DangerousTalk

Christians are always complaining about how mean atheists are and how Christianity is a religion of peace and compassion. But this is just another Christian delusion. The fact is that the opposite is true.

It is pretty rare for atheists to threaten Christians over some expression of their religiosity. Sure, there may be atheists that do, but it is extremely rare. It is even rarer for threats to come from an atheist who is part of the greater community of reason. What do I mean by that? I once worked with a guy who was a fellow atheist, but he wasn’t knowledgeable about religion, didn’t attend any atheist groups, and was just an angry guy in general. He was not part of the greater community of reason. People who go to atheist groups or write and advocate about and for atheism tend to be humanistic and not prone to violence or to delivering threats. Atheism is just a lack of belief in gods.

On the other hand, it is not unusual at all for church going Christians to issue threats and act violently. Yesterday, I posted an article on Examiner about how Christians made threatening tweets on Twitter over an atheist hash tag.  This wasn’t an isolated incident either. Christians are always making hateful and threatening comments and actions towards atheists because we lack belief in their ridiculous deity.

The only thing Christians can do is to jump into the No True Scotsman defense. But that doesn’t really work because anyone who reads the Bible will see that it is a series of books which often advocates a great deal of violence. Sure Jesus said to love your enemy, but he also said that he didn’t come to bring peace, he came with a sword. He also advocated cutting off your hands and plucking out your eyes. The God of the Bible is over the top violent. So if he the the example that Christians want to live up to, it really is no surprise that they act so violently.

Related articles

• Christians issue death threats over Twitter hash tag (examiner.com)
• Some atheist parents take kids to religious services (examiner.com)
• Dear Bill Donohue (dead-logic.blogspot.com)
• Hitchens and the Christian Reactions to His Death (atheistrev.com)
• The Good Atheist (secularcentered.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Evils of Christianity, Love, morality, twitter | 3 Comments »

On Sunday, I was on the Twitter and saw that some of the atheists that I am following had experienced a miracle. It turns out that Christopher Hitchens was seen alive three days after he died of cancer. The evidence is clear, Hitchen has risen!

People tweeted about seeing an empty coffin and others saw him arguing with religious believers. Then before their eyes, he just vanished into another dimension. Christopher Hitchens has defeated death itself. He has fulfilled the prophecy, died, and on the third day he has risen.

Now, no religious believer with even the miniscule sense of reality would accept this as true. Yet these people on Twitter have no reason to lie. In fact, talking about their experience only opens them up to ridicule and might even cause them to lose their jobs in our theocratic infested nation.

So who wants evidence that Christopher Hitchens had really risen from the dead and is alive today in another dimension? Who will accept the testimony of these people on Twitter as proof of this? Who will pretend that this is a claim that has nothing to do with science or that it is somehow beyond science and yet equally as valid as anything that the scientific method has done or could do?

Now let me offer this; Adolf Hitler didn’t believe that Hitchens returned from the dead. Therefore, everyone who doesn’t believe that Hitchens did not return from the dead must be like Hitler. In fact, not believing that Hitchens returned from the dead leads to the mass murder of Jews.

Think about it, how many people who believe that Hitchens rose from the dead are in prison today? Zero! How many people who believe that Hitchens rose from the dead killed Jews or anyone else? Zero!

Admittedly, these are all terrible arguments and yet atheists have to address these very arguments on a daily basis from Christians. How can a Christian really prove that Hitchens didn’t rise from the dead as so many people claim that he has and that they have seen him? They could present the body, but that doesn’t really deal with the issue since we all know that the body is just an empty vessel and that Hitchens’ personality lives on in another dimension in the form of spaghetti sauce or something.

It actually takes more faith not to believe that Hitchens has risen on the third day than it does to believe that he has. One would have to claim to know everything in the entire universe in order to reject the belief that Hitchens has risen. How arrogant! These people must hate Hitchens and are just angry people. One must at least be willing to admit that it is possible that Hitchens did rise on the third day and that he is the world’s true savior. Kneel before the Hitch!

Related articles

• The Remarkable Mr. Hitchens (dangeroustalk.net)
• God is not great, but Christopher Hitchens was! (examiner.com)

Filed under: Belief, death, delusion, Hitchens, miracles, twitter | 8 Comments »

When atheists and Christians discuss religion we often talk past each other. That being the case, I came up with an idea that might change that. I think we should try to meet Christians halfway… as long as they are willing to meet us halfway.

Here is how it works. First, we offer to meet halfway and let them know that we are willing to consider the possibility that there might be a god and that we can’t rule it out with 100% certainty. This seems like a reasonable concession to make.

Then we ask them to admit a concession. Specifically, we ask them if they are willing to at least admit that on the surface, the whole Christian story does sound a little farfetched. You can go into the whole virgin birth, walking on water, raising the dead, raised from the dead thing in you want, but the point is to get them to at least try to understand why someone might not take such a stseriously. It is pretty absurd.

That’s as far as we need to go. While the whole god concept is possible and we can’t rule it out with 100% certainty, it is extremely improbable and as we just pointed out and they admitted, it is a bit ludicrous.

Now we have given them something to think about and we don’t need to concede another inch. We’re done here. The seeds of doubt have been planted and watered.

Related articles

• The Certainty Trap (dangeroustalk.net)
• Hitchens dead at 62 (examiner.com)

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, conversation, de-conversion, delusion | No Comments »

I had an entirely different blog post in mind for today, but sadly that will have to wait until next week. Sadly, Christopher Hitchens has died and that is something that needs talking about because he was such a remarkable person.

Late last night, when I heard the news I posted an Examiner article on his death. But after reading it this morning, I am not happy with it. While my writing skill could never match or even come close to Hitchens, I really thought that I could do better and that I should do better. So this morning I wrote a second Examiner article.

But the real tribute to Hitchens didn’t come after he died, but rather while he was still alive to appreciate it. Last month, atheists raised their glasses to Hitchens. Today, atheists all over the world will surely be raising our glasses to the remarkable Mr. Hitchens.

Related articles

• Hitchens dead at 62 (examiner.com)
• Christopher Hitchens: Remembering The Legendary Writer And Orator (huffingtonpost.com)
• Christopher Hitchens is Dead (breakingspells.net)
• Christopher Hitchens, an atheist in a foxhole (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)

Filed under: atheism, Current Events, death, Hitchens | 3 Comments »

Former Star Trek actor, gay activist, and Humanist George Takei has been on fire lately. When a bill was on the table in one of the southern states (I forget which one) that attempted to restrict teachers from using the word, “gay” in the classroom, George Takei stepped up with his, “It’s okay to be Takei” campaign.

The idea of Takei’s campaign is that instead of saying gay, you can say Takei. He created a logo for the campaign featuring the Starfleet insignia and rainbow colors. Last night he posted a contest on twitter to create a new logo. I answered his call and as far as I know, I was the first to do so.

If my logo makes it as a finalist (which I think it might), then voting will be on Sunday, December 18th 2011. George Takei will create a special photo gallery on his facebook page for the contest and the logo that gets the most “likes” wins.

You don’t have to vote for mine, but I hope you will because you all love me so much and I don’t want to brag or anything, but my logo is pretty kickass. Take a look:

Related articles

• “Star Wars” Vs.”Star Trek?” George Takei Reveals The True Enemy! (pinkbananaworld.com)
• George Takei on Shatner-Fisher Feud: ‘Knock It Off, Bash Twilight’ (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Your Daily Moment of George Takei Brokering Galactic Peace (tor.com)

Filed under: culture war, facebook, Gay Issues, humanism, People of Reason, Personal, twitter | 1 Comment »

Earlier this week, I wrote about how religious believers often seem like they are just waiting to die and that this world is just a doorway into the next world. For many Christians, this world only purpose is to serve God by proselytizing until the end comes. But now, when a Christians comes to proselytize to me, I can tell them that I am just waiting to die.

According to most Christians, Jesus saves not by works, out of grace. This means that it doesn’t matter what you do in life as long as you accept Jesus as your savior before your death. So when Christians come to proselytize to me, I can tell them that I am waiting to die… or more accurately right before I die. I can tell them that this way I can sin all I want and not have to worry, but that moments before I die, I plan to accept Jesus’s sacrifice. I can even encourage them to do the same.

Now of course, I have no intention of doing that. That type of Pascal’s Wager just doesn’t appeal to me. But it might get the proselytizer to pause and consider. If I can get them to leave religion until they are ready to die, they might just end up leaving religion all together. At the very least, it might get them to stop trying to proselytize to me.

Related articles

• May I concern troll the Christians? (freethoughtblogs.com)
• How Do You Handle a Possibly Proselytizing Teacher? (patheos.com)

Filed under: death, deathbed conversion, Religion | 1 Comment »

People often have conversations in which we label others into groups. Those group identities can be created by others or the group themselves. Either case, when we talk about the group ambiguity creeps in. The perceiver may make the assumption that the conversation must apply to the entire group rather than the group in general. This is a fallacy I will call the Assumed All Fallacy.

For example, if I were to make the statement, “The English love to tea,” it would be a fallacy to conclude that there is an “assumed all” in the statement. It is probably that there are at least a few English who do not in fact love tea. The statement about English loving tea is a general statement.

Loving tea is not in this case a defining characteristic of being English and so therefore it should be interpreted as a general statement about many or most English rather than “assumed all” statement about every single man and woman living in England.

Now, let’s take this fallacy into a more controversial application. “Christians oppose same-sex marriage.” This again is a general statement and not a statement about every single Christian. To assume that this statement refers to every single Christian and not to Christians in general would be an example of the Assumed All Fallacy.

“Muslims use fear and terrorism to suppress criticism.” Again, this statement is not a defining characteristic of all Muslims; it is a general statement about many Muslims. In fact, it has become such a common characteristic that the Muslim culture has become known throughout the world for this tactic. Obviously there are Muslims who do not use fear and terrorism to suppress criticism just as there are English people who do not like tea. But the statement in general is true. When people “assume all” in such statements they are being fallacious.

Filed under: context, conversation, logic | 2 Comments »

One of the most common statements religious believers make toward atheists is that without the promise of everlasting life, our lives must be meaningless. Quite frankly, I think it is reversed. It seems to me that most religious believers are so focused on their afterlife that they go around this life just waiting to die.

Now I have talked about the purpose of life before, but I really am curious as to what religious believers think their purpose in life is. It seems like their only purpose in life is to die quickly before they sin too much. The faster they get through this life the better. This life is evil, sinful, and full of temptation to them. The next life on the other hand is an endless paradise of bliss kissing God’s ass for all eternity without free will and without caring about those former loved ones now being tortured for all eternity in Hell.

Of course you would be hard pressed to find a Christian who is so eager to die quickly and just move beyond this evil, sinful world. But they should want that, right? Instead, they come up with this copout that they have to do God’s will here on Earth before they die. In reality, these believers cling to life much more than the most vocal atheists do and yet they are still living life waiting to die.

It really doesn’t make much sense, but neither does religion. You have people claiming that this world is evil and bad and that they are waiting for the next life and yet they cling to this life as if it were the only one that truly matters. For me, this is the only world that truly matters because it is the only world I believe actual exists. So I don’t want to waste a minute of my life.

Related articles

• Dogmatic About Death (dangeroustalk.net)
• Some atheist parents take kids to religious services (examiner.com)
• Religion infects smart people too (examiner.com)
• The problem with the afterlife (whydontyou.org.uk)

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Belief, Criticism, death, healthcare, Projection, Religion | 4 Comments »

Christians are always claiming that Jesus is the reason for the season and many fundamentalists have started “Keep Christ in Christmas” campaigns. Yet it has been pretty well established as common knowledge now that Christians stole Christmas from the pagans.

The fact is that Christmas doesn’t belong to Christians. It doesn’t even belong to the pagans. While the pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice, that really isn’t the reason for the season either. It is just the excuse.

The reason for the season is obvious. It is fucking cold outside, trees look like they are dying, it gets dark earlier, and people get seasonal depression. People need to be cheered up and the best way to do that is to celebrate with family and friends.

The evergreen tree is a symbol of life because it is the one tree that is still green during this time of year. So we decorate that tree. We give presents to people because that makes people happy in this depressing time of year.

In this cold, dark, and dreary season, it is our humanity that keeps us warm. The spirit of good will toward each other warms our hearts better than any magical births of deities.

Related articles

• Reclaiming the Winter Solstice (witchesofthecraft.com)
• Wisconsin Christmas Tree Prayer? (secularnewsdaily.com)

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Christmas | 1 Comment »

Thirty-one years ago today, musician and activist John Lennon was shot and killed. I wonder what he would be doing if he were alive today. Aside from the awesome music which might have been made, what would Lennon’s activism look like in today’s world?

For starters, he would almost certainly be a large voice supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think he would make some interesting and unique contributions to the movement. While, some Occupiers have tried to mirror his famous “War is Over” campaign, John would almost certainly have new ideas for getting the world to take notice of the corruption on Wall Street.

Would Lennon be a more vocal atheist in 2011? This is hard to say. He was a fairly vocal atheist back in his day, but he is also someone who seeks to harmony with everyone. So he probably wouldn’t be like Christopher Hitchens. He might however take up a more Humanist angle on the issue and present a very positive face for atheism.

My guess is that he wouldn’t actually identify himself with the greater community of reason, but would be similar to people like Neil deGrasse Tyson in his positioning. Neil speaks out against religious extremism and doesn’t hide the fact that he lacks belief, but he also doesn’t actively encourage people to disbelieve. John would probably be like that too.

Yoko Ono has continued to do some activism over the years, but she lacks the showmanship that John had. On the other hand, it is possible that over thirty years, John’s activism would have become stale. The right-wing could marginalize him as a polarizing figure like Michael Moore and if their campaign was successful, it might diminish Lennon’s impact. Still, even people on the right loved the Beatles.

The world that could have been… We miss you John.  Wish you were here.

Related articles

• John Lennon remembered on his birthday (examiner.com)

Filed under: Current Events, death, Hope, John Lennon, People of Reason, Political Activism | 1 Comment »

Religious believers often accuse atheists of being angry, but if you ever read comment on any article dealing with atheism, it really seems like it is the theists who are the angry ones. Why is that?

Last weekend, atheists rallied to protest our exclusion from the “Free Speech Zone” in West Chester, PA. The local newspaper covered the story. I went online to read the story and found a slew of angry and hate filled comments by Christians. This isn’t the first time this has happened either. Any news story that even mentioned the fact that atheists exist on virtually any news website gets filled up with angry, hate filled comments by the religious.

The way I see it, it is a lot like the Santa myth. It just takes one kid to know the truth and the myth is shattered for everyone. The belief is so weak that it can’t stand up to any scrutiny or criticism without falling apart completely. So the mere existence of people who make it known that they don’t believe is enough to get those who do believe on the defensive.

Most religious believers really can’t even attempt to defend their beliefs and so they get angry at atheists for forcing them to think. If everyone believers in God, then they can continue to live in blissful delusion, but if just one person rejects that belief then the delusion is diluted. The possibility arises that God might not exist. The more people reject the belief in a god, the more religious believers have to accept the possibility that they are wrong and that God doesn’t exist.

Related articles

• Censoring the World for Santa (dangeroustalk.net)

Filed under: culture war, Religion, truth | 5 Comments »

As an atheist, I have no problem informing people that their imaginary friend is… well, imaginary. But it seems that many of my fellow atheists get all bent out of shape when the imaginary friend happens to be Santa Claus.

Yesterday, I published an Examiner article about a news anchor who told the obvious truth about old St. Nick toward the end of her 9pm news broadcast (9:45pm to be exact). I defended anchor Robin Robinson and to my surprise, atheists went ape-shit.

I had fellow atheists tell me that I am taking away people’s happiness, that I am angry at Santa, that I must not have ever experienced Santa, that I hate children, and I even had a few people threat to beat me up. Now, it isn’t the death threats I typically get from Christians mind you, but that is pretty extreme coming from atheists. The funny thing is that all these responses resemble typical responses Christians give when I inform them that God is imaginary.

To me this all boils down to control. This is something I often talk about in terms of Star Wars to my Jedi friends, but I will have to just get to the basics of it here. People can control themselves, but you can’t control the world. If you want to lie to your kids about Santa Claus, that’s on you. It seems that some atheists believe that lying to their kids about Santa Claus will help their kids to think critically and to learn to discover the truth for themselves. That’s cool, but I see it as undermining my trust to my children.

What you can’t do however is to force the entire world to support your lie. Religions do that. Christians get all bent out of shape whenever anyone says anything that doesn’t support their worldview. They have to control the flow of knowledge and information to protect their lie. I had one of my fellow atheists tell me that if I came to his house and told his kids that there was no Santa, I would be in trouble. Like with Christians, I told him that I didn’t have to come to his doorstep, I was already inside his house. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Parents tell their kids about God and kids believe it because they trust their parents, their religious leaders, and their community. But when just one atheist is out there no believing it becomes a threat to them. The same is true with Santa. It just takes one kid watching the news at 9:45pm and it is all over. My point here is that you can’t protect your kids from learning that Santa is a myth by trying to censoring the entire world just like religious believers can’t protect their belief in God by censoring the entire world.

Related articles

• News anchor apologizes for ‘Santa’ comments (examiner.com)

Filed under: atheism, censorship, Media, Parenting, Religion | 12 Comments »

Many times when I criticize a particular heinous verse of the Bible, religious believers will criticize me for taking the Bible too literally. They will claim that the verse is merely a metaphor. Sometimes they are correct, but not usually. It seems that religious believers will bend over backwards to find an interpretation that isn’t completely heinous.

One example of this comes from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s take on the Isaac story in a recent HuffPost article. We all know the actual story. Abraham is commanded by God to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. At the last minute, God sends an angel to stop him because it seems clear that Abraham is actually going to do it. The angel claims that God was testing Abraham and he passed! The obvious interpretation of this story is that when you hear voices in your head telling you to kill your son, you should do it… well sort of. Most people see this as a test of faith. Will you follow God no matter how crazy or insane the command is? The answer should be yes.

But Rabbi Boteach talks about the interpretation by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, which is to view Isaac as religion itself:

“The test, therefore, was this: Would Abraham follow G-d’s commandment to kill off his religion or would he put his religion before G-d’s will? What really mattered to Abraham? G-d or Judaism? And if they were to be put in conflict, what would he choose? The religious fanatic is the man or woman who has ceased to serve G-d and has begun worshipping their religion, making their faith into yet another false idol.”

In other words, this isn’t about God ordering Abraham to kill his son at all because that would be heinous. What self-respecting deity would actually expect a follower to kill their own child as a sacrifice to satisfy the deity’s ego? But the interpretation of the Isaac story is pretty obvious and yet we have a gymnastic interpretation put forth to defend the religion.

It seems to me that Rabbi Boteach is sacrificing common sense for his religion and in so doing; he is making his faith into yet another false idol.

Filed under: anti-intellectualism, blood sacrifice, Religion, Religious Manipulation, the bible | No Comments »

We are all familiar with Epicurus’s Problem of Evil but for the Christian there is a bigger Problem of Evil too. I’ll call it the Problem of the Cruelty Asshole.

Epicurus has put his problem this way:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Christians claim that non-believers and unrepentant sinners will go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. This they claim isn’t God’s fault despite his all-powerfulness, but our fault for not worshipping his ass for creating this situation. Fortunately the situation doesn’t actually exist, but Christians believe that it does. So let’s look at it for a moment through part of a conversation I recently had with a Christian:

Christian: “When you die and you are face to face with GOD the fact that you died not believing and denying gets you eternity in HELL, not by GODS choice but yours.”

My response: “Are you saying that God can’t save me if I don’t repent, or God won’t save me? Is he willing to save me from eternal torture, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able to save me from eternal torture, but not willing to save me from eternal torture? Then he is a cruel asshole.”

And there it is, the Problem of the Cruel Asshole. God created a situation in which people will be tortured for all eternity (which is a pretty long time) and then has decided that unless we believe in a bunch of ridiculous claims without sufficient evidence and worship him as a peasant would worship a Lord, we will be tortured for all eternity. He could stop it but doesn’t and then blames us for his choice to torture people for all eternity.

Free-Will doesn’t apply since as I stated before it would be an uninformed choice based on insufficient evidence. If God were to reveal himself to us and give us an informed choice, then Christians could try to pull out the Free-Will crap. But as it is now, the Christian God is just a cruel asshole. Fortunately this is all a fictional situation anyway and the only real cruel assholes are the Christians who propagate this type of cruel nonsense.

Related articles

• What If It Is True? (dangeroustalk.net)
• Soul Murderer (dangeroustalk.net)
• 14 Problems with Christianity (Part I) (new.exchristian.net)

Filed under: conversation, Evils of Christianity, god, God Fearing, hell, Judge God, Religion | 1 Comment »

I tweet a lot of my articles out on the twitter. Sometimes I get comments back and even get into twitter discussions on rare occasions. But yesterday, I got the funniest tweet back in response to one of my articles. Oddly enough, I am not sure what article the response was directed toward, but it still struck me silly.

So here it is:

“@dangeroustalk No other Religion Give respect to women as Islam gives.”

I should add that this was one tweet out of about two dozen sent to me within minutes of each other by the same person. This guy pretty much spammed my twitter with these ridiculous pro-Islam statements. But this one just took the cake.

For the record, I don’t believe that Islam, Judaism, or Christianity gives respect to women. All three Abrahamic religions have an absurdly bad record on the feminism front. Islam is notoriously the worst, which is why I find the tweet so damn funny.

Filed under: islam, Religious Manipulation, twitter | 2 Comments »

Fox News is good at one thing and it is distorting the truth and flat out lying. As a Lib and a moral person, I like to bitch and complain about this; however the sad fact is that it works. Poll after poll has shown that Fox News viewers are generally misinformed about the events of the day.

The problem with Liberals is that we just too damn honest. Yeah, that’s right we don’t know how to lie to win. Maybe we should.

Maybe we should plant a story in the blogosphere that during the last Republican debate, all of the candidates on the stage left out “under God” when pledging allegiance to the flag. This is easy to disprove because there is video of the debates, but so what? No one is going to fact check this. The media is too damn lazy for that. Let’s fake some outrage.

Is this immoral? Yes, but it will also serve as an interesting experiment on our media and on Republican voters. It is an absurd and meaningless story. The reality is that it makes no practical difference if the candidates “omitted” god or not and we all know that all the candidates are super religious. Interestingly enough, I am pretty sure that they don’t even say the pledge at the debates.

Hey, we can make it more interesting if we say that Jon Huntsman was the only one who did say “under God” and see if that make Republicans more likely to vote for him. We can see if he actually moves up in the polls. So let’s spread this meme around the internets and see what happens.

Related articles

• Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study (uncommontary.com)
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Filed under: culture war, debate, Election, journalism, Media, Political Activism, Politics | 2 Comments »

I recently watched Greta Christina’s presentation at Skepticon IV about why atheists are angry. It is well worth the watching. In it, she mentioned that Christians often give atheists advice on how we should run our movement. This particularly caught my attention because I hear this all the time and even heard it shortly before watching the video.

The next time a Christian offers advice to me about how atheists should conduct our movement, I would like to point out to them that Gandhi must have eagerly awaited the advice of the British when he was conducting his protest. Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. consulted with the Grand Wizards of the KKK before his famous speech.

I wonder what their advice would have been. I bet it would have been something along the lines of stop fighting for your rights and don’t shove your concerns in the face of the entire nation. Interestingly enough that is the same advice Christians give to me about atheism.

Just the other day, I wrote about the new American Humanist Association billboards and a Christian told me that he thought they were offensive. I asked him in what way they could possibly be offensive and he told me that one of them used the word, “God.” That billboard said, “Don’t believe in a God? Join the club.” So his advice to me was to not mention “god” or “belief” or “even “atheism.” In other words, his advice was to just put up a billboard that said, “Join the club.”

Thanks for the advice but in the immortal words of Jack Napier, “I didn’t ask!”

Related articles

• Humanist group announces new billboard, bus, and newspaper campaign (examiner.com)
• Five atheists to be thankful to in 2011 (examiner.com)
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• Last Week’s Anti-Atheist Bigotry (atheistethicist.blogspot.com)

Filed under: atheism, billboards, culture war, humanism, People of Reason, Religion | No Comments »

Fundamentalist Christians are upset because apparently President Obama didn’t mention God in his Thanksgiving Day address. Personally, I don’t know why the President has to even have a Thanksgiving Day address. But the Right Wing has been complaining all weekend that Obama “omitted” God from the address.

The Amazing Atheist did a great video on this in which he mentioned that term “omit” implies that something was supposed to be there and then taken out. There is no evidence that “God” was ever in Obama’s speech and so it wasn’t that he omitted it, but simply chose not to include it. He also didn’t include Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Easter Bunny. Why does President Obama hate the Easter Bunny?

How arrogant is it for Christians to expect that every speech the President of the United States gives should include a personal shout-out to them and their ridiculous beliefs. More to the point, the Constitution of the United States also doesn’t include any shout-outs to any deities. In fact, the Constitution actually makes it clear that should shout-outs are inappropriate at best.

Where is the Christian outrage that the framers of the Constitution omitted God?

PS It’s Cyber Monday, please use the Amazon search bar in the sidebar. Thanks!

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• Obama Flayed for Not Mentioning God in Thanksgiving Address (ibtimes.com)
• Right Wingers Go Crazy After Obama Omits ‘God’ from Thanksgiving Address (patheos.com)
• Obama Omits God From Thanksgiving Address, Riles Critics (abcnews.go.com)

Filed under: church/state, culture war, Obama, Offensiveness, Religion, thanksgiving | No Comments »

After I really get into it with a Creationist, they will often admit that they agree with “micro-evolution” but reject the “belief” in “macro-evolution.” So what is macro-evolution? The truth is that there is no such thing as macro-evolution. Creations made it up.

There is only one kind of evolution and that is evolution via natural selection in which organisms change over time by genetic mutation. The evidence for evolution is so extensive that one would have to bury their head in the sand to avoid seeing it. Even Creationists have to admit that evolution is a fact of life.

This is why they decided to split evolution in half so that they can accept the indisputable facts of evolution while still clinging to their dogmatic belief that God created man in his present form. By making up this idea of micro and macro evolution, they can accept the obvious evidence for evolution yet still claim that the evolution that occurred over millions of years didn’t happen because they didn’t see it happen before their eyes. It is their way of having their cake and eating it too.

There is a problem with this however. It is a huge concession on their part. The second a Creationist starts spouting off about micro and macro evolution, they are admitting that they lost the argument.

Related articles

• Humans still evolving (lifeofalabrat.wordpress.com)
• Evolution for ID-iots (unreasonablefaith.com)
• The “D-Word” (dangeroustalk.net)

Filed under: Creationism, evolution, science | 1 Comment »

Recently a Christian commented on a forum that he was tired of all the “Christian basing” and that Christians do so much good in the world. He pointed out that Christians are often first on the scene of disasters and give more to charity than atheists do. So I wrote him a response and thought I would share it here:

First, criticizing a particular idea or belief isn’t “bashing,” it is criticism. If you don’t want your ideas and beliefs criticized, don’t put them out into the market place of ideas. In the market place of ideas, all ideas and beliefs should be open for criticism.

Second, Christians are first on the scene to exploit people’s misfortune. This is because the Christian belief system advocates converting others at all costs. So when people are suffering, Christians are often the first to shove their Bibles in the faces of those in need. Also, atheist organizations are relatively new but individual atheists are often there on the ground and helping others alongside those of every other religion. We’re just not dicks about it.

If Christians really just want to help others, that would be great but they should leave their Bibles at home. Don’t go into third world nations and try to buy converts with bribes of food, water, and medicine. That isn’t right. Also, don’t go to Africa (where there is an AIDS epidemic) and tell people that condoms cause AIDS (like the Pope does).

The Gates Foundation for the record has done more to combat Malaria in Africa than any Christian group and Bill Gates is an atheist. But he doesn’t go down there to preach Humanism; he just helps people in need.

I am criticizing the idea that Christianity preaches that spreading “The Word” is the most important thing a Christian can do. I am criticizing the idea that it is more important to save the soul than to save human lives. That’s honest criticism, not “Christian bashing.”

Supporting the Spread of Reason

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• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)
• Let’s Raise $5,000 for Charity: Water (patheos.com)
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Filed under: atheism, Criticism, missionaries, Vaccines | 2 Comments »

It isn’t quite the Clinton question of what is the meaning of the word “is,” but what is torture is pretty straight forward. Herman Cain said it best when he said, “I do not agree with torture… period. However, I will trust in the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture.” When asked the obvious follow-up if waterboarding is torture, Cain said that it wasn’t and the crowd went wild. Michele Bachmann then supported waterboarding and got even more cheers.

In fairness, Ron Paul got some cheering for arguing against torture, but we should keep in mind that Ron Paul supporters will cheer at anything Ron Paul has to say.

It used to be that torture was universally acknowledged as a bad thing. But the Republican Party of today doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, many religious believers in particular don’t seem to think so. A study done a few years ago showed that the more religious someone claimed to be correlates to the greater the likelihood that they would support torture. Conversely, atheists were the least likely to support torture.

What will the Republican Party advocate for next? Rape? The question is, has the Republican Party hit a moral bottom. Not long ago they cheered people dying from no health insurance and booed a United States soldier for being openly gay. At this point, if someone told me that the Republicans cheered the cannibalism of babies, I wouldn’t really be surprised.

Getting back to the original point, if waterboarding isn’t torture, then what the fuck is torture? Let’s waterboard these candidates and see if they think it is torture then. A few years ago and right-wing radio host set out to prove that waterboarding wasn’t torture by being waterboarded. It was probably the only case in which torture yielded some useful information. He realized that waterboarding was torture!

Related articles

• Obama: Waterboarding Is ‘Torture’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• GOP Debate Audience Cheers Waterboarding (crooksandliars.com)
• Cain, Bachmann want to reinstate waterboarding (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Filed under: Current Events, debate, Election, morality, Politics, torture | No Comments »

Whenever there is a sex scandal or just about anything at all having to do with sex or sexuality, Christians are often quick to complain, “How am I going to explain this to my kids?” I never really understood their complaint until somewhat recently. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t understand the complaint in relation to sexuality, but lately I have been asking the same question about a different subject matter… Churches!

With a church on practically every street corner and church bells sounding every day at noon, my two and a half year old often asks, “What’s that Dada?” How am I going to explain that to my son? It’s a building people go to listen to make-believe stories? He’s start thinking that churches are libraries when they are pretty much the opposite of libraries. People go to libraries to learn and churches prevent learning.

I know I have to explain religion to my son at some point, but I was thinking that when he was old enough to understand and think logically, I would take him on a tour of various religious houses of worship and have him talk to various religious leaders about their beliefs. That way he could ask reasonable questions right from the source and he could compare what they say with what other religious leaders say. My hope of course is that he would see them all as equally ridiculous.

The thing is that right now, he is not old enough to really understand what is being preached. He is too young and his brain hasn’t developed enough for such an exercise. So what do I tell him in the meantime without indoctrinating him in my own lack of belief? I want to educate him in an unbiased fashion, but because religion is so focused on indoctrination, it makes it nearly impossible for me to educate my son about religion without some form of indoctrination.

So when we see a church on the street corner or hear the church bells cause noise pollution at noon, how am I going to explain it to my kids?

Related articles

• Indoctrination and Brainwashing (dangeroustalk.net)
• Atheism 101: How atheist parenting differ from religious parenting (examiner.com)
• How to grow an atheist (honjii.wordpress.com)
• Why Are Atheists Atheists? (jansimson.wordpress.com)
• 13-Year Old Atheist Explains His Beliefs [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Church, conversation, culture war, education, Parenting, Personal, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 5 Comments »

Back in my college days, there weren’t a lot of atheist t-shirts out there. I had a shirt that I got from Hot Topic that said, “i am god” in all lowercase letters. There is an interesting story with this shirt and what happened when I wore it to my Christian friend’s Creationism program.

My friend was a fundamentalist and was a member of a Christian group called, “Christians In Action” or CIA for short. He decided to put on this program where he would refute the science of evolution and advocate for Creationism. It was a pretty silly program and a few biology professors even showed up to witness the ridiculousness of it all. But the really fun part happened after the program.

Apparently, some Christians from out of town came to the program. They actually were the people who provided my friend with all his props and information. Most fundamentalist Christians on campus already knew me and knew enough at that point not to challenge me on religious matters. But these people were new in town and didn’t get the memo.

So they came up to me after the program because they saw my shirt. One young woman asked me in a confused voice if I really believed that. I was confused and asked what she was talking about. She pointed to my shirt and said, “Do you really believe you are God?” She seemed really sincere and was not asking that to start an argument, but genuinely wanted to know. I was pretty surprised by such a reaction, so I said the only thing any young smartass atheist could say, “Yes!”

What followed became a conversation of near legend. I really got into the role of being a deity. She was skeptical of my divine power and even down right atheistic. The more I played into the role the more fundamentalist Christians gathered around to ask me questions, which I was more than willing to answer. In fact, I answered many of their skeptical questions the same exact way they answer questions about their deity of choice.

At one point, I told them that I created their God and Satan too and then they started arguing over these soul things like children. I told them that I don’t even know what they do with them and added that I think they just put them on a shelf or something.

One person asked me, “If you created God, who created you?” To which I answered, “I always am and always will be.” He actually said to me that, “That doesn’t make sense.”

For me, it was fun to use all their arguments against them and to get them to use all the atheist arguments without realizing them. Sure, not one of them went home that night thinking I was serious and it is extremely doubtful that any of them were actually convinced that I really was, “god,” but I guarantee they will remember that conversation in which they met up with some crazy college kid who claimed to be God. They will remember the arguments that they used against my claims and when atheists in the future use those arguments against them, they may pause for a moment to consider.

