Noah Lugeons: How to Survive a Theocracy in 8 Easy Steps

Given the political climate these days - even worse than it was during the Bush administration, which I'd thought would be impossible - you might need this.

And you probably need it now - or,... well, before now, really - because some of these steps are going to require a great deal of advanced planning (the first two steps, for example).

Note that Noah Lugeons co-hosts the Scathing Atheist, God Awful Movies, Skepticrat, and Citation Needed podcasts - all highly recommended. You can find them on many different podcast platforms. (Note that you do need a fairly high tolerance for both profanity and dick jokes. They're not exactly safe for work.)

More 'family values' from the GOP

America has become the laughingstock of the world.

Of course, that wouldn't be so bad if the Republican Party wasn't also working so hard to destroy our democracy.

Christian evangelicals are helping them do it, because... well, what else would you expect? They're faith-based, not evidence-based. So they're always excusing right-wing Republicans.

Can you imagine how they would have reacted if anything like this had come out about Barack Obama? Can you imagine how they would have reacted over the antics of the Palin family, or Newt Gingrich's affairs, or David Vitter's,... I could go on and on ... if it had involved our first black president, instead?

Would they have been fine with Russia helping Hillary Clinton get elected? Would they have shrugged that off? But when you're faith-based, none of this matters - just like how evidence doesn't matter, and reality doesn't matter, and scientific research doesn't matter.

All that matters is what you want to be true.

I don't know how I'd survive without political comedians these days! And we did this to ourselves. If you voted Republican in 2016, or if you threw away your vote on an idiotic third party candidate, or if you couldn't be bothered to vote at all, this is your fault, at least in part.
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Incidentally, did you see the million dollar payoff from Charles Koch to Paul Ryan and the Republican Party just 13 days after the GOP slashed his taxes? This is one of the most corrupt political parties we've ever seen.

But don't get me started!

A brief history of the Trinity

Fascinating stuff, isn't it?

Creation Today: Risen Without a Doubt

This guy - his YouTube channel is Paulogia - does a great job with all of his videos. As far as I can tell, he's only been on YouTube for ten months, but he's developed quite a following - and for good reason, don't you think?

Apparently, his first - short - video was "Ken Ham made me an atheist." That's a good one, too, since it tells you Paulogia's own story of a devout Christian discovering that he'd been lied to all his life.

But I think his videos are so good that I've been sampling some of the earlier ones, like this one from April. Note that he had a thousand subscribers then, while he's got more than 9,000 now. Not bad for ten months, though he deserves a lot more than that!

Creationists don't build starships

I haven't been blogging lately, and that's not likely to change. But I thought I'd mention this post at Stonekettle Station. I highly recommend it.

I'm not going to blog about this myself. He says everything I could say - and better. So I'll just give you the general idea with a few brief excerpts:

These sons of bitches just can’t seem to face reality.

We didn’t know.

We hoped he'd act more presidential.

I mean, we knew Trump was an ignorant self-aggrandizing jackass with no experience in government at all, right. We knew that. We knew he was a liar, a misogynist, a con artist, an abuser, and a bully. We knew he was prone to uncontrolled rage and that there was no filter between his ego and his thumbs. We knew that. We knew all of that. Of course we did. Sure. That part was obvious. But see, we hoped – we hoped – Trump would somehow just magically become a dignified adult, suddenly imbued with reason and self-control and filled with knowledge and wisdom of how to actually run a government.

That is what they told us. That is literally what they told us. He’s just doing this to get elected. Once he’s president, you’ll see. He’ll straighten out, he’ll become…

…a unicorn.

Now, admittedly, we’re not really sure how any of that would happen, but we hoped it would.

We hoped it would.

Magical thinking.

Trump is the manifestation of all the worst aspects of modern America writ large, loud, florid, and proudly ignorant. A mindset that is shamelessly hypocritical, self-important and self-involved, wrapped in a flag waving a cross and obsessed with money at the expense of everything else, downing handfuls of Viagra not because we need it but rather for instant self gratification without effort, and a sneering dismissal of any debate that can’t be compressed into a Tweet as “Too Long; Didn’t Read.”

I’m not the first to note that Trump is what stupid people think a smart person sounds like and it doesn’t take much digging around on social media to find those who despite all evidence to the contrary still dogmatically believe in they’re going to get a unicorn...

Somewhere in the last half a century, we Americans traded Apollo moon ships for the Creation Museum and the ugly truth of the matter is that Donald Trump is a reflection of who we’ve become as a nation.

Trump is the utterly predictable result of decades of an increasingly dumber and dumber electorate. A deliberately dumber electorate, Idiocracy in action, a society that dismisses intelligence and education and experience as “elitism” while howling in drunken mirth at Honey Boo Boo and lighting their farts on fire.

Creationists don’t build starships.

Read the whole thing here. Seriously, read it!

Ravi Zacharias and quantum physics

This is about the bogus educational claims of Ravi Zacharias, rather than quantum physics itself (although "quantum" does seem to be the latest buzzword in pseudoscience and religion).

This is shorter than most videos by Seth Andrews, and I did think that the interview was interesting. Note that there are links to RaviWatch, and to the other videos mentioned, here.

The proof that God is evil

This is the summary of this playlist called "The Case for an Evil God."

Of course, to be technical, this is evidence, not proof, and it's only about the Biblical god. But personally, I think we're all lucky he doesn't exist.

The case against the resurrection

I meant to post this on Sunday - Easter- but I never got around to it. Oh, well. It's still worth your time, but I'll make this post especially short.

This is a playlist of video arguments against the resurrection of Jesus Christ - ten video clips from nine different people. They're all interesting, though I'd especially recommend the video with Bart Ehrman and the two from Richard Carrier.

Again, here is the link at YouTube. Enjoy!

Is the New Testament reliable?

Bart Ehrman gets pretty worked up here, but I understand it. Keep in mind that Ehrman does believe in a historical Jesus. That's not universal among scholars, although it's the majority position.

Who or what that Jesus was,... well, there's certainly no agreement about that, even among the people who think he actually existed.

And keep in mind that Ehrman was an evangelical Christian who became an expert in the New Testament for his faith. He lost that faith when he discovered too much about his own holy book, but he certainly didn't want to lose it. Just the reverse, in fact.

Finally, note that he talks about "scribal errors" in the Bible. But many of the most important of these weren't errors at all. They were deliberate changes.

For example: "Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her." That entire story was added later. It can hardly be an "error."

And the entire ending of the Gospel of Mark - the first gospel to be written - was added later, apparently because the original ending seemed appropriate only for fiction. (The women who supposedly witnessed the resurrection never told anyone about it, because they were afraid. The end.)

Ehrman gives other examples, including the justification for the whole idea of the Trinity. That's certainly not a minor issue, but it's clearly not an accidental "error," either. It was added to the original text deliberately, by some unknown person, for his own reasons.

FFRF and the Ark Encounter

This is basically an advertisement for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but it's important - especially in this time of widespread science-denial from the White House on down.

Eric Hovind and dinosaur farts

I thought this was funny,... but sad, too. I wonder how many people get their 'science' from Christian apologists like these who are completely ignorant of the subject, themselves?

Even when you get your science from the media, you need to realize that journalists aren't scientists (and I'm not sure that tabloid journalists are even journalists).

The goal of scientists is to be precise. The goal of journalists is to attract paying customers with sensational stories. Most journalists try to be accurate, I'm sure, but they're not scientists, and strict scientific accuracy isn't their primary goal.

But you only have to know a little about Eric Hovind in order to laugh at the idea of him criticizing scientists, anyway!

Seth Andrews: a secular State of the Union Address

This is a great speech, isn't it? But in America, no president would ever be elected who could give it, even if he believed every bit of it.

Of course, we've actually got a president who doesn't believe any of it. Now, thanks to 90 million Americans who couldn't even be bothered to vote, we've got the worst president in U.S. history, a president whose speeches are just the reverse of this one.

As Seth Andrews demonstrates, we've still got good people in America. But we've got an uphill struggle now.

Another child abuse scandal

This is a difficult article to read. It's another inquiry into child sexual abuse, this time of the 150,000 children sent abroad from the UK after World War II.

Those children weren't all abused, and not all of the perpetrators were from religious institutions. But many were. And the stories are horrendous!

For example, there's this one from Clifford Walsh:

He is now 72. Fremantle is where, in 1954, aged nine, he stepped off the ship from London, looking for the sheep he'd been told outnumbered people in Australia 100 to one.

He ended up at a place called Bindoon.

The Catholic institution known at one point as Bindoon Boys Town is now notorious. Based around an imposing stone mansion in the Australian countryside, 49 miles north of Perth, are buildings Walsh and his fellow child migrants were forced to build, barefoot, starting work the day after they arrived.

The Christian Brothers ruled the place with the aim of upholding order and a moral code. Within two days of arriving he says he received his first punishment at the hands of one of the brothers.

"He punched us, he kicked us, smashed us in the face, back-handed us and everything, and he then sat us on his knee to tell us that he doesn't like to hurt children, but we had been bad boys.

"I was sobbing uncontrollably for hours."

His story is deeply distressing. He tells it with a particularly Australian directness. He is furious.

He describes one brother luring him into his room with the promise he could have some sweet molasses - normally fed, not to the boys, but the cows. The man sexually abused him.

He claims another brother raped him, and a third beat him mercilessly after falsely accusing him of having sex with another boy.

"We had no parents, we had no relatives, there was nowhere we could go, these brothers - these paedophiles - must have thought they were in hog heaven."

He has accused the brothers at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the first time he has fully disclosed his experiences.

At the time he says: "I was too terrified to report the abuse. I knew no other life.

"I've lived 60 odd years with this hate, I can't have a normal sexual relationship because I don't like to hold people," says Walsh. "My own wife, I couldn't hug."

He was troubled by all the memories.

"I couldn't show any affection. Stuff like that only reminded me of what the brothers would do all the time."

Bindoon is now a Catholic College. Again, not every person who raped children was a priest. And not every priest rapes children - far from it. But these are people who get respect just because of who they are.

Churches expect - and almost always get - our automatic respect. They claim to be our moral leaders, and nearly everyone seems to go along with that. Certainly, the news media and our politicians do. The religious section of my local newspaper is titled "Faith and Values." Church leaders regularly claim that 'you can't be moral without God.'

And yet:

The Australian Royal Commission recently estimated that 7% of the country's Catholic priests were involved in child abuse.

And such is the scope of sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic and Anglican churches in the UK that entire strands of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse are dedicated to them.

This story is horrific for many different reasons, and it wasn't just the churches who let such things happen to children, but the British government, too. Child rape is vile no matter who does it. I don't mean to imply otherwise.

But religious groups are different, because they claim to have the high ground. They claim to be our moral leaders. They claim to have an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity on their side. Well, where was he when children were being raped by his own priests?

The Catholic Church, in particular, tells us that contraception is immoral, that abortion is immoral, that homosexuality is immoral. Well, why should we listen to anything they say, when priests were not only raping children, but the church was helping them by covering it up and moving those priests to new, unsuspecting parishes where they could find fresh victims?

Of course, it's not just the Catholics, and it's not just Christian churches. But it's Christian churches here, in English-speaking parts of the world. And the Catholics have a rigid hierarchy that many Protestant denominations don't have (especially the smaller sects). With power comes responsibility.

And again, if you really do have an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity on your side, where the fuck was he? Your god would not be worth my worship even if he did exist. (Of course, if you've ever bothered to read your own Bible, you'd already know that.)

It is long past the time when we should have stopped giving churches and church leaders our automatic respect. If you want our respect, earn it.

It is long past the time when we should have stopped accepting the claims of religious leaders about morality. They know no more about morality than the rest of us, and many of them have demonstrated that they know far less.

It is long past the time when we should have stopped accepting all of their claims, without good evidence first backing up those claims. If child rape won't open our eyes, what will?

An Index to Creationist Claims

This isn't anything brand-new, but I thought I'd point out this website: An Index to Creationist Claims.

If you've ever talked to Creationists, you'll know that most of them don't even have a fifth-grade level understanding of evolution. Many don't even know what evolution is. I'm no biologist, but that's been obvious even to me.

And you'll hear from these people lots of different arguments for why evolution is wrong. (Oddly enough - or maybe it's not surprising at all - you never seem to hear an argument for why Creationism is true. They seem to think that disproving evolution would magically make their own beliefs valid. Obviously, it doesn't work like that.)

Still, it's rather shocking to see all of the claims of Creationists on the same web page! I didn't realize there were that many of them. Heh, heh. But I love how the website handles these claims.

Click on a particular claim and you'll go to a page that clearly, and succinctly, describes everything you need to know. First, it repeats the claim and gives a source for the claim (just one source; many of these claims can be found all over the internet).

Then it lists one or more brief responses. These really are brief, and I love that. I should learn from this website! (But I know I won't.) Typically, a response seems to be all you need to know in the shortest version possible.

But after that, there are links and/or references for further research, so if you do need to know more, you can find much longer explanations (often scientific reference materials).

I've had this web page bookmarked for some time, but I don't use it much. (As I say, most arguments by Creationists require only a fifth-grade level understanding of evolution to refute.) However, it's a fascinating page to browse.

Take a look. It's really quite interesting, isn't it? I'm impressed!

Whatever happened to freedom of religion?

(Jesus and Mo)

Yeah, it's another good one from... the cartoonist who must remain anonymous in order to stay alive. Oh, give me that Old Time Religion, huh?

What Would Jesus Do? - the movie

Sorry, this review is audio only. But I'm a big fan of God Awful Movies, brought to you by the same funny people who do The Scathing Atheist podcast.

These aren't safe for work, and they might give your elderly relatives a heart attack (unless they're like me, of course), but if you're not easily offended, they're hilarious. I just listened to this one, and it struck me as particularly funny. It's a review of What Would Jesus Do?

I've never tried to embed audioBoom, but if this doesn't work for you, you can download the mp3 file here, or listen to it on iTunes. The later podcasts are available on YouTube here, but not this one - not yet, at least. (This particular podcast is about a year old. I've been working my way through their archives.)

Actually, that is probably only scratching the surface of where you can get these. But again, if you enjoy this kind of humor, be sure to check out their Scathing Atheist and Skepticrat podcasts, too. (Note that the latter is their newest podcast, and although it started great, they've only released one episode since May. I suspect that two regular podcasts are about all they can handle right now.)

BTW, here's a quote from the beginning of one of their Scathing Atheist podcasts: "Warning: The following podcast contains genuine, heartfelt emotions. But don't worry. We wrap them in profanity." Don't say you weren't warned. :)

The not-a-Muslim-ban Muslim ban

I'm a little late with this, but when it comes to Donald Trump, the crazy never stops coming. It's depressing and tiring.

Luckily, there's Samantha Bee, who seems to have enough energy for all of us.

My New Year's resolution

(Jesus and Mo)

My New Year's resolution is to keep laughing. The alternative, after all, is to cry.

Still, I don't know how long I can keep this resolution. How black can things get and still let me laugh?

The perfect story in your head

Happy New Year, everyone, and my apologies for the state of this blog. I've been slacking off for some time, but the election really ended things. And it's not going to get any better, I'm sure. (Right from the start, I pledged that I wouldn't let this become a chore, and I'm holding to that.)

But today, I thought I'd post a comment I made somewhere else. It's already written, after all. :)

There's a woman who writes a monthly column in my local newspaper pushing Christianity (Everyday Faith). Michelle DeRusha seems like a very nice woman, just entirely faith-based.

She's the woman who claims to have been an atheist before God came to her in church one Sunday. Yes, as an 'atheist,' she never missed church - the church she'd been raised in since infancy, of course. And as an 'atheist,' she had to take her kid to Sunday School every week, right? (I'll note that being a "former atheist" is very popular among Christians these days.)

Anyway, there's lots of Christian propaganda in my local newspaper, and never any opposing views. So I supply one. Heh, heh. I don't subscribe to the paper, online or otherwise, so I don't normally comment there. But I usually post a comment every month to DeRusha's column.

In her latest post, "God is the author of the story," she explains how she built up a "perfect story" in her head and was disappointed when reality didn't match God's plan.

You see, I had written a perfect story in my head -- a fairy tale, complete with a knight(ess) in shining armor and the quintessential happy ending. I had it all worked out: the poignant meeting at the airport, the excitement of the kids when they saw their bedrooms, their new backpacks, the cute stuffed animals propped just so on brand-new sheets, the friendship we would forge -- dinners together, laughter, conversation, pass the lamb stew!

The problem was, I had forgotten one critical detail: God, not me, is the author of this story. And long before I knew a single detail about the Yazidi people, long before “sponsorship” and “refugee” and “resettlement” were part of my daily vocabulary, he had already begun to write it. He had plans for each one of us in this story. My disappointment arose from the fact that my plans didn’t match his. The truth is, they rarely do.

This is so typical of DeRusha. She's a very nice woman who goes the extra mile to do good things, but wraps up everything in a God wrapper. Even when she recognizes that she built a fantasy story in her head, a "fairy tale" that was disproved by reality, she refuses to learn the real lesson from that and remains entirely faith-based.

Anyway, I thought I'd post my (long) comment to that column here. Why not? As I say, it's already written. And I'm certainly not swamping you with posts these days, huh?

"God, not me, is the author of this story."

Actually, you're more the author of this story than 'God' is. There's no evidence that a god even exists outside of your imagination, let alone your particular God, let alone that you have any idea of what a god might be doing.

Do you see what you did? You imagined a fantasy in your head. That fantasy didn't match reality, so you were disappointed.

You've imagined a fantasy about 'God,' too. But reality doesn't enter into it. Thus, you have no check on your imagination. You can - and do - just imagine whatever you want to imagine.

You think you'll meet 'God' after you die, but that's a fantasy that can never be disproved while you're alive. When you're disappointed, you imagine that it was all 'God's' plan, and that can never be disproved, either. Thus, when it comes to 'God,' your fantasy is never challenged by reality.

You know exactly what 'God' wants, unless something bad or unexplainable happens, in which case, 'God' has a reason that we mere mortals can't understand. Thus, when it comes to the fantasy you've imagined in your head, it can never be disproved. Even when it's wrong.

This is why science advances, but religion never does. A scientist may imagine a beautiful hypothesis, a lovely idea - brilliant, inspiring, perfect in every way. But if it doesn't match up to reality, it has to be discarded.

Science stays grounded in reality, rather than in the imagination of some pleasant fantasy, because it's evidence-based. The most beautiful idea in the world can't be accepted without evidence. And although any individual - scientist or otherwise - might be reluctant to find evidence that disproves his own beloved ideas, science relies on other scientists for that. No one, after all, is reluctant to disprove someone else's beloved idea.

Religion doesn't have that. In religion, your fantasies are immune to reality. If you disagree with your church, you can just find a different church or start your own. That's why science comes to a worldwide consensus about what's true and what isn't, while religious believers can't agree about anything.

I find your columns very interesting, because you often get halfway to the truth, but then refuse to take that extra step. This column is a perfect example of that. You recognize that you built up a fantasy in your head, a story that ended up not matching reality. Unfortunately for you, for this story, reality showed you that your fantasy was wrong. So you were unhappy.

But that fantasy about 'God,' that story which you've also imagined in your head, can't ever be disproven by reality, even in theory. Even if you were wrong, you'd never know it. And that's the case with every faith-based believer of every competing religion, too. You all just believe what you want to believe, such that even those of you who supposedly follow the same holy instruction manual can't agree about much of anything.

Thus, all of you can keep your pretty fantasies. Every religion in the world, every interpretation of every holy book, every 'personal relationship' with a god, every story about who your god is, what he wants, what he does,... it's all immune to reality, as long as it doesn't claim something which can be tested by science. (Even then, how many faith-based people reject evolution, or global warming, or the actual age of the Earth? They're not willing to give up their fantasies even when they have been shown to be wrong.)

Unlike you, I care about the truth of my beliefs. I want to believe as many true things as possible and as few false things as possible. So I'm evidence-based, not faith-based. I want to have good reasons backing up my beliefs, and if I'm wrong, I want to know that, so I can change my beliefs. That's why real-world evidence is so critical. Science has shown us that. Science has progressed so rapidly and so greatly for just that reason.

Yes, in your story, this was all God's story. Unfortunately, your story is fiction. At least, there's zero reason to believe that it's anything else.

Scathing Atheist: is it fear of death?

Like all Scathing Atheist podcasts, this isn't safe for work. Well, depending on where you work, I suppose...

But it's an interesting question. Is it fear of death that causes otherwise intelligent people to cling to ancient myths? Or is it the narrative?

You're confronted with two worldviews. In one, you're a chemical anomaly that occupies an insignificant portion of a cosmic pebble for an insignificant fraction of time. You're going to spend that time engaged in activities that have no cosmic significance. ...

And then along comes this competing narrative. In this one, sure, you still have to do mundane shit to comport with your secret identity, but even when it seems to the casual observer like you're just looking for a parking space, you're really communing with the divine. Right, you spend your days playing a critical role in the cosmic battle between good and evil. ...

It may look like you're singing a hymn. But when you strip away the mortal facade, you're battling demons! You're locked in combat with the Devil himself, warring alongside God in the only battle that's ever mattered. Now, even an atheist has to admit that's more appealing than pond scum that learned to wipe, isn't it?

As I say, it's an interesting question. Of course, religion existed long before they invented Heaven. And it existed before human beings imagined some cosmic significance to their everyday lives. At least, not every early religion included that feature. But back then, we knew almost nothing about how the world worked.

Primitive myths probably weren't so primitive when they were invented. They were serious attempts to explain reality (combined with entertainment and the desire to enhance their political, social, and economic status, of course).

But they are primitive today. They're so primitive that apologists have to jump through hoops to try to rationalize away the problems with that. They're so primitive that reading the Bible - actually reading it, rather than having portions of it spoon-fed to you - is a good way create another atheist.

I suspect that there are lots of reasons why people cling to whatever religion they were taught children, but this is probably an important one. We love a good narrative, don't we? Especially when we get to play a starring role in it?