Atheist Propaganda

Happy birthday, Atheist Propaganda!

2009-07-08T07:13:00.004+09:00

It's now been 1 year since I began this site. I started it just as a place for me to vent, and remember being pretty surprised when I first saw that I was actually getting visitors. I'm flattered that people are interested in what I write.

Anyway, I've collected some of my favourite posts from the first year of the site, and listed them here:

Prayers for Madeline McCann - the site's first post
What's with the quote at the top of the blog?
The most serious failure
For my next trick, I will pull a statistical probability out of my ass!
The Atheist Bible - Authoritative Book of Atheism, 1st Edition
Science is not a democracy, so shut up!
The pope doesn't like knowledge either
The Atheist's Riddle... Oh no, I'm so scared! - my most popular post
Scientific proof vs. 'religious proof'
My embarrassing fantasies
Is the problem merely lack of awareness of the world?
Believers are closed-minded and dumb
Questions biblical creationists can't answer without making me laugh
Isn't science great?
We came from rocks?
Your imaginary friend won't heal them, so we have to try!
Oh... that's just a bad translation
I don't respect your insanity
Don't respect people who think we're going to hell
The Atheist's Riddle revisited
How many of my atheist readers are rapists?

Thanks to everybody who has visited the site!

The biblical god stoned me!

2009-07-07T06:29:00.008+09:00

I read an article today about the oldest known Christian Bible (that is, with New Testament included), being posted online. According to the article, the book is missing some passages found in today's Bible, which doesn't surprise me. This will hopefully aid in exposing the fraud that is the Bible. Anyway, this isn't the main reason for this post.

The manuscript was discovered in St. Catharine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, which is located at the foot of Mt. Sinai. I visited the monastery on New Year's Day a couple of years ago, after walking to the top of the mountain. They had this bush on the grounds that it is said to be a descendant of the burning bush from the Bible, which gave the 10 Commandments to Moses.

Any fan of the TV show, Arrested Development, should remember the scene in season 3 when Gob is in Iraq and starts a riot when he tries to do a magic trick involving a burning bush, but the Iraqis start chanting "Burn Bush! Burn Bush!", complete with flaming effigies of that dumbass. So I stared at this bush in the monastery and started chanting "Burn Bush! Burn Bush!" I also thought it was pretty silly to worship what is believed to be a descendant of the real (*cough*) burning bush, which is located at what is believed to be the Mt. Sinai from the Bible (my understanding is that the jury is out on whether or not it is the correct mountain). So I began mocking that, too.

Just then, a bunch of rocks and dirt came out of the sky and landed on my head! I looked up, and saw nothing. Was the biblical god punishing me for my disrespect? Had I angered this ogre, who hasn't appeared in public in thousands of years, causing it to attack? Believers would say so, and would stop their investigation there, citing their faith as sufficient for explanation. I however, decided to investigate further. I took the extraordinarily time-consuming step of looking up, again! What did I see? I saw the head of a bearded monk peering at me from on top of the wall next to me. What was the explanation? A believer would argue that the monk had heard rumours of his god throwing rocks and dirt at an infidel, and had come to watch the smiting-in-progress. Personally, I think the monk threw rocks and dirt at my head. It just seems like the simplest explanation. I wonder if he spoke English, and understood what I was saying. Perhaps he thought I was an adulterer, and was stoning me as the Bible commands. Or maybe he was just a jerk who liked to throw rocks and dirt at tourists.

What do YOU think?

Win a lifetime of stupidity and gullibility!

2009-07-04T09:10:00.003+09:00

This is funny. A game show in Turkey is going to have representatives of different religions compete to convert atheists to their faith. Check it out here.

The article says that the show "aims to turn disbelievers on to god". That's pretty funny, considering that they have a Buddhist monk on the show. I guess they don't give him much respect or chance of success. Probably just like the token minority on western TV shows. It's also funny because exposure to different religions is exactly what turned me into an atheist. By watching the religions all simultaneously claim the truth, (I'd like to think) anybody with half a brain would realise that they're all bullshit. I'll bet this show does a fair amount of damage to people's beliefs, and ends up being counter-productive.

Welcome to the 8th century

2009-06-26T07:03:00.004+09:00

A video has been posted to YouTube of a church in the U.S. performing an exorcism on a gay teenager. I'd like to comment as little as possible, except a few lines below.

People often say that humans are an intelligent species. I couldn't disagree more. Only SOME humans are intelligent. The rest are irrational psychos. I write the following with as much condescension and disgust as I possibly can; these people do not deserve to be called 'intelligent'.

The news article is here. Notice the line in the article that says this is not the first time that this particular church has done an exorcism. The video is below. In the name of Jeeza! In the name of Jeeza! In the name of Jeeza! The blood of Jeeza!

Intelligent Design and the Two Courts

2009-06-21T08:55:00.003+09:00

I'm a big fan of You-Tube user, Thunderf00t's, video series, Why Do People Laugh At Creationists? There are currently 30 videos in the series, but it's the latest one that I think is a real gem. The videos often use scientific knowledge to contradict the teachings of biblical creationists, the problem being that any good, shit-for-brains, biblical creationist will merely reject any scientific knowledge presented as being flawed. But Episode 30 in the series is a bit different because it catches a member of the Discovery Institute in his own web of lies, in such an obvious way that even creationists, in their limited mental capacities, should see it.

