Can we please form a Rationalist Party now?

I was shocked to open Current Biology and find the leading news article was titled “Call to atheists,” and it was actually a pleasantly neutral article that simply reported on Dawkins’ efforts to organize atheists and promote a positive view of secularism — I guess I’m simply so used to so many media references that get immediately defensive of religion and treat atheism as something scary. It’s very nice.

Right after reading it, however, I got a note from Melissa. If you want to see something that should choke a cockroach, watch the parade of Democrats getting in line to stand up and defend the Bible. It’s nauseating. I want to see my party standing up to defend the constitution and personal liberties, not antique superstitions…but there they are, prioritizing vocal support for a wretched old book of lies while allowing the erosion of democratic principles to continue, and in fact by their praise of state-endorsed Christianity, promoting the demolition of the separation of church and state.

What does that have to do with Dawkins? He makes this comment in the interview:

He has been encouraged in the early days for the race for president by the apparent distancing of Republican candidates from the Christian right. But he found “very depressing” the profession of faith from the Democratic candidates. “I guess the Democrats have to pretend to be more pious than the Republicans because they are under suspicion of not being.”

I think Dawkins is wrong, unfortunately. Watch that video; I don’t think they’re pretending, I think they actually are pious twits.

I hate to admit it, but even I would vote for a Republican if he were openly atheist. I am thoroughly fed up with the sad-sack sanctimony from our representatives, and I don’t care whether it’s feigned or sincere — it’s corrosive garbage.

Williams, N (2007) Call to atheists. Current Biology 17(21):R899-R900.

Roy Varghese and the exploitation of Antony Flew

I have not been shy about my contempt for the crackpot, Roy Varghese — he’s one of those undeservedly lucky computer consultants who struck it rich and is now using his money to endorse religion. He’s a god-soaked loon who pretends to be a scientific authority, yet he falls for the claim that bumblebees can’t fly and therefore there flight is evidence for a god. Really. He’s that deluded.

I’ve been too kind, however. You must read this New York Times article, The Turning of an Atheist, in which it turns out that Varghese is also a contemptible manipulator.

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That holy flail

Guilt-ridden Christian: If I don’t obey God, he’s going to make me suffer for all eternity.

Evil-angelical Christian: I don’t make you obey God, I’ll be responsible for your eternal suffering.

That link will take you to a despicably manipulative video on GodTube — a dramatized letter from Hell in which a young fellow about to be thrown into the Lake of Fire screams at his still living, Christian friend for not doing enough to save him. It is genuinely vile. It is an attempt to turn a positive social value, friendship, into a rationale for browbeating people into abandoning reason and accepting a superstitious lie.

Christianity is all about death, suffering, fear, guilt, and coercion. It’s a damnable doctrine that preys on the good people want to do and turns it into a corrupting servility to a wretched dogma.

What did America do to deserve these idiots?

Do we have to wait until he’s elected to impeach him? ‘Cause right now I’d like to see Huckabee kicked off the campaign trail and sent back to repeat grades 6-12.

Oh, I believe in science. I certainly do. In fact, what I believe in is, I believe in God. I don’t think there’s a conflict between the two. But if there’s going to be a conflict, science changes with every generation and with new discoveries and God doesn’t. So I’ll stick with God if the two are in conflict.

So when he’s faced with two claims, he’ll follow the one that ignores all the evidence and sticks to its guns in the face of all reason? We’ve already had one of those clowns in office, I don’t think we need another one.

In the annals of god-soaked sports hype…

Here’s an article that deserves a prize. It’s wall-to-wall praise-Jebus babble, giving the Lord of the Universe credit for getting the Colorado Rockies baseball team into the World Series—have a puke bucket handy if you actually try to read the whole thing.

“You look at some of the moves we made and didn’t make,” general manager Dan O’Dowd said in the only interview he has given on the subject, long before the Rockies’ remarkable ascension over the past few weeks. “You look at some of the games we’re winning. Those aren’t just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this.”

And that’s just one small piece of the story. The rest is trying to make a long argument that all of the improbabilities mean that the divine must have had a hand in elevating a local sports team to national recognition. It’s amazing. You would think a God would have slightly different priorities.

But then, I suspect I know the truth. The piety of the team and the fans don’t matter in the slightest. God is doing it to spite Andy.

No purposes but those we create for ourselves

Those sneaky rascals at the Templeton Foundation have asked one of those ridiculous questions that gets some otherwise rational people stumbling over themselves to give an inoffensive answer: does the universe have a purpose? Of course, the irrational people have no trouble piping up with a happy “Yes!”, which should clue everyone in, as Larry notes, that it’s a gimmick question designed to provoke a range of waffly answers … and waffles, especially the tepid, limp kind, are the stock-in-trade of the Templeton House of Waffles.

I’d say “no, there is no evidence of universal purpose and no reason to assume one,” and be done with it. Except, perhaps, to ask those who say “yes” to specify exactly what that purpose is, and how they know it.

Near as I can tell, the primary purposes of the universe as discerned from the casual expressions of religion’s proponents are 1) to bias victory in local football games, and 2) to regulate the appropriate orifices into which certain people are allowed to place their penises. How the creation of Betelgeuse, the concentration of planetary material in our solar system in one body which we can’t reach and which is uninhabitable to us, and the ubiquity and success of bacteria all play into these purposes is unknown to me … it must be one of God’s mysteries.

Time to skew another internet poll

Or in this case, perhaps, unskew one. Take a look at this poll that asks, Does Islam Oppress or Liberate Women? The leading answer so far is “Islam is generally liberating to women, freeing them from sexual pressures that exist elsewhere. “

Yeah, if by “liberating” you mean “compelling them to wear a bag over their head, not allowing them to drive or hold various public positions, and in some cases, gouging out chunks of their genitalia with a piece of broken glass.”

Morris Area High Schools … for Christ

Speaking of bad teaching and schools that screw up under community pressure, it looks like we have an ugly story here in Morris. Last week, the student at the Morris Area High School were released from classes (you know, those sessions where they are supposed to learn something) to listen to some motivational speaker babbling about healthy lifestyles and abstinence, and apparently telling them that Madonna was a lesbian, among other tidbits. I’ve only heard third-hand about the event itself — Skatje‘s still in touch with friends at the high school, but she didn’t actually attend herself — but now there’s an article in the local paper on it.

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More priests behaving badly

That conservative Christian who offed himself in an autoerotic embarrassment? That’s simply sad, and reflects poorly on a repressive culture. This story, of a Catholic priest who collaborated in kidnappings and torture, is just plain evil, and is something completely different.

Christian Von Wernich, 69, was chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force. He used this position to obtain confessions from prisoners, which he then passed on to police who tortured them at secret detention centers.

Von Wernich was convicted of complicity in seven murders, 31 cases of torture and 42 abductions in the Buenos Aires region; a mere smattering of the estimated 30,000 disappearances during the military junta’s countrywide purge of leftists.

And before everyone starts suspecting I think all religious people are repressed sexual obsessives or mass murderers, I’ll clarify: I don’t think these people are messed up because of religion. I think they’d be messed up if they were atheists, too. But what we can clearly see is that religion doesn’t help, and may in some cases make a problem worse. Religion, far from being a force for morality in the world, is a mask that promotes the appearance of normality while allow some truly wretched ideas to fester beneath.

The mask is crumbling, though, and at least more young people are seeing through the illusion.