As some of you may know, I am not an American. I’m your neighbor from the Great White North (who is supposed to spell neighbor with a “u” but doesn’t to avoid confusion), which means that my attitude regarding finances and politics tends to be more on the left than your average Apple pie baking Good Old Boy. I was born in the province of Quebec, perhaps the most socialist of all the provinces in this country. I live in a place where access to medicine isn’t likely to send you to the poorhouse, and our myriad social programs (probably too many, in fact) help low income families have access to food, shelter and even dental care. While it’s true that our country is currently in debt, that amount is still much lower than the US, even after you compensate for our different population.

Canada has much stricter regulations regarding banking and finance, which allowed our country to avoid the same financial crisis that cost American Taxpayers a whopping 7 trillion dollars to fix. While this country does consider itself open to the idea of the free market, evidently our citizens are overwhelmingly in the majority of wanting some degree of regulation over the way business is conducted. Whether or not you agree that regulations hinder or help economies prosper, these philosophies have NOTHING to do with our belief about God. Of course, this isn’t the opinion of one commenters on the site who seems convinced that only a Darwinian model is something we non-believers should be interested in:

Atheist Republican here… Atheists should have more in common with free market capitalist Republicans over social wealfare democrats purely on a darwinian view of survival of the fittest through competition. Yes the Republican Party is hijacked by social evangelicals, but overlooking this fact atheists should be working within the GOP to counter balance this

So, because we believe in evolution, we should suddenly embrace its cruelty, waste, and directionless? That hardly sounds wise to me. Besides, this seems only to lend credence to the idea that non-believers are heartless cynics who think only of themselves. I think you’ll find, dear commenter, that the vast majority of us don’t believe in this nonsense. We disdain people who improperly use science to support bogus theories of economics. If you want to argue that free market capitalism is most effective when completely devoid of any restrictions, I’d be happy to participate in such a debate. When you argue that my atheism should support what I regard to be an insensitive, destructive and ultimately inhumane philosophy (social darwinism), then you’ll have guys like me telling you to fuck off. If you want me to support a party of religious fundamentalists in order to have few regulations in an economy already on the edge of collapse, then you’ve got an other thing coming, pal.

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It ain’t easy being a Christian: sure, they might be the majority (for now), but every other day the faith is challenged by objective reality. While many Christians will scoff at the idea that their religion is in trouble, the truth is that countries like Canada, Sweden, and Australia are quickly shedding their religious coat in favor of a broader “spirituality” that doesn’t have to deal with the many inconsistencies or outright lies of organized religion. Over half of all Canadians, according to a recent survey, are convinced that religion does more harm than good.

Enter the Apologist. Their “job” is to try and defend their faith against the harshness of reality. Christian Apologetics have been around since the very forming of the religion; St. Paul was the first to begin the tradition when confronted by desert sheppards possessing some measure of skepticism. In the modern world, it’s much more difficult to defend the faith, and so a whole cottage industry has sprung up to meet the demands of increasingly skeptically-minded kids.

I spotted this article entitled “Top 10 Defences youth can give for their beliefs“, and I thought I might share with you the kind of “advice” they’re giving young Christians in a vain attempt to prevent them from leaving the religion in frustration. I think you’ll agree that any teenager attempting to use any of these arguments would be eaten alive by anyone with a moderate understanding of history or science:

1. How can you know for sure that anything is true?
Among your acquaintances are likely to be some people who don’t believe in truth. That is, they don’t believe truth can be known. However, that idea is easily refuted, as this fictional conversation in the 2011 novel, The Quest, illustrates:
It took a minute, but I finally realized what she was waiting for. “You’re saying that if I think that’s a true statement, then I’ve claimed to know something that is true….By saying truth can’t be known. I contradicted myself.”

