thereisnogod:

“You have adults going, “I was offended! I was offended!” Well, so what? Be offended! Nothing happens! You’re an adult, grow up, deal with it. “But I was offended!” I don’t care! Nothing happens when you’re offended. It’s not like, “I went to a comedy show, and the comedian said something about the Lord, and I was offended, and when I woke up in the morning, I had leprosy!” Nothing happens. “I want to live in a democracy, but I never want to be offended again!” Well, you’re an idiot.”

—

Steve Hughes (via cocknbull)

I get around this by understanding people are allowed their own views and so long as said views don’t effect me, I don’t care.  So if I see a show or a comic that offends me, I walk out.  That’s it.  If they’re preaching hate or violence, I might send them a nasty email or post something nasty about them on my blog.  But that’s it.  I’ve got better things to do than waste time being offended.

Which reminds me, I’ve got better things to do that belaboring this point. :)

A week or two ago, I stumbled across a post somewhere on some blog that featured a TED video of a pastor/minister/priest/somethingorother giving a talk about how God can let terrible tragedy happen. 

I won’t go into my honest surprise at seeing God being the topic of a TED video.  I wasn’t about to watch the thing, but I did glance over a bit of what the guy who posted the video had to say.  As with all believers, I’m puzzled as to why people have this seemingly impossible-to-deny desire to believe in a supreme being.  The video was apparently about how silly it is that most believers agree that God is infinite and yet they’ve also decided that God is “this” or “that.”  Yes, it is silly.  But what about the part where you accept that God is infinite right along the idea that God can ever be comprehended or understood in the first place?  Why even bother trying to comprehend him if you know the human brain can never fully do it?  And since He is just so far above you, why do you even bother believing at all?  What’s the point?

I left some of that in a comment on the already commented upon post (most of the comments were from believers).  And I did get a response from the original poster explaining that we should try to understand God so we can understand existence, understand how we understand and understand how we relate to each other.

Being careful to only slightly stretch my own 3 Rules of Internet Arguing, I decided to leave one more comment.  Here it is:

I guess I just don’t see much to *understand*. I mean, I read the science, I understand how certain conditions lined up and allowed me to exist.  Understanding existence in this way tells me that life is incredibly fragile.  Seeing how lifeless the universe appears to be, suggests how incredibly special and unique we are.  It also tells me that it is we who bring meaning to the universe—that without us, existence would just be a bunch of planets, asteroids, stars and space dust.  Without us, no one would be able to attribute meaning to any of it.  So, that makes human life invaluable.

So, to me, when someone I know dies or gets cancer or stubs his toe, I understand this as the way the universe works.  I don’t really see a need to describe it in terms of God.  I don’t see evidence of God.  I actually see evidence of a lack of God.

But I’ll shut up now.  I know how useful it is for you believers to hear from a non-believer (not at all).

To me, there can’t really be meaning without anyone around the comprehend that meaning.  If meaning was so important to God, you’d think that He’d create a universe teaming with life forms—plenty of people to understand the meaning He has created.

Instead, we are the only ones.  We are the only ones who see the patterns.  We see star systems and galaxies and shapes and beauty.  We bring the meaning.  Not God.

We see the stunning mechanics of the universe, while the universe itself, sees nothing.

And that’s OK with me.

From friendlyatheist:

“It’s all about the truth, people. And all the evidence is crystal clear right now: the earth is far older than 6,000 years. Evolution is a real, and it is a process built on raw chance driven by the brutal engines of selection, and there is no sign of a loving, personal god, but only billions of years of pitiless winnowing without any direction other than short-term survival and reproduction. It’s not pretty, it’s not consoling, it doesn’t sanctify virginity, or tell you that god really loves your foreskin, but it’s got one soaring virtue that trumps all the others: it’s true.”

—

Confrontation all the way : Pharyngula

Brilliant. Read this, all of it, now.

(via bildungsroman)

YES! GO READ IT NOW! I COMMAND IT!

Dude, why are we still having this conversation? We’ve ALL been saying this shit for years! I’m sick of people telling me to go read stuff I already know.  It’s just replacing one dogma with another.  QUICK! GO READ THIS, IT SHALL REINFORCE EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE!

Gee, thanks, but I’m already pretty firm in my point-of-view. I don’t need to read someone state the obvious. 

And for God’s sake (!) stop using the word “selection” when referring to evolution.  That suggests there’s a thought process behind things that happen.  It’s not “the brutal engines of selection” it’s the brutal engines of FATE. There’s no being or even “unit” that “makes” a choice: “You get to live, YOU do not.”

It’s just random luck meeting random preparedness—fate.

It’s like when people call evolution a “process”.  It isn’t.  It may look like one because we line the evidence up in a nice easy-to-understand fashion. But the reality is that it’s not a process.  It’s a mess of random events that cause things randomly.  It’s not even “survival of the fittest,” it’s more “survival of the lucky.”

When we use words like “process” and “selection” we just give the believers room to wiggle and redefine what “truth” even means.  That, in turn, allows them to keep preaching.  And THAT, in turn, makes me want to walk away from the discussion, sit down and wait for the believers to die.

This is why I asked: why are we still having this discussion?

Don’t let the bedbugs bite? That’s not the only thing we want to stop them from doing!

So, I saw this post and thought it provided a nice example of an argument I’ve been making for years:

“Another Resons To Avoid Bedbugs: Traumatic Insemination” from underpaidgenius:

Scientists discover new weapon in fight against bedbugs

Bedbugs are swiftly becoming the bane of humanity, plaguing homes, offices, movie theaters and malls alike. But the fight against the red and brown bloodsuckers has gained a new weapon. E! ScienceNews reports that researchers in Sweden have discovered immature bedbugs release a pheromone to dissuade adult males from mating with them. Scientists say the findings can be applied towards a solution to the bedbug dilemma.

When bedbugs mate, they do so by “traumatic insemination.” As the female lacks a genital opening, the male pierces her abdomen with his hypodermic genitalia to leave his sperm in her abdominal cavity. And because male bedbugs don’t discriminate between partners, they will climb on top of the nearest comrade — be it male or sexually immature. In these situations, they fatally wound the unsuspecting recipient of their amorous advances.

Luckily for bedbugs, nature has developed an alarm system to defend against unwanted embraces. When a male bedbug approaches a sexually immature nymph or male bedbug, the insect releases pheromones to let the male know he should find another friend.

Man, animals like this shouldn’t exist in the first place.

That last comment there is from Stowe Boyd, the “Underpaid Genius” behind UnderpaidGenius.com.  I agree with him—but hey, God works in mysterious ways, right?  The thing is, this isn’t just mysterious—this is downright fucked up.

I remember the exact moment I became an atheist. I was about 12 and was in Sunday School.  My teacher was telling us how God was “all around us.”  I thought about that for a moment and then pointed to the middle of the table I was sitting at and asked “God is there? In the middle of this table?”

“Yes, of course!” replied the teacher.

“But that’s stupid,” I said.

But God being in the middle of a table is just the tip of the “stupid” iceberg.  Look at how bedbugs reproduce for Christ’s sake ;)  Their males have sword penises that wound their mates with sperm.  And check it out homophobes!  There are GAY BEDBUGS, TOO!

So much for homosexuality being “unnatural,” but I digress…

The point is, there are too many seriously twisted things in nature that are just too illogical and, frankly, messed up, to think a “just” god would allow them to occur. 

So, rather than give the female bedbug a nice, identifiable orifice for sex, it gives the male a stabbing tool for a penis. 

WHAT A DICK—and I’m not talking about a male bedbug’s reproductive organs.  Why is God a dick? “Because He works in mysterious ways.”

Orrrrr, God doesn’t exist and the “process” of evolution, the hit-and-miss style of life’s random attempts to work, yields some pretty bizarre results.

What’s both scary and heartening is that the “evolution” argument seems much more rational and suggests the universe is much more stable than the “God” argument.

According to believers, if I piss off God I could end up with cancer or dead. 

I’ll try my chances with random fate, thanks.

Just keep those fucking bedbugs away from me, though—those things are MESSED UP.

friendlyatheist:

Hawkings on the origin of the universe - MSNBC.com

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” Hawking and his co-author, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, write in “The Grand Design,” which is due to be issued next week. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Wow!  The universe and I have a lot in common!  Neither of us need God!  It’s like we think alike, the universe and me!!  I bet we’d get along really well!  I wish the universe would come by my apartment once in a while.  We’d have a blast!!

Er, a bang!

Wait, I don’t want to have sex with the universe!

Found via underpaidgenius:

paulmalouf:

Andrew Nikiforuk @ The Tyee ~ The Enbridge Dirty Dozen: Michigan disaster follows 12 other big spills or penalties this decade for giant aiming to pipe tar sands oil to Kitimat

Enbridge Inc, based in Calgary, Alberta, employs 6,000 workers and ranks 18th as one of Canada’s largest companies in revenue. It operates the world’s longest crude oil pipelines, through which it transports 12 per cent U.S. oil imports.

Between 1999 and 2008 Enbridge recorded 610 spills that released 132,000 barrels of hydrocarbons into farms, wetlands and waterways on the continent. According to the Polaris Institute, this volume of crude “amounts to approximately half of the oil that spilled from the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1988.” (…)

As an atheist, I hate to even play along that there might be a god, but since so very much is at stake, I’ll do it this once:

< believe >

HEY, LOOK AT ALL OF THESE OIL MISHAPS! CLEARLY, IT’S THE ALMIGHTY GOD TELLING US TO GET OFF THE OIL!

All the evidence is there. All you need to do is Accept His Will and get off the oil.  What’s your problem?  YOU’LL GO TO HELL IF YOU DON’T SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY AND FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING!!

JUST LOOK AT THE SIGNS, IGNORE THEM AND YOU ARE A DENIER OF GOD’S WILL!! 

Look, in a moment of weakness, I, an atheist, prayed to God and asked Him: “God, do you want us to get off oil or not?”

THEN ALL OF THESE SPILLS HAPPENED.

CLEARLY, IT IS GOD’S WILL THAT WE GET OFF OIL. DO NO BLASHPHEME ANY LONGER.

OIL=SATAN THAT IS ALL.

< /Believe >

This had better work—I even learned of enough of their language to converse with them and everything!