A sad day. It’s just come out that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He wrote a brief statement in Vanity Fair:
I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.
Here’s hoping he pulls through okay.
“If you can’t multi-task, then you’ve got no business being President of the United States of America.” That was the message sent loud and clear to Senator John McCain when he was rightly criticized for stopping his campaign, canceling a debate with Obama and running to D.C. to “handle” the (then new) economic meltdown during the last Presidential race. Most saw it as an attempt to demonstrate his ability as a leader. Of course, it backfired horribly and the Democrats gave him hell over it for the rest of the campaign. Next to taking on the idiot Palin as his running mate, this was probably one of the most damaging stunts of Senator McCain’s run for the Presidency.
If elected,however, he might not have done much worse than the current suit occupying the Oval Office. It appears the inability to multi-task wasn’t limited to one candidate only. Lots of promises have been made by Obama in regards to gay (human) rights and to turning back the aggressive advance of religion into government, but little has actually been done.
Do what you said you were going to do Mr. President. Stating that you’ve got a full plate or other more important or pressing issues to deal with is no excuse. We elected you to make some changes. Start making them. Now. Lead, follow or get out of the way.
Mr. Faircloth of the SCA has a few things to say about the subject as well:
I was just commenting on a post by The Main Man, Mark Pogue on Proud Atheists, entitled, Your God Probably Does Not Need Your Help.
Almost every atheist at one point or another has made fun of the fact that the religious seem to think that God, Allah or Yahweh needs their help. A lot of time and energy is spent trying to psychoanalyze these folks as to why they believe such nonsense.
To me, it’s always been obvious…these folks are collectively under the impression that they are some awesome muthafuckas.
Really, think about it for a minute. If there WAS a God and he WAS all powerful, yet he came groveling to little, itty, bitty YOU for help…how bad a sonofabitch does that make you? I’d say nigh near invincible.
How awesome of an entity must you be for the Almighty Lord God of all Creation to crawl to, to ask for an audience and request assistance? You are badder than the Godfather. Hell, you’re badder than a million Galactic Godfathers.
“Don’t mess wit’ me bitches. I even got God’s back, muthafuckas.”
That’s right. You aren’t like them effeminate, sissified atheistic types, ‘specially that Godless Monster bitch.
Nope, you are God’s “go-to-man”. You…are superbad.
In honor of the upcoming sixty-fifth birthday of NCSE’s executive director Eugenie C. Scott, the latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach contains essays by some of the greatest minds involved in the defense of science education today.
Read more about it HERE.
“Where are you from?” the old man asked in Arabic as I walked by his metals workshop. “Amrikiya” I replied, “American.” He squinted his eyes and ran back into his shop.
“Fuck” I muttered to myself. I knew what that was all about. My sister, of course was oblivious.
“Could you at least pretend to give a damn about things and walk next to me?!” I asked. “Everyone is fucking staring.”
I was about 4 paces behind her, walking uphill on the outskirts of the small town that my father’s family hails from in Hezbollah controlled territory in southern Lebanon. We may as well have been nude.
As she was in the, “I am woman, hear me roar” mode, slowing down wasn’t an option and it wasn’t going to happen. “Stop being so paranoid, you’re always so paranoid, “she snapped. The Lebanese version of the Jewish American Princess.
I’d spent some time in the Middle East as a young man in the military and later as a private soldier and the last thing I wanted was to stick out like a sore thumb and have some militia type stop me, look at my passport and ask a million and one questions about my work in other Arab countries.
A Renault Kangoo occupied by two men drove slowly by us, stopped, and then backed up. It was an unmarked Hezbollah security patrol. The bearded driver stayed in the vehicle, while the clean-shaven passenger got out and asked us for our passports and inquired as to what we were doing and who we were staying with. I dropped a few names and pointed in the direction of my aunt’s house. Satisfied with my answers; he apologized for the inconvenience and let us go.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It could have been Palestinians, in which case I would have been fucked.
I got on my sister’s case, but she wasn’t going to admit she was out of line. “You’re just paranoid…”
“If she had just done as all women here do and walked behind me, this wouldn’t have happened”, I thought. I blamed her, not the stupid culture that made a problem out of nothing in the first place.
After getting back to my aunt’s house I was famished and tried to make myself something to eat.
“La, la, la, la, la!!!!” (No, no, no, no, no!!!) My aunts were in hysterics. I had almost broken that unbreakable rule and intruded on their territory, thus negating their purpose in life. I had to sit in the living room and wait patiently while they made my snack and waited on me hand and foot. Laundry? Nope, I couldn’t do my own laundry, either. Pick up my dish after a meal at another relative’s home to take it to the sink? You’d have thought I pulled my pants off. As a guy I couldn’t shake hands with a woman that wasn’t a close blood relative. And Lebanese are fairly liberal when it comes to this kind of thing…
When I look back at my travels throughout the Middle East, I realize that as a man, I had my place defined for me just as much as the women had their place defined for them. It can be rightfully said that men there have it much better than women, but to my westernized sensibilities, this comes at too dear a price.
I can’t help but feel that as men in Muslim cultures have made cages for women, they’ve forged chains for themselves in the process.
A simultaneously hilarious and scary post from Woo Fighters covers the claim that consumption of soy products by pregnant mothers turns their male fetuses gay and…gives them small penises. Some of you may need to call your mothers…
Read it HERE.
Remember the short-lived The Flash television series of 1990? No? You’re not alone, not many folks watched it past the 3rd episode. Why? The villains sucked, that’s why. Crappy villains make for a crappy show.
The video I’m posting today is the latest challenge from YouTube’s Thundef00t to asshat creatard Nephilimfree. In regards to the whole atheist vs creationist thing on YouTube, this is starting to get lame.
Seriously, don’t creationists have anyone better than Nephilimfree to put forward as their champion? It’s common knowledge that a good (as in really bad, smart, capable, etc.) villain makes for a good film, comic or novel. The same goes for these YouTube “showdowns”.
Without a good bad guy, there’s no real threat, no challenge. Without a threat or real challenge, it becomes nothing more than shooting fish in a barrel. Still, like when passing a car wreck, I can’t help but slow down and check out the carnage…
As Jesus probably didn’t exist in the first place, I could have told you that, but a Swedish theologian claims that Jesus was indeed real and executed, but most likely not from crucifixion. At the very least, he demonstrates that there is no evidence to support the claim that he was crucified. In other words, it was all made up. I’m shocked.
In his 400 plus page doctoral thesis for Gothenburg University, Gunnar Samuelsson states it is much more likely that Jesus was executed by impalement or being hung from a tree or log or some other form of execution utilizing suspension of part or all of the victim.
The original Greek of some texts refers to a stauros, which has been mistranslated all these centuries and could just as easily have been a pole or a tree and not necessarily a cross. According to Samuelsson , it was actually more likely that it was a tree or a pole. In fact, recent evidence obtained by careful research of ancient texts reveals that crucifixion was somewhat uncommon.
Samuelsson points out that there are no references to nails or crucifixion in the original ancient religious texts or supporting texts and that religious tradition and artwork created throughout history are solely responsible for the myth of crucifixion.
All of this begs the question…how much more of Christianity as we know it is just make-believe fairy tales?
I’m betting 100%. How about you?
Original audio of a German radio interview with Samuelsson. Be patient,
the host alternates between German and English, but the interview is well worth listening to.
You can read an abstract of the thesis here.
You can receive a copy of the dissertation here.
Post script: Answers in Genesis seems to take issue with this, so there must be something to it. 
Ever hear a claim that just didn’t sound quite right, but you couldn’t put your finger on why? Well, Woo Fighters can help you with that:
Warning Signs That Something is Not Scientific
Here’s the latest offering from my favorite YouTube atheist, Pat Condell.
I go on some other atheist blogger’s sites and am amazed at the number of posts that are devoted to the topic of gay rights. While I wholeheartedly support gay marriage and gay rights overall, I am often at a loss to understand what I can only call an obsession that some atheists have with gay issues. Upon further introspection, it’s really not so much that they are covering gay issues, but that they are constantly portraying them as victims. They’re not just victims; they’re heroes and they are making changes. Hell, they’ve been effective advocates for change in the U.S. of A. since the 1960’s.
The importance of gay rights is not lost on me, but I happen to believe that it is atheists who need them, not the other way around. As far as sheer buying power and economic influence, gays have far more clout than the atheist crowd. And yes, I am aware of the not insignificant amount of demographic overlap. Still, I don’t see that there is much we can do for the gay cause beyond encouraging public awareness, and gay organizations already do that for themselves and they do it much more effectively than we can.
Instead of approaching the gay community with condescension, perhaps a little humility would be in order. There’s a lot of lip service given to the fact that they were trail blazers for civil rights, but many of us continue to treat them as if they are victims only, and not the ready-made source for intelligence networks, experience, resources and financial support that they are. We can stop feeling sorry for them and start treating them as mentors. I think the time for the pity party to end is long overdue.
They’re gay, not helpless ninnies…and we need them.
Postscript: Need we any more proof that gays are more mainstream than atheists than the number of Gay Pride parades around the country this weekend?
The Vatican isn’t going to let well enough alone. I thought they’d had their say about the Belgian police raids and investigation, but, no…they continue to press the issue and whine like the privileged bitches they are.
The words being bandied about now by the Catholics are “serious and unbelievable” and “astonishment”. In my post yesterday, I pointed out the discrepancy between the Vatican reaction to untold thousands (maybe millions) of children being raped and a few priests being inconvenienced for a few hours.
