Yes, I am a Hitchens fanboy and will post just about anything the man says, but in my defense, you can’t help but acknowledge the man is brilliant. Here’s an old video of him talking about freedom of speech. My favorite part is when he argues it’s the right of people not only to speak their minds, but also for others to hear the opinions of others. Simply awesome.
I like this guy
I love how he describes the religious right as a “5th column of insanity”. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Fundie Mormons use water torture on babies
I’ve said many times I think the word “fundamentalist” is misplaced; not because it’s inaccurate, but because it misses the point when talking about adherents. The word “originalist” seems more apt, since the people who qualify as fundamentalists are merely those who have taken the old school approach to their religion. The rest of the world behaves in a sane matter because they have ignored passages of their holy books generally regarded as unacceptable or down-right insane.
Take the obsession of “Originalist” Mormons when it comes to the fear of God. They believe submission to God begins with mental conditioning including torturing babies to get them to fear authority. I wish I was making this shit up:
Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints instill fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday.
“It’s quite common,” Carolyn Blackmore Jessop said. She was a witness for the B.C. government in the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy law is valid.
“They spank the baby and when it cries, they hold the baby face up under the tap with running water. When they stop crying, they spank it again and the cycle is repeated until they are exhausted.”
It’s typically done by fathers and it’s called “breaking in.”
Yes, you read right: these religious nutbags are using waterboarding on babies. Babies for fuck sakes!
The story came out during a trial to determine the legal status of polygamy in Canada. Now I’m actually of the opinion it should be legal (why the fuck should the government decides what constitutes marriage anyway), but it’s tricky when you’re taking about Fundamentalist Mormons who force young women to marry older men against their will. The truth is for the most part, polygamy is used by members of the FLDS churches as a way of controlling and subjugating women.
Don’t you just love religion?
Bigot Psychotherapist to be fired
Britain is starting to drop the hammer on homophobic counselors and psychotherapists. For starters, there was the counselor Gary McFarlane who was sacked after he refused to service a gay couple, and now it looks like another mental help professional is getting the boot:
A psychotherapist faces being struck off after trying to ‘convert’ a homosexual man.
Lesley Pilkington, 60, a therapist for 20 years, is accused of ‘praying to God’ to ‘heal’ the patient .
Mrs Pilkington, will appear at a landmark disciplinary hearing this week where she faces being stripped of her accreditation to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
One of her clients recorded her therapy session, which included her suggesting that homosexuality was a mental illness and a “anti-religious phenomenon”.
Of course, she’s trying to argue the whole thing is entrapment, and she had made it clear to her client she used a “Biblical framework” for her therapy. That’s simple Christian-speak for “I use select passages of the Bible to accuse gay men of being abominations”. Luckily, the Royal College of Psychiatrists says this kind of “therapy” is complete shit, and it’s very likely that she’ll be sacked.
What’s really sad is Pilkington’s own son is gay, and she refuses to acknowledge it’s anything but a “lifestyle choice”. Man, can you imagine having this close-minded bitch for a mother?
Neil deGrasse Tyson on why Intelligent Design is stupid
The Universe is so hostile to life it makes me laugh that religionists are convinced it was created with us in mind. We’re like a tiny bit of bacteria living on a rock that’s about to be engulfed by a river of lava. Mother Nature is a cruel bitch just itching to take us out, and will succeed eventually!
Army wants to assess “Spiritual Fitness”
It bothers me to no end religious people are convinced the only way to cope with difficult situations and circumstances is to believe in a higher power. It’s just something they claim without any real evidence to suggest it’s true. It merely sounds good to their deluded ears.
So imagine my complete lack of surprise when I heard the US Army has devised a survey designed to test the relative spiritual “fitness level” of soldiers in an effort to avoid mental breakdown of their employees. It turns out a bunch of soldiers have started killing themselves or having mental breakdowns during and after their tours, and rather than taking care of the core problem (namely that they are embroiled in a pointless war that sucks donkey dick), the top brass has decided a person’s spiritual beliefs is of paramount concern when determining their combat fitness.
As you might have guessed, a number of non-religious soldiers are outraged they are being judged based on their lack of belief in fairy tales. Justin Griffith, a self described “foxhole atheist” had to take a survey, and since he answered a hearty “no” when asked if he prayed or meditated during times of stress, he was told his “spiritual fitness may be an area of difficulty” (I would say that religionists have an “area of difficulty” when it comes to accepting reality, but I digress).
