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It’s OK, NBC – Bellamy Also Forgot to Add “Under God”

So, as the whole country (and apparently all of Twitter) knows by now, NBC left out the “under god” line in the Pledge of Allegiance in the ridiculously self-indulgent, patriotic jerkfest of an opening montage for the U.S. Open. I have no idea what soldiers and children reciting the pledge have to do with tennis, but if you even offhandedly suggest that there are people dying to “protect our freedom” to whack a yellow bouncy ball over a net while overdramatically sighing, I’ll seriously reach through your internet connection, even if it’s wi-fi, and slap you across the face for being an absolute fucking moron. Actually, I’d do that even if you said you were just watching tennis.

Anyway, NBC apologized, but the networks (including their own) will continue to drag this out for the next week or so as an excuse to bash atheists and focus on trivial topics that distract from the real problems our country is facing – two things the media is excellent at. It’s sad that the only time the majority of this country is willing to discuss matters of mixing church and state is when some overpaid pundit jumps on a non-issue like this one, and their point is never to “discuss” anything. They just push all the right buttons, and like mindless, reactionary robots, we scream about the evils of godlessness and the preserving of great American traditions and other logical fallacies that fail to address the heart of the subject or contain any semblance of truth.

Hey Twitter, do you know who else left out “under god” out of the Pledge of Allegiance? THE FUCKING GUY WHO WROTE IT. Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892, and despite being a Baptist minister, he never thought to include his religious belief in that simple oath, hoping to unite rather than divide. In fact, he also considered himself a Christian socialist, so it was ironic that his words were later changed out of fear of some of the very ideas its original author stood for. The pledge was formally recognized by Congress in 1942, but in 1954, in a cowardly reaction to the Red Scare, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the official addition of the religious phrase. I’ve found that the people who seem to talk the most about rights and freedoms are those who are working the hardest to take those very things away from you, and nothing embodied that more than the ensuing wave of McCarthyism.

It’s funny how Americans spend so much time sucking off the Founding Fathers and raising them up like infallible gods on high, yet Bellamy specifically wrote the pledge with their intentions in mind and here we are claiming it’s “un-American” to not include a phrase that wasn’t found in its first draft or even its first official adoption. It’s also a phrase that you won’t find in any of the documents the country was founded on, yet we let fear mongers slap it on our currency and indoctrinate us with it in prejudiced campaigns that often resembled those of our enemies. You hear so much about how our country was better off “back in the good old days,” yet these same flag-waving dipshits would rather recite a 57-year-old pledge over a 119-year-old pledge. I know it’s more fun to make up your own version of history that fits your narrow-minded, spoon-fed worldview, but let’s try to remember that fifth grade education, people. It’s a pledge, not a prayer; you’re swearing allegiance to the country, not to a higher power – all you have to do is read it to understand that much.

I also love how often the word “godless” is thrown around in these debates as a negative term, though to call those “debates” imply that the other side is actually listening and responding to the others’ arguments. The true atheists aren’t actually heard from at all during these one-sided, hate-filled tirades, and if they are, it’s only to put them on for a 30-second segment in which they have no time to form a cohesive sentence, never mind a rebuttal. Secular, largely atheistic countries have the lowest crime and teen pregnancy rates in the world, and less than one percent of America’s prisons contain godless criminals, but again and again people are told that atheism leads to moral degradation, and again and again the unwashed masses eat it up without question. If one of those same pundits used “Jewish,” for example, in the same nasty, condescending tone they use to utter “godless,” you better believe that network would have him fired faster than you could tweet, “I’m offended!” Guess what? #noonecares

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if NBC’s exclusion of those words was due to poor editing or to make a purposeful statement – what matters is that the thoughtful dialogue that could result from such snafus always ends up being reduced to 140 character whining with absolutely no context or forethought. You’re not special, you’re not quotable, you’re not clever, and you’re definitely not ready for a real discussion on real national concerns. Everyone I’ve refuted on this wasn’t too happy about having their history corrected, but you shouldn’t bring it up if you don’t want to look as stupid as you clearly are.