Today, I’m looking at one comment made by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
If that name doesn’t sound familiar to you, let me refresh your memory. He’s the Catholic cleric who recently claimed that gays were to blame for pedophilia:
“…that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true! That is the problem.”
Yes, this is THAT Cardinal Bertone.
In regards to the recent anti-boy-buggery campaign in Belgium, Bertone states, “there are no precedents, not even under the old communist regimes”.
I haven’t been doing a lot of digging in regards to media reaction to this comment, but there’s bound to be others like myself who read that remark and just laughed.
Bertone is either stupid or he’s lying and I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. History has given me every reason to believe that the good Cardinal – like so many others from his clique – is intimately familiar with the Catholic variation of Hitler’s “Big Lie” strategy and that this is just another implementation of it. Those with an education in, or understanding of the history of the Soviet Empire need to expose the Cardinals comment for what it is: complete and utter bullshit.
Under the Soviet boot, oppression permeated every aspect of clerical life, especially countries like East Germany, but to varying degrees, difficulty was part of every Christian cleric’s lives throughout the Soviet bloc. In general, unless you cooperated with the secret police organs, Soviet bloc countries were not good places to be a Christian cleric, so… cooperate the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches did. For the most part, they served as organs of the State and depending on the country, were employed to some degree or another by the State, either officially or unofficially. Promotions and assignments depended quite frequently on a cleric’s willingness to cooperate with the regime and inform on others.
Of course police raids and detentions were not a part of everyday life for the cleric living under Soviet rule. They did happen, but for the most part, they occurred as the communists were consolidating their power after WW II. Once their hold on power was absolute, there was no need for raids or detentions on a regular basis because the clergy were already under communist control.
For Bertone to cast the legally and morally justified acts of the Belgian police in a negative light as compared to the pervasive subjugation under the communists of the last century is absurd and is a strawman argument of the highest order.
What does a distortion of this magnitude say about the Catholic Church? It shows that they will say and do anything in order to keep their hold on power.
They will not go quietly into the night. When backed into a corner, just like Islam, Catholicism relies on the old standby, the “persecuted victim defense” in order to gain influence amongst those who have a predilection for supporting the underdog.
The Catholics are no underdogs, and rewriting history won’t erase their crimes.
The Belgian cops did their job and the Vatican calls the Belgian ambassador to the carpet over the way in which the raids were conducted. Too bad, so sad. A few tombs were opened. There was cause to believe that evidence had been secreted in them, so the cops did their job. No big deal.
Oh, but it is a big deal to the poor beleaguered papists. They’ve put out press releases, held press conferences and as already mentioned, called the Belgian ambassador to stand tall before “the man” at the Holy See. You’d think someone threatened to cut off their steady supply of boy ass, they are that upset.
The words the Vatican used to describe their feelings about the raid are “astonished and outraged”.
Really? Well, I don’t believe those are the words used by the Boy’s Club for Men when they get busted for fucking little kids.
No, I think the words they use are “disappointed”, “regrettable”, “saddened”, “upset”, and “remorseful”.
One more thing…why the fuck does a religion have its own state? It’s a rhetorical question…don’t answer that.
Remember my post from June 15th? *Video* Nutsoid Christian ninja nabbed in Pakistan?
Well, he’s back in the U.S., and it seems that wackiness definitely runs in the Faulkner family. If you thought his brother was “out there” and full of himself, wait til you get a load of Gary.
This guy should run with Palin in 2012. He’d be the brains of the team.
I challenge you to not rip off your ears or tear out your eyes while watching this video. Enjoy!!!
P.S. The first 2-3 minutes are fairly boring…skip ahead 3 minutes or so and you won’t have missed much.
I’m not referring to sodomy, sorry to disappoint.
Nope, I’m talking about those wacky fundamentalists who are always wanting to have their cake and eat it, too.
Latest example: the fine Republican politicians of Louisiana who are currently “seeking the brightest minds in science and engineering to help” in regards to the giant fuck fest that is the BP oil disaster. Of course, these are the very same folks who have pushed for weakening science education in Louisiana public schools.
The irony of this request wasn’t lost on Charles Kincade, columnist for the Shreveport Times:
…And Jindal’s educational policy handicaps future generations’ ability to deal with inevitable future crises.” He concludes, “unless the anti-science policies of Jindal, Vitter, et al[.] are corrected, and soon, future generations will be unable to function in the modern world…
You can read more about it on the NCSE website HERE.
What really eats the lining out of my stomach is these folks are willing to reap the benefits of science but they aren’t willing to admit that when they push for inserting religion into science classes they are injuring the economy and putting our national security at risk. If these folks are so opposed to science, maybe we should establish science and technology free zones in this country and ship all of these asshats off to live there.
I bet a good number of them would come around after a few days.
Amongst other sites, I monitor msnbc’s science page and every once in a while find something of interest to read and/or share with my readers.
Yesterday I came across an article concerning the great dinosaur graveyards (“mega-bonebed”) that northern Alberta Canada is now famous for…well at least among dinosaur enthusiasts it is famous.
Though this fossil bed was located back in 1997, it is only now that scientists have come up with an explanation for the fact that the dinosaur remains are all found in the same level of sediment and thus appear to have all died simultaneously.
The explanation is as follows (drumroll):
“The likely culprit in this scenario was a catastrophic storm, which could quickly have routinely made the waters flood up as high as 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 meters), if experiences with modern floodplains are any guide.”
If you’ve read this blog before then you know where I am going with this.
Creationists are nothing, if not predictable. I routinely check in on my friends at the ICR to read their “Science Update”.
Usually written by Brian Thomas, these articles cover a wide range of topics relating to science and always end with an unsupported assertion that scientists are wrong in their interpretation of the data (due to being brainwashed by Darwinism) and that young earth creationists are right because…the Bible says so.
An article like the one mentioned above is a veritable Bible-thumping creationist quote miner’s wet dream. I’m sure the ICR won’t be able to resist vomiting out their own spin on the evidence as soon as possible once they are finished changing their shorts. There’s no way they aren’t going to milk this for everything they can.
I’m betting something spectacularly idiotic will be up within 2 weeks.
Here’s a great post on responsibility from my main man Andy at Laughing in Purgatory.
This is an older video with Rowan Atkinson that one of my former co-workers just sent me. For those of you who have seen it before, my apologies.
My favorite parts are when he addresses atheists and Christians:-)
Mea culpa, my bad. I was wrong. Now it’s time to make things right. I’ve taken down my link to Geert Wilder’s blog and I’ve stopped my financial support for his Party for Freedom (PVV) in Holland. What upsets me is that I never should have been taken in by these clowns in the first place. If I had spent the extra time and energy and fully investigated the PVV and Wilders I would have understood early on that he was a Zionist and a racist. It was intellectual laziness on my part, plain and simple. No excuses, especially as I am very quick to criticize those on the other side who commit the same offense.
Oh, I saw the signs of Mr. Wilder’s proclivity for race baiting here and there on other blogs and in articles written by folks who are unsympathetic to Wilder’s cause célèbre, but I refused to really see them. It wasn’t until I read the latest post on his blog from today that the facts actually started to take their cumulative toll on my conscience. There’s a fine line between being anti-Islamic and a racist and Mr. Wilders has not only crossed that line, he’s vaulted over it and sprinted straight for the outstretched arms of his fascist brothers-in-arms.
I’m not going to bother quoting Wilders here. He doesn’t deserve it. Suffice it to say, it’s standard Zionist hate speech, sprinkled liberally with fear mongering and xenophobic hysteria. Speaking of hate speech…
I stopped linking to Jihad Watch a few weeks back, more or less for the same reason. Robert Spencer has a disclaimer on his site stating that he is not responsible for the comments left on his blog by readers, and I used to cut him some slack based on that claim, but now I call “bullshit” on his disclaimer. He’s morally responsible in the same way that I would be morally responsible if I allowed folks to spew racist hatred unchecked on my blog.
You can’t hide behind your disclaimer, Mr. Spencer. Your blog isn’t (just) anti-Muslim; by virtue of the hate you tacitly encourage in the comments section, it is anti-Arab and it relentlessly pushes an aggressively pro-Israeli agenda as if one must be pro-Israel in order to be anti-Muslim. Well, that certainly leaves people like me out in the cold, now doesn’t it? Tying Zionism to an anti-Islamic message plays into the hands of Muslim whiners and only serves to fan the flames of hatred. However, after some careful review of JW, it appears that promoting the Israeli agenda and stirring up anti-Arab sentiment are greater priorities than revealing Islam for the brutal death cult that it is. The latter comes off only as an afterthought once one has spent some time browsing through the comments sections.
I’m disappointed that so many groups seem incapable of promoting an anti-Islamic message without stooping to anti-Arab bigotry and Zionist hate speech.
This September join dprjones of YouTube and thousands of others from the secular and atheist community in the 24 hour Blogtv event to support Medecins Sans Frontieres (also known as Doctors without Borders).
MSF are a secular group, founded in 1971 and are devoted to providing medical aid to those in need worldwide. If there’s a natural or man-made disaster somewhere n the world, chances are MSF volunteers are in the thick of it. Oftentimes they are the first on scene in remote areas. They literally risk life and limb to go to dangerous places and help complete strangers.
$32,000 was raised last year and this years they hope to raise at least $75,000.
Please give the video a watch and pass it on to others and if you can…please give.
Postscript: There is a YouTube user who has flagged the above video and is trying to get it banned as he is opposed to the secularist and freethinking point of view. Here is the link to the video dprjones released in regards to that threat.