It continued: “You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and to others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles and values.”
It concluded: “Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal.”
I’m so sick of this nonsense. Believing in religious bullshit doesn’t make one a better soldier; it just means you’ve made the conscious decision to favor spiritual gobbledygook over hard fact. No, I don’t feel disconnected to what is happening to others around me; I’m just sick and tired of them pushing their fucking nonsense in my face.
Griffith and others are convinced this is merely a way to discriminate against non-believers in an attempt to populate the army entirely with religious zombies, and I’m inclined to agree. For every testimony I’ve heard (yes, I’m aware this kind of evidence is flawed), the Army is extremely evangelizing when it comes to Christianity, and this fact alone scares the shit out of me. When you combine the toxicity of religion with the machinery of war, terrible things are bound to happen.
The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 181
This week, Carisa joins me to talk about superstition, and we read some of your emails about your own wacky rituals.
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Interfaith dialog at its finest
It’s pretty rare I agree with the Pope, but he’s recently been calling on Pakistan to repeal their insane blasphemy laws, and I’m behind him on this one. His calls were met, unsurprisingly, with a friendly “mind your own fucking business”:
The pope has given a statement today that has not only offended the 180 million Muslims in Pakistan, it has also hurt the sentiments of the entire Islamic world,” said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam.
Man, Muslims are the most overly sensitive annoying jackasses, aren’t they? As soon as you tell them “hey guys, could you turn down the barbarism a notch?” they start flipping the fuck out. It kind of reminds me of a petulant and spoiled child that’s allowed to get away with everything because their parents are divorced. The difference is these childish idiots sentence people to death for talking smack about their dead prophet.
The problem isn’t just the government though: the whole country is pretty messed up, and as soon as a politician tried to open the blasphemy law for debate, he was gunned down while his guards stood by watching.
“There would be an unprecedented reaction in Pakistan if any attempt was made to amend or repeal the law,” Hussain Ahmed said, Reuters reported.
No shit. Remember how religious apologists say it’s politics and not religion itself responsible for all the violence? If the majority of your population thinks murdering individuals who don’t share your faith sensibilities, and slaughter any politician who tries to change the status quo, how can anyone make the claim the problem is with the politics rather than the faith itself?
Hitchens vs Berlinski
In case you don’t know who the hell David Berlinski is (and trust me, you aren’t missing much), he’s a mathematician and a critic of evolution. He likes to use transparently obvious slight-of-hand math to try to disprove one of the most solid theories in all of science. He describes himself as a “maverick intellectual” (what the fuck does that mean?), which gives you an idea of his qualifications. If you’re a fellow of the Discovery Institute, you’ve got zero respectability in my book. The rest of the video after the jump.
Rabbi claims “Gentile” Sperm is Barbaric
I love it whenever experts in nonsense start ranting about the immorality of others. It’s especially pleasant whenever these idiots make incredibly racist remarks without actually understanding the ramifications of what they say. It’s like having an embarrassingly racist grandpa make totally inappropriate remarks to the cashiers at the local Burger King: you’d try and say something, but the old man is way beyond salvation.
The latest hyper-racist-but-doesn’t-even-know-it old fool is Rabbi Dov Lior, who issued statements claiming all “Gentile” sperm contains “adverse traits” inherent to the “race”, and that Jewish couples should avoid using their love seed for artificial insemination:
“Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son,” he said in the lecture. “If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel.”
Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable – qualities that he claimed could be inherited. “A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren’t raised on the Torah – there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it’s genetic,” he explained. “If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things.
Is this moron pretending he understands anything about genes, while simultaneously using his ludicrous fantasy novel as proof? Firstly, I think it’s relatively important to stipulate Jews aren’t genetically a “people” to begin with? It’s merely a religious belief, and a xenophobic one at that.
Not only are non-Jews sinister, but children of single mothers are hell bound hooligans:
“If a child is born without a father, he cannot be 100% normal.” He stated that rabbinical literature defines these kids as “criminals and subjects of other negative phenomena.”
Forget about modern parenting techniques: you should put all your trust in a book of fairy tales written at a time when children who talked back to their parents would be stoned to death. Nowadays we’re too afraid to even spank them. We need to get back to the fundamentals, people!
Joe Dixon’s Atheist Bible Study
Fan of the show, Joe Dixon, does a little video series called “Atheist Bible Study” and asked me to post this. His bow tie was so charming I forgave the fact the video is 15 minutes long. Well, my last podcast was over an hour and a half, so who am I to judge? You’ve got to love his enthusiasm.
