Shout out to Stupid-Clint McCance

This month’s "Shout Out" goes out to Arkansas School Board member Clint McCance and his public Facebook rant about homosexuals on Spirit day.

For those of you who don't know about Spirit Day, it was a day set aside for support of homosexuals who are victim to the bullying that leads to depression and suicide.  The support came in the form of wearing purple for the day, leading some of us to call it "Purple Day".

Here is his original post on his Facebook status;

"Seriously, they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We aer {sic} honoring the fact that they sinned and killed themselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE."

This was his response to people showing empathy for the victims of hatred.

This was his response to the plights of people who had fallen to the depths of despair because of the hatred they face each day that they end their lives..

This was his response to seeing people wear purple.

My mother used to say to me "When someone shows you who they are. Believe them"

Don’t make excuses, don’t apologize, don’t let their “I’m sorry’s” make you forget who they really are.

He couldn't just stay silent in his hatred of people who are different; he felt it necessary to show us all who he was.

This is a person who represents the interests of our children (some of whom may belong to the group about whom he expresses such vile intent).  A public official who feels that an entire segment of our population should kill themselves because they don't deny who they are so that they can conform to his beliefs can't possibly feel that he is sentinel to the interests of all his constituents.  

He just can't.

Not only does he proclaim to all who will listen (his settings are private, but like many of us his "friends" list is larger than just a cozy few)  that he would actually celebrate if all the "queers" would kill themselves, 

            

 "The only way im wearin it (purple) for them is if they ALL commit suicide"

but he actually BLAMES them for their own plight and pain.  

        

"They sinned and killed themselves because of their sin"

Remember, this is the attitude of a public and elected official.  Instead of sounding like the intelligent elected official he comes off sounding like every time he speaks there should be the banjo from the movie “Deliverance” playing in the background. 

Certainly not the empathic and understanding feelings of anyone I want having any effect on my child’s education or emotional development. 

Think that he can't get any more stupid? 

Any more hateful? 

Any more ridiculous?

I hope not, because you would think wrong.

       

  "I would disown my kids they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off"

So much for unconditional love!

His hatred knows no bounds and his concern about how people have sex and who they have sex with is more important to him than even his children are!

His love for his children has limits, and they come in the form of who they want to love.  The very thing that most parents wish for their children is what he puts limits on.  I wish that my son would grow up to find the love of his life, and be happy basking in a healthy relationship. 

That is my fondest wish.

If it happens to be a man, then I am ok with that.

Let me rephrase, I don’t have a right to be “Ok” with it or not, just to be happy for him. 

But THIS man doesn’t care about that.  He will throw his concern for his own children out the window the very moment that he hears that they love someone of whom he doesn’t approve. 

If he will throw his OWN children away so easily, how easily will he dump on the rights of children that he DIDN’T bear?

I know that I want the people whom I trust with my son's future to have HIS interests and rights in mind, and not with conditions that ride on THEIR beliefs but on the statutes of law and the wishes of the parents.

This man has shouted out his stupidity to all of us, and told us everything we need to know about him….

…now it’s our job to believe him. 

Books in Review- The Bible

There are very few books that can rival the historical and cultural importance of the Bible so I thought I might read it from cover to cover and see what all the fuss is about.

Honestly aside from the literal inconsistencies and the need for a deep seeded suspension of disbelief I thought the Bible was a quality supernatural thriller to the core and a fantastic allegory for mans ability to inflict suffering on himself.

The main character in the book (God) is cleverly disguised as the all knowing, all loving maker of man to the protagonist, but he is clearly established as villain to the reader within a few short pages.

His Machiavellian scheme to create man as an Orwellian plaything for his own cruel purpose is sheer genius of story writing. It is a tale akin to Frankenstein's monster, where the monster is man as he attempts to live up to the cruel dictates of a master who created him to be unable to do so. This is evident from the very beginning as the author shows us that man is created with no understanding of right and wrong (genesis) but is still punished for disobeying the edicts of his nefarious creator.

You can almost hear Gods villainous laughter over the manipulation of man whom he created to fall for these evil traps and you can't help but wonder how he will escape such tyranny with the odds stacked so heavily against him. It is in this portion of the story that Gods complex cohort, and double agent Lucifer, is introduced seemingly to help man in his plight. He is presented to the reader as the scheming villain while he reveals Gods adroit lie regarding the tree of knowledge but quickly we can see how he is Gods accomplice in his scheme to manipulate and humiliate man for own sick pleasure. Lucifer's right hand man, the snake, helps nudge Adam through Eve (the first members of our protagonist group, “mankind” that we meet) into the trap set for them by convincing them to defy the rules and eat from the forbidden tree. He persuades them to eat the fruit so that they too can be Gods, and not knowing right from wrong, they do it.

BAM!!!

