Kevin Sorbo doesn't understand atheists

Kevin Sorbo was the star of a syndicated 1990s tv show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.  Recently, he starred in a christian film called God is Not Dead where he played an atheist.  He says he doesn’t understand why atheists are so angry about a god they don’t believe in: 

Sorbo, who is still promoting his most recent film, God Is Not Dead, in which he plays an atheist, said he can’t comprehend the logic behind atheist’s lack of beliefs and their anger.

“I’m a Christian myself and had to play an atheist. I see the anger of these (atheist) guys on TV and it’s like ‘wow, how do you get so angry at something you don’t believe in?”  Sorbo said.

Earlier this year, Sorbo discussed self-professed atheist Bill Maher, calling him “angry and lonely,” before adding, “I did Politically Incorrect a couple of times, and all I can do is feel sad for the guy, because I think he is a very angry and lonely man. Comedy comes from anger anyway. You know, what are you going to say when a guy talks like this?”

 

My first question I’d ask him is have you ever listened to an atheist?  If he had, he’d realize that we’re not angry all the time.  You see, atheists, like other human beings, are human.  We possess and display the full range of human emotions (to one degree or another, and at various points in our lives).  

We laugh when we’re happy.

We cry when we’re sad.

We get frustrated when things don’t go as planned.

We shrug our shoulders over things we don’t care about.

We care about the lives of family and friends.

We show concern when the people we care about are hurt.

We are most certainly *not* angry all the time.  To believe that is to truly not know what the fuck one is talking about.

We do get angry though. 

Some of us get angry on a regular basis, and guess what? There’s nothing wrong with that.  Anger is an emotion and like all emotions it helps us express our thoughts and feelings.  There is much in the world to be happy or joyous about.  There is also much to be angry about.  I could discuss a great many things about religion in general that make me angry, but I’ll limit it to just 5 items (and not just christianity Mr. Sorbo, it’s hardly unique):

  1. I’m mad that the Catholic Church uses it position as one of the most powerful organizations on the planet to deny women the right to have an abortion.  The right to bodily autonomy is a right all human beings have.  It is foundational to the right to self-defense, which is a right all humans have.  To deny women the right to have an abortion results in women being denied a right they are entitled to by virtue of being human.  Such a denial relegates women to second class status, and I condemn that 1000%. 
  2. I’m mad that children are brought up, indoctrinated into religious belief.  The foundation of religious belief-faith-instills in children (from a very young age) the idea that it is preferable to hold beliefs without any reason to do so; in the face of evidence to the contrary.  Religious belief hinders the ability of children in the areas of logic and critical thinking.  The damage isn’t irreversible, but is difficult to overcome.  The ability to use critical thinking, logic, and reason is essential in learning how to understand and interpret the world around us.  These tools are also important in allowing us to cut through the bullshit we so often find in life. Faith-belief without evidence-allows people to believe in all manner of things, often to their own personal detriment.
  3. Religious teachings on sexuality are wrong.  As I’ve written before, there is no moral component to sexuality.  It’s personal to each individual, and has no bearing on questions of right and wrong in interactions between people.  I find the teaching of *many* religions on the subject of sexuality to be abominable.  Homosexuality is not morally wrong. Bisexuality is not morally wrong.  That many religions teach that homosexuality is morally wrong is itself deeply immoral.  These teaching have led parents to disown their kids, kick them out of their homes, and even kill them.  These teachings have led to a lifetime of shame and disgust that many people feel over their sexuality. These religious teachings have led entire countries-I’m looking at you Russia-to enact legislation that discriminates against and oppresses people.  All for the “crime” of not being heterosexual. Religious teachings on sexuality-on the whole-are deeply harmful to people, and actively work to make people miserable and the world a worse place.
  4. Creationism does not belong in the classroom.  It is a wholly religious idea that has no foundation in science.  There is no empirical evidence in support of creationism, yet despite this, there are efforts across the US and other parts of the world to teach creationism in place of evolution in the classroom.  This angers me because I want people to be educated, but I want that education to be reality based.  Not fantasy based.  Evolution has mountains of evidence to support it, and a vast array of scientific disciplines support the theory of evolution.  
  5. I am an atheist.  That means I do not believe in the existence of any god or gods.  That does *not* mean I’m an immoral shitbag who has no reason to not rape or kill people. I am angry that people believe-without knowing who I am-that I’m an immoral person. Morality concerns the distinctions between right and wrong or good and evil actions between humans.  How does one determine whether a particular course of action is good or evil?  One way is to attempt to understand how the other person feels in that situation.  If I’m trying to decided if I want to punch someone or not, by imagining myself in the shoes of someone else, it can be easy to see that they wouldn’t like to be punched.  I know I don’t want to be punched either, so it’s probably a good idea for me to not punch them, at least if I think they have the same rights as I do (which I do).  The Golden Rule-basically treating others as you would be treated yourself-has been in existence for longer than christianity, and informs morality.   Likewise, morality was a necessary component in creating societies.  There must be rules to govern our interactions if we’re going to live among each other, and humans being a social species, that’s pretty much going to happen everywhere.  These rules attempt to balance the desires of the individual against the desires of society as a whole.  Destructive, damaging behaviors obviously harm society as a whole and are discouraged.  Positive behaviors are encouraged.  This is obviously in simple terms, but we don’t encourage people to kill or rape one another because that threatens social cohesion by affecting the safety and security of others.  The idea that you cannot have morality without god is a false one (and ridiculous anyways-how can you decide which actions are good and which are bad when {if you use christianity} god commits genocide and encourages or permits rape, slavery, and murder?)

If Sorbo were interested in actually learning why many atheists are angry-sometimes-he ought to check out Greta Christina’s book Why Are You Atheists So Angry:  99 Things That Piss Off The Godless. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of good reasons to get angry at the actions of the religious. Given the shit going on in the world, if you’re not angry, then you don’t care, and apathy is responsible for tremendous amounts of human suffering.

Incidentally Mr. Sorbo, we aren’t angry at god. We’re angry at how believers act in the name
of god.

Kevin Sorbo doesn't understand atheists
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Ferguson, MO

Jay Nixon, Governor of Missouri, declared a state of emergency in Ferguson, and instituted a curfew from midnight to 5 a.m.  

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in Ferguson, Mo., on Saturday, following nights of protests after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer.

“If we’re going to have justice, we must first have and maintain peace,” Nixon said at a Saturday afternoon press conference. “The eyes of the world are watching.”

Capt. Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol says the curfew will run from midnight to 5 a.m. local time Sunday and will be enforced through conversations, not tear gas and tanks.

A curfew.  As if adults are children and need to be told to go home at a certain time.  Or maybe the Governor is treating them like a potential public safety issue.  Maybe he thinks it’s ‘for their own good’.  I don’t know what the reasoning is, but I disagree with it.  The citizens of Ferguson want to read the autopsy report on Michael Brown’s body.  They want to hear that Officer Wilson has been taken into custody.  They want to hear that his vehicle has been impounded. They want to hear an apology from the Ferguson Police Department.  They want answers about why they were treated like terrorists.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t ask for a curfew, and I’m pretty damn sure they don’t need one.  They want their concerns to be heard and actually listened to.  

Margaret Huang, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, disagrees with the curfew.

“It’s clear that the community doesn’t feel heard,” Huang says. “It’s hard to build trust when the governor won’t meet with community members and restricts their movements with a curfew. The people of Ferguson should not have their rights further restricted.”

The Governor is treating the citizens of Ferguson like they have done something wrong.  They are the ones that have been acting peacefully.  The Ferguson PD are the ones who have acted aggressively, unnecessarily deploying force and treating protesters like criminals (which I doubt they’d have done if it were a group of white people).  This curfew will accomplish nothing more than to inflame tensions between the community of Ferguson and government officials.

The curfew was apparently enforced by the use of smoke gas, though some reports claim tear gas was used.  Speaking of tear gas, it is a chemical weapon and has been banned in war:

Despite its ubiquity across the globe and in United States, tear gas is a chemical agent banned in warfare per the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which set forth agreements signed by nearly every nation in the world — including the United States. The catch, however, is that while it’s illegal in war, it’s legal in domestic riot control. That means Turkey got to use it on its protesters last year. That meant Bahrain got to the do the same. And now, in Ferguson, cops are likewise blasting residents protesting the police for the killing of an unarmed teen named Michael Brown.

“I was just trying to get to my sister’s house,” one 23-year-old sobbed on his lawn, according to this harrowing report by The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, who was arrested by police Wednesday. The man said police had pelted him with rubber bullets and sprayed his face with tear gas.

Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson has defended the use of tear gas. “There are complaints about the response from some people,” he said, “but to me, nobody got hurt seriously, and I’m happy about that.”

While that appears to have held true as of Thursday morning, some scientists and international observers contend the tactic of spraying people with tear gas, which commonly uses the chemical agent 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (CS), can pose serious dangers. “Tear gas under the Geneva Convention is characterized as a chemical warfare agent, and so it is precluded for use in warfare, but it is used very frequently against civilians,” Sven-Eric Jordt, a nerve gas expert at Yale University School of Medicine, explained to National Geographic. “That’s very illogical.”

Technically not a gas, Jordt said, tear gas is an aerosol. “Tear gases are nerve gases that specifically activate pain-sensing nerves,” Jordt told National Geographic. And when used properly, in lower doses and deployed in open spaces, its effects are more or less harmless. Those affected sneeze and cough and panic — and may even temporarily go blind — but those symptoms subside after several hours. A 2003 study found there “is no evidence that a healthy individual will experience long-term health effects from open-air exposures to CS or CR, although contamination with CR is less easy to remove.”

But sometimes things don’t go as planned. “The use of tear gas in … situations of civil unrest, however, demonstrates that exposure to the weapon is difficult to control and indiscriminate, and the weapon is often not used correctly,” wrote Howard Hu in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1989. “Severe traumatic injury from exploding tear gas bombs as well as lethal toxic injury have been documented.” Hu found that if exposed to “high levels of CS,” some victims experienced heart failure or even death. “An infant exposed to CS in a house into which police had fired CS canisters to subdue a mentally disturbed adult developed severe pneumonitis requiring therapy with steroids, oxygen, antibiotics, and 29 days of hospitalization.”

I’m sorry, but if tear gas has been banned in war, it should not be used in conditions that are less extreme than wartime, like say, during non violent protests (for that matter, even if it were a violent protest, tear gas still shouldn’t be used).

Unfortunately, law enforcement was needed after the curfew went into effect.  One person was shot and seven people were arrested.  

Gun violence, tear gas and armored vehicles marked the first night of a controversial curfew imposed in this St. Louis suburb where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager has kicked over a cauldron of frustration and anger.

What some hoped would be an evening of calm was instead one of chaos that ended with a shooting victim, seven arrests and an early morning heavy rain that finally helped clear the streets.

Capt. Ronald Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol said early Sunday that a large force was deployed amid a curfew and protests in Ferguson after police received a report that an unknown assailant shot a person.

More Twitter comments and updates:

Very angry young man w face confronts Ron Johnson, screaming, demanding answers. “You deserve answers,” Johnson says. “You will get them.”

Alex Altman

 

Malik Shabazz, worki
ng w/New Black Panther Party: “At 11:30 when I say move out, move out. They have 3,000 men ready. I don’t want you hurt”

Trymaine Lee

 

Very thin numbers as the curfew nears. Community leaders have been talking to the young guys. Many have already left.

Antonio French

 

BREAKING: One person shot and seven arrested in after curfew, officials say

NBC News

 

Police defend use of tear gas as “proper response” to their car being shot at in , Missouri

BBC News US

 

Here are the faces of the people of , cleaning up their community this morning

Ryan J. Reilly

 

 

 

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Ferguson, MO

This gives me the warm fuzzies

Quick:  which religious organization boycotts the funerals of military service personnel because they think the United States is embracing homosexuality and “god hates fags”?

If you guessed The Westboro Baptist Church, you’d be right.  If you didn’t guess them, then it’s time to crawl out from under that rock you’ve been living under.

