RCimT: Busy week for us heathens! (updated)

This week has been a bit of a busy one as far as godlessness goes! Here’s a quick round-up of the best stuff on the blogosphere and of what people have tweeted about over the week.

But first, as always, your Cool Atheist of the Week: Sir Ian McKellan, Shakespearean thespian probably best known for the awesomest incarnations of both Gandalf and Magneto ever.

“I was brought up a Christian, low church, and I like the community of churchgoing. That’s rather been replaced for me by the community of people I work with. I like a sense of family, of people working together. But I’m an atheist. So God, if She exists, isn’t really a part of my life.”
— from a January 19, 1996 profile by Tim Appelo found in Mr. Showbiz.

Links below the fold, as usual. What are you, new here?
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RCimT: Busy week for us heathens! (updated)
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RCimT: Fashionably Late Sunday Readings

Here’s yesterday’s Sunday RCimT, which is only fashionably late.

Your Cool Atheist of the Week is author Terry Pratchett of the Discworld series. The series is on my short list of books to read, as soon as I obtain a copy. Oh, and read everything else I’ve got queued up.

“I think I’m probably an atheist, but rather angry with God for not existing.” In a 1999 interview he told Anne Gay, “I’m an atheist, at least to the extent that I don’t believe in the objective existence of any big beards in the sky. That is a religious position, by the way.” He has also referred to himself as a “Victorian-style” atheist, in the sense that he rejects supernaturalism but considers himself culturally and morally Christian.

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RCimT: Fashionably Late Sunday Readings

Three more bits of interesting reading

Just got back from braving the holiday shopping crowds. I got myself a housecoat. My first one ever. And I plan on wearing it all weekend — even when we visit Ron and Tanya for supper on Sunday.

Michael Geist covers OECD’s declaration that Canada is among the lowest sources of counterfeiting, despite lobbyists’ and politicians’ recent claims:

The OECD has released new data on its global counterfeiting estimates, concluding that the share of counterfeit and pirated goods in world trade is estimated to have increased from 1.85% in 2000 to 1.95% in 2007. That represents an increase to $250 billion worldwide. That is obviously a big number, but notably far lower than the claims from ACTA supporters. Copyright lobby groups have long claimed – without empirical support – that counterfeiting and piracy represents 5 – 7% of global trade. The OECD data indicates those claims are wildly exaggerated.

PalMD discusses the Ontario push toward legitimizing fake medicine:

Naturopaths like to present themselves as walking a different path to the same destination, but the truth is not so pretty. If we were to, as the naturopaths put it, help nature heal itself, we would die toothless and miserable before we hit fifty. Most of us are likely to die of either cancer, heart disease, or stroke.

Tears may have evolved as a defense mechanism — to elicit mercy from an overpowering human foe:

Humans appear to be the only creatures that shed tears as an emotional reaction. Other animals excrete tears to clean their eyes following an injury or irritation from dust, but only human beings cry in social situations as an expression of sadness or excitement. Hasson says that in a setting in which someone is threatened, a crying person unconsciously increases survival prospects, because an attacker understands that someone who is crying is defenseless and there is no reason to continue to attack.

Oh, and a bonus — photos from the LHC spin-up at CERN.

Three more bits of interesting reading

RCimT: Stand back, I’m going to try SCIENCE!

Some science news for your daily consumption.

Scientists just accidentally the whole blue. Blue pigment has been notoriously difficult to create without using cobalt and/or other dangerous or extraordinarily expensive materials. While experimenting with manganese oxide in an unrelated experiment, scientists discovered a cheap, easy way of creating blue. I’m sure Glendon Mellow, the Flying Trilobite will love this.

More below the fold.
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RCimT: Stand back, I’m going to try SCIENCE!

RCimT: Midweek Religion Catch-up

A few religion-related, pre-Wednesday links to catch you up on.

145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration promising civil disobedience against any laws that “could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.” They even have the temerity to cite Martin Luther King Jr., because citing a black civil rights leader is a totally appropriate strategy when you’re trying to suppress women’s and homosexuals’ civil rights movements.

The Vatican plugs Twilight: New Moon, claiming it to be a “moral vacuum with a deviant message”. Um, isn’t it mostly about a sparkly fairy-vampire that refuses to bang a young girl because it would be immoral?

New proof that the Shroud of Turin is totally legit: it says so. Since that’s all the proof necessary to show the Bible is legit (you know, that it said so), the claim that the shroud says “Jesus the Nazarene” on it totally supercedes all the proof that it’s just a centuries old fraud made to dupe credulous faithful, and easily duplicable with simple techniques available to just about anyone even today.

What if Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris’ claim of being the Four Horsemen was real? I sort of have to take issue with Hitchens liberating a woman; that seems like a meta-joke and a rather low one at that, given Hitchens’ misogyny whenever he’s around Bill Maher for some reason.

I’ve talked about the Salvation Army in the past (in one of my first ever posts, in fact). Turns out there are a lot of good reasons not to do business with them, especially if you want to actually help others.

Kansas apparently has decided to “teach the controversy” — about the shape of the Earth. Okay, not really, it’s a parody, but Flat-Earthers have the same amount of evidence behind their hypothesis that Creationists do.

As though it were necessary, given the proliferation by theists of such articles as of late, here’s how to write an atheist hit-piece, by tearing down a very obvious example.

ReligionLulz asks a very pertinent question: if America’s such a “Christian Nation”, why all these fundie versions of popular sites?

FOX News prods the atheist billboard debate. And the coverage is totally fair and balanced… if you’re a theist, anyway. Always seems to be the case, doesn’t it?

And finally, the godless can quote the Bible too.

RCimT: Midweek Religion Catch-up

RCimT: This Week, Without Gods

This is long overdue, but this week’s Cool Atheist of the Week is awarded posthumously to George Carlin, who veiled his insight into humanity under the guise of being a comedian — as in Shakespeare’s plays, the Fool is the one freest to speak to the King without fear of retribution.

You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he’s a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn’t fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.

For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog, Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat.

So I’ve been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don’t. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit’s foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat’s testicles, it’s all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.

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RCimT: This Week, Without Gods

RCimT: Monday is Sunday for one day only

A day late, but here’s your Sunday atheist link roundup. Your Cool Atheist of the Week is Canadian comedian Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall.

Therese: I think if you believe in the basic tenets of the Catholic faith, you’re Catholic. But abortion — some of these peoples’ teachings are — they’re not part of the core Catholicism.

Dave: But isn’t the essential pillar of Catholicism papal infallibility?

Bill: Yeah.

Therese: I wouldn’t say that that’s the core. No, I think belief in the father, and the son and the holy spirit, the trinity, the communion of saints —

Dave: But is papal infallibility a belief of the Catholic church?

Therese: Yes, it is.

Dave: Do you believe in papal infallibility?

Therese: I believe that the pope speaks with an authority of God. Yeah.

Dave: Well, then how can the church ever change its mind about anything unless God gets confused one day?

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RCimT: Monday is Sunday for one day only

RCimT: Unholy Sunday

Welcome to another end-of-weekend link roundup! Your Cool Atheist of the Week is the creator/producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon.

The Onion: Is there a God?

Joss Whedon: No.

O: That’s it, end of story, no?

JW: Absolutely not. That’s a very important and necessary thing to learn.

In the writer/director commentary track to Episode 16 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 (The Body), Joss makes the following remarks concerning his characters’ responses to death and mourning in general: “…at this time a lot of people turn to, as Tim Minear would call him, The Sky Bully, but since I don’t believe in The Sky Bully, and don’t really have that to fall back on, I haven’t really found any lessons in death other than I wish it wouldn’t.”

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RCimT: Unholy Sunday

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!

Continue reading “RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity”

RCimT: Views on a probably nonexistent deity