Here the author tries to argue that if an agnostic claims that truth cannot be known, this itself is a truth-claim and the statement is therefore inconsistent. While it’s true that consistency is a desirable attribute of any philosophy, we have to examine what’s actually being argued instead of over-analysing the statement itself. What is truth? How do we determine what’s real and what isn’t? Humans create models to explain the natural world, and while they can be amazingly accurate, there is still much to discover. We must accept that our understanding of the Universe is limited, flawed, but constantly improving. To claim otherwise is only possible when one sees the world through the arrogant prism of religion.

2. Is God a human invention?
A popular view these days is the idea that humans invented God in order to meet their needs and fulfill their desires. But it is at least as reasonable to believe exactly the opposite: that the innate desire humans have for God exists because there is Someone who satisfies that desire.

“Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles.”- Voltaire. The fact that we have a tendency to see patternicity, agency and intentionality has more to do with our environment than some invisible man in the sky. For millions of years, our ancestors braved a cruel, violent world which placed survival above skepticism. As a result, we’ve inherited brains susceptible to superstition, and the persistence of religion in a world of scientific discovery is an excellent example of this.

3. Doesn’t the Big Bang disprove Creation?
There is a common misconception that the Big Bang has pretty much eliminated the idea that God created the heavens and the earth. But the opposite is true. Former atheist Antony Flew, in his book There Is a God, explained that the Big Bang model eventually led him to believe in a God who created the universe, because it pointed to a beginning point in the universe, and to something (or Someone) behind that beginning that was too big for science to explain.

So the Universe needs a beginning, but Super-Monkey doesn’t? The best science we have now tells us that a Universe can indeed come from nothing, so while the science we have today tells us that the Universe requires no supernatural “party-starter”, religionists can’t seem to abandon this lost “first” cause. I won’t pretend to know for certain that a God couldn’t have done this; however, our faithful opponents have still failed to provide a compelling explanation of their deity’s apparent ability to transcend the law of causality. Lastly, this idea that something can be “too big” for science is just an invitation to ignorance.

4. How can an intelligent person not believe in evolution?

Atheist Richard Dawkins has famously written, “Beyond doubt evolution is a fact,”4 adding that no reputable scientist disputes it. However, neither statement is true. First, it is necessary to understand what people mean when they use the world “evolution,” because it can refer to both micro-evolution (the observable process by which change happens over time within species) and macro-evolution (the arguable claim that starting with a common ancestor, over time simple organisms have changed into the species that exist today). Macro-evolution is not as widely accepted as some claim. In fact, more than eight hundred world-class scientists have signed a formal dissent from Darwinian evolution.

So, you’re willing to accept that species gradually change over time, but somehow still can’t grasp that over geological time-frames (millions of years), these incremental changes would form entirely new species? Also, if you want to put this whole “over 800 scientists express doubt about evolution” number into perspective, there are currently over a million scientists working in the US alone. 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today. The fact that you have 800 dummies on your side only proves that education is no guarantee of intelligence.

5. How can you trust the Bible when it has been changed and corrupted so much through the centuries?
I aimed to show everyone that Christianity was nonsense. I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. In fact, I discovered that the Bible is far and away the most meticulously preserved and widely attested documents of the ancient world. No other book even comes close (we go into greater detail on this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). This reliability was confirmed by the 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which showed that after a thousand years of copying, the text as it appears in modern Bibles was more than ninety-five percent the same, word-for-word and letter-for-letter, as it had been three thousand years earlier! And what differences did exist were mainly spelling variations.

The relative consistency of nonsense is of little interest to us. The fact remains that the Bible is little more than a book of fairy-tales. The ancient stories of Gilgamesh and Enkidu have survived the ravages of time, and yet we do not believe that the ancient stories of Sumer are anything but poetic allegory. As a Christian, you’re far more likely to be asked “How can you trust the Bible to guide your morality when it advocates rape, incest, genocide, infanticide and cruelty?”. I’d try and work on the response for that one instead.

6. Hasn’t modern science pretty much disproved the Bible?
t’s hard to imagine anything that is farther from the truth than the idea that modern science has disproved the Bible. In fact, the science of archaeology, to name one field, has repeatedly confirmed the trustworthiness of the biblical accounts (we devote a chapter to this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). Archaeologist William F. Albright wrote,

The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history

We don’t need 18th century skepticism to tell us the Bible is full of holes. Where do we begin? The creation story perhaps, or Noah’s Flood? Shall we discuss what science has to say about the possibility of Jonah living inside a giant fish for three days, or Samson killing thousands of men with a donkey’s jaw-bone? As for the Bible’s take on history, modern archaeology has found little in the way of proof. Take the “City of David“. While Israeli archaeologists acknowledge that there is no evidence linking David to the site, they anticipate eventually finding this proof, and as far as they are concerned, there is no way to convince them otherwise. Proof has remained elusive for Israel’s archaeologists, but it hasn’t prevented anyone there from trying to use it as a political tool to bolster Israel’s claim to ancient Palestine. Does this sound like good science to you?

7. Who even knows if Jesus ever really existed?

The existence of a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee and Judea in the early part of the first century is utterly indisputable from a historical standpoint. In fact, if you ever encounter such a view from a friend or teacher, invite that person to travel with you to Israel. In the land where Jesus once lived, everyone—Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists—consider the idea that never existed to be laughable. Why? Because the evidence of his historicity is a daily reality there.

Is this guy for real? I don’t find the idea laughable at all, and I’m not the only one. Some of the very first Christians, the Gnostics, didn’t believe in a historical Jesus either. You don’t hear much about these early Christians since, like the Aryans, they were mostly wiped out. Questioning the historicity of Jesus isn’t new; we just weren’t allowed to voice contrary opinions for a long time. To claim that everyone agrees on his historical existence is a pretty big disservice to Christian teens desperately trying to defend their bullshit, trust me.

8. Don’t you think Jesus could have been just a good teacher who didn’t intend to be worshiped a god?

Though Christianity and Christians can be pretty unpopular these days, Jesus remains widely admired… even by many people who don’t profess to believe in him or worship him. He is revered as a “good teacher,” as a “philosopher,” but not as who he said he was, according to the historical record. C. S. Lewis famously wrote about this phenomenon:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic— on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg— or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse…let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Creating this kind of dichotomy can’t possibly work in your favor, guys. Any person with a logical mind not indoctrinated to your cult would immediately realize that, if given the choice between God or madman, Jesus certainly fits the description of the latter. When he curses a fig tree for failing to give him fruit, the choice seems fairly obvious. When he claims that diseases are the result of demonic possession, we recognize the words of a loon. Giving him the status of godhood only serves to prove how little Jesus knew about the real world. If he did exist, he is no more remarkable than Apollonius of Tyana, who was claimed to have performed the exact same miracles as Jesus (with the added bonus of being able to pass through walls like David Copperfield).

9. Do you really believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead?
Many theories have been put forth to try to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All of  them are inadequate; some are even ludicrous (we devote three chapters to these theories in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). In fact, the historical evidence for the resurrection is so overwhelming, historians have to become “anti-historical” in their efforts to build a case against it. As Lord Darling, a prominent English judge, once said, “No intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.

Lord Darling, for any of you who gives a shit, was a minor historical figure of little importance, and little relevancy. Authority here, in any case, is not needed to contest the Resurrection of a Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, and what little there is consist of “witness” accounts written decades after his supposed death by people who never even met the guy. If our standards for evidence are so low, than should we also believe that Perseus really did kill the Medusa, and Orpheus braved the underworld to rescue his beloved?

10. How can you believe in that stuff?

The most convincing evidence for the Christian faith is not historical, textual, or archaeological; it is the testimony of a changed life. When I (Josh) set out to disprove the Christian faith, my mind met unassailable facts… but my heart met irresistible love. I met a group of Christians at Kellogg College in Battle Creek, Michigan, who exposed me for the first time to the love of God. Oh, how they loved each other. And I wanted what they had. That love paved the road of faith for me, and thus began my journey of faith. All the evidence in the world—the most powerful arguments and most convincing proofs—probably wouldn’t have gotten through to me if the transforming power of God’s love had not reached my heart through that student group and others.

