starting to have a pretty decent list of funny videos. If you like their stuff, please be sure to visit their fanpage and give them some love.
Looking forward to seeing more from you guys!
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!