I have no idea if any of them are still Christians or not, but I would like to think that the seeds of doubt were planted that night and that some of them have de-converted in part as a result of that conversation.

Related articles

• “An Atheist Has to Prove X…” (dangeroustalk.net)
• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)
• I Did Not Choose to Be an Atheist (atheistrev.com)
• Never Ending Story (new.exchristian.net)

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, atheism, conversation, Creationism, de-conversion, god, Personal, Religion | No Comments »

Yesterday was Election Day and as Minority Election Inspector, I am at my polling place all day long. Since I live in a largely Republican area, it is an opportunity to talk to Republicans about politics. It came to no surprise to me that I couldn’t find anyone who liked Mitt Romney for President. What did surprise me was that ever Republican I talked to said they would still vote for him.

When I started to talk to all the Republican officials, party leaders, and candidates none of them liked anyone in the current field of candidates. There were no Republicans who were enthusiastically supporting any candidate in the Republican Primary. One guy said that he liked Rick Perry for a while, but Perry went off the deep end. I got a few people who actually said they kind of liked Herman Cain despite the sexual harassment scandals, but that they weren’t die hard supporters. They just kind of liked him. A few people shouted out other names like Chris Christie or that one guy from Florida whose name I forget but neither is running.

I asked them if their candidate was Mitt Romney… because it probably will be, would they still vote for him. Every Republican I talked to without fail said in an Obama vs. Romney matchup they would hold their nose and vote for Romney. No one said they would stay home or write in another candidate.

Republicans are disciplined. They vote no matter what and they vote party before people. On Election Day, they don’t care how much they hate the candidate they vote Republican no matter what. Democrats like me are a little different. If I don’t like a candidate, I don’t vote for the candidate. Even in this year’s off-year election, there were candidates I didn’t vote for. There was a Democrat running for county office who was a Creationist and a Democrat running for Judge who is a member of a Christian Legal Society whose mission it is to serve “Jesus Christ through the practice of law.” So I couldn’t vote for her either. I don’t think either won.

The bottom line is that if it is an Obama vs. Romney match-up which is likely, then it will be close and Obama will need every vote. So if he wants to win he best start trying to earn my vote. 😉

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Filed under: Election, Obama, Personal, Politics | 1 Comment »

A number of years ago, I attempted to run for the US Congress against a Republican who had been there for a long time (and is still there today). My plan was to take advantage of the situation in which no one wanted to run against this Congressman and use it to test out some ideas I had about politics. Some of those ideas would be silly and some would be serious. The point was to mock the current political system and to use my opponent’s strengths against him. Last night, my good friend Shaun sent me a video from the Rachel Maddow Show which pointed out that Herman Cain is using at least some similar type methods/themes in his campaign.

Political campaigns are entertainment. The goal is to get people’s attention and to excite them into supporting you, donating money to you, and voting for you. However, most political campaigns are pretty standard and don’t really stand out. If they don’t stand out, they aren’t entertaining. If they aren’t entertaining, then they aren’t getting anyone’s attention. If they don’t get people’s attention, they aren’t exciting people to support, donate, and vote for the candidate.

Obama won the Presidential election in 2008 in large part because of his entertainment factor. He had cool posters and entertaining speeches, an interesting logo, and an exciting message of hope and change (which he has yet to deliver on).

Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to the general election because I didn’t have an experienced team behind me and the head of one of the county parties found a primary opponent to run against me which sucked all of my resources away. For the record, she has now lost the race three times because she ran boring campaigns that were politics as usual against an entrenched Republican in a largely Republican district. But don’t get me wrong, in certain situation there is nothing wrong with a boring campaign. If the district is a tightly contested race, it is better to be boring than to test out something that might not work and loss the entire district for a long time to come.

Herman Cain however is in the lead in the Republican primary because he is entertaining. Now it is true that he may even be a joke, but that only makes him more entertaining. In a general election, Obama may have a serious problem against Cain. Cain is more entertaining and people are skeptical about Obama’s messaging. In any case, here is the Rachel Maddow clip:

PS Tomorrow is Election Day, so I will be at the polls all day… or at the hospital if my wife decides to give birth. Either way, there won’t be a Dangerous Talk blog tomorrow. Don’t forget to vote even if it is for “None of the above” or to just write-in “Occupied!”

Filed under: Election, Personal, Politics | No Comments »

I few months ago, I wrote my Republican congressman about health insurance reform. I wanted to persuade him to push for a Medicare for all system or even a compromised public option. A few weeks later, I got a letter back that was pretty much a form letter with a few details thrown in. Guess what? He didn’t agree with me. Shocker, I know.

A few years ago, I wrote a different Republican congressman where I lived about an issue and he sent me back the wrong form letter. Writing your congressman has about as much good as writing Santa Claus. The fact is that you already know where your congressman stands on an issue and no argument you make will persuade him because the lobbyist money is far more persuasive than anything you have to say and your congressman will almost certainly never read your letter anyway. Some intern will read it, mark a comment on a note pad, and file your letter away.

Calling your congressman is even more useless. In fact, the only thing less useful then calling your congressman about an issue you disagree with him on is e-mailing him or signing an online petition. Going to his office and talking to him in person might have some small affect, but not nearly as much as the donations he gets from lobbyists. So don’t waste your time.

Not to worry, I do have a plan that just might get your elected representative to seriously consider what you are trying to tell him. Write them at their homes! After all, they send you all kinds of crap every election season so now it is our turn to send them something with a bit more substance.

They probably get about the same amount of mail everyday as you do so when they get a hand written envelope at home, either they will read it personally or their spouse read it first. If their spouse does read it first and you make a good argument, there is no lobbyist money to counter it because family trumps lobbyist most of the time.

If you want, address the letter to the spouse or to the household in general. Make good arguments and really sell them on your ideas. Get your friends to do it too. Do your research and learn about your representative personally and what they believe. Find out how politically active their spouse is and use every scrap of information you can find to help sway them.

The lower on the political chain you go the more effective this strategy will probably be. State representatives will be more easily swayed than congress people. County and local representatives will take you really seriously if you write them at their home.

Politicians get a lot of mail at the office, but their home is their castle. They get the same amount as you do. A hand addressed envelope gets more attention than a piece of junk mail so it is pretty likely you will get your message to your elected official without getting the intern screening the mail. If enough people do this, they will also be annoyed enough to take you seriously. They might even have to hire someone to go through their mail at home. That would create a job. So this plan actually is a job creator. We’re coming… We’re coming to their house!

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• Abramoff: How to end corruption (politico.com)
• Lobbyists’ campaign contributions are the real issue (thehill.com)

Filed under: conversation, Government, Political Activism, Politics | No Comments »

It would be great if we could all go to NYC, lock hands, and join the Occupy Wall Street fight, but for whatever reason we can’t make it. Fortunately, there are now OWS protests in various cities around the country and even the world. Soon we will start to see these protests popping up in small towns too. But still, not everyone will be able to make it. But not to worry you can still protest from home.

I should stress that there really is no substitute for going to one of the protests, so if you can protest, you should protest. However, if you can’t (like in my case my wife is about to have a baby any minute) I have two ideas to pass on to you today and a third idea which I created and will share tomorrow (assuming my wife hasn’t had the baby yet).

First, we have to fight money with money. So if you have some money please consider donating some to the Occupy effort or to the Wolf-PAC. Wolf-PAC was set up by Cenk Ugyer of The Young Turks to create a grassroots movement to force a Constitutional Convention so that we can create an amendment to the Constitution that would end corporate personhood. I’ll let Cenk explain it:

The second idea was present to me a few days ago and I think it is pretty brilliant. You can use your junk mail to send a message to Wall Street. How awesome is that?

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Filed under: Capitalism, Current Events, Government, Political Activism, Politics | No Comments »

Republicans love to call anyone who disagrees with them names. Usually it is Socialist or Nazi (despite the fact that these are two completely opposite political philosophies). But then they go with anarchist which is an pretty interesting choice considering that they often claim that liberals are for big government which is last I checked the exact opposite of anarchy.

Interestingly enough, Republicans want to gut the government and get rid of all regulations (i.e. rules) which sounds a lot like anarchy to me. So they can’t have it both ways. Either liberals want government to control your lives or liberals are anarchists.

In truth, I just want government to regulate corporations so that they don’t pollute my air and water in order to save a few dollars. I think some regulations and laws are good if they protect the general public. Some laws are bad however if they start policing what people can do in their personal lives which don’t hurt others. For example, car companies should be required to put seat belts in cars, but people shouldn’t be required by law to use them (although it is usually a good idea to use them). It should be illegal for corporations to screw you, but legal for you to screw any consenting adult.

Filed under: Government, Law, Personal | No Comments »

Often times when I get into a discussion about religion with a Christian they will abruptly stop the discussion and ask me a particular question. Sometimes they even ask this question after I have shown the ridiculousness of the story pointing out plot hole after plot hole. “What if it is true?”

Sure I can suspend disbelief and tell them that if it were all true I would be forced to accept that God exists, but I still would refuse to follow such a tyrant and so my fate would be eternal Hell. I would then tell them what Socrates said to Crito that it is always better to receive an injustice than to do one and so I could never be a Christian even if it were all true.

However, it is more likely that Star Wars is all true. If you think about it, the Star wars films are far more consistent with much less plot holes (and even they have a few). So what if Star Wars is all true and there really is a Force that surrounds us and binds us together? Shouldn’t you try to learn about the Force?

But there really is no need to get into the fictional world of Star Wars to address the fictional world of Christianity here. We could ask that same question with any religion. What if Islam is all true and Allah is the one true God? Would a Christian start praying toward Mecca? I doubt it. Or, how about Scientology or Mormonism, what if they are true?

For me, as a Humanist, it doesn’t matter if these religions are true, they still preach immorality and so they are still bad for humanity. Even if they were true, I would never worship in those religions. While Christians believe that morality is just God’s whim, I actually have a solid objective foundation for moral judgments. So even if Christianity were true (which for the record it isn’t), it still wouldn’t be a moral path. Calling it a moral path or “the” moral path doesn’t make it so.

So if Christianity were true, then I would believe in God and I believe I would tell him to go fuck himself for being such a cruel tyrant who created a flawed system on purpose in which trillions of people will be tortured for all eternity and who believes that is the moral thing to do.

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Belief, conversation, delusion, hell, humanism, morality, Religion | 1 Comment »

No, I didn’t misspell the holiday, I renamed it. Recently, there has been a new fundamentalist Christian movement to take back Halloween for the prudish and those who are fun impaired. The Jesusween movement encourages wacky Christians to give out Bibles instead of candy when kids come knocking on the door. But I want to create a movement of my own: The Helloween movement.

I want to encourage people to dress in scantily clad and/or blasphemous costumes and knock on the doors of the ultra-religious even when their lights are out. It really is that simple. Some people are just easily offended and so I have no problem encouraging people to oblige offending them. I should also use this opportunity to remind readers about the ongoing Halloween Forever project.

Here are a few articles I wrote on Halloween. Please consider sharing them on all your social networks:
Halloween: An atheist perspective
Atheist Halloween Costumes
Why do atheists celebrate Halloween?

Happy Halloween!

Filed under: Blasphemy, culture war, Halloween, hell | No Comments »