Atheist Media Blog

“high levels of organic atheism [not government coerced] are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality.”

Interestingly, the US is 4-5 times more religious than Israel.

Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns

The excellent One Good Move beats everyone to the punch with a clip of Dawkins on OReilly. Except there were no punches and the whole thing was rushed along as if it were a Gong Show skit.

onegoodmove: Richard Dawkins - Bill O’Reilly

Last week a real saint died.

Abbe Pierre, was the type of Christian who was in direct opposition to Fox News watching, Christian abortion that is the evangelical right. In other words, he was not the type of person who was more interested in protecting a particular brand of western suburban lifestyle from anyone different, rather than actually helping the unfortunate.

After saving the lives of thousands of Jews and political refugees, working with the French Resistance during WWII, he dedicated his life, as a Catholic priest, to helping the homeless, when he found a destitute, pregnant woman, lying on the mud floor of a shelter in Paris, with two dead children next to her.

He admitted breaking his vows on more than one occasion, saying that the hardest thing to resist was the tenderness of a woman. He survived both a plane crash and a shipwreck.

As an atheist, Abbe Pierre is something I can worship, a real human being.

A pastor in the UK who mentally abused children, accusing them of witchcraft and praying for them to die, cannot be charged, after a 10 month investigation by police, since the law that covers child abuse does not cover mental abuse.

This is the same as the situtation in the US, and is a perfect illustration of why laws against mental abuse of children are needed, to challenge the excesses of extreme religion which specifically target children.

Telegraph | News | Child “witches” case dropped

I watched a very disturbing film last night. It was a film about child abuse, about the kind of child abuse that leaves mental scars that take far longer to heal than physical abuse. And this abuse is both legal and widely encouraged, because there are many good people taken in by it.

We have a natural revulsion towards seeing children being forced to act like adults, in that most adult of traits, sexuality. At first I couldn’t understand what it was that bothered me most about the interviews with the children of fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the documentary, Jesus Camp then I realized.

They did not sound like children at all, but were spouting off rehearsed indoctrination with adult vocabulary, opinions and mannerisms.

Levi: At five I got saved…
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: …because I just wanted more of life.

This is like a line from a world weary reformed drunk in a film noir, not an innocent child.

Their innocence had been removed and they looked either somewhat cold and insincere, or were overcome with emotion, sobbing in a way that you wanted to help these poor kids escape this torture. Only occasionally did their real childish innocence and playfullness shine through.

And if anyone thinks I’m over-reacting, that indoctrinating a child to be an, M16 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Christian radical, is not like indoctrinating a child to be an AK47 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Muslim radical, for example. That this is not child abuse. Then consider this.

Jesus Camp is a film about pre-teen children at a religious summer camp, with no footage of anything that the children themselves weren’t exposed to and yet it carries a certificate 13 - it is not considered fit for young children.

An animated map of the Spread of religion.

One thing it suggests to me is that Judaism and subsequently the other Abrahamic religions are actually based on Hinduism.

After all, Krishna was crucified and rose again and was referred to as Kris (Christ).

[Thanks Keith.]

History of Religion

Rev. Haggard:

“There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.”

Unfortunately he is not referring to the part of his life that extorts money to brainwash people into following a obscenely twisted form of Christianity, via sermons that have been compared to the Nuremberg Rallies?

Haggard confesses to ‘lifelong’ sexual problem - CNN.com

The Richard Dawkins foundation is accepting donations.

If you are a tolerant, reasonable person that opposes religious persecution, perhaps you might accept that:

1. Faith, the opposite of reason - is unreasonable.

2. Tolerating the intolerance which exists in all major religions - is intolerant.

3. Allowing a child to be automatically given its parents’ religion (often irreversably reducing the capacity for freedom of thought, religious or otherwise, as an adult) - is religious persecution.

In which case I recommend you give this ‘reason based initiative’ lots of tax deductable money.

You will be contributing to truly reasonable and tolerant cause, making a stand against religious persecution - in a way that only atheists can.

(At last RDF means something useful!)

RichardDawkins.net - The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

CNN.com - Rep. Harris: Church-state separation ‘a lie’ - Aug 28, 2006

“Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is “a lie” and God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”

Why are Americans putting up with this crap? Katherine Harris is exactly what they fought the war in 1776 to escape.