Atheist Experience Classic!

The latest episode had a classic caller and classic closer.  Apparently it even attracted the attention of the Huffington Post!  For those without the patience to watch the whole painful thing, here's the gist:  Shane from Phoenix claims to have a proof of god via morality, but his ideas are all over the place and he keeps moving the goalposts, resorting to straw man arguments, and in general being a very poor debater.

Tracey's final point is the closer to close all closers:

"If I were in a position to prevent a child from being raped, I'd intervene.  That's what makes me different from your god."

My new hero! Mike Lee, the "Religious Antagonist." Now this is what I call "militant" atheism:

A few links...

Catholic preaches to Mormons about evangelizing and says "faith's beauty can lead even athiests to God."  I guess if you can believe in a talking snake and Paul's psychotic experience on the road to Damascus you can believe that too.

 Thursday's school shooter had been bullied.  CBS belittles the kid's experience then quotes witnesses confirming it.   Well, so much for anti-bullying campaigns's effectiveness.  Of course lessening the anguish of the victims was never the true inspiration for those campaigns anyway, it was just to keep kids from snapping and killing the cool kids.  Seems it didn't work at all!

Perhaps evangelical leaders supporting more gun control will keep the cool kids safe from the revenge of the nerds.  ...assuming evangelicals will still call themselves evangicals.  This WaPo editorial says the word needs to be rebranded.

Not new, but new-ish:  Mormon women declare "wear pants to church day."  I have always found the insistance on dresses for women and pants for men really stupid, considering Christ is always pictured in a caftan, a.k.a. a dress!

I ran across the above link after reading this article about the religious objection to contraception coverage at the same site.  The author is Howard M. Friedman, of The Religious Clause blog, which I follow.  I highly recommend the blog and the article.

Catholics and Protestants are going at it again in Ireland.

Being "spiritual" without having someone else's ancient delusional writings to frame and justify your magical thinking is supposedly related to mental illness.   (This article includes a link to a Businessweek page of LOL graphics about Correlation vs Causation)

Huge study being headed up by atheists.  This guy calls Dawkins "philosophically uninformed," which makes me wonder about his aim to study religion's place in human evolution.  I look forward to Dawkins' review of their publication.

Ex-Scientologist talks about how she stalked suppressive persons

A new series on Investigation Discovery channel called "Dangerous Persuasions" opens with an episode on Scientology. Wednesday, December 16, 10:00 p.m. ET/PT Here's the blurb:

Devoted Scientologist Nancy becomes an undercover spy to root out The Church's enemies. Little did she know she'd become immersed in the organization's secret war against its critics. Will her mission lead to her mental breakdown?

It's very courageous of her to do this.  I think this one is worth DVR-ing in case Scientology gets to the owners of Discovery channel!

Amazing Crash Video

This is so scary. I have driven many many miles on roads in this condition (but I don't tailgate, which is what the SUV driver was doing)

One time I was on I-71 in Ohio during a blizzard, and a Chevy Suburban crossed a very very wide median, came within feet of front-ending me, then veered back onto the median. They were so close I could see the driver's & passenger's faces, and I had nowhere to go! This video reminded me of that time.

LOL wut?

I don't know if this has been turned into a meme yet, but It got me photoshopping as soon as I saw it.

The Original:

My immediate thought:

...and I couldn't resist:

...and then I thought the pope needed commentary:

Fox and (Best) Friends?

2013 LadyAtheist Awards

Why?  Because I can. 

First, the good awards:
Woman of the Year:  Candy Crowley for smacking down Mitt Romney in the debates.

Girl of the Year:  Malala Yusafsai

Man of the Year:  Last-minute winner is Joe Biden, for knocking heads in Congress today

Boy of the Year:  Sorry, can't think of one.  Any ideas?


Religion of the Year:  Mormonism, because it became "mainstream" this year

Event of the Year:  Indian public bus rape-murder

Puppet of the year:  Big Bird.  Geoff Peterson was a shoo-in until Big Bird got a mention in the presidential debates.  Keep working at it, Geoff!  You've come a long way, dude!  Just lay off the booze and you'll be fine.

Song of the year:  Gangnam Style, of course!

Video of the year:  The 47% video.  It may have changed history

Shoe of the year:  Yves Saint Laurent's red shoe with the red sole.  Suck it, Christian Louboutin.  Maybe you can start worrying about women who get shot in the face for going to school or raped and killed for riding a bus instead of whether someone else puts a red sole on a pump now.

Meme of the year:  Fresco Jesus

Now the other awards:

Douche of the year:  NRA's Wayne Lapierre

Fool of the year: Mitt Romney

Dumbass of the year:  How to choose?  how to choose?  It has to be Todd Akin, but Mourdock is a close runner-up.  Oh wait, Karl Rove.  No, every member of Westboro Baptist Church.  *sigh*  Let's just call 2012 the Year of the Dumbass.

Ignorant harpie of the year:  Michele Bachmann

Loser of the year:  Honey Boo-Boo, who will look back on her show years later and cry

Disaster of the year:  The Mayan Apocalypse.  It was off by 500 years or so.  They failed to see Cortez coming & got the date wrong!

Thugs of the year:  the creeps who raped a woman on a city bus in India. 

Sports team of the year:  m'eh who cares?  It's just a game.  Which game?  They're all just games!  Why do people care about sports????  It's not like it matters who wins, unlike Project Runway.

Facebook meme of the year: ecards.  They're getting old.  I still like some of them but they're getting old.