The WBC is a deeply homophobic organization that are almost universally reviled (I’m sure there are some nice fundamentalist christian churches that agree with them, but you’d probably have to search far and wide to find them). Obviously, they got a case of the sadz when Michael Sam came out of the closet. What to do, what to do?  Hmmm.  Oh, I know!  They can boycott a ceremony at a basketball game in his honor.  It didn’t quite go how they wanted (I’m trying to drum up a tear to shed in the name of the WBC, but my eyes just don’t want to agree with me):

Thousands of people have turned out to block members of the Westboro Baptist Church from picketing a basketball game during which openly gay college footballer Michael Sam was to be honored.

The Westboro Baptist Church members traveled to Missouri on Saturday after Sam came out publicly, labeling the Tigers ‘fag enablers’ for tolerating Sam on the team and calling for the death penalty for homosexuality to be reinstated.

In response thousands of Sam’s supporters – many fellow students at the University of Missouri – formed a ring around the stadium and turned their backs on the church members.

‘The college campuses of doomed-USA are over flowing with proud fornicators and fags,’ church members said ahead of their protest action.

‘They are most concentrated on your sports teams, especially football — the favorite religion of this idolatrous superstitious lost nation. By the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, one of those foolish proud young men, Mike Sam, burst forth on the front pages, when he introduced himself in time for the NFL Combine & Draft as a proud fag football player, kicking off peals of perverse sin-justifying praise.’

Church members claimed that Missouri was famous for two things – ‘bestiality, and persecuting the saints of the Most High God.’

Student’s sang the University of Missouri’s school fighting song while keeping the church members away from the arena.

Photos of the human barrier soon went viral on Twitter, trending with the hashtag #StandWithSam.

Sam is expected to become the first openly gay professional American footballer to be chosen by a major team and several teams have already said they would be interested in him as a draft pick.

 

(yeah, the article is months old, but I’m just now hearing about it)

This gives me the warm fuzzies

$3.00 an hour is a nice wage increase

The lowest wage allowable by federal law is $7.25 an hour.  At that rate, an employee working full time would take home-before taxes-$290 a week, $1160 a month, and $13,920 a year. The Federal Poverty  level for a single individual in 2013 was $11,490/year.  For a family of 2, it was $15,410/year.  That’s not a significant amount of money.  People making $6, $7, or $8 an hour can benefit from wage increases. Depending on the amount of the raise, it could lift people out of poverty-a condition that no human should ever be in.  Raising the minimum wage also spurs economic growth (which makes sense; if people have more money, they’re likely to spend it; if they have enough money to pay for essentials, they’ll be more likely to spend extra on luxuries). If the minimum wage had increased with inflation, it would currently be $10.90/hour.  Heck, it if the minimum wage had increased along with worker productivity since 1968, it would be around $21.72/hour).  Sadly, there are politicians (a great many of them Republicans or members of the Tea Party, as well as Libertarians) who oppose hikes in the minimum wage (some-looking at you Ron Paul-think the minimum wage should be abolished; fuck you very much for that).  Too often, they’re thinking of corporations (and in the process display a callous indifference to the plight of minimum wage workers across the country).  They still think that if you save corporations money, or give them tax breaks that this will help the economy by creating jobs.  This reality challenged idea, aka trickle down economics, has yet to bear any fruit.

Thankfully there are people who advocate a raise in the minimum wage.  There are even people who make sacrifices so that others can see a pay increase.  One such person is the interim President of Kentucky State University:

Two dozen low-wage workers at Kentucky State University (KSU) will get a raise to $10.25 an hour after the school’s interim president asked for his pay to be cut by about 25 percent, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. The workers currently make as little as $7.25 an hour, the lowest wage allowed by federal law.

“This is not a publicity stunt,” interim KSU president Raymond Burse told the newspaper. “You don’t give up $90,000 for publicity. I did this for the people,” he said. Burse, who retired from an executive position at General Electric in 2012, pointed out that “I don’t need to work” and “the people who do the hard work and heavy lifting, they are at the lower pay scale.”

Burse will only be KSU president for the next year while the school’s board searches for a long-term replacement for Mary Evans Sias, who retired at the end of June after 10 years as president. He was set to be paid just under $350,000 and asked that $90,000 of that be spent on staff wages instead. There is no guarantee that the workers’ wages will remain at $10.25 under future regimes should the school’s board of regents decide it needs that money for other purposes.

As I wrote elsewhere:

“I would like to see more of this. He did it out of compassion for others, and I think that’s wonderful. I’m sure Burse could use that $90K, but low wage workers *need* the extra money in a way I doubt he does. At $7.25/hr and an average 40 hour work week, those workers would take home roughly $13,920/year. Raising their wage to $10.25/hr means they’ll take home an additional $120/week, almost $500 extra dollars a month, and slightly more than $19K/year. That’s pretty substantial in my book. That can raise people out of poverty.
He says he didn’t do this to shame other school presidents, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have a problem with him doing so. Instead of $350K, he’s going to be making around $260K. I’d kill (not literally, mind you; that whole ‘valuing human life’ thing would prevent me from even thinking of taking a life) to make half that amount ($130K), a third ($85K), a quarter ($65K), or even a fifth ($52K).”

It may be shocking to advocate for people to not take home more money, but I think people who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year are less in need of a raise than people who are struggling to make $15,000/year.

 

 

$3.00 an hour is a nice wage increase

Homeless people deserve compassion

A charity in Vancouver has converted city benches into pop up rain shelters for the homeless.

 

(source: startenthousand)

 

RainCity Housing, which provides specialised accommodation and support services for homeless people in the Canadian city, has set up instant pop-up shelters that take the form of an ordinary park bench.

During the day, the innovative design simply works as the back support to benches where people might sit and eat lunch or while waiting for a bus.

But at night, the boards fold out upwards, providing emergency cover in what is – like London – a notoriously rainy city.

Homeless people, like all other people deserve to have food, water, and shelter.  It’s great to see that some people recognize that.  

London, take note.  The anti-homeless spikes erected to prevent homeless people from finding shelter from the elements are cruel.

(source: theindependent)

 

Homeless people deserve compassion

The Best of Humanity: Restoration

An ecosystem is deforested.  For housing. For urbanization. Cash crops. Farming. Among the many results: light pollution.  Frugivorous  bats are slow to return to the affected areas.  The bats enjoy fruit, and defecate while flying.  Their feces result in ‘seed rain’-part of a cycle by which new fruit can be produced.  The deforestation causes more sunlight to reach the affected areas, and the bats are light sensitive; less able to feed in well lit areas.

Humanity often has a negative effect upon the environment.  Often, but not always.  There are times when humans give back. When they demonstrate care for the world around them.  When they make the decision not to destroy, but to restore.

Nestled in Northeast India next to the Brahmaputra River sits Majuli Island, a giant sandbar that happens to be the largest river island on Earth, home to some 150,000 people. It is also the location of the 1,360 acre Molai Forest, one of the most unusual woodlands in the world for the incredible fact that it was planted by a single man. Since 1979, forestry worker Jadav Payeng has dedicated his life to planting trees on the island, creating a forest that has surpassed the scale of New York’s Central Park.

While home to such a large population, rapidly increasing erosion over the last 100 years has reduced the land mass of Majuli Island to less than half. Spurred by the dire situation, Payeng transformed himself into a modern day Johnny Appleseed and singlehandedly planted thousands upon thousands of plants, including 300 hectares of bamboo.

Payeng’s work has been credited with significantly fortifying the island, while providing a habitat for several endangered animals which have returned to the area; a herd of nearly 100 elephants (which has now given birth to an additional ten), Bengal tigers, and a species of vulture that hasn’t been seen on the island in over 40 years. Gives you more than a little hope for the world, doesn’t it?

 

 

The Best of Humanity: Restoration

The Best of Humanity: Compassion

A woman is turned away from a hospital and denied a life saving abortion, because a fetal heartbeat can be detected.  The fetus has no chance of survival, yet the woman is not given the procedure that would save her life.  She dies from sepsis.

A young man is kidnapped.

Attacked.

Brutalized.

Left for dead.

He dies.

Why?

For the “crime” of being gay.

Children of 7. 8. 9. 10. flee their home countries.  Flee the violence of everyday life that threatens their existence.  They want more than existence; they want life.  They seek life in another country.  The other country greets them with fear. Fear and apathy.  Apathy and racism.  The racism boils over, bringing some to threaten those children with death if they do not leave. Death to children of 7. 8. 9. 10.

Continue reading “The Best of Humanity: Compassion”

The Best of Humanity: Compassion