Jesus Vs. Doctor Who

http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=211


http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=212

How Ricky Gervais Became an Atheist

What Makes Jesus Cry

Awesome.  http://thisisindexed.com/2010/06/not-to-mention-the-dreaded-manger-rash/

Best Caller Ever

I laughed.

On Wanting to Smack Tavis Smiley

I like NPR.  I have been a supporter of local NPR stations.  Sometimes, though, something on NPR is so unbelievably stupid that a part of my brain actually dies.

On 5/25/2010, Tavis Smiley aired an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (click here for transcript, video, and audio).  Please note: I'm not a fan of the American Enterprise Institute, but there's much about Hirsi Ali to admire.

Here's an excerpt from the transcript of that interview.

Ali: ...Major Nidal Hasan, the military guy who in November shot 13 of his colleagues and injured 32, he's going to be on trial pretty soon, I think this week, the young man, Faisal Shahzad, in Times Square who tried to blow innocent people that he doesn't know up, these guys are acting on conviction. Somehow, the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.

Tavis: But Christians do that every single day in this country.

Ali: Do they blow people up (unintelligible)?

Tavis: Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is - I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians - and I happen to be a Christian. That's back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.

Smiley isn't generally stupid, so I can only guess that he is deliberately conflating acts by Christians with acts motivated by Christianity.

C'mon, Smiley- let's hear about all the Christian terrorism that has been committed in the 21st Century.

At least Hirsi Ali schooled Smiley:

Ali: Well, I think you and I disagree, not so much on is there extremism in Christianity - I fully acknowledge that. There are people who want to take the bible and use passages from the bible as justification for violent behavior. I'm not denying that in the least. But mainstream Christians in the 21st century are more like you.

I'm an atheist, I'm not a Christian, but they are more like you - accepting of other religions and tolerant. The latest example, "South Park," where Jesus Christ was made fun of, watching pornography, people, Christians, maybe have been annoyed by it but the producers of "South Park" were not threatened by Christians.

They were not threatened by Buddhists. They showed Buddha snorting cocaine. Muhammad, whose picture wasn't shown, there was a line saying "censored" and he was imagined to be in a Teddy bear, some of the followers of Muhammad got very angry. A few of them posted threats about the producers, and this is very mild.

Embedded video of Smiley's idiotic comments below:

Seen at grocery store checkout today: redundant title?

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

At last, the day is here!

My purpose in posting Mohammed drawings here is not to offend (though it will certainly offend some), but to stand in solidarity with those who have been threatened or attacked as a result of violent threats from religious extremists for depicting Mohammed.

Let me put it another way: If Orthodox Jews threatened or attacked non-Jews for eating bacon, I would happily celebrate "Everybody Eat a Ton of Pork Day."

Civilized nations have freedom of expression, not freedom to go through life unoffended. To those who DO take offense at these, please understand that I am outraged by a hundred religious practices daily- but I certainly don't threaten your life and limb for adhering to them. On the contrary, I support your right to participate in whatever religious observances you like that involve only consenting adults and do not harm others. Don't eat pork. Don't work on Sundays. Don't depict Mohammed- that's cool. But if you think you can threaten others for failing to SHARE your beliefs/practices, you're a loon and I'm happy to offend you.

http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2010/05/everybody-draws-muhammad-day-and.html

Stop Persecuting Me!

Evolution Facepalm

Tim Minchin: If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)

"If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single Psychic who has been able to prove under reasonable experimental conditions that they are able to read minds

And if anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single Astrologer who has been able to prove under reasonable experimental conditions that they can predict events by interpreting celestial signs

And if anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single Homeopathic Practitioner who has been able to prove under reasonable experimental conditions that solutions made of infinitely tiny particles of good stuff dissolved repeatedly into relatively huge quantities of water has a consistently higher medicinal value than a similarly administered placebo

And if anyone can show me just one example in the history of the world of a single Spiritual or religious person who has been able to prove either logically or empirically the existence of a higher power that has any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for there moral choices or that there is any reason - other than fear - to believe in any version of an afterlife

I’ll give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife"

Hitchens Overreaches on Banning the Burqa

I dislike burqas but I think banning them by law is not civilized behavior for a modern nation.

Hitchens, however, is fine with banning them. In discussing the proposed French ban on burqas:
http://www.slate.com/id/2253493/

The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers "only" the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a "ban." To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and—no less important—equal in the face of one another.

Hitchens is usually much better than this level of nonsense. What about women who CHOOSE to wear it? What's next? Would you favor banning orthodox Jewish men from wearing hats or yarmulkes? Would you ban orthodox Jewish women from wearing wigs?

On the door of my bank in Washington, D.C., is a printed notice politely requesting me to remove any form of facial concealment before I enter the premises. The notice doesn't bore me or weary me by explaining its reasoning: A person barging through those doors with any sort of mask would incur the right and proper presumption of guilt. This presumption should operate in the rest of society. I would indignantly refuse to have any dealings with a nurse or doctor or teacher who hid his or her face, let alone a tax inspector or customs official. Where would we be without sayings like "What have you got to hide?" or "You dare not show your face"?

A bank, as a private business, can have whatever rules it likes. If a bank sets a policy that they will not provide counter service to people who are concealing their faces, I have no problem with that at all. This is NOT the same thing as a federal law that bans the garments being worn ANYWHERE.

Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

Well, the burqa shouldn't be exempted from the bank's rules, period. Your problem here, Mr. Hitchens, is with the bank's inconsistent policy.

Let me ask a simple question to the pseudoliberals who take a soft line on the veil and the burqa. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Notorious for its hooded style and its reactionary history, this gang is and always was dedicated to upholding Protestant and Anglo-Saxon purity.

Comparing women who wear a veil to the klan is a low, irrational blow. The klan wore hoods to conceal their identity as they did illegal and reprehensible things like lynching people.

I do not deny the right of the KKK to take this faith-based view, which is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I might even go so far as to say that, at a rally protected by police, they could lawfully hide their nasty faces. But I am not going to have a hooded man or woman teach my children, or push their way into the bank ahead of me, or drive my taxi or bus, and there will never be a law that says I have to.

No, Mr. Hitchens, you are not required to do ANY business with someone who wears the veil. Why are you suggesting that this could be expected of you?

It might be objected that in some Muslim societies women are not allowed to drive in the first place. But that would absolutely emphasize my second point. All the above criticisms would be valid if Muslim women were as passionately committed to wearing a burqa as a male Klansman is committed to donning a pointy-headed white shroud. But, in fact, we have no assurance that Muslim women put on the burqa or don the veil as a matter of their own choice.

Well, you could ASK them. I think a lot of men and women wear particular clothes or groom themselves in particular ways because their spouse/family/culture demands it. If a woman chooses to throw off this tradition and is PUNISHED for it, a civilized nation would seek justice against anyone who metes out such punishment.

But this argument is sooooo weak. How do I know, Mr. Hitchens, that you don't constantly look sweaty and drunk because your wife intimidates you into wearing woolen undergarments and sucking down endless amounts of scotch? Would you have us ban woolen underwear and scotch to protect you from your wife?

A huge amount of evidence goes the other way. Mothers, wives, and daughters have been threatened with acid in the face, or honor-killing, or vicious beating, if they do not adopt the humiliating outer clothing that is mandated by their menfolk.

This is of course true. Again, if a woman in a civilized nation chooses not to wear the veil and is mistreated as a result, THAT is a crime we can prosecute.

Many women of all religious and non-religious backgrounds in western nations are routinely intimidated into subservience by their families/husbands/communities/religions. The best we can do is seek to make such women aware of their real legal rights and ensure that any who seek to get between women and their rights are promptly smacked by the law.

This is why, in many Muslim societies, such as Tunisia and Turkey, the shrouded look is illegal in government buildings, schools, and universities. Why should Europeans and Americans, seeking perhaps to accommodate Muslim immigrants, adopt the standard only of the most backward and primitive Muslim states?

Well, now Hitchens is just being dishonest. The western nations will NEVER pass laws requiring that citizens wear veils, yarmulkes or crucifixes. To equate France with Saudi Arabia because France doesn't ban the veil is disingenuous.

The burqa and the veil, surely, are the most aggressive sign of a refusal to integrate or accommodate.

Here in the United States, Mr. Hitchens, we don't force people to integrate.

While is not illegal to wear a ski mask, we cannot outlaw the veil.

I cannot adequately express my disappointment in Hitchens, whose work on religion and civil liberties I usually find quite worthy of admiration.

This is an awesome exchange of emails between an Australian father and a "school chaplain."

Many thanks to the Archbishop of Cedar Creek for sharing this with me. :)

James Randi TED Talk

Randi gives an entertaining talk about psychics, homeopathy, and other irrational beliefs.

Baba Brinkman: Off That (Rationalist Anthem)

More Baba here.

Dawkins: What if Scientists Behaved Like Religionists?

This, it seems, is a man who thinks he is exemplifying Jesus' love

Praying for the death of President Obama. Hoping that homosexuals die of brain cancer.

Dude. You make Jeebus cry.

Favorite Lines from Recent South Park

Billy: Do you wanna do it?

Cartman: Do I wanna do it? Does the pope help pedophiles get away with their crime?

Billy: Is that something you would want to do?

Cartman: Is that something I would want to do? Is the pope Catholic...and making the world safe for pedophiles?

Billy: You wouldn't do that. 

Cartman: Does a bear crap in the woods? And does the pope crap on the broken lives and dreams of 200 deaf boys?

Tim Minchin's Pope Song

Stephen Fry Speaks on the Catholic Church

Wow.

And how did Fry and Hitchens do? They kicked ass.

No Reason to be Offended...

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

Mark your calendar for May 20th!

Also earning my endless affection: Boobquake!

Chosen People

Heh.

Iranian cleric blames quakes on promiscuous women

[BBC]

Women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes, an Iranian cleric says.

La Ciudad de las Ideas 2009

La Ciudad de las Ideas 2009

Hitchens demonstrates again here the rhetorical skills that I so admire.

If you like, you can watch the video of D'Souza embedded below or you can trust that my descriptions and transcriptions are honest and accurate.



Among the things D'Souza says:

...I have just published a book about life after death...it's called Life After Death: The Evidence.

Got that? "Evidence."

...The atheist is posing as the champion of reason and science and evidence. I want to beginby showing that on an issue crucial to religion - is there life after death - the atheist is not only AS ignorant, but MORE ignorant than the religious believer.

D'Souza goes on to correctly describe how the atheist will disparage the view of the religious person who believes in life after death because a "holy book" SAYS there is life after death. He correctly describes the atheist reponse that the believer has access to no knowledge that can confirm the existence of life after death.

But what if we were to turn the camera around and say to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett: "Do you believe there is life after death?" They will say no!

Well this is very interesting. YOU haven't been to the other side of the curtain either, you haven't interviewed any dead guys! What information do YOU have that the religous believer does NOT have?! And the answer is none. And so the atheist and the believer are in exactly the same position. Both are making a truth claim and both are totally ignorant. Both are stating a belief on a position on which neither one has any evidence at all.

Dinesh isn't a stupid man, so I can only assume he is aware of what a bad straw man argument this is and is just an intellectually dishonest man.

But Hitchens responds to this dishonest argument more elgantly than I could.

I'm sorry, Dinesh:

Atheists do NOT say "we know there is no God."

We say, to the contrary, no argument and no evidence has ever been aduced that we consider to be persuasive.

There's no reason to beleve in evidence or argument, ontology or science.

The same with the afterlife. Of course we don't say that we KNOW there isn't one. We say that we don't know anyone who can bring any reason to think that there IS.

This is a very important distinction and it is very regretabble that you miss it and I'm sorry to say, Dinesh, that the immediate loser in an argument about things of which we can and can't be certain...where the only thing that IS certain in these laws is the principle of UNcertainty...the immediate loser, the man who has to leave the island (sorry Dinesh, again) right away almost, is the man who says "I already know all I need to know, I already have all the information I need- indeed I've been given it by a supernatural body."

Hitchens video embedded below:


"I can say with reasonable certainty: I don't think all this was undertaken so that one primate species on one small planet could hear the Pope telling them that AIDS may be bad, but that condoms are worse. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what could be more self-flattering, pathetic, and yes, superstitious than that?"

Hitchens on "National Day of Prayer"

Hitchens briefly debates Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.



Hitchens would be more effective in this one if he was slightly more polite- but I agree with everything he says.

Jesus Plays Telephone

This is great.

Blaming the Jews for Pedophile Backlash

Item: In Germany, 56% lose trust in Church

Well, good for the Germans.

An opinion poll conducted by the Focus magazine found that 56 percent of the 600 German participants have no confidence in the Church, which has been rocked by an unending stream of sex abuse allegations against priests.

Some 26 percent of the country's Catholic population is now considering quitting the Church, according to the study which is to be published in the magazine on Monday. The respondents said that this is regardless of the consequences of the move on their income tax.

On their INCOME TAX? Huh?

Germany is among a number of European countries that impose Church tax (8-9%) on followers of any religious congregation, unless a member officially quits their communion.

...and the German government gives the income from these taxes to the Church! Got that? The supposedly secular government collects tithes for the church!


Item: Jews blamed for pedophile backlash

An Italian Catholic Web site is claiming that a retired bishop has blamed the Jews for the current backlash against the church over sex abuse claims.

Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, allegedly said in an article on the Pontifex Web site that he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the church, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism was.

“They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers,” he was quoted as saying.

He now denies having said these things.

[Times Online article]

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof

Wow. What an asshole.

Other Stuff Catholics Have So Far Blamed for the Church's Pedophilia Scandal:

• The Devil
• Gays
• The Sexual Revolution
• The Media
• Persecution

Unbelievable.

Atheism's One Commandment

Flush

Good Questions for Catholics

Vatican Priest Likens Abuse Furor To Anti-Semitism

Yet another post that is not at all about religion or metaphysics, and not at all funny.

From NPR:

Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

...what? The "collective violence" endured by the world's Jews can largely be traced to the Catholic church's holding Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. It wasn't until the Second Vatican Council (in the 1960s) that the Church decided that maybe this wasn't quite fair.

So, I think that pretty much means that Raniero Cantalamessa (the aforementioned priest making this comparison) and the rest of the Catholic church may have a bit of a screwy idea of what persecution actually IS.

Again, the church isn't under attack. Priests committed horrible crimes against children. The Church systematically and by policy covered it up. Wanting to hold the criminals and those who protected them from justice is not persecution of the church.

To make such a comparison is not only disgusting, but shows how outrageously out of touch the church is with the real world.

Flabbergasted by Reactions to Priest Sexual Abuse

Let's put aside my usual theological complaints for a minute.


Priests.  Raped.  Children.


Their superiors did nothing or covered it up.


Some Catholics are claiming this is an attack against the church.  Nuh-uh.  It is an attack on widespread acceptance of child abuse.

"I'm sad for the priests, for the hierarchy taking so much grief," says 80-year-old Nancy Caruso, who regularly attends Mass in Boston's North End. "I'm sad for the pope. It's happened. Nobody wanted it to happen, but let's move on. Let's not forget the tenets of our religion."

Which tenets of the religion indicate that this should be set aside, Nancy?  You're sad for the priests who raped children or those in the hierarchy who covered it up?  How about being sad for their victims?


In this NPR story, one Catholic student, Mike somebody, says (at 1m44s):

 "...I definitely don't think things should be swept under the rug- at the same time I hope this doesn't turn into another Salem witch hunt."

[blink]


Mike, you must not be much of a student, because your analogy is backwards.  The Salem witch trial are an example of what happens in the ABSENCE of due process and religious extremists are allowed to hold far too much power.  What victims are asking for is due process.


Sister Mary Christine Athans (a professor of Church history) says: 

"We have had FAR more horrendous times in the history of the Church.  Not just the Renaissance,  but other times as well, where the papacy was, you know, in REALLY corrupt state.  So, to suggest that this is equivalent to some of those situations is way out of proportion."

Because the Church has done much WORSE things in times when it had more power and less transparency, this isn't such a big deal?


So, Sister is using a history of atrocities and corruption in the Church to excuse ones which are, today, better hidden.  Shame on her for her appalling moral relativism.  The Church covered up the rape of children.  In what world is that anything less than completely unacceptable?


According to NPR:

Swiss bishops admitted this week that they had underestimated the problem and are now telling victims to consider filing criminal complaints.

..."CONSIDER"?!

In Germany, bishops are considering mandatory or automatic reporting of abuse cases to police

Oh, good.  They're CONSIDERING reporting child rape to the police.

In Italy, bishops ended their annual meeting this week with a vague pledge of cooperation with police.

So...the best they'll do is promise to cooperate with police in cases of child rape?


This isn't about religion.  This is about protecting rapists and child abusers instead of protecting their victims and their potential victims.

Pope Benedict's Commandments

via

CONTEXT!

Epicurus

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?

-Epicurus, as translated by David Hume

Nice illustration:

Dividing by Zero

Campus atheists offer free porn in exchange for Bibles

"Smut for smut." I love it.

More here

Richard Pryor

God Told Me to Tell You

 This comic rules.

Occam's Razor and Death