"Filthy Atheists"

As I indicated some nine days ago, I attended the third (I believe) meeting of the Mid-West Humanist association, with a great deal of trepidation that was proven unfounded. The fourteen or so other people in attendance were bright, eager people from 21 to 65, of various backgrounds, each with an interesting tale to tell and a fascinating perspective on the religious peculiarities that exist in Irish society.

Being the non-writing aspiring writer that I am, I figured that since I had found an organisation that I could conceivably contribute to, I'd better volunteer my services to their blog, and after a rigorous vetting process that involved lifting one's hand to indicate willingness, three new authors joined the fray, myself included.

The first thing I contributed was a repackaged rehash of one of my pet-projects on this blog, 'Saints and Shitters', which may well have found a new home, if the reception there is warm enough. I've since followed it up with some new content, in which I laud the average Irish Catholic (typical contrarian prickery, eh? Lambasting it on my personal blog, only to join a pack of filthy atheists and have a change of heart).

For the sake of brevity, I've grotesquely simplified everything down to a level where America = bad, Ireland = good, but I'm hoping the bones of my idea will prompt some bit of critical thought.

You should should see this development as A Very Good Thing, as it means that my espousal of atheism has found a new home, leaving me more space to fill with unbridled PMSing.

Please to enjoy: In praise of Irish Catholics - which features the phrase "the only thing that comes close to this woman’s offensive ignorance is her aesthetic repugnancy" - religious broadside and fatty-bashing in one blog! I'm like a pig in shit!

define: sully

One of my favourite websites of recent times is UrbanDictionary.com - a vast educational resource that I use to inform myself on a vast number of topics, from internet memes I haven't encountered to the non-standard use of a word that doesn't make sense in its usual context. Most crucially, UrbanDictionary has minimised those awkward moments in which I must ask an acquaintance what a phrase means, only for him to describe a sexual act so depraved that it surely only exists in theory.

Putting that randomly-divulged piece of trivia to one side for a moment, I'll introduce another! Lame as it is to admit, I get a small kick out of the fact that my nickname (and blogging handle) is also a verb:

sul·ly [suhl-ee] verb, -lied, -ly·ing, noun, plural -lies. –verb (used with object)

1.	to soil, stain, or tarnish.

2.	to mar the purity or luster of; defile: to sully a reputation.

–verb (used without object)

3.	to become sullied, soiled, or tarnished.

–noun

I've gotten some mileage out of this over the years - even if it mostly consists of me lecherously threatening to 'sully' my girlfriend when I've run out of idle threats to send her way - but until today I've never been bored enough to look it up on UrbanDictionary. Of the 17 results, some of them are quite mundane, others are quite funny, and one or two evoked an irrational paranoia that the author could conceivably be talking about me! So let's have a looksee, eh?

Sully
A charismatic,but cheeky person with the power to annoy and entertain people around the world.can be random and unpredictable at the best of times.

a ''sully'' is sitting in the corner.girl sits down with a lot of food. sully:woah,take it easy on the munch there. girl:are u calling me fat? sully:are you calling me a liar?

"Random"? Maybe. "Entertaining"? Why not! They even incorporated my latent misogyny into the usage example! Urban Dictionary is great! Let's see what else is on here...

This one was posted on my 22nd birthday (I kid you not!):

Sully
[...] Favours the nazi regime over drunk easy women!! [...]

Sullys eyes are imfamous for giving people the impression that he is imagining having sexual relations with underagers![...]

Also believes to be batman...this is just a excuse for him to dress up in the costume so he fits in with the kids!

sully.....i tink ur of the homo majority!

Hmmm... Not sure I like this one quite as much. Some of these accusations are mere misunderstandings, of course. I would rather be reading about the Nazi regime than entertaining intoxicated women, but who wouldn't? The perma-pensive look on my face could understandably be misconstrued as intent to play the kiddie fiddle in today's paedophile-obsessed society, and my Batman impersonating proclivities hark back to a childhood obsession with a certain Snickers ad, and nothing more.

Let's look at another one:

Sully
a male child who strangely resembles shirley temple and will not shut the fuck up. Most teachers hate "sully" and wish him to never speak again. A "Sully" will frequently ask stupid questions that will either end up in a very short sentence, or a reprimand for asking something so stupid (if a reprimand occurs a "Sully" will give a long, unnecessary explanation of what was going on through his mind when he asked the question). Somehow he manages to pull good grades out of his ass. He also embarrasses himself in front of others and then when laughed at he says, "I did it on purpose to get a laugh."
NOTE: "Sully" is capable of saying "you know" 14 times in a short monologue.

Sully, shut the fuck up!

This person has to be talking about me - I do pull good grades out of my ass, I am prone to asking questions then explaining my motivations for doing so, and I do on occasion sacrifice my dignity to amuse others. And while it's true that teachers to find me quite offensive, the part of the description that tips me off the most that I'm being attacked anonymously by the internets is this irrefutable evidence:


Of course, not all of the entries are a libel on my character - it seems that there are alternative uses for the word 'sully' that cast the aforementioned idle threat to my girlfriend in a much more sinister light:

Sully

Get a girl mid-orgasm, pass out drunk and pee inside of her.

"I've been cleaning piss out of my vagina all day because some asshole gave me a Sully last nite."

Hmmm... I'm not quite sure what the point of this exercise was, but it's soured my opinion on Urban Dictionary somewhat. Ban this sick filth!

Any Takers?

While my final year project was in its gestation stages I joined the atheist.ie forum, thinking I could probe its users for information and ideas relevant to the thesis, and also because I wanted to bolster the meagre 150 or so members they had at the time (which has since grown to over 800, I'm happy to note).

Registering was about as involved as I got, as once my thesis topic was established I had no need nor inclination to converse with anonymous internet types about a topic that can get quite tiring quite quickly.

Regardless of this fact, I received an e-mail yesterday alerting me that someone from the messageboard had sent me a private message:

Hi,

As an member of atheist.ie living in the Mid-west I thought you might like to know that there is a new group of Humanists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Skeptics meeting in Limerick.

Our website is at http://midwesthumanists.wordpress.com/ and our next meeting is in the Castletroy Park Hotel at 11.00 on Sunday the 19th of October.

Hope to see you there

I have a natural aversion to such gatherings - my concern is that it could be an opportunity for a group of people to unify for the purposes of mutually affirming one another's 'beliefs*', (or as a more eloquent friend described it, a 'circle jerk') - which would fly in the face of my personal philosophy, and therefore not be a thing I want to be a part of (I'm talking about the belief-affirming here, although I should probably clarify I've no interest in circle jerks either).

Of course, there's a chance that this is an organisation that is interested in something a little more cerebral, and if the (rarely updated) blog linked above is any indication, there's at least one like-minded soul (inappropriate metaphor intended) involved that I could happily engage in conversation with.

So then. 11am - Sunday the 19th of October - Castletroy Park Hotel. Anybody want to accompany me on my investigation into this group?

*= I put 'beliefs' in apostrophes because atheism does not involve belief - it involves repudiating the claims of religion, most of which are demonstrably false. I should have just said 'disbeliefs', but I enjoy asteriks. Really spruces up the blog.

10,030.54 Kilometers

See that red dot on the leftmost side of the picture of the Earth? That's where I am now.

See that red dot on the rightmost side of the picture of the Earth? That's where I'll be in two weeks time!

As you've surely figured out by now - I'm quite excited by this fact.

It seems that I'm an asshole

So randomly today, I found myself the unwilling participant in conversation with a person who told me that he hurled himself off the top of a five-storey building in an attempt to end his life.

There was a moment of silence, in which he expected me to react, but to chase away the silence that met him, he topped off his story:

"That was the first time I tried to kill myself"

Not wanting to get into a touchy-feely conversation with the how or why behind this person's mental illness,I decided to try and end the conversation as politely as possible:

"It's true what they say - you never forget your first time."

Eat-driving

It seems that eating a McDonalds® meal whilst driving a manual-transmission, power-steering-free, cupholder deficient vehicle through a suburban area then a country road at night is a difficult task.

