Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Russian army introduces the flying Orthodox - Not a Joke
Church-in-a-box … A Russian military Orthodox chapel. Photographs: Russian Airborne Force
The Russian military unveiled an unlikely new weapon in its arsenal this month – an army of parachuting priests. The unit of chaplains, who have joined the Russian Airborne Force to train in parachute jumping and vehicle assembly, will operate out of flatpack churches that can be airlifted in to wherever soldiers may be stationed.
The church could be mistaken for a standard-issue army cabin, taking the form of a khaki-coloured shed on wheels, were it not for the cladding of gilded icons and the majestic onion dome spire sprouting from its rooftop. The mobile prayer room has also been fitted with a “life-sustaining module”, which includes a diesel power source, an air-conditioning unit and a fridge, reported Russia Today.
The chapel is flown in as a kit of parts, delivered via the kind of airborne platform usually used to carry armoured vehicles and other heavy military equipment, and is then assembled on the ground. Within, the gilded interior incorporates crucifixes, bells and icons, as well as a mini theatre – which can be extended sideways with additional wings, thus forming the cross-shaped plan of an Orthodox church.
The initiative has not gone without controversy in the Russian government, where debate rages over the cost of rearmament and rising military spending.
While the Russian army insists this is the first ever flying chapel in the world, Orthodox Christianity is not the first to bring mobile worship to the battlefield. The Israeli Defense Force launched a mobile synagogue initiative in 2011 to allow troops to pray more comfortably as they operate the Iron Dome anti-missile system in southern Israel. The UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers (UKAWIS)has provided such mobile synagogues – which contain an ark, reader’s platform and washbasin – as “a source of spiritual sustenance [for the soldiers] as they carry the weight of Israel’s security on their shoulders”.
In the US, religious spaces have been mobile for some time, with organisations such as Transport for Christ spreading the gospel through the medium of the truck. Its mobile chapels, which are housed in articulated lorries clad in bright decals, are parked at “strategic truck stops” to “lead truck drivers as well as the trucking community to Jesus Christ”. They have yet to be deployed to the front line – as a lighter option, perhaps the US Army could try the inflatable church?
Russian army introduces the flying Orthodox - Not a Joke
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
[video] Mr Bean - Asleep in Church
Mr Bean goes to church. Unfortunately he doesn’t know the words to the hymns, sneezes loudly and falls asleep out of boredom, much to the annoyance of Mr. Sprout (Richard Briers) who is sitting next to him. From the first ever Mr Bean programme.
[/tube]bh__g-ZZ6WA[/tube]
[video] Mr Bean - Asleep in Church
Care about earth
I wish more people cared about Earth as much as they cared about who they believe created it
Care about earth
David Attenborough
They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in East Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.
(Responding to religious viewers who criticize him for not crediting God in his nature episodes)
David Attenborough
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Use head or Tail
Atheism and Religion are but two sides of the same coin
One prefers to use the head while the Other relies on tales
Use head or Tail
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Jail for Catholic priest who sexually abused teenage girl
A Roman Catholic priest who sexually abused a 17-year-old girl in his church had damaged her faith in God and divided a community with his lies, a judge said as he jailed him.
William Finnegan, 60, known as “Father Bill” to his parishioners, was imprisoned for six months when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court yesterday afternoon.
Finnegan was parish priest at St Clare’s RC Church, Fagley, Bradford, when he told the girl he loved her, grabbed her bottom and kissed her passionately on the lips in the church on Easter Sunday last year.
He denied sexual assault, forcing the teenager and her mother to give evidence at his trial.
Finnegan also revealed in court that he had broken his vows of celibacy by secretly marrying Beverley Dawson, a former parishioner, in 1999.
Finnegan, wearing a smart dark suit and patterned tie, showed no emotion as he was led to the cells to begin his sentence yesterday.
His victim and her family were in court and extra seats had to be brought in to find room for members of the church congregation there to support Finnegan.
His barrister, Jeremy Hill-Baker, handed the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, a sheaf of letters and testimonials from past and present parishioners.
He also said Finnegan had made a determined attempt to kill himself with liquid morphine and whisky.
“After decades of exemplary ministry, materially helping the community in which he lived and worked, his ministry is over and his reputation is in ruins,” Mr Hill-Baker said.
Judge Thomas said Finnegan, who was ordained in 1977, had given real and beneficial religious and pastoral support to many parishioners over the years.
But he described the sexual assault as “a very considerable fall from grace”.
Afterwards, Finnegan had also tried to buy the girl’s silence by promising her “a good birthday present”, the jury had heard at his trial.
In a victim impact statement to the court considered by Judge Thomas, the girl said of Finnegan: “He put me through a trial and I had to give evidence. Why did he do that when he is supposed to be a man of God?”
Judge Thomas said Finnegan had committed an enormous breach of trust, undermining not only his victim’s physical well being but also her religious faith and that of her family.
“You’ve also caused real damage to the wider church community, particularly perhaps the Catholic Church, and at a time when such churches can ill afford such damage,” he told him.
Because Finnegan would still not admit his guilt, many people believed he was innocent. His denials meant the girl had faced animosity and felt demoralised by the actions of some parishioners, the court heard.
“You clearly cannot face up to your wrongdoing here, perhaps because of the shame and loss of face,” Judge Thomas told him.
And in criticising parishioners who stood by their shamed former priest, Judge Thomas said: “Maybe some of them would believe the sun would rise in the west tomorrow if he said it.”
Jailing him Judge Thomas accepted that Finnegan had lost his high reputation, his vocation and his livelihood but the only appropriate sentence was one of immediate imprisonment.
A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds yesterday expressed its ‘sorrow and regret’ to Mr Finnegan’s 17-year-old victim after the former priest was jailed.
Monsignor John Wilson, Diocesan administrator, said: “Following the sentence of William Finnegan for the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl while parish priest at St Clare’s Church in Bradford, I would once again like to express my sorrow and regret to his victim.
“I realise that this has been a very difficult and distressing time for you and your family and I hope that this sentence will help in the healing process. My thoughts and prayers are with you and my door is always open.
“The Diocese is committed to ensuring the safety and protection of every child and vulnerable person in our parishes and there are robust safeguarding policies and procedures in operation throughout this Diocese – and indeed the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
“As with this case, any abuse reported to the Diocese is referred to the police and other relevant authorities and the Diocese of Leeds cooperated fully with police throughout this case.
“If anyone has any concerns at all relating to this matter, please contact the Diocesan safeguarding coordinator.”
Jail for Catholic priest who sexually abused teenage girl
Do I think I am going to Paradise? - Christopher Hitchens
“Do I think I am going to Paradise? Of Course Not. I wouldn’t go if I was asked. I don’t want to live in some fucking Celestial North Korea for one thing. Where all I get to do is praise the dear leader from dawn till dusk.”
Do I think I am going to Paradise? - Christopher Hitchens
Who Prays for Satan - Mark Twain
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Who Prays for Satan - Mark Twain
Thursday, April 11, 2013
I believe
he most discussed moral argument for God’s existence is currently the argument concerning the ontological basis for objective moral values:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
2. Objective moral values do exist
3. Therefore, God exists
Although consistent atheists must avoid accepting both premises of this logically valid syllogism, it’s not hard to find atheists who endorse either premise. Hence, this argument can be defended by quoting exclusively from atheists. After sketching a defence of both premises, and dealing with the frequent confusion between epistemology and ontology amongst its critics, this paper will focus upon defending the first premise against two objections from atheist Russ Shafer-Landau’s otherwise excellent book Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (Oxford, 2004).
I believe
[video] Cult Leader Thinks He"s Jesus
Published on May 16, 2012
Deep in Siberia’s Taiga forest is Vissarion, a cult leader who looks like Jesus and claims to be the voice of God. He’s known as “the Teacher” to his 4,000 followers, who initially seem surprisingly normal. Over time, however, their unflinching belief in UFOs and the Earth’s imminent demise made this group start to look more and more like some sort of strange cult.
Hosted by Rocco Castoro | Originally released in 2011 athttp://vice.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cv5hZfOmk
[video] Cult Leader Thinks He"s Jesus
Alvin Toffler
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”
- Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler
Mihail Bakunin
My dignity as a man, my human right which consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity.
The materialistic conception of freedom is therefore a very positive, very complex thing, and above all, eminently social, because it can be realized only in society and by the strictest equality and solidarity among all men.