And what were any of you doing watching tennis anyway? If you really have that little to do, America, try picking up the book you use to balance your coffee table and actually reading it. In the same time it takes to exercise your freedoms, you could actually learn about why you have them in the first place. Spoiler: It’s not because of the theocratic bullshit being spewed by “news” programs and “concerned” politicians.

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
-Thomas Jefferson, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association

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A Stroke of Luck

I’m not one who believes in karma, or much else for that matter, but goddamn is this a “payback’s a bitch” kind of moment…

The radio preacher who sparked an international media frenzy by predicting the end of the world last month has suffered a stroke. Harold Camping was rushed to hospital from his Alameda, California home on Thursday night.

The 89-year-old has survived the stroke – but there are fears that the gravelly, famous voice he used to make his predictions to millions around the world will never be the same.

And whose “fear” is this? The thousands of people he knowingly ripped off over the years who are broke (or at least financially hurting) now because of him? If this is a guy who’s always looking to the skies for a sign, maybe he should take this as a not-so-subtle hint to shut the fuck up already and pack it in.

At least we know that now he’ll be talking out of the side of his face instead of his ass. Hopefully, he’ll go for a nice, long drive and that will be the last we hear from Dr. Doomsday…

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Someone’s Going to be Richer on May 22, and It’s Not You

Amongst all this May 21 “The End Is Nigh” bullshit, people are too busy selling all their worldly possessions or laughing their asses off to take this into account…

At the center of it all, Camping’s organization, Family Radio, is perfectly happy to take your money — and in fact, received $80 million in contributions between 2005 and 2009. Camping founded Family Radio, a nonprofit Christian radio network based in Oakland, Calif. with about 65 stations across the country, in 1958.

But not even all of his own employees are convinced that the world is ending on Saturday. In fact, many still plan on showing up at work on Monday.

“I don’t believe in any of this stuff that’s going on, and I plan on being here next week,” a receptionist at their Oakland headquarters told CNNMoney.

A program producer in Illinois told us, “We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing.”

Oh, I’m sure you are, which is ripping people off in the one of the lowest ways possible. This is the same Harold Camping, after all, that told us the world was going to end in 1994. While he broke the Golden Rule of religion – never present a testable claim – he also kept in mind that sheep have short attention spans.

According to their most recent IRS filings, Family Radio is almost entirely funded by donations, and brought in $18 million in contributions in 2009 alone. According to those financial documents, accountants put the total worth of Family Radio (referred to as Family Stations on its official forms) at $72 million.

Most of the group’s net worth is tied up in FCC broadcasting licenses, valued at $56 million. Family Radio claimed it held only $1.5 million in cash on its books at the end of 2009. The paperwork shows Camping has so far, never taken a penny for his own salary, but Family Radio has plenty of other paid employees.

At the ripe old age of 89, he seems to be living quite well for someone who doesn’t make any money. After all, if it’s not on paper, it must not exist, right? Bernie Madoff thought the same thing.

The nonprofit employed about 350 people and paid them a collective $8.3 million — or roughly $23,000 per person — in 2009.

Meanwhile, some employees are questioning the meaning of Harold Camping’s goodbye letter sent to the Family Radio mailing list last week. While he says farewell, he encourages employees to “steadfastly continue to stand with us to proclaim the Gospel through Family Radio.”

Yeah, he seems to have a lot of obvious holes in his story, doesn’t he? Why would he request a November extension to file their financial paperwork when the world is ending in October? Dodging your obligations isn’t a “family value” that I’m aware of. I’ve also read that at least $100 million was spent on the recent ad campaign alone, which Camping’s own producer called a “conservative estimate,” so that means a hell of a lot more money was made to keep everybody paid. I can’t wait to see the paperwork (or lack thereof) for that one.

Even 80% of his own employees freely admit that he’s full of shit, yet they still cash those paychecks funded by other people’s stupidity every week, don’t they? The Catholic Church is full of the same type of callous apathy towards its largely poor followers, but they could definitely learn something from these guys. Around here, all the churches are closing, but business seems to be booming in the Family Radio doomsday bunker.

After all, Camping has made it quite clear that no refunds will be available on Sunday…

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May 21, 2011 Will Be the Day That Saturday Happens

What are guys doing on May 21, 2011? The same thing everyone else will be doing – not being “Raptured.”

Somehow I doubt all that money being collected from gullible Chicken Littles will be going towards apology billboards, but hey, what do I know? I’m just the guy with a website that doesn’t look like it was made in 1994…you know, the last time Harold Camping predicted the end of the world and was completely wrong about it.

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America’s Joyous Future

I’m assuming that this church is filled every Sunday with the same 8 in 10 simpletons who think prayer saved Congresswoman Giffords. I guess the family of 9-year-old Christina Green just didn’t pray hard enough.

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Greg Graffin of Bad Religion on MSNBC and The Pod Delusion

As Bad Religion celebrates their 30th year as the best punk rock band ever (Yes, in my opinion.) with the release of their new album, The Dissent of Man, lead singer Greg Graffin, who is also a science professor at UCLA, has been making the rounds in the press to promote his new book, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God. While the man is utterly brilliant, MSNBC gave him about 30 seconds to talk in a 5 minute segment. Take a look…

All morning news show are this insipid, but Morning Joe really took the cake on this one. We didn’t get to hear why he really disagreed with Bill O’Reilly, what subjects his book covers, or anything about his new album. Hell, he didn’t even get the chance to retort the random theist woman they threw in there that no one wanted to hear speak. These hour or so news shows never ask the right questions (usually because they know nothing of their guests before they appear) and never give their guests enough screen time to even justify their time.

Thankfully, we now have the internet and alternative media to deliver the real story with some actual worthwhile soundbites; otherwise, those unfamiliar with him would just assume Greg is some kind of overly-polite pussy without anything challenging to say. Embedded below is a 14-minute interview he did over at The Pod Delusion (I see what they did there) that better explains his book, his naturalistic worldview, and his own approach to atheism that separates him from fellow non-believers like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins…

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Atheists Know More About Religion

I’m not quite sure what to add to the following. I’ve known for quite some time that people don’t know terribly much about their own religion and, actually, if you read our blog on a semi-regular basis then you probably knew that too. However, it’s nice to see an observation confirmed by a large institution like Pew.

The tl;dr (Too Long; Didn’t Read for you non-internet-lingo-savy readers) is that on average, Atheists and Agnostics know more about religion than religious people do. Why? Because, as the article points out – we think about it instead of just accepting it on blind faith. Article below:

If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.

Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term “blind faith.”

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn’t identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church’s central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.

Atheists and agnostics — those who believe there is no God or who aren’t sure — were more likely to answer the survey’s questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey’s measurement of religious knowledge — so close as to be statistically tied.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” he said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics.

Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but their numbers were too small to be broken out as statistically significant groups.

Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t,” served as an advisor on the survey. “I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people,” he said.

He said he found it significant that Mormons, who are not considered Christians by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than evangelical Christians.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister from Leawood, Kan., and the author of “When Christians Get it Wrong,” said the survey’s results may reflect a reluctance by many people to dig deeply into their own beliefs and especially into those of others.

“I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths. … That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith,” he said.

The Pew survey was not without its bright spots for the devout. Eight in 10 people surveyed knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

The question that elicited the most correct responses concerned whether public school teachers are allowed to lead their classes in prayer. Eighty-nine percent of the respondents correctly said no. However, 67% also said that such teachers are not permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature, something the law clearly allows.

For comparison purposes, the survey also asked some questions about general knowledge, which yielded the scariest finding: 4% of Americans believe that Stephen King, not Herman Melville, wrote “Moby Dick.”

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
source: here

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Bill Maher on Larry King Live – 9/14/10

I love when Maher does Larry King Live because he just runs through current events one after the other and just makes sense out of every last news bite. I find it hard to disagree with pretty much anything he said in this episode, so do yourself a favor – watch this one in its entirety and get a good laugh out of what’s been going on lately.

