The plague of religion

Biblical Fraud

2011-08-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, a factless, baseless, frequently falsified, mistranslated and fallible 5000 year old story book written by desert savages tells you. That makes all the difference. Want to try again maybe?

Mood: contemplative

Religion: look closer

2011-03-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Religion.
At first sight it might seem impressive, but just take a closer look.
Don't let religion fool you.

Mood: amused

Rule 666

2011-03-02T05:23:00.000-08:00

If it exists, Christians have raped it, tortured it, murdered it or lied about it.

No exceptions.

~ Weston Lockley

Mood: cynical

Islam: another barbaric Abrahamic cult in action

2010-10-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

Young woman whose nose and ears were cut of by her husband,
a vicious Muslim, because he thinks Islam,
the religion of "peace" gives him the right.

Mood: nauseated

Criminals remain at large

2010-10-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

Victims of rape by Catholic priests protesting during visit of the criminal
Joseph Ratzinger, the lying pope, to Great Britain on September 18th, 2010.

Mood: cynical

Yes, why?

2010-10-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

Mood: giggly

Prayer

2010-10-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

“That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken — such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Anti-Christ”

Mood: okay

Death and destruction

2010-10-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

Mood: uncomfortable

Love, sex and god

2010-10-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

~ Butch Hancock

Mood: cheerful

Catholics

2010-09-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

Mood: aggravated

Balls

2010-09-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Atheism is also a religion. You believe in the non-existence of god. You can't prove god doesn't exist.

Yes, atheism is a religion, but without a church, without even an organization, without rules, without altar boys, without a pope, without things to believe in for no reason at all and most importantly without a made up god.

Ah, I "believe" in the non-existence of god. Note that theists will suddenly use the qualification "believe" in the sense of "you just believe it but you can't be sure". At the same time they are right, just because they happen to believe so. When applied to us atheists, belief is suddenly something ridiculous, naive and credulous. It is not even the case. I just ask: where is your proof? At least give me some evidence. Don't ramble on about your god and your storybook in ever more preposterous circles.

They collect stamps. I don't see the particular excitement of collecting stamps. You're also a collector, they say. Of non-stamps.

No, I can't prove there isn't such a being as a god. Neither can I prove that invisible pink unicorns don't exist or that they didn't create the world by accidentally bumping into each other. Ridiculous? Let me ask you: do you know everything? No? I thought so. How can you really be sure that they don't exist? You can't. That's not even the point. The question is how likely is it? Both the pink invisible unicorns and the Abrahamic god have about as much likelihood of existing as if you were to go out now, buy a lottery ticket and win the grand prize. And buy another one the next day and again win the grand prize. And so on for all the remaining days of your life. Theoretically it could happen, but how likely is it? Don't count on it for your retirement plan is my advice.

The cartoon above — not mine; it's floating around the Internet — is very clear. Maybe I should add that I myself make no claim whatsoever of having or not having a baseball. I owe no explanation. I don't have to prove anything. Those who claim to have a baseball, however, most certainly do.

So theists, quit your whining, your aggressive and obnoxious insistence upon your made up god and most of all, don't try to force your barbaric, cruel rules as substitutes for decent morals upon us, sane people.

Show us your balls.

Mood: accomplished

Believe nothing

2010-09-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

~ Gautama Buddha

Mood: contemplative

You have no right

2010-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

“You have no right to erect your tollgate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the alters of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire; have all forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your liberty in your own way but extend to all others the same right.”

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Mood: creative

Clitoris or Islam?

2010-09-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that I'm not so much against religion as a Christianity basher.

I assure you nothing could be further from the truth: I'm an equal opportunity religion basher. Really, I find them all vile, detrimental, nefarious and devoid of any redeeming quality. In fact, I think they are all growing pains — here's looking at you, kid, yes, you Kirk Cameron, you lying has-been-cutie — of the human race. Whenever we will have rid ourselves of these brutal superstitions we will have entered young adulthood as a species.

So, to prove my point, here's a picture of a young woman protesting the cruelty inspired by male insecurity and translated into that other ridiculous pile of backward garbage: Islam.

Mood: peaceful

Light

2010-09-25T11:02:00.001-07:00

Mood: nerdy

Biblical values

2010-09-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Mood: giggly

A bloody good read

2010-09-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

“Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition — then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness, and purity to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.”

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Mood: creative

No taste

2010-09-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

Mood: quixotic

Religion can't hear you

2010-09-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

"Every day the voice of atheism grows louder, more confident, backed by ever increasing evidence, reason and logic. Every day the religious respond by sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “La! La! La! La! La!"

~ Alan Harvey

Mood: surprised

Just say no

2010-09-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Mood: pleased

Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity

2010-09-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt, taken out of the full text of the speech that Richard Dawkins planned to give at the London rally against the Pope, September 18th , 2010. The speech as actually delivered in Whitehall was much shorter, mostly because the rally was so huge (an estimated 15,000) that the speeches started late and had to be curtailed.

Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.

He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be raped and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the church itself.

He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the sort of bigotry that his church used to reserve for Jews.

He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties. What other employer is allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, when filling a job that manifestly doesn’t require physical strength or some other quality that only males might be thought to have?

He is an enemy of truth, promoting barefaced lies about condoms not protecting against AIDS, especially in Africa.

He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed, and so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty that sits ill with the obscene riches of the Vatican.

He is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem-cell research, on grounds not of morality but of pre-scientific superstition.

Less seriously from my point of view, Ratzinger is even an enemy of the Queen’s own church, arrogantly endorsing a predecessor's dissing of Anglican Orders as “absolutely null and utterly void”, while shamelessly trying to poach Anglican vicars to shore up his own pitifully declining priesthood.

Finally, perhaps of most personal concern to me, he is an enemy of education. Quite apart from the lifelong psychological damage caused by the guilt and fear that have made catholic education infamous throughout the world, he and his church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence is a less reliable basis for belief than faith, tradition, revelation and authority – his authority.

Mood: peaceful

Catholic smear campaign

2010-09-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

Mood: lazy

Criminal becomes insane

2010-09-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Joseph Ratzinger, a liar, child rapist protector and hate monger who ignorantly endangers countless lives, has added a new absurdity to his long, long list of inanities.

It is to be feared he has become completely insane.

As usual, the silly old fool, abusing an invitation, brought his message of hate and intolerance. Some Christians have whined that Britain should receive the pope with civility and as an honored guest. OK, but the first prerequisite for that is that your guest behaves with a modicum of decency and doesn't call his hosts, who have paid for his costly trip, Nazis.

In a speech, and miraculously keeping a straight face, this blatant liar and slanderer raped history. Well, better history than minors, I suppose.

"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live."

Ah, yes, the Jews and homosexuals and gypsies and communists. With some of these groups Ratzinger himself has a few problems. Maybe he even thinks that in this instance the Nazis had the right idea and that they are indeed unfit to live. You know, old habits die hard. After all, the Roman Catholic church used to cruelly torture and murder gays and all kinds of dissidents without the least pity.

But, eradicate your god? I don't think so. Both Hitler and Mussolini were staunch defenders of Roman Catholicism of which Ratzinger is the current pope.

"I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives."

Another bald faced lie. The Nazi regime was supported by the pope, the cardinals, the clergy and most Roman Catholics. Granted there were a few, a very few exceptions, but generally speaking Nazism and Catholicism were on great terms. In earlier posts I gave some evidence for that and it is literally plastered all over the internet, but for good measure I'll give some visual evidence.

Jozef Ratzinger, the later Benedict XVI,
standing up against Nazi tyranny
in his Nazi Luftwaffe uniform

Priests expressing their disgust for the Nazi regime
by bringing the Nazi salute

Atheist Adolf Hitler witnessing
atheist Hermann Goering's wedding
as best man in Berlin cathedral

Roman Catholic cardinal endangering his life
heroically fighting Adolf Hitler in person

Adolf Hitler trembling while
papal nuncio cardinal Orsenigo
speaks the truth in love to him
at the peril of his life

Shield of the atheist Nazi Luftwaffe

Atheist belt buckle the atheist Nazi regime
forced every soldier to wear

"As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”.

Except, Ratzinger, statistics and scientific research contradict you. It is the most secular nations that are the happiest, have the fewest abortions, though they are legal there, teenage pregnancies and incidences of rape. Actually: if you don't want your children to be raped, you'd better move out of Christian neighborhoods, and, most of all, keep them out of the claws of Catholic predatory priests.

It is religion that has always been an insult to human dignity. It is Roman Catholicism that has tortured people, murdered them and generally tried to keep them ignorant and poor, because it is a vile superstition, inimical to life since it focuses upon an imagined afterlife.

Some Catholic person wrote on the BBC News website Have Your Say (comment #1294)

"I was taught as a child that often when people insult and belittle it is more of a reflection on their weaknesses, than a comment on the people they insult. This adage has been proven only too true if the comments on this site from those against religion,are anything to go by. I would urge them to follow another rule from my childhood; if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

She had better written to Ratzinger. If any insulting and belittling was done, it was by him. I agree, however, that it is a reflection on his weakness.

But on the whole I think Ratzinger is doing great.

He lied and continues lying about the rape of minors in his unholy institution, about AIDS prevention, and now he has lied about Adolf Hitler being an atheist, while actually he was a Roman Catholic. Everybody knows that the Catholic Church collaborated with the fascist regime of Mussolini. It is in fact why Vatican City is a state, marginally less ridiculous than Disneyland, and why he is received today as a head of state instead of being arrested as the criminal that he is.

His preposterous lies have taken on such dimensions that we can hope there will come a day nobody will take him or his crime gang serious anymore. He is singlehandedly destroying a two thousand year old outrage. It's almost like watching a train wreck. Very good.

As Napoleon Bonaparte said: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

And another. And another.

Mood: nauseated

Criminal sighted in Scotland

2010-09-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

The criminal Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Benedict XVI, has landed in Scotland to preach his message of hate and intolerance.

Ratzinger is the foolish old liar who claims condoms not only don't protect against AIDS but actually cause AIDS. All scientist disagree with him. All statistics contradict this. He himself has no scientific degree. It is an obvious, malignant, harmful and murderous lie. Yet, this disgusting deceiver continues endangering people's lives in the name of some superstition.

Ratzinger is also the criminal who knew child abuse was rampant in his organization, had the power to do something about it, but did exactly nothing. Instead he actively helped — not the victims, that would just be silly — to cover up the rape of children by the clergy of his unholy institution.

Everyone has the right to believe what nonsense he pleases and to worship, in his or her own time, whatever deity they prefer, but superstitions, even if you call them religion and you truly, honestly believe in them, don't have the right to undermine others or discriminate against them. They certainly don't have the right to endanger lives in the name of some Bronze Age set of rules. The Catholic Church has raped, tortured and murdered enough already throughout history.

Ratzinger is mad enough to think he has some moral values to "teach" us. The thought alone is revolting and ridiculous in the extreme. You could as well ask advice about peaceful negotiating from Attila the Hun.

He landed in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The country, part of the United Kingdom has about 5.2 million inhabitants, of which at least 2 million "are good without god". That is nearly 40%, but it is only an estimate and the true figure is believed to be much higher. In 2009, Asma Jahangir, The UN Special Rapporteur on Faith and Belief, estimated that the actual figure is around 66%.

If you live in the UK, you can get a free sticker. Click on the banner.

The spokeswoman of the Humanist Society Scotland, Juliet Wilson said, "Although the Pope is welcome to visit Scotland as an individual, the Humanist Society of Scotland opposes the state visit because he actively opposes democracy and human rights. We know from last week's Theos poll that 80% of Scots agree with us, and we know that fewer than 80,000 people will travel to see the Pope in Glasgow."

Juliet Wilson: "As we say, if you’re not religious, for god’s sake say so!"

Mood: peaceful

Where did you come from?

2010-09-15T05:04:00.000-07:00

Mood: giggly

Nothing is sacred to religion

2010-09-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Mood: annoyed

Peace

2010-09-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

Mood: peaceful

Abuse by church in Belgium

2010-09-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

Distressing details have come to light about abuse of children by the clergy of the Catholic Church in Belgium. The crimes were endemic and were rife in every diocese without exception. It is also thought that child abuse occurred in every Catholic school.

At least thirteen victims have taken their own life. The actual figure is unknown: it could very easily run into the hundreds. A seventy year old man told a reporter that he still had nightmares, twice a week, about what was done to him some sixty years ago by a priest.

At first sight the majority of the Belgians seem to be Catholic. Like always, Christians are lying. Somewhat less than half come into a church about three times in their lifespan: when they are born to get baptized, to get married and to be buried. Those numbers are dwindling every year.

In the late 1950's regular attendance of Sunday mass was over 60%. In 2008 this figure was barely 5%, and the church admits it is losing about 0.5% every year. That might be a lot more in 2010.

The Catholic Democratic Party had an absolute majority in the 1950's. It barely got 16,15% of the votes in the elections of 2010. That this figure isn't even lower is probably partly because the party has changed the "Catholic"-part of it's name into "Christian" and even so almost never emphasizes it.

The scandal of the child abuse has rippled through the nation. Not only the facts are shocking, but the subsequent efforts of the church to cover up the filth instead of doing something about it are equally despicable.

L'Anglophone writes (on September 2, 2010):

"According to secretly-recorded tapes made public, a former leader of Belgium's Catholic church advised a victim of sexual abuse to remain silent until after the retirement of the perpetrator, who was both the victim's uncle and the Bishop of Bruges.

The first of the two tapes, both of which were made public last weekend in the Flemish dailies De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, is of a conversation on April 8th, 2010 between three people: the victim, whose name has not been made public; Robert Joseph Vangheluwe, 73, (right) the former bishop of Bruges; and Cardinal Godfried Danneels, 77, (left) the former archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. Church authorities have verified the tapes' authenticity.

On the first tape, the victim is encouraged to either accept a private apology and remain silent, or to wait until Vangheluwe's retirement in 2011. 'The bishop will resign next year, so actually it would be better for you to wait. I don’t think you’d do yourself or him a favor by shouting this from the rooftops,' said the cardinal, adding later in the conversation, 'I don't know whether it would be to your advantage to make a lot of noise about it. Neither for you, nor for him.'

When the cardinal warned the victim against blackmailing the church and dragging Vangheluwe's name 'through the mud,' the victim replied, 'He has dragged my whole life through the mud, from age 5 until 18. Why do you feel sorry for him and not for me?'"

What did the poor man expect? Compassion from Catholics?

Last week, under the continuing pressure of the indignant public opinion, the cardinal confessed he had made an error of judgment. He made an error of judgment? How about he committed a crime? This systematic, deliberate choice of giving precedence to the "good" name of the church over the suffering of the victims is not only the pinnacle of cruelty, it has prevented any action being taken to keep perpetrators from continuing to sexually molest children. His decision has undoubtedly cost lives.

Real people have suffered horribly to protect a superstition.

Cardinal Danneels, once thought to be a possible pope, has shown us the true face of his merciless and callous institution. It is not as if he didn't know about these monstrous crimes. He just ignored them in a way that can be called nothing less than inhumanly cruel and criminal.

Father Rik Devillé, an advocate for victims of abuse by priests, said he tried to warn cardinal Danneels about the bishop’s abuse of his nephew 14 years ago, but was berated by the cardinal for doing so. This was even reported in The New York Times. Father Devillé was one of the founders of the organization Human Rights in the Church, which assisted more than 300 young victims of priest pedophilia between 1992 and 1998.

Vangheluwe did not wait to retire until 2011. About two weeks after the meeting, after a friend of the victim threatened to make the case pubic, the bishop resigned on April 23th, and admitted he had sexually abused "a boy in my entourage" two decades earlier. Despite this he will not face prosecution because the statute of limitations on his crimes has run out. The tactics of Catholic Church to intimidate the victims into silence have proven once more effective.

The Vatican accepted Vangheluwe's resignation in June, but said nothing publicly before Belgian police raided church properties on June 24th. Then it raged furiously. Cardinal Bertone angrily told reporters that not even communist states dared to treat church authorities and church property in this way. He summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Vatican and handed him a formal protest note.

It is doubtful this will have made much of an impression on Belgian authorities. In 2009, the Belgian parliament made a formal diplomatic protest to the Vatican over the Pope's remarks about the use of condoms to combat Aids. The Vatican rejected the Belgian protest as an "attempt to silence the Pope's moral teaching".

Moral teachings?

Are these criminals telling us they have anything to teach us about morality? Let's see.

Sexually abuse children
Threaten them to remain silent
React furiously when your vile crimes are found out
Hypocritically try to make yourself look as the victim
Tell people condoms are not safe, jeopardizing the lives of millions (since you know better than all scientists in the world)
Call yourself "holy"

The truth is the average sewer rat has a higher moral standard than the Catholic Church. The truth is no other organization could have committed such despicable, vile crimes without being shut down.

The Catholic Church is a criminal organization and should be treated as such. Their officials should be treated like Mafia dons. They belong behind bars pending long and thorough investigations into their crimes.

Johnny Cash comes to mind when he sung about San Quentin Prison:

May you rot and burn in hell.
May your walls fall and may I live to tell.
May all the world forget you ever stood.
And may all the world regret you did no good.

Mood: nauseated

Gay marriage

2010-09-11T03:55:00.000-07:00

Mood: flirty

Religion teaches hate

2010-09-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

Mood: melancholy

Abuse prevented

2010-09-09T02:20:00.000-07:00

This would be funny, were it not that it is what these sick, perverted criminals actually seem to think.

Mood: sick

Atheism is looking at the world objectively

2010-09-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that god doesn’t exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as part of nature."

~ Carl Sagan

Mood: pensive

Catholicism: a shining example for Nazism

2010-09-07T00:28:00.000-07:00

Adolf Hitler admired Catholicism. The ostentatious richness of its rituals, its longevity, its spreading of hatred for anybody who doesn't conform, its dogmatism, its claims to universal domination and, last but not least, its strict hierarchical management: it all appealed to the Führer.

Nazi propaganda poster: Adolf Hitler is pictured as a messiah.
Notice the dove and the beam of light out of heaven.

"For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? (...) Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. (...) it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith."

~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume 2, Chapter 5

Is it any wonder Catholics loved Nazism? Of course not, as systems to deceive and subjugate people they used practically the same methods.

Mood: nauseated

Religions of peace?

2010-09-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Mood: grumpy

Sometimes Jesus talks sense

2010-09-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

Mood: naughty

Cruel Bible

2010-09-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Mood: blah

Santa isn't real

2010-09-03T00:27:00.000-07:00

"It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities."

~ H. L. Mencken

Mood: accomplished

New atheist

2010-09-02T00:30:00.000-07:00

Mood: giddy

Psychotic

2010-09-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

"To have an invisible friend at the age of eight is charming and not a cause for concern. To have an invisible friend in adulthood is however a cause for concern and could be considered psychotic. So how exactly does giving them the name of a deity change that opinion?"

~ Phil Slattery

Mood: chipper

Jesus likes to spank you

2010-08-31T02:21:00.000-07:00

Jesus saves. He also spanks. That's, scientifically speaking, what it means to be sick. The good lord himself is giving you a few slaps on the butt. Which you deserved.

Don't, I repeat, don't go to a doctor. Pray and ask why. That will make you all better.

"Not fair," I hear Christians grumbling, "we don't teach that nonsense anymore."

We can't be sure that is true. They're Christians after all, so there is a rather high probability they are lying.

Even if they're not in this particular instance, they're teaching children other nonsense. Like that pile of debilitating absurdities they call Creationism. Or those cruel, made up myths out of that great collection of amoral horror stories, the Bible. Just to give them some healthy nightmares.

With this kind of attitude to science and reality in general, is it any wonder that the Bible Belt States are not only the most religious, but at the same time the ones with the highest incidence of teenage pregnancies and abortions? Coincidence? Of course not.

Maybe it is the combination of having no morals and no education.

It also goes to show that Christians will lie to you about the most simple things. Not only is this a ridiculous perversion of what illness is, but the mind also staggers at what poor Jesus must be going through on a daily basis.

So many little kids, cute boys and girls, hundreds of thousands of them, to spank on their rosy butts. What is he? Some Catholic Superpriest?

Christians, what will they think of next?

Mood: giggly

Religion is a trick

2010-08-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Mood: creative

Is faith the only basis for morality?

2010-08-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Christians like to argue that we need objective moral standards and that only faith, their faith of course, can give them.

There is so much wrong with that statement and its wild claims that it would take a book, a very thick one, or even several to just explore how wildly ridiculous this is.

Maybe that is why this argument had such a staunch supporter in Adolf Hitler.

Hitler argues that "the existing denominations", mainly Catholicism and the Protestant Churches, offer the only basis for a moral outlook on life. For this good Christian the world itself would be "inconceivable" without faith. Of course he recognizes its use for the masses. Guess why that is?

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people especially, faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life. The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us to think that they might usefully replace the existing denominations."

~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume 1, Chapter 10

Adolf Hitler and fan

Interestingly enough, Hitler here makes the link between fanaticism, hysteria, upheavals and faith.

"Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward."

~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume 1, Chapter 12

Mood: pensive

Keep it to yourself already

2010-08-28T03:09:00.000-07:00

Mood: bouncy

Religion is fear

2010-08-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."

~ Bertrand Russell

in Why I am not a Christian (1907)

Mood: geeky

The church loves kids... too much

2010-08-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

The catholic church: raping the minds and bodies of kids and still having the arrogance to pretend to teach you what is right or wrong.

Mood: melancholy

The vicious lies of Joseph Ratzinger

2010-08-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

The mind boggles: Joseph Ratzinger, a known criminal and vicious liar, boss of an organization that in its sad, long history has committed literally every atrocity known to mankind accuses Atheism of the very appalling cruelties his own unholy gang has committed over and over again.

The appalling immorality of christians and in particular the shameless lies of catholics never cease to amaze.

Mood: aggravated

Objective moral sandwich

2010-08-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Some people seem to think we need so called objective moral values.

I wonder where they get that idea? I also wonder where they would get those so called objective values?

I think moral values will always be relative to human understanding. Our best chances lie in good education and trying to better the general living conditions. Rich people don't fight as much. Not themselves anyway.

The Golden Rule seems to be a good point to start: "Treat others like you would want to be treated yourself." Or one of the variations. Or even Weston's Iron Corollary: "Try not to be too much of a dick." Add some logic and humanistic values and you're on your way.

Christians seem to think that the Bible is the source of moral values. I sure hope not, what with all the slavery, smiting of innocent children, human sacrifices and other disgusting, horrible stuff the insecure tribal desert deity of that book seems to insist upon.

What a weird idea to try to get your moral values from barbarians out of the Bronze Age. Oh, christians will tell you, that was the Old Testament. The objective, eternal moral values were revised in the New Testament. The Bible 2.0. The eternal, objective moral values in that part are totally different from the objective, eternal values in that other part. They are also somewhat more humane. Which seems logical, as humanity had progressed some three thousand years between the writing of the two.

But in that addendum to the immutable moral values, the spokesperson seems to say that all the laws and regulations of the Old Testament are still very valid. And even the New Testament is some two thousand years old by now. Isn't it time for a new version? The Bible 3.0? The Latest Testament?

Or are we such a sorry lot that we haven't learned anything in those two millennia?

Actually, the so called objective moral values are nothing of the kind. They are just a reflection of how a sourpuss, aggressive dictator with stomach ulcers would try to keep a backward, primitive and violent tribe in check.

The rules are furthermore confusing, often downright ridiculous, cruel and absurd. They tend to be self-contradictory as well.

Actually, the Bible is a gigantic moral salad bar and not only the more than 33,800 christian sects, but practically all christians, just fill their plate with the bits they find most tasty.

Let's face it: as a source of moral values the Bible stinks.

And do you really need it?

If I have two sandwiches and across the table sits someone who hasn't eaten in three days and has no sandwich, is it really that hard to figure out what I should do?

Does it really matter that maybe he was too lazy, too stupid or just too unlucky to get his own sandwich?

I will give him one of my two sandwiches.

It will prevent unnecessary aggression. It will prevent him trying to mug me to steal my sandwiches. He will probably see that two people, two sandwiches, each a sandwich, is a fair solution to his own problems.

But actually, that's not even it.

I just won't be able to enjoy my sandwich with someone sitting at the other side of the table, looking on with saliva running out of his mouth and stomach aches from being hungry.

And even that is not it.

It just is the right thing to do. Somebody is hungry. I have the means to do something about it. So I do it.

That isn't difficult, is it?

I don't need some ancient collection of reprehensible desert stories to tell me that. I don't need some savage, bloodthirsty dictator with a penchant for torture to scare me into doing that. And it doesn't exactly make you respectable in my eyes if you do.

Yes, I might like to keep my second sandwich for myself.

I doubt however that I will go hungry.

I'll feast on the look in his eyes.

Mood: thankful

Ignorant superstition

2010-08-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."

~ Isaac Asimov

Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994

"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."

~ Isaac Asimov

attributed, source unknown

Mood: annoyed

The Marcus Aurelius vow

2010-08-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self‐delusion and ignorance which does harm."

~ Marcus Aurelius

Roman Emperor (121 - 180)

Mood: contemplative

New Atheist

2010-08-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

"I wonder: if I tell my christian friend "Hang on to your dreams", am I being a nice, a mean or just an uncaring Atheist?

~ Weston Lockley

Mood: curious

Evil Atheists

2010-08-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

If they manage to stay out of the claws of religion, they will grow up to be happy, balanced individuals.

Mood: hopeful

Religious leeching

2010-08-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

"Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it plows no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Mood: indifferent

Adolf Hitler was a supporter of christianity

2010-08-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

Christians are still spreading the atrocious, vicious lie that Adolf Hitler was an Atheist. As a result, they continue lying, he killed Jews and started a world war because he was an Atheist.

As is often the case when christians open their mouth, all kinds of things come out except the truth. Are they really that uninformed or stupid, I wonder, or are they just willful liars?

The truth is that Hitler was very popular in conservative christian circles in Germany because he opposed homosexuality, pornography and was a firm adherent of all "values" christians want others to follow, but so seldom practice themselves.

No wonder that when the Vatican signed a concordat with that other fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, a staunch supporter of christianity himself, applauded this.

The Vatican, Hitler, Mussolini, christianity, nazism, fascism: they seemed to be made for each other.

Were he to live today in the US there is no doubt Adolf Hitler would be a devout christian Republican.

Christians should stop their ridiculous, disgusting, slanderous lies.

The following is an excerpt of a jubilant article Hitler wrote to celebrate this understanding between the Vatican, Nazism and Fascism. Of course, as a christian, Adolf Hitler not only condemns liberal Jews, but also Atheistic Marxism.

"The fact that the Curia is now making its peace with Fascism shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms. ...The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy ...proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism..."

~ Adolf Hitler

in an article in the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party newspaper, February 29, 1929, on the new Lateran Concordat between Mussolini's fascist government and the Vatican.

Lateran Concordat 1929
commemorative postcard, from left to right:
Victor Emmanuel III, Pius XI, Benito Mussolini

Mood: nauseated

Would religion lie to you? Ever?

2010-08-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

Mood: naughty

When justice is lost, there is religion

2010-08-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

"The loving do not act.
The kind act without self-interest;
The just act to serve self-interest;
The religious act to reproduce self-interest.
For when Tao is lost, there is love;
When love is lost, there is kindness;
When kindness is lost, there is justice;
And when justice is lost, there is religion.
Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
So religion enthralls generation after generation.
Religion is the end of love and honesty,
The beginning of confusion;
Faith is a colorful hope or fear,
The origin of folly.
The sage goes by knowledge, not by hope;
He dwells in the fruit, not the flower;
He accepts the former, and rejects the latter."

~ Lao Tzu

Tao Te Ching

For obvious reasons I like this quote.

I must admit I only explored Taoism very superficially. At first sight it seems the Tao is kind of a description of the natural world. It doesn't seem to have dogmas, doesn't insist on rituals with old men (no women, please) in funny dresses and silly hats and it doesn't require devotion. So far so good.