The video focuses on one particular twit, Casey Luskin. Now to Casey's credit, he doesn't appear to be a young-Earth creationist, as he has published at least one paper on orthodox geology, according to the video. Yet it's in Casey's other role, arguing for the inclusion of intelligent design into school classrooms, that he earns his shame.

At the beginning of the video, Casey is shown accusing "Darwinists" of an unwarranted conspiracy to tie together creationism and intelligent design, in order for it to be rejected from schools as the teaching of religion. He says that intelligent design is "agnostic" on the topic of the source of this intelligence. Later on in the video, he is shown arguing, through his various writings, that the intelligent design movement does, in fact, believe that the Christian god is the creator, and encourages young people to start groups which believe just that. He even uses the terms 'intelligent design' and 'creationism' interchangeably.

The video is quite good, and leaves absolutely no reasonable way out for Luskin, who has been caught in his lies and two-faced strategy. On the one hand, when trying to court the religious to support his cause, he claims outright that the Christian god did it. But on the other hand, when it comes time to go to court to argue that intelligent design should be in classrooms, he turns around and argues that intelligent design makes no such claim, and that it is entirely different from biblical creationism.

Once again, the lies and lack of moral integrity of the Christian god's followers have been exposed. And once again, the religious fall flat on their face while nipping at the heels of science like the little bitches that they are.

The full video is below:

The Atheist's Riddle Revisited

2009-06-14T21:29:00.006+09:00

My first post on the Atheist's Riddle has been my most popular post, bringing in roughly one-third of the traffic received by the entire site. A search for Atheist's Riddle on Google and Yahoo rank my post highly enough that it is arguably the most popular rebuttal to Perry's ridiculous garbage on the internet. Because of this, I thought it was time to revisit the post, but from a different angle.

A possible rebuttal to my first post, though not a very good one, is "Hey, you can't use DNA and RNA as the examples of codes created by nature! You have to give a DIFFERENT example!"

I'd like to examine this objection, which will demonstrate why the style of proof attempted in the Atheist's Riddle is just pathetic. Keep in mind that I am not going to do what so many others have done and try to argue that DNA is not a code. I'll just grant him that, because it honestly doesn't even matter.

I am not a clock-maker (get the reference?). I don't make clocks for a living or a hobby, and you can look at hundreds of millions of clocks in the world and I haven't made any of them. But if you look in my closet, you will find a single clock that I made as a project in elementary school shop class. It has the San Francisco Giants' logo on it, as I was a huge baseball fan at the time.

Now, one could take that clock and make the following argument, which parallels the Atheist's Riddle quite well:

1. This object is a clock. It has hands and numbers around a dial, it ticks, and it can be used to tell time.

2. The author of the Atheist Propaganda site is not a clock-maker. All clocks are created by somebody other than him. There is no known instance of him creating a clock.

3. Therefore, this clock was not created by the author of the Atheist Propaganda site.

If you can find an example of a clock that was created by the author of the Atheist Propaganda site, you've toppled my proof. All you need is one.

Now the most obvious objection to this absurd argument is that I've only ever made one clock, and you're holding it! But if we allow the counter-objection that I cited above, you could try to make me find a DIFFERENT clock that I made. No such clock exists. Does that prove that I didn't make the San Francisco Giants clock that you're holding?

So the objection to my counter to the Atheist's Riddle really collapses under its own absurdity. What if nature only made one of these codes, or in this case, two? By denying their use as examples to 'topple the proof', you've really just made an ass of yourself. I think you can see why this style of argument is not a good one to use in trying to prove the existence of gods, but I'm not surprised that there would be people dumb enough to try.

Once again Perry, get bent.

A Truly Depressing Story

2009-06-07T13:36:00.002+09:00

I read this article on CNN.com today and just had to address it on this page. It's about a common belief in Africa regarding HIV/AIDS. As hopefully most of you know (not holding my breath on this one), some countries in Africa have HIV infection rates around 1/3 of the entire population! It's an absolutely devastating disease, and there is not enough appropriate education going on. Some of what education is being attempted is actually being sabotaged by the largest sect of Christianity; but more on that later.

The belief in question is that if a man is infected with HIV, he can cure it by having sex with a virgin. The first part of the article is below, and it's absolutely shocking:

Hope was 14 years old when her uncle raped her. "He trapped me to the ground and covered my mouth with his hand," said the 18-year-old from Zimbabwe. "He threatened to kill me if I ever told anybody."

So, she kept quiet.

"After a while people around the villages started saying that I looked pregnant," she said.

Hope was not only pregnant, but her uncle had infected her with HIV.

Like many young girls in Zimbabwe, Hope was the victim of a widely held belief that if a man with HIV or AIDS rapes a virgin he will be cured of his disease. This so-called virgin myth, perpetuated by Zimbabwe's traditional healers, has led to the rape of hundreds of girls, according to UNICEF. Some of those victims are too young to walk, much less protect themselves.

Betty Makoni has fought for nearly a decade to protect her country's young girls from sexual abuse. And she's witnessed some of the worst cases of the myth in action.

"The youngest girl I ever came across was a day-old baby who was raped," said Makoni, 37.

This really pisses me off! This is what happens when you are either ignorant of, or reject scientific knowledge!

Now there are probably a lot of you 'nice, loving', (but probably homosexual-hating and war-supporting) Christians who are saying, "We don't rape girls, we're not dangerous and we resent you comparing these people to us!"