Always keep in mind that the same will be true of anyone who challenges or questions your faith. Your answers can help open their hearts, but the vibrant evidence of a changed life will always be the most convincing apologetic you can offer.

This is usually where arguments with Christians end: this idea that “a changed life” is somehow proof that their faith is real. While I don’t deny that their beliefs may be genuine, it has no bearing on reality whatsoever. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second regardless of how I feel about it, or whether my life is transformed with such information. If relying on emotion is your idea of a strong defense in face of legitimate criticism, than there’s very little I can do to convince you otherwise. Of course, I can offer you this little piece of advice: don’t expect to blow anyone away with these kinds of pathetic arguments, boys and girls.

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With the countless University courses gleefully handing out doctorates of nonsense (commonly known as theology), it’s nice to hear that Pitzer College will be offering a Major in Secularism this fall. How cool is that?

Starting this fall, Pitzer College, a small liberal arts institution in Southern California, will inaugurate a department of secular studies. Professors from other departments, including history, philosophy, religion, science and sociology, will teach courses like “God, Darwin and Design in America,” “Anxiety in the Age of Reason” and “Bible as Literature.”

Studying nonbelief is as valid as studying belief, Mr. Zuckerman said, and the new major will make that very clear.

I’d say given the fact that we live in a culture that has to have special rules to keep religion out of public life 9albiet with varying degrees of success), I would say it’s far MORE important than religious study. We need to understand how the this irreligious trend is growing, and what the future of this movement means. It’s my hope that the tiny college will be one of many who adopt this kind of curriculum in their schools.

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In general, I find that atheists need a unifying tome about as much as men need nipples. I’m of the opinion that to properly educate yourself on morality, ethics and philosophy, you need more than what a single book can provide; you need a lifetime of education, thought and what some would call “soul searching”; the act of reflecting on one’s actions.

Our general dislike of sacred tomes hasn’t bothered Professor AC Grayling, the president of the British Humanist Association. He’s recently written an “atheist bible” in the hopes of providing a useful, overarching guide for non-believers:

Without any reference to gods, souls or afterlives, it [the book] aims to give atheists a book of inspiration and guidance as they make their way in the world.

I’ll reserve my judgement until after I’ve read it, but I generally dislike this kind of publicity. It lends credence to the idea that people need “manuals” for living their lives. Some of the most contemptible people in history have lived according to such doctrine, and I like atheism specifically BECAUSE we don’t bother with that nonsense. Still, I did like the comment of one religious commentator:

You might think that Christians would find such a book an insult to their own Good Book, but not Rev Dr Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral.
If anything, however, Rev Dr Fraser believes that The Good Book is a bit tame, a little “cheesy”, in comparison with the “full-blooded version”.

Yeah, it’s cheesy when you don’t have stories about rape, incest, murder and genocide, right? Now that’s the “full-blooded” shit we should all be reading!

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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

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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”

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I’m not going to argue that it’s impossible to be an atheist and a Buddhist. In the west, the aspects of the religion which have survived the trek here make it seem more like a philosophy than anything else, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still has plenty of dogma, and seems to insist that happiness is achieved once desire is eliminated from one’s life. It also emphasizes “clearing one’s mind”, a practice that I find literally abhorrent. A mind free of thought is one free of creativity, inspiration and ambition. Why not simply be an atheist, dude?

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Now I know that a number of you Aussies are still gleaming of the fact that your Prime Minister is a non-believer, but I’m sorry to announce to some of you that this lack of belief doesn’t seem to be having much of an influence on policy. A few weeks ago, controversy erupted when it was suggested that a new “humanism” course should be included in schools as an alternative to religious education. Christians freaked out naturally, and started accusing humanists of being no better than Satanists (I wish I was kidding about that one).

Despite the course being designed and ready to be implemented, Minister Bronwyn Pike rejected the proposal in an obvious attempt to placate powerful Christian lobbies.

There you have it folks: it’s as easy as that to kill secular programs. All you need is an army of rabid, uneducated zombies who insist that a secular alternative to their nonsense is unacceptable. So students who “opt out” of the classes will still be stuck with their thumbs up their ass, waiting for their fellow students to be done being taught that an invisible man in the sky created the world for them.

Children who do not attend these sessions are not allowed to be taught anything their classmates might miss out on during this time, so they are often put in another room where they read or play on computers.

That sure sounds like religion’s handy work, right? They prefer students do nothing rather than learn about “…the art of living, the environment, philosophy, science and world citizenship.” With their powerful and influential vote, they’ve managed to shut down this program until someone with fucking balls tells them to keep their retarded, uneducated opinions to themselves. This is a pretty big fail moment, my Aussie friends…

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Before he can become “President of Texas”, Chuck Norris is on an anti-abortion campaign. He regularly blogs for the ultra conservative World Net Daily, and reading his posts is an exercise in both patience and a form of torture in some countries.

In his latest opus, Chucky takes on health care reform, lambasting Democrats for trying to provide abortion services to women in need. He’s not cool with that idea, since he argues that if the Virgin Mary had access to such a system, baby Jesus would have never been born:

Lastly, as we sit on the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary were covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor uninsured teenaged[sic] woman were provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?

Actually, I kind of like this question: here Chuck is introducing us to a moral dilema that he seems blindly unaware of: what should a woman do if her life is threatened by a pregnancy (this being the fucking Bronze Age, the penalty was indeed stoning for being pregnant out of wedlock. Wow, what a moral bunch)? In Chuck’s world, you have the baby, no matter how dangerous such a propositions is for the both of you. Don’t like it? Too fucking bad.

Norris isn’t a particularly educated man, so I have to believe he has no idea that the human body regularly aborts pregnancies if complications arise. It’s why until month three of your pregnancy, it’s best to be cautiously optimistic about the whole thing. But hey, if you’re not convinced that all abortions are bad, that’s because you haven’t heard the best part of his wishy washy philosophy of the consequences of legalized abortion:

Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind, if only they too would have been as progressive as Washington’s wise men and women!

If you can use that stupid reasoning, couldn’t this world also have been spared a few headaches if the Stalins or the Hitlers had access to the procedure? Just sayin’.

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I feel weird today, since I’m defending a religious group called “Our Lady of Calvary Abbey”, in Rogersville, NB. You see, they raise a number of dairy cows and chickens, and the radical animal “rights” group PETA is upset by their farming practices. They believe the calves are taken away from their mothers too early, and that the chickens are being raised in cramped spaces.

Presumably, all animals should be enjoying a life free of slaughter, cheerfully gallivanting in the fields with their other animal buddies, and occasionally breaking out into song. The problem is that we live in the real world and not some fucking Disney fantasy. Perhaps you’re a vegetarian and dislike the idea of raising animals for food; that’s fair enough, and I certainly wouldn’t try to force anyone to eat meat. My problem with these delusional idiots is that they think they’re in a position to tell others what is ethical and what isn’t, and they aren’t above trying to force others to believe what they do. PETA is nothing more than a thinly veiled extremist organization that thinks all animals should be free (including your beloved pets). If you’re stupid enough to have given them money in the past, try researching them a little more thoroughly before you do that again.

The obvious problem with such an infantile philosophy is that it ignores the fact that most of the animals we have domesticated are ill suited to survive in the wild. They exist because we breed them to exist. Without our effort, they would simply be the victim of some clever wild animal, or they would starve to death or die of an infection. Nature is fucking cruel, and no one has an easy death. If you’re going to go, you might as well have been grain fed while you were alive, don’t you think?

Of course, it’s also shitty that I have to defend a monastery that’s harboring a Bishop that was caught with a shitload of child pornography. Can we all agree that both of these organizations suck then?

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