It was a valiant effort, folks. I tried, hard as I might, to make a living spreading the “gospel’ of atheism, but in the end, I failed. It took me a little while to realize just how desperate the situation had become, but my failure to secure even the most modest of loans served as a cold reminder that outside of my tiny group of supporters, there is no recognizable value in what I do.

Part of me is honestly resentful of the scene. Were I some religious no-name douche-bag, my coffers would be overflowing with monies. Religious people might be gullible, but they are also aware of the importance of spreading their message, and the cost involved in doing so. For them, the idea of stretching their budget to accommodate their local pastor is just something they do. This dedication and generosity is in large part the reason why religions continue to spread and prosper. As atheists, we have no such dedication.

In many regards, my life is one of a “pastor”, in that the skills I have spent years crafting have no real importance in the 9-5 world. When a priest leaves his profession, he enters a world where his ability to sway the masses is essentially worthless. It’s why so many who have already lost their faith continue to preach the “good news” in order to pay their mortgage and put food on the table. In a way, my situation is similar. After spending years studying, researching and promoting my program, my isolation from the corporate world has lowered my stock. I’m at the bottom of the ladder, and that’s a terrifying prospect.

My eventual return to the working world spells the death of The Good Atheist. While I don’t doubt that the odd podcast may appear, I must now dedicate 100% of my effort to ensure my continued survival, leaving little time to contemplate matters of life, the universe, and the absurdity of existence. I stand defeated, and must now resolve myself to the fate that awaits me in the work-a-day world.

I would like to thank all the fans who have supported us over the years. The hard-core fans, in particular, helped to keep the show afloat for all these years. The tiny raft, set adrift in a sea of uncertainty, faced little chance of success. I’m grateful for all the wonderful messages I’ve received over the years from fans who expressed their love of the show. They were all touching, and I shall treasure them for as long as I live. I leave you in the capable hands of my fellow atheists, who will continue to fight the good fight.

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When you think of the word courage, what’s the first thing to cross your mind? If you happen to be gay and a catholic living in Connecticut, that word is about to take on a disturbing new meaning:

The Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, this month is beginning a program that ministers to gays and lesbians…The Vatican-endorsed program, called Courage…was started in 1980 by the late Terence Cardinal Cooke in Manhattan “to form a spiritual support system which would assist men and women with same-sex attractions in living chaste lives in fellowship, truth and love.”

It’s basically an organization that emotionally tortures gays and lesbians into giving up their joy of sex and intimacy because it doesn’t conform with what the Vatican wants.

“These are people in the Roman Catholic Church who need our care and love,” Deacon Robert Pallotti, director of the Office of the Diaconate, told the Hartford TV station. “In some cases, they have been rejected by society. They need to be accepted, affirmed and supported as Roman Catholics trying to remain faithful to church teachings.

Rejected by society, eh? Could that have anything to do with the fact that your organization continues to support the bigoted idea that what they are doing is inherently bad? Remaining “faithful” to Roman Catholic teachings is just a nice way of saying that they don’t want gay dudes fucking each other in the ass anymore.

Honestly, there is no one on this planet that needs the Vatican getting involved in their sex life. They’ve already proven that their sexual philosophies are diseased. While they condemn homosexuality, the Vatican has provided an unprecedented level of financial, legal and emotional support to child rapists. This alone should bare them from the conversation.

The program, ironically called “Courage”, is just another way for a bunch of creepy celibate dudes in robes to try and tell everyone else how to live. I’ll tell you what Courage is: it’s not putting up with deluded assholes who care more about their money, power and interests than they care about human suffering (remember, they actually think that suffering makes you closer to God). Courage is rejecting old dogmas in favor of scientific truth, even when everyone around you still cling to these ancient superstitions. And above all else, Courage is staying true to yourself, no matter what.

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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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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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Things I find hilaro-tragic about this video:

1. Bolling assuming that the group, which was founded out of state, is intent on forcing their agenda on Texans, despite the fact that he’s told several times that the group responded to complaints from residents of the town.
2. No one on the program seems to understand the difference between free speech and government sanctioned religion.
3. Fox News crew making snarky remarks (that’s my job) in the style of “here we go again”, even though this whole affair is a RESPONSE to Christians shoving their baby Jesus in everyone’s face.
4. The town deputy’s brilliant argument against allowing others the same right to free speech as ‘garbage”.
5. Bolling getting upset when Barker (who wrote a book that stole my bloody name) calls the Jesus parable “insulting to humans” and pulling the whole “this is my fucking show” act before kicking him off.
6. Calling the guy who got kicked out of a show for being honest a “hate monger’.
7. Claiming that the greatest symbol of love is the ritualistic sacrificial blood offering of one’s son with a straight face.
8. Trying to get Ben Franklin on their religious fundy side, despite having said this:

..As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity

(via NCRM)

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I’ve written countless articles denouncing these Christian preachers in Nigeria for accusing innocent children of witchcraft; it’s one of the few times I’ve taken a subject so seriously. It isn’t only because of the images of these poor children -victims of a toxic mix of ancient superstition and organized religion- are seared into my brain. No, my passion comes mainly from the fact that this issue has been completely ignored by the mainstream media because of the obvious question it poses concerning Christianity’s influence in the Third World.

