Atheist Chat

A Priest-Ridden People

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:28:25 GMT

“History, I believe,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

No country in the West has been so thoroughly priest-ridden as Ireland. The priests have taken not only Ireland’s past, but her future. For the past sixty years, priests and nuns have inflicted physical, mental, and sexual abuse on children in Catholic schools and orphanages. A nine-year effort culminating in a 2,600 page report published last May by Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, found “a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment... Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.”

As we saw in the Archdiocese of Boston, and in other Roman Catholic dioceses in America and Canada, when confronted with charges of sexual abuse of children, religious superiors simply moved the offenders to another location where they were free to abuse again. “There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse.”

Last week, Ireland outlawed blasphemy. From the new law:

Section 36

(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offense and shall be liable upon on conviction to a fine not exceeding €25,000.

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

Section 37

(1) Where a person is convicted of an offence under section 36, the court may issue a warrant (a) authorizing any member of the Garda Siochana to enter (if necessary by the use of reasonable force) at all reasonable times any premises (including a dwelling) at which he or she has reasonable grounds for believing that copies of the statement to which the offence related are to be found, and to search those premises and seize and remove all copies of the statement found therein, (b) directing the seizure and removal by any member of the Garda Siochana of all copies of the statement to which the offence related that are in the possession of any person, specifying the manner in which copies so seized and removed shall be detained and stored by the Garda Siochana.

(Note: “Garda Siochana” is Irish for “police”.)

The first offending document must surely be the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse’s report.

What a terrible shame it must be to worship a god powerful enough to terrorize children into submitting to torture and rape, but so pitiably weak his reputation must be defended by threat of a fine.

Kissing Hank's ass

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:40:26 GMT

I'm sorry if everybody knows already about this little gem of video:
Kissing Hank's ass, a humorous religion parallel between God and "Hank".

Witty, fun to watch and a really good metaphor...

Turin Shroud

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:29:07 GMT

A recent theory on the Holy Shroud of Turin, a faked relic proposed to show the figure of Christ, is that it was faked by non other that Leonardo De Vinci, and is the first photograph.
Leonardo De Vinci: Ultimate in Awesomeness Y/Y?

Atheist "Float" Booed at my 4th of July Parade

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:08:40 GMT

I play in a community band in a suburb of Chicago. This morning our group played in a parade. After we finished, I watched the rest of the parade and I spotted an atheist "float". It got booed. I don't know who this "Rob Sherman" is. At first I thought maybe he was a d-bag and that's why people were booing but then I overheard a guy say "Ugh, atheists" as he shook his head.

Here's my footage:

Turkish Reality Show about Converting Atheists

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:54:23 GMT

Faiths compete on Turkish Game Show
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2009/07/03/turkey-gameshow-religion-atheists.html

A new game show on Turkish television will pit a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, an imam and a Buddhist monk against one another in attempt to convert atheists to their respective religions.

In each episode of Penitents Compete, to be broadcast by Turkey's Kanal T television station in September, the four faith guides will try to persuade 10 atheists of the merits and truth of their creeds.

The show's producers say there is a good chance none of the atheists will be converted, Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review reports.

But those who are will be sent on a pilgrimage. New Muslims will head to Mecca, Buddhists to Tibet and Jews and Christians to Jerusalem – with television cameras following them.

[Click on link for more.]

Well, I might come down with a temporary case of Buddhism for a free trip to Tibet--although the TV cameras would be a tad disconcerting. How long until some American network picks up the idea though? Can't you just imagine it now? "Next on Fox: Real live atheists fight for their beliefs with the America's most pious!"

Ugh!

iopha

More from Mitchell & Webb

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:58:10 GMT

Homeopathy -- The series

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:13:14 GMT

Saw this on Bad Astronomy:

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:02:49 GMT

I went to the Pride Parade last weekend, and I think this was the most interesting booth of them all (and that's saying something):

The sign says:
No God
No Evolution
Let's welcome our creators from space!

Their website is raeliangay.org - I honestly couldn’t tell if they were in the Scientology camp or the Flying Spaghetti Monster camp.

Ghosts

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:33:16 GMT

I'm in a bit of a discussion with one of my former professors about whether Atheists can believe in ghosts or not, and I am of the opinion that they can (though I personally do not) so I was wondering if there is anyone here who is atheist and believes in ghosts, and if they could explain their reasoning for believing so? Thank you for any comments!