Yes, you ARE that dangerous! You are now, you have been in the past, and you will be again in the future. Besides the past rapes and murders your religion has committed on a scale much larger than this; besides the wars you begin, and have begun, because you think your god is commanding you to; besides your witch hunts, residential schools and organised cover-ups of sexual abuse; you are also ENABLING this kind of shit to happen all over the world!

By not standing up for science and by not standing up for reason and rationality, you hold all of humanity back! Even the moderates among you hold us back by not attacking the ridiculous garbage being spewed from the mouths of the fundamentalists in your religion. The half of all Christians who are Roman Catholics hold all of humanity back, but also hold back the fight against HIV/AIDS in particular, when you allow your leader to tell Africa that condoms are not the answer, and don't revolt against him!

Religious belief is, was and always will be, dangerous. To the individual religious people reading this, you might not be out there raping girls, but you are every bit as stupid and gullible as these men are! You prove it every time you open your mouths about angels, gods, resurrections, ghosts or virgin births, and every time you question current scientific knowledge in favour of an ancient text. It will only take some charismatic leader to rise in the future to make you follow once again into dangeorus territory.

If you'd like to help in this cause, I have some suggestions:

1. Those of you who are Roman Catholic need to stop giving donations at your churches, and let your priest know that you will not be giving any more money until the Pope takes a pro-condom stance for reducing HIV infection rates in Africa. Organise with your fellow church members and encourage others to join you! Better yet, leave the religion altogether! Just be sure to explain to your priest why you're leaving.

2. The moderates among you need to start telling the fundamentalists just how disgraceful they are! Tell them that they don't represent you. It's time to stop holding back just because they believe in your god.

3. Fundamentalists need to shut the fuck up, or go kill yourselves. Go be with your god, and do the world a favour at the same time!

4. Any readers, atheist or religious, can check out the charity started by the woman in this article, the Girl Child Network, and make a donation.

Why is YOUR religion NOT ridiculous?

2009-05-26T17:39:00.005+09:00

I was debating a YouTube creationist, and the guy/girl (I honestly don't know which, as the person never appears in their videos, but I'll just use male pronouns for this post) was making the ridiculous leap of assuming HIS god once he believes he's established that a god exists. I've posted on this topic before, and consider it to be the most serious logical failure of religious people. So I asked him why it couldn't mean that Vishnu created everything. He responded mockingly, "Really? A smart guy like you, asking that question?" I pushed the issue, and asked again, why it couldn't have been Vishnu. He literally had no answer, and changed the topic without answering my question.

Religious people are notoriously bad at acknowledging the possibility of other religions, and Christians in particular often set up false dichotomies where only atheism or Jesus could be the truth. They often ridicule other religions, without realising that followers of those other religions are mocking theirs at the same time. So I ask religious readers this question:

"What makes your religion less ridiculous than all of the other religions in the world that you might scoff at?"

For another post with the same kind of reasoning, click here.

18 fun biblical atrocities

2009-05-15T12:53:00.000+09:00

I found this site, which collects some of the Bible's most despicable atrocities, including many committed by the all-loving god, into one convenient location!

There are a few in there that I didn't know about.

Omnipotent god? Then 'fine-tuning' is irrelevant! And more....!

2009-05-11T12:03:00.008+09:00

I've been thinking about this one for a while, but I have to give credit to the The Atheist Experience episode last week for helping me to get started with putting it into words.

I'm sure that all of us have heard from Christians, Jews and/or Muslims that their god is omnipotent (ie. can do anything it wants, even what we'd say is impossible). Most of them seem to agree on this point, and I'm going to consider it to be an axiom of their religions. But then we get this argument coming from many of them, including people such as Lee Strobel, that a god must exist because the Universe is fine-tuned for life.

This is completely contradictory to the belief that their god is omnipotent! Why? Well, if their god can do anything it wants, then it could create life to exist in any environment. So if the physical constants or conditions of the Universe were any different, then we, or another form of life, could be made to live in it. The Universe then doesn't have to be tuned for our existence. In other words, the physical constants are completely arbitrary, and life could exist no matter what they were. In fact, the Universe being suited to our existence (or vice-versa) is a compelling suggestion that there are no gods at all!

Let's take another example of how the existence of an omnipotent god doesn't make much sense. That is the existence of bacteria and viruses which make us sick. I'm told by the creationist fucktards that disease was made to punish humans for seeking knowledge, or disobedience, however you want to interpret that garbage. Why would such an omnipotent god need to create bacteria and viruses to be the causes of disease? Couldn't it just give us the disease without any physical cause at all? Like by magic? Like the way that many religious psychos believe their god created everything in the first place? Why doesn't it work that way anymore? Where did the magic go? Why does disease seem to be caused by processes that are natural and follow natural laws? The fact that disease gets transmitted by bacteria and viruses, and the fact that other diseases are caused by mutations in DNA, giving all diseases a physical cause, is another compelling suggestion that an omnipotent god does not exist.

Another question is why does this god send to me the stupidest people in order to pass along its message? I'm a pretty smart guy, and the people who attempt to debate with me, or to tell me about the existence of god, are often dumb as bricks and can't stand their ground in a debate. Couldn't an omnipotent god choose somebody smarter than me to try to convince me? Couldn't an omnipotent god send a person who knows absolutely everything to my door to answer all of my questions? Why does this god count on these fucking incompetent boobs who either end up getting caught with their pants down with a trannie hooker, or sent to prison, or end up disgraced for molesting children? If you're going to argue that god sent Jesus, or some crap, please spare me! That work of fiction is from 2,000 years ago. Where is the message for me directly?! Even better, why does this god need carriers of its message at all? Why couldn't it make me born with the knowledge or put it into my head by magic? Again, it really looks as if this hypothetical god has some serious limitations.

