Your Religion is False - BIL2009 Video

About the Talk
In a humorous talk at BIL2009, Joel takes on the lofty goal of proving every religion false individually.

About the Presenter
According to his blog, “If you want to get technical, Joel Grus is actually an aspiring author, an aspiring speaker, and an aspiring provocateur. He is, however, an accomplished jerk. Joel lives in Seattle. He has no hobbies.”


Your Religion is False.

From BIL: like TED, but BIL.

Dangerous Talk

Dangerous Talk is an atheist/progressive daily blog discussing the three most dangerous topics of polite conversation: Religion, Politics, and Sex. Our goal is to fight back against Religion and push for a more free and rational society.

Go to Dangerous Talk.

Carnival of the Godless #133

Welcome to the 133th edition of the Carnival of the Godless, January 17, 2010. This edition is being hosted by Null Session. Please consider adding this blog to your blogroll, and follow Nullsession on Twitter.

Let me start off by saying how excited I am to be hosting this instalment of the CotG. This is more than a self-serving attempt to drive traffic to my website, this is an opportunity to share some articles from some excellent atheist blogs!

If you wish to submit an article for the next Carnival of the Godless then just click here.

Natural Born Atheists

An interesting short article from the Proud Atheists blog. Not merely a rant about the lunacy of the Pentecostal church with its unwavering message of "you're going to hell!", but picks up on the idea that there are people just born unbelievers. Religious indoctrination starts at such an early age that it is very difficult to investigate how, or even whether, the average human goes through phases of religious thinking and development. From the comments, there are a few out there who do not recall lapsing from any religion but rather have always been faithless skeptics.

As some religions would dearly love to find some 'God spot' in the brain, thereby connecting us mere mortals to some alleged metaphysical eldorado, so they wish to claim that we are all 'wired for God', thereby adding yet another lame metaphysical proof of God's existence. I mean, if you find a door then it must lead somewhere - building a door on a brick wall is slightly surreal but does evolution include such aesthetic pranks? I'll come back to this door in a minute.

So are people born with a natural sense of religion or are they just indoctrinated into their parents' cult? There are some for whom belief is just not part of the program. I, for one, do not recall ever believing the stuff spoken by priests. Not only did the words not mean anything but I saw how people behaved in both church and outside it and, apart from the rampant hypocrisy, I was left bemused as to what exactly they were doing. Kneeling down in a gesture of prayer was easy to imitate but what was going on in their heads?

I suspect - or perhaps hope - that most young children go through a process of thinking through who they are as their brain goes beyond learning how to walk and starts to focus on where to walk to. I also think parents do their kids an injustice by not listening to what they try to tell them about life, the universe and their dreams. I do recall having an intense period in which it was very important for me to figure out who I was, what was it that made me conscious of being me, and so on. I had nothing that could be called 'faith' in any great gig in the sky. I was the doubting Thomas - show me! However, the revelation that eventually appeared was very interesting and best described in Buddhist terms as naked awareness - a kind of atomic consciousness. Unfortunately, I knew nothing of Buddhism at the age 6 or 7 but I did know that such experiences were not part of the Catholic canon. My natural born faithlessness grew into a conscious rejection of the whole racket. Not only was Christianity wrong (people are wrong about many things all the time, it's called learning) but it was actually a lie, which struck me as a more serious charge.

So coming back to that door. The attempt by some religions to distort neuroscience into locating some God-terminal in the brain has already started. The structure of our mind is a fascinating and important area of research, both from a scientific and personal point of view. The structure of our deepest and most basic part of the mind is normally left unconscious and yet in some individuals under some circumstances it does manifest. Such experiences are often life-changing and hence should be treated with respect. In my opinion, the delusion propagated by religions is not the delusion of such experiences but in the mind-map propagated to explain such experiences. The mental door is not a gateway to a metaphysical deity but the opening up of previously secret areas of our mind.

