godlessness
pharyngula | September 28, 2010Lately, a certain faction within CFI (not the whole organization — I know several staff who disagree) has taken it upon itself to slam the Gnu Atheists as a gang of crude louts who know nothing about religion — they've criticized Richard Dawkins, and I've heard that both Jerry Coyne and I were named in a recent talk as bad for the movement. Both Coyne and Benson have already taken John Shook to task for his poor HuffPo article, which begins:
Atheists are getting a reputation for being a bunch of know-nothings. They know nothing of God, and not much more about religion, and they seem proud of…
pharyngula | September 26, 2010I will not respect a book of lies. I will not tolerate intolerance.
Lately, there has been considerable angst and fury over a bad book, the Koran. Terry Jones, a fundamentalist lackwit, gets called out by the American president, not for being a professional fool taking advantage of our lax laws that encourage the promulgation of religious inanity, but for being insufficiently sensitive and deferential to another gang of fools promoting a different brand of religious idiocy. Then six British racists got arrested, not for real crimes against their neighbors of a different ethnicity, but, again…
pharyngula | September 22, 2010I was interviewed for this article about how atheists respond to signs of their own mortality. It's a little unsurprising…atheists don't expect to live forever, after all, so there's no news there.
I am very uncomfortable with the comparison between my recent experiences and what Christopher Hitchens is facing. I had a little cardio-hiccup and quick & easy surgery to correct a potential problem (and a little warning to make some life style changes); Hitchens has a serious disease that is likely to take his life. These aren't the same thing. These aren't even close.
I'm also feeling pretty…
pharyngula | September 20, 2010This is what the Pope's astronomer says:
Any entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul.
Guy Consolmagno
Here's what I say.
No entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul.
PZ Myers
I can count tentacles. I can't count souls, and neither can anyone else.
pharyngula | September 20, 2010Since Rabbi Lapin has identified godless folk as "parasites", we need a field guide to atheist parasites, just so you can avoid them. They're horrible little creatures with filthy habits, like writing or teaching math.
pharyngula | September 20, 2010Oh, look: a network of Canadian atheists. Now in addition to saying hello to your neighbor to uncover an atheist, you can log in and track them down that way.
pharyngula | September 19, 2010The Fargo newspaper has a reasonable, impartial article on the freethought convention this weekend. It's too bad: inflammatory ranty articles get more attention, and it would have been good to have a few picketers here at the hotel. As it is, we just had a good time.
pharyngula | September 17, 2010You all recall that Project 42 kicks off today with some free events this evening, and a day-long convention tomorrow, right? I expect all the godless in North Dakota to converge on the Fargo Radisson this weekend.
pharyngula | September 16, 2010David Penberthy is, presumably, an atheist…but a terribly angry, ranty, sanctimonious one. He has written an amazing article damning his nemeses—other atheists.
My faith in atheism is being tested by born-agains. Not of the Christian variety, but the obnoxious, pushy, ram-it-down-your-throat, born-again atheist variety.
This new breed of Godless souls has adopted one of the most irritating features of religion. They have become belligerent evangelists for their non-cause.
The rest of the article rages on, and you might be wondering what horrible crimes these atheists have committed, and…
pharyngula | September 16, 2010I'm going to be participating in an internet show this weekend to raise money for charity — Doctors without Borders. It's going to be going on on BlogTV Saturday and Sunday (I'll only be on for an hour early Sunday morning), with a lot of interesting people like James Randi and Matt Dillahunty in an interactive format — ask us questions, and maybe we'll answer.
Here's all the information you need. It isn't required, but remember…the purpose is to encourage donations to an excellent charity.
This video can be downloaded from here;http://www.mediafire.com/?fvv4bf2ssvk...Please feel free to…
pharyngula | September 15, 2010Rabbi Daniel Lapin says some of his best friends are atheists, but he still thinks we're all parasites. I've heard that phrase somewhere before, applied to some religious group or other.
(via OneGoodMove)
pharyngula | September 12, 2010I'm amused to see an Australian burned pages from a Bible and Koran — to good purpose!
I'm happy to report, too, that Muslims in Australia are reacting in a reasonable way, with the leadership urging no retaliation. There is a bit of silly whining going on, though.
Sheik Wahid said the burnt pages represented a sacred connection for Muslims.
"He doesn't understand people have a strong feeling towards those sacred books," he said.
"It's not a piece of paper, it's a sacred law by the divine for the humanity to follow and we have a very, very strong connection to those books."
Nope. To me…
pharyngula | September 12, 2010
Religion's voice is that of a spoiled child having a temper tantrum.
I have been accused by PalMD of lacking empathy for believers; that's not quite right. My response to the Islamic uproar over the Florida preacher who was planning to burn the Koran on 11 September was to say that that's too bad, we have a right to destroy our own property, and that the responses people were making to this trivial event were hysterical and inappropriate.
Informing me that the Muslims are genuinely and sincerely and deeply offended is not informative — contrary to the suggestion that I must have an empathy…
pharyngula | September 10, 2010My lukewarm support for this president is cooling fast. First he's making absurd excuses to kowtow to the easily inflamed sensibilities of Islam, and now, apparently, he's forgotten that this is a secular nation.
Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can't be divided because of religion or ethnicity - and hopes that is something that can continue.
"We are all Americans, we stand together," Obama said. "I think it is absolutely important now for majority of Americans to hang onto that thing that is best in us: a belief in religious tolerance. We have to make…
pharyngula | September 10, 2010The LDS church has a weird habit of baptizing dead people into their faith — and now you can get even. Atheize anyone!
It works, too! I atheized Brigham Young, and next thing I knew, his ghost was hanging about whining about how I'd gotten him kicked out of Mormon heaven and how all his celestial wives had laughed as they tossed his newly godless patriarchal butt off out of their palace. That may sound like a bit of an annoyance, getting haunted out of the deal, but really, it's no problem — just remind them that they don't believe in the supernatural, and you might get a brief look of…
pharyngula | September 9, 2010The OKCupid site dug deep into their database of users and analyzed…a lot of stuff. The interesting one is this chart of reading/writing level by religious belief.
Look there: the godless users of OKCupid score higher than the religious users; and furthermore, being more serious about agnosticism/atheism is correlated with better scores, while the more devout you are within a religious tradition, the lower your score.
Is anyone surprised by this? Not me.
We should regard these data with a little suspicion, though — OKCupid is an online dating site, so it's not an entirely random sample of…
pharyngula | September 8, 2010So I'm having a few niggling little health problems, but all is well and getting better; meanwhile, Christopher Hitchens mentions this:
"Well, I'm dying, since you asked," Hitchens replied. "So are you, but I'm doing it faster and in more rich and fecund detail."
And what does he do? He gallops off to Birmingham to debate that supercilious pompous nitwit, David Berlinski. And by all accounts, whips him into slime. I am extremely impressed with Hitchens right now.
I'm not at all impressed with Berlinski, but then I never have been. He dredged up the rotting corpse of Hitler to claim he was…
pharyngula | September 6, 2010Hemant Mehta is going to be speaking at the University of South Alabama in Mobile next week, and it turns out that the local newspapers won't mention it! So I've been asked to post something about the talk so more people will know to show up. Here's their ad:
Hmmm. They left out the horns and the flames and the profanity and the naked backup singers. He must be doing something horrendous to frighten the local media, after all.
Anyway, go if you're nearby. I suspect there are many more open-minded interested people in the region than the newspaper reaction would imply.
pharyngula | September 4, 2010I hate to break the news to him, but he's just so Johnny Snow. I've grated against ol' Wayne a few times before to mock his awful polls, and now I think he has finally snapped, babbling out incoherent mush about how atheists are just like believers, only worse…and he really doesn't like me. I don't think. Hard to tell with mixed messages like this one.
Just as James Dobson and other evangelists cultivate audiences in order to spread their beliefs, so do atheist evangelizers. The bigs are Britons Christopher Hitchens, who is battling cancer, and Richard Dawkins, who turns 70 in March. Myers,…