The Good Atheist Podcast: EP 180
We’re back, boys and girls, and this week, Carisa Hendrix joins me for a mailbag show. Our topics range from “What’s the most annoying fallacy religious people make” to “Is there anything that would convince you a God actually exists”.
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Creationist teacher will finally get the boot
If you’re a long-time reader of the site, you might remember a guy by the name of John Freshwater. I wrote about him in 2009 after he was facing dismissal for 1) teaching creationism in his science class, 2) telling his students gays are evil sinners, and 3) burning crosses in the arms of some of his students. A shittier science teacher, there is not.
Well, it finally looks like the lengthy process of firing him is almost over. After a bunch of appeals and sporadic hearings, a report issued by the state has recommended Freshwater should be fired:
“(Freshwater) persisted in his attempts to make eighth grade science what he thought it should be – an examination of accepted scientific curriculum with the discerning eye of Christian doctrine,” Shepherd wrote. “He used his classroom as a means of sowing the seeds of doubt and confusion in the minds of impressionable students as they searched for meaning in the subject of science.”
Freshwater had for years asked the school board to consider allowing a curriculum that includes arguments against evolution. Shepherd wrote that after no changes were made, Freshwater took it upon himself to hand out Christian materials and push creationism.
I can see removing shitty teachers who push their ridiculous dogma on others is going to be an uphill battle if each one takes almost 2 years to dismiss. What does a person need to do to get the boot right away if burning a cross with a electrical laboratory instrument doesn’t do it?
Cindy Jacobs is an bigot
Do you remember all those thousands of birds that dropped dead a little while ago? Scientists are still trying to figure out what happened (I’m willing to bet money it has something to do with Climate Change, but I’m no expert). While serious folks with brains are busy solving this mystery, religious nutjobs are jumping on this story as proof “God” is mad about something, and sending us a message by annihilating a bunch of innocent birds.
The craziest so far is a woman by the name of Cindy Jacobs (of the friendly sounding “Ministry of Generals“). As your typical crazy evangelical, she thinks this tragedy is because of – wait for it – teh gays!
According to biblical principles, marriage is between a man and a woman , so we have to say “what happens when a nation makes a decision that’s against God’s principles?” Well, often what happens is that nature itself will begin to talk to us – for instance, violent storms, flooding. And you know there are actually some patterns that you can see where a nation will make a decision that is contrary to the principles of God and after that there is some kind of answer that God gives, being the God of creation, the God who created nature, but we don’t always understand what He’s saying.
Well, there’s something interesting we have been watching – let’s talk about this Arkansas pattern and say, could it be a pattern? We’re going to watch and see. But the blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas, well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton. As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.
It could be because we have said it’s okay for people who commit these kinds of acts to be recognized in our military for the first time in our history, there is a potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.
Mystery solved, everyone! Yes, God wants the US military not to encourage gays and lesbians to serve openly, and as revenge, he slaughtered a bunch of blackbirds to teach us a lesson. If we’re not careful, other natural disasters could continue to happen.
The good news is as soon as we stop letting men fudge-pack one another, there will be no more disasters and we’ll all be living in a perfect world where everyone has the common courtesy to be miserable and hate themselves for having same sex attractions. The future looks bright, people!
Catholic School Board Chair compares LGBT group to Nazis
I’m exhausted with all the crazy bigotry and homophobia coming out of every conceivable Catholic institution. They simply refuse to accept the fact some human beings have a sexual attraction to members of the same gender. Of course, they all deny their obvious homophobia and assume it’s society that has the problem, not them. Clearly, these aren’t the kind of folks who are accustomed to accepting objective reality.
So imagine my utter disgust when I read a Catholic school in Ontario, Canada not only refused to allow a Gay-Straight Alliance club to exist on school grounds, but had one of the board chairs (an ignorant and spiteful woman named Alice Anne LeMay) compare LGBT students to Nazis:
We don’t have Nazi groups either,” she mused in an interview with Canadian LGBT publication Xtra!. “Gay-straight alliances are banned because they are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
To be fair, had there been a Nazi group, they might have had more luck getting sanctioned; let’s not forget the Vatican signed an agreement with Hitler’s regime that made them the official religion of Germany. So technically speaking, I guess Nazism is more in line with the teaching of Catholicism than tolerance, compassion and understanding.