Here’s a tragic example of what happens when your loved ones are ensnared in the clutches of religious dogma:

My Darling Son David,

You are so very special to me and have always been the love of my life. I used to think when you were little that I would die for you, and live because of you. You meant the world to me and I will always love you very much.

Because of this love I always wanted you to have the happiest, safest life I could provide and tried to bring you up with the strongly held beliefs I lived by, in the hope that this would affect your own life for the good and ultimately you would live forever in Paradise on earth. You know all this be the case.

I personally have always believed in the Truth as presented in the Bible and have always felt the strong presence of Jehovah God and Jesus in my life, even as a child. I have always believed the prophesies in the Bible, and that there will be paradise on earth in which everyone will live in peace and love with no war, sickness and death, and that the dead will be resurrected due to Jehovah’s justice and fairness. I have always lived my life with all this in view, and have never sought a worldly, secular career or pathway. Becoming one of Jehovah’s Witness was the obvious next step for me.

This letter is being written by me with no outside coercion or influence because there are things I want to say to you. Being in the Truth had never been easy but when all is said and done, I am in it because of my belief in Jehovah, and what he has done for us, and will yet do.

I’m always a little suspicious whenever someone says specifically in a letter that they are not being coerced.

People will always let you down, and somehow we have to look above and beyond, at the bigger picture. So to say that some people who profess to be Christians live in ways that show them to be hypocrites is no exaggeration. But I strongly feel that whilst they may fool themselves and others, they can’t fool Jehovah, and “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”.

I have chosen my path and my way of life and so I must live by the commands and statutes laid down in the Bible by Jehovah himself. One of these commands has been the cause of great stress and grief to me, and I have put it off for too long now. I realize that I would have benefitted [sic] spiritually by doing things Jehovah’s way from the start, and I must emphasize that what I am about to say to you is not influenced by any other living person, but is purely directed by my conscience and a desire to regain my peaceful friendship with God. Nobody can make me do anything I don’t want to do.

I’m always really suspicious whenever someone claims not to have been coerced…multiple times in the same letter.

whilst this is the single most painful thing I have ever had to do in my entire life, I need to move forwards towards the goal of everlasting life, and to this end I deeply regret that I must terminate our relationship whilst you remain disfellowshipped.

I have cried myself dry over this situation, and it has broken my heart , but David you have known that it should have been handled this way from the start. You have chosen your path in life, and I wish you all the best. I want you to know that not only will my love always be there for you, but Jehovah too is waiting with open arms for your return.

Your loving mother, now and forever.

Her last line says it all; confused about her own delusion and her love for her son, she’s created an imaginary opening to have him back in her life: simply return to God and all is forgiven! Hey, it’s what Jesus would have wanted. He did say, after all, that you should abandon your families if they don’t believe in his ownership of all reality. How else are you suppose to manage a cult?

Every day, another religious mouth breather with a keyboard attempts to find a way to argue the atheistic worldview is antithetical to the welfare of society. It’s so painful to read these articles specifically because at no time do any of these morons ever come close to making a valid point. The latest frustration to hit my peepers is an article entitled “Atheists Get Religion All Wrong“. This unidentified author tries to argue that as non-believers, we don’t really “get” the purpose of religion:

Let’s say those religions do disappear, even this very afternoon…Will all the problems of the world cease – would wars, terrorism, sexual molestation of children, discrimination, jealously, theft, just stop…Would peace and goodwill descend on Earth?

Of course not.

Well, we already know for a fact countless conflicts around the globe, the systematic cover-up of sex abuse by various faiths, the spread of AIDS in Africa and the murder of children due to dangerous superstitions would be severely reduced. While the whole world wouldn’t suddenly be holding hands and singing songs together, why does the end outcome have to be perfect anyway? No atheist has ever argued the world without religion would achieve perfect amenity; it would just get a hell of a lot better, that’s all.

If one wants to make the intellectual effort to understand religions one should look at the whole and not just the part. No one has to, of course, it’s all entertainment anyway. But still, maybe there is a reason why religions endure.

