Towel Day: That About Wraps it up For God

Today is Towel Day! A Celebration of the life of Douglas Adams.
This is also the Towel Day Blogfest!

Today I want to talk about Douglas Adams the atheist.   Adams had described himself as a Radical Atheist, he was also best friends to Richard Dawkins another famous atheist, but I never knew that back when I was young.

When I was 13-14 I discovered a wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It was funny, clever and so very British that I fell in love with it.  It was perfect for my teenage mind then; living on a steady diet of Doctor Who, British metal and TV.

Reading the book though I recognized something.  Here was an author that felt the same things I did. Sure he was hiding it in comedy and irreverent space travel, but here was someone that knew the same things I did:
The was no God.

As I got older I learned more about Douglas Adams.  Of course I knew the Doctor Who connection, but later I learned he and Richard Dawkins owned the first Macs in England. He introduced Dawkins to the woman that would be his wife, Lala Ward aka Romana II.

He was involved in computers, he was on Monty Python he was an advocate of science, technology, environmentalism and he was an atheist.

Reading his books made me happy, they made me realize that the thoughts I was having as a teenager were just ok, but certainly a sign that I was a hoopy frood that really knew where my towel was.

I am currently rereading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy now.
It is every bit as great today as it was in the 1980s.

The Thaw

Gotta get on this.

There is this newish video out called The Thaw.
It has a bunch of whiny teenagers complaining about the "fact" that Christians are being "frozen out of America".

Here. Watch it yourself.



Hemat and TJ have already posted their responses.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/18/these-christian-kids-think-theyre-being-persecuted-now-watch-them-get-called-out-on-it/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIrHwHYtQxo
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/20/more-atheist-responses-to-the-thaw/

Here are some video responses.

This one is just awesome, from the Cult of Dusty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EtRxYf7APwE


The first one I saw, from the Amazing Atheist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIrHwHYtQxo



The BarkingAtheist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWeV98JIXko
This one is actually makes a lot of great points.



Livelife8072
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLWKGBBHeuU



EssenceOfThought
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBmuqr9R1w8



All these videos make the same points.
No you are not being forced from being Christians. Bulling is bad no matter WHO is doing it.
You are not special and you don't get special rights.

Blogfest: Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Cross posting this from my gaming blog The Other Side.

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia
http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/2013/03/hop-against-homophobia-and-transphobia_15.html

I have never been shy about the fact that I support equal rights for everyone. In particular I have been a strong supporter of gay rights and freedom to marry rights.  So I am very pleased to be part of this one.  Since this hop is focused on authors I am going to talk about some characters.

But this is not just a regular blog hop.  This one is about making a difference.

So. For the time period between May 17 to May 27 I will donate all the money I make from The Witch and from my DriveThruRPG Affiliate money to The Trevor Project.

This is a charity I have given money to in the past and they are a worthy cause.
In the unfortunate event I make no money then I will make it a function of the number of visitors I get. I get something like a 1,000 hits a day over at the Other Side.  So that over ten days, maybe a penny a visitor would be like $100.  A drop in the bucket for their operating costs to be sure, but every little bit helps.  No idea yet. Gotta see how much I can budget for this.

So help me out and help out a group kids that really need some understanding.
We can certainly do more than debate the merits of ascending vs. descending AC right?

Illinois Family Institute: Little Hate Machine

I have talked about the IFI in past here.
Not so subtle reminder: Did you know that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies them as a hate group?  It's true. They are right up there (down there?) with the Klan.
Good place for them too because they are a hate filled bunch of evil little minded people.

I had a post I was working on about them. But Sheldon over at The Ramblings of Sheldon did a much better job. Go read his post (but do it in the same voice you use when reading my posts.)

http://ramblingsofsheldon.blogspot.com/2013/05/exposing-extremism-illinois-family.html

It is a great read and touches on a lot of the same things I wanted to talk about.

I have had the misfortune of dealing with these people (the IFI). I find them to be so closed minded and hate filled that I am ashamed for our species because of them.  Sure there are worse groups out there. But these twits are so clueless about their hate that they make me sick.

You know what I am glad Sheldon wrote his post instead of me writing one now. I don't think I would have been able to get to the end.

Psychics make me sick

From Hemant Mehta,

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/06/in-2004-psychic-sylvia-browne-told-amanda-berrys-mom-her-daughter-was-dead/

So this piece of shit Sylvia Browne told the girl's mother she was dead. The mother soon died afterward.
Now granted, the stress of loosing a child was ample enough to kill anyone.  But this fraud continues unabated in her cold-reading bullshit.

Another one I can't is that Long Island Medium, Theresa Caputo.  I won't link to her site or to her stupid "reality" show on TLC, but here is a blurb about her on James Randi's site, http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1755-long-island-medium-a-tall-story.html

I think what gets me the most is not that they get away with it, but people are falling over themselves to throw money at them.  That's not just willful ignorance, it is blind, rabid stupidity.

I shouldn't disgusted or surprised, but I am.

Faith vs. Reason

As seen recently on Facebook...

Reason: 

Knowing to turn on a light to see the rest of the damn staircase. 

-  Me.