Standing Tall for Atheism

I was struck by something this evening that I haven't thought a great deal about. I was struck by another sneaky lie by the theists (I like Hitchens' term for them). Picture the school child who has done something wrong and knows they've done something wrong. Quite often the guilty party will point a finger at another child and say, "But he did this awful thing..." it takes focus away from the guilty party and focuses it on a child that, perhaps, has done nothing. This is what the theists have been doing for quite some time and have done particularly well this week. This notion hit me as I was watching a video of Christopher Hitchens. He had been on a TV program with a particularly snotty host (Joe Scarborough - MSNBC of all places but he is Republican) who refused to let him answer the questions he'd been asked because Joe is clearly a Deluded-American. This in itself makes him a bad journalist (because journalism is never supposed to be about what the interviewer believes) but I digress. Hitchens was invited and Joe was rude to him. In any event, watching Christopher Hitchens throughout the years gave me a particular respect for him. He never backed down from a fight. He didn't allow anybody to get away with anything. His idea was that just because someone had "faith" didn't automatically entitle them to respect. He also wouldn't allow these people to disrespect him because he was rational (an atheist). He eventually made Joe look like an idiot and rightly so.

My "lightbulb" moment happened. All week (and for years actually) American theists have been falsely claiming a war on Christianity, when, in fact, there is no such war. It's like the school kid above. The war is on atheism! But they are pointing their fingers at us and whoosh... the attention is suddenly on atheists. We are supposedly the bad ones attacking religion when they are the ones attacking our constitutional right to NOT be bombarded with irrational nonsense 24/7.

Richard Dawkins is brilliant but he is soft spoken and is a target for religious bullies for this reason. He reads more before breakfast than the religious idiots, he argued with this week, read in a year. The study that was done by Dawkins was a questionnaire that clearly pointed out that most people who call themselves Christian on the census, know virtually nothing about Christianity. I'm an atheist and I know more about what is in the bible than most Christians. So the archbishop (or whoever the hell the bully was) asked him, totally off guard what the entire (lengthy) title was of Darwin's book. He stumbled with his words because it caught him off guard and after the 13 year old school girl giggles passed from the obviously biased room, some moron claimed Dawkins didn't know the title of his "bible".

Well, first of all, bullies at large, atheists don't have a bible. Educated people read lots of books (not just one that they base EVERYTHING on) and so it's very likely that one might momentarily forget a lengthy book title. One thing I am certain of, is that Dawkins has read the content of 'The Origin of Species' (and I can't remember the full title either) and knows what's in it and has studied plenty of other books on biology and has authored a few himself. I quite often have to look up the title of a book I've read or sometimes even an author's name because I read a lot! And NOTHING I read is my "bible" because I have no bible. The books in the bible have longer titles too but we all call them by their short names.

Then the moronic Janet Daley, author of the Telegraph article claimed Dawkins couldn't answer her about why it's wrong to hurt people. She's lying. Even I know the "evidence" for that "belief" is in ours brains, where there is a "survival of the species" mechanism which causes us to feel empathy for others. We have human emotions that come from the brain which evolved in us to protect our young and protect our tribe members from predators. Dawkins is much smarter than I am and would have given that answer had that actually been the question asked.

Furthermore, as Dailey said in her lame defense of her position, asking "why" is human nature. We're intelligent, curious animals. But just because we are curious and want to know "why" doesn't mean we should believe nonsense made up by other humans. It also doesn't mean there is actually an answer to that question. Why are lilies so beautiful? Because they are a happy accident of nature. I don't know why flowers are so pretty and neither does anyone else. It's been argued repeatedly that the universe is so magnificent and everything functions as if by design. There must be a designer. It can't all be accidental. My answer is "yes it can". There is no reason why it can't. It all just happened. Why is that so hard for humans to accept. It makes more sense than a magic space daddy that was made up by flat Earth desert dwellers.

So back off theists! The war is on those of us who use our brains for thinking and not for "blind faith". There is no war on Christianity. There is a war on atheism - rational thinkers!

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Oh, Religion!

Fist of all, let's deal with the religious person's (let's call them RP's for typing efficiency from here on out) first "argument" in their defense of religion. It's one word - "faith". The dictionary defines it as a "strong belief in god or the doctrines of religion based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof". I agree with that definition and that is why "faith" is also my number one argument against religion. Why would a species who have evolved so far in science and engineering, ever believe ancient myths that were taught thousands of years ago before there even was science? Why would we believe stories that were told by people to explain their environment (that which could not be explained at the time)? Why would we believe that a supernatural omnipotent being "spoke" to the men who wrote those texts rather than the fact that it was their own, personal moral values being pushed on others? The moral compass of these men was based on bigotry - bigotry of homosexuals, bigotry of women, bigotry or other races, etc. so these men decided that they would tell everyone that God spoke to them or they had a dream (which very well could have been the case) that God spoke to them, when, in fact, it was their own thoughts or a mental condition such as schizophrenia, that actually came to them. And so the tales were eventually written down. Neighbours, with the same fears of the unknown, were told the tales and so began religion. And may I point out that every religion started in this manner. The point is, we now have science. We now know that magic is illusion, we now know that chemical problems in the brain cause some poor people to see things that are not there and hear voices. So why is faith, that pesky word that absolves us from thinking about the things we know to be true, an argument? How can not taking responsibility for our own lives be considered a good thing?

Secondly, why would this http://t.co/COEk6nWM insanely stupid argument in support of misogyny, be thought by its writter to be a convincing argument in favour of religion (belief in "God"). If God was real, if god was good, if god was all knowing and all seeing and if god, did, indeed create all things, one would assume that god, who knows everything, would have realized that the "culture" of the time was wrong. That women are sentient beings with absolutely equal RIGHTS as their male counterparts and therefore teach "His" people that the way they treated the women at that time period was brutally wrong, and therefore shell out a whole different set of punishments for those who raped women, didn't allow women to be community leaders, didn't allow women to own their own property and didn't allow women to control their own sexuality. Just because lameassed jealous men didn't trust their wives and so didn't want to feed another man's child is no excuse. Perhaps if those men didn't cheat on their wives they wouldn't have assumed their wives were doing the same thing. And perhaps if the women were allowed to choose their own husband, they would never have dreamed of cheating on the man they loved. You see, if God was real, he would have taught people these things 2000 - 6000 years ago.

He could have said to Abraham instead of "if you love me kill your own kid to prove it" something like "I created men and women to be sentient beings and therefore if a man does not treat his wife as he would like to be treated, it's an assault on me and same thing goes for a woman to a man". Thus ending the misogyny of the times.

You see if God was real, he would not threaten his "children" to believe in him or you'll burn in hell because if he was that great, he'd never have to threaten anyone. And if every human is a "child" of God, why would he pick favourites and tell the Jews in the first five books of the bible to go to non-Jew lands and butcher the men, women and children (yes even babies who couldn't possibly have done anything wrong - unless crying is a crime). Weren't those "non-Jews" God's children too? He even made them kill the damned livestock. What the hell did the animals do to piss off God? And why wouldn't they keep the livestock to feed their own families. Which reminds me, in the one case I recall where the conquering army did keep the livestock to feed themselves, God got completely pissed off and made them suffer big time. WHAT AN ASS!

So, as you can see, these arguments we atheists use are not the "insanely stupid" arguments douchebag above makes... the arguments he makes are insanely stupid for all of the reasons I just mentioned.

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Our Corrupt Defense Minister

Why are we, as Canadians, not outraged and demanding the immediate resignation of defense minister, Peter MacKay? We, the taxpayers, should not be paying for a military helicopter to transport him on his personal fishing trips. Why is nothing being done? The media has even seemed to completely forget about this. He's a low life who tried to diminish military pensions, has sent our young people into battle in Afghanistan when that conflict has nothing to do with us and he's spending our money on pleasure trips. This is ridiculous. Canadians were loved all over the world as "peace keepers" and this jerk is ruining our image in the world. SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT THIS GUY PEOPLE! Where is our voice?

Scary Stuff

I was angry and frustrated and now, I’m beginning to get frightened.

It seems that every single one of the Republican primary runners is insane. They are religious fundamentalist fanatics who, clearly, care only about the ultra-wealthy. Those two concepts alone are polar opposites. The Jesus character that all of these people go on about, was a Socialist. He cared most for the poor and needy and overturned the tables of the “money changers” in the “market”. He was militant about economic inequality and expressed it over and over again.

It says a great deal about a society who demonizes the hard-working class and venerates greedy, wealthy oligarchs. Fox News pundits are openly biased, bigoted and racist. The comments you hear from them and their guests, literally make one's jaw drop. The latest was something Jon Stewart clearly outlined in a comic performance. The Fox News people were outraged that poor people (who make under $25,000 a year) actually own a refrigerator (correction 99.6% of them own a refrigerator) and they don’t pay taxes... Ooooo! Do they think we don’t notice that the ultra-rich don’t want to pay taxes on their private jets? They would rather the poorest people in the nation pay all of the taxes. Their buzz words are frequently spewed such as “successful”, “productive” and “job creators”. Are they completely loonie? Who, in their right mind, thinks that someone sitting in an office signing papers, or on the golf course in a “meeting” (wink, wink) works harder than a Latino in a restaurant washing dishes? These Republican crazy people should go back to grade school to learn what the definition of “hard work” and “productivity” is. They commonly fake outrage that the rich are picked on and the poor are a drain on society. Who the hell do they think did all the hard work that made the rich, rich? It certainly wasn’t the likes of Paris Hilton.

The fact is, 25%... that’s 1 in every 4 (for those of you who can’t count)... of Corporate Executives are psychopaths (“The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson). A psychopath, to summarize, is a selfish, self-centered, unempathetic, unfeeling person who is capable of extreme cruelty without a twinkle of remorse. 25%! And these are the people that Republicans support and praise. I probably wouldn’t be far from the truth to say that many Republicans are probably psychopaths themselves.

You have Rick Perry who is in a religious cult who want to take over the world (kind of like Al Qaida). You have Michelle Bachmann, who refuses to answer questions and has extremely bizarre ideas about life. You have Mitt Romney who believes in magic underwear. And the rest of the primary candidates are openly against 98% of the American population – I know this because they are so strongly FOR the ultra-wealthy 2% of the country.

Then there is President Obama who thought he was dealing with reasonable people. His hair has turned grey because he has had great difficulty accepting the fact that Republicans do NOT love their country... they love rich people. They literally hate average Americans and have said so over and over and over again. The Republican run House will never allow Obama to pass any meaningful legislation because that would make Obama successful and might get him re-elected and they’d rather see the country destroyed than to have a black Democrat re-elected. And even the Liberal media continually attacks the President even though it is so clear that there is nothing he can do against the “say “NO” to Obama” party. He could propose legislation to give Republicans EVERYTHING that they ever wanted and they would vote against it because it's him that proposed it.

And still, millions of Americans believe the Republican lies. They want to cut Medicare (so basically they want to kill the seniors), Medicaid (they want to kill poor people and children) and Social Security (again they really have it in for the elderly). I guess they really don’t think that seniors deserve to retire or have comfort in their old age, even though these are the people who worked for decades to build the country. Republicans are also misogynists. They are against abortions (even in cases of child rape) but at the same time they aren’t willing to help that same child with health care or raising the child. It’s a war against women. If men could have babies, there would be no discussion and abortion would be extremely common.

And last, but not least, they use religion to support their bigotry and racism. They hate homosexuals because some book (written and EDITED by homophobic men – human homophobic men) says (in a couple of sentences) that it’s OK to hate people who are different than you. The same book says it’s OK to have slaves (human beings whose race is different than their own). And yet, these same people are the types who rape little children.

When are average people going to wake up and call these fascists out on their actions? Just wondering?

If these people gain more power in the US, the thoughts of that are scary... some crazy lunatic is going to have nuclear arms within his/her reach. I'm just sayin'.

My Bill for Starting US Economic Recovery

Stop all wars. Military personnel will be deployed to New Orleans first to rebuild that area, Detroit after that and then their rebuilding of disaster stricken areas will be prioritized based on need.

Eliminate oil subsidies!

Recall all money given in bailouts with interest (a small percentage). Liquidate Wall Street criminals' assets and lay criminal charges on all of the bastards that made the mess (then seize their assets).

Cut all tax loopholes for rich. 3% tax hike for ONLY the top 2% wealthy in the US. Tax cuts have proven NO JOB CREATION! So take tax cuts away. Make the phrase "punishing success" illegal. The phrase should have been "rewarding the greedy" anyway.

95% tax on ALL corporations who employ people outside of the US! If Corporations don't like hiring Americans, they and their CEO's can move to India and enjoy the heat and lifestyle or China and live by their laws.

BAN all religious language of ANY type from ALL government legislation and debate. Laws should be based on moral conscience, empathy, compassion, equality and of providing basic human needs for ALL. This would eliminate racism, misogyny and bigotry in current legislation.

Provide economic stimulus (from the money retrieved from the banks) to infrastructure. This would reduce unemployment and in turn increase tax revenue.

Nationalize all banks and other financial institutions and REGULATE them.

UNIVERSAL health care for ALL... starting with the 9/11 responders - covering ALL their illnesses including cancer! Regulate insurance industry to eliminate gouging and cap pricing on pharmaceuticals.

STOP GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS by coming up will significant environmental protection.

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