Fuck that god.

I have no respect for a god that kills and maims children with parasites and disease. I have no respect for religion that causes people to kill and maim other people's children. I have no respect for a god who's imperfect body I am stuck living with. We are God's perfect creation?!? Are you JOKING? A brain susceptible to seizure at the slightest chemical imbalance, a nerve that controls the larynx that is routed from the brain to the heart and back up to the throat? Blood chemistry that allows for clogged arteries that kills my friend at 39 leaving two little girls without their father? 

 Fuck. That. God.

But then I don't believe that god exists. All of this is the evidence of evolution, the drawbacks of evolution, the consequences of evolution which is the beauty of life and our universe. I love life and how it works. I hate the false hope and delusions of religion.

Another YouTube discussion :-)

lougalou04

You must have faith to understand, Tom. I can never get over how dark, pessimistic and negative so many atheists are. You have no joy in your heart. Perhaps that is the difference between many of the faithful and atheists. I hear Stephen Fry with his histrionics bashing religion, cursing God, and being all negative. Then I hear you doing the same. You all remind me of that character from 'Lil Abner" who had a cloud of rain following him wherever he went. No joy. No happiness. In fact, I practically feel sorry for you all. 


Tom Hail

+lougalou04 It must be that you only know atheists online where we take on and ridicule religious beliefs like the priest's video here. I and all atheists I know lead fulfilling, meaningful and happy lives. I bet you know atheists and don't know it. I live with a beautiful and incredibly patient special needs teacher, I have daughters and granddaughter who are making meaningful and productive lives for themselves without religion. I have the respect and love from friends and family who I respect and love. I support my family, community, nation and many peoples with my work and charity. I give my time and resources freely in charity and community works. I am not a special or uncommon atheist.

I rejoice in seeing Venus, Mars, and the Moon in a tight triangle, the flight of an owl, the power of waves crashing into rock that will eventually give way to the ocean. When I fly my plane I celebrate the ingenuity that created the engine, wings, avionics, and the training that gives me the confidence to climb into my flying machine and rise above the earth for a little while. Looking at a hillside of trees and grass I marvel at the trillions upon trillions of cells in all those plants busily turning sunlight into chemical energy and replicating themselves almost always perfectly.

No joy?! I laugh at you! You have NO IDEA how unrestrained I am, no fear of death, only of dying painfully before I'm ready. I attack religion for this very reason, I feel sorry for those who waste so much of their lives with it. So much human endeavour wasted in the wishful thinking and false hope of this bullshit. It is almost criminal. And then I attack religion for trying to control my life, to say what is moral when it has no moral standing to judge me by, to say what my purpose in life should be when it has nothing real to offer, to claim truth when it is obviously fantasy to control the masses. Faith is NOT a virtue in any sense, to believe without evidence is to give up your touted free will. Faith is to be despised.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TomHail/posts/T5qVZXxpx1M

Just wanted to capture this in case Google crashes.

How I told/tell people I am atheist

As a kid (10 yrs old):

My 5th grade friend and I were playing with an electronics kit and he said if Ii didn't believe in Jesus I would go to hell.  I just looked at him and said I didn't think so.  He said uh huh.  I said uh uh.  And then we made the kit produce a siren sound and his mom came running afraid that the police would come.  This was in Dacca, East Pakistan in the late 60's, they were Baptist missionaries.  My dad is a geologist.

At work late 90's (43 yrs old):

I sneezed at my desk one day and an engineering co-worker at a cubicle across the aisle said "bless you".  I said nothing and then as an afterthought joke he asked "What does an atheist say after he sneezes and you say 'bless you'?"  He didn't know I was atheist and I don't know why he thought it would be funny but I said "I generally say 'Thank you'." He looked at me and then went back to his desk, my impression was that he was surprised, especially since I was his manager.  From that day on I made it clear that I was atheist at work.  Being a manager of the group may have stymied some discussion, but I don't think so.  My mentions are matter of fact only when the subject comes up.  I have one Catholic co-worker who will question and joke with me about it which shocks others sometimes, especially since I hold my own and joke back at her.  But then I've had one come to me on the side and agree with some of my replies, Facebook rants or a comment from the news, especially when it concerns the Pope.  These gals I'll often send science nerd news that shows them how the universe really works, trying to get them to see the real perspective of where we are in the universe.  My morals are probably what has surprised them the most.  Why am I so nice?  Why don't I just want to rape and murder?  What keeps me from trying that?  Seeing the charity things I do used to just baffle them.  I had to explain how altruism benefits a population and that it is natural for me to be good.

Meeting for breakfast the Baptist minister parents of my girlfriend's roommate, who happened to be a Methodist pastor at the time herself.  (Yes, my lapsed Catholic, almost atheist, girlfriend lived with a Methodist pastor when I met her.)  I knew I was going to be asked about my religion at this breakfast but had no prepared answer, mainly because I didn't know how it would come.  Tarah's dad turned to me and asked how I was brought up.  I said, "I was brought up pretty much straight."  What did that mean?  I don't know.  That is what came out of my mouth.  I then qualified that I didn't have any religion growing up and don't have any now.  He was so amused by the "growing up straight" that the topic ended there.  That forced me to have the "I'm atheist" answer ready to use.  One of many moments in life I'd like to do over again but at least learned from.

At the airport in the 2010's:

Friends at the airport, fellow pilots, event volunteers who are also friends on Facebook have seen my posts about atheism.  Three have come up to me on the side and said that they don't believe either.  I hadn't read Why Atheists are so Angry yet so didn't encourage them to come out.  I've read that now and also participate in the Santa Cruz skeptics meet-up group.  That has honed my ability to discuss the issues of religion.  

I am proud that I am atheist.  I feel I dodged a bullet when I realize how much of my life was not wasted with religion.  I've not once regretted expressing my atheism and have been pleasantly surprised by the agreement I've received, even quietly.  But then I live in Santa Cruz county and work in Santa Clara county, pretty safe place to be atheist with bumper stickers and open discussion about religion.  I've been flipped off a few times on the road but never had anyone in my face about being godless.  Online is a different matter… but then I will comment on religious FB and Twitter posts without too much hesitation.  Yes, I can be a troll.  Not actively all the time, but it happens.  I've been angry and I've been reasonable and patient.  Maybe it has gotten through to someone on the sidelines.

An atheist's ten commandments.

From Adam Lee's Daylight Atheism blog his "ten commandments".

First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.

Third Commandment: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

Fourth Commandment: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.

Seventh Commandment: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

Ninth Commandment: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

Tenth Commandment: Question everything. (Including these commandments.)

I was told to look in the mirror as an answer to this.

I look in the mirror and don't see any hatred of minorities. I am a minority. I've tolerated religion all my life and still do, I don't oppress anyone, and seldom make claims without evidence. However, religion doesn't get a free pass anymore. If it makes claims that can't be substantiated, it gets questioned. No longer is faith a virtue. No longer can religion claim moral high ground. No longer can religion claim the only purpose and meaning to life. No longer can religion claim any explanation for why or how we came to be. Showing where religion is wrong is rational human growth, progress out of darkness and superstition. That isn't war, that's rational thought. That's growing out of fear and into understanding of our place in the universe. If the religious feel embattled and persecuted, they should consider the arguments they make based on ancient texts and personal anecdotes that usually are easily explained by statistics, imperfect human perception, and corruption.

I do hate. I hate mutilation of children's genitals in the name of religion. I hate stoning of women on religious grounds. I hate the child abuse that is telling a small child that they will burn in hell without proper belief in gods/Jesus/whatever. I hate the undemocratic control religion has over people with the subsequent inevitable abuse of power. Hate is not always a bad thing.

God in judgment

Today 20 kids lost their lives. 

Mike Huckbee has an opinion.


So do I.“[W]e’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we’re not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment,” Huckabee said. “If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.”

Why would I fear a God who is so ineffective as to be totally unable to at least call the cops before the shooting starts? It never has before. Or maybe this god is malevolent and shouldn't get our attention. Or is uncaring and there is no point in our attention. Or. There is no god. Mike Huckabee... you've wasted your life on something that doesn't exist. How sad for you. Not nearly as sad as losing 20 kids you think could have been prevented with fear and superstition. Action by us here and now could have prevented it, not fear and superstition. Those kids have lost their one and only lives, they do not go to a better place. They are lost to us. Their lives have been lost, they will never be who they could have been. We will never know who they could have been. This is the price paid for supposed rights (god given in some minds) of gun ownership and personal responsibility that limits aid to mental illness. 

The first five shots I blame on the lack of health care in this country, the rest on the NRA.

