There are two things that raced through my mind when I listened to this tragedy of a song:

#1. Why do so many white people think that to rap effectively, one has to be completely tone deaf? (I’m looking at you, Blondie)
#2. You can sell any piece of crap as long as you put a cross on it.
#3: Christianity is a creepy death cult. If it hadn’t been part of your culture for so long, you’d realize that their rapturous embrace of eschatology borders on insanity. The early church fathers were so convinced that Jesus was going to end the world that they discouraged people from marrying or having kids. Once that bearded hippy started looking like he wasn’t coming back, they switched gears a little, but their incessant need to believe in his return isn’t only crazy: it’s dangerous. Does no one accept the possibility that one day, one of these nutjobs with enough power might want to “speed things up” a little when it comes to the end of the world?

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This week, we discuss the recent loss of Christopher Hitchens and Susan Jacoby’s recent article about the challenges facing atheists. I also share some exciting news about the future.

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Standard Podcast [ 52:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s worth a look. Be sure to check it out.

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This show seems like a lot of fun, but judging by all the comments, I think the host should:

1) Lose the facial hair. Dude looks like a rat in that thing.
2) Do something about the lens glare. Perhaps diffuse light might eliminate what is a distracting amount of glare shinning off those spectacles of his.
3) Get nicer clothing. L.L. Bean called, and they want their shitty shirts back, dude.

Otherwise everything else is super slick, short (which is important), fun, and well produced. All in all, I’m looking forward to watching these videos three times a week. Go subscribe to their channel now!

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This might be a minor grievance, but why do religious folks insist on singing “Imagine” when the song is so clearly anti-religious? I know it’s beautiful and melancholic, but surely they realize that the whole point of John Lennon’s immortal ballad is a call for peace and love by abandoning ideologies that needlessly divide us. Sure, it’s a song of peace, but it lays out the way to get there pretty fucking effectively. The “imagine no heaven/ no hell” line is meant to illustrate just how sick and twisted these kinds of ideas are. Eternal torment for refusing to believe that a 2000 year old Palestinian Jew was a God? Yeah, fucking prince of peace my ass.

Still, it doesn’t stop assholes from appropriating the songs and changing the lyrics to make it appear in favor of religion rather than against it. Here are a few things to keep in mind when singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” song:

#1. The song speaks out against patriotism, religion, and materialism. It is not a glorification of ideologies that causes needless suffering.
#2. Replacing “and no religion too” with “All religion is true” is the equivalent of kicking John Lennon in his rotting testicles.

We already have so few atheist songs; hearing some religious douchebag slaughter the words just hurts, man.

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You can always count on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to do something crazy. If they aren’t busy showing up at a Holocaust denier conference, they’re harassing little girls for dressing “imodestly”. All of this bad press has intensified resentment for these fundamentalist weirdos, so in an effort to fight this image problem, they decided to parade around town in uniforms similar to the ones worn by Jews in concentration camps.

Demonstrating against what they viewed as incitement against the ultra-Orthodox in Israeli media, about 1,000 men marched through the streets of their neighborhood, many of them dressed in concentration camp uniforms and wearing yellow Stars of David, which Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Well, that should convince everyone that you aren’t a bunch of out-of-touch, religious douche-bags without a clue.

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It’s finally upon us, folks! A date that dumb people are convinced will bring upon the end of the earth, and everything we care about.Since I’m not too nervous about it, I’ll wish you all a Happy New year instead!

Oh, and podcasts and posting goes back to normal starting tomorrow. Now there’s a bit of good news.

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Here’s something I’ve learned in all my years of blogging: if you look for something hard enough, you’ll find it. In my case, it’s examples of religious stupidity that I zero in on. I realize that cheap laughs and easy jokes may not give the complete picture of a particular religion (usually Christianity or Islam), but if I was trying to be fair I wouldn’t be having any fun.

I want you to keep this in mind, as it might help clarify some of the frustration you might be feeling if you read Rebecca Watson’s new tirade on the evils of secular sexism entitled “Reddit makes me hate atheists“. The post focuses on the story of a 15 year old girl who received a barage of innapropriate comments after posting a picture of herself with a copy of Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World”. I think this opening paragraph will help set the tone of the piece:

…R/atheism is very large, and so it is jam packed with assholes. And yet! I continue to read it every day. I read it even though I usually learn nothing new from it and it only serves to create and foster inside me an intense hatred of my fellow atheists.

While there are a variety of explinations as to why some of comments were so disparaging (her post made it to the front page of reddit, which extends far beyond the confines of r/atheism), her obsession with gender issues makes it seem as though the atheist reddit forums are a cesspool of misogyny. I couldn’t disagree more.

I’ve been trolling the site for years now, watching the group grow from humble numbers to over 300,000 strong. While a great number of posts are usually rage comics, occasionally hilarious facebook threads and funny pictures, a significant portion of them are personal tales of individuals “coming out” to family members (I even remember one post from a redditor claiming to be Michel Behe’s atheit son). The support these people receive from their fellow redditors is almost universally positive. I’m constantly surprised by the patience, understanding and intelligence on display from members. Then again, I’m usually on the lookout for positive examples of human kindness on the site, so I’m not entirely surprised when I find what I’m looking for.

This, in a nutshell, is Rebecca’s problem; she’s actively looking for examples of mysoginy in the scene to justify her claim that sexism is rampant in the atheist community. While I don’t believe that our group is guiltless, I think the problem has been severely overstated. Do we have studies to show atheists are more sexist than believers? Is there any proof beyond a couple of anecdotal stories of misogyny? Seems to me like there’s a lot of speculation based on some extremely limited samples, colored by emotion and marred with anecdotal evidence. Sounds like a fucking nightmare to me.

I don’t want to claim to have more “journalistic credibility” than Rebecca, or anything equally silly (I’m more of a curmudgeon than a serious writer). Still, I think it’s important to recognize how much of your own perception is influenced by your pre-existing beliefs. Is the world as sexist as you think, or is there a chance that your preconceptions might be blinding you? I certainly wonder how anyone could visit r/atheism and develop an “intense hatred” of your fellow atheists (unless you hate rage comics, of course). Seems far more likely that this intense hatred might have been there all along…

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Mobalizing 10,000 people to pray! Wow, how amazing. Think of all the good you can do by sitting in a dark room and talking to yourself all day.

So, if you want God to interfer with human affairs (and apparently throw this whole “free will” idea out the window when it’s inconvenient), you just need to stop eating for several days, followed by inperceptibly mumbling to yourself. Sounds good to me!

“Imagine with me half a million people praying for a nation.”

Praying for what? The economy to recouperate? For the poor and indigent to finally get their due? Nope. She just wants to get rid of abortion and gay marriage. That’s the kind of priorities you can expect from someone who sits very still and begs their imaginary friend for shit they want.

(via Christian Nightmares)

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I love the way this video is put together: it combines sharp visuals with brilliant satire. Be sure to read some of the captions at the bottom. My favorite so far is “Paper Just a Fad says Scribe.” Classic.

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