ENOUGH !

We are living in 2012, and who is holding us back from the future?

Right wing religious buffoons.

 

We can’t have freedom to love who we want,

We can’t have stem cells which may fix a plethora of disease

Scientists are apparently stupid

and Climate Change isn’t happening

 

I had cancer in 2005, and I know very well where I’d be if I’d had a horde of priests and nuns praying that I’d get better, instead of the medical science and skill which did in fact make me better.

 

I refuse to give the religious one moment of my time, I have put a sign on my letterbox which reads “No Religious Propaganda” did they ignore it? Of course! Because I’m so in need of the word of God or something.

 

I tear it up and put it straight in the bin.

 

I have fought and argued with you dinosaurs over and over, and all you do is quote passages from your pathetic book.

 

Well no more, 

You’re a Christian?

Fuck off.

 

Wolfie!

Atheistcon Melbourne

A small group of Islamic fundamentalist turned up to #atheistcon. A gay couple Gregory Storer & Michael Barnett kissed.

 

Aussies sing Monty Pythons “Always look on the bright side of life” in front of Islamic Fundamentalists at Melbournes Atheistcon.

Little monster

“It’s harmless” was the mantra for religion, it was the bottom line in this family for the reasons for marching kids off to sunday school.

Except it wasn’t harmless.

I lacked a lot of self confidence, and I found religion made it all the more difficult for me, and with the bullies I endured at school, did I really need one extra reason to feel ashamed of myself, or lesser than I felt that I was?

Undoing what religion did to my mind, took years. and mind you, I was never all that religious either… but it was here, in the home, sort of hiding in corners.

Now and then it would sort of leap out at me at unexpected times, or drift past like an almost unnoticed fart.

To untie all those knots and crawl ever so slowly out of that took time.

I didn’t spring out of bed one morning and run down the street in my undies, yelling that I was an atheist.

And with that personal experience, I can’t expect anyone else to either, although what tends to take others days, takes years with me, or seems to.

I suppose because I’ve had to do so much on my own, and never had a mentor or guide to show me the way.

If religion was harmless, then it wouldn’t be getting in the way of making decisions about big issues, such as climate change, same sex marriage and birth control. but it does get in the way.

And playing with the notion that God exists but Climate Change doesn’t is simply playing with fire, and that’s dangerous to us all.

How Atheists see Religion

It’s a bit, no… a lot like this.

“The one true creator is Santa Claus”

“To Hell with your Santa Claus, it was Father Christmas who made everything”

“If You Follow Santa Claus you’ll live forever in His Kingdom”

“The Noble Grandfather Frost will take you into his castle if you are a worthy warrior”

“Seven virgin elves to those who follow Papai Noel after their death”

“Reincarnation will be the gift to those who cherish Babbo Natale”

I think you get the idea,

Merry Christmas and may there be many presents upon you, or at least, under your tree.

Wolfie!

What Religion does to People.

I had the misfortune to discover this wordpress blog tonight, as you know, I am completely over religion, the threats of an eternity in hell, the promise of an eternity in heaven… but only if you’re impossibly good, and most of all because of bigots who call themselves patriots and think that they’re so much more righteous than you and I because they carry a book in their hand which was probably written by a gang of pot smoking hermits.

I have lived through cancer, I saw my relatives with it, several of my most wonderful animals and I had it myself, and I have talked about this fairly often on this very blog, you may search for it if you wish.

What I read in this persons blog, was cruel, thoughtless and downright mean, if that is what religion does to people, then I don’t want any part of it.

When I was diagnosed with Cancer, I had the best oncologist I could get, I had the best surgeon, and a wonderful dedicated bunch of doctors and nurses who got me through, it was science which has allowed me to continue living, not mumbo-jumbo and imaginary friends in the sky.

And although I am an Atheist, I am loved, by friends, family and my beautiful household animals, and their encouragement pushed me to keep going when I wanted desperately to stop having chemo, it was this, not prayers that I value.

I don’t care who you are, no book or made up faith should allow anyone to become the kind of person who would write anything like this, and I sincerely hope that the time will come when people will drop religion and walk into the future with those of us who are now free of it, instead of digging your nails into the dirt and trying to drag us all back into the 17th century.

Here is a transcript of the page, just in case it’s deleted, I want everyone to see this.

