Theists actually believe this stuff!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Always good for a giggle

Humour

Top 10 Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Jesus

10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.

9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.

8. Beer has never caused a major war.

7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.

6. When you have Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to make them drink it.

5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured over their brand of Beer.

4. You don't have to wait more than 2,000 years for a second Beer.

3. There are laws saying that Beer labels can't lie to you.

2. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.

1. You can prove you have a Beer.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Christian kindness Westboro Baptist style.

Third Knox teacher charged with sex abuse

Third Knox teacher charged with sex abuse.

Another teacher charged over sexual abuse allegations from Anglican school, Knox. Don't have to look any further if you want a good example of how Christianity teaches people to be good. These leaders of the Christian community are accused of terrible crimes. Were they all atheists hiding out in the religious education system?

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Friday, February 20, 2009

Thursday, February 19, 2009

GetUp's Save the Internet campaign

GetUp's Save the Internet campaign is still going. It must have prickled Clive Hamilton by the look of his attack on GetUp in this AustralianIT article.

They say: "Without God, how would we know how to be good?"

How do we know how to be good without God? I think that our morality and social rules have evolved. Religion has co-opted these social rules.

Anyway, what happens if the rules all disappear? I have a couple of examples:
. Japan and Scaninavian countries have abandoned religion but anarchy hasn't ensued.
. The Dutch town of Drachten removed all of its road signs but traffic chaos has not ensued. In fact, in Bohmpt, Germany, things have gotten better with less crashes and more polite sharing. There are only two rules: stay under 30mph and give way to anything to your right be it a bike, a pram or a vehicle. Easy :)

So, what's going on? Without clear commandments, why don't people just run wild? I think that people pull their heads in when they don't know that they are in the right. If you feel that ideas you get are pre-approved by an omniscient being you will carry them forward, right or wrong.

Christian Kindness at work again.

And they want to ban pornography. Ban Christianity, I say.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Mark Twain's description of the book of Mormon

The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so ’slow,’ so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

How to respond to requests to debate creationists

"A professor at the University of Vermont, Nicholas Gotelli, got an invitation to debate one of the clowns at the Discovery Institute. Here's what they wrote."

From PZ Meyer's Pharyngula blog.

I'm gonna call this agressive evangelising.

This guy held a woman captive, hand cuffed in an adult diaper, reading the bible to her. Watch those fundies, you never know how far they'll go.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Proposition 8 supporters

Because the proposition 8 campaign was a political movement donations over USD100 had to be recorded on public record. eightmaps.com have converted that list into a map to help normal people to avoid such nutjobs.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Good arguements:

When you're abused for being an atheist because Hitler was an atheist these are your arguements.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

ID fundies at it again.

The ID fundies are at it again in Florida this time. After ten court cases dismissing ID as religion they are ready to give it another run through.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Polls

Polls seem to attract the terminally stupid, or is that being too hopeful. Perhaps people really are this stupid. This Guradian (UK) article indicates 12% of Britons believe the bible to be the literal truth. The Telegraph (UK) gives a little more detail including the Archbishop of Canterbury's amusing accusation that Dawkins is evolving into a "very simple kind of thinker". This from a theist. Theists can't see the world in black and white quickly enough.

Friday, January 30, 2009

WTF


The Israeli army showed us its loving god through its wholesale slaughter of cage Zoo animals. This pregnant camel was deliberately shot with a rocket. Other animals were shot with small arms in their cages.

Slide Show


Find more photos like this on Atheist Nexus

Christian Nazis

Archive footage of Christian Nazis. Before theists accuse atheists of being Nazis they should understand that Hitler was elected by a Christian country. He didn't suddenly become a Nazi. He didn't take power by forse. His policies were acceptable to Christians.

Theists. Watch this video.

Watch this video. This guy says that the earth is flat because it says so in the Koran. This is now dumb you sound to me when you make claims about how the world is based on your bible.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Carbon Dating

Eric Lyons M.Min. sets out his arguments against carbon dating. He sets up his straw man well then burns it to the ground thinking that this proves the Young Earth Creationist theory.

Where did he go wrong? PotHoler54 answers all of his questions.



Of particular interest is the Hugh Miller carbon dating incident as told by the two parties above. Hugh Miller sent fossilized dinosaur bones in for carbon dating. Fossilized dinosaur bones cannot be carbon dated because all of the carbon is gone from them. This is just the wrong measure so it cannot give any meaningful results.

However, these bones had a preserving resin coating applied to them by man. So, the sample, being a combination of relatively new resin and carbon14 free, fossilized dinosaur bones came up with an age of 15000 - 20000 years. This is an average age between the bones and the resin.

For Young Earthers this was the knock down argument for evolution. For them, if evolution is wrong, creationism must be right. For me, if evolution was disproved right now it would not make creationism more likely. They are not competing scientific arguments. Why would Christian creationism or Intelligent Design be more valid than the Australian Aboriginal's Rainbow Serpent creation hypothesis?

How is this different to science? Miller was looking for a result. He worked out how to get it. According to potholer54, he could have gotten the same result by smearing jam on a dinosaur bone. The jam would introduce carbon14 to the sample and skew the results towards a much younger date. Science looks at results to see if they fit into scientific theory. If they don't fit into scientific theory they put both the test and the theory to the test. They don't just yawn and pull an old theory out of the draw and say: 'Well, I suppose this one will do.' They aren't just trying to keep the punters happy.

In this case it would be just as valid (totally invalid) to say that the resin on the bones was 15000 - 20000 years old and that this disproved the entire bible story that man was created 6000 years ago because man makes resin. It's a dumb argument designed to impress dumb people into tithing. They use these straw man arguments because they work on theists.

Teen Rape Case - SMH

This SMH article tells of 7 boys around 16 raping a 13 year old repeatedly.

So, the happy clappers are gonna be after the pornographers again.

However, for me, there is a hint. I know I am reading between the lines a lot here. But if my theist oponents ignore the rule that correlation does not imply causation then I'll join in and be intuitive. One of the kids was not permitted by his parents to recieve school based sex education prior to the event. For me that equals happy-clapper parents. Secular parents want their children to have real information as they need it to deal with real world situations as they encounter them.

How would real sex education have helped here?
. If these kids had know what rape was one of them might have seen that this was wrong and said something or just gone home. I bet each parent of the boys wishes their boy had walk away and rung the police.
. She would have know that she was out of her depth and that 16 year old boys have just one thing on their minds.
. Did they use condoms? Is she pregnant? This situation is bad enough without this poor girl having to life with the repercussions of this forever.

How religion primed society and these boys for this event:
. Christianity says that a girl who steps into any situation and is raped did the wrong thing. It says that she should have been more careful. The blame is pushed onto the victim. Islam does this more - thus the bhurka.
. Religions tell their members that others are of less worth than their fellow flock members. This xenophobia justifies rape of 'the other'.
. Women are second class citizens to theists. Made from a rib to keep men company, rib woman gets what she diserves.
. Men are instilled with a sense of entitlement to women's bodies - just look at traditional wedding vows.
. Women brought sin into the world (the snake/apple affair) so they get what they deserve.
. With a black and white attitude towards the world theists will stoop to depravity when they fall from grace - in for a pound, in for a penny. The idea that a fall from grace is a complete fall is what leads many Catholic girls into prostitution.
. Once a woman has fallen from grace she is worthless. For these boys she probably got what she diserved because she went on a date with one of them.


Football teaches young men the wrong thing too.
. Again, a sense of entitlement.
. The message is that if you are good enough, you'll get away with it. Our society seeks to be like its idols by wearing the same brand shoes or shirt and raping girls in the same manner.
. Football teaches that might is right.


Christianity has had 2000 years to make the society it says it can make. It is no closer today than it ever has been. Society wasn't safe when they had enough power to burn you to death or drown you for disagreeing with them. The problems and threats were just different. We only give politicians a few years to show that their policies are working then we dump them. Why have we stuck this this crap for so long? Is it because we want to believe their lies?

If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Theist misconceptions

Atheists have to moral compass:
. My moral compass is based on Secular Humanism.
. I don't need supernatural threats to be nice to people.
. Reciprocity is a human trait co-opted by religion.

Atheists are more prone to criminality:
. Prison populations show higher religosity than society overall.
. Atheists don't have a supernatural forgiver of sins. We have to forgive ourselves.
. Atheists don't have a devil to blame. We have to take reponsibility for our actions.
. Atheists only get one life and don't want to waste it in gaol.

