The War on Christmas 2008

It's time to declare war on Christmas yet again. For 2008, there is a cool site called Why Believe in a God? And you can donate to an advertisement campaign that puts atheist ads on busses! I'm down, are you?

Nate Phelps is an Atheist

Looks like Fred couldn't keep all the sheep in the flock:

“I do declare myself an atheist now,” affirmed Nate, “although I’m willing to admit that there’s stuff in life that I’m not real clear on yet.”

Heaven the Fantasy Game

Genesis Works, LLC, is developing Heaven the Game, and from the screenshots and videos available on their website, it looks like it could actually be fun to play as well as provide lots of cool visual effects. Although I don't understand why all the female characters look like porn stars.

But this game brings up an important question: Will it increase or decrease belief in Christianity? Genesis Works, LLC, clearly takes the Bible and Christianity seriously, and they are proudly claiming a high level of Biblical accuracy in the game. So obviously this game is intended by the developer to be an evangelistic tool and not solely a fun experience.

Having said that, it needs to be noted that this is a video game, and video games are typically considered to be the realm of fantasy and make-believe. Will people take Christianity and the Bible more or less seriously when, at Amazon.com or the local GameStop, they see Heaven the Game sitting right next to games like Fable, The Lord of the Rings, and Pokemon?

Personally, I can't decide what to predict in terms of this game's effect on faith in Christ. As an optimistic atheist, I would like to think that this video game will make Heaven and the Bible seem like myths or fantasies, but I honestly can't say that it will with confidence. At any rate, the game looks technically impressive, and if it gets good reviews upon release, I might just pirate a copy of it. Ha ha!

Dear readers, what effect do you think this game will have on belief in Heaven? Let me know in the comments section below.

Christian Girls Are the Sluttiest

According to The New Yorker magazine, Christian girls have more out-of-wedlock sex, get pregnant more often, use less condoms (and get more STDs), and are generally bigger sluts than anyone else. Faith fails again!

The gulf between sexual belief and sexual behavior becomes apparent, too, when you look at the outcomes of abstinence-pledge movements. Nationwide, according to a 2001 estimate, some two and a half million people have taken a pledge to remain celibate until marriage. Usually, they do so under the auspices of movements such as True Love Waits or the Silver Ring Thing. Sometimes, they make their vows at big rallies featuring Christian pop stars and laser light shows, or at purity balls, where girls in frothy dresses exchange rings with their fathers, who vow to help them remain virgins until the day they marry. More than half of those who take such pledges—which, unlike abstinence-only classes in public schools, are explicitly Christian—end up having sex before marriage, and not usually with their future spouse. The movement is not the complete washout its critics portray it as: pledgers delay sex eighteen months longer than non-pledgers, and have fewer partners. Yet, according to the sociologists Peter Bearman, of Columbia University, and Hannah Brückner, of Yale, communities with high rates of pledging also have high rates of S.T.D.s. This could be because more teens pledge in communities where they perceive more danger from sex (in which case the pledge is doing some good); or it could be because fewer people in these communities use condoms when they break the pledge.

Dwindling Catholic Devotion is a Good Thing, Says Some Catholic

Leave it to Slate writer Harold Fickett to put a hopeful spin on a story about a dying breed. But behind the spin, this article reveals what I've been saying, and seeing, for years: Belief in religion is dwindling, and the importance of religion is also decreasing within the minds of its adherents.

Though the number of young people entering monasteries, convents, and the priesthood has drastically dropped from the mid-20th century, some new approaches to religious vocations have inspired some young people in America to embrace this idea, replenishing several of the older religious orders and filling new ones.

In other words, a smaller proportion than ever of faithful youths are trying to keep the old gray mare alive. But she ain't what she used to be.

The growth in these orders provides a striking contrast to the continuing decline in Catholic monastic and religious life generally. In 1965, there were twice as many religious priests and brothers as today. There are just one-third as many nuns. According to Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the average monk is in his early 70s, the average nun in her mid-70s. The mission of many orders has become simply caring for their aging populations as they sell properties and consolidate with others.

...

The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles are the most famous example of the combustible combination of the times and the dissatisfaction of many religious. In 1966, humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers led a series of "encounter sessions" with the sisters, urging them to seek personal fulfillment. Within the next several years, the order nearly vanished. In many orders at the time, the vow of chastity was widely ignored.

I especially like the idea of nuns abandoning their chastity vows. How deliciously blasphemous. It's like a bird unbinding its wings and, ignoring the demands of the invisible bird cage, taking flight into the clear blue sky.

Father Anderson says, "We were only a bunch of bums, but by becoming nothing, you can be a part of something great."

Way to go, Father Anderson. Tell us over and over again that the way to worthiness in life is by believing yourself to be a worthless bum. And after that, maybe you can explain to us why drenching oneself in blood will result in a "cleansing." Down is up, and up is down, and like Mr. Fickett says, there is hope for Catholicism in it's current withering on the vine of society. Yeah, right!

Bill Maher and Religulous

Salon.com has an article and interview of Bill Maher for his just-released film, Religious.

Religulous is a documentary similar to one of those Michael Moore films, but instead it's making fun of faith. I plan to see it later this week, and I encourage atheist and theists alike to see it too.

Anarchism, the New Atheism

An excellent post from Anarchy in Your Head entitled, "Anarchism, the New Atheism":

I can remember a time in my own lifetime when freedom of religion was frequently interpreted to mean you could be whatever flavor of Christian you wanted to be. In time, the language of religious freedom generally started to include non-Christian religions. It was still more time before the notion of religious freedom began to include the notion of freedom from religion altogether. Atheism used to be a much more fringe viewpoint, so much so that many people didn’t even fully understand what it meant. Atheists with the courage to speak up back when it was still a largely fringe viewpoint played a significant role in promoting freedom of religion. This applies even to those who, while not atheists themselves, held minority and perhaps unpopular religious views.

...

I see many similarities now in the emergence of anarchy as a personal view. It still appears to be a fringe viewpoint. However, just as I suspect there are and were a number of atheists who didn’t label themselves or desire to speak up and subject themselves to ridicule by a theist majority, there may now be many closet anarchists. The word “anarchy” still means chaos to the general public largely ignorant of the subject...

Go and read the rest of this excellent essay.

The Gerin Oil Anagram

Richard Dawkins wrote a scathing attack on Gerin Oil (aka religion). It promted some disturbed Gerin Oil/religion addict to write Dawkins a very angry letter in response. Interestingly, the ornery theist's letter only seems to confirm Dawkin's criticisms, similar to Muslims who call for the beheading of anyone who accuses Islam of being violent.

Richard's article text:

Gerin Oil
by Richard Dawkins
Gerin Oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of symptoms, often of an anti-social or self-damaging nature. It can permanently modify the child brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions which are hard to treat. The four doomed flights of September 11th 2001 were Gerin Oil trips: all nineteen of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time. Historically, Geriniolism was responsible for atrocities such as the Salem Witch Hunts and the massacres of Native South Americans by Conquistadores. Gerin Oil fuelled most of the wars of the European Middle Ages and, in more recent times, the carnage that attended the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent and of Ireland.

Gerin Oil intoxication can drive previously sane individuals to run away from a normally fulfilled human life and retreat to closed communities of confirmed addicts. These communities are usually limited to one sex only, and they vigorously, often obsessively, forbid sexual activity. Indeed, a tendency towards agonized sexual prohibition emerges as a drably recurring theme amid all the colourful variations of Gerin Oil symptomatology. Gerin Oil does not seem to reduce the libido per se, but it frequently leads to a preoccupation with reducing the sexual pleasure of others. A current example is the prurience with which many habitual 'Oilers' condemn homosexuality.

As with other drugs, refined Gerin Oil in low doses is largely harmless, and can serve as a lubricant on social occasions such as marriages, funerals, and state ceremonies. Experts differ over whether such social tripping, though harmless in itself, is a risk factor for upgrading to harder and more addictive forms of the drug.

Medium doses of Gerin Oil, though not in themselves dangerous, can distort perceptions of reality. Beliefs that have no basis in fact are immunized, by the drug's direct effects on the nervous system, against evidence from the real world. Oil-heads can be heard talking to thin air or muttering to themselves, apparently in the belief that private wishes so expressed will come true, even at the cost of other people's welfare and mild violation of the laws of physics. This autolocutory disorder is often accompanied by weird tics and hand gestures, manic stereotypies such as rhythmic head-nodding toward a wall, or Obsessive Compulsive Orientation Syndrome' (OCOS: facing towards the east five times a day).

Gerin Oil in strong doses is hallucinogenic. Hardcore mainliners may hear voices in the head, or experience visual illusions which seem to the sufferers so real that they often succeed in persuading others of their reality. An individual who convincingly reports high-grade hallucinations may be venerated, and even followed as some kind of leader, by others who regard themselves as less fortunate. Such follower-pathology can long post-date the original leader's death, and may expand into bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of 'drinking the blood and eating the flesh' of the leader.

Chronic abuse of Geriniol can lead to 'bad trips', in which the user suffers terrifying delusions, including fears of being tortured, not in the real world but in a postmortem fantasy world. Bad trips of this kind are bound up with a morbid punishment-lore which is as characteristic of this drug as the obsessive fear of sexuality already noted. The punishment-culture fostered by Gerin Oil ranges from 'smack' through 'lash' to getting 'stoned' (especially adulteresses and rape victims), and 'demanifestation' (amputation of one hand), up to the sinister fantasy of allo-punishment or 'cross-topping', the execution of one individual for the sins of others.

You might think that such a potentially dangerous and addictive drug would head the list of proscribed intoxicants, with exemplary sentences handed out for pushing it. But no, it is readily obtainable anywhere in the world and you don't even need a prescription. Professional traffickers are numerous, and organized in hierarchical cartels, openly trading on street corners and in purpose-made buildings. Some of these cartels are adept at fleecing poor people desperate to feed their habit. 'Godfathers' occupy influential positions in high places, and they have the ear of Royalty, of Presidents and Prime Ministers. Governments don't just turn a blind eye to the trade, they grant it tax-exempt status. Worse, they subsidize schools founded with the specific intention of getting children hooked.