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
We must make a very precise distinction between the official and consequently dictatorial prerogatives of society organized as a state, and of the natural influence and action of the members of a non-official, non-artificial society.
- Mihail Bakunin
Mihail Bakunin
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
How can we trust the Bible to tell us where we are going
Since the Bible and the Church are obviously mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going
How can we trust the Bible to tell us where we are going
Bertrand Russel
No One can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God
- Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Russel
Dan Savage
The shortest book in the New Testament [called Philemon] is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn’t say Christians don’t own people. Paul talks about how Christians own people.” To the contrary, Philemon was one of the key biblical texts used by the abolitionists in their argument against slavery.
The letter tells the story of a man named Onesimus who had been Philemon’s slave before escaping and then meeting the apostle Paul, who was at that time a prisoner of Rome. Paul led Onesimus to faith in Christ and then wrote to Philemon urging him to receive Onesimus back, “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philemon 16).
What a concept! This man was your slave, he ran away and has now become a Christian, so receive him back as your brother and no longer as a slave. Savage really got this one wrong.
Dan Savage
Carl Sagan
“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
- Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Christopher Hitchens
The least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion
- Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
[video] Highly Recommend - Brainwashed by the Westboro Baptist Church
Published on Jul 30, 2012
We followed the story of the Westboro Baptist Church as families split and children were brainwashed into picketing funerals and bashing homosexuals.
During that time, we interviewed more than a dozen members of the reviled group, including some of the only members not related by blood, the Drains. They welcomed us into their homes and gave us access to 17 years of home video footage. In return, we produced an unbiased look into the lives of one of America’s most despised organizations.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
God doesn"t exist, Jules Reynard
I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for his reputation if he Didn’t
- Jules Reynard
God doesn"t exist, Jules Reynard
Christina Applegate
I’m not saying that the religious right is wrong for condemning homosexuals and terrorizing them for thousands of years.. I’m just saying FUCK YOU !
- Christina Applegate
Christina Applegate
Philosopher or Priest - Denis Diderot
“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”
― Denis Diderot
Philosopher or Priest - Denis Diderot
Discrimination against atheists
Discrimination against atheists (sometimes called atheophobia) includes the persecution and discrimination faced by atheists and those labeled as atheists in the past and in the current era. Differing definitions of atheism historically and culturally mean those discriminated against might not be considered truly atheist by modern Western standards.
In constitutional democracies, legal discrimination against atheists is uncommon, but some atheists and atheist groups, particularly those in the United States, have protested laws, regulations and institutions they view as being discriminatory. In some Islamic countries, atheists face discrimination including lack of legal status or even a death sentence in the case ofapostasy.
Wikipedia has the rest of the info
Discrimination against atheists
Clarence Darrow - Why I Am An Agnostic
An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept. Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded. In a popular way, in the western world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of the Christian faith.
I would say that belief in at least three tenets is necessary to the faith of a Christian: a belief in God, a belief in immortality, and a belief in a supernatural book. Various Christian sects require much more, but it is difficult to imagine that one could be a Christian, under any intelligent meaning of the word, with less. Yet there are some people who claim to be Christians who do not accept the literal interpretation of all the Bible, and who give more credence to some portions of the book than to others.
I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force.
Man has always speculated upon the origin of the universe, including himself. I feel, with Herbert Spencer, that whether the universe had an origin– and if it had– what the origin is will never be known by man. The Christian says that the universe could not make itself; that there must have been some higher power to call it into being. Christians have been obsessed for many years by Paley’s argument that if a person passing through a desert should find a watch and examine its spring, its hands, its case and its crystal, he would at once be satisfied that some intelligent being capable of design had made the watch. No doubt this is true. No civilized man would question that someone made the watch. The reason he would not doubt it is because he is familiar with watches and other appliances made by man. The savage was once unfamiliar with a watch and would have had no idea upon the subject. There are plenty of crystals and rocks of natural formation that are as intricate as a watch, but even to intelligent man they carry no implication that some intelligent power must have made them. They carry no such implication because no one has any knowledge or experience of someone having made these natural objects which everywhere abound.
To say that God made the universe gives us no explanation of the beginnings of things. If we are told that God made the universe, the question immediately arises: Who made God? Did he always exist, or was there some power back of that? Did he create matter out of nothing, or is his existence coextensive with matter? The problem is still there. What is the origin of it all? If, on the other hand, one says that the universe was not made by God, that it always existed, he has the same difficulty to confront. To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.
As to the existence of the soul, all people may either believe or disbelieve. Everyone knows the origin of the human being. They know that it came from a single cell in the body of the mother, and that the cell was one out of ten thousand in the mother’s body. Before gestation the cell must have been fertilized by a spermatozoon from the body of the father. This was one out of perhaps a billion spermatozoa that was the capacity of the father. When the cell is fertilized a chemical process begins. The cell divides and multiplies and increases into millions of cells, and finally a child is born. Cells die and are born during the life of the individual until they finally drop apart, and this is death.
If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.
Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus.
When I was a boy the theologians used to assert that the proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible rested on miracles and prophecies. But a miracle means a violation of a natural law, and there can be no proof imagined that could be sufficient to show the violation of a natural law; even though proof seemed to show violation, it would only show that we were not acquainted with all natural laws. One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.
If one should say that the sun did not rise, to use the ordinary expression, on the day before, his hearer would not believe it, even though he had slept all day and knew that his informant was a man of the strictest veracity. He would not believe it because the story is inconsistent with the conduct of the sun in all the ages past.
Primitive and even civilized people have grown so accustomed to believing in miracles that they often attribute the simplest manifestations of nature to agencies of which they know nothing. They do this when the belief is utterly inconsistent with knowledge and logic. They believe in old miracles and new ones. Preachers pray for rain, knowing full well that no such prayer was ever answered. When a politician is sick, they pray for God to cure him, and the politician almost invariably dies. The modern clergyman who prays for rain and for the health of the politician is no more intelligent in this matter than the primitive man who saw a separate miracle in the rising and setting of the sun, in the birth of an individual, in the growth of a plant, in the stroke of lighting, in the flood, in every manifestation of nature and life.
As to prophecies, intelligent writers gave them up long ago. In all prophecies facts are made to suit the prophecy, or the prophecy was made after the facts, or the events have no relation to the prophecy. Weird and strange and unreasonable interpretations are used to explain simple statements, that a prophecy may be claimed.
Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today. For instance, Genesis says that God made the earth, and he made the sun to light the day and the moon to light the night, and in one clause disposes of the stars by saying that “he made the stars also.” This was plainly written by someone who had no conception of the stars. Man, by the aid of his telescope, has looked out into the heavens and found stars whose diameter is as great as the distance between the earth and the sun. We know that the universe is filled with stars and suns and planets and systems. Every new telescope looking further into the heavens only discovers more and more worlds and suns and systems in the endless reaches of space. The men who wrote Genesis believed, of course, that this tiny speck of mud that we call the earth was the center of the universe, the only world in space, and made for man, who was the only being worth considering. These men believed that the stars were only a little way above the earth, and were set in the firmament for man to look at, and for nothing else. Everyone today knows that this conception is not true.
The origin of the human race is not as blind a subject as it once was. Let alone God creating Adam out of hand, from the dust of the earth, does anyone believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib–that the snake walked and spoke in the Garden of Eden–that he tempted Eve to persuade Adam to eat an apple, and that it is on that account that the whole human race was doomed to hell–that for four thousand years there was no chance for any human to be saved, though none of them had anything whatever to do with the temptation; and that finally men were saved only through God’s son dying for them, and that unless human beings believed this silly, impossible and wicked story they were doomed to hell? Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.
Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today.
Do intelligent people believe that the various languages spoken by man on earth came from the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, some four thousand years ago? Human languages were dispersed all over the face of the earth long before that time. Evidences of civilizations are in existence now that were old long before the date that romancers fix for the building of the Tower, and even before the date claimed for the flood.
Do Christians believe that Joshua made the sun stand still, so that the day could be lengthened, that a battle might be finished? What kind of person wrote that story, and what did he know about astronomy? It is perfectly plain that the author thought that the earth was the center of the universe and stood still in the heavens, and that the sun either went around it or was pulled across its path each day, and that the stopping of the sun would lengthen the day. We know now that had the sun stopped when Joshua commanded it, and had it stood still until now, it would not have lengthened the day. We know that the day is determined by the rotation of the earth upon its axis, and not by the movement of the sun. Everyone knows that this story simply is not true, and not many even pretend to believe the childish fable.
What of the tale of Balaam’s ass speaking to him, probably in Hebrew? Is it true, or is it a fable? Many asses have spoken, and doubtless some in Hebrew, but they have not been that breed of asses. Is salvation to depend on a belief in a monstrosity like this?
Above all the rest, would any human being today believe that a child was born without a father? Yet this story was not at all unreasonable in the ancient world; at least three or four miraculous births are recorded in the Bible, including John the Baptist and Samson. Immaculate conceptions were common in the Roman world at the time and at the place where Christianity really had its nativity. Women were taken to the temples to be inoculated of God so that their sons might be heroes, which meant, generally, wholesale butchers. Julius Caesar was a miraculous conception–indeed, they were common all over the world. How many miraculous-birth stories is a Christian now expected to believe?
In the days of the formation of the Christian religion, disease meant the possession of human beings by devils. Christ cured a sick man by casting out the devils, who ran into the swine, and the swine ran into the sea. Is there any question but what that was simply the attitude and belief of a primitive people? Does anyone believe that sickness means the possession of the body by devils, and that the devils must be cast out of the human being that he may be cured? Does anyone believe that a dead person can come to life? The miracles recorded in the Bible are not the only instances of dead men coming to life. All over the world one finds testimony of such miracles: miracles which no person is expected to believe, unless it is his kind of a miracle. Still at Lourdes today, and all over the present world, from New York to Los Angeles and up and down the lands, people believe in miraculous occurrences, and even in the return of the dead. Superstition is everywhere prevalent in the world. It has been so from the beginning, and most likely will be so unto the end.
The reasons for agnosticism are abundant and compelling. Fantastic and foolish and impossible consequences are freely claimed for the belief in religion. All the civilization of any period is put down as a result of religion. All the cruelty and error and ignorance of the period has no relation to religion.
The truth is that the origin of what we call civilization is not due to religion but to skepticism. So long as men accepted miracles without question, so long as they believed in original sin and the road to salvation, so long as they believed in a hell where man would be kept for eternity on account of Eve, there was no reason whatever for civilization: life was short, and eternity was long, and the business of life was preparation for eternity.
When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature. We no longer cure disease by casting out devils. Since that time, men have studied the human body, have built hospitals and treated illness in a scientific way. Science is responsible for the building of railroads and bridges, of steamships, of telegraph lines, of cities, towns, large buildings and small, plumbing and sanitation, of the food supply, and the countless thousands of useful things that we now deem necessary to life. Without skepticism and doubt, none of these things could have been given to the world.
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
The modern world is the child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and faith.
- Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow - Why I Am An Agnostic
God won"t stop a rape
If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would.
That’s the difference between me and your God
God won"t stop a rape
This Is the Porn That Gets Downloaded in the Vatican
It can get lonely in the Vatican: with a population of just over 800, sometimes it’s inevitable that nobody will want to hang out with you. Which might explain this list, which details the porn that’s been downloaded in the Vatican recently.
Torrent Freak was casually taking a look at the most popular torrents within Vatican City, when it stumbled over some rather mature content. As Torrent Freak explains:
We spotted some downloads to get pulses racing. It seems that while Vatican dwellers aren’t all that interested in Hollywood movies, they do enjoy adult related celluloid… In the interests of science we researched each of the titles (including the curiously named RS77_Episode 01) and discovered that downloaders in the Vatican have one or two unusual ‘niche’ interests.
In the interest of remaining vaguely tasteful, we won’t dive into exactly what those interests are here. But, hey, you have Google. Knock yourselves out. [Torrent Freak via Boing Boing]
This Is the Porn That Gets Downloaded in the Vatican
Religion is an insult to human dignity - Steven Weinberg
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Religion is an insult to human dignity - Steven Weinberg
Two babies stricken with herpes after ritual ultra-orthodox Jewish oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City
- Since 2000 13 known cases of herpes have been contracted from the religious practice
- Two deaths and two babies suffering brain damage have resulted
- Department of health warns there being no safe way to perform the ritual that dates back more than 5,000 years
The department of health says one of the latest infants to contract the virus developed a fever and a lesion on its scrotum, seven days after the procedure. The boy later tested positive for HSV-1. That virus differs from HSV-2, the genital herpes, which is contracted during sexual intercourse.