There is Always a Price

I was listening to George Hrab's Geologic Podcast episode where he replies to a new atheist about the loss of a loved one.  George made a point I had known but never knew how to put into words.

Everything has a cost or a price.  That car you want.  The career you strive for.  The power or status you crave.  Also other things less materialistic like ethics and morals.   Learning and research.   But maybe the heaviest price is paid for friendships and relationships.

This isn't saying it is bad to pay a price for these things, only that it is there in many forms.  And it may be that the emotional price of a relationship is the biggest for most of us.

When do we pay the price?  Sometimes the relationship is costly as it progresses no matter how it ends.  A relationship may be costly at the beginning for many reasons.  But it seems that at the end of a relationship is where the highest costs are, especially with death, because this is when the realization that you'll never be seeing that person (or pet) again sets in and the sorrow for the loss is the final emotional cost of that relationship.

I think the price is worth paying for a good relationship and most of us do.  Some of us avoid the price by avoiding or limiting relationships which I think limits life too much.  But other people avoid the cost by pretending there is a place where we all go when we die, where the relationship will continue for eternity as if that is a desirable thing.  Besides the fact that this is totally made up with no evidence, it is also cheating, diminishing the price of the relationship lost.  "Oh, I'll just see mom in Heaven when it is my time" is a dismissal of the relationship.  To diminish the cost of the loss with wishful thinking about an afterlife is denial of the cost of the relationship.  It's like shoplifting a candy bar, a short quick satisfaction and doesn't really satisfy the hunger and has it's own cost.

I don't think most people really feel all that much better thinking that there is an afterlife.  The loss is huge, the pain is real, the sorrow is deep for most of us anyway.  Why cheapen the meaning of the relationship with this fantasy/wish for a later reunion?

There might be more thoughts on this...

Where am I going?

To all my friends and family; I pray that you know for sure where you are going after this brief stay in the World. If you cannot say, without absolute confidence, then you are being or have been decieved. Fortunately, the choice is yours. I am not here to argue with you about your beliefs. If you want to try and argue it, then take your argument to your Creator. There is only One True God and one Way to Him. Don't wait any longer to receive His free gift of Salvation!
"Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines.-" Hebrews 13:9a

• 3 people like this.
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  ---------------- AMEN BROTHER!! "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23

  52 minutes ago · Like
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  Tom Hail To my cousin David who I have enormous respect this is one thing I cannot be silent about. With absolute confidence I know that when I die, the carbon in my body will recycle into the earth, my water will recycle into the environment, my mind will stop thinking and dreaming. My soul will die with my mind. All that will remain is the memory of me by others and the results of my efforts, primarily my daughters and their lives to come after mine. To believe otherwise is at best wishful thinking based on the deceit of religion. No mystery of the universe has ever been answered by the supernatural or magic. There is no evidence that any soul, despite hundreds of years of looking for it, remains after our death. Religion brings false hope for something better, allows for suffering to be endured for when, if good enough, you go to the better place instead of working harder to improve this life. To hope for an afterlife is wasted effort and diminishes the meaning of this life, your only life.

Killing children again.

Barrage of rocket attacks slam southern Israel

Over 30 rockets fired at Israel after missile hit IDF jeep on border patrol, injuring 4 soldiers; IDF tank shelling kills 4 Palestinians.

Christians United for Israel (CUFI)

Like This Page · 6 hours ago 

Prayer Alert- more than 30 rockets and mortars have been fired on Southern Israel. Israelis near the boarder with Gaza were told to stay within 15 seconds of a safe room. LIKE to join us in praying for the one million Israeli men, women, and children living under the threat of rockets tonight. http://bit.ly/Q4Pp5h


Not mentioned is that the Israeli retaliation resulted in the death and injuries of children.

‎/S Ooh! Ooh! The religious cranks killing the other religious cranks's children again because they killed their children for killing those children through slow starvation and depravation because their children were killed with suicide bombing children. And then there's the other religious cranks who will kill to keep an unborn child alive at all costs standing on the side egging on the fighting that kills children in hopes of the big killing spree that brings on the magical guy who will make everything better after everything is horribly horribly worse. Awesome. Bronze aged magical thinking armed with 21st century weapons. /SarcasmOff Reason #37 why I am an angry atheist.

Like prayer has helped at all in the last 60 years or so.

Movement conservatives have traded truth for certainty.

"Mike.K. says:October 29, 2012 at 4:01 am

I have to say on your “big government” comments on conservatives:

Most conservatives are authoritarians. They want small government for *themselves*. They want big, authoritarian government for people they don’t like. I’ve mentioned the base’s drive towards “punishment politics” before. They are often people who either want to be lead, or want to be part of the goon squad so they can give a beating to “those” people. They have made themselves the hero of their invented past of lies for so long, and everyone else the villain, that they really believe that God Himself will make sure they and they alone are on the right side of the gated fence and the right side of the billy club. Remember that with Bush’s election they were promised a thousand year reign of Good Christian Conservatives, and so they already think their ascendance to power was stolen by hippies and uppity women and minorities and gays.  

This is part of why they will applaud torture and applaud the thought of leaving someone to die. They are OK with sending their children to war, knowing some will die, as long as more brown people and unbelievers die than their own. They are fine with back ally abortions, as long as they can buy their own daughters an airline ticket and that more poor and colored die than their own. They were fine with the dismantling of unions, as long as it was laborer-class jobs sent overseas. They are fine with pissing away billions on a war on drugs, as long as more of “those” people get swept off the streets. 

Movement conservatives have traded truth for certainty. As a result, words no longer have meaning. If you don’t understand talk of “big government”, it’s because you’re trying to make sense of the lyrics of Wingnut Jazz. It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t make sense. It just scares you with big government spending by big government democrats for big government liberals to re-educate your children with socialist indoctrination, think of the children!, until Sarah Palin gets up on stage wrapped in a flag and brandishing her Bible, her hair did up and her tits nice and bouncy under her big big smile (just for you!), spinning a soothing chord of the Jazz, about the Founding Fathers and their Common Sense Constitutional Freedom Solutions based on Conservative Values and the Christian Bible of Jesus.  

And then you write her a check."

Death for damaging a book

Tom from Cognitive Dissonance Podcast had this rant on the InKredulous podcast episode #015.  This is in reference to the little girl in Pakistan who was arrested and could have been tried for damaging a Qur'an, the penalty possibly being death.  Turns out the cleric who accused her may have actually planted the damaged book, so he is arrested and may suffer that fate.  I had to transcribe it...  the audio is better with the feeling he puts into it.

Death for damaging a book.

A book made of paper.

A stupid fucking book.  

All that matters is that there is a place of solemnity and respect in the hearts of people for religion and religiosity and religious leaders and we are all supposed to kowtow to this idea that these religious ideas are valuable and the diversity of spirituality and ya-da ya-da ya-da and meanwhile an eleven year old girl is mobbed and nearly killed because people have taken that shit far too seriously for far too long and we are in two thousand and twelve and we live in a world that condemn people to death for violence against books!  Holy books made of paper!  And because of this non-sense, this utter fucking non-sense, my heart is filled with dirty filthy atheist rage when I look on that mindset.  And I give de-facto respect and adulation for religious ideas and religious leaders a hale and hearty "fuck you".

Awesome rant.

There is some good news... the case seems to be opening up the debate in Pakistan about their blasphemy laws.

Atheist Obama - almost.

"And if there’s anything to take away from this tragedy it’s the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another. It’s what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That’s what matters. At the end of the day, what we’ll remember will be those we loved and what we did for others. That’s why we’re here."

As I heard Obama say this on the radio Friday morning after the Aurora shootings, I was thinking how atheist he sounded.  Nothing about heaven or evil or god.  At least not until the very end where he blathered about the Lord giving comfort and God blessing us all.

This week in the War on Women: Republicans want to fight about lady parts some more? Okay.

This week in the War on Women: Republicans want to fight about lady parts some more? Okay.

Just in case you thought the GOP war on women has subsided... it hasn't. Time to donate more to Planned Parent Parenthood.


I do.

• Catherine Gile Where is the outrage when baby girls are aborted simply because they are girls?
  

