Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/23
Conservative Christian Commenter Shows Remarkable Lack of Knowledge about Nature
We haven’t gotten a lot of comments from right-wing Christians over at Geeks Without God yet. I guess we haven’t quite hit the big time. I’m sure that we may eventually be awash in commenters telling us we are going to hell but we’ll need to have patience for that. Someday we will be truly famous on the internet!
We did get a comment this week and what annoys me is not the comment, but the tremendous level of ignorance that it contains while being only a paragraph long.
If you are going to argue that homosexuality is unnatural, don’t start by arguing that it doesn’t happen in nature. Because it does.
No really! It was an accident! We just tried to have sex with her at the exact same time!
Now as a whacked out conservative Christian, you have all sorts of articles that will try to make the argument that sure, homosexuality occurs in other animals, but it doesn’t count. So why deny homosexual behavior exists in wild animals when you can just make excuses for it?
Please note that last link takes you to Coservapedia so beware: that way lies madness.
The point here is that the argument is useless obfuscation. Who cares if homosexuality occurs in other species? Birds can fly. Fish can breathe underwater. Humans can’t. Different species do different things that are completely natural. The presumption that homosexuality is a behavior that is somehow the only thing an animal species does that is counter to the natural order defies logic.
Humans, in fact, do a ton of stuff other animals don’t or can’t do. There is no presumption that most of those things are unnatural. Homosexuality gets special attention because one passage in a very long book has been given far too much relevance.
Geeks Without God is Sober this week!
We have a guest on our podcast this week! And, unlike last week’s podcast, everyone is sober! Matt Allex, of the Apropos of Nothing podcast, joined us to talk about atheism and how talking about his beliefs convinced one of his listeners to come out of the closet.
As a personal aside here, I always hope that talking about my atheism will help others be more out about theirs. Being an atheist doesn’t have to be about activism or convincing others that god doesn’t exist. I feel like we all need to take a moment to cry “we are here, we are here, we are here” in a Wholike fashion because – well – we are here.
I’m quite inspired by Matt’s story because he did exactly what I want to do. He talked about his atheism in a way that helped someone else start to cry out that he is here. Good for him.
Our conversation was great. Matt is very smart and very funny and he has a favorite sandwich that will kill you if you eat it. Have a listen!
New Geeks Without God – now With More Liquor
This weeks Geeks Without God was recorded live at Omegacon and we were pretty drunk. Actually, Nick and Molly were pretty drunk. So drunk, in fact, that I think it is fair to qualify that we were all drunk even though I technically wasn’t drunk at all. We recorded in front of a live audience and shared booze with them. I even tried some. Boy was that a mistake.
We talk about games and movies and a little bit about the gay marriage amendment. Also annoying mega churches. There’s a little bit for everyone! Please listen!
Listen to a New Episode of Geeks Without God Right After you Vote!
Hey everybody, Tuesday means a new Geeks Without God episode! This week, we talked with Bill Lehto, who edited Atheist Voices of Minnesota. The book features several essays by Minnesota Atheists, including one by me. My first (and likely last) published work!
Bill talked with us about the process of putting the book together and it was a really interesting conversation. Also, if you listen to the podcast, you will learn how you can win a free signed copy of the book! What a deal! Go listen if you want!
And whether or not you listen, please make sure you get out and Vote No.
Geeks Without God Editorial
Molly, Nick and I have posted an editorial over at Geeks Without God about marriage equality.
While our opinions on the topic have been quite clear, we wanted to take one more opportunity to voice our support for marriage equality and to offer some logical arguments against constitutional discrimination.
Please read, share and help us stem the tide of discrimination in the United States.
I am Fearless
So if you look at the right hand side of the page, you will see a new button that says I’m a proud supporter of Fearless. You probably don’t care what that means but I’m going to tell you anyway.
Fearless Comedy Productions is a new theatre company conceived to bring together several different comedy companies under a single umbrella that will, we hope, help increase the visibility of all of the. It is also a company that will be producing and supporting new work.
The idea for this company was mine but I was lucky enough to be working with a bunch of other comedians who thought the idea was a good one. We’ve been talking about the idea for about six months now and we’ve finally reached a point where we can tell everyone about it.
Geeks Without God is all New!
Another Tuesday morning means another Geeks Without God podcast! This week we talk about The Contender, a fine political film that happens to feature an atheist protagonist.
The film led us to a conversation about all sorts of topics including, at times, the actual movie. I really enjoy the in-depth movie episodes because it involves watching good movies and then seeing where the film takes us.
You can listen to it here.
Geeks Without God is Getting all Political this Week
This week features an episode we recorded back at the Renaissance Festival. We sat down with Tony Miller (Shamus the Insulter) to talk to him about being raised as a Menonite. I still think we need to back to talking about him about that because we ended up getting sidetracked by the upcoming gay marriage amendment.
Obviously, I’ve spent a lot of time writing and talking about the amendment but I really liked a lot of the things Tony said in this episode. We decided to schedule it a couple weeks before the election in hopes that it might change someone’s mind. Even if it doesn’t change your mind, I’m hoping that we can inspire a few people to talk about it to family and friends who are still going to vote “yes.”
People who vote “yes” don’t want to talk about it. At some level, I believe they understand that their decision to vote “yes” is a hurtful act and they don’t like to be told. This isn’t an ideological conservative vs. liberal issue. It is a “fucking over a minority issue.” I don’t have a problem with people who are going to vote for Mitt Romney. I have a big problem with people who are voting “yes.”
All righteous indignation aside, I’m pretty proud of this episode. Please listen.
A Spooooky Geeks Without God
Another Tuesday morning and another episode of Geeks Without God! We have another installment of our Geeky Boners in which we talk about all sorts of geeky stuff but mostly Borderlands 2. Man o man is Nick obsessed with Borderlands 2.
I was also allowed to pimp my band a little bit. So that was cool.
Actually, the episode ended up being our longest yet because we proceeded to talk about how much we all like Halloween and it turns out we like Halloween nearly as much as Nick likes Borderlands 2.
So listen up if that’s your thing!
Geeks Without God Does it Again
What do we do again? We have a brand new episode up on a Tuesday morning! Talk about consistency!
For this week’s episode, we talked with our friend Porter right after the riots in Libya and Egypt and we found ourself getting pretty focused on Islam for the first time. It kind of mystified all of us that anyone (of any religion) would kill someone in the name of god. Because we focus so much on Christianity in America, we don’t always recognize that other parts of the world are faced with different religions doing the same thing.
We also talked about deep fried bacon.
It was a very interesting conversation. Have a listen if you wanna!
Grail Diary 