ChaoSkeptic

Speaking of messed up Christian sex values...



I'm not sure where to even go with this trailer. It seems to be a good example of how Christians fetishize virginity and "purity". As someone in the YouTube comments noted, the guy is more excited about losing his virginity than the fact that he's going to be getting married. This kind of attitude is the cause of some very bad marriages. And it's proof that lack of sex will eventually cause mental disorders.

(Hat tip to Unreasonable Faith, the Friendly Atheist, and Blag Hag. Yes, it took three people posting it before I'd actually watch the trailer.)

Thanks to a suggestion by Jerry Coyne on his blog Why Evolution is True I've been reading Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer. (And by recently I mean over the last 3 months. I'm a notoriously slow reader when it comes to books.) It's a very interesting book in that it tackles religion from the perspective of anthropology while other books on the subject that I have read have used the routes of evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and lots and lots of sex.

Boyer does a good job of tying a lot of things together like why human inference systems like to create supernatural beings, why funerals and weddings are so important, why religions that are based on holy books are so different from "native" religions, and, definitely the most interesting to me, why coalitions are so important to society.

One of the most solid and famous findings of social psychology is that it is trivially easy to create strong feelings of group membership and solidarity between arbitrarily chosen group members. All it takes is to divide a set of participants and assign them to, say, the Blue group and the Red group. Once membership is clearly established, get them to perform some trivial task (any task will do) with members of their team. In a very short time, people are better disposed toward members of their group than toward the others.
- Pascal Boyer - Religion Explained

As someone who is about as social backwards as a slightly retarded chihuahua I've never given much thought to the types of coalitions that make up society. I've never been good at joining or forming coalitions, but more on that later. Coalitions are the glue that keeps any society together. Whether you know it or not you are currently in a coalition with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your local/state/national governments, and everyone else on this planet. In all of these coalitions you are expected to act a certain way at all times. Your family expects you to have their back, your friends expect you to talk to them every once in awhile, your neighbors expect you to not play your music too loud, your coworkers expect you to do your job on time, your government expects you to not violate someone else's rights, and everyone else expects you to not to go on a killing spree. It's a heavy burden but we all must share it together. Each coalition has its benefits and costs.

Where Discordianism comes into all of this, IMHO, is that Discordianism is very anti-coalitional. At least, it is anti artificial coalitional. What I meant by artificial coalitions are things like organized religions, political parties, schools of philosophy, cults of computer operating systems, etc. Coalitions not of the physical world but of the mental world.

Above an orange couch hung a huge oil painting in an elaborate gilt frame easily a foot deep on all sides. The painting was essentially a cartoon. It showed a man in robes with long, flowing white hair and beard standing on a mountaintop staring in astonishment at a wall of black rock. Above his head a fiery hand traced flaming letters with its index finger on the rock. The words it wrote were: THINK FOR YOURSELF, SCHMUCK!
- Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

One of the most important teachings of Discordianism is that your thoughts should always be your own. You should not adhere too closely to one ideology because there is always the possibility that it could be wrong. Always be ready to walk away from a bad idea. And don't apologize for someone else's ideas just because they happen to attach the sample label that you are currently using.

I think that is why Discordianism has always appealed to people who either cannot or do not want to form coalitions. Discordians are outsiders, by choice or by ineptitude. None of us have the overwhelming desire to belong to just one group. Yes, we use the same label but we always stick apart. We are liberals and libertarians. We are pagans and atheists. We are chaos magicians and staunch rationalists. We are pot heads and Straight Edgers. We are Macs and Linux and PCs. We are always ready to fight to the teeth about these ideas, but we are also ready to drop them like the bad habits they are. We are a non-coalition of fools ready to protect each other from the other coalitions.

Recent message broadcast on Bryan Fisher's radio program:

There's this odd collaboration between Discordians in America and Muslims. Discordians reject the Judeo-Christian tradition just like Islam does and that's where, I think, the linkage is. I mean, you look at Islam, they're going to behead homosexuals; Discordians want them coronated; we want them helped. So these are poles apart, so why is it that Discordians in America are so fond of and go to bat for Muslims all the time? It makes no sense in any kind of rational world.

But there isn't any rationality in Discordianism. It's not rational. It's not logical. It violates everything we know about history, everything we know about logic, everything we know about morality. All of those are violated by a Discordian worldview. So what is that they share in common? Well, I think what they share in common, the reason that they bond together, you know the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they both have in common one enemy: the Judeo-Christian system of values, the Judeo-Christian system of truth claims and values. They both hate the Judeo-Christian tradition with equal with equal passion and so that's what bonds them together.

And they hate America with equal passion. And they hate democracy. They hate freedom of speech, they hate freedom of association. So what Muslims and Discordians share together is this hatred of the United States, this hatred of classical American values, this hatred of the Judeo-Christian values system.

And the illustration of the way in which Muslims hate democracy just as much as "Erisians" do ... I'm not saying "as much" because Muslims are willing to go much further in their opposition to democracy than Discordians are. They'll try to shut you down, they'll try to engage in electoral fraud, they will try to use intimidation, they will try to use the courts, they will try to shout you down, but so far they haven't taken to killing people.

In America there are strange norms when it comes to sex. There is a constant shroud of silence when it comes to what goes on in bedrooms. Every church (and until recently even the government) constantly preached that sex is a dirty bad thing that should be saved for marriage. There is a supernatural mystique when it comes to virginity (especially for women). It is not considered a state of mind but as a physical thing that you can lose like a sock in the dryer. We even have Purity Balls where fathers and daughters worship her virginity like a fetish doll. We have to be the most sexually dysfunctional country in history.

And that's why I get a perverse thrill out of American sex studies. They have a way of ripping off the veil for everyone to see how we actually feel about sex and not just the company line we mouth when the children are around.

My favorite all time favorite study was released by the Guttmacher Institute in 2007. It was entitled "Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003". The title alone makes me giddy with excitement. The most important part of the study says this:

Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men.

That's right. All of us are horny hypocrites. It is almost a guarantee that every single abstinence-only educator and pontificating preacher had sex before they were married. (Hell, your grandparents most likely had sex before marriage. Wrap your head around that!) The same people saying that sex before marriage will leave you a sad husk that no one will love anymore and that you will get every single STD simultaneously did the horizontal mambo before marriage and turned out just fine.

This is one of the reasons I've been against abstinence only education for a long time. It's not just that is scientifically proven to not work and in many instances increases the number of teen pregnancies and STD rates. It is unrealistic model of how the world works. It's an outright lie. And if you lie to kids you'll have to face the D.A.R.E. effect where kids can no longer tell the truth from the propaganda and end up making bad decisions.


And I said all that to talk about a new study by Guttmacher that came out today called "Religion and Contraceptive Use". Another great title. The key findings of this study were:

• Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same among Catholic women (98%).

• Among sexually active women of all denominations who do not want to become pregnant, 69% are using a highly effective method (i.e., sterilization, the pill or another hormonal method, or the IUD).

• Some 68% of Catholic women use a highly effective method, compared with 73% of Mainline Protestants and 74% of Evangelicals.

• Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family planning; this is true even among Catholic women who attend church once a month or more.

The big things I want to point out are that 98% of Catholic women use contraception and only 2% use the "rhythm method". 98%! Try to wrap your head around that because I can't. For those not up on Roman Catholic dogma, contraception is considered a mortal sin. Pope Paul VI called it "seriously evil". The current pope, Benedict XV, said that handing out condoms "aggravates the problems" when it comes to AIDs.

And 98% of American Catholic women are collectively saying, "Fuck the motherfucking pope". They would rather risk the fate of their soul than be told how to control their bodies. To that I say, "You go, girl!" (Do people still say that?) But I also say, "Why the hell do you put up with this shit?" Obviously a bunch of old men in dresses who've (allegedly) never had sex shouldn't be giving other people marriage advice. People need to stand up and tell them to be more realistic.

Oh, that's right! Women aren't allowed to have leadership positions in the Catholic Church. Silly me. Maybe several centuries from now they'll change their minds about the whole thing. There might not be anyone left to care at that point.

Yeah, I'm being lazy and making my fifth post in a row with a video. I think this one is worth it though. It's the first part of a news special by British journalist Louis Theroux about the Westboro Baptist Church. WBC, of course, is the hyper-fundamentalist group run by Fred and Shirley Phelps that likes to picket places with signs that say "God Hates Fags". I'm torn about the group personally. I feel that they have a first amendment right to picket in public and hold up whatever hateful slogans that they want. (Their Supreme court case is touched on briefly in this program.) On the other hand, I feel that they are attention whores who are experts at trolling the media. They almost always draw counter-protests that are 10-100 times bigger than they are. If everyone ignored them they would eventually go away.

However this special does do a good job of humanizing them. For the most part Louis Theroux let's them speak their minds and occasionally probes them with questions. He disagrees with him but doesn't yell at them, which is what almost everyone else would be tempted to do. Most of the interviews are with the younger female members, and several female members that have left the group.

The eeriest part of the whole special is that I actually understood the Christianese that the members were using. While growing up I attended Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal churches. The fire-and-brimstone I heard back then isn't radically different from the stuff coming out of Shirley and her daughters' mouths. Yes, they are on the very very far end of the bell curve but they share more in common with your everyday fundamental, Sola Scriptura Calvinist than they do with me. (If you look very closely you will see a TULIP poster behind Fred while he is preaching.)

The thesis that Louis is trying to pull out of the special is that the WBC group is losing members because their religious beliefs are robbing them of their humanity. The girls are not able to date, the boys aren't allowed to have friends outside of the family, the parents aren't allowed to talk to their children once they are exiled from the church. Strangely none of them seem to be angry or intentionally hateful. Their language is toxic but never venomous. The memes of their religion have taken over their minds and they don't even realize what is coming out of their mouth anymore.

Even weirder is that the Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs effect does not seem to be in play here. I think Fred's beliefs were so out there to begin with that "cooling" them even further doesn't nothing at all.




I'll just embed part one and link to the rest:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I know I've been blogging about Facebook stuff too much lately, but this is too good not to share. Unless you are living under a rock, you already know about the situation over in Japan. Earthquake, tsunami, possible nuclear meltdown. Horrific stuff. "Pray for Japan" was a popular topic on both Twitter and Facebook this weekend. You can imagine how I feel about that. I posted "Prayer: the original slacktivism. Get off your knees and give to the Red Cross" to both Facebook and Twitter to get the word out that the Japanese people need food, shelter, and clothing more than they need prayer and empty platitudes. Got a pretty good response although I have no idea how many people took my advice.

About 24 hours after I posted that status on Facebook I got a notification text on my phone that one of the three preachers that I'm friends with had posted a response to my status. I was busy playing Wii bowling with my daughter so I just glance at it, see that it's a Bible verse and expect the worst. I didn't check my Facebook wall until several hours later because getting into a public theological debate in front of most of my friends and family is not exactly my idea of a fun time. When I finally did check it, I was pleasantly surprised:



Everything went better than expected. Sometimes it's good to remember that not all Christians are evil conservative bastards who ironically hate the poor and meek.

Sorry for the smudging in the picture, btw. I decided to share this with Reddit before I put it here. (Upboat if you love me.)

At any rate, go donate to the Red Cross RIGHT NOW. Give whatever you are capable of. You can even specify that your donates go towards Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. If you have a cell phone you can Text REDCROSS to 90999. If you don't have money then give blood. Every drop helps.

Jesus Camp is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing about a charismatic summer camp, where children spend their summers learning and practicing their "prophetic gifts" and being taught that they can "take back America for Christ." According to the distributor, it "doesn't come with any prepackaged point of view" and tries to be "an honest and impartial depiction of one faction of the evangelical Christian community".

The scary part is that every single thing in this movie is 100% true. As far as I know nothing was scripted. This is not a work of satire and there is not a hint of irony involved. The camp in this movie no longer exists but there are tens of thousands of people scattered throughout America that look, think, and act like this. I know, because I've met them before. This is what fundamentalist Christians actually believe. Hopefully you'll still be able to sleep at night after this.




Also: LOL, Ted Haggard!

For some reason both atheists and Discordians have been stereotyped as people who don't believe in anything. Atheists because people often confuse it with nihilism (thank Nietzsche for that). And Discordians because people often confuse it with absurdism (and Robert Anton Wilson was a big proponent of Model Agnosticism). I, however, am not afraid to admit that there are things that I believe in. And yes, some of the things that I believe in based on nothing more than optimistic faith that the world isn't a complete pile of shit. Some of the things that I currently believe in:

I believe that humans are simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to this planet. Us humans have made this tiny blue and green orb in the middle of a rather boring galaxy into a compelling story with a heavy underdog overcoming substantial odds to rise to the top of the heap. On the other hand there is a non-zero chance that we will destroy all life on this planet someday.

I also believe that as humans we are all that we have. There is no Superman, Spiderman or the Second Coming of Jesus to rescue us from ourselves. If we are to solve our problems we must rely on one another, quit our bitching and fix the goddamn problems. Then again, usually we are the problem in the first place. We can't get out of our own way because everyone wants what they want.

I believe that justice, purpose, beauty, good and evil do not exist outside of the human mind. But that doesn't mean that they aren't real.

Life will never be fair but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try with all of our might to tip the scales into the right direction. Never be afraid to overcompensate those who have been wronged.

We have to create our own purpose in life outside of breathing, eating, and reproducing. Do what you must to make the world a better place for those that come after you. Learn, laugh, love, cry. Connect with other people. Enjoy the people that you love. Torment the people that you hate.

There are no sins other than harming another. That's not always an easy thing to determine though. What hurts one may help another. There's never an easy answer. Choose as best you can and beg for forgiveness and empathy when it doesn't turn out like you hoped.

I believe that logic, empiricism, and rationality will also win out over metaphysical guesswork. As Tim Minchin said, "Throughout history every mystery EVER solved has turned out to be Not Magic." Wishful thinking and talking to the ceiling will make you feel better but at some point you are going to have to get off of your knees and do the hard work. Likewise, if you really care about knowing the truth then you must have enough courage for your ideas to be tested to the breaking point.

I believe that Chaos is the most powerful force in the universe. The ability to create Order from Disorder and Disorder from Order is the closest to magic we will ever have. Unexpected creation/destruction has an amazing effect of producing both horror and mirth at the same time. It can evoke joy and sadness, trust and disgust, fear and anger, surprise and anticipation all at the same time. And it will never be the same emotions between different people. Chaos needs us to tell the story. And no two stories are the same.

And most of all, I believe that I'll have another beer.

Current scientific evidence points to the universe forming out of the expansion of a Singularity around 13 billion years ago. After about 9 billion years of matter forming, galaxies forming, dying and then reforming, our tiny star was born. Out of the refuse left over from the Sun came our minuscule blue planet. Around 3 billion years ago complex organic compounds formed in the oceans. For the first 2 billion years or so those organic compounds reproduced like crazy forming more and more complex life forms. Eventually fish appeared, then amphibians crawled onto the beaches, then reptiles braved the continents.

At some point some of those reptiles developed fur to help keep themselves warm. Some of these mammals roamed the forests and learn how to climb through the trees. But then the trees were not good enough for them so they came back down to the ground and formed tribes to keep each other safe. These upright apes roamed the lands hunting down other animals until that wasn't good enough either. They settled down, built huts to live in, and started planting their own food rather than searching constantly for it. At some point they learned how to read, write, do math, harness electricity, and kill each other very effectively. It's all been down hill from there.

As for the purpose of all this, it doesn't exist outside of your mind. However we constantly want purpose to be there so we start making stuff up until the world makes sense again. Some stuff actually does make sense. Others don't because we just don't have enough information. A lot of times the made up stuff is more interesting and exciting than the real truth. But that some people's made up stuff is very different from other people's made up stuff. That is the main reason why we learned to kill each other so effectively...

I love Louis CK. I'm man enough in my sexuality to say that. He's easily my favorite stand up comedian right now. That's more than likely because I'm a balding, pudgy middle man with two kids. He has an amazing ability to capture the quiet desperation that most American men seems to shamble through these days. (Plus he's not afraid to get extremely dirty with his jokes.) I'm not quite ready to give him Discordian sainthood yet because he needs to do something amazing to reach that plateau.

Currently he has a hilarious show on FX simply called Louie. It's mostly clips of him doing stand up interspersed with scenes of him dealing with his family and wondering aimlessly around NYC. Brilliant stuff (especially the guest spots by Rickie Gervais as his asshole doctor). If you are in the US you can watch all 13 episodes on Hulu.

I'd especially like to call attention to episode #11: God. In it he flashes back to when he was a Catholic school kid. An evil nun brings in a creepy medical doctor to scare the hell (literally) out of the kids by going into gory detail about the horrors of crucifixion. I didn't go to a Catholic school but I went to enough Good Friday services as a kid to hear the exact same sermon as an impressionable youngster. The episode raises some interesting issues about how religion uses fear and guilt to convert children who don't know any better. There's also a very touching scene with his mother near the end that shows a good example of how skeptics should present religion to their own children. You can check the episode out here:



But if you are outside the US or are reading this post after the video expires then just enjoy this clip from when Louis was on the old Conan show.



Or this clip where he investigates the Catholic Church:



All clips NSFW, obviously.

"God wants goodness. God wants light. God wants mayhem. God wants a clean fight." Roger Waters

If God is omnipotent (and we are told by his followers that He most definitely is) then we have to assume that this is the universe that He wants to exist. What God wants, God gets. Therefore God wants pain, suffering, famine, death, disease, and war. If He wanted it any other way He'd just snap His fingers and make it all disappear. He must really love seeing humans in pain. (And don't give me that nonsense about God not wanting to interfere with our "free will". An omnipotent/omniscient being would find that problem trivial.)

The logical conclusion then is that God is a dick or He is not omnipotent (or both). Either way that is not an entity worth of worship. Better to stick with Eris instead. You know where you stand with Her. Yes, she is a heartless Bitch but you know She just does it out of boredom, not malice.

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with people? This whole "Ground Zero Mosque (that isn't really a mosque and isn't really at Ground Zero)" debate has turned people into mindless idiots. We used to be a country that believed in freedom, liberty and justice, right? Did we at some point not freak out when someone slightly different from us moved into the neighborhood? We used to believe in the Constitution, didn't we?

But now everyone has turned into a spineless jellyfish because a group of Muslims that are in no way associated with terrorism wants to build a community center within walking distance of Ground Zero. It wouldn't be so laughable if they didn't pick on the most liberal imam in America. This guy is literally the Muslim version of Rick Warren. He's been on several interfaith tours for the State Department preaching tolerance, for chrissake! (Yes, he basically says "no comment" when it comes to Hamas but he has the right to say that.) It's like telling Joel Osteen  that he can't build a church in Oklahoma City because the Christian Identity movement was behind the Murrah Building bombing.

Instead of treating this like a local zoning issue people in this country are shitting their drawers. They are willing to infringe on the rights of their fellow Americans because of fear. They are willing to strip away religious freedoms, free speech, property rights, the freedom of assembly, and even the concept of innocent until proven guilty. We have become a nation of easily manipulated cowards who run scared anytime an Arabic-looking man walks down the street. All over a fucking building that 99% of them will never be within 100 miles of.

All of this just proves that terror and fear still work, even 9 years after the fact. People are too easily swayed by emotionally charged language from cynical politics looking for a vote. We too easily are willing to give up our liberty in order to slay the scapegoat du jour. And above all, there is no way to have a rational political conversation in this country any more. Sixty percent of our population has given up their senses in order to feel a little safer at night.

ADDENDUM: And while we are at it, let's stop this foolish talk about "hallowed ground". No piece of land is sacred no matter what happened there 10, 50, 100 or 500 years ago. Land is land.

Believe it or not, despite many similarities in style the following quote IS NOT from Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's classic Discordian novel "The Illuminatus! Trilogy"

America, according to Frazier, LaHaye and many other leaders in the movement, is being ruled by evil, clandestine organizations that hide behind the veneer of liberal, democratic groups. These clandestine forces seek to destroy Christians. They spread their demonic, secular-humanist ideology through front groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Trilateral Commission and "the major TV networks, high-profile newspapers and news magazines," the U.S. State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), the United Nations, "the left wing of the Democratic Party," Harvard, Yale "and 2,000 other colleges and universities."

That quote is from the book "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges. And he is not talking about Mothers March Against Liberal Elite but Gary Frazier, head of Discovery Ministries, and Tim LaHaye, founder of the Council for National Policy and co-author of the Left Behind series which has sold over 65 million (!!!) copies.

This is what has happened to the world, people. We can't even write good parody anymore because reality has become too absurd. Poe's Law has rendered satire completely meaningless. I mean, if you were attempting to write a scathing spoof of modern right wing paranoia you wouldn't include  the Trilateral Commission and every single college in the United States. That would be too far out and no one would believe it. But modern conservative Christian leaders just blow right past that point without batting an eye. And somehow these people have political power. Welcome to the 21st century!

If you've been following me long enough then surely you remember my post on ignosticism, the belief system that says that the term God is meaningless. Personally, I don't think that I did the concept justice but I was young at the time and felt that the idea needed to be out there so others can know about it (plus it got me featured in the Skeptics' Circle so it wasn't all bad.

I wanted to revisit the idea because it occurred to me that it's not just the term "God" that is meaningless but there are many other theological terms that are equally nonsensical or under-defined.

Take for instance "heaven" and "hell". I believe that the current definitions for the two are "spending eternity in God's presence" and "spending eternity separated from God" respectively. (YMMV, since some have an idea of heaven that includes pearly gates, fluffy clouds, and streets of gold while hell is either fire and brimstone or a cold grave.) Notice that both of definition are dependent on the concept of God, which we've already said is undefined.

Another fuzzy term is "sin". Sin is typically considered "an action or thought that goes against God's Will". But how can we know what is God's will if we don't even know who he is? At this point we are all just guessing about what he wants.

To give you an example of the effect all of these ill-defined terms have on theology discussions I will take a paragraph that I was recently able to provoke over at Yahoo Answers. God is now "Lof". Heaven is now "Nevel". Hell is now "Nimm". Sin is now "wub".

Nimm is a place of eternal separation from Lof, and people go there when they die because they chose to separate themselves from Lof while living on earth. Lof created us with a free will to make our own choices and separating ourselves from Lof is one of the choices we are free to make. Our free will is a wonderful gift from Lof in that he does not force us to love Him or to follow him. With out our free will, we would be nothing but puppets or robots, which does not please Lof, and certainly does nothing to better our lives. While Lof desires that everyone would choose to love him, many people will choose not to. These people will die in their wubs and be separated from Lof forever in hell. Man from the beginning has Lof’s law written in his heart, and has the power to obey it, and yet was capable of disobeying, being left to the freedom of his own will. Man was created with holy character prompting him to holy actions; but man was fallible, and did fall from his integrity. Many would say that this is unfair, and that a loving Lof would never set up a system such as this; it is precisely God’s love for us, and the fact that He is perfectly just, that tells why nimm exists, and why men and women will choose to go there. Lof loves us so much that He respects our freedom of choice. If we choose not to love Him, then why would He want us to live with Him eternally in Nevel? Wouldn’t living for eternity with someone we don’t love be a kind of nimm any way? Lof wants to spare those people who don’t love Him from having to live with Him and be under His rule for eternity.

Clear as mud, isn't it? I don't know how that could possibly make sense no matter what words you put in the place of God or hell. Add to it all of the mental wankery that is "free will" and that paragraph isn't even worth reading. This is why I see most of theology a waste of time. It's nonsense talk to give comfort to the ignorant masses.

I'll leave you with a real definition provided by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary:

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

I assume that most of you are already aware of the big to-do earlier this year about Comedy Central censoring an episode of South Park that featured the Super Best Friends, in particular Muhammad. As a form of protest today has officially been declared Everybody Draw Muhammmed Day. Of course as with any major project like this has it's own Facebook Group. Or if you want a real laugh go over the counter protest group called "We Stand Against Draw Muhammad Day" which has this paragraph in it's information section:

We all unite against draw Muhammad day, This sickens us to see the so called civilized nation acting in this barbaric manner !
HATRED IS NOT FREEDOM OF SPEECH !

First off which is more barbaric: drawing a cartoon of a long dead "prophet" or attempting to hurt or kill someone for drawing that picture? Secondly, yes hatred is freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you just allow speech you agree with. It means that you have to put up with letting assholes have their say because at any time you might be one of those assholes. And freedom of speech means that you definitely DON'T have the right to never be offended. In fact, it guarantees my right to be as offensive as possible safe in the knowledge that the government cannot punish me (unless I stray into libel/slander territory).

Personally, I am a horrible artist. I was just going to put up a stick figure drawing with the caption "This may or may not be the prophet Muhammad" but I'm sure someone has already done that. Instead, I was inspired by the always great YouTubers AronRa who repurposed a drawing of Subgenius figurehead J.R. "Bob" Dobbs into a picture of Muhammad and ZOMGitsCriss who said that she was, in fact, the prophet Muhammad. I'm not nearly that talented so I found a better picture and added my own caption.


Tip of the photoshop brush to Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta who has a huge compilation of Muhammad pictures.

You'll be excused for not noticing but the other day one of my very very old posts was hit up by a drive-by troll. In my award-winning post about Questions that Creationists Can't Answer the anonymous coward posted the following:

look up radioactive halos at halos.com
think about this:
if creationism is wrong and the bible is wrong than are we any worse for beliveing it? but what if it's right? than you have a lot to worry about. better safe than sorry!

The first part isn't even worth answering. If you want to know about the creationist claim that polonium halos somehow prove that the earth is young there is an excellent article about it on TalkOrigins.

As for the rest of that post, if you've studied theology for longer than five minutes you would recognize it as a creationist version of Pascal's Wager. The wager can be summed up as follows:

If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing , whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything. But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing, whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything.

Obviously there are many things wrong with this. The first is the assumption that believing in God means you lose nothing. Then there is the assumption that God will reward you solely on your beliefs and not your actions (and not punish you for you simply hedging your bets). And there is the assumption that the Christian God is the correct one and not the millions of other gods and goddesses that have been worshiped since mankind first bowed to the sun.

Therefore, I have taken to come up with some new wager's of my own.

Cthulu's Wager: The god that exists may be the most malevolent being possible so it is best to worship Cthulu and hope that He eats you first instead of torturing you for eternity.

Dawkin's Wager: It is better to lack belief and do good on earth then hope that whichever god is up there rewards works and intellectual curiosity over mere belief.

Eris's Wager: All of the gods and goddesses might actually exist so it is best to worship as many as you can before you die in order that one might favor you enough to give you a VIP pass to the afterlife.

F.D.R. Stuart claimed that the purpose of POE was to accelerate the dialectical process of evolution toward the classless society where all would live in peace, prosperity, and socialist solidarity, and there would be no cops.

The real purpose of Stuart's activities was to get even. - Schrödinger's Cat


In case you hadn't heard, over the weekend the Episcopal Church ordained their second openly gay bishop. This time a lesbian reverend canon from the Diocese of Los Angles. As you can imagine this has created quite a stir in the church and will likely cause a major schism much like the issue of slavery did in the 1850s. That's not really what I wanted to talk about right now though. Interdoctrinal issues has never been my thing especially since I'm never even stepped foot in an Episcopalian church.

I find the Episcopalians' acceptance of homosexuals to be very progressive and open-minded and should be commended even if we do disagree on many many other points. It does bring up the question of how the world would be different if all other denominations were as friendly to gay people. I thought it such an interesting topic that I posed the question to the one online forum where I thought I would get the best possible answer: Yahoo Answers.

Yes, I know what you are going to say. Yahoo Answers is one of the dumbest places on the internet. It has successfully proven wrong the hypothesis of the Wisdom of Crowds over and over again and is more known for people asking "how is babby formed" and needing to "do way instain mother". It's not exactly the highest form of conversation over there. Half of the people are trolls and the other half you wish were trolls. But still, I have an obsession with the Religion and Spirituality section. In practice, it is just a bunch of people yelling at each other over their beliefs. The fast paced style appeals to me though which is why I'm a level 6 with over 14,000 points. (Yes, I really do need a life).

So, in order to see what the general feeling was about this topic I asked the simple question:

Would there be less atheists if Christianity was more accepting of homosexuals?

(I like to keep my question on YA as simple and straightforward as possible. Adding details is usually worthless and, I'll be honest, you get funnier answers from the idiots that are not smart enough to understand the question.)

It must have touched a nerve because I was able to get more than 30 answers on an otherwise slow Sunday afternoon. Many of them fell into the following categories: God doesn't change (LOL!) so we should keep on hating the gays, most people are atheists for other reasons than how Christians treat gays or WHARRGARBL. (That last one is typical of any question asked on YA).

The one who earned my Best Answer was Kevin B. since he was the only one who seemed to understand what I was getting at:

There may be more Christians, but I doubt it would convert many atheists. A Church not acceptiong (sic) homosexuals leads you to leave that Church, not change your belief in God.

If every single church in the world suddenly decided that they were going to cut the crap, stop calling homosexuality an abomination and finally give all homosexuals equal rights I don't expect any atheists to automagically convert back to Christianity. It just doesn't work that way.

However, it is more interesting to wonder how many people would have never left Christianity in the first place. For many people the treatment of gay people was the last straw (or one of the many straws) that finally broke the camels back. There are large numbers of people who were Christian and either gay or were close friends of a gay person who was made to feel an outcast for not thinking that love was a sin. There are similar controversies like that that have driven people out of their churches. For me it was creationism. For others it is the overwhelming politicization over the last several decades. For still others it is the oppression of woman that has been preached from the very beginning of Christianity. For some it was just a personal slight by another church member that drove them over the top.

But if you notice in each one of those issues it wasn't theology or reason that made them abandon their faith. Many current atheists who were raised Christian made an emotional decision to stop believing in God and then rationalized their way backwards. (It doesn't help that Christianity is unable to answer many basic questions.) Most people need that catalyst to break the spell religion has put them under.

Because, let's face it, humans suck at making rational choices. We often pick our religious and political beliefs in a reactive rather than proactive way. We believe one thing over another because FUCK THOSE OTHER GUYS! I'll cop to it. A long time ago I was added to the daily e-mail list of OneNewNow, the propaganda arm of the American Family Association. Very right wing and very very religious. I automatically assume that any story being reported by them is wrong and has at least one lie by omission. Why do I do that? Because FUCK THOSE GUYS. Granted, this method has actually worked 90% of the time but that doesn't mean it is right for me to be so biased.

So, what does this mean for us? First off, it means that we probably shouldn't try to rationalize people out of being religious. As the old saying goes, "You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into." I know that it's considered dirty and underhanded to use appeals to emotion in a debate but 1) they started it and 2) it actually works. Secondly, we should be more introspective and check our emotions at the door. Being your own Devil's Advocate is a very handy mindfuck. Don't be afraid to question your beliefs at all times. Don't let anger and spite cloud your judgment.


(One last thing: Yes, I realize that most of this post doesn't address people who weren't raised as religious and weren't exposed to faith at an impressionable age. And yes, there are people that are smart enough to rationalize their way out of religion. You are probably one of them. Also, you smell nice. Is that a new cologne?)

The National Day of Prayer is a very unusual holiday here in the United States. Its origins (like that of "In God We Trust" on our money and "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance) can be directly traced back to the heyday of the 1950s where everyone was screaming, "At least we aren't like those damn godless Commies!" It's weird in the fact that almost no one actually goes out of their way to celebrate it. A bunch of fundies swarm DC looking to glad-hand some VIPs, beg for money and twist some arms to get Congress to pass a non-binding resolution saying how much the Founding Fathers loved Baby Jesus. For everyone else it is just another Thursday in May (except for me since it occasionally falls on my birthday). I agree with the Freedom from Religion Foundation that it is unconstitutional and is a massive waste of time.

Now, what I would really love to see is Congress declare one day a "National Day of No Prayer". I want them to pass a non-binding resolution telling people to not pray for exactly one day. Just to see what would happen. I know that most people would ignore because, hey, it's freaking Congress. The fundies would go absolutely apeshit but no one pays attention to them either. At any rate, I'm dying to know how people would react if they didn't have the crutch of talking to their imaginary super friend for a little bit. Would they end up huddled in a corner by noontime? Or would they finally get off of their knees and do everything that they were expecting God to do for them?

Nah, I'm not that pollyannaish enough to believe it would work like that. Prayer is one of the single best examples of the Law of Fives. The prayer gets a positive answer: God answered our prayers! The prayer gets a negative answer: It's all a part of God's Plan. The prayer gets no answer at all: God wants us to wait. As always God gets all of the credit and none of the blame. Nice racket He's got going there. He doesn't even have to lift a finger. You might as well be praying to a jug of milk.

So, I know that a National Day of No Prayer would accomplish nothing, much like the National Day of Prayer does right now. It'd be nice to see people use some critical thinking about it for once though. Or at the very least did a day's worth charity instead of sitting in a stuffy church all day.

The wonderful Tim Minchin just released a nice tribute to everyone's least favorite pope, Benedict XVI. Yeah, the guy who thinks he is the only pope. Everybody sing along!



Tip of the papal mitre to Attempts at Rational Behavior, Pharyngula, Skepchick and basically every other skeptical blog on the web. Yeah, I'm late, as usual.

Ok, now that I have your attention... Hopefully you've been following the craziness over at Jen McCreight's Blag Hag. If not, here is a quick rundown. Last week a crazed Iranian cleric made the mistake of making a supernatural claim that could be tested. He said, "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes." That's right, cleavage causes earthquakes. Well, he didn't mean the cleavage that occurs between rock formations but the cleavage in a woman's bossom. (Sidenote: The term penetrative cleavage proves that all geologists are massive pervs). Jen, being the science minded person that she is, decided to put it to the test:

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

So, who's with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If you'll be joining me on twitter, use the tag #boobquake! Or join the facebook event!

Since then tremors have passed through the internet. Going through my Google Reader I see that it has been mentioned by Skepchick, Pharyngula, Unreasonable Faith, Friendly Atheist, and ERV. She's already been covered by Rev. Barry Lynn, CNN, Mashable, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and even the New Zealand Herald. On top of that she has a completely full schedule of interviews set up during the event tomorrow (including every single Indiana based news station).

Jen has managed to set forth a skeptical quake that has reached around the globe several times over. How the hell did she do it? No one really knows. Hemant over at Friendly Atheist has several ideas as to why (pithy name, good time line, humor, youth, BOOBS!) but in the long run no one really knows why these things happen. The media is so fickle that you never know what pick up its attention. As skeptics we have to just keep hammering away until something clicks. And when your name is called all you can do is ride that dragon out until the bitter end.

And showing a bit of cleavage along the way probably doesn't hurt either.

(Make sure to follow Jen on Twitter and watch the hashtag #boobquake for updates during the day)