In its primary and most fundamental text the Tao seems to be just a useful philosophical concept. The Tao is the whole of the universe, even beyond sensory perception. We experience the Tao, but is escapes our efforts to describe it. All That Is. All later religious concepts that came to pollute it can easily be dismissed. Not surprisingly, the plague that is religion tries to contaminate everything, even the Tao.

Among all spiritual concepts I think I like Taoism the most. You could be an Atheist and a Taoist without contradicting yourself. However, you could also say it is an unnecessary crutch for an Atheist. I'm not even contradicting myself, or the Tao, by writing this, since the Tao encompasses everything.

For recovering christians, recovering muslims and other theists on their way out of the mists of primitive superstition, the Tao could be useful. It gives some aura of spirituality, yet is so broad in its concepts, that it can't be used to hate other people like e.g. those blots on humanity like christianity or islam.

You can't control the Tao. You can't rule it. You can only accept it, and through acceptance, find your place within it. It doesn't require you to browbeat, or force, or torture others into accepting your vision of it.

At the center, Taoism could be said to be a philosophy that promotes a kind of universal "rightness of being" of which love, justice, kindness and other such concepts are only imperfect reflections.

Materialists will complain that it contains elements that could be described as spiritual. And indeed, for morality, existentialism could be enough, without the need for any cosmic system. You could simply rely on plain old humanist principles, using experience and reason, to know what is right or not.

Alternatively, you could adhere to Ron Hogan's version of the Tao Te Ching, verse 20:

"Don't spend too much time
thinking about stupid shit."

Mood: indescribable

The stupid, it burns holes

2010-08-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

I know, it's an old one. Worth posting again though.

Mood: disappointed

Understanding love

2010-08-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

"I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being."

~ Dan Barker

Mood: contemplative

Redundancy

2010-08-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Mood: amused

The Marcus Aurelius non wager

2010-08-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid."

~ Marcus Aurelius

Roman Emperor (121 - 180)

Mood: contemplative

Are they really that stupid?

2010-08-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

Mood: nauseated

Just a reminder

2010-08-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

Mood: amused

The Joy of Atheism

2010-08-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

"When I became convinced that the Universe is natural — that all the ghosts and gods are myth, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bards, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Mood: grateful

The catholic joy of being insulting

2010-08-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

You have to admire them. Nobody, but nobody can insult you in such a sanctimonious, bitter way as catholics. Unhindered by knowledge or manners they heap one crude affront after another rude slight upon you, if you don't happen to belong to their rapist-condoning club.

In The Catholic Herald, one Francis Phillips writes her little pious butt off to demonstrate that Atheists can't be joyous.

Well, I knew we were all vicious, amoral murderers but now it appears it is impossible for us to experience joy. We're just not equipped for it. Only, I repeat only, catholics (well, maybe other christians as well) can experience true joy. Mind you, I grant we sorely lack how a catholic priest can be joyous at times.

A joyous Atheist is no less than The Ultimate Oxymoron according to Francis. Not your garden variety oxymoron. No, no. The Ultimate Oxymoron. It doesn't get more oxy, according to what must be the ultimate catholic moron.

It is probably something like The Ultimate Pleonasm: a bigoted catholic.

"You can be either ‘joyous’ or an ‘atheist’; you cannot be both. Discuss."

Discuss? Gladly, dear Madam.

So, I tried my hand at some sanctimoniousness of my own. It was hard work, but I tried to be as salving, yet denigrating, as understanding, yet condescending as a catholic.

This is what I came up with.

Dear Madam,

Why is it that so many Christians, and especially so many Catholics, are so harsh, judgmental and, well, frankly, unhappy?

Haven't you read this piece over before submitting it? Haven't you noticed its acerbic, condescending tone? Haven't you noticed the callous way in which you insult a very, very large group of people?

I wonder what your definition of the word joyful is. Is this piece joyful? Joyful hate? Joyful condescension? Are you joyfully feeling superior?

Don't you think that if your religion were really joyful, people would flock to you? Wouldn't they come running towards you, asking, nay, begging "Please, tell me, what is the source of your joyfulness? Please, tell me your secret. Instruct me how I can become as joyful as you are."

Do they, dear Madam? Do they really?

Over the last years, more than 34 million people have turned their backs to organized religion in the US alone. How can they give up that ethereal joy of which you non-atheists are the sole possessors?

By their fruits you shall know them. Or, more prosaically and less religiously put, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You only have to look at your emptying churches. You only have to listen to the howls of derision and ridicule reverberating throughout the world when the pope has issued yet another statement that defies, literally, belief in all the meanings of the word. You only have to feel the almost palpable distastefulness that surrounds your priesthood.

Your lack of love, Madam, is only surpassed by your arrogant hatefulness.

I understand, Madam, that you were preaching to the choir. Like any group of enablers they will undoubtedly applaud you. Cherish them, because their numbers are dwindling by the day. Alas for you, the Dark Ages are over and when you insult people, even when it is in the name of your god, even when you are a Catholic, you are going to get some answers. Not all of which might please you.

You have been sowing bitter seeds.

What kind of harvest do you think you will reap?

PS: You also fail at linguistics. Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. At least since the early seventeenth century the word has been used with a secular meaning.

Why am I not surprised a Catholic is lagging a few centuries behind?

A lot of other atheists have reacted as well. So now you have a web page that makes for partly infuriating, partly highly amusing reading: enjoy it here

Thanks to The Spiritual Atheist who drew my attention to this site.

Mood: bitchy

Look, women

2010-08-07T05:18:00.000-07:00

Mood: amused

Bitter

2010-08-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

"Why are many christians so bitter? Does their religion make them unhappy or does their unhappiness make them religious?"

~ Weston Lockley

Mood: pensive

Christian love

2010-08-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Somebody explain please. What are christians objecting to now? A boy can't kiss a girl or he goes to hell? How do these people procreate? More importantly: why?

Mood: confused

God murders 103 plane passengers

2010-08-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

god murders 103 people on a plane

forgets to kill one young boy

On May 12th, 2010, god mercilessly killed 103 people, including 11 crew members on an Airbus-flight to Tripoli, Libya. Everything, from the randomness to the injustice of the killings, points to Yahweh (a.k.a. Jehovah). Only one boy, who he evidently overlooked, survived the carnage by accident.

Scientists are baffled. "The theory behind airplanes is sound," they argue. "The technique has been proven again and again. The pilot was excellently trained, in good health and a teetotaler. He was happily and devoutly married. To a woman. There is no scientific reason imaginable why this plane should have crashed. The conclusion is inescapable: it was an act of god. He willfully killed those people. Thanks to coincidence one boy survived."

Pastor Houg Dumphrey (Apex, N.C.): "I heard the tapes out of the black box. It was panic all around. People were loudly imploring god to save their lives. One young man of 19, with his whole life still before him, sent a text message to his girlfriend from his mobile phone that he was praying to god to keep him safe. She, very sensibly, immediately went on Twitter. 'Pleese help me pray 4 my bf who is in a plain crush. praice the lord. RT if u agree. #bieberfans' It was all in vain. Notwithstanding all the prayers, he murdered them all callously. Only that boy survived. It's really a coincidence!"

