My article ” #BionicDance and I Get into a Bitch-Slap Hissy or On Atheist Fallacy” is live on #AtheistConnect!

The main page is here. The article is here. The full text is reposted on the Articles page.

Wait a minute! Didn’t I say here that the exact same article was pending at Support Atheism?

I did. It was quietly, unceremoniously put down:

“Anton, I don’t see an the conversation being worthy of publishing as it seems to become more of foray into semantics. Now, I do see an article about the fact that terrorism and 9/11 is as motivated by sociopolitical factors as religion – and an exploration of the fact that socio-political and economic factors are also what lead to fundamentalism.

“That would be a great article. It is hard to argue about actions of those terrorists culminating into such an atrociity w/out the quran’s justification of martyrdom and jihad. And the typical deathcult idea of a paradise in the afterlife though.”

–Jacob Kramer

I suggest that the real reason my article was killed, or in the very least a more practical reason, was that it’s critical of a fellow Support Atheism contributor, and we can’t have one SA contributor criticizing another SA contributor in the SA magazine, now can we? I didn’t whine about it on the Support Atheism forum, however, and I won’t whine about it here.

Thank you, #RonaldHill , for your awesome ‘toon!

Yes, this is from my dad. I was gonna title the post something like “Alcoholics Anonymous is bullshit (recalibrated)!” but I’ve used that series too much too recently.

After some serious “soul”-searching…

(yeah, yeah, I know) I’ve decided that I must admit that this wasn’t entirely honest. It’s true that I had no mal-intent in revealing Pen Pal’s name, but I have to admit that after our initial discussion on Facebook as detailed here, I became frustrated at her insistence on her accusations against me, her absolute disinterest in considering my side, her frankly dishonest representation of some points, and:

I retaliated.

I was annoyed, I wanted my side to be considered, and I essentially pulled an “I’ll show you.”

It was immature and stupid.

Pen has since suggested that there may be “serious” ramifications of my actions given that she has students or colleagues who may have already seen our correspondence. I can’t deny the possibility that our correspondence may have been seen, but I truly see any viewing of our correspondence as irrelevant to her job or any other private issue in her life. She said nothing of which she should feel ashamed or was taken out of context. Now, if she does feel ashamed of anything she said that’s, frankly, her problem as what I posted were direct quotes.

However, I had to admit to myself that if a conversation of mine had been posted on-line without my knowledge and attributed to me with a picture of me, I would have pause. Maybe not such loud, furious, and ALL CAPS pause as Pen, but I would’ve had pause nonetheless.

So, Pen, I sincerely hope you’ve not suffered any negative ramifications of my actions and it was a bit of a dick move to post your full name and pic.

Pen has declared to me that she absolutely does not accept my apologies for my actions on this issue and that’s certainly her right. I simply felt I should be completely honest with myself and this site on those actions and their motivations. I now consider this matter closed and have no further plans of discussing it.

Alcoholics Anonymous is bullshit (redux)!

I got this from commentor AntiChristianLeague.

“I attended AA meetings for six months after I quit drinking. I left because there wasn’t a single meeting that at some point didn’t deteriorate into up front bible thumping.

“I was also not very keen on the idea of willingly calling myself a ‘victim’ of my addiction. I chose to put myself in that crappy place, I can bloody well choose to work towards something better. And I have.

“The whole idea of ‘powerlessness’ in AA is just an attempt to weaken one’s resolve against religious indoctrination. You take people who are obviously hurting, tell them that this ‘god’ guy can totally help them, and that they are otherwise worthless and unable to live a normal life, and most people fall for it.”

–AntiChristianLeague

As I told Anti, Bible-thumping was never part of my experience, though it doesn’t surprise me that it was a part of Anti’s. Once you introduce God into shit, people tend to feel justified in saying or doing whatever the fuck they want around Him. What Anti says about choice is totally true. People choose to get themselves into a situation, they can bloody well choose to get themselves out. No higher power, steps, or even group therapy required. And to claim otherwise is a fucking bullshit lie.

Fuck you, Mark Burnett, Roma Downey, and the History Channel, for perpetuating made-up bullshit!

I saw this on Nikki Finke’s Deadline.

For those who don’t know, Burnett built a very lucrative career creating, among others, CBS’ Survivor, which, as we all know, pretty much single-handedly created what’s now known as reality TV. His wife, Downey, according to Finke, was the executive producer of Touched by an Angel.

I get the profit motive of exploiting, what Finke (and everyone else) calls, “…the most popular book in human history…” especially given that there are at least, I think, 80 million Evangelical Christians in the country.

But this:

does not = this:

In fact, not only do we now know that Noah’s Ark didn’t happen, but there’s also zero evidence that the Exodus happened, or that Jesus even existed.

If you’re gonna call something “history,” it sure would be nice if it were actual, proven, non-made-up bullshit history.