April 20th 2008
Some Boulder High School students protested Thursday over having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day.More than 50 students took part in the morning protest in the school courtyard.The students are upset that the pledge includes the words “under God.”
Read the full story at:
March 26th 2008
In January PZ Myers (Associate Professor at University of Minnesota, Morris) debated Jeffrey Simmons (a Medical Doctor and Senior Fellow with the Discovery Institute) on KKMS radio. At the last minute the topic of the debate was changed to “Are Darwin’s Theories Fact Or Faith Issues?”. This is a common ploy by creationists, debating “Darwin’s Theory” instead of Evolution. Charles Darwin did not have anywhere near the evidence that we have today so of course there are things that he was not quite right about. He simply laid the framework for our current theory of evolution. This new title only challenged PZ to provide evidence for his side of the debate. No evidence of “intelligent design” would be required.
Science has updated this theory and it is now the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. A theory is a good thing in science. It is testable, makes predictions, is peer reviewed and can be updated/ammended. To call intelligent design a theory is ridiculous. It can not be tested, no predictions can be made and what updates are possible to the statement “A god did it”? I am not sure what scientific community termed it a “theory”, it seems to have just been self-proclaimed as such.
Listen to the debate here: PZ Myers debates Jeffry Simmons
March 12th 2008
A couple of nights ago I was going through the channels on my TV out of boredom and I came across “Way of the Master”. I am familiar with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron so I thought I would watch it for its “entertainment” value. I did learn something from it however. I used to think that these people were afraid of death in the sense that they were frightened of not existing anymore but learned that they are actually more afraid of existing eternally. They actually believe that they will (probably out of the arrogance of not being able to imagine the universe actually going on without them). In all of their “witnessing” they have one main theme “you will live forever either in heaven or hell”. Their whole belief system would seem to be an elaborate version of Pascal’s Wager.
The proof that they offer for the universe operating this way is that this “God” gave everyone a conscience and gave them 10 rules to live by. So then they start their usual trash of “Are you a good person?”. If you’ve ever told a lie, then you are a liar, if you’ve ever taken something that doesn’t belong to you, then you are a thief… Somehow all of this proves to them that the tribal god of the Jews is the one and only God and he impregnated a virgin and the earth is only 6000 years old. So, if you are afraid of hell then Yahweh and Jesus must be true. I really believe that had they grown up with Muslim parents they would be saying the exact same things about Mohammed and Allah. It would take a lot more than a socially conditioned conscience to convince me that there is a shred of truth in writings by people that believed that bats were birds and the earth was flat.
It further amuses me that, according to this “logic” a person like Hitler (had he asked for forgiveness just before his death) could be in their version of Heaven while someone like Mother Teresa (if her doubts persisted to her death) would be in their version of Hell. Personally if there were a Heaven ruled by a megalomaniacal tyrant such as this Yahweh and it was full of people like Todd Friel, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron it certainly doesn’t sound like a place I’d even want to spend an eternity.
On their website they claim they can scientifically prove that God exists in 3 minutes without invoking “Faith” or even “the Bible” which I have yet to see them attempt. In a debate with Rational Response Squad’s Brian and Kelly they claimed that they were going to do that. In the first 3 sentences they of course brought up the 10 commandments which as most people know are in the Bible (stolen mostly from the Code of Hammurabi).
February 5th 2008
Here is a sad story of bigotry, threats, vandalism and terror perpetuated by “Christians”. I wonder what part of the Bible condones this action? Christians commonly accuse atheists of being intolerant of their beliefs. It would seem to me that atheists generally only use words to express their opinion. I have yet to hear of atheists trashing a Christian’s property like this.
The police sgt. said “The vandalism likely was the retaliatory work of youngsters” giving the reason that Jesus was misspelled. I have read a great many blogs and entries on public forums from “Christians” and I am not surprised about any misspelling, it is very common.
Original Story
AtheistDiscrimination’s blog
Vandals egg house of local atheist
By AtheistDiscrimi… - Posted on October 4th, 2007
From the Daily Herald 9/23/07
The home of a local outspoken atheist was vandalized overnight Friday, police said — with eggs tossed at the house and cars, and crosses and religious words scrawled in chalk on the driveway.
A church bulletin also was stuck on the front door.