Are we, in the end natural born fideists or atheists? We are undoubtedly conscious. We can choose to open those doors and explore our consciousness - explore what it means to be human - or we can get faith and close all those doors, lock them up and throw away the keys. Thankfully, those keys can always be found again if one starts to wonder about those locked doors.

Angie The Anti-Theist

AngieTheAntiTheist.blogspot.com is my blog about dangerous cults in America, faith healing, medical neglect of children in the name of prayer, and my general views on religion and atheism. It's also where excerpts from my upcoming book "Exodus from Zion" appear. This book details my life growing up in a faith healing cult, Home in Zion Ministries, with it's founder, my grandmother, Carol Balizet.

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Should be interesting! I've met people who have had close dealings with cults: one was being terrorized by one; and another was trained to abduct and deprogramme cult members (which somehow never seemed to make anybody happy!)

"Why I Write This Blog"

I write this blog because losing my religion was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I want to share that with people. When I finally got critical thinking, and really allowed myself to challenge everything I believed and loved, and hold it all to the same standards of reason and evidence - that’s when I really came alive as a person. I was finally willing to accept the universe, however it was, and live the best life I could here and now, in reality. That’s a wonderful thing, and when you encounter something wonderful you want to share it with people.

This is not me but Common Sense Atheism speaking.

I write this blog because I because I really enjoy this stuff. I enjoy the search for truth. I enjoy finding out where I’m wrong, or where I’m ignorant, or where I’m right. And I enjoy these topics, too. The questions of God and meaning and morality are some of the biggest questions one could ask, and it’s pretty epic to make some progress in finding the answers.

Read the whole post, and the comments.

Atheism on the Rise Among Canadian Teens

Project Teen Canada has been conducting surveys on the religious affiliations of teenagers since 1984. Its latest findings show that Canadians are becoming more polarised into believers and non-believers. The number of faithless has grown almost three-fold whereas Christians have dropped below 50% for the first time. There has also been a steep rise in believers of other faiths, although this is largely due to immigrants. One minor point is that the new data for 2008 only adds up to 93% rather than 100%.

One interesting trend is that the grey area of uncommitted believers and agnostics is emptying out leaving the two poles of practising believers on one side and atheists on the other. The article writer obviously thinks this is a "bad thing", but that just exposes her own beliefs. Indeed there is a huge statistical blunder near the end of the piece. "For instance, 95 per cent of young people who “definitely” believe in God or a higher power also think this entity “expects us to be good to each other,” while just three per cent of atheists agree. As the percentage of religious teens falls, Bibby wonders just how that will affect our ethics and behaviour."

It doesn't seem to enter the writer's mind that as atheists do not believe in God then they can hardly then agree that God "expects us to be good". Indeed, perhaps 3% of atheists didn't understand the question, or perhaps as is seen in other surveys the category of atheist hides a lot of different philosophical positions.

Sadly, the article seems to think this is a worrying trend and the road to moral corruption. A tired and boring argument that somehow a carrot-and-stick deity is the best humanity can do to live a civil life. As one commenter says, kids nowadays want to be smart, they want to know, they want to be rational and scientific - I hope the Canadian education system satisfies these desires. If at some point in the future these kids also need to look inside themselves for some esoteric knowledge, then that too can be done scientifically without recourse to a phantom in the skies.

Obama Says U.S. Not a Christian Nation

Despite whatever shortcomings Obama may have, it is nice to have a president with some knowledge of history and recognition that he is tasked with representing all Americans and not just the Christian ones.





Thanks to Atheist Revolution.

This flipping around trying to be everyman may well come to haunt Obama if he ever lays himself open to being pinned down under questioning. He is, of course, historically correct; the USA as a nation was not founded as a Christian state. This does not preclude it from being hijacked by any religion.

Common Sense Atheism

What do I mean when I say atheism is “common sense?”

I do not mean that religious people are stupid. Believers can be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, philosophers, entrepreneurs – some smart folks.