God’s cruel plan is fulfilled and they both settle back for a good laugh at mans expense.
We are left to chuckle to ourselves as we see the humour injected in the story of our creation as he punishes them for breaking a law that they never understood was wrong. Man is sentenced to hard labour for eternity, women are sentenced to have painful childbirth woven into their design, and for the agent of Lucifer a symbolic punishment was needed to maintain the illusion of opposition to god, so the snake was cursed to crawl on its belly for all its days. Clearly this is not really much of a punishment for a snake but it is the first good humour in the book to see the snake penalized in such an overtly favourable way. This humourous irony in consequence seems to show the collusion between the antagonists against man.

The double veneer and genius in manipulation continues without much subtlety for hundreds of pages. If you are squeamish in reading about murder, selling daughters into the sex trade, human sacrifice, war, plunder, genocide, rape, infant killings, and slavery then this book may not be for you as the bible can't seem get enough of it. The masterwork of this manipulation of man comes with the fact that he now knows what good is (the forbidden tree of knowledge gave him that skill), but God still is able to convince him to partake in these terrible, immoral and sometimes nonsensical things (do not wear clothes of many fabrics?!?) in the name of love and goodness. He is like a used car salesman in that he seems to be able to cover his motives for evil so well as to bring all of mankind to his cause and convince us to buy Kia for the same price as a Mercedes. This gives the antagonist much pleasure and helps to build our sympathy for a protagonist who is doomed to play the part as marionette to a wicked puppeteer in this tragic tale.

When Gods schemes become too great and bring the world to a state of toiling in its own filth, god kills them all to wipe all evidence of his crimes with a flood and starts all over with only a very naive Noah and his family to repopulate. (With clearly no knowledge of what "incest" means)

The book slows down from time to time with a bit of drudgery as the author seems to enjoy his genealogy, but it picks back up again with the story and all its violence and unprecedented lust (the song of Solomon is NOT for the prudish!) very shortly after.

I don't want to give away the whole story of manipulation and deception, but suffice to say that in the second book God tries a new and far more subtle tactic. The genius in this new approach is that when the reader begins to find the burden of suspension of disbelief too heavy to carry, and just when he feels like Gods immorality and violence is too much for man to continue believing that God is motivated by good, he changes his approach and sends his son with his message of “peace”.  Jesus takes an outwardly gentler hand that has us falling right back in line alongside man for a while. Jesus’ motivation is given away to the reader only when, after selling his message of peace, he surprises you by reinforcing all of God's old rules.  Now with the message of peace and the continued violence from the old laws, confusion begins to grow for man.

At the end of this tragedy all of the people that remain loyal to the cruel joke in hope of the reward that God promises are guerdoned with the "rapture".  This is the ultimate realization of the tragedy as the raptured are not rewarded at all for their loyalty to their tyrant god but instead sent to an alternate dimension to continue to toil in the ego of their tormentor's selfish entertainment for all time. Those who choose not to accept his conditional, “unconditional” love find themselves in a sadistic torture pit of his making. This is the terrible secret of the book that, with God in the picture, we lose either way.

It is certainly an epic in terror and genius in character development in its portrayal of man as the eternal victim of his own making. My only real issue are the constant inconsistencies. Dates are not the same from one chapter to another, numbers of generations counted are wrong from page to page, laws and rules contraindicate, and accounts of story vary greatly depending on the author of a given chapter (The apostles). I can forgive much of this in the name of poetic license but a greater hand could have been taken in the editing process.

In the end if you are looking for a book that will bring you to the edge of your seat with terror, lust to your loins for the unbridled sexuality, rage to the fore of your emotions for the injustice and to bring tears of sympathy for mans plight to your heart, this is the book for you.

Quite simply it has all the makings of a great Roman Polanski film. Murder, conniving schemes, a powerful villain, lust, sex, sacrifice, betrayal and the hope of redemption that never comes fill this book from beginning to end.

If you can see into the allegory for our own existence and our tendency as man to work against our own best interests and past the blood and gore, then this book is a great cautionary tale. A tale that warns us of our own self destructive tendencies (represented by god) and our ability to follow without thought the edicts of an absolute morality that we seem to crave.

I give it 3 out of 5 stars with a bonus star for historical significance for a total of 4 /5.

Now back to the reading and my next project, Dianetics!

*SPOILER ALERT*


Jesus dies on page 681......





(Published in American Atheist magazine's Aug 2010 Edition)

Dear Christians....

thanks to seculagaytheist on twitter

Purple Day Message

I stand in support of Purple Day and in proud support of those who are victimized by hatred and cowardly bullying. 

I make an effort here at Atheist Evolution to take the rational approach and not infringe on the "rights" of anyone to believe whatever they want but this is different.

Usually I just ask for a person to present the evidence and then respond by merely refuting or agreeing, but this is different.

This IS different. Yes you are allowed to speak up, but if your words are hateful, discriminatory or harmful then that respect has to take a backseat to those that you harm.

If you believe that being gay is wrong, or that I am being offensive, then I say "FUCK YOU and your beliefs".

How dare you hide behind religion or "opinion" to spread hate and expect your beliefs to be respected.
How dare you pretend that speaking about those beliefs in public is your right and that it doesn't do harm.
How dare you sit on your moral pedestal and preach the wrongs and immoralities of another person's nature
How dare you defend your right to make baseless assumptions about people and project your OWN awkwardness with sexuality on others who already feel like outsiders.

What I am trying to say is that today, I do not call for you to defend your position.
Today I say FUCK YOU and your beliefs
To hell with your "right" to believe them

Today is about not allowing bigots to judge others because of their own sexual hangups.

Each time you speak your opinion about homosexuality you push another homosexual down into the mire of shame.

Each time you assume that you know about the nature of homosexuals you force another person to feel unnatural.
Each time you fight as though your life depends on it to ensure that two people are not allowed to choose as you can, you force another human being into segregation.

People are DYING because of your beliefs.
They are sitting alone and thinking about the different ways that they can end their LIVES because they feel so alone.

Brothers afraid to speak of their nature to brothers because of how YOU make them fear the response.
Sisters afraid of how their Dad will not love them because of how YOU make them feel abnormal.
Husbands living a lie because of the life into which your words have pigeonholed them.

This goes out to every one of you, even those who think that they harm no one, or that they "love the sinner but hate the sin", or who even just think it is abnormal but don't do anything about it.

For even those who are "moderate" in their hatred are providing the framework of normality for those who are not so moderate in their hate.

Each time someone feels the sting of hatred, is the victim of homophobic violence or, in extreme cases, commits suicide you SHOULD feel shame.

But do you?
No.  You don't.

You blame it on their "troubled lives" or how "mislead" they were.


So here is my message to all you people who think that it is your "right" to believe hateful homophobic things.


FUCK YOU, and your beliefs.

FUCK YOU, and grow up.  

FUCK YOU and understand that I blame each and every homophobic one of you for the pain, the shame, the isolation and the deaths of those who suffered because of your words and your immoral beliefs.

There have been hateful people like you throughout history->


We stood up to them too.


And for for each person who thinks that my language is more offensive than the crime of one more adolescent hiding in shame and considering suicide because of another persons hateful beliefs I have two words for you.

FUCK YOU TOO.

Its time that we were ALL offended by this.

My civility is reserved for those who need to know that they are NOT alone, and that they are as "normal" as any of us.

Rational Response- Evolution and the 2nd Law

A very common argument against evolution is that the 2nd law of thermodynamics disproves evolution.  Now I don't want to conflate evolution with atheism, because atheism has nothing to do with evolution.  There are many theists who accept evolution just as it is possible to be an atheist and not accept it. Many creationists try to do equate one with the other though and argue against evolution and then cry to the stars that they have defeated the atheists and evolutionists.

So lets put this one to bed while trying not to overstep my laymans boundaries in the process.

I am going to start to respond to some of the false assertions that Creationists make about science and evolution in particular.

This one goes- "Since the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that everything goes from order to increased chaos or entropy, evolution must be false as it goes from chaos to a more ordered state.  This is impossible, and clearly goes against the 2nd law."

Let me just say first that I am incredulous that creationists would attempt to use solid science to disprove something when it is science that they have an issue with.  Science is OK when it seems to serves your agenda?  Hypocrisy.

In any case...

This argument fails from the beginning.  The 2nd law states that entropy which is not in equilibrium increases over time in an isolated system.    How does this differ from the creationist claim?

One phrase....

"Isolated system"

Evolution is not an isolated or closed system.  Energy is injected from outside systems in many ways.  Even sunlight adds energy to that system.  If there is even one source of energy that is not from that closed or cyclical system then their argument fails.

Sunlight
Food
Water
All of these are sources of energy that come from outside the human body, but yet there is more.

The next point is that it is a societal shift in the species and not an individual change per se.  Since evolution doesn't happen at an individual level, there are many individual systems to consider and therefor each single system wouldn't relate to another as far as the 2nd law is concerned.

Evolution is driven by the survival of individuals in a species that share an environment.  Eventually, if a random mutation happens (that assists in the passage of the allele by giving that individual a survival advantage) frequently enough, more and more of this mutation will appear in that society.  As that mutation helps each individual to survive, individuals with that mutation appear more and more frequently until it becomes the norm and the species no longer resembles what it once was.

This is speciation.

It is a process driven by a multitude of systems.  None of them closed.  So if no one single organisms "systems" can have an direct effect on the process, and the whole of the process encompasses not only open systems, but a multitude of open systems, then the 2nd law is left inviolate.