These videos are extremely hard to watch. The situation appears to be getting worse as Christianity’s influence grows. When that little girl starts crying when a person nearby admits to wanting to kill her, you’ll find it difficult to wake up happy tomorrow morning.

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Most of you know that I’m often critical of our community in terms of our charitably, as I’ve complained in the past that many of us are not willing to compete with the financially support organized religions get. I’m convinced that the only way to fight the evils of religion is to play their game, to some degree. Part of that includes giving money to organizations that make an actual difference rather than offer food, comfort and medical services with strings attached.

Over the years, the Atheism subreddit has been growing by leaps and bounds (outnumbering many of the religious subreddits many times over), and are over 300,000 subscribers and counting. Compare that to the Christian subreddit that has a paltry 19k, and you realize the strong secular leaning of the site. Anyone who visits TGA realizes that I often troll these forums, looking for the latest happenings, rage cartoons and funny pictures from the web (that’s putting it mildly; I’m practically a content thief).

The group will probably grow even more after knocking one out of the park:

Atheist bloggers have shown their charitable side by swarming to donate money to Doctors Without Borders…Thousands more clicked through from the atheism sub-reddit, a site normally given over to finding holes in religions and picking fights with creationists, and headed for a dedicated site at firstgiving.com, where they have so far given $180,000.

Sure makes me look like a jackass for claiming we’re a bunch of cheapskates! I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in my life.

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Scientology is messed up. What else do you expect from a “religion” created by a poor science-fiction writer with delusions of grandeur? There’s so much wrong with it, it’s hard to know exactly where to start the list of fucked up shit they do. Convince people with mental disabilities or brain imbalances that drugs are bad, vitamins are the answer and psychiatry is evil? Check. Find a way to take more and more money from your members from bogus auditing that costs more and more cash? Check. Have “work-camps” where people essentially do slave labor in exchange for more stupid auditing, and refuse to release people who want to leave? Oh, you better believe that’s a check.

A former Church of Scientology member has claimed she was held against her will aboard the Church’s cruise ship, The Freewinds, for 12 years.

Valeska Paris, an Australian resident, said she was forced onto the ship by the Church’s leader, David Miscavige, when she was 17 after her mother tried to dissociate her from the organisation.

Yeah, totally not creepy at all: They effectively hold a young woman captive for a decade, and then claim she was there of her own free will. Too bad some of her fellow members actually have the guts to back up her story, or that there are loads of similar complaints. I’m beginning to wonder if any prosecutor with a set of balls is going to bother to try and bring this evil organization to justice. Here is a clear group of deranged psychos with a shit-ton of money doing anything they want with impunity since given the magical status of religion. Why is it we’re always willing to suffer the worst offenses against people if it’s done by an organized body of nonsense?

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For those of you that still naively believe that believing in nonsense can’t harm you, I present to you reason #1,697,456 why religion is fucking evil: a church called the Synagogue Church of All Nations has apparently been telling some of their parishioners that they don’t need to take their AIDS medication in favor of prayer. As you can guess, a number of premature deaths have occurred, and while officials inside the Church deny having told people to stop taking medication, the organization still claims to have cured a number of cancers in parishioners on its own website. This fact alone should be enough to warrant an investigation, and in anticipation of this, an undercover journalist decided to see just what kinds of claims were being made in this dangerous nuthouse.

The video above is from one of the branches in Southwark, and posing as someone with full blown AIDS, this journalist gets a preview of the kind of dangerous, irresponsible and deadly advice these charlatans are giving sick and desperate people. AIDS medication is extremely effective when taken properly, but these bastards trying to make a quick buck have robbed them of existence. I can see of no greater crime that to steal away a person’s life for one’s personal gain. It absolutely makes me sick.

These fucks also try to sell a whole slew of bullshit products, including anointed water, DVD’s and “Partner Training” programs for anyone interested in starting their own deadly franchise. Remember folks: god is all powerful, but he has an insatiable lust for your material possessions. He used to want your best baby goats and lambs; now he just wants all your fucking money.

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