Interesting Canadian take on the current atheist movement. I was very impressed with the rapper. In Europe atheists just get on with life apparently in Canada they feel the need to have basement meetings. It’s all a bit strange but interesting non the less.

Marcus at his best…

Marcus Brigstocke rants about religion. Not for the faint-hearted! Audio from ‘The Now Show’, Radio 4, Saturday 21 July 2007. Pictures compiled and sequenced by Alien8ted. I was going to have a go at adding images to the speech but as usual there is not enough time I think I would have been less kind in my use of images.

Dan Dennett receives the “Richard Dawkins Award” at the AAI 07 conference in Washington, D.C. Julia Sweeney introduces Richard Dawkins, and Richard Dawkins introduces Dan Dennett.

Jump to 17:20 to start the speech (Intros by Julia Sweeney – VERY, VERY ANNOYING and Richard Dawkins)

Richard Dawkins puts out a call to arms..

Some very interesting facts and figures on the numbers of atheist and their demographics. As well as Dawkins at his best.

Original Source : http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/113

“The session was titled “The Design of Life,” and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution’s role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education (quoting Douglas Adams in the bargain). Scientists and intellectuals hold very different beliefs about God from the American public, he says, yet they are cowed by the overall political environment. Dawkins’ scornful tone drew strongly mixed reactions from the audience; some stood and applauded his courage. Others wondered whether his strident approach could do more harm than good. Dawkins went on to publish The God Delusion and become perhaps the world’s best-known atheist.”

Poe’s Law 

As prompted by The Now Show (best show on the radio) this is a great site

“The Net Authority is an organization dedicated to the removal of offensive material from the Internet. “

sounds ok so far..

“It is our mission to define a set of guidelines to which all information posted on the Internet must adhere, and to hold responsible those who would knowingly break those guidelines.”

“It is extremely important that children are shielded from sites in violation of the Internet Acceptable Use Policy.  “

Fair enough.. but lets look at that  Internet Acceptable Use Policy..

“As a result of this, we decided that the best way to write this document would be to model it after something that everyone knows and follows (or at least should!) in their daily lives already. We chose God’s own law—The Ten Commandments. To help keep things simple though, we have narrowed it down to five simple rules.”

“Thou shalt not post pornographic material.

There is a common misconception that pornography is limited purely to images or textual descriptions of an explicit sexual nature. This is not the case. Anything that can evoke impure thoughts in the mind of the beholder is pornographic.

1. Thou shalt not post hateful material.
Any material that promotes or inspires hatred or violence towards any other person or group of people is strictly forbidden.

2. Thou shalt not post blasphemous material.
Any material that would lead one astray from the righteous path of the one true God must not be permitted on the Internet. These days children are gaining access to the Internet at younger and younger ages—a time when they are most vulnerable and susceptible to blasphemous viewpoints and suggestions.

3. Thou shalt not post materials of an offensive political nature.
4. Thou shalt not post materials concerning bestiality, including interracial relationships.
God did not intend for different species or races to intermingle sexually. Any content that contradicts this natural law, directly or indirectly, is strictly forbidden.”

From the About Us Page

“Talk to your children—let them know that the Internet, while being an extremely important and useful tool in today’s society, also contains many dark places that may lead their souls astray from the path of God. Do not be afraid to scare them!”

Lol because a little bit of child abuse goes a long way.

How to Spot a violation.

“Example #2: Children’s Dinosaur Stories. You might think that a site that contains stories about dinosaurs for children would be innocent—but let’s stop and think about that for a moment. If you read the bible (you should, it’s great!) you know that dinosaurs never actually existed, and that God put those fossils and bones there to test our faith in Him. While the stories themselves may not contain any offensive material, the simple fact that they are about dinosaurs may cause a child to question his faith in the one true God. By blaspheming, this site is in violation of the Internet Acceptable Use Policy and should be added to our database.”

Fantastic.  Top marks to who ever came up with this.

I have found that it is quite hard to discover which podcasts are good and which are rubbish.  You end up having to listen to some rubbish in order to find he good stuff.  So for what it is worth here are some podcasts that I have found to be good.

Scientific American : 60 seconds science subscribe

BBC : In Our Time – looking at thoughts and ideas that have shaped out world subscribe

Infidel Radio : Infidel Guy – Debate Hour – some great interviews on the Philosophy of Religion subscribe

Guardian : Science Talk subscribe

New Scientist : subscribe

Scientific American : science talk subscribe

You have got to read this!!!!

Evolutionism Propaganda

top stuff

this link might help you see the funny side

another example of Poes Law 

Scientology has been back in the headlines again. They have been making great play of the fact that one of the BBC reporters lost his cool and had a shouting match with one of their goons. Now I am a little unsure of what they actually believe. What I find most interesting is that there is no mention of god on the “about us” pages of their website. While buried in the search results you can find the following.

” Does Scientology have a concept of God?

Most definitely. Scientology affirms the existence of a Supreme Being, although its dogma is unique and does not include the worship of one. Scientology believes that only through total spiritual enlightenment can one then truly discover and understand the Supreme Being.”

Given how main stream Christian most US opinion seems to be how is it that these views seem to be flourishing so well and prospering.

OMG just been watching a video on US police and how they have been bought out by the cult. It looks like the local police of Clear Water have become a department of Scientology. Now this is scary stuff. Only in America.

Is it a dark and dangerous cult as suggested by well… most people? Is certainly looks that way. Have read of the case of Lisa McPherson. Apparently even killing someone is not enough to get your thrown out of town if you have enough money.

Info

BBC’s John Sweeney shouting at Tommy. Quite frankly he deserves a medal for not decking the freaky black suited goon.
Scientology is not Science interesting round of off ideas of scientology. The cult tried to have this site shut down but it fought back and lives.

Xenutv an interesting website looking at Scientology and its dodgy dealings. There is a great intro to Scientology on their blog.

It is probably just a coincidence but I have stumbled on quite a few blogs recently all attacking basic evolution theory. Take this one for instance . Now, I don’t know a great deal about the author other than he is clearly a very clever and intelligent person. He wrote (or at least adapted) a phpbb script which prevents spam bots from signing up to your boards. This alone was worth its weight in gold to me and has done what many other scripts failed to do. So how can such a clever, intelligent person believe what he believes what he believes. He constantly quotes scripture and takes it deadly seriously. He mixes New Testament with old and clearly holds each to be as important as the other. He even promotes loving homosexuals (err in a purely Christian way!) Yet he clearly and firmly believed in the literal truth of the Noah myths and other mythological stories from the Old Testament. Yet this clever individual is quite happy to promote stuff that he clearly knows is erroneous or correct. In a post on An Evolution Conversation with My Father he promoted the usual myth of ‘throw the bible / Shakespeare up in the air and marvel that it lands in a manner that makes sense’. This is a tactic that Jehovah witnesses have tried to push on me several times on my door step. They know it is disingenuous and I am sure that every preacher who uses this argument knows that it is dishonest. The problem and the solution can be seen here

If you have not read this article then it is well worth a look. 15 Answers to Creationists Nonsense.

I am still not sure if this is an early April fool joke or just a very scary reality. However, they have a nice website and it has an air of Christian Lunacy about it.  The good news, as you will see from their frequently asked questions, is that they percieve America as being increasingly anti-Christian and more specifically that “Evolutionary indoctrination has undermined the Christian foundations in America.”  Which, if true, is great news.  The project is costing a staggering $25 million !!! FFS how many people would that feed for a year???? Now that’s Christian values for you!