godlessness
pharyngula | November 23, 2008Whoa, I was worn out from traveling, and just got up. It's almost time for Atheists Talk radio! This week, it's time for some science: we're going to hear from Matt Kaplan, head of a DNA testing lab, and he's going to discuss the Genographic Project and procedures for tracing human ancestry.
pharyngula | November 22, 2008Recently, we've been mocking the sad little website of the Rev. Cockshaw, which had the title "There probably is!" (referring, of course, to a deity). Now someone has done the obvious and grabbed the url for There Probably Isn't!. So go ahead, post your stories of deconversion there.
I'm feeling a bit sorry for Cockshaw. His efforts got steamrollered rather easily, and now they're being reversed. Good work!
grrlscientist | November 16, 2008tags: gawd is hate, grrlscientist with beaker of evil, humor, reader response
Secret Underground Laboratory, New York, NY 10024.
Image: Homeland Security Photo of GrrlScientist with Beaker of Evil.
God inspired a reader of mine to write a message to me in response to my godless spoutings. My reader, being a blog writer, posted it to his blog (much like the disciples did when gawd inspired them to write stuff -- no doubt only after they'd all sparked up a doobie and sat back on the couch with a bag of Doritos and quill-and-ink and a piece of parchment). This piece is one letter that will…
pharyngula | November 16, 2008In less than an hour, Atheists Talk radio will be on! This week, they're discussing how to talk to a christian proselytizer, and are also having a segment on fundamentalism. It sounds very depressing, but I'm sure it will be good.
By the way, I am back home, and my laptop is still dead. I'm using an older, slower, smaller laptop while the other is out for repair, and I'm just now beginning the slow process of doing a complete restore to this little machine. I'm feeling sort of brain-damaged, but at least I'm getting some functionality back.
One thing that never restores very well, though, is…
pharyngula | November 12, 2008Fresh off the British Humanist Associations's successful bus campaign, the American Humanist Association has fired up its own set of big signs on buses in the Washington DC area. Their message is "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake".
Of course, CNN considers this another salvo in the War on Christmas. Silly news organization. Didn't you get the word? The war on Christmas is over. We won. It's a secular holiday, atheists can celebrate it any way they want, Christians can continue to pretend it's baby Jesus' birthday, and everyone has the freedom to interpret the meaning of…
pharyngula | November 9, 2008This morning at 9am Central, tune in to Atheists Talk radio for a discussion of atheists in the military — it turns out there are atheists in foxholes.
pharyngula | November 7, 2008Slate has an article by Paul Bloom on why religious people are nice and atheists are mean. As you might guess, I have some difficulty with the premise of the article — in my experience, atheists have been far friendlier, while the religious have been downright vicious — but it does make some interesting points (and, of course, it cites me as "prominent", which is very flattering).
In particular, his main argument, which I entirely agree with, is that if religion has any virtue, it is not in the belief itself, but in the community that forms around it.
The positive effect of religion in the…
pharyngula | November 7, 2008I was interviewed by humanistischer pressedienst about the New Atheism and American politics and religion. I am amazingly erudite auf Deutsch, so much so that I can only read what I said with considerable effort.
OK, I confess—the interview was in English, and it's the fluency of the interviewer we ought to praise. I've put the original text below the fold for those of us who'd rather not read slowly with the aid of a dictionary.
1. You received quite a number of threads, even death threads, for mistreating a cracker that supposedly contained the body of Jesus. You never really made the…
pharyngula | November 5, 2008On 13 November, at 7pm, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking at Blegen Hall 10 at the UMTC campus. This is part of a national college speaking tour that draws from and promotes Bob Avakian's new book, "AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World", and here's what she'll be talking about:
Freethinking activist Sunsara Taylor will explore the questions:
Is believing in gods actually harmful?
How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation?
Why is the "Bible Belt" in the U.S. also the "lynching belt"?