Another question is about the cruelty that life must inflict on other life in order to survive. Why would an omnipotent and all-loving god do that? Couldn't it have made all life photosynthetic? Then we'd get all of our energy from the sun, and we wouldn't need to eat other life. Here is where the believer argues, "Duh, phoyosynthesis doesn't provide enough energy to support life". But that's the entire fricking point!!!! Why couldn't an omnipotent god have made photosynthesis more efficient, so that all life could get all of the energy it needs without killing any other life, including not killing plants? Why? A better question, why couldn't it make us so that we don't need energy at all?! Why do we need energy? Why can't we all operate by magic and never need food, or even sleep? We could then exist without ever killing another living organism.

This magical, omnipotent god seems to require a lot of natural systems in order to make things run. It operates all of its little creations within the framework of natural laws, and does not deviate from them. It seems to be limited by what the laws of physics say is possible. That is EXACTLY how we'd expect the Universe to look if gods didn't exist at all!

How many of my atheist readers are rapists?

2009-05-05T10:22:00.005+09:00

I received this comment from an anonymous poster on my Atheist's Riddle post:

"Wow, you guys figured out the riddle... Why don't you put those purses down, go on to that form (sic), and show that God loving idiot a thing or two. http://www.freeratio.org//showthread.php?t=135497&page=1
God sucks because he wants us to be good to each other. What a jerk! Without God in our lives we can all lie, steal and rape guilt free. See you in hell, losers."

You got it wrong. This site isn't written by 'you guys', it's written by one person, and that's me. Also, your god doesn't suck, it just doesn't exist.

This absurd argument you're attempting to make is one of the most ridiculously flawed arguments one can make about religion vs. atheism, and just shows how little you actually know or have observed about the world. This argument pisses me off, and demonstrates how stupid religious people can be, all at the same time.

What you really mean is that if YOU didn't believe in a god, that YOU could go around raping, lying and stealing without any guilt. For SOME OF US, WE DON'T NEED any belief in supernatural punishers to be good people, because WE WANT to be good. And in my opinion, which is of course, entirely valid, that makes me a better person than you! You're pathetic!

You need to ask yourself why you're such a bad person that you can't think of any reason to consider the rights of others, unless you believe in eternal punishment. You need to ask yourself why you have no compassion or conscience. You need to ask yourself why you wouldn't mind dishing out suffering to others, violating them in horrible ways, as long as you were gratified by it. You also need to ask yourself then why the world's prisons are not filling up with atheists. You need to ask yourself why the good ol' USA, among the most Christian of Western, developed countries, has one of the highest crime and incarceration rates (I believe it has the highest incarceration rate in the whole world). You need to ask why less-religious countries, such as Canada and the UK, have lower crime rates. And then you need to ask yourself why Japan, perhaps the least-religious developed country in the world, has among the lowest crime rates of them all.

It kills the religious, just kills them, to think that there are people who can be good without any superstitious belief. They're jealous of us. The religious are weak, and their religion is a crutch for their weakness. They have no idea how to be good, and would never be able to be good, if they didn't fear punishment. At least, that's what people like this religious commenter claim. Believe it or not, I give them more credit than that, more credit than they give themselves, and believe that it isn't the religion that makes them good.

As for your sign-off, stating that I'm going to hell, why don't you go fuck yourself?!

Only humans can appreciate music?

2009-05-01T17:20:00.008+09:00

Has anybody else ever heard the argument from the religious crowd that only humans can appreciate music, proving that we're special creations?

I realise that this video is a couple of years old, but this is the first I've seen of it. It is yet another blow to the creationist wackos. Think they'll give up soon? *cough*

Edit: The first comment on this post suggested that the bird is just trained to do this routine. Well, scientists have studied this bird. Not only this species, but this EXACT bird. His name is Snowball. Check out what the scientists thought of him.

It's hard for people to believe, and maybe a bit humbling to some, but it seems that some animals like music.

Defending the undefendable

2009-04-30T06:10:00.000+09:00

I always wonder how people would defend their positions on issues in which science conflicts with religion, if they were to admit that they were wrong. For example, if some god appears to me tomorrow and tells me that it made everything and that I should stop believing in what science says, then after I change my beliefs, I would have no problem defending my previous position like this:

"Well, the evidence pointed in that direction, and the best I could do was to use my reasoning ability to make sense of what facts I saw around me. I was wrong, and my reasoning failed me."

But what defence could the religious fundamentalists offer for their beliefs if they were forced to concede to scientific knowledge? How could they defend their position, which was to ignore all the facts around us, to ignore the opinions of the most brilliant minds in the world who study these issues, to ignore what all experiments tell us to be true, and to put their faith (in the Bible's case) in an absurdly-vague book written by ignorant barbarians, thousands of years ago, and who were no better than the Taliban are today? How could they possibly defend that level of insane stupidity and willful ignorance, except to come out and say:

"I was an insanely stupid and willfully ignorant person."

Who to turn to?

2009-04-26T18:04:00.004+09:00

Isn't it nice to know that at a time like now, when a potentially pandemic flu virus is spreading, that the world is turning to biological scientists for information and plans, rather than turning to ridiculous 'holy' books?

How does that make you backwards, religious types feel? These scientists are the same people you heap scorn upon because the Universe doesn't seem to mesh with your fictional, ancient books. When the time of need comes, the people in charge don't want your religious guidance or theological debate. They want things like genetic analysis and models of virus transmission in populations, both of which biology can provide. Seems the world isn't too interested in what your religious positions are, despite your claims about how many answers you have.

But if you're so inclined, do leave a comment and tell us your opinion about why your magic buddy(ies) made this new virus. I'd love to have a laugh at your expense.

Don't respect people who think we're going to hell

2009-04-15T16:07:00.001+09:00

**This post has its own little history. When I first wrote it, I thought it might be over the line of decency, even to use as a hypothetical example to make a point. So I asked the Godless Bastard what he thought, and after a few days, even he decided it wasn't appropriate for posting. If you've ever read his page, you'll know that when the Godless Bastard thinks a post has gone over the line, you know you've really gone too far! So I decided to post it with the vulgar and disturbing part omitted. I'll mark the location where the cut was made, and I think you'll get the point without having it there.

I always wonder why, when atheists call Christians stupid, mindless retards, the Christians get upset and say we should respect their religion. Yet they don't seem to see a problem with telling atheists that we deserve the absolute worst thing that can possibly happen to a person (ie. to be tortured forever in their hell), and don't even mind coming and knocking on the doors of our homes just to tell us that.

When challenged with this line of thinking, Christians have been known to respond along the lines of, "Why would you be offended if you don't believe in hell anyway?"

The thing that they don't understand is that it doesn't matter whether or not we believe in it. THEY DO BELIEVE IN IT, and so they are insulting us in the most serious way they know how, by telling us that we are so worthless that we deserve to go to the same place as the worst human beings who have ever lived. Shouldn't we be pissed off that they have this opinion of us? Do they deserve our respect and thanks for letting us know?

If they still fail to understand, I've written a little story to try to communicate what it feels like. The story begins with you knocking on the Christian's door. Once the door opens, you begin to talk.....

"Hello. Oh, what a beautiful little daughter you have there. I just came to your door to let you know that you're a terrible person, and deserve nothing but the worst. In order to punish you, I decided to take action against those that you love.

Last night, I broke into your home and went to your daughter's room.

(highly offensive material removed)

I made sure she knew that it happened to her because her father is a scumbag. As I walked out, I took all of the change from her piggy bank as a gratuity for my excellent servicing of her."

Now the father probably doesn't believe a word of this story, so he shouldn't be offended, right Christians? RIGHT?

Feel free to change the story, based on whether or not this person has a young son or daughter, or any other vulnerable loved ones, such as a disabled wife or elderly mother, that you could use to really make it sting.

The point is that whatever outrageous story I can come up with here is not as bad as what the Christians believe will happen to me after I die. No story I can write could be as vicious as eternal torture by a supernatural, expert pain-bringer. "You're going to go to hell" is just another way of saying, "You deserve only the worst! You're less than shit!"

So atheists, the next time a Christian tells you that you're going to hell, maybe you should tell them to go fuck themselves!

Einstein Quotes

2009-04-03T22:30:00.002+09:00

There are a lot of really dishonest Christians out there who like to try to tell us atheists that our hero, whom we worship every day, Albert Einstein, believed in a god. They like to use mined quotations, in order to warp the meaning of what Einstein actually meant.

So here is a good website you can direct them to, a list of some Einstein quotes which will leave absolutely no doubt that the man did not believe in their ridiculous Christian god, or really any other god that is involved in the lives of humans.

My current favourite Bible story

2009-03-29T10:20:00.003+09:00

This story makes me want to cringe when I hear people say they get their morals from the Bible.

Genesis 19:1-8

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, "My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way." They said, "No; we will spend the night in the town square." But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them." Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, "I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof."

Next time some Bible-thumper tells you he gets his morals from the Bible, ask him to bring you his daughters for a good, old-fashioned raping.

A god at the video store?

2009-03-25T11:59:00.005+09:00

This comment was recently posted on my Atheist's Riddle post. The original comment is in blue, and my response is in black.

I don't know why, but I have been heavily debating internally for the past few years about the existance of God. I look at religion and all of the pain and destruction that it has caused throughout the history of mankind, and science has come so far in recent times and solved so many of the great mysteries of the universe. Yet for some reason I've always had this lingering feeling of the presence of a higher power. Now I have figured one thing out for damn sure, and that is that no form of organized religion (at least any of the ones that I know about) can possibly be right. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddism, they all are built upon stories and myths that cannot possibly be completely true. Personally I think these religions are merely stories that got blown out of proportion via a giant longterm game of "telephone" throughout hundreds of generations. But I always thought that there could be something more than meets the eye.

Congrats for figuring out that the world's religions are ridiculous! I like you. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to use some sarcasm and a harsh tone further down, in order to try to get you to see that your argument is just as ridiculous. Sorry, but sarcasm is one of my best tools.

Due to a couple of extreme coincidental occurences in the past days and the fact that I read this artical when I did I feel I have no choice but to believe in a higher power watching over me.

This should be interesting.

You see, yesterday a friend of mine who's roommate is moving out in a couple of weeks asked me if I wanted to move in and take their place because I had recently been staying with my folks due to an unexpected financial crisis.
I was eager to take him up on the offer as some tension had been building between my parents and I due to the fact that they had been asking me to pay an amount of rent considerably more than the cost of my staying with them. I kind of took it as a slap in the face considering that I had fallen under some financial strife and was trying to get resituated.
Later on last night (the same night) I picked up a couple of random movies from "Family Video" (blatant corporation namedrop, sorry) and went over to my girlfriend's place and watched them. I got two movies, "No Good Deed" (two stars) and "Slingshot" (three stars). I noticed an astounding coincidence that in both movies there was a part where the main characters had to take a vehicle and switch over the license plate and it showed a close up of them screwing on the new plates with a screwdriver. Seriously rent these movies and watch them, it is a WEIRD coincidence because I had never heard of either of them before and I randomly picked them out of hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of movies. I would seriously like to get the odds on that.

You'd like to get the odds on that? Out of possibly THOUSANDS of movies (or maybe just hundreds)? Thousands is not a lot, so I'm not intimidated by this challenge. Let's try it. Hollywood copies ideas often, so let's assume that every movie in that store had one other movie in which a scene is repeated in some way. If you rented one movie, and had THOUSANDS (again, I'm not scared) of possibilities to choose from, let's say two-thousand, then you'd have a 1 in 2,000 chance of choosing that movie as your second. Those odds are not improbable. In fact, if events with these kinds of chances are possible to occur in your life once a day, then you'd have one occur every 6 years, or roughly 12 times in the lifespan of the average American. The odds of winning the lottery are often millions or tens of millions to one, but nearly every week, somebody seems to win. If an event has a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of occurring to any given person in any given day, then it will occur to 33 people in your country every single day! Is that evidence of the existence of gods? Or is it just evidence that you're not so good at probabilities?

And I really take exception to your choice of events. You think there might be a personal god watching you because you rented two movies with identical scenes from the video store?! Seriously?! Well, good to know that while this god was helping you rent movies to communicate its existence to you, it was not intervening while hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little kids in your country got raped by their daddies. Good to know it didn't intervene in the helicopter crash that killed over a dozen people in Canada, or the shootings in the US and Germany around the day you sent me this. What kind of fucked up logic are you using? People put themselves on such a pedestal that they think minor events in their little lives are more important than all of the suffering going on in the world. Their gods help them win awards or the big game, but don't seem to mind really horrific events occurring to other people.

And now today I come home from work and find out that my Dad could possbly be getting laid off of his job, the VERY DAY after my friend had asked me to move in and AND the movie coincidence.

How many people have lost their jobs in your country in the last few months? I found a figure suggesting 1.8 million jobs lost since January. And how many more are in danger of losing their job, like your dad? Another 10 million? More? So this isn't exactly exclusive company, nor an event with a low probability. Your country has been averaging more than 20,000 lost jobs every day this year, and I'll bet tens of thousands more people got the same sort of news that your father did on that day.

Then, not five minutes later I stumble upon this atheist's riddle/theist's riddle argument.

It's advertised all over the internet. I see it several times a week. It's advertised using Google AdWords, and possibly other similar systems. In order to trigger the ad, you would have had to have been reading and/or searching for content related to religion, which you seem to be confessing you have been. It wasn't a god, it was fricking Google! And I do know how you found my rebuttal to the argument. You searched for atheist's riddle in a search engine. I can see that from the tracking software. You were looking for it. You found it because I took the effort to write it, not because a god put it there for you. Although, if you want to think I'm a god, be my guest, and send money! So basically, you found content related to what you were looking for or reading about. That's what internet advertising does (is supposed to do). It gives you relevant content. There is nothing divine about this.

What does it mean?

Nothing. Well, it means that shit happens, that you're bad at probabilities, and that you can be easily convinced/duped.

Well all I can say is that it's just too many longshot occurrences in too short a span of time for me to just pass off as "a funny coincidence"

I don't agree. If people are this easy to persuade, no wonder religions have managed to dominate much of human history, and continue to hold most of the world's population hostage!

I really don't know what to say. I believe in science, I believe in evolution, I believe in progress. But after this I must say that I also believe in something unseen as well.

I'm sorry I wrote so much and take from it what you will. It is what it is. I'm out.

And no, I didn't make up a word of this. I'm not that lame.

Glad to hear it. Sorry I had to be so harsh, but you're slipping out of rational thought. I found this email to be a really weak argument, in fact, it's the weakest I've seen in a long time.

Religion feeds on fear and desperation

2009-03-21T11:07:00.001+09:00

I found this article about a new survey showing that the percentage of Christians in the United States is declining, to the benefit of the growth of atheism. The article suggests that up to 20% of Americans are now non-believers. The article was interesting for a couple of other reasons.

First, check out this asshole quote of the day:

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League said he thinks a radical shift towards individualism over the last quarter-century has a lot to do it. "The three most dreaded words are thou shalt not," he told Lou Dobbs. "Notice they are not atheists -- they are saying I don't want to be told what to do with my life."

Yeah, that's right! We don't actually not believe in fucking fairy godmothers, we just don't want to be told what to do. Fuck you, Donohue! (That rhymes)

Next, there's this:

(Tony) Perkins (of the Family Research Council) told Lou Dobbs he sees that decline easing, and he thinks soon religion will be an even greater part of people's lives. "If this poll is taken next year will the outcome be different?" he asked. "As the economy goes downward, I think people are going to be driven to religion."

Here we are! It's religion's secret weapon, their trump card, their ace-in-the-hole! Fear and desperation! As the economy around the world collapses, religions are licking their chops, waiting to feed on the scraps like the_____ that they are! (I left it blank because I couldn't think of what to write. I wanted to write dogs, but I like dogs. Then I wanted to write bottom-feeders, but as a scuba diver, I like bottom-feeding fish, too. Why do all of these popular expressions relate to animals anyway? I like animals, and there's nothing wrong with them doing what they do, so I'll just let the readers fill in the blank themselves).

