Tuesday Tonic - Mr. Deity's Chick Fil A Ad

Thanks once again to def shepherd.

Tuesday Tonic - Join The Party!

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's best Christian, explains the clear choice before you.

QFT:

"If you think that life is sacred, but health is negotiable...join the (GOP) party!"

Betty Bowers sums up the current Republican party thusly:

"The grand old party: where you can be for something while you're against it!"

Tuesday Tonic - EnCouraging Non-conformity

                      (full screen viewing strongly recommended)

A little Tuesday Tonic for people everywhere.

"In a world oddly bent on conformity, there's something strangely
en-COURAGE-ing about a place that is anything but."

Apropos my post earlier this week: Look at this video and remember 
that finding the courage not to conform can have magnificent results.

via some.org

Less is Mormon!

         "All you need is the slightest majority, and you get to waterboard a witch!"

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's best Christian, discusses the right wing tactic of putting civil rights to a simple majority vote via ballot initiatives.

Best line:

"The more timid founding fathers created a Republic instead of a democracy because they thought allowing citizens to vote on individual rights was a really stupid idea. But you know what they call a really stupid idea that's also a really popular one...a law!"

Occupy Reason!

The vast majority of reasonable people cannot compete with the wealth and influence of the .0001% - Koch brothers alone have committed to raising $88 billion to buy the 2012 election - but we have the right to peacefully dissent, we (still) have the right to vote and we have social media to communicate with millions of other Americans.

The power to decide elections and to choose the way forward for the country lies with the people, but we must shake off the apathy and perform our duty - exercise our right - as citizens.

An informed citizenry is the only protection against tyranny, oppression and abuse of power.

Let's counter the propaganda saturating the paid media with the truth.

Let's use those products of the scientific, secular world to rally spirits and unite the people.


Revolution
(lyrics)

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
Ah

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
all right, all right, all right
all right, all right, all right

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Tuesday Tonics - Hank Fox and Al Stefanelli

Still out of town, but I had to post briefly to link to two excellent FTB posts.

Hank Fox responded with his usual amazing clarity of thought and spare, straightforward writing to Ian Cromwell's call for essays elaborating on the title "Because I am an atheist". As usual, Hank has read my mind.

This ought to be passed around the blogosphere and hopefully out into other venues of mass communication. Especially this:

"…I understand the incredible human tragedy that religion represents.

Across millennia during which “hope” was measured against the willingness of an unknowable God to fix problems or provide a future of abundance for people, rather than the capabilities of hard-working, educated, compassionate humans, we Earthlings have continued to waste our vast potential, losing out on near-infinite opportunities. During that time, huge amounts of effort and wealth have been bent toward pleasing this or that capricious god, or his supposed Earthly representatives, stealing away the value of human endeavor in order to build castles of worship, create artworks of fear-driven piety, and produce – rather than textbooks for learning – mere holy books, the printed tools for brainwashing billions of hapless victims.

Through those hundreds and hundreds of years, how many have starved, or died, or lived in pain and fear and enforced ignorance while fat priests sat in literal castles, built on the backs of their enslaved fellow men? Because I’m an atheist, I can despise the malignant, manipulative human spiders who spin and maintain those enslaving webs of belief."  Hank Fox, Blue Collar Atheist.

Also this week. Al Stefanelli outdid himself with an amazing and disturbing post about the Christian apologist William Lane Craig, whose veneer of academic credentials hides a pernicious and destructive determination to obfuscate and confuse as many people as possible. Al's takedown of this notorious liar is his usual epic and well-written work.  It is well worth not only reading, but bookmarking, quoting and sending onward.

A sample:

"In case you don’t know, William Lane Craig is an oft-trundled-out source of Christian apology because he has a lot of books out with fancy titles and is a pseudo-academic. As a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of  Theology in La Mirada, California, Dr. Craig spends a fair amount of time on the lecture and debate circuit, performing feats of mental gymnastics in an effort to explain some of the contradictory principles and answer some ”tough questions” that inevitably come up when one chooses to live their life according to a world view that includes magic, unicorns, giant demigods having sex with human women, wizardry, sorcery, fire-breathing half dragon-half roosters, Satyrs, human birds, bones coming up out of the ground and dancing around, UFOs, dancing and talking animals, flying people, teleportation and all the other batshittery that is in the bible." Al Stefanelli, A Voice of Reason.

Read!  Pass it on!  The internet is the last freethought medium - let's use it to save humanity.

