See Spot Rant.

Nice flag.

A Random Harvest.

Shake a tree and a few nuts are bound to come loose.

A specious adage until one considers that is exactly how they harvest walnuts. There was a history channel thing about automated harvesting machines and harvesting walnut was a tough one for a machine to crack, so to speak. They have this big thing that clamps on to the tree and shakes the fuck out of it, they used to have guys do that by climbing them. The same machine (that I saw on TV anyway…) can pick up the nuts from the ground which used to require more illegal aliens or something.

They do the same shit at FuxNews.

I read an interesting article from the website Religious Dispatches this morning about something called “Ecumenical Protestantism” and it’s evil cousin “Evangelical Protestantism” and an apparent conflict of interest between the two:

Hollinger notes Harry Emerson Fosdick’s 1922 sermon, “Will the Fundamentalists Win,” and its publication in Christian Century. Hollinger invites EcuP to adopt a Fosdickian mentality, a willingness to offer criticism of Evangelical Protestantism (EvaP) and its obscurantist versions of faith and questionable scholarship.

I add: legalism and a drive for purity of faith and thought, confusion about women and race, disdain for the world, Paul rather than Jesus, a masochistic love of perceived persecution, Old-Testament militarism, twisting history to support American Exceptionalism, Reconstructionism, a reliance on outlandish promises and miracle stories, pressured conformity, visions of eternal wrath for the “faithless,” and always the temptation to believe “my faith is bigger, better and brighter than your faith; what’s wrong with yours?”

Why should we take anyone’s “word” on their Faith?

In other words, how are we supposed to know whether or not they’re being honest with us or even themselves?  It used to be that they’d scar themselves, sacrifice something or just do something plain insane and/or  idiotic.  But these creeps want the rest of us to take on “faith” that their own faith isn’t a lie.  How do we know whether or not they’re faking it?

And isn’t that the fundamental flaw with religion to begin with, the conflation(or rather confusion) of knowledge and belief?  What is a “crisis of faith” but the nagging feeling you’ve been swallowing shit all your life?

“Our effort might not win any EvaP friends, but secular intellectuals who accept “Enlightenment-generated standards for cognitive plausibility,” and just about anyone else who cares about the state of religion and prefers truth to hype. In other words, let Toto do his work—pull back the curtain, let the world see the smoke and mirrors and regain the trust of many.”

That’s nice, but you’re far too late to the party and simply showing the world what these people has accomplished nothing and if anything, emboldened them. “Liberal” Christianity is no less a problem either.  Believing in supernatural nonsense is still believing in supernatural nonsense.  Liberal Christians are like a backyard barbecue chef that defends the arsonist’s use of fire.  Theology is an Epistemology only to  another Theologian.

We,  as a species, are facing an unprecedented economic and environmental crisis.  The science leaves little to zero doubt we are at, or even past the point of no return.

The time to act is passing us by.  Our plutocrats have their heads up their asses as far as the Theocrats do, and we can afford neither of them any more.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply” has morphed into “Go Forth and Keep for Thyself What Thou Kills except what Thou Hasn’t Already Fucked Up Beyond Redemption“.

We are getting fucked over by the world’s foremost purveyors of   ‘The Seven Deadly Sins“, and they are allowed to continue their rampages in the name of  ”Religious Freedom” and “The Invisible Hand of the Free Market“.

What has this imaginary friend and this imaginary force done for you lately?

A bunch of pussies. Reservations are for dinner, not the philosophical foundations of one’s life. A respect for those of faith? Why should anybody have respect for institutionalized stupidity? My imaginary friend disappeared when I was about three or four. How about your’s?

This is a forum for social, political and philosophic polemics.  A place to say anything I want about whatever I need to from a decidedly left of center, in your face atheistic and uncensored point of view.  Comments are welcome, but I’m likely as anything to tell you to go fuck yourself, but will never back away from an intelligently formulated dialectic.   The most important thing here is to not waste my fucking time with idiocy,  you can get a lifetime’s worth of that by watching Fox News or listening to Rush Limbaugh for an hour.  I need only quote the first two sentences of Adorno and Horkheimer’s classic ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’:   “In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty.  Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant”.  Let’s keep kicking it around some more for good measure.