SMBC

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:37:03 GMT

This doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but I love Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and I thought this morning's comic was brilliant. Friday funnies!

scary stuff

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:31:35 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TME6X9LQ4y8

That embed didn't seem to work for some reason.

This is a video from Al Jazeera about evangelizing in the military. Its about 17 minutes long. When I was in boot camp I went to a few of the Jewish services to get out of cleaning because it was the most interesting even though a good half of it was in Hebrew. A good portion of this report is sensational and exaggerated from my perspective but the level of religion in the Navy was completely over the top. Daily prayers, forced adherence to religious holidays. We didn't have to go to church on Easter but we had to remain on board the ship for the duration of the services so that the 'faithful' wouldn't feel pressured to skip it. The counseling and mental health treatment was performed by these chaplains which I felt was very inappropriate. I grew up in Seattle and I had never met an evangelical before I joined, it was quite a shock to see first hand that the rumors I had heard were true.

Children Need Morals

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:50:08 GMT

So yesterday (Tuesday) my uncle passed away for he was very sick, and as I was at my grandparents house his best friend of 40 years (let’s call him S for now) came to the house to give him condolences.

While talking about religion and “the Great Beyond” my mom informed me that my other uncle (may aunt's husband) is an atheist too (oh cool). So we started talking about why we became atheists, or as he likes to call himself a “heathen.” He told me that when he was like 7 was when he realized religion was BS and there might not be a man upstairs, because he was raised at a catholic school and saw their manipulative ways to “teach” children the word of god, and being smacked around by the nuns didn’t help either.

Somehow we said something about children and religion and S (who was also in the room) said, “Children need to grow up with religion, so they can learn morals.” I was kind of shocked to hear something like that, because this was the first time someone kind of challenged me about being an atheist (sort of). At the same time I wasn’t offended entirely because well we were talking about religion in mixed company (considered to be a party faux pas).

Anyways I kept my cool (at least I think I did, no one has said anything to me yet) and I said, “You see, that is a big misconception that a lot of people have about atheists. Just because I don’t believe in an upper power doesn’t mean that I have no morals. I personally think that this is the one life I have and that it is so precious that I want to live it to the fullest and be good to people and so on.” He didn’t say much after that he nodded his head so I guess he understood where I was coming from but I’m guessing he didn’t want to get into it, that’s cool.

This kind of scenario really makes me wish I had that pamphlet I made for my print production class because I totally put the whole moral thing in there too lol! I’m seriously going to pitch this idea to American Atheist or Think Atheist, I don’t care if they change what I said a little as long as it puts out the same message I was shooting for which was “this is what we believe in (or don’t believe in), but we’re not asking you to change.”

I’m really happy that I found a relative who shares the same views as me. Most of my family is Jewish, (for those of you who don’t know), and I do have another question about that but I’ll save that for another post. Any way now I really want to hang out with my uncle because he has gone up like 50 points in my cool book (and there aren’t too many people in my cool book, lol).

x-posted

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:02:35 GMT

Are you going to hell too?!

You might need to join this community in order to see the post. I find it disturbing to find my name on this list @ livejournal_uk

I woner what sort of search they did to compile this list.

x-posted in atheism & antitheism

EDIT: added community of the post I linked.

Screencap for those interested.

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:12:14 GMT

How do you deal with the common presupposition that you are religious? Do you out yourself every time religion comes up, no matter what, or save it for when you are on the spot, or not out yourself at all? Do you awkwardly change the subject? Do you feel like you have a responsibility to be out and proud?

We are part of a Christian homeschooling group, and these people are my friends. When I first joined the group only a couple of them knew that we weren't religious and it was very awkward sometimes. Dads who had never met me before would rant about Dawkins or someone I hadn't outed myself to would say something about how sad it is that atheists don't have the comfort of god in hard times. Eventually I got more confident and told everyone, or it at least got around, and, much to my surprise, no one gives me any crap about it. I prejudged this group to be judgmental because of their religion, but I was the judgmental one.

So I a pretty big on being out. But I struggle with how to do that gracefully and politely. I try to throw out a "we aren't religious" in a conversation that touches on religion so people know where they stand with me. I hope that by doing this I make it easier for the next generation to not have to feel like they need to hide their atheistic perspective. I am also trying not to assume so much about religious people. No single group has a monopoly on assholes.

Crossposted. :P

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:35:24 GMT

Someone vandalized the church sign next door. It once read 'God is the greatest problem solver.' They corrected it the next day. I think its pretty funny.

