Seems like a lot of bloggers are posting April Fools Jokes today, because April Fools Day is one of the sacred holidays of Atheism, having no reference whatsoever to the divine, supernatural or religious (even though this year it falls on Palm Sunday). It’s a completely secular holiday. Most of the posts on Freethought Blogs are of the “my fellow atheist blogger X has decided to hang it up, and stop blogging ” variety. I have to think this was a planned strategy. (D’uh).
People think we atheists pick on Christians too much, but tend to shy away from picking on Muslims. Actually, just about everything we object to, while often directed to some inanity of Christianity, could be easily extrapolated to any religion, because it’s theism that atheists don’t buy into. Christianity is just the most pervasive form of theism on the planet, and a known target. In addition most atheists, if they were once part of a theistic community, were probably Christians, or at least live in a predominately Christian area. There are not a lot of formerly Islamic atheists out there. At least there are not many talking about it, even if they exist.
Apparently, maybe not always, but sometimes, when there is smoke there is a significant probability that there is fire also.
This seems to be the case in Arizona where the well known but smokey Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, seems to have run a department in an area of the country known for its significant Hispanic population, not to mention close to the border of Mexico, that
unfairly [targeted] Latinos for detentions and arrests and [retaliated] against those who complain.
As you would expect, Herman Cain’s wife stands by her man. Hey! It’s a marriage. Why 
wouldn’t she? That’s what married couples do. They try to overlook the failings of their spouses and sometimes go public with nonsensical rationalizations.
Herman Cain’s wife says the claims of sex harassment against the GOP presidential candidate don’t ring true because he “totally respects women.”
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a post meant to disparage any religion, especially the Muslim religion. You know, the “religion of peace”.
Muzzammil Hassan was a cable TV producer, who set up his own cable studio to broadcast shows that “promote[d] understanding of his Muslim culture”. He started the studio with his wife, Aasiya Hassan, the 37 year old mother of his two children. They wanted to counter the negative stereotypes of Muslims perceived by Americans since 9/11. On Feb 12, 2009, he stabbed her to death with two knives he had purchased about an hour earlier at Wal-Mart, six days after she had filed for divorce.
“All I can say is, I’m so sorry. I see myself as a mere scumbag paedophile who took advantage of a situation and used my power to abuse young people.”
(((Billy))) has a great post on his blog, that I hope you’ll read, concerning human’s inexplicable subconscious ability to revert to tribalism. He noted that we seem to have a tendency to see people who are different than us as outside ourselves, which allows us to treat them and think of them as less than us, i.e. less than human. At least, that’s what I got from his post.
<rant> We all know that Religion and Hypocrisy go hand in hand. Religion has no choice. It is impossible to be religious and consistent at the same time, because any religious claim is usually self-contradictory, requiring a pull in two directions. Against abortion? Sure, every life is sacred (except those on death row, service men fighting in war, innocent civilians in Iran and Afghanistan, etc. etc. etc.). Voila’! Instant Hypocrisy.
A new report from Ireland, specifically from the 
Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, has detailed the cover-up by the hierarchy of the Catholic church which was perpetuated for decades, a “scandal on an astonishing scale”.
The report, which took three years to complete, said the archdiocese had an “obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal” and had “little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child”.
Maybe this is just another example of confirmation bias at work, only as viewed through this atheist’s rose colored glasses, but why does it seem that whenever something particularly horrible, or pathetically sad happens, somehow religion or religious sensibilities seems to be lurking in the background, or coloring the fringe? Vjack has an ongoing series over at Atheist Revolution on the topic, continually pointing out the sordid news that occurs when religious people take their beliefs to extremes, something along the lines of “Know Them By Their Deeds”. He rightly points out Christian hypocrisy with real life stories of religious extremists who rationalize their bad deeds with their religion. It looks like another one looming on the horizon.
SPANISH INQUISITOR 