I hope that I have made it reasonably clear, from a layman's perspective, how the theory of evolution doesn't violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

I am not claiming to be an expert by any means, but it is pretty obvious that this argument is based on a fallacy, possibly even a lie since it is so clearly false.  

Please Creationists....I am not asking you to change your beliefs (because of this anyway) but I AM asking you to stop using false arguments against things that seem to contradict your dogma.

Science is how we progress and it is important to humanity at large.  I am not saying that you should accept it without thinking, but I AM saying that you should stop fighting it to the point of blinding yourselves to the consequences of confirmation bias.

You hurt yourselves
You hurt your children
You hurt our schools
and you hurt progress in our society.

Find a new battleground.  Preferably one that is supported by evidence.

When you find that battleground, then lets talk.


Peace

Thanksgiving Thoughts

This is a day that is set aside in our culture for thinking about how fortunate we are.

Usually it is partnered with religious thought, but it needn't be, and I would say that it is more appreciative when observed in a secular manner.

Appreciate your wife, appreciate your family, appreciate your friends, appreciate any fortune that fell your way this year, but if you send those thanks to someone, send them to those who deserve them.

Who is responsible for your friends, your family, and your life?

Your friends, your family and YOU.

Love is compatibility made more intense by shared and positive experience.

Who made it positive?
Who got you that job?
Who made your life worth giving thanks?

YOU did.

Your friends did.

Your wife did.

Your children did.


Thank them and leave the omnipotent entities out of it, pretty sure he didn't control those people and make them love you and I am pretty sure he gets enough attention thrown his way already without stealing kudos meant for other people.

So don't ignore the important people in your life by giving thanks to someone you have never met for things he never did.

Instead

Take a bow for what you did, say "I love you" to those who love you, and enjoy the company of those who make your life fantastic.

Peace and Love

and,

theist or not,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stand up Islam!

New Zealand’s Building Minister Maurice Williamson has landed himself in hot water with the Islamic community for cracking a joke about the practice of stoning during a speech at a building industry awards ceremony last month. The Federation of Islamic Associations New Zealand feels that they are unfairly characterized by such insensitive and stereotyping comments. 

My question is;

Where is the outrage at Islam being unfairly characterized by the large sect of the Muslims in fundamental countries who actually perform these terrible actions under the banner of Islam?

Why isn’t THAT the more heinous crime?

Why doesn’t Anwar Ghani (the Federations President) hear comments like the ones the minister made and think;

 “If only the fundamental Islamic countries would stop such immoral, misogynistic, and hateful practices we wouldn’t be so unfairly characterized by the world at large.”

Instead, he thinks;

 “The Minister is espousing religious intolerance by painting us all in a negative light for the actions of those who do such things.”

On the surface I can understand this thinking, but here is the problem.

The people who do, and support this sort of thing are not few in number. 
They are not from extremist sects.
They are not from the fringe of their religion.

They are from the fundamental countries that represent Islam on a world stage.
They are from the nations that gave birth to Islam, and from whom their religious dogma flows.
They are representative of the central and world wide Muslim community.

In short they are exactly the people that we should be garnering our impressions of their religion.

If Muslims feel that they are being poorly represented by such remarks, then maybe they should send a letter to the political leaders in the fundamental Islamic nations instead and decry the acceptance of such practices as “against the spirit of their faith” or just plain immoral.


Moderate Muslims from across the world should be standing up in protest against the terrible crimes that are being committed in the name of their religion.
They should be striving to escape the stereotypes by displaying utter intolerance for the evils that take place in Islam in the countries of it's origin.
They should be publicly saying "No" and examining the Qur'an to make the same excuses that Christians make about the evils of their book.
That it is a medieval book written by medieval men, and not to be taken literally any longer.
Their voice should be crying the loudest in opposition to the crimes committed in their name, instead of saving its volume to defensively cry "foul", "unfair", and "stereotype" when people across the world notice those crimes.



Wouldn’t this be more productive than merely asking offended people worldwide to ignore all the terrible things done in the name of their religion and let everyone live free of “unfair” judgment?

If they would express offense over the archaic rituals of the fundamental and central Islamic cultures first and with the goal of ridding the world of such terrible influences, then and only then, would they have a right to express offense at being “unfairly characterized”.

And really….

Who is characterizing Islam to a higher degree?

Is it Minister Maurice Williamson with an broad stroke and stereotyping comment about Islamic atrocities, or is it those Muslims living in the countries that gave birth to Islam and who allow, condone and perpetrate such evil acts?

I think that you know the answer.

Let’s hope that Islam discovers it soon too.






http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gw7x1wqeJ_0ZAWOEjprBoiDUIW7A

Cartoon found here

Atheist Haiku of the Month-Halloween Edition

 

                                                    Costumes hide us from 

                                                    Monsters in the dark of night

                                                    God and faith create them