First of all, I would like to follow up on my piece regarding the ‘Two wrongs make a right’ subject about racism. I had scathingly criticized the accepted racist terms used in a recent article heralding the irrelevance of such notable authors and atheists as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Prof. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and would like to elaborate further. The terms were used in reference to the above mentioned “privileged white guys” and the need to accept that they are no longer relevant due to the fact that the face of atheism has become much more diverse in recent years. I, of course, couldn’t disagree more! Just as I would never approach my graduation podium and announce to my professors that due to my graduation into their field of expertise, they are no longer relevant.

The architects of the New Atheist Movement paved the way and broke down immense barriers to what was once reviled completely as another form of Satan worship. Hitchens repeatedly eviscerated verbally the fundamentalists and dogmatic propagators of ignorance to  spread the truth and eliminate the general mistrust and animosity directed to those who would live their lives free of oppressive mythology, and it worked! The more he and his contemporaries wrote and debated, the more freedoms atheists felt. The more time that was given to them on network TV, the more and further the word spread that atheists could now come out of the closet and help to bring the truth of science into the forefront. Many highly regarded scientists have been publishing for years, but the New Atheist Movement directly took on the ignorance of religion and it’s constant meddling into the teachings of science in the public school system.

Those who grew to adulthood in the 60’s remember being told that vocal groundbreaking atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hare was a ‘tool of the Devil’ spreading ‘His’ lies and poisoning the youth of the nation, when all she was was a mother fighting the religious oppression of the times. The Four Horsemen, as the above mentioned are often called, brought the ‘in your face’ challenge into the fray with constant challenge to established religious interference in public venues. They established a much publicized and politicized front of reason that constantly chipped away at the wall of ignorance established by the GOP types that existed in places that allowed them to proliferate their poisonous lies against demonstrable evidence.

The racism demonstrated in some articles regarding the Horsemen cannot be ignored. Why does racism get a free pass when doled out by the formerly oppressed peoples that originally vilified this very practice up until this very day? I remember when I was ordered to formation in the Army in 1990 and told that the ‘N’ word would result in the automatic expulsion of anyone who used it no mater what! The following week a black female enlisted person called another person a “white cracker greymeat motherfucking white asshole” in front of the entire company of enlisted folks and was totally ignored for this racist rant. I now feel that this is being exercised in the article that described ‘The Four Horsemen’ as irrelevant and passe because people of color had recently come out as atheist and were now activists.

These people obviously viewed videos and read books by these people and came out of the atheist closet related to their encouragement by these people and owe them a debt of gratitude. I, as an atheist, owe Christopher Hitchens a debt of gratitude because of the opening of my eyes related to his ‘in your face’ writings and videos related to atheism and give him his due respect. I could care less about the color of his skin and conc entrate upon the message of this great man as opposed to his color! If he and the others were black or hispanic, I would have done the same things in response, but they were not and that is that!

I respect and follow the example set by the Four Horsemen because of the strength and grit that they showed in the face of the faithful rebuttal and the vilification that was heaped upon them by these very same people that they opposed that claimed that they were peaceful.  Religious people were not peaceful or accommodating to the community of non belief. They were antagonistic and intolerant of these people that challenged the belief in mythological bullshit!

I learned my atheism from the Four Horsemen and others in the atheist movement that inspired Southern Baptist adherents to declare their atheism. Why do they now declare racist declarations in the name of atheism to diminish the incredible works of the Four Horseman in the liberation of atheists!! I will stick with them and thank them to the end no matter WHAT the DIVERSE community declares. The Four Horsemen and others were the first to announce our freedom to the world, and will be given that right! I look to Hitchens and Harris as role models and will proceed from there. I will not become a racist atheist as some have done!

Atheism is Beautiful. Yeah, I said it.
May 18, 2012 By molly 77 Comments
Explaining to a die-hard Christian that you are a “friendly atheist” is sometimes equivalent to explaining you are a friendly murderer. To them, atheists are evil soulless creatures condemned to hell.
God made atheists, atheists. Who are they to question his creations? Who are they to question anything? Questioning means you don’t have true faith.
The word “atheist” seems to leave a sting when spoken. Maybe that’s just me. It has a subliminal negative meaning after being raised Catholic. I remember it being explained to me that atheists didn’t believe in heaven. As a kid, this was pretty terrifying because you would hang on to all the possibilities; you dreamt big and the idea of going to a place where there were no boundaries sounded wonderful. (Endless supply of candy? I can fly? Wow! I feel bad for people who don’t believe!)
It’s a bummer the word atheist has such a negative connotation when the only reason the word exists is because of religion. Atheism isn’t a religion. It’s a way to categorize a minority of people who want to take responsibility for themselves rather than credit or blame a supernatural designer. We do believe in something. Ourselves.
And it is not just other atheists we believe in. We believe every individual has the power to mold their own reality and that there are simply things out there that we do not quite understand yet. Uncertainty is what makes life interesting. It’s a reason to learn, grow, and challenge ourselves to be better and a chance to discover new things about the universe through science and exploration. There are certain things we may never know or understand in our lifetimes, but this doesn’t make them less beautiful or intriguing.
“I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.” — Katharine Hepburn
If anything, atheists have good reason to be friendlier than most groups of people — since there is no evidence for an afterlife, it is important to turn to each other for support and improve our world as we know it. Pave your own way. Do what makes you happy. Don’t hurt others in the process. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves –- or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” — Ayn Rand
There is an intrinsic allure to the world around us when we come to terms with the fact that we will die one day. Flowers smell sweeter, little moments become more joyous, and sunsets and sunrises look more vibrant in our eyes. These little beauties are limited so enjoying them to the fullest is crucial. One day, the lovely light of life as we individually know it will go out and only the memories, tangible possessions, and works we created will remain. That’s why writing can be an amazing art. I won’t be around forever, but my words will still cling to the paper they were written on.
Letting go of the idea of an afterlife doesn’t have to be sad, because you can’t necessarily feel loss for something you’ve never had. Soaking in the reality of our here and now is something we can control, and there are means to make the world we live in better for ourselves and the people around us. Viewing the Earth as its exquisite self and delving into new paths as a walking, breathing human can be far more meaningful than an illusion of a God we can only prove in death.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/05/18/atheism-is-beautiful-yeah-i-said-it/#ixzz352mag3eM

The rich JUUUST get richer!!

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Congressman Paul Ryan says America has a problem in culture of poverty
• Eric Liu: Actually, we live in a dysfunctional culture of concentrated wealth
• He says certain antisocial values and behaviors have taken root among the rich
• Liu: The wealthy rigged the political and economic games to amplify their gains

Editor’s note: Eric Liu is the founder of Citizen University and the author of several books, including “The Gardens of Democracy” and “The Accidental Asian.” He served as a White House speechwriter and policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. Follow him on Twitter@ericpliu. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) — When Congressman Paul Ryan opined recently that there was a “real culture problem” in poor communities, “in our inner cities in particular,” and that this culture was behind some of the country’s economic troubles, he didn’t realize how half right he was.

People are continuing to debate fiercely what Ryan said and whether he meant to propagate racially coded explanations of poverty’s roots. But put that aside for a moment. Here’s what he was right about: There is indeed a culture in America that is pathological and now threatens our social fabric. It’s not the culture of poverty, though. It’s the culture of wealth.

We live in an age of extreme concentration of wealth in America. The problem is not just that the 1% have managed to nearly triple their share of national income in the last three decades. Nor is it just that the 1% increasingly are fed, schooled and housed in a bubble apart from the rest of their fellow citizens.

Eric Liu

The problem is that today’s concentration of wealth is breaking the golden link that Ryan and others take pains to emphasize — the link between work and reward.

Economist Thomas Piketty’s landmark new book “Capital”unpacks this delinking in great statistical detail. It turns out that increasing numbers of Americans in the 1%, .1% and .01% have done little to “earn” their wealth or privilege.

Contrary to myth, most of today’s plutocrats are not the kind of Steve Jobsian visionary risk-taking entrepreneurs or superstar celebrities. The .01%, for instance, tend overwhelmingly to be high-end corporate managers and executives, particularly on Wall Street, operating in interlocking networks that inflate the standard of what an executive is “worth.” Or they are the heirs of the great entrepreneurs (4 of the 10 richest Americans are children of Sam Walton), inheritors of fortunes of which it can truly be said, “someone else built that.”

An aristocracy is emerging in America, a class of insiders that corrodes the promise of equal citizenship. And with this compounding of unearned advantage, certain antisocial values and behaviors have taken root among the superrich — norms that threaten to corrupt the rest of American society.

 a inequality’s an embarrassment

s Google to blame for the income gap?

What’s in this dysfunctional culture of concentrated wealth? Look around Wall Street. You’ll find tribal insularity, short-term thinking, personal irresponsibility, cynicism about playing by the rules, an aversion to socially productive labor, a habit of shameless materialism, an inability to defer gratification and a lack of concern for what “message” all this sends to the youth raised in such an environment.

In short, you’ll find the very things typically imputed to the culture of poverty.

Now, to be sure, there are poor people who do exhibit these antisocial values and norms. And there is no question that plenty of poor people are poor because they made bad choices and behaved in self-destructive ways.

But rich people who exhibit such values have something the poor don’t: Money. Money buys exemption from bad choices. Money confers power — in particular, over the poor. It confers the power to frame public narrative and policymaking and to determine whose behavior — whose culture — is (and isn’t) called pathological.

Today, as it was during the last Gilded Age, the concentration of wealth gives the rich the political clout to further concentrate their wealth. (And now, as then, the Supreme Court greases the skids in the name of “liberty“). This clout is wielded in plain sight now, without any pretense of civic equality. And it calls to mind the warning attributed to Justice Louis Brandeis: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

When the richest 400 families in America have more wealth than the bottom 155 million Americans combined, the danger to the republic is far more clear and present than that posed by the “welfare queens” of lore or by anecdotes of shiftless inner-city men.

That would be true even if the super-rich today had entirely benign or merely neutral policy preferences. But in fact they’ve rigged the game of policy, subsidies and tax preferences to amplify and hoard their gains.

This isn’t to suggest that all super-wealthy people are “welfare kings” (they’re not) or to imply that they have a monopoly on selfishness or sociopathic attitudes (they don’t). Yet if it’s unfair to paint everyone in the 1% with the same unflattering brush of “dysfunctional culture,” isn’t it far worse to do the same to the poorest 20%?

Wealth and advantage are as strongly self-reinforcing as poverty and disadvantage. It’s possible to recognize this fact while also championing grit, gumption and good values. In fact, it’s essential. But culture doesn’t explain everything. And where it matters isn’t only among the poor or nonwhite.

If we’re going to reform the norms in this country so that opportunity is truly reflective of effort and talent, we have to do more than pick on those with the least. We have to start at the top.

-Again, start with the 90 Billion in church tax breaks, the NFL tax exempt status and all other huge corporate tax breaks and you have a good start. Applying skeptical and critical thinking along with a good bit of research and you will find the gap between the rich and poor exponentially widening. This is due to the fact that when you have enough money and influence you can load the dice in your favor.

The billionaires do not have to observe the laws that their paid minions write because they contain built-in loop holes dictated by said overlords, AND when the politicians get out of office, they just go to consulting jobs offered by the very same businesses that paid to have the laws written in the first place, yayyyy Sheldon Adelson, Koch Bros. George Soros and the people at ActBlue!!.

Bill Nye the mannerly guy

I watched the televised debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham and was very disappointed at the incredibly ‘kid gloves’ approach that Nye used in his argument. I found him being overly careful in making his opponent feel comfortable and would have LOVED to see him break out into a more Hitchens-like surgical strike into the heart of Ham’s rebuttal! The gloves needed to come off in order to guarentee a more decisive victory on behalf of Evolution. Whereas Nye did furnish the required proof and Ham gave forth with the tired old ‘Young Earth’ bullshit, Nye still would have lost if not for subject matter only. As Hitchens was fond of pointing out, “That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” and Ham, of course did no such feat in the proof department!

The standard still goes that you cannot make the ridiculous ever seem like other than what it is; ridiculous, and you would have to be living under a scientific rock to believe that you can’t find objects in a field that are older than 6-9.000 years. I have rocks in my posession that are WAY older than that and to refute that, you have to be living with your head in the sand. I could care LESS if the inventor of the MRI is a Young Earth Creationist, it doesn’t make the ridiculous any more valid! This is a religious OPINION and NOT one that is held in high regard by anyone of logic and reason. I cannot believe such nonsense and am amazed when I hear of educated people who do. As Nye said, you are ignoring what is in your own back yard  when you believe in Creation.  These thoughts are shared by many and, thank science, are spreading like wildfire as more people identify as ‘Nones,’ meaning affiliated with no religion or gods.

I certainly hope that our beloved ‘Science guy’ grows some debate testicles if he plans any further forays into argument, because he is a good speaker and his ideas are shared by the reasonable all over the world. The Milquetoast approach has got to go and the barracuda needs to emerge. Debate is about theatrics as well as facts and if you have the right formula then you can easily win the match. The late great Christopher Hitchens was a prime example of an opponent who crushed the opposition. His facts coupled with his incredible savvy kept many great debaters grabbing their flaming asses in pain. Hopefully Bill will take a few pages from Hitchens and blast the next opponent.

Honest Atheism

I would like to begin this post with a heartfelt thank you to the Four Horsemen, Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins and Harris for making my journey to out atheist a wonderful experience. I am normally a very outspoken person who has received negative feedback in the past for telling the truth and take heart in seeing others unabashedly challenge the status PC quo.  As a younger man, I used to be very introverted and quiet about my opinions and would retreat if a strong personality disagreed with me. I joined the Army many years ago and was molded slowly form a scared child into a very muscular, self-sufficient and confident adult who quickly adopted an ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think’ attitude toward overbearing assholes. My drill sergeant was very fond of saying ‘I calls it like I sees it, ‘ and I found a courage and commitment toward the truth in those words. My shyness melted away and I learned to temper my attitude for fighting for honesty in my arguments. I attended debate classes and argued with different people on political subjects usually winning due to an affinity for common sense answers.

The sad truth is that the disease of PC is spreading like wildfire especially in the liberal communities where it all began. The senseless notion that all speech should not be heated and should be carefully worded so as not to offend anyone lest their virgin fucking ears explode into flame defies logic! We are being trained as a society to be passive and to lack passion and conviction by the dummying down of our school system and the constant barrage of stupid peripheral issues meant to divide our concentration. The common sense that our grandparents wielded on a daily basis has now become what I call ‘Uncommon Sense’ because so many people today lack this simple ability! Rather than meet in the middle, people would rather divide on small political issues while the 1% grow exponentially watching our idiocy. Example, the welfare sandwich. The rich orchestrating the sandwiching of the middle class between social and corporate welfare. We get to work our asses off paying for both and grow weaker by the fiscal year. More and more people are afraid to stand up to this oppression because of the threat of losing that which they worked so hard to achieve, stability for their families.

Normally when the rich abuse their power so blatantly, the public rises up and cuts all of their fucking heads off ala French Revolution, but today we have a weakened populace that features about 100 million people on welfare and growing and corporate taxes decreasing yearly as THEY hold wage earners hostage as well! One of the byproducts of all of this is  convincing people that they need to watch every word that they say and create euphemisms for existing terms.  Imagine the confusion and angst that this causes, having to weigh everything that comes out of your mouth because society now consists of thin skin panty waste idiots who take offense to the smallest perceived insult!

Honesty is becoming a thing of the past and this blogger will resist until the very end. If I have to bounce from place to place in order to tell the truth, then I am sure as Hell ready and will not let the threat of being financially ruined stand in the way! Social pressure can be a good thing when used in small increments, but when exuded from every pore of humanity becomes like arsenic in the water supply, or better yet, lithium! The great ‘Horsemen’ did not let the disease of PC infect the truths that they spoke and printed, they became self sufficient and continued hurting the feelings of the bastard children of the euphemistic age! Please see The great George Carlin’s hilarious rant on political correctness and euphemistic language.

