An important Easter message.

Today is a day of celebration in churches all over the world. The zombie Jesus has risen (after a quick tour of the US, if you believe the mormons) and is out to get brains spread the word of God to the masses.

Churches in Australia have taken the opportunity to continue their Easter message – Atheists are the cause of all evil in the world!

Apparently, atheism leads to loneliness and is “the path to a very lonely old age” according to Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen.

I would like to make a suggestion to Peter – meet some atheists. I think you’ll find that you rather like us. We’re nice, normal people. We have jobs, hobbies, families. We fall in love, just like Christians, we have friends and are involved in our communities. Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t all 40 year old virgins who live in Mum’s basement.

Also, because using your brain is sexy and we don’t have weird hang-ups about sex, I’d go so far as to suggest that maybe atheists spend fewer nights cold and alone than the church-goers…

Buns of Unbelief!

Mmmm... who knew atheism could taste so good?

I made hot cross atheist buns! They’re extra strident.

Note: this photo was taken before they were baked. The heathens in my house ate them before I could get a photo of the finished product.

The Easter Message

Ah, Good Friday – the day the Christians mourn the torture and death of Jesus, one of the biggest days of the Christian calendar and an opportunity for the head honchos to get a message out to their twice-a-year congregations. So, what to talk about? The message of God’s love? The nice things Jesus said? A parable or two? Perhaps read from Leviticus?

Nah, let’s bash the atheists.

I kind of get that, I’d probably do that too. But calling us a religion? Firstly, look atheism up in the dictionary, we can’t be a religion. The name gives it away. Secondly, is being called a religion by the religious really an insult?

“Don’t listen to those evil atheists! They aren’t really atheists! They’re as religious as you and I, and we all know how evil religions are! Wait, shit, that’s not what I mean. They’re religious! They can’t think for themselves, their leaders have to tell them what to think because they’re as stupid as any other congregation! I mean, I bet they’d believe as much bullshit as I feed you! Fuck, no, that’s not right either. Um… atheists… they’re like, like, um, HITLER! And Stalin! And Pol Pot! That’s right! They’re PolPotists! EVIL!“

If we were a religion too, wouldn’t the church be celebrating?

Hooray! They’re just like us! Let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. I’ll count us in…

No?

So, I’d like to give my own Easter message. Christians – we know you are a bit threatened by the fact that we had a convention. And we laughed at some jokes at your expense. Doesn’t make us a religion, no matter how many times you say it.

Atheism – apparently just rebellion against your non-existent father.

James S. Spiegel, a Christian philosopher has declared that atheism in fact, isn’t a rational decision based on science and reason but is the “suppression of truth by wickedness”. Enid Blyton would approve.

Naughty Atheists!

We also have no fathers. And that’s the Biblical Truth (TM)!

But mummy, atheists are MEAN!

Barney Zwartz had a good whinge in the Age this morning that atheists at a convention weren’t nice to Christians. We laughed, we applauded when people said funny things. HOW DARE WE?

Barney – shut up. We had a laugh. We’re allowed to joke amongst ourselves without constantly being chastised by people like you. Grow up and stop getting “offended” every time someone disagrees with you. You are starting to get boring, and I’m going to be forced to make fun of you – and then you’ll cry, because people will laugh.

PS. Did you seriously make fun of Stuart Bechman’s hair? Is that all you could come up with?

Wedding vs PZ Myers

I have a major dilemma… I bought my tickets to the Rise of Atheism convention as soon as they were available and did so to see three speakers in particular; Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and A.C. Grayling.

A few months later, I got an invitation to a friend’s wedding and realised that it was on the same weekend. No biggie, I thought, I’ll just go to both! So I miss a few talks on the Saturday afternoon and can’t go to the dinner, that’ll be okay…

And then I got the program and found I would be missing PZ’s and Grayling’s talks.

Argh! What do I do? I am shattered, but I’ve already RSVPed to the wedding. Nooooooooooo.

Tim Minchin needs no introduction

If I were that sort of a person, I would say that I must have accumulated some serious karma, or maybe God was smiling upon me, or today was my lucky day thanks to Venus’ angle with Cetus. But I’m not that sort of person, and it would be very inappropriate to use such language when talking about the musical genius of the skeptical movement… Mr Tim Minchin.

I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to Tim Minchin’s show this afternoon (and to M.R. et al, I say thank you!), and went with great excitement. I’ve seen him perform before, but this show was orders of magnitude better.

I mean, c’mon, the guy explained logical fallacies in the first ten minutes. He used the term “ironic” correctly! He sang about Jesus and the Bible and oh so many other things.

My favourite part was his beat poem Storm, which is just extraordinary.

And he finished off with this lovely song about Christmas, which sums up my feelings on the holiday as well. I’m not religious, but I look forward to Christmas, and get carried away with baking and presents and carols… and my family. It is a beautiful song, and I think you should listen to it:

To cross, or not to cross?

This little atheist got invited to a fancy-schmancy dinner last night, at the Catholic residential college she teaches at.

I was looking forward to it, partly because the invitation promised drinks (mmm… wine), partly because I suspected there would be steak (there was), and partly because I hoped the cute engineering tutor would be there (he wasn’t). But instead of a night of interesting conversation with other postgrad students, I got stuck between a priest and a theology student who knew a lot about noxious weeds of South Australia. We discussed someone’s trip to Rome two years ago, and the virtues of boiling up Patterson’s Curse for homeopathic remedies.

So, the night wasn’t quite as exciting as I had hoped, at least I got a steak and a few glasses of NZ sav blanc. There was one other thing though…

As this was a Catholic institution, and there were no less than six priests in attendance, grace was said before and after the meal. No big deal, I’ve done grace before, hell, I’ve even said grace before. But never have I been on the receiving end of such dirty looks for not crossing myself during the prayer.

I’m not one for kicking up a fuss – I bow my head and mumble when prayers are being said, but I’ve always drawn the line at crossing myself. There are several good reasons for this:

1. I’m not Catholic
2. I feel it is a bit rude to go through the motions when it does actually mean something to the people around me and
3. I don’t know which way you’re supposed to do it.

I sat back down, feeling as though I’d blown my nose on the table cloth, or committed some other major social faux pas, and wondering whether I’d still have a job next year, now that I’d revealed myself to be a heathen.

Should I have just done it? Was it impolite not to?

Scientology called out by Australian senator

Nick Xenophon has called out Scientology as a ‘criminal organisation’ and wants an investigation into its tax-free status.

Good job! It’s about time that an investigation was conducted. It took some balls to stand up in parliament and say that.

There is video of the ABC news broadcast here, and audio here

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Kevin Rudd has said that he also has concerns about Scientology, and will look at the evidence provided by Xenophon. Of course, the Church of Scientology has called it “outrageous”.

A plague of athiests? Really?

I’m not sure if there is a worse start to an otherwise sunny Wednesday, than opening the paper of the morning and finding yet another poorly-researched, shrill, (oh yes, I went there) and downright insulting opinion piece in the paper about the “plague of atheists”.

Yep, you read that correctly, according to Greg Craven in The Age this morning (4th November 2009), athesits are the “largest and least appealing infestations”, comparable to “bogong moths in Canberra [and] frogs in biblical Egypt”, “summer’s blowflies” and, by inference, cane toads. Of course, this is only the “New Atheists”, the traditional ones fared somewhat better,

Worse, they are not traditional atheists. These tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceramics, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.

Um, I wonder whether Prof. Craven has ever actually met an atheist, let alone a pamplet-clutching one?