Why the internet has so many atheists

I've often thought about why the internet seems like such an atheistic place. I haven't gotten down to writing about it, because I couldn't overcome my misgivings about selection bias-- that is, my fear that I was merely perusing atheistic portions of the internet.

Before I could get down to it, Thunderf00t on YouTube made this awesome video. It's worth it to watch immediately.


One thing that he didn't address: could it be that the internet has a higher-than-average proportion of tech-savvy individuals? Or that the people generating the content-- videos, websites, forums-- must be somewhat tech-savvy, and that group has a higher-than-average proportion of rational thinkers, and therefore atheists?

God... will fuck you up

My new favorite song.
























Found on Unreasonable Faith

Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation on the Daily Show

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The Daily Show takes a critical look at the FFRF's fight against Mother Teresa. There are certainly some valid criticisms of Mother Teresa; either Barker argued ineffectively or The Daily Show edited them out. Either way, it still makes for a pretty hilarious sketch.

Californian Christian sect teaches you how to see and talk to God

The Guardian has an excellent article on the Vineyard Churches, an evangelical sect of Christianity with an emphasis on a personal relationship with God. Sounds like every evangelical Christian denomination, right?

Wrong.

These people really have a relationship with God. Some people pour an extra cup of coffee for God every morning. Others set a place at the dinner table for God. “One woman would have "Date nights" with God, where she would go into the park and sit on a bench with him, eating a sandwich. “

The research was done by Tanya Luhrmann of Stanford University. She studied the ways in which people could induce themselves to see and talk to God everywhere they go. She essentially said that first, you have to be temperamentally predisposed to being good at pretending, and then you hone the skill to an art form.

A truly pathetic art form. God is often referred to as an “imaginary friend,” but these people have taken it to a whole new level. 

You can find the article here.

Catholic school student expelled because his parents are gay

From the Huffington Post


Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact, it’s lucky he got away with only an expulsion. Given Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, the Bible is pretty clear on homosexuality. The punishment for it is death. The  truly horrific thing is that he should, according to the Bible, be punished for his parents' sinfulness. WikiAnswers shows the relevant passages:

Exodus 20:5 , Deuteronomy 5:9 I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:7 Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Numbers 14:18 Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Deuteronomy 28:18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body.

Jeremiah 32:18 Thou ... recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them.

And now my personal favorite: Isaiah never disappoints.

Isaiah 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers.

And before you say that Jesus changed the story, consider this passage in Matthew 23, 31-33:

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? 

So once again, I’d say he got off pretty lucky. To their credit, the Catholic Church is acting in full accordance with their doctrines. Perhaps if all believers followed their holy texts more strictly, their absurdity would be more readily apparent.

Faith healing exposes the danger of prayer

Faith healing, the practice of forgoing modern medical practices in favor of healing by the power of faith alone, exposes the inherent danger of prayer. Last week, a woman named Liz Heywood had been planning to go share her story directly with the White House representatives at the Secular Coalition of America briefing. Unfortunately, weather prevented her flight from arriving. She instead sent a statement, which was read by an SCA staffer at the meeting. It is a must-read: go read the full text over at the Friendly Atheist.

The highlights:
When she was 13, her knee swelled up "like a melon." It was later learned that she had a strep-infection in her joint: while it is serious, when caught immediately it is treatable. But she never saw a doctor.


Her parents were Christian Scientists: they believed that the real world is an illusion. Here's wikipedia on the subject:

Man and the universe as a whole are spiritual rather than material in nature and that truth and good are real, whereas evil and error are unreal. Christian Scientists believe that only through prayer and knowing and understanding God will this be demonstrated.

There's the crux of the issue. In Christian Science, prayer is the only form of medicine. She remained bedridden for nearly a year, in horrible pain. She survived, her leg "scarred to the bone and my knee fused at an angle of about eighty degrees." She lived with this until she was in her forties. Orthopedic surgeons were unable to correct the damage: 3 years ago, she opted for above-the-knee amputation.


The worst part about all this: it is sanctioned by the law. Child abuse laws in 30 states have exemptions from neglect in cases of "faith healing."Another astonishing fact from this New York Times article-- 300 children have died over the past 30 years when treatment was withheld on religious grounds.


In their defense of prayer, many religious people assert that it gives one peace of mind. At the very least, doesn't do any harm. Liz Heywood and those poor 300 children are direct evidence against this statement. She would have her leg, and those children would have her lives, were it not for their parent's belief in the "healing power" of prayer. Critics could counter that this is an extreme example, and therefore doesn't apply to prayer in general. That is false- it merely demonstrates something that is always true about prayer. Prayer tells us that wishful thinking is an acceptable alternative to action.

One of my favorite quotes is that "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer." This is especially true when, by forsaking work, those hands clasped in prayer allow their children to suffer and die. This is neglectful homicide, and we should all work to ensure that religious exemptions come off the books.

For further reading on faith healing and neglect, check out these sites:
Religiously Based Child Abuse
Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty
Faith Healing and the Law

Christopher Hitchens' Ten Commandments

Christopher Hitchens recently revised the Ten Commandments in an article in the recent issue of Vanity Fair. He starts off with a bit of biblical background, reminding readers that there are in fact four different versions of the Ten Commandments- one of the many useful things I myself learned during my read-through of the King James Version. They vary, sometimes dramatically: the Exodus 34 version is a bit heavier on ritual. It is there that the eternal Lord, creator of the Universe and master of all, decides it is important that his disciples not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

For an omnipotent, universal being, he sure does have some pretty specific concerns.

Hitchens then goes on to analyze and criticize each of the 10 in turn. He ends his piece with a suggested new Decalogue:

Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.

A better atheistic ten commandments would be a bit more universal than this one, despite the noxious evil of annoying cellphone users. Still, his closing intonation is both witty and concise: the quintessential Hitchens.

"In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form."