godlessness
pharyngula | October 22, 2009
Those rascals at the Coalition of Reason are stirring up mischief again — people are sending me all these news stories about ads going up in the NY subways, Boston, Chicago, and so forth. They are making trouble for atheists! Didn't they get the word that we're supposed to be as quiet as mice, laying low and avoiding antagonizing the elephantine majority that might just squish us? Any active response by a subset of atheists will also mean that some other subset will be doing something different, which will create Deep Rifts, and we can't have that.
Nah, I'm just pulling your leg. Get out…
pharyngula | October 21, 2009Greg Laden reports that Oprah actually had positive things to say about the quality of life in Denmark, and may even have been non-condemning in a brief comment about their godlessness. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Greg spends his afternoons watching Oprah. But after that, I'm mildly and pleasantly surprised. I doubt that much was said about it (parts of the program are online, but no, I simply can't bear to watch it), but at least it's one tiny step toward mainstreaming atheism.
pharyngula | October 20, 2009I guess we have somebody worried.
Atheist Foundation of Australia and Global Atheist Convention Websites Attacked
The Atheist Foundation of Australia and Global Atheist Convention websites suffered a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack yesterday, which caused the websites to be taken offline.
These attacks affected our upstream providers and numerous other websites, cost a large amount of money and time, and have left the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites without hosting for the interim.
While we do not have enough information to confirm the…
pharyngula | October 20, 2009You've got a whole 66 shopping days until Christmas, but as you all know, the War on Christmas is fought all year 'round. I'm already getting email from people who have started their Christmas shopping (I hate you all) and who toys and games to educate and introduce kids to science and learning (OK, you're forgiven.) This is a tough call, especially if you want something to do with evolution — it has been deemed 'controversial', you know, so there has been a kind of de facto self-censorship going on among those manufacturers who want our money, but want Christian money just as bad.
One…
pharyngula | October 20, 2009There was a debate yesterday, on the motion "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world". On the affirmative side, the Catholics had Anne Widdecombe, a conservative British politician, and Archbishop Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria. On the godless side…Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.
Just look at that lineup and you can predict how it went. It was a complete rout.
The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers. The archbishop had obviously…
pharyngula | October 19, 2009The story Barbara Bradley Hagerty cobbled together from interviews with atheists is now up. It's called "A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists", and it's very strange. Her emphasis is on the differences within the atheist community, and she makes it sound like atheism is about to blow apart into a collection of warring sects, just like religion, and offers scornful quotes about how the New Atheism offers nothing.
That's not the message I gave when she interviewed me, but maybe she got it from the others. Or maybe it's what she wanted to hear.
I told her a number of things. I said that atheism doesn'…
pharyngula | October 18, 2009This is a video by an apostate: an atheist who has left the flock and become a believer. I was all ready to point a gnarled bony finger at him and screech to my minions that he must be rent limb from limb, but then I made the mistake of listening further…and he actually makes a good case.
I'm thinking, though, that if I get sick this year and don't recover, then I'll be able to mock and laugh at him again. Briefly. From my deathbed.
grrlscientist | October 18, 2009tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, hate mail, Richard Dawkins, streaming video
Richard Dawkins responds to some hate mail sent by those architects of brotherly love, god's own followers, christians.
grrlscientist | October 17, 2009tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, atheist meets god, Edward Current, streaming video
It's the moment of judgment for one fool who says there is no God. Christians, get ready to laugh as he learns his eternal fate!
pharyngula | October 16, 2009The atheism conference in Australia is going to be huge (note the logo in the left sidebar here), with attendance in the thousands, a swarm of speakers, etc. It's fairly typical for regions to support that kind of influx of tourist dollars into their economies; they want to encourage more visitors. Strangely, though, while the conference leadership has applied for government support in this project, there has been no word yet.
Hmmmm.
Now you might be thinking that this sort of enterprise should be entirely self-supporting, which is true. But then again, consider similar sorts of events with a…
pharyngula | October 16, 2009Lately, all the polls people have been sending me are already going in the right direction — have I become superfluous? Are atheists everywhere already gleefully clicking buttons in polls without my prompting?
