It’s a really nice video of some really nice authors talking about god… or the lack of one. Well worth the time to watch.

This list of authors in the video was, too, remorselessly pillaged from Pharyngula:

1. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer
2. Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate in Literature
3. Professor Isaac Asimov, Author and Biochemist
4. Arthur Miller, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
5. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
6. Gore Vidal, Award-Winning Novelist and Political Activist
7. Douglas Adams, Best-Selling Science Fiction Writer
8. Professor Germaine Greer, Writer and Feminist
9. Iain Banks, Best-Selling Fiction Writer
10. José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature
11. Sir Terry Pratchett, NYT Best-Selling Novelist
12. Ken Follett, NYT Best-Selling Author
13. Ian McEwan, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
14. Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate (1999-2009)
15. Professor Martin Amis, Award-Winning Novelist
16. Michel Houellebecq, Goncourt Prize-Winning French Novelist
17. Philip Roth, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
18. Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize-Winning Author and Poet
19. Sir Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
20. Norman MacCaig, Renowned Scottish Poet
21. Phillip Pullman, Best-Selling British Author
22. Dr Matt Ridley, Award-Winning Science Writer
23. Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate in Literature
24. Howard Brenton, Award-Winning English Playwright
25. Tariq Ali, Award-Winning Writer and Filmmaker
26. Theodore Dalrymple, English Writer and Psychiatrist
27. Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
28. Redmond O’Hanlon FRSL, British Writer and Scholar
29. Diana Athill, Award-Winning Author and Literary Editor
30. Christopher Hitchens, Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Columnist

Praying. And thinking hard about it.

While speaking to an atheist friend of mine at work he asked me if I ever had a meal at the house of a mutual Christian friend. I said that I had not and he asked if it was because the Christian friend prayed before eating a meal. While the prayer before the meal thing is not necessarily the reason it certainly is a contributing reason. While at work, I strictly stay away from the subject of religion and I expect everybody else to do the same. In my private time, however, I will not shy away from expressing my opinion loudly,  so I don’t actively pursue situations where my complete and utter lack of respect for religious beliefs will cause conflict.

The conversation got me thinking about the praying before a meal thing that Christians are so fond of doing. The more religious a person is the more pious and intense the meal time prayer is likely to be. I know this since I come from a family where at family gatherings, there most certainly was going to be a bit of pre-meal praying. One uncle in particular always delivered fantastic and pious oration, bless his racist soul.

The prayer always followed a reasonably similar script, regardless of which side of the family was gathering. By ‘which side’ I mean: the Methodist side, the Methodist side that included the Jehovah’s witnesses or the Dutch Reformed side. Considering the seemingly scripted nature of the pre-meal prayers, I suspect that, mostly, Christians don’t sit down and think about what it is that they are babbling. Here are some examples of the pre-meal prayer one might experience:

For what we are about to receive, may the lord make us truly thankful. Amen

That one is the most common in my experience. I think people uncomfortable with the public spectacle of the thing opt for this version to get it over quickly. The extended version might go more like this:

For what we are about to receive, may the lord make us truly thankful. And may we always be mindful of the needs of others, for Jesus sake, Amen.

I’ve heard this one a couple of times:

Dear Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and us to thy service. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

I find this one quite interesting:

Bless us, O Lord, for these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Help us to be mindful of all our blessings, and the needs of those who have less. Amen.

On the surface I guess they seem sufficiently pious, nice even. Being thankful to your Lord Jesus for the food he’s given you to eat. Remember all the good things you have and remember those who don’t have as much. Isn’t that nice?

I have composed an altogether different prayer I would like to propose. I might even try to memorize it so that if the opportunity arose I’d be ready with a nice thought-provoking appeal to the almighty creator of the universe for everybody to ponder over while consuming a nice meal. It might go something like this:

For what we are about to receive dear Lord Jesus, make us truly thankful. To help us be truly thankful, please will you also open our minds so that we may understand why you have deemed us, who are able to afford to grow and purchase our own food, worthy of this bounty while allowing millions of children to starve to death every day. We are thankful, oh Lord, that you have deemed us worthy of living in a first world country which guarantees us food and shelter but to properly appreciate this oh Lord, open our minds to understand your plan that involves the mutilation and torture of millions of people, including children and babies, who are not deemed worthy of this bounty. Dear Lord, we are thankful for the first world medicine which is provided to us, essentially free of charge, through the toil of secular scientists, sometimes in the face of great adversity from your holy church and funded from taxes paid by those who are not of our faith and who do not believe you exist, but allow us to understand oh Lord, why millions are not deemed fit for this privilege and die horribly in the most disgusting ways imaginable even though they are far more religious than we are, obey your commandments with much more zeal and believe in you much more fervently. As we consume this bounty you have provided us who do not really need assistance oh Lord, help us to understand why so many little children who are unable to help themselves deserve to die of hunger, thirst and torture. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

I can’t help but wonder why Jesus Christ, who allegedly provides food to (some) Christians, also provides food to Muslims, Hindus and Atheists among others while at the same time not providing food to literally millions of other Christians who are left to starve to death. Among them very many little ‘Christian’ Children.

How do you rationalise that? I guess you don’t. I guess you just ignore it. I guess you just put it down to God’s mysterious but good plan… that involves the most horrible deaths imaginable for millions of people.

Praying to a deity before a meal to thank him (funny how it’s always a ‘him’) for the food he demonstrably had no part in providing? Yes, I find it offensive.

Oh, and Christian, ye who would pray when thy knowest that in thy presence are those who do not believe, or, in fact, anybody at all, should probably have another look at thy Bible, lest thy eternal soul be damned or some such:

Matthew 6
6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
6:8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

He makes several outstanding points and it’s given me quite a bit to think about. So I will. Think about it. And then, hopefully, remember what it was that I thought so I can write about it.

But seriously. Watch the video.

I love the Symphony of Science video’s. They are the most awesome and they keep getting better. This one is about Evolution, The Greatest Show On Earth and it features Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough (and Bill Nye).

Most awesome indeed.

Check out Melodysheep’s YouTube channel for the other most awesome video’s: http://www.youtube.com/user/melodysheep?feature=watch

Girl at the Center of the Cranston “Prayer Banner” Case targeted by Cyber-Bullies

The summary is: School breaks US constitution by promoting Christianity, school girl sue’s school, school girl wins, Christians threaten to assault her, murder her or express how delighted they will be if she had to be harmed.

Jessica Ahlquist - The winner.

Read the whole post at that link, it seems to be by her uncle and it lays out the Christian love she’s experiencing nicely.

I guess it’s only Christians who can’t see the problems with their behaviour. It is, after all, only Christians who seem to be unable to read the Bible, the manual they allege to live their lives by.

To be a Christian is to be a hypocrite. That’s all there is to it. “Not all Christians are hypocrites!”, I hear some people scream. Well, actually, all Christians ARE hypocrites on some level; some more so than others I’ll grant, but fundamentally there are some pretty clear instructions in the Bible from their god that not a single one of them follow or even attempt to follow. I go over one or two of the blindingly obvious ones in this post:  I hate religion but love I god and a couple in this one: Christianity: conveniently forgetting the inconvenient

Am I surprised Christians act like this? No. But I am very happy that a teenager and the US justice system can at least see what millions of supposedly neighbour loving, adult Christians can not.

Jessica Ahlquist for the win!

Some related sites:

• http://cranston.patch.com/articles/ahlquist-fight-over-mural-despite-harrassment-threats-worth-it
• http://jesusfetusfajitafishsticks.blogspot.com/2012/01/ahlquist-screenshots-if-by-christian.html
• http://www.opposingviews.com/i/religion/christianity/16-year-old-jessica-ahlquist-wins-fight-against-school-religious-display
• http://jessicaahlquist.com/

Anyway, I watched the video, I had many issues, I toyed with writing a post about it. Then I saw The Amazing Atheist (bless his brilliant banana loving ass) had already made a video that takes it apart, in style. So I now happily post it here since it says just about everything that  needs to be said.

Take it away TJ:

Yea. Christians doing what Christians do: bend ‘your beliefs’ until they fit what you want to believe. The entire video is empty, contradictory and filled with marketing speak. It’s a sales job that sells nothing new. It’s controversy stirring where there is none. It is par for the course as far as Christians are concerned.

On top of that, it’s not new either, I’ve blogged on that particular statement of idiocy before: I hate religion but love I god. Silly Christians are silly.

If it wasn’t for the stupid subject, the poem and video would have been quite nice though. Quite nice.

Those who argue that evolution has no evidence are ignorant. There is no other word. Those that believe ‘intelligent design’ are ignorant since it has no evidence. Wilfully ignorant possibly. Unwittingly ignorant perhaps but certainly ignorant.

Anybody who looks objectively at the imaginary ‘debate’ intelligent design proponents insist exists between evolution and intelligent design cannot help but arrive at the simple and obvious conclusion that… well… there is no debate. Evolution explains what needs to be explained and it has large mountains of empirical evidence. Intelligent design does not. End of story. There is nothing more to it than that.

It’s not hard to see the truth. Why do people make it seem so hard? How can one look at that mountain of evidence for evolution and conclude that a tricky, deceptive deity must have put the world together in exactly the right way to make it look like evolution is true or indeed that the mountain of evidence doesn’t exist. It’s like standing in front of the Himalayas in Janakpur with every intention of hiking to Shigatse and insisting that the road is flat, the Himalayas don’t actually exist and that the walk will be as if it were in a park, as it were.

How is it possible that one can insist on things ‘making sense’ in every single aspect of one’s life except that one? What, precisely, do they think drives the incredulous stares and the questions about their sanity (from 99.9% of the scientists in the world…)?

One of the things I find most trying about dealing with other atheists, especially in groups, is that you have to defend every single point you make since very few people ever agree with you completely. You very  infrequently experience agreement purely for the sake of a feeling of community. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it forces you to avoid making statements for the sake of making statements and to seriously consider what it is you want to relay; your logic, thought process and conclusions will be questioned and best you be prepared to back everything up with some convincing evidence. This can sometimes makes informal conversation… exhausting.

“How much easier the religious have it”, I briefly thought with a pang of self-pity, “the Christians especially get to go to church and everybody just gets along and agrees…”.

Then I laughed. Hard.

I’m going to pick on Christians now because they’re in the news again. You see, at the core, Christians have something fundamental in common. They all read the same manual, the unchanging perfect words of the almighty creator of the universe; the super being who can do no wrong. You’d think, then, that they all agree and get along.

Christians do not agree and they do not get along and I find this hilarious to say the least.

There is a church in Auckland city that puts up some pretty risqué billboards; you can check out their site here: http://stmatthews.org.nz/. Now, I can appreciate this, at least they’re trying to get their Christians to think about what they’re doing a bit. The latest billboard was of the virgin Mary with a positive pregnancy test.

You might not think there’s much to that. Christians do, after all, believe a virgin, Mary, was impregnated by the almighty creator of the universe and bore its son whom they called Jesus Christ. Mary, virgin, pregnant. If you’re a Christian, that’s what you believe and that’s what the poster shows: Mary, surprised, pregnant.

Apparently not. One Mr. Arthur Skinner from the Catholic Action Group took great exception to this poster. “Blasphemy!” cried Mr. Arthur Skinner. He was, in fact, so pissed off with this blasphemous affront to his personal version of Christianity that he took to the poster and cut the positive pregnancy test right off. Clearly, the poster is now much less blasphemous since the removal of the proof of pregnancy… or something.

The "blasphemous" billboard - Before

The "blasphemous" billboard - After

From the New Zealand Herald article at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10773887

Catholic Action’s Arthur Skinner, from Whangarei, said they were protesting because the image was blasphemous.

Strange, it was put up by Christians who obviously didn’t find it blasphemous… I guess Mr. Arthur Skinner must have a different line to the almighty that says something else. Which, too, is a little strange, no?

Yesterday, stunned passers-by watched as a scissors-wielding zealot slashed the billboard and tore off a large chunk.

…

Skinner later claimed responsibility for the incident. He was believed to have earlier phoned St Matthew’s vicar Glynn Cardy to say he would “roast slowly in hell” for erecting the billboard.

“He told me I would burn in the fires of hell, that would be my final destination,” Cardy said.

Let us consider this situation for a moment. Both Skinner and Cardy claim to worship Jesus Christ. Both of them claim to have Jesus as their personal lord and saviour, to have a personal relationship with him. Seems to me somebody should just ask Jesus if he has a problem with the poster or not. Get an answer and have the deity in question settle the dispute. Seems pretty damn straightforward to me. Pray, get Jesus to tell each of them at the same time if the poster is ok or not. Simple right?

“It doesn’t work like that”, I hear them say. No? Then how the fuck does it work if you both speak to the same freaking god? If your god can’t even settle this one little dispute between devout followers amicably, what, precisely, can he do?

You see, here’s the problem with religion, Christianity in particular. They all (mostly – the Mormons had to go write their own addition to the unchanging words of the almighty) read from the same (by ‘same’ I really mean ‘similar’ since some of them took liberties in the many translations…) unchanging perfect word of the almighty creator of the universe. They all have a direct line to Jesus Christ who personally saved them and with whom they have a relationship with. And yet there are over 38,000 Christian denominations.

I shit you not. Thirty eight thousand different denominations. Thirty eight thousand different interpretations of what, exactly, it is, that Jesus Christ and his dad want from the world.

Some of the major Christian disagreements

Look, Christians, if you people can’t even agree on the basics, how the fuck do you expect to convince us unbelievers of The Truth (… as you currently see it anyway…). Tell me, which one of you has it right at the moment? Yea, of course…

Some of the major Protestant disagreements. Seriously. They even read the same holy book.

Disagreement and discord, those are very human characteristics. It is normal for human beings to disagree, to see every little thing differently. The way you view the world is shaped by unimaginably complex processes. Things like physical brain structure, brain, body and environmental chemical levels, hormone levels, altitude, electrical signals, external stimuli, culture, family, surroundings, the food you eat, the stuff you drink, the gasses you breathe, the things you’ve read, heard, watched, the parasites you carry, the diseases you’ve had, the diseases you currently have and all of this over the span of your entire life.

How could we NOT disagree? We are so fundamentally different, we have to disagree. If there was no disagreement what so ever, that would go a long way towards proving the alleged divine origins of religion since it would take a massive miracle and an almighty super being to get humanity to agree completely on any given point unquestioningly. That there is disagreement among the faithful says everything that needs to be said about that ‘faith’.

You Christians do not have a personal relationship with the same deity. You, fucking, do, not. It’s clear as daylight to anybody who looks. Grow up, accept that. There is no god. You’re making that shit up.

We do not agree on anything and we never will. The ability to compromise and work together despite our disagreements, that is what sets us apart. That is what makes us special.

“The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.” — Voltaire

Christopher Hitchens - A great man.

Goodbye Hitch.

Today the world is a poorer place than it was yesterday. Today the world has lost one of its great citizens. Today the world is sadder. The world was a better place with you in it Christopher Hitchens.

Humanity has lost a brilliant mind and it makes me incredibly sad to know that we will never again experience the result of your thoughts Hitch. It makes me sad that we will never hear a new argument from you, read a new book, watch a new video. There will never be another new epic Hitch Slap.

You left the world a better place than you found it and that is all any of us can ever strive for. You have changed countless lives. You have changed my life, for the better. You said the things that needed to be said and you did the things that needed to be done.

I wish you weren’t dead but you are and perhaps my greatest regret is that I never had the opportunity to meet you in person.

Goodbye Hitch and thank you.

Happy 20k views to me!

Happy 20k views to me! Happy 20k views to me! Happy 20k views toooo meeeeee eeeeeeeee! Happy 20k views to me!

Yea, I know, still pitiful in the greater scheme of things. The last 10k only took 4.5 months so possibly the 100k mark is not completely out of my grasp.

I haven’t had much, any time what so ever actually, to post in the last three months; I’ve been hectically busy on a couple of projects that are now finally coming to an end. From the middle of December (also the second birthday of OneFuriousLlama) I should be getting back into the swing of things so I can start chipping away at the remaining 80,000 views that are currently stopping me from getting up close and personal with my goal.

Anyway, thanks for coming around, I appreciate the traffic (definitely more than a bunch of you appreciate what I have to say) and a special thanks to the Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta. He’s an awesome atheist whom I’ve never met who helps and encourages random strangers. Respect.