I’ve been waiting for this:

Westboro Baptist Church loses lawsuit in Maryland.

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – A jury on Wednesday ordered an anti-gay Kansas church to pay $10.9 million in damages to relatives of a U.S. Marine who died in Iraq after church members cheered his death at his funeral.

*snip*

“It’s enough already to bankrupt them and financially destroy them,”

We can only hope this will finally shut them the fuck up.

Our friend Revenant recently mentioned this story in response to Christian troll (ted) who has been bombarding the moderation queue with messages and prayers to tell us all how we need his god’s love. I had forgotten this Bible story that is as scary as any Halloween horror story. Here is first what the satirical site, Landover Baptist Church had written about it:

The Lord sending bears to maul young children to death is nothing new to True Christians who have memorized their Bible! Saved folks know that the Lord Jesus is liable to send ravenous bears to kill children at the drop of a hat, as was the case when He sent two bears to rip apart 42 children who were rude enough to mock a bald man. Glory!

And the passage from the Bible: From The Holy Bible, 2 Kings 2:23-24:

“And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them”

The love of God is wonderfully horrifying, ain’t it?
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

From the ancient reaches of Asia tread the whale-road in the dragon-prowed ships north to the snowy lands beneath the Aurora Borealis. Take a seat in the warm banquet halls of the children of Odin, and quaff a bowl of golden mead as you hearken to a chill winter’s tale sung by a gifted skald:

Beneath the third root of Yggdrasil the Cosmic Ash Tree, where the great serpent Nidhogg nibbles both the ash’s roots and dead men’s flesh, lies deep, dark, cold Niflheim, realm of mist and shadows, the abode of those unlucky enough not to have died in battle or at sea.

Nine pitch-black nights as the crow flies across its trackless wastes, upon Nastrond, the ghastly Shore of Corpses, flows the Gjoll or Wailing River where sharp, glinting knives tumble dangerously in the freezing cold currents. Only the Gjoll Bridge, gleamingly thatched in pure gold, offers a safe way across past its sturdy maiden guard Modgudr – but under the slightest step of living foot, the entire span rings with the tramp of a thousand soldiers.

On the other side of the Gjoll the Hel-Way, road to the home of the inglorious dead, winds toward Drop to Destruction, a sheer cliff looming out of the mists over the darkling plain. A great castle squats behind a high wall atop the frowning rock, and in the wall is set a single, terrible gate. Chained by an inky cave nearby sits the monstrous dog Garmr, his neck and massive chest dripping with blood, to make sure only the dead pass through Nagrind the Corpse Gate and over the Pit of Stumbling into dread Eliudnir, Sleet-Cold Hall.

Inside, the snake-spine rafters drip acrid, acid poison onto the heads of the castle’s shadowy, spectral captives, who slog endlessly through the streams of smoking venom and reeking blood running over the gray floors. Those unlucky enough to succumb to disease, accident, murder, or plain old age reluctantly rub elbows with liars, perjurers, oath-breakers, adulterers, and murderers on an endless round of torment. No mead here but only goat’s urine for the thirsty; the dragon Nidhogg, however, finds plenty of blood to drink from the veins of the condemned.

What nightmarish being stirs from her bed Disease draped with Gleaming Anguish? In the eternal gloom her grim, fierce face can appear as fair as her father’s, that of trickster god Loki; others whisper ‘tis the visage of a hag, like her giantess mother Angrboda. At any rate, a pink-skinned, living woman from the waist up – but below, the mottled, greenish-blue-black, rotting thighs and legs of a cadaver appear.

Her male and female slaves Ganglati (“Idler”) and Ganglot (“Sloven”) respectively move so slowly they appear not to move at all, but they serve her with her plate Hunger and knife Famine. The mistress of Niflheim endures a routine no less numbing than her wretched subjects, as much a prisoner in this awful place as they. For she did not choose this lot, this terrible burden of ruling the inglorious dead.

When the Allfather Odin found out that giant-blooded Loki had begat such powerful beings as she and her two older brothers, he had them kidnapped from their mother’s home and cast far far away from his band of bright gods. They chained the Fenris Wolf deep below the earth; sank the snake Jormungandr in the blackness at the bottom of the sea; and exiled her, Hel the Hider, to live here amongst the chill, shadowy mists forever. She does not even have the luxury of turning away any who reach the Corpse Gate – but once she did have revenge, of sorts, on the shining souls in Asgard.

Beautiful boy-god Baldr had recurring dreams of an unutterable doom and to stave it off, his mother Frigg got every object on earth to promise not to hurt him. She grew so sure of his safety, however, that she invited every god to try to harm him to show off his invulnerability, not knowing that she had revealed to the disguised Loki that only the humble young mistletoe had not taken the oath – because Frigg never bothered to ask it.

Jealous Loki plucked a sprig of mistletoe, whittled it into a dart, and convincing blind god Hodr to let him put it in his hand and guide his toss, killed the handsome young deity of innocence where he stood laughing at the hitherto-unsuccessful attempts on his life. Pure and beloved as he was, Baldr had not died on the battlefield or on the storm-tossed seas but most treacherously assassinated; he now belonged to the pale half-corpse Queen of Niflheim.

Desperate, Frigg sent Baldr’s brother Hermodr to the world of darkness to beg for her favorite son’s release. On his father Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the would-be rescuer rode through the icy fogs to the blade-bristling Gjoll, over Modgudr’s bridge, and down the Hel-Way to foreboding Eliudnir. Its mistress greeted him graciously and let him visit with Baldr, whom she treated as an honored guest rather than a disgraced captive, but she had no intention of letting him slip through her chill fingers that easily.

If the world of sunlight truly missed the beautiful youth that much, then everyone and everything both animate and inanimate would shed tears for their loss – and she would return him to the golden halls of Asgard.

Despite the fact that a similar condition had failed so spectacularly before, Baldr’s mother and the other aesir or gods reduced all of creation to weeping on his behalf – except for a mean, cave-dwelling giantess named Thokk, who adamantly refused to squeeze so much as a single drop from her glower. Convinced she was actually Loki masquerading once more, the aesir persecuted and finally punished him with extreme cruelty – but nothing could ever bring the god of joy and peace back again. Hel keeps her precious prisoner – for now.

Even her sinister siblings’ imprisonment will not last eternally, for the Wolf will one day burst his bonds and swallow the sun, and the Serpent will rise flinging the ocean over the land. On the tempestuous seas, the Queen of the Damned’s phantom ship Naglfar, built from the parings of dead men’s nails, will slip its moorings and sail on Asgard. The Corpse Gate will fly open, disgorging Sleet-Cold’s denizens for a final great battle against the heroes who died in combat and went to Valhalla in Asgard instead. Loki will escape his torture chamber and march against his tormentors as the fire giant Surtr.

Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, will end this world in darkness, and blood, and devouring fire – only to give way to the fresh, new world that will arise from the destruction. For Eliudnir will finally release Baldr the Beautiful, but to rule over this green earth of peace and plenty.

In the meantime, Niflheim waits, and continues to welcome as many, if not more, dead than Valhalla and the ocean.

Cold in your bones? Then warm them with more honeyed mead – and drink to a glorious death in battle or at sea!

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel_(being)
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hel.html
http://www.deliriumsrealm.com/delirium/articleview.asp?Post=147
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9039864/Hel
http://goddessofthe8thhouse.com/dar_hel5.htm
http://www.northvegr.org/lore/pdf/prose_brodeur.pdf, specifically the “Gylfaginning”

[Pastor Terry] Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church’s lay leaders had turned on him. “They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!” he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. “And these were deacons of the church!”

In a ten-page obituary, the NYT delivers a post-mortem on evangelical fundamentalism. The much-vaunted solidarity of the once-triumphant Jerry Dobertson is crumbling before our very eyes…

Enjoy a free trip behind the Grey Lady’s parsimonious, cheese-paring pay-wall — courtesy of Huffington Post: The Evangelical Crackup, by David D. Kirkpatrick

Schadenfreude, y’all!

(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)

I’ve gotten used to the idea that every day when I wake up, there will be a few new posts criticizing Christianity, theism, or religion in general at Debunking Christianity. And every two weeks, there’s another Carnival of the Godless, with more posts along those lines than I can find time to read. At one point in my blogging career, such things seemed natural. However, I’ve come to wonder how people can do it. The thing is, just as I once threw up my hands and said how boring pseudoscience is, I have come to the conclusion that religion, too, is profoundly boring.

I cannot bring myself to care much about the blatherings of Dinesh D’Souza (so ably dissected at Pharyngula and God is for Suckers!). Idiocy and ignorance aren’t news, folks. It’s a snooze fest.

Or, consider this recent piece by Chuck Colson. This piece is a bit special for me, because I found it linked by Vic Reppert when I decided to pick up reading his blog again. I did so having vague memories that Reppert was worth reading, because he had a Ph.D. in philosophy and was sensitive to some of the weaknesses in his religious position. Colson, himself, is a big-shot Evangelical, politically influential and the author of a book on Christian apologetics. Yet what do I find? Basically, Colson’s argument is that two atheists had an exchange where they took atheism for granted, and therefore atheism is a faith position. Even without having read the articles Colson is referring to, it’s easy to see where he’s going wrong: winning people to atheism wasn’t their purpose, their purpose was to have an intramurral discussion of an issue that arises if you’re an atheist. In this case, it isn’t even that Colson needs to have someone who understands the issues to show him how ridiculous his beliefs are. It isn’t even that he needs some basic training in critical thinking or science or history. It’s more like Colson needs remedial reading comprehension classes. Did this guy go to college? If so, how on earth did he get an admittable score on his verbal SAT?

Faced with such formidable intellectual opposition to Colson, I must struggle with all my might to avoid falling asleep. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up writing about religion. I do, for example, regard it as my duty to fight against the waves of misinformation that orthodox believers have been vigorously churning out to keep their flock (their word, not mine) deceived. But it is duty only–born of desire to do some good in the world and realization that this is an area where my skills are most suited to helping out. The excitement, however, is gone.

I’ve been perusing The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak – and it’s a compilation of the plethora of casuistic counter-evolutionary claims, and it’s a long, looonnnggg list of complaints lodged against evolutionary theory, most of them niggling little nuggets of nonsense.

More often than not, I am stunned by the addled idiocy of my fellow humans. When I was younger, I’d be stunned into silence by the utter stupidity of some verbal diversionary tactic of the mental midgets.

I seriously advise picking up this book. It gathers the commoner counter-claims, and lays them to rest in a rational, logical fashion, quite similar to the Talkorigins site.

As I’ve pointed out before, the teleological is the more difficult of these discussions, at least on a superficial level. Some simple investigation usually lays the majority of these items to rest.

Here’s a few tasty little morsels:

Could life arise spontaneously? If you read How Cells Work, you can see that even a primitive cell like an E. coli bacteria — one of the simplest life forms in existence today — is amazingly complex.

This is a ridiculous comparison. A ‘primitive’ cell today is by far more complex than a primitive cell a billion years ago. Argument from incredulity. Try a different tack – I use the term ‘compounded simplicity’.

The cosmos is fine-tuned to permit human life. If any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, life would be impossible. (This claim is also known as the weak anthropic principle.)

The Talk Origins link covers this nicely:

The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos.
We do not know what fundamental conditions would rule out any possibility of any life. For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible.
Indeed, many examples of fine-tuning are evidence that life is fine-tuned to the cosmos, not vice versa. This is exactly what evolution proposes.

The argument from long odds:

…the odds calculated by Morowitz and Hoyle are staggering. The odds led Fred Hoyle to state that the probability of spontaneous generation ‘is about the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard could assemble a Boeing 747 from the contents therein.’ Mathematicians tell us that any event with an improbability greater than one chance in 10⁵⁰ is in the realm of metaphysics — i.e. a miracle.¹

This is perhaps the most specious of arguments. We’re here, and what criterion is used to generate this number? But really, how on earth do you calculate these odds? Do we have alternate universes that have these components misarranged for comparison? Yes, this is abiogenesis – but I’ve seen this concept applied to the argument from fine tuning, (see above) i.e., if select items were just a little bit off kilter, we wouldn’t be here.

