If you thought a country like France was free from the influence of religion on their science programs, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. The government was planning on easing restriction on embryonic cell research, but the Catholic Church lobbied hard to prevent this, and it appears they’ve had some success.

“The Catholics have succeeded in imposing their view on embryos and seem to be succeeding in their attack on this method,” said François Olivennes, a leading fertility expert, told Europe 1 radio. “We already have a very retrograde law compared to those in Spain, Britain, Belgium, Netherlands and all of Scandinavia. Nothing is advancing.”

This can of worms was opened after scientist produced a number of stem cells for a child suffering from a rare blood disorder. And because the Catholic Church opposes abortion because of some confused interpretation of their mythology book, they feel compelled to arrest the development of life saving technology.

If they were still in control, do you have any doubt that medical science would essentially grind to a halt? I think this nonsense is a wakeup call for Western countries. Our religious institutions are effectively preventing a vital branch of science from progressing all because of their idiotic dogmas. In their deluded minds they think they are saving “babies” from annihilation, but in reality they only further our misery in their tireless efforts to save a few blastulas.

Spread the outrage

Carl Sagan and what appears to be a pirate/astronomer discuss the search for extra-terrestrial life, and why the advances of science obliterates belief.

“It used to be possible to believe in a personal, benevolent, powerful all knowing god…but now there are very few people who believe that”. Man, I wish that was true, Carl. I think at that time he may have been a little isolated from what life is like for people who don’t spend their time studying the Universe. It’s always easy to be ignorant.

Spread the outrage

As you might recall, Superfan Andy Scott was generous enough to donate monies to the site in order for 10 people to get free membership for a year. Andy has picked 8 few winners so far for his “Broke-Ass Scholarship” scholarship, and here is the list:

Roki B,
Sterling
David
Kyle Nicholas
Will Rodbourne
Ashley
Dayton
Tercero

Congratulation to the winners. There are still two spots left, so be sure to include in the comments why you too deserve to be the recipient of this totally not-made-up-in-10-minutes scholarship. Good luck everyone!

Spread the outrage

It freaks the fuck out of me whenever you hear this kind of “obey God’s word” rhetoric, especially when the audience is so young, and the consequences of disobedience are so severe. I mean, an ETERNITY of hellfire? What kind of sick fuck torments someone forever? The world may be a cruel place, but at least when you die, the suffering ends. Only the sick and twisted mind of man could come up with such a vile idea as eternal torture…

Spread the outrage

I remember when I was a kid, I went to the only English elementary school in my hometown. Because of some stupid laws forcing most children to attend French school in my province, the only way to avoid this was by attending a Catholic school. Try as they might, they utterly failed to instill anything other than complete disdain for religion. Their pathetic religion failed to impress me even as a child, but that doesn’t mean I was a happy camper having this garbage shoved down my throat.

In a sense I’m happy that things worked out the way they did. As religious as the school was, it was pretty mild compared to the way some curriculum are devised. Take South Coast, Australia. It seems that atheist children are being forced to attend scripture class, even though their non-Christian religious counterparts are exempt from this torture.

One parent told the ABC her daughter came home distressed after being told God is going to burn the world, while another parent says her child walked out of class when the religious instructor claimed he could ‘cure’ homosexuals.

Man, I’m proud of that little guy that walked out of the class. There’s a fucking brave kid! It takes balls to stand up to people; most folks would have sit their quietly raging. Hearing that story at least makes me hopeful that in the future, they next generation won’t stand for the kind of bigotry that’s still so prevalent today.

Spread the outrage

Well, looks like someone finally stepped up to provide Rapture crazy nutjobs with a service they’ve been craving for: ensuring that their animals will be taken care of once Jesus beams them up into space-heaven when he annihilates the infidels.

Eternal Earth-Bound Pets is offering this service by guaranteeing that their employees and volunteers are all died-in-the-wool atheists (and animal lovers, of course). That way, they can rest assured that Rex won’t be stuck all alone after magical man-god whisks them away.

If it’s successful, it’s basically a licence to print money. I’d feel bad for them taking money away from gullible morons if I wasn’t so fucking jealous of their idea. It makes me want to resurrect my “Rap-Sure” insurance scam….

Spread the outrage

There are two things that will never change in this world: 1) people will always have reasons to hate others, and 2) religions will always provide a way to make this exceedingly easy.

Take the Mormon Church for example: they’ve been diligently working to ensure that gays and lesbians aren’t allowed to marry out of the ridiculous notion that doing so “violates” the sanctity of marriage. Because of a few passages in the Bible (next to the ones that condone slavery and selling your daughter for money), Mormons have fought tooth and nail to deny the rights of their fellow human beings.

And because they are convinced of the superiority of their ideas, they now feel as though their OWN rights are being violated when society tells them politely to go fuck themselves. They recognize the way the tide is shifting, and it’s not something that’s a pleasant prospect. Tolerance, it seems, is not that Christian a virtue.

One of their elders recently said that as gays get the rights they deserve, the Church’s religious freedoms are being threatened:

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, one of 12 leaders, known as apostles, who help govern the Mormon Church, delivered his message Friday in a speech at Chapman University in Orange: The 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion is under siege, he said, threatened by a growing secularization of society and constrained by the inroads made by a vigorous gay rights movement.

“For some time,” he said, “we have been experiencing laws and official actions that impinge on religious freedom.”

Oaks, a former law professor and Utah Supreme Court justice, has been making speeches along these lines for more than 25 years, and says the climate has been getting worse for religious rights. “It was apparent 25 years ago, and it is undeniable today,” he said.

It’s funny he didn’t say 35 years ago, when the Mormon church didn’t allow black men to be ordained into the priesthood (and they weren’t allowed to be included in their “celestial marriages” either). You might recall that their racism was a direct result of their own religious conviction. Sound familiar?

Hey, it would be fucking effortless for Mormons to abandon their own bigotry and get with the program. In 1978, elders said they had received a “revelation” decreeing that African Americans were suddenly granted the same rights as everyone else in their church; this after strong public pressure to change their policies. It’s easy to change your stupid dogma when you’re just making shit up, isn’t it?

Spread the outrage

I love the last sentence when he says of Kurt Wise (a young-earth creationist with a PHD in geology):

“You cannot argue with a mind like that. A mind like that, it seems to me, is a disgrace to the human species”.

Snap!

Spread the outrage

Religious people are hilarious. How many times have we been accused of being “just another religion”? I imagine just stating this baseless canard must be a way for them to feel comforted by the idea that atheists base their beliefs on the same dogmatic mechanism they use. Unfortunately for them, it’s ludicrously easy to demonstrate just how wrong this idea is.

I fell upon an article this morning claiming that atheism is a religion (it wakes you up better than coffee). I thought it might be fun to pick apart these 8 pathetic arguments one by one, for your reading pleasure. I also suggest reading the comments, as I’m not the only one who’s done this.

1. They have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world. Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. They are like a guy wearing dark sunglasses who chides all others for thinking the sun is out.

2. They have their own orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a set of beliefs acceptable to a faith community. Just as there are orthodox Christian beliefs, there is an atheist orthodoxy as well. In brief, it is that EVERYTHING can be explained as the product of unintentional, undirected, purposeless evolution. No truth claim is acceptable if it cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny.

3. They have their own brand of apostasy. Apostasy is to abandon one’s former religious faith. Antony Flew was for many years one of the world’s most prominent atheists. And then he did the unthinkable: he changed his mind. You can imagine the response of the “open-minded, tolerant” New Atheist movement. Flew was vilified. Richard Dawkins accused Flew of “tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy. By their own admission, then, Flew abandoned their “faith.”

4. They have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, Marx.

5. They have their own messiah: He is, of course, Charles Darwin. Darwin – in their view – drove the definitive stake through the heart of theism by providing a comprehensive explanation of life that never needs God as a cause or explanation. Daniel Dennett has even written a book seeking to define religious faith itself as merely an evolutionary development.

6. They have their own preachers and evangelists. And boy, are they “evangelistic.” Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens (Speaking of which, our prayers goes out to Christopher Hitchens in hopes of a speedy recovery for his cancer, we need more time with him Lord) are NOT out to ask that atheism be given respect.

