Atheist group puts giant anti-Catholic Super Bowl sign at sight of big game
BizPac Review
With Christmas behind us, atheists in search of new opportunities to display their animosity toward people of faith are turning to the Super Bowl. And why not, considering that Super Bowl Sunday is all but a national holiday and has come to rival ...

I’ll be hosting a session on Spiritual Abuse at FtBCon 2 at 9am. I’m just convening the event: the real work will be done by Vyckie Garrison, Ania Bula, Jamila Bey, and Heina Dadabhoy, who will be talking about…

What is spiritual abuse? What distinguishes “spiritual” abuse from regular forms of physical, emotional, and mental abuse?

In spiritual abuse, a person’s faith and ideas about God, the supernatural, and the afterlife, get intermingled and entwined with relational and behavioral choices so that the situation is not only about the way a person thinks, acts, and relates – it is primarily about the condition of your soul.

It’s hard to imagine a more crystal clear example of institutionalized racism than a racist football team owner giving his team a racist name, and then a generation later refuses to make a trivial change. Nothing big; just change the name to something a little more respectful…and apparently the right to use this slur is more important than respecting human beings.

Change the name. It’s obviously the right thing to do. Every day that the Washington football team delays is a day that their stubbornness and stupidity and bigotry becomes a more notable part of their history.

Crossmap
North Carolina Football Coach Ordered to Cease Leading Team Prayers ...
Crossmap
Text size: Small · Medium · Large. Email; Share · Print; Comment. Tweet. A high school football coach in North Carolina has been ordered to cease leading his team in prayers following a complaint by a prominent atheist activist organization.
Community rallies for football coach accused of — (gasp!) — praying with playersBizPac Review
Students Rally Around Football Coach Ordered to Stop Leading His Team in ...TheBlaze.com

all 30 news articles »

After I botched it last night, the Lovecraftians have regrouped and we will be having Cthulhu panel at FtBCon 2. It’s tonight, at 10pm Central (in about 2 hours). Confirmed: Michael Davis, Robert Price, Toren Atkinson, and me. A few others have been invited and might show up. If you’re desperately excited about shambling horrors from the outer darkness and really, really want to join in, email me, maybe I’ll squeeze you in. Also, we might need sacrifices.

And…here we are.

 

 

 

 

Written by Johnny O’Coileain (Facebook)

Editor, One Nation Under Nothing 

(Picture Source)

A One Nation Under Nothing reader, Brian, submitted the following question:

 “With Christianity (and other such ideas) having one book; and treating itself like a universal truth, how can a so called ‘universal’ be so divided into many shards?”

 The splintering effect that makes one religion divide like a germ is well documented. What begins as one dogma (like the original Catholic Church), passes through interpretation filters, and each view breaks off into its own ideology. The end result is a colossal spectrum of thought; from liberal Christians, to the KKK, and everything in between. The spectrum I hint at can usually be thought of as, from least to greatest, those who take their religion seriously. Or in other words, those who ignore much of the Bible, vs. those who take every printed word to heart.

 From my observations, it’s usually one’s natural temperament that decides the interpretation. Temperament, in a sense, predisposes people to target certain parts of the Bible while ignoring others (for better or worse). The simple idea is cherry-picking, and temperament does the picking. When someone is compassionate about humans, they’ll display a heavy emphasis on the generous acts of Jesus. Oppositely, when someone is a foaming-at-the-mouth bigot, their natural temperament will lead them to Leviticus rather than John, Mark, Matthew, or Luke.

 When people in one congregation possess a temperament different from the establishment, the same ideology arrives at new tone. Maybe they’ve decided one church isn’t “hardcore” enough, or that it’s too hardcore. A new establishment may become milder or harder or in between; and it’s decided by that one word I keep repeating. Things become detrimental when the temperament of a human becomes canonized. It’s when a relative, subjective attitude is looked at like the laws of physics: as an unalterable fact.

 If one can deduce a “general attitude” about a religion, undoubtedly it can be traced back to the temperament of an individual or group. Stepping outside of religion into the greater sphere of Ideology, I’ll touch on communism. The general attitude of Karl Marx’s writings vs. the Soviet totalitarian experiment are literally worlds apart. Only human temperament can take the idea of a (in Marx’s words) “stateless, classless society,” and as Lenin and Stalin did, centralize the entire economy and ruling power into a few hands. Concurrently, they created a new ruling class (the vanguard party). There’s nothing “stateless” or “classless” happening, yet they still paraded under the communist title.

 With Christianity and communism, when certain temperaments become the mantle, the original intention can be entirely wiped out. The imminent philosopher of the Scottish enlightenment, David Hume, had this to say in A Treatise of Human Nature: 

 “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

 Pure reason would have a human read Marx or Jesus, and the end result should approximate an elevated life for the poor, the mistreated, and the exploited. But when people arrive at totalitarianism from a “stateless, classless” idea; or strip away food stamps and healthcare while claiming to be Christian, the intended result of the Idea isn’t necessarily wrong, but the temperament leading it certainly is.

