Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 1/4
Woman Accused of Scamming People in the Wake of the Newton Massacre
There’s no better way to show compassion for your fellow human beings than by trying to make money off of their misfortune. In this case, a woman allegedly convinced people to donate money for the funeral of one of the Newton victims but kept the money for herself.
She, of course, denies that she had anything to do with the scam – even though it was run from her own personal gmail account.
Now, let’s be fair. Her account might have been hacked.
Maybe she got this message on her computer!
That still means some asshole was using her account to profit off of the murder of a bunch of kids. Who did it isn’t really the point, is it? Someone decided that they needed money and figured that they’d make it the easy way.
Let’s hope they never find themselves in need of real charity.
How Can I sing about Christmas?
When The Dregs perform our Holiday shows, we sing a lot of inappropriate music. Songs like “Do you Have what I Have” and “I Want a Hysterectomy for Christmas” are Dregs fan favorites. So popular, in fact, that we get requests for them all year round.
But we also sing some traditional stuff every year and this year especially, I had more than one person ask me how I dealt with singing religious lyrics. It’s a fair question that comes from the knowledge that I’m not a Christian and I’m pretty darn vocal about it.
The question primarily comes from other atheists. I get it. As a non-Christian, we all get bombarded with religious music at this time of year. For every rendition of “Let is Snow,” we have to listen to eight versions of “Oh Holy Night.” We get tired of constantly being told to fall on our knees because we just don’t want to do it.
I may be an atheist but I still really love Christmas. I don’t just like it. I love it. I love the decorations (christmas lights are pretty). I love the way everyone is a little bit more cheerful this time of year. When I’m talking to people on the phone at work, they are a little more patient with issues. They are a little more pleasant and understanding.
I don’t know if it is because they are anticipating they will find a set of Indiana Jones blu-rays in their stocking or because they are super excited their savior was born in a manger over 2000 years ago. I expect the former is more common than the latter but I don’t really care.
Happy New Year from Geeks Without God!
This week’s episode is our six month anniversary! I was pleased to discover that New Year’s day fell on a Tuesday so we could do our yearly recap show on the day itself. Sure, New Year’s Day is an arbitrary assignment but we all made one more trip around the sun so today is as good a day to celebrate as any!
The show features just the three hosts and we talk about cool stuff that happened in 2012, what we are looking forward to in 2013 and the “proper” way to refer to 2013.
I’m also going to remind everyone that you can still donate to Camp Quest today! We have made our goal but it would be super cool if we could exceed it – even by $10. So give something! Just because you can!
And have a Happy New Year!
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 12/28
The Pope Communicates his Growing Irrelevance to the World
After the Catholic church’s spectacular failure to stem the tide of tolerance, The Pope has decided to make opposition to gay marriage the major thrust of Catholic activism in the coming year. In fact, he said that it is (I shit you now) a “threat to world peace.”
WHAT?????
I really want to understand what kind of thinking would suggest that allowing two people who love each other the right to marry would ever threaten world peace. I would think that stable, loving homes would be a benefit to world peace. I don’t have any data to prove this but goodness knows that the pope has no data to prove his point either.
He doesn’t need data, though. Because he’s infallible.
Infallibly wrong.
He’s also a very affordable line of cosmetics!
And, as usual, he is wasting the vast resources of his church on Gay Marriage. At what point is he going to start focusing on issues that are actually important to his church?
Like the fact so many people think the guy leading his church is a dick?
Merry Christmas from Geeks Without God
Yeah, sure. I said it. Merry Christmas.
It’s Tuesday morning and it’s Christmas and just in case you are done with your family Christmas festivities, Geeks Without God is there with you. We talked about Christmas for this weeks’ show and honestly, we all like Christmas.
We realize that makes us poor foot soldiers in the war on Christmas but so be it. We will be filled with the spirit of secular Christmas today and you can too by listening to our podcast. It’s even extra long because we spent a lot of time talking about Christmas cookies.
However you celebrate the holidays (and whatever holiday you celebrate), enjoy this week’s episode!
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 12/21
In the wake of a tragedy like the school shooting in Connecticut last week, Mike Huckabee decided the best way to deal with it was to be an insensitive prick. Rather that recognizing that what happened was a random act of violence by a clearly deranged individual, Huckabee decided that all of this could have been avoided if people could only pray in schools.
I get that Huckabee is a religious man but in this particular case, he’s trying to come up with a reason that has absolutely no relationship to the tragedy at hand.
The secondary implication, mind you, is that if we were praying in schools, god wouldn’t let this shit happen. God just sits back and watches because we won’t let Christians pray on school property. As soon as prayer can happen on school grounds, god will strike down the gunmen before they can kill a bunch of innocent children.
Oh but wait! Prayer is allowed on school grounds! It is public prayer that isn’t permitted! So not only is Huckabee a dick, he’s lying.
Huckabee isn’t alone in this either. Bryan Fischer says God didn’t protect those kids because “god won’t go where he’s not wanted.” Eric Hovind also tweeted that the entire affair was probably because the shooter grew up in a school without god.
Dear God: I thought you were omnipotent. Turns out you are just a dick.
I don’t want to sugar coat this or these fucks might get the wrong idea. What they are saying is tone-deaf insensitive grandstanding and if we lived in a just universe (we don’t), they would never be allowed to speak into a microphone again.
Reality Hurts
In the wake of yet another senseless slaughter, I’ve seen many of my friends argue that something should be done and they offer up their opinions as to what the solution should be. They argue for more guns or fewer guns. They argue for more god. They argue for more mental health care. They argue against “politicizing” the event by arguing for or against guns, god or mental health care.
What everyone is trying to do is come to grips with something that makes no sense. Who would kill twenty children deliberately? How could anyone do that? We don’t understand and we want to find something that will create a just universe where these things will never happen again.
Do I support reasonable restrictions on gun ownership? Yes I do. I want to be clear that I don’t believe that people should not be permitted to own guns. I do believe that some restrictions on dangerous weapons may help reduce the amount of damage a crazy person with a gun can do.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week, 12/7
Bill O’Reilly says Anyone who Thinks Christianity is a Religion is “Stone-Cold Dumb”
In his latest tirade against the “war on Christmas” he insists that the biggest problem is all of us idiots who think that Christianity is a religion instead of a philosophy. We are, in fact, “so stupid, it’s painful.”
Well I’m sorry to cause Mr. O’Reilly so much pain but I’m going to have to ask him in what way Christianity does not meet the following definition:
The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
Now perhaps Mr. O’Reilly thinks that Christianity is also a philosophy. That is a different conversation but it isn’t what he said.
The problem, in fact, is not what he said but the fact that when he says it, thousands of people adopt his position as truth. Instead of saying to themselves “holy shit – that is the most fucked up description of Christianity I’ve ever heard,” which they should because most of them are Christians, they are instead saying “he’s right! I don’t accept the divinity of Jesus Christ as part of a religion! It’s my philosophy!!!!”
However, let them believe that because if they want to argue that Christianity is a philosophy, then their churches need to start paying taxes because they are no longer exempt. And they can’t get all pissed off about people saying “Happy Holidays” either because we aren’t attacking their religion any longer. Since they don’t have one. They also can’t demand freedom of religion either. The first amendment doesn’t provide freedom of philosophy.
Let’s all celebrate Rene Descartes day! We’ll all spend the whole day thinking and therefore being! Thanks for opening the door to making it a Federal holiday, Bill!
You keep going with this one Bill. I hope you convince everyone who is watching your show that you are right.
Note: He backed off that claim a little bit when a Catholic Priest corrected him. Damn! I really wanted him to re-define Christianity as a philosophy.
Geeks Without God Gets Charitable
This week’s Geeks Without God is live and it features an interview with fellow Atheist Voices of Minnesota contributor, Norm Barrett Wiik. In the weird conincidence category, Norm also wrote an essay on summer camp and “Wiik” is prounounced “Wick.” I can confirm we are not the same person, however, because we were both in a room together. Also, he said on the podcast that he was too young to remember the Iranian hostage crisis and I was most definitely not.
Norm is also on the board of directors for Camp Quest Minnesota, which is a super cool secular summer camp. The aim of the camp is to teach kids about critical thinking, which is something that is lacking in our school cirruculum. It is not “Jesus Camp for atheists.
Nick, Molly and I are really interested in helping Camp Quest Minnesota so in addition to having Norm on our podcast this week, we are doing a holiday fundraiser for them! If you click through to our website, you will see a widget to donate directly to Camp Quest! You could also just click here and it will take you directly to the donation page. Our goal is to raise $500 or more in the next month, which will be enough for us to provide a scholarship for one child to attend camp.*
So if you are like me and you don’t want to give your charity dollars to the salvation army this year, think about givng a few bucks to Camp Quest instead. Help us reach (and exceed) our goal.
*Note – $500 is enough to provide a scholarship. That doesn’t mean Camp Quest Minnesota will use the funds for that purpose. That is up to them. There are no strings attatched to our donation. We’d like them to use the funds for whatever purpose they think is best.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/30
Kentucky Law Forces People to Acknowledge that Only God Can Protect us from Terrorism
To be fair, I’m expecting most people in Kentucky believe this anyway. Forcing the dept of Homeland Security to post a plaque acknowledging the contributions of God really feel like a violation of church and state, though, doesn’t it? The Kentucky courts, for some reason, don’t actually see it that way.
Actually, the Kentucky supreme court has refused to hear challenges to the law so it becomes difficult to determine exactly how the courts see it.
But let’s be clear here, if god is responsible for protecting us from terrorism, we have put our faith in the wrong guy. I don’t know if anyone else was paying attention on Sept 11th, 2001 but I didn’t see a big divine hand inserting itself between those airplanes and those buildings.
Let me catch that for you!
Passing a law saying god will protect us from terrorism after god has already failed to do so is like hiring a guy to stop people from shoplifting at Wal-Mart after you watched a video in which he was ignoring his friends who were shoplifting at Wal-mart.
Grail Diary 