“A meeting in late October heard from 18 speakers, including a number of campus religious groups who defended the original wording.” I’m confused how religious groups could defend a charge that clearly asserts God’s reality. God is only real to them. Any other personal proclivity you may harbour without reason doesn’t need to be respected in a public university, so why that one?
2. Non-God bus ads hit Canada! Two different Canadian organizations are working on atheist bus campaigns.
I mean, you don’t expect a lot out of Fox News to begin with, but their editorial “slant” sometimes overwhelms. My dinner.
The inaugeration was soaked like a rumcake in God references, but a very special thing happened when Obama acknowledged that his country is comprised of 16% rational people. He said “Hey, you guys exist. And you probably voted for me”.
Fox tried to make a controversy of it, suggesting it was “offensive”. Offensive to acknowledge the existence of—is that some 48 million Americans? We exist, in massive numbers, Fox News.
Time released their Top 10 of Everything, including the religious highlights of 08. They missed some of the best stuff! The also seem to be proud of the Mormons for killing gay marriage, and made me ask “when did evangelism become evangelicalism, and what is the heck difference?”
But so much other weird, fascinating, offensive, ridiculous, and insane stuff happened in the guff between atheists and the idiots we affectionately call believers, including this winner of an editorial illustration: the illustrious Pope Ben, surrounded by the gay wieners he so despises! It’s nice to show that image again, since Flickr finds it too offensive to put up on our gallery. Anyways, It was tough to pick cause all our stuff is so interesting, but here goes…
Topic Agnostic’s 2008 Top Ten: the really interesting religious stuff from the past year
2. The best damn anti-Creationist rant ever, period.
Our serendipitous discovery of Aronra, a Texan geoscience student who’s eloquent YouTube video series “The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism” just destroy creationist nonsense over and over and over again.
The drama over the potential inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in Texas biology curriculum is over for now as a coalition of six Democrats and two Republicans defeated an amendment that would have maintained discussion of evolution’s “weaknesses.”
Textbook publishers cater to the influential Texas market, so whether or not science books continued to kowtow to creationism is of great interest nationally—changes to Texas’ science curriculum will likely be echoed across the land. The exact issue was whether to re-incorporate the phrase “strengths and weaknesses” into the discussion of evolution in state biology curriculum. The loathsome Discovery Institute had it’s scaly hands all over this fail.
The big deal about referring to “weaknesses” in evolution is that there aren’t any. Creationists are trying to introduce controversy and suggest that gaps in evidence equal flaws in the theory. We’ve seen those gaps steadily filled in as knowledge and technology increase. There’s no reason to think knowledge won’t continue grow, unless of course the Discovery Institute has its way.
This is a vote on the science curriculum, not theology or philosophy. It’s certainly not an issue of free speech; I doubt high school kids have been doing research and uncovered a dramatic flaw that’s being suppressed by wily biology teachers. There are no “sides” to be on; within the realm of science this theory is the accepted one, due to overwhelming evidence, for the diversity of life.
Here are some of the reasons those who understand the process and results of science “believe” in evolution:
It seems like everybody’s plotting an atheist bus campaign these days. Good! It’s not happening in Genoa, Italy, however—violation of an “ethics code in advertising” prevented the ungodly slogans from appearing.
“The bad news is that God doesn’t exist. The good news is that you don’t need him“, the ads were to proclaim.
Right-wing politicians fiercly criticized the message. The 1998 Catholic Almanac proclaims Italy to be the world’s most Catholic country, with 97.2% of the population obstensibly religious, so you can see why the idea was a tough sell.
Let’s be clear about it, if religion didn’t exist, then the current conflict between Hamas and Israel wouldn’t exist. It doesn’t even have to go that far; if some portions of the Torah (the Old Testament to Christians) didn’t exist then this conflict wouldn’t be happening.
Israel is anciently considered a “Holy Land”, and that it was set apart by God to be the homeland for the Hebrew person, thus when modern Israelwas created as a Jewish State in 1947 it was considered by some to be a fulfillment of Gods promise for a holy lands because of the ancient contract between God and his covenant people, the Hebrews.
When it was created as Jewish State, many of the Arabs living there were displaced.
This is a clear division of land, state and power between 2 groups of people; Jews and Arabs.
