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The title of this video is “what if you’re wrong” and yes atheist friends DM2525 does touch on that venerated old chestnut of Pascal’s Wager, but like M. Night – Can’tmakeagoodmovietosafehislife- with a twist – there are questions and consequences that the deluded must face.
If your god happens to be the right one, how is it merciful to condemn some 5 million other people to hell? How do you know your god is the “right” one, given the sectarian nature of the christian and muslim faiths you might be on the right team, but sitting in the wrong seats; so off to hell you go.
Did you ever get the feeling that religious people don’t stop to question their faith? Because a serious examination of the just the numbers presented here would indicate a pretty good chance of being FUBAR’ed right from get go. Even contemplating stuff like this makes the faithful bust out their jesus approved cotton balls ready to jammed down auditory canals served up with a side of “LALLLALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU!!!!”. But then again, reality is a fraught with anxiety, existential and otherwise and who wants to be staring down the barrel of that gun 24/7 (other than us hell bound atheists, of course).
What most abortions look like.
Having laid down the smack on this forced-birther, he then laments being called on his misogyny and fundamental disrespect for the female portion of the species. This is Red Pen of Justice Territory folks.
Before he gets deep into the anti-choice bullcookery we detour into his deep important thoughts about the Olympics and human rights. Let’s see what he has to say.
“No religion but Christianity can support them[human rights]. (Atheism certainly can’t, as is becoming increasingly apparent.”
Oh wow… christianity the saviour of human rights, but only if you happen to be a white heterosexual male. Hmmm,women…submit to your husbands (because submission has everything to do with human rights) and heaven forbid if you are a homosexual. Oh you’ll be burning forever in hell? Atheists – have you made fun of the holy ghost? See you in hell too. The love of jebus is thick in the air, I can feel it!
We’ll skip the philosophical wanking and get down to what makes this religiously deluded liberal dude such enemy to women and and their rights.
“Talking about abortion as a right “to choose” or a right to “have bodily autonomy” is flagrant misrepresentation.”
Yes, those noises women make when defending their rights – just “misrepresentations”.
“I don’t have the right to choose to kill someone else. My rights over my body don’t give me the right to kill someone else’s body.”
Funny how badly forced birthers argue are when trying to be all moral and prescriptive. Of course, when it is not their body and their rights being effected, the holy jack boots of jebus are forcefully applied, despite reason and logic.
We here in civilized society prize bodily autonomy – the use of my organs by another is by my consent or not at all. Of course, being christian he and his god have no problem with slavery, so slavery for women is a-okay because Mr.Noble High Horse is preserving life, all the while taking a shit women and their rights.
I do love the smell of religious hypocrisy in the morning.
“Abortion advocates mostly know this though, so they try to portray the fetus as being somehow less than a “someone else.” Human rights are intended precisely to protect people from that sort of move. “
Well when legal and medical experts define someone as alive, you know like possessing brain function, which a fetus does not possess for a good part of its growth cycle, then we can talk about human rights. Medical facts aside, we don’t let other adults with full humanity dictate how our organs are used so…Mr.fetus you seem to be straight out of luck.
“We don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t count, we don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t deserve rights, we don’t get to set standards about whom we protect and whom we abuse. “
Wow. Much morality. Much pretense. Little connection withe real world. Go try your little speech to someone in Afghanistan or Iraq, or anyone in Central America they will tell you how much American’s value “life” and what they do to preserve the sanctity of it. My god man, you must bathe in naivety, to make such blithely arrogant pronouncements such as these.
We say who counts and who doesn’t count. Ask any black person in America as to how much they “count” and how many rights they have and if they are treated the same as you. In your “christian” nation under god seems to be just brimming with equality for all!
No. We’re not taken in easily as you. Your magical whitewashing of the world and morality might be fine for churchy-churchy time and your churchy-church friends, but outside the jebus-bubble in this place commonly termed as, reality, facts matter. The world is much more complex that your simple moral prescriptions and you can’t handwave-away the geopolitical reality we inhabit no matter what your sky-daddy says.
So, take your pious moralizing and settle it firmly back in your church,where I’m sure your illusive bullshite makes perfect sense and has a receptive audience.
“The last few posts I’ve tried to be objective and rational. “
Couldn’t fool me. Charity? WTF is that?
“They throw around deliberately inflammatory terms like “forced birth” and “a woman’s right to her body,” so that people react emotionally and don’t notice the treachery. “
Ah! Women, when speaking up for their rights demanding to be treated as human beings as opposed to incubators, are actually making ‘inflammatory statements’. Your fainting couch has arrived, please use it at the first available opportunity.
“They deliberately cloud the issue so that people won’t think about it. “
So sayeth the prophet from the side that regularly lies about medical facts such as stages of foetal development, pregnancy, and effects of abortion on women. I imagine that makes you quite the expert on clouding the issue, no?
“Suddenly it’s not death, it’s liberty. They trick us into thinking that maybe the human beings we abandon don’t actually matter.”
Oh, you mean like the women you conveniently erase while pining for a forced birth dystopia. Yeah-no, your fetus-fetish stinks from here and can only be seen as hatred toward women and their status as human beings.
“God help us. God help the ones we won’t help. God give them peace and a home with a Father that won’t reject them and leave them in the clutches of a monster.We ought to be willing to die to save them. What have we become?”
Yes, I think you should pray a lot more. Significantly more, maybe so much more than you won’t have time to post your misogynistic forced birth opinions on the interwebs and save me the time of refuting your mendacity.
Our high priestess Fiona issues her decree’s from the bean bag chair she just recently colonized.
For The Intransigent One. My heart, my love, my life.
O mor henion i dhu:
Ely siriar, el sila
Ai! Aniron Undomiel
Tiro! el eria e mor
I ‘lir en el luitha ‘uren.
Ai! Aniron…
*******
From darkness I understand the night
dreams flow, a star shines
Ah! I desire Evenstar
Look! A star rises out of the darkness
The song of the star enchants my heart
Ah! I desire…
Not owning a television is one of the best decisions TIO and I made. Well, we do have a TV but no cable so we can watch the occasional DVD if we so desire. What the media focuses on and what is important is often two very different sets of ideas. There are multiple cases of human suffering and abuse going on in the world at any given time; but often we are inundated with the very important happenings of celebrities and the random piffle they do as a substitute for what is actually happening in the world. As pointed out by Christian Christensen in his opinion piece on Al Jazeera “More Guantanamo and Global Warming and Less Knox and Justin Bieber.”
Amanda Knox has, with her second “guilty” verdict for the murder of Meredith Kercher, re-entered our media landscape. There is nothing inherently wrong with some coverage of the Knox case, but the level of exposure afforded the story since it first broke in late 2007/early 2008 has undoubtedly been magnified by a heady mixture of sex, drugs, violence and a lead character with an image and nickname many editors seem unable to resist. The murder of Kercher is tragic, and it appears that the Knox conviction is highly suspect. Yet, as with Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, the volume of coverage afforded vacuous, salacious and/or sexed-up stories should lead us to consider what would happen – at the very least politically – if equivalent levels of journalistic time and energy were devoted to other issues.
Consider where Christensen thinks we ought to be spending our time rather than the current (ongoing)Bieber/Cyrus/Knox dramas.
Iraq: Since 2008, over 37,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq. That’s just over twelve 9/11 attacks, or the equivalent of 370,000 civilians dying in the US (Iraq’s population is 10 times smaller of that of the US). In other words, like wiping out a city the size of Tampa, Florida. Since the bulk of the US media were more than willing to cheerlead a war based on a blatant falsehood, a recalibration of the coverage of the aftermath of this debacle is perhaps in order.
Global warming/climate change: The US remains the home of more political climate change sceptics than any other country in the so-called “developed world”. Despite the near-unanimous position of scientists around the world, US politicians continue to display mind-boggling scientific ignorance (wilful or otherwise). Not surprising, in retrospect, from a country where 50 percent of Republicans believe that humans have existed in their present form since the dawn of time (which would be about 7,000 years ago), and politicians claim with seriousness that women’s bodies are able to miraculously prevent pregnancy in cases of rape.
Death Penalty: Between January 1, 2008 and February 2, 2014, there have been 266 executions in the US. In 2012, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US were the top 5 global executioners. Disturbingly, earlier studies have shown that US prosecutors were twice as likely to request the death penalty for a black defendant who is charged with killing a non-black victim versus a black victim; and, white defendants were twice as likely as non-white to be offered a plea agreement to reduce their sentence from execution to life imprisonment. The death penalty gets coverage, but far too many of the “What-did-he-have-for-his-last-meal?” variety.
Sexual assault: At an average of 240,000 per year, according to a study by the US Department of Justice, there have been 1.5 million rapes and sexual assaults in the US since the start of 2008. Those are big numbers. However, this study has been challenged by a study administered by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which it is suggested that the correct number of rapes and attempted rapes alone may be an astounding 1.27 million over 2013. If this is taken as an average per year, then that would be 7 million rapes since 2008. If the vast majority of victims of these assaults were men and not women, would we perhaps see more coverage? That’s a rhetorical question.
Guantanamo: Many inmates, in violation of the US Constitution, remain incarcerated without charge, denied of their basic right of habeas corpus. A lengthy hunger-strike in 2013 to protest this legal limbo was afforded a low level of media coverage. Guantanamo is a national and legal disgrace.
Everyday gun deaths: Since the start of 2008 there have been just short of 200,000 gun-related deaths in the US. While tragic mass shootings such as Columbine and Sandy Hook generate the headlines, the fact remains that gun-related deaths in general, and homicides using firearms in particular, have become a banal part of everyday life in the US. To get some sense of the relentless and often invisible flow of gun violence in the US, follow @GunDeaths on Twitter. It’s sobering.
Chelsea Manning: The person who provided the material for thousands of newspaper articles was arrested in 2010, placed in solitary confinement and subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison. Coverage of Manning before and during her trial by the US news media was abysmal: a particularly damning indictment of journalism given the importance of the case for the future of whistle-blowing and, hence, freedom of the press.
Military spending: In 2011, of the 14 leading countries in the world when it came to spending on national defence, the US was, of course, first with an offensive $711bn budget. Even more offensive? The fact that the 13 countries underneath the US spent $695bn on national defence…combined. And, this US budget does not include the estimated $6tn (that’s $6,000,000,000,000) the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely wind up costing the US taxpayers. And Manning is the one who gets 35 years in prison.
Watch the news. How much do you see of the later versus the former. Consider that without some serious media triangulation what you are ingesting is the equivalent of the Roman bread and circuses put on to keep the population stupid, obedient and passive.
In honour(?) of the Olympic Spirit(TM), my current crochet project is a pair of Salute to Putin gloves. I’ll be able to finish them when the rainbow yarn I ordered arrives.
And, below the fold, a Fiona photobomb because I know you want more Fiona.
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