TV-evangelist Matt Focker has railed against the godless, immoral, unbelieving scum who blame god. "God is blameless. He created it all, so he can do as he pleases. When you make a child with your spouse in holy matrimony, nobody of sound mind will deny that this child is your property to do with as you please. We must never forget that we are god's children and that he only tortures us because he loves us. He has his reasons. We're just to dumb to understand them. Send us money to help spread his word."

Benedict XVI has issued a statement that prayer is obviously useless. He has given orders to assemble a Holy Synod to investigate the possibility that the passengers were all grave sinners. "They probably were," the Vatican states. "They must have been all abhorrent unto him. Like the Canaanites, who also deserved to die. Painfully and cruelly. Or those evil little children of Egypt. Maybe the passengers were sloppy in attending mass, or worse, gay, which would explain why god murdered them."

Governor Rob Biley has declared next Sunday a day of prayer throughout the state of Alabama. "It's not because prayer has never ever worked in all of recorded history that it never will. That's so typical of scientific arrogance. As if science knows everything. Let's not forget god did not let that plane fall on one of the magnificent cities of our beautiful state. We should thank him for that. Lest he smites us."

Mood: cynical

Christian love

2010-08-04T03:02:00.001-07:00

Mood: enraged

Malfunctioning brain

2010-08-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

"Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."

~ Gene Roddenberry

(creator of Star Trek)

Mood: lazy

No scientific proof

2010-08-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal god."

~ Thomas Edison

Mood: productive

Sanity

2010-08-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

Mood: peaceful

Ridiculous

2010-07-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Mood: amused

Creation Science Evangelism: lying for Jesus

2010-07-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

OK, we knew creationists were a bunch of liars.

Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) describes itself modestly as "a leading Christian-apologetics ministry, defending the literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account from the theory of evolution."

Defending in this case means "lying our asses off as much as we can and committing fraud to prove the unprovable."

The most hilarious and pathetic attempt is a "poll", WHAT’CHA THINK?, they run on their front page.

One of those polls asks: What do you believe about evolution? Is it a fact, a religion or reasonable scientific theory?

As P.Z. Myers points out in his blog, this is less than honest: there are two reasonable answers (and one that is crazy), so the reasonable vote gets split up.

Let's for one moment also overlook the fact that scientific issues are not a matter of what the majority "thinks".

So what do you do when the result is still not to your liking? What you always do in that pile of bunk called creationism. You falsify the facts.

(CET)

If that doesn't help... you can also just change the question.

Minutes later the poll was back online. Alas for creationism, it threatened to give the same result, and people began massively voting "it's a fact!". So they just changed the question from "What do you believe about evolution?" into "What do you believe about creation?"

Falsifying the vote for Jesus. Is there any task more noble?

Christianity and creationism always win. Always.

Of course, this poll is completely ridiculous, a lie and a fraud.

What did you expect? So is creationism.

Christians lying? I'm sure you're as shocked as I am.

Mood: accomplished

Fables

2010-07-29T05:58:00.001-07:00

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Mood: amused

Was Hitler an atheist?

2010-07-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

"My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. They point me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth!, was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.

In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross.

As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago — a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people."

~ Adolf Hitler

speech April 12th, 1922

Mood: nauseated

If only

2010-07-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Mood: hopeful

All is well with the world

2010-07-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

All is well with the world.

Yep, everything is just going fine.

On Twitter some hysterical person was exhorting the devout masses to help the christian victims of rape by muslims in Iran, while the only thing those poor, innocent christians had been doing was trying to convert people to their own brand of barbarity, and away from that other skid mark upon humanity. A bit like selling Richard Dawkins' books in Saint Peter's basilica in Rome. Which would be totally OK by christians. They are known for their tolerance.

As if Iran wasn't in trouble enough with one retarded religion. As if christians hadn't anything better to do, like cleaning their own filthy house of rapists. To mention only the bleeding obvious.

Meanwhile the catholics in Boston are putting much effort in their marketing campaign called "Catholics Come Home". Yes, come home you lost sheep. We're beginning to feel the absence of your money.

One Joseph Kurtz, Great Padishah-Mogul of the Sacred Beehive of Poughkeepsie (that could also be Archbishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church — I always confuse those two) insists on letting us know what his feeble mind thinks about marriage.

“Marriage exists prior to the state and is not open to redefinition by the state. The role of the state, instead, is to respect and reinforce marriage.”

Yeah. Kurtz obviously operates under the somewhat false impression he has any authority left. How dare that nincompoop even try to tell other people what to do and not. And, by the way, the State is not your business, Kurtz, you cheeky monkey. You have nothing to do with it. You have nothing relevant to say about it. You're just an insignificant old man who wears funny dresses and silly hats. None of those enhance your credibility. And, please, take your penis out of the anus of my underage son while you're talking gibberish to me.

Get it trough your calcified skull that chess rules only apply to the game of chess. Your ramblings only apply to people who want to belong to your club. Us sane people don't want to be bothered by your blabberings based on a collection of Bronze Age horror stories.

In Rome priests now pay adult call boys to have hot man-sex or go to gay clubs to have consensual intercourse. This is progress in comparison to raping altar boys.

Joseph "The Pitbull" Ratzinger, however, doesn't seem to think so. Still reeling from the howls of hysterical laughter and the outcries of indignation his latests inanity (declaring the mere attempt to ordain women into the priesthood equal to raping children) has provoked, he ordered gay priests to leave the priesthood. Not a wise move, a gay activist mused. The church stands to lose 98 % of its ground personnel.

It's things like these that make Ratzinger the best pope ever. He's destroying an almost two thousand year old institution singlehandedly. He is to be applauded and encouraged. Like Napoleon said "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." And another one. And another one.

You would think Ratzinger would do something for all those victims his vile, criminal organization has made. No, there are more important things to tend to than caring for some whining rape victims. What is the church? A compassionate institute preaching love? Perish the thought. Latest we heard he is writing the final part of a fiction work, "The life of Jesus, part III", based on an ancient fairy tale. (spoiler: the main character dies)

Unless he makes Jesus sparkle like the vampires of "Twilight" he could have saved himself the trouble.

All is well with the world.

Mood: thankful

Magic

2010-07-25T01:18:00.000-07:00

"The pope doesn't believe in god. Did you ever see a conjurer who believed in magic?"

~ Coluche

Mood: indifferent

Elephants exist

2010-07-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

"Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?"

~ Penn Jillette

Mood: giggly

New mythology

2010-07-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

Mood: cynical

Dogmas

2010-07-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Mood: confused

Mistake

2010-07-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

Mood: shocked

Theory

2010-07-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

Creationists,

My theory is that unlimited premarital sex with as many partners as you can possibly get, of all genders, is the best thing you can experience and completely harmless and healthy fun.

Let's teach both my theory and your theory of total abstinence in schools and then let the kids decide for themselves.

Mood: flirty

50 Reasons I Reject Evolution

2010-07-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

by Bobbie-the-Jean

You can find the original and a lot of entertaining reactions here

1.) Because I don’t like the idea that we came from apes… despite that humans are categorically defined and classified as apes.

2.) Because I’m too stupid and/or lazy to open a fucking science book or turn on the Discovery Science Channel.

3.) Because if I can’t immediately understand how something works, then it must be bullshit.

4.) Because I don’t care that literally 99.9% of all biologists accept evolution as the unifying theory of biology.

