Hey, I think I like this kid…

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Polls show atheists on the rise in America

Atheist groups are growing all over the United States, challenging stereotypes and confronting what they consider a big backslide in the separation of church and state. They are chatting online, picking up trash along “adopted” highways, and advertising on buses and billboards. In South Florida, they recently picketed a prayer meeting in a public safety building paid for with tax dollars. “We’re growing by leaps and bounds,” said Bob Senatore, a retired teacher and one of the early members of the Florida Atheists and Secular Humanists, or FLASH. “The attitude is, ‘If we don’t do something about it now, we’ll be living under a theocracy.’” Polls show non-believers are on the rise in the United States, even in places like Florida, where, as Senatore sees it, “There’s a church on every corner and a fish on every car.” [...] The American Religious Identification Survey recently found the number of people who claimed “no religion” had nearly doubled nationally over the last 18 years, to 15 percent. They were the only demographic that increased in all 50 states. Some attribute the surge to outrage over former president George W. Bush and his courting of the religious right. Others mention a slew of best-selling books about atheism that have recently fueled debate. But there’s no doubt the Internet is playing a role too. It offers atheist dating services, and helps nonbelievers meet up — people who might otherwise remain “loners.” [...] For others, atheism is a cause. Along with freethinking and agnostic groups, they are beginning to lobby Congress on everything from stem cell research to civil rights. The Secular Coalition for America represents 10 such organizations. Executive director Sean Faircloth said the coalition was particularly interested in bringing down state laws that give special privileges to religious-based services. Groups like his took note when President Barack Obama nodded to “non-believers” during his inaugural speech. “We’ve gone from where we essentially could communicate only with Congress, to now, where we have some open doors at the White House as well,” Faircloth said. “I see tremendous progress and I feel real hope for the future, that you’re going to hear more of us.”

You go, baby…

Judge clears way for dinosaur park to be seized

A federal judge has cleared the way for the government’s seizure of a creationism theme park in Pensacola owned by a couple convicted of tax fraud. A ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers states that the nine properties that make up Dinosaur Adventure Land as well as two bank accounts associated with the park will be used to satisfy $430,400 owed to the federal government. Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, is serving 10 years in federal prison for failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $470,000 in employee taxes. He was found guilty in November 2006 on 58 counts, including failure to pay employee taxes and making threats against investigators. The conviction culminated 17 years of Hovind sparring with the IRS. Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property. Hovind is incarcerated at the Edgefield Federal Correction Institution in South Carolina. His wife, Jo, also was sentenced to a year in federal prison for her role in the tax fraud. She’s currently jailed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna. Rodgers’ 16-page order released late Thursday gives the government the green light to divide up the nine properties in and around the 5800 block of North Palafox Street and begin to sell them until the $430,400 forfeiture amount is satisfied. The properties have a combined value of more than what the Hovinds owe, according to Rodgers’ order, and any excess property available after the sales will be returned to the Hovinds.

Ireland Outlaws Blasphemy

After some hesitation, Ireland’s president, Mary McAleese, signed into law on Thursday a controversial new measure which makes it a crime, punishable by a fine of up to $35,000, to publish or utter blasphemous statements in the Irish Republic. As The Irish Times explained in April, the new law was crafted after someone noticed that while the country’s constitution clearly calls blasphemy a criminal act, Irish legislators had failed to give the nation’s police force the legal means to hold blasphemers to account. Indeed, Article 40 of the Irish Constitution, which also guarantees freedom of speech, states: The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent material is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law. As of Thursday, Ireland now has such a law on the books. Even before the law was signed, a group of Irish atheists began a campaign “for the repeal of this anachronistic and dangerous blasphemy law, and for a referendum to remove the blasphemy reference from the Irish Constitution.” The group’s first step will be to intentionally break the law by publishing a blasphemous statement and defending their right to blaspheme in court. Michael Nugent, a writer and co-founder of Atheist Ireland, called the new law “both silly and dangerous” in an opinion piece published by The Irish Times this month. According to Mr. Nugent: It is silly because it revives a medieval religious crime in a modern pluralist republic. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, by making it the first trigger for defining blasphemy. The problematic behaviour here is the outrage, not the expression of different beliefs. Instead of incentivising outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting. The Irish atheists have also proposed amending Ireland’s constitution to remove other references to religious belief, including those deeply embedded in the very first words of its preamble, which begins: In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Eire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ [...] Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution. While Irish Catholics will no doubt oppose moves to make such sweeping changes to the constitution, one of the curious features of the debate over the new blasphemy law is that, as Padraig Reidy pointed out in The Guardian, there seems to be almost no public support for it among religious leaders in the country.

Granted, we should give kudos to those “religious leaders” for agreeing how stupid it is — but, still, damn: could you imagine if our Constitution started like that?

Gives me chills just thinking about it…

Blech…

God gets His minions to do His dirty work:

Rats kill one baby, bite two toes off another

A baby attacked by rats bled to death in her Louisiana crib while an Ohio infant lost two toes to the vicious rodents in a pair of bizarre attacks. Three people were charged with child endangerment after authorities determined that the six-week-old Ohio baby had been bitten repeatedly by rodents “over a lengthy period of time,” the Pike County sheriff department said. But charges have not yet been filed in the case of the Louisiana child who bled to death last week from hundreds of rat bites, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. The girl’s father was found screaming outside his home when paramedics arrived and her parents told police they did not hear the three-month-old cry out when she was attacked during her nap time. Neighbors told the Picayune that the children always appeared well-cared for and that the father had recently set out traps for the rats that plagued the area. A funeral was held Thursday.

Ah, God just SO loves those little babies…

I can learn such deep moral lessons from the way the world works, God…

Praise Be! Glory!…

Atheist nations are more peaceful

The 2009 Global Peace Index has just been released. It’s basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is. They put it together by assessing 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy (Guardian). You can see a world map of peace at the Vision of Humanity website, and also take a look at country rankings for 2009, as well as earlier years. New Zealand came top this year. Hmm, New Zealand is a pretty secular country. In fact, if you eyeball the rankings, the top few countries are all pretty secular. What I’ve done in the figures here is to take data from the World Values Survey on the percentage of people in each country who say they are a committed atheist, and also on the percentage of people who say that they go to a religious service at least once a month. Then I split the sample into two equal groups, based on their score on the Global Peace Index. The ones in the ‘Peaceful’ group are countries with a GPI score less than 1.8. Sure enough, peaceful countries have more atheists and fewer regular worshippers. The difference is highly statistically significant (P=0.001 or less) – in other words it’s real, not just a chance finding.

More text can be found here…

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Very honest and disturbing video from a victim of the Irish Catholic Church Terror Cell…

(Just gotta love live TV — and YouTube, of course)…

It just amazes me when I think what all of this would have been like if religion wasn’t involved…

When I look at my kid (around the age of many who suffered abuse at the hands of the church), and imagining him going through what so many kids went through, and then having to live through all that fucking shit — well, it just makes me want Bill Donohue to die from pancreatic cancer…

Oh, I’m sorry — was that out loud?…

Christ, I need a fucking drink…jeezus…

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