Is that what people really do? When times get tough, they begin to believe in religion? Like I'd suddenly think, 'Wow, I've fallen on hard times. Best to start believing in imaginary friends. They'll make it all better.' Honestly, who does that?

It remains to be seen whether or not membership in religions increases as a result of the current problems, but one thing is for sure; religions are loving every minute of it!

I don't respect your insanity

2009-03-12T22:01:00.001+09:00

If you believe you have an invisible man on your shoulder, and you talk to it and take orders from it, I can call you insane. But if you believe that invisible man created the Universe, I'm supposed to respect it, and the government is supposed to give you tax breaks.

You may get your tax breaks, but you're not getting my respect for your insanity.

10 Questions to Ask Your Pastor

2009-03-08T18:50:00.001+09:00

Ebonmuse over at Daylight Atheism commented on a tract given to students listing ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution. In response, he posted a list of 10 questions he'd like to see Sunday School students ask their pastors:

1. Why is your god called loving or merciful when, in the Old Testament's stories of the Israelite conquest, it specifically orders its chosen people to massacre their enemies, showing no mercy to men, women, even children and animals?

2. Does it make sense to claim, as the Bible does, that wrongdoing can be forgiven by magically transferring the blame from a guilty person to an innocent one, then punishing the innocent person?

3. Why does the Bible routinely depict its god as manifesting itself in dramatic, unmistakable ways and performing obvious miracles even before the eyes of nonbelievers, when no such thing happens in the world today?

4. Why do vast numbers of Christians still believe in the imminent end of the world when the New Testament states clearly that the apocalypse was supposed to happen 2,000 years ago, during the lifetime of Jesus' contemporaries?

5. Why do Christians believe in the soul when neurology has found clear evidence that the sense of identity and personality can be altered by physical changes to the brain?

6. If it was always the god's plan to provide salvation through Jesus, why didn't it send Jesus from the very beginning, instead of confusing and misleading generations of people by setting up a religion called Judaism which it knew in advance would prove to be inadequate?

7. Since the Bible states that its god does not desire that anyone perish, but also states that the majority of humankind is going to hell, doesn't this show that the god's plan of salvation is a failure even by its own standard? If this outcome is a success, what would count as a failure?

8. Why didn't the god create human beings such that they freely desire to do good, thus removing the need to create a hell at all? (If you believe this is impossible, isn't this the state that will exist in heaven?)

9. Is it fair or rational for the god to hide itself so that it can only be known by faith, then insist that every single human being find it by picking the right one out of thousands of conflicting and incompatible religions?

10. If you had the power to help all people who are suffering or in need, at no cost or effort to yourself, would you do it? If so, why hasn't the god done this already?

Our laws are not from biblical commandments

2009-03-04T09:00:00.003+09:00

One of the most infuriating and baffling assertions that Christians make, and they make it often, is that the laws of Western developed countries are based on the 10 commandments of the Bible. They use such arguments to try to get religious monuments on the grounds of courts.

This is complete and utter bullshit! I never cease to be astounded every time this argument is presented. I'm not sure if the problem is that these Christians haven't read the commandments (or most parts of their precious Bible), or if they just have a very poor understanding of law, but our laws have very little to do with the commandments.

I used Wikipedia to help me sort out the commandments as they vary from version to version of the books, so we actually have 12 different rules to examine. More data points are always welcomed.

1. I am the lord your god.

Not even a rule, just a statement of supposed fact. No evidence to back it up.

2. You shall have no other gods before me.

Not a law.

3. You shall not make for yourself an idol.

Not a law.

4. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your god.

Not a law.

5. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Not a law.

6. Honor your father and mother.

Not a law.

7. You shall not murder.

This is a law in most countries, unless your leader tells you to go kill people from another country.

8. You shall not commit adultery.

Not a law.

9. You shall not steal.

This is a law in most countries.

10. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

This is a law in most countries, but only sometimes. It is illegal to lie about your neighbour as a witness in court, but not if you're just trashing him behind his back in social situations. In most daily situations lying is not illegal, only socially unacceptable.

11. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife.

Not a law.

12. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Not a law.

So as we see, only 2 of these rules are reasonably solid laws, with a third rule which is a law sometimes, but not in daily life. It doesn't seem to me like the laws of Western countries are based on these rules at all. If we could have only figured out about the murder, lying and stealing from the Bible, why then did the Hindus and Buddhists also figure it out? Also, why does the biblical god allow us to kill our slaves? And why can't it obey the fricking laws itself? Oh well, these questions will have to be answered another time.

Christians killing their kids is not news

2009-02-28T11:00:00.001+09:00

I meant to make this post a couple of weeks ago, but never got around to it. By now, most people will have heard the story of an 11-year old American girl who was suffering from diabetes, but whose parents wouldn't take her for medical treatment because of their fucking retarded religious beliefs. They prayed really hard though. I guess they did everything they could.

I mentioned this story to my co-worker, who grew up in the American Midwest in a religious family. He somehow managed to become an atheist. He has 2 young daughters himself, so I expected a reaction of shock or sympathy or something along those lines. But all he said was, "Let it go. This kind of thing happens all the time."

How sad is that?! It has become such a normal occurrence for hardcore Christian parents to neglect/abuse/kill their children, that it doesn't even get a reaction from this father of two little girls. I don't have any kids, and even I'm shocked. I guess for those who are close to this part of the world and these attitudes, nothing can shock you anymore.

