Idiots vandalize church with "athiest" graffiti

I don't often use foul language on this blog, but: you fucking dumbasses.

Nice "use" of unnecessary "quotes" there.

Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to tag a church with spraypainted messages promoting atheism.  Well, except that these brilliant vandals couldn't even spell "atheism" right.

Creative spelling, eh?

At this point, no one knows whether the people who did this were really atheists or just anti-authority trolls looking to have some fun at someone else's expense.

Yeah, that'll convince 'em.

I really hope that whoever did this didn't honestly think they were helping the atheist movement at all.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Apparently, atheists are driven by hate and anger

Religious folk reacted with the fury of Caps Lock when the University of Wisconsin's Secular Student Alliance affiliate sent a mass email inviting interested students to join.  Though many other student groups use the very same method to get the word out that they exist, some apparently found the existence of an atheist-agnostic-freethinker group offensive.

Then, this article turned up on my Google Sparks:

When natural man embraces atheism, you often end up with a ticking time bomb. The seething anger lies just beneath the surface for many atheists. Even for those “sophisticated atheists” who are able to put up a good front for the public, their “inner workings” are usually filled with rage against God and Christians.


In that sense, atheists unwittingly help to prove the truth of Christianity by their hatred for it. Jesus told his disciples, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” (John 15:18) Real Christians don’t hate atheists. Real Christians love atheists. That is the supernatural grace of God at work in the life of a believer. Real atheists, on the other hand, have an inner hatred for Christ that gets directed at believers. That is the natural result of man rejecting God as His Creator.

Another choice segment:

If everyone in the world was an atheist, the population would shrink drastically and violently. Human arrogance and anger doesn’t put up with too much before it goes ballistic and begins to wipe out the “enemy.”

And then there's this gem:

If you are an atheist, here are 11 words you won't say from your heart unless you choose to open your mind to be a "freethinker" for Christ: "Lord Jesus, forgive me for my hatred toward You and others." Wow! You would rather die than sincerely pray those words wouldn't you? That's because a hatred for Jesus fills your heart, as it would mine without Christ. You tell yourself it is just unbelief in Jesus. That is only the "fruit of it." The "root of it" is hatred towards God.

Here I thought that the old "atheists hate God" argument had been beaten to death and beyond, and yet it pops up again on a major Christian news site.  I have to wonder if the author, Dan Delzell, has ever met, read the writings of, or heard a speech by an atheist; his understanding of how atheists think seems to come exclusively from the Bible.

I could write a long-winded post about how wrong his assertions are, and why they're wrong; that would be a waste of my time, as this topic has been covered in depth by those who have tread before me.  So I'll keep it short and sweet.

First off: atheists do not believe that any god exists.  You can't hate what doesn't exist.  I would hope that this isn't a difficult concept.  Now let's move on.

Secondly: one look at the sheer vastness of the universe shows us how insignificant we are on the scale of the cosmos.  We aren't our own "gods" - we are ephemeral chemical reactions on the surface of a speck of space dust who have managed to develop intelligence.  Realizing this fact is the exact opposite of arrogance.  You know what would be arrogant?  Believing that all of this was created just for little old young us.

Lastly, I will concede you one point: a lot of atheists do have a great deal of antipathy toward religion, especially so in the West toward Christianity.  However: this isn't because we're angry at some long dead (and possibly legendary) cult leader named Yeshua; it's because we think that organized religion (and the political power it wields) is an absolute farce.

One final note on the 11-word prayer: you won't hear a sincere prayer out of me because it is not possible to sincerely lie.  This argument, like the rest of the column, does not make sense.

Nursing student has a problem with women

Via Jen at Blag Hag:

This winner, the now-infamous Ben Cochran, decided to submit a steaming pile of excrement as an op-ed column for his school paper.  He was at his campus student health center with a cold, and was horrified to see that some of the patients ahead of him were (gasp!) getting prescribed birth control pills.

As if that version wasn't bad enough, an employee of the newspaper decided to leak the rough draft to the public.  Some particularly putrid bits from the uncensored version of his diatribe:

Classic Manchild.

If you have a lung problem, you see a pulmonologist. If you have a heart problem, you see a cardiologist. If you have a cunt problem, you see a gynecologist.

...

First of all, not even porn stars need that much birth control. Second of all, do you mean to seriously tell me that I’ve been sitting here in misery for the last half an hour just so that this gaggle of preemie sluts could get a free pass on harlotry?

...

Go read your Redbook in the lobby of a specialist while you get a mani as you wait to get your hatchet wound inspected.

And finally,

Please take your gaping holes elsewhere for medical services, and leave the real health issues to those that actually belong on a college campus.

This wouldn't be remarkable if it was some run-of-the-mill, insecure-about-his-penis-size douchecopter who's mad at the women he fails to seduce; however, this particular douchecopter is a nursing student who ought to have some basic knowledge about how the female reproductive system works.

In the name of free speech and letting fools remove all doubts as to their foolishness, the school paper let him publish a follow up column.  Worded as a faux-apology, he continued what can only be self-aware trolling of the people he offended the first time around.

I would hope that people as willfully ignorant as he is get weeded out of East Carolina University's nursing program long before they're allowed near a live patient.

Are Muslims and secular humanists allied to destroy America?

Of course not.  But apparently Brad Hughes over at American Thinker believes that they are.  He writes of a "worldview war":

"with secular humanism and Islam as co-belligerents on one side and Judeo-Christian America on the other." 

I'm curious as to how he came to this conclusion; let's read his article, shall we?

He opens up with a Bible passage as his first piece of evidence (Ephesians 6:12 - New International Version no less!  Doesn't he know that anything other than King James is blasphemy?), setting the stage for what can only be a well-researched exposition.

Satan wants YOU to care about the environment!

This afternoon, courtesy of Martin S. Pribble, my Google Reader feed was graced by this alarming little nugget of religious nutballery. I'd like to share:

So there you have it, folks. The global movement to reduce pollution and use our planet's resources more responsibly is really a master scheme by the Devil to establish his New World Order. And how dare those environmentalist scientists suggest that our planet can't accommodate an infinite number of humans!

I personally found it hilarious when they talked about children being targeted because they are susceptible to deception, and accused environmentalists of using bad science, exaggeration, myth, and outright lies to push their worldview. Hmm, who else does that sound like? 0=)

Mr. Pribble didn't want to have a live link to these loons' website giving them hits from his blog. I personally don't care if they track hits back to me. You're welcome, guys! I'll bet you won't link to any of your critics, because that would give your followers the opportunity to think for themselves.

In all seriousness, I will admit that I am skeptical of some environmentalists' claims. I think that some of them do exaggerate the gravity of problems such as global warming to drum up support for solutions (and I'll have to see remarkable evidence of imminent danger before I support anything as rash as geoengineering measures). That's not to say that I'm not even more skeptical (cynical?) of their opponents who pretend that our activities never negatively affect the biosphere.

Legitimate criticisms of the more extreme elements of the environmentalist movement are one thing; blind religious denial that we're doing anything wrong is another. The belief that an all-powerful father figure wants our species to consume the planet into ruin is going to encourage a lot of people to behave irresponsibly, and its spread among American Christians will further divorce the faith's adherents from reality. As if this country's Religious Right wasn't doing enough in its war on science...

The interblags are on fire again!

Just last week I wrote about how petty controversies within the online atheist community tend to explode into all-out take-no-prisoners no-holds-barred flamewars.

It happened again shortly thereafter, like a forest fire breaking out just after a Smokey Bear PSA.  This time it involves pretty much every blogger whose blog I read; even Richard Dawkins himself felt the need to get involved in the melee by making snide comments on Pharyngula.  And I can't help but #smh at PZ's Twitter feed.

Really, people?  We seem to get angrier with each other over tone and word choice when we disagree than we do at the religious establishment for their usual nonsense.  Maybe it's because we're used to it from the pious ones and expect better of one another?

To sum up "Elevatorgate" for the uninformed: Atheist and skepticism advocate Rebecca Watson was propositioned in an elevator at a skeptics conference.  She wasn't interested and was kind of creeped out, and mentioned the incident in a video essentially saying "guys, don't do stuff that creeps women out.  It makes them not want to come to conferences."  Another atheist and freethought advocate, Stef McGraw, wrote a blog post accusing her of overreacting to the elevator guy's advances.  Watson then called McGraw out on it in her keynote speech at the conference, and then the internet exploded into a storm of rage, feminist and misogynist and everything in between, on a scale unprecedented even by the earlier Gendergate row.

Drama, drama, drama.  I'm hoping that this has finally blown over, and that the next gender-related faux pas doesn't flood the secular/skeptic movement with even more venom than this.

Weekly Recap: Kevorkian, antimatter, Reapers, and a facepalm!

The past week has seen me making a road trip to Chicago with my wife and being miserable with a head cold, and it looks like I missed out on a few developments during my hiatus from the news and the blogosphere.  I've been playing catchup since Tuesday.

• Dr. Jack Kevorkian, infamous for assisting in the suicides of patients with terminal or otherwise incurable degenerative diseases, has himself shuffled loose the mortal coil; atheist bloggers across the ideological spectrum seem inclined to agree with his assertion that people ought to be allowed to choose a quick, painless death over a slow, agonizing one.

• The crew over at CERN managed to trap 300 atoms of antimatter for 16 minutes, long enough to get some serious science done.  (Side note: what does a photo of someone looking through a low-power microscope have to do with studying subatomic particles?  I expect better science reporting, Telegraph.)

• New gameplay videos of Mass Effect 3 were released this past weekend at E3, showing the devastation wrought by untold legions of colossal Reapers descending on our planet.  I normally don't like to geek out on this blog, but I am (to say the least) very excited for this game to come out next year.
  
  

• PZ Myers has showcased what is quite possibly the dumbest thing ever sent his way.  The stupid, it burns.
  
  
• Anthony Weiner.  Obvious jokes abound, but there have been worse scandals.  All that aside, I've generally been impressed with debate he's given on the House floor.

Facepalm of the Month: "To Kill A Mockingbird" Censored

2011 has been an interesting year for cases of idiotic censorship.


In a classic episode of missing the point, a school superintendent in our great state has banned a stage production of To Kill A Mockingbird, adapted from Harper Lee's famous novel.  The reason?  It's not because of the violence or the fact that the crux of the plot is a rape trial.  No, the play was cancelled because, true to its profound indictment of the irrationality of racism, it features characters who utter racial slurs, and that's not school appropriate.

Seriously.  We might as well ban George Orwell's 1984 because Ingsoc's propaganda could be seen as pro-Communist.  Oh, wait, that's been done.

I suppose this is to be expected in an age when a prominent scholar censors the same slur out of the dialogue of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The late Mr. Clemens would be bashing his head on his keyboard in Hell right now if there were an afterlife).  Apparently we can depict black slaves being savagely beaten, treated like subhuman beasts, and deprived of every opportunity in life, and that's perfectly fine - but if we candidly depict their tormentors calling them "niggers" it makes too many people uncomfortable.


Censoring the ugliness of our past hinders future generations from learning from their ancestors' stupidity and from preventing history from repeating itself.  When we take the sting out of human cruelty by censoring the nasty words, we're left with only statistics about death and disenfranchisement.  We're left without a moral lesson to derive from the way humans have used language to dehumanize one another, and without such poignant depictions in literature, we're left without a way to empathize with the victims of injustice.