From the there-never-really-was-any-reason-to-believe-to-begin-with-department.

Everybody’s talking about it: Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out, The Grand Design, in which he departs somewhat from his previous comments about the divine in A Brief History of Time.

In the latter book, Hawking wrote, “If we do discover a complete theory … of why it is that we and the universe exist … it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.” Many have stated that Hawking was speaking metaphorically and no more intended the notion of a creator-god than Einstein did when he wrote “God does not play dice” (Einstein also wrote that he absolutely did not believe in the notion of a personal god).

Hawking now writes, in his new book:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. [...] It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.

Like Einstein, Hawking also has been quoted^[1] as stating he did not believe in a personal god:

The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions.

Christians throughout the blogosphere are going nuts. “How dare a scientist pretend to practice theology?!” they say. Jim West, theologian (with a “Ph.D.” and all) claims Hawking isn’t educated enough to comment on “theology.”

Uh… Hawking isn’t. He’s commenting on reality. Theology is about fantasy and superstition. It isn’t about the real world.

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1. June 2010 in a British Channel 4 television program

Christians have been burning books since before Gutenberg sorted out moveable type. The Library of Alexandria was ordered to be destroyed by a Christian bishop in 391. The same assholes murdered Hypatia, one of the most intellectual philosophers and mathematicians of her time. Why? Because she was woman who didn’t believe as they.

Before that, the Library of Antioch was burned by Christian emperor Jovian. Why? Because Jovian’s predecessor established the library and filled it with texts that didn’t jive with Jovian’s superstitions.

Lest we go on thinking Christians only burn the books of those who aren’t Christian, we must consider that poor sod Priscillian of Avila who was brutally executed as a heretic, his writings nearly all destroyed -burned by his fellow Christians. It seems he didn’t believe as they did.

The church council of Soissons, France, in 1121, forced Peter Abelard to burn his own book! Another Christian heretic oppressed by other Christians with apparently more right to think as they did than Abelard had to think as he did. At least they didn’t murder him. They just locked him in a convent for good.

The first ever Inquisitor General of Spain (c. 1480) promoted the burning of non-catholic texts (written by people who don’t think as Christians do).

But surely Christians were satisfied with the books of Europe, right?

Wrong. Diego de Landa, the Christian bishop who spread his superstitions to the New World (along with syphilis, TB, small pox, etc.) burned the few books ever written in the Americas by non-Europeans at the time. Lost forever to academia are the sacred texts of the Maya along with many of their images and cult items. The worship of a non-white, bearded god like Quetzacoatl is clearly not thinking like a Christian.

And it goes on and on. Through all of Christian history. To as recent as 2009 in North Carolina, USA where pastor Marc Grizzard of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church had a book burning on Halloween. Grizzard burned books by the likes of T.D. Jakes and Billy Graham -Christians! Why? You guessed it: they didn’t think like Grizzard and his particular notion of Christianity.

Hey, Christians aren’t the only book burners in history. Not by a long shot. But the do it so well. And, when Jim West at Zwinglius Redivivus says the nuts at Dove Outreach Center in Florida aren’t “true Christians,” I’d have to disagree. They’re completely consistent with Christianity so far.

These particular Christians are hatemongers (something else not inconsistent with Christianity through history) who are very likely going to provoke extremist Muslims (also no strangers to hatemongering). But burning korans (or even bibles) is their right to free speech. Personally, I find it despicable and depraved. Despicable because books ought not be burned but read; depraved because these Christians deify and anthropomorphize the book itself with a power it truly doesn’t have.

But, such is to be expected from the superstitious.

Oh, and to Jim West, just remember: no true Scotsman would…

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Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The chaplain was struck both by RP2 Chute’s command of the Book of Revelation, and his refusal to take it seriously. “He’s familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it,” says the chaplain, a slender-faced, soft-spoken man with a fringe of gray in his black hair. “That’s what I find puzzling.”

On a visit to Kilo Co., a Marine asked for a biblical ruling on tattoos. Lt. Moran said the Book of Leviticus bans them. RP2 Chute disagreed. Leviticus, he said, says people shouldn’t get tattoos to mourn the dead.

“I don’t believe as Chaplain Moran believes,” RP2 Chute often tells the Marines during these visits.

One of the things that stands out, too, at that link is a graph that the WSJ decided to use to accompany the text which depicts the number of chaplains who died in their duties. Throughout the article, Moran, the chaplain, is quoted as saying he’s not afraid of the enemy, that God will protect him, etc. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these chaplains killed since the Revolutionary War had the same misplaced conviction.

The shame of it is, they don’t just put themselves at risk, but the lives of sympathetic believers and non-believers who are willing to protect them or attempt to save them.