Tuberculosis may “endure”, but it isn’t because of some benign reason. Superstition is the same; our brains may be wired to jump to irrational conclusions when faced with few facts about the world (which is why filling it with facts is so corrosive to faith), but this doesn’t suddenly mean this is a desirable mental state. It was just a very practical one at the time. As for “understanding religion” more, do you get the immediate impression the author of this article only really understands faith from a Christian perspective? It certainly smacks of it when making broad statements that all religions are concerned about sins, or “fallen” people. Anyone who believes these are the primary concerns of most world religions throughout history has obviously never truly studied them.

The news remains: people do bad things and would be better off if they did the right things. The funny thing about this religious idea is that it is based on a fact. It is scientifically without exception verifiable that every single naughty, wrong, bad, evil is done by people. This fact preceded and gave rise to the religions.

How is “you’re better off doing something good rather than bad” a religious idea? Only a person indoctrinated with the nonsense of faith could even begin to believe that’s true. Animals in nature obey their own form of the “Golden Rule” and yet require no sermons nor holy books to accomplish this. The author is right: the golden rule is a fact, but it’s better understood as a mathematical principle than the revealed word of God.

If atheists want to dismantle religions they need to dismantle this verifiable fact and the belief that things could be better.

It’s ironic a person who has a literal belief a God will someday come and wipe out the whole of humanity in a holy war could even accuse others of failing to believe in a better tomorrow. Only a mind so steeped in religious nonsense could even stand that degree of cognitive dissonance. The largest religious denomination in North America is a death-cult obsessed with the end of days, a product of the embarrassing death of their messiah. This version of a “better tomorrow” involves rivers of blood, plagues, disasters and death. How is any of this dangerous nonsense needed to believe in a future more just, prosperous and peaceful?

I hate it when our commitment to rationality is attacked for no other reason than religiously motivated people feeling slighted from the accusation that rational thought is abrasive to belief. In light of a recent study that found rational thinking diminishes religious faith (at least temporarily), a few mouth-breathers are attempting to argue being rational isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s misleading for Harris to define faith as “belief without evidence,” Haught says. Faith, which is similar to “trust,” is embedded in our humanity. Atheists, for instance, act out of faith when they trust their partners, or even when they hope rationality is capable of solving every problem.

It’s interesting this author is trying to conflate the various definitions of faith. While it’s true I trust my partner will be faithful, I do so because I have plenty of evidence of fidelity in the past. This trust may not always be a “rational” thing to believe, but it is grounded in some degree of reality, something religious faith cannot claim. To use this shitty example against itself, if there was any proof my partner no longer deserved my trust, then it would quickly erode my “faith’. I can assure you there is little in the form of evidence that moves a religious believer away from their dogmatic commitment to bullshit.

Even though atheists are correct in saying many faithful people do come to irrational “supernatural” conclusions, Haught says theologians have for centuries offered a more complex definition of faith.

More sophisticated forms of nonsense are still rooted in nonsense, regardless of the relative intelligence of their proponents. Besides, so few believers are actually familiar with these arguments that one wonders if they should even bother to come up with more ridiculous justifications for believing in things without evidence.

The author seems to believe rationalists are incapable of imagination, or even intuitive thinking, when in fact, our commitment to rationality is a statement about knowledge itself. While I fully accept not all aspects of humanity should be governed by rationality, it does not mean the irrational ideas of the religious are suddenly true, or even meaningful.

In other words, as Einstein suggested, authentic scientists may well be rational and analytic — but they also have imagination, vision, empathy and a sense of values and aesthetics. All of which helps guide them in their intellectual pursuits…In that way, scientists are just like many spiritual people.

If you chose to so poorly define something, then sure, you could claim that. Or, if you used your brain for a moment, you would realize perhaps what these people have in common is imagination, although that similarity ends as soon as one group decides what they feel intuitively must be the truth without even bothering to back it up with any evidence. If scientists were more like spiritual people, then we wouldn’t have a lot of good science; just a bunch of meaningless, untested theories.

