You’ve probably seen that placeholder text for websites in progress — piles of nonsense Latin that’s just there to represent sample text. Now there’s something better: the Samuel L. Ipsum generator. Next time you’re designing a website for a church or pre-school, use this program to build up some random text for your demonstration.
(via Stupid Evil Bastard)
(Also on Sb)
It’s so confusing. As you may know, there was an amicable split between the imperialist American atheists and the rest of the world a while back: there is now an Atheist Alliance of America (AAA), and Atheist Alliance International (AAI) that gets the rest — it’s kind of like how the Treaty of Tordesilla divvied up the planet between Spain and Portugal.
Anyway, Tanya Smith, president of AAI, had an interview with the Non Prophets. Maybe that will help clarify everything for you.
It’s not too late to sign up: Project 42 is this weekend in lovely downtown Fargo, North Dakota. I’ll be there, so will Michael Shermer and Richard Carrier and Richard Haynes.
You might want to skip it if you’re a theist. There might be woodchippers around.
I missed one example of ugliness in my last post. I already thoroughly detest Christianity, but if I didn’t, one way I’d learn to hate it would be by standing outside of Planned Parenthood and witness the faith on display in the horde of abortion clinic protestors.
If we want to encourage more atheists, maybe one way would be to organize days of service as an abortion clinic escort. It might be a little unfair, though: that really does expose you to some of the worst Christians on the planet.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is very concerned: atheism has turned ugly, he says. Oh, no, I says, what atrocity have we perpetrated now? Have we been…
Because those would be UGLY. That’s the kind of thing that comes to my mind as representative of disgraceful, hideous behavior by established social institutions. For a representative of a religious faith to claim that atheists have done something ugly implies that they must have really done something awful.
So what has Rabbi Hirschfield covering his eyes in horror?
The Backyard Skeptics were tearing pieces of paper in half…paper that had magic words written on them. O Lord, avert thine eyes that thou would not witness the great evils your people perpetrate on this earth. God, with your perfect all-seeing vision, I think you would prefer to change channels, avoid this heresy, and instead peep in on some of your good and holy people: I’m sure somewhere there’s a priest buggering a choir boy, or a rabbi gnawing on a baby’s penis, or an imam cutting off someone’s head, providing a soothing spectacle for a holy mind. Whatever you do, do not watch this horrific video of smiling people on a sunny day in California cheerfully disrespecting your sacred words. Amen.
You watched it, didn’t you? Now you’re going to have flashbacks to those frightful images all day long. Don’t blame me if you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder now.
You’ve probably seen that placeholder text for websites in progress — piles of nonsense Latin that’s just there to represent sample text. Now there’s something better: the Samuel L. Ipsum generator. Next time you’re designing a website for a church or pre-school, use this program to build up some random text for your demonstration.
(via Stupid Evil Bastard)
(Also on FtB)
The state of Georgia killed him. As I said before, I don’t care whether he was guilty or innocent, the death penalty is barbarous and irrevocable. There was no justice this evening, only vengeance.
That Anglican archbishop, Rowan Williams, is complaining about the atheists again.
I’m not avoiding the point that the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. The problem is it’s become a bit of a vicious circle. Atheism is cool, so books about atheism are cool.
They get a high profile, and books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong don’t get the same kind of publicity because atheism is the new cool thing.
It’s difficult to break into that, but plenty of people are trying.
He’s making a very common error of perspective. I hate to break the news to all of you, but atheism is not cool. It’s not cool at all. It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them. We are not rock stars. We are not fabulously sexy (well, except for Brian Cox). We tend not to have loud movie star personalities (well, except for Neil deGrasse Tyson). Nothing personal, but if you put together a line-up of one of the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Daniel Radcliffe, and Richard Dawkins, and showed them to the average person on the American street, most of our citizens’ eyes would light up in recognition at the first four, and look quizzically at the guy on the end. And no, it wouldn’t help much to swap in Brian Cox for Richard Dawkins.
But that’s the point: cool is a relative thing. Coolness depends on what you contrast it with. And that’s really Rowan Williams’ problem.
It’s not the coolness of atheism. It’s the lameness of religion.
Look at me. I’m moderately popular, and I’m a schlubby college professor at a small college. I’ve got a beard and I wear nerdy ties. I’m nobody. But stand me next to a priest, or a creationist, and the contrast makes me look white-hot and super-cool, even though I’m not. It’s been my cunning trick for years.
So the problem for Williams isn’t that atheism is cool at all — it’s that our cool/lame quotient rockets to stratospheric heights whenever we’re in opposition to old geezy wankers who are chanting antique gobbledygook about magic rabbis and dead people. And those apologists trying break into our schtick? All they are doing is making us look cooler.
There’s only one solution. If the priests just fade away and stop looking like such gomers next to us, then atheism will look much, much less cool. We’ll have to compete with Michael Bay and video games and porn for attention, and then there won’t be anyone chattering about how cool we are any more.
OH NO! I just revealed the secret to making atheism irrelevent — for all the religious folk to disappear into the woodwork. Now we’re dooooomed!
