Shadow Casting

They Can’t Turn The Lights Off

Excellent viral video about the prop 8 trial censorship.

Aggressive atheism

One of my favorites, Pat Condell brings the house down.

Pascal’s wager: Seriously?

Another great video from @zjemptv decimating pascal’s wager.

As an atheist, I have completely lost count of how many times some theist has pulled Pascal’s wager on me. In fact, I refuse to even debate it anymore. It has been debunked so many times, that anyone who still thinks it makes a valid argument is just wilfully ignorant. Now, I can just send them to this video.

For all of the ex-catholics out there, @zjemptv also has a video on how to officially leave the catholic church. Until you do this, they will still count you as a catholic.

Seriously, people. For queer, gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, gender queer, and everyone in between, do we not have enough outside enemies? There are many, many ways to be each of these things. Find out where you fit, and be comfortable with who you are.

If someone else is not like you, so what? Let them be who they are too. How do we expect the straight world to learn tolerance if we cannot even show it to one another.

Gay people who hate gay people

Once again, the ever fabulous @ZJemptv lays it down.

Self Loathing Gay Guys: a response

An excellent response by @ExplorationB to a video about self loathing gay guys.

Now, let us all give one another a big hug, and try not to be a jackass.

I am sure many atheists have been accused of being angry at god. Theists refuse to accept that atheism is simply the non-belief in a deity due to a lack of evidence. Instead, they often try to find some other motive such as anger. In their view, atheists really believe in god deep down inside, but we are so angry or hurt that we advocate atheism as a way to punish god. In other words, atheists are just childish and petty.

Of course, many atheists actually are angry. Many horrible things have been done in the name of religion, and some of us have been the victims. Anger also comes from seeing the injustice and cruelty that others have suffered. In the history of religion, there is plenty to be angry about.

I was born into a fifth generation mormon family, and I left when I was eighteen. I spent a few years as a catholic, and a few years studying buddhism and practicing meditation. In each case, I can honestly say that I did not leave out of anger. I left because I learned too much to believe in it. In my case, a background in science and skepticism coupled with a strong interest in the study of religion provided the fertile ground for my non-belief.

Despite the fact that I did not leave out of anger, I am extremely angry. Of course, my anger has nothing to do with an imaginary god, and everything to do with the evil actions of various religious institutions. Even so, my anger coupled with an outspoken atheism tend to put me on the receiving end of the popular theist assumption that I am really a believer who is just angry at god. Add to these characteristics, the fact that I am queer, and all of the pieces fall into place.

I am mad at god for making me gay. Now it all makes sense, at least to the theists. At this point, though, they tend to divide into two main camps. The more conservative theists offer to cure me through all of the usual means: prayer, aversion therapy, brainwashing, and torture. The more liberal theists tell me that god loves me for who I am, and that homosexuality is not a sin. It is from the latter group, that I tend to receive articles stressing the need for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Building Bridges

Recently, I received such an article entitled Building Bridges from the Dancing With Crazy blog. I think it was sent with the intention of soothing my intense hatred of the mormon church.

Oh, well. The article actually had the opposite effect. The rest of this post is very much a rant. As such, it contains a great many angry words. Now would be a good time to stop reading if you are not comfortable with that.

The article is about an LDS stake in California that is trying to repair a rift caused by Prop 8. The author, Emily Pearson, is also an ex-mormon whose mother belongs to that very stake, and much of the post comes from stories that were related by her mother. In addition, the post also contains a link to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune which provides a somewhat different viewpoint.

For those people fortunate enough to have little contact with mormons, here are some comparisons that may help. A stake in the mormon church is roughly the equivalent of a catholic diocese, and a ward would be the equivalent of a parish. A stake is made up of multiple wards like a diocese is made up of multiple parishes. To confuse matters though, a mormon bishop presides over a ward whereas a catholic bishop presides over a diocese. The man who presides over a mormon stake is called a stake president. And, yes, only men get to be in these positions, so they do have that in common with the catholics.

Also, I should say that my anger has nothing to do with Emily Pearson’s article, and everything to do with the event she describes. With that, let the ranting begin.

Rant 1 – Shut the fuck up already

Part of my anger with this entire event may be due to some bad timing as I have spent the past few weeks listening to the various debates about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. As such, I was already in a bad mood.

I have spent my entire life listening to straight people talk about “the gays“. What makes people gay? Is it a lifestyle choice? Can they be cured? Should they be allowed to get married? Should they be allowed to raise kids? Should they be allowed to join the military? How should I act around them? What if they hit on me? If I’m nice to them, will people think I’m gay? Will they destroy my marriage? Will they molest my kids? Will they destroy the very fabric of creation? Should they be arrested? Should they be executed?

For each of these questions, I have a few of my own. What the fuck is the straight worlds utter obsession with gay people about? Straight people talk about gay people way more than gay people ever talk about gay people. Do you people not have a life of your own? Do you secretly wish you were gay? Jesus tap dancing christ, whatever it is, would you please get over it and shut the fuck up?

So, here we have yet another meeting by a group of mostly straight people to discuss “the gays“. I was annoyed before the article even started.

Rant 2 – The ugly kid at the party

The other thing that annoys me about all of this talk is the utter condescension involved. Many of these people act like a spoiled teenager who is about to throw a party, and gay people are the ugly kid who lives down the block. They don’t really want the ugly kid at their party, but they feel guilty about not inviting him.

To alleviate their guilt, they go ahead and send the invitation, and golly gee it makes them feel swell. It’s so nice that the poor ugly kid gets to hang out with all the cool kids. I bet he’s just so grateful.

Well, sorry, cool kids. I already throw much better parties with people who can actually dance. How about taking that invitation and fucking the hell off?

Which is worse, the assholes who hate you for being gay, or the people who try to stop them from being assholes by telling them how horrible it is to be gay?

Those poor gay people. They are just so sad and pathetic. How can you not feel sorry for them?

Rant 3 – We really really love you

The next person who tells me how much they love me after voting to take away my rights is liable to get smacked upside the head. This kind of drivel has been coming from various christian groups for a while now, so I’m already sick of it.

You know who I love? I love the Westboro Baptist Church because they don’t pretend to love me. They tell me right up front that they hate me, their god hates me, and the bible says to hate me. Personally, I can live with that. Hell, I can even respect it.

What I cannot respect, though, are the people who tell me how much they love me while they stab me in the back. It’s underhanded and despicable. I’ll take a few “god hates fags” signs any day of the week over the atrocities committed by the mormon church.

Rant 4 – Who cares if you’re sorry

Despite the actions of this one stake, the mormon church still continues along it’s bloody sadistic path of hatred.

But, what if that changed? If we all woke up tomorrow to find the mormon church apologizing for the harm they have caused, would it matter?

How many people were driven to an outright suicide because of the mormon church? How many others were driven to suicide indirectly through addictions to drugs, alcohol, etc. because of the mormon church?

How many lives have been utterly destroyed?

Does it matter if they’re sorry? None of those people can ever be brought back. None of the hurt can ever be repaired. There has simply been too much pain, too much death, too much sadness, and all of this blood is on their hands.

I guess some mormons want to build a bridge over the rotting corpses of the people they have destroyed. If they build it high enough, they may not have to smell the horrible stench any longer.

I don’t want an apology. I don’t want their approval, their acceptance, or their love. I want them gone.

I hate the mormon church, and I always will. My greatest desire is to see it wiped from the face of the planet. To every mormon, I have this to say:

The mormon church is my enemy. If you feel guilty for what it has done, then leave. If you want reconciliation, then leave. If you want forgiveness, then leave. As long as you remain a member of the mormon church, you are also my enemy, and I hope it brings you nothing but misery.

Did I mention I was angry?

And, that concludes the angry vitriol part of our show. How about a sprinkling of truth to round things out.

Whenever someone makes an extraordinary claim, it is perfectly reasonable to ask what evidence exists to support such a claim. In the case of Joseph Smith, there is none. There is no evidence to support any of his outlandish stories or his prophetic claims. In addition, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the claims made by the book of mormon.

There is, however, a great deal of evidence against him. Evidence that Joseph Smith was a liar, a swindler, a scoundrel, a child molester, a destroyer of families, a bully, and possibly an accomplice to the murder of a government official. All of these allegations are well documented in many books and countless web sites.

In addition, “the pearl of great price” which holds a place in the mormon canon of scripture is such an obvious fabrication as to eliminate any doubt that Joseph Smith was a complete and utter fraud. All of the evidence points clearly to a very obvious conclusion: mormonism is a lie.

Any person who believes in the mormon church has chosen to deliberately ignore the truth. Prefering, instead, the horrid fantasy of an evil man.

It’s time to wake up.

P.S. If any person reads this rant, and has the gall to leave a comment about how god can heal my anger, I will personally reach through this monitor and throttle you.

Here is an excellent source of information on the long history of homophobia in the mormon church.

The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature

Here are some examples that demonstrate the extreme levels of assholeness to which the mormon church has descended in their dealings with gay people.

Go away, but pay your tithing

In 1975, Air Force Sgt. Leonard Phillip Matlovich Jr. appeared on the cover of Time magazine with a caption that read “I Am a Homosexual“. He also happened to be a mormon, but not for long. They threw him out, of course, with an excommunication.

He was welcome to attend public meetings as a guest but he was “not to pay tithes or other contributions, but [was] encouraged to keep them on deposit until such time as [he] might be readmitted to the Church.”

Remember, ex-mormons, just because you don’t belong to the church anymore, don’t forget about tithing. Just put it in a bank account in case you ever change your mind. I guess that is the price of re-admission?

Here is another article on Sgt. Matlovich: Sgt. Leonard P. Matlovich:
Patriot, Mormon, and Activist

Spencer W. Kimball, Apostle, Prophet, Total Fuckwad

I never knew about the massive efforts by Spencer W. Kimball to eradicate homosexuals. He was the mormon Grand Poobah when I was a kid. More than anyone, it seems like he was the major influence behind the church’s hatred of gay people that exists to this day. He also instituted “counseling” to help people overcome their sinful nature; one of the first ex-gay programs. Here is a lovely quote:

Homosexuality is an ugly sin, but because of its prevalence, the need to warn the uninitiated, and the desire to help those who may already be involved with it, it must be brought into the open. It is the sin of the ages….There is today a strong clamor to make such practices legal by passing legislation….We do not hesitate to tell the world that the cure for these evils is not in surrender….As we think back upon the experiences of Nineveh, Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, we wonder – will history repeat itself?

Kimball also participated in the gay witch hunts at BYU which contributed to the suicides of five young men who were rejected by the church.

Two of the students committed suicide by over-dosing on drugs, one hung himself, another blew his own head apart with a gun, and the last jumped seven storeys to his death.

Mormon history is certainly a sick and twisted affair. A long history of misogyny, racism, and homophobia dominates the mormon story. Connell O’Donovan has done an excellent job providing the details in the history of the mormon church’s hatred of gay people.

I found The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature from a link in this post Thomas S. Monson: New President detailing Monson’s involvement with The Values Institute.

Much thanks to @Utahnite for posting this link on twitter.

catholic = muslim = assholes

The pope claims that gay marriage is an attack on creation. As for covering up massive pedophilia and child abuse, well, that was just an oversight.

No, seriously. Why can’t people just let them move on? They said they were sorry, and the pope has promised to write a strongly worded pastoral letter about it. He almost shed a tear about it one day. Give the guy in a funny hat a break, okay?

So, anyway, let’s get the focus back to where it really belongs instead. Let’s focus on those evil gay people who want to commit the abominable act of making a lifetime commitment to one another out of love. Now, that is some twisted shit.

