I was captured on the Good Atheist earlier today.

It’s more of a conversation than an interview, so just sit back and listen to a couple of guys blather.

As I mentioned before, the Coalition of Reason is putting some positive, pro-atheism ads in the NY subways. As expected, of course, some Christians are upset about this. Their reaction is no surprise. The inanity of their reaction is also no surprise. For a beautiful example of a truly stupid response, you can rely on Sean Hannity.

Can you imagine the outrage if a Christian group put pro-God ads in the New York City subways? What outrage.

I can imagine it, because as that link points out, there have been multitudes of pro-God ads there for years. I was also familiar with seeing them all over the place in the Philadelphia subways when I lived there, and I can describe perfectly the “outrage” they generated. Look in a mirror, roll your eyes, and sigh…that’s it.

That link also points out that Sean Hannity doesn’t know, because he never rides the NY subway system.

Here’s the Arizona COR video. Watch that and imagine Sean Hannity’s outrage.

He must be the warm-up act for the global atheism convention this spring.

Those rascals at the Coalition of Reason are stirring up mischief again — people are sending me all these news stories about ads going up in the NY subways, Boston, Chicago, and so forth. They are making trouble for atheists! Didn’t they get the word that we’re supposed to be as quiet as mice, laying low and avoiding antagonizing the elephantine majority that might just squish us? Any active response by a subset of atheists will also mean that some other subset will be doing something different, which will create Deep Rifts, and we can’t have that.

Nah, I’m just pulling your leg. Get out there and make some noise. CoR seems to be doing a fine job of coordinating national awareness campaigns.

Greg Laden reports that Oprah actually had positive things to say about the quality of life in Denmark, and may even have been non-condemning in a brief comment about their godlessness. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Greg spends his afternoons watching Oprah. But after that, I’m mildly and pleasantly surprised. I doubt that much was said about it (parts of the program are online, but no, I simply can’t bear to watch it), but at least it’s one tiny step toward mainstreaming atheism.

I guess we have somebody worried.

Atheist Foundation of Australia and Global Atheist Convention Websites Attacked

The Atheist Foundation of Australia and Global Atheist Convention websites suffered a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack yesterday, which caused the websites to be taken offline.

These attacks affected our upstream providers and numerous other websites, cost a large amount of money and time, and have left the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites without hosting for the interim.

While we do not have enough information to confirm the source or reason for the attacks, they came in the wake of news that The Rise of Atheism Global Atheist Convention, to be held in Melbourne next March, has already sold 1,000 tickets and is set to become the largest gathering of atheists in Australia’s history.

AFA President, David Nicholls, says, “We have been informed that the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention sites were the specific target of the attacks. This may be not just an attack on atheism, but an attack on freedom of speech.”

Nicholls says that the Global Atheist Convention is not about attacking the beliefs of individuals but, rather, opposes the undue political influence of religious institutions and lobby groups in society.

“The Atheist Foundation of Australia supports freedom of thought, and that includes freedom of religion. Our aim is to keep the Australian government, education and welfare systems secular,” says Nicholls. “Unfortunately, some people in our society find that very confronting.”

The Atheist Foundation of Australia has raised this matter with the appropriate authorities and is discussing this situation with them.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia technical staff are working hard to restore the site and once it is restored, tickets for The Rise of Atheism Global Atheist Convention will again be available at http://www.atheistconvention.org.au.

You’ve got a whole 66 shopping days until Christmas, but as you all know, the War on Christmas is fought all year ’round. I’m already getting email from people who have started their Christmas shopping (I hate you all) and who toys and games to educate and introduce kids to science and learning (OK, you’re forgiven.) This is a tough call, especially if you want something to do with evolution — it has been deemed ‘controversial’, you know, so there has been a kind of de facto self-censorship going on among those manufacturers who want our money, but want Christian money just as bad.

One suggestion I’ve been sending to parents of young kids is to check out Charlie’s Playhouse, a place that specializes in evolution toys and games.

Notice that my cunning plan to undermine Christmas is to encourage secular people to celebrate it…bwahahahahahaaa!

There was a debate yesterday, on the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. On the affirmative side, the Catholics had Anne Widdecombe, a conservative British politician, and Archbishop Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria. On the godless side…Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.

Just look at that lineup and you can predict how it went. It was a complete rout.

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers. The archbishop had obviously decided that it would work best if he stuck to facts and figures and presented the Church as a sort of vast charitable or “social welfare” organisation. He emphasised how many Catholics there were in the world, and that even included “heads of state”, he said, as if that was a clincher. But he said virtually nothing of a religious or spiritual nature as far as I could tell, and non-Catholics would have been none the wiser about what you might call the transcendent aspects of the Church. Then later when challenged he became painfully hesitant. In the end he mumbled and spluttered and retreated into embarrassing excuses and evasions. He repeatedly got Ann Widdecombe’s name wrong. The hostility of both the audience and his opponents seemed to have discomfited him.

So it was left to Ann Widdecombe to defend the Church single-handedly. She did well, showed a light touch and took Hitchens to task for exaggerations and so on. But in the end Hitchens and Fry were able to persuade decisively by simply listing one after another the wicked things that have been done in the Church’s name over the centuries. More than anything they focused on the “institutionalisation of the rape and torture and maltreatment of children”. That’s what Hitchens called it – that’s pretty much what it was – and Fry returned to it. I don’t blame them for harping on about these unspeakable crimes, because there is no answer to them. Then they talked about the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. When Zeinab Badawi in the chair asked the archbishop whether Christ himself ever actually said anything about homosexuality, he replied by saying “that’s not the point” or words to that effect, and sounded slippery.

Ah, fish in a barrel, defended from a pair of professional big game hunters and explosives experts by a pair of ditherers. That’s entertainment!