Poor old tree...

Poor tree. It was just quietly living it's life when along comes some religious nut, wanting to make a point. Too bad for the tree. I wonder how many other innocent lives have been cut short by religious zealotry?

anecdote-from the archives...

I originally wrote this post about four months ago and unfortunately, I have no idea what post I was trying to link to, but I just re-read this and thought I'd post it. I liked it well enough:

I've been thinking a lot lately about a specific anecdote from my life that I think should be quite easy to extrapolate to general life. Let's see if I can express it in words.

There have been a few times in my life where I worked with or around glory-hounds. People who take credit for other people's work, don't really care about the quality of whatever work they did manage to do when they weren't sucking up to whomever they could and in general, just annoying everyone around them-especially the antithesis of a glory hound, the hard-worker. I like to think that I fall into this second category. For the most part, I like to share credit, even sometimes overly so, and/or to my detriment. I also, for the most part, am very humble about my own accomplishments, hard work, etc.

Now, second thing I've been thinking about lately. (Don't worry, I hopefully will be connecting these in about a paragraph.)

Believers (read: Delusionals) like to claim that atheists (or any shade of non-believer) don't care about our fellow humans. They like to say that we are incapable of caring because we are heathens, etc. (Actually, there's multiple arguments-all shitty ones-about why we apparently don't give a shit about anyone but ourselves, but I don't really need to put them all here and knock them down. I think you're all with me.) One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the fact that there aren't any prominent atheist charities. What I mean to say is, there's no atheist equivalent (at least I'm not aware of any) to say, Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. I just threw a few out there, but hopefully you get my meaning. So then I thought, well, ok then, maybe we should start an atheist charity.

Then, along comes this post and makes me see the error of my ways. It's not that atheists don't care about their fellow humans (I know, shocking, isn't it?) It's that we're not glory hounds about it. You never hear of doctors running around saying, "It's a good thing I'm an atheist AND was able to heal you!" or scientists saying, "All I do, I do in the name of godlessness." So, perhaps (and I would say almost certainly) a huge portion of the "good being done for humanity" gets done in some quiet, hard-working, day in and day out, humble, "Aw, shucks, m'am, just doin' my job" kinda way.

ARGH...in my head, it makes a lot more sense. Somebody help me out here. What am I trying and failing to say?

Update for Feb 08: Berzlebub's 3M project for Pmomma, and everyone who contributed makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm glad we non-believers (and a few believers) can come together and do good for fellow humans. Perhaps the next time people use that whole "atheists are self centered heathens" thing, we can all point to this project and say, "SEE?? We're not heartless!"

Great post over at the Church of the FSM

I really really enjoyed this post. Go read it. I love her rebuttal. And, a big fat amen to her last sentence. I'd much rather burn in hell than live an ignorant, bigoted life.

Oh, the statues...

Awhile back, on GiFS, we were talking about gawd statues and the most gaudy (pun intended) of them. I had mentioned that there is a set of statues in Washington State, along I-5 and one of the statues in particular is ridiculous. Rather than go into the whole thing, you can read about them here, here, here and here. Check out a picture of the "Gospodor Monument Park" here. Do you see the little tiny statue on the ground? When you are driving past this, it VERY MUCH looks like a priest grabbing a child's head in order to force the child to fellate him. I wish there were a closer photo of this, but the best I could find, I posted. Enjoy!

Angelic

Why are so many parents convinced their children are going to be perfect little angels? Was it really so long ago that they themselves were that age? I don't understand this concept.

I'm not a parent myself (unless you count my pups, which I totally do, but I know it's not the same thing) so I know that I can't fully understand this. However...

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and we were talking about Americans vs. Europeans and how so many times it's the "preacher's daughter" who gets knocked up and disowned by her family. I said that these children are more prone to such things because they haven't been given education in such matters. However, it does not change their hormone levels! If you have a child and that child is reaching puberty, they WILL be thinking about, talking about and perhaps even engaging in sex. This is almost a given. With that fact in mind, wouldn't you rather have a well-informed hormone machine who can survive puberty relatively unscathed or would you rather have your daughter suddenly start to grow a belly, you disown her because you convinced yourself she was a "perfect angel" and now your relationship with her will if not be ruined, will forever be tarnished?

My best friend's mother took us both to a sexual education convention when we were in our late teens. If anything, I wish we would have gone sooner. Did it make us any more likely to engage in sexual activity? Highly doubt it. Did I learn valuable information? Certainly. I felt more prepared to engage in activity, but no more likely to. We treat our teens like they're children and in some very important ways, they're not anymore. Isn't it time we woke up and educated our children properly and hoped for the best for them? As that's realistically all you can do at that point, short of locking them indoors.

Comics I like

This is just gonna be a quick one, but I thought I'd link to some comics I like/love.

First off, Russell's Teapot. This comic is hilarious. If you aren't already reading this, do. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't show up well in my blog reader, but then neither do some others, so perhaps it's hard to get comics and blog readers to play nice. I dunno. But, definitely give this one a go if you haven't already.

Next, I Drew This. This is another one I have a really hard time keeping up with because of my blog reader. Totally could be something I'm doing wrong, but the archives on this one are great. Not as much "atheist" cartoon as "liberal" but still some really great comics.

Well, I guess this really is going to be a short one because I can't think of any others right now. If you're one of my loyal readers, you probably already read both of these comics, but maybe I'll post more later. Or, you can share the ones you love in the comments.

Tagged

Recently, I was tagged by American Scot. (Note: new blog name) The meme is the evolution of my blog. I already sorta wrote this post for my 100th post. Basically, I started blogging because dear BF had a blog for a long time and I was starting to read a few blogs round about that same time, I think. I guess in a way, I was really just jumping on the bandwagon.

Eventually, a large majority of the other blogs I was reading turned out to be atheistic/non-believer blogs. The growing theocracy in my country has me worried. My blog is, as I said in my 100th post, hopefully a small piece of fighting against that.

As most of my three loyal readers know, I go for long spurts without posting at all. However, it's nice to be able to vent about something (seems to be much of what I use this for nowadays) rather than just leave comments on other blogs, when something particularly pisses me off.

I think that's about all I have to say about the evolution of my blog.