Taylor Swift’s vulva and the worst Christian ever?

Holy crap. You think you’ve plumbed the depths of the Internet, and then you find a Christian making sandwich sculptures of her daughters’ crotches and sneering at Taylor Swift’s labia.

Taylor Swift hasn’t had any nude photos published, has she, so how does she know? And what’s wrong with the sandwich on the left? This is weird, ignorant body shaming and using anatomy as a proxy for piety.

She sucked me in. I had to look at this woman’s web site: An Elegant Life by Jennifer: Spreading Positivity through Jesus Christ. You may be thinking that her sandwich art is neither elegant nor positive, and this is pretty repellent stuff. But that’s because you haven’t read the other stuff she writes.

It’s worse.

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The Amazing what?

We need an appropriate noun in there…I just wish “atheist” wasn’t one of them. After his awful run-in with Martin Hughes in which TJ Kirk, the “amazing” atheist, revealed just how mind-bogglingly and obliviously racist he is, you can guess what happened next.

A. He had an epiphany and realized that lecturing a black man on the nature of racism was absurd?

B. He took the rebuke seriously and is in the process of rethinking his errors?

C. He doubled down and declared that black people in America are all professional victims?

What’s your guess?


The correct answer is C, D, E, F, G, H, etc., in increasing order of patent nastiness. Kirk had a long heartfelt discussion with Hughes, and it just got worse and worse and worse.

This is exactly why we have to dig a deep chasm in the heart of atheism, detonate a few nukes inside it to widen it, and fill it with molten lava to keep those shitbags on their side.

Atheism seems to be amazingly doomed

As long as we put up with clueless clowns like the “Amazing Atheist” we are, that is. Martin Hughes, a black atheist, watched one of the “Amazing Atheist”‘s ranty little videos in which he made a whole series of ignorant, racist comments and tore it apart. Just a small sample:

When asked, “What are you going to do about systematic racism?”

He says:

[Racism against black people] is not my problem in the first place. What are [the people in the video I’m responding to] going to do to end discrimination against atheists? Right, you ain’t gonna do shit, because it’s not your problem and you don’t give a shit.

Yeah. That’s what I’m seeing. Atheism is a white America thing, and white atheists are increasingly, proudly, not caring about black people.

Like…why am I going to fight for atheists rights when they are made up of so many bigots, over and above the black church that’s fighting for my rights day in, day out? Why would I care about a predominantly white atheist club who cordons off race issues, when that impacts my day-to-day life far, far more than what I do or don’t believe about some nonexistent God?

I don’t believe in God. But frankly, when I hear sentiments like this, I want to turn in my atheist card and go back to church.

But let’s not single out the “Amazing Atheist” here — if he were alone, if he were just the ‘lone wolf’ that seems to be the standard label attached to any white guy with hideous opinions, we could just ignore him. But he and many other youtube atheists have large followings. As Hughes points out…

More atheists have watched The Amazing Atheist in the past few days than atheists who have attended all major atheist organization events in the past year combined.

We are in over our heads in racism here.

526,000 views. Over 35,000 likes, only 4,000 dislikes. He makes over a thousand dollars a month on Patreon with his bigotry.

Yeah, that’s a larger atheist problem.

P.S. The “Amazing Atheist” made a reply. I skimmed through it. It seems to consist mainly of “Nuh-uh, I am not a racist, I have black friends.”

“e-beggars”

I just have to say that I totally despise the “e-begging” nonsense: not the requests for donations, but all the assholes who come squirming out of the woodwork to sneer at people who have financial difficulties, who make pleas for donations to support the work you are reading, who think it is somehow a mark of inferiority that someone does not have a prestigious job to support the leisure activity of writing, and are offended that they’re asked to maybe, voluntarily, donate a small sum to an author who’s having a hard time making ends meet.

Ultimately, the complaints are rooted in classism and bigotry. I’m in the odd position of being financially rock-solid — not rich by any means, but economically stable, with good health insurance to protect me from catastrophe, which, come to think of it, does mean I’m wealthy — yet here I am promoting people who are the less widely heard voices in freethought, and they generally have less robust incomes than I do. There is a big gay and transgender pay gap, and an even wider pay gap for racial minorities, and yet, when someone with less dares to hold out a hand and ask for some help, the hecklers all come to mock me, which is just plain weird. It’s as if they not only scorn the underprivileged, but they despise them so much they don’t want to even talk to the person, but instead come to spit in the face of the old white man, because he’s the one with authority.

The first time this happened, years ago, I was so discombobulated that I actually asked the asshole what he was complaining about; I said that I whole-heartedly supported people who asked for voluntary donations, and that those of us who could, should be chipping in to promote talent. Apparently, that was the problem: that I was enabling “freeloaders”, so I was responsible for the epidemic of begging that was annoying him.

Apparently, too, writing is something people should do for free, because hey, anyone can do it. It’s strange how so few authors get paid what they’re worth, then.

Well, fuck that.

Also, have you noticed all the outrage directed at Anita Sarkeesian because she’s held wildly successful fundraisers? These are donations by people who appreciate the fact that she promotes an important and interesting perspective, and they freely give to support her work, and this stirs up intense resentment among certain other kinds of people…who say nothing about the “e-begging” of Thunderf00t or Sargon of Akkad, which, apparently is something fundamentally different and isn’t even called “e-begging”.

And, as a mentioned, I get to be the recipient of all these bullying complaints about people who ask for a few dollars to support their writing. All that means, of course, is that I get to witness first hand how these whiners react to people of color, or gay or transgender people, reminding them of their privilege. I also get to be dumbfounded at my privilege, which is to be treated as the master who is supposed to keep all the little people in line.

The latest case: Tony is trying to make ends meet. So I get to hear all these weirdly inappropriate insults because, obviously, I have something to do with allowing these “e-beggars” to pollute their internet (I also get supportive suggestions, so it’s not as if the internet is entirely a cesspit). It’s weird because Tony is on a different network, I’ve never met him, and he doesn’t even like me very much, but because I’m the Emperor of all things SJW within atheism, I’m responsible. They have such a blithely authoritarian perspective. Note also: these are people who are so ravingly anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-SJW that the only reason they can be reading Tony’s blog is to metaphorically spit on it, and they’re complaining about a donation request that won’t take a penny out of their pocket.

So I’m going to come out and say it: if you want to see a greater diversity of ideas on the internet, if you want to promote greater equality, and if you’ve got the financial ability to do so, you should seek out people other than us noisy old white cis-het men, and put your money where your mouth is. If you like Tony’s writing, give him a little help. If you want to hear more from other than the usual suspects with the big bullhorns, look around, explore, and read what they write…and if they have a “donations” button, click on it. It’s good for everyone.

And now when the jerks come complaining to me that I’m enabling freeloaders, I’ll be able to say that yes, I try to enable writers, but you’re mistaken. My job is to shut down assholes, goodbye.

The alt-right: a dumping ground for Trumpian losers

I’m reading about the alt-right yahoos at Portland State University, and it’s horrifying. It’s a long story, focusing on a small group of admitted racist trolls who have absorbed 4chan/Reddit culture and have decided that openly parading their ignorance and bigotry is fun. What’s particularly appalling to me is that they claim that their views are scientific and rational…but when I read them, they’re just wrong about everything.

Well-read in the authoritarian right, Kolychev says he supports the liberal values of the Enlightenment.

This is a common refrain among certain kinds of conservatives. They claim they are the True Liberals, or neo-liberals, and they are simply returning to the original values of the Enlightenment. There is a grain of truth to that, but they’re doing it wrong. A central value of the Enlightenment ought to be the embrace of change, accepting the idea that we can learn more and become better; it’s not a fixed set of rigid values. You especially cannot support the liberal values of the Enlightenment by thinking that you should turn back the clock three or four hundred years.

The Enlightenment arose in the 17th/18th centuries. It was also a time of colonialism, empire building, racism, slavery, oppression of the poor, and vicious punishments. You don’t support the Enlightenment if you think everything about the past was virtuous, so therefore we should bring back public hanging, workhouses, and colonial exploitation.

Modern liberalism is different than 18th century liberalism. Ideas change. Seeking justification in the past is a conservative value.

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Deriving evil, with reason

James O’Brien makes a very good point here.

If I was to be reading my newspaper every single morning and be told that my very existence was under siege from people I’ve never met and never seen but keep getting told are coming here in their hordes.

If I was to open my newspaper or turn on my radio or TV to hear that everybody who is coming here is a rapist and they’ve got their eyes on our women and we’ve got no chance whatsoever of protecting ourselves.

And unless we do this or do that, or treat them like this or treat them like that, then we’re all doomed, we’re all going to hell in a handcart.

If I was being told it’s time to reclaim our country every time I got out of bed in the morning, I’d begin to believe it, I think, if I didn’t have the knowledge and the insights and the education to know that it is not true.

