To Japan from Americans God Damn Christian Population.

The following note is regarding the types of tweets and posts that I've been seeing all day today and all day yesterday. From any and all atheist, agnostics, irreligious, or just plainly secular people I know, it's been a field of "Sending our good thoughts to Japan," followed by links or text numbers where you can donate to aid in humanitarian efforts. From the other side, however, while I've seen a few of the religious people I know actually posting some positive messages (excluded is the copy/paste status going around telling people to send a WAVE of prayers toward the Japanese - really tasteful, Christians), the vast majority of it has been posts like the following from Twitter:
@DOC914‎: Japan gave us pokemon, God gave them an earthquake/tsunami one-two ... you do the math.

@Evd23rocker:‎ Why this earthquake happened in Japan? I don't think God did it I believe Satan did it.

@Ninja_Beanz‎: Dont ask God for help Japan, ask him to please stop killing ur people. He CREATED the earthquake and the tsunami

@Traceybickle:‎ The earth needs the mercy of God. Cry out all who will and He will relent. #Japan's #earthquake

@EspoOriginals:‎ Maybe the Mayans were right.... #2012 #Earthquakes #Japan #Haiti

@Catcasco‎: All I'm going to say is this: if God gave one tiny dog's scrotum about Japan he wouldn't have hit them with the earthquake/tsunami combo.

@PoetSam17:‎ Man has never been good at reading signs, Just ignoring them. Earthquake in Japan, let's acknowledge God's signs. Turn to HIM and pray.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGYqrANnAw
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/27876648/could-the-japan-earthquake-be-gods-punish-for-them-killing-whales?page=0
@Tinasongbird73‎: Prayers up 4 the people in japan who've experience great loss & heartache frm the earthquakes & Tsunami. God is trying 2tell us something!

Yet to weigh in is the infallible Pat Robertson himself, but it seems like his zombie followers are beating him to the punch these days. Really, people. Anyone I see saying anything about GOD being involved or that God is telling us something or sending us a message, is going to get beaten about the head severely with a book on plate tectonics.

Smiling Atheist OUT!

Why are Atheists so Vocal?

What are atheists so vocal? This is a question I'm often asked, and it's a legitimate question at that. Quite frankly, the answer is pretty clear cut to us, but for many, I can see why it would need to be put into a more personal perspective. Luckily for you, I'm pretty good at doing that in rather entertaining ways in order to get my point across, so I think it's time to flex my metaphor muscle and DO THIS THING!

First, let's ask a question of ourselves, "What sounds absurd to us?" Well, as an atheist, there are quite a few things that sound absurd to me: ghosts, homeopathy, angels, demons, religion in general, and so on... But what sounds absurd to you? I recently took a poll on a facebook page that I run anonymously; to see what most religious people think is absurd in our world. I asked about things like ghosts, homeopathy, chiropractic medicine (it's amazing how many people think chiropractors are legitimate doctors), UFO abduction, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and so on... Leaving out the fact that many Christians said zombie and vampires sound most absurd to them, even though both of which are in the bible, the most claimed absurd idea in the poll was alien abduction. Therefore, I'm going to use that. How, you ask? Well, keep reading, nitz!

Let's say for a moment that the alien abduction scene started to catch fire. It sort of did back in the 90's with the X-Files and all, but certainly not to the degree needed for this metaphor. Let's say that it really started to catch on, this absurd idea that intelligent alien life forms with the technology to travel twenty billion light years, utilized this technology just to hover over a quiet corn field for an hour, then shoot a beam of light into the farmhouse, pulling yokel farmer X into the ship with the hopes of sticking a large tube into yokel farm X's ass, and then leaving. Not stopping by the White House to have a chat with President Obama, or dropping in the middle of the Super Bowl to let us know they're hear, just sticking a tube up a hillbilly's ass will suffice.

Now, let's say that idea really started catching on. Let's say that the next thing you know, about 50% of the country started to firmly believe this was actually happening despite a clear lack of empirical evidence, and, in fact, plenty of empirical evidence to the contrary. You're probably going to start wondering, "What's going on here?" Though, you're concerned, it's really not any of your business, so you move on with your life.

Next thing you know, 80% of the country firmly believes in these random abductions. It's everywhere. It's starting to show up on billboards and in magazines. You can't look in one direction without being reminded just how stupid the rest of the populace really is. Still, it's a perfectly harmless belief, thus, you move on with your life. It's not affecting you, right?