Oh, well, here's another one. An ambitious priest gets assigned to Brighton, which he calls "the most Godless city in Britain". He has declared that it is now his intention to transform the place into a sanctuary for unctuous old farts with their brains scrambled by nonsense (uh, those are my words, not his, if you couldn't tell.) So the local newspaper ran a poll to see what people…
pharyngula | October 15, 2009All right, England, enough is enough. Every Christmas, those people over there get some fabulous secular midwinter celebration, and what do we godless Americans get? Another war on Christmas waged by an indignant Bill O'Reilly, and maybe some pathetic civic spectacle as some state capitol has various sects jostling for display space. Boring!
Now look at what you can see in London: Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, with Robin Ince, Richard Dawkins, Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden, Simon Singh, Richard Herring, Robyn Hitchcock, Ben Goldacre, Chris Addison, Brian Cox, Martin White's…
pharyngula | October 14, 2009Atheists are familiar with the Grandma Gambit — it's a common tactic used to shut us up. We're told to keep quiet because our dear sweet devout Grandma couldn't possibly deal with the news; it would break her heart and you wouldn't want to do that, would you? What kind of callous rat would hurt a gentle little old lady!
It's a rather patronizing suggestion that belittles Grandmas everywhere. Both of my grandmothers were feisty types who would have relished a good argument (and one of my grandmothers, who died when I was 12, would probably have just said, "good for you"). Go ahead, break the…
pharyngula | October 13, 2009The Secular Student Alliance is growing faster than their income, but that could change. They just got a generous offer from a donor to provide matching funds, up to $50,000, so you can guess what they're up to now: funding drive! They're looking for more people willing to cough up a few bucks, because every donation between now and December will be doubled.
Help them out, if you can. This is the best time to get a good return on your investment.
grrlscientist | October 11, 2009tags: atheist life, godlessness, Imagine, streaming video
This video is a list of famous people who are atheists, put together for a school project and using John Lennon's song "Imagine" as the background music.
grrlscientist | October 10, 2009tags: atheist life, godlessness, streaming video
Being an atheist, you believe that this is the only life, and live it to the fullest. Atheists and skeptics lack proof and evidence of certain deities and spiritual beliefs. So there is no intent for us to harshly bash other religions and forms, for we humbly have our own perspectives in life.
If you however think that atheists are a threat to the general community, first take a look at the mirror. Millions of people have died just because of religion, "religious" wars, and rejection due to contradictory beliefs.
"Skeptic does not mean him who…
pharyngula | October 9, 2009
Here are the lyrics:
Don't need no god.
Don't need no eternal paternal god.
Don't need no reassuringly protective
good and evil in perspective god.
Don't need no imported distorted,
inflated updated,
holy roller, save your soul, or
anaesthetisingly opiate gods.
Don't need no "all creatures that on Earth do dwell"
be good or you go to Hell god.
Don't need no Hare Krishna Hare Krishna,
Hail Mary, Hail Mary god.
Got no yen for zen, Baghavad-Gita or Gurdjieff.
No Mormon, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist god,
no absolutes beyond refute,
no reverential preferential Judaic Messianic god.
No Bibles…
pharyngula | October 7, 2009Yeah, probably. It's a letter from Einstein that we'll have to brandish next time some faitheist claims Einstein for their cause.
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
Wow. He's so strident.
pharyngula | October 7, 2009I was looking for a Hallmark card with that on the cover (and also, preferably, a sad-eyed puppy dog) to send to Josh Rosenau and Chris Mooney, but they didn't have one, so I had to settle for a blog post. Here's the sad puppy, at least.
Oh, Internet, you are like a giant greeting card store that is always well-stocked with lovely cliches.
What seems to have scrambled their brains is that Richard Dawkins said, in an interview for Newsweek, that "there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God" and accepts that "there is that compatibility". Shock! He must have…