Category: Atheism

Aaaaand I’m back!

Hey kiddies. Long time no post. Seems I’ve sort of neglected this. I think at one point I had an audience of as many as 20 people. I’m pretty sure we’re back to zero now. A lot has happened. To all of us. When I started this blog it was many many years ago. I was married, I had two kids, and my wife was going slowly insane. We still don’t know exactly what is wrong with her, but I have a few amateur armchair suspicions. What’s important is after a long drawn out legal battle in a justice system that is skewed against dads and, in particular, atheists, I divorced my wife and eventually got residential custody of my kids. My kids went through hell and there was nothing I could do to stop it. They’re both grown adults now, and I think they turned out pretty well despite everything. And by everything I don’t just mean their mom. I made plenty of mistakes myself. The difference is that I own my mistakes. Anyway… rambling again.

Another impetus for this blog was the trauma of leaving a religious cult. Those folks fuck with your mind, and I spent a lot of years sorting through who I was and what I believed. As part of my recovery I took a class in Logic and Critical Thinking and it was the single best thing I ever did for myself, although it changed my life irreversibly. I’m now an atheist, a science enthusiast, and (by American standards) a crazy ass whacked out deranged libtard. That’s American for “I care about people I don’t know.”

I sorted through a lot of things on this platform. Actually, it was another platform and it’s been so long now I don’t even remember what it was. But it had an orange logo. I imported everything here. That’s probably about the time I lost the handful of followers my blog had at the time. Sometime around then Facebook and Twitter became the bright shiny new thing. I started tweeting. A lot. Don’t go looking for it, that account is gone. When Elon Musk went full on far right psycho I deleted the account. I don’t really have a social media presence left. Not as Dr. Cowboy anyway. But while I was doing the incessant tweeting thing, broadcasting every stupid thought that popped into my head out into the interwebs, I stopped blogging. I got married again. This time to someone with mental conditions that range in the two digit range (e.g. she was diagnosed with more than 10), none of which I knew about when I took those vows. So that was fun. I learned all about narcissistic personality disorder. And antisocial personality disorder. And a few others. I popped back in for one more blog post in 2019 in the middle of that shitstorm. I don’t think anybody read it. I doubt anybody will read this either. The blog has always been for me, with the rest of you invited along for the journey. I’ll probably keep exploring all of those topics, because the trauma from all of them still lives in my head. I’m still working through all of it. And now, we have orange Jesus in the white house. And every trigger I’ve accumulated over the last 2 1/2 decades is being triggered again. We’re gonna explore that too. I’m gonna have a hard time getting through the insanity that’s coming our way. Hopefully we can get through this together.

We’ve had quite the journey, y’all. Where do we go from here? Well, the country decided to elect an over the top narcissist with apparent dementia and a felony fraud conviction and a history of insurrection and stealing classified documents. Because why the fuck not? What’s the worst that can happen? Well we’re finding out day by day. We’re only a couple of weeks into the second term and the shit is flying fast and furious. I’m not going to be able to keep up with that, so don’t look to me as a news source. Plenty of others are doing that already. I’m here for us regular types who didn’t drink the orange koolaid, and are trying to keep our sanity intact while deciding what to do. When we studied Nazi Germany in school some of us wondered, or perhaps even asked by the teacher, “what would you do if you lived through that?” I think we can say for certain now that most of us gave a bullshit answer. Most of us should have said “not a goddamned fucking thing.” I don’t want to be that one. I intend to resist. I intend to keep people safe. I intend to be the person who hid Anne Frank, not the one who turned her in. Although sometimes I wonder if I’m not in danger of being Anne Frank. Let’s hope it doesn’t get there, but folks, we can’t assume anything yet. We’ve got at least four years of this shit to get through. One hopes our form of government holds long enough to retain elections for that long. That’s not what happened in Germany. Or Russia. I mean, technically Russia still has elections, but… c’mon. We all know, Vladimir.

So once again I need this outlet. I have no idea where we’re going. Let’s start finding out.

God’s Not Dead II: Electric Boogaloo

So according to The Friendly Atheist, God’s not dead is getting a sequel. That’s right, a motherfucking sequel.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/20/gods-not-dead-2-will-be-out-next-year-says-studio-head/

I find this hilarious. Apparently people are hungry for atheist stereotype poor logic defense of irrational beliefs. Go at it then. At the end of the post, Hemant issued a challenge to commenters:

So let’s have a contest! In the comment section, leave your idea for what the plot of God’s Not Dead 2 will look like. I’ll pick a winner at random in a few days and you’ll receive a free shirt from Hypatia, Ltd., a new company started by an ex-Muslim. 10% of all sales from now through the end of the year will go to the Malala Fund.

Challenge accepted.

I posted the following proposal for the plot of God’s Not Dead II:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/20/gods-not-dead-2-will-be-out-next-year-says-studio-head/#comment-1647683150

God’s Not Dead II: Electric Boogaloo.

A hell hound defiles Kevin Sorbo’s grave, and he returns to unholy life. Filled with atheist rage, he assumes commands over all of the world’s governments and passes a law that all citizens must be tattooed with the number 666 to show property citizenship. All Christians mysteriously disappear before the holocaust begins. Except for our hero, the recent college graduate, who must don the mantle of warrior once again and battle his way through hordes of satanic zombies to get to the source of evil, the anti-christ Kevin Sorbo and pave the way for the second coming of Jesus. To be continued…

Seriously, is that not the most fucking awesome Christian movie plot ever??? Apocalypse? Zombies? Massacres? Giant presses filled with people squishing the blood out of them? Explosions? Total Michael Bay shit! Go vote for me right the fuck now. I need more T-shirts and shit.

This? Again?

So this happened:

(I’m having a little trouble with the link in my blogging software, so I’ll post it here just in case it goes horribly wrong).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNl_1gQqrWI

First of all, I like Russell Brand. I do. I don’t exactly think he’s any kind of bastion of intellectual thought, but his heart is in the right place. But here, like with Ben Affleck, he’s adopted this mainline liberal idea that Muslims are this big giant group of peace loving hippies and there’s just a couple of bad apples who run around blowing up buildings trying to make Islam look bad.

So I find my self in the uncomfortable position of actually agreeing with Fox News. Yes, they got something right. There are scores of human rights abuses in Islamic countries ruled by Sharia Law. However, Fox is right but for the wrong reasons, and they get the point wrong as usual.

You see, Fox has an agenda. They target a Christian conservative audience and play on their fears to increase viewership. To a conservative Christians, Muslims are fuckin’ scary. We sort of ran out of bad guys with the fall of the (godless communist) Soviet Union in the early 90s, and 9/11 gave us a new one: Muslims!

In this case, the facts fit Fox’s narrative beautifully, as long as you don’t back up and look at the bigger picture. The Quran does endorse subjugation of women. It does call for killing infidels and apostates. Fox says that you can be killed for “sins” but it’s actually a bit more specific than that. Only certain sins will merit the death penalty, and leaving Islam is right up there. I can only assume they dodge that one because *gasp!* it makes atheists look persecuted. Fox hates atheists too, so they can’t go there. But back up a little, take the 40,000 foot view, and you can say that Islam commands death for the commission of (certain) sins. See how easy it was to twist that little fact to fit a narrative?

So lets take Brand’s claims into account here. There’s 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, and the vast majority of them aren’t running around blowing up buildings. Yes, true. But Fox was actually talking about human rights abuses, and these occur at an alarming rate in many Muslim theocracies. The problem, of course, is more complex than anything that can be summed up in a simple sentence and plastered on a picture of Morgan Freeman for circulation around the internet.

55410280

What Fox is missing is the fact that any criticism that can be leveled against Islam can also (and should be) leveled against Christianity. Christianity had Theocracies with human rights abuses a while ago too. We call them the dark ages now. Islam is currently in it’s own dark age.

