American Humanist Association

STORIES OF ATHEIST DISCRIMINATION

Stories of Atheist Discrimination

Public School Prayer Complaint Turns Nasty — Bastrop, LA (2011)

Damon Fowler, a high school student at Bastrop High School, complained about an unconstitutional school prayer planned for an upcoming graduation ceremony. The school initially agreed to cancel the prayer, but Fowler’sname was leaked as the one behind the complaint. As a result, he has been publicly demeaned by teachers and students, physically threatened—including death threats—and was ostracized from the community. He was thrown out of his house and financial support was withheld by his own parents. A student gave a prayer at the graduation ceremony anyway—another attack against Fowler and perhaps other atheist students—instead of a moment of silence. The AHA now administers a scholarship fund for Fowler.

Prayer Banner Case Ends Up In Federal Court — Cranston, RI (2011)

Jessica Ahlquist, a student at Cranston High School West, filed a federal lawsuit asking that a prayer banner be removed from the public school. The banner, which violates the First and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution, includes the phrases “Our Heavenly Father” and “Amen.” Local authorities are asking that the banner remain. 

According to a story in The Providence Journal, “students and adults have called [Ahlquist] a ‘stupid atheist,’ an ACLU tool, a witch and a ‘media whore.’ They’ve also threatened her through e-mails or at school, she says. A former classmate told her that, if she knew what he really thought of her, she would kill herself, she says.”

Creationist History Teacher Confronted — Kearny, NJ (2008)

During his junior year of high school Matthew LaClair, of Kearny, NJ, took a history class from a teacher who used his position to promote his personal religious beliefs, including creationism. Matthew went to school officials and his teacher and was rebuffed. It was only after he produced audio recordings of his teacher in class did he get any attention. This resulted in LaClair becoming a target of harassment, including death threats. He also lost friends and many of the people in his town turned against him. It took many months of working through the tactics of a non-responsive school system before his determination resulted in teachers being trained on state-school separations issues.

The Student Education Assembly on Religious Freedom was created at LaClair’s high school as a result of the turmoil. In 2008, LaClair received the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Pioneer Award.

Faith Healing Kills — Oregon City, OR (2011)

Dale and Shannon Hickman have been convicted of second-degree manslaughter after failing to seek medical attention for their newborn baby, delivered in their home two months early. The couple,Members of Oregon City’s Followers of Christchurch, decided instead to pray and anoint the 3-pound, 7-ounce baby with olive oil. David Hickman lived less than 9 hours following the attempt at faith healing.

At trial, medical experts testified that there was a 99% chance that, given proper medical attention, the baby would have survived. As a result of this case, Oregon’s lawmakers have removed a religious exemption that could minimize the couple’s jail time to 18 months.

Richard Dawkins Dissed By Country Club — Rochester Hills, MI (2011)

The managers of the Wyndgate Country Club decided to cancel a fundraising event featuring Richard Dawkins, the well-known evolutionary biologist, author and atheist. The cancelation came after one of the club’s officials saw Dawkins on “The O’Reilly Factor,” discovering for the first time he was an atheist. The official decided that was cause enough to cancel the confirmed engagement, which had to be quickly moved elsewhere.

The AHA is assisting the Center for Inquiry in a possible legal response.

Atheist Marching Band Hated For More Than Blowing Vuvuzelas — Bryan/College Station, TX (2010)

During the annual Bryan/College Station Christmas parade the Brazos Valley Vuvuzela Atheist Marching Band took part. The 18-person band played “Jingle Bells” while wishing people a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and merry Kwanzaa.

Many residents declared their disdain, likening atheists to the Ku Klux Klan, pedophiles, and labeling them a “hate group.” One local resident was quoted as being concerned for her children because “it was hard for them to believe and understand that there are actually people out there that don’t believe in God.”  Video

No Pray, No Play — Hardesty, OK (2007)

Nicole Smalkowski, a public school student at Hardesty High School, ended up in court after incidents at her school over her family’s atheism. As a member of the basketball team, Smalkowski refused to take part in The Lord’s Prayer offered by coaches. She was soon kicked off the team, after being accused of hurting morale and stealing someone’s shoes, which she denies. Back on the team the next year, she was once again kicked off for not taking part in the prayer and for saying the Pledge of Allegiance without “under god.” School officials said she was kicked off for threatening to kill someone. Again, Smalkowski denies the allegation.

Smalkowski had to endure harassment and mistreatment by students and teachers, resulting in her parents opting to provide homeschooling. “You know they would call me devil worshipper. I’d walk down the halls, people would laugh at me. They would look at me really weird and stare me down,” she said. A lawsuit was eventually settled.  Video

Burn Baby!!

I am amazed every day that I see religious literature at the bedside of someone who is acutely or chronically ill. Amazed because the fear is very present in the fact that these people do not ask why their all powerful omnipotent god does not heal them. If he was all powerful then you would expect that he could do this, but no, that goes against that shit in the bible meant to obscure the truth of the matter. Oh, we have free will and such, so god doesn’t get involved in these cases and lets his sheeple suffer as they cry out unto him! The truth is that these clauses in the spiritual contract are there to reinforce that you cannot see, touch or hear him, because if they weren’t then that would blow the illusion by making some poor bozo have to show up in a god suit with a puff of smoke!

These superstitions are based on blind faith alone and require but a sheep-like mentality to adhere to them. There is no basis or proof, there is no actual witnesses. Hell, Jesus can’t even be substantiated! The authors of the bible have only proven that to take control of the masses you need only to present a better deity than the one before. People are tractable, limited and backward thinking which really helps people like the Kartrashians get famous. Being an idiot also helps to increase the sales of gossip rags and romance novels because vacuum headed morons love to live vicariously through actors and other fictional characters. Why, if so many people didn’t pay attention to useless drivel then these things wouldn’t even exist, but they do because 90% of all people care more about their favorite American Idol than who is elected to lead them.

I see the terrible things that happen to innocent people every day yet I see these people or their family members pray to the very god that supposedly is powerful enough to have prevented the tragedy. The excuses, of course, are free will, the Devil, god is testing them, etc. I say that if HE was all-powerful, then HE would be a better steward of his fucking resources, but thats just me and sense having a conversation over here! I try not to spoil another person’s irrational blabber with my petty logic and reasoning, and I also try not to impune their impotent sky cop by constantly questioning HIS grace and power either. I just would love to have some insight as to why people have to make up fantastic stories to make themselves feel secure instead of looking to each other for strength. Sky Daddy is gone! The smoke and mirrors have gathered layers of dust while God has trimmed the long white hair into a mohawk and gone off to follow The Stones on their last tour! The ticket booth is empty and the great theater of life is no longer seating for the reading of The Book of Life! Yes your gonna burn, but only when your cremated by a relative trying to save 12 Grand on that silver handled casket! Hell, he may just row you out in the ol fishing boat, weigh you down with a few rocks and let the alligators do the rest! The moral of this story is that you are fucking gone when you are gone!

Oh my mortal soul!

I must confess that I am probably not a moral person and it’s probably because I’m an atheist. For instance,  I have used my cell phone while driving, yes, yes I have, even though I know that it is wrong and can cause an accident, but that’s actually not all. I have flogged it with my left hand while using my right hand to access the internet for porn and driving with my knees. Wait. Thats not all, I purposely tore off one of those ‘Do not remove under penalty of law’ tags from several of my pillows at home. I’ve also looked at EVERY attractive woman who has EVER walked by me with lust in my heart, mind, soul and my weiner whom I refer to as Anthony. I have also made jokes about the hadicapped and the completely stupid and have actually pissed on sleeping bums. I am a reprobate without excuse for my actions.

While on my way to work today I leaned out of my car window and yelled “Move it or lose it you old dildo!” to a sweet little old lady who was going a bit too slow on the freeway. Now did I have to do this? Did I also have to add insult to injury by giving her and the rest of the nuns she was with the finger? No I didn’t, but I felt entitled to do so by a lack of conscience and a moral deficit! Why I’ll bet with a little ol’ tyme religion that I’d be back on track in no tyme! You don’t see Jesus out pissing in an allyway or breaking windows with a slingshot,( which, by the way, I have done also ). You don’t see God letting children die of horrible diseases or letting natural disasters kill thousands……oh, yeah..He does? He does. Scratch that then.