7. They are seeking converts. They are preaching a “gospel” calling for the end of theism.

8. They have faith. That’s right, faith. They would have you believe the opposite. Their writings ridicule faith, condemn faith. Harris’s book is called The End of Faith. But theirs is a faith-based enterprise. The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. To deny it takes faith. Evolution has no explanation for why our universe is orderly, predictable, measurable. In fact (atheistic) evolutionary theory has no rational explanation for why there is such a thing as rational explanation. There is no accounting for the things they hope you won’t ask: Why do we have self-awareness? What makes us conscious? From what source is there a universal sense of right and wrong? They just take such unexplained things by … faith

.

1. So a world-view constitute a religion now? Religious people “postulate” a world that exists beyond what we can measure. They have the gall to call this imaginary world “supernatural” (as in “above nature). We simply chose to reject a notion that offers nothing in the way of proof. Materialism is simply postulating that everything in the Universe is the result of material interactions. So far, it’s the only explanation that holds any water.

2. If something needs to be subjected to scientific scrutiny, then it’s not orthodoxy. That word is defined as “of, pertaining to, or conforming to the approved form of any doctrine, philosophy, ideology, etc.” By its very definition, Orthodoxy is not open to debate or refinement. All beliefs must conform to previously held dogma. This is the very opposite of the way science work.

3. We’ll admit to being surprised if someone goes from atheism to theist, but that’s mostly because of how utterly rare it is. There’s certainly no punishment for it, and the only thing you lose is respect from fellow intellectuals. Where are the Inquisition and death threats you get from religions?

4. Nietzsche wasn’t an atheist (at least not a self professed one), and if you think Bertrand Russell is a prophet, then I think you’re profoundly confused as to what the word actually means. Prophets conjure messages they claim come from a supernatural entity. Philosophers attempt to use epistemology (the theory of how we know things) when formulating theories. Prophets just make shit up.

5. Charles Darwin, the anointed one who died for your sins, people! No doubt we can agree that evolution destroyed the religious argument for design, but that hardly makes Darwin messianic. The idea of evolution wasn’t new by the time Darwin postulated his theory of descent with modification, and isn’t even a hard one to grasp (if your mind isn’t polluted by religious dogma). We may respect him, but we certainly don’t revere him, or consider him our “Lord”.

6 +7. By this guy’s definition, someone trying to spread the word about vaccines and their benefits is “evangelizing”. We don’t use threats of hellfire, damnation, promise of eternal bliss for conversion, or any other tactic that religions use to try and “convert” people. We simply use reasoned arguments and logic to destroy superstitious notions about the world. What people do with that information is up to them.

8. If it required faith to believe in evolution, then it wouldn’t be science. Science is based on testable hypotheses. If you doubt the validity of the idea, you’re free to research it for yourself. Faith is not about questioning anything; it’s the persistent belief in a dogma DESPITE evidence to the contrary. That’s why whenever you have a conversation with a theist, they’ll fall back on this word as though it means something. “You can’t question my faith”. If an evolutionary biologist ever said that concerning a particular pet theory about some evolutionary process, he’d be laughed at.

While it’s true that we have only conjecture about consciousness and the evolution of morality (though still strongly supported by evolutionary mechanisms), this does not mean that religious ideas are therefor correct. They offer nothing in the way of verifiability, and are therefore invalid. The only recourse for believers is to disregard any competing idea in favor of a rigid persistence to maintain their belief structure. We call this process “faith”

Spread the outrage

Superfan Andy Scott has decided, in his bountiful generosity, to sponsor 10 broke-asses who wish to become members of TGA. That’s good news for anyone that’s struggling to make ends meet, or who doesn’t have any means of actually becoming a patron (the economy sucks, trust me I know).

If you want to become on of those being sponsored, then please leave a comment as to why you should be a recipient. I won’t actually be choosing who gets it, so feel free to flatter him as much as you want, even if you don’t know anything about him. If that doesn’t work, I might suggest explaining why you think you merit this awesome freebie.

Good luck guys and girls. I look forward to counting 10 more of you as members!

Spread the outrage