2. Empathy

3. Patience

4. Sacrifice

5. Politeness

6. Humor

7. Self-awareness

8. Forgiveness

9. Hope

10. Confidence

But with all the new friends, you get to experience the stab of a double-edged sword: you can see what true friends are up to, but get pestered by your acquaintances’ status updates. In my case, the pestering is having to view peoples’ religious propaganda/mumbo-jumbo/filth.

I can’t tell you how many posts I see on my Facebook page that display these messages like, “Re-post if you love Jesus”, with some proclamation about how without Jesus this person would be lost and so on. I feel like I’d have more to bitch about if I didn’t re-post atheist comics and other things that I find funny, relevant, interesting, or all of the above. But there is a stark difference: at any time a Christian is posed with the question, “if you really love Jesus, you’d do this…”, I have to think that the wheels are turning; their fake dictator in the sky is watching them, and they’re too afraid to turn down a reasonable request.

Why do I re-post Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins quotes? Two reasons.

First, I want to remind everyone to think critically and be inquisitive about the unknown. I like to encourage the application of science, reason, and free thought.

Second, I like the opportunity to spread awareness of the above to others. There’s not much point in posting something for which all my atheist or agnostic (or apathetic) friends would all pat me on the back. I don’t need to be reassured that I’m funny or witty, or I like funny or witty things from funny, witty people. What I really want is for theists to read those quotes and say, “Hey, I think I understand a little more about the scientific method,” or, “Sorry for being such a fucking idiot. The bible is stupid!”

Although I think the latter one is much less likely to happen. A Christian or other religious zealot would argue that they want the same, but there’s no real-world justification for why they’re right and I’m wrong. On the other hand, I have evidence to back it up. But, that’s another argument that I’ve had before.

But there are power in those quotes. The most recent one I fell in love with is shown below:

See? Nothing offensive here. What is offensive is people thanking their god for providing the food they put on their tables. I can take them places to show them who plants, cultivates, and refines those foods to provide nutrition for their bodies. I don’t see them sending any thank-you cards to them.

The Mexicans are whitey’s saviors.

While memes are all the hype lately (rage comics were a year ago), let’s try to use them to mock religion as much as possible.

We hope that the time off from work that you may have had this year was well-enjoyed and that you were able to visit and enjoy your family!

We look forward to an exciting new year in which we will be doing some new things with the blog. There is also a planned name-change and a vlog! As well as a cool upcoming campaign which should be extraordinarily exciting.

Too early to share details, but things we’ve been saying we are going to do are still in the works!

When Hitchens died, “god Is Not Great” began trending on Twitter. The religious know-nothings of our technologically-advanced time then rebutted the title of the book without doing any research.

Particular gems are:

#GodIsNotGreat Gotta kill the person who said this..!
-@Kritikagoyal007

and

If you’re really comin up with reason why #GodIsNotGreat, kill yourself.
-@ThatCruzGirl

There are 23 more in an article on Buzzfeed which are absolutely humorous, but in a very sad way.

Yes, I know that your religion is a religion of peace, and these cock-helmets do not represent everyone. With that said, your front-lines representatives on Twitter are really letting humanity down.

One would think that the insolent fuckwads rebutting Hitchens’ book title would have done some research before “tweeting” their thoughts, but, unfortunately, the top 25 tweets show no sign of research. A peculiar trait from the top-25ers, who are not only blindly dedicated to their god, but skipped that all-important research part. You know, where they actually look shit up online and determine what’s real and what’s not? I would figure that if these morons had any propensity for research, they might have questioned or given up their religion a long time ago.

Also, how violent! Isn’t Jesus referred to as “The Prince of Peace” in many modern Christian circles? Don’t the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. [mostly] claim to be peaceful? Aren’t these people attempting to see themselves as peaceful representatives for their religions? So what’s with the violence? It’s not like Hitchens titled his book, “Fuck your god; I’m going to rape him in his pristine asshole when I get to Heaven” or anything like that. No, instead he wrote, “god Is Not Great”. Of course that warrants a massive beat-down from these cowardly Twitter-fucks.

Fuck!

Check these dudes out at www.homophobicjesus.com.

When I retired 15 years ago and moved to central Maine I was surprised and annoyed by the intrusions into my yard by evangelists. Apparently there is a northern extension of the Bible Belt that I had been unaware of. One reason I didn’t like their visits was that I got mad and said things I shouldn’t have. So I painted a message on my snowplow — “THIS PROPERTY IS A SANCTUARY FROM RELIGIOUS HARASSMENT”. It works. No evangelists for about ten years now.

My neighbor, on the other hand, likes to discuss theology with them, as long as he has the time. One day they came when it was raining. He pulled a chair to the door, sat down and engaged them in a prolonged discussion without inviting them in out of the rain.

For those who want to push back a little without breaking the law, there are no doubt many more ingenious ways to make the point.

Hitch won every time.

Yet another victim of Muslim abuse

I continue to struggle with the claims that Islam is a religion of peace when I read things like this. In fact, most religious dogmas aren’t peaceful, Christianity included. But this is truly a sad story. In Bangladesh, a 30-year-old Muslim man chopped off his wife’s fingers in a cowardly act to prevent her from studying for college.

Rafiqul Islam blindfolded his wife, Hawa Akhter, 21, and taped her mouth, telling her that he was going to give her a surprise. He then cut her fingers off while a relative disposed of them to prevent doctors from being able to reattach them.

This article from The Daily Mail gives details on the atrocity:

‘He was enraged. He was jealous because while he only had a grade eight standard education, she was off to college to pursue higher studies,’ said Mr Saluddin.

The motivating factor here is that the so cleverly-named Mr. Islam, was jealous of his wife for pursuing a higher education. One would try to find a way to justify such an act. Like she poked his eyes out, or murdered his family and this was his vengeance. No, she was just going to college and he was jealous. So he chopped off her fingers.

This is why Islam is a dangerous religion. His religion may not have been the direct reason he committed this atrocity against her. He probably didn’t wake up that morning and say, “I’m going to chop off Hawa’s fingers because I am a Muslim…” Instead, what happened was, through years of brainwashing by the Islamic machine, he began to believe that it’s okay to violently assault women. Especially his wife. I don’t understand why women sign up for this abuse time and time again. All I can figure is that the brainwashing doesn’t stop at the men.

A General in the Army of Reason

A General in the Army of Reason, Christopher Hitchens died yesterday evening after a long battle with complications resulting from his esophageal cancer. Hitchens made no secret of his enjoyment of cigarettes and heavy drinking, but that still never prevented him from taking on the enormous and scope-less task of talking reason to theists all around.

Hitchens will be missed, for sure, by the atheist community, the scientific community, and the people throughout the world whose lives he touched in many ways.

I remember listening to Christopher Hitchens for the first time. I was left reeling by his incredibly articulate oration. How he could nimbly dash the argument of any theist. In a split second, I immediately knew what was meant by “Hitch-slap!”

Hitchens released a letter earlier this year that discussed his withdrawal from attending various conferences, and before this, a cancellation of a tour for his memoir, “Hitch-22″.

I absolutely hate knowing Hitchens is gone. I came to grips with him possibly succumbing in the future, but alas, this feels too soon. As Hitchens would say, “don’t keep the faith”. And we press on.

If you're going to make penises out of your food, don't let any females in your kitchen.

Saturday’s Daily Mail had a pretty interesting article about a Muslim cleric warning against women going grocery shopping for fruits and vegetables that look like penises.

The cleric warned that women could potentially get aroused by seeing such vegetables. Honestly, he must be watching too much Hungarian porn, because I don’t think I’ve ever taken a special ladyfriend to the supermarket to find her deep-throating zucchinis.

An excerpt below can’t even begin to cover the ridiculous nature of this article:

The cleric said that these fruits and vegetables ‘resemble the male penis’ and could arouse women or ‘make them think of sex,’ in a story reported on Egyptian news website Bikya Masr.

The article gets worse:

The sheikh was asked how to ‘control’ women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them.

The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Finally when someone challenges this bumbling idiot about it, he pushes the details back to an esoteric personal dynamic that the horny vegetable woman has with her god. On the outside this sounds ridiculous, but it’s a little puzzling (and scary) that we share a world with psychopaths like this.