Usually when someone says, “It’s common sense!” he really means “This is the way I think about it; isn’t it obvious to everyone else?” That’s not what I mean by common sense. I’m going to argue for atheism using your common sense; the way you already think about most things in life.

See, believers have two ways of thinking. In most situations, they think with the same logic as most people do: this is our “common sense.” Tell a believer that the bank stole his money, or that an ancient book says you can heal disease by dancing around a fire, and he will ask for evidence. That is common sense.

But believers think in a different way about their religious beliefs. This is “special thinking.” A believer reads in his religion’s ancient book that a man walked on water and rose from the dead, and that is enough for him to believe.

The whole point of my book is this: If a believer applies his special thinking to any other area of life, it becomes clear how irrational that special thinking is. And if he applies common sense to his religion, it becomes clear how irrational that religion is.

Go to Common Sense Atheism.

Ad Absurdum

The blog of Bjorn and Jeannette, a freethinking couple in Saint Paul, MN.

Much of the blog is about the activities in Minnesota with links to the Minnesota Atheists, the largest and most active atheist organization in the state.



Go to Ad Absurdum.

Aces Full of Links

A blog written by Dr Momentum. Includes all sorts of stuff, like politics, economics, science and mathematics, some humour and random thoughts and comments from an atheist perspective.

Go to Aces Full of Links.

20 gram Soul

Welcome to 20 gram Soul. Here we discuss issues relating to religion, science and spirituality through links, reviews, general ramblings and (with any luck) some intelligent discussion.

The name “20 gram Soul” refers to the experiments of Duncan MacDougal in 1907, where he “weighed the soul” by measuring the weight of people just before and after they died. His results determined the soul weighs approximately 21 grams. Since I’m still on a journey to further my own spiritual views, my soul is a little bit lacking, and by my powers of “guesstimation“, what I lack weighs exactly 1 gram.

Go to 20 gram Soul.

1 2 3 Religious Comics

This is the blog companion site to http://www.religiouscartoons.net which is a photo-album site available to everybody to upload religious cartoons. This blog will display some of those cartoons and go into more detail about what they mean.

It is the authors belief that although religion can sometimes perform valuable social and psychological services, all religions are based on absurd premises.

For instance, there being an afterlife is merely human wishful thinking. And even if there were an afterlife, how arrogant is it of us to think we have any idea what it would be like or whether or not there is any criteria or prerequisite to gain admittance.

And the ultimate audacity is to ask people to give their time, money, and children to a church that preaches to put “God first” or you will burn burn burn for all eternity.

Lets break this spell religion has over us.

Go to 1 2 3 Religious Comics.

A-Deistic

Let us be clear, we are atheists opposed not to mild-mannered deism or theism, but to the menace to logic, knowledge, and humanism that has been promoted by fundamentalists and the Religious Right.

Christian apologists repeatedly demonstrate that it is insurmountably difficult to develop a worldview free of philosophical tension when one begins and ends all thinking with an inculcated-a-priori assumption of the existence of supernatural agencies.

This blog, then, is an appeal for rational thinking.

Go to A-Deistic.

Daily Atheist

The intentions with this blog is to provide Atheists with useful content from various sources. We can all ramble about religion in a blog, but I think our ramblings become better with more facts. And also, I need to be inspired to ramble so I'd rather just present the news! (I do ramble a lot on forums though!)

Well, I decided to gather all the good and important stuff I come across here as safekeeping for myself and for everyone else. What's important and not important is not always so easy to say, although I tend to like science and the occasional good argument. I also have a fetish for statistics.

Some articles fall outside of what consider most pressing to post here, and since Google reader has a real nice "share" button and a page where my shared items go, I have decided to use it when I see stuff I like. You can of course subscribe to it.

Being Norwegian, I occasionally come across good articles in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish so I've set up a Scandinavian blog too at Dagens Ateist.

Go to Daily Atheist.

State of Protest

State of Protest is an online journal run by skeptics, atheists, and other alleged undesirables dedicated to the dissemination of pertinent rational activist information. We maintain the idea that information and critical thinking are key elements in making progress against the status quo of a religiously controlled and threatened society and world.

Go to State of Protest.

Aftermath News

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

- Seneca the Younger

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

- Henry David Thoreau.

News for independent thinkers in the “Post 9/11″ era

If you are too scared, too dumb or too corrupt to think for yourself, then this blog is not for you. If you are a sheep or a sheepherder, a victim or a persecutor, a prey or a predator, you will probably hate this blog because I challenge you to question your own cherished beliefs, think about what you are doing and how you are existing. I challenge you to stand up and be a real human being instead of a dumb animal, predator or prey. If you are truly an individual who is not the slave of any religion, cult, government or political party, and who understands the value of rational independent thought, then it might just interest you.

This site is a catalogue of evil in high places, and a guide to how that evil trickles down to infect the general population. Unfortunately, I do not have enough hours in the day or days in the week to sit here and share it all with you. The evil done by the elite aristocracy is so massive, so all-encompassing and so unfathomable to the averge person, that it is impossible to come anywhere close to describing just how diabolical these psychopaths really are.

We are all born into an essentially Masonic New World Order matrix that uses social-engineering which results in social-degeneration with most living in delusion, out of contact with reality. The latest phase of this New World Order system is moving us into the fulfillment of “predictive programming” presented in sci-fi horror books and films of the past. It is the enslavement of the human mind despite the warnings of George Orwell’s 1984. It is a time where most people are subject to mental or physical slavery to some degree, under the domination of the Illuminati.

These masters of manipulation rule with such pervasive influence that the majority of people do not even know they exist. Even though prominent historical figures like Carroll Quigley, Woodrow Wilson and Benjamin Disraeli have openly admitted they exist and that they have a secret agenda which they never openly share with the public, many people seem to think they are nothing more than a “conspiracy theory”. And that, of course, is by design. They are supposed to think that way and so they follow along like sheep headlong to their own slaughter.

The Illuminati have destroyed man’s ability to think for himself and question what is going on. They have accomplished this through the use of terror, psychological operations, media propaganda, manufactured wars, legal and illegal drugs, television, music, “education”, religion, masonic ritual initiation and other methods of mass mind-control.

This phase of history is known as “Aftermath”, the fifth and final stage in Adam Weishaupt’s scheme of total revolution, the deliberate building up and destroying of society that would condition humans to willingly submit to a ruthless and cunning elite. Aldous Huxley referred to it as learning to enjoy your servitude. Hitler said that man could be indoctrinated and conditioned into seeing hell as a paradise.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, protegé of David Rockefeller, CFR member, founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and National Security Advisor to five presidents puts it this way in his book “Between Two Ages” written in 1971:

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values…”

The purpose of Aftermath News is primarily to educate people as an antidote to the massive whitewashing and brainwashing provided by mainstream media whose primary function is to put people to sleep.

I urgently encourage you, the reader, to open your mind, to step out out of your programming and conditioning. Let go of the Left/Right paradigm and try harder to see the big picture of Reality. You can only achieve this by realizing that you are an individual human being with your own mind, able to think your own original thoughts.

Ideally, an informed public can come together to find ways to stop all the madness and chaos before it gets completely beyond our control. Informed people are empowered to both stand up to abuse and to pro-actively work for positive outcomes. We must not give in to fear, cynicism or fatalism and we must not give up hope for a better future. Study the New World Order. Pick your battles and act constructively with a positive mindset. This is the basic spirit behind Aftermath News.

This blog is authored by Paul Walker.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com is a web site that explores the existence of God. This blog accompanies the site and explores God and religion in our world today. For more information:

• Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? - Exploring God and his existence
• WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com Forum - a great place to talk to believers and non-believers about religion.
• God is Imaginary - 50 proofs showing that God is imaginary