Atheists worship self:
. I don't even know what that means. It sounds like religious mumbo jumbo so it just gets ignored.
. I don't worship anything. Worshipping is for theists.

Atheists are too few to effect real change in the world:
. Keep telling yourself that if it gives you comfort.

Atheists fear death because they have no heaven to go to:
. Theists have constructed an imaginary world to avoid having to face their own deaths. This is a product of fear.

Atheists are selfish:
. Freecycle's Atheist, Agnostic and Freethinkers group has lent the most money of all the groups including the Christians.
. Again, this is religion co-opting positive human actions and attributing them to their own faiths.
. Their motivation for altruism is to curry favour with their god. I don't have a heaven that will repay me for good deeds so my altruistic actions are much more generous because I don't expect repayment.

Atheists are stupid. They just cannot see the real world.
. We think the same thing. We say: "They beleive what...?"
. Religion is all black and white. So theists can answer questions in ridgid, dogmatic ways but they rarely give much thought to topics.
. They are asleep.
. Freethinkers - they just sound smart.
. Theists are just so closed minded. How can you learn with a closed mind.

There are no atheists in foxholes:
. at first I took this as a compliment. Atheists are rarely sucked into religious wars.
. after a while I was led to understand that this was an accusation of cowardous.
. the Military Acsociation of Atheists and Freethinkers will have an issue with this.

Atheists are imaginary. God doesn't believe in Atheists, so they don't exist.
. Prove it.

Atheists are just lazy, they just want to stay in bed on Sundays:
. Theists are lazy, they just don't want to think.
. I don't really sleep any later on Sundays.

Evolution/Science is a religion:
. I just don't get this.
. You're not allowed to just make up new definitions of words.
. Science makes astoundingly accurate predictions. Religions don't even try to make predictions they just retrospectively justify dusty old books and power structures.

Atheists hate God and we're just being rebellious by denying His existence...
. He doesn't exist so how can I hate him?

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

xxxchurch

Every time you masturbate God kills a kitten. Frankly, I don't really like cats.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

I can't find this...

I've been thumbing through my bible (a lie) and I can't find the section where is says I should write hate mail to elderly nature program presenters who don't believe in God.

Sir David Attenborough recieves hate mail from Christians who disagree with his position on evolution. Is this Christian love in action? If this is Christian love or the loving spirit of Jesus operating via these misguided lunatics, I don't want any part of it.

If you want to get power from threatening and harrasing other people Christianity is your gig.

Correlation does not prove causality.

So much of religion's authority comes from ideas like: lack of religion causes immorality, sex out of wedlock causes social problems or homosexuality causes floods. Again and again religion has last it's authority on such issues. Psychotherapy has replaced demonic possession and exorcism. Weather science has replaced God. Thor is not the god of thunder any more.

The response to this is that correlation does not prove causality.

Christians still have their heads in the sand. Christian News says that God does control the weather. Weather like: "storms, floods and earthquakes".

The Trumpet describes God's stick and carrot attitude towards weather.

These causality claims make as much sense as phocks.org's comparitive study between the dietary health of the Japanese and the French or the correlation between pirate decline to global warming.

Monday, January 26, 2009

A can of Mercy Ministries worms

After my last post I was reading SeanTheBlogonaut's AtheistNexes posts on MM. This lead me to this Nashville News story that ran after the SMH broke the Australian MM story. It is very interesting. It has lies, love afairs, demons corrupting people... the usual nonsense Christians just can't seem to stay away from.

Sean the Blogonaut - MM posts. Sean has followed this story closely. His posts are much more detailed than mine so head on over there if you want to know more.

A blog by an ex captive of MM.

The Perth Voice ran a story on Naomi Johnson's experience with MM.

When you try to discuss MM on youtube the video is taken down because MM slaps a copyright claim on you... because they have nothing to hide. But never fear. There are still plenty of videos on youtube about MM's treatment of young people in need of help.

Mercy Ministries again... well, they keep it up.

This blog is not a search and destroy mission against Mercy Ministries, however, they persist so I persist in attacking them.

Live News ran a story not unlike previous stories telling of Mercy Ministries' treatment of medical conditions with prayer and exorcism.

