Unfortunately not everyone who is pushed over the edge by their faith is so harmless. In Chile four people have been arrested for burning a 3-day-old baby to death because they believed she was the anti-christ:

Chile arrests 4 accused of burning baby in rite | abc30.com.

The 3-day-old baby was taken to a hill in the town of Colliguay near the Chilean port of Valparaiso on Nov. 21 and was thrown into a bonfire. The baby’s mother, 25-year-old Natalia Guerra, had allegedly approved the sacrifice and was among those arrested.

“The baby was naked. They strapped tape around her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then they placed her on a board. After calling on the spirits they threw her on the bonfire alive,” said Miguel Ampuero, of the Police investigative Unit, Chile’s equivalent of the FBI.

Now when push comes to shove I really don’t give a shit if you believe in a God or Gods until your faith starts to interfere in the life of others. You can’t really interfere much more severely than by throwing someone onto a bonfire. The fact that it was a 3-day-old child just makes you that much more of a waste of life.

It would be easy to write these barbarians off as ignorant assholes who are probably too stupid to breathe without written instructions, but that’s clearly not the case here:

“Everyone in this sect was a professional,” Ampuero said. “We have someone who was a veterinarian and who worked as a flight attendant, we have a filmmaker, a draftsman. Everyone has a university degree. “

These weren’t ignorant, backwards peasants falling victim to their lack of education. These were otherwise intelligent people who allowed their faith in the apocalypse to drive them to commit what can only be described as an atrocity. The fact that the mother was a willing participant just boggles my mind.

At least with folks like the followers of Harold Camping that went around telling us how the world was going to end in May of 2011 they only people they really ended up hurting was themselves and that was mostly in the form of embarrassment with a little job quitting/giving away all their money to drive the point home. They didn’t burn any babies alive.

The truly sad part is that the point I made in the previous light-hearted entry still stands: If you accept the idea that there is a God who speaks to his followers and gives them instructions then how can you justify questioning the actions of these true believers? Especially given some of the stories in the Bible in which such murderous decrees from God are not only accepted as OK, but held up as great examples of people being truly faithful?

As for these folks, my knee-jerk reaction is that they should meet the same end as that child. Let them have a taste of their own medicine so they’ll truly understand what they subjected that infant to. That would be cruel and inhumane and would reduce us to their level, but damned if it’s not a tempting thing to call for.

2 women, 2 children take a naked stroll | CharlotteObserver.com

A woman in her 20s was walking with her 40-something-year-old mother and her toddler while carrying her newborn baby in her arms. Everyone was smiling and enjoying the spring weather.

The only thing missing? Their clothes.

[...] “Like freshly-born baby naked,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Capt. Rod Farley said. “This was Adam and Eve stuff, not even a loincloth.”

The sight “blew my mind,” said resident Jill Mead, who was driving on Providence Road at the time.

When police stopped the women, they said “the Lord told them to get naked and walk down the street,” Farley said.

Police transported all four of them to Presbyterian Matthews, where the adults were physically and mentally evaluated.

“It didn’t appear that they had any problems short of that they didn’t have any clothes on,” Farley said.

Given God’s track record of asking people to do strange things I can’t begin to imagine why the police would think these women might need to have their mental state evaluated. Surely in the grand number of things God has demanded his followers to do — many of them involving the wholesale slaughter of people who don’t believe in him — this has to be a fairly innocuous request. It’s almost as if these officers don’t believe God talks to his followers and tell them to do things.

Perhaps you’re wondering what possible reason God would have for such a command, but according to the Bible you’re not supposed to question God. You’re just supposed to do it like a good little sycophant. Mysterious ways and all that nonsense. If God asks you to do it then surely he has Very Good Reasons® for doing so. After all, you can’t prove that God didn’t ask these women to walk around naked with their kids, right? Of course you can’t.

THIS IS WATER – By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested.

Read the full speech here.
-The Glossary

I find that this resonates with me on a personal level because it’s how I try to live my life. I couldn’t tell you when or where I learned this, but somewhere in my 45 years on this planet I’ve managed to find ways to alleviate the boring tedium that makes up the vast majority of our daily routine. Often by being a goofball.

The video gives an example of standing in a busy supermarket checkout lane and the inherent frustration that can provoke. I’ve experienced such situations countless times and most of the time I’m able to remind myself that I’m not the only one standing there and that many of them may have significantly more troubles than I do. I always try to make any harried cashiers I deal with smile if at all possible. Usually through an attempt at wit, or at least an approximation of it. Same thing with waitresses at restaurants. I try to live by the rule that the last person I want to piss off is the person who is handling my food.

