Category Archives: Skeptic

Center for Inquiry’s Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest

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Center for Inquiry’s Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest has begun! The right to freely express oneself is vital in a modern society; we would like you to tell the world why.

Participation is easy: create a short video public service announcement about the importance of free expression, upload the video to YouTube, and tag the video with “Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest”. On International Blasphemy Rights Day, September 30th, 2010, we will announce the top three winners, with a grand prize of $2000! See the full instructions and rules before creating your entry.

Center for Inquiry: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/
Campaign for Free Expression: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/campa…
Contest rules: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/campa…

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About the Campaign for Free Expression:
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Some governments and institutions—and even some individuals—want to keep certain topics off limits. This is especially true with religion. In many places, discussions and questions about religion are discouraged, even punished. But how can we come to our own conclusions about religion if we can’t freely examine and discuss it?

The Campaign for Free Expression is a CFI initiative to focus efforts and attention on one of the most crucial components of freethought: the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs about all subjects—especially religion.

Various United Nations bodies, including the UN’s Human Rights Council, have recently adopted resolutions condemning so-called “defamation” of religion. These resolutions lend credibility to efforts to suppress dissent and criticism, especially in Islamic countries, but Western European countries are also debating, or have already instated, laws that would criminalize religiously offensive statements. For example, Ireland recently enacted a new blasphemy law that prohibits publication of material “insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion.”

CFI believes we must increase public awareness of these threats to freedom of expression, discuss and develop plans to prevent curtailment of free expression, and demonstrate that people care about their rights to free expression and are eager to exercise them.

I’ve found much truth in all religious texts….

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I thought the following comment I made in a thread was quite clever, but that also leads me to think I’ve unknowingly stolen it from someone else. If you know the source, clue me in.

I’ve found much truth in all religious texts as well. Mainly the words “the”, “a”, “and” and “to”. The other words get fuzzy from there.
For me, I’ve never claimed there was no “truth” to any religious system, but that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, et. al. are not the truth they claim. They claim to be divinely inspired. What this means is that you pretty much need to take the bad with the good. You don’t HAVE to, but then you’re not a follower of the religion, you’re a tourist with a camera who picked up something from the gift shop to take home.What “truth” or “goodness” does the Quaran or Bible contain that cannot be found completely independent of it?

“Who is this stupid piece of shit Kevin Slaughter?”

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I understand most Atheists are liberals, many are socialists. One that I know posted an article bemoaning how the TEA Party is fixated on race. I post a response, not attacking the poster, just posting my own thoughts and an observation.

A black atheist/skeptic adds his wise considered voice with the line “Who is this stupid piece of shit Kevin Slaughter?”

It would have been pointless to call him names back. He’s clearly a dumb monkey who would rather sling shit than respond. He “dehumanizes” me, to make me less than human to others reading the thread.

Luckily, I couldn’t give a fuck.

The TEA Party didn’t ever discuss race until they were unendingly attacked as racists. The TEA Party rallies were almost all white not because they were racist, but because of the same reason Obama has a 90% approval rating among blacks. Blacks, as a group, do not want anything the TEA Party advocates want. There are notable exceptions, but there is effectively zero political diversity among blacks in America.

UPDATE:

This exchange reminded me of another comment from another skeptic/atheist. I finally figured it out and luckily it was still there. This one, at least, articulated his disgust with me a little better, but still failed entirely at providing a rebuttal with any content:

HL Mencken on the first great evolution trial…

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I’ve spent a LOT of time putting together a series of 13 podcast episodes of HL Mencken’s Baltimore Evening Sun reports on the Scopes trial from Dayton, Tenn. I’m releasing them in somewhat “real time”, according to the dates they were published 85 years ago. I’d like my visitors to this blog to hear them, and if you enjoy it, please pass a link along to others.

First, a list of the episodes and dates they’ll be released, I’ll link them up as they come out:

June 29th – Homo Neanderthalensis
July 9th – Sickening Doubts About Publicity
July 10th – Impossibility of Obtaining Fair Jury
July 11th – Trial as Religious Orgy
July 13th – Souls Need Reconversion Nightly
July 14th – Darrow’s Eloquent Appeal
July 15th – Law and Freedom
July 16th – Fair Trial Beyond Ken
July 17th – Malone the Victor
July 18th – Genesis Triumphant
July 20th – Tennessee in the Frying Pan
July 27th – Bryan
Sept. 14th* - Aftermath
*Will be released by July 30th.

The full text of the report at the end of the blog!

As frequent readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of Mencken’s writing. He’s got a viewpoint that is hardly expressed anymore – a no-bullshit commentator on the follies of his day. Moreso, much of what he criticised then has only gone downhill, and his mockery and scathing verbiage is a balm for the mind appalled by the utter stupidity of the modern scene. The only man I’ve read that was able to mix his best elements together with style was Anton Szandor LaVey. LaVey introduced me to Mencken, as well as any number of authors, philosophers, artists and ideas. LaVey is indeed the proverbial gateway drug. It is the opposite of the religions of “the book”, his was a religion “of the world”. When Adversary Recordings rereleased his “Satan Takes a Holiday” CD, and I was tasked with writing promotional copy, this is the tail end:

“…as with most of the work that Anton LaVey has done, it’s a small door to a sometimes unseemly and Satanic world. Applying the true definition of “occult” to these songs is probably most appropriate, as they are hidden wonders.”

A few of the folks who didn’t get turned onto LaVey get real tripped up on the S-word. I’m not going to go into apologetics here, but I think I will be doing an episode on the topic. Let me assure you that you are nowhere near the first person, if you’re like many, to ask “But why not just call yourself ______?”

***

I’m not a writer. There are a few things that I’ve pecked out on the keyboard that I’m proud of, but I hold no illusion that they could even serve as an introduction to Mencken’s own words. Though mecken has penned a few pithy quotable lines, there has been one that I’ve found most reflects my own lifelong work, and I’ve used it many times. It is, in fact, the very first quote on my quotes page:

“I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday… This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day’s work.”

-H.L. Menken, from “In Defense of Women”

***

July 6th was my 35th birthday and the 2nd anniversary of Underworld Amusements (I made a public announcement in October of ’08, but July was the time I started working on it seriously… well, as seriously as I’ve had spare time for). I’ve done quite a bit in the last two years under the banner of UA, but I’m reevaluating it as one should do everything. The podcast started in

The past month and a half I’ve been running ads on Facebook. It’s as cheap or expensive as you want to make it, so I made it cheap and tried to target the people I think would be most interested. It’s brought traffic to the site, but the idea of paying .15 to .50 cents for someone to merely visit the site is hard for me to do. UA is a no-budget operation, more or less. The meager profits from books just go to spending money on website hosting and whatever expenses come along.

This isn’t a wind-up to hitting you up for donations, though it probably sounds like it. No, this is a wind-up to ask anyone who has enjoyed a podcast or book released under the Underworld Amusements banner to occasionally, or at least once, post a link on facebook, write a review on itunes, or do some simple free task to promote what I’m doing. After 14 podcasts, including a number of interviews (from Oscar winner HR Giger, to one-time “worlds worst person” John Derbyshire, to Church of Satan High Priest Peter H. Gilmore, among others), I’ve received exactly one review on iTunes, and that I hounded a friend for.

A few folks have been very supportive, and I’ve done my best to reciprocate. That’s how I roll. I’ve done my best to avoid SPAMMY behavior. I haven’t trolled social network sites begging for folks to “friend” me. I rarely do it on my personal profile and just as rarely do it on my “business” pages. I promote other projects and publishers directly on the UA site and moreso on my personal site. This respectable method isn’t working. Paying for clicks is, but it’s also spending the little money I make that could be spent on new projects or making ongoing projects better.

***

I’ve tried thinking of ways to organize some sort of project that would assist others who are working on projects or have blogs or books to promote to do so easily. Something either a little more targeted than “facebook”, but not a whole separate system that competes with the established sites. I don’t want to build a social network for misfits, but I would like something like an Instapundit for misanthropes. Something that’s compelling enough to bring returning visitors, but not so involved that people have to set up identities, and something that can push that same info out to folks.

I’m not sure what form it’ll take, but it has a name and a url, though I’m not letting that on right now, as it could radically change or not happen. It’d be like telling you my sons name while still a virgin (well, technically, after I had the first two kids aborted, and was planing on making another kid).

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day (Muslim Tears and Impotent Rage)

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Muslim pleading with me to stop hurting people with cartoons then threatens me, calls me a wimp, insinuates that I fuck other mens wives and am on drugs, and quits facebook…

Remember, this guy contacted me, after purposefully looking for offensive images.

“I cried myself to sleep thinking about Muhammad”

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I got the following e-mail on facebook, from someone I don’t know, regarding my dumb Mohammed cartoon.

When you attack black people,they call it Racism. When you attack Jewish people,they call it Anti-semetism. When you attack women, they call it Sexism. When you attack homosexuality,they call it Intolerance. When you attack your country,they call it Treason. When you attack a religious sect,they callit Hate speech. But when you attack the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him,they want to call it freedom of speech.

why do you feel you HAVE to join in a effort JUST to hurt muslims? Could you not draw animal porn or something less disturbing and hurtfull? Must you really go to this effort to make my day all horrible? I don’t even know you, why are you doing this? Did I do some mistake, I cried myself to sleep thinking about Muhammad. You take lots of liberties, hurting millions of people, and you probably don’t even care… You probably think I deserve it for some reason… Just so you can have the freedom to do this more!!

Hope you had your fun, altho I can not see what kind of fun that would make me do this to other people, I can’t see how you are other than wicked.

So I replied:

I’m assuming this is a mass e-mail. You obviously don’t know me, or you’d know that I don’t care if I’m called intolerant, so your sad sop e-mail means nothing. Tears of strangers is but water.
“You take lots of liberties, hurting millions of people…”
Muslims have murdered a few hundred people worldwide over cartoons, I just drew one. Not even mentioning the people threatened with harm or death, and all the property damage. Over cartoons. Any group of people who get so worked up over cartoons need a fucking readjustment. I hope you cry yourself to sleep every night until you come to the realization that Muhammad doesn’t give a shit if people draw cartoons of him… primarily because he’s dead, secondarily because he was merely a man.
Found the following on Facebook:
btw, I added a new blog “category” for this post and others.

Listen to me!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:19 — 2.4MB)

Or don’t. I’ve put a new episode of the Variety Hour up. Later than expected and I’m less than satisfied as usual. I explain in the intro that my plans tend to be too big, or complicated, or rely on me writing something really clever (hah)… and things don’t fall into place, the show gets pushed back and then finally I just do some recording one night to wrap it up and send it out. There are some glitches in the recording, where the audio skips and I didn’t catch it and record back over it. I’m trying to listen to the episode now, but I’m just tired of hearing myself talk for the time being.

If I’m putting them out once a month, I want to do something a little more polished and/or complex than what I’ve done. I had my first caller in the show and I was going to do some commentary and that involved a quick interview with someone else. I never got that done, so I ended up having to take the caller out of the show. I think it would have pushed the whole thing well past the hour mark anyway.

I’ve recorded a couple of Ingersoll speeches for an Infidels.org / AAI project where they’re taking works on freethought/atheism and making audiobook versions available for free. The one in the podcast is “Should Infidels Send Their Children to Sunday School?” and it was written in the latter half of the 1800’s. I’ve attached another short one to this post, titled “How to Edit a Liberal Paper“, you know I had to jump on that one – it only runs about 5 minutes.

I’ve recorded a third, but haven’t edited it yet. The recording unedited is over an hour… I was tired of talking by the end of it, and it’s just really long. I’ll post it when I’ve edited it.