You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Religion’ tag.
The world wide atheist community has stood up for Damon Fowler. Providing over 20, 000 dollars toward his post-secondary education. What heinous crime has Mr.Fowler committed that resulted in threats to his person, public defamation by his teachers and being kicked out of the family house? Expressing his rights, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, to have his school free of the perversity know as the christian religion. Greta Christina writes about the entire sordid incident, I recommend you read the entire article. I post an excerpt here to illustrate how deeply ingrained the religious rot is in the United States.
“Damon Fowler, an atheist student at Bastrop High School in Louisiana, was about to graduate. His public school was planning to have a prayer as part of the graduation ceremony: as they traditionally did, as so many public schools around the country do every year. But Fowler — knowing that government-sponsored prayer in the public schools is unconstitutional and legally forbidden — contacted the school superintendent to let him know that he opposed the prayer, and would be contacting the ACLU if it happened. The school — at first, anyway — agreed, and canceled the prayer.
Then Fowler’s name, and his role in this incident, was leaked. As a direct result:
1) Fowler has been hounded, pilloried, and ostracized by his community.
2) One of Fowler’s teachers has publicly demeaned him.
3) Fowler has been physically threatened. Students have threatened to “jump him” at graduation practice, and he has received multiple threats of bodily harm, and even death threats.
4) Fowler’s parents have cut off his financial support, kicked him out of the house, and thrown his belongings onto the front porch.
Oh, and by the way? They went ahead and had the graduation prayer anyway.”
Good Times to be had down south. I’ve just wondered though, why isn’t the Tea Party all over this? I mean, this is the US CONSTITUTION that is being violated here, where is the uproar?
**Update: Check out Darkmatter’s video on the subject as well.
Religion is one of the factors that constantly works against civilization and the values of the Enlightenment. Belief in magic and the supernatural, a wish to return to the Dark Ages is remarkable exercise in puerile wish-fulfillment. Strong argumentation, relentless morality and ridicule are the only answers to the plague of religion. The purulent immorality of religion, the suppurating chest wound of humanity, must be expunged.
Christopher Hitchens stands against religion, and in this video shows what must be done, and redone to combat the forces of the anti-rational.
The Sunday Disservice today looks at what it might be like to be a believer, to see world through the beer goggles of religion and maybe get a glance at how the world looks from the point of view of the deluded. Stay with our sheepy protagonist as she encounters the world through the eyes of a believer and the patterns of attribution necessary to keep the whole illusion consistent.
First, to any and all Christians who claim to believe the world is ending tomorrow, I don’t believe you for a second. I invite you to prove me wrong. Spend the rest of today donating every single penny and asset you have accumulated over you life to charity. Give up your house, your life savings, everything you own (maybe pack yourself a lunch) to the underprivileged. You won’t need it anyway, and the charity will look good on your resume when pining for positions in heaven. What’s the matter? Not enough faith? I thought not.
But before the second coming of christ (giggety giggety) we have another very important event: today is Draw Mohammad Day! Here is my 2011 contribution, a fine display of microsoft paint skills, if I do say so myself.
If you have no idea what this post is all about, here is a great vid from one of my youTube favs, Thunderf00t, explaining everything.
Just a small update today, and in light of our world ending I figure I would say a few things… first a pox on Statistics Canada for sending me a nasty census reminder to participate and secondly, promptly arranging to have the online census form bork out and be unavailable when I finally clear time to actually do the damn thing.
However, if the world is ending on the 21st, then I have it made in the shade!
“According to evangelical Christian leader Harold Camping, the world will come to an end this Saturday.
Camping, the 89-year-old leader of Family Radio Worldwide, predicts that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur on May 21. Camping claims that those who have accepted Christ as their savior will rise into the air and join him in the sky before proceeding on to heaven, an event known in evangelical circles as “the rapture.”
Once the rapture occurs, those left behind will experience the wrath of God until the world is completely destroyed by fire on Oct. 21, 2011.”
Sounds like a bad deal except for the whole rapture part because then we will have less religious inanity to deal with for awhile.
“What is the inspiration for such unquestioning faith? Camping claims his prediction was derived from a mathematical analysis of the Bible. His doomsday calculus is the square of the product of 5 (which represents “atonement”), 10 (which represents “completeness”) and 17 (which represents “heaven”). That number — 722,500 — is equal to the number of days between Christ’s crucifixion and his return to judge the earth. According to Camping, Jesus is scheduled to arrive on May 21, 2011, 6 p.m. local time.
I guess it should have been obvious.
However, this isn’t the first time Camping has made such a prediction. Two decades ago, his mathematical gymnastics resulted in the prediction that the world would end in September 1994. When the world did not cease to be, Camping blamed it on a miscalculation, but the experience wasn’t a complete failure: the publicity he generated led to increased donations and book sales.”
Damn, he’s only been wrong once, and of course it was a ‘miscalculation’. Some days I think it would nice just to start my own cult and prey on the stupid to make money and live like a sultan for the rest of my days. (Yes I am watching the sock-gnome cult thread developing and taking careful notes, stay tuned).
Sorry for the late post folks, there was some serious singing to do today, at a church…never fear we went into the belly of beast and returned triumphant at the cost of the Sunday Disservice being late. Oh the things we do for our art. :) Enjoy.
Farming out the business of the Sunday Disservice can be trying at times as so much good material exists and is being freshly created here in the interwebs. This small snippit is from a commenter on Pharyngula and describes quite nicely the flaming hoops you have to jump through just to keep everyone’s favorite Zombie story consistent and clear.
1. There is no credible evidence that anyone named “Jesus” ever existed. The myths retold in the book called the “bible” were written decades to a century after the purported events by people who were not there (seriously, just look at Luke 1:1 for confirmation — he claims right there that he’s an historian, not an eyewitness). In addition, no contemporary historian seems to have noticed anything having to do with such a person. So, the evidence suggests that Jesus is nothing more than a mythological creature to start. (Hint: Josephus, Origen, and all the rest you’re going to quote were born quite a number of years after the alleged events.)
2. Any belief in the divinity of Jesus begins and ends with miracles. Without miracles, Jesus is just another nutjob who got whacked for mouthing off to the authorities. Only by virtue of miracles can the divinity of Jesus be claimed. Now, I’m not going to say that miracles are impossible — after all, they wouldn’t be miracles if they weren’t impossible.
Instead, I’m saying that the so-called miracles of the NT are stupid. The amount of power inherent in such acts is enormous — and yet, the god of everything who knows everything could not see fit to leave the slightest shred of proof behind that these “miracles” actually happened. What we do get is “the dog ate my homework” miracles.
* Where’s the wine? We drank it.
* Loaves and fishes? Eaten.
* The healed sick? Dead.
* Lazarus? Dead again. (Really? If I were a god and I raised someone from the dead, they would good and well stay un-dead.)
* The risen Jesus? Invisible in heaven.
Seriously, these are the stories that you MUST believe in order to credibly believe in the divinity of Jesus. And my 6-year-old could make up more-believable stories.
You don’t have a problem of faith – you have a problem of credibility.
Finding contemptible religious people saying horrible things on youtube is not a difficult task. This particular individual is all over his Sky-daddy allah and how women need to be beaten so they can quickly learn their place and proper behaviour within Islamic religious society.
We can dispense with any notion of Islam (christianity, judiasm etc.) being the religion of peace and harmony. Oh certainly this man may be a crank and not represent the “true faith” but does this lessen the horror of what he is saying? We have our share of absolute cranks here in North American, but we are protected from their delusional insanity because of the secular tenets of our society.
In countries that do not share the same dedication(?) to rationality the damage these people can do is significantly multiplied.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…