Next thing you know, these believers start to build giant buildings in dedication to this absurd belief. Not just that, but while you were sleeping, references to random alien abductions became a part of your national motto and is now printed on your money, "In Aliens and Farmer Sugar-Snoogle-Billy-Bob-Joe-Jack we Trust!" Now you're becoming just a little more alarmed, aren't you? Well, not as alarmed as you'll be once you realize that the Pledge of Allegiance has been changed to include references to aliens and Farmer Joe-Jack. That's right. While your children are still half asleep, with their brains hardly functioning (the perfect time for hypnosis), they're being forced to pledge an undying allegiance to a country, as well as to the aliens who show up every night and sodomize the old farmer. Now, you're getting mad.

Only weeks later, you notice it's gone farther. In fact, not a single person elected in the last cycle was so without claiming some sort of belief in these aliens and in Farmer Joe-Jacks chosen anus. Not just that, but these politicians are starting to pass legislation based on these beliefs. Legislation about the our possible affects on our planet, no matter how scientifically backed-up they are, are being shot down because senators are reading from the book of the Alien and Farmer Joe-Jack as their counter to the legislation. And it actually worked! More legislation is being passed, and it's becoming more and more harmful, not just to the planet, but also to human rights and civil liberties. Your rights are being stripped away while your president stands in front of the country and says, "Well, no. I don't consider the non-alien people to be patriots. I don't even consider them to be citizens. This is one nation under Aliens and Farmer Butts."

The next week, your child comes home and says that science class has changed. He's no longer being taught facts and evidence, but instead, they've introduced the Alien and Farmer Butt creation story, which has no evidence to back it up whatsoever, into the biology classroom, and booted out the theory of evolution. Your child is no longer being taught science or math or any other hard or soft science, but instead, they're learning from this ridiculous book that's so absurd, you think anyone who believes it should be locked away in a psych ward.

What's worse than that? Well, I'll tell you. Suddenly, you've just found out that your kind, those who don't believe in the absurd alien story, are the least trusted minority in the United States, scoring underneath illegal immigrants, Muslims, Homosexuals, Mexicans and so on... Well, people think you can't possibly have a moral compass without believing in the alien story, so you must be a bad person. You probably want to convert all of their young to your hetaeristic ways.

Next thing you know, two towers fall in New York because the alien people have branched into separate tribes and want to kill one another, as well as you - mostly you! Abortion clinics are being bombed, abortion doctors are being shot right in the middle of alien church, and atheists of the alien stories are being shot, mugged and beheaded just for writing stories that are critical of the alien stories. Women and children are being stoned in town squares for disobeying the rules of the alien doctrine. Innocent people who want nothing more than to believe in something greater than them are being taken advantage of by televangelists of the alien doctrine. They're shelling all of their money out to polyester-clad men just so that they can get into alien heaven. Militias are forming all over the place to counter the alien Armageddon they believe is coming, while governments wage wars on countries and kill innocent people just to make the prophecies come true.  Uneducated, misspelled and grammatically incorrect hyperbole is everywhere with new, radical political parties based solely on these ideas.  Thousands die everyday based on the alien doctrine. All for one stupid little idea that a dumb redneck had who wanted to be in the newspaper.

Gee, can you imagine why we'd want to be a little vocal from time to time?

This has been your Smiling Atheist, C. Allen Thompson, with another edition of the blog that all but guarantees me a special slot in hell should I be wrong.  And don't forget to click the link below.  Crusade: The Unchecked and Unbalanced Role of Faith in America makes a great V-Day gift for that special godless someone in your life.

MEMORIAL

Today, none of the usual snark will occur on the Smiling Atheist blog.  Today we remember a great man - possibly one of the greatest men to have ever lived.  On January 24, 1965, the world lost a great writer, statesman and politician by the name of Sir Winston Churchill.  Aside from his impeccable wit, he is, and forever will be, known as the voice of a generation in the United Kingdom during one of the darkest times in recent history.  Winston Churchill was not only a two-time British Prime Minister, but was also a Nobel Prize winner in literature. 