I sat down the other day at my local Starbucks and had nothing to do for several hours so I started writing. As the hours passed I turned out eight complete pages of article worthy material that will follow this post. I then decided to follow those who I respect the most and write a book about atheism. This book will not spare any religious feelings just as The God Delusion and god is NOT Great did not either. Hitchens, Harris, Dennett and Dawkins did NOT gain their  reputations by dabbling in PC feelings sparing bullshit, they went right into the fray and challenged every notion held by the religious leaders of our time. They were confident, assertive, acerbic, unabashed and honest in an age where sheep follow the yellow line into the slaughter house! I shall carry the legacy of the horsemen on right in the face of these pablum puking milquetoast idiots who seem to believe that the best way to win a fight is to drop your shields! Hitchens didn’t become an icon by playing nice, he did it with cutting honesty. The notion of having to break a few eggs to make an omelet was true then and remains so today and I intend to eventually go toe to toe with the famous apologists of this time and have been inspired to do so by brave men who used their voices against popular demand. 

Look for more posts and links to other social media sites as I gain popularity on the atheist scene. I am not doing this because I wish to be lauded, I do it to further the cause of honesty, reason and logic and to staunch the retardation of science in the public schools while assisting people in throwing off the shackles of political correctness, or as I call it, ‘Nouveau Nazism. Be genteel but do not sacrifice your soul to do so. Do not go out of your way to be insulting but if the truth hurts then there is a good reason why feelings are hurt. People who are dishonest do not like to hear the truth or be singled out and exposed. Until the next post, thank you for your attention to my little corner of reason and peace to all in a reasonable world of the future!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

WARRANT TO ARREST

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

                                                                                SUBJECT:

DEFENDANT: Yaweh. AKA ‘ The Lord Our God,’ AKA ‘Jesus

1. THE THINKING PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

TO ANY PEACE OFFICER: Complaint under the oath or penalty of perjury having been this day laid before me, that the crime(s) of violation of section(s) : ALL, has been committed, and accusing defendant, YAWEH.

YOU ARE THEREFORE COMMANDED FORTHWITH TO ARREST and bring forth said Defendant before a Judge of the above entitled Court, or in case of ‘HIS’ usual inability whatsoever to appear or act anywhere in any shape or form, said Defendant should be brought before the nearest accessible Magistrate of The Court of Common Sense.

BY ORDER OF THE HONORABLE:  Christopher Hitchens, SUPERIOR ATHEIST COURT JUDGE. Signed this date: 12/25/2013

BAIL IS DENIED DUE TO SEVERITY OF INFRACTION(S):

1. Declaration of the granting of individual “Free Will” as excuse for criminal negligence in management of asset: Planet Earth. ie: Columbine, Sandy Hook, letting little Billy’s mom die of cancer on Christmas, giving long life to pedophiles while the innocent suffer, world hunger, earthquakes, allowing children to be beaten to death while you sit with your celestial thumb up your ass, claiming to be a ‘Personal Savior’ but being more impotent than an 88 year old man on Viagra, etc.

2. Moral turpitude in time frame spanning greater than 10.000 years, ie: ordering of genocide, orchestrating murder, rape, child rape, encouraging child abuse/neglect, unlawful declaration of several wars, condoning the trafficking and sale of human beings, menacing, impersonating a divine being, larceny exceeding $80 Billion per year, misappropriation of public resources, ( convincing humans that they have domain over the Earth and over animals).

3.Perpetration of widespread fraud, not restricted to and including: claiming to cure terminal illness,unlawful aquatic ambulation in hazardous circumstances, unlawful distribution of hallucinogenic substance for the purpose of defrauding individuals, ie: providing sustenance to multitudes using a few ‘fishes and loaves.’