‘A herpes infection in a newborn baby has the risk of leading to severe illness and death,’ Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told ABC News.
Two babies stricken with herpes after ritual ultra-orthodox Jewish oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Herbert J Muller
- Science remains the author of our major problem, in its gift of tremendous power that has been terribly abused; but for the wise use of this power we need more, not less, of the objective dispassionate scientific spirit. For our philosophical purposes we need more of its integrity and its basic humility, its respect at once for the fact and the mystery.
- Religion can no longer rest its claims on a dogmatic supernaturalism, because any dogma that is irreconcilable with tested knowledge must be rejected. . . . [One] sentence . . . sums up the dark and deadly pages of Christian history: “If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”
- - Herbert J Muller
Herbert J Muller
Charlie Chaplin
There is a fraternity of those who passionately want to know. I was one of them. But my motives were not so pure; I wanted to know, not for the love of knowledge but as a defence against the world’s contempt for the ignorant. So when I had time I browsed around the second-hand bookshops. In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll’s Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.
Charlie Chaplin
Friday, April 5, 2013
Bill Maher
Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.
- Bill Maher
Bill Maher
Annie Wood Besant
“No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.”
- Annie Wood Besant
Annie Wood Besant
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Chuck Easttom
“Young earth creationism is essentially the position that all of modern science, 90% of living scientists and 98% of living
biologists, all major university biology departments, every major science journal, the American Academy of Sciences, and
every major science organization in the world, are all wrong regarding the origins and development of life….but one
particular tribe of uneducated, bronze aged, goat herders got it exactly right.”
- Chuck Easttom
Chuck Easttom
Spock, The God Thing
❝If this is your God, he’s not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he’s so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He’s a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being.❞
— Spock, The God Thing: Gene Roddenberry’s Lost Star Trek Novel rejected by Paramount in 1975.
Spock, The God Thing
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Abul" Ala Al-Ma"arri
The world holds two classes of men-
intelligent men without religion, and
Religious Men without Intelligence.”
- Abul’ Ala Al-Ma’arri
Abul" Ala Al-Ma"arri
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Religion in Schools
Religion in Schools
You want to see Religious Studies in Schools ?
All Religions or just yours ?
Religion in Schools
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Helen H. Gardener
This Religion and the Bible requires of woman everything, and give her nothing.
They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt and opression
- Helen H Gardener
Helen H. Gardener
Thomas Jefferson
Erecting the Wall of Separation Between the church and state is absolutely essential in a Free Society
- Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
God Loves You
I love you so much that i’m going to hide my existence to the point that i will be indistinguishable from other gods, and if you follow the wrong god, you are going to suffer for eternity
God Loves You
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s response on Reddit when asked “What can you tell a young man looking for motivation in life itself?”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Ex-priest admits home drug dealing
A suspended Roman Catholic priest accused of making more than 300,000 dollars (£200,000) in methamphetamine sales and running an adult video and sex toy shop has admitted a federal drug charge.
Kevin Wallin of Waterbury, Connecticut, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Wallin is scheduled to be sentenced on June 25. The agreed-upon sentence is 11 to 14 years.
Ex-priest admits home drug dealing
Monday, April 1, 2013
Richard Dawkins
“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
- Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Charles Smith - Bible is a Hoax
The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards.
Charles Smith - Bible is a Hoax
[short video] Richard Dawkins - It works Bitches
Richard Dawkins responds to a christian who is critical of the scientific method: “it (science) works… bitches!”. Filmed at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, on Friday 15th February 2013.
[short video] Richard Dawkins - It works Bitches
Christopher Hitchens
This evening we’ve already had your suggestion that God is only really a guru – a friend when you’re in need. I mean, he wouldn’t do anything like bugger around with Job to prove a point. Which, if I now tell you that must mean that that book is not the word of God, you’d say: well, who ever believed that it was the word of God? Let me just tell you something: for hundreds and thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been in most places impossible to have, or Sam and I would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiling-face, ingratiating way, because it’s had to give so much ground, and because we know so much more. But you’ve no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
- Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)