The second “number-crunching” entry from The Cambridge Companion to Atheism is called, “Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Contemporary Patterns,” and it ends with the following observations (organic atheism — atheistic societies that have no governmental requirement or coercion — is contrasted with coercive atheism — atheistic societies that do have governmental coercion):

Been going through The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, and found some cool “number-crunching” entries.

The first is called “Atheists: A Psychological Profile,” and it ends with the following observations:

Ah, yes, the exportation of goodwill from devoted xians. What could be better — that is, besides pulling out one’s fingernails with a set of pliers?

My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists

“When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane. Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.

ACT NOW and sign the petition.
ACT NOW
and sign the petition.

The founders of our nation believed that all Americans should have the right to worship according to their own beliefs, or not to worship at all. So strong was their commitment to religious freedom that they enshrined it in the first sentence of the Bill of Rights.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Go here to sign the petition.
http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/

Well, it was bound to happen. I mean, it’s been almost fourteen hundred years since the Almighty deigned to chat one of us up- yeah, yeah, Mormons, but even fundies know that Joseph Smith was nuttier than a rabid squirrel listening to the Alan Parsons Project(I,Moron). And, where the hell has this Jesus dude been anyway? The folks back in the day were convinced that Godboy was coming back in their lifetime(think of the monumental arrogance that’s had every generation since thinking the same thing), so, by my reckoning, he’s roughly 1946 years late but who’s counting.

Still, it was like one of those five historical figures dinner parties- minus four, for me, when I happened upon the Man, himself, or, rather, a third of the Man, himself, at Chipotle, sitting at my regular table, rolling a triskodecahedron of highly-refined unobtainium between his palms. As an experienced veteran of both synthetic/organic mind expansion and lucid dreaming, I wasn’t thrown by my unlikely dinner guest. On the contrary, I assumed this visitation boded well for a good evening’s entertainment, so I settled my burrito and tea on the stainless steel tabletop and pulled up a chair.

First, let me say that, these days, Jesus still looks a lot like he did in those Sunday school mugshots from my childhood- you know, Him with the lambs, and the children, and the whores, and whatnot, that same angelic, soulful-eyed caucasian hippie that gave St. Theresa those wetdreams, except, with the teeth of a tweaker- or Shane McGowan.

Since I had no notebook with me, let alone a recording device, I’ve had to rely on my eidetic- at one time, anyway, memory to summarize our conversation. These are the main points he made:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“After you’ve lived almost two millenia, you tend to forget most of what you’ve done but I do remember being in the band Badfinger circa 1971 and singing “Day After Day” to a groupie while I snorted coke off the small of her back.”

“I spent this past election day surrounding Republican election officials with invisible tinfoil to prevent their evil electromagnetic bursts from altering the Diebold vote tallies. That, and shadowing J. Kenneth Blackwell to make sure he didn’t slip off to a courtroom and legally change his name to “Ted Strickland”- in order to claim his opponent’s majority of the votes.”

“My favorite actor is Cheech Marin. My favorite singer is also Cheech Marin;

‘Mexican Americans don’t like to just get into gang fights,
they like flowers and music and white girls named Debbie too…’

Often times, when I’m with a white girl named Debbie, I imagine myself to be a Mexican-American.”

“When former Senator, Rick ‘Man On Dog’ Santorum, took his dead, 20 week-old, miscarried fetus home from the hospital for all his other kids to hold, I threw up a little in my mouth and, then, full-on projectile vomited in his sick head.”

“Never in my life have I spoken to Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, John Hagee, Ted Haggard, or Pastor ‘King’ Bob Enyart. Nor have I ever heard so much as a whispered prayer in my direction from any of them.”

“You know how Jews feel when they see a swastika, well, that’s me anytime I see a cross- and don’t get me started on the crucifix.”

“Madonna sucks and I don’t mean that as a compliment on her sexual prowess.”

“I wish people would stop trying to use me as an endorsement for their homophobia. Sure, back in the day, we weren’t real enlightened about that sort of thing but, personally, I have no problem whatsoever with any consenting adult’s choice for a partner. Hell, Simon bar Jonah- you may know him as ‘Peter’, and I were known to experiment when we had heads full of wine.”

“Oh, this is really important. Herod the Great- not to be confused with his son, Herod Antipas, was actually my father. He took my betrothed and virginal mother on a whim- some ‘ius primae noctis‘ bullshit, and left her with a bun in the oven and some serious ’splaining to do with her husband to be. Fortunately, Joseph- who I always called ‘Daddy Joe’, was just naive enough to buy the ‘immaculate’ tale she told. That’s right, God was not my Pops and the ‘Father’ who’s ‘house’ I’m always talking about in those execrable Gospels, is Herod, his ‘kingdom’, Judea, and the ‘entering unto’ it, simple code for the revolution I was aiming for. In, perhaps, the ultimate irony, Herod Antipas had me crucified not because I claimed to be the son of God(I didn’t) and not because my revolutionary plot was a threat to him or Pilate(though it surely was). No, he did it simply because he was so insecure in his position as tetrarch, he feared another son of his father claiming the throne. Well, he was partly right.”

