Support for torture of terrorists

Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey on torture of terrorists. Turns out, if you're more religious you're more likely to support it. Not surprising considering most religious texts limit human rights back to the dark ages.

I'm edging towards the "can rarely be justified" response, but maybe I've been watching too much 24!

What's your stance?

God exists, therefore, God exists

I was having an enjoyable conversation with an anonymous Christian commenter here on my Easter post.

They were trying their best to answer some tricky questions and find evidence for Christianity when this one popped up.

The question was:
"What makes Christianity's obvious inaccuracies any more credible than other religions?"

And I got this wonderful circular argument as a response:
"Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and the life...AND he rose from the dead. I'll believe Him before anyone else."

This exemplifies a far too common argument. I have heard both family and friends make it in similar forms. It's a fallacy that only makes sense in the mind of someone who starts with the conclusion that God exists. If you already know God exists, then why not look to his infallible word to back that up? Problem is, it holds no water when you look at it from a neutral perspective.

If you are religious, please try to step back from your faith and legitimately ask the question: is my religion more likely to be man-made or true, and what makes it so different from other religions that we all agree are man-made?



As you can probably guess, I'm still waiting for the evidence.

Dirty Dirty God

Genesis 1:31: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

Very very good, if you know what I mean...

God is filthy. Not your average truck-stop restroom man-whore kind of filthy, I'm talking about kink more deviant and extreme than you can even imagine. No, this isn't another joke at the expense of Catholic priests; their boy buggering is made to look as tame as Sunday school where the rest of the animal kingdom is concerned. God's filthy creations include porcupines who take golden showers, Garter snake male she-male female orgies, and Bed bugs which mate through the appropriately horrifyingly named process "traumatic insemination."

So next time you're reminded that God hates homosexual humans, don't forget, at least he LOVES homosexual animals.

Check out God's perverted creations at cracked.com's 15 most bizarre animal mating rituals.

7 reasons why becoming an atheist sucks

1. Say goodbye to sheeple.

Having spent all your life being raised by, herding amongst, and copulating with other Christians, your social pool just got a whole lot smaller. Admitting atheism amongst Christians is social suicide one step away from coming out as gay. As your social circle's new black sheep and immediate source of gossip, you'll be prayed for, suspiciously glanced at, and be the only one not invited to your niece's baptism. You might even get your very own intervention; coming home to find a circle of family and friends, bible in hands and solemn faced, it starts with "I know you are angry at God, but...."

Sure, you could keep going to church and stick with your friends, but you could also continue to put out milk and cookies for Santa.

To make things worse, its not like you can hop on over to your local church of atheism and find a new circle of friends. Finding a lover is going to be difficult too. There are still a lot of fish left in the sea, but the unfortunate majority are the deluded religious.

2. Death isn't the beginning.

Death suddenly becomes the fear inducing end to your existence you had been afraid to think about. Sure you're free from hell too, but you were never going there anyway, only the neighbors' kid who peed on your lawn.

Once life was a journey with Disneyland waiting at the end, now it's the destination and sure as hell isn't Disneyland. You really don't want to go back to before you were born, what with the lack of thinking and all.

3. Ignorance was bliss.

Your days of living in a bible bubble are over. The bible is no longer the source of all answers. It's like you lost your textbook the day before midterms, and to make things worse there isn't even a midterm!

God forbid, you may even need to discern between sources of information yourself.

That mysterious plan God had for your life? Turns out it wasn't so mysterious after all. Nana didn't die because God was calling her to heaven, she died because she refused medical treatment on grounds of faith.

Suddenly those angry looking bees aren't God's creatures, and that drunk driver doesn't have God nudging his car away from running you down as you tentatively cross the road away from the bees. Sure all these things had just as high a chance of hurting you before you became an atheist, but now they hurt you mentally too.

4. Cut line to big J.

Who you gonna call? Not Jesus, that's for sure.

That voice in your head just got a major downgrade from almighty creator of the universe to imaginary friend. Want grandma to survive cancer? Well too bad, talking to yourself just isn't going to cut it anymore. You'll have to get a Ph.D and start researching.

What are you going to do on airplanes? I'm entirely sure they stay in the air only thanks to continual requests to God.

Once you were like a superhero in disguise. "God's disciple" colorfully embroidered on the spandex under your shirt - at a moment's notice you could send up the call and stop the turbulence bringing the plane down. Now it's Superman II all over again.