We atheists are very, very good at telling people they ought to use their reason and think rationally. The most important thing is reason, we say, not emotion; if only those wacky religious people would use evidence and rational thought, they wouldn’t believe in such silly things.

But reason is not enough. “Garbage in, garbage out” is a familiar phrase to describe what happens when your eminently predictable, logical computer is reduced to processing bad inputs, but it’s also true for human beings. We make the mistake of thinking other people’s brains must be inferior or working badly when they reach bad conclusions.

Those wacky Catholics…how stupid they must be to believe in original sin or that Jesus and Mary are watching over them. But Catholic culture actually values education and logic, and they aren’t stupid at all: what they’ve done is reach an entirely rational conclusion built on a set of premises that have been dunned into them from an early age. Their flaw isn’t that their minds are bad, it’s quite the opposite — Catholic scholars think creatively and intelligently from a set of invalid claims about the nature of the universe.

Consider any group you disagree with. Your first assumptions shouldn’t be that the group is a unique vortex of stupid that draws in mentally deficient people who don’t know better, and will be unable to think their way out of a soggy paper bag. Assume that they are a group with the same mental capacity in general as your favorite people. Then try to figure out what foundational ideas are leading them to conclusions you find repugnant.

Look at gun fanatics, for instance. That earlier post about arguments for owning an AR-15 is addressing an entirely reasonable set of justifications for needing a deadly weapon…if you believe you are living in a world in which you and your family are facing an existential threat from hordes of other human beings who specifically intend to do you harm. That guy’s rationale would make a lot of sense if this were the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, and we had to deal with random monsters popping up and trying to eat our brains, and also needed to forage for any wild game to survive.

We do not live in such a world. He thinks we do. GIGO.

As O’Brien points out, if you wake up every morning to listen to right-wing talk radio, or Fox News, or to read Stormfront or white nationalist literature, the inputs to your mind are all skewed. Those outlets are committed to presenting a terrifying picture of the world, in which you, your family, your tribe, your race, your whole damn species is in peril. The brown hordes are coming to replace you…yes, you personally! Your problem with landing a job is not your fault, it’s because that immigrant over there is competing with you unfairly. We once were a great and powerful nation — you know because your grandparents said so — but it’s all gone to the dogs in your generation, because it’s different.

Get that message over and over and over again, and then apply your rational, intelligent, thoughtful brain to the problem, and you’ll come up with reasonable solutions. Kick out those immigrants. Assassinate that politician. Build a wall. Vote for Trump.

The man who killed Jo Cox was not crazy. He was somebody who read and listened and came to what he thought was a necessary solution to a serious problem. He had built a world in his mind that corresponded poorly to reality, because he’d been consuming lies.

Lies kill.

Unfortunately, we all live in a world where institutions and media lie to us constantly, and navigating through all the chaos is a difficult skill that none of us have fully mastered and that misleads many of us.

My hometown does good

Kent-Syrian-Refugees

I grew up in Kent, Washington, and I just learned that Kent is one of a small number of cities chosen to settle Syrian refugees.

Among a divided community, Twenty five, ten-member families will resettle in Kent in the coming weeks.

“Kent has affordable housing, ample job opportunities, and a welcoming community,” said Dave Duea, director of refugee and immigration services for the Seattle-based Lutheran Community Services of Washington. “We expect to resettle many more families in Kent, along with many other refugee groups we are proud to serve.”

Well, I hope it’s welcoming. On the forum where I heard about this, people were talking about “savages” and declaring that “the jungle just opened up”. I see it as good news, though. Not only are they praising the town, but it’s a reflection of a vast improvement since I lived there. I remember Kent as a barren wasteland of banks and gas stations, with farms being steadily paved over and replaced with warehouses. When I’ve been back to visit, it is much improved (although traffic is much worse), with an entertainment complex, an expanded library, and a light rail station. When I left, I thought I’d never be back. Now it looks like a lovely place to retire to (except for the traffic).

Having some more ethnic diversity is just another big plus.

It is too bad, though, that a religious organization is front and center in assisting in this humanitarian effort. If only secular organizations were larger and more involved…


NEVER MIND. Snopes has the source for this one, the “Nevada Scooper”, as a fake news site. I hadn’t checked because it was such a mundane and unsurprising story, and didn’t seem particularly like clickbait — it was just something happening in my hometown. But apparently, “settling refugees in America” is one of those subjects that draws in outraged readers.