Month: August 2009

A brilliant deconversion story

Jason Thibeault1 Comment

This is how people come to atheism — not through indoctrination, not through reinforcement, but through critical thinking. Make no mistake, this is why theists want to control the schools. They are afraid of people who ask “why”, because forcing a child to think critically about the things they believe unquestioningly is indeed the most effective way to plant the seed of doubt and bring them around to rationality.

Tangent: looks like I have to come into work for an overnight. Whee. La roue tourne.

A brilliant deconversion story
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Seth MacFarlane: “It’s about fucking time!”

Jason Thibeault

While I’ve always eyed Bill Maher as a potential stumbling block in the atheist movement, given his propensity toward believing other forms of woo to fill the void left by his lack of faith in religion, I appreciate what he does to popularize being godless in an age where it is viewed as anathema. His guest however, I’ve always loved, for accepting absolutely no sacred cows in this world. No matter how crude or crass you think Family Guy is, at least it is unabashedly honest.

Seth MacFarlane: “It’s about fucking time!”

My headache

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , 11 Comments

I’ve sat on this for a while, as I’ve had quite a bit on my plate lately, and I don’t want to go out of my way to give Zdenny a bigger stage than he already has. Yet, I link to him because he quote-mined me here to make a larger point about science as dogma and Christ as science (no, seriously). He’s definitely right about one thing — this line of argumentation gives me a headache, one for which only a good long rant can serve as ibuprofen. Especially since they’re the ones who consistently conflate atheism with scientific naturalism.

Continue reading “My headache” →

My headache

UK residents: sign this petition please!

Jason Thibeault, , 2 Comments

If you live in the United Kingdom (and I know I’ve picked up a few Brit readers at least!), I have a special request to make of you. Go sign this petition, demanding that the British government apologize for the persecution of Alan Turing that culminated in his apparent suicide.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Alan Turing is commonly known today as the grandfather of the modern computer. He has contributed vast swathes of knowledge to the fields of computing and artificial intelligence, identified the existence of the Fibonacci sequence in plant structures, and he personally cracked the Nazis’ Enigma code leading to numerous Allied victories in World War II. Without this man, we would have never advanced in our technology to the point that we have today.

And yet, he was drummed out of his government positions and stripped of his security clearance because he was gay. At the time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness, homosexual acts considered criminal offenses, and chemical castration the common sentence. Turing’s lover broke into his apartment with an accomplice to rob the place, and in filing the police report, Turing made the mistake of admitting to having had sexual relations with the burglar. Turing and the burglar were both convicted of gross indecency, and Turing was chemically castrated amid fears that the KGB was busy trying to gay-bait government officials. He was never charged with espionage, but his security clearance was stripped and as a result his government career ended. Shortly thereafter, he evidently took his own life, eating part of an apple he had apparently laced with cyanide, emulating his favorite childhood story, Snow White.

We’ll never know what brilliance this man might have contributed otherwise, if his life had played out normally and he wasn’t persecuted for being merely atypical. We could already be exploring the stars, for all I know. I hope you will spread the word about this petition to any of your English friends and countrymen; Alan Turing deserves some small token of retribution for having been kicked around so, despite his contributions to humankind.

UK residents: sign this petition please!

Long eventful weekend

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

Jen and Opal are here, and I’m still embroiled in fixing their two laptops. One is reformatted and pretty well ready to go, just copying over some of their old data now; and the other needs drivers and security software. Afterward, it looks like I have queued up an evening of trying out Bully for the Wii (which looks, by all accounts, like Grand Theft Auto for 15-year-olds).

Just keeping y’all in the loop. Hopefully back to regular blogging very shortly.

In the meantime, check out these great crocheted Mythbusters.

Long eventful weekend

Silly planets, you’re going the wrong way

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

Kepler, the extrasolar planet detecting telescope, has discoved in rapid succession a planet in a retrograde orbit to its parent sun, then a mere day later, another one!

Our science is not nearly sensitive enough presently to detect at what angle we’re looking at the sun, so we don’t have a lot of information just yet. The chances are either that these planets were captured, or some sort of cataclysm occurred. The second one is apparently only as dense as polystyrene, at that. Fascinating.

Silly planets, you’re going the wrong way

I’m going through withdrawl

Jason Thibeault, 9 Comments

I really do want to get involved in all the awesome conversations raging across the blogosphere about health care reform, about the fundamentalists and aristocracy that are controlling the dialogue about it and tons of other issues, about the backlash atheists are getting from the religious now that we’re finding our own voice. I haven’t read my RSS feeds in days, and the numbers of unread are in the hundreds now. I’m going through some major information withdrawl. I thought it was bad when my own blog was down, as I didn’t realize how empowering it is to have a space to rant when I needed it, but now that I don’t even have access to materials to rant about, I’m really getting the shakes over it all.

To make matters worse, I’m feeling under a ton of pressure from work, which just kicked into overdrive again, and finances, where I can’t figure out how the hell to actually get money to Wells Fargo’s “furniture partnership” division since the walk-in store won’t do it and I can’t find the right division online through my bank; and there are a lot of home improvements that we have yet to budget out and build actual action plans for. I have spent much of yesterday and today worrying about making sure the car is in tip top shape for the trip to Halifax tomorrow (and it is, now), and we have to rearrange much of the house tonight to accomodate Jen and Opal’s arrival. And last night, a big stupid crisis had to happen (which I can’t really talk about; sorry), and that put Jodi into an emotionally untenable state until we went to visit Mark and Sara, so she and Sara could vent.

All I want is a bit of normalcy so I can feel like I’m not overwhelmed, and so I can get back into the conversations. I really do crave these conversations, which is scary in itself, but not, I suppose, a surprise to me — I’m passionate about a lot of things, and these passions intersect very heavily with the ongoing conversations happening right now without my input. I really do feel like I’m missing out.

I’m going through withdrawl