Europe sees creationism as threat to human rights

Europe sees creationism as threat to human rights

Europe's primary human rights body will vote on a proposal this week to defend the teaching of Darwinian evolution and keep creationist and intelligent design views out of science classes in state schools in its 47 member countries.

This has always been a problem with the liberal idea of "cultural diversity." Far too many cultures still treat women as chattel, glorify religious violence, and battle science because its provable tenets contradict their fairy tales from the ancient past. This is where liberalism breaks down. We have get shitty with people: religious indoctrination is child abuse, stupid lies and made-up fantasies about the origin and evolution of life on earth form the basis of the belief systems that permit ignorance and abuse everywhere there is fundamentalist religion, whether christian or muslim or hindu.

You know what will be really hilarious? If the vote goes through to prevent the teaching of fantasies as science, creationsit cacklers everywhere are going to slapping their lips together in the form of rapidfire hate speech like never before. Fox News will become the comedy channel.

God Hates the World

http://view.break.com/278059 - Watch more free videos

I wish I could say this is a parody. Phelps & fucktards are at it again.

I think I'm going to be sick...

Found via Pharyngula.

Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.

Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are. An interesting read from a muslim unwilling to let others steal his religion out from under him.

Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to demonstrate widely against God’s self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

Of course, you know my take on this: Muslims are not the problem, either. Religion is.

Militant Atheism?

From the Midwest Populist Party blog comes a brilliantly written post: "Militant Atheism"? An excerpt:

Just remember, atheists did not launch the Crusades. Atheists have not burnt people alive on the stakes. Atheists do not instruct the meager to turn the other cheek in hopes of rewards that consist entirely of invisible conditions in some posit called the afterlife.

Atheists are, in fact, the living embodiments of the temperaments that the religious claim to possess but fail to embody.

Fight Song

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Something to help keep your spirits up!

Holy War! Rise of the Atheists

From The Phoenix:

The events that have since overtaken Haggard do indeed bear the distinct imprint of what creationists call the argument from design. What more perfectly appointed doom could there be for an evangelical preacher than that he be revealed as a drug-snorting patron of male whores? Haggard, his ministry in ruins, was last seen emerging from three weeks of faith-based counseling with the declaration that he was now “completely heterosexual.” The infidel Dawkins has meanwhile sailed into riches and best-sellerdom. Even Mike Jones, the escort with whom Haggard shared his meth-romps, looks set to have a hit this summer with his upcoming kiss-and-tell I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard’s Fall (Seven Stories). “My muscles seemed to be my biggest attraction,” writes Jones. “Until I took off my pants.” Truly, the Lord works in mysterious fucking ways.

That just might be the best quote I've ever pasted into a blog form.

I am Resurrected!

I guess I just can't leave this issue alone. You can find this here. I may not post as much, but I'm back and ready for the hate mail.

DeGod-ify your money

Mitchell Kahle explains why and how at Spending Godless Money:

For more than 10 years, I have spent only Godless dollars. Using a red pen or stamp, I mark a circle and slash over the word "God" (as pictured above) on every bill that passes my way. When I make a withdrawal from the bank ATM, I immediately "de-God" each of the crisp new $20s. When I spend the $20s, and receive $1s, $5s, or $10s in change, I "de-God" each bill before passing it along. No merchant or business has ever refused to accept this "godless" money.

Should Religions Get Special Treatment?

Religions don't deserve special treatment:

It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule.

It is time to refuse to tip-toe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither.

Boo-yah! A well-written piece.

Mexico Wants Children Abused by Catholic Priests

Mexico bans lawyer who sues church:

The government of Mexico has banned an American lawyer from entering their country after the lawyer sued the country's Roman Catholic Archbishop, claiming he conspired to protect pedophile priests.

The five-year exclusion order was issued in Mexico City against Jeffrey Anderson, known for his many lawsuits against the Catholic Church on behalf of victims of clergy sexual abuse.

That's nice. Maybe we can set up a Pedo-priest Protection Program, put 'em up in some villa someplace nice, let poor people send their male children to work in the villa, you know? As an added benefit, the glut of priests would help make sure that a high priest-to-sinner ratio is maintained.

Atheist Groups On the Rise!

Atheist groups are on the rise, according to thos interviewed by the Florida Sun Sentinel:

"Local groups are springing up all over the place," said Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists. Active groups have grown by about 90 percent over the past six years, she said.

...

