It’s been a day for Displaying the Nasty, so I’ll display some more.
There’s a horrible Facebook page called Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. It’s public, so you can look at it if you’re on Facebook.
Its profile picture is…symptomatic.
Cute, isn’t it? Just “No Rebecca Watson” – just like that. [Read more…]
Transcription courtesy of John Morales.
I want to take this time today to answer this question I get a lot: why don’t I believe in the gospels.
Um — the first big problem I have with the gospels is that they are anonymous — a lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.
Um, and no good skeptic, atheist, freethinker should ever accept any anonymous report just offhand; aah especially when we’re talking about something truly awful — I mean, the gospel writers have Jesus doing some pretty ugly stuff. Umm, killing a tree for no reason, which makes him look completely insane; they have him claiming to be God, which would have been a major blasphemy within Judaism at the time; and they have him turning water into wine, which we all know is just a tactic to get the ladies drunk — right? — I mean, no-one turns water into wine for any reason that’s not just completely nefarious!
But if you’re gonna talk [whoopee noise] about someone like that, you can’t do that anonymously — and if you do, what is that? What are we talking about?
That’s nothing more than gossip.
And I think that as good skeptics, atheists, freethinkers, we should all know how absolutely toxic, disgusting and beneath us it is to repeat and or report mere gossip. [Read more…]
A three-year-old observation by John Scalzi, just because I saw it and like it. The failure mode of clever is asshole.
So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone you’ve not communicated with privately before, for whatever reason you might have. And, wanting to stand out from the crowd, you decide to try to be clever about it, because, hey, you are a clever person, and as far as you know, people seem to like that about you. So you write your clever bit and send it off, safe in the knowledge of your cleverosity, and confident that your various cleverations will make the impression you want to make on the intended cleveree. [Read more…]
For once, there’s a kernel of truth in something Brendan O’Neill writes (in the Telegraph this time). Only a kernel though.
When did atheists become so teeth-gratingly annoying? Surely non-believers in God weren’t always the colossal pains in the collective backside that they are today? Surely there was a time when you could say to someone “I am an atheist” without them instantly assuming you were a smug, self-righteous loather of dumb hicks given to making pseudo-clever statements like, “Well, Leviticus also frowns upon having unkempt hair, did you know that?” Things are now so bad that I tend to keep my atheism to myself, and instead mumble something about being a very lapsed Catholic if I’m put on the spot, for fear that uttering the A-word will make people think I’m a Dawkins drone with a mammoth superiority complex and a hives-like allergy to nurses wearing crucifixes. [Read more…]
American Atheists has sent out a press release.
Cartersville, Georgia—Beginning Wednesday, visitors to Georgia State Parks vacationing in government-owned rental cabins can read atheist books during their stay courtesy of American Atheists. The national non-profit announced that its former President, Ed Buckner, will distribute hundreds of donated copies of atheist literature to the Red Top State Park for placement in cabin bedside drawers, alongside Bibles already placed there, on Wednesday morning.
Additional atheist books will be distributed to A.H. Stephens Historic Park in Crawfordville, Georgia at 2:00 PM EDT on Wednesday afternoon, with more parks to follow later this week. [Read more…]
From Richard Webster’s Why Freud Was Wrong:
…although Freud had initially reacted skeptically to Jung’s interest in the occult, he had eventually come to regard this aspect of his work with almost exactly the same credulity he once bestowed on the ideas of Fliess. “In matters of occultism,” he replies, “I have grown humble since the great lesson Ferenczi’s experiences gave me; I promise to believe anything that can be made to look reasonable.” [Read more…]
Because it’s a hot afternoon. Also because they kept making me laugh.
@TheTweetOfGod
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But then there’s like two million more after that, so what’s the point?
Laurie Penny @PennyRed
That’s a shame- the main reason I do politics is so that internet creeps will want to fuck me. [Read more…]
Marie-Thérèse has a haunting post about summer holidays in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, which was the one escape from the misery of Goldenbridge that most of the children had.
As a child at Goldenbridge industrial “school” during the sixties summertime season, I absolutely adored heading off on the ‘Special’ bus to Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. Bernadette Fahy in her book “Freedom of Angels” referred to St. Joseph’s Holiday Home, that was for Goldenbridge children who had no families to take them out on summer holidays, as a haven. [Read more…]
