Atheist Comedy: NonStampCollector

Showing posts with label NonStampCollector. Show all posts

Jesus: the cover-up

No broadcast, no festivities, no coverage whatsoever...
Instead, it happens in the dead of night when nobody's around...?
Why? Isn't this meant to be the turning point of the history of creation?
Sounds like someone's covering something up, or trying to get away with something. But why? What? And guess who screwed it up?

It suddenly occurred to me a few months back: the 40+ years-later accounts we have of the morning of Jesus's resurrection sound exactly like the way things would have played out if Jesus had wanted NOBODY to know about it. Curious. Why would THAT be? But then when you think about the insane theology behind it - it's actually no wonder. I think I know what happened. Here's my theory.

At times in the past few weeks, especially the last two weekends, I've actually sympathized with those who ask me why the hell I would spend so much time and energy on doing something like this. There are lots of reasons, and somewhere amongst them are things like simply the pleasure of creating something as close to as I'd imagined it as possible. Others have to do with simply the fact that this stuff is important to me- this insane religion really can control people's lives, and I find meaning in sharing the good news: it's a bunch of crazy bullshit that you are free to relieve yourself of at any time.
I'm thinking of this as a "concept-piece". It was quite fun and challenging to write and turn into a coherent narrative. It ended up longer than I'd wanted, and I may have bitten off too much to chew through, with all the "But you don't have a basis for objective morality" stuff,... but whatever.

Bible Slavery: TOTALLY DIFFERENT

Whether you're a believer or non-believer, when confronting bible slavery, don't let anyone throw up this ridiculous smokescreen that says that the slavery instituted in the old testament was so completely different to, say, pre-civil war US slavery. The usual tactic is to throw facts and rules about Israelite indentured servitude around, to throw you off the scent of a Yahweh-mandated form of slavery EVERY BIT as bad as anything we've seen in recent centuries. This line of argument is so prevalent that I'm confused as to whether its proponents actually believe it or not; but either way, this video is my attempt to inject a bit of reality into this very important area of discussion.
The god of the bible mandated oppressive life-long slavery of foreigners - pretty much a concise description of one of the worst forms of human rights abuses the world has ever had to grapple with. It's as simple as that.
No, I don't hate God for mandating slavery, and no I don't believe that God is evil for mandating slavery. I don't believe that THIS god, the absurd god of the bible, is even extant, let alone worthy of any adjectives beyond that! This god's inhumane and ridiculously cruel commands say nothing about the god that they are ascribed to, simply because they are so obviously ascribed to a god by the men in whose image this god was made.
Deal with it folks; your god is the brainchild of some particularly awful humans. The bible simply and clearly gets this very easy human rights question utterly wrong.
Abandon it, and keep looking for answers. You'll be ever so glad you did.

Yahweh's Amazing Test (Abraham, Genesis 22)

I think it's very important to remember that a god can do whatever it wants - a god could even come up with a better thing to be impressed by than a human's willingness to stab and burn their own child. A god could, instead, choose to give rewards for doing... you know, .... things that improve the world.

I'm trying to think of what, about this story, would impress a modern-day courtroom that Abraham was a stable, balanced member of society that deserved rewards for his actions. Obviously - none in the civilized world ever would. Does that mean that "civilization" is completely immoral? We would put anybody who fully obeyed the god of the bible in prison. What. Does. That. Tell. You?

As I ask in the video - if agreeing to stab and burn your own child is a test of righteousness, then WTF would a test of psychopathy look like?
Why do people look to the bible for righteousness?
IT'S GOT THE WHOLE THING COMPLETELY FUCKING BACKWARDS!

Yahweh's Perfect Justice (Numbers 15:32-36)

Numbers 15 : 32 And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
33 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
34 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.
35 And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

The god of the bible is a sick, inhumane, barbaric character. That is, unless you think that He's loving, kind, perfectly fair and perfectly just, - in which case He's that. Never mind what He's apparently told us about Himself.
This is actually a re-make of one of my first videos, from 2008. The original video had, at the end, footage of an actual stoning that had taken place somewhere in the Islamic world, taken on a camera phone. The video was banned and taken down in 2009, and I didn't dispute the ban.
I could never get around to drawing a stoning scene that I thought would have the same impact. A few months back I came up with the idea of seeing if people would like to draw cartoon pictures of a stoning that I could include in this remake. I made a quick video calling for submissions, and you can see the results here.
I'm so happy that my request was met with such wonderful replies.
Thank you to all those who responded - there were many more than I could include, time-wise, in the video itself.

Christian believers, you have a choice: either defend the story of this man's being killed by having an angry mob of barbarians pelt him with rocks as being the holy justice mandated by a fair and just god of perfect love,...
or join the rest of the world in rejecting any deity's involvement in the story as a piece of insane fiction dreamt up by savage people hoping to convince somebody that their barbaric cruelty was mandated by a holy and unquestionable moral authority. It wasn't: it was fucking sick, AND YOU KNOW IT.
The bible is bullshit. Look elsewhere for perfect love.

Isn't it funny, that if you took a random sampling of people from around the world, it would most likely be the CHRISTIANS amongst them, not the atheists, that would voice any disagreement with a statement declaring that stoning is, and always was, a monumentally unnecessarily cruel and inhumane form of punishment. As an atheist, I can say outright that it's a sick and disgusting method of execution- and the standard Christian response to that would NOT be to say that they agree with me, because that would condemn their god. Rather, the response I usually get is for them to say that since I don't believe in their god, that I don't have a moral framework upon which to base such a statement.
Well - if the only option is a moral framework that declares stoning anything other than fucking barbaric, then I'm happier with the one that I have (or don't have)!!!

If you are convinced that there must be a god - a source of love and life and joy and morality and hope - then keep looking. Yahweh is about the worst candidate for that job that there could possibly be. Read the bible for more proof of that.

The King of Kings' Speech [Bible Slavery]

So, who would most likely be responsible for Leviticus 25:44-46, a Lord of Love, or a demonic Satan?

By their fruits shall ye know them: and think of how many thousands, or millions of lives have been utterly ruined by the fact that that passage exists in a piece of scripture that a whole bunch of people think has something to do with morality.
Slavery is just about the easiest human rights issue imaginable, and the bible gets it wrong. What an embarrassment. In fact, practically any human being who has ever been born and survived to the age of 8 or so could come up with a better and more ethical set of instructions on how to behave and run a society than the bible. It would not have ownership of PEOPLE as part of its core tenets.

Why did humanity have to wait thousands of years for the Emancipation Declaration? Couldn't Yahweh have delivered it himself? Couldn't Jesus? Peter? Paul? Nup - no one gave a shit about that sort of thing. Not when there were people keeping their foreskins, water to be walked on, and women speaking in churches!!

Script and music and performance and drawings etc (everything) by ME!!

If you haven't seen The King's Speech (Best picture Oscar winner, 2011), then you won't get this.

Sorry to the non-native English speakers or those who'd like to translate it - sometimes the ideas that come to me just don't lend themselves to subtitling or even voice-over.

The Ten Commandments (The Basis of our Laws and Morals)

Are the biblical Ten Commandments REALLY responsible for our laws and morality, as many Christians claim? Do we owe anything to them at all?
Should they be considered significant? Displayed in public buildings such as schools and courts?

Yahweh, the old testament god, looked into the future and discovered that the mighty western civilization was getting by without paying all that much attention to his commandments, so he thought about changing them a bit in order for them to be reflective of the actual laws and values we hold to.

"Tablet", get it? Get it?
Remember -Noah threw his iPad (YahPad) at the wall and smashed it (in Noah's Ark Part 2), so Moses got a more durable one (just with less functionality).

Some may argue that my claim of "three out of ten" is inaccurate, and that from a certain viewpoint it more be more like four. I can live with that. I did cross reference a number of articles on the net of people claiming it's three, others four. Either way - the purpose of the video is to show that it's closer ZERO than it is to TEN!

Noah's Ark (part 2 of 2)

Part 1

This one has been more than a year in the making.
The first take recording went for 28 minutes. Trust me: everything you think I ought to have included in this, I probably did at some stage. I had a very, very hard time cutting this down, and in the end, had to split it up anyway, because youtube viewers simply don't click on much above about 4 minutes, let alone 16, which is about what this has ended up as.
***I'm getting requests to hear the first take: it's gone. Chucked it out weeks ago. Listening back to it, it was flabby and slow. What you're hearing here is most of those ideas, whipped into shape, turned into one-liners rather than passages, and a few long lists of animals had to be dropped. I really wish I could have included the list of 40 or so Australian animals, but it was just too much of a halt on proceedings.

Research on animal behaviors and numbers of species was not carried out in accordance with the strictest of academic standards, I freely admit. I went all over the net following leads on interesting animal facts FAR too much to ever keep records of where I'd been, and where I got each "fact" from. There's probably a few minor numerical and mathematical errors in here, but I am not making any claim to inerrancy so I hope you'll forgive me.
Noah's long rant at the end came mainly from various articles on Wikipedia.

Noah's Ark (part 1 of 2)

Part 2: http://begone-religion.blogspot.com/2013/12/noahs-ark-part-2-of-2.html

1 Corinthians 13

Well, having just gone through the process of getting married, I thought I'd pull out an old idea that I've had for ages, and adapt it to a marriage context. People were asking me if my wedding was going to be a traditional church wedding - well, no. :)

The point of the video - the bible is as good a source of information on the topic of LOVE, as any ancient desert scribblings. Sure, taken on its own, 1 Cor 13:4-7 is very nice, but not as nice as other descriptions of love that human beings have come up with. And anyway - would you take advice about love from someone whose biography revealed them to be an appallingly UNLOVING character in the first place?
The bible demolishes itself as a useful source for anything, other than an anthropological study in the history of metaphysical wonderings, superstition, ignorance, and delusion. When you read the words on the pages of the bible, what you actually see is horror, fear, violence, anger, rage, jealousy (fuck it, I think jealousy is a pretty low emotion/characteristic), pettiness, death, fear, - the very worst of human nature.

Just because there are a couple of nice sentences scattered throughout it to doesn't make up for the bulk of it being so revolting.

It's not as if nobody has ever come up with a better description of love than St. Paul. Anyone could. Many have. Let's leave the bible in the dustbox of history.

A few weak points in this video? Yeah, probably. eg, the fine line between envy and jealousy, whether or not god condones smashing babies to pieces on rocks. They're certainly worth bringing up, and it's not as if the bible isn't already an impossibly mistranslated, confused self-contradictory document. I'm not claiming my video is infallible, just making a point. And anyway - smearing shit on people's faces? WTF? Deuteronomy 28? WWWTTTFFFFFFF???
Once again, let me assure my critics that I know christian doctrine rather well, and that I've read the counter arguments, for ex this one regarding whether or not God keeps a record of wrongs:
http://www.gracecentered.com/does_God...
I know you can point to all sorts of examples of God being nice - but that's kind of the point, isn't it. There are examples of niceness, and also of the worst and most appalling cruelty. I'll happily admit the former, I have nothing to lose from it. Just please admit the latter, without making shit up out of thin air about how those traits of this god are less important. The old testament is fucking BRIMMING with them. God must have been very deliberate in seeing to it that those elements of his character were recorded and preserved in such VOLUME!

Genesis (take #2)

Yahweh still can't seem to get the universe working the way he really wants it. Here's another attempt that He has to end up scratching.

Here's His first attempt: Genesis Take #1
http://begone-religion.blogspot.com/2013/12/genesis-take-1.html

So, here's to Yahweh: the deity that's SO OMNIPOTENT that he can't even say "NO" when the epitome of evil decides it wants to enter the universe of matter, energy, space, and time, and cause suffering and destruction.

I said on the last video (Hitler Quiz Show) that I was done for the year.
But I got the idea for this on Saturday afternoon and wanted to prove to myself that not all my videos have to take scores of hours to create. This one is borrowing old pictures, admittedly, but only took about 4 or 5 hours to make.
So I'll say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year again, but it probably won't be the last time this year, as I just love breaking the 9th commandment. (and the seventh, tenth, first, third, fifth, second, and fourth.) (But it's not my fault, Yahweh decided to let the fucking Prince of Darkness into the physical universe to tempt me to such evil.)

Hitler: The Atheist (Quiz Show)

So here I go again, addressing the absurd claim that Nazi atrocities are inextricably linked to atheism.

Maybe Hitler was indeed an atheist. I don't know. Who can? But given what he said on the subject throughout his whole life, I'd find that position pretty hard to defend. And what it had to do with his evil acts... well you get the idea of what I think of that argument.

Astute viewers will notice that throughout the movie I don't blame Hitler's actions upon his being a Christian. Indeed -- was he a Christian?! Some may differ with me on this, but I say No, he wasn't. Not in any practical sense of the label.
Saying his evil actions are linked to his status as a Christian either way would be as stupid as saying that they are linked to his moustache, or his atheism.
Indeed -- that's the point. Atheist or theist, Christian or Hindu, Catholic or Lutheran: none of it matters. HE WAS A NAZI: ISN'T THAT ENOUGH?
He was a frigging NAZI, with incredible political power that he'd achieved through shrewd statecraft over many years. Obviously THAT is the lethal combination. Not his moustache, not his vegetarianism, not his atheism/religion.
As close as I could come to linking religion with his actions was actually a portion of the script that didn't make it to the final cut, in which a description of totalitarianism is read out, the contestants are asked to identify what is being described, and it plays out that after all, totalitarianism and religion sound an awful lot like each other.
Initially I had intended to put the laugh segment last, but was afraid that the other sections might be too slow and boring to sit through, and people might leave before seeing all those fantastic quotes of Hitler talking about his love of the Creator etc. So -- if you think the vid goes downhill a bit after that, I kind of agree. It's just the best format I could come up with, and I tried them all, I think!

Great thanks to those who responded to my call for voice extras to carry out quite a task: recording themselves laughing their heads off for a full minute. The response was fantastic, and very very funny to listen to and mix.

Also, to those who helped me find videos of people claiming that Hitler was an atheist and did his evil in the name of atheism. ***Especially OGJimbo.*** The clip of Father Jonathon from FOX News I had in mind from the start. What an unbelievable twat to say what he said. Fuck you, Fr. Jonathon.
And to the others featured in the ads (anyone who'd put themselves in front of a camera and declare that Hitler acted out of atheism deserves to be ridiculed. The ad breaks are my contribution to that ridicule.) : if you DMCA me for including your clips, despite their certainly coming under FAIR USE for criticism; I'll put the video file on mediafire and it will be mirrored on hundreds of channels within a few hours. Shoot yourselves in the foot if you really really want to.

That's it for me for this year. Thanks very much for sharing and rating my vids. Happy 2011.

Genesis (take #1)

Here's what I suspect happened. Yahweh secretly had a practice run. It didn't work out, it bored him to tears, and He decided to try again.
Well, you tell ME - why did it have to be a delicious, attractive fruit? Could the knowledge of good and evil NOT be magically stored in something else? Wouldn't it have been wise to NOT place the thing that's going to fuck up the entire universe IN THE MIDDLE OF A GARDEN, DISGUISED AS A FUCKING FRUIT?
What was Yahweh asking for? Seriously?!

and adults alive today believe Genesis literally.

I produced the music in this one, too. I've just figured out how to use Garageband.
And it's the first time I've attempted dialogue in a woman's voice.

Yahweh's Amazing Miracle

Yahweh: He's either miraculous or 'mysterious'. It's a pity -- if the rest of us were as 'mysterious' as Yahweh we'd deserve to be in prison for crimes of omission.

a guy and his family was in a light aircraft whose pilot DIED in the chair, and credited the fact that everybody else on board didn't die to JESUS having been looking out for them in their hour of need -- Jesus was his co-pilot. Just amazing tunnel vision -- Yahweh/Jesus is responsible for all the good, but absolutely NONE of the bad -- and there was a hell of a lot of bad in that guy's story; the pilot actually DIED, and they very nearly all met their doom. The guy who landed the plane was an experienced pilot too - (MIRACLE!) and the air traffic control helped out - but it was FAITH that got them through! With a dead frigging pilot in the plane! THAT, of course, had nothing to do with Jesus.
It's hard for me to remember when I had such a ridiculous world view, but I know I did once!

This video provided me with an opportunity to discuss the whole thing about the lack of thought that is SO EVIDENT in theists who think that if there is a god, (which they view as a necessity for there being anything in existence), then it must automatically be THEIR god. Or even that it must be a god that has rules and ethical standards (let alone standards of what to make your clothes out of or whether to keep your foreskin).
I'm a pretty weak atheist in this regard -- I'd be pretty easily convinced that there must be some kind of starting force or originator -- (don't quote-mine me -- I haven't said that I believe any such thing). I certainly don't rule it out, but I haven't really come across any evidence to give me any idea of even the most basic characteristics of that "force", if it exists. But by no means does such an acceptance (or vague feeling) necessitate believing anything at ALL about the character of the creative force. There could be a creative force that we know absolutely NOTHING about! Why do people automatically assume that the character is knowable? Just because it says so in a ridiculous old book? Maybe the creative force is US!! Perhaps this life is what it's like when gods get drunk! Ever thought that? Or maybe it's fucking Yahweh! WE DON'T KNOW! None of the "evidence" presented up til now has been any good for ascertaining ANYTHING like a factual understanding of the situation.

Christianity Debate

With the flourish, in recent years, of popular and widely accessible debates on this subject, the arguments coming from the theistic side have very quickly become predictable, stale, old, and even less convincing than they may have been the first time they were used.

This debate has to change. Theists - when all of your arguments have been debunked, and you keep spouting them anyway, congratulations - you're not convincing anyone except the credulous and weak minded. Are you proud of that?

I've often thought of opening up a second channel on youtube, on which I could engage in some debates with other users, but every time I ponder the idea I realise that 90% of the time I'd just be bringing people up to speed on what has already been answered a million times in the past. Screw that.

The way I see it, this debate ended a few decades ago. Everything that had been brought to the table then is what we're still seeing being brought to the table now. What we "new" or "affirmative" atheists are doing is trying to knock some nails into the coffin so that this whole thing can be put to rest in what Sam Harris so eloquently calls "the vast graveyard of mythology".

Theists - you simply must educate yourself before you go opening your mouth about all these tired old topics. Evolution. 20th century killers. The U.S. constitution. Atheism and atheists, and what it actually is that they DON'T believe. When you spout them- you get knocked down by the sheer force of facts. When you spout them and then get corrected and shown convincingly that your argument is in fact false, --- and then spout them again - I'm lost for words. Where is the virtue in that? Where? How can you be proud of that? How can you support others whom you see doing that?

I just simply, truly, and sincerely don't understand why christian theists aren't red with embarrassment that in these debates, their side so constantly and obviously relies on misinformation, falsehood and ignorance. How many times does one need to be told that 2 + 2 = 4 before they will stop insisting that it = 7?
I. Just. Do. Not. Understand. This. Situation.

Why. WHY!?!?!?

Of course not all christians are like this. And not even all of the christians who engage in debate are like this. To those sensible christians, I have this to say:
Why not join us in criticizing intellectual dishonesty like this even when it comes from your side? People who knowingly proclaim falsehoods from the podium (or pulpit) are not doing your side any favors in regards to spreading your message or enhancing your side's credibility (which is, you might have noticed, in crisis). People who do it are a liability to you.
One commenter suggested that I should have revealed at the end of the video that the moderator was in fact a christian, concerned with honesty and veracity. I wish I had included that. It would have made the video a hundred times better, but alas - 'tis too late.

Quiz Show (Bible Contradictions)

This is a video response to all those people who claim that the bible is free of contradictions

Context!!!!!!

Here are a few kernels of truth, wrapped liberally in extreme exaggeration. I know. It's pretty over the top. But so is the assertion that the bible is a holy book. That's a massive exaggeration. Most of it isn't even "pleasant".
The bible is revolting. It is sickening. It is nowhere NEAR as nice a book as what an ethical human could come up with, so why on earth does it have this reputation as having been written by the very author of love itself? It wasn't. It was written by human men - and pretty horrible men by the sounds of things.

And why is it that it only ever seems to be the ugly bits of the bible that are ever taken out of context? Why don't we ever hear christians complaining of John 3:16 being taken out of context?

Look, I know it's possible for things to be taken out of context. Creationists do it all the time, and it bugs the hell out of scientists and rationalists. Even I've been quoted out of context. Sure, it's annoying. But no context is large enough to write off some of the horrors of the bible. I mean - is September 11, for example, completely justified by recourse to a larger "context"? No, and neither are some of the horrors mentioned in the video.

The Eye of the Python

Right! Stop that! It's SILLY! Dear friends, if you're not familiar with the timeless genius of Monty Python then this one might be a bit over your head. It's an adaptation of the following classic sketch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSL

I got the idea for this from, unsurprisingly, reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth. Particularly the chapter which deals with the enormous amount of evidence pointing to life having NOT been designed by an intelligent agency, given all the incredible design flaws that can be seen throughout all of biology. The vertebrate eye is a very good example of this, for the reasons you can hear herein.

I usually like to give detailed references where I can, but the research for this one was just a wild goose-chase around the net picking up bits of info here and there, mainly from Wikipedia. So tough, you'll have to take my word for it.

Yes, yes, its all a bit exaggerated. I am very grateful for my eyes and am in fact one of the lucky ones who cannot complain of any eye weakness of any kind.

Special Investigation - Evolution

One of the most fascinating things for me about the whole religion debate, is the quality of the arguments that come from the religious side in response to the atheist/anti-theist kickback of recent years. Quality? It's too positive a word. The quality of the arguments is dreadful.

It truly fascinates me to see these desperately bad arguments, so easily debunked and deflected, coming back at us time and time again. I dealt with one of them in a recent video called "Atheists Secretly Believe in Yahweh", and this video is a similar thing, about creationism's terrible arguments (if you can call them that).

I know next to nothing about science - really, only what I've learnt by being interested in this debate for the last few years. And what is fascinating for me, is that the anti-science (creationist) side have such amazingly bad arguments. Their arguments are rarely, if ever, any better than utterly wrong. They're either flat out wrong, or make things up, strawman style, and then when their errors are pointed out, - they NEVER admit their mistakes, and seem to go on arguing the same things. It is just too plain to see to be a mistake - it's clear that as long as theyve got a flock of believers to preach it to, they'll keep on going like this, even when they are knowingly lying.

So this is based on a debate I recently heard between Kent Hovind and a christian who accepted evolution. Hovind just bulldozed his way through, spouting things that EVEN I know are wrong, and that, I have no doubt whatsoever, he has been corrected on time after time after time.

Its also based on P.Z. Myers famous debate against Geoffrey Simmonds (early 2008) - a guy with doctoral qualifications who didnt know the scientific meaning of the word theory, and used it as a pejorative. Quite a few elements of the script came from that exchange (whales, ignorance... etc).

There are so many "arguments" or "tactics" that they use repeatedly that I just couldn't squeeze into 11 minutes.
This video also came about by me realising how easy it is to get educated about evolution. I cannot recommend Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth highly enough. It is full of jaw-dropping information. It is an unbelievable privelige to be alive at a time that allows us to know so much about our universe. If I believed in a god, I'd be thanking it for allowing me to be alive at such an incredible stage in history, where so many mysteries are being, or have been, solved. Only a few hundred years ago - people didnt even know what stars were! Let alone dating rocks with atomic precision. Amazing.

Creationists - get educated before you argue about these things. And when you're corrected, try to learn something. Can you imagine if Dr. Finch here refused to be corrected about Moses or Noah, and spouted the same mistakes the rest of his life, like Hovind is SURE to do once he gets out of prison?

Offensive!!!!!!!

I suggest that christians just fucking get over it when we use words like fuck, shit, fucking, fucker, and all that. Please also realise that your religious beliefs are extremely offensive to some people, too, and that your religion has caused more trouble in the world than a million people screaming CUNT at the top of their lungs all day could ever cause.

Special Investigation - Atheist Alert

Here are Ray and Kent again with another Special Investigation, using all the available information to draw reasonable conclusions about what it means to not believe in their specific deity.