Atheists teachers corrupting our youth, oh no!!!

I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the pure lunacy going on with the Illinois Family Institute and Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist. You know a group is going to be wacky if they have to put ‘Family’ in their name in order to prove their worth (because they have no other redeeming qualities). And now they’ve taken a break fighting the evils of homosexuality to focus on an even more threatening menace: atheist teachers! The super short version of the story is that they’re absolutely appalled that an outspoken atheist could be teaching your children (long story, please go here and here). Nothing else matters – Hemant has an excellent teaching record and never discusses atheism in the classroom, but he’s still a role model. And who wants an atheist as a role model? After a stunning lecture about acute angles, all of your children will burning Bibles and eating babies! I know I thought my high school math teachers were the paradigm of cool! …Hm, wait a second…

Anyway, IFI’s latest post is a feeble attempt at spinning the story (likely before anyone threatens their ass for libel). They claim they never called for Hemant to be fired. It’s technically true that they never used those exact words, but it was obviously their intention. Why else sent out an email to every faculty member in his school district(well, except him, how honorable), if not to alert his bosses of his evil ways? Why else email all of your members and encourage parents to pull their children out of his class? They can’t get him fired because of that pesky First Amendment and other laws, but parents have power. If they refuse to let their children attend his class, then hopefully the administration’s hands will be tied. They can’t exactly have him teaching a class with no students, can they?

The thing that really gets me (well, other than the blind hatred that these people have) is their flawed logic. They compare having an atheist teacher to having one who is racist or a Holocaust denier. In the most ironic statement of the century, they claim “It’s all about diversity and choice.” You shouldn’t have to have your student exposed to those evil atheists! This is ridiculous for so many reasons, please forgive me while I make a list:

1. If you’re that concerned with letting your children see ANY sort of subversive culture (gay kissing!! someone not believing in your God!!! oh noes!!!!), you basically have no choice but to home school them and keep them under house arrest with no television, radio, or internet for the rest of their life. I’m terrified to even joke about this, because I know people who do such things and it’s depressing. These children are being brainwashed by the hateful rubbish their parents spout and will never know an alternative.

2. The fact that atheists seem as bad as racists or Holocaust deniers (basically also racists) shows how insecure you are about your invisible Sky Daddy. The idea that our mere existence fuels doubt is both hilarious and rewarding.

3. If you’re going to pull your child out of every class where the teacher doesn’t conform to your narrow minded world views, then everyone has that right, yes? So when I reproduce, I in no way want my children to have religious teachers, or Republicans teaching history/government classes, or fans of modern art teaching Painting. They’re obviously a horrible influence. …Oh, wait, I actually want my children to be able to think for themselves, so I want them to be exposed to different viewpoints! That’s right, I forgot.

4. And finally, the idea that Hemant is somehow the only atheist you and your family may come in contact with… You know what? You may want to sit down before you read this, because it’s shocking: Atheists are everywhere! They’re your neighbors, your doctors, your friends, your family, and yes, your children’s teachers. Most probably don’t have blogs, many are probably still closeted (because cruel people like you go around trying to turn them into the town pariah), but some are definitely outspoken.

If you want to go on a crusade against atheist teachers, why pick on just Hemant? I’m President of an atheist club, I have a blog no where near as Friendly as Friendly Atheist – more like, Friendly Until You Show Your Ignorance in Which I am a Snarky and Pissed Atheist (doesn’t have as nice of a ring to it). And you know what? I’m going to be teaching starting Tuesday! Yes, I’ll be teaching ickle sophomores how to run gels and do experiments with peroxidase and all sorts of neat Biology things. And even though I will never bring up atheism in class, never wear my club shirt there, never bring in a baby for a snack – my sheer awesomeness will surely convert them all to the evil ways of heathenism. So you have a lot on your plate, IFI. There are a lot more atheist teachers out there than Hemant and me.

Atheist bus ad in Iowa…oops, never mind

Not even 24 hours ago, Hemant posted a story about the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers succeeding in getting this ad on buses in Des Moines:
Aaaaannndddd now they’ve been taken down.

“When she met with us on May 27, we showed her the ads and asked if this could be controversial and she said she didn’t think so,” said the group’s president, Randy Henderson. “She thought it was a nice ad, a safe ad.”

The ads that went up on Saturday read, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

DART said it immediately started to receive complaints.”

Drivers said people weren’t getting on buses or getting off the buses because of it,” said advertising director Kirstin Baer-Harding. “So with all the calls, it wasn’t something we wanted.”

The signs came down on Aug. 4. Baer-Harding said they never should have gone up.”The ads mistakenly got put on buses,” she said.

She said DART has the final say on any advertisements and its board decided at the last minute that it didn’t like the content. She said the mistake slipped in amid last week’s chaos with the DART-pedestrian crash and the release of its first hybrid bus.

jk lol!!!!1!!eleven!!!

…

Ok, in a warped and twisted way, I can understand the controversy behind “You can be good without God.” There are religious people out there who sincerely believe that you can’t be good without God, and that suggesting so is corrupting the innocent souls of their children. That’s obviously a load of bull crap, but I can understand the public reaction.

But this?

How dare someone suggest there’s more than one atheist out there! How dare they put a serene cloud background on their ad! Don’t they know serene cloud backgrounds imply God, since he’s up in the sky?! They mocked us! They hate Christians! Dey tuk ar jerbs!

This, my friends, is why we need to have these ads. Not only to find each other, but to let theists know we exist. Only with repeated exposure, over many many years, will they start to realize the atheist next door isn’t such a horrible person after all.

Creationism abroad

Hmm, this line of thought sounds very familiar:

“If their name is uncertain, however, their mission appears clear enough: to overthrow the Nigerian state, impose an extreme interpretation of Islamic law and abolish what they term “Western-style education”.

In an interview with the BBC, the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, said such education “spoils the belief in one god”.

“There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam,” he said.

“Like rain. We believe it is a creation of god rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.

“Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism.””

Oh wait! That’s the same paranoid creationist garbage we hear in the United States! Except, you know, the US is one of the most advanced nations in the world and Nigeria is an undeveloped nation home to corruption and scandal and unrest and disease and and and…

Good to know the Nigerian Taliban isn’t much different than our Fundamentalist Christian Taliban. Crazies no matter where you are!

A Victory for the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign

A while back I posted how the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign had their ad “You Can Be Good Without God” rejected in Bloomington for being “too controversial” even though the bus agency (owned by the town) had run religious ads before. Well, they’ve reached a settlement regarding their lawsuit! The transit will run their ads on as many buses for whatever length of time at the normal rate, and pay for part of the ACLU’s legal fees. And they say it best:

“Let’s be straight here: this is a victory not just for atheism and secularism, but for free speech all around.”

I’m crossing my fingers that West Lafayette is next. Maybe I need to go beg their organizer a little more…

Goddamnit Facebook

First my Dad friends me. Then my Mom’s like, “Wait, why did you friend your Dad and not me? Friend me too!” Then I think my Prof/Boss friends me so I accept his request, only to find out his friendship was merely suggested to me by a coworker, so in actuality I sent him a friend request. Then a minute ago I get a friend request from a cousin who is Republican, Christian, and a fan of Fox News and Sarah Palin.

…

Why, why?!?!

It’s a bit ironic because she comments on how the McCreights are bad at keeping touch and it would be a great way to get to know each other, but I have a hunch she would be appalled at most of the stuff on my facebook page. It really doesn’t surprise me though. I mean, she’s right, my dad’s side of the family doesn’t keep in touch at all, even though I have much more relatives there compared to my mom’s side (which is unusual for Greeks…). But the one thing I know is that something went horrendously wrong politics wise in my family:Seriously, how do two working class Democrats produce 1 Democrat (my dad) and 3 Republicans?* What went horribly wrong?!? Maybe this is the reason why we don’t keep in touch…

*The question marks are there because I seriously have no idea how many cousins or second cousins or probably third cousins (I’m the youngest cousin of the bunch) that I even have, especially because it seems like everyone has been remaried at least once or twice. The ones shown are just the ones I know the names of.** And my brothers didn’t arise by parthenogenesis, they just have a different mother that I was too lazy to draw.
**Actually, it’s kind of sad. I’ve done some genealogy stuff and I have an accurate family tree for the McCreights back to the 1700s (and for other branches back to the 1500s) yet I don’t know my modern relatives.

Conservative vs Liberal morals

Here’s a wonderful TED talk by Jonathan Haidt on the difference between conservative and liberal morals. Watched it a while back in my Evolutionary Psychology class and thought it was intriguing.

This is post 41 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Pat Buchanan needs to learn his internet memes

Pat Buchanan wrote an article titled “Is Obamania Over?” You could go and read it, or you could just look at this:
This is a graphic Pat Buchanan made to represent the sugar-coated, wonderful hopes for the Obama administration.

…

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Come on Pedobear, isn’t Barack a little too old for you?

This is post 40 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Married to a porn star? You’re fired

A town manager in Florida was fired for his connections to porn – not making his own, but being married to someone who did.

Wait, what?

“Scott, who married Anabela in October, was fired at an emergency meeting Tuesday after the mayor and council members learned the nature of her employment. Scott, the town manager for 15 months, was unanimously voted out, terminated with six months pay.

The firing came after Anabela, who goes by the stage name Jazella Moore, was recognized by an editor of an online adult entertainment publication after a photo of the couple on the Fourth of July parade was published in the local paper.

Fort Myers Beach Mayor Larry Kiker said, “Our issue is the situation town was put in in terms of how effective we can govern and whether or not it this was going to serve as a distraction for that, and we felt like it would.””

It would be wrong for a town council to fire someone because they had been in porn, but it sadly wouldn’t surprise me. America has such Puritan values when it comes to sex, especially using sex to make money. But firing someone for being married to a porn star? Does any connection to porn automatically make someone unfit to perform his or her job? What if it had been Scott’s sister; would he still be to blame?

If this is really all there is to the story, I hope someone offers this man a job.

This is post 19 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Married to a porn star? You're fired

A town manager in Florida was fired for his connections to porn – not making his own, but being married to someone who did.

Wait, what?

“Scott, who married Anabela in October, was fired at an emergency meeting Tuesday after the mayor and council members learned the nature of her employment. Scott, the town manager for 15 months, was unanimously voted out, terminated with six months pay.

The firing came after Anabela, who goes by the stage name Jazella Moore, was recognized by an editor of an online adult entertainment publication after a photo of the couple on the Fourth of July parade was published in the local paper.

Fort Myers Beach Mayor Larry Kiker said, “Our issue is the situation town was put in in terms of how effective we can govern and whether or not it this was going to serve as a distraction for that, and we felt like it would.””

It would be wrong for a town council to fire someone because they had been in porn, but it sadly wouldn’t surprise me. America has such Puritan values when it comes to sex, especially using sex to make money. But firing someone for being married to a porn star? Does any connection to porn automatically make someone unfit to perform his or her job? What if it had been Scott’s sister; would he still be to blame?

If this is really all there is to the story, I hope someone offers this man a job.

This is post 19 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Kiss-In Protests Mormon Bigotry

A couple days ago Pharyngula covered a story about two men who shared a kiss outside of the Mormon’s headquarters in Utah. Security guards detained the men because the formerly public plaza is now property of the LDS church, and apparently gay kissing is considered to be “offensive, indecent, obscene, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct.”

First of, fuck you, LDS church.

Ahem. Thankfully there are a bunch of awesome gay people in Salt Lake City, and they decided to hold a peaceful kiss-in on the square:

This kind of stuff needs to happen every time gay rights takes a hit somewhere. It’s peaceful and shows that gays are normal, loving couples just like heterosexual couples. I don’t want to live in a world where it’s not cool for a gay couple to kiss in a bar, but then I have to watch a straight couple basically having sex at their table.

And yes, I guess the plaza is private property now. And even though the LDS church promised this sort of stuff wouldn’t happen, that isn’t legally binding and they can theoretically do whatever they want. But you know what, whatever tiny modicum of respect I had for the LDS church completely went out the window when they fucked over California with their ridiculous funding of Prop 8. So screw you, Mormon bigots. I hope gays make out in front of all of your temples every day until you wise up.

*end rant*

(Video via Womanist Musings)