If you haven’t already guessed, I came across the suspension of a Southwestern high school teacher who’s been suspended for showing his students an article about documented homosexual behavior in animals. (Considering the family dog has a tendency to hump anything within a mile radius, you’d think this would be old news. Well, the article is 3 years old so I guess it is old.) I know it’s been over a week but I haven’t seen any news about anything more recent. Thankfully the students are showing their support and he’s getting paid during the suspension.

It’s not like he went to a propaganda website or magazine and made them read something controversial and unproven. It was Seed, a science and culture magazine which they might already have read. It’s really ridiculous that they could even be discussing discipline. At first I was confused about why an English teacher would bring this up, but it turns out he was doing a unit on critical reading for which he used a piece of non-fiction. You would think that this is an extremely good exercise for students who are dogmatically opposed to homosexuality because they could learn to evaluate an scientific article, but nooooo, it’s too dangerous for their young minds and the teacher became too much of a liability for the spineless administrators to handle. More like ADMINISTRAITORS because they betrayed the trust put forth by the community to provide a comprehensive and factual education to these kids, and instead they bent over forwards and backwards so as not to anger the wing nuts who object to critical thinking.

If anyone has any more updated information on the matter, please leave a comment. I’d like to stay abreast of this.

But it’s total BS.

No one’s opinions, not even mine, should be respected or held above reproach without any evidence or proof. Hell, even with proof there should some questions every so often about whether the evidence was really right or if we made a mistake.

Saying that I should respect your religion is like saying I should respect your opinion that getting the flu vaccine is more dangerous than not getting it. It’s just factually not true, no matter how many anecdotes there are, the data doesn’t lie. My opinion that everyone should be vaccinated should be respected because I can prove I’m right.

That doesn’t mean no one should question me, and I wouldn’t get angry if someone did. I encourage it, in fact, because it only makes me feel more strongly. If someone can prove me wrong, I’d welcome it since it’s worse to be wrong and feel right than to change your mind in the right direction.

Religious people can’t prove anything, so there’s no respect to be had. The fact that they lie to their kids time and time again only serves to make me disrespect them more. I applaud the boy in Janesville, Wisconsin who tore pages out of the bible for showing that he won’t be intimidated by religious beliefs. I hate him though because he sounds like such an ass by saying “you’re stupid little minds”. There’s no need to do that, the message was already clear in his assignment without it. What a douche bag.

I would have ripped a page out of a book about santa claus and said “It’s my book, so what do I care? Santa’s not real, so why shouldn’t I tear the page out?” then do the same thing with the bible, though much much more politely.

Don’t be an ass about it. Leave that to the christian girl who left the school in response to him

If the sick person dies, everyone in the religious community can just say “It’s sad, but he wasn’t truly faithful. If he were, he’d be alive.” That’s essentially what people did when the girl died. Apparently the parents just didn’t have enough faith in god. If only they had faith in our knowledge of how the pancreas works.

Here’s my proposal: Everyone who claims to have the utmost faith in god and gets sick should avoid any sort of medical treatment and use faith instead. Provided they don’t have kids, it would certainly cull the population of crazies.

And don’t say that the hospitals and doctors work through god. That’s the same as saying that you don’t trust god enough so you’re hedging your bets by seeking tangible help. I work in health care and I’ve never asked god before doing anything, just consulted peer reviewed literature. Neither the bible, quran, torah, nor any other religious texts count as peer reviewed, not even with 12 apostles.

But so does Santa Claus…

After a single search, I was able to see at a variety of poetry and stories written by many people, all describing old Saint Nick. Just like with god, there are a few versions of him. There’s a younger one, older one, skinny and fat, much like Elvis, but much more intangible. There are so many songs, movies, and TV shows that portray Chris Cringle that it’s hard to deny his existence.

After all, no one can disprove that he’s real, right?

You start out with an upright religious citizen who follows a moral code according to god every day of his life. During a particularly trying time in his life, he feels abandoned by god and stops believing. All of a sudden he’s left without any guidance or moral code to follow. He thinks “There’s no god or objective morality, so I can do whatever I want.” He then goes on to murder, rape, and steal because there are no far reaching consequences.

I wouldn’t ever want to be around religious people for this reason. You never know when they might stop believing and lose their morality. Your own neighbor may be one hair away from snapping and going on a killing spree, but you’d never know until it’s too late.

If you have any sense whatsoever, you’d realize that this is nonsense. People don’t just lose their morality when they stop believing in god(s), temporarily or for life. It’s ludicrous to think like that.

When you realize how foolish the earlier argument was, you’ll realize why it’s easy for atheists to be moral.

There’s one great argument against believing in any one god or in any subset of the total set of gods that could possibly exist or that any person can believe in. The common picture shows two lists. One is of all of the gods that a monotheist doesn’t believe in while the other list is of all of the gods that atheists don’t believe in. Of course, there is only a difference of one, so our beliefs are practically identical according to the math. By extension, if we take into account every god that any person in the history of the world has ever believed in and every god that anyone might come to believe in (flying spaghetti monster, Elrond Hubbard, the Fonz), then the entire set of gods is an infinite set. In terms of numbers, we have a potentially infinite number of gods we can believe in or deny.

As an atheist, I deny the existence of any god, so I don’t believe in any number of gods. That means that I don’t believe in an infinite number of gods. Now a monotheist believes in one god, so he denies belief in an infinite number of gods minus one. But taking one away from infinity is still infinity so monotheists also deny the existence of an infinite number of gods. In this manner, atheists and monotheists alike deny the existence of an infinite number of gods, so we’re not that different. The same logic applies to theists of any kind unless they believe in an infinite number of gods which I won’t go into. If anyone believes in a finite number of gods, they must still deny belief in the same number of gods as atheists.

There is one logical hitch, though, for the finite theist. For example, take the monotheist. Consider how many gods he believes in versus the atheist. The atheist believes in zero gods. The monotheist believes in one god. But they both deny belief in an infinite number of gods, so the one god that the monotheist professes belief in falls into the category of gods that he doesn’t believe in. This means that one cannot logically be a monotheist by virtue of the math. One must either deny the existence of all gods or believe in the existence of an infinite number of gods to be consistent. Since believing in no gods and denying any of an infinite number of gods is more plausible than trying to rationalize the existence of every god (since many are mutually exclusive) except when a single religion provides for an infinite number of gods. In that case, the point is moot. With an infinite number of gods, it’s impossible to schedule any meetings so they’d be essentially powerless.

If a person really believed with 100% of their brain that there was an all powerful being that could do ANYTHING, would he take the risk of a small sin when the punishment is eternal? How can you say you believe in god and then do anything that’s less than 100% effort? How can you willingly do something bad or avoid doing something good for your own personal enjoyment when he’s watching?

The answer is that you can’t have it both ways. Either you truly believe in god, both on and off the camera (if you’re a celebrity *ahem* popes*) and never sin, or you take temporary enjoyment in things you know are sins yet do anyway because they’re fun and you accept your fallibility as a human and show that you really don’t believe.

I dare anyone who says he believes in god and subscribes to a particular religion to argue that a person who really believes in and understands an omnipotent god could ever willingly sin when so much is at stake.

Of course, some people do argue that you don’t have to be perfect to go to heaven. This just means you have to come in slightly under budget to win. In a perfect afterlife,winning is winning right? A little perfect is a lot perfect.

After all, the only reason self righteous preachers rant and rave is to compensate for their own sin. People with small penises drive hummers just like people who commit sins preach against them.

“Can god do something that he can’t do?”

If he says something like ‘The English language isn’t capable of encompassing god’s power’, then just explain that it’s a cop out argument. Also, rephrase it:

“Is god able to create a task that he cannot complete/accomplish?”

Think about another paradox and it will all make sense. Consider Pinocchio. Suppose he said “My nose will grow.” If he’s lying, his nose won’t grow, but since the rule is that his nose grows when he lies, it should grow. What a paradox!

The only solution is to realize that the rule doesn’t make sense and is irrational and a fantasy, just like omnipotence. Since the only way to break the paradox is to admit that an assumption is false – that is, admit that there is no omnipotent god – it must be the right solution.