The point is that you need a book and the fear of a lake of eternal fire to be an upstanding person and if you don’t believe in these things, just fake it to be safe! You wouldn’t want the ark to sail without you right?! Just imagine what it would be like to be standing all alone at the great cosmic bus stop like Kirk Cameron in Left Behind. You’d never eat the bread ‘o’ life with Jesus and all of the other holy fuckers up there, you’d be cursed to walk the Earth in Chuck Taylors and skinny jeans while wearing a funny hat and listening to music that has no fucking guitar riffs! Now thats what I call Hell! Some call it Northeast Portland, Oregon!

I go now to seek out Tom Cruise and find out just exactly what my Thetan level is and how I can rid myself of those bastards. Maybe we will go couch jumping or something with John Travolta and the gang of Hollyweird schizos and shit! All I know is that I GOTTA find me a fucking god! The void is just too great and sensability just ain’t enough to quench the desire to follow like an idiot and glaze my eyes over with the love of the holy spook! I will now look for a blind asshole to follow and when the shit that he makes up gets too fucking insane, I will know that I have hit the motherlode! Peace and prosperity to all of my bretheren in..well, whatever shit I choose to follow aimlessly! 

The Jesus myth

I have spoken of the Jesus myth many times and always seem to get uninformed speeches about him only being a great philosopher etc. But this video explains it perfectly and is narrated by one of the foremost intellects of our time.

More Men…and the pope!

When I joined the Mormon church I thought it meant More Men!-The Village Priest. That wuz funny…not! Sorry, bloggin’ by the light of the flourescent candle here. Helpin’ with the demise of the wonder of ‘God’s glory, the human eye, which could’nt have possibly come of several million years of evolution! You say GOD?! I say, “If GOD wuz SOOoo great then why didn’t I get Predator vision? HMMMM? I want infra red, thermal and spectral analyzing capabilities! I want to be able to hunt Gary Busey in a freezing meat locker and do battle with Danny Glover! This is too much to ask I guess, because I got stuck with perfectly mundane binocular vision. I don’t even have eyeballs that rotate in different directions like a lizard! No laser vision, heat vision, X-Ray vision, (I’d use it to sparingly invade personal privacy but I’m a man, what do you expect?), etc.
No, I haven’t had to fly off and weld the hull of a sinking ship with my heat vision. I’m stuck listening to the prattlings of reformed but still useless unemployed drug addicts showing me cell phone pics of rocks that are in the shape of Jesus, (look! you can see where he shat himself!!). It’s a miracle! Fucker won’t give you a Goddamned job but he’s free flowing with the miracle snow globes and Buddy Christ dashboard statues! Go figure. I guess that if I were a toothless idiot with an I.Q of 60 then I too, would be impressed with cheap parlor tricks. Lord? I pray…please saw this lady in the box in half and parade her corpse around the room! If you do this I will forever be your humble servant! NEXT!!
Goal for today: Punch the Pope in his fucking eye for being a little quitter bitch! What was his real name? John Ratzenberger? So does that mean he hangs out with Cardinal Normie and Father Woody? Well, he retired today and as of 8PM Central Asshole time he officially retreated to Birchegaden to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest to restart the Third Reich! Being an evil pedophile, I’m sure he is more than man for the job! Be sure to stock up heavily on those Hugo Boss SS uniforms, the athletic fitting ones of course, and Reisen, lots of Storck Chocolate Reisen! One cannot say that the ex-pope is a man without reisen!
For those of you who care, Princess Kate is soon to make that slobbering slope-browed, weak-chinned peice of effeminate ragweed Prince Charles a grandfather! Prince Harry on the other hand is unfortunately going to continue to just fuck himself! Also in important news, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West ARE actually Satan, those of you lemmings that follow the show have already inadvertantly sold your souls. Sorry! Too late! We have a no return policy and all sales are fucking final so PISS OFF!!

So this post has a rather weak content, no real purpose! Good! I at least feel better! And thats what really counts! Remember folks, it’s not about you..it’s about me! Always me!! So before I digress into constructing Mohammed bobble-heads or statues of Bhudda made out of my own shit, let me end this post with one last thing. Releasing yourself from the yoke of religion is like eating an entire pan of Ex Lax brownies; you may shit your brains out at first, but when it’s all over you feel so much cleaner inside!

Of theists and anti-theists!

Good morrow kind readers! I know that my posts haven’t been very prolific in the last month, I was busy eating babies and performing all of the other rituals that people expect us ungodly atheists to be performing! So far ‘Our Lord Satan’ hasn’t done shit for my lottery numbers OR given me the clairvoyance to find the Death Star plans! But that shit aside, let me run down this weeks reasons for my being a strong anti-theist. This position is held by those of us in the atheist community who DO NOT wish that god was real! We are the ones that feel that a 24/7 cosmic overlord is actually a BAD thing and do NOT want a kindly old grandfather in a white robe to be able to see us as we are masturbating! We have a Pope for that! Anyway, the reasons!

First there is the 20 year old who is fulfilling ‘God’s Plan’ and dealing with an aggressive form of M.S and will never see a 30th birthday!, Second there is the two children 4 and 2yrs old who’s mom went off the road and was killed leaving the 4 yr old to rescue the 2 yr old. After the horriffic accident and having to climb over their mother’s dead corpse, two fishermen discovered them huddled underneath a blanket close to the car and took them to a hospital. Of course assholes had to write in that it was ‘God’s Will’ that brought the fishermen to the aid of the kids! Really?! Thank ‘Our Lord’ that he couldn’t be bothered to begin with NOT letting 2 little kids endure that horror! Thanks be to god! Also, third, the Kartrashians are still alive! Is this not evidence of the absence of a merciful god? Four, Honey BooBoo! Five, thousands of innocent children still suffer in the world while an imaginary god grants us free will to kill them! These are just a few reasons, more will surely follow!

Some people are just fucked in the brain pan! Yes an almighty being sent forth ‘His’ followers to write a book in several languages that would become dead forcing scholars paid by kings to interpret it as well as they could while deleting any references injurious to the present king’s rule! Sounds like a being that knows all and sees all!

As I write this blog I will include certain arguements against deism just as info to those who read so that when they are attacked by zealots they can cite facts and logical conclusion contained within these writings. I will include more in-depth references as the blog goes on and try to provide a witty delivery to make the slice even deeper! Why do I have a boner for religion do you ask? Why are us atheists SO angry? Answer: I’m not! I am just providing something for those in MY community, something that they can use to strengthen their position against the media machine that drives organized religion. Also, I believe that religion NEEDS to be approached with aggression due to it’s infectious nature and because of the lies that it spreads. I live in a small town where if you actually are brave enough to say that you don’t believe in god then you had better be prepared for a bunch of ‘are you insane!’ looks and a disbelief that you could actually put such blasphemy into words!

The great writer Christopher Hitchens once said, “That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” So if you use that logic as I most certainly do, then you can look a theist in the face and say, “Why should I have to prove to YOU that I am right when you can’t cite ONE SHRED of evidence for YOUR beliefs.” This can be said with absolute conviction as it is patently ridiculous for anyone to attempt to cite proof of biblical happenstance! There is none and no scientist worth a degree in his/her field will back ‘scientific’ evidence proving religious claims. The very fact that a sane stable person can believe in bronze age mythology just because it was told to them by their parents attests to the lemming-like nature of most of humanity. I didn’t believe that Jesus walked on water when I was 11 years old and I was an undereducated mook who threw rocks at windows for fun! It totally boggles my mind that there are people out there with degrees in science that believe in god!

Besides not believing in god, I am also an anti-theist. I have no wish for the stories of the bible to be true or for a cosmic deity to have watch over me 24/7;it’s creepy! I DO believe that agnostics are just atheists without balls, as John Stewart puts it. I feel sorry for atheists who say that they wish it were true and that they could believe in god! I wish that I had a better understanding of the process of human life and also wish I had more than my allotted years, but not on the condition that I am guided by any of the gods that men on this Earth have created! These gods are the ridiculous creations of feeble-minded tribesmen trying to control their fellow humans and they did a piss-poor job of most of it if you are not a lemming who believes every fairy tale that you are told!

If you were to raise two human beings in a vaacum of knowledge and tell them that everything that you give them to read was absolute truth, then you could give one the bible and one a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and they would not be able to tell the fairy stories from the OTHER fairy stories! Well, thats my post for today. I will try not to leave such a time gap between posts. Now I am off to either pull my pud or go to church, I just can’t tell which one is more of a waste of my time! Peace!!