More On The Madness Of Muslim: Faith Expressed Via Dynamite

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Can’t we all just get along? – Rodney King

Obviously we can’t. And the jury’s been in for a decade for the ‘religion of peace’. The bad press that Ass-lame receives on a regular basis disproves the title. Such as the following:

45 Killed in Sectarian Bombings in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In a deadly sectarian attack, at least 54 people were killed Friday evening and about 75 wounded when two bombs ripped through a town in a tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, officials said. A militant group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

That anyone on earth would not only step up, but to be proud of such wanton cruelty, monstrous madness, shredding of the innocent…if ours were indeed the civilized world we wished it to be, this would’ve prompted swift and relentless justice to be wreaked on the heads of those who would boast of such a crime.

Sadly, it is common news. Too common. Our species inherent tribalism and xenophobia might be the end of civilization – how long before one who would train suicide bombers is granted access to the wrong launch codes?

What else is a religion, any religion, but a cloak to disguise the sociopaths among us? A comic book fantasy for the arrested adolescence? The manic mania of the self-loathing narcissist?

Till the next post, then.

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Republicans Gone Retarded–A Pulse As An Excuse For Misogyny

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Heartbeat, heartbeat, listen to my heartbeat – Red 7

Texas. Yet another state the US could do without.

Texas Legislators File Radical ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Bill To Ban Abortion After Just Six Weeks

On Thursday, three Texas Republicans filed a measure that would criminalize abortion services after a fetal heartbeat can be detected — which typically occurs around six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they’re pregnant.

The Texas legislature is currently in the midst of a special session that was convened specifically to give lawmakers more time to consider abortion restrictions. The session will end on July 31. Until then, GOP lawmakers have been busy proposing a slew of anti-abortion bills in the hopes of being able to rush them through.

One of those bills, a measure to ban abortion after 20 weeks and shut down the majority of the states’ abortion clinics, has captured national attention over the past several weeks as thousands of Texans have rallied at the capitol in protest. The legislature gave final approval to that bill on Saturday, and Gov. Rick Perry (R) just signed it into law on Thursday morning. But that’s not enough to satisfy Reps. Phil King (R), Dan Flynn (R), and Geanie Morrison (R) — who filed HB 59 on the same day that Perry signed the controversial abortion restrictions.

So-called “heartbeat” bills are so radical that they divide the anti-choice community. In addition to criminalizing the vast majority of abortions, they also mandate invasive ultrasound procedures for women seeking abortions. In order to detect a fetal heartbeat so early in a pregnancy, doctors typically have to use a transvaginal probe.

Earlier this year, North Dakota became the first state to pass a six-week heartbeat ban. It currently represents the most stringent abortion ban the country has seen since Roe v. Wade first legalized the procedure, and it’s being challenged in court for overstepping Roe.

None of this will go into affect unless Roe vs. Wade is overturned:

Later on Thursday night, the text for the bill was released. The heartbeat ban is a “trigger” provision, which means it wouldn’t take effect unless Roe v. Wade is overturned. If that court decision is struck down while HB 59 is law, a six-week abortion ban would immediately go into effect without requiring Texas to pass another law. Similar “trigger” provisions have been added to state constitutions in other conservative states in hopes of quickly banning abortion in the event that Roe is invalidated.

I’m actually shocked that any of these boneheads could set up a domino effect – but along with conscious denial of the facts, deception is a valued weapon in the repertoire of the rethuglicans.

And because Americans (as a rule) only live in America (mentally), they somehow think that there’s just plenty of room for more people, so hey! Let’s get fertile! As if overpopulation is the stuff of dystopian science fiction.

Which it will not be – if we keep walking down the road of irresponsible prolificacy.

Till the next post, then.

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More Batshit Crazy Burmese Buddhists: Mobbing The Muslims

Cross posted at the Atheist Oasis

"Life is dear to all. Comparing others with oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill." -  Dhammapada

Lately, more Buddhists have been in the news – and the press is none too good.

Burma jails 25 Buddhists for mob killings of 36 Muslims in Meikhtila

A Burmese court has sentenced 25 Buddhists to up to 15 years in prison for murder and other crimes during a night of rioting, burning and killing in central Burma, after weeks in which it seemed only Muslims were being punished for sectarian violence aimed largely at them.

But the sentences handed down on Wednesday and Thursday did not erase a sense of unequal justice: a day earlier, a Muslim received a life sentence for murdering one of 43 people killed in March in the central Burmese town of Meikhtila.

A wave of violence in the past year in the largely Buddhist country has left more than 250 people dead and 140,000 others fleeing their homes, most of them Muslim. The attacks, and the government's inability to stop them, have marred the south-east Asian country's image abroad as it moves toward democracy and greater freedom after nearly five decades of military rule.

Many of the sentences were handed down on Wednesday, and the toughest stemmed from the deadliest incident of the Meikhtila riots: a brutal mob attack on an Islamic school, its students and teachers that killed 36 people.

Buddhist mobs torched Mingalar Zayone Islamic boarding school, Muslim firms and all but one of the city's 13 mosques after a row between a Muslim and a Buddhist at a gold shop and the burning to death of a Buddhist monk by four Muslim men.

Although among the least associated religious traditions with violence, there is a robust history of Buddhist-related self-flagellation, suicides, torture, and wars.

Buddhism often promotes unproven nonsense concepts such as reincarnation and karma –again proving my repeated insistence that the idea of an afterlife - and as a transient factor the comic book idea that all deeds are written down in some invisible ledger to be paid off at some indeterminate point in the future – only pours gasoline on the fire.

The afterlife poisons all that it touches – regardless of which culture it hails from.

Till the next post, then.

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J’accuse! What Religion Is Truly Responsible For…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; Bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. Genesis 9:7

"We have met the enemy and he is us." – Pogo

Puff pieces. None of them ever cut to the bone. Every one of them dilly-dallies around the issues. Most articles adopt a shrug-hey-let-‘em-have-it-if-it makes-them-feel-good attitude.

The truth of the matter is this: religion isn’t responsible for anything. That’s the fallacy of reification. The fact is, that people are responsible. For everything. Good and bad. Natural selection doesn’t select on intelligence. It selects based on adaptability, and being easily influenced is a facet of adaptability.

But this religion nonsense still has got to go.

It propagates a series of vast lies: that some otherworldly other is watching out for you personally, that there’s some invisible ledger being kept and all debts and injuries will finally be balanced; in short, someone else will come along and sort your mess for you.

It’s an insane and irresponsible mindset. It gives the lazy thinker all the excuses they might need: I’ll not use birth control, because the result is gawd’s will. My gawd wants me to have multiple children (see the quote from above). Gawd is against birth control because some pointy-hatted asshole in Italy says so.

At this juncture, anthropocentric global warming is fact – the only people who battle that are the mooks fiercely clenching their SUV’s to their chests in denial. We are exhausting this planet’s resources. This is no longer speculation or science fiction. As a species, we are going to wreck this little blue pearl within a century or so.

We are coming to an agonizing realization: people are going to have to start taking reproductive responsibility. We have upwards of an estimated 100 million abandoned children living in the streets – and the upper percentiles are usually in the heavily religious countries. Starving children? Human trafficking? Yeah, there’ll be no divine intervention there. It’s down to us.

Pretty soon, it will get to the point where governments will be required to legislate and enforce a limit to family size. For the sake of our species. Regardless of fuzzy-wuzzy feelings or religious belief. Sad but true.

So go forth, and fuck responsibly.

Till the next post, then.

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