Atheism

Do not feed the trolls.

trollsOh for shits fucking sake people, enough is enough already. This rant mainly goes out to the atheists I follow on Facebook and Twitter, so those of you not in the atheist communities feel free to ignore (or read on for the lulz, I care not).

Remember all the times you’ve been told “do not feed the trolls”? Remember all the times you’ve told other people “do not feed the trolls”? Well, Ray Comfort IS A TROLL! There’s no two ways about it.

His modus operandi is “Any publicity is good publicity”, and he feeds of this. It’s his go-to method to increase publicity. He’s an unrepentant liar for christ, and he’s more than willing to do so. The more outrage he can get for what he does, the happier he is. By responding, by getting outraged at what he does, you are just falling plumb into PRECISELY what he wants out of people. You are making yourself his stooge. You are giving him EVERYTHING he wants, and more. And yes, I do realize the irony of my whinging about this making me one of his stooges too. Continue reading →

PZMyers and the definition of atheism.

I first saw this post by PZ Myers back when he first wrote it, and I disagreed with him whole heartedly at the time.  I still do, the only difference is at the time I couldn’t form my thoughts into a format that was appropriate for blogging about it.  Full disclosure, I actually do like PZ Myers and most of what he writes.  He earned my respect through his thoughts, words, and actions.  Although I don’t read his blog as much as I used to, that respect is still definitely there.  That doesn’t mean I have to agree with every single thing he says though.  If I had to agree, then that would be hero worship – something which amusingly there’s a surprisingly large amount of in skeptic and atheist communities.  This is just one such situation of divergent opinions, nothing more. Continue reading →

Disillusioned?

I’m not even sure if I really want to post this.  It’s going up for now, may get removed later.

First it was the “brights”, people trying to push for a new name that was blatantly insulting to those not part of it.  Then it was the no true scottsman / no true skeptic calls from the atheist communities against skeptics who also happened to be [gasp] theists!  Now, it’s rebeccagate, and the vile and hate that just won’t die down due to it.

Sometimes I’m not really all that sure if I even want to be part of the skeptic community. Continue reading →

Scientology massively underpaying staff.

If you watched the videos from my last article on the Cult of Scientology, you would have heard side-mentions of people being paid little to nothing by the cult while being heavily coerced if not completely forced to work anywhere from 40 to 100 hours a week for the cult.

Now thanks to an earlier investigation by the ABC TV show 4Corners, the Australian Fair Work Ombudsman has opened up an investigation in to the cult to look at these claims.  Details of the investigation come from Lateline in the video after the cut. Continue reading →

Creationism to be taught in Queensland classrooms.

The thin edge of the wedge (the name of the strategy being actively used by the anti-reality, anti-science, and pro-creationism thinkignorancetank The Discovery Institute) has left its mark in the Queensland department of education.  Creationism has wormed its way in to Queensland classrooms.

On a positive note, the mythology of creationism hasn’t found its way in to science classes as it has in numerous states in America, but the fact it found its way in at all is still bad.  In Queensland it will be taught in History class under the subject of “controversial issues”. Continue reading →

ANZ Obstetricians to back female ritualistic mutilation.

This is just horrific.  The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians is about to discuss backing the mutilation of women according to 2000 year old goat herder’s barbaric magical rituals.

Their “justification” for this (and I use the term lightly, there is no justification for such horrific non-consensual barbarism) is that it will minimise back-yard amateur illegal procedures which leaves girls scarred for life.

Not that this will be any better.  It’s a horrific thing to do to young girls.  It often leaves women without the ability to feel sexual pleasure and is just another way to demean and put them down further.  Along with the burka and other such bullshit this is just segregation and discrimination.  It’s bigoted sexism that should have been wiped out in the west decades ago, rather than being supported. Continue reading →

Wowzers trying to stop science again.

Earlier today I tweeted about a breakthrough by some Australian scientists after they created the first ever artificial life.  It’s the world’s first fully synthetic cell, controlled by man-made DNA.  But that’s not what this post is about.  No.  It only took a few hours, but the wowzers are already out in force trying to put a premature end to this breakthrough and once again slow down science.

The reasons they’re using to try and stop it are their completely unfounded fears, and completely fictitious invisible friends.  Continue reading →

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

Today, the 20th of May 2010 is International Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.  You can get the full story at the Wikipedia page, but in summary it all started off by the South Park episodes I speak about in an earlier post (go take a look).  A cartoonist called Molly Norris decided to have a little fun with it and drew the cartoon shown to the left.  She spread it around a few prominent social networking celebrities and celebrity bloggers to give people a laugh.

Here’s my drawing of Mohammed, it’s the one I drew for the South Park episode.

Joe Wellington then created a facebook page with quickly grew to have a few thousand followers.  By this stage Molly started realising the implications of what this could mean.  It was originally intended to just be a one-off cartoon, to give people a laugh and point out the importance of free speech.  She decided to disassociate herself from it as it had grown out of control. Continue reading →

SouthPark creators threatened for depicting bear suit.

(Note: Scroll down and read the update to this post after “Additional” to read about the episode 201 censorship / bleeping).

If I understand this story correctly, the creators of South Park, for episode 200, decided to include the Prophet Mohammed in the episode.  This was done, clearly, to take the piss out of all the fundamentalists who get so upset when ever he’s pictured.  Surely I don’t need to remind everyone of the Danish cartoon “scandal”?

To take the piss out of the censorship “required”, they have him covered throughout the entire episode.  First by a large “censored” sign, then in a U-Haul trailer, and finally a bear mascott costume.  So it’s not even him being depicted in South Park cartoon style, but actually just a word/trailer/bear costume they’ve labelled “Mohammed”.

The scary thing is, despite taking this extra step away from it actually being anything like Mohammed, some fundies have actually gotten upset.  What … the … fuck?  I mean, seriously? Continue reading →

Cult of Scientology – Premiere night for their new DVD.

I have just arrived home from a premiere screening put on by the Cult of Scientology.  One of their many arms to be precise, known as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.  The CCHR is the arm of the Cult that attacks Psychiatry, spreading misinformation and blatant lies about the profession in an attempt to lower peoples connections to reality and soften them up for when the Cult of Scientology comes along with their Dianetics books, though they do not pimp the books directly themselves.

Tonight the CCHR were having a premiere screening of a new DVD they were releasing titled “The Marketing of Madness”.  They had posted an invitation to an email distribution group concentrating on health, and from this location a friend who subscribes to this list forwarded it on to me.  I tried to get some others to join me, but they were smarter than I was and never showed up. 🙂 Continue reading →