The incident comes days after Rob Sherman’s daughter, Dawn, led a successful effort to have the song “God Bless America” yanked from Buffalo Grove High School’s homecoming celebration. Dawn Sherman is a freshman on the student council.
The vandalism likely was the retaliatory work of youngsters, police Sgt. Mike Millett said — since it came on the heels of the school incident and because one of the chalked words, “Jesus,” was misspelled.
January 21st 2008
When I read this story in December 2007, I thought it was something from the ONION at first glance. It shows that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
The Catholic church believes that the loss of “faith in the church” is caused by Satanism? I’d say most of the people are losing faith in it due more to the bigotry and hypocrisies that it condones and in some cases requires (the child molestation/cover-ups don’t do its image much good either).
It is interesting that it takes a priest to perform a series of gestures and prayers to rid a victim of demons. It would seem that the victim could simply ask this God to remove them in a simple short prayer, if the God cared about his “faithful servant” enough it would do it for them.
The term “the occult”, was particularly amusing. It actually describes religion itself in some definitions. So in essence the Pope is suggesting to use the occult to fight influences from the occult. I’ll agree with him on the fact that the occult (as in organized religion) is the most extreme form of godlessness.
The Pope wants to “fight the devil head-on” but has also been instrumental in the covering of much of the child molesting going on, even many of the bishops are not taking this seriously, so there are possibly a few somewhat sane bishops.
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The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.
Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.
They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of “Godlessness.”
Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.
The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican “exorcistinchief,” to the online Catholic news service Petrus.
“Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on,” he said.
“Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.
“Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” The CDF is the oldest Vatican department and was headed by Benedict from 1982, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, until he became Pope in 2005.
Father Amorth said that during his time at the department Benedict had not lost the chance to warn humanity of the risk from the Devil.
He said the Pope wants to restore a prayer seen as protection against evil that was traditionally recited at the end of Catholic Masses. The prayer, to St Michael the Archangel, was dropped in the 1960s by Pope John XXIII.
Scroll down for more…
The 1973 film The Exorcist deals with the demonic possession of a young girl: Now the Pope wants specialist exorcism squads in every parish
“The prayer is useful not only for priests but also for lay people in helping to fight demons,” he said.
Father Paolo Scarafoni, who lectures on the Vatican’s exorcism course, said interest in Satanism and the occult has grown as people lost faith with the church.
He added: “People suffer and think that turning to the Devil can help solve their problems. We are being bombarded by requests for exorcisms.”
The Vatican is particularly concerned that young people are being exposed to the influence of Satanic sects through rock music and the Internet.
In theory, under the Catholic Church’s Canon Law 1172, all priests can perform exorcisms. But in reality only a select few are assigned the task.
Under the law, practitioners must have “piety, knowledge, prudence, and integrity of life.”
The rite of exorcism involves a series of gestures and prayers to invoke the power of God and stop the “demon” influencing its victim.
Original story.
By NICK PISA - More by this author » Last updated at 16:34pm on 29th December 2007
Here is a funny picture I found at :
http://www.bastardly.com/archives/2005/05/13/body-double-pope-benedict-xvi-emperor-palpatine/
I thought I was the only one that noticed the uncanny resemblance.
January 17th 2008
This to me was very disturbing. I wonder whose version of God Huckabee would like to use. Even among evangelical Christians such as Huckabee there are variations on beliefs. His statements concerning evolution and not knowing how long it took God to create the universe are a prime examples. I have heard some evangelicals criticize others and say that they are not “real Christians” for not taking every word of the Bible literally.
This Country has enough division already and does not need interpretations of the Bible to further divide people. I wonder - does he think women should be quiet in church and submissive to their husbands? Does he think “witches” should be killed? Should we start executing people who work on the Sabbath? Perhaps in this war in Iraq we should tell our soldiers to kill everything/everyone but keep the virgins for themselves? At what point do you stop taking the Bible literally? If his answer is (as I’ve heard many Christians say) “that was the Old Testament” he would be incorrect on some issues (they are indeed New Testament ideas as well). Also there is this other fact that the 10 Commandments are also “Old Testament” so they could be tossed out as well?