4. Conspiracy to commit murder, (of minor child)/coercion, (convincing Abraham that he needed to murder his son to prove loyalty).

5. Rape, unlawful penetration of a minor, Mary, supposedly for the purpose of giving birth to you.

It is not believed that said Defendant will actually appear because NO ONE has actually SEEN said Defendant EVER, or has EVER witnessed any action by said insidious perpetrator.

Monuments to Political correctness!

• Temple to Atheism’ proposal splits non-believers

Published January 27, 2012

FoxNews.com

A proposal to build a 151-foot tower to celebrate “new atheism” in London has pitted some of Britain’s most recognized non-believers against each other, The Guardian reports. 

Alain de Botton, a philosopher and writer wants the tower built as an antidote to what he describes as the “aggressive,” and “destructive” approach to atheism of Richard Dawkins. 

“Normally a temple is to Jesus, Mary or Buddha, but you can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good,” he told The Guardian. “That could mean a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective.”

Dawkins criticized Botton’s proposal, saying it’s a waste of money and a contradiction. 

“Atheists don’t need temples,” Dawkins told the Guardian. “If you are going to spend money on atheism you could improve secular education and build non-religious schools which teach rational, skeptical critical thinking.” 

De Botton’s plans for the tower would include each centimeter of the tower’s interior to represent a million years, with a narrow band of gold to illustrate the amount of time humans have been on earth, The Guardian reveals. The exterior reportedly would be inscribed with a binary code representing the human genome sequence.

Some suggest it’s not so strange to link something typically associated with religion to beliefs outside of religion.

“The things religious people get from religion — awe, wonder, meaning and perspective — non-religious people get from other places like art, nature, human relationships and the narratives we give our lives in other ways,” Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Society, told The Guardian. 

From the desk of Me, myself and I- I agree with and respect Prof. Dawkins immensly and think that these new assholes who are not willing to break a few eggs for their beliefs should shut their mouths if bashing the trailblazers of 21st Century atheism. True atheists don’t need ‘churches’ or monuments and couldn’t give a fuck LESS about what feel-good shitheels think about healing any rift or sore spot caused by telling the truth! To fucking HELL with political correctness and all of the pussies who practice it and they can keep their milquetoast bullshit to themselves! Yeah Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett, they speak for me every day! This de Botton jackass can stick his monument up his goddamned shitter!

Click here to read more from The Guardian. 

 

 

•  

Science is the only miracle!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank science and his son evolution for all of the wonderful things that hard work has brought to my table this Thanksgiving. Without intestinal fortitude, I would probably be at home praying for these things instead of at work putting my two hands to better use. I have given to the poor, I have helped others selflessly because it is the right thing to do and not because I fear banishment to some Hell that a Holy child molester threatened me with. I jump start dead batteries and rescue animals if I can because I am a decent person who wants to set an example for others to follow.

On this Thanksgiving I would hope that people will be kind to each other and save being royal cocksuckers for those that truly deserve it. Non-believers don’t need a myth, we just need to know that we are doing the right thing. So as we go about our wonderful dinners and sumptuous drink, remember that someone’s myth is not watching over you, so be safe and sane this HOLY-day season. Glob be with you and Cheez-whiz is the reason for the season! Don’t forget to help that old lady across the street, she’s going to church and without your help God will kill her with a cross town bus! Please give to the poor because it’ll make God look better when their prayers are answered with food, even though it was given by YOU! Drop those coins into the Salvation Army kettle because if you don’t God will let those homeless people freeze to death without new coats! Cancer kids will still die while their parents cry and reason that their myth had a plan but let some child molester live till 80.

I could go on, but all I have to conclude with is please make the season a brighter one by subverting the will of God and not letting Him wreck it with His barbaric ‘plan.’ As human slaves toil in sweat shops right under God’s nose, please do your part and study the signs of human trafficking so that you can do more than a stupid prayer and actually deliver someone from bondage! And as The Almighty sits on His hands and lets the world’s atrocities go on, you will do your small part to make things better which equals more than the supposed power of the Big Sky Fairy! Peace and love folks.