Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace – Imagine, John Lennon

I recently watched this movie, and I have to say: I absolutely loved it.

Because, let’s admit it – as an atheist, I cannot abide dishonesty. It was the initial attraction it had for me after all. The uncompromising pedantry, the brutal clinical analysis of details, the utter logic of it. And religious people? They lie. Perhaps in small ways, even more so in large ways. The mental gymnastics of rationalizing their worldview, the  semantic dishonesty, the dance of belief so fragile that a light wind can shatter it and the denial afterwards.

So the plotline was a refreshing concept: a parallel world where nobody understands the concept of lying. Wow. What I wouldn’t give to live there, I tells ya. You’d know where you stood immediately with anyone you’d meet. Conversations where people never ever used ‘weasel words’. If you were going to score, you’d know it. Ask a question, and there’s no dancing about, just a straight answer.

And one of the more beautiful aspects of the flick, is that there was no such thing as religion. Not one jot nor tittle.

So one day, as shown in the trailer, Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) lies and gets more money from the bank than he has. He begins to experiment with this newfound ‘power’, much to our collective amusement.

And the big hit at the Judeo-Christian religion, is when his mother is lying in bed, scared of death, not wanting to go into cold nothingness, and Mark makes up a huge fib about what is obviously termed heaven here, and is overheard by the doctor and nurses. The ‘word’ spreads like wildfire, and people begin camping on his doorstep. So Mark writes the ‘nine commandments’ on the back of two pizza boxes, and addresses the crowd by telling them about the ‘man in the sky’. Much hilarity ensues.

I rather liked the subplot, where Mark is trying to woo Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner), who isn’t interested in him at all, and…well, watch the movie. Some critics didn’t like the idea of a dumpy little guy getting a hottie, but it does happen, and screw those shallow pricks anyways.

And some of the religious kooks weren’t too hot about it, anyways:

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film the three and a half stars out of four saying "in its amiable, quiet, PG-13 way, [it] is a remarkably radical comedy" while Empire gave the film 1 star out of 5 saying the "ramshackle plot detours into a hideously ill-conceived religious satire". The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rated The Invention of Lying as "O – morally offensive"^] However, Xan Brooks of The Guardian was more favourable, giving the film four out of five stars, although he was critical of some aspects: "It is slick and it is funny. But it is also too obviously schematic, while that romantic subplot can feel awfully synthetic at times."

But hey, if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined the race.

Anyways, till the next post.

The Great Flood (Christian Flood Myth)
Thanks to The Atheist Jew for this one. OMG, too funny because it’s now in a place where all my Bible literalist friends and relatives can watch it, if their retinas aren’t burned out by the word “atheist” in the title first. Beaj came along and interjected this little gem below in a comment thread under a news article I posted about Hubble capturing the earliest image yet of the universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang.

LOL! My bet is that they don’t get through five seconds of it before they turn it off and start praying for us. Too funny. But the sad part is that this little cartoon presentation brings up some very good questions to consider before taking the flood myth literally. But sadly, most fundies choose to remain willfully ignorant.

Here’s the trailer: [LINK]

God belief and religious superstition often leads to more superstition, which leads to even more superstition, and so on, and so forth.

How do these people function while being afraid of the grotesque inventions of their own minds that they believe are real? I can’t imagine what their children must go through.

Here is an amusing, yet sad report from MSNBC’s Countdown

Question for you all. Do any of you have superstitions even though you are an atheist? As for me, I don’t have any superstitions. Shit happens, coincidences happen. That’s life.

Shall we donate a bunch of them?

This is happening at a small church in the town my father was born and grew up in, Canton, N.C. Also, this is just another example of Christians against Christians, one declaring to have superior and divine knowledge of the “true word” via the King James Bible. All other translations of the Bible are “of the devil”, according to Pastor Marc Grizzard. One woman interviewed says “In my opinion, the King James version is the only version.” These folks are showing their total lack of knowledge concerning the Bible’s history (amongst other things).

The “wrong” versions of the Bible are not the only books being burned. Books of many Christian authors are also on the burn list, including the Rev. Billy Graham, Dr. James Dobson, Mother Theresa, Rick Warren, Tim LaHaye. This just goes to show us, eventually the Christians will but themselves out of business by fighting amongst themselves.

N.C. Church Plans Bible Burning

Stephen Colbert’s take on the Mojave Desert cross crap: Includes some funny pokes at Justice Scalia’s ridiculous argument that the cross is not religious but simply represents all dead people.

Yeah, that’s real news…

(Dawkins, a gentleman, as always)…

[LINK]

Facebook is supposed to be a fun place for friends and family to all hang out and post pictures, chat and just chill. Well, there is my fundie aunts who post xian hymn videos and their stupid fundie scare tactic films they find on YouTube and other places, not to mention the daily Babble verses. I wouldn’t give a shit what they post if it didn’t show up on my home “wall”. Every morning there is one aunt wishing everyone a “blessed” day and “gob bless” and all that crap, maybe accompanied by a Bible verse, and then the other aunt is determined to use Facebook for a “witnessing” avenue for Jeebus. I don’t really want to have to resort to un-friending an aunt, so I usually just ignore it all. This is her latest video post and it’s too ridiculous for words. I don’t want to get into an argument with her on FB, but I may write a comment to this one. The world has always had war and violence, natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and there have always been ruthless, evil people who have wiped out millions. Even the godly Catholic church is guilty of ancient crimes against humanity, as well as the Protestants and their horrible witch-burnings [I stand corrected here...witch HANGINGS, the Catholics are the ones who liked to burn people at the stake]. There has always been homosexuality and while that is some sort of evil in her eyes, it is not and homosexuals are not the cause of bad things in the world. They are scared into believing, and they are too scared to even question their irrational beliefs. Too scared to compare it to the other similar mythologies that were once religions where many were afraid to question.

Here is the latest stupid video that showed up on my FB wall. The end part is totally ridiculous attempt to scare us into acquiring belief in an imaginary friend…before it’s too late: