This is so lame that it might just make you hate the shit out of little lame math puzzles. According to this little exercise, if you want to get 104% out of “life” rather than a paltry 101%, then try “BUTT RAPE”.

NOTE: My math was a bit off. It’s actually 103%. I guess some idiots DON’T know math…

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After trouncing TGA for best Atheist Podcast, AE goes out and celebrates by getting Ray Comfort on their show. I stand defeated, as Matt does easily with poor old Ray. Good job guys!

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I’m headed back to North America in 3 days, and when my plane lands in Newark Airport on Wednesday afternoon, I have a 12 hour layover before my flight leaves for Calgary. That means I have almost half a day to sit around and do absolutely nothing. If any fans are in Newark on Wednesday and feel like hanging out near the airport, let me know. I’m not exactly looking forward to that particular travelling ordeal.

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Ray Comfort has done it again. If there’s one thing you can admire from this guy (and trust me, there’s probably only one), it’s his unweivering desire to convert everyone over to Jesus, and to turn a profit doing so. Ray has always catered to an audience of semi-educated people, and his “Evidence Bible” looks to be a hilarious tome filled with poor arguments, strawmen attacks, and stretched interpritation of the Bible. I wants it!

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When you hear the words “disturbing trend”, do you think of society’s growing acceptance of same sex unions? If you do, then odds are you’re being ostracized by friends and family members who feel embarrassed by your outdated views. A number of us have moved beyond the Bronze Age and recognize homosexuality as a development of evolution, the same way your eyeballs and your fingernails are. A gay person can no more suppress their sexual attraction than a straight one. In any case, the distinction is archaic: we’re all fucking human.

Not according to the Vatican though. These assholes believe that homosexuality is a sin because a bunch of stone age sheep fuckers decided a few THOUSAND years ago that such unions were against the will of their imaginary friend. And while they’ve abandoned an unbelievable amount of archaic beliefs that make it impossible to live in modern society (like stoning their children to death for swearing), they’re sticking with this one. Gays, as far as they are concerned, are an abomination, and they want the right to tell you so without feeling persecuted.

“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council[of the UN].
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.”

The irony here would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. A group of outright homophobes are upset that society is telling them to “shut the fuck up” with all this bigoted nonsense. They don’t like to hear that their opinions aren’t welcomed at the grown up table, and now they are crying to mommy.

We’ve seen the writing on the wall, written in the blood of young gay teens who took their lives because of feelings of shamed and self hatred. This shame – a direct result of the campaign of hatred and intolerance from the Catholic Church- has fueled more than it’s fair share of fires that have ravage the lives of millions of people. You’ll forgive us if we think you should stop being the bad guys for once. We’ve put up with your child raping and baby thefts, but I’m not sure why that is exactly.

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Over 80,000 people signed an online petition to pressure Apple to drop an app that was designed to help “struggling homosexuals” change their sexuality. As you can easily deduce, it promises to help users gain “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus”.

It used to be that just a few years ago, we would have let this shit slide as a society. Luckily, society has been intolerant of this kind of harmful bigotry, especially in light of all the young men and women that have killed themselves over their perceived “shame”. And who fans these kinds of thoughts? Why, it’s the Jesus-pimps, of course!

Long story short, the good guys won, and Apple pulled this vile bullshit off their app store. Who says I only report on bad news?

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Alabama continues its campaign of stupidity by declaring March 25th a “Day of Prayer of Students Across Alabama”. You might recall that the governor of the state, a man named Robert Bentley, was the man who declared that:

“…anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother”

This is the same state that has introduced, on a number of occasions, a bit of legislation called the “Academic Freedom Bill“, right around the time when this day was officially dedicated to talking to one’s invisible friend. This impressive sounding bill (all terrible bills have great names) was designed to try and introduce creationism in schools, but luckily, the last time they tried in 2009, it died in committee.

“We are very encouraged by the Governor’s proclamation. While we know that many adults will want to have corporate prayer opportunities we know that this is not the real success of this emphasis. The real success of this special day will be in the home. Our hope is that people will start a new habit in their home, community or church of consistently lifting up the needs of today’s students,” said First Priority Greater Birmingham president Greg Davis.

I find it deeply ironic that the government who is working so diligently to make their own children completely ignorant of real science have devoted a day of prayer for them. Why don’t you quit wasting your time with nonsense and actually NOT try and sabotage their education for a change?

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You might remember that billowing idiot debating Christopher from a video I posted earlier this week. He’s the deluded moron who thinks he can prove “scientifically” that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Master. I believe I can use the same arguments he does to also “prove” that my dead dog is will soon come back to earth to defeat evil, conquer the planet and behead the infidels. Isn’t religion fun?

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The faithful often confound me with their tortured explanation as to why their own beliefs are somehow intellectually justified. They want to make faith a virtue; as though believing in God despite any solid evidence is far more brave and integrous than doubt and healthy skepticism.

A fan of the site showed me this article, which claims that it’s the faithful who truly have doubt, while “scientists” are close-minded fools who turn their backs on truth:

…scientists under normal circumstances strive to make their data conform to agreed-upon paradigms. They cling to these paradigms quite tenaciously, even when evidence mounts against them, and the scientific community will only switch paradigms as a last resort. The notion of a completely neutral and objective perspective from which to discern all truth – so crucial to the Enlightenment project – has been shown to be something of a myth, even in the so-called “hard sciences”.

It’s the rare scientist who will claim perfect objectivity, and a perfectly willing to throw out their own pet scientific theories. We know that every human being is prone to accept what confirms his own biase and disregard what doesn’t. This point, however, is irrelevant; science is a method, a way of discerning the truth. It doesn’t matter if a particular scientists is attached to his/her own theory. If it’s incorrect, the error correcting mechanism of science inevitably weeds out good theories from bad ones.

There is no such method in the world of religion. The very existence of faith is the suppression of doubt, and the celebration of undeserved certainty. While the author claims that “Christian theology has often regarded doubt in a positive light”, he has ignored the legacy of his faith in regards to heresy (were the followers of Arius rewarded for their doubt in the Holy Trinity?) What are we to think of Mark and Luke’s passages that allude to eternal damnation if one even doubts for a moment the existence of the Holy Spirit? How many Christians confess to doubting the validity of the claims of divinity of Jesus, or the virgin birth itself?

Socratic doubt, as understood by Hamann, is the beginning of faith; it’s a form of repentance and confession before the Almighty. And it’s far more radical than any rationalist conception of doubt, which confines itself only to penultimate matters and never creeps into the depths of the soul. The scientist (as scientist) may be skeptical, he may be curious, but he can never really doubt. That is reserved for those who know only as they are known, in faith.

I have no problems believing that religious people have doubts like the rest of us. The difference is in their confidence that their doubts are misplaced and ultimately wrong. Faith is a mask of assurance, a false certainty about matters for which there is little or no proof, and more often than not, evidence to the contrary. It should be celebrated the same way ignorance is.

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