During the 1930's, Churchill was one of the first voices with the courage to warn not only his country, but the rest of the world, of the impending doom of Hitler's German regime.  And to this date, he is known as the man who was Hitler's worst enemy.  Adolf Hitler's regime came to rise primarily because of his gift of communication and manipulation.  Churchill, however, was his better, in both matters.  Churchill was the orator that the western world needed to combat Hitler's regime and add fodder to the cannons that stood against the Third Reich.  And while Hitler himself stated, "The best way to sell a big lie is with a small truth," Churchill himself sold the truth to the world with nothing more than wit and determination.

I am not half the writer that Churchill was, so I feel the best way to remember him is to share some of his words with you.  So, in tribute, here is Sir Winston Churchill:

16 October 1938

I avail myself with relief of the opportunity of speaking to the people of the United States. I do not know how long such liberties will be allowed. The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.


The American people have, it seems to me, formed a true judgment upon the disaster which has befallen Europe. They realise, perhaps more clearly than the French and British publics have yet done, the far-reaching consequences of the abandonment and ruin of the Czechoslovak Republic. I hold to the conviction I expressed some months ago, that if in April, May or June, Great Britain, France, and Russia had jointly declared that they would act together upon Nazi Germany if Herr Hitler committed an act of unprovoked aggression against this small State, and if they had told Poland, Yugoslavia, and Rumania what they meant to do in good time, and invited them to join the combination of peace-defending Powers, I hold that the German Dictator would have been confronted with such a formidable array that he would have been deterred from his purpose. This would also have been an opportunity for all the peace-loving and moderate forces in Germany, together with the chiefs of the German Army, to make a great effort to re-establish something like sane and civilised conditions in their own country. If the risks of war which were run by France and Britain at the last moment had been boldly faced in good time, and plain declarations made, and meant, how different would our prospects be today!


But all these backward speculations belong to history. It is no good using hard words among friends about the past, and reproaching one another for what cannot be recalled. It is the future, not the past, that demands our earnest and anxious thought. We must recognize that the Parliamentary democracies and liberal, peaceful forces have everywhere sustained a defeat which leaves them weaker, morally and physically, to cope with dangers which have vastly grown. But the cause of freedom has in it a recuperative power and virtue which can draw from misfortune new hope and new strength. If ever there was a time when men and women who cherish the ideals of the founders of the British and American Constitutions should take earnest counsel with one another, that time is now.


All the world wishes for peace and security. Have we gained it by the sacrifice of the Czechoslovak Republic. Here was the model democratic State of Central Europe, a country where minorities were treated better than anywhere else. It has been deserted, destroyed and devoured. It is now being digested. The question which is of interest to a lot of ordinary people, common people, is whether this destruction of the Czechoslovak Republic will bring upon the world a blessing or a curse.


We must all hope it will bring a blessing; that after we have averted our gaze for a while from the process of subjugation and liquidation, everyone will breathe more freely; that a load will be taken off our chests; we shall be able to say to ourselves: "Well, that's out of the way, anyhow. Now let's get on with our regular daily life." But are these hopes well founded or are we merely making the best of what we had not the force and virtue to stop? That is the question that the English-speaking peoples in all their lands must ask themselves today. Is this the end, or is there more to come?


There is another question which arises out of this. Can peace, goodwill, and confidence be built upon submission to wrong-doing backed by force?


One may put this question in the largest form. Has any benefit or progress ever been achieved by the human race by submission to organised and calculated violence? As we look back over the long story of the nations we must see that, on the contrary, their glory has been founded upon the spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice, especially when these evils seemed to be backed by heavier force. Since the dawn of the Christian era a certain way of life has slowly been shaping itself among the Western peoples, and certain standards of conduct and government have come to be esteemed. After many miseries and prolonged confusion, there arose into the broad light of day the conception of the right of the individual; his right to be consulted in the government of his country; his right to invoke the law even against the State itself. Independent Courts of Justice were created to affirm and inforce this hard-won custom. Thus was assured throughout the English-speaking world, and in France by the stern lessons of the Revolution, what Kipling called, "Leave to live by no man's leave underneath the law." Now in this resides all that makes existence precious to man, and all that confers honour and health upon the State.


