most serial killers love their dogs

“Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important... about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.”

PZ Myers, Theology is a deceitful strategy@Pharyngula

PZ keeps a science blog, like any biology teacher should do, where he frequently bashes irrationality, religion and other anti-scientific subjects. Pharyngula is one of the most famous science blogs around, and PZ himself is one of the celebrities of the atheist online community. I always found it remarkable the rate at which publishes updates, almost faster than a normal person can read them. Most of his entries are mostly informative, always with a hint of his black humor and sharp tongue (the sub-title of his blog is "Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal", which I guess is enough to keep more conservative minds away), more proper for those interested in science in general. Some people think he is a little too violent in his words, and I would tend to agree, but I wouldn't consider it as a bad thing; on the contrary, people like him are necessary to stir things up, and to make people think about all the stuf they take for granted.
I found this paragraph of this dissertation about theology (and the so called moderate religion) quite brilliant and eloquent, even for him. I particularly liked the last phrase. Very insightful...

(...)there is the notorious eighteenth-century debate on the existence of God, staged by Catherine the Great between Euler, the Swiss mathematician, and Diderot, the great encyclopedist of the Enlightenment. The pious Euler advanced upon the atheistic Diderot and, in tones of the utmost conviction, delivered his challenge: 'Monsieur, (a + bⁿ)/n = x, therefore God exists. Reply!' Diderot was cowed into withdrawal, and one version of the story has him withdrawing all the way back to France.

I find this passage from Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' extremely amusing... Amusing, but most likely false. Neither Euler would use such a fawlty argument, nor would Diderot avoid a mathematic discussion as important as this one.

[ via Friendly Atheist ]

'Back of the Bible' tells us about all those old testament books nobody really reads. Everybody should know these stories, they are the kind of stuff you want to teach your children. Genocide, whores and kittens, it's all here!

Here's a part of the introduction:

"Everybody loves the Bible. It's shit-full of good advice you can apply to everyday life, from "turn the other cheek" to "God hates fags." What many people don't know, however, is that the Bible isn't just the basis for highly collectible Jesus plates - it's also an enormous goddamn thousands-years-old book.

But keep in mind, the Bible's as thick as a phone book. For every chapter about Jesus wind-sprinting across a lake to tell you how much he loves kittens, there's another with God making a smoking peasant fireball because they sacrificed a goat to Him with the wrong knife.

Once you wade past the shallow end of the New Testament into the back half of the Old Testament, get ready: it turns out God's a fucking lunatic, and He loves the taste of your blood. Old Testament God ain't letting Himself get nailed to any crosses like some pussy; OT God wouldn't spit on your balls if they were on fire. If He covers your eyes with boils to win a bet with Satan, consider yourself lucky He didn't turn your city into a mushroom cloud for not praying to Him enough. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament leaves only one conclusion: God is a total hardass, and if you step out of line He will most likely drop you in the time it takes most people to open a door."

[ via Pharyngula ]

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

I always had this reasoning, but only now I found out that Epicurus thought of it first... 2300 years before me...

"Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.", Sidney J. Harris

(...)The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex - an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make. Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. Monks have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. The teaching of the church has been, and still is, that virginity is best, but that for those who find this impossible marriage is permissible. "It is better to marry than to burn," as St. Paul puts it. By making marriage indissoluble, and by stamping out all knowledge of the ars amandi, the church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain. The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged. ( Read more...Collapse )

Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?, 1930