Suggested Musical Accompaniment: White Horse by Laid Back
In 1843, Joseph Smith, the dude behind Mormonism, said
You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber….It will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense.
Look at My Horse
Suggested Musical Accompaniment: Faith No More – Land of Sunshine
My undies is tight!
Nothing makes me happier than to know that, on November 2nd 2012, Bible-banging Conservatives will be forced to vote for a Mormon or face another four years of Obama. Of course, many of these Christi-Cons still have no idea what the hell a Mormon is. Therefore, in the interest in education, here are five of the most awesome parts of the Mormon religion.
There was a time that voting for a Catholic for president was considered controversial. And, coming in November, Right Wing Christian Conservatives – Or “Ri-Wi-Chri-Cons” as I like to call them – will be forced to vote for a Mormon. There is very little more in this world that brings me more glee than to see Ri-Wi-Chri-Cons forced to vote for a dude that believes that, if we all work hard enough, we can all become gods. But, now it comes down the wire that there is a little cherry to top this delicious religious wing-nut sundae.
Paul Fucking Ryan!
God watches over Moe.
A lot of religious claims and justifications that persist down through the generations do so because they’ve managed to escape empirical testing. So if you ask most religious people if they believe in the power of demonic possession in the straightforward literal sense embraced by the faithful in past centuries, most of them will probably say they don’t. We’ve found better explanations for floods and droughts and other things that used to be blamed on demons. The superstitions that haven’t been filtered out of religion with scientific rigor just becomes what we call religion today.
But even still, lots of superstitions remain intact despite them being proven demonstrably wrong. So for example we have this, from Luke 10:19
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
Some Christians reinforce this passage with one from the Book of Roadhouse, wherein Patrick Swayze sayeth unto us, “Pain don’t hurt.”
Sarah Posner is the author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters and senior editor at Religion Dispatches where she covers politics. We talk about Republicans, contraception, my gambling debts, religious code words, the possible problems Foster Friess had with girls in high school, and lots more.
Warren Jeffs, alleged child-fucker and leader/prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints takes time off from his trial to roll out his new advice column.
Dear Warren Jeffs:
My beautiful wife Jennifer and I just had our first child. It’s been an amazing experience so far, but it’s also had a much bigger effect on our day-to-day life than we expected. Our biggest challenge has been to get a good night’s sleep! She wakes us up constantly, several times throughout the night. And one time when it was my turn to run over to her room to make sure all was well at 3 AM, she was laughing at me when I got there. At least, I suspected that the crying had turned to laughter. Maybe it’s my lack of sleep. Anyway, is my baby being an asshole? And if so, is there anything I can do to change her?
Sincerely,
Fatigued in Fallujah
A common response to criticisms of religion is that its adherents can sometimes do good things, even if it’s for irrational reasons. That’s fair enough, but at the same time it’s useful to remember that while some good can be mixed in with the bad, sometimes religions create institutions of pure evil. Here are a few of them:
Schadenfreude isn’t even the best word to describe what you feel when you hear about cases like these. It’s a very specific kind of schadenfreude: one where you know that the subject’s irrational beliefs somehow shaped their own downfall, so that their own life becomes a case study against the very worldview they had adopted. We’re all happy that Hitler killed himself in the end, but how much sweeter would it have been if rumors of him being part Jewish had sent him to his own gas chambers? Clearly, that would have been awesome. So let’s look at some cases like that.
There is no news in this post. I just thought I would bulk up thecounter-apologetics here since I maybe haven’t been doing my share lately as a member of the atheist blogroll. And a good way to do that would be to start with something pretty simple and then work my way through to more complicated shit later. So if you’re looking for the usual making fun of the news thing or something you don’t already know about Pascal’s Wager, then it’s probably best to skip this one.
Atheist Hobos 