Atheist Realm Blog
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No matter how hard you hope it will just stop and go away you just cannot seem to escape the fact that Christians care about no one but themselves and will hurt anyone, especially children for their own selfish agendas. And in Haiti – of all places! I really thought that perhaps most religious organizations would put aside petty self interests and provide some much needed relief to the people of Haiti after their devastating earthquake. You know, forget the religious stuff, let’s just be good people and help. But then, we get this. A group of ten American Baptist missionaries have been detained for attempting to kidnap 33 children and smuggle them into the Dominican Republic. Not much is functioning in Haiti, but fortunately the border police are. The alleged kidnappers have stated that they meant no harm and were only trying to do God’s will. Let’s see, God’s will by rescuing orphans by inculcating them into their Christian sect and stealing them away. I guess they figured in all of the confusion no one would miss a few (33) children. Some of the children do, in fact, have parents and are not orphaned as the kidnappers claim. As of this morning the missionaries have not been formally charged and the children have been temporarily placed in a Haitian orphanage just outside of the capital city. The missionaries’ Baptist pastor in Idaho has said that they went down to Haiti to help and not to kidnap. We’ll it looks like they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. You want to help? Send money to organizations that provide food, water, and medical care. If you are a trained health care professional, then go down and treat the sick. If you are nothing but an ignorant, arrogant Christian missionary who is only capable of proselytizing – stay the hell away! Haiti does not need you type of help. These missionaries are Americans. Stupid acts like this reflect poorly on our entire nation. At a time when the entire world is watching relief efforts in this most unfortunate country, we get American Christian zealots blatantly trying to steal children. In the event that the missionaries did get consent from parents to take their children, they still failed to do it properly. Their covert act is one typical of religious organizations. In the guise of offering a better life elsewhere, the religious will deceive naïve parents and convince them to abandon their children without realizing they will be converted into mindless religious Christbots. If the missionaries are found guilty, they should be punished to the full extent of Haitian law rather than deported where they will most likely go free. The saddest thing is that these people probably truly believe that they did no wrong. Once again religion has blinded people into acting irresponsibly with the outcome of hurting the innocent. I should have known better. A religious organization that actually does something unselfishly to help people – not in this world. Dec
06
2009
Catholic Church Should Be Held Accountable![]() The UK groups the Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers, along with several others, are paying out over €500m (over $750,000,000.00 USD) in cash and property to compensate those that were sexually abused as children in their schools. The money will also be used to pay for counseling and other medical expenses. What gets me is that today, in the Twenty-First Century; we are still allowing children to be abused. These nuns, priests, and other religious people are criminals. Proportionally the Catholic Church probably has one of the largest numbers of pedophiles, rapists, sadists, of any organized group in the world. The Catholic Church is also one of the wealthiest organizations in the world too. So, like they always do, they just buy their way out of trouble. How much longer are going to allow this vile institution to continue to physically and mentally harm our children? Enough already! If you commit the crime, do the time. Let’s start putting these perverts and child molesters in jail where they belong. How about world governments taking a stand for human rights and censuring the Catholic Church? Any other organization that committed these atrocities would be dissolved and its leaders incarcerated. The Pope in jail with the rest of his perverted sadists; we can only wish. So, the Vatican is having an unprecedented big conference on what to do if extra-terrestrial life is discovered. To some, this may seem like a shock – but it shouldn’t. The Catholic Church, unlike the wacked-out Protestant Evangelicals in the United States, has recently at least made an attempt to embrace some scientific realities. The Catholic Church’s official stance is that it accepts both Evolutionary Theory and the Big Bang. However, it maintains that the Christian god is the driving force behind them both. But extra-terrestrial aliens! The truth is this is really an important issue for the Catholic Church – and religion, in general. A much bigger issue than most religious people are openly willing to admit. Over the past decade there have been hundreds of extrasolar planets discovered (at least 400 as of this writing). Most of these are really large Jupiter size or larger and orbit their respective stars at a close distance that would preclude any form of life emerging. But that is changing very fast. New telescopes and technology are going to make it possible to detect Earth sized planets very soon. It is only a matter of time before organic molecules are discovered elsewhere. And then, perhaps, the possibility of discovering alien life begins to increase. If we should one day actually discover intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, what happens to God? Most likely the Catholic will try and adapt the idea of other intelligent life forms into their church dogma somehow.