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http://www.freerealestatetip.com/2010/08/help-what-can-i-do-about-the-atheists-driving-down-the-price-of-real-estate-in-my-neighborhood/

Help! What can I do about the atheists driving down the price of real estate in my neighborhood?

I own a luxury apartment building in which I only rent to good Christian families. However, there have been more and more atheists moving into the community and the price of real estate has dropped dramatically recently. The problem is that these atheists make it well known that they are atheists, including protesting the use of religious decorations in public buildings for holidays like christmas and easter. What can be done about this?

Yes. I’m sure atheism is what caused the real estate market to decline. Dumbass.

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Much of this post started as a comment to the post below about Major General Chambers. I’ve left the comment and reposted it here since I realized that it might do better standing on its own.

I was in the U.S. Army for a good part of two decades, and for much of that time, I really didn’t give religion much thought. It wasn’t until near the end of my military career that I began to think of myself as an atheist or consider what that truly meant. But I always carried “NO REL PREF” on my dogtags, signifying that I didn’t have a religious preference. Thats about as honest as I could have been and, looking back, I would probably have considered myself atheist had anyone really bothered to have that discussion with me about god, belief, faith, etc.

I made a comment in the previous post that indicated that Major General Chambers might not have been “promoted” in his recent change of duty assignment. Just a point of clarificaition: while I could be wrong about why the General was reassigned, it does seem fishy that he would leave a command where he had much responsibility and many subordinate commanders to one that is a directorship on a base that isn’t even of the Army. It just screams “quiet firing.”

I was in the Army the better part of two decades and I distinctly remember my training days where we would get a choice of “church services” on Wednesday evenings or normal duty in the barracks. This was basic training and the Chaplain’s office would “tempt” us with a movie, popcorn, and soda -sometimes pizza- in exchange for a short prayer and offer to attend church services on Sunday. I only ever went for the movie (watched Bill Murray’s “Stripes” and “Private Benjamin” during these movie nights and met some girls!).

I hadn’t begun thinking of myself as an “atheist” back then. I honestly never gave religion much thought at that point in my life. The payoff for me (movies, food, chicks) was worth a few minutes of prayer and sermon -which really was just a few minutes.

But the situations that these soldiers found themselves in was entirely different. They were forced-marched to the concert, made to feel they should participate or be thought of as different and unacceptable. They were ultimately treated differently and punished for their choice. Even in training environments like this (garrison training), soldiers have a certain quality of life and moral expectation.

Had the concert not occurred, the evening would have been business as usual. Most likely, some soldiers had their own cleaning assignments and responsibilities. They would likely have personal time between evening meals and lights out to do this, answer emails, talk with family and friends on the phone, visit the PX, get hair cuts, perhaps even attend a movie.

Also, it’s the chaplain’s office that’s responsible for organizing “spiritual” activities, not the commander’s office. The installation commander’s place, according to AR 600-20, is to ensure Equal Opportunity policies are being upheld. That soldiers are being treated fairly with regard to race, religion, etc; that soldiers are not being hazed or initiated unwillingly or willingly, into any in-groups, be they official or unofficial groups.

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Leaving his Command

Harsh words, but that’s the way it seems to pan out.

Hazing, under Army Regulation 600-20 (4-20):

“is defined as any conduct whereby one military member or employee, regardless of Service or rank, unnecessarily causes another military member or employee, regardless of Service or rank, to suffer or be exposed to an activity that is cruel, abusive, oppressive, or harmful.“

And that’s what the Major General, former commander of the Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, VA, did when he created the Commander’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts and pressured his commanding officers and non commissioned officers to mandate that soldiers either attend or be punished. “Soliciting or coercing another to participate in any such activity is also considered hazing.”

The Spiritual Fitness Concerts have been going on now for the past two years and in May of this year, a concert was performed by BarlowGirl, an evangelical Christian rock band that describe themselves as “tender-hearted, beautiful young women who aren’t afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God ((http://www.barlowgirl.com/about)).”

This concert was all but mandatory. Soldiers of a training class in logistics, regardless of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), were force-marched to the concert, where they were finally given an option to attend or return to the barracks. Those that declined attendance were force-marched back to the barracks and ordered to GI the building. No PX, library, barber shop privileges. They were restricted from electronics (cellphones, laptops, games).

Now, if this were during duty hours, it would be one thing. But this is after evening chow. These student-soldiers should have been able to conduct business as usual instead of being punished for not wanting to be proselytized to. And this wasn’t just a handful of soldiers who declined to attend, nor was it just a couple atheists and Muslims. There were about 80 soldiers (half, according to the account at Talk to Action) who chose not to attend and more among the group that attended who did so out of pressure. Those that abstained their attendance and were punished with a GI party (detailed cleaning of a building -busy work often mandated for screw-ups) included Muslims, atheists, agnostics and Christians. Yes, Christians:

“At that evening, nine of us chose to pursue an EO complaint. I was surprised to find out that a couple of the most offended soldiers were actually Christian themselves (Catholic). One of them was grown as a child in Cuba and this incident enraged him particularly as it brought memories of oppression.”

It was “hazing” because there was an attempt to indoctrinate or initiate subordinates into an in-group within the U.S. Army (that being members of the born-again cult). It was an Equal Opportunity (EO) complaint because it clearly violated section 6-1 of AR 600-20.

The U.S. Army will provide EO and fair treatment for military personnel and family members without regard torace, color, gender, religion, national origin, and provide an environment free of unlawful discrimination and offensive behavior.

… and…

Soldiers will not be accessed, classified, trained, assigned, promoted, or otherwise managed on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin.

So, Chambers, ultimately responsible for EO under his command as the installation commander, chose instead to abuse his position and initiate or attempt to indoctrinate soldiers into his own superstition. Chambers admits in an article^[1] that he is a “born again” Christian and claims the Spiritual Fitness Concerts were “not to be a proponent for any one religion, [but] to have a mix of different performers with different religious backgrounds.” Except this didn’t happen.

And then there’s the cost. These concerts aren’t just small events with local Christian bands. We’re talking about the top, nationally known, award-winning Christian artists, with headline acts costing anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000, and even many of the opening acts being in the $10,000 range.

The cost of these concerts led MRFF‘s research department to start looking at some of the DoD contracts for other “spiritual fitness” events and programs, and what we found was astounding. One contract, for example, awarded to an outside consulting firm to provide “spiritual fitness” services, was for $3.5 million^[2].

Money that could be better spent elsewhere to be sure. Barracks improvement, cookouts for soldiers on the weekends, secular concerts, exercise equipment for dayrooms, etc.

I spent many years in the US Army. What improves “spiritual fitness” (whatever that means) is this sort of moral support -not mandatory evangelical nonsense. Give a soldier a plate of barbequed ribs and a beer, let him or her mingle with peers of the opposite sex, play some volley ball or just horse shoes and you’ve got some happy soldiers.  And it won’t cost $30,000! Hell, you can even get each soldier to pitch in $20!

Luckily, Mikey Weinstein from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is involved in this. It’s left me to wonder if that’s why Chambers is no longer an installation command (as of June 2010) and now a director at some supply dump on an Air Force Base. It’s definitely a step down in the career ladder -going from Installation Commander with hundreds of subordinate commanders to director of logistics on a base that doesn’t even belong to the Army.

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1. http://www.army.mil/-news/2008/07/09/10753-fort-lee-commanding-general-reaches-out-to-soldiers/
2. http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/8/19/113223/843

And that was my first thought when I watched Michael Voris’ video called “Angry Atheists.” This video goes on about how he was slandered and called dirty names (I’m betting “batshit” was among them) after he called for a “Catholic Monarchy” to replace Western government. In this video, he claims to be “clarifying” what it is he actually meant. In this video he says:

“Western civilization would be better off if it were a Catholic monarchy. How this comes about I don’t know. The point wasn’t to publicize a battle plan for overthrowing the secular humanist government. It was to point out that we are already living under a dictatorship. The dictatorship of relativism.”

And he complained incessantly about the “sad sack boo birds” who ridiculed this idea using vile, profane words. “Foul-mouthed, Catholic-bashing, invective-filled, hate speech” is what he called it. I guess some people just don’t like the idea of giving up democracy for a monarchy… He kept referring to his earlier video, so I looked for it. It was “removed by the user.” Apparently he started by censoring the comments. Then closing comments altogether. Then he removed the video (coward).

But, a quick Google search landed the mirrored copy I knew would be there. The atheosphere is dependable in that regard: someone is always ready to make internet faux pas of mad-hater Christians as forever as herpes.

Yipes! That guy truly is batshit!

His complaint begins with how “everyone gets to vote.” He points out that there are informed voters and there are “ignorant” voters. But he doesn’t really get the distinction right. For Voris, an “informed” voter is one that votes for things Voris agrees with. “Ignorant” voters are those that vote differently. For Voris, they’re obviously ignorant if they don’t think like he does. And he goes on to say that, if we’re going to insist on a voting system, then “only virtuous people” should be allowed to vote. Only Catholics would be considered virtuous to Voris -he makes this clear in his batshit rant.

In 2009, Catholics comprised 22% of the United States population. Voris proposes to have 78% of the population (using 2009 statistics) be ruled by 22%.

Bugs Bunny said it best: “What a maroon!”

