The Antichristian Phenomenon

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010, as a National Day of Prayer.  I call upon the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.”

But Mr. President, my (lack of) faith does not have any equivalent to prayer, I don’t have any God to give thanks to, or ask for guidance or protection. You “call upon” me to do what, then?

Even if we put aside the fact that prayer has not been proven to provide a result more consistent than the randomness that would occur naturally, even if we grant that some people “enrich” their lives with it (without questioning exactly how talking to themselves enriches their lives, of course), and even if we acknowledge the role in the history of the United states played by Christianity… I’m sorry, I mean, “a generic concept of religion without referring to any specific denomination or faith but slightly alluding to Christianity, so as not to blatantly exclude or offend anyone except atheists and agnostics”, then it still begs the question, what about those of us who DON’T pray, for whatever personal reason? Effectively, you’ve just told us to participate in a religious exercise, and no matter how much of a “universal” spin you try to place on it, the fact remains that it is not universal. The fact that it is fundamentally unique to specific spiritual worldviews indicates that the government should keep its hands out, or violate the freedoms of those who do not hold the worldview that includes the exercise.

This fact makes these words incredibly hollow:


Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation.

Yes, the blessing of freedom to live our beliefs. That implies that no government official ever tells you what you should be doing in your personal, private, spiritual life. EVER. Well, Mr. President, by issuing your Proclaimation “calling the citizens… to pray”, you are doing just that.

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First of all, Happy/Merry whatever-holiday-you-celebrate. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the day off work and school and putting on a few pounds with tasty cookies.

Full article below the jump: (more…)

Recently there has been a bit of a stir over the latest Mr. Deity: “Mr. Deity and the Woman”, in which Mr. Deity meets his latest creation, the rib-woman Eve.  After being posted to RichardDawkins.net and Pharyngula, its been stirring up debate over whether or not it is derogatory by negatively stereotyping women.  The short answer: No.  The long answer is below the jump.  I expect it will be largely unpopular, so don’t waste your time if you aren’t going to actually engage potentially uncomfortable ideas.

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It appears to be more important to rail against a preconceived notion of a concept rather than engage the idea itself.  What do you think this ad is saying about those children in the image?  Why are they so happy?  Is the message based on who the children are?

No, its not.  It doesn’t matter who those kids are, the point is that they’re kids.  They could be happy, sad, cute, or ugly, and the message would stay the same.  It also stays the same regardless of what religion their parents are members of… which happens to be Christianity.

The  idea that somehow the fact that these kid’s parents are Christian undermines the message of the advertisement is absolute nonsense.  It wouldn’t be reinforced if their parents were atheists.  The fact is, those kids are way too young to really choose whether or not they believe in any religion, so as the ad says, DON’T LABEL THEM.  They are not “Christian children”, they are children of Christian parents.  It is not ironic in any way that their parents are Christians.  This ad is not about their parents, its about them.

Additionally, they probably chose happy looking kids not to make any statement on religion itself, but because a picture of a smiling person is better suited to advertising.  Why do you think soap and underwear and laxative advertisements have “smiling” people?  Same reason this ad does, it grabs attention.  Also, look closely at their faces, they’re not *really* smiling and happy–just like every other lame ad photo, they’re being told to smile for the camera.  Their smiles are insincere zygomatic-only smiles, not the sincere Ducenne smile, which also entails the involuntary contraction of the orbicularis oculi, which creates “crow’s feet” at the corners of the eye. Due to the fact this muscle contraction is completely involuntary and unable to be recreated at will (short of artificial stimulation with electricity) when people are genuinely happy, they can’t help showing it, and they can’t force themselves to appear happy when they’re really not.

So they didn’t REALLY choose genuinely “happy and free” children.  They chose children who LOOKED “happy and free” because they possess the ability to “smile” on command… just like every other model in advertising.  Look closely at the next few ads and magazine covers you see with “smiling” models, you’ll find this phenomenon of not-really-smiling universal.

