Hyperbole is the language of the fool, fearmonger, and gossip, Humility is the language of the wise.

I use a lot of Hyperbole I have to admit, in fact, I would claim it is a significant deterrent to my effectiveness as a communicator.  It is always so tempting to lash out at ones perceived enemies with exaggeration or even spin on words and phrases to imply serious insult or harm to their credibility.

I found myself criticising conservative pundit Glen Beck for this, when while pointing my finger at him, I failed to notice the three fingers pointing back at me.

If our goal is to achieve peace and prosperity for all humans, to eliminate poverty and advance science and health for all, advancing our species to higher plains of understanding...

One of our greatest enemies is our own tendency towards hyperbole. "Cheney is Satan" is equally as unhelpful as "Obama is Hitler" to the cause of either the "left" or the "right".

I need to avoid it myself, I tend to make idiotic, emotionally charged statements like "religious people love to eat jesus" and "religious people are insane" etc.  Neither of those statements encourage tolerance and compassion for my fellow human beings, and I need to realize whatever ideology I embrace, a mutual respect for others and a measured, compassionate, well thought out approach to speaking is far more effective at fighting religious extremism and fundamentalist dogma.

My challenge for myself and other atheists is to be wise and compassionate in our speech, and differenciate ourselves from our detractors with our patience, our love, and our understanding for others and ourselves.

Debating Creationism

"Debating Creationists on the topic of Evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

Its a good point, and very true to anyone who has slogged through that 3.5 hour conversation at the various family holidays.  It takes one sentence to say "Radiocarbon dating is unreliable" and several pages or even volumes to explain how it works and is, in fact, as reliable as any other established scientific procedure.  You dont see Creationists debating XRay technology with their physician presenting them with their prognosis.


In my experience the best thing one can do is avoid topics neither participant is an "expert" in, and keep the conversation as biblically focussed as possible.  Ask them to explain the various apparent contradictions in the Bible, and focus on real life examples of the bible either being silent or flat out wrong.  "How exactly is an appendix an "intelligent design" ?  Why do I need glasses exactly?  Why wont God heal amputees?  Why doesnt God reveal himself to people...is he shy? Nervous?  Can create the whole physical universe but has trouble with the whole materializing thing?

One particularly powerful statment and something generally difficult to refute is "If God puts together marriages in Christian Churches, why is the divorce rate equally as high among christians as non christians?"    Why is the instance of child abuse higher among priests than almost any other group in society?  etc.  They are old but very difficult to refute.  The fun ones I like are the paradoxes of the almighty: "can god make a machine so complicated even he cant comprehend it?"  If God is bigger than the universe, Does he have to wait 6 trillion lightyears to see his hands?  If so, why couldnt he have made light faster, or the universe smaller?

etc. Enjoy!

Deepest Bore hole and the skin of an apple.

The deepest hole ever dug by humans was around 12 kilometers deep. Relative to the size of the earth, that is approximately the same as taking a pin and poking a hole just through the skin of an apple but no further. Bearing in mind that 12KM is deeper than all the mines, all the oil drilling holes, the grand canyon...everything.

Also bear in mind the average thickness of the atmosphere is 60 Kilometers or so, although nothing really lives past 12 Kilometers. The highest you'll fly in a commercial jet is well under 12 Km.

So we exist in an incredibly thin film on the surface of our planet. All life as we know it evolved in this incredibly insignificant wisp of a layer of nothing on the surface of the earth.

Then, going further, if you could combine the mass of all the planets in our little solar system wayy out on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, the Sun would account for 99.8% of that mass. So including Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Uranus, Venus, Mercury, pluto, the asteroid belt, and Earth...all that accounts for .2% of the mass of the solar system, which, by the way, is a completely unnoticed nothing on the edge of a galaxy with 100-400 BILLION stars in it. So if the milky way "shed" our solar system like our bodies shed skin cells, it would amount to losing a few dozen cells or so.

Why would God go to so much trouble to create something so impossibly gigantic compared to this tiny species on a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere? Is he a "god of waste"? Why not simply make a few lights for night, a nice big light for day, and call it done? Saying we are literally designed by God is like saying a designer would make an entire city, no, country just to house a single ant farm, with the ants oblivious to most of it.

Another interesting point is...if you were as big as the Milky Way, which, by the way is only one of billions of galaxies in the visible universe, it would take you 100,000 years to "see" your feet. Yes, its 100,000 light years across, so if you could see your feet, you would be seeing them as they were 100,000 years ago. Talk about delayed messages.

Again, I ask...why would God make things so impossibly far away like that? Its entirely unnecessary. We could have a beautiful night sky full of stars less than a few dozen light years away and have practically the same effect of "night lights". But instead, to make an entire universe just for some "night lights" for humans on an insignfiicant planet seems like the very height of hubris, the very height of arrogance.

What is more likely is the universe is billions of years old, it is massive, and we evolved on our own out here and dont amount to more than a tiny blip in the scale of the universe. We are guests in its house, not the other way around, and we need to show it the proper respect it deserves by ending our hubris to believe our tiny, imaginary gods had anything to do with it.

Nationalism is Dumb.

The only thing dumber and more detrimental to earth than religious faith is "nationalism". We are not countries, we are all humans. Every human being is a "citizen of earth". We need to forget the idea of countries and relegate the notion of "immigrant" to history.

Read http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm for the way to make it a reality (the last part is where it becomes clear)

"their country...our country..." dumb. We are all earthlings. Poverty is EVERYONE's problem. Unemployment anywhere is EVERYONE's PROBLEM. Poor labor laws anywhere on earth is EVERYONE's PROBLEM.

Darwin and the case for "militant" atheism - Richard Dawkins on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/23/dawkins.darwin.atheism/index.html

I dont think Dawkins is suggesting we literally form an atheist militia, but it is strongly implied that atheism and science need to be rigorously defended under the growing onslaught of attacks from the ignorant religious right. The attacks are particularly insidious because they do not occur in the form of intellectual challenges or debating points (which I think most Scientists and Atheists would welcome), rather, they take the form of propeganda outside of forums to the illiterate and under-educated, children etc. They take the form of backroom deals cooked up in churches and pushed into government policy directly past open public scrutiny.

These religous attacks literally circumvent accountability to intelligence by operating well away from the light of public inquest. The damage from the attacks is spreading ignorance, illiterate and undereducated generations, and thus a general increase in crime, violence, support for unjust wars, and the ablity for corporations to take advantage of a large, undereducated voting bloc to effectively rob taxpayers blind while "praising jeebus" in public.

This is why "militant" atheism should be discussed and defined...we need to proactively do something about the cancer of religion, delusion, and ignorance.

The Lord is My Healthcare, I shall not want.

So I've been reading and trying to understand why all these poor/middleclass people are so vehemently opposed to having a decent common standard of healthcare in the US.

You listen to their reasons, and when it comes down to it, what I hear over and over again is just the word "Socialism" without any apparent understanding of what socialism actually is. I think it sets up a connection for a mentally less endowed person to make, basically if they say "socialized medicine" which straightforwardly means people can get access to a minimum standard of healthcare. The word "Socialist" in extreme is often associated with "communism" which in turn is associated with "Atheism" so to a mentally challenged religious person, its easy to be convinced that "socialist medicine" is the same as "atheism", which they believe is actually satanism, or more poorly but accurately for their under utilzed mental facility put, devil worship.

So its no surprise that Republican Christians are opposed to Public Healthcare, they literally believe it is the exact same thing as Devil Worship.

Should mentally challenged people be allowed to make decisions for all of society? I personally do not believe so. You take care of them because if you didnt, they would poke their own eyes out with forks. Its true.

Canadian Border Agents can turn things away based on their own personal morality

Canadian Border Agents apparently have carte blanche to determine what is "obscene" material you are carrying and can impound it based on their own personal moral judgement. Check it out: http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/dm-md/d9/d9-1-1-eng.pdf Is the year 1935? I thought we had freedom and couldn't be oppressed by religious nutbars.

Apparently I was wrong. As I read this, if the words "sex" appear in a book, any book, any film, any thing, Canadian Border Service agents have the power to keep it. Its like having to take all your personal belongings to a church and have a priest approve them.

This is religious oppression if your agent happens to be an evangelical zealot, and you happen to have "the God Delusion" chances are they could impound it as obscene.

This entire law needs to be removed. Steven Harper's christian uptight delusional morals need to stay out of government.

In God We Trust - Why is it on US money?

According to this page on the US Treasury site, the following letter is the reason for the motto, the weird "all seeing eye" and the bizarre pyramid design on modern US dollar bills. Pictured here are comparisons, the relatively benign version and the modern, superstitious, religiously adorned version c.1956.

Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.

One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.

You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.

This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.

To you first I address a subject that must be agitated.

So it stands. While fighting this nonsense is likely a near impossible battle, the truth of history bears repeating loudly and clearly from all who find religious symbols emblazoned on public property offensive and anti-humanist. Why must we preserve our uncivilized, ignorant religious roots? Why can we not move past them and embrace our future?

Superstition: literally, to stay still, to be fixed, unmovable. To cling to cherished ideas and beliefs in spite of new contradictory knowledge and evidence.

Get them to believe absurdities, and you can convince them to commit atrocities. - Voltaire (paraphrase)

The above letter was written to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase by Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania.

The Atheist Blogroll-on it

SecondSkeleton.com has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

Article on CNN encourages parents to assure Kids that Monsters arent real...

This article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/14/children.fears.real.imaginary/index.html

did a good service, but stopped short at movie monsters. Should have continued with telling kids that God is imaginary, there's no such thing as Hell, and not to worry about some guy tortured for their "sins" because crazy people like to believe crazy things. You know, to keep kids from getting unnecessarily scared or traumatized.


