Social Bookmarking for Atheist Websites

For those who may not be familiar with The Atheist Spot, it is a social bookmarking site, a la Digg and Reddit, exclusively for stories that we are likely to enjoy.

The site, whose tagline reads “In our minds we trust”, allows users to submit links that are voted up and down the news hierarchy. There are a variety of subcategories including Interviews, Video & Audio, Science & Technology, Events, and Books within which users can better classify their submissions.

There are three ways in which users can submit links to the site: through the “Add News” link on the website, through a javascript bookmarklet that can be accessed in your browser’s toolbar, and through embeddable image widgets that can be added to blog posts or new stories on your own site. I have the Sociable Wordpress plugin installed on my site which uses PHP awesomeness to create dynamic submission links for each new blog post. Try it out below your favorite story on here to add it to The Atheist Spot for other users to enjoy.

Whether or not your submit links to the site, there is a wealth of great links on the site for all atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers.

Religulous Open in Limited Release

Well Religulous has finally opened in select theaters. Larry Charles did a phoner to the Opie & Anthony show on Sirius-XM the other day, promoting the movie, and I got excited, having forgotten that it was close to release.

As soon as I got home, I checked Fandango to see what theaters near me would be carrying the film. I knew better than to expect it in my town. My local cinema doesn’t carry edgy or controversial films (except for The Passion of the Christ, of course.) Expecting a nice drive to see the film, I searched several surrounding metropolitan areas (from 50 to 90 miles away), but found no theaters with the film at all. I know it’s a limited release, but the closest theater was 127 miles away. The truly shitty part of this story is the fear that even after the film opens in wider release that it still won’t be any closer to me than that. I hope at least one nearby city has it. I’m figuring since it was the closest theater to show Fahreheit 9/11 and Sicko, that there is a good chance that it will have this one.

Check Fandango, and see if Religulous is playing anywhere in your vicinity. Leave a comment to spread hope or confirm despair.

Also, check out The God Who Wasn’t There on DVD.

Intelligent Debate on Intelligent Design

I was searching for something in my email archives, and I came across this fictional, though hilariously illustrative, dialogue between a scientist and an advocate for Intelligent Design^©. The email was dated October 2005, so I figured it merited being dredged up from the internet meme catacombs and (re)introduced to you all.

********************************************************************

Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the  hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the “naturalistic” explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible — it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can’t rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn’t prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let’s not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That’s a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we’ll see how that plays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it’s so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.

Religulous Clips

I recently posted the trailer for Bill Maher’s new documentary, Religulous. I found two clips that I wanted to share. The first one was particularly unsettling for me. Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) professes belief in the creationist account of the formation of the world less than 6,000 years ago. The staggering lack of judgment and higher-order thinking skills represented with that statement make me shudder. This man creates law! All three branches of our government are infested with godbot automatons that swallow these fairy tales hook, line and sinker.

EDIT: The YouTube clips are no longer available (Thanks, Lionsgate!), but there are still a variety of other clips and interviews available on YouTube.

My Petition to the AP Stylebook Editor

Editorial Staff,

I was recently flipping through the 2007 AP Stylebook, and I came to the entry for “agnostic, atheist” on page 9. The stylebook definition given for atheist is, “An atheist is a person who believes there is no God.” It is my opinion, that this is not an accurate definition. According to Merriam-Webster, theism is the “belief in the existence of a god or gods”. The prefix “a-”, meaning without, only adds that atheists are without said belief. Atheism does not make any positive assertions nor does it represent a belief. It represents a lack of belief.

While your definition reads, “An atheist is a person who believes there is no God,” I believe it would be more correctly stated as, “An atheist is a person who does not believe in the existence of God.”

Furthermore, in your definition of “agnostic” you omit the key defining element of agnosticism, i.e. an unwillingness to commit. Merriam-Webster defines “agnostic” as “a person unwilling to commit to an opinion”. While your definition states, “An agnostic is a person who believes it is impossible to know whether there is a God,” I believe it would be more complete if read as, “An agnostic is a person who is unwilling to commit to a belief of the existence or nonexistence of God.”

It should go without saying that where “God” is used in these contexts, it could and should be substituted with “a god.” Your stylebook dictates the capitalization of ‘God’ “in references to the deity of all monotheistic religions” (pg 106), but atheism and agnosticism are not exclusive to monotheistic religions.

I appreciate your time and attention to these discrepancies. I hope that you will consider corrections to these entries to prevent any potential misconceptions among your publications’ users. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

My Name
My Email @ddress

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theism
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic

Ignorant Indianapolis Woman Confuses Inertia for ‘God’

Indianapolis wackaloon Charlotte Thompson recently had the misfortune of stray gunfire tearing into her car. Worse yet, her two great-granddaughters were in the car with her. Luckily, no one was killed in this incident.

As illustrated in the story, let me describe the path of the bullet: through the car door, through her great-granddaughter Shyann, through a purse containing a Bible, and into a watermelon.

Keeping that path in mind, absorb the following quote from Thompson.

“Came through the door, hit her, then it went to the Bible,” she said. The Bible was sitting on the seat between the two girls. “It went in here and come out here and it shredded my Sunday School book. The word of God slowed the bullet so that it didn’t kill anybody.”

“Right in the watermelon. Didn’t come out of the watermelon,” Thompson said. “The word of God and the Lord’s power saved. He sent the bullet into the watermelon.”

The little girl recovered from her injuries, and I’m very glad of that. However I hope she has a better physics teacher than her ignorant great-grandmother had. In keeping with the principles of inertia, friction and resistance created by the door, the Bible, and a human abdomen slowed the bullet, not “the word of god and the lord’s power”. The fact that this woman even toys with the notion that there was any divine intervention is laughable or infuriating, depending on how much you have to deal with this sort of bullshit on a daily basis.

To falsely teach her great-grandchildren by reinforcing this nonsense is a form of neglect. She is failing to properly educate these children by attributing physical occurrences to the supernatural. Telling kids that ‘thunder is actually angels bowling’ is harmless enough, because I don’t know that the tellers of such tall tales actually believe the stories, and the children will eventually learn about the temperature differential caused by a bolt of lightning. To lead them to believe that God slowed down a bullet to keep anyone from getting killed is plain stupid, and may lead to resistance when the time comes that someone tries to teach them what really happened that day.

By the way, wouldn’t it have been a little more convenient if God had slowed the bullet down before it pierced poor Shyann? Why didn’t God make her carry the watermelon? I know why. Because God doesn’t exist. He is a phantom. Acts are attributed to him when the attributee is too ignorant to know the real cause.

If you haven’t seen the movie Pulp Fiction, watch the clip below for a theatrical replay of this scenario. There is some harsh language, so it’s not quite work safe.

SEXPOSED!

Of all the archaic “morals”, when will this one finally cease to exist? If someone chooses to not have sex before marriage, that’s fine. I know a lot of people who have made that choice and I 100% respect that. What I don’t respect is the fact that some people have been brainwashed into thinking that it is somehow a sin or devalues your future relationships.

The Bible promotes slavery. As a society, we have all cast a furrowed brow upon that practice. The Bible promotes the subservience of women. As a society, most of us at least, have frowned upon that view as well. When will the same be true of pre-marital sex?

What tickles me the most is when I meet a practitioner of this idea that has done pretty much everything except have vaginal intercourse. Does that even honor the spirit of the idea? If you take the message of the video that you wouldn’t want something that someone else has already used, then how do oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, and other acts “slip through the cracks.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think abstinence is a good idea, but I think discretion is an even better one. Obviously, there are a lot of threats that face people who engage in sex: sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy being the most common. But are there not other ways to avoid those things without fear of eternal hellfire? After all, in accordance with Christian tradition, one could live a life of absolute debauchery and then surrender their heart to Jesus when they’ve finished sowing their oats. The only thing that keeps more people from truly liberating themselves from the shackles of this ancient prohibition is the fear that, if they were to die before surrendering their life to Christ, you know, the hellfire thing.

Why not start things off right with a free sample from Trojan?

Religulous: Truth for the masses at last

I don’t know whether to be happy that such an amazing film is being released, or to be sad knowing that I will likely have to drive more than 100 miles to see it for myself.

I doubt this movie will really sway anyone. After all, The Bashin’ of the Christ didn’t really convert many folks; it served mostly to reinforce and solidify the beliefs of those already in line with the film’s theme. Likely the same will hold true for Religulous.

IF (and that’s a big IF where I’m from) any god-believers actually see this movie, they will likely leave the movie just as wrapped in their mythology as they were when they entered, but feeling a bit more persecuted. After all, it’s okay for them to remind me that I’m condemning myself to hell by not praying to Sky Daddy, but it’s not okay for me to remind them that they are practicing only a slightly more complex belief system than children do in believing in Santa Claus.

Please spread this video on your own blogs, talk about it, write about it, and when the time comes, go and see it. This stands to be a great opportunity to have a few folks scratch their heads and reconsider their life’s direction. Live out of hope of heaven and fear of hell?… or do good to others because it creates a great environment in which to live?

The choice: she’s a clear one.

Great Video Blog on Atheism

This is a great video that pretty much sums up my views on the perception of religion and atheism.

“I think it’s an act of supreme hubris to fill unanswered questions with a god we’ve created in our own image. To assume the world works on the same set of principles that we do is completely arrogant and intellectually weak.” - Micki Krimmel @ mickipedia.com

Atheist Rap - The New Sensation?

Greydon Square is not a London locale. He is an openly atheist rapper, and his music is replete not only with sharp sound, but intelligent lyrics. His raps openly refute common proselyte topics including attacks on evolutionary theory, carbon dating and Pascal’s Wager.

Then they try and hit me with the wager
Who? Pascal’s wager. Who? Pascal’s wager.
Now that’s a fool’s bet
And against the intelligent it’s used less
Really? You bet!
This ain’t nothing new, they use it on kids
But for those who don’t know it goes a little like this:
“Wouldn’t you rather believe in God and be wrong
Then to not believe in God and be wrong
If you believe in God and your wrong you’ve lost nothing
But if you don’t believe and you’re wrong its all suffering”
The problem is you can try it on anything
Switch the Gods around and apply it to anything
The Flyin’ Spaghetti Monster, Zeus, Amin, Ra
Krishna, Odin, Baal and then Allah
Which one of em’s our God?
None of em, all false

He has faced pressure from many fundamentalist pundits and aptly makes the point that society is more concerned with rap promoting atheism than rap that supports beating women and selling crack. When you consider that atheists are the least trusted minority in the United States, it’s not hard to realize why that would be.

Even if you are not a fan of rap, I recommend you take a moment and visit the following links to show your support for a man that faces fire in the public spotlight every day for intelligently representing atheists in his art through appeals to scientific evidence.

• Greydon Square’s Music MySpace page with six great tracks
• Greydon Square’s personal MySpace page
• Greydon Square’s online store