5. No more get out of jail free.

Those children you molested during your priesthood? Turns out God didn't forgive you after all. You're accountable to yourself for everything you have done. God isn't going to wash your sins away, you'll just have to live with the dirt.

That war your country is fighting over seas? Turns out it wasn't something God wanted, and right now your taxes are going towards funding genocide of a culture whose only sin was getting religion just as wrong as you did.

As if not having your sins forgiven was bad, now there isn't even defined good and evil. You might just need to come up with your own moral code, and how egotistical would that be!?

6. One in a billion.

The sun no longer revolves around the earth, and life no longer revolves around you. This isn't your personal God constructed holodeck. You're about as special as one talking animal amongst 6,000,000,000 similar talking animals on one planet in a solar system amongst 10,000,000,000 other solar systems in a galaxy amongst 1000,000,000,000 other galaxies.

Worst of all, now you can't judge others. Jimmy the satanist isn't going to hell, and you can stop feeling self-satisfied knowing you're going to heaven. Remember that picture of you in a solid gold frame that was stolen by burglars? Well now you can't feel all smug knowing they will be getting their comeuppance.

7. You dumb.

You have to admit you were horribly deluded. You might just have to dissect your lost faith inside and out, and maybe start a blog to lure others into the bleak reality you have discovered. What's worse is that all the faithful are exposed as the infected they have always been. Like waking from your stupor amongst the flesh eating zombie hoard, you are not in a better place!

Do you have an STD?

STD
abbr. socially transmitted dogma

noun
1.	a communicable viral idea transmitted by social contact

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

God's Influence

A few cheap jabs. Cheesy I know.

Any buttons I missed?

A vast and important undertaking.

Tonight I took the time to contribute to one of the most important movements of this generation: The Zombie Bible! Matthew 18 was in dire lack of zombies, so I corrected this grave omission.

A few highlights:
"18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be turned, and become as headless zombies, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of the undead."

"18:8 Wherefore if thy brain thinks with rational thought, tear it out and devour it: it is better for thee to shuffle unflinching with the horde, rather than have a brain to question it."

Luckily it was easy to keep the original message completely intact!

Please, for all our sakes, do your part and contribute.

Pro Christian marriage parody.

The National Organization for Marriage put out this video parodying pro christian marriage. Its a good laugh, here's the transcript:

There's a storm gathering.
The clouds are dark and the winds are strong, and I am afraid.
Some who advocate for interracial marriage have taken the issue far beyond interracial couples.
They want to bring the issue into my life.
My freedom will be taken away.
I'm a California doctor who must choose between my faith and my job.
I'm part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can't support interracial marriage.
I'm a Massachusetts parent, helplessly watching public schools teach my son that interracial marriage is OK.
But some who advocate for interracial marriage have not been content with interracial couples living as they wish.
Those advocates want to change the way I live.
I will have no choice.
The storm is coming.
But we have hope, a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and sexual preference are coming together in love to protect marriage.
Visit NationForMarriage.org

Wait.. did I get something mixed up?


Raw auditions dug up by the Human Rights Campaign. Catch them before they are pulled!

UPDATE: Wake Up World did a real parody (as if it needed one):

Persuade me.

There's a guide via wikiHow on how to persuade an atheist to become christian. Its seemingly written by a mixture of theist and atheist authors, although much of it deals with praying, knowing and dispensing advice from the bible, setting a good example, and being friendly and open.

Just to make things clear, appealing to my emotions will never change my mind.

There are also a lot of deceptive arguments against science and tired arguments for the existence of God (Kalam Cosmological Argument anyone?).

When you boil it down, there is only one piece of good advice left:

find evidence.

For the theist who's trying, see this guide on ebonmusings.

Borderline religious

In the course of a potentially offensive Joke I asked someone at work if they where religious. The answer itself wasn't surprising, but hearing it out loud and so readily admitted was bizarre. "I'm borderline religious" was how they put it.

Maybe they are legitimately going through a transitional phase and have the where-withal to acknowledge it? Perhaps they were worried about fitting in and scared to admit their faith fully? If that was the case, then how much faith can they really have? It's far more likely they hold a common view; that of nonchalance and ignorance. I have known many Christians who use it as a label and nothing more. It's what they Identify themselves as, but they don't go to church or practice. Effectively, they just haven't given it much thought. One of Christianity's traits is to stop believers from thinking; my experiences and the statistics would suggest it's highly effective.

A devout Christian friend of mine would describe those people as false Christians, almost relishing the idea that they won't be going to heaven. I can't look at them any more kindly, these half Christians can neither defend their beliefs or even understand them. They are enablers for the more extreme zealots. Approaching voting with that same ignorance, public policy's are so easily swayed towards that of the religion to which most subscribe. It's a travesty when the religious majority band together to trample the rights of the minority.

So to all those who are borderline religious out there. Stop riding the fence and start thinking. Get your beliefs straight or risk going through life a zombie pawn to the fanatical!

Evolution vs Creationism

Muslim scholars debate evolution vs Intelligent Design. Oh... wait... what year is this?



Creationists - this is how your arguments come across to scientists! Also, don't forget, a couple of centuries ago the church once insisted the world was flat for the same reasons. How is denial of evolution any different?

Revelation 7:1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth.

Happy Easter

A week early I know, but Happy Easter everyone!

Slain in the spirit FAIL

I have just been slain in the spirit! I was in hysterics. I couldn't stop laughing. I could hardly move. It lasted for what seemed like hours. I was ecstatic. I could hardly breathe. I felt light headed. I felt disembodied. Surely it was the power of the Lord God? Surely it was Jesus feeling me up?

Nope..

I just spent the last hour reading FailBlog and working up a fit of laughter that wiped the floor with when I was "really" slain in the spirit. It happened back when I was young, christian, and naive. I was down on the floor near the pulpit. The service was over and members of the church had come together to pray, lay hands on each other, and speak in tongues. It wasn't uncommon for people to collapse to the floor in fits of laughter. It was called "slain in the spirit" and was considered a mystical encounter with the holy spirit. Some of my church friends were praying, speaking in tongues, and laying hands on me when the laughter started. I collapsed in hysterics. They blew the holy spirit on me, and I could hardly move, such was its power.

After I escaped from the confines of faith, I had believed that experience to be a combination of oxygen deprivation & our biological perceptibility to transcendent experiences. Thanks FailBlog for inducing that experience again.

Holy Spirit FAIL!

What the bleep do we know

The movie What the bleep do we know uses quantum physics as a springboard into absurd pseudoscience. Directed by three Ramtha cultists, it unsurprisingly receives a thorough debunking here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It's also terrible, which doesn't help its case.

I couldn't stomach it to the end, instead I re-watched a fantastic talk by Richard Dawkins' "The universe is queerer than we can suppose".

My de-conversion, part 1

One of my earliest memories is of a plaque my mother had handcrafted (shown left). It depicted verses from Corinthians 13, which detail Love. I remember being enthralled by its simple but beautiful artistry. In many ways, this is how I saw Christianity, as my mother and upbringing pedestaled it as the only source of joy. It took me many years to realize life was the source of Joy, not God. This is the first part of that story.

I was brought into this world by two very young evangelicals in the UK during the 80's. My mother was strictly religious, having devoted her life to God. I never saw my father as religious; he left both my mother and religion when I was just 4. Looking after my 2 year old sister and I, times were tough for my mother who had no useful extended education or income beyond minimum wage jobs and alimony. I expect the hardship helped fuel her religious devolution, combined with her sisters and parents who were all devoutly religious and a constant source of support.

We went to church weekly; God was the central theme of everything my mother did. When I was 5, I remember being tucked into the lower bunk bed by my mother and asking Jesus into my heart. My mother had prompted me to do so, explaining that doing so was the only way to heaven. I felt that what conspired that night was somehow of great significance. I was right, it was the start of my full indoctrination. To further my education I was sent to an small expensive private Christian school my mother could barely afford. As intended, it enforced my early beliefs and kept me covered in cotton wool. Bible verse memorization and assemblies that almost always involved God were part of every day school life. Ultimately classmates and faculty were kind, and being a kid was usually simple and fun.

It wasn't all joy though, fear of hell was a powerful pacifier. I remember feeling pangs of desperation and despair when I'd doubt my faith, as all questioning and criticism was replaced with complete and overwhelming dread. A feeling I can still remember vividly to this day.

My school headmaster & our church pastor during an assembly re-enacting Jesus washing his disciples feet. Hard core!