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:24:03 GMT

I suggest going through the archives, too... some pretty good stuff in there.

Where do we come from? results

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:00:08 GMT

My thanks to everyone who answered this. I've put the data together in a spreadsheet, and published it as a Google document here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rsWUM6j96gO6ptafoYh73iA&output=html

Results:

- Of the 59 people who answered, 19 were raised as atheists and 40 were raised in a faith tradition.

- 45 respondents were raised in the USA, and 14 were not.

- Of the 19 raised without religion, 10 were from the USA and 9 were not.

- Of the 40 raised in a faith tradition, 35 were from the USA and 5 were not. 17 were raised Catholic; the next highest total was generic/unspecified, of which there were seven. There were five former Lutherans, four former Methodists, three former Baptists and four raised in faiths which they did not have in common with any other respondent. There was only one non-Christian.

Notes:

I assigned regions within the US generally according to their Wikipedia definitions, with some exceptions. I counted Maryland as the "East Coast", as well as New York and New Jersey. In any case, I didn't derive anything meaningful from the region/state data. No one outside of the USA gave regional information.

If I do this again (unlikely) I will probably make it a multiple-choice poll. Atheists seem to prefer to give nuanced answers. :D

If anyone wants to add a response, please do! I'll do my best to track it. Thanks again, everyone! I'm not sure what we've learned, but I think we learned something.

It sucks being atheist

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:09:27 GMT

It sucks. Really it does. Because everybody needs to know why. Someone wanted to know the other day and I gave my cop out answer of not caring. I do that pretty much everytime people asks, so at least they think I'm agnostic or something. Apparently that's not so bad (WTF).

I believe religion is kind of a wishful thinking sort of thing. Like people just can't stand to think that there is nothing beyond this, so they made religion up to make themselves feel better. I take comfort in this and I feel firmly planted in my views, ready to explain them.

But then I get caught up in that sick sinking feeling of shame because I can't believe I'm so arrogant as to think that I know something. The feeling fades to laziness and that is when I say I don't really care. It's a vicious circle.

I'd really love to believe in God. I really would. But I don't.

"One can't believe in impossible things" -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

my boss about made me puke.

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:17:28 GMT

my boss is an evangelical christian. we became friends for a while, despite our differences of opinion on a wealth of things. all that came to a screeching hault when he had a conversation in confidence with me. he told me how up until the day he moved out of his home after his divorce from his wife his sex life was "healthy." healthy. that's the word he used to describe it. well, then he said that a wife has to fulfill her duties, sexual and otherwise, regardless of whether she is in the mood or not. so, in essence, he probably raped his wife a few times. she said no, and he told her it was his god-given right to have sex with her. he said that a wife doesn't have the right to refuse a husband sex, and justified it (in his own mind, at least) with religion.

is this a common line of thinking among people, christian and otherwise? i am well aware that sex is pretty damn important in a relationship; but if it got to the point where your partner didn't want to have sex with you, wouldn't it be wiser to leave them than to rape them? or if it was just a day of the week when they weren't in the mood, couldn't you just go rub one out rather than raping them? this makes me all kind of sick and i am worried for his new girlfriend. just needed to vent. thanks.

Have YOU been touched by His noodley appendage?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:29:10 GMT

(crop circle in Britain)

Where do we come from?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:29:02 GMT

I recently got involved in a discussion about Christianity and atheism. Along the way someone asked atheists to try praying to Jesus. I answered that most atheists had started out as Christians, and had probably tried that sort of prayer.

In fact, I argued, the majority of atheists had probably done more spiritual introspection than most Christians. Joining a widely-reviled category such as atheists isn't something that one does lightly!

Later, a Brit I know replied that most atheists don't start out as Christians - they were never religious to begin with. I suspect that this is a big difference between atheists in the UK/Europe and those in the USA.

So I'm asking:

1) what's your country of origin/upbringing, and

2) were you always an atheist, or were you raised in a faith tradition? If you feel like telling which faith you were raised in, please do!

Personally I was raised in the USA (in New England, specifically), and was baptized and raised in the Armenian Orthodox Church.

‘Out of the Closet’ — Black Atheists

Sat, 30 May 2009 15:17:04 GMT

"‘Out of the Closet’ — Black Atheists"

May 28, 2009

BY SIKIVU HUTCHINSON

In some black communities it’s akin to donning a white sheet and a Confederate flag. In others, it’s ostensibly tolerated yet whispered about, branded culturally incorrect and bad form, if not outright sacrilege.

For black atheists like myself, proclaiming one’s non-belief amidst genial wishes to “have a blessed day” is never easy in the seemingly innocuous context of casual chit chat between black folk.

Yet, according to The New York Times, a small but growing segment of the American population, galvanized by the hyper-evangelical climate of the Republican Pleistocene, have begun organizing nationwide and becoming more vocal about their atheism.

Although African Americans are not visible in the “movement,” [*]some are easing away from religion. For black atheists, actively breaking with religious tradition is an even graver rejection than that of white intellectuals electrified by the “pew-storming” rhetoric of atheist gurus such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins [**]. This is partly due to the fact that the history of African American civil and human rights resistance is heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian religious dogma.

Despite the White Anglo Saxon Protestant religious justification for slavery and domestic terrorism, African Americans converted to Christianity and utilized it as a source of succor, community and spiritual redemption.

No matter one’s actual deeds, life path or personal mores, to be unquestioningly religious in some quarters is to be inoculated from criticism. Noting this historical irony in his blog “The Black Atheist,” Wrath James White states, “In these (black) communities you find more tolerance towards gangbangers, drug addicts, and prostitutes, who pray to God for forgiveness than for honest productive citizens who deny the existence of God. This, for me, is one of the most embarrassing elements of Black culture, our zealous embrace of the God of our kidnappers, murderers, slave masters and oppressors.”

While there have been critical appraisals of African American adoption of Christianity within the context of European conquest and racial slavery, few propose atheism as a corrective. Indeed, atheism would seem to fly in the face of a cultural ethos that frames earthly pain and suffering as a crucible for achieving rewards in the afterlife.

In the midst of extreme brutality, religious faith can either be seen as a means to mental health, or, as Karl Marx put it more bluntly, an opiate.

In this sense, contemporary black religiosity is the legacy of a culturally specific survival strategy. Many black community-based organizations still look to the black church as a coalition partner and resource. Disturbingly, the church is often uncritically perceived as the “backbone” of the black community.

However, as the debate over California’s Proposition 8 demonstrated, the notion that there is a monolithic “marching in lockstep” black community is terminally outdated.

On issues of gender and sexual orientation, the overwhelming opposition of many prominent black churches to granting civil rights to partnered African American gays and lesbians is morally indefensible.

When it comes to attitudes about traditional gender roles, gender-based assumptions about black female religiosity are double-edged. While black male non-believers are given more leeway to be heretics, black women who openly profess atheist views are deemed especially traitorous, having eschewed their family role as purveyors of culture and religious tradition.

Images of black women faithfully shuttling their children to church and socializing them into Christianity are a prominent part of mainstream black culture. If being black and being Christian are synonymous, then being black, female and religious (whatever the denomination) is practically compulsory. Black women with children who don’t fall in line, who raise their children as atheists, may find their race credentials revoked.

On the national level, the contradictions between American secularism and religion have produced a schizoid tension in the U.S., whereby religious fundamentalism and intolerance for secular thought have become the norm. When it’s practiced in the non-Western world, Americans routinely brand this kind of propaganda as backward and extremist.

Yet, in this, the most swaggeringly liberal humanist of all nations, “coming out” as an atheist in a culture that parades religious dogma as a substitute for true morality may be the final frontier.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7 FM.

My comments:

* - Neil Degrasse Tyson isn't visible? He should be...

** - I would add Sam Harris, PZ Myers, and Daniel Dennit to that list.

ha!

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:13:23 GMT

toothpastefordinner.com

Wed, 27 May 2009 03:03:01 GMT

I bring you two things:

A macro I found on Pharyngula:

And a quote from A Mighty Wind:

Terry and I worship an unconventional deity. The power of another dimension. Now you are not going to read about this dimension in a book or a magazine because it exists nowhere... but in my own mind. Through our ceremonies and rituals we have witnessed the awesome and vibratory power... of color.

[...]

This is not an occult science, this is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey and you gotta have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing. Our beliefs are fairly commonpalce and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street. </a>

I found this funny

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:37:55 GMT

The whole fact that this theist thinks we are full of anger and hate. but the the best part was we victimize our selves, it seems the autho feels the victim trying to defend by taking the offensive.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/atheists-no-god-no-reason-just-whining/

Need a little cheese with that whine, because in reading this thats how i pictured the voice if she were speaking.