Adult Swim Pokes Fun at Christianity

Frisky Dingo - 205

Squidbillies - Survival of the Dumbest

Pretty funny, about 10 minutes each

Interview with Webster Cook on Freethought Radio

Following up on my last post about the UCF student whose actions led to PZ Myers soliciting people to obtain holy crackers so that he could personally desecrate them , is a link to an interview with the actual student, Webster Cook.

Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation interviewed Webster on July 19 on Freethought Radio. The interview lasts for about 15 minutes and doesn't begin until somewhere in the middle of the podcast. Webster goes in to great detail about the events and is careful to explain what actually occured. I highly recommend checking this out if you're at all interested in this story.

While I was exploring the FFRF website I bumped into this 50 question Bible quiz. I only got 22 of 50 questions correct. Apparently that's passing according to the FFRF. They report that the average person scores a 15. If you take the quiz post your score in the comments!

Creation Science Proves God Exists!

For all you faithless heathens out there still doubting the existence of God look no further! This video, originally posted at GodTube, clearly shows the intelligent design of God's creation. Why else would walnuts look like brains, tomatoes look like hearts, and kidney beans look like kidneys?! Duh!!!

PZ Myers discusses "IT'S A FRACKIN' CRACKER!" post on Catholic Radio International

So here's the deal:

James Webster, a student at the University of Central Florida, attended Mass held on campus with a friend he brought with him a few weeks ago. Apparently, when James went up to receive the Eucharist he brought it back to his seat to show his friend instead of consuming it on the spot (fyi, the Eucharist is a magical piece of bread that turns into Jesus when Catholics eat it). Well, a church leader noticed and tried to retrieve the cracker from him, supposedly by force.

You can read more about the incident here.

Anyhow, PZ Myers of Pharyngula blogged about it and said this:

"So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address."

PZ was recently interviewed by Catholic Radio International to discuss his blog entry about the cracker. The interview was relatively dull but I loved PZ's response to the "you can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God" argument. When posed with this pretty lame apology for the existence of God, PZ rebutted,

"If you believe that love exists without empirical evidence then you fit the definition of a stalker."

LMFAO!

You can listen to the full interview here.

1 Bald Prophet + 2 Bears + 42 Children = 2 Kings 2:23-24

If you weren't already convinced that the God of the Bible loves you then you should read 2 Kings 2:23-24. God shows he loves us with bears!

23And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

The movie:

Through Christ Alone? A Skeptic's Response...

This is a response to a recent blogpost entitled, Through Christ Alone.

The Bible is very clear that the only way to Heaven is through Jesus Christ alone (see John 14:6). Interestingly, according to a recent survey of the U.S. religious landscape, 70% of people who claim affiliation to a particular religious faith reject this idea. In fact, 57% of Evangelical Christians think that many religions can lead to eternal life.

This is both encouraging and depressing at the same time. It is actually of little surprise that such religious pluralism is so prevalent in American society when one considers that, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,

“…44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.”

As Christopher Hitchens so aptly questions,

“Do these people have no idea how much used to hang on the differences between Wesley, Luther, Miller, Smith, Augustine, and Aquinas? How choice of religion was once a life-and-death matter, in this world and the next?”

Thank God that these choices are no longer life-and-death matters! Yet, it is even that much more frustrating that so many believers still cling to their beliefs in spite of, or in ignorance to, the contradictions between their self-identified religious faiths and their own foggy notion of what is necessary to achieve eternal salvation.

While the majority of Americans have apparently rejected biblical literalism, at least with respect to the beliefs one must subscribe to in order to avoid spending one’s afterlife in a lake of eternal fire, a significant minority has not. A good friend of mine, Matt Capps, takes literally the necessity of accepting Jesus as one’s lord and savior as a requisite belief to enter Heaven (described here).

To accept this belief is to espouse the following ultimatum: Worship Jesus or burn in Hell forever.

To be frank, I find this doctrine morally detestable to the highest degree.

A skeptic’s creed is simply this: extraordinary claims must be met with extraordinary evidence. So long as the evidence and reason for a particular belief are in proportion to the claims being made then a skeptic will accept it as provisionally true; that is until further evidence / reason refutes said claim. Basically, a skeptic is one who fully and consciously embraces the scientific method.

Before one considers the moral proposition that Jesus is the only path to Heaven one must consider whether there really is even a Heaven in the first place. Does a personal God exist? Even so, is there sufficient reason or evidence to suggest that our spirits live on after our bodies pass away? The answers to these questions must be known with the highest level of confidence prior to contemplating the original question.

I’ll end here with a quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

"If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind."

B.J. Novak on Islamic Virgins and Heaven