Tuesday Tonics - Throwing Darts in the Dark?

via Trenchant Atheist, Faith vs. Science: A Difference in Darts

Violence In The Bible

There is just so much of it, sometimes you just have to find a source to run through the roll.

The tonic in this Tuesday Tonic is the sublime rendition of the Schindler's List theme.

(via Paprikazz  and Religious Tolerance.Org  God's Genocides)

Tuesday Tonic - Beyond Reason

Sit back and enjoy another rap inspiration on this Tuessday morning.

Tombstone da Deadman:  Beyond Reason

(Facebook)

The Poetry of Reality

Tuesday tonic!

Lyrics:

[Michael Shermer]
Science is the best tool ever devised
For understanding how the world works

[Jacob Bronowski]
Science is a very human form of knowledge
We are always at the brink of the known

[Carl Sagan]
Science is a collaborative enterprise
Spanning the generations
We remember those who prepared the way
Seeing for them also

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
If you're scientifically literate,
The world looks very different to you
And that understanding empowers you

Refrain:
[Richard Dawkins]
There's real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality

[Sagan]
We can do science
And with it, we can improve our lives

[Jill Tarter]
The story of humans is the story of ideas
That shine light into dark corners

[Lawrence Krauss]
Scientists love mysteries
They love not knowing

[Richard Feynman]
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things
I think it's much more interesting

[Brian Greene]
There's a larger universal reality
of which we are all a part

[Stephen Hawking]
The further we probe into the universe
The more remarkable are the discoveries we make

[Carolyn Porco]
The quest for the truth, in and of itself,
Is a story that's filled with insights

(Refrain)

[Greene]
From our lonely point in the cosmos
We have through the power of thought
Been able to peer back to a brief moment
After the beginning of the universe

[PZ Myers]
I think that science changes the way your mind works
To think a little more deeply about things

[Dawkins]
Science replaces private prejudice
With publicly verifiable evidence

(Refrain)

RIP Maurice Sendak

The New York Times reports that Maurice Sendak, legendary author of children's stories including Where the Wild Things Are, died this morning at the age of 83.

The insight that Sendak expressed in his work was fresh and revolutionary:

“Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are." Maurice Sendak

I think the genre of Children's Literature was vastly enriched by Maurice Sendak, but I could not say this any better than his friend and editor, Ursula Nordstrom:

“You may not be Tolstoy,” Ms. Nordstrom once wrote to Mr. Sendak after he expressed self-doubt, “but Tolstoy wasn’t Sendak, either. You have a vast and beautiful genius.” Ursula Nordstrom, Harper & Row.

Stephen Colbert interviewed Maurice Sendak for his program The Colbert Report. The interview was aired in two parts.  You can view the first part here. Below, you will find the second part. Colbert is his usual hilarious deadpan self, but Sendak will charm you with his sincerity, his humor and his ability to more than match Colbert for wit and timing.

Do stick it out till the end - Maurice Sendak has the last word and he is marvelous (sorry ebook aficionados!).

RIP Mr. Sendak. The world of Children's Books has lost a shining star.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

there are no gods (1/3)

Brief, succinct, powerful. From TheraminTrees, "there are no gods"

"A dialogue with only one participant is a monologue."

I'm posting this video today because I like the timing, as well. The author/speaker refers to the very Bible stories which were the subjects of my first two Barmy Bible Studies - the stories of Abraham and Noah. These stories, which are so popular for scaring teaching little children, are a window into the twisted world of theistic "morality".  It is likely that many future atheists begin their journey out of the horror of religious belief when they are told these stories.

TheraminTrees has a uniquely clear, easy to understand way of explaining how it was that so many freethinkers made the journey from theism to atheism.

Tuesday Tonic - Through These Godless Eyes

(via Left Hemisphere)

Philhellenes hits another one out of the park.

"...Children of Abraham, as kind and as good as you are inside...by being a follower of the Abrahamic god, you are essentially telling me that the creator of the universe once roamed this planet, pointed at a human child and said, 

'Kill that - for me.' 

What am I supposed to do?  Tell you that you may have a point?"

Good timing, this.  The story of Abraham and Isaac is cued up for Wednesday's Barmy Bible Study.

Tuesday Tonic - Bill Nye on Evolution Part 1

Sit back and enjoy a little evolutionary science on a Tuesday morning.

Bill Nye the Science Guy:  Evolution (Part 1)

Tuesday Tonic

Some days, you just need a little Hitchens.  For all his flaws,  Christopher Hitchens' clarity of thought, command of the English language and passionate advocacy for the dignity of humankind was unrivaled.

Here is a short memorial video that was presented at the Reason Rally.