One group (Jews) feels entitled to the land they live in, partly because of the words in their holy book, the other group (Arabs) resent the Israeli occupation of what they consider to be their holy lands.
If the borders of Israel and the Gaza Strip were merged, and there was no separation of people according to religion and race, would this conflict even be happening?
This conflict, at it’s root, is about difference of beliefs about God, and isn’t that tragic? Take God out of the picture and these are just people with different ethnic backgrounds, with no pre-concieved notions about “heretics” and “gentiles”.
Baker said she doesn’t want to make a big deal out of the image or turn her house into a shrine.
Thank God for that!
She first noticed the Jesus image in her floor tiles around Christmastime. Hmm, perhaps she already had Christ on her mind, which pre-disposed her being more likely to see the Messiah in laminate.
She believes the depiction is meant to be inspirational and said this is the time of year for religious reflection.
She doesn’t go as far as to say that it was a miracle, or anything supernatural that caused it, but perhaps it was just guided by Jesus, sort of like Intelligent Design.
May I take a moment to again talk about the phenomenon known as pareidolia.
The term pareidolia describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
Bingo. Not supernatural, not a miracle, and not a message from Jesus. It is in your brain, a brain trying to make sense of the world. A Christian might see Jesus, an ancient Greek might see Zeus.
The ironies in the following story are so sweet that I invite you to poor yourself a glass of Cabernet, slice up some Swiss and a tart apple, and savour this feast of Christian moronism. I’ll wait til you get comfy.
You may recall that 800 buses recently launched in London bearing the slogan: “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Co-sponsored by Dawkins, the British Humanist Association, and concocted by Ariane Sherine of the Guardian’s Comment is Free, the ad campaign was created in response to irritating, scary Christian bus ads warning of damnation, hellfire and other nonsense.
The ads are now being challenged by “leading Christian activist” Stephen Green, who has made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and is calling for their removal.
Here’s one of the sweet nuggets of irony: “truthfulness” and “substantiation” are Mr. Green’s basis for a challenge. He suggests there’s not “a shred of supporting evidence” that God is not real, and thusly the ads (unlike most advertising?) are misleading.
Mr. Green: what kind of evidence will ever be recorded that God doesn’t exist? None, because proving a negative is a flaming logical fallacy. How does one show that something isn’t there? By the fact that we never see, hear, smell, touch or taste it? And anyone who says they have can’t replicate it for anyone else?
The onus is not on atheists to prove God does not exist; we are safer in our claim, as no evidence whatsoever shows that God does exist.
Which brings us to the second, even more succulent irony nugget. Should the ASA have to rule on the truthfulness of assertions of existence of a diety, the ruling logically has to
a) affect future Christian ads and
b) weigh in favour of those who don’t need to prove their assertion, as opposed to those who’s extrodinary claim has 0 extrodinary evidence to back it up.
Truthiness was apparently already addressed when the atheist campaign was accepted for appearance on British transit. Philosopher and BHA Distinguished Supporter A C Grayling wrote, in what we hope will inform a legal precedent, that the advertising rules that insisted on the “probably” in the atheist slogan need apply just as stringently to the Christian’s hellfire advertising.
Way to go, Mr. Green! You have exposed your religious convictions for the baseless nutjobbery that they are. You have no reason to believe God exists, and neither do we. Kudos.
Cristo Rendentor, the bloody big Jesus towering over Rio de Janeiro, may not be the Top God in Brazil for much longer. Sertaozinho, a town northwest of Sao Paulo city, is planning a way bigger Jesus (pedestal included) for Easter launch. About 681,000 God-glorifying dollars will be diverted from poverty, homelessness and other human travails in order to show the Lord who loves him most.
Giant Jesuses and huge crosses have popped up all over lately.
Munro, Ohio’s massive, wet Lord [image by Joe Orman]:
So you can see this is a common problem, the need to show God how big your religion is. I suspect he doesn’t give a damn about idol size and would prefer you to focus your funds upon the least of those, your bretheren.
Go Freedom From Religion Foundation. “Imagine no religion” billboards of a lovely stained-glass design have appeared in SF to remind people that there are other, more reasonable ways of living.
“We’re taking our liberating message of freedom from religious dogma in government to show solidarity with people who have now had a taste of the power of religion as a repressive force,” said Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
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