Y’see, a manual transmission, power-steering free vehicle generally requires the use of all limbs for effective piloting. The left hand is responsible for changing gears, operating the handbrake, the indicators, and toggling the headlights between high and low beams; the right hand is tasked with turning the steering wheel, assisted by the left hand when turning (due to the difficulties imposed by a lack of power-steering). The left foot is necessary to operate the clutch, while the right foot operates the brake and accelerator. It’s not a complex system, as basic co-ordination between limbs in this inter-reliant fashion will generally lead to safe locomotion.

Difficulties that arise when additional duties for the four limbs are introduced can be overcome by implementing a proprietary driving system, such as the official McDonalds® ‘I can’t wait ten minutes I have to eat now’ system, which compensates for the multi-tasking limbs by introducing less dexterous - hence underused - body parts.

For instance, whilst the driver holds a McDonalds® Sweet and Sour dipping sauce in his left hand, and a carton of McDonalds® lightly salted French fries in his right, the operation of the steering wheel is sub-contracted to the subject’s knees. This duty is compounded by the presence of a McDonalds® 500ml carbonated beverage clamped between his thighs, which must be held together despite the constant movements of left and right feet on the pedals. This three-way conflict of interest means that the driver must maintain a balance between maintaining a safe position of the vehicle on the road, the vehicle’s rate of acceleration, and maintaining only a gentle grip on the beverage between his thighs, so as not to warm it.

When changing gears, great care must be taken not to spill the McDonalds® carbonated beverage, as the depression of the clutch involves considerable leg extension. Great care must also be taken not to spill any of the McDonalds® Sweet and Sour dipping sauce, which should be gripped between the thumb and index-finger as the gear-stick is manipulated with the palm of the left hand. A similar process is involved when indicating and toggling the headlights between high and low beams, making use of knuckle of the thumb to activate the switches.

When taking sharp turns on a car without power steering, two hands are generally required to turn the wheel. This is generally problematic, as once the right hand has been handling McDonalds® lightly salted French fries, drivers do not wish to transfer the residual salt to the equipment in the vehicle. A sharp turning manoeuvre can be performed satisfactorily whilst holding the McDonalds® Sweet and Sour dipping sauce between the thumb and index finger as before, and gripping the wheel at the 10 o clock position with the left middle, ring and little fingers, and placing the wrist of the right hand under/over a spoke on the steering wheel as appropriate, and moving it in an anti-clockwise / clockwise direction.

Follow this guide, all drivers of cupholder-deprived, power-steering lacking, manual-transmission vehicles, and enjoy the sudden improvement in the quality of your life today!

[Note: Has been known to cause serious injury and some cases of death]

Sick Note

That picture was taken last Friday at the Cahercalla Clinic in Ennis, just before I got my wisdom tooth pulled.

In advance of the surgery, I was advised to take a week off to recover. I was looking forward to the this process, thinking it’d afford me a few days to write and blog and job-hunt with the kind of zeal my present obligations have a tendency to interfere with.

For the past few days I’ve felt a desire to defend the procedure, lest anyone think any less of me for the fashion in which it was carried out. This compulsion is enforced by the phenomenon that most people I’ve talked to have had more teeth pulled with much less ado.

Y'see, my lower right mandibular third molar (to use its proper title) was removed whilst I was under general anaesthetic, on an operating table, wearing only a hospital gown. My father couldn’t help but compare this with his experience, in which he had four wisdom teeth removed in a dentist’s chair (whilst conscious, wearing his own clothes) on a Friday, and was back at work on Monday. Any efforts by myself to situate such incidents as belonging to a more barbaric time are immediately rendered fallacious by my girlfriend who underwent essentially the same procedure not too long ago.

For these reasons, I feel the need to regurgitate half-understood buzzwords from my dentist’s diagnosis to elevate my seemingly childish ailment into a testament to how severe the situation was. When someone innocently remarked “I’m surprised they knocked you out for just one tooth”, I couldn’t not stick up for myself: “The one tooth I did have was coming in horizontally!” I spluttered, as if such an orientation gave it explosive properties. I followed this up with a swift appeal-to-medical-authority to quell the quarrelsome lay-person: “Also, it was so close to the nerves for my tongue and lips that they didn’t want to take any chances”.