In other news...I heard some Mormon spokesperson suggest that the idea of marriage for homosexuals would "do violence to the definition of marriage". Isnt "violence" to any definition also known as progress? We did "violence" to our definition of elements, our definition of the shape of the earth, and the origin of the universe. It is, I suppose, then, valid to consider the "defence of the definition of marriage" exactly equal to Superstition and willful ignorance.

I for one am very glad we did "violence" to the definition of human via the civil rights and suffrage movements, and I hope to see a lot more definitions get roughed up, such as the "definition of fraud" to include religious teaching.

the difference between a leader and a manager

leader, from the root "lead", are people that get the "lead out" of others and inspire them on with enticement.

Managers, from the root "mange" or eat, are people who feed and care for those whom they are responsible for.

©2009/2010 the institute for invented etymology, inc.

There's a reason I keep my Fantasy and Religion books on the same shelf.

Thats it. Continue about your business.

(title is a quote by grace b.)

Response:A Muslim Soldier's View from Fort Hood by Kamran Pasha

My response to a recent article in the Huffington Post about the recent tragedy in Fort Hood:

"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities" - Voltaire.

How tragically appropriate these words are today. We need to take this as a lesson that no teaching is above the law of reason. All doctrines held as sacred must be accountable to reality, and we cannot afford to allow the fraudulent teaching of imaginary gods and monsters as literal truth in spite of overwhelming physical evidence against.

now the long version they wouldnt accept due to character limit:

The problem is fairly straight forward, in spite of all these mental gymnastics folks are trying to do to justify religion. What it comes down to is the idea of taking instruction from an imaginary being (aka "god") and trying to use ancient books full of made up gobbledy gook instead of reasoned, rational thinking to approach life and wisdom. The only reason this doesnt happen more often is because most people are able to ignore 99% of what these ancient texts teach, and focus on what tiny bits of them actually align with common sense. (the beattitudes in the new testament for example). I cant speak for the Koran, but the Bible is full of violence, anti-humanism, slavery, misogyny, elitism, racism, anti science and learning, all in the name of its twisted version of "justice". Anyone wishing to embrace the entire bible really must become an insane fundamentalist bent on the ultimate destruction of everyone who does not believe like they do. We can keep spouting "tolerance" etc, but in the end, we keep ignoring the elephant in the room, and that is the unwillingness to hold religious teachings to the same standards of accountability and reason we hold all other knowledge. We have legally outlawed slander, libel, and fraud with this approach without stepping on anyone's individual rights. Religion needs to be put in the same category as these things and we need to cease teaching this violent fantasy as if it is actually, literally true. That constitutes fraud, and you can probably trace almost every atrocity committed in the past 2000 years to this root cause.

I am not a fundamentalist atheist, I am merely pointing out that all teaching and knowledge needs to be held to the same standard, the same scrutiny, and nothing is "sacred" or above the law of reason. Once we do that, we will see this kind of attack become a thing of the past. Sorry if I offend, but it is the truth and most of us know it.

My response to a recent article in the Huffington Post about the recent tragedy in Fort Hood:
"If you can get people to believe in absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities" - Voltaire.

How tragically appropriate these words are today. We need to take this as a lesson that no teaching is above the law of reason. All doctrines held as sacred must be accountable to reality, and we cannot afford to allow the fraudulent teaching of imaginary gods and monsters as literal truth in spite of overwhelming physical evidence against.
The problem is fairly straight forward, in spite of all these mental gymnastics folks are trying to do to justify religion. What it comes down to is the idea of taking instruction from an imaginary being (aka "god") and trying to use ancient books full of made up gobbledy gook instead of reasoned, rational thinking to approach life and wisdom. The only reason this doesnt happen more often is because most people are able to ignore 99% of what these ancient texts teach, and focus on what tiny bits of them actually align with common sense. (the beattitudes in the new testament for example). I cant speak for the Koran, but the Bible is full of violence, anti-humanism, slavery, misogyny, elitism, racism, anti science and learning, all in the name of its twisted version of "justice". Anyone wishing to embrace the entire bible really must become an insane fundamentalist bent on the ultimate destruction of everyone who does not believe like they do. We can keep spouting "tolerance" etc, but in the end, we keep ignoring the elephant in the room, and that is the unwillingness to hold religious teachings to the same standards of accountability and reason we hold all other knowledge. We have legally outlawed slander, libel, and fraud with this approach without stepping on anyone's individual rights. Religion needs to be put in the same category as these things and we need to cease teaching this violent fantasy as if it is actually, literally true. That constitutes fraud, and you can probably trace almost every atrocity committed in the past 2000 years to this root cause.

I am not a fundamentalist atheist, I am merely pointing out that all teaching and knowledge needs to be held to the same standard, the same scrutiny, and nothing is "sacred" or above the law of reason. Once we do that, we will see this kind of attack become a thing of the past. Sorry if I offend, but it is the truth and most of us know it.