5.) Because I prefer the idea that a (insert god of choice) went ALLA-KADABRA-ZAM MOTHAH-FUCKAHS!!!

6.) Because I can’t get it through my thick logic-proof skull that evolution refers ONLY to the diversity of living organisms which reproduce with genetic variation, not to abiogenesis, or planet formation, or big bang cosmology, or whether God exists, or where they buried Jimmy Hoffa, or why the sky is blue, or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a fucking Tootsie Pop.

7.) Because the fossil record doesn’t comprise the remains of every single living thing that ever existed on this 4.5 billion year old planet, even though fossilization is a rare process that only occurs under very specific circumstances.

8.) Because science has yet to produce any transitional species… except for the magnitudinous numbers of them found in the fossil record which don’t count because… I uh, OOH LOOK! A SHINY OBJECT!!! *runs away*

9.) Because I know nothing about Darwin except that he had a funny beard.

10.) Because the theory of evolution (which, according to scientists, perfectly explains the richness and diversity of life on Earth) contradicts biblical literalism… ya know, flat Earth with a firmament that keeps out the water, talking snakes, people rising from the dead, bats are birds, flamey talking bushes, virgin births, food appearing out of nowhere, massive bodies of water turning into blood… etc etc.

11.) Because I think the word “theory” actually means: “random stabs in the dark” when it really means: "an explanation of certain phenomena that is well-supported by a large body of facts and often unifies similarly well-supported hypotheses" i.e. atomic theory, gravitational theory, germ theory, cell theory, some-people-are-dumb-motherfuckers-theory, etc.

12.) Because the fact that science is self-correcting annoys me. Most of my other beliefs are rigidly fixed and uncorrectable.

13.) Because I am under the severely mistaken impression that evolution implies someone in my very recent ancestry was a chimp.

14.) Because everything appears designed to my mind which was expertly tuned by nature to perceive design, probably as a survival mechanism.

15.) Because some secretly fabulous closet-dwelling televangelist (who unironically preaches hate towards gays) told me that evolution is Satan’s way of leading me away from God.

16.) Because that same guy (who was also caught snorting blow off a male hooker’s shiny naked ass) told me that God planted those fossils to test my faith.

17.) Because I’m 100% correct about everything 100% of the time and there is 0% chance that some snooty Oxford educated scientist with numerous honorary doctorates could possibly know something that I don’t.

18.) Because I don’t know that fossils are found in sedimentary strata corresponding to their age as one would expect if evolution were true.

19.) Because I don’t understand why, if we share common ancestry with chimps, there are still chimps. And when someone with more than three brain cells in their head inevitably replies: “for the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Brits but there are still Brits, I can’t follow the logic. It’s just too big a leap. Who am I, Evil Knievel?

20.) Because my mom dropped me on my head when I was a baby.

21.) Multiple times.

22.) On purpose.

23.) Because the idea that life evolved naturally over billions of years is infinitely less believable than the idea that an 800 year old man crammed two of every species into a giant wooden boat when the entire planet flooded, an event for which there is absolutely no geological evidence whatsoever and also makes no fucking sense at all.

24.) Because Jesus totally rode around on a fucking t-rex. He’s just that badassed. And also, did you know that t-rexes were vegetarians? Ken Ham says so and I believe it.

25.) Because I don’t realize that saying “microevolution is possible but macroevolution isn’t” is as stupid as saying “I can pick my nose for one second but I cannot pick it for 10 seconds.”

26.) Because the education system failed me miserably.

27.) …and then took a big wet dump on my face.

28.) Because I think that knowing how nature works magically obliterates all of its beauty.

29.) Because I didn’t know that evolution has been tested and observed in laboratories.

30.) Because when confronted with that, I refuse to believe it. It’s obviously a scientific conspiracy aimed at turning everyone on the planet into atheists... even though evolution says nothing about god's nature nor whether he, she, it, or they exist.

31.) Because I’m too stupid to realize that Social Darwinism has nothing to do with evolution and is actually a pseudo-scientific bastardization that real science largely rejects.

32.) Because the planet and all the life on it was designed for humans… kinda like how the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY was designed specifically for the dust-bunnies that may accumulate on the floors.

33.) Because I don’t realize that if we actually found croco-ducks in the fossil record, it would falsify evolution.

34.) Because plenty of respectable people like Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee (who are not scientists) don’t accept evolution, and that somehow validates my opinion.

35.) Because my mother didn’t know not to drink while she was pregnant. She also didn’t know not to repeatedly throw herself down a flight of stairs in an attempt to undo the accident of screwing someone who voted for Bush both times.

36.) Because I don’t know that “irreducible complexity” has been debunked a frazillion times by a frazillion different people and is no more credible an argument than “NEEN-er NEEN-er NEEN-er, I’m right and you’re wrong.”

37.) Because I have never seen a duck evolve into a cat over night, despite the fact that such a thing would be contrary to all known scientific disciplines.

38.) Because I have no imagination, learning is too much effort, I don’t like proven facts, change scares me, and I think deoxyribonucleic acid is something I’m supposed to clean my bathroom floors with.

39.) Because evolution means that I absolutely MUST reject everything else I know, abandon all my beliefs, and start aping around my house like a fucking monkey. OOOh-ooohh-ooohohh -OOOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!

40.) Because I haven’t put my cave on the market and moved into the 21st century yet. I’m waiting for the cave market to rebound from the recent financial meltdown.

41.) Because I don’t know what an atavism is and if you told me, I still wouldn't believe it. Too weird.

42.) Because I don’t know that evolution explains methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and also provides the answer in preventing it from turning into a superbug and killing massive numbers of people.

43.) Because I don’t know that evolution is routinely used in medicine to diagnose and treat certain illnesses such as genetic ailments, bacterial infections, and viral infections.

44.) Because I believe there is a strong comparison between designed inanimate objects such as buildings, paintings, and watches (which we know were pieced together from identifiable components by human beings) and living organisms (which reproduce with genetic variation under the effects of environmental attrition).

45.) Because I see no significant similarities between humans and apes. *scratches my ass-crack then smells my fingers*

46.) Because I think I’m too special to have been crafted by any natural process and the entire planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe were created with me especially in mind.

47.) Because I unquestioningly swallow the ignorant anti-science bullshit spewed directly from the fraudulent stupid asses of people like Ken Ham, Ted Haggard, Fred Phelps, and Kent Hovind.

48.) Because I’m a freethinker and freethinking really means ignoring anything that contradicts what I already believe.

49.) Because I don’t know what confirmation bias is.

50.) Because despite the fact that in all my years of life, I have never seen any magic, I still believe magic is the answer to anything I don’t immediately comprehend.

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. Quod erat demonstrandum, I fucking win. Take that you EVILutionists!

~ Bobbie Jean Pentecost

Mood: ecstatic

Creationist theory

2010-07-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

"Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamed up after being drunk all night."

~ Isaac Asimov

Light

2010-07-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

In Greek mythology Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus because he had stolen fire, light, from the gods and given it to human-kind. An eagle came to eat his liver every day, only to have it grow back and to be eaten again the next day.

Gods are primitive. Gods are cruel

So, I thought, maybe that is what happened with Lucifer, the bearer of light, in that other primitive mythology.

History is written by the victor. To justify his cruelty he has to vilify his vanquished opponent.

Then I thought: Nah, they're all crude, invented stories.

Evil

2010-07-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

"I am treated as evil by people who claim they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do."

~ D. Dale Gulledge

Vacuum

2010-07-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Your sex life and the pope

2010-07-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

Science and religion (3)

2010-07-16T04:18:00.000-07:00

"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."

~ Catherine Fahringer

God is the refuge of the incompetent

2010-07-15T05:47:00.000-07:00

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos. He will set them above their betters."

~ H. L. Mencken

Lamb stew

2010-07-14T03:09:00.001-07:00

Crazy kid says Superman is real

2010-07-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Hey mister, Superman wants you to worship him or he will punish you."

"Superman doesn't exist, kid. He's an invention."

"You are so stupid. Superman is real. Can you prove Superman doesn't exist, mister?"

"I don't have to prove that, you crazy, obnoxious kid. You say he exists. You have to prove that."

"I have stacks of comic books that say he exists. So he exists."

"No, he doesn't. Those comic books just tell invented stories."

"You're so stupid. The comic books tell the truth or they wouldn't exist."

"What?"

"Superman is unbelievably strong. If the comic books told lies about him he would destroy them. He hasn't destroyed them. So they tell the truth. And they say Superman exists. So he exists. Are you too stupid to understand that?"

"Leave me alone, kid."

"Are you a servant of Lex Luthor, mister?"

Perversions

2010-07-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

"I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent."

~ Arthur C. Clarke

The power of prayer

2010-07-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

The power of prayer: a practical exercise for religious people.

Warning: this exercise is only for non-atheists. Atheists should abstain as this won't work for them because of lack of faith.

This exercise is meant for religious people, to demonstrate the power of prayer.

If you're a religious person and you are an adult, you surely have children. Because you are heterosexual. You have more than one. Because you only have sex to further god's purpose, which is to populate the earth with more religious people.

For this exercise we'll need two children.

Take two (2) of your children (their age doesn't matter) and break an arm (1) of each. Use a hammer.

Take child A to an hospital and let it be treated by doctors. Whatever you do: don't pray for it. If you can't help yourself, pray something like: "Oh lord, don't heal this child."

Take child B and lay it on a couch or a bed. Gather your spouse and any other children you might have and start praying for it. Pray that its arm may be healed in the name of Jesus. Make it count. Don't hesitate to wail a bit.

It says in the bible that whatever you ask for you shall be given. And the bible tells the truth. Always. Literally.

Jesus himself confirmed this. You can command mountains. Healing a broken arm is peanuts in comparison. And Jesus wouldn't lie, now would he? Of course not.

Have faith. Pray. Pray. Pray.

Notice how those stupid doctors have put a plaster cast around child A's broken arm. Notice how uncomfortable that is. Notice how they make it take all kinds of pills. Notice how they give it injections with antibiotics. Notice how that hurts.

Notice how child B's wound begins to smell a bit putrefied. Notice how gangrene sets in. Don't worry. Don't panic. This is just god testing your faith. Rejoice. Your faith is strong. Invite your neighbors to come and pray with you. Have faith. Pray.

Try not to look too triumphant when you see child A struggling, while it tries to operate a computer and surf the net, with that awful cast hampering its every movement.

Try not to be upset by the howls of pain of child B. Just invite your congregation (yes, the whole congregation) over to your house to pray with you, your family and your neighbors. Pray loudly. Go all out. Come on, give it some oomph. You need to draw the lord's attention. He might be getting slightly hard of hearing by now or maybe he is otherwise engaged and he can't be everywhere at the same time, can he? Wait. Yes, he can. Anyhow, it will also drown out child B's anguished cries.

At the funeral of child B mock child A because its cast is itching.

While in prison for child neglect wonder why child A doesn't come to visit you but prefers playing basketball with its friends instead. How ungrateful. However, god is always with you. Marvel over god's kindness.

Realize how good the lord is. Understand that child B would have died anyway. Whether you broke its arm or not. Whether you took it to a stupid hospital or not. It was his will.

There are several possibilities.

Maybe he has called child B to him because it is so precious to him. In that case it is now sitting at his right hand, watching over you, its loving parent.

Maybe child B was an evil child and didn't deserve to be rescued. In that case it is now in hell and will burn forever and ever and ever. As it deserves. For being evil.

Realize you are an insignificant worm who can't understand the lord's purpose.

Prayer works. It says so in the bible. And everything in the bible is the literal truth. If this weren't the case you couldn't trust anything that is in the bible, could you? That would be just absurd.

Prayer works. Jesus says so. And Jesus wouldn't lie to you, would he? Of course he wouldn't. He loves you.

Pray.

It always works.

Pray.

(Also works great in case of a major oil spill according to Oil Spill Prayer and governor Bob Riley of Alabama. He is no idiot, is he?)

Start hating

2010-07-11T03:14:00.000-07:00

The Ages

2010-07-11T01:36:00.000-07:00

The Classical Age: before christianity existed or had any power or influence
The Dark Ages: when christianity had full political power and people suffered under its barbaric, deadly oppression
The Renaissance (Rebirth): christianity loses power; the Arts and Science reemerge
The Age of Enlightenment: christianity loses more power: Science and Rationality take the place of superstition and cruel myths
The Modern Age: christianity loses all direct political power and its indirect influence wanes (in civilized countries)

Birth of a goddess

2010-07-09T23:49:00.001-07:00

A few years ago I saw a documentary on TV, commemorating lady Diana, the deceased princess of Wales.

Amongst many other things they interviewed a nice lady.

At her home there was this little table, put against a wall. On it she had laid a white tablecloth. She had taken a picture of lady Di out of a magazine, put it in a frame and it was now sitting on that little table, on the white tablecloth. On each side were candles. Before it stood a little vase with one rose in it.

Did this picture of lady Di comfort her, the reporter asked. Yes, the lady answered. Every time she walked by it, she took a moment to look at the picture and felt comforted. Sometimes she even talked to the picture and told it about her problems.

Did this help her, the reporter asked. Yes, she answered. Sometimes she even felt as if lady Di answered her and told her to carry on and that the bad times would soon be over.

So, after all these years, lady Di was still a living presence in her life, the reporter asked. Yes, the lady answered, she often felt that the princess supported her in her difficulties.

I thought: this woman has made an altar and created a goddess. She prays to her self-created divinity and her goddess answers her. For her this deity is real. She had convinced herself that she communicates with her.

If this woman had been a fanatic she would have founded a church for her goddess.

If this woman had been an evil fanatic she would have started telling other people how her goddess wanted them to behave.

If this woman had been a powerful, evil fanatic she would probably have killed anybody who didn't believe in her goddess.

Sick horror

2010-07-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

"The core of Christianity is this: It's an Iron Age Cult of Human Sacrifice. Any love, compassion, or gentleness tacked onto it is just natural humanity's attempt to conceal the hideousness of that sick horror."

~ Geoff Mather

Primates

2010-07-08T09:59:00.001-07:00

"Primates often have trouble imagining a universe not run by an angry alpha male."

~ Unknown