Month: September 2009

RCimT Sunday: Godless LOLs

Jason Thibeault,

Happy Otherwise-Meaningless-Second-Half-Of-The-Weekend Day, everyone! As it’s traditionally associated with Christian worship, and most of you think Christian worship is kind of silly, it’s only fitting that this become a tradition on this blog: linking to stuff that’s funny at religion’s expense.

So God apparently once said “let there be light” or something. God is also sometimes Jesus, who can apparently also turn on lights. Only to do so, you evidently have to first turn HIM on. Well, that explains all the pedophile priests anyway.

Here’s a list of 281 ways to annoy the piss outta an atheist. #1:
Ask them why they are bitter against God. Yep, and it all goes downhill from there.

Nom nom body of Christ. I notice none of these guys are going after his brains though… how odd.

Hey God, if you exist and are capable of seeing this and interpreting an anchor tag: you are here.

And this isn’t really about God or even religion, but religious folks seem to think Darwin is some kind of science/atheist prophet or something, so I guess this belongs here too or something.

—

220px-BruceLeecard

Another feature I’d like to start (if I can remember to do so on a weekly basis), is your Cool Atheist of the Week. And I can think of no better first inductee than Bruce Lee.

Lee felt that anything which substituted the ways or beliefs of others in the place of teaching you how to cultivate your own was a step in the wrong direction. For this reason, Lee was opposed to the doctrines–or rather the dogmas–of organized religion.

When asked by journalist Alex Ben Block in the summer of 1972 what his religious affiliation was, Lee answered: ‘None whatsoever.’

Block then pressed him further, asking him if he then believed in God: ‘To be perfectly frank, I really do not.’

source

RCimT Sunday: Godless LOLs
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RCimT: Atheist readings

Jason Thibeault, ,

It’s Sunday, and you’ve inevitably had to deal with the faithful either in line at the coffee shop or getting stuck behind a line of them that are just getting out of service, or while flipping through the channels the remote’s battery dies and you have to get up to change the channel off the televangelist or “Sunday shut-in service” show it inevitably landed on. So how do you cleanse the palate after having to spend any sort of time with faith-heads?

Firstly, read this one at Daylight Atheism on how religious apologists go into apoplectic fits explaining away all the evil that God does, in a post entitled Defending Genocide.

Follow that up with a look at the full-page ad that the FFRF is using to spread awareness of the possibility of escaping your religious shackles.

Then check out CyberLizard’s coverage of the Great Faith Debate, and his follow-up.

Afterward, check out what a popular representative of the Baptist church really thinks about the idea of killing gays, abortionists and the President of the United States. And see CNN’s take on this interview.

At some point you should get a more international perspective, so read this Jamaican newspaper article about why atheists seem to give religion such a hard time all the time.

Or, perhaps, read a deconversion story, wherein the author lays out exactly why he has turned away from Christianity after having been brought up in the faith.

And to wash it all down, check out two fantastic posts about reducibly complex features of biology like the eye and the transporter inner membrane complex.

Hopefully that’ll bring your blood pressure down from having to spend time amongst the sheep. Have a wonderful day!

Update Sept 23: Oops. I broke an anchor tag. That’ll learn me for using the HTML posting mode primarily. And for not looking back for what, three days?

RCimT: Atheist readings

RCimT: Sexuality

Jason Thibeault, , ,

It’s Saturday night, we all have big days ahead of us tomorrow for various reasons, and I need to trim back on my ballooning tab session, so allow me to rapid-fire-style link a bunch of stuff I have open presently. First, stuff to do with sex and sexuality. As usual, with anything intrinsic to human nature, there’s going to be some overlap with religion. I’ll try to keep it relevant though.

First up, Discover Blogs has a fascinating article about the brain and how it processes sexuality, as well as how we figured out that, like most other aspects of your body, it’s mostly brain-centric. There’s even a video! (Of the brain. Sorry to disappoint.)

Apparently Jesus isn’t a contraceptive. Who knew?

The ever-hilarious website The Gaytheist Agenda has posted a revealing video suggesting that religious crazies in Iowa are not only against gay marriage — they’re apparently also against marriage in which the couple are infertile or otherwise can’t produce more babies that are born into the faith.

Stephanie has recently pointed us all to this post at Vagina Dentata, though I’ve sadly only gotten around to actually reading this now. It’s about the feminist movement, being able to express sexuality without an implication of consent to harassment, and EA Games booth babes, among other things. Brilliant read.

In the meantime, one out of thirty-three female churchgoers are targeted for sexual harassment by their faith’s leaders. Considering how many faithful women there are, that’s a shitload of sexual advances by people that are supposed to be celibate. Celibacy works just as well as abstinence-only education, apparently.

And finally, Blag Hag covers an anti-porn event run by religious conservatives, and covers the lying-for-Jesus in great detail. She also wrote a letter to Purdue University, who hosted the event, and got nothing but a form-letter in reply.

RCimT: Sexuality

Let’s produce a special version of the Bible!

Jason Thibeault1 Comment

You know, with 50 pages of foreword explaining how utterly insipid, morally bankrupt, and fact-free the Bible actually is. Let’s see how long it takes before someone comes along and says “hey, you can’t do that to our holy book” and threatens us with death (or even actually carries out such a threat).

The funny thing is, we’re obviously annoyed with a “special edition” of Origin of Species and giving them away to schools in order to slip their pernicious lies into the classroom. However, because those of us who are either atheist or scientists do not believe in Species’ “inerrant word of Darwin” nor do we revere Darwin as some kind of figurehead, nobody really cares all that much except maybe to spread the word that Banana Man and His Buttmonkey are trying to pull such a stunt — to get out ahead of their stupid scheme.

ZOMGItsCriss on the topic:

Let’s produce a special version of the Bible!

The Prepuce

Jason Thibeault, 1 Comment

As it’s come up a number of times in the past, since the Abrahamic religions have a tendency toward going choppy-choppy with a sensitive piece of equipment for young boys when they’re young enough that they can’t argue against it, I figure it’s about time I post this video.

It’s produced by Doctors Opposing Circumcision, and they oppose the mutilation of children’s genitals regardless of what gender, faith, or regional cultural expectations are involved. If I were a doctor, I’d join in a heartbeat.

As it’s probably not safe for work, I’ve put it below the fold. Do educate yourselves, folks!
Continue reading “The Prepuce” →

The Prepuce

Religion as a mental parasite

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , , , 53 Comments

Look at this picture for a moment — click to enlarge. Kinda stomach-churning, huh? Looks a lot like an alien chest-burster in fact. It’s a rare isopod discovered off the Jersey coast that eats, then replaces, the tongue of a fish. Interestingly, outside the eating of the tongue, the fish doesn’t suffer terribly much in the way of ill effects from this disgusting, horrific, and horribly effective parasitic behaviour. Also interestingly, neither do people whose reason has been eaten and replaced by religious faith.

Continue reading “Religion as a mental parasite” →

Religion as a mental parasite

The final frontier

Jason Thibeault

The ESA’s Planck microwave observatory has started scanning the skies in order to examine the background cosmic radiation left behind by the Big Bang (or, for you creationist twits, whatever theory comes along and explains redshift, background radiation, the relative minority of elements heavier than helium or hydrogen, etc, better than the Big Bang theory does now — and trust me, that’ll only put it exponentially ahead of your theory of “goddidit”).

The smallest extrasolar planet we’ve found yet, has been proven to be a small, solid, rocky one. Our first extrasolar non-gaseous planet! This is both extraordinary and exciting! Who knows, we might be on the very cusp of discovering extrasolar planets that contain oxygen-rich environments, and therefore possibly biomass (e.g. life), and therefore could possibly be someplace to colonize or otherwise investigate. Maybe we’ll even find such a planet within our lifetimes. How cool would that be?

And apparently scientists are revamping the Drake equation to include the possibility of life on icy masses that are not orbiting any star, among other such unlikely but interesting tweaks to the most fascinating “mental experiment” equation ever. The fact that none of the variables are yet filled in is inconsequential to the illustrative power of the equation itself — the fact that, given how large some of the numbers are (e.g. the number of stars in the galaxy, and the number of stars that apparently have planets — just look at how many planets we’re seeing so far, and our detection capabilities are still in their infancy!), the chances could be extraordinarily good that life could arise in our galaxy and in others.

To assert that the odds of life arising in this universe are slim, becomes almost meaningless in the face of the sheer number of chances life gets in this universe. There are over a hundred billion galaxies visible to us presently, and doubtless many many more; and in each, there are likely a hundred billion stars on average. So, how many rolls of the dice does it take before you come up with however-many-sixes-in-a-row you need? Well, first we need to figure out how many we’ve already gotten. The odds mean nothing to someone who hit the lottery a jillion times sequentially, after they’ve done so.

The final frontier

PaintRoll’d

Jason Thibeault, 3 Comments

Made using Mario Paint Composer, a remake of the SNES Mario Paint song-making module. I remember renting it from Blockbuster on more than one occasion while I was an employee there oh so long ago… it came with a mouse pad and crappy mouse, but it was revolutionary at the time. I wasted a lot of hours on the music composer and the flyswatter game. I’ve since found a Wii homebrew remake of the flyswatter game, and this Windows-only Composer remake fills that other nostalgia gap. If only I could get it to work properly under WINE… sigh. Ah well, if I COULD get it to work, that would probably blow my productivity for the day.

PaintRoll’d