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I’ll work on a banner (or maybe use an old one) and smooth out a few things. I don’t like how long it loads in Epiphany, and the columns are disjointed in my version of FireFox. But it loads quick and correct in Chrome. I haven’t tried IE or Safari yet, so if anyone has either of these and can share their experiences on loading/displaying, please do.

One thing I noticed that I’m really irritated about is the stray characters that are showing up in some of the posts, like the Billy Graham post below. This is probably an artifact of upgrading the SQL database and will probably show up where quotations, apostrophes, and the like were used.

Courtesy of atheistcartoons.com

Clearly Billy Graham‘s “letters” in his column with the The Oklahoman are shills; made up personae who “write letters” that are convenient devices for Graham to build an opinion on. I could be wrong. Perhaps “S.K.” is a real person who genuinely wrote a real letter to Graham. I doubt it, but here’s “S.K.’s” letter:

DEAR DR. GRAHAM: The kindest, most thoughtful person I know says she’s an atheist and doesn’t even believe in God. I always thought we needed to believe in God before we’d behave like she does, but I guess this isn’t necessarily true, is it?

S.K.

Graham’s reply is basically that S.K.’s friend just looks like a good person and really isn’t since only a Christian can be moral. Here’s part of Graham’s reply. You can read the whole thing at the link below.

Why is she such a kind and thoughtful person? I don’t know the reason; perhaps she simply has a sunny personality (as some people do), or perhaps her parents taught her to be kind and considerate when she was growing up. But I do know this: She’s not this way because she’s an atheist. In fact, she’s this way despite her atheism — because a true atheist has no real reason to believe in right and wrong or to behave sacrificially toward others.

Read more: http://newsok.com/billy-graham/article/3484008

Obviously Graham is completely and utterly wrong. If you accept his version, there were never moral people before Christianity and there are no moral Hindu, Muslim, Polynesians, Native Americans, Inuit, etc. To accept his version of morality, we must believe that prisons are full of atheists and not Christians.

Morality doesn’t come from Graham’s god and to believe such a superstition is a delusion or a willful lie.

But what’s truly interesting is this: if his letter writer is a shill (and I think it is), then that means Graham invented the letter by S.K. to bring up the topic. Even if the letter writer isn’t a shill, how many letters would Graham have had to choose from to pick this one?  The point is, the topic of atheism is one that he chose.

The new atheists and the “atheist agenda” have evangelicals like Billy Graham worried. We’re vocal and determined not to be marginalized. We’re standing up for Church-State separation issues (which is precisely antithetical  to Graham’s move to merge the two everywhere possible). And we’re hiding in the shadows less and less: bestsellers by atheists on atheism hitting the shelves each year, entire conventions being held on the topic of atheism, and the internet is our backyard.

Ironically, Graham’s efforts may have backfired. If the comments section of that article are any indication. Atheists in Oklahoma have spoken out against his bigotry and very few Christians have made any attempt to support his position.

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… some of us just accept it.

Among the recent billboards and bus ads that are popping up around the globe in an effort to raise public consciousness about atheism is one that reads, “we are all atheists about most gods, some of us just go one god further.”

There are Christian bloggers around the internet who are, understandably (albeit irrationally), annoyed by these public service messages. Messages which counter the decades of superstition that has found little or no opposition with their own billboards and ads. A recent blog post by Liturgy, a Christian blog based in New Zealand, voiced its opposition to the ads in New Zealand by creating a straw man of the sort of billboard mentioned above, recently presented to Kiwis by their local atheist and freethinker organization (the NZAHR).

The meat of this blogger’s argument is that the billboard/bus ad message assumes all theists are monotheists. Which, of course, is largely the case. At least for the targeted population of the ads. But the blogger seems to suggest that different religions have different gods, but only “exclusivists ” would deny that these different gods for each religion aren’t the same. He suggests that most Christians, Muslims, Hindu, etc. believe that theirs is but a different version of the same god. It doesn’t really explain why Hindus have so many versions with so many different names and characteristics, but perhaps that’s why he doesn’t mention them.

He also doesn’t bother to mention that the few gods of the few religions he mentioned are but a very, very tiny portion of the extant and extinct gods that humanity has invented. I don’t know of any Christians, regardless of how “inclusive” or “pluralist” they might be who would conceive that Quetzacoatl and Chac are both Mayan versions of Yahweh/Elohim/Allah once they’ve learned how the Maya described these gods (and how one of them liked the sacrifice of female children whose hearts were removed still beating by an obsidian blade).

The truth is, we’re all atheists. None of those gods exist. The Judeo-Christo-Islamic god in the Liturgy blogger’s mind, Yahweh-Elohim-Allah, almost certainly doesn’t exist.

We’re all without gods. Some of us simply choose to accept it. We choose reality.

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