When dealing with more-credulous profferers of sympathy who unwittingly stumbled into the realm of undermining my condition, I’d occasionally indulge in some purely speculative exaggeration. “My wisdom tooth came in horizontally, and was pushing against my teeth – in time they could have looked like a line of collapsed dominoes!”

Anyhow – whether or not I managed to impress upon those around me that my recent “surgery” deserves the quotation marks or not, I can at least assure you that I believe it was an ordeal. The amount of pain and swelling I’m experiencing is still on a sharp upward trajectory; whereas the lump in my cheek was the size of a ping pong ball yesterday, it’s more comparable to a tennis ball today. As my face balloons, I can hear my speech growing increasingly indistinct, and I’m starting to sound a poor man’s impersonation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

Needless to say, the first day of my well-intentioned week hasn’t been very productive. Not only has my work ethic been kicked squarely in the nuts, but my level of concentration has taken a hit also. Whilst driving my car earlier on, I noticed the lack of the symbiosis between man and machine – I was on edge, trying hard to focus on what I was doing, but having little success and feeling quite unsafe in the process. There was an editorial-piece that I was going to get around to writing today, but if I can’t trust myself with the mechanical operation of a motor-vehicle, I’ll hold off on any attempts to provoke-thought for the time being. Instead, I’ll post something that I wrote last week, decided ‘nah’, and figured I’d touch up before posting at a later date.

Since I’ve spent the past 600 words hedging the following entry with a ‘don’t blame me, I’m on medication which affects my judgement!’, I think I can safely post it without the edits I planned on making whilst of sounder mind. Enjoy!

WTF of the month

[Note: this isn't a regular feature, in case you read too much into the headline]

True story: a week or two ago, I attempted to visit this very blog to have a peek at what I was up to a year ago (it's no secret that this blog serves as my online memory), but instead of arriving at 'Sully's Blog - the angry warblings of a narcissistic atheistic pedant', I found myself looking at 'AZT.com - Mega site of Bible studies and information'.


My jaw dropped. For the first four seconds I wondered if the site had been hacked by someone displeased by my good-natured ribbing of organised religion, but realising how utterly insignificant my site is in the grand scheme of things, began to look for alternative hypotheses.

So I checked the address bar. I wasn't on ssully.blogspot.com at all! I was on ssully.blogpot.com!



It seems that these evangelical types decided that they would buy a domain to catch typo-prone chaps like myself, and convert them in the process. Of course, if they'd learnt from the experiences of Jehova's witnesses, they'd know that few people enjoy spontaneous religious pontification, but it's a nice effort all the same.

With friends like these...

A few months ago, I decided to add the Feedjit widget to the blog, which sits to the right side of the page and displays where the last few hits came from, for all that are interested (such as myself).

Late last night, I got a message from friend and fellow-blogger Fin, suggesting I have a gander at the detailed results page for the widget.

From the details above, it seems that someone came to the site from Ireland, using Firefox as their browser, running Mac OS X, and found it through google after searching for 'people who are shit at halo'.

After a bit more scrolling, I saw a few more unusual entries of dubious veracity:

As you've probably surmised by now, my friend is an idiot. A very clever idiot. If you're interested, he's written up the same tale with a bit more technical information, on his new look blog! (Oooooh!)

"Broken"

I'm posting this video because it deserves to be shared and seen by as many people as possible. If you're not interested in US politics, you might want to give this post a miss, however.

The clip is a delightfully succinct summation of the type of brazen hypocrisy that propaganda-spewers will indulge in, and the highest concentration of these offenders seem to sit on the right-wing, making the job of political satirists like Jon Stewart a very easy one indeed.

It's testament to how broken political reporting is in the United States when Stewart can just compare statements made by pundits (and politicians) and get the laughs he does. To a casual-follower of US politics, Jon Stewart's comedy (!) show is essential viewing, as it represents the most forthright and concise criticism that one can find on US television.

A Close Call

Whilst playing videogames with my seven year old brother, I became distracted by the fact that he had stopped looking at the TV screen and was directing his gaze towards me, as if gearing up to broach an awkward subject.

“Can I help you sir?” I asked.

“Seán” he squeaked.

“Yessir”

“Do you know America?”

“If by ‘America’ you mean the nation known as the United States of America, then yes I do”

He took a moment to process what I had said, then continued:

“Do you know that there’s a hurricane there at the moment.”

I chuckled and said “Oh Really?”

He seemed taken aback by how aloof I was about our exchange, and proceeded gingerly:

“Do you know who’s there?”

“Who?”

“Caitlyn.”

He paused, waiting for the shock to register on my face, then gave me a little prompt:

“Your girlfriend.”

At this point, (after another chuckle at his concern), I put his mind at ease by explaining to him that America was a very large place, and that anybody I know over there was not in any danger.

And in one fell swoop I learned a few things about my littlest brother: he likes my girlfriend, he has a means of keeping abreast of major world affairs, and unlike his second-eldest brother, he endeavours to be tactful and discreet in potentially difficult conversations!

Excuses Excuses...

It seems every other month I find myself apologising for some perceived infraction of the blogger - blog-reader covenant. Dear reader, I am truly sorry that I only managed a feeble three posts during the month of August, and I'll try my best to counterbalance this dearth during the month of September.

In the meantime, I humbly present my excuse:

I couldn't update because I had a few things to do. Things like:

Going to Pittsburgh to see old friends!

Going to a wedding in Wisconsin!
Checking out a baseball game in Milwaukee!

Being best man at my brother's wedding in Cork!

Visiting Northern Ireland!
Graduating!
Going to my graduation ball!

Next post should be business as usual: over-zealous effusions about things people care little about!

Things you probably didn't want to know about Mother Theresa...

Apologies for the lack of updates as of late - I assure you I've been quite busy (I was about to go to my brother's wedding rehearsal when I was putting this post together, and it involved taking a break from writing my best man's speech) but for the sake of updating my blog, I humbly present a thought-provoking video I've watched twice and enjoyed.

This video examines the reputation Mother Theresa has, and critically investigates whether she deserves it or not. (Spoiler alert: not at all).

If you can spare 30 minutes to watch this documentary, I insist you do - the first few minutes are enough to expose the tawdriness around this beatified bastion of moral flexibility.

What's wrong with America (in handy video form)

I'm going to show you two videos designed to deter people from driving whilst under the influence of alcohol. One shows a handful of feeble, unfortunate chaps who are all caught by the police and made to look rather silly. The other shows a rather horriffic example of what could conceivably happen as a result of drink-driving.




(It's in German, but I'm pretty certain that this was made in Ireland and shown there first)

So after watching both of these ask yourself: which is more effective? Promoting an individual ethic of responsibility by making one aware of the possible dire consequences, or warning you that someone else will catch you in the act (for something that is portrayed in an innocuous fashion)?

In Print: What's in a Name?

As part of my 'try to trick someone into hiring me' campaign, I've been doing the slightest bit of freelance for the Limerick Leader. They were gracious enough to put my rather blog-style opinion article on the front page of their features section, which was nice, so I figure why not share it with you fine people?

The article is here, and I'm chuffed to see that it's already on the 'most popular' stories pane (not that I reckon the traffic is very high on their site) - so feel free to click through and send it up the chart!

Comments of course, are appreciated - either here or there (no registration required on mine however!). Feel free to have a go at my naivety if you'd like. I know I would.

One from the Road: Teetotalling Traveller

I'm writing this from Terminal 6 of Kennedy International Airport in New York, in an attempt to kill the considerable amount of time that stands between me and my flight to Pittsburgh, to finally reunite with some good friends from my exchange-student days (friends I have now spent more time away from than with).

Little did I know that July 31st is "Bring your small child to America day", as the plane was crawling with the snotty-faced urchins. The satisfaction I usually feel when I finally sit on the plane bound for wherever the hell I’m going was short lived, for my ears were immediately battered with the sounds of some screaming shit-dispenser behind me.

Before I had time to wince, a steward appeared in my vision, and told me that there was a family who would like to sit together and if I'd be willing- at which point I cut him off with a enthusiastic "yes". The flamboyant pretzel-pusher then tantalizingly promised "I'll take care of you for this" - making me excited about the prospect of a journey with a happy ending.