We are confronted with another theme. It is not a new theme; it leaps out upon us from the Dark Ages - racial persecution, religious intolerance, deprivation of free speech, the conception of the citizen as a mere soulless fraction of the State. To this has been added the cult of war. Children are to be taught in their earliest schooling the delights and profits of conquest and aggression. A whole mighty community has been drawn painfully, by severe privations, into a warlike frame. They are held in this condition, which they relish no more than we do, by a party organisation, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime. Like the Communists, the Nazis tolerate no opinion but their own. Like the Communists, they feed on hatred. Like the Communists, they must seek, from time to time, and always at shorter intervals, a new target, a new prize, a new victim. The Dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his Party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within. As Byron wrote a hundred years ago: "These Pagod things of Sabre sway, with fronts of brass and feet of clay."


No one must, however, underrate the power and efficiency of a totalitarian state. Where the whole population of a great country, amiable, good-hearted, peace-loving people are gripped by the neck and by the hair by a Communist or a Nazi tyranny - for they are the same things spelt in different ways - the rulers for the time being can exercise a power for the purposes of war and external domination before which the ordinary free parliamentary societies are at a grievous practical disadvantage. We have to recognise this. And then, on top of all, comes this wonderful mastery of the air which our century has discovered, but of which, alas, mankind has so far shown itself unworthy. Here is this air power with its claim to torture and terrorise the women and children, the civil population of neighbouring countries.


This combination of medieval passion, a party caucus, the weapons of modern science, and the blackmailing power of air-bombing, is the most monstrous menace to peace, order and fertile progress that has appeared in the world since the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century.


The culminating question to which I have been leading is whether the world as we have known it - the great and hopeful world of before the war, the world of increasing hope and enjoyment for the common man, the world of honoured tradition and expanding science - should meet this menace by submission or by resistance. Let us see, then, whether the means of resistance remain to us today. We have sustained an immense disaster; the renown of France is dimmed. In spite of her brave, efficient army, her influence is profoundly diminished. No one has a right to say that Britain, for all her blundering, has broken her word - indeed, when it was too late, she was better than her word. Nevertheless, Europe lies at this moment abashed and distracted before the triumphant assertions of dictatorial power. In the Spanish Peninsula, a purely Spanish quarrel has been carried by the intervention, or shall I say the "non-intervention" (to quote the current Jargon) of Dictators into the region of a world cause.


But it is not only in Europe that these oppressions prevail. China is being torn to pieces by a military clique in Japan; the poor, tormented Chinese people there are making a brave and stubborn defence. The ancient empire of Ethiopia has been overrun. The Ethiopians were taught to look to the sanctity of public law, to the tribunal of many nations gathered in majestic union. But all failed; they were deceived, and now they are winning back their right to live by beginning again from the bottom a struggle on primordial lines. Even in South America, the Nazi regime begins to undermine the fabric of Brazilian society.


Far away, happily protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, you, the people of the United States, to whom I now have the chance to speak, are the spectators, and I may add the increasingly involved spectators of these tragedies and crimes. We are left in no doubt where American conviction and sympathies lie; but will you wait until British freedom and independence have succumbed, and then take up the cause when it is three-quarters ruined, yourselves alone? I hear that they are saying in the United States that because England and France have failed to do their duty therefore the American people can wash their hands of the whole business. This may be the passing mood of many people, but there is no sense in it. If things have got much worse, all the more must we try to cope with them.


For, after all, survey the remaining forces of civilisation; they are overwhelming. If only they were united in a common conception of right and duty, there would be no war. On the contrary, the German people, industrious, faithful, valiant, but alas! lacking in the proper spirit of civic independence, liberated from their present nightmare, would take their honoured place in the vanguard of human society. Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word "No." Let that not be the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of Parliamentary democracy, or of France, or of the many surviving liberal States of Europe.


There, in one single word, is the resolve which the forces of freedom and progress, of tolerance and good will, should take. It is not in the power of one nation, however formidably armed, still less is it in the power of a small group of men, violent, ruthless men, who have always to cast their eyes back over their shoulders, to cramp and fetter the forward march of human destiny. The preponderant world forces are upon our side; they have but to be combined to be obeyed. We must arm. Britain must arm. America must arm. If, through an earnest desire for peace, we have placed ourselves at a disadvantage, we must make up for it by redoubled exertions, and, if necessary, by fortitude in suffering.


We shall, no doubt, arm. Britain, casting away the habits of centuries, will decree national service upon her citizens. The British people will stand erect, and will face whatever may be coming.


But arms - instrumentalities, as President Wilson called them - are not sufficient by themselves. We must add to them the power of ideas. People say we ought not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between Nazidom and democracy; but the antagonism is here now. It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like - they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home - all the more powerful because forbidden - terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?


Dictatorship - the fetish worship of one man - is a passing phase. A state of society where men may not speak their minds, where children denounce their parents to the police, where a business man or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinions; such a state of society cannot long endure if brought into contact with the healthy outside world. The light of civilised progress with its tolerances and co-operation, with its dignities and joys, has often in the past been blotted out. But I hold the belief that we have now at last got far enough ahead of barbarism to control it, and to avert it, if only we realise what is afoot and make up our minds in time. We shall do it in the end. But how much harder our toil for every day's delay!


Is this a call to war? Does anyone pretend that preparation for resistance to aggression is unleashing war? I declare it to be the sole guarantee of peace. We need the swift gathering of forces to confront not only military but moral aggression; the resolute and sober acceptance of their duty by the English-speaking peoples and by all the nations, great and small, who wish to walk with them. Their faithful and zealous comradeship would almost between night and morning clear the path of progress and banish from all our lives the fear which already darkens the sunlight to hundreds of millions of men.

February is Sarah Palin-Free Month

I know that this is going to be pretty hard on all of you out there, but we must make this pact.  Here's why:

1.)  It's become a little bit like punching a two-year-old crying child; yes, it's extremely satisfying, but it's just way too easy.

2.)  You know how fickle people are.  If they don't hear from someone in the news for a month, they'll completely forget about him/her.  This needs to happen.  Sarah Palin was like a mushroom (hiding in the shadows and eating shit) before she was thrust into the spotlight in the 2008 elections.  We all know why she was chosen as well, so there's no reason to be redundant here.

This is important, people.  Just shut up about her and she'll go away.  You know, like the uncle of yours who had cancer and just ignored...okay, that's not the best example, but this will work, I assure you.  Ignore her and she'll go back into the obscurity from which she came.  So, let's make this pact: no more talking about the prom queen of illiteracy; the sultan of spin; the (sorry for this) semen stain on the proverbial bed sheets of life that is Sarah Palin.

Thank you, and don't forget to follow me into hell.  Oh, and why don't you give my book a read while you're at it.  Just go to http://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Unchecked-Unbalanced-Faith-America/dp/1456491946/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1 and give it a whirl.  You never know - you just might like it.

Please, Governor Bentley, Don't Apologize to Me!

Oh, no, please, Mr. Alabama governor Bentley, please don't apologize to me.  You really don't have to.  I'm sure that everyone as of late has heard the recent comments made on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, regarding who he considers to be his brothers and sisters.  Let me go ahead and give you a refresh of exactly what was said, "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

Obviously, many people seem to think that this statement wasn't all that smart.  Well, I don't know what you'd expect from an Alabama governor giving his inauguration speech inside of a Baptist church, located inside of a largely Baptist community, inside of a largely Baptist state?  The state, actually, that was the birthplace of the KKK as well as the Christian Identity Movement.  I'm not saying I defend his words, but seriously, what could you possibly expect?

The reason I'm not offended by his remarks are the following: 1) He's a crazy Baptist and I expect these people to be bigots; 2) I don't consider him my brother anyway. 

I don't, honestly.  Not one damn bit.  Because nobody who wishes to divide our nation by any means, namely one as stupid as which cosmic sky-daddy in whom you believe, is my brother or my sister.  The time has come for logic to rule over myth, and the time has come for unity to overthrow division, and this can never happen so long as people like Governor Bentley are alive and kicking, let alone serving in political office.

The good thing about science is that it teaches us that we're all brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and so on...to one another through a common ancestor.  Religion, on the other hand, seems to teach division, and seemingly everything else that is contrary to a mass tribal mentality, which would turn this world around for the better.  Knowing that we are all family among one another, and with our extended family in nature, could make this world a much better place.  Religion, on the other hand, only tends to lead to destruction at the hands of the religious.  What else makes science better than religion?  It doesn't require belief. 

