According to this survey, church goers are more likely to support torture. Evangelicals were the group that supports it the most, and considering that because of them, we all had to endure 8 years of W. Bush, then yeah, that makes sense to me (also, the Passion of the Christ is probably the longest snuff movie in history).

Are you not as tired as I am with all the moral righteousness of Christians? There isn’t a day that goes by where they don’t attack atheists and accuse us of having no morality. The fact that they can turn around and support torturing other human beings is beyond me.

I got an idea; next time some religious jerkoff gets in your face and starts telling you that there is no morality in atheism, ask them why 6 in 10 of them find that it’s not a big deal to inflict pain on other human beings.

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I was never a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I could at least appreciate their music. It was angsty, raw and very emotional. Lead singer and songwriter Billy Corgan obviously had some personal demons (which he attributes to being abused by his step mother as a child), but these usually channeled into moderately entertaining music. That, of course, was before he became born again and created the monstrosity that is Zwan. If you want to know just how much God is on his mind now, take a gander at his Twitter.

If God is Love and Love is Truth than anything not born of Love or Truth is not born of God.

What the hell does that even mean?

Sometimes God is as simple as saying I AM. Love is only complex if you will not forgive

What is this, some fortune cookie caption contest? Lame dosn’t even begin to describe this man’s “poetry”. He was better when he was depressed.

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Here’s a crappy website that thinks it’s laid out an airtight case against atheism. Considering the fact that geocities is dead and buried, I wonder if anyone will bother migrating this steaming pile of crap to some other free hosting company. Here are some hilarious quotes:

Second, the atheistic world view is irrational and cannot provide an adequate basis for intelligible experience. You see, an atheistic world is ultimately random, disorderly, transitive, and volatile. It is therefore incapable of providing the necessary preconditions to account for the laws of science, the universal laws of logic, and the human need for absolute moral standards. In short, it cannot account for the meaningful realities we encounter in life…

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever. Compared to the infinite stretch of time, the span of man’s life is but an infinitesimal moment; and yet this is all the life he will ever know. Therefore, everyone must come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called “the threat of non-being.” For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call “myself” will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

Yeah buddy, there will be a day when the Universe does die (in roughly 10¹⁰⁰ years) when we reach maximum entropy and the whole Cosmos becomes a giant popsicle. But so what? That’s a pretty damn big number, and I doubt anyone is going to live that long.

Also check out the link they have that tries to make the connection between atheists and dog molesters..

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If you’ve never heard of the Westboro Baptist Church, they are the guys that picket the funerals of soldiers with placards that says “God hates Fags” and other hate speech. The patriarch of the family is a man by the name of Fred Phelps, Nate’s father. The following is a speech he gave at the American Atheist convention in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s some really stirring stuff, so if you have a few minutes, take the time to read what he said. Here is a few passages I found interesting:

Anyone who claimed to be a believer, but didn’t subscribe to my father’s interpretation of the scriptures, was quickly declared to be excluded from god’s grace for any number of flaws in their doctrine. For example, the Lord’s Supper was to be performed with unleavened bread and wine only. If you used grape juice, you were going to hell. If the loaf wasn’t a single loaf, unleavened, broken by hand, you were guilty of desecrating the body of Christ. If you had ever divorced, had sex outside marriage, married a divorced person, felt empathy for a gay person — or simply crossed Fred — you were the enemy…

I must admit, there are few careers more suited to my father’s temperament and abilities than the legal profession. His intellect and fiery oratorical skills compel people to stand up and take notice. Early on in his legal career he discovered an untapped gold mine in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This new federal act was basically an empty shell waiting to be filled. He was up to that challenge. Filing an unprecedented number of civil rights suits earned him a reputation in the region for championing the rights of the black man. In spite of his personal and theologically based disdain for the black community he was able to sway juries, with his passionate rhetoric, to pay large judgments and even convinced the NAACP to honor him with several awards.

I always wondered how Fred Phelps went from being a Civil rights lawyer to a religious nut. Now I know that he just did it for the money while obviously secretly hating blacks. Talk about a hate filled man!

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alright, you guys in Ireland need to get your shit together. When reading this article on a proposed “Defamation Bill“, I had failed to realize that it was already a crime to defame religion in your Republic. The problem is, of course, that the very concept of “freedom of speech” conflicts with any special provisions meant to protect religion. Apparently, having +90% of your population actual believers isn’t enough. These religious institutions need to be protected from slander too! Here’s part of article 40 of their Constitution:

“(6.1) The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality:–
(i) The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavor to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State. The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.

I guess the problem is that no one uses this law, since their own Supreme Court can’t seem to decide what constitutes as blasphemy under the umbrella of free speech. What a surprise! Who knew that curbing free speech could be so difficult? Well, now the government wants to move to plan B, which is to make offending religion a crime that you have to pay money for if you get caught. It’s usually a lot easier to get convictions, and I’m sure those religious nut jobs love the idea of blasphemers becoming financially bankrupt for daring to say that Catholicism sucks ass. The wording of the Bill lays it out to make everything crystal clear:

Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court may issue a warrant authorising the Garda Síochána [their police force] to enter, if necessary using reasonable force, a premises where the member of the force has reasonable grounds for believing there are copies of the blasphemous statements in order to seize them.

Great. That’s not scary at all! Would that make my fans in Ireland (i think I have 2 or three over there) get fined for downloading my show? Guys, you gotta get your asses and gear and defeat this horrible Bill, please!

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Superfan Kate forwarded me an email she got when attempting to get in contact with the maker of the film “Return of Christ”. Rather than a simple “hi, thanks for contacting me”, Kate got a long diatribe about this man’s own personal world view. What I found most intriguing is how Josiah has justified his beliefs in his mind. Here is the first part of the letter:

My Hope is the first thing that distinguishes me from this world. While far secondary to LOVE, HOPE is just as important, if not more important than FAITH.

Unlike many faiths, my HOPE is full of humility and love, not arrogance and contention. I do not arrogantly proclaim to know that I am right. For all I know, there is no GOD. Never-the-less, I continue to Hope. I believe that my Hope is the same hope that Noah had when he built the arc. The same Hope that Abraham had when he left his country to find the promise land. The same Hope that Moses dreamed of as he journeyed through the desert to find a promised land, and the same hope that Jesus promised to fulfill.

In the end, I believe that all those who ask to be changed shall be changed (physically and spiritually). In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the corrupt shall be made incorrupt. Until then, do not let anyone tell you that you have Victory.

Until then, Hope for LOVE. Love is far above anything else. Most religions focus on faith and/or works, but both faith and works are dead without Love. Terrorists are the epitome of undoubting faith. Anything can be justified when you know that you are right… when you know that you are God’s chosen.

The religious leaders of this planet (earth) have changed the meaning of the word “faith” into a adverb that defines how strongly they believe. I say again, there is no virtue in undoubting faith. Biblical Faith is a noun. It is simply your beliefs, and can best be understood in a question like; “What is your faith?” or… “Of what faith are you?”

I will not proclaim that I know that I am going to heaven (or to a new world). I hope that there will be a new world and I hope that I will be a part of it, but I know nothing.

If my faith is wrong, and such a perfect heavenly world does not exist??? If the ways of this “survival of the fittest” planet are the ways of the whole Universe, then I am certainly hopeless.

If I am wrong, and the survival of the fittest way is the way of the the entire Universe, then Satan has won whether he really exists or not (in other words, from my perspective, he has won symbolically even if not literally). In which case, the strong will continue to dominate the weak, and the rich will continue to oppress the poor.

Christ clearly stated that He is not a part of this world. Sadly, as it is written, Satan is the God of this world. A third of the angels of heaven chose to follow Satan’s survival of the fittest ideas, so they were cast down to earth. Satan is not the stereotypical creature that most people perceive him to be. He is righteous in his own eyes. He believes this earth is a beautiful and righteous place.

As you can see, Josiah seems to focus entirely on hope, a feeling he believes is impossible without his specific worldview. Although I can admire his ability to see the destructive power of faith, his inability to see just how irrational and paranoid his own beliefs are is scary to say the least. His conclusions about evolution also sound very misguided. Natural selection is neither good nor evil; though it can sometimes appear that way to us. Yes, nature is often cruel, but it is not a directed process. If you try and combine science with theology, this is the kind of predictable reaction you can expect.

The rest of his letter is the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, complete with plagues, famine, death and destruction. This bleak world view makes his whole speech about hope seem utterly pointless, if not a tad bit ironic. For if the prophecies were revealed to him to be false, no doubt he would feel a sense of loss at the idea that humanity was not about to embark in a epic and bloody conflict between Satan and Jesus.

Considering how nutty this guy seems to be, I’m all the more intrigued to see his movie now!

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