Of course, the (not-so) clever word play creeps in – “Hey, if you use the word ‘design’, it implies a designer!” Well, design is in the natural order of things, but it doesn’t necessitate a supernatural first cause. Or the good ole “So everything was an accident!?!?”, which I disemboweled here - because after all, language is a two-edged sword, is it not?

But we are. And everything just is. And we all make our own purpose, no?

Yes.

Till the next post, then.

“For the last 15 years, the homosexual community has been publishing children’s books promoting homosexuality, starting with the book Heather Has Two Mommies. Other books such as Daddy’s Roommate and My Two Uncles have followed suit…”

Why, it’s a veritable market saturation, a cornering, even!

“…To our knowledge, no comparable children’s book designed to combat the promotion of homosexuality is available on the market—until now. “Does God Love Michael’s Two Daddies?” is a professionally designed and illustrated book that promotes God’s love for all individuals, while at the same time showing, in a loving way, that homosexuality is wrong. This book has tremendous potential to positively influence the lives of thousands of children growing up in tumultuous and confusing times.”

Thus spake the Mental Giants, known collectively as Apologetics Press. Obviously, given the name of their operation, we know to mock and/or ignore their output- which includes that extrasciencey*, contemporaneous man/dinosaur cohabitation thing. If we’re feeling generous, we may even rise above the belly laughs over the author of this claptrap being Sheila K. Butt.

*- my brand new, Stephen Colbert word.

I think maybe a new category is in order. Something like; “Oh, for Fuck’s Sake!” because some of this stuff just goes way beyond “Crazy Fundies” and simple “Stupidity”.

With a tip of the helmet to Miss Poppy Dixon and the General…and here’s the reworked version.

It’s probably not surprising that many god believers also believe in ghosts, demons, spirits, ESP, etc. According to Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson (”Belief in Ghosts High”), “About one out of five people, 19 percent, say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly half, 48 percent, believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP.”

The article states that “the most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.”

But conservatives are more apt to be those snake-handling, Gawd fearing, Hell and Satan believing, talking in tongues speaking, casting-out-demons rural superstitious folks who believe an imaginary sky daddy walks and talks with them and sees everything they do and controls every aspect of their lives! I see that wasn’t mentioned in the article.

“Spells and witchcraft are more readily believed by urban dwellers, minorities and lower-earning people. Those who find credibility in ESP are more likely to be better educated and white — 51 percent of college graduates compared to 37 percent with a high school diploma or less, about the same proportion by which white believers outnumber minorities.”

*snip*

“One in five say they are at least somewhat superstitious, with young men, minorities, and the less educated more likely to go out of their way to seek luck. Twenty-six percent of urban residents — twice the rate of those from rural areas — said they are superstitious, while single men were more superstitious than unmarried women, 31 percent to 17 percent.

“The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover. Thirteen percent dread walking under a ladder or the groom seeing his bride before their wedding, while slightly smaller numbers named black cats, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, Friday the 13th or the number 13.

“Generally, women were more superstitious than men about four-leaf clovers, breaking mirrors or grooms prematurely seeing brides. Democrats were more superstitious than Republicans over opening umbrellas indoors, while liberals were more superstitious than conservatives over four-leaf clovers, grooms seeing brides and umbrellas.

*snip*

“The poll, conducted Oct. 16-18, involved telephone interviews with 1,013 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.”

While it may not be surprising that god botherers also believe in the paranormal, astrology, ESP etc, I find it surprising to have read articles where some atheists believe in ghosts and are quite superstitious in various ways. I have a friend who claims to be an atheist, but believes ghosts and other dimensions exist. Can one be an atheist and still believe in ghosts, etc? IMO, I don’t think so, but even I find myself being a bit superstitious sometimes.

This video shows that people believe what they want to believe…because it gives them comfort, gives them a crutch to lean on, or is just plain fun (or they can’t help themselves).

The Power of Belief with John Stossel 1 of 5 (Links to 2 through 5 below video)

The Power of Belief 2 of 5
The Power of Belief 3 of 5
The Power of Belief 4 of 5
The Power of Belief 5 of 5