Slashdot Mirror

Why watch one per year when you can cram that into 23 days or less if you watch via some ad-free on-demand service. 200 hours?

No kid is going to wait a week to see an old episode of a show...

Not to argue any of your other points, but there are atheists (and atheist societies) that would gladly kill Christians for there belief, and we have their actions and regulations to prove it.

But do we have a link to back that up? It's suspiciously missing from your post.

I do know that U.S. Christians, as a group, are among the most charitable and selfless people in the world.

Are you sure?

Actually a better substitute question would be, Most modern scientists agree that the climate is changing. Do you see it now? I will give you a hint: There are detractors from facts when facts have consequences. It's the same reason why some people deny the holocaust. Believing in Caesar's existence has no consequences, believing that Jesus didn't exists does.

Where the heck did I hear about atheists discouraging atheists from saying silly things like "Jesus is Fictional"? I don't know. How about this blog for starters? Or how about this non-Christian historian? The better question is how does your painting cross thing even relate to anything?

You are right, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. However, I'd argue that there is a difference between spouting a view in a public forum and supporting a cause through what should be an anonymous donation. Should I be persecuted for voting Democrat? What about voting for or giving money to gay marriage? It cuts both ways remember.

You could be. Here's a church telling you what is in store for you:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/w...

Here's a fellow who lost his job for being a Democrat

http://www.newsobserver.com/20...

Yeah, being gay is a reason for being fired too

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Your argument is specious anyhow, because he wasn't fired. He quit.

The Telegraph has a nice one right now about the madrassas discriminating by gender in hiring teachers. The BBC, however, has had a history of being soft on Islam.

The Telegraph has a nice one right now about the madrassas discriminating by gender in hiring teachers. The BBC, however, has had a history of being soft on Islam.

Is AC misinformed or liar? You decide

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/w...

I make a better case for him as an atheist terrorist above, quoting from his list of demands. I'd like to note that while you can dismiss it if you'd like, you'd also be forced to dismiss other acts of religious terrorism like various abortion clinic bombings and the murder of George Tiller by the same reasoning.

Of course, Lee was just the first one that came to mind. There have been other incidents.

Gregory Arthur Weiler II - Arrested in a plot to burn down 48 churches. His atheism remains unconfirmed, though step 20 of his plan was "Self-Promote for the next 4 years while beginning list of goals written in Oklahoma having to do with destroying and removing church buildings from U.S., a tiny bit at a time - setting foundation for the years to follow" He was also suspected, in an unrelated case, of burning down a Mosque.

This one is a bit dubious, but made the news anyway.

The East Texas church arsonists were suspected of being motivated by atheism due to some of the books found in one of the arsonists homes. Again, that remains unconfirmed. (Their motivation was not disclosed.)

Historically, I can point to The League of Militant Atheists or to the Cult of Reason

Moving on, it's not unreasonable to believe that someone could commit an act of terror "in the name of atheism". As atheism grows in popularity, you're bound to find more and more unstable people that identify with atheism and, consequently, more violent atheist organizations. It's not uncommon for atheists to believe that all religion is harmful. It's won't take much for a few of the disenfranchised to add "it must be stopped at any cost".

Well, you're a troll. It's nothing like that. Having a manpussy in prison is largely voluntary. Rape does exist, but it's not like it's more likely to happen to you than not. Here's an article about what it's like to be a techie in prison. It's not this way everywhere. Lots of places have no tech access besides a Plexiglas covered TV. Worse, however, is the lack of any good material to read.

The library shelves or book cart is chock full with lot's of brand new religious bullshit and various other statist crap, or bubble gum escapist shite. There's hardly any good books on ethics from a secular viewpoint instead it's all "you're locked up because you're not right with God, imagine you're sucking Jesus' metaphorical dick and you'll be so right with God we'll see you next revolution of the revolving door," in not so many more obfuscated words. Origin of Species? God & Golem Inc.? Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy? Ring World? SICP? Knuth's Art of Computer Programming? Nope. Most books besides religious crap are ratty and worn, pages and covers missing. Hell, there was even romance novels and interview with a vampire, but not a single Dragon Lance or O'Reilly?

I can run a program on a piece of paper with a pencil, I don't need a computer to follow along with Knuth, but damn, the prison and jail libraries have only mind numbing dreck that seems made to rot your mind and give you false sense of security that you'll be able to function and interact properly if you just gargle Jesus jiz. The criminal legal library is kept up, and there are some jobs programs that are OK -- They get their reading material at the behest of the corporate masters who want cheap slave drivable labor for dangerous or dirty jobs; A buddy learned underwater welding and works his ass off for good "honest" money now, helping oil companies rape the planet.