In the intensifying conflict…
grrlscientist | November 4, 2008tags: God is Hate, christians are haters, religion is organized hate, religion, fundamentalists are everywhere, mindcontrol
The above letter was spoofed and supposedly signed by Alice Shannon of Soldotna, Alaska, and republished by DIGG. However, the original letter was published in the newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle on Monday, October 22, 2001, when all the good religionists in the area were pondering the role of a gawd-inspired terrorist act: the destruction of the World Trade Towers, portions of the Pentagon and the downing of an airliner in an Pennsylvania cornfield -- which…
pharyngula | November 3, 2008The hateful Reverend Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church was a heck of a father. Some of his kids have escaped the hellish prison of WBC, and one, Nathan Phelps, has written about his upbringing. Religion was a tool of oppression, something to instill fear and allow an angry father to control his family, and to justify violence against them.
Nathan Phelps is now an atheist, and says that he "agrees with prominent atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins, who has said that religion can be 'real child abuse.'"
(via erv)
pharyngula | November 2, 2008Don't forget to tune in to Atheists Talk radio for a discussion of state science standards sometime this morning. It's nominally at 9am, but there's a time change tonight, I'm in a different time zone right now, and I've got to be up at 4am to catch a plane home, so I have no idea what time it will actually be. You figure it out.
pharyngula | November 1, 2008In case you've been feeling dumped upon because atheists seem to be the current target of contempt by so many, there is still one group that might be lower: Dungeons & Dragons players. At GenCon, D&D players raised $17,000 to donate to the late Gary Gygax's favorite charity, The Christian Children's fund…only to have it turned down because sales of the heathenish D&D contributed to the amount.
If you are a D&D player and an atheist, then I'm sorry, this won't cheer you up, because obviously you are the lowest slime in the universe.
grrlscientist | October 31, 2008tags: politics, political sleeze, Elizabeth Dole, Kay Hagen, atheists, streaming video
At one time, I respected -- note the past tense of the word -- Elizabeth Dole, but after seeing this astonishing ad that her campaign aired in NC against her political opponent, Kay Hagen, I am disgusted. At the end of the ad, there is a picture of Hagen and a voice-over saying "there is no god" -- the implication being that Hagen, a christian, actually said this. Worse, even though Hagen is christian, her willingness to meet with atheists shows she is open-minded and thoughtful: since when is tolerance…
pharyngula | October 30, 2008I really regret ever recommending Kay Hagan. That race has taken a turn from a vivid example of anti-atheist bigotry on Dole's side, to one where all sides are taking turns bashing the godless to wash off the taint of association with us subhumans with no faith. Greg Laden has a couple of examples of the way the media is sliming us.
Kay Hagan herself has a counter-ad that closes with an admonition against "making false witness against fellow Christians". Well, gosh, that's mighty white of her. Wouldn't it have been enough to leave off those last three words? Or was that the really important…
pharyngula | October 30, 2008A while back, I posted this video of an enthusiastic young atheist — and would you believe that almost immediately after I put it up, censorious theistic jerks started dunning youtube to remove all of her videos and ban her? It's nice to know that bullying thugs are monitoring Pharyngula to seek out more fragile targets, but it's not good to see that they sometimes actually succeed in getting people suspended. We all have to hang in there and be tough, and support our fellow godless rationalists against the sleazy weasels who want to silence our voices.
Anyway, she's back now.
Hey,…
pharyngula | October 27, 2008We've got another troll in the comments — she wouldn't necessarily be a troll, except for the dead giveaway of asking the same question a dozen times and running away from any answer any of the non-troll commenters might give. The question is, "Does evolution imply atheism?", and I'm going to have to disagree with most of the people who have already answered it by giving a conditional yes.
First, let's clear up the incoherence of the question. I understand it as, "Does understanding science [it's not just biologists who exhibit this phenomenon!] lead to an abandonment of religious beliefs?",…
pharyngula | October 26, 2008This morning at 9am, Atheists Talk radio will be about the Ghosts of Minnesota and American Atheists. One of those two is entirely unreal.
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pharyngula | October 22, 2008
Some people like to claim that religion is here to stay and we can never hope to change it.
Yes, we can.