The difference is that there is a video of Mercy Ministries boss Peter Irvine. Mr Irvine is also CEO of Gloria Jean Coffee. During the video footage he says that there is no use of exorcism in the Mercy Ministries program. They also have photocopies of the Mercy Ministries handbook that explains how to do exorcisms. Put the two together and something doesn't match.

Now, as every dogmatic christian will tell you, Mr Irvine cannot be lying because he is a christian. I'm not buying that assessment. My experience of Christians is that they will lie through their teeth and they will believe almost anything to forward their ridiculous belief system.

The problem with credulity:

A goat is being held in custody for attempted armed robbery. Apparently this goat, who is really a person who transformed himself using witchcraft was seen trying to steal a car before running into an alley. His persuers came around the corner and there he was standing there looking sheepish.

Two issues here:
. witchcraft is a belief held by christians. They think that Harry Potter is bringing evil into the world and that witches get tehir power from satan. If you'll believe in religion, what will you believe next?
. as Hitchens says, mob opinion is wrong by definition.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Go Jean-Luc

Friday, January 23, 2009

I'm gonna call it:

I 'm gonna call it. I bet these nutbags were Christians.

It's got all the signs of dumb-arses taking their queues from the bible. Infanticide, incest, obedient and silent wife, obeying your father, not seeking medical help, Americans... it's got it all. I think the story will be in Bible 3.0.

This call is made with as much evidence as people with the opposite view, that they must have been Atheists, have for their stance.

Mercy Ministries

An opinion piece on Hillong and Mercy Ministies.

Previous article linking Hillsong to Mercy Ministries.

And an opinion piece.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Atheist Bus Campaign again

Facebook has groups for and against the Atheist Bus Campaign. A lot more people have joined the for than the against.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

If an Atheist did this...

If an atheist felt strongly that they couldn't drive a bus that carried a religious advertisement they would be accused of being anti-christian. The label anti-christian feeds straight into accusations of being immoral, Nazi, communists... and all that crap.

Ten Commandments again.

What's wrong with the ten commandments?
The real ten commandments.
The ten commandments are no longer valid.

Links from OzAtheist.

ISIS

Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society made the St. Petersburg Declaration starting thus:

We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.

It goes on to call for secular rights and responsibilities in Islamic societies.

Another Fundy Nutbag

This guy's magic larva lamp created a sculpture of The Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus (characters from a popular local religion). Having strong abstract thought I can see the resembelance... also, it looks a little like a spagetti western cactus but no-one prays to them so we'll overlook that inconvenient resembelance.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Churchies more likely to cheat.

Church goers are more likely to steal a paper from a self serve booth. They feel that, as they are generally more moral and righteous, that things that they think of doing are right. Like a spoilt child who does anything that pops into his or her mind because the parents never defined and applied proper boundries.

Now this is one of their Ten Commandments (and under Greed in the 7 deadly sins) so why would theists be doing this. This really is a problem with religion. It tells people they are good if they make the correct tythe to their church and attend weekly to repent. As a humanist all I see is a dirty little theif.

Clean your own dirty laundry first before you start accusing me of being bad, theist scum.

Humanism

The Victorian State Government education accreditation body has been given a Humanist Ethical Lesson plan to be taught to children who's parents do not want their children to be given religion lessons in Victorian primary schools. Previously they were given no activities or lessons, they were left to their own devises for the period.

Religion claims to be able to teach people how to be good. Humanism, equally, claims to teach an ethical system. Humanism offers a workable ethical system based on tested, proven concepts. Just because it lacks a supernatural punishment for non-compliance that doesn't render it invalid.

Religion is quite right to be afraid of this movement. It is staring down the barrel of extinction. One of the few claims it is still allowed to make by agnostics and soft atheists is that it teaches morality. If a system without supernatural threat is found to be just as valid people on the middle ground will see one more of religion's lies.

Humanist Society of Victoria
Ethical Education Site
Age Article with comments on Richard Dawkins' site.

The Large Hadron Collider

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Theists, with all of their superstition, are convinced that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the earth. Their big problem, as illustrated by their faith, is that they will believe almost any peice of nonsense put to them by anyone standing near a pulpit.

Snoopygirl illustrates this hysterical credulity well.

Fortunately there are sensible, thoughtful atheists like larianlequella out there too. Larian is brave enough to engage with these lunatics.

Speaking of Lunatics:
George W has finally left the building. This illustrates how much he will be missed. Another theocractic dictator brought down. :))