 

 

Raw Story
American Atheists create Super Bowl billboard ad at the Meadowlands
Raw Story
It's not a $2 million ad buy. But will a billboard by the activist group American Atheists at the Super Bowl draw the same kind of attention? The 14 foot by 48 foot digital billboard in East Rutherford, half a mile from the Meadowlands and Metlife ...
Atheist group puts giant anti-Catholic Super Bowl sign at sight of big gameBizPac Review

all 10 news articles »

Important tidbits: John Wilkins, unemployed philosopher, would love to come to the States and talk, so if you have money to fly in an Australian, and you enjoy what he had to say, you know who to talk to.

Also important: The audio book of The Happy Atheist is in the works, and rather than boring ol’ me doing the reading, it shall be spoken in the deep and imposing voice of Aron Ra. Look for it!

Social justice, women of color, right now on FtBCon2. Coming up in 15 minutes is Ken White of Popehat talking about sexual harassment and the law, then at 3 Aron Ra, John Wilkins, and I will be duking it out for your eyeballs against the atheism and accessibility panel. Decisions, decisions.

Atheists, believers and goals
Albany Times Union
As an atheist and a queer person, I know that every minority community faces stereotypes. For atheists, one stereotype is that we are immoral. The idea that atheists can't be moral is not only false, but it also harms the prospect of finding common ...
'Christian humanist' Daniel Taylor on freeing your inner atheistReligion News Service

all 2 news articles »

Salon
New Atheism's big mistake: Debating creationists solves nothing
Salon
The fundamentalist Christian and the atheist both read the Bible as a series of falsifiable propositions — what Terry Eagleton calls the “Yeti” theory of belief. Disproving the creation narrative should strike any theologian as absurd — the way a ...

What is it with MRAs and PUAs and MGTOWs and their endless acronyms? Here’s a new one on me: LMR. “Last minute resistance”. It’s how the acronym-ridden ones refer to women’s efforts to prevent them from sticking their penis into their vagina. It’s all about rape, in other words.

One of the odious PUAs at RoK tried to publish an e-book titled LMR Exposed: How To Overcome Her Last Minute Resistance To Sex, Turn ‘No’ Into ‘Yes’ And Get The Lay! It’s been yanked off the virtual shelves once the ‘bot slaves at Amazon realized what it was about. It wasn’t hard. Quotes like this…

I’ve had situations where a girl is lying naked with me on my bed, still loudly proclaiming that we’re not having sex… Other times, I just forcefully removed the hand, stuck my dick inside, and she welcomed it eagerly once I was in.

…make it clear that we’re talking about a rape manual.

Tauriq Moosa and Jezebel. have more, including the author’s reaction to “cuckoo social justice warriors”.

Remember to check the schedule for FtBCon 2 — more stuff starts up at 10am Central, with secularism, godless parenting, gender issues, and community building this mornin.

You’ll never guess what that is a euphemism for in this creepy video from the Mormon church.

Yep, it’s all about masturbation, wrought with an excessive metaphor that protecting your friends from pornography and self-gratification is exactly the same as running around with guns to rescue wounded soldiers on the battlefield. I think the problem here isn’t that young men masturbate, but that old authorities are telling them that they’re evil and helping Nazis win the war for Satan when they do what comes naturally.

Be sure not to miss the end, when the two guys who have confided in each other about their sins give each other hot, smoky looks across a room.

Also, I’ve gotta say, when youtube pops up a collection of recommended videos to watch after this one, I blushed…I had no idea that you could find those kinds of R-rated videos there. This production from the Mormon church is only going to help people find more porn!

(via Carrie Poppy, that perv.)

'Christian humanist' Daniel Taylor on freeing your inner atheist
Religion News Service
His recent book, “The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist,“ makes a compelling case for why skepticism isn't the antithesis of faith. Here, we discuss religious certainty, doubt, and why he doesn't resist his “inner atheist.” RNS ...

Christian News Network
North Carolina Football Coach Ordered to Cease Leading Team Prayers ...
Christian News Network
MOORESVILLE, N.C. – A high school football coach in North Carolina has been ordered to cease leading his team in prayers following a complaint by a prominent atheist activist organization. Officials with the Mooresville Graded School District recently ...
Community rallies for football coach accused of — (gasp!) — praying with playersBizPac Review
Students Rally Around Football Coach Ordered to Stop Leading His Team in ...TheBlaze.com

all 31 news articles »

Atheist billboard ad hopes to get Calgarians thinking
CBC.ca
Atheist billboard ads rejected in Vancouver. An atheist organization is hoping its new billboard will challenge the way some Calgarians think. The Centre for Inquiry has installed an ad on Edmonton Trail for six months that reads, "Praying won't help ...

and more »

'Minang atheist' Aan released from prison
Jakarta Post
Alexander Aan, who was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison in 2012 for publicly declaring himself an atheist on Facebook, was released from prison on Jan. 27. Aan, a 30-year-old former civil servant, posted statements and pictures on the social ...

I’ve been in full meltdown mode at work for the last few weeks, but hey, it’s started: FtBCon 2 is now in progress. Go there now. Now.

'An Atheist's History of Belief' unfaithful to its title
Los Angeles Times
"As the son of a Manx Methodist atheist and a refugee German Jewish atheist," Matthew Kneale tells us in the first sentence of "An Atheist's History of Belief: Understanding Our Most Extraordinary Invention," "I have never been much of a believer." It ...