Punny Atheists

The most common joke about atheists I see on twitter is the “Date an atheist, they are popeless romantics”.

So decided to try and come up with a more unsavoury version:

An atheist may not take you to heaven and back, but they know where to stick hard evidence and come to a conclusion.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Inauguration and pissed off Anti-Gay Christians

Louie Giglio, who was to be the inauguration pastor, has stepped down after a sermon he gave against homosexuality surfaced here. In his sermon he denounces homosexuality as a lifestyle, that it should not be given legal rights as marriage, or heterosexual relationships, and that it is a choice like overeating.

Which reminded me of Ricky Gervais’ gag on people making that comparison, below at 2:57 having laid the ground work on what makes people fat:

Note only audio – visual clips not long enough.

Matthew Lee Anderson suggested rather than getting pissed off, this is how religious conservatives should respond:

But when one of their leaders is pushed aside again, religious conservatives might consider instead meeting our rejection with something nearer indifference, rather than angry denunciation.

In the Bible, St. Paul suggests that as Christians “our citizenship is in heaven.” While we can and should be loyal Americans, our concern for justice must primarily be a concern for justice for others. Our desire for our own justice is often deferred until heaven.

Source CNN

The problem is not saying homosexuals cannot be in your church. The issue is when you advocate correction therapy, accuse gays of being an aggressive and insidious threat to society, and deny them having rights as a straight couple, let alone married couple, have.

Louie Giglio was promoting those very things in his sermon. The inauguration is about Americans coming together. When you are concerned by your faith with the peccadilloes of how some others by consent choose to come together, with a message not of tolerance but of actual hate, you should content yourself with a place in heaven. Rather than within the secular world, as Anderson suggests.

Jesus himself said his kingdom was not part of this world, and to turn the other cheek. The gay community should also be allowed to turn each other’s cheek without judgements being passed beyond the pulpit into legal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Toilet Humour and faith

“Zen and the Art of going to the Lavatory” was a made up book in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy universe. However, religious thought regarding the toilet, and in particular materials used during, are a real life matter played out either in protest, custom or trying to start a shit-storm:

Conversely, you might become a pawn in a global inter-faith propaganda war when, in the course of occupying the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, you are accused of applying pages from the Bible to your soiled anus, even though you deny it: “I am not ready to hear these dirty accusations” was the response of Jihad Jaara, former Bethlehem chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to the 2002 charge. “It is completely untrue. We believe in the Bible and cannot do such a thing.”

It’s easier to get away with that sort of thing if you’re a puckish knight of the realm – like Sir Ian McKellen, who told a magazine interviewer that he keeps torn-out pages from Leviticus (you know the ones: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination) hung up on a string in his toilet. “But it’s too much of a curiosity to actually put to use,” he added, disappointingly.

Breaking the laws of man is one thing. But get your bum-wiping really wrong, and you might end up pissing off God. In the Islam tradition, the hadith – a collection of stories and sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad – are second only to the Qur’an in religious authority. Certain hadith can be seen to represent a typical attempt by religious authority to codify a custom that already exists: in this case, the custom is bottom-wiping, and the key hadith can be found in Kitab Al-Taharah (The Book of Purification) by the 9th-century scholar Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj.

More from The New Humanist here.

A summery of the custom would be the right hand does know what the left hand has been doing.

Picture from Whitewolf

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Santa or skull - you decide!

Reblogged from Richard Wiseman:

Hope you had a great time yesterday.  Here is another santa-based illusion to make you smile.....

Have a great Boxing day!

Is a reblog blogging? Too good not to post despite self-imposed holiday!

Merry christmas

Going to enjoy the festivities – so no blogs till the New Year.

Thanks for reading – do check out links to top ten read blogs, and the tags and categories for articles you may have missed. Plus the search box if you really want to be specific.

Will still be tweeting so feel free to follow!

Cartoon above from here

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Photo: the Palm Tree with fairy lights

Up there with the Jesus light switch.

As always do they know, was it intentional?

Still it is in keeping with the idea of rebirth. May be wasted however for some.

Courtesy of RT by PZ Myers @RichardWiseman: @thepoke

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Post Apocalypse

Glad you made it

Related blog: The Hobbit

New Scientist: End of the world is not a threat, but an opportunity

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Ricky Gervais Interview Newstatesman

In the Christmas edition of the New Statesman Ricky Gervais as interviewed by Robin Ince, in particular about atheism. Just one highlight:

This is very important – there is a difference between people who happen to believe in God, for whatever reason, and the very small minority of crazy, mental, psychotic people who use their religion as a conduit for hate.

There is a difference between people who think, “I’m going to go to heaven and see my relatives” and people who say, “If my son is born homosexual, I’m going to murder him.” There is a chasm. Fundamentalists have no more in common with the average Christian, Muslim or Jew than atheists do.

Being a good person has nothing to do with believing in God or following any religion, OK? There are good people that believe in God, and there are bad people that believe in God. And there are good atheists and bad atheists. The big difference is, no atheist does things in the name of atheism. There’s no such thing. This myth that atheism is a religion, it’s ludicrous; [atheism is] the absence of belief. Atheism is a religion like health is a disease.

Agnosticism queers the picture a little bit because they are technically right, that you can’t know in a very hard sense whether there is a God or not. But when I ask someone and they say they’re agnostic, I change the question. I change it from “Is there a God?” to “Do you believe in God?” because the answer for that can’t be: “I don’t know.”

You’re allowed to say, “I’m 99 per cent sure there is or there isn’t,” but you can’t say you don’t know if you believe or not. Someone sent me a tweet saying, “Well, that’s not fair, because I could ask you now over Twitter whether you think I’m wearing a red jumper and you couldn’t really have an educated guess either way – it’s not based on anything.” I said, that’s true. Now tell me your red jumper created the universe. Now tell me your red jumper’s telling me to stone people to death.

The full article from the Newstatesman here

Related previous blog: morality of an atheist

On twitter Ricky does cover other things – mercifully below.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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WordPress statistics – the well traveled visitor

WordPress have introduced a new statistic which now differentiates between how many views your blog has from how many people visited. In the last few days that has shown that on average each person reads at least two articles.

In the last few moments though it looks like one visitor has read seventeen articles while zig zagging across the Atlantic with a pit stop in Ireland and Canada:

Either superman is reading this blog on the fly or something is not computing here for visitors.

Reason suggests the later.

Very grateful for all the support out there since I resumed blogging full-time a few months ago. Hope you enjoy reading, and if so please share. The blog makes a thoughtful if cheap Christmas present.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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Photo Jesus Light Switch

Perhaps there is more to why graven images are not supposed to happen. But by heaven was it not obvious what this would look like?

Maybe designed by the people behind the 2012 Olympic logo.

If anyone knows more about the photo please leave a comment – would like to know if genuine or a mock up but late here in UK.

Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog

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