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Here’s David Mills on WAJR Radio in West Virgina (both his and my home state).  As usual David makes a logical and compelling argument and the locals tear into him like a pack of rabid wolves-as usual.  I’d expect no less from either of them.  When we can’t open the topic of religion up for analysis and debate then we’re heading down a dangerous path.  There was a point in our history where society executed people for that sort of thing.

I also find it somewhat humorous how predictable, ill-informed, knee-jerk, and just plain stupid the counterarguments were.  I can’t say I’m surprised.

Anyway, it’s an interesting appearance and it shows just how pervasive and reason-suppressing religion can actually be.

Listen to David on WAJR

With such a deluge of stupidity and hate coming from fundamentalist groups and religious zealots, it’s easy to get caught up in all that and begin to generalize.  I just listened to a wonderful interview on Free Thought Radio with Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, concerning Bill Donohue and his reactionary group The Catholic League.

It was particularly insightful because O’Brien was very progressive and tremedously logical, reasonable, and smart.  His stance on religion and the protection of secular society was refreshing and thoughtful, and it reminded me that not all religious people are insane or stupid.  I’ve been so innundated with the barrage of fundamentalist idiocy that rules the airwaves and drives …read more »

One of the thing that scares me the most about religious fundamentalism is that ignorance is not only tolerated but encouraged.  The message is to stop thinking and just believe.  Reason, logic, and critical thinking are discouraged, even considered a sin in some cases.

Never is this “tune in and turn off” message more clearly stated than on the back of a t-shirt I saw some teenager wearing about a year or so ago:

The Simple Life: eat, sleep, pray.

Now this is actually considered virtuous by these people.  In this equation there is no thinking, no discovering the world around us, no attempt to learn how the world really works.  There is no attempt to realize our place on the planet, the solar system, and the galaxy.

This mantra is isolationist, disassociating the adherent …read more »

Psalms 14:1

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”  They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.

This is the basis for this little montage below.  I’ve already mentioned this before but I thought this video expanded on it a bit.  Get ready for a bit of enlightenment.

I didn’t follow Jesse Helms much, probably because he was a bit before my time and already half-dead, but it appears he’s finally ready to take his dirt nap.  I’d like to reference a few of the more meaningful “advances” Helms made before he decided to call it a day.

• In 1950, Helms became an unofficial researcher for United States Senate candidate Willis Smith. Smith was a conservative Democratic lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association. While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms helped create an ad that read, “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors

…read more »

I found some dope shit on GodTube…check it!

I don’t know about you but this kinda reminds me of the Legend of Bilbo Baggins.

I’m done with YouTube…I’m all about GodTube now!

Traci’s going to this one but, alas, I’m a man and I can’t go.  Maybe next year!

I was watching a particularly amusing video clip sent by a friend to me of Sean Hannity having his ass handed to him by Christoper Hitchens and Hannity, in true Fox News fashion, pulls out the same tired old list of atheist mass murderers in an attempt to vilify and dehumanize atheists across the world. O’Reilly does the same thing, as do a number of conservative ditto heads. He sites Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin in particular. He refers to atheists as “good atheist communists” which is almost juvenile in its intended misrepresentation and blatant misdirectional “slight of hand”. He’s pulling the same routine, attempting to imply that these people committed their heinous crimes because of their atheism, not because they were homicidal megalomaniacs.

The non-belief in a deity has little more to do with the motivation for these people’s crimes than their hair color or their favorite food. If someone is homicidal they’ll find a way to carry out their plans, regardless of religion. Religion can be twisted any which way; it’s not an impediment to immorality. It’s the same old tired argument, made time and time again to inextricably combine morality with religion. It’s a tactic fundamentalists have used for centuries and they’re still doing it today. It’s tired, it’s old, but, apparently, it’s effective.

Since Hannity has decided that all atheists are “good atheist communists” and are mass-murderers then I thought I’d present a list of other atheists to “watch out for”. You might be surprised by this list which includes the likes of Woody Allen, Lance Armstrong, Isaac Asimov, Berkeley Breathed, Warren Buffett, Rodney Dangerfield, Jodie Foster, Bill Gates, Katharine Hepburn, Penn Jillette, Billy Joel, Angelina Jolie, Diane Keaton, Bruce Lee, John Malkovich, Barry Manilow, Julianne Moore, Desmond Morris, Jack Nicholson, Ron Reagan Jr., Keanu Reeves, Gene Roddenberry, Andy Rooney, Salman Rushdie, Teller, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, William Shatner, and Linus Torvalds, just to name a few.

I guess Hannity didn’t want to mention the …read more »

Ben Stein is back for more, this time again blaming the Holocaust on Darwin and accusing science of murder. Here’s a tidbit from his interview with TBN founder Paul Crouch:

Stein: Love of God, compassion, and empathy leads you to a very glorious place; and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Sound too stupid and irresponsible to be true? See for yourself:

I do find it odd that Ben was on TBN, a Christian network, since the Jews killed Jesus and all. Maybe what they have in common are their extremist, fundamentalist viewpoints. Fundamentalist Christianity hates science as we’ve seen from the persecution of Galileo to the preposterous idea that Darwin is responsible for the holocaust. If science differs from scripture, they reason, then scripture wins out, regardless of the facts. At least the Catholic church is behaving just a little better lately but it’s primarily because they don’t hold the power they once held. If they did I’d wager we’d see a significant rise in witch burnings and heretic killings. The Dark Ages 2.0, so to speak, but that’s my opinion.

Even the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t want to be associated with this lunacy. They’ve issued an official statement denouncing the association of Darwin to the Holocaust as presented by Stein in his film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. From the ADL’s site:

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

I have two schools of thought on how to handle delusional and potentially dangerous people like …read more »