To think that this man is so arrogant as to think everyone should be forced to live by his interpretation of his “God’s” will is frightening and unimaginable. People like this would say this is a “Christian Nation” due to the fact that the “Majority” of its citizens are Christian. The same person will claim in a disagreement over interpretation that their opponent is not a “True Christian”, you can’t have it both ways. If they are not true Christians they should not be part of your claim of a majority either. Christianity claims to be “mono-theistic”, but it would appear that there are as many “gods” as there are Christians.
January 8th 2008
On Jan. 2, Star Tribune columnist Steve Chapman wrote a surprisingly positive piece in support of state-church separation and fairly tolerant of atheism. (At least we didn’t get bashed.) We sent the following letter in response, but it was not printed. Too fact-based-positive and informative about atheism? Too fact-based-clear in showing the danger of fundamentalist Christianity?
Letter from Marie Alena Castle, as Communications Director for AFHR
Steve Chapman’s column on Jan. 2 was a long-needed commentary on religion in politics. It is absolutely and refreshingly accurate regarding atheistic views on this topic. A survey of nonbelievers and religionists, begun in 2002 by Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer and published in Atheists; A Groundbreaking Study of American’s Nonbelievers, included the following report (page 121):
“Finally, in our last measure of zealotry we asked nonbelievers if they would like atheism taught in public schools, and we similarly asked believers if they wanted a (fundamentalist) Christianity to become part of the curriculum. Zero percent of the atheists said they wanted their beliefs taught. (Ain’t nobody squeezing under that!) Only 1 percent of the agnostics liked the idea. Meanwhile, only 37 percent of the inactive Christians endorsed the teaching of fundamentalist Christianity to everyone’s children. But 84 percent of the high fundamentalists liked that idea.”
The entire survey brought out the intense desire of fundamentalists to impose their beliefs on society and the equally intense desire of nonbelievers for a tolerant, live-and-let-live society. Our thanks to Chapman for making our point so well!
posted by Atheists For Human Rights at 11:25 AM | 1 comments links to
January 2nd 2008
Archbishop John Nienstedt is making dogmatic claims about the morality of, and family 
complicity in, homosexual relationships. Since this is causing considerable mental anguish among his followers and/or their families, and is an issue affecting all of society, it is appropriate to question those claims.
Basic Moral Premise #1: Moral people don’t go around hurting others. However, it’s apparently OK when religious beliefs are involved. This seems to be Nienstedt’s position, and it has a long history among authoritarian religions. Ancient Aztecs threw virgins into volcanoes to appease their god. Ancient Hebrews sacrificed their firstborn sons to Yahweh (at least early in their history). Today, Christian Scientists let their kids die by substituting prayer for medical care. Muslim suicide bombers eagerly kill thousands in sending themselves off into what they think are the arms of 72 virgins in Paradise. Japanese Kamikaze in World War II did similar suicide missions for their emperor-god. Routinely, worldwide and throughout history, women are abused and killed in many ways for many reasons having to do with religious views of what is moral.
Basic Moral Premise #2: Sexual behavior becomes immoral only when it hurts someone—when it betrays a trust, is coercive in some way, exploits vulnerable persons, irresponsibly causes a harmful pregnancy, knowingly passes on a disease, etc. These are all too common and deserve social condemnation.
Basic Moral Premise #3: It is gravely immoral to harm people (through restrictive laws, social practices and religious condemnations) for engaging in mature, loving, responsible, non-harmful sexual relationships, regardless of gender. There is no rational justification possible for such condemnation.
Basic Moral Premise #4: It is true that it is morally wrong to be complicit in immoral behavior. For that reason, Catholics, especially GLBT Catholics, make a grave error in continuing to support the Catholic Church and its transparently immoral teachings. If they have any moral obligation at all to the Church, it is to leave, and the sooner the better.
If Archbishop Nienstedt insists that the Catholic Church’s position on sexuality should be the socially (and even legally) preferred standard of morality, he has an obligation to produce evidence to support that position. However, the fact is, there is no evidence—not in history, not in philosophy, not even in the Bible. All one can find are myths and legends at best, and power-mongering fakery at worst. Even the claim that there is a god is devoid of supporting evidence. Religious dogma is a thin strand indeed on which to hang a claim of moral authority. A humanistic, secular standard based on not hurting people is far more reliable, rational, just and compassionate.
Religious Insanity