This is an old advertisement for the WTC that I found over on The Fundy Post.

Physicists claim that the Universe is held together by four forces: Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic, and Gravitation.

I’ve maintained for years that this is not the complete picture. There is a fifth force, one that actually powers the Universe. This fifth force is responsible for much of what happens.

This fifth force is Irony.

Never taunt the Universe. Just as you wouldn’t stand in the middle of an open field in a thunderstorm, never give irony an opportunity to strike you. The lightning has no intelligence and no “desire” to hit you. But there’s a buttload of electrons up in the clouds just itching for an opportunity to jump to someplace with a lower charge. You know better than to walk out into an open field to give those electrons a conduit.

Likewise, there is a giant cloud of irony out there, just waiting to jump to a place of lower ironicness. Never say out loud “I’ve scheduled my Caribbean vacation for the week after hurricane season ends, because I don’t want a storm to ruin it.” That’s just asking for a post-season hurricane to destroy your trip.

That brings us back to the unfortunate advertisement above. It’s painfully ironic today.

We have no control over irony, but we can affect the mechanisms it uses to hurt us. Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod to prevent the fires and deaths that were caused by electrical storms.

It is time for a new lightning rod. It is time to contain the dangerous power of religion.

Religious fundamentalism in all of its stripes, flavors, forms, and strengths must be eradicated, and eradicated now!

I thought it would be interesting to set up “atheist” as a keyword on my Tivo to see what it catches. Not long after throwing that line into the water, the Tivo reeled in an episode of All in the Family. I never really understood why that show was so popular. I guess it was a product of its time.

This episode is called “The Little Atheist”. Gloria is eight months pregnant. Interestingly, they show her drinking wine. (Actually, the characters never really drink it. They show the wine. They talk about the wine. They pour the wine. Then they just stare at it for the rest of the episode. The program could have Archie spouting off all sorts of inflammatory racist hogwash, but they can’t drink wine. Strange.) I do find it ironic that this program portrayed itself as so progressive, yet it showed a pregnant being served booze. Odd how the perspective of 30 years can change things.

The premise of this episode is that Gloria and Mike are not going to abuse the baby with a god delusion. This upsets Archie, who thinks that this form of child abuse is necessary. Then there’s the standard All in the Family arguments pro and con, and Archie is shown as being on the wrong side again.

The particular angle they took with this show is that it should be the parents, not anyone else (e.g., grandparents), who should have the final decision in all matters of child rearing. Although it’s hard to argue with that attitude, I was disappointed that the producers copped out of the atheism issue by using this approach.

The episode appears to be about atheism, but it’s really about who decides how to raise a child. So this program, which is famous for tackling controversial issues, doesn’t really tackle it at all. They raise the issue, but settle it by other means.

The episode ends with Archie agreeing to let Mike and Gloria do things their way, but he secretly conspires with Edith to sneak the child off to church every Sunday morning. I’m not sure how this was intended. Are the producers saying that Archie is such a selfish jerk that he will do anything to get his way? Or are they saying that, yes, the parents have all of the rights, except when it comes to God?

Here’s an audio excerpt from the show. (If you’re reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit my web site to see the Flash player.)

You’ll notice a link to the Atheist Blogroll in the sidebar. Most sites that have this will list at least some of the blogs from that blogroll in their sidebar. I don’t, because that forces your browser to run off to a different server to fetch stuff. That slows down page loading times. The code for that also uses javascript. I try to use as little javascript on this site as possible.

A bunch of blogs are listing the entire Atheist Blogroll in a post. This helps the listed sites with their search engine rankings and Technorati authority. I thought I would help out here as well. Herewith is the entire list. Scan through it and see if any of the titles sound interesting and give them a look.

Misguided fundie Bill Johnson of the Anti-Democracy Association American Decency Association wants us to put our efforts into banning internet porn instead of catching pedophiles. At least that’s how I read his latest diatribe.

BJ’s rant is entitled A federal prosecutor, myspace and a five year old. His link is broken, because it’s improperly formatted (Hey BJ! Why don’t you learn to use the internet instead of just bitching about it?). Here’s what he was trying to link to: Federal prosecutor is arrested in sex sting. According to the story, John D.R. Atchison of Gulf Breeze, FL, is a federal prosecutor. Allegedly, he flew to Detroit to have sex with a 5-year-old girl! Yow! That’s bad!

