RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity

More random crap in my tabs! Hooray! These are mostly about religion, as keeping with the Sunday trend.

Your Cool Atheist of the Week: Linus Torvalds, famous for… something. I dunno.

Margie: How about religion?

Linus: Hmmmm, completely a-religious — atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, “Oh, nature was just created”, and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, “Wow, it’s incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place.” I think we can have morals without getting religion into it, and a lot of bad things have come from organized religion in particular. I actually fear organized religion because it usually leads to misuses of power.

Links are below the fold!

Ed Brayton covers ABC’s article-based-blowjob of the recent creationist attempts at suggesting that Ardipithecus actually disproves evolution. That is, when coupled with the Bible. As though the Bible is proof of anything beside the fact that some guys in 325CE decided to paste together some common stories, including a chunk of the Jewish foundational texts, into one big mishmash of parables and fables that were obviously God’s own work.

Ever have someone start off an argument with “you’re obviously an intelligent person“, disclaim themselves with “I don’t pretend to be qualified”, then proceed to tell you exactly why they know more than you about a subject, especially any scientific one that goes against their beliefs? Yeah, I hate that too.

Here’s a deity I could get behind, one that actually talks about the universe as having the very natural underpinnings that we’ve discovered via the scientific method. You know, that is, if only this were really true, and not just some guy writing a work of fiction and posting it to the web.

Another Catholic priest and paedophile has been brought to justice. Meanwhile, our local Catholic Bishop paedophile was caught with a shit-ton of pictures of underaged boys performing sexual acts on his personal computers seized from his multiple residences. Losing faith in Catholicism yet?

Theists have suggested to us atheists that, in order to make a better case for atheism, we should seem sorry for the absence of religion in our lives. Never mind that I have already stated that a world with the supernatural would be fundamentally more interesting than the world we presently inhabit, where there’s no evidence whatsoever that any deity has ever existed. (Note that I say “interesting”, not “better”. Because it wouldn’t be better to have to watch out for ghouls and hobgoblins and dodge dragons while trying to live our ordinary lives.)

Remember how the Rapture was apparently calculated to happen on Sept 21, 2009, via that crazy sine-wave diagram? Well, it got revised up to October 21. I fear disappointment once more, sadly. Yet another prophecy will come and go without the disappearance of any of the fundamentalists in this world.

Some idiots beat a gay man nearly to death, and are going to be prosecuted under hate crime legislations because of how they picked their target and what they were yelling while they were beating him senseless. Which is a shame. The only thing worth smiling about with regard to this whole situation, though, is this guy’s tattoo — and the fact that it quotes Leviticus 18:22 while blatantly violating Leviticus 19:28.

Daylight Atheism takes on the false credentials used by the Case for A Creator authors and interviewees. Faking degrees to steal unearned authority? You’d never figure creationists to do such a thing — that’d be bearing false witness!

Here’s some great ways you can teach the controversy — by buying t-shirts that show them in living color! Controversies including how the Devil must have buried fossils to trick people, how aliens built the pyramids, and how the periodic table of the elements should only have five entries.

And finally, Robert Crumb illustrates the Book of Genesis. Yes, he graphically illustrates Lot screwing his two daughters. No, it’s not particularly titillating, despite the religious “think” tanks’ claims.

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RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity
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One thought on “RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity

  1. 1

    Linus has just bumped his way to the top of my hero chart! And he was already pretty high up there. I even named a cat “Linus” after him. Though the wife thought it was named after the Peanuts character.

    “This is Linus Torvolds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux.” Hmm, looses something in the translation from audio to text 😉

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