You can read about it here, although a few excerpts are below.

Her parents were told the body would be taken to Madison for an autopsy the next day. “They responded, ’You won’t need to do that. She will be alive by then,”’

.....

Wormgoor said he had urged the father to seek medical help and was told the illness “was a test of faith for the Neumann family and asked the Wormgoors to join them in praying for Kara to get well,”

.....

“We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her. My husband Dale was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor and I said, ’The Lord’s going to heal her,’ and we continued to pray,”

.....

A day before Madeline died, according to the criminal complaint, the father wrote an e-mail with the headline, “Help our daughter needs emergency prayer!!!!.”

.....

One relative told police that the girl’s mother believed she “died because the devil is trying to stop Leilani from starting her own ministry,”

Fatherly love, insane violence and the clitoris

2009-02-26T13:09:00.005+09:00

There is some great reading over at the Atheist Experience blog today.

Check out Tracie's post, in which she explains to a father of a young girl why it can be harmful to raise his daughter in Christianity. A preview is below:

I asked this dad what he would think of a neighbor who each day sat his own kids down and told them, “I think you are all such despicable children that you deserve nothing less than to be beaten without mercy, but since I love you so much, I won’t do that to you, so long as you tell me how truly sorry you are that you’re who and what you are—utterly unworthy.”

Then check this post by Kazim (Russell), responding to a lunatic Christian who tried to argue, among other things, that the clitoris (yes, THAT clitoris) is evidence of the existence of a god. The lunatic Christian then also explains what he would do to people if he thought that his god didn't exist. A preview (written by the insane Christian, not by Russell, just to make that clear) is below:

if i didn't have God to keep me in check i know i would hurt anyone who pissed me off and kill anyone who did anything bad enough for me to want to kill them. and screw the police since i would not care about jail or the death penalty because there is no after-life. right? i'd probably kill myself afterwards anyway just to prevent them from locking me up.

Gotta love Christians! Go religious morality!

A Post About Irrelevant Things

2009-02-25T21:01:00.002+09:00

I am making this post because I think that atheists often take the wrong tactics in debating against believers. They get caught in a trap, arguing completely irrelevant points, and do not demand that the believer make arguments which are relvant to the issue.

Here are some of the common arguments made by the religious, and what I think an atheist's response should be.

1. "(insert famous scientist's name) believed in a god."

Well, that's great. This is why science examines each idea individually, and does not just take people's word for something based on their reputations. If a great scientist was right about one thing, it does not mean that they were right about other things, especially when it comes to issues outside of their area of expertise. In religion, the sheep just choose a person to listen to then accept everything he says, but science doesn't work that way. It examines ideas on their own merit.

In addition, some of the scientists who are often cited (ie. Newton) lived in an era when they did not have the proper evidence to refute ideas such as the young-Earth model. It's an extremely dishonest tactic.

If you are faced with this argument from a believer, do not try to argue the fact, regardless of whether it is true or not. You should instead make it clear that it does not matter what a scientist believed about gods, unless he had proof of it. You can explain how science is not a battle of reputations. You could also ask them to demonstrate that the scientist was correct in his assessment.

2. "Atheism/evolution leads to abortion/genocide/Communism/school shootings/(insert social-evil-of-the-week here).

Even if it's true, it doesn't matter. Not even a little bit. What certain people do with such knowledge is completely irrelevant. Anything bad, or good, which comes from knowledge of a scientific field, does nothing to influence the truth. Anybody who uses this argument is implicitly saying that the truth is not important to him, and that he would prefer to believe lies if it makes him feel good.

Believers use this argument because they have no evidence to back up their case. If faced with this argument, you should dismiss it and ask the believer if he has anything to say on the facts of the issue itself.

3. "I can prove that a god exists. The Universe must have a creator because bananas are perfect/look at the trees/DNA is a code/logic is transcendent/bacterial flagellum/(insert hand-waving-argument here)."

Congratulate the believer for actually attempting to make a relevant argument this time. Unfortunately for him, he has not proven anything, but merely made a hypothesis based on a proposed model of reality. This hypothesis has alternatives (ie. no gods), and so the believer must now actually produce the evidence needed to support his case. The typical standard for proof of the existence of an entity is to detect it, either directly, or based on its observed interaction with the things around it. In order to be considered proof, you must also exclude all other reasonable possibilities. Wish the believer good luck, and send him on his way to do years of research to prove his case.

If the believer doesn't like this reasoning, ask him if scientists should declare the existence of the Higgs Boson to be proven, just because they have hypothesised it and it fits the models. Wouldn't it be better if they actually detect it before declaring it to exist? Chances are the believer will agree with you on this.

The mistake that so many atheists make in these cases is to try to argue the truthfulness of the believer's assertions. This often leads to disaster. The problem is that there are so many, probably an infinite number, of arguments that a believer can make in this style. It is fruitless to try to argue against them all, as nobody has the knowledge necessary to do so. You cannot refute all of these points to the satisfaction of all observers. This allows the believer to make the atheist look bad in front of easily-impressed onlookers. It also distracts from the truly important point, which is that any argument of this style proves absolutely nothing. It is completely irrelevant whether or not the assumptions the believer is making are true or not, except for the final conclusion, the leap to gods. Don't get caught in this trap. Instead, attack the logic that was used and the hands that were waved. I've posted on this topic before, here and here.