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).
If you’re seriously thinking that Santorum is a viable candidate, you need to have your chucklehead examined. This guy is a major financial backer of the candidate, yet his ideas about women are from the 1950s. Birth control consisted of women keeping they legs pressed tight against a Bayer aspirin? How enlightened of him! Of course, the Pill had not been invented and commercially produced by then, so I guess that was the only pill available for birth control when Mr. Chucklehead was playing hide the salami.
Nyah, nyah. Do I sound like a petulant school boy? The reason I might is because the sentiment is so painfully obvious, even a child could figure it out and agree. It takes little in the way of critical thinking to do so.
In the Can-Your-God-Do-This? Department, science has done what, as usual, god cannot do. Or, to believe most believers, he could do it, so he apparently doesn’t want to.
In 1974, 13 year old Ima Jean Sanders disappeared. She was never heard from again, and for 37 years her mother has never had a day go by where she didn’t think about her, or wonder whatever happened to her. The remains of a young female were discovered in 1976, but never linked to Ima.
I’m into numbers today. Numbers, as in lists. 
First up, the Top Ten anti-gay, rabid homophobic men in public life who happened to be caught, hypocritically, being gay themselves. It’s a telling list when Ted Haggard doesn’t even make the top four, though I don’t think the list is weighted in any particular order. It runs the gamut from Mark Foley through Haggard to George Rekers to the notable Pastor Eddie Long (and I wonder how many permutations of his last name he has used to attract the boys?). Then, to add to your numbers fixation, there is the bonus that the top 10 actually includes 14 names! How good can it get?
“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.”
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.
I’m not exactly sure who Betty Bowers is, but she does seem to have marriage, according to the Bible, down pat.
There’s not a lot I can say about the following story that isn’t so obvious, it needs no comment, so I will make this short.
A thirteen year old girl in Somalia was raped by three men. Under Islamic Law, that rape means that she committed adultery, the penalty for which is death by stoning. Guess what the authorities did? If you guessed that they stoned her to death, you are correct. And not only did they stone her to death, they did it in a stadium with over 1000 apparently bloodthirsty onlookers, cheering on the men with stones.
Here is a heartbreaking story, and it’s not a little story either. It should be getting much more attention than it is. It’s called rape, and it is happening on a systematic, daily basis, with increasing frequency and impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not only simple rape, but kidnapping, torture and sexual enslavement of very young girls, some as young as nine years old. The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children also has issued a report on this. There were 27,000 sexual assaults in one province in 2006 alone! A couple of quotes from the above article: Continue reading
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