I, for one, am really glad the pope has his priorities straight.

Pope says gay marriage an ‘attack’ on creation

Then, there are the muslims. Once again, they manage to make christianity look almost civilized by comparison.

Gay Muslims made homeless by family violence

How about we start to consider religion to be an attack on reason, human decency, and civilization?

Thanks to @ZJemptv for the links.

A most blessed hymn

Finally, this completely unrelated video has to be the best christian hymn ever written. I just had to include it here.

There seems to be some controversy among non-believers as to the best way to refer to themselves. There are atheists, agnostics, free-thinkers, humanists, brights, godless, etc. Personally, I have no problem with any of these terms. It is not for me to decide how other people should identify themselves.

Like everyone else, though, I do have a term which I prefer over the others, and that term is “atheist”. For me, the choice to use this term happened in a single week, and the choice was caused by a news story on television. To be accurate though, I should say that the news of that day was really the final straw in a long sequence of events. At that point, I was already a non-believer having left the religion of mormonism into which I was born. I simply could not bring myself to refer to this state of non-belief as atheism.

Evacuate the Earth

Then, around March 26, 1997, I heard the news. A cult in California had committed group suicide: Heaven’s Gate. For many people, this was the first time that they had heard of the group. Not for me though. I have always had a strong interest in religion and, in particular, how religions develop. This interest had led me to a study of various cult groups such as heaven’s gate.

I watched the news pundits discuss the beliefs of this group with a look of incredulity on their faces. The group’s belief in UFOs, their communal lifestyle, and lurid details of some member’s castrations were paraded around by the media. Some questioned their sanity. Others wondered how people with enough intelligence to run a successful web company could believe such nonsense.

Nonsense was the word of the day. In any conversation about the cult, the words stupidity, insanity, and nonsense would be used over and over again. People made jokes about it, laughed about it, declared it a tragedy, asked if cults should be illegal, wrote articles on how to prevent your children from joining a cult, etc.

All of these activities were carried out with a smug self-confidence, and the majority of people who performed these activities were not atheists but christians. Within one week of this event, I was calling myself an atheist.

Nonsense is relative

As I said, I have spent time studying various cults. In doing so, I often noticed the way in which people made a sharp distinction between cults and religions. In conversing with religious people this distinction was often a source of confusion because, for me, it did not exist.

Religions start out as cults. In the beginning, they often hold radical beliefs. In fact, religions only become more mainstream after they gain a significant number of followers. To me, it seems like early christianity exhibited all of the characteristics of the other cults I studied. Certainly, my own childhood religion, mormonism, was like that. Some cults, like heaven’s gate, never last long enough to move beyond this extremism. Other cults become full grown religions by jettisoning the more extreme beliefs.

Before the suicides, I had preferred the term agnostic. Atheist seemed too dogmatic, and a childhood filled with indoctrination had left me wary of any dogmatic stance. Atheists seemed just as dogmatic in asserting that there was no god as theists were in asserting god’s existence. I had always felt it better to take the middle ground.

When the reports on the suicide came out, it caused me to take an entirely different view. I realized that I could go pretty much anywhere in America, find a large group of people, stand up, and proclaim that the heaven’s gate followers were idiots for believing such nonsense. I also realized what would happen to me if I did: nothing.

I would not be ostracized, I would not be looked at with anger, I would not be accosted, I would not be yelled at, and I would not be called upon to justify my opinion. People would simply nod their heads in agreement, and move on. It was this realization that was key to my adoption of the atheist moniker.

When I had first learned about this cult, I did not join up with them. I did not join up because there was no evidence to support their claims, and I did not join up because their view of the world was not reasonable. However, I could make these same statements about any of the cults I have studied. Even more, I could make them about any religion including christianity.

The only difference between the claims of christianity and the claims of heaven’s gate is the number of people who believe in them. Both claims are unreasonable and without evidence. However, denying the claims of christianity can have all sorts of negative social consequences if you happen to live in America.