***

Obama implies he’s not a believing Christian
Posted on August 15, 2009 by GodsGadfly| 2 Comments

“I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love, who’s aging, deteriorate and have to struggle with that,” an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with “the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma.”

I know people are going to call this a stretch, but one thing I’ve experienced first hand, and through many conversations, is how different the death experience for those who have faith and those who don’t.

One person’s “agonizing” death from cancer may be a time of family togetherness, all-night prayer vigils, hand holding and hugging and hymnody. Another’s death really is agony: dark-rooms, somber relatives, no one speaking, everyone standing at a distance.

We had a big conversation about this at my Carmelite meeting a few months ago. People told amazing stories of relatives’ deathbed conversions. Some talked about relatives who had no faith, whose deaths were *horrible.* “You could feel the demons in the room,” said one lady of her brother-in-law’s death experience. He was writhing in the bed, screaming. Suddenly, he asked for a priest. They got the priest who’d been waiting outside, blocked by the atheist relatives. The priest received the dying man into the Church, and the whole room changed.

When you hear liberals talk about death, they talk about the agonizing nature of it. And the liberals, and the media, just don’t get it. They think people have a “choice” about “end of life” care (to a certain extent, we do). They say that the Schiavo case was a matter of “choice” and “family decisions” in which the government had no place (even though it had been in court for years, and the federal involvement was merely giving the family a chance at an appeal to someone other than the corrupt judge who always ruled in Michael’s favor).

But you don’t have the choice not to accept basic nutrition. You have to the choice to refuse medical care, under certain circumstances . You do *not* have the choice to turn down basic nutrition or hydration, even to the point of refusing to provide nutritoin or hydration to a dying person when one has pulled the plug.

But his talk of the agonizing experience of watching his grandmother’s death–and how much did he actually experience? Was it agonizing because of his guilt of putting his own ambitions above family?–betrays the fact that he thinks death is something fearful.

Years ago, before my heart surgery, the topic was being discussed at a Cursillo Ultreya. Members were discussing their ailing parents and how sad it was they were dying in their 80s or whatever, and Dad said, “When John dies, it will be the happiest day of our lives. All he wants is to go to Heaven, and why should we be sad that he gets his heart’s desire?”

***

Here is the original link, you can comment on my page, as I’m sure the only people who will be allowed to post at their end will be those who agree with their twisted sentiments.

Wolfie!

Facts Vs Belief

I thought of a way to show students the importance of fact over belief.

Tonight I watched the 1958 version of The Blob, the entire thing is on
Youtube, cut into ten minute sections… I’ve watched a few old films
this way.

Now…

You ask the students to pretend they’re reporters for a paper which has
a good name based upon it’s factual stories (no gossip columns here!).

You’re a reporter from the town in which The Blob eats several people,
Your job is to write down, in order, who was eaten.

Now at this point you may want to watch the film yourself.

For those who want me to continue, here’s the rest.

The blob eats, in order…

The Old man who finds the meteorite in the hole.
The Nurse,
The Doctor,
The Mechanic,
The Janitor at the supermarket.
The Projectionist at the cinema.

It has possibly eaten several people at the cinema… and I noticed that when they show the audience on the inside of the cinema, and then the audience running out terrified, that there seemed to be four times the amount of people crashing out the doors.

Anyway, the point is that although the janitor was missing, his items left dumped on the floor of the supermarket, he’s believed to have been eaten… but he could have got away.

And I wonder how many viewers would be convinced that he was eaten, even when there’s no proof that he was.

There’s also the issue of the little dog.

While the heroes of the story are stuck in a supermarket fridge, you hear the little dog, formerly owned by the old man, give a yelp.

We assume that the blob got the little dog, but once the couple escape from the supermarket, we hear one of the other teenagers say that they saw the little dog running terrified up the street.

The questions which could arise here are:

* Did the blob eat the dog?
* Did the dog escape like the teenager said?
* or was the teenager mistaken, since it could have been a dog which looked the same, which just happened to be passing in that direction?

It’s just a thought, it might be a fun lesson, and could lead to some
really good discussion… best of all, it leaves theology out of the
picture, so certain students wouldn’t block the lesson out as soon as
you mention the E word.

Wolfie!

Losing my Religion

Earlier today I came across a youtube video about brainwashing kids to believe evolution is wrong, dinosaurs didn’t exist and an idiot who thought that teaching her kids religious nonsense was “simply a lot easier and made more sense”.

Mum battled with getting me to believe, Mum grew up among family members who were in the Salvos, in fact a few of our family were in the local Salvo band.

Though she was an interesting case, although she believed in God, she never went to church, at least in my memory, and I’m not sure why.

Mum had been a churchgoer earlier on, and was even a Sunday School teacher for a while, My sister also attended sunday school.

About as much as I can recall of religion when I was growing up, were those awful US evangelists on television on a sunday. In the 70s, it was law for Aussie TV to have several hours of religious content… but this was thankfully dropped in later decades.

Mum was strange though in that whenever a nature program came on, which spoke of evolution, she never criticised it. Though she’d point her finger at me at times and yell “You’re a bloody heathen, just like your bloody Father”. Whenever I was “bad” I was always my Fathers Son or just like the other side of the Family.

We had religious instruction at primary school in the 70′s, but suddenly for whatever reason it was not required anymore, whether this was a change of government or school views, I’m not sure.

I remember some kid dobbing me into the pastor (or whatever he was) telling him that I didn’t believe in God, the fellow had a word with me but I don’t remember anything he said and it didn’t matter anyway, the words ran off me like rain from a ducks back.

The class was strange, My feelings now was that it was a bit like being taught facts and figures and then having a class dedicated to elves and fairies (which may have been more fun).

I always found religion sombre and dreary, it may have been different if I’d been bought up in the US with one of those soulful black choirs, whose music I could feel on the inside… maybe I would have gone on to enjoy music more for the experience, but the religion would have gone just the same.

During the 80s, Mum pushed me into Sunday School, so I had to stand there and sing like a goose and read parts of the bible and pray, She’d glare at me and growl “It won’t hurt you to go” when I’d protest, so instead of laying in bed like a teenage boy with a hardon and a dirty mind should, I was forced to get up an have Jesus forced down my throat, sometimes I wondered if Mum had noticed a few of my urges and was hoping she could squash them back down before I became a total animal with a few threatening words about the man upstairs.

Sometimes I though Mum was in it for the freebies, this church was extremely generous at picnics and I do admit the food was good, and oddly they weren’t too pushy with the whole God thing.

But I think it gave me a whole pile of guilt about my feelings and who I was which ontop of what I already carried around, was something I simply didn’t need.

I briefly toyed with religion myself during the 90′s when I became interested in Chinese Medicine, Shiatsu massage, Natural medicine, Native American beliefs and Reiki (which I was told was the same sort of healing power that Jesus used). I was great at reiki and shiatsu, people loved receiving a massage from me, and it was the sort of quiet hobby I needed at the time.

I became quite a spiritual person, around that time. it was my hippy phase, but without the drugs, booze and the free love.

But I got over it and moved on, and became a volunteer at Melbourne Zoo just shortly before a lot of bad stuff began to happen in my life, including the death of my Father, My wonderful Dog and the discovery of why I had been sick for so long.

Mum came to see me in hospital shortly after the removal of my rectal cancer, which was a six-hour operation. She inspected my wrist band with my name, number, home address and religion on it, and saw that it read “No religion”.

She questioned me on that, and told me that I’m Protestant, I looked at her and said “No I’m not, I don’t even know what that means”, I think she was a little surprised that I’d say… all my life I had not been religious, sometimes I said I believed merely to keep my peace with her, but I never was and this was my moment.. She wasn’t upset with me, she was just grateful that I was still alive.

Mum would sing while she was in the kitchen, she often only knew a few phrases of songs, but it was enough for her. sometimes it was a tune from the 40s, something from theatre or the pictures, sometimes a song that came out during the war… sometimes it was a Hymn.

She loved to watch “Songs of praise” but would get quite upset and angry when an old tune that she loved was “all hepped up”, sometimes she’d fight it by trying to sing louder than the television, in the old style… if looks could kill.

But a few weeks short of her passing, it was odd to hear her singing REMs “Losing my religion”. to me, that seemed to indicate that her God had left her and she didn’t care anymore, perhaps she had accepted that I was right after all.

Wolfie!

The video which was mentioned in the story.