You see, the problem isn’t Islam, it’s Theocracies. It’s following bronze age religions in the information age. But you have to love the irony of Fox News decrying a Theocracy, considering how much time they’ve spent suggesting that we become one.

Liberal Pseudo-Intellectual Arrogant Shitheads

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you may have missed the little spat between Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Reza Aslan, and Ben Affleck.

That’s right. Ben. Fucking. Affleck. Because his opinion is somehow important.

So let’s recap to bring you up to speed.

First this happened:

Just in case you didn’t take the time to watch those (or they’ve been taken down since I posted this) I’ll recap:

Bill Maher: You liberals who defend Islam suck. Islam is bad. Rih rih bad. They kill you n shit. Liberals who don’t speak out against the violence of Islam suck.

Reza Aslan: Oh no you didn’t! Bill Maher is wrong because he’s dumb. I’m smart. Listen to me. Islam fucking rulez, beeches! BTW I’m smart and he’s dumb!

(Spoiler alert: that’s called the ad hominem attack and is a way for pseudo-intellectual assholes to assert their superiority without actually making good factually based arguments. I kinda hate that shit)

Bill Maher: Huh? Islam kills you n shit for not being Islamic. Or leaving Islam. Or drawing Muhammad. Or basically doing fucking anything that isn’t sucking Allah’s imaginary motherfucking dick.

Ben Affleck: Whatever. Islam is awesome.

Bill Maher: WTF? Here’s some facts. They’ll fucking kill your ass!

Ben Affleck: Whatever you motherfucking racist!

Bill Maher: Racist? Islam isn’t a race, it’s a motherfucking religion, bitches! WTF are you talking about?

Ben Affleck: I’m right because I’M MOTHERFUCKING BEN AFFLECK BITCHES!

Bill Maher: But… but… facts?

Ben Affleck: FUCK YOUR FACTS BITCH! I’M MOTHERFUCKING BEN FUCKING AFFLECK AND I SAY ISLAM IS FUCKING GREAT N SHIT! MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! COME SUCK IT BITCH!!!!

Sam Harris: Ok, I’ll concede this one point to you…

Ben Affleck: FUCK YOU BITCH! WHO’S YOU DADDY?!? ME!!! I’M YOU MOTHERFUCKING DADDY! CUZ I DID UR MOM! LIKE THIS!! OOOOOH YEAH!!! SMACK THAT ASS BABY!!! WOOOOO!!!!!

Okay, full disclosure: I’m drinking while I write this, so my synopsis of the exchange might be slightly off, but I think I got the general gist of it. Basically I’m the Mr. Cranky of the liberal atheist blogosphere. Except people actually read Mr. Cranky.

So as you might have surmised, I have a slight problem with this. I’ll give you the right answer in advance: Bill Maher was right.

It goes like this. When you say “black people be like” you’re a fucking racist. There’s no African-American manual where you can glean what they think from. They’re people. If you generalize them, you’re a bigot. End of story.

When you say “White people be like” you’re the same fucking thing. To get to the point slightly faster, you can put any race or gender in there and you get the same thing. Bigot. 

But religion is different. When you criticize Christians, they have a manual. They’re more than happy to wave it in your face and quote from it. They get pissed off if you know more about it than they do and point out the bad parts. But some of them actually read the bad parts, and dutifully try to apply them. We call those assholes extremists. Islam is the same. You’ll find plenty of “moderate” Muslims who don’t go killing atheists or Christians or former Muslims or beheading cartoonists or filmmakers who have the audacity to tell the stories of abuse from the Muslim world, but they’re not exactly speaking up either. And the bad shit is in their holy book too, same as the extremists. So you can paint Muslims and Christians (and most other religions) with the same brush, because they actually have a source they’re getting this shit from. And we can go right to the source and criticize it, and we should, because there’s a lot of bad shit in there.

You see, the difference is that religion is an idea, not a set of physical attributes. And as an idea, like any human idea, it is open to criticism. And it should be. Religion is a terrible idea.

I’ve never identified myself as a liberal, even though most people consider me to be so. Most of my political leanings are to the left, because I believe that people are more important than things. That’s right, you don’t have to have a holy book to think morally like that. But these pseudo intellectual shitheads like Affleck and Aslan piss me right the fuck off. They’re liberal because they think it’s cool. They don’t give a fuck about facts, they take whatever they think they’re supposed to think and run with it.

Fuck that shit. Islam deserves criticism.

There’s a shit storm a-brewin…

The atheist/skeptic community is busy tearing itself apart again.

I walked away from the organized atheist/skeptic community a while ago over the Atheism+ thing. The reasons I did so were complex, as usual. It’s not that I disagreed with the ideals of Atheism+. I agree with them 100%. I think perhaps it was poorly named, but that’s another story. I think I may have already blogged about that too. What turned me off was the vitriol which came so easily from both sides of the argument. Those opposed to Atheism+ demonized those who supported it. Those who supported it seemed to become instantly intolerant of any dissenting opinion. I’m not talking about the hate mail that Jenny McCreight received, that was despicable and she has my sympathy for what she’s endured. But I saw exchanges where one person was mocked, ridiculed, called disgusting names, and ultimately banned by a popular Atheist speaker that I normally respect simply for asking a (reasonable) question. Had somebody told me about that incident second hand, I would not have probably believed it, but I read the exchange myself. Like any good skeptic.

Rather than take sides, I walked away.

That entire incident came on the heels of a scandal where another popular atheist blogger was propositioned in an elevator at a conference. A huge shit storm ensued as soon as Richard Dawkins chimed in. I’ve already made my stance on that incident clear in a previous post, but that reason for bringing it up again is thus: The court of public opinion tried, convicted and sentenced Dawkins within a day because he dissented. Do you see a pattern emerging yet? Let me give you one more example.

A few days ago, PZ Meyers posted a bombshell. So far I haven’t posted any links to back up anything I’m saying (I don’t have to, it’s a fucking blog, so chill the fuck out) but I’ll go ahead and look this one up.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/

In case you didn’t bother to read it, PZ was made aware of an accusation of rape against Dr. Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine.

I’m going to have to choose my words carefully here, because the court of public opinion in the atheist community is fast and vicious.

First, let me say this: Rape is serious. Rape is never not-serious. *Every *Single *Accusation *Of *Rape *Should *Be *Taken *Seriously. Every one. I feel very strongly about that. Something like 1 in 3 women get raped, if I recall correctly. I know several victims personally, and some of their stories are the worst kind of horrific rapes you can possibly imagine. Stories that make you lose hope in humanity.

But….

False accusations do happen. There is a difference between taking an accusation of rape seriously and just believing it blindly. Belief without evidence is called faith. That’s what the religious do. We’re skeptics. We need evidence.

The result of PZ’s little hand grenade is that the atheist community seems to largely have already convicted Dr. Shermer. To be honest, I’ve avoided this so far. Dr. Shermer is one of my favorite writers and speakers. I have an immense amount of respect for Dr. Shermer. On the other hand, I’m fully aware than whenever you set someone on a pedestal and make a hero out of them, they invariably disappoint you because they are, after all, merely humans just like you. 

So let’s get this out of the way first. Did he do it? I don’t know. I truly don’t. To be honest, there’s only two people who do. One of them is Michael Shermer and the other one is anonymous. That’s because we don’t know all the facts here. In the American Judicial System (I can’t believe I’m about to defend that collection of clowns after what I’ve just been through, but…) you are (supposed to be) innocent until proven guilty. This is a good thing.

However…

In the court of public opinion, the atheist community at large, and the most especially the Internet, You’re guilty. Period. One accusation and you’re done.

I just got done reading a post by a guy who managed to piss of Shermer via e-mail and proudly posted all the exchanges while mocking him. A slew of comments talked about what a scumbag Shermer is.

Really?

I think this is wrong. I want desperately for this accusation to be false. But it might not be. But I can’t go condemning Dr. Shermer until it is shown to at least likely be true. I don’t think that has been done yet.

This is what skepticism is all about, folks. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s how we work. Let’s all calm down on the judgmentalness until the facts are in. Keep in mind that Dr. Shermer’s reputation has all ready taken a serious hit whether the accusation is true or not.

We’re better than this, people.

Goodbye, Mr. Ebert

Roger Ebert died today. I haven’t talked about him much, but in recent years he’s become a real inspiration for me. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t expect that we would lose him so soon.

I forget the exact article I read that keyed me into the fact that Roger Ebert was so much more than just a movie critic, but I began reading his blog. My favorite posts was the ones where he was not writing about movies, but pondering on our polarized political climate, gun violence, and other issues. I think one of his most powerful posts was one of his last, this one: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/a_shooting_in_harsh_park.html

He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t preach, he simply relates yet another senseless killing by gun related violence. The power of the post comes from the fact that it’s short, for the most part simply relates an incident most of us probably didn’t hear about, and most importantly the final paragraph. You can sense his frustration with humanity, almost defeat in his tone. There’s a world weariness that comes through. He sees this incident through a lens that most of us don’t. This is a story that should have made national news. It should have dominated headlines across the country for weeks. But it didn’t. It was lost in an onslaught of other, equally tragic, gun related murders that happen each and every day. We, as a society, as a people, as humans, should all be working together to find a solution, but we don’t. The only discussion that every happens is political posturing. One side shouts “guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” and the other side shouts “gun control now!” All any of us seem interested in is winning an argument, but in the meantime we continue to kill countless numbers of ourselves every single day.

Gun violence is a complex issue without a single simple solution, but we as a society seem incapable of having a serious honest discussion about it and implementing any kind of solutions at all. It kills one’s faith in humanity.

Gun control is almost certainly part of the solution. What the second amendment actually says aside, I don’t think it’s necessary to ban all weapons, but there is no reason that average citizens in a civilized society need assault weapons designed for combat. An AR-15 has one purpose and one purpose alone, to kill lots of people quickly. It is only being used properly when being used to kill lots of people quickly. Whatever else my be true of the Sandy Hook killer or the Colorado movie killer, they were using their weapons exactly as they were meant to be used. There is no justification for weapons of this sort to be made available to the general public.

But there are so many other factors that factor in to the issue. Poverty, poor education, and economic inequality are all factors that are rectifiable, but we can’t have honest discussions about these issues either.

In short, I share his frustration when watching Americans posture and shout and sling old tired memes around rather than trying to find a way to make life better for anybody. I identified with the man. More than I even knew. Michael Shermer reposted this article written by Ebert then I had never read before:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

I didn’t know he was an atheist. It honestly never occurred to me to wonder. He didn’t blog about religion much. He was simply Roger Ebert, human being, supporter of the philosophy of Kindness. I respected and identified with him without even knowing that he was religion-free just like me.

That’s how it ought to be for all of us.

I will miss Roger Ebert. I will miss his thought-provoking insights, his desire to see humanity rise above itself, his powerful intellect. And yes, dear sister, those times when we were kids and would all sit down and watch Siskel and Ebert review the new movies together.

Good-bye, Mr. Ebert. The world was made better for having had you in it.

I think your plan backfired…

Ok, I wasn’t necessarily going to write another blog post today, but I went to go look at my stats since I haven’t really been caring for the blog for a while, and I noticed something weird, the page hits were really high.

Even stranger, a lot of the hits seemed to come from here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/11/how-bout-we-stop-this-trend-in-its-tracks/

Um… That’s PZ Myers’s blog…. WTF is he doing linking to me? To, of all things, this blog post: http://taocowboy.blogspot.com/2007/11/reflections-on-devconnections-part-i_10.html

Well, as it turns out, the blog post was about booth babes at tech trade shows and a policy at the most recent Skepticon that discouraged booth babes. So I checked it out. I kind of stopped reading PZ a while ago, There’s a very negative vibe over at his blog and he seems to attract a very hateful crowd. I don’t give people a pass for being asshats just because they’re atheists. If you want to have a rational discussion with me, I’m game. But f your response to dissenting opinions is to be an asshat, I have better things to do with my time. That’s why I don’t spend any time reading PZ anymore. He and his readers seem to thrive on the very vitriol we insist to theists that we don’t spew. I want no part of that, so I choose not to participate. Don’t get me wrong, PZ is brilliant and I enjoy reading his explanations of science, but the vitriol gets old. It’s the same reason I decided not to participate in Atheism+ but rather dropped out of the atheist community. I have another blog post on that topic in the works, but the short version is Jenny McCreight came to Kansas City and changed my mind about Atheism+, but there’s still a lot of vitriol in that community, so while I agree with the virtues they espouse, I choose not to participate.

So back to the blog post: PZ didn’t link to me (ah damn). But one of the commenters did. Round about comment #140 a commenter with the unlikely handle of nightshadequeen posted a link to my post from five years ago about my trip to DevConnections and my experience with booth babes. The link read “*sigh*” and then she posted a large excerpt from the post without comment (without my permission, I might add. That content is technically copyrighted, but never mind that).

The interesting thing about this is that as far as I can tell nobody responded to her (I assume it’s a “her”), but quite a few people followed the link. That much I can tell from my blog stats.

My first thought is “how long did you scour Google looking for that? Couldn’t come up with something original on your own to say?”

My second thought is that she completely and totally entirely missed the point. Had she been inside a barn with a shotgun she would have missed the inside and blown her own foot off. I’m not condoning booth babes. Had she actually bothered to read the post instead of just copy/pasting it into a comment to get a little attention from the Pharyngula crowd, she might have gotten the point. She strikes me as somebody looking for a misogynist to fight. I suggest she contact my ex wife if she wants to pick a fight with somebody setting the women’s movement back by decades. Or centuries. Millennia, more accurately.

The point to the post was to chronicle my experience and my thoughts at the convention. I didn’t hire the booth babes, and they’re not why I went. It was an experience. I expounded on the fact that these vendors that do that sort of thing do so purposefully, and it works. It’s a normal biological reaction for a male to be attracted to an attractive woman of the variety that you normally only see on TV and to go butt-ass stupid around them, and they played me beautifully like a violin. It doesn’t help that I was married to a psycho bitch at the time and that I’m a geek who doesn’t normally attract attractive women. Honestly I wasn’t offering any opinion for or against booth babes, but I would be just as happy at a convention without them. The vendors, however, would not. It was also FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO. My views have changed so dramatically since that post it’s not even funny. I didn’t even consider myself an atheist at the time.

So the total net result here is that my stats shot way up and I think I picked up a few new readers. Not, methinks, what nightshadequeen was aiming for. I find this kind of funny. It’s nice to have a few new visitors but the regulars at Pharyngula aren’t necessarily the kind of readership I was looking for. I’m not entirely sure I want to get noticed by those people. I like the open comment policy I’ve had so far and would had to have to get my own “ban hammer” as they like to go on about over there.

Gun Control

I’ve been very disappointed in Americans and in particular my friends recently. In response to the recent tragedy everybody is spouting the same old tired clichés. 

  • “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
  • “Cars kill people too, but we don’t ban cars”
  • “This violence is because we took God out of schools”

The stupid, it burns.

Guns kill people. Period. Yes, a human has to pull the trigger and point it, but the gun is what kills them. This argument is bullshit.

Yes, cars kill people too, but there is a significant difference here: cars are a tool designed to transport people from one place to another. They are not designed to kill people, and only do so when used incorrectly. Guns are a tool designed with one purpose and one purpose only in mind: to kill people. That is what they were made to do. The killer in Connecticut killed 26 people using a tool EXACTLY AS IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE USED.

I can give you a valid reason I need a car: to get somewhere. I can give you valid reason I need hammer: to build something. I cannot give you a single valid reason for needing to own an assault rifle. It is not legal, nor do I have any need of murdering large numbers of people. That is what assault rifles are for, killing large numbers of people. It has no other use.

And taking God out of schools is also bullshit. Nobody took God out of schools. Nobody is preventing children from praying to whatever God they believe in, they’ve only removed people’s ability to force children to pray to a particular God. That’s all. If your children were forced to pray to Allah in the morning at school and study the accomplishments of Mohammed, the outcry would be enormous. Yet these people see no hypocrisy in forcing Muslim children to pray to the Christian god.

Furthermore, implying that your god allowed children to be murdered out of spite due to the enforcement of the freedom of religion clause in the constitution should be offensive to all Christians. This is making the claim that your god is an asshole. I’m astounded that no Christians are offended by this implication.

I’m a what???

I find that sometimes people assume that because I unabashedly and vocally support gay marriage and homosexual equality, that I must be gay. I find this incredibly amusing. That is similar to saying that if I support racial equality, I must be black. Or if I support gender equality, I must be a woman. Or if I support animal rights, I must be a dog.

I am a white heterosexual middle class [human] male. I am privileged in every conceivable way with the exception of my lack of religion. I have nothing tangible to gain by supporting equal rights. I do so because it is right. I reasoned myself into this viewpoint, because I can find no logical reason that any human because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or any other method by which we arbitrarily segregate ourselves should be denied any rights that are given to others, including myself.

I support equal rights with no expectation of a reward in an afterlife, but ironically those who do believe in an afterlife tend to be those who do not support equal rights. By accident of birth I receive that which should be given to every human regardless of the genetics of their own birth.

If you do not support equality in any of the forms in which it has had to be fought for, why?

You do not have the right to not be offended.

Facebook is always an interesting place, where an eclectic assortment of ideas tent to bubble around the surface. I just saw a picture go by of a woman holding a sign (it’s a popular meme) which read something to the effect of

I’m an American, but I would never make a video that mocks your faith. I am offended by that. Yadda yadda, don’t remember the exact words.

So my initial gut reaction is

Yeah, let them know how kind and understanding and tolerant Americans are.

Then I think

The fuck we are…

Then I think

The fuck! I don’t agree with that sentiment at all.

Call me an asshole. I am. But I haven’t been following the events that have occurred in the middle east recently too closely, but as I understand it, it goes a little something like this. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.

  1. Some yahoo makes a video that mocks Islam.
  2. Muslims across the middle east are mortally offended by it.
  3. Said “peaceful” Muslims riot in response to their offense at the video.
  4. People die.
  5. Video maker is now a bad guy, Americans everywhere condemn him

I have a slight problem with this. To illustrate my point, let’s take this same scenario but turn it on it’s side a little bit. Let’s say it went a little like this:

  1. Some religious yahoo makes a video mocking Atheists, or makes false claims about them. Say, something like this:
  2. Atheists across the country are mortally offended by it.
  3. Atheist riots occur across the country in response to the offensive video.
  4. People die.
  5. Who is/are the bad guy(s) now?

Bill O’Reilly would shit himself with pleasure if that happened. His “War on Christianity” would hit non-stop status.

The point is this: You do NOT have the right to not be offended.

I don’t care who you are or where you live or what bronze age myths you believe or choose not to believe. You do not have the right to kill because you’re offended by something. A few years ago I condemned a nutjob pastor from Florida for threatening to burn a stack of Korans which set off a set of riots in the middle east which put American lives at risk. I was wrong. I take that back. While I still think he’s a dipshit and should not have done it, the blame for this was put squarely on the wrong shoulders. It should have gone on the shoulders of the people actually doing the killing, not the fuckwad who pissed them off enough to do it.

I don’t know what the content of this video is, and I don’t care. It could show Muhammed being prison raped for all I care, that’s not the point. The point is that no video gives anybody the right to kill. And only religion seems to get a pass on this. Only religion could inspire someone to be offended enough to kill. Only the assault of someone’s precious religious beliefs make us sympathize with murderers. I don’t give a fuck what was in that video, those people who killed others are murderers, period.