Atheist Trap

This is just pure AWESOME!

via Friendly Atheist

Relating to my Last Post

Seems to fit in well with my last post

Christian Inconsistency

Many Christians are very hypocritical in their beliefs. They claim the bible is the inerrant word of god, and that, because of that, it is the absolute standard of morality. I will cover that in a later post. For now, I will focus on the hypocrisy of  how some verses seem to be more inerrant than others. For example, the above picture refers to how Leviticus 18:22 is devine eternal truth for saying

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

 yet a few chapters later in 21:5 it says

Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies

 yet every priest and pastor I know cuts their hair. Hell, some even get John Edwards style $200 haircuts. That money could be better spent feeding the poor. But who feeds the poor. I mean, the only people who do that are stupid commie liberal hippie douches like Jesus. And no self respecting Christian wants to be like that liberal pussy.

a few more ignored verses:

Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:34)

This verse is ignored, as evidenced by.... well, the fact that women speak in church. This verse is not completely ignored though. It is used to justify the fact that women are to be subservient and to obey the man. So, not only is this verse not taken for what it says, but it is twisted to mean what the Christians want.

"One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 23:2)

 This one is of personal interest to me, because i was born out of wedlock. Yet, I was allowed into the church just fine. Christians will say "That is the Old Testament, done away with by Jesus." The problem with that is that Jesus himself said

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Mathew 5:17-20)

This is a sign that ALL of the bible is to be followed. Yes, that means you should detest homosexual behavior, but it also means you shouldn't eat shellfish, pig, and consider women to be dirty for 7 days after their period, just to name a few.

If Christians want to be homophobic bigots in the name of 'following the bible' they need to start following the inconvenient verses as well.

UPDATE: saw a youtube video today relating to this

Windows 7 Review

Im now using windows 7(after staying up till 3:20 am in the morning yesterday setting it up). I really like it. It is the fastest and easiest to use operating system I have ever used. It required some tweaking(less than any other os though), but this is expected given that I want it to fit me perfectly, and now it does.

7 is faster and more responsive. My bootup in Vista was around 1:15, and 7 was just 37 seconds(although to be fair, Vista was a used install, and 7 is brand new). It uses less ram too. It idles at around 940 mb of ram, as opposed to just over 1.5gb ram in vista. this, combined with a better desktop manager, speed everything up a lot!

Jumplists are great. being able to right click my browser icon and open a page from the history is neat. The new taskbar is a little big, but im used to it now. I like being able to reorganize window order on the taskbar.

All in all, the new features are great, but the massive drop in resource usage is the big plus.

Windows 7

I have been hitting it heavy on the Atheism posts to start with, but, as I said in my introductory post, I am also a nerd, and will write about Tech. I decided today to make my first technology post about Windows 7. For those of you who don't know, it is Microsoft's next version of Windows, set to release Thursday. Windows 7 has many perks over Vista:

1. It's shiny! - The new Aero tweaks make 7 look cooler. One neat difference is that the taskbar and the title bar stay transparent when maximized, which was sadly lacking in Vista.
2. It's faster - it starts up quicker and is more responsive. A new desktop window manager driver update makes it use less memory as well.
3. Libraries - Having 1 music folder that displays everything from several locations is useful.
4. New taskbar - the new taskbar is very different from Vista's. It will get it's own post after I install 7 on thursday. It now puts all instances of 1 application in one icon. Yay for saving space! It also has a dedicated Show Desktop button.
5. Jump lists - little popups that come up with a right click on a taskbar icon. these can contain anything the developer chooses. Frequently browsed web sites in Internet Explorer, favorite songs in Windows Media Player
6. Tons of little things - Easier control of User Account Control, better wifi management, being able to easily 'snap' a window to 1 side of the screen.

All in all, 7 looks great. I cant wait for Thursday!

The Coming and Going of Faith

I am a stubborn individual. I don't change my mind easily, but when I do, I go with it 100%. As a young child I wasn't very religious. I believed in that Jesus guy that my mom read to me at bedtime, but I also believed in the tooth fairy. I went to a Catholic church, but was too young to really understand it. I stopped going to church at 5 years old, because my mom split up with her then boyfriend(what a devout faith... held together by someone else's attendance, which was in turn held by his mother's insistence). After that, it wasn't really a subject until my cousin's fire and brimstone hell talk, mixed with insistence of an impending rapture scared the shit out of me.

After that, I insisted that we find a church. We did, and I latched to it. As a socially ostracized 14 year old, who could not find acceptance from his peers due to a disability, I would have taken any acceptance. I probably would have agreed to fellatiate a priest if it would have given me a group I could call friends. I began going regularly and loved it. I soaked up all the bible I could, learning all I could about it. To quote the 'good book' itself:

in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. - Philipians 3:5-6

I was like Paul, a religious fanatic. I learned all I could about the bible. I was that annoyingly overt Christian who prosthelytized and preached to anyone who would listen.

It was because of this 'full throttle' faith, I knew a lot about the bible, which enabled me to see it's contradictions. I realized that there is no solid evidence to prove the bible, and, in fact, plenty of evidence against it.

Once my Christianity waned, I became a deist. I realized that science explained our universe's nature, and how humans came about, yet fell for the fallacy that because we don't know the origin of life, or how the universe began, goddidit! I soon realized that such logic was flawed. You can't insert god into any gap you find and call it evidence. It was then that I became an agnostic, based on the view that because we have no evidence either way, we should just leave it as a giant cosmic maybe. The problem I found with this was that it could be applied to anything. I could use that argument to 'prove' the Flying Spaghetti Monster, UFO's, Bigfoot, or, my personal favorite, Russell's Teapot. It is logical and scientific to begin with a null hypothesis, aka 'It doesn't exist until proven otherwise.' It was then that I became an atheist(although, if we are going by the actual meaning of the word, I was an atheist as soon as I didn't ascribe to theism).

Looking back, I am thankful for going to church. It showed me the flaws in religious thinking that I otherwise may have ignored in stubbornness. I feel like there is something I'm forgetting, but if I remember, I will post it later.

I've Been Added to the Atheist Blogroll!

Yup, That's right, Nonreligious Nerd has been added to the Atheist Blogroll. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a collection of atheist blogs from all around the world. You can see the most recent updated blogs in my sidebar. To join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

Excellent Commentary About Prop 8 Lies

Via: Gaytheists

Atheist Beliefs

I saw this of Friendly Atheist here, and it got me thinking. Religion is an apathy tool. It allows you to be lazy and do nothing, yet not feel bad. Starving children? pray about it. Thousands dead in a tragedy? Give a heartwarming sermon. Without the 'get out of guilt free' card of religion, we, as atheists, are typically more motivated to action on the causes we care about. We strive to better ourselves, instead of praying a magic sky fairy will do it for us.

Religiously Fueled Hate

This picture sums up my experiences with many Christians. They shun and disapprove of me because I fit into many of those items.

Honest Inquiry by Christians?

When you see the above picture, who do you think made it? Secular Student Alliance? nope. Secular Coalition for America? guess again! would you guess a Christian group? Neither would I, but that is what happened at Purdue. A Christian group put up a sign saying "I hate religion because..." for the purpose of understanding the nontheist viewpoint. This is surprising, given how many christians 'understanding' of atheism consists of "I understand that you are wrong!" I applaud this group for doing more than that, and actually caring about our reasons for unbelief.

Via BlagHag

Would you stone your child to death for swearing at you?

The bible commands it, among other things, which Christians selectively ignore.



Credit goes to Gaytheists for the link.

Abstinence 99.99% Effective

Just saw this, thanks to a friend, and I had to post it.

Living in a religious home.

Im an atheist living in a religious home. It is a struggle. Here is my situation: My mother, who believes in a literal interpretation of the bible, is a member of The Church of Christ in the town where I live. She and my brother go every Sunday. Then there is my Step-Dad. He is vehemently opposed to organized religion, and see's all religious people as filthy hypocrites. Yet, strangely enough, he reacted most negatively to me not believing in god. He got mad, and called me a hypocrite, for reasons I still do not understand. My mothers reaction was 'Ok.' followed by denial, and demand that I drop the subject if ever brought up.

Knowing how my situation is, I was wary of asking to go to Skepticon II. but I was tired of hiding who I am, and I wanted to go, as it is by far the closest a meetup has ever been to my location. So I asked my mom if I could go, and her response was "You know I don't approve of that!" To which I responded "I know, but it is part of who I am." She then asked me why I didn't believe, and I responded with the fact that there is, at the very least, lack of evidence for God. She then asked if I believed that Jesus had actually lived, because that "has proof outside the bible." I responded that if she was referring to Josephus, his writings on Jesus consist of 2 references, 1 shown to be a fraud, and the other to be rather vague. At this point she just said "Whatever, I don't want to talk about it!"

She then shifted into saying that she didn't know if she could allow me to do something like expressing myself (in a way that didn't fit her dogma) while living in her house. In essence she said that I cannot be who I am, because It bothers her. She did say she would "do some soul searching" and let me know if I could go to skepticon. So I remain hopeful. I will let you all know if I can attend.

UPDATE: I can go! Sadly, it is not all good though.

Frist psot!

This is the all important introduction post! I'll keep it short and simple, and tell you what this blog will discuss:

• Atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and the recent events effecting these groups, as well as other related groups.
• Technology. I'm not just an atheist, I am also a geek. so occasionally there will be tech posts, but this is first and foremost about atheism
• Random Shit: I have a life, and some of the events therein will spill into this blog.

Also, as I'm sure you can tell by bullet point number 3, there will be swearing here. It will be kept to a reasonably low degree, but I offer this disclaimer here and now so you don't expect this blog to be PG.

Another post coming soon!