National membership in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of atheists and agnostics that monitors the separation of church and state, grew from 5,000 in 2004 to 6,400 members by the beginning of 2006, said co-founder Annie Laurie Gaylor.

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Two University of California at Berkeley sociology professors found that the proportion of Americans with no religion doubled from 1990 to 1998, but has leveled out at 14 percent.

Jesus Camper Speaks Out -- Has PTSD

Wow. Some choice quotes, but go read the whole thing:

There's a reason I write about dominionism--not just on the political threat, but the real threat inherent in these groups by virtue of many of the hardline "spiritual warfare" dominionists being in essence abusive Bible-based cults.

I know all too well about the danger these groups present--not just for the country, but for the kids themselves. I in fact live with it everyday.

You see...I was once one of those kids like in "Jesus Camp" myself.

I'm a survivor of the same "Third Wave" (aka "Joel's Army") dominionist movement that spawned the camp depicted in "Jesus Camp". I even remember in my youth attending a day-camp program run by the dominionist church I escaped--one that was very much like "Jesus Camp", in fact.

To this day I have serious issues trusting people and have had to undergo therapy for complex PTSD (yes, kids who grow up in this stuff go through literal shellshock, in some ways worse than Gulf War or Vietnam veterans--because they never had anything "before the war" to go back to), and have socialisation issues to the point people have wondered if I didn't have Asperger's Syndrome.

I've compared the experience of growing up in these groups to something akin to growing up in a pit filled with zombies--all of which are trying to zombify you, and grab onto you as you try to climb out the slick, jagged walls...and that's assuming you decide to at all, because you're taught all your life that even with the horrors in the pit that Outside is Much, Much, Much Worse.

Most of us who've escaped discovered either people "in the pit" were lying about Outside, or we had a caring person from Outside tell us what it's really like (usually kind of a mix of both); more and more, these kids are being isolated from ever having contact with people from Outside till they're well in their twenties or even beyond that.

...

The problem is that--because dominionism is, at its core, a spiritually abusive movement with political aspirations it isn't that simple at all...because you have to fight the programmed mindset.

I am posting this info in the hope that people--in particular, experts in the psychological field (I know we have at least one on the board!) will be able to give suggestions. I also post this in the hope people realise the difficulty us walkaways have had in getting out--and maybe our success stories will give people hints on how to stop the hijacks from occuring.

One thing that is difficult to explain to people who have never been involved in a coercive religious group is just how people get "stuck in" and refuse to leave.

What people don't tend to realise is that most coercive groups--be they dominionist groups or some other flavour of coercive group (such as Scientology, the Moonies, etc.)--have as part of the coercion in and of itself various "thought stopping" techniques and other forms of coercion that literally prevent the person from questioning the group at all. (In fact, that's how we can define dominionism as a coercive religious movement, especially in its "spiritual warfare" and "premillenarian dispensationalist" flavours.)

Divorce Rates Highest for Christians, Lowest for Atheists. Neener Neener Neener!

Check it out for yourself, but here's some snippets:

George Barna, president and founder of Barna Research Group, commented:

"While it may be alarming to discover that born again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing. But the research also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families. The ultimate responsibility for a marriage belongs to the husband and wife, but the high incidence of divorce within the Christian community challenges the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriages."

...

Barna's results verified findings of earlier polls: that conservative Protestant Christians, on average, have the highest divorce rate, while mainline Christians have a much lower rate. They found some new information as well: that atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rate of all.

...

Ron Barrier, Spokespersonn for American Atheists remarked on these findings with some rather caustic comments against organized religion. He said:

"These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years. Since Atheist ethics are of a higher caliber than religious morals, it stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky. With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage. There is no room in Atheist ethics for the type of 'submissive' nonsense preached by Baptists and other Christian and/or Jewish groups. Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage."

Yeah, baby!

Video Interview with Richard Dawkins

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Watch Richard Dawkins interview @ YouTube

Dawkins is wonderfully lucid and congenial in this interview related to the publication of his new book, The God Delusion.

The Dangers of Christian Extremism

Rippin' into Rosie

I hate Rosie. She says something that's correct: radical Christians are just as dangerous as radical Muslims, but then she can't explain why in a cogent fashion. She sputters and argues and, by making a fool of herself, she discredits a correctly drawn conclusion based on observing what radical Christians are doing.

Richard Dawkins Has a Posse

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

There's something really interesting to read in the page on the foundation's mission:

Feminists and homosexuals have taught us the value of consciousness-raising. A phrase like “One man one vote” either causes you to flinch, or is uttered with intent to make you flinch. It is nowadays almost impossible to hear the phrase with its original innocent meaning of “One adult person one vote.” Some atheists and freethinkers try to raise consciousness about, for example, the phrase ‘under God’ in the US Pledge of Allegiance. I am more interested in raising consciousness about something else: the habit, practised not only by religious people, of labelling children by the religion of their parents. This is a Catholic child. That is a Muslim child. I want everybody to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, That is a Marxist child. It is immoral to brand young children with the religion of their parents. At present, hardly anybody’s consciousness is raised to this. I would welcome suggestions, perhaps from those with experience of the feminist and gay campaigns, for the most effective ways to raise consciousness. I would like such consciousness-raising to be a particular project of this foundation.

For somebody who claims religion is a thought virus, this seems like an oddly naive hope. The only way to kill a virus is to quarantine it until it has no more carriers. And that, of course, smacks a little too much of a "final solution" and is completely unacceptable. I think we're going to be stuck with religion until the Singularity happens.

So-called Third Awakening is the New Dark Age

I am completely sickened by this from the Washington Post :

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

WTF? He senses a "Third Awakening?" Senses it how? Coincided with the nation's struggle? WHAT STRUGGLE? Does he mean the struggle against American citizens who still beleive that America should befree? And how can Bush behave like this and expect to be considered the good guy?

Commentary more to my style from CorrenteWire:

And now we’ve got Bush telling The Base how to frame his campaign: As the Third Awakening.

Enough to make you vomit. The greatest proof for atheism is that a just God hasn’t struck these people down.

The problem with Bush is that it just doesn't matter that he's an idiot. The people who handle him and put words in his mouth are not idiots. Rove is a bloodthirsty master strategist. Over the years I have watched him in awe and disgust. He must be just laughing his cold ass off about this. This is pure evil genius, that's what this is. Third Awakening my ass. New Dark Age is more like it. We will be a nation of technologically advanced delusional dumbasses.

"Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages." ~ Richard Lederer

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross." ~ Sinclair Lewis

An Atheist Reads the Bible: One Big WTF

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One man reads the Bible and has some questions... makes a little film. It's an amusing and informative film. Then makes another one. It's even more amusing than the first one. Here's Part Two:

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The Root of All Evil - all parts, in order - Richard Dawkins

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The above is part 1-1. Because of the hodge-podge way they're broken up, uploaded, and indexed, they never seem to be listed in the right order. Below are links to all the videos in the correct order, so that you can watch the whole online.

Part 1-1: http://www.youtube.com/?v=CPaD6D54L4o
Part 1-2: http://www.youtube.com/?v=TUy-Uq3WuhA
Part 1-3: http://www.youtube.com/?v=8GgD3lgspQE
Part 2-1: http://www.youtube.com/?v=_kcKInudkq4
Part 2-2: http://www.youtube.com/?v=T27Ef_xvYMs
Part 2-3: http://www.youtube.com/?v=qPBdz-TXlaI
Part 2-4: http://www.youtube.com/?v=dTKLM09FeNM
Part 2-5: http://www.youtube.com/?v=RwD9HOrjLRw
Part 2-6: http://www.youtube.com/?v=mGLPViVW5ms

He probably didn't mean it to be this way, but one of the most entertaining aspects of this work is watching Dawkins frown grimly and disapprovingly as he sits and squirms through what must be torturous evangelical services.

Dark Sided Atheism Links for Tue Sept. 12 2006

God is Imaginary offers a series of proofs (50 of them) and for many of them, the site also offers common Christian rationalizations and rebuttals. Everything on God is Imaginary is written far better than anything I've written here, and there is an excellent forum (which I just joined).

Why I am an Atheist at ministerturnedatheist.org. Many, many atheists are not only former Christians, but former ministers. The reverse occurs infrequently enough to be worth noting. This one man's personal website is touching and, to me, inspiring (almost in a religious sense... heh).

Half Sigma's tag line is: The new politics of common sense. Neither Republican, Democratic, nor Libertarian. Even though it isn't, technically, about atheism or religion specifically, I include it here because of how it includes posts showcasing the religious extremism's detrimental behavior as an issue separate from party affiliation or identifications with conservatism or liberalism. This blog is, as it purports to be, very even-handed. It is also very much worth your time.