Plus, he’ll kick your ass to the curb if he thinks you’ve got Alzheimer’s. Now THAT’s Christian compassion!
Tag atheists
Just A Little Fucking Ray Of Sunshine
This time it will kill us all, FOR SURE! We promise!
Recently, Asia Times ran this story recapping and analyzing what actually happened at Fukushima during the minutes of the March earthquake that led to the even greater disaster as the tsunami hit. The entire Fukushima site was in trouble with safety inspectors for years, coming to a head in 2002, but problems persisted for years afterward. Even without the one-two punch of the natural disasters, it seems likely from this story that a serious accident at Fukushima was merely a matter of time. Also, if you missed it last week, the IEEE has republished blog posts made by an anonymous cleanup worker who operates a robot in the facility to remove materials where the radiation is too high for humans. The posts, which were extremely critical of TEPCO management of the cleanup operations, were deleted from their original website after drawing attention, but the IEEE recovered the posts and republished them to much attention. Last week, Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan, resigned because of criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis.
If you get your news from the American news media, you probably didn’t hear this tidbit: the U.S. government has negotiated an agreement to leave up to 25,000 troops in Afghanistan until 2024. You hear a lot about the troops coming home in 2014, but not so much about the “special advisors” staying for at least another full decade in the single biggest waste of money and materiel in the history of humankind. That, of course, presumes that we haven’t completely bankrupted ourselves before then.
PZ Meyers had this story about a “pastor” who thinks it would be great if there could be a national registry of all of us atheists just like they have for “convicted sex offenders, ex-convicts, terrorist cells…” and other undesirables. It would be for “information purposes”:
Now , many (especially the atheists ) , may ask “Why do this , what’s the purpose ?” Duhhh , Mr. Atheist , for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net – to INFORM the public ! I mean , in the City of Miramar , Florida , where I live , the population is approx. 109,000 . My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists ! Perhaps we may actually know some . In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism . Or perhaps they are radical atheists , whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh’s , in that case , if they are business owners , we would encourage all our Christian friends , as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan .
Gee, wouldn’t it just be easier if we all wore a patch or something?
Former BBC producer Jo Glanville has written an in-depth piece for the London Review of Books chronicling the battle over the future of one of the (if not THE) pre-eminent broadcasting institutions, the BBC World Service. While the mission of the World Service unquestionably needs to be re-evaluated in the era of the Internet, British domestic politics may have more to do with its fate than the information age.
Anything else I can help you feel bad about today? I’ve got plenty of links.
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Sadly, This Does Little For My Self-Esteem
This just in: ThinkProgress cites a new poll conducted by the New York Times that shows that public approval of the Tea Party has dropped below the always-disappointingly low rating for atheists. Interactive poll results here.
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An Apology
A former Christian publicly apologizes for being a shit-head for all those years.
Money quote:
3. I apologize to all my former Sunday school students because I taught you that the bible was the word of god. I perpetuated a myth that the bible is a special book that should be regarded ‘much more highly than it ought’. I encouraged you to trust this book, to think this book contained sacred ideas about life and god. I made you think that the stories in the bible were intrinsically valuable and could teach you about how god works and who god is. I apologize for always referring to god as a ‘he’, thereby further anthropomorphizing a pretend deity and making you think ‘he’ was real and decidedly masculine. I apologize for teaching you to think that you were a sinner and that Jesus had to die for you when you are really just a beautiful child, perfect in every way from the minute you were born (except for when you aren’t). I apologize for telling you that Jesus conquered death and that you should put your trust in him when there is not a shred of evidence of the resurrection except for what is in the bible. I apologize for not respecting your intelligence and glazing over thorny issues and rationalizing all the bullshit that is so present at all times in ‘god’s word’. (I apologize for saying bullshit in this apology). I apologize for ever calling the bible ‘god’s word’. It isn’t ‘god’s word’. It’s just a book. There are a lot of other much better books. There are books that helped humanity move beyond misogyny and slavery and tyranny. There are books that led to scientific discoveries which led to medicine and helpful machines and made the world a better place. None of those books are in the bible. In fact, the bible helps people to justify misogyny and tyranny and slavery and the bible made church leaders fear science and so they burned scientists and doctors and smart people because what those smart people were learning was often in direct conflict with what the bible and the church taught. I apologize for not telling you that the bible and christianity are two of the main reasons that it took people so long to move from tyranny into democracy, from slavery to human rights, from cruel religious mandates to civil law. I hope someday you will figure that out for yourselves in spite of what I taught you.
The unfortunate thing is that she gets so much Christian hate-mail, she’s shut off the comments on her blog, so I guess they haven’t exactly accepted her apology.
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Without Us
One of the things that gets my blood boiling when religious people start crowing about how evil and despicable we atheists are is the demonstrably false notion that people without religion can’t possibly lead upstanding “moral” lives because we don’t live with the constant fear of eternal damnation from a capricious and short-tempered “all-loving God” if we don’t behave. And yet, study after study show a very different picture: the 10-15% of the population who self-identify as atheists are among the most educated, socially responsible, and politically engaged segment of the American population.
I ran across this video on an atheism website the other day. It is a bit self-important to be sure, but it hammers home some seriously relevant points about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to the “morality” and positive effects of the presence of non-believers in this country: