Yeah, this pretty much sums it up:

Found over at Atheist Media Blog.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an entry about the atheist bus ads making their way to Detroit. I mentioned in the title that the Christians in the area were “freaking the fuck out.” A description that at least one commenter in that thread took issue with:

John writes:

So what? I’m an atheist. I’m also not one who attempts to make excuses for my beliefs – just as Christians should not for theirs. They aren’t “freaking the fuck out” from what I can tell from the protests. It seems most want to abstain from riding the train that displays a message on it that they disagree with ; which is fine. It’s what I do by avoiding walking in to places of worship because I don’t wish to hear whatever messages I disagree with.

You’re right, John. It was wrong of me to characterize the folks leaving angry comments on the news article as “freaking the fuck out.”

Though perhaps this qualifies:

(Detroit, March 15, 2010) Vandals defaced or tore off part of the wording on at least three of the Detroit area bus ads that read “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” In each of the three currently known instances, it was the word “Don’t” that was targeted.

The vandalized signs are among the baker’s dozen of King and Queen sized ads first placed on the outsides of Detroit SMART buses on March 4 by the Detroit Area Coalition of Reason (Detroit CoR). The ads were paid for by the United Coalition of Reason (United CoR), headquartered in Washington DC.

“Acts like this give a striking reminder that our message is necessary,” said Ruthe Milan, coordinator of Detroit CoR. “Without a doubt, prejudice against atheists and agnostics is still very real in American life.”

Yes, there’s nothing like vandalizing messages you don’t agree with to demonstrate Jesus’ love and teachings of tolerance. A rather innocuous message reaching out to other atheists is just the sort of thing that would’ve prompted Jesus into trying to rip them off the sides of the buses. Heaven forbid us atheists associate freely and openly! Next thing you know we’ll be meeting with the President and expressing our opinions on things!

Oh, wait…

…with the goal of improving them. This is the result:

Don’t know about you, but I think his version of the Decalogue is a vast improvement over the original(s).

It looks like it’s Detroit’s turn for a round of atheist bus ads according to this article in The Oakland Press News:

The ads are to begin a month-long run Thursday on more than a dozen Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) buses. They show the words “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone” superimposed on an image of blue sky and clouds.

Ruthe Milan, a spokeswoman for the Detroit Area Coalition of Reason, says the ads will appear on SMART buses running from downtown Detroit to several Oakland County communities. They are being paid for with $5,250 from the United Coalition of Reason.

The message is the same as many that have been shown on buses around the country and, as you would expect, the Christians in the area are reacting with the calm tolerance preached by Jesus himself.

Ha ha! Just kidding! They’re pitching a fucking fit.

Here’s a small sample of their well-reasoned discourse:

James DiPaola wrote on Mar 4, 2010 6:42 AM:
“Lets send a message! DONT RIDE THE BUS! ”

Pat Sullivan wrote on Mar 4, 2010 7:07 AM:
“SMART bus? They are not very smart for accepting an ad like this one. I agree with James–DON’T RIDE THE BUS!! ”

daryl wrote on Mar 4, 2010 7:09 AM:
“All the atheists are doing is pushing their religion (and yes its another religous group) on Detroit. I am sick of these egotistical people that believe that the universe is just here. Well guess what i hope religious people of Detroit ban the busses. Than you crazy people can ride the busses together while talking about how you know everything there is to know about existence. ”

Sick of it wrote on Mar 4, 2010 7:17 AM:
“I don’t recall the last time I heard of a group of atheists helping the disadvantaged and poor like religious groups do everyday from all denominations. I think that speaks for itself and how they value human life, they don’t. I feel like they are the sociopaths of spirituality, they think they should feel something spiritual and when they don’t, they want to bring you down too. ”

kathy wrote on Mar 4, 2010 7:19 AM:
“instead of banning GOD in our schools and on our money, and every where else the atheist’s want as to ban him. why dont we just ban the atheist’s. Ill walk in ten feet of snow before i’ll ride one of those buses. SHAME ON YOU FOR PUTTING THAT CRAP ON YOUR BUSES. “

Fortunately, it looks like there are some rationalists amongst the population who are also chiming in. It’s already turned into quite the lengthy thread over there and The Oakland Press is probably enjoying the attention it so rarely gets otherwise.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. An email about the coming apocalypse that combines Christian end-times-nonsense with a government/alien (as in UFOs) conspiracy.

To whom it will concern,

A man and a woman are about to witness to, and reveal, some very shocking information that will have a profound and quite disturbing effect upon the populace. The testimony will encompass ‘top secret’ programs and certain ‘black technology’ that the US Government and the US Military do not want you to know about.

More specifically the information involves US involvement with Alien species and alien technology. This joint military and alien alliance is one of pure evil, and more specifically, Satanic. Many heroic whistle blowers have lost their lives trying to bring this shocking information into the public domain.

Listen to this testimony of Phil Shneider who was murdered after he started speaking out in town hall meetings about his involvement with the construction of numerous underground bases to accomadate this very unholy alliance. Phil was an extremely brave man who continued to talk even after suffering many attempts upon his life. In the end he was strangled to death in his apartment.

Listen to this testimony of former US Navy Intelligence officer and patriot William Cooper who was murdered in a staged shootout at his rural home.

There are many former military personal speaking out well, including former astronaut Ed Mitchell and a former senior member of NASA Clark McClelland.

The ‘Two Witnesses’ will indeed shock the world in the coming weeks. These two are indeed, the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 that are mentioned in the Book of Revelation. They will be testifying that they are witnesses to the works of Revelation 12 that have been recorded in great detail at www.prophecies.org

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

This email has been sent to you by Mark Brander of Ontario Canada. I am a witness as well to the works of Revelation 12. I have known Linda for several years and have been given many dream/visions about these works that have also included a couple of very profound spiritual encounters.

Cause if you can’t trust a complete stranger who has had several dreams and/or visions about “these works” then who can you trust?

But that’s just the tip of the crazy iceberg. I’ve included the rest after the jump because it’s lengthy and I don’t want that much crazy spread all over SEB’s front page. Be prepared to be awed by the amazing prophecies of a complete nut bag. As always, we post this nonsense as a public service to remind folks of the importance of taking your medication every day.

Continue reading »

Roger Ebert is dying and showing us how to live. Found at Pharyngula on February 19: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

My favorite excerpt:

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

“To make others less happy is a crime.” Review an earlier post, here, “Christians are the bad guy? How did that happen?” How many fundamentalists (enter any religion) have made gays, women, slaves, etc, unhappy? And the only reason for such was ego or greed.

“We must try to contribute joy to the world.” I, too, am happy I have lived long enough to find this out.

Peace.

Here’s a bit a news to brighten your day: The latest Pew Forum on Religion & Public life study finds that religious belief is on the decline among the younger population:

One in four American millennials — which it defined as those who were born after 1980 and came of age around the millennium — are not affiliated with any faith tradition, Pew found. They characterize their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.”

That compares to fewer than one in five Generation Xers — Americans born from 1965 to 1980 — who were unaffiliated with a religion when they were in their late teens and early 20s.

Just 13 percent of American baby boomers — those born from 1946 to 1964 — were unaffiliated with any religious tradition when they were young adults, according to Pew.

via Study: Young Americans less religious than their parents – CNN.com.

The other bit of good news is that there’s a good chunk of believers who don’t adhere to any particular religious sect or affiliation:

“While growing numbers of people are unaffiliated, it’s not necessarily a sign that they’re committed secularists,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum. “We’re seeing among young people that there are ways of practicing faith and being religious outside of belonging to a religious organization or attending services.”

And while it’s likely some of the so-called millennials will become more religious as they get older, the study predicts that the number of unaffiliated will probably not shrink.

This will no doubt lead to renewed hand-wringing among the hardcore religious folks on the need to “get ‘em while they’re young” to try and stave off the increasing number of atheists and agnostics in the coming years.

Cue the Pat Robertsons of the world in 5, 4, 3, 2…

Explaining the differences between Jews, Christians, and Muslims can be tricky, but fortunately someone going by the name RandomFerret has a simple explanation for the easily confused. It’s short. Concise. And nails it right on the head. Check it:

Click to embiggen!

Thanks to RockLifter for sending that along via Twitter.

So here it is: The inaugural episode of The SEB Podcast.

We cover a number of topics starting with Podcasts and moving on to a question from Decrepit Old Fool that we talk about a lot, but never actually answer. That’s followed by tangents galore that are related to DOF’s question by only the thinest of hairs and then a little gushing over the fact that George reads our blogs and some discussion of our religions backgrounds, faith healing, and politics and how we should be the leaders of the world except that we’re too lazy. We close it out with a discussion of James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar which may contain a couple of spoilers so you may want to stop listening at that point if you haven’t seen the movie.

The program I used to record this podcast stuck us in separate stereo channels so I’ll be in your left ear and Dave will be in your right if you wear headphones. This turned out to be a good thing in part because Dave’s audio was much quieter than mine and I spent a good part of the last couple of days learning how to use Audacity to try and bring his levels up without distorting the hell out of it. In the end I dropped my levels down to more closely match his so you can turn up the volume and hear us both a little better. It also took a little time to figure out what data rate to save it as to keep the quality up and the file size down. The final file is 56.7 MB in size and will occupy 1 hour and 22 minutes of your time.You can download it directly by clicking here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed here or you can listen to it at the bottom of this post with the built-in handy flash player. Right now it’s being hosted on SEB’s server so I’m hoping that we don’t suddenly kill our bandwidth allowance with it, but we’ll find out soon.

We had a lot of fun doing it and we hope you’ll be at least mildly amused by the results. If you like it then we’ll do more and try to get better at it both in terms of the quality of the recording and in the quality of our discussions. Let us know what you think in the comments.

It can be tough to be the son of a clergyman. You’re held to a higher standard and any transgressions on your part can reflect poorly on your father. This sometimes results in extra pressure from your Dad to put forth the best image you possibly can.

In this case it seems the Pastor may have gone a tad too far in motivating his son:

ALCOA, Tenn. (AP) – The son of a well-known Alcoa pastor has taken out an order of protection against his father, claiming he was threatened with a gun during an argument at a church over his lack of church attendance. The order of protection was filed by 32-year-old Michael Louis Colquitt against 60-year-old Joe Colquitt, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church.

The younger man told police his father pulled out a handgun when they met at the church to discuss church attendance. He told officers his father pointed the gun at him and threatened to kill him, his wife and family.

via Pastor accused of pulling gun on son at church.

Good thing you didn’t tell him you’re an atheist and have stopped attending church altogether. He would’ve used a tactical nuke on your house.