But the Bible states that God created us in His image. What if the aliens don’t look like us? What if the aliens don’t have a belief in Jesus – or any god for that matter? What if they believe in another completely different god or gods? The point is, Christianity can equivocate all it wants, but the whole concept of a supreme being that created humans in His own image goes right out the window. What the Vatican is really doing is try to get a jump on a potential problem and save its sorry ass. To date, the Catholic Church is dying. All current surveys show the Church’s numbers have been declining faster than any other religious group. Galileo dealt the first crucial blow when he eliminated our “special, privileged place” in the universe. Darwin followed with the death blow by providing the explanation as to how we were actually created. The Church has been reeling ever since. Beginning at the end of the Dark Ages, when religion still maintained that virtually every phenomenon in the universe was a divine act, science has replaced all of that dogma with cold hard non-religious facts. Knowledge replaced ignorance. Can religion still find a home in a scientific future devoid of fantasy and superstition? Unlike others who make the claim that science and religion have “non-overlapping magisteria,” as first proposed by biologist Stephen J. Gould, I completely disagree. Religion has No magisteria period! There is no venue at all that religion is sufficient or necessary for. Today, even intangible emotions like love and hate can easily be explained by secretions of various chemicals in the brain. These facts can be demonstrated and replicated at will. There are very few things that religion can contribute to society other than the ignorance and hatred it breeds. Whereas I applaud the Catholic Church for at least making a feeble attempt at trying to redeem itself for crimes of keeping knowledge locked up for centuries – so what? The Church’s days are numbered and their alien convention will conclude nothing other than they were wrong; again. If intelligent extra-terrestrial life should ever be discovered it would not surprise me if they concluded that Jesus was really an alien. Then they could claim they were worshipping the aliens all along. In USA Today’s Faith and Reason (faith yes, reason hardly) column, journalist Cathy Lynn Grossman pokes fun at the Atheist Alliance International National Convention – and atheism and freethought in general. In addition to her own failed attempt at reason, Grossman quotes from Rice University’s Anthony Pinn who makes several false claims and ridiculous statements. Using someone like Pinn as a source illustrates Grossman’s ignorance of a subject she claims to be qualified to comment on. Grossman compares Oxford Evolutionary Biologist Professor Richard Dawkins to singer Mick Jager and award winning Journalist Christopher Hitchens to guitar player Keith Richards both from the English rock band the Rolling Stones. Her point is to show that scientists, intellectuals, etc are no more than performers. Besides her silly and immature analogy, she misses her mark completely. Perhaps if Grossman would have not made fun of the convention and its participants and tried to form some intelligent criticisms, I might not be so disgusted with her unfounded attacks. As Grossman points out, Pinn calls himself a humanist. But there are religious humanists and Secular Humanists – the latter calling for holding religion accountable for all of the superstition and dogma that they proliferate as part of their existence. Pimm supports religious dogma and states,
In the above statement, the word “making” should be replaced with “making up.” Theism invents fictions and has absolutely no claim on reality. Grossman also paraphrases Pinn as saying “…religion is never going away.” Oh yes it is. All recent religious surveys confirm that it is declining everywhere and the ranks of non-believers are growing in staggering proportions. The biggest joke is the closing question that Grossman asks,
None. Atheism is not just the absence of god, but the intolerance for harmful and hurtful superstitions and dogmas which cripple societies. Secular Humanism is about removing the harmful and hurtful influences of religion and replacing them with universally recognized humane and ethical worldviews. How can any religious person even understand moral commitments when most religions label actions like murder, rape, incest and just about every immoral act conceivable as acceptable? The horrific god of the Old Testament is brilliant at devising ways to torture people for his own perverted amusement. His devotees have always followed that example with like actions. Where there is a malicious god and subservient followers, there can not be any moral behavior. Until theists can stop burning children alive (see earlier post), stop hijacking airplanes and bombing subway stations, stop lying to people about made up mythical afterlives, and start treating all people with the respect and kindness they deserve, there will be no “shared ethical” endeavors. Grossman needs to remove the word “Reason” from the title of her column. She obviously does not understand the meaning of it. Oct
21
2009
Amazon.com Screws Up; Promotes Creationism![]() Amazon.com screwed up! They have mixed the reviews from the bastardised Ray Comfort 150 Anniversary Edition of Origin of Species (see earlier post) with the actual 150th Anniversary Edition of Origin of Species. So, when people leave negative reviews for the Ray Comfort version, it also shows up on the “real” version as well. When you leave positive reviews for the actual Origin of Species it shows up on the Ray Comfort version too. I started a discussion yesterday on each book explaining this on the Amazon.com website and sent an email to them. Amazon.com did try to fix this last night, but it is messed up again today. What is worse, is the that when you do a search Origin of Species, the Ray Comfort version comes up first. The actual 150 Anniversary Edition does not even come up at all! I need everyone to send an email to Amazon.com customer service and complain. Do NOT leave a review – either positive or negative because it will go to both books. The more reviews that are left, the worse the problem gets. You see, both books have the exact same title and the same author (Darwin). You would think that Amazon.com would sort the books by their ISBN numbers rather than the titles, but apparently they are not that smart. If you feel you must leave a review, make sure you clarify which book you are leaving it for. The Ray Comfort “fake” Origin of Species is ISBN-13: 978-0882709192 The “real” Origin of Species is ISBN-13: 