Ok folks, this comment was left today on a June 2005 comment thread buried deep in the archives because Tracey is another one of those tough-talking yet chicken shit drive-by xians who want to drop their turds for us to find in the queue, but too afraid to bring it to the front and center. Well, I am bringing this one front and center! (Colder weather approaching and the loonies are starting to come back inside again.) Have fun with this one people.

Tracey says: because of sin we do all “deserve” to go to hell.

What “sins” Tracey? Can you specifically name the sins that would condemn you to eternal flames and torture by your sadistic gawd?

BUT, that is why Jesus died on the cross – so we would have a way out.

First of all, a way out of what??? Death? See…there is that “I need religion because I want to fantasize the impossible and live for ever” thing. This is cowardly and delusional. Better to accept the inevitable with as much dignity and grace as we can and acknowledge that death is a fact of nature. Grow up!

About the “died on the cross” thing…I am sick, sick, sick of this! Xian people are so into gore and bloodshed. So this gawd rapes a virgin, and even though his “son” is “perfect” he tortures and kills him because this gawd is into sadism too much to find a kinder and gentler way of communicating with this creations? Since the beginning of this myth, this gawd is a dick. There is no other word for him. He needs to just off himself…HE deserves it if he cannot even make a loving and peaceful world when he has all power to do so. But…the reality is Tracey…we are left here on our own…mere humans fucking up the planet LARGELY BECAUSE OF FUCKING RELIGION.

Let me ask you this… Would you punish your child for spouting off the type of vulgar words and hatred you’ve described here?

What you are talking about…condemning people to hell forever is far different than getting a bar of soap out for saying a few words that you interpret to be “bad language.” They are only words…made up by humans. While some words mean something to some, they mean nothing to others. Again…GROW THE FUCK UP. I would not kill my children and condemn them to eternal hell for saying fuck, shit, damn, goddamn it or even if they told me to fuck off. Let me ask you this, Tracey. Would you mutilate and kill your child in the most grotesque way to save your other children when you had the power to save those other children any way you wanted? Some women kill their children (usually crazy xian women)…would you kill yours if you felt the crime fit, Tracey?

As a parent, I would definitely punish my child although I love him. Well, as does God.

I see your answer. Please…get some help for the sake of your children.

You xians are so focused on punishment and death, punishment and death. You need to dump the religion and get some positiveness into your life. You are NOT bad and there is no sky daddy to kill you.

And… since God wants us to “choose” Him and love him, would it possible that it hurts for you to be so hateful?

Who is the hateful one who is focused on death, worships an execution symbol, and wishes harm to all those who do not believe as you do? As far as “choosing” that is your brainwashing that you need to get rid of. FREE YOURSELF. Saying there is no gawd is not hateful…it is just being honest. (Besides…how can you “choose” something there has not been one shred of evidence for except in your ancient and tattered mythology book that was written long ago when humans believed the earth to be flat?

Would I want to FORCE someone to love me? NO – and neither does God. Simply put, you have not had a Divine experience, obviously.

Most of us here are ex-xians and are much older and wiser than you are Tracey. To us, “Divine experience” is schizophrenia, or people just believing what they want to believe because they are afraid of death.

And when tragedy hits you hard enough, hopefully you will be brought to your knees.

Why don’t you read through all of the entries on the first page before you start talking of tragedy you self-righteous bitch! Some here have lost friends and family on 911, some lost parents. I have lost children, as others here have. You have absolutely ZERO knowledge of any of us here. So…go take a brain bath and get some sanity PLEASE and shove your prayers up your brainwasher’s ass.

Maybe it’s only right like a stopped clock, but the Cincinnati Enquirer wades in to the issue of science in Ohio schools:

“For all the noise and hype building around some state and local election campaigns, there’s one important race you’re not hearing enough about.

That’s the Ohio Board of Education election, where five of 19 positions are up for vote (including those representing Hamilton, Butler and Warren counties) and so, indirectly, may be the state’s position on the teaching of creationism.”

snip

“This issue has been not just a political hot potato but an obstacle to educational improvement for the state’s 1.85 million students. Time, energy and expertise that could have been spent on issues with far more impact have been consumed by five years of board bickering and maneuvering on evolution/creationism.

That’s terrible stewardship of resources in the name of, not just bad science, but bad educational leadership.”

snip

“In 2002, the state board adopted a science curriculum that allowed individual districts to decide whether to teach intelligent design, which says that some complexities of life are best attributed to an unseen intelligence rather than explained by evolution. In 2004, the board approved a model lesson plan that encouraged students to critically analyze evolution.