So, Governor Bentley, whether you like it or not, we are all brothers and sisters, and the irony that it's only the people whose cosmic Jewish sky-daddy told them to love their neighbors, who seem to have a problem doing so.  And if you can't love your neighbor and love your brothers and sisters, governor, then you're not my brother or my neighbor - you are everything that is wrong with the world today.  So, don't apologize to me because you don't consider me a brother.  You're not mine.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow.  Also, follow the link below to purchase my new book, Crusade: The Unchecked and Unbalanced Role of Faith in America from Amazon.com. 

http://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Unchecked-Unbalanced-Faith-America/dp/1456491946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295567587&sr=1-1

Arizona: Here We Go Again

Sorry, I've been away for sometime now.  I've been getting the book off the ground, and even though it keeps getting pushed back, my final proof is in the mail as we speak, and by February, it should be on the shelves.  I'll be providing you all links on Amazon.com as well as my personal eStore, where you can all pick it up for $19.99.  Also, I'm working on my first serious fiction piece.  The working title is Sex & Therapy, and what it is is sort of a modern day excursion into Scottish Realism, with a sort of Chuck and JD style of writing to it. 

I did, however, want to take a moment to discuss the recent actions over this weekend in Arizona.  To be blunt, I have to ask now, how much blood is now on the hands of the pundits who feed into the delusional minds of their paranoid viewers?  People like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to just name two of the top.  You have to understand, when you use terms like "First Amendment remedy," and encourage violence and revolution, this is precisely what happens.

Now, I'm not going to feed into the game by only blaming one side of this.  America is divided because both sides are divided - not just one.  However, you only really here this type of hate speech and encouragement of war coming from one side of the coin.  And much like when Bill O'Reilly openly ordered the death of an abortion doctor on his show - an act that took place only a week later - I have yet to hear any sort of condemning from the side that encouraged it.  In fact, I saw that Fox News immediately cut away from its coverage of the vigil when Sarah Palin's name was brought up. 

And speaking of Sarah Palin, this is a message that was left on her Facebook page only yesterday regarding the incident: "It's ok. Christina Taylor Green [the 9-year-old girl who was killed] was probably going to end up a left-wing bleeding-heart liberal anyway. Hey, as 'they' say, what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly."

This is exactly the kind of hate speech I'm talking about.  Nobody deserves to die for anything, in my opinion, and I know that many Christians out there feel differently, including this one.  But especially a nine-year-old girl who had nothing more than her entire life to look forward to.  Did I mention this girl was born on September 11, 2001?  How coincidental is that?  She was born on the day of America's greatest political and religious attack to date, and she ends up dying not ten years later, in a political attack that came from within our own country - an attack bread by our own radicalism, and not that of another country.

People like this disgust me, but not half as much as those to whom they look up - those who encourage this type of violence.  Left or Right, black or white, theist or atheist; NONE of us should plot to kill innocent people, and NONE of us should encourage such actions with either actions of our own, or something as simple as our words.  I know that pundits on both sides know that they reach an audience comprised of those who merely listen moderately, to those who take every word as gospel, and would even set out to kill those who would deny their words.  This time, it was the latter, as it will be again and again.  Divisive hate speech ends today, less we be cursed with a future as war-torn and destroyed as those countries we wage war against, in order to "spread freedom".

Smiling Atheist out, and please remember that anything which divides us can never unite us.  Also, remember to follow me into hell with a smile on your face.  And please, how about the rest of you start smiling for a while?  You may see violence wiped away within a matter of seconds.  We can all be good without God, but not God without good.  Take from that what you will.

Christine "Did She Really Just Say That" O'Donnell

This morning in Delaware, Tea Party candidate for senate, Christine O'Donnell, criticized Democratic nominee, Chris Coons, by claiming that the teaching of creationism in public schools is not a violation of the First Amendment. O'Donnell continued her idiocy by asking where in the First Amendment is there any mention of the separation of church and state. Coons' response was that the First Amendment bars congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion. O'Donnell's retort was, "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

So, apparently O'Donnell is just one of many Tea Party members who have not actually read the constitution they claim to hold so dear. And although you're not alone on this view, Ms. O'Donnell, there's one person who tends to disagree with you and the rest of your bat-shit party. That man is former US president, and author of the First Amendment, Mr. Thomas Jefferson. Let's see what he has to say about the separation of church and state:

“Mr. President,

To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen,

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, the he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of the conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and the creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem.”

Thomas Jefferson

January 1, 1802

Wait, what just happened? Are you telling me that not only did the First Amendment intend for a separation of church ans state, but Mr. Jefferson himself coined the term "Wall of Separation?" Why yes, that is what just happened here. I'll be sitting by my computer awaiting your next idiotic claim about the founding of this country. But until then, let me leave you with my favorite Jefferson quote regarding a theocratic government.

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”