When people used to ask me to say prayers, I’d have a beer in honor of whatever cause for which I was asked to pray. That served the purpose of getting me drunk and honoring the prayer recipient in question.

Now that I know longer drink, I think happy thoughts instead when asked to pray for someone. (Usually happy thoughts about the person in question, unless it’s someone I secretly despise.) It serves the purpose of making me happy, and ultimately making the world a better place… plus, I’m not wasting my time praying.

In my own little world, this is effectively twisting something useless into a genuinely good and useful action. (Sort of like when people have fund raisers for every hour they spend protesting Fred Phelps or other unsavory bastards.)

The last three months have given me a pretty pessimistic outlook on the future of this country. Our population is 80% Christian, and all it takes to distract them from the theft of our wealth by our governments and business community is to bring up abortion, creationism, sex, or taxes. It’s as if 80% of our country has the critical thinking skills and reading comprehension of a third grader. (No offense to third graders.)

Unions gave us those lovely weekends that we enjoy. Unions gave us overtime pay. Unions succeeded in effecting a child labor ban. Unions are the reason that most of us don’t work 14 hour days. (At least not without appropriate compensation) Unions gave us health and retirement benefits, as well as a working environment that was much safer, cleaner, and supportive to the worker. These benefits did not come freely, but at the price of blood, sweat, and sacrifice. They stood, united, against the clubs and guns of strikebreakers, as well as the US military, and endeavored to stop the work until their rights were respected. Ownership of a business does not imply ownership of an employee, and that is a cultural standard that even our idiotically religious country has grown to respect. We cannot trust the corporate community to treat workers with any value, and we know this not only from the last two years’ events, but from the whole of industrial history.

Frankly, I could care less what Christians’ storybook says about taxes, work, and ownership. Workers are human beings, not pawns, and their treatment at the hands of teabaggers is nothing short of unconscionable.

Per Mother Jones:

Wisconsin’s ongoing labor battle has officially become a holy war. The Family Research Council, the evangelical advocacy organization founded by James Dobson, has been dipping into its war chest to defend Republican Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to curtail collective bargaining for public-sector unions. FRC president Tony Perkins interviewed backers of Walker’s anti-union bill on his weekly radio program and has tweeted his support for the bill, directly linking social conservatism with an anti-union, pro-business agenda: “Pro-family voters should celebrate WI victory b/c public & private sector union bosses have marched lock-step w/liberal social agenda.”

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ohmessylifex:

Link is HERE

Why is it that we can create things better than ‘God’? If you truly believe God exists then it would seem as if we’re smarter than him, not only have we created an artificial leaf better than the real thing, but plenty of people could list many things we could improve on in other areas of life - one example of course is not having 1 hole for breathing and eating because its too prone to choking.

‘God’ is about as impressive as a childrens magician at an adults party.

Holy smokes, this is neat.  And I’d add, for you Creationists, why have we already identified five other planets that are roughly the same size as Earth, and potentially habitable? (Among thousands of potentially habitable planets, at that.)

helvetebrann:

A Massachusetts mom is accused of killing her 3-year-old daughter by stuffing roses down her throat in an exorcism to remove the demons inside the girl, according to court documents.

Dora Alicia Tejada Pleitez, 26, was arrested Tuesday in connection with her daughter’s death. She is being held without bail pending a mental competency hearing. She pleaded not guilty.

While being treated at the hospital for an injury to her hand sustained the day her daughter died, Pleitez told staff that she had stuck a rose down Nicole’s throat because God had told her to, according to court documents.

Pleitez told hospital staff that she had considered performing an exorcism on her son, Luis, too.

She “had thought about fighting the demons out of both children and that at one point had a child in each arm,” the documents read.

Another horrific thing done in the name of a higher power.

Monstrous.

This probably isn’t the best thing to watch before bed, but, I love any movie that mocks and exposes religious fraud and superstition, yet still manages to provide some neato Devil CGI.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I can’t keep my mouth shut, especially in the face of injustice and religious debates.  I am very outspoken against religion for three reasons:  Religion, for as good as it makes some people feel, is ultimately poisonous in the grand scheme of things, it diminishes the importance of ones finite time and the extent to which they enjoy it, and there’s simply no evidence that god(s) exist.

The pervasive and ever-encroaching nature of Christianity and Islam has elevated the importance of religious debate, specifically in the realm of public policy.  The reason we outspoken (read: ‘militant’) atheists push our ‘secular agenda’ is that our Christian and Muslim brothers in the world are not content to live and let live.  In spite of the fact that religion played a major role in every major humanitarian crisis and war of the past 5000 years, the religious folks in this country, with their votes and lobbies, continue to push an agenda that would marry religion and law to the greatest extent our Constitution will allow, regardless of the empirical evidence of the destructive nature of theocracies. (Quick examples, Native American genocide, Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the Holocaust, etc.)  As scary and ‘militant’ as we atheists are unfairly portrayed by Christians and Muslims, the worst we ever really do is make fun of blindly accepted religious dogma (and the people who believe it) and write books.   Most of us are content to let people think what they want, as long as they aren’t trying to enshrine it in public law.

One of the common philosophies that religious folks like to use (even though it is flawed) is Pascal’s Wager.   Pascal held that even though the existence of God cannot be proven, one loses nothing by living as if God does exist, and potentially has everything to gain by gambling that God does indeed exist.

With respect to Blaise Pascal, I respectfully disagree.   

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