Those moves came even after the U.S. Supreme Court banned creationism from public school science classrooms in 1987, and science associations howled at the inclusion of “pseudo science.” This year a federal judge in Pennsylvania(Dover) added further legal weight to the argument by putting intelligent design under the creationism umbrella and ruling that its teaching violates separation of church and state.

Finally, in a February vote, a majority of the board reversed its previous rulings and fully supported teaching evolutionary theory. It was the correct decision in keeping with the best thinking of most of the scientific community.

There is no reason creationism can’t be discussed with students in classes on philosophy or religion, but it is not appropriate to label it as an alternative to hard science.”

The piece goes on to list more serious matters the board ought to be focusing on, including this telling point:

“…they could even take on the inexcusable absence of a comprehensive health and physical education curriculum – an indefensible lack in light of the obesity epidemic engulfing our children.

Worse still, that “missing” health curriculum isn’t just an ancillary issue. State board member Martha Wise and many health educators across the state say the board’s conservative leanings caused members to skirt sex education, thereby stalling the adoption of new health and P.E. standards.”

snip

“It’s time for the Ohio Board of Education to move on to more substantial issues – and for Ohio voters to elect fair-minded, pragmatic members to that board.”

I was just itching to give props to my Bengals- and T.J. Houshmandzadeh(pictured). So, sue me…no, not you Robert O’Brien.

God believers are wasting so much precious time and missing out on really living life. God believers of every variety turn to a negative, violent, and depressing book that was written so long ago by primitive people to solve their problems. The bizarre part is that they take it as literal truth. It’s quite irrational when analyzed critically. It would be like people thousands of years from now finding Tolkien’s works and declaring them to be sacred and everyone worshipping the Hobbit Frodo Baggins as their “savior” and donning medevial attire and growing long beards and going to buildings with a golden ring symbol on top and praying to the almighty spirit of Gandalf. (Actually, LOTR is much more uplifting and positive than the bible or koran.)

Another problem with religion is that these people have had so much fear instilled in them that this god is going to send them to some awful imaginary place after they are dead that they fail to live and fully enjoy the only life they will ever have in the here and now. Sad…sad for people who live for death.

I did some thinking on vacation recently as I observed others also enjoying themselves and relaxing and wondering to myself why people just can’t be content with enjoying this life and appreciating this big, blue beautiful planet we live on instead of feeling guilty and not worthy to have existed at all.

My husband and I just returned from a few days by the ocean on Brigatine Island near Atlantic City. We drove down the coast to Ocean City, New Jersey and walked along the boardwalk, looking at all of the people enjoying themselves, having a good time eating hot dogs, ice cream cones, and funnel cakes while laughing and having fun together. Kids and adults swimming and all seemingly happy, families together, old couples together, young couples together and I thought to myself, this is what people should be doing instead of sitting in churches praying to their imaginary god to help them with their problems. I saw old people in wheel chairs, sitting with serene and smiling expressions on their faces as they watched the ocean waves and felt the wind whipping through their white hair. Children ran into the surf and waves chased them back onto dry sand and they giggled with glee. Fathers swung their children in the air, Mothers passed out popscicles and and hugged their little ones. Young lovers sat closely whispering secrets to each other. Some people slept, some read a book, some body surfed on the foamy waves. No one was praising Jeebus, no one bowing to Mecca. Everyone was just content to be there amongst other people and enjoying nature and being happy.

I know not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to travel, and there are those trapped living in the cities where even a speck of nature is hard to find. Instead of herding these people into dark churches volunteers should pick them up and take them to the park for a couple of hours to sit under the trees or take a walk through the orange and yellow falling leaves. All cities have parks of some sort. I have sat in Grant Park in Chicago and listened for birds. They are there and you can hear their songs if you “tune in.”

People don’t need religion…they need Nature. Religion causes people to focus on the negative and their weakness and their sadness. On the other hand, if one looks to Nature he or she will find beauty, tranquility, peacefulness…and happiness. I would rather put my energy into enjoying my life and this beautiful planet where I was lucky enough to happen to come into being. We all have problems, we all have trials of some sort. No one is immune from problems. But religion is NOT the answer…the answer is in Nature and inside oneself and how one chooses to deal with life.

I know, I know, it’s like shooting fish in barrels to dissect anything from WorldNutDaily. But this one, by Tom Flannery(pictured), was addressed to us!

“LETTER TO AN ATHEIST.
To promote “Letter to a Christian Nation,” the new book by avowed atheist Sam Harris, Random House has compiled a litany of quotes presented as words of wisdom from the author and posted them on its website – along with some statistics that are clearly meant to alarm us.

But should we be alarmed by them? And are Harris’ sentiments really words of wisdom?

Is it alarming that 83 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? Well, it is if you believe (as atheists like Harris do) that the Bible must be accepted purely on faith, without the benefit of corroborating evidence or ever being subjected to rigorous scrutiny of any kind. Yet the Bible itself commands us to test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Jesus taught that believers should love God with all our minds, and not only with our hearts and souls (Matthew 22:37).

The truth is there’s a great deal of historical evidence that supports Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave. For instance, we have the firsthand testimonies of the disciples of Christ, who witnessed the events surrounding His death and burial, then had personal encounters with the Risen Christ in the days that followed. As the apostle Peter explained: “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

In all, more than 500 people saw the Risen Christ over a period of several weeks. As Christian apologist Josh McDowell writes in his book “Evidence That Demands a Verdict,” if you brought all of those 500-plus witnesses into a courtroom and allowed them each just six minutes to give their accounts, you would have an astounding 50 hours of firsthand, eyewitness testimony in support of Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave.

Not only were their lives dramatically transformed after seeing and touching and eating with the Risen Christ – when they went from hiding in locked rooms in fear for their lives before the Resurrection to openly and boldly proclaiming the gospel throughout Jerusalem and well beyond after it – but the majority of these witnesses also sealed their testimonies with their own blood by dying willingly as martyrs rather than renouncing the truth that Christ had risen from the dead.

Combine this with all of the other historical evidence for the Resurrection – the facts surrounding the empty tomb, the inability of the authorities to produce Christ’s corpse after news of His appearances began spreading, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (enemy and persecutor of the church) to the apostle Paul (writer of two-thirds of the New Testament by inspiration of God) after his own encounter with the Risen Christ, etc. – and you begin to see that it takes more faith not to believe in the Resurrection and to come up with ridiculous hypotheses like “the swoon theory” to try to explain it away than to follow the data where they lead and affirm this exhaustively attested historical event.”

According to Harris:

“A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. … But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the Bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.”

But Flannery is having none of that:

“Nonsense. There is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that Elvis is alive*; in fact, all of the evidence we have confirms that The King has indeed “left the building” (what the Bible calls our earthly tent, or body).

So holding to an “Elvis lives” philosophy is incontestably irrational, whereas faith in Christ’s resurrection is rooted in solid historical data.

For this reason, it’s deceptive and intellectually dishonest to try to compare the two beliefs.

Another “alarming” statistic, according to Harris, is that 49 percent of Americans believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God.

Actually, this isn’t very surprising at all when you consider the abundance of evidence for the Resurrection, the multitude of specific Bible prophecies that were provably fulfilled hundreds and in some cases even thousands of years after they were recorded, all of the scientific and medical knowledge revealed in the Bible long before being “discovered” by man, and many other infallible proofs for the veracity of Scripture.

So Harris shouldn’t be so chagrined by the fact that a stunning 87 percent of Americans say they “never doubt the existence of God.”

There’s simply no reason for them to do so.”

*- He’s obviously forgetting the Weekly World News, which has every bit of the credibility of the bibble.

In general, this amounts to the electronic version of a prank call- unsolicited and insane. But, seeing as it was addressed to us, I felt it my duty to pass it along. I think it’s time to count each lie Tom tells.

US Intelligence Report: Iraq War Fuels Terror

A U.S. intelligence report, the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began and published Sunday by The New York Times, blamed the Iraq war for the surge in global terrorism, adding it helped fuel Islamic radicalism worldwide.

A National Intelligence Estimate completed in April said Islamic radicalism has mushroomed worldwide and cites the Iraq war as a reason for the spread of jihad ideology, the newspaper reported.

“The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of ’self-generating’ cells inspired by al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants,” the newspaper said.

“It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan,” the Times said.

Accordingly, some of the estimate’s results confirm the predictions in a January 2003 National Intelligence Council report claiming that a war in Iraq might increase support for political Islam worldwide.

It is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by U.S. intelligence agencies since the war began in March 2003 and represents a consensus view of the 16 U.S. spy services.

Can our right-wing friends now apologize and finally shut the fuck up?

You were wrong, guys. Dead fucking wrong, and the truth is coming home to roost, as I knew it would.

Yes, the old Sean is slowly coming back, folks. Watch out.

Hey GifSters. Long time no see. It’s your old pal King Retard. So where the hell have I been? No, I didn’t find religion or forget about you guys. It’s been an extremely hectic month in my kingdom. Some of you may remember a while back I had mentioned I was going to be teaching. Well, I have a class of 22 college freshmen learning the basics of college composition, mainly how to form and support arguments. The day before the semester started, my grandmother had a heart attack down the coast from where I live, meaning the first two weeks of school, I was commuting a few hours every couple of days. Fortunately, she is still with us, but as you can imagine, the constant travel, lack of sleep, preparing for lessons, doing my own homework (I’m still working on my MA), trying to get to my thesis, and working my two other jobs hasn’t left me a lot of time or energy to engage with my favorite people on the internet.

Ok, so what’s my point? Excellent question. There are some wonderfully amazing and brilliant people on this site. I’ve missed you guys and I will be writing on here more frequently than I have been but not with my previous frequency. I finally feel like I have a routine going as well as some time to devote to outside writing, although not a ton. I’ve been reading a lot of what’s been on here lately and even when I don’t comment, seeing what’s going on and laughing at some of the stuff people say on here has been a big help.

On a fun note, my students are reading an essay titled “Do Kids Need Religion?” I’m following that up with an essay by a minister. Right now, we’re in the middle of a unit focusing on analyzing arguments and measuring their validity. I’m borrowing an assignment Carl Sagan mentioned in Demon Haunted World. Each student will have to take a side on an issue and discuss why their side is valid; however, before they’re allowed to do that, they must present a summary that’s as objective as possible of the other side’s argument. I’m going to make them rewrite it as many times as necessary until they get rid of as much personal bias as possible. I’m going to use the two religion themed essays for this assignment. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*-Though the pooch’s name is “Angus”, I suspect that the backside, itself, is called “Frank Walker”.

“Angus MacDougall is a three-year-old terrier mix that has recently been blessed with the revered and holy image of Jesus Christ on his hindquarters. Is this manifestation of The Prince of Peace a coincidence or a bona fide miracle? One thing is for certain, this apparition of the Son of God is sure to inspire controversy. Not much if any true scientific or theological inquiry has been made into the nature of this sign to date, but “seeing is believing” as little Angus’ terrier-tush is obviously marked by the likeness of Christ. Click on the image below to witness His astonishing appearance, first hand then be sure to visit the links above to learn more about Angus and his sacred derriere extraordinaire. We hope you enjoy your visit!”

Hope this gives you a little respite of goofiness in your troubled times, Sean- and if I could have figured out how to do it, I would have posted it beneath yours to keep it up front.

This does explain a lot, if not all, of what comes out of Frank’s mouth.

I can’t help but post this right now.

My daddy died last night.

He was a poet, an atheist and a genius. In fact, he was beyond atheism. For most of his life, despite being raised Irish Catholic, he said “that silliness just holds no meaning for me; no time for it.” And he died on the floor with a midnight snack in his hand at the young age of 68. He had complained of a cold and gone to bed early, skipping dinner. He got up in the middle of the night for a sandwich and it seems he had a massive heart attack mere feet from returning to his bed.

He was the greatest man I have ever known. His brilliance was on a par with Bertrand Russell, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal (I dare not say Emily Dickinson, who is beyond mortal ken… But he was a hell of a poet). He just never got that famous. Most people don’t. He taught me everything I know.

My sister stood over his body before they took him away this morning and read one of his poems. It was about how he wanted to die. He said he wanted it to be swift. He got his wish.

They had just gotten him to come live with them in the Midwest. Just a month ago.

As an atheist, he will be cremated and we will save the ashes and have a memorial service that will be fucking awesome back in New York, when the time is right.

Ironically, my sister and I just recovered from serious illnesses of our own and the timing couldn’t be more fucking crazy.

But life’s a bitch, then you die. Ain’t no platitude.

Just tell everyone you love how much you love them before you have to say goodbye.

A part of one of his poems:

My grandmother’s house was fraught with peril.
Tigers skulked in the dark back hall;
snakes writhed, languid, on one wall;
the stairs — a tumultuous waterfall.
Children given to unnatural fright
disappeared sometimes at night,
without a whimper or a scream.
We children lived from dream to dream.

Charities that will be contributed to are most likely the ACLU and Amnesty International. Wish I could hit you guys up, but privacy won’t allow.