“The Magdalene? Ah, Mary, my love, the churchmen and history have done you so wrong. Mary was my soulmate, my confidante, my comrade-at-arms, my equal in every way, and only a whore in so much as we both were, whenever we found ourselves with a moment alone. Of course we were married, I was a rabbi, remember? It was required of me- not that I went into it out of any sense of duty or obligation, but only out of a humbling desire to be with her for all time. She was always there to soothe, to comfort, to tease, to satisfy, to knock me down a peg when I was getting a bit full of myself, and to just share the almost constant adrenalin rush of the life we led. Though she grew tired of life some time ago, I can still taste her, smell her, be consumed by the memories of her beside me, and, if that’s not enough, I can always watch CSI: NY because Melina Kanakaredes looks almost exactly like my Mary.”

“Take away their makeup, the fire, and the blood, and Kiss is just an average rock band.”

“As far as I can tell- and, believe me, I could tell, there is no God. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some Jeffersonian, Enlightenment, Deist version of him that started the ball rolling and then ambled off to his next task- I think of that God as some sort of mad scientist who mixes a couple volatile chemicals together in a test tube and then runs for his life. Either way- no god or one like the aforementioned, there’s no one listening(well, I am sometimes, when I’m really bored like when there’s nothing on TV but those inane ‘reality’ shows or Nascar). No matter how good a deed, how appropriate a behavior, how steadfast one is in the face of temptation, if even part of one’s motive is to avoid eternal damnation or to achieve eternal reward, one’s virtue is tainted- which is not to say that some good has been done. Just that a gift bestowed upon another out of the sheer joy of giving is far superior to one reeking of the smoke-filled backroom, Tammany Hall bagman bribery we’ll just call an ‘ulterior motive’.”

“Obviously, the previous eliminates the possibility of Satan as well.”

“We’re all responsible for our own actions. Sure, we have within us genetic instincts- and, probably, personality traits, just as we have learned behaviors and thought processes inflicted upon us by our environment. However, even if what we know as ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ consists of nothing more than genes, cells, chemicals, and electrical current, it does not absolve us from blame for our misdeeds. Because each person’s array of the abovementioned ingredients is unique, ‘free will’- which some theologians posit can not exist without God, is actually but a component of our ’selves’ that we may use- or not, as we see fit.”

“Can I have a bite of your burrito?”

“Yes, I am still alive. But not because I’m supposed to be half-God. I take a dose daily of an elixir that I discovered back in the day- a mixture of willow bark, green tea, and highly refined unobtainium. Mary took it, too, up until about the seventh century. It doesn’t actually make one immortal but it slows the aging process- or, more precisely, the degradation of the telomeres, to a glacial pace. This chunk is all that remains of this element here on earth and it’ll probably last me for another, oh, five hundred years give or take a decade. Basically, I just wander the world in whatever direction strikes my fancy, trying to do a little good here and there David Carradine in ‘Kung Fu‘. Currently, I’m working as a DJ at the Prince of Piece Gentleman’s Club.”

“Just in case you think Jesus can’t be petty, this is for J. Kenneth Blackwell;

‘Nah, nah, nah, nah! Nah, nah, nah, nah! Hey, Hey-ey! Goodbye!’

Fucker. Catch y’all on the flipflop…”

Jesus told me that he’d try and stop by the site to answer any questions you might have for him later this evening.

Not my question, folks — but a very important question from an amazing and incredible and fascinating and awesome website I just found.

Some highlights (keeping in mind, of course, that interpretation of scripture can be quite hazardous):

Here is the point. You and I do not know whom God has selected, in advance, as the “winner” that He wants in office. To cast a vote for someone other than the pre-selected winner is to fight God’s purpose! That is serious—and the Bible says that it is possible to “fight against God” (Acts 5:39)! Further, if you are seeking to elect the best man, in an election where God has told you in advance that He is going to pick the “basest” person, you are directly ignoring His purpose and overriding it with your own. God has already picked the winner. Christians know they had better “get out of the way,” not “get out the vote”! God does not need our “help” installing who He has chosen. [...] Remember that Christ’s kingdom is not on earth—it is from another place. It is not the job of His servants, through participation in men’s governments or through fighting in their wars, to spread the kingdom of God. It has not yet arrived. Since God’s kingdom comes from, and is headquartered in, heaven, His servants neither vote in, nor fight for, men’s nations or governments.

Yes, once you read this, you too will be enlightened. Glory!

Got this link over at PZ’s site…

Definitely gotta see this one…

Well, first there was the Nietzsche / Family Circus Page, and now it looks like there’s a Dennis the Menace / Fight Club Page. It doesn’t reload like the NFC page, but it still cracked me up…

This post goes out to all of those anger management folks. (You know who you are.)

May I see your hand, please?