Religion vs Death

Anyone who still thinks religion has been a benign force in this world need to read the compilation that James Haught made in a 1990 edition of the Skeptical Review.  Below is a segment to whet your appetite:

“– The Thirty Years’ War produced the largest religious death toll of all time. It began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in supportive religious armies from Germany, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy. Sweden’s Protestant soldiers sang Martin Luther’s “Ein ‘Feste Burg” in battle. Three decades of combat turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery. One estimate states that Germany’s population dropped from 18 million to 4 million. In the end nothing was settled, and too few people remained to rebuild cities, plant fields, or conduct education.”

I’ve had people tell me that it is men doing these dastardly deeds and not God or the religion.  I have to disagree with this interpretation.  There are passages in the Bible and Koran that are constantly interpreted / misinterpreted and used as an excuse to maim and kill those who believe differently.  The Catholics and Protestants still barely talk to each other, and the Muslims still kill anybody that disagrees with them.  The Muslims kill the Hindus and the Hindus kill the Muslims

“It’s fashionable among thinking people to say that religion isn’t the real cause of today’s strife in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, India and Iran — that sects merely provide labels for combatants. Not so. Religion keeps the groups in hostile camps. Without it, divisions would blur with passing generations; children would adapt to new times, mingle, intermarry, forget ancient wounds. But religion keeps them alien to one another.

Anything that divides people breeds inhumanity. Religion serves that ugly purpose.”

Remember this was written before  9-11

A passing thought as I go to close this post.  The Republican Religious Right wing wants to return a measure of religious control to America

Muslims Kill Christians

Well its happened again…those super friendly, religion of peace, and non-violent Muslims in Nigeria have killed some more Christians in their ongoing effort to rid the country of a competing religion.   Boy those Muslims, what a crack-up they are.  HERE
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

The Fall of Man

The Fall of Man as seen by Thomas Paine

“The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tête-à-tête is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit: or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women and doing more mischief.

But instead of this they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole—the secret of which is that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the pit—let him out again—gave him a triumph over the whole creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Authors emphasis 

Merry Christmas Everyone

I see the “Religion of Peace”…Islam, has given a gift of murder and mayhem to Nigerian Christians this year.

“Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. The group, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 504 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.” From CBS News

Why am I not convinced that the Muslims are peaceful???
.

God is Either Impotent or Evil

“Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.”  Sam Harris, 2005

We Are All Children of Africa

.
ALL the evidence from ALL the relevant sciences just keeps pointing to Africa, and that the early hominids are our ancestors.  Religionists of course have been denying this for over a hundred years…but the science is relentless and cohesive, we humans are products of evolution, not created ex-nihilo by some imaginary Jewish God 6000 years ago.

Priests, rabbi’s, pastors, Mullah’s, and  theologians on all sides can make all the Grand Pronouncements and split all the hairs they want for eternity, and all we atheists need to do is point to humankind’s KNOWN past and the KNOWN path we took to get where we are today.  And of course the evidence for our ancestry kinda’ kills the mainline established Christian dogma…we now know the old stories are impossible to fit into KNOWN history.

Christianity, as we know it, is on it’s last legs, it cannot integrate the knowledge we now have without major changes to all denominations and theological thought.

.
|
see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Vandalize Cars If Displaying Darwin Symbol

Apparently religious zealots have decided that biology teachers at the University of Florida needed to be humbled and shown that religion, not evolution, rules in Gainesville, Florida.   Of course Christians have doing this kind of crap for many, many years.  Our US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who happen to be atheist (yes there are atheists in foxholes) have been beaten up and denied advancement.  I haven’t heard about any deaths yet, but it probably will happen at some point.

“Letters, nails, and vehicular sabotage haven’t kept two University of Florida biology professors from expressing their belief in evolution.  In a string of events occurring over the past four months, the professors’ cars, which were parked in the Bartram-Carr Hall parking lot, were vandalized.

First, religious letters were left on the cars, and then pro-evolution bumper stickers and Darwin-fish emblems were scraped and torn from the vehicles. Most recently, nails were put into the tires.”   Independent Florida Alligator:

Yeah those God Lovin’ Christians just can’t stand someone who doesn’t agree with their magical sky-God.  And they keep that falsehood going about how nice and loving their religion is…not like the Muslims.  Thing is when Christianity ruled the Western world it was every bit as bad as Islam is now…don’t look now, but the Christian right (Republicans) are trying to re-establish Biblical rule
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

The Christian Right Wants What Muslims Want

What is the agenda of the Muslim extremists, other than killing infidels?  Well we know that they are anti-woman’s rights and anti-gay rights.  They will kill women who step out of line and kill any person exhibiting gay behavior.  Their countries are generally controlled by religion and have no separation of church and state.

Funny thing…the Christian Right has pretty much the same agenda.  Women are considered second class citizens by the church hierarchy of most Christian denominations.  All but a handful of Christian churches condemn the homosexuals to burn in hell forever…and several evil fundamentalist movements want us Americans to be ruled by Old Testament law, which essentially means no separation of church and state.

So it seems that the Christian right wants exactly what the Muslim extremists want…they both want to take over America and make us slaves to their religion.

Fundamentalist Religion of any kind is evil, and bad for our country’s future.  As civilized, thinking, and caring people we need to recognize the threat these evil people present to us and our country and do our best to dissuade them from what they are trying to do.  They need to be exposed for what they are…a deadly and real threat to civilization.
.

see more dog and puppy pictures

Muslims Want Sex Slaves

From the Middle East Forum

“Last week witnessed popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini boast about how Islam allows Muslims to buy and sell conquered infidel women, so that “When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

“This week’s depraved anachronism comes from a Muslim woman—Salwa al-Mutairi, a political activist and former parliamentary candidate for Kuwait’s government, no less: She, too, seeks to “revive the institution of sex-slavery.”

“Muslim men who fear being seduced or tempted into immoral behavior by the beauty of their female servants, or even of those servants “casting spells” on them, would be better to purchase women from an “enslaved maid” agency for sexual purposes. She [Mutairi] suggested that special offices could be set up to provide concubines in the same way as domestic staff recruitment agencies currently provide housemaids. “We want our youth to be protected from adultery,” said al-Mutairi, suggesting that these maids could be brought as prisoners of war in war-stricken nations like Chechnya to be sold on later to devout merchants.”
For full story

Just a thought for those who read the full story.  If we get into a full-fledged war with the Muslim countries and they take prisoners somewhere, any females in that group of prisoners can legally (by their religious laws) be made a sex slave for Muslim men/soldiers.  How fun that must be…..  :-(

Oh Yeah, I’m sure God/Allah is just smiling down from heaven/wherever and using His/Her/Its various and sundry powers to allow this idea to come to “consummation”  :-)

Does this not scream out to you that Islam is totally full of SH*T…the Muslim people are batspit crazy and their pitiful governments are useless…the whole bunch of them are a drain on the worlds resources, they just can’t come out of the Dark Ages and realize that ALL humans have the right to be free of ASSHAT religious crap.

Just sayin’…..

.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Muslims Want To Kill Americans Everywhere

Today in a videotaped eulogy for dead al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden his deputy warned America that they face an international community of Muslims that seek to destroy it and its allies.

Full story can be found here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110608/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_al_qaida_message

Well so much for warm fuzzy feelings and normal relations with the Muslim community all over the world.  I’m just sitting here and thinking of how the greater Muslim community would react if there was a large group of American terrorists vowing to slaughter and maim all followers of Islam wherever they are found in the world.  They key to this scenario is that our government would round up any members of an American terrorist group, jail them, and throw away the key.

Muslims for some unknown reason cannot seem to do this to their own terrorist groups…I wonder why.
.
.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!