I was prompted to write this article by the smiling face of a happy man in Bali. He was ecstatically greeting his death sentence for the brutal murder of large numbers of innocent holidaymakers whom he had never met, and against whom he bore no personal grudge. Some people in the court were shocked at his lack of remorse. Far from remorse, his response was one of obvious exhilaration. He punched the air, delirious with joy that he was to be 'martyred', to use the jargon of his group of abusers. Make no mistake about it, that beatific smile, looking forward with unalloyed pleasure to the firing squad, is the smile of a junkie. Here we have the archetypal mainliner, doped up with hard, unrefined, unadulterated, high-octane Gerin Oil.

Whatever your view of the vengeance and deterrence theories of capital punishment, it should be obvious that this case is special. Martyrdom is a strange revenge against those who crave it, and, far from deterring, it always recruits more martyrs than it kills. The important point is that the problem would not arise in the first place if children were protected from getting hooked on a drug with such a bad prognosis for their adult minds.

Now click here to see an image of the afterlife-addict's response (via Pharyngula).

Offspring Murder Club: Prayer Never Ever Works

Prayer never works. Just ask Javon Thompson and 1 Mind Ministries:

Baltimore, MD and Philadelphia, PA - When Javon Thompson died, he was only about 18 months old. Sometime between December 2006 and February 2007, the toddler was killed and left in a green suitcase in a shed in Philadelphia. Little Javon was starved to death by the members of his mother’s cult because he wouldn’t - or couldn’t - say “Amen” at mealtime prayers. Now Javon’s mother, Ria “Princess Marie” Ramkissoon, and four other cult members are charged with his murder.

Queen Antoinette’s punishment for Javon not saying “Amen” was simply to withhold food and water until the next meal, when he was given a chance to say it again. When he couldn’t or wouldn’t comply, Javon got no food and water for that meal either. At no time did Ria Ramkissoon pick up her baby and get the hell out of there. At no time did anyone call for medical assistance. The group watched baby Javon’s eyes go dark. They watched him dehydrate and starve. And they watched him die.

Once Javon was dead, Queen Antoinette put him in a room and told the cult members that God would resurrect the toddler. But she was apparently unclear on the resurrection process, and Javon did not come back to life.

Unclear on the resurrection process? Quite. Specifically, she was unclear that resurrection doesn't happen, and prayer never does shit!

What a stupid bunch of people. Jevon would have been better off if he were put in a basket and floated down a river than left in the care of his own mother, that's how bad Ria's brainwashing was.

Ria made an incredibly stupid series of mistakes. First of all, she believed in and prioritized her religion and her God over her own child (the mere fact that all religions require you to prioritize the faith over your own family should have been a big enough warning). Secondly, she made the mistake of thinking that prayer can somehow override the need for food. Third, she mistakenly thought that prayer could overcome the biological facts surrounding death. For these reasons, Ria Ramkissoon and 1 Mind Ministries are the newest members of the Offspring Murder Club!

Holy shit. A fully grown adult woman was unable to discern the facts of reality and, despite her good intentions (trying to bring her baby closer to God), she was unable to properly care for her baby's life. Indeed, she was the direct cause of the death of her baby. I think some well known words of wisdom are appropriate here: Good people do good things, and evil people do evil things, but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion!

The Offspring Murder Club is only a couple years old, and its membership roster is already bursting at the seams. Why don't we try to convince people to stop applying for membership in this club? Why don't we help spread the word that this is not a good club to belong to? Why don't we teach people to Kill the Afterlife, and kill prayer, rather than kill children?

God the Terrorist

Someone is suing God for making terrorist threats:

A Nebraska Senator who filed a lawsuit against God appeared in court Tuesday and ordered the defendant to "cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats."

...

The lawsuit accuses God "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent." It says God has caused "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like."

Apparently the lawsuit is only an exercise to show some point about frivolous lawsuits, and isn't really meant to criticize religion. Bummer. But it's still funny to see the concept of god being put on trial.

California Invokes God's Wrath

As I was walking back to the office from my lunch break moments ago, I witnessed firsthand God's righteous wrath. God struck Southern California with a magnitude 5.8 earthquake, and it is painfully obvious that He did so because of California's recent legalization of gay marriage.

Unfortunately for God, there are not yet any reports of queer-deaths. It seems that He may have missed, or only have given us a "warning," which means that He will likely strike again with even greater vengeance.

Attention all queer-hating, Abrahamic-religion-believers: What should I as an atheist do now to protect myself from future earthquake-assaults from God almighty? And has God given you any revelations or hints as to when and where he will hit us next for our gay-marriage-allowing ways? Please, please provide a response to these questions in the comments section below. Do it for your fellow human beings that they might be saved from future earthquake-wrath attacks from omnibenevolent God!

LOL Cat Bible

Some LOLCat fans have been translating the Holy Bible into LOLCatSpeak.

Let's take a look at Genesis Chapter 1

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.
2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

Finally, a Bible that makes sense!