Part 1 – The Tea Party, Christine O’Donnell, Newt Gingrich

Part 2 – Sarah Palin, Obama, Democrats, The War on Terror, Islam

Part 3 – Glenn Beck, The NYC Mosque, 9/11

Part 4 – Jobs, The Media, The American People, Patriotism

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Cthulhu, and a Trampoline

With an eye-catching title like that, you may have been expecting some sort of metaphor or deep poetry at work here, but no, there’s just this awesome tea/coffee cup with the cutest picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu jumping of a trampoline I’ve seen all week on it.

As a skeptic, sci-fi nerd, and big fan of religious parody, I wholeheartedly approve. My friend Kenna paints cups like this by hand, and this one in particular is for sale along with several others, so check out her Etsy shop if you’re so inclined. She does accept customer orders, but I don’t think I can think of anything more awesome or random to paint on a porcelain cup.

(Yes, I know this is completely off-topic. No, I don’t care…it’s fucking Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu on a goddamn trampoline. STFU.)

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Why Religious People Make Terrible Parents: Part 1

If there’s anything worse than kids anymore, it’s their goddamn parents, and while children have an excuse to believe in invisible men and fairy tales, their guardians in this already harsh enough world should have woken up to reality a long time ago. By forcing their prejudices and beliefs on their children in their early formative years, they not only scar them for life mentally, but many times physically as well, all in the name of something that they’ve been too afraid to question all these years. Our first example comes from Oregon; a lovely couple from Beavercreek (Do you need more explanation?) let a mass of blood vessels grow over their infant daughter’s eye to the size of a tennis ball because they figured god would just magically make it disappear. Now they’re facing first-degree criminal mistreatment charges…

The Wylands’ 7-month-old daughter, Alayna, was placed in state custody earlier this month after child-welfare workers received a tip about the untreated and ballooning growth. Doctors said that the condition could cause permanent damage or loss of vision.

The Wylands and their church reject medical care in favor of faith-healing — anointing with oil, laying on of hands, prayer and fasting. The parents testified at a juvenile court hearing last week that they never considered getting medical attention for Alayna. According to court documents, Rebecca Wyland anointed Alayna with oil each time she changed the girl’s diaper and wiped away the yellow discharge that seeped daily from the baby’s left eye.

The area started swelling, and the fast-growing mass of blood vessels, known as a hemangioma, eventually caused her eye to swell shut and pushed the eyeball down and outward and started eroding the eye socket bone around the eye. It’s rare to see a child with an advanced hemangioma because the condition typically is treated as soon as it’s detected, said a doctor who testified at a hearing before Van Dyk last week.

A little faith in god never hurt anybody, right? Tell that to little Alayna, but make sure you tell it to her right side, so she can actually see what the face of an apologist asswipe looks like. That way, when she’s older and hopefully taken away from these brainwashed psychopaths completely, she’ll know who deserves to have anointing oil pumped into every open orifice next time they catch the common cold. While the custody battle is still up in the air, the article does leave us with a great end note…

Timothy Wyland was a widower when he married Rebecca Wyland two years ago. Wyland’s first wife, Monique, died of breast cancer in 2006. She had not sought or received medical treatment for the condition, said Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner who signed the death certificate.

Well, the power of Jesus juju worked so well the first time, why not let your bet against the fates ride once again, right? You’ll notice in the countless stories like these that it’s never the parents who are suffering from the lack of medical treatment, but their defenseless children who can’t (or have been convinced not to) help themselves. At least Monique had the decency to drop dead before bearing a child that she and Mr. Wyland could torture. This time, 44-year-old Timothy chose the impressionably young Rebecca, about half his age at 23, to birth the fruit(cake) of his loins.

If that story doesn’t make you think twice about “honoring your mother and father,” I don’t know what will. Oh wait, I do – Part 2 of this series. Check back soon for another story that’s guaranteed to make you cross your legs in pain…that is, if you still have anything left down there to feel it when these parents are through with you.