Public Ridicule

One of the best things about moving to Austin in the past year is the active and thriving non-religious community here. Case in point - The Atheist Experience. It airs on Public Access down here. Something like this would never air back in North Carolina where I moved from (Wilkesboro - Land of 1000 Baptist Churches).

Recently The Atheist Experience was pranked by a girl named Microbiologychick who runs her own blog called Atheist Girls. She doesn’t live too awfully far from where I moved from - just over the border in Tennessee. Microbiologychick gets a big thumbs-up from PR for being so incredibly dead-on in playing her character of the typical religious buffoon who knows nothing of what they are talking about when it comes to science. The hosts of The Atheist Experience were good sports and have also congratulated her on her ability to the play the role. She did so well, she fooled the show hosts, other bloggers, and even my favorite radio show, The Opie and Anthony Show on XM Satellite Radio. Below is a link to the audio so you can hear her fantastic performance and commentary from Opie, Anthony, and Jimmy Norton.

NOTE: I cut-out a 20 minutes tangent discussion about Rocky Dennis, the deformed kid depicted in the Cher movie, “Mask”. It was so uproariously funny that they never really get fully back on the track of Microbiologychick’s call, but kept making allusions to it while wrapping up the discussion.

Opie and Anthony listen to The Atheist Experience

Good job, Microbiologychick. Public Ridicule salutes you.

Sorry for the long hiatus - we’ll be back to blogging regularly now.

It was 375 years ago today when that idiot, Galileo, was forced to admit that the Bible cannot be wrong and that the Earth can’t move around the sun. Silly, Galileo. Why did he even bother to challenge the inerrant word of God?

Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and I Chronicles 16:30 - “the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.”

Psalm 104:5 - “[the Lord] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”

Ecclesiastes 1:5 - “the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.”

Why do scientists insist on undermining our faith with things like a heliocentric theory of planetary rotation and evolution. We must TEACH THE CONTROVERSY because the Bible cannot be wrong. If we can’t force our beliefs into schools because of absurb things like facts, we must make sure that BOTH SIDES ARE REPRESENTED.

Thankfully, I am not alone. Ben Stein agrees with me. And, so does TEACHTHECONTROVERSY.com. They have put together a wonderful array of apparel that you can wear proudly. Here are a few examples:

/sarcasm

I had to do an ethics presentation on an area of scientific research in college. I took on the subject of “Genetic Engineering” and my take was one of optimism on how incredibly wonderful the results of this research could be. I specifically discussed the “Frankenstein” argument that always gets trotted out when critics of this area of research speak out. Put simply, “playing God” isn’t a valid argument against pursuing this line of research. The novel has more to do with taking responsibility for your actions than following some religious decree. I put a lot of work into that project and got a “B” for it.

My roommate, Dave, was taking the same class and his presentation was on present-day parallels to the biblical “Mark of the Beast“. Though Dave and I share opinions about religion in general, his presentation catered to the fear most Bible-thumpers have about the future and technological advancement. He took this approach because our professor was one of the advisors for the Campus Crusade for Christ club at our university and very openly religious. Dave played to the professors biases and got an “A”. Even though Dave readily admitted that I worked harder on my project, he still laughed at me for putting so much work into something the professor wasn’t going to appreciate because the Invisible Sky Dude frowned upon it. Looking back on it now, I deserved the ridicule.

Today we laugh at some of the beliefs the generations before us held. Unfortunately we haven’t learned we are as susceptible to being laughed at by generations to come. In the future we will be considered as stupid as the imbeciles that thought blood-letting cured everything from headaches to syphilis. Take the example I ran across today, for instance.

Some very forward-thinking members of the British House of Commons decided not to ban the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos. The purpose of this research is the treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Immediately, knee-jerk reactionaries started their cacophony of “Frankenstein” and “Dr. Moreau” references. Though no one is proposing creating hybrid organisms from these embryos, that is the conclusion to which the anti-science lunatics jump.

This area of research could lead to incredible breakthroughs in the treatment of debilitating diseases. It could also be a scientific dead-end. We don’t know; we have to try. The anti-science douchebags don’t even want us to try. As science continues barreling down the Superhighway to the Future, it still has to deal with blue-hairs and church buses in the left lane. Not surprisingly, these scientific obstructionists are trying to stay under 30 miles per hour because faster speeds than that will kill a human being.

How low will Jack Thompson stoop? According to the Wired Blog Network, pretty damn low. Jack addressed a letter to the mother of the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, Strauss Zelnick. Take-Two is the company behind the Grand Theft Auto IV game. You can read the letter in it’s entirety at the Wired link above, but here are a few choice quotes from Jack’s letter:

Dear Mrs. Zelnick:

Your son, as you may know (or maybe you don’t know), is Chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., whose most popular video games are the Grand Theft Auto murder simulator games banned in some countries but sold to children here.

Right out of the gate, “murder simulator” and “sold to children”. Jack loves his emotionally charged buzzwords. As if murders didn’t occur before the era of video games. Come on, Jack. You can’t be this dense - this is all about publicity for you.

Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Grand Theft Auto IV, due to be released Tuesday, April 29:

“We’ve already received numerous [GTA IV] reviews, and to a one, they are perfect scores. My mom couldn’t write better reviews…”

Taking your son’s thought, I would encourage you either to play this game or have an adroit video gamer play it for you. Some of the latter gamers are on death row, so try to find one out in the civilian population who hasn’t killed someone yet.

Laughable.

Mrs. Zelnick, did you train up your son, Strauss, to make millions of dollars by pushing Mature-rated video games to children? Any kid can go right to little Strauss’ corporate web site and buy GTA IV with no age verification. Strauss is even marketing the new Grand Theft Auto IV on World Wrestling Entertainment tv shows seen by millions of kids. If you trained up Strauss to do this, then shame on you.

It seems like Jack’s mother trained him up to be media whore. Shame on her. She raised her boy to open his hole up for anyone with a recording device.

Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA IV to teen boys in the United States, a country in which your son claims you raised him to be “a Boy Scout.” More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.

For someone who claims to despise everything about GTA, Jack sure knows how to throw verbal Molotov cocktails. It’s as if he’s been “trained” to do so.

I’ve got an idea for a game I think Jack will like. It’s about the ruler of a gang and how this ruler maintains order over his territory. You will be one of his many underlings. In the game, the ruler:

Orders his followers to commit genocide not just once, but many, many times.

Sends wild beasts to kill his enemies children.

Threatens to force people to eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and fathers and friends.

Condones and orders human sacrifice.

Creates a plague that kills thousands of people - men, women, and children.

Has 32,000 virgins taken as spoils of war. Thirty-two are set aside as a tribute for him.

Orders horses to be hamstrung.

Commands his underlings to “utterly destroy” and shown “no mercy” to those he defeats.

Has an underling sacrifice his daughter, his only child, according to a vow he has made.

Kills seventy men for looking at his possessions and at him.

Has an underling rip open all the women who are pregnant.

My game is called GTA (God, the Asshole), because all of the things I just listed (and many more equally horrible things) happen in the Bible at God’s request.

And the game gets worse because the Ruler can also torture the dead beyond the grave. Millions upon millions will be sent to a place where they will burn alive for eternity. What do you think, Jack? Is this acceptable? It’s your rule book we’re gong by. You should be thrilled.

Jack, think long and hard about what you want this world to be like. Douche.

On the Trinity Broadcasting Network (yes, that bastion of class and sophistication), Ben was speaking to Paul Crouch about the anti-science ‘Expelled’ movie:

From National Review Online:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

I would say more, but is there any point. I mean, anybody who really feels this way should just become Amish. There’s no point in continuing on in this society benefitting from scientific discoveries you feel are part of a long walk toward moral and physical destruction. I’m starting to see what Nixon liked about him.

Jack Thompson is a royal asshole.

Few people are busier busy-bodies than Jack. He’s been on his own personal crusade for several years to get rid of violent video games. Jack seems to think that violent video games make kids violent, though the research says “no”.

With a brand new Grand Theft Auto game coming out today, I expect to hear more from Jack. He took on the last GTA game, this one will probably be no different. According to Wikipedia:

On March 14, 2007 Take-Two filed a lawsuit to prevent Thompson from preventing the sale of Grand Theft Auto IV and Manhunt 2 to minors, claiming that Thompson’s effort to block sales of its games through lawsuits violates the company’s First Amendment rights. Responding, Thompson said, “I have been praying, literally, that Take-Two and its lawyers would do something so stupid, so arrogant, so dumb, even dumber than what they have to date done, that such a misstep would enable me to destroy Take-Two.” On April 19, 2007, Thompson and Take-Two settled their suit, with Thompson agreeing not to restrict sales through any court worldwide of Take-Two’s games, threaten to sue the company, or accuse Take-Two of any wrongdoing based on the sale of any of its games. According to one analyst, the settlement is likely to mute his public pronouncements and lawsuits against the company.

That sounds like a real money-grubbing swine to me. The asshole sold-out his principals. But, all is not right in Mudville (aka: Jack’s brain):

Source: GamePolitics

…Jack Thompson has today persuaded the Miami-Dade Transit System to pull all advertisements for the Grand Theft Auto IV cop-killing simulation game from its bus stops.

In the wake of this success, Thompson is proceeding to get all GTA IV ads pulled from all US transit systems since such ads clearly violate promises made by the [ESRB], found right at its web site, not to place “Mature-rated” game ads in venues that will be seen by teens.

He also blamed the Virginia Tech shootings on video games. Jack has become such a polarizing force in the violent media debate that other organizations that are inclined to agree with him are distancing themselves from him.

From ArsTechnica in a 2005 column:

Already, other activists against video game violence are starting to distance themselves from Jack Thompson. Earlier this month, the National Institute on Media and the Family wrote a letter to Jack, asking him to remove the link to their organization from his web site.

The latest GTA game, Grand Theft Auto IV, looks to be amazing and I will be buying it. Fuck you, Jack. If I shoot up a public place, then you can gloat. Otherwise, shut up.

I wonder how many Looney Tunes cartoons and “Our Gang” shorts Jack watched as a kid? He’s a real piece of work and a worthy member of the PR Parade of Douchebags.

Ben Stein is at the fore-front of this “documentary”, Expelled, about how Intelligent Design (ID) creation theory is being pushed out of science classes by some “Big Science” cabal.

Yeah, so?

Last time I checked there was no physical evidence to support ID, thus rendering it unscientific.

Now, I haven’t seen the film, nor will I. I have better things to do than listen to the inane ramblings of idiots who want to answer every difficult question with “God did it”. Every review I’ve read of the film says it is a ham-fisted propaganda piece disguised as an “oh, woe is me, I’m being persecuted” film. You used to be funny, Ben. I used to like you on “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. Now you go and affiliate yourself with this?

Here’s my issue… these ID people like to say that they just want “all points of view” discussed. Do these retards know how many different creation stories there are in the world? Every religion has it’s own idea - not to mention every whack-job. It’s not like the two competing theories are ID and Evolution. To open the door to Judeo-Christian Creation means we have talk about every other Creation story as well. Right now I could come up with as valid a guess as ID about how humans came to exist. Here, I’ll do it right now:

Theory: The Universe and everything in it was created by a giant wet fart from Jenu, the butt-baby of Jesus and Xenu.

What about fossils?
Jenu doesn’t chew his food very well.

Why is the Universe still expanding?
Well it was a pretty goddamn big fart. We’re still flying through space from the sheer power of it.

What are black holes?
Jenu inherited multiple assholes from Xenu’s side of the family. Xenu has an incredible number of assholes on his body - most of them in the motion picture industry.

So we didn’t evolve, we just keep digesting into smarter and smarter beings?
Pretty much, only now the digesting has stopped and we won’t get any smarter. We’re just part of a giant poop bubble from Jenu’s fart.

Daddy, what’s Vietnam?
Fuck off.

You see how this works?

Now I want this taught alongside evolution and ID because ALL VIEWPOINTS MUST BE HEARD! I will no longer be oppressed! Stop pushing my theory out of schools!

Maybe I could get Jimmy Kimmel to endorse my documentary. I’ll call it, Relieved of Doody.

The funniest development so far is that the Expelled documentary may be in trouble from Yoko Ono. The film uses John Lennon’s Imagine and the producers apparently didn’t feel like they needed to pay for the rights to use the song since they were critiquing it.

Also, I’m sure all involved were hoping for a lot of shouting and protests from the less religious community and got nothing. There wasn’t even a ripple. Unlike the knee-jerk religious follower, most thinking people realize that making a stink (not like Jenu, though) over some kind of film, book, or TV show just generates more revenue for the product in question.

Who would have ever thought that Yoko Ono would try to win Ben Stein’s money? I’m just going to sit back and laugh while the fruit of their labor rots on the vine.

From Reuters:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

…

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

For some reason, I’m just not all that concerned about black men who claim that their dicks have been shrunk.

This tard is upset because somebody dared challenge the wisdom of the local government granting $1 million to a church. Here’s how the exchange went down between Rep. Dumbass and atheist activist Rob Sherman:

Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

What bullshit. It’s obvious that Davis believes in something - censorship. Also, from what I know of Lincoln, he didn’t believe in god the same way this twat does. Abe was a lot more open in his belief and didn’t seem to be any enemy of honest doubt.

And how is knowledge that a particular philosophy exists dangerous? Nazism existed. Fascism existed. Totalitarianism existed. The Spanish Inquisition existed. Why do we teach kids about those subjects in school?

Hey Monique, I don’t want to ever hear you mention racism - ever. Some kid may suddenly realize that racism exists and become a racist. You don’t want that, do you? No. We must have only Monique Davis-approved philosophies taught in schools. Eat my ass, you ignorant creep. I would have thought that a member of the black community would be more sensitive to hearing out minority viewpoints. Way to be a hypocrite, Monique. You’ve made a real ass of yourself and joined the PR Parade of Douchebags.

Full story and link to audio.

The Vatican has released a new set of sins - seven “social” sins. Let’s look at these one-by-one:

1. “Bioethical’ violations such as birth control

Right… Instead of birth control, you should just continue to breed like rabbits regardless of whether you live in, oh… say… Calcutta. Don’t worry about being able to feed the little buggers, just keep having them and make sure they’re Catholic.

2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research

Because, God forbid that we learn how to heal anything. Healing is strictly a religious institution.

3. Drug abuse

Says “the opiate of the masses”.

4. Polluting the environment

Polluting your mind with a stupid ideas like sin and hell are still ok, though.

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

I’d like to see the ratio between Church assets vs. donations.

6. Excessive wealth

Pot, meet kettle.

7. Creating poverty

Remember, 10% is only the minimum.

The nerve of this church. How about addressing some real sins, Ratzo. Seems to me like there’s an awful big plank in thine own eye. Here are my seven deadly sins for you:

7. Molestation of children.
6. Covering up the molestation of children
5. Fucking up minds with moralistic dogma that goes against human nature
4. The glorification of suffering
3. Encouraging ignorance
2. Inflicting self-esteem-crushing guilt on your followers
1. Being completely irrelevant in the modern world