It’s easy to get the impression from my ranting here on SEB that I don’t like people, but the truth is I love people. We are an amazing species capable of astounding acts of beauty, bravery, and plain old simple good heartedness. The things we can accomplish when we use our brains and work together seem to be unlimited, which is why I get so frustrated with those folks who refuse to use their brains and act as though they are the center of the Universe. Note I didn’t say they were incapable of using their brains, but refuse to do so.

That said, we all have our off days where using our brains is just too much effort and I try to keep that in mind when interacting with others as well. Life can be tough and none of us are getting out of it alive, but while we’re here we can choose how we deal with it and our attitude about it. I vent a lot here, but when I’m out in the real world I try to make at least my little corner of it a little less of a pain in the ass for myself and everyone around me. I may not always succeed, but I try.

This is the third time in my life that I’ve watched a family member slowly subcomb to the insidiously slow death that cancer brings with it. The first time was when my biological father died of it 40 years ago when I was five years old. He was only 55 at the time. I wasn’t old enough to really understand what was happening, but that didn’t stop the experience from leaving me a little emotionally messed up for awhile.

The second time was my grandfather back in my 20′s. He at least made it into his 70′s before passing. I wasn’t there for the bitter end and, because of other obligations, only saw him a few times over the months that he suffered from the disease.

My father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer almost 10 months ago and he lived a lot longer than his doctors expected him to. I, along with my wife and her family, were at his bedside at the end though I suspect he had vacated well before that point arrived. He didn’t look like the man who had welcomed me into his family with open arms despite the fact that I’m an independent Liberal atheist and he was a moderate Republican episcopal. He was literally a shell that was holding onto life for as long as it could manage even as various parts of his system were failing. It was not an easy thing to experience, but then that’s something that far too many people are familiar with. Then the situation was compounded by learning shortly after his death — while viewing and funeral arrangements were being made — that the wife of a longtime friend of mine had passed away from cancer on Saturday.

Lets just say that it wasn’t a good weekend. Needless to say, I’ve not had much inspiration to write anything during this time. Though I intend to try and get back into writing more often in the near future. It seems I’ve been coming across things that I want to blog about more often as of late so I’ll try to actually get around to doing so.

That’s what I’ve been up to. What about you guys?

Here is his response:

Like Wil, I was a nerd growing up and I had to deal with the the taunts and bullying that came with it, but by the time I hit Junior High I had managed to find other nerds and started friendships that have lasted right up to today. Countless hours spent playing video games, pen and paper RPGs, and watching sci-fi movies and shows and discussing the latest books with these friends have left me with some of the best memories I could hope for. If I had it all to do over again I don’t think I’d change a minute of it. Being a nerd is awesome and we ended up taking over the world.

Found via Geeks are Sexy.

But you don’t have to be a part of an organized group to help contribute to the your religion’s image problem. You can be like Dean Saxton and just go around holding up a sign that says ’You Deserve Rape’:

Source: Ryan Revock/Arizona Daily Wildcat

Dean Saxton — also known as Brother Dean Samuel — regularly preaches on the UA Mall in front of Heritage Hill and the Administration building. On Tuesday, his sermon drew the attention of onlookers, several of whom either personally confronted him or complained to the Dean of Students Office.

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”

“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

Ah, the classic asshat tactic of blaming the victim. Those poor men. So tempted by the slutty sluts who dress in a manner Brother Dean finds inappropriate that they just can’t help themselves. If women would just dress the way Saxton thinks they should then rape would probably disappear completely! You gotta admire a man who is so confident in his beliefs that he’ll shout them from the rooftops no matter how much it offends the folks he’s trying to win over.

Jesus loves you, Brother Dean, but everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.

Police: Woman claiming to be ‘God’ set car on fire at gas station | www.wftv.com.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A woman claiming to be God doused her car with gasoline and lit it on fire at a BP gas station in Daytona Beach, police said.
Employee Clerk Edna Sandrus said Barnes Alexandra Barnes, 29, went behind the counter, grabbed a lighter and then ran out the door.
Surveillance video shows another clerk, Craig Walker, run after Barnes and tussle with her to get the lighter.

“I could smell gas on my hand from wrestling with her,” Walker said.

Walker said he realized there was fuel on the back of the car and on the ground, and that’s how he realized what she meant when Barnes said, “Don’t move, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it.”

Barnes grabbed another lighter from her car. She flicked the lighter and the car went up in flames.

Apparently God forgot that she had dogs in her car, but fortunately they were rescued by a bystander before they became hot dogs.

SEB posts this as a reminder of the importance of taking your medication each and every day.

It’s helpful to understand just how bad things have gotten so the folks at The Pew Research Center take the time every so often to poll Americans with a simple science quiz to see how they do. When I say simple, I mean ridiculously simple. There are 13 questions and only one of them made me pause for more than half a second to think about the answer.

You can take the quiz yourself here: Do you know more about science and technology than the average American? Go ahead and take it before proceeding with the rest of this entry. I’ll wait.

Done? OK, how’d you do? I got 13 out of 13 correct. There were several questions that I couldn’t believe they were seriously asking. Surely everyone got all of these questions correct, yes? According to the results I scored better than 93% of the Public and the same as only 7% of other quiz takers.

Granted I’m probably more scientifically literate than the average person just because it’s a topic I’m interested in, but it’s not like I spend all my time studying science books nor are these questions in any way esoteric. The vast majority of them were laughably simplistic. If you’re paying attention at all you should get all 13 right.

When you get into the demographic breakdowns of the quiz it gets a little more interesting. Men did better than women on most of the questions except for those related to health. Generally speaking, the more education you have the better you’re likely to do — “collage graduate” scored better than “some college” which was better than “high school” — but it was surprising that only 20% of folks know which gas makes up the majority of the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s middle school science class for crying out loud. And the older you are the more likely you are to score low (probably because you’re beyond the point of giving a shit).

So what do we do to fix this problem? Hey, how about we get rid of that stupid No Child Left Behind program and allow teachers to, you know, teach and then properly fund education and science initiatives?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Like that has a chance in hell of happening.

It’s a particularly useless thing to do when your kids are are sick and need medical attention:

Herbert and Catherine Schaible belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith healing. They lost their 8-month-old son, Brandon, last week after he suffered from diarrhea and breathing problems for at least a week, and stopped eating.

Now I’ve written about dumbshit parents who opted to try and use prayer to heal deathly ill children many times over the years, but this case is different.

This isn’t the first time they’ve tried this:

Four years ago, another son died from bacterial pneumonia.

[...] A jury convicted the Schaibles of involuntary manslaughter in the January 2009 death of their 2-year-old son, Kent. The boy’s symptoms had included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite. His parents said he was eating and drinking until the last day, and they had thought he was getting better.

The Schaibles were sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

You’d think that after they killed their first son by appealing to a God, that either doesn’t care or doesn’t exist, they’d have learned their lesson and made sure to not make that mistake again.

At a hearing Monday, a judge told the couple they had violated the terms of their probation, noting the Schaibles had told investigators that they prayed to God to make Brandon well instead of seeking medical attention.

“You did that once, and the consequences were tragic,” Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

I’d find the attempted defense of these two idiots by their lawyer hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that they’ve killed two kids so far:

“There are way more questions than answers at this point. We haven’t seen the autopsy report. We don’t know the cause of death of this child,” Jayaraman told The Associated Press. “What we do know is Mr. and Mrs. Schaible are distraught, they are grieving, they are tremendously sad about the loss of their most recent baby.”

“Nobody argues that these aren’t very loving, nurturing parents,” she said Tuesday. “Whether their religion had anything to do with the death of their baby, we don’t know.”

The hell we don’t. They made it pretty clear that they wasted days praying instead of seeking medical attention. Their church has a sermon on its website called  ”Healing — From God or Medicine?” which states that it is a “definite sin to trust in medical help and pills”. That sounds like their religion being involved to me.

These morons violated the terms of their probation and are probably headed to jail with an entirely new manslaughter charge tacked on to boot. Their seven other children are currently in foster care which is probably for the best considering the judge thinks these two are “a danger to their children — not to the community, but to their own children.”  I couldn’t agree more.

 Hi Les, if you’re reading this, I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to do so. I’m sure you get hundreds of emails every day from fans and freaks alike, so I wouldn’t blame you if you happened to not read some of them.

Anyway, my purpose in writing to you is to share with you a ridiculous religious speech that I was forced to endure in my high school history class. The way my teacher runs the class, there isn’t much actual teaching done on her part (she doesn’t even know most of the material herself) but last week she decided to share some of her “knowledge” with us.

I’m not sure how it actually started, but she got my immediate attention when she said that “Numerous people throughout history have tried to prove the contents of the bible wrong, but always ended up failing or proving it correct and then becoming Christians”. She then continued to say that the bible was a largely important and accurate historical reference and that basically it’s infallible. She said that the reason that the bible has been censored and edited by rulers throughout history was because they were making it closer to the “original” which according to her, was written by the apostles not long after the death of Jesus. Which is obviously completely false. She also stated that there are many examples of contemporary people writing about Jesus when he was alive and that it was “clearly” documented by Pontius Pilate himself. Another false statement.

This entire thing just really got on my nerves, not only because she is supposed to be a teacher (and therefore separating church from state) but because the bullshit that she was telling us was actually believed by my ignorant classmates. I was just wondering what your take on this was.

I don’t know many atheists at my school, I live in the bible belt – so I decided to come talk to you about it because after reading your blog, I’ve realized that our views on most subjects are basically identical and I think you’re a cool guy.

So, what’s your guy’s take on this? What, if anything, do you think our young friend should do about the situation?