Ultimately, what Haught and the author fail to realize rationality is what grounds us in reality. While I don’t deny that we must let our imaginations soar once in a while, it does not mean that we should suddenly abandon what is still our most important weapon in our intellectual arsenal. To suggest rationality is overrated in a world still dictated by so much superstition is both dishonest and ignorant. Perhaps if our society was ruled exclusively by logic and cold rationality, I might agree. As it stands, I think the world could use a lot more of it, not less.

I love these kinds of stories. They help give courage to young people who want to fight for what they believe in. Nahkoura Mahnassi has taken a stand: her school is planning on holding their graduating ceremony in the controversial New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. You might remember that its pastor, Eddie Long, had been accused of sexual misconduct with 4 young men (which was later settled out of court. Money solves all problems apparently).

Mahnassi has no religious affiliation, and rightly feels that the school has no business holding their ceremony in a church, especially one mired in so much controversy. Despite her impressive grades, she’s decided to stand up for what she believes in. This is exactly the kind of act that we should be supporting as a community. It’s people like Mahnassi that are out there fighting the good fight, taking all the risks. They should not be alone in their struggle! Share this story with anyone you think will care, people.

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.

I’ve been trying very hard to not like Miley Cyrus, but it’s starting to look like this may be impossible. Maybe it’s the fact that she keeps smoking pot even when the LA times gets all preachy about it. To top it all off, she recently re-tweeted an atheist meme on her twitter courtesy of Laurence Krauss:

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

Now, while the important message is actually the fact that we are made of stars, her Christian fans were quick to jump on the “forget Jesus” line in there. She’s been getting tons of negative comments from these douchebags. These assholes even managed to “flag” the image as inappropriate in an effort to suppress it (hey, it’s their M.O. after all), so if you’re trying to view the image she tweeted, you won’t be able to (although can head on over to Friendly Atheist if you’re that curious). Did you expect anything different from these people? That’s what happens when a significant portion of your fanbase believes in fairy-tale nonsense: as soon as you call them on it, they lose their fucking minds.

Death is hard on those who accept its terminal reality. There’s no magical playland in the sky, there’s no transference or retention of our thought patterns, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that the mind is anything more than the brain. Materialism may not be appealing to the majority of the population, but it’s undeniably the only reality so far to manifest itself. These supernatural fairy-tales we’ve constructed during the infancy of our species – a time when the tools for understanding the world had not yet been invented – should be treated with contempt, and yet we languish in ignorance in favor of comforting thoughts.

One of the hardest transitions into atheism is the acceptance that death is final, and this can be a powerful blow for those still partially wrapped up in the bubble of religious delusion. In many cases, dealing with the non-reality of Heaven (or some analogue) is like losing your deceased loved ones all over again. I can only imagine my reaction if this was compounded by trite, childish words meant for comfort. How can we convey the sorrow of reality to someone still living (quite literally) in a fantasy land?

Were it not for the fact that we occupy the same physical space, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Luckily, the Internet is exactly the kind of place where you don’t have to. There, grieving atheists like Rebecca Hensler have a place where they can express their sorrow. After her 3 month old child Jude died in 2009, Rebecca created a Facebook group called “Grief Beyond Belief“, a place where atheists can share their grief in an environment not populated by delusional idiots sharing their thoughtless platitudes. The story of this has since been picked up by the mainstream media and so far, there are a few trolls on both sides (a non-believer attempting to debate about some finer point of atheism, and a few Christian douchebags spewing hateful shit), so I strongly urge you to participate in shaming these morons. Also, there’s something beautifully melancholic of reading the stories of lost loved ones. Makes you appreciate what you do have, doesn’t it?

I generally dislike when celebrities try and participate in the political discourse. Sure, I might not mind if someone famous agrees with me on every issue (which has yet to happen), but most of the time, celebrities use the spotlight to demonstrate how little they know about important topics. Such cause célèbre also tend to make them look foolish. Remember Brad and Angelina’s attempt to re-invigorate Louisiana with unusual architecture? After spending millions of dollars, these monstrosities may house people, but they do little to inspire anyone to go back to the Big Easy.

James Dart, a Manhattan-based architect who was born and raised in The Big Easy, labels the houses as “Alien, sometimes even insulting,” adding, “the biggest problem is that they are not grounded in the history of New Orleans architecture,”

It’s great to have your heart in the right place, and Pitt’s foundation Make it Right has built over 70 houses. Was this the best use of these resources however? Would they have done more with the money if Brad didn’t have a love of ghastly architecture?

In light of the fact that I’m just about to contradict myself, I can’t help but find yet another reason to love Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe (apart from him being a fellow “Mega Brow”). His outspoken atheism not-notwithstanding, he’s now come out publicly that he’s changing his political support. He claims that Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrat government is placating the religious right, especially when it comes to ‘faith schools”.

Radcliffe said that he wished more educational establishments, especially in the US, were not in thrall to religion, stating: “I’m not religious, I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation. We need sex education in schools.

I like the way he doesn’t fear the word militant. I know we hate being compared with our religious counterpart, but I’m far more afraid of how organized and effective the religious right is. So, now you have a few more reasons to like Danny-boy. Do I like him enough to go see his new movie? I may not love him enough…

Most of you know that I’m often critical of our community in terms of our charitably, as I’ve complained in the past that many of us are not willing to compete with financially supported organized religions yet. I’m convinced that the only way to fight the evils of religion is to play their game, to some degree. Part of that includes giving money to organizations that make an actual difference rather than offer food, comfort and medical services with strings attached.

Over the years, the Atheism sub-reddit has been growing by leaps and bounds (outnumbering many of the religious sub-reddits many times over), and are over 300,000 subscribers and counting. Compare that to the Christian sub-reddit that has a paltry 19k, and you realize the strong secular leaning of the site. Anyone who visits TGA realizes that I often troll these forums, looking for the latest happenings, rage cartoons and funny pictures from the web (that’s putting it mildly; I’m practically a content thief).

The group will probably grow even more after knocking one out of the park:

Atheist bloggers have shown their charitable side by swarming to donate money to Doctors Without Borders…Thousands more clicked through from the atheism sub-reddit, a site normally given over to finding holes in religions and picking fights with creationists, and headed for a dedicated site at firstgiving.com, where they have so far given $180,000.

Sure makes me look like a jackass for claiming we’re a bunch of cheapskates! I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in my life.

After receiving some flak (some of it merited, some of it not) over my article indicating my worry that the CFI’s Board of Directors was fractured over Justin Trottier’s dismissal, and that this fact alone demanded that the organization come clean to members regarding the details. While I had managed to get a few details of what was happening, it was clear from every other article out there that no one was 100% aware of the facts, and this was precisely my original complaint. A lack of transparency was the crux of the problem, demonstrating that that the board was susceptible to outside influence and could fall victim to a situation similar to what transpired:

On November 21, Derek Pert wrote to the board requesting that he be terminated with severance. Derek indicated that he thought he lacked sufficient support from the board to carry out his duties. The board held an emergency meeting on the evening of Wednesday, November 23. At that meeting the board passed a motion confirming that Derek had full authority to carry out the responsibilities associated with the position of National Executive Director.

There followed a motion to terminate Derek Pert with severance of $50,000. The motion was made by Michael Gardiner. The motion was properly seconded and a vote was taken. The motion failed 6-3, with Michael Gardiner, Ian McCuaig, and board chair Carol Parlow voting for the motion.

Late on the night of November 23, Derek Pert submitted a letter of resignation. On November 24, in quick succession, directors Michael Gardiner and Ian McCuaig and board chair Carol Parlow submitted their letters of resignation.

That doesn’t sound fucking sketchy at all. Former board member Ian insists the motion was done as a symbolic gesture, but this whole affair smells like a major scam. You don’t play around with member money, especially when there is so much at stake.

As for what the future holds, I’m not sure Justin should come back. His presence could further divide members who already had to pick camps (trust me, I read all about their opinion in the comment section) and it could have the appearance of impropriety. I think, however, that the opportunity is there for a lot of exciting changes to happen. I do agree that CFI’s mission hasn’t always been clear, and increased professionalism would benefit their image. I also think that they need to increase their media strategy, and have professional press people that could represent secular issues in the news (both local and national). It’s time to get serious and show everyone that CFI can thrive in the face of a crisis. The Simpsons have a word for this kind of thing: crisitunity!