Monthly Archives: November 2008

Reality rules! Superstition Drools!

Or in the words of Adam of Daylight Atheism:

…the age of reason is also an age of wonder. The devotees of superstition and pseudoscience do not know what they are missing. In grasping after fool’s gold, they have missed the true vein. The universe is a grander, more majestic and more beautiful place than any human being has ever imagined, or can imagine. The unsubstantiated and anthrocentric claims and inventions of people can never compare to the true wonder and mystery held by reality as it truly is, and now that we truly have begun to understand how the cosmos works, we are at last getting a glimpse of that awe and wonder.

Consider what we witness when we peer into the cosmos with our telescopic eyes. We see light born billions of years ago in the crucible of dying stars, shining out across the cosmos and becoming ever more diffused, until at last our telescopes captured the lonely few photons that arrive bearing news of stupendous, ancient catastrophes. We see colliding galaxies, matter swirling into the abyss of black holes, and stars exploding with titanic force, sending out jets of energy visible across the known universe.

I simply insist that you leave my site and read the whole post over at Adam’s.

From one extreme to the other?

shackled I finally got around to reading this month’s issue of Freethought Today by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and as usual, it was not disappointing.  Of all the articles this month it is the one by Barbara Walker titled “A Brief History of Marriage” that caught my eye.

Apparently back in the day it was women who owned everything and held so much power that men could only attain social standing if they were married to the highest ranking woman in their respective societies. They lost that social standing if their wife died or left them:

At the beginning of history, men could claim spiritual and secular authority by association with a representative of the Great Goddess. Early kingships depended on the king’s marriage to his nation’s Mother Earth, in the form of a high priestess or queen. Landowners in pre-Christian Scandinavia were kvaens, “queens,” the same as Saxon cwenes. Scriptures from Babylon and Phoenicia speak of the time when fatherhood was unknown, but kings could rule by means of a hieros gamos, a “sacred marriage” with the Goddess.

The high priest of ancient Rome, the Flamen Dialis, had no power unless he was married to the high priestess, the Flaminia. If she died or divorced him, he lost his office. Similarly in Judaism, a rabbi had to be married to be considered spiritually empowered. In India, even today, it is said that every god must have his Shakti, an emanation of the Great Goddess as a divine muse, because godlike potency is gained only through women: “Women are Life itself.”

At the risk of once again having my feminist card threatened with revocation, I have to say it must have sucked to be a man a few thousand years ago. For me, Walkers article detailing, if only briefly, how marriage used to work puts how marriage has worked here in the west for the last thousand years or so as well as the writings of early Christian leaders into perspective.

Imagine for a moment that every current well known man here in the west could only get and hold their positions via marriage to a woman.

Is it little wonder why early Christian leaders despised marriage and worked to see that the rules that subjugated them were not only made null and void, but that new rules were put into effect that, in effect if not intent, subjugated women to them once it became common amongst Christians?

The book meme in which the pope shoots himself

The Atheist Blogger just tagged everyone who read his post with a book meme and since I actually have a book near my desk this morning, I decided not to ignore him.

The Rules:

  1. Grab the nearest book.
  2. Open the book to page 56.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
  5. Don’t dig for your favourite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

The book near me this morning just happens to one of my favourites. It’s The Happy Heretic by Judith Hayes who writes a monthly column at, you guessed it, The Happy Heretic.  Her columns have always made me smile as did the seven sentences on page 56 of her book:

Using a .22 Ruger, Pope John Paul II scored a bull’s-eye with a through and through wound at the base of the middle toe of his left foot. In a stunningly medieval, unenlightened Apostolic Letter titled “In Order to Defend the Faith,” the pontiff carved into stone via Canon Law the bans on birth control, women priests, voluntary euthanasia, and teaching mynah birds to talk.

Asked about the birds, John Paul replied, “The power of speech is God’s precious gift to man alone. The mynah is just a dumb bird.” But when asked if the ban then also applied to parrots, the pontiff snapped, “Of course not! Those birds are incredible They talk better than most people!”

Chastened by the papal outburst, no one dared ask about parakeets. But an inside source at the Vatican said that budgies would be exempt from the ban because, “In the first place, they aren’t mynahs, are they?! And in the second place, those crummy little birds are so hard to understand nobody cares.” The penance for mynah bird training will be fifteen Hail Marys and the ritual sacrifice by fire of the offending feathered vocalist.

…read the rest of the column…

I do not like tagging people so if you’d like to participate, consider yourself tagged.

What will your Thanksgiving dinner say about you?

According to BlogThings, here’s what we’re having tomorrow says about me:

What Your Thanksgiving Meal Says About You

When it comes to the holidays, you are traditional with a twist. You do things a bit differently, and you’ve established your own traditions.

You see the holidays as a time to think about what’s important to you. It’s a good time to reflect and regroup.

You like the more adult aspects of the holidays – parties, cocktails, and having time off from work.

During the holidays, you are likely to feel generous. At your worst, you feel exhausted.

You consider yourself a real red blooded American, and you’re proud of it.

You tend to spend your holidays doing everything and anything. You really get into the holiday spirit.

Me? Traditional? I didn’t know traditional came in flaming liberal feminist colours. And I was quite unaware that that I not only considered myself a “real red blooded American” (WTF does that even mean? Do the French have green blood or something?), but was ‘proud of it” too seeing as I think patriotism is just another word for fascism and is a kind of faith not too far removed from religious faith.

I obviously have a split personality, no?

FFRF sues Rancho Cucomonga over billboard

The Freedom of Religion Foundation has filed a lawsuit against Rancho Cucomonga in the wake of their billboard being taken down after someone in city hall made an inquiry about taking it down.

Though the city is denying that they had anything to do with it, the Daily Bullinten quoted Linda Daniels, the Redevelopment Director, as saying:

“We contacted the sign company and asked if there was a way to get it removed,”

If “we” doesn’t mean the city, someone needs to step up and explain exactly who these “we” are.  Because as it stands, Linda Daniels is listed on the city’s site as an employee of the city.

The city’s official response seems to be that the billboard company just up and decided to take the sign down itself as you can see from the following email I recieved after complaining about their involvement.

Thank you so much for your inquiry regarding the “No Religion” billboard and the media’s coverage regarding its removal.  For the record, we would like to inform you that the City of Rancho Cucamonga did notsuggest, nor did it request, that any billboard content be removed from the billboard.  Advertising content decisions rest with the company that sells the advertising space, not with the City.  The placement and removal of advertising content is a private business decision.

The City of Rancho Cucamonga supports freedom of speech and expression. It does not have any authority over the content of any billboard, and
does not involve itself in private business transactions between
companies that provide billboard advertising and companies/organizations that desire to utilize billboards for advertising purposes. The City of Rancho Cucamonga has NO role in controlling billboard content.

I don’t buy it. Daniel’s was either misquoted or the “we” in her statement refers to the city (aka: her employer). IMHO, any request she makes of a private company in her official capacity is a request by the city. The FFRF should win this one.

Toby Keith on the War on Christmas

This has to be the best thing to come out of the War on Christmas yet. Toby Keith is perfect for the part after his endorsement of W over Kerry and his feud with the Dixie Chicks.

This is what censorship looks like

imaginenoreligion One week after being put up in Rancho Cucamonga, California, the Imagine No Religion billboard, shown to the left, by the Freedom From Religion Foundation has been taken down.  It would be one thing if the company who owned the billboard had taken it down on their own.

However, it’s another thing when the company does so after city hall asks if there’s a way to get it removed.

A billboard with the message “Imagine No Religion” is no more.

Sign company General Outdoor removed the sign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on Thursday after it received a request by the city to do so.

According to Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels, City Hall had received 90 calls of complaint since Wednesday.

“We contacted the sign company and asked if there was a way to get it removed,” Daniels said.

This is the first time the sign has been removed since the campaign started and I think it’s pretty obvious that the sign would still be up if the local government had not gotten involved.

If you’d like to send a complaint (a polite one, of course) you can send it from this page on Atheists United.  The FFRF has issued a statement and has also put up the address of the billboard company if you’d like to send a complaint to them also.

“Leave the land so we won’t rape you”

These are the words of an Egyptian lawyer named Nagla Al Imam in an interview where she, yes SHE, encourages Arabic men to sexually harass Israeli women and girls as a new form of resistance.

Why does she support such behaviour? Because “they [Israelis] violate our rights, and they rape the land”.  She goes on to state that there are “few things” that “are as grave as the rape of the land”.

This apparently includes raping actual human women as Al Imam has also attacked a rape victim.  Al Imam has apparently called the woman a liar and wants her deported for “unsettling Egyptian sentiments”.

Nagla Al Imam, a lawyer who initially voiced support for Rushdi, has also taken to the airwaves, claiming the young woman lied about her charges and argued that she is an Israeli and should be deported for “unsettling Egyptian sentiments”.

What makes this even worse is that Al Imam is also the head of a human rights organisation and when asked about her rationalization for supporting such a hateful, bigoted idea stated that it’s only fair that that Israeli women be treated as poorly as Arabic women.

Interviewer: As a lawyer, don’t you think this might expose Arab youth to punishment for violating laws against sexual harassment?

Nagla Al-Imam: Most Arab countries… With the exception of three or four Arab countries, which I don’t think allow Israeli women to enter anyway, most Arab countries do not have sexual harassment laws. Therefore, if [Arab women] are fair game for Arab men, there is nothing wrong with Israeli women being fair game as well.

The victimization of one group is okay since another group is also being victimized in the same manner?  WTF?  It’s so absurd it’s almost unbelievable.  How can anyone think like this?

Hate. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

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