  5 hours ago via mobile · 
• 
  

  Tom Hail Planned Parenthood opposes sex selection abortion. Rational thinkers oppose it. Education and real prenatal assistance prevent it. Stifling PP and other such organizations on puritanical grounds solves nothing and makes the problem bigger. http://shar.es/tOmBK
  

  
  

  http://shar.es/tOmBK

  www.plannedparenthood.org
  

  ‎"Planned Parenthood health centers provide high-quality preventive health care ...See More

  
  

  37 minutes ago ·  · 

Atheism - Purposeless & Meaningless

This cracked me up at first (when I saw it on Facebook) in it's demonstrated ignorance of atheism. Atheism is without a belief in gods. Religious belief is a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny and the world. Spontaneous? Sure, the math, observations, and experimentation of quantum physics expects it. Causeless? Physics. Sourceless? Sure there was a source, but that disappeared an instant later. Purposeless, meaningless existence? Now this pisses me off since I spent the last 4 months preparing for what I spent all day doing yesterday, helping to give hundreds of families with special needs children a safe, inclusive, interesting, fun day at the airport. Purpose in my life is to relieve and prevent suffering, to learn new things, to grow, to make for a better future for my children and their friends. EVERY ATHEIST I KNOW strives for this in some form or another. I do this all the time in my work, home, and spare time. I DON'T need to justify myself to some made up deity in the wishful thinking that there is something after I die. I want my children to be able to live and prosper in a safe world after I no longer can support them, to give them the tools to support me in my old age. That means supporting my community and nation, getting them and the people around them educated, building the community they will need to do the same for their children. Most people do this. They would do it without religion if they half way thought about it. Since it is obvious there isn't any supernatural being doing ANYTHING in this universe, why believe?

Take the test | Pharyngula

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/25/take-the-test/

Why does anyone like Ron Paul?

So, why are these people supporting a crazy, racist Christian fundamentalist?

http://ashleyfmiller.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/why-does-anyone-like-ron-paul/

Why get married conversation...

My friend Violy wonders why Liz and I don’t get married and we’ve had this on-going conversation over the last few months in the hallway.  Yesterday I get this question about decency, that somehow being married is more decent? …

Continuing our discussion about marriage … the decency (conventional?) to introduce this is my wife/husband matters.

---

Me:

Why?

Who decided that married is decent, unmarried is not?  Isn&# 8217;t the nature of the relationship is what matters?  The label “married” has nothing to do if the relationship is good or not.

Barely 50% of US adults are married. 

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/12/14/barely-half-of-u-s-adults-are-married-a-record-low/

---

Violy:

I am not going to click the link …

I got to thinking on my way to the ladies room that there isn 217;t anything you care about … in what people say or think about you.  What matters to you is what you think/feel about yourself.  I am not saying it is wrong to think that way.  It would almost be one is untouchable.

So can you feel hurt?  If you don’t care about what anyone says or think, then you can’t get hurt.

---

Me:

There are lots of things I care about.  I do care and it is important what people think of me and how I live.  I do care to be socially accepted.  But there are limits to what I will do to be accepted.  I will not pray to a make-believe god.  Nor wi ll I pretend to just to look like I do.  I care how people see my relationship with Liz.  It doesn’t need a label to be a good relationship.  I care that a loving, respectful, happy relationship is seen because that is what it is, without coercion by a religion or dogma.  The social norms have always changed and will change in the future.  You live in a world where the marriage label is important, but that may be a shrinking world.  You can have that world, it is important to you and I have no problem with it.  Just don’t expect me to conform to it.

---

Violy:

My views are too simplistic and narrow … I realized it after I sent the last email.  Sorry …

---

Me:

Don’t be sorry, it is worthwhile to discuss and think about these things.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

"Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way."

As did Hitchens, my grandfather Evan lived his life like he didn't know enough, couldn't know enough.

I'm going to miss Christopher Hitchens

North Korea and heaven. Heaven would be worse.

Irrational belief in rhino horn power...

"IPSWICH, England — The Ipswich Museum contains many alluring and potentially theft-worthy items, including a spectacular 2,000-year-old gold-leaf Egyptian death mask on loan from the British Museum and a rare Hawaiian cape featuring feathers from the extinct o’o bird. But when two thieves forced their way in after midnight on July 28, they were seeking something else entirely.Never mind that their target, a large rhinoceros horn, was still attached to its owner, which had been standing blamelessly in the museum since 1907."

And now they are stealing horn from museums? For some reason the killing of rhinos for their horn so that some inadequate prick somewhere can pretend to be enhanced sexually with it enrages me. (yeah, what else is new?) Why is that? Could it be the stupidity of a totally irrational belief in rhino horn power causing the slaughter of thousands of people.... oops rhinos?