(And before the inevitable accusation–it would be exactly the same if the parents were Muslim.)

It seems that I missed a week in my goal!  I have been really busy recently, I didn’t even realize the week went by.

Anyway, we left off with typo drama and a bit of bragging.  Now it’s my turn to confront the nonsense.

If you’re new to this series, here’s The Prelude, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. (more…)

It seems that its Wednesday again! I hardly noticed the week pass… here is another installment. Beware, from this point on, posts are Epic in length.

If you would like to read the debate for yourself directly on Amazon you can go to his review here. The content I am posting starts on page 3.
If you’re new to this series, here’s The Prelude, Part 1, and Part 2. (more…)

I got a bit carried away with something yesterday and totally forgot to make my post.
Anyway, now that it is Wednesday, new posts are overdue!

If you remember in our last episode, Aelnathan asked us to go to HIS review if we wanted to continue commenting, as he just can’t keep up with posts on someone else’s review. Whatever. I did it. Previously, Cleric had gone to his review and continued a discussion that was already in the comments section, but we will start with my post, as there is a gap in time and the old debate (The bible promotes genocide! No it doesn’t, there are wars but wars aren’t genocide! Yes it does, God asks them to kill all living beings in a city…! BUT BUT BUT TEH WERE TEH EVULS…) Kind of died. If you would like to read it for yourself you can go to his review here. The content I am posting starts on page 2. There’s also another person who steps in and gives similar arguments to the ones I presented, but all of the previous debates were months old by the time I got there.

Anyway, on with the debate. I will keep it short, 2 posts, because from here on out, the posts become… EPIC.

If you’re new to this series, here’s The Prelude and Part 1. (more…)

It’s Tuesday again, time for the next little installment in the Great Amazon Smackdown debate!

This will be much shorter than the Prelude since we no longer have to catch up.

For those who want to read ahead or look at it in its “native environment”, this section starts on page 30 of Cleric’s review.
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It turns out, All-Access Customer really did run away, only to be replaced by another. This turns out to be Aelnathan, who had been in and out sporadically during the All-Access affair. I mentioned him in my last article by the name he posts under, but he requested I use Aelnathan as a pseudonym so I have edited that, and will continue to refer to him under the pseudonym. A LOT has transpired in the debate since then and it may potentially continue, though Aelnathan claims to be getting too busy to continue to reply (right…), so instead of posting a single entry with all the comments, I’ll make small weekly installments until we catch up to the end, and then I’ll only post as 2-5 replies accumulate.

This article records everything from Aelnathan’s first comment up to the time All-Access left for good and Aelnathan got serious and stopped waiting a month between posts.
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I preserved this thread on my personal blog, but I figure the visitors here would be more interested, since I don’t even attempt to generate traffic there.  I’ve also modified it into a single post.  Now that the fireworks have died down and the Creationist ran away officially, I would say the debate is officially over, and quite post-worthy.

A silly “All-Access Customer” was harassing Cleric on his Expelled review (which he also posted on the ACP), and putting forth statements he couldn’t answer, so I was called in for damage control.  If you want to read the original source, my first post is on page 27, All-Access’s comments start somewhere around 20, his complete idiocy is exposed on page 26, but I have condensed the posts here and edited basically nothing. (I may have fixed a few typos and names?)  I left out posts that weren’t by myself, Cleric, or All-Access as they did not contribute to the debate.  If you want to read them, the link is above…

All-Access got confused and a bit angry at my blatant exposure of his logical fallacies, then I smacked him around with some science and he disappeared for over a month, claiming he was “sleep deprived” and couldn’t think about it yet.  When he came back, he complained again that he was sleep deprived and continued to ignore my post.  It seems that most Creationists/ID proponents can not seem to argue outside those tired boxes already set up for them.

Warning: some of the responses are MASSIVE, and there is not much logic to be found.  Overall, it is a pretty typical debate with a supporter of ID.  Also, if you see that I have made a mistake or provided mis-information anywhere, please let me know so I do not repeat it next time.

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