Atheism is political

I do not need a special term to designate myself as someone who does not believe in the truth of heaven’s gate. My status as a non-believer with respect to them is simply taken for granted.

In addition, no one declares me to be in any way dogmatic for saying directly and without qualification that the followers of heaven’s gate were wrong, that their religion is not true, or that their claims are false. No one looks down on me for demanding hard evidence of a spacecraft or alien life. In addition, I have never been accused of being angry for simply denying the truth of their religion.

No one declares that my refusal to live by the arbitrary constraints of that religion is because I prefer a life of immorality or hedonism. And, no one suggests that I am being selfish for my unwillingness to submit myself to a communal life under the complete control of that cult even though it is true. If I were less selfish, maybe I would have been willing to give all of my money to them. Maybe I would have submitted to their total control. Maybe I would have undergone voluntary castration for the greater good, and maybe I would be dead right now.

Despite the fact that I do not believe in heaven’s gate, or the fact that I chose the path of selfishness in not converting, no one declares me to be the least bit immoral for either of these. When it comes to christianity in America, however, the situation is very different.

In the week after the suicide, I came to realize that my refusal to call myself an atheist had more to do with fear than anything else. I was simply afraid of the way many people would view me for making such a declaration. Not declaring myself an atheist was due to the social constraints of living in America, but agnostic was not an accurate way to describe myself. The fact was, I did not believe in god in the exact same way I did not believe in heaven’s gate. I was simply an atheist by definition. As time moved on though, it became much more than that.

Unlike the terms humanist or free-thinker, the term atheist comes with a great deal of baggage. There are certainly stereotypes to overcome. Some people prefer a term without all of this baggage. Others prefer a more positive term instead of a negative word like atheism which expresses an opposition to something. Atheist is an “in your face” type of word, and some people do not like this confrontational aspect. I have come to prefer it. Why? Because I am in opposition to religion.

It is no longer a matter of simple non-belief. I am opposed to the ignorance, the blind stupidity, and the evil carried out in the name of religion. I am tired of the privilege assigned to religion, and I am angry at the way religions use that privilege to trample on the rights of others while escaping prosecution for their own evil actions.

In a non-religious world, I would not need a word to designate me as a non-believer. It would simply be assumed. Instead, such a word is a necessity. It is a necessity for simple practicality. For me, it is also necessary as a political means to speak out against the evils of religion.

The word atheist is subversive in a way that those other terms are not, and I think I will keep it.

This article was first posted at Think Atheist. If you are an atheist, agnostic, skeptic, or free thinker, you should join. It’s a really great place.

Great atheist videos from TheraminTrees on YouTube.

Instruction Manual for Life

Transition to atheism

Atheism as congruence

Why Mom & Dad are Christians

25 Questions for Bible Literalists

For those of you who prefer to get your information the old fashioned way, i.e. reading. Here is an excellent post from @Petursey in much the same vein.

When nasty fundies strike….

Oral Roberts Dies

Yep. The fundie with a funny name is dead. In celebration of one less asshole in the world, allow me to post an article on one of Oral’s less lucid moments.

Oral Roberts tells of talking to 900-foot Jesus

You know, the people who wrote that article have no idea how to create a newspaper headline. Mine would have been the following.

“900 Foot Jesus Wants Oral to build a new hospital”

I bet that would have sold more newspapers.

The pope is pissed off and he’s not gonna take it anymore

The pope finally heard about all of the horrible child abuse in Ireland. You know, the abuse that was committed by catholic clergy? The abuse that was covered up for years as the catholic church intimidated families into being silent, interfered with police investigations, and constantly moved pedophile priests to new parishes where they failed to warn the parishioners.

Let me tell you, the pope is REALLY angry about it too. He just promised to write a strongly worded letter about it.

Outraged by Dublin revelations, Pope plans pastoral letter on abuse scandal

Don’t fuck with the pope, people. He is scary mad.