Happy New Year & 50K+ hits (and counting) & @timminchin’s #Storm!

Imagine my delight when I saw the counter zip past 49 (now past 51) thousand. Yes, it’s taken a while. Yes, a wee bit behind Facebook and Wikipedia. But since my only goal when I started this site was to add a voice to the movement, I’m way more than satisfied.

What’s funny to me, though, is I imagine the most popular and not best written post seems to be my rant on AA. While I’m glad that’s brought people here, I kind of wish it had been something better.

Oh, well.

Now onto what I teased in the title. I’ve known about Minchin for a bit, but I’ve never found the time to check out his work. Then, completely randomly, I happened upon his (with DC Turner and Tracy King) Storm while looking at other stuff. And it’s fucking fantastic.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve either gotten into or almost gotten into conversations as described below. And like the narrator protagonist, I’ve been warned by partners not to get into it. But, like Minchin’s character, I have a very short fuse for bullshit, especially bullshit which leads directly to harm.

Happy New Year and enjoy!

Thank you, #somethingdiffereable, for your de-conversion story!

My sincerest apologies to somethingdiffereable, who sent me this a long time ago, but I never got around to posting it. His story’s below and under De-Conversion Stories.

“Well, like most people I was systematically brainwashed into religion at an early age! I never believed in santa claus (ever) and found the god-thing suspect right from the get-go! I was raised roman catholic and when my folks sent me to church on sundays, I skipped along with my little band of deciples. I spent the money on candy and whatnot.

“By the time I got to Jr. Highschool I began to examine the religious mumbo-jumbo a little more critically after discovering Darwin. I never really cared for Marx but I thought he was on to something with the religion being the opiate of the masses statement. I was at that time an agnostic.

“By the time I hit high school and discovered girls, drugs, liquor and all that fun stuff. I felt religion of any kind was not consistant with enjoyment and became a full fledged Atheist.

“Early into adulthood I was introduced to our wonderful legal system due to liquor and drug usage and was subsequently forced to attend AA. This didn’t last long however because I discovered seperation of church and state was in the first amendment and told the judge where to put it. That’s when I was fully converted to militant Atheism and have been ever since. I was saved! That’s what I tell all the fundies. I am saved from a life of religious enslavement!”

–somethingdiffereable

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.

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, The Salvation Army, for being a bunch of homophobic dicks!

This comes from Zinnia Jones, linked on the Atheist Videos page.

Full disclosure: my mom was a non-officer employee of The Salvation Army’s West Women’s and Children’s Shelter in northwest Portland for about 20 years (until they found a “legal” way of dismissing her, without severance or retirement*, due to her MS). During her tenure there, she had the at times unenviable position of publicly defending the Army while privately having huge concerns with them and their policies. She freely admitted privately that they’re a right-wing, fundamentalist, homophobic organization, but often claimed that despite all that, the Army “does a lot of good.” In fact, in many situations, she went so far as to claim that, in emergency situations, “The Army is often the first to arrive, the last to leave.” I can’t prove this true or false, so I won’t bother with it except to say that I always found her unwavering support of the organization a little baffling. It was a job, and I get that, but another bit of full disclosure:

My brother is gay.