Let’s leave it up to the courts to determine Mr. Atchison’s guilt or innocence. Instead, let’s see what old BJ has to say about the case:

Another one falls. A federal prosecutor out of a conservative area in Florida picked up at Detroit Metro [airport].

I’m not sure why BJ felt compelled to mention that Atchison is from a conservative area. The conservative movement in general does seem to have a lot of perverts.

I tried to find evidence that Atchison was an outspoken opponent of “gay sex” or “marital infidelity” or “Hillary”, but I didn’t find anything. That would have made this story sweetly ironic. Since there isn’t any such angle, let’s leave Mr. Atchison to the criminal justice system and instead get back to BJ’s tirade:

Adults risking their reputations to have sex with a minor. What prompts individuals to act so recklessly and often seemingly uncharacteristically? What does such irrational behavior reveal?

I’ll tell you what it reveals. That the human sex urge is extremely strong. In most cases, it operates normally (meaning that the vast majority of adults are sexually attracted to other adults). However, in (relatively) rare cases, the mechanism can go haywire, and some adults become attracted to children. The fact that somebody could be attracted to a 5-year-old shows how incredibly haywire the system can go.

I’m not aware of any evidence that a normally-functioning adult who is attracted to other adults can just suddenly switch to children. The cause of this type of malfunction is very deep-rooted. Apparently BJ thinks otherwise:

If it doesn’t point to the powerful draw of sexual images and words, that grown men with Ph.ds, with families, good reputations and good incomes would risk everything to have sex with a youngster, then I don’t know what it more powerfully communicates.

It more powerfully communicates that BJ is a retard.

BJ has just jumped to a huge unfounded conclusion here. We don’t even know whether Atchison is guilty, and BJ has already diagnosed this man’s entire case. The articles I read did not mention whether the cops found pornography in Atchison’s house or on his computer. And even if they do find porn, what type is it?

Pedophiles primarily keep child pornography, because adult pornography doesn’t do anything for them. Pedophiles are already pedophiles before they encounter porn. If Atchison is a pedo, any adult porn he had didn’t turn him into one.

It’s a good thing, too. Just how fragile does BJ think the human brain is? Can you imagine how horrible it would be to actually live in a world like the one BJ imagines? That all it takes is a couple of erotic images to turn ordinary family men into roving gangs of child predators?

I’ve known numerous guys who have spent way too much time at the titty bars. The only damage this has done to them is to deplete their supply of one-dollar bills. By BJ’s logic, they should have all become Incredible-Hulk-like raging infernos who serially-mount every living thing they see.

If seasoned adults are stirred and manipulated by images, especially pornographic images, then there is certainly cause to be concerned for our children.

Certainly adults can be aroused by images, but what’s his point? If he’s worried that our teenagers are going to turn into raving sex machines, that’s going to happen with or without pornography, or does BJ not remember puberty? (I suspect that BJ has indeed forgotten his own puberty, having successfully repressed those memories decades ago for “being dirty”.)

Obviously, there are untold numbers of adults who can’t handle the wide-open nature of the Internet.

I agree. I just happen to think this “untold number” is quite small, though. What does BJ want to do? Shut down the whole internet just because a few people are porn addicts?

But what about the millions who even this day have been surfing the net.

What about them?

They are no where near to trading reputation for sex with a child.

And they never will be, because they aren’t in that tiny fraction of the population with miswired brains.

But they are looking and lusting, perhaps masturbating,…

Whoa, BJ! Keep a civil tongue! I’m eating here!

…becoming desensitized and/or addicted. Certainly their thought life is being incrementally corrupted.

Certainly there is some desensitization going on. There is some intensely deviant porn out there, and that’s partly because porn is so commonplace that some people have to seek out more intense stuff. As far as I know, all normal adults who seek more intense porn keep in the realm of adult pornography. I have not seen any data that suggests that normal (non-pedophile) adults who get bored with simple porn switch over to kiddie porn.

Conclusion

So where did BJ go with this article? He starts off talking about how horrible it is that somebody would seek to have sex with a 5-year-old girl. Then he spends the rest of the article talking about internet porn. What’s wrong with him? Where is BJ’s outrage at pedophilia? Where is BJ’s outrage that sexual predators are using the internet to prowl for girls? All BJ wants to do is eliminate porn!

First of all, that isn’t feasible. Secondly, it would do nothing to stop the pedophiles.

If we follow BJ’s recommendation, we should put our efforts into chasing porn all over the internet and just assume that the pedophiles will magically go away.

I have a better idea, BJ. Why don’t we put our efforts into stopping and catching these scumbags?

If you go take a look at Why Creationists Say There’s No Proof, which is a cartoon I found elsewhere, there is a comment from someone calling himself Genius835. He is apparently a moderate Christian, and he somehow thinks that this anti-creationist cartoon is an attack on all Christians.

Genius835’s first problem is that he doesn’t know what a creationist is. Aside from that, he says “I can’t understand why atheists are so quick in insulting religion without any understanding of the religion.” This is followed by my comment educating Genius835 on creationism.

What I want to call your attention to is the comment after that, by Brian. It is brilliant. It answers Genius835’s charge that atheists “are so quick in insulting religion”. In just 334 words, he sums up the situation beautifully. I’m reprinting that comment here:

More than half of this country, 150 million people, living in 21st century America, think the universe is only 6,000 years old. They think that people rode dinosaurs in saddles. They think that the light we see from distant stars was created en route so as to only give the appearance of the universe being billions of years old. It took the Vatican how many centuries to acknowledge that Galileo was right?

I hope what I am about to say will help you to understand atheists better: I insult religion because it insults my intelligence. I insult and ridicule religion because that seems to be the only language believers recognize. Rational discourse is not something creationists are skilled at. Critical thinking is beyond their capacity. Polite, courteous discourse is impossible. These people refuse to open their eyes, and if they harmed only themselves, I could live with it.

These people are actively attempting to undermine my children’s education with their Bronze Age nonsense. They want their mythology codified and enshrined in all our schools, and as an added bonus, they also want to run our personal sex lives for us. They want women to stop being so gosh-darned uppity. They want gays to go away. They want every single one of us to live in a state of fear and anger, all in the service of their imaginary god.

Perhaps you don’t believe that I understand religion, that perhaps not all believers behave this way. Surely a few bad apples can’t ruin the whole basket, can they? But it is people, perhaps like yourself, warm and fuzzy in the thick blanket of religious moderation, that excuse people like Falwell, Dobson, and any other extremist you can mention. I understand the claims made by these religions. I understand the arguments. I reject them wholly and completely.

Atheists don’t attack religion for the hell of it. We do it because religious belief has infested human society, and caused too much misery, for long enough.

Do they hand out Pulitzers for blog comments?

I know that some of you might not be completely current on some of the more disgusting slang words out there, so you may not have fully enjoyed just how revoltingly funny Pop-Up Bible Stories, Part 1 was.

Thankfully, Jon Stewart comes to the rescue. I can’t post any video here, because Viascum is very aggressive about their copyrights. However, you can go over to Santorum Exposed to watch the video. Highly recommended.

(Images from bible.ca)

Another televangelist kicked the bucket yesterday. That brings us to three (that I know of) so far this year. This time it was Rex Humbard of the Cathedral of Tomorrow church and TV show. I was hoping for somebody more evil, such as James Dobson or Pat Robertson, but I guess we have to take our miracles where we can get them.

Humbard isn’t too well known these days. I’d barely heard of him myself. His biggest claim to fame is that he was one of the very first televangelists. We can blame him for showing everybody who followed how to do it.

His second-biggest claim to fame is that he officiated at Elvis Presley’s funeral.

As you can see by the image above, he specialized in using trinkets to fleece the gullible.

The images below are from another one of his campaigns. First, you receive some junk mail from Humbard. When you open it, you discover two coins inside! Don’t get too excited. One is a peso, and the other is 20 centavos! He really broke the bank for this campaign!

You’re supposed to keep the peso. Oh that’s exactly what I need. Another piece of junk cluttering up my drawers. (I wonder if it will fool the Coinstar?) Then you’re supposed to wrap the centavo in your largest bill and send it back.

Read the above envelope carefully. What do you suppose a $25 bill looks like?

This next image shows why you’re supposed to send the centavo back. Apparently Humbard is going to feed it to a fish.

This campaign seem crude now, but many of the cheesier televangelists are still doing stuff like this. You can thank Humbard for pioneering a lot of this junk.

Here’s something I happened to miss. In the state of Texas, dildos are illegal!

(According to Pandagon, this is also true in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.)

I guess only synthetic dildos are illegal:

A few years ago, somebody made a documentary about this whole silly mess. It’s called Dildo Diaries. I guess I’ll have to rent it. To lubricate whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt I found on YouTube. It features the late, great Molly Ivins discussing the ban.

(YouTube page is here)