I was positively delighted to be putting some distance between myself and the wailing, but this proved to be a little premature. My new spot was right next to two children - one a few months old - the other three years of age at the most. The elder child and the mother were in a frenzied discussion as I joined them:

Mum, are we flying?
Not yet.
Mum, are we flying?
Not yet.
Mum, are we flying?
Not yet.
Mum, are we flying?
Not yet.
Mum are we flying?

She smiled at me, as if to say "isn't he so cute?” which I promptly shot back at her as she humoured the impetuous infant:

"Not yet."

By now the gelatinous lump on her lap decided it wasn't getting enough attention, so it let rip with a succession of shrieks, each one driving the grimace deeper into my already rather sour pus.

Thankfully, the mother was a woman of action, and she promptly shoved her tit into the tot's face, quelling his quarrelsome mood (a placating method men never grow an immunity to).

Being the polite passenger that I am, I turned away from the suckling nipper, and began to stare longingly at the empty exit-row seat. No sooner had the covetous thoughts taken a hold than a stewardess materialized from behind me and offered me the leg-roomiest spot on the plane.

The plane took off on time, and I got to spend six and a half hours, enjoying the ingenuity employed by a brother and sister pair in annoying one another. The stewardess of ambivalent offers appeared and revealed the spoils of my charitable acts: free alcohol.

Offering free booze to this teetotalling traveller meant about as much to me as my mother's assurances that she'd pray for my safe voyage.

Holy shit! A clergyman I respect

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop from Newark, N.J., talks about why Christianity must change its view of hell. Spong is one of the leading spokepersons for liberal Christianity.

This is a spiritual man who has grown sick of Christian bullshit, and is happy to hold onto a rather agnostic sense of reverence. While I don't necessarily agree with what he holds onto, I certainly hope that this movement catches on, and a more cerebral, less intrusive type of religion can remain in place for those who need the crutch.

Saints and Shitters III: Triple Trouble

If you're not familiar with the Saints and Shitters series, you should check out Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing.

It's hard to believe, but five months have passed since the last documented sighting of a rather specific type of of vandalism.

"The Bible is the word of God - A Priest". So far this message has been found scrawled in permanent marker inside of mensrooms in Limerick, Clare and Galway.

Today, I present the latest confirmed victim of this evangelical-epidemic; the Limerick City Library's male toilets. After receiving a tip from (one-time Sully's Blog contributor) Dermot, I called over to the library and jumped into the cubicle closest to the door. The dim light made for a crappy camera-phone picture, but serves to illustrate what was there. Just underneath the coat hanger was some misguided bastard's slogan; a specimen that matched the graphology of the previous ones exactly:


I moved onto the next cubicle, to see yet again, the meaningless collection of words underneath the coat hanger:


In the third and final cubicle, I found the most intriguing example of the toilet-dwelling priest's handiwork:


Note that "Priest" has been crossed off twice, and replaced with "pervert" and "liar". Obviously this means, that like most criminals, the author of this endeavour has returned to the crime scene - at least three times! His cubicle-debating skills are astonishing - note how he has cleverly drawn a line underneath his signature, effectively separating himself from the name-calling underneath... Well played sir.

Despite being crossed out twice and replaced with a slur against his character, this man has returned each time to insist that he is - in fact, a priest. That's one pathetic persistent vandalising clergyman!

Dear reader, do your part to report these happenings! Next year I will be launching the Committee for Secular Cubicles to tackle this issue with the fervour it deserves... Until then - let me know of any crapper-based religious shenanigans via the comments!

Watch 20 children get molested...

... mentally, of course.

The following video is fairly old, and I first watched it about three months ago, but in honour of "mock-an-easy-target month" (working title), I thought I'd post it. It's a newspiece from ABC, called "Biblically-correct tours". The premise is that two religious "fuckwits" [Thanks, PZ] take a group of home-schooled children through a legitimate museum, ridiculing any scientific aspects that don't fit with their ridiculous religious beliefs, and obfuscating everything else.



Thankfully, the newspiece is sufficiently sceptical of their nonsense, which helps to restore my tarnished faith in the mass media (and saves me a bit of typing!). Whilst watching this perversion of science, I had to pause every minute or so to involuntarily exclaim, like a Tourette's sufferer, at the absolute stupidity of what I was witnessing. Whilst this video is quite hilarious in its outright absurdity, it's also utterly infuriating.

Science isn't limited by superstitious notions that cannot be challenged - it doesn't start with a framework that everything has to be hamfistedly stuffed into. Nor is it decided in the courts. Reframing evolution as a "philosophy" or "religion" is absurd, and done only because it is not a part of evangelical Christianity. Just to further reflect on how insane this is - the Catholic Church officially accept evolution - (and the pope has a blinking-red-bat-phone direct to God!). We know that science works because people who have never talked to each other can come to the same conclusions through empirical observations; a feat lacking not only in different religious creeds, but also their spin-off denominations. These people are getting so wrapped up in the minutiae of their allegorical fables that they are beginning to unravel the progress of our civilisation as a whole!

Indoctrinating a child with religious beliefs is bad enough, but actively crippling their understanding of the world, and planting crackpot theories is absolutely child abuse. Does anyone else feel disturbed after witnessing just how shameless and brazen the efforts of the religious right are to unravel human knowledge?

Christians? Crackers!

In December ’06, during my fourth month or so in the States, I had to do a “cultural breakdown” of some public event, and contemplate it at a level people generally don’t. I made casual reference to this in a blog entry at the time, but didn’t go too far into the polemical specifics, as I had yet to embrace representing the full extent of my beliefs on this blog.

It was supposed to be a 'cultural breakdown,' but since I winged it and was deulsionally tired, it turned into a ten minute lecture on why everybody should be agnostic.

The thesis of the presentation was that ‘faith‘ is just reframed superstition, and anyone who invokes it is openly declaring their lack of intellectual integrity. It was my first public denunciation of childish beliefs, and most greeted it with a stunned silence, or laughed at the absurdity of what the large Irish man was saying.

The presentation was borne out of the frustration I felt at being surrounded by so many people who seemed to punctuate their sentences with allusions to religious dogma, and the general lack of scepticism with which they approached all topics, as a system of binary oppositions seemed to define most; democrat/republican, pro-life/pro-choice, “global warming is real”/ “global warming is a scare-tactic by liberals”. I'm also keen to point out that I had yet to hear of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or any others in the atheistic movement before moving ahead with my diatribe.

Anyhow – as part of my project, I attended a Catholic mass, went up for communion for the first time in years, (forgot what came after “Body of Christ” and said “cheers” instead of "amen"), and slipped the communion-wafer into my pocket, so I had something for show-and-tell. The presence of the communion-wafer on my study desk made my suitemates a little uneasy at first, but it didn’t take long for them to give up on my hell-bound soul.

Why am I bringing this up again? I just read a blog entry by the legendary PZ Myers, in which he highlights a story that is a reflection on the sorry state of our species, which tells the tale of young Webster Cook, who “smuggled a Eucharist[...] out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it”. This incident is hardly newsworthy on its own grounds, until you factor in the immensely stupid response of the religious, who have accused him of hate crime, condemned his “mortal sin” (sending him straight to hell when he dies), and are actively trying to get him expelled from school!

Let’s have PZ break it down:

That's right. Crazy Christian fanatics right here in our own country have been threatening to kill a young man over a cracker. This is insane. These people are demented fuckwits.

PZ Myers is an educated man. A scientist, even. Who teaches biology. Biology is a science which furthers our understanding of ourselves and the world, and is therefore important. And these people just made him say “fuckwit”.

Of course, as appalled as I am by this story, my overriding narcissism has to kick in, and I have to think about myself for a moment. When I made that presentation in Pittsburgh, I decided not to use the cracker at the last minute, thinking that my classmates would cry “offensive!” and not listen to what I was actually saying. Not only would I have committed a “hate crime” by removing the magical Jesus-bread (listen to how stupid your beliefs sound, Catholics!), but I would have used it as a prop in a 10-15 minute “hate-speech” against Christians. They probably would have tried to get me deported, and at the least, it would have destroyed my chances of staying a second semester.

Unsurprisingly, PZ Myers is now being attacked by the pitchfork-brandishing “fuckwits”, merely for reporting on the issue, and treating it with the reverence it deserved:

I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker ... I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.