978-0451529060 Perhaps Comfort and Cameron planned this all along. Their own website goes to great lengths explaining how it is their plan to get their version of Origin of Species into as many schools as possible. Tricking people is the only way these slime-balls could ever get anyone to buy their drivel. This needs to be fixed now. If Amazon.com gets overwhelmed with complaints perhaps they will try in earnest to fix it. Below is a link to Amazon’s customer service page. Murdering and torturing innocent children is nothing new to Christianity. Pope Innocent the IV encouraged it over 700 years ago. Thomas Aquinas later justified it by claiming that evil (heresy) must be destroyed in the name of Christ and condoned all of the murders during the Medieval Inquisition. Today that message is apparently being resurrected in Africa. In cowardly acts that would do Christian mass-murders like Thomas Aquinas proud, pastors in Nigeria have murdered some one thousand children and tortured many more for allegedly being witches. Evangelical Christianity is on the rise in Africa in general. And many evangelical pastors are preaching that children are witches and must be exorcised or brutally murdered. At least 15,000 children have been targeted in Nigeria alone. Fortunately the United Nations Children’s Fund and others are making these facts known. Murdering innocent children is wrong period. But, murdering them for Christianity is just more proof of the horrors of religion. Let’s see, defame the profit (Mohammad) and Islam demands your head. Allow yourself to be called a witch and Christianity will burn you alive. Islam is a peaceful religion; aspire to be a good Christian. Somehow it just doesn’t sound right, does it? Click the link below to read a Los Angels Times report on the subject. Churches involved in torture, murder of thousands of African children denounced as witches Sep
22
2009
Creationists Re-Write Origin of Species!![]() Creationist nut-job Kirk Cameron is promoting a 150Th Anniversary Edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Say what? You heard me. Actually, fellow whacked-out, scientifically challenged creation-mate Ray (Banana Boy) Comfort has published the new book. However, this is one version you do not what to read. The new book has a 50 page introduction by Comfort that basically says evolution is a lie. It goes on to talk about how evolution is responsible for Hitler’s actions and everything else that is bad in the world. I have not read the book yet, but I have been told that the actual text has been edited by the creationists, as well. Here is a link to the introduction. On November 24, they will be giving away 1000 copies for free at the University of California Berkley. They are hoping that Christian groups will buy them (.99 in bulk) and distribute them. Here is a link to their webpage. There have already been calls to go out and purchase as many copies as possible and remove the first 50 pages. However, with the rest of the book in question, and the fact that we don’t want to give them any money, I would advise against this. Besides, they legally have the right to publish anything they want – the copyright has long expired. What we need to do is inform everyone we know that this book represents a dishonest and duplicitous attempt to corrupt science and promote creationism. Evolution has destroyed outdated and ludicrous unfounded ideas like creationism, so the only thing for the creationists to do is to try and distort evolution. Do NOT let them get away with this. This is a deliberate attempt to sneak creationism into schools. Tell everyone you know! Watch the video and cringe: Sep
15
2009
Humanist Author Under Attack By Catholics – Again![]() Award winning English author Philip Pullman is once again under attack by the Catholic Church. Pullman, a supporter of the British Humanist Association and the author of the engaging children’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, was viciously attacked by the Catholic Church when the first book of the trilogy, The Northern Lights, was made into a movie and released in the United States under the title The Golden Compass. The movie did not fair well in the United States because of the relentless bashing and boycotting from Catholics. Now, Pullman’s newest book, which is scheduled for release early next year and titled The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, is already taking heat from the Catholic Church. Pullman’s newest book posits the idea that Paul (Saul of Tarsus) created much of the myth of Christ. Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, David McGough, has been very vocal and released the following statement:
Pullman States:
Even though the Catholic Church pretends not to know much of their own history, most honest biblical scholars would agree that Paul basically invented Christianity. I don’t know what an “Auxiliary Bishop” is – perhaps a spare that isn’t very bright? But it is apparent that McGough is very much out of touch with the history of his own cult. There most definitely needs to be more books written on the true origins of Christianity. Pullman’s publisher defends the book properly as a work that needs to be read:
Philip Pullman is a literary genius. He has provided tales of hope and joy for millions of readers the world over. It is horrible that here the United States free expression – especially good literature, is allowed to be subverted by an ignorant majority. Try explaining to a young child that one their favorite movies is not going to have a sequel and they will be kept hanging because foolish people protested the movie so much that it did not make enough money to justify making a sequel. I’ve explained to my seven-year-old daughter that she will never get to see a sequel to The Golden Compass because in the real world there is an evil entity just like Pullman’s Magisterium that has the power to prevent people from expressing themselves and living their lives to the fullest. It is called the Catholic Church. Another year has passed since the tragic events which launched the United States in its current “war on Islam.” Once again people will gather together and pray. They will pray for peace to a god that was responsible for the pain, suffering and death they are remembering. Unfortunately most will not head the call of reason and take the correct action – abolish their god to the realm of bad memories. Below is the post I published last year at this time. I don’t see anything to indicate that the national sentiment has changed so I feel it is still just as relevant today as it was a year ago. Remembering 9/11 – Without the Prayer Please
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