Louisiana High School Student Told To Convert To Avoid "Hassle"

Why is this crap still happening in the 21st century? According to this Raw Story article a Louisiana high school student was told to convert to Christianity from Buddhism to "avoid the hassle."

A public school in Louisiana allegedly advised a Buddhist family to change their beliefs if they didn't want their child to face harassment from zealous teachers.

From zealous teachers?! I might be able to understand if this was a case of bullying from other students (understandable, but not acceptable), but from teachers! Also, has this school never heard of separation of church and state?

Sixth-grade teacher Rita Roark has told her students that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago, and taught that both the Big Bang theory and evolution are false, according to the lawsuit. She told her students that “if evolution was real, it would still be happening: Apes would be turning into humans today.”

Apparently they have not... Not only is this blatantly illegal, but this is a SCHOOL teaching that the Earth is six thousand years old. This is bullshit, plain and simple.

When informed that C.C. was a Buddhist and therefore didn't believe in God, Roark allegedly responded, “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”

Well, I know you're stupid if you believe in a magical invisible man who lives in the sky and makes men out of dirt and sacrifices himself to himself to save us from himself, especially when there is no evidence to support such a claim. This shit has no business in a classroom.

On another accusation, she allegedly described both Buddhism and Hinduism as “stupid.”

As opposed to believing in space zombies?

When the outraged parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the incidents, she allegedly told them “this is the Bible belt” and that they “shouldn't be offended” to “see God here.” Ebarb advised that C.C. should either change his faith or be transferred to another District school where “there are more Asians.”

That's racist. Where the school is located is irrelevant as long as it's located in the United States of America. They are telling this kid to convert or get the fuck out. This is an outrage.

Google+ Bullshit

Dear Google,

Please stop G+. Nobody likes it. Stop trying to make it a thing, it's not working.

Athiest Zen

"Evolution vs. God" Review

I've recently had the misfortune of watching Evolution vs. God, which is Ray Comfort's latest attempt to ignore common sense and to generally make an ass out of himself. Enough of that, I've decided that for the sake of this review, I will review only the film, not Comfort himself except for what is in the film.

The film starts with a Richard Dawkins quote, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence." I don't get it, why use that quote? It makes no sense to me. A few moments later it is asserted "Live Science" says of Darwinian evolution: "It can turn dinosaurs into birds, apes into humans and amphibious mammals into whales." First off, it obviously assumes that the changes are sudden when in fact evolution is very gradual. Second, we did not evolve from modern day apes, we evolved from a common ancestor. This statement simply proves Comfort's ignorance. He repeatedly displays his lack of understanding of evolution by asking for an instance of one species becoming another, sorry Ray but it doesn't work that way. He frequently states that he wants evidence yet completely ignores evidence that is presented to him.
He interestingly pushes that you need faith to believe in evolution. So let me get this right, faith in evolution, which has mountains of evidence supporting it, is bad but blindly accepting a magical man in the sky with no evidence whatsoever is just fine? Ray consistently uses editing techniques to make the people he interviews look like idiots, but to the educated mind Ray himself looks like the idiot. He attempts to push his idea that belief in evolution requires faith and that there is no evidence for it, while simultaneously refusing to accept the evidence that is presented to him. He seems to think that existence itself is evidence for God, an assertion that is fundamentally flawed.
At one point Ray asks random people to make things out of nothing, he is literally asking people to conjure things out of thin air, and when they obviously can't, that's somehow evidence for intelligent design. I honestly think he doesn't actually know what evidence is. Ray's logic throughout is severely lacking. He doesn't seem to understand that not knowing is not evidence for God, which he frequently asserts. I'm sorry Ray, but just because i'm not a wizard, that doesn't mean there is one somewhere.
As far as I figure, Ray's line of reasoning is this, things that have happened before the rise of man cannot be observed so it's not evidence and therefor never happened, something cannot come from nothing so something must have created it, we don't know exactly what happened so it must have been God. His entire argument completely ignores factual evidence, which he discredits simply because no living person has personally witnessed it. Not to mention he keeps asking for a jump between species and that's just not how evolution works. He's basically looking for an ape giving birth to a human, something that has never happened, and using his lack of findings as evidence for his beliefs. His entire argument falls apart with a minimal amount of thought.
He cites several quotes from famous historical figures but cites them out of context.
Ray then addresses morality. I will state this yet again, Christianity did not invent morals. The Bible has rules on when it's okay to rape, murder, and how badly you can beat your slaves. The book offers guidelines on selling your daughter. The Bible is not a source of morality! If you were to follow every "moral" guideline in the Bible, you would spend the rest of you life in prison.  He goes on to say that you can't be a good moral person without God, and even attempts guilt-trip tactics, "I wouldn't want to see you go to Hell!" Pathetic at best. He then makes laughable attempts to convert people.
At this point in the film you can just stop because he only tries to illustrate the same point over and over.

Honestly, this film was horrible and I honestly believe it will go down in history as an embarrassment.
All in all, Ray Comfort is an idiot.

They Gunna Take Ma Guns!

Every time some new tragedy occurs there is always some kind of uproar about guns. Every friggin time. It's usually these rednecks bitching about Obama taking their guns away. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this matter so I will make this as clear as possible.

Nobody wants your guns. The government is not going to send agents door to door to collect your firearms. Nobody gives a shit about whether or not you own one, as long as you do it safely and legally. When they talk about gun safety and gun control, they're talking about keeping them out of criminal's hands, not law abiding citizens'.

Don't get me wrong, I support the Second Amendment, I like guns, but chill the hell out. They are not going to makes guns illegal in the US. Not going to happen. So you rednecks can calm down, swig your PBR, watch some Nascar, and know that as long as you use them responsibly, you can keep your damn guns.

So please, shut the fuck up about it.

You're an atheist? Oh my...

It never fails, someone discovers that i'm an atheist i'm asked for the reason. People seem to think that there's some deep-seated reason. There's only one reason why I am, that's because there's no evidence to support any religion. Why should I believe when there is no evidence? If someone could show me one shred of valid evidence that supports the God hypothesis, i'll consider it.

Why isn't it the other way around? Why is it that nobody asks Christians why they believe? Preferably with a rational response. But no, that never happens. It really kinda sad if you think about it, ignorance and superstition is preferable to critical thinking. Joyce Meyer once said, "I once asked the Lord why so many people are confused and He said to me, 'Tell them to stop trying to figure everything out, and they will stop being confused' I found it to be absolutely true. Reasoning and confusion go together." Anyone else find this terrifying? Basically, another variation of willful ignorance. Sorry, but I will never be happy with a system that says ignorance is bliss, I will never be content with not knowing. No evidence, no reason to believe.

Next time a theist asks why not, ask them why.

Touchy-Feely Buddha-Bullshit

I've recently had the opportunity to debate a well-known author in a Zen related subject. I won't give his name because i'm not sure he would want that without his permission and I don't want to give him free advertisement. His argument was that our true selves were peace, joy, happiness, and wisdom. He went on to say that anger and aggression are learned behaviors that need to be unlearned.

Now that's when I had something to say, anger and aggression are indeed natural in humans. Those are found in us for good reasons too. Imagine having to live without those in a primitive world where everyday is kill or be killed. Without aggression, you're going to die pretty quickly. If humanity only had joy-joy feelings all of the time, we would have gone extinct thousands of years ago.

So why do so many authors on the subject preach only about the happy stuff? Because that's what sells books. They spend so much time and effort telling you that anger, sadness, hostility, pain, all of those negative thing shouldn't exist, and if they do, it's your own fault and you can change, with their help of course. A lot of these self-appointed experts in Buddhism, Zen, or whatever, are simply interested in money. When I made a point to the author, he actually countered my argument by trying to sell me a book. No shit. He was obviously more concerned with book sales than he was with providing a decent argument on his part.

All those "negative" emotions and feeling are a part of life. There's nothing you can do about it. To deny that would be to deny yourself. These authors use this as a marketing strategy, it works like this, they write a book saying that it's your fault you are so miserable, they are so happy, here's how to be happy like them. Now when their advice doesn't work, it's already been established that it's your own fault, so you buy another book. And so on and so on...

The real secret is to find a positive outlet for those emotions, whether it be through art, a hobby, or work. That's it. Take the "bad" and try to turn it into "good", don't tell yourself it's wrong to have those feelings, it's not.

Cherry-Picking

How many christians follow the Bible word for word and does exactly what it says? Not too many, if one were to do that he or she would find themselves in prison really fast. Obviously there is a lot of cherry-picking going on, you know, following the parts they happen to agree with but ignoring the parts that don't suit their tastes. For example, the homosexuality issue (which shouldn't even be an issue). Homosexuality is said to be an abomination in Leviticus 20:13, which is in the Old Testament. What about the other stuff in the Old Testament? Let's check out some interesting laws...

Leviticus 20:10 says that adultery is punishable by death.

Leviticus 20:27 says that fortune tellers shall be put to death.

Leviticus 24:44-46 says it's just fine to buy and own slaves.
Leviticus 19:19 says to not wear clothing made of more than one kind of fabric.
Leviticus 19:27 says not to get haircuts or to shave, you don't see too many pickets outside of barber-shops...
Deuteronomy 13:6-10 says that if anyone tries to convince you to worship other gods, even your own family, you must kill them.
Deuteronomy 17:2-7 says to kill anyone with a different religion.

So why are they saying that homosexuality is a sin while ignoring all these other commandments? If you ask them why they wouldn't follow these rules, they would tell you that they don't go by the Old Testament anymore, that Jesus somehow cancels that out (even though he said the rules still apply). But that doesn't make sense because the Old Testament says homosexuality is wrong. How can that be?
Because if they agree with it, it counts, if they don't, it doesn't. Cherry-picking...