Anyway, yeah, the incarcerated could use some books. I'd have given up my food tray for a week for a good sci-fi book. Sad thing is, out in the free world there's libraries getting rid of books -- can hardly give 'em away because they're too abused, but they rarely find their way to where they could do the most good. Nope, those Christ fuckers who think Jesus is off preparing a place for them in the sky somewhere so the body of the church can get half-gay married into God's magical zombie family have a damn near monopoly on fresh reading material. I've read that damn insane bible in 6 different translations just to laugh at the inconsistencies -- Hell, did you know the whole virgin birth is based on a mistranslation error? Careful pointing out the bullshit though: Private Prisons are essentially Christian-Camp Cages.

Sounds like AC has got one hell of a prison rape fantasy up there -- It's not copy-pasta... They'll surely be disappointed if they ever grow balls and lose brains enough to make their dream come true.

This is a terrible idea! You just read an article about PR firms editing articles about science & history. Facts are the least democratic things of all!

Do you want people to vote on science? How many people think Relativity is just E=mc^2? They ignore all the import aspects about it. If there wasn't a maximum speed (speed of light), then kinetic energy (KE=mv^2) would go to infinity and create unlimited energy.

Do you want people to vote on History? Well, they did, and the Holocaust only killed Jews. The other 5 million killed for handicaps, homosexuality, and others don't count. There were even 3 more genocides in the 20th century alone: Pol Pot's Cambodia (the educated), Serbia (muslims), & Rwanda.

I don't want popular opinion to warp reality anymore!

And you even left off the Armenian Genocide.

Don't blame him, blame the government schools he attended

Atheism is holding a belief that the dragon doesn't exist in the garage which is different from simply not believing that one is in the garage.

Atheist: "I've just been in the garage. No dragon."
Theist: "You don't understand... it's a magical invisible dragon. You can't see it, or touch it, or hear it. But it's there!"
Atheist: "But if you can't see it, or touch it, or hear it, how do you know it's there?"
Theist: "This ancient Japanese book Kojiki about a dragon proves it! You can't argue with this!"
Atheist: "That doesn't 'prove' there's a dragon in the garage. It's just an old story written by people."
Theist: "But the book! The book! You can't argue with the book! Checkmate, atheist!"

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2013/08/the-final-nail-in-evolutions-coffin/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/27/we-were-all-wrong-the-true-god-is-polynesian/

Around 4% of the population lacks belief in god. Only around 1% of the population explicitly claim the atheist label. Around 4% of males, or 2% of the population admits to non-consensual sex.

There aren't "a lot more" atheists than rapists, and there's no reason to expect there to be. Sexual aggression has obvious evolutionary benefits. Questioning widely held beliefs has less obvious evolutionary benefits.

hopefully you have ample examples of men receiving death threats

Sure. Here are a few that come up on Google:

This guy pissed off some animal rights activists and they threatened to use pliers on his testicles, disembowel him and use napalm on him. Among other things. Incidentally, it was a woman who ran the organization that sent the threats, and was sentenced to jail for it. That one isn't even anonymous!

Gay blogger gets death threats.

This guy tracked down the sender of his death threats.

Here's a story about a guy who sends death threats to people who debunk the paranormal. Some blog authors, mostly male, were targeted.

Here's a guy who pissed off 4chan by making a movie. Here's one who wrote a book. If you want to do an experiment go post something they find offensive there and see how many death/rape/mutilation threats you get.

A Slashdot story about a guy getting death threats from some scammers he exposed.

Browsing Slashdot at -1 can be pretty enlightening too.

If you want to really get some threats, piss off some religious people.

The ones that don't end in divorce usually ends with someone dying!

I think I dodged a bullet (literally) by moving 1000 miles away before I filed. :)

Look the correlation. Percent of population married has declined steadily since 1970,
inversely related to rise of feminism.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/blackwhiteandgray/2012/05/marriage-and-divorce-statistics/

"In 2010, the ratio stood at 1.89-to-1, compared to 2.05-to-1 in 2000. Not a radical shift, but a notable one. The action is largely on the marriage side of the equation: the marriage rate has dropped 17 percent in 10 years, while the divorce rate has dropped 10 percent. The two tend to rise and fall together, but clearly not tightly so. People are being more selective about marrying, likely, and as a result there are fewer divorces"

Yeah, like that backwards place where they trust rapists more than atheists:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-12-10/religion-atheism/51777612/1

Wait, that was the United States. Looks like Americans have some really poorly reasoned attitudes and legislation.

> We don't force religious parents to vaccinate their children.

We do, however, jail them for neglect if they follow their religious beliefs and "treat their children with prayer". Sometimes they are acquitted after a trial. Sometimes they get jail time.

Which is to say, it is not a subject with a unified and unambiguous body of law behind it.

. . . he was just a a Christian anti-government gun nut . . .

Actually no, he wasn't a Christian as he stated.

Timothy McVeigh Was Not a “Christian Terrorist”

He became a little bit more specific before his execution in 2001. We might call him spiritual but not religious. He claimed to be agnostic but not an atheist. McVeigh believed in “science” and not “religion,” he said. (In fact, he said his religion was science.) His murky metaphysical notions included some sort of Deistic creator who set things in motion, not the personal God of Christianity. . . . The Oklahoma City Bomber didn’t believe in an afterlife and he certainly didn’t believe in hell.

The fact that he has spoken at length in multiple speeches against this film, without one word in support of the concept that even hateful speech is Free Speech and protected in America.

He didn't?

i'm a descendent of a revolutionary war soldier. don't lecture me about thomas jefferson

you know nothing about the principles of the founding fathers. no one familiar with their wisdom would reach for violence so quickly. you rise to arms carefully, wisely. i believe you call that sort of wisdom "timidity." you don't look forward to violence and revolution and fantasize about its application with relish, like you obviously do. your thinking and your "solutions" are WORSE than the abuses you see in our government

don't think you stand for the principles of this great nation. you're just a hothead with a boomstick who thinks that makes him a man. go ahead and wrap yourself in the flag if you like but you're still a dumb violent thug. the only people interested in sticking boots in peoples faces is the likes of you. you represent the roots of the shocktroops of any real abusive government that would come to this land

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2011/11/fascism/

find a better way to deal with your petty frustrations in life other than your violent fantasies. you're a shitbag one misunderstanding away from inappropriate violence

Heck, just look at the damage that's being done to women and girls in our own society.

Even women who aren't trapped in fundamentalist Christian communities are being hurt by the opposition to sex education, the unreasonable barriers to contraception access, the many pointless, harassing laws chipping away at abortion rights - all done in the name of religious beliefs, all intended to keep women under the sexual & financial control of their fathers and husbands.

Thankfully we're not at the point where it's socially acceptable to just lynch disobedient women or children in the streets, but there is still harm being done here.

Traditional biblical answer is that it's not a person till born. Check the pre-Happy-Meal bibles, Exodus 21:12-27 -- penalty for striking and killing a person, is death. Penalty for striking a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry, is not death. Ergo, not born, not a person. Word-o-God, can't argue with that, can we?

But someone's also been fucking with the translation in recent years. Imagine that, politically inspired tinkering with the Inerrant Word. Seems seriously wrong to me.

Speaking of religious texts, check this out: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/03/22/mischief-follows-in-partisan-bible-translations/

Exodus 21:22 is used to say: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." or "If men chide, and a man smiteth a woman with child, and soothly he maketh the child dead-born, but the woman liveth over that smiting, he shall be subject to the harm (he shall be subject to a fine), as much as the woman’s husband asketh (for), and as the judges deem (appropriate)."

Lately certain translators have been replacing words meaning "miscarriage" with words meaning "premature birth". Why that, you might ask? Notice that penalty for miscarriage is not the same as the penalty for murder, implying that according to the bible itself (Old Testament, even, none of that namby-pamby turn-the-other-cheek Jesus stuff), a fetus is not a person. Whoops! Looks like the inspired word needs a little clarification.

(If you care to argue, follow the link and read it first. They've documented it rather well.)

You would be surprised what some homeless won't do for money.

Again, you're presuming people are seriously more desperate than they typically are. However, your example is almost meaningless. How many home-having people wouldn't trade their shirt for $50 and a bottle of vodka? I mean, unless you're wearing a crazy expensive-to-replace shirt, it's an incredibly good deal.

that device is going to be traded to whoever happens to have what the homeless guy needs at the time, be it a sandwich, a new pair of pants, a new shoe, a blanket, whatever.

Again... people are not THAT desperate. Being homeless doesn't make you retarded (although, sometimes the converse however is somewhat more likely), and it doesn't make you exceedingly desperate. Homeless people will not trade a good that they've been given unless it is a substantial trade that benefits them. At that point, who is going to make that trade?

Just think of it this way. No matter how much you give the homeless person for the hotspot, you're not going to make them not-homeless anymore. So, why should they feel justified in just giving it away to you? Seriously, homeless people do have morals just like the rest of us. They're not petty scavengers who will do anything for a buck. (Some are, but not all of them.)

The hotspot can get them tips. Hell, I've heard that people are expected to tip Sonic waiters, and all they do is carry your food from the counter to your car...

Religion is not just a set of superstitions. It's a code of life. Over the centuries, belief in the superstitions attached to the code has been elevated far beyond its proper status, but the code itself is still a power in its own right and it's still worthwhile.

Religious people are demonstrably, measurably more generous and in many respects, better people than non-religious. Irrespective of whatever weird sky-fairy they believe in, that's a scientifically verifiable fact about them. So cut them some slack, because the world would be a much harsher place without them.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2008/12/santa-vs-god/