Who Gets In

From Wonkette commenter divegirl:

Engage With Reality

From thunderclapnewman at TPM:



Everybody knows that since July 1, Kentucky has open and concealed carry everywhere NO PERMIT REQUIRED, right?

Faith Over Facts

From Down with Tyranny:

They Are Homophones for a Reason *

Yes, every religious group has its child rapists.  There are child rapists even among atheists, who have no religion to hide behind.  And every religion denies, hides and protects its child rapists who are employees of the church. But none can compete with the ability of the catholic church to maintain an air of utter probity while doing so.

Via Brad Blog:


* Here.

Easter

Divine Irony:

↵ Reblogged from religionisbs

KY Repugs Have No Budget, Just a Mandatory Day of Prayer for Students

Also no gun laws. No pension fix. No tax reform.

Just the most grossly unconstitutional gambit by a bunch of freakazoids that specialize in unconstitutional bullshit.

There should be some kind of fine these assholes have to pay for pulling this shit, wasting taxpayers' money and time.

From the Herald:

An annual day of prayer for Kentucky’s students at school would become state law under a bill passed Thursday in the House.

But Amber Duke, a spokeswoman for ACLU Kentucky told the Herald-Leader Friday that if the bill passes the Senate and is signed into law, “it should be made clear to our public schools that they should not be in the business of endorsing religious practices in violation of students’ constitutional rights.”

“The content of the bill doesn’t mandate prayer, but as we’ve seen time and time again in the Commonwealth when it comes to religion and schools, what is intended by the General Assembly can be lost in translation when it reaches the local school level,” Duke said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article205562774.html#storylink=cpy

How about this?  Every time a bill gets overturned in the courts by a lawsuit, the bill's sponsors, NOT the taxpayers of the Commonwealth, have to pay all the legal bills and courts costs of both sides, plus a six-figure fine to the ACLU, Freedom from Religion Foundation, NAACP, American Atheists, Fairness Campaign or whatever civil rights organization won the case.

KY School Shows How to Create Atheists

Forced prayer will do it every time.

From the Herald:

An organization of atheists and agnostics has taken issue with a prayer circle held after a high school basketball game in northeastern Kentucky recently.

Players, cheerleaders and coaches from cross-county rivals West Carter High School and East Carter High School gathered on the court and joined hands in prayer after their game on Jan. 26, according to a post on West Carter School’s Facebook page.

A photo of the prayer time was posted with a caption that said, in part, “What a way to end the game! #cometpride #wearecartercounty.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued a news release Friday, asking that school employees stop praying with students and saying the school shouldn’t be using its official page “to endorse religion.”

The organization sent a letter to Carter County Superintendent Ronnie Dotson on Feb. 6, saying that “federal courts have held that even a public school coach’s silent participation in student prayer circles is unconstitutional.”

“These coaches’ conduct was unconstitutional because they endorsed and promoted religion while acting in their official capacities as school district employees,” the letter states.

It further argues that the posting on the West Carter Facebook page constitutes an endorsement of religion, which violates the Establishment Clause.

“We ask that Carter County Schools commence an investigation into the complaint alleged and take immediate action to stop any and all school-sponsored prayers occurring within any district athletic programs,” the letter states.

It also asks that the district remove “any posts on the district’s social media pages promoting religion” and make sure the staff members responsible for the post are “counseled that such conduct is not to be repeated in the future.”

Kentucky public schools are beyond broke and facing catastrophe when legislators forced them to start paying for teachers' pensions.

So Carter County schools will not waste money fighting this lawsuit.  Right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Our Own Efforts

Divine Irony:

But It's the Christians Who Are the Only Victims

I don't think this story accurately portrays how courageous this boy really is to endure the abuse that only freakazoids hiding behind the unconstitutional cover of governmental authority can dish out.Yo

Because yes, in Kentucky, taxpayer-supported public fucking schools are openly and blatantly forcing children to endure religious indoctrination.

Coming soon from a homophobic bakery to public facilities near you.

From the Herald:

Heather Estes says her son, fifth-grader Devin Estes, has been bullied by other students at Stanton Elementary in Powell County and has been given a hard time by teachers because he doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t attend a morning religious service at the school. 

“They run it like a Christian school,” Estes told the Herald-Leader. “They have this program called the Upper Room. When I first got the permission slip, I asked around: What is the Upper Room? Why would I have to sign for something that’s during school hours?

“It’s like a little Sunday School program that they have during school hours,” she said.

“I don’t think it’s fair that they bully me because I’m not religious or Christian,” Devin, 10, told the Herald-Leader. “Because I don’t bully them. I’m fine with them being Christian. But for some reason, they are not fine with me being atheist.”

“It makes me feel like a bad person,” he said in a video his mother made one morning at the assembly. “I don’t want to feel like I’m a bad person.”

Don't think you're immune, blue-staters. The Supreme Court is getting ready to gut the Establishment Clause and bring freakazoid authority to every public facility near you.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article187938144.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article187938144.html#storylink=cpy

Not Old, Not New, Just Good

Atheism is what you do with it.  If you use your atheism to work against racism and misogyny and homophobia and all the other evils of religion, you're an activist atheist and good on ya.  If you use your atheism to justify your racism and misogyny and homophobia, or even just to pretend you don't have to make the world a better place, then you're a pig and shame on you.

PZ Myers:

I have a problem with this description.

 Follow

Existential Comics @existentialcoms

Old Atheism: "there is no God."
New Atheism: "we need to bomb more Muslims. European culture is superior. Also modern feminism is a cancer."

2:41 PM - Oct 18, 2017

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Twitter

They forgot the usual immediate followup:

New Atheism: “But all atheism means is that there is no god, and so we’re going to exclude any attempt to insert your values into it.”

But then, somehow, their heads fail to explode at the contradictions and hypocrisy. I don’t get it.

Proof of god

PZ Myers:

I’m a hardcore atheist, but I’m not claiming to possess absolute truth, Catholics are. I’m saying that 1) believers have failed to provide an internally consistent definition of a god that does not contradict available evidence, and 2) have failed to provide specific evidence that their god is the best possible explanation. 

Saying that “things exist” is not evidence for “my specific model for why things exist”, especially when there are better alternative models that don’t have the shortcomings of the god hypothesis. There is a fundamental distinction there that they consistently fail to notice.

Trump's America Endorses Death Penalty for LGBT, Adulterers, Atheists and Blasphemers

Nope, not kidding or exaggerating at all:

PZ  Myers:

A resolution before the UN to condemn executions for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, and consensual same-sex relations has passed, but Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates voted against it.

Oh. And one more. The United States voted against it, too, all for allowing countries to continue to execute people for being an atheist or a gay person. The United States. My country.

Your fine christian leaders, ladies and gentlemen.  Hand-in -hand with their fellow hateful freakazoids of islam, hinduism, shinto, confuscianism and buddhism.

Don't Pray; Vote

From Brad Blog:

Bible in School? Then Let's Have Atheism in Church.

No, I mean it.  Freedom OF religion is also Freedom FROM religion, so let's have a fair fight.

Truthfully, Bevin's new Inquisition is not new.  When I was in Kentucky high school in the 1970s, there was an English class elective in "The Bible as Literature."  Everybody took it because easy A, right?

"Bible Literacy," however, is quite a bit more blatant about its religious indoctrination.

So I say: bring it on, motherfuckers. As long as it also requires churches to provide an "elective" Sunday School class in Atheism.

Only we won't call it Atheism.  We'll call it "Reading the Bible Word for Word."

Because that is the never-fail recipe for turning christianists into atheists.

No more taking your preacher's word that the Bible condemns gays and blacks and muslims and poor people.  Read it for yourself!  Read what a vicious, bloodthirsty, genocidal piece of shit the Old Testament god really is. Decide for yourself if Liviticus' ban on shellfish makes sense.

Read the gospels of the New Testament and try to fit jesus' words about helping the poor and the sick into the repug kill-the-poor-to-enrich-the-obscenely-wealthy platform.

Ask converts to atheism what turned them against the christianist upbringing, and they all tell the same story: In order to become a better christian, they started really studying the Bible.  And what they read opened their eyes to the scam all religions are.

So read your bible, Kentucky students!  Read it really, really well.

God Logic

Divine Irony:

If leprechauns aren’t real

Then why is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Blindly Following

Divine Irony:

(Source: iamatheistgirl)

Remember How They Behaved

Divine Irony:

This World

Divine Irony:

All Exist

Divine Irony:



 (Source: cure-your-delusions)

Respect for Religion

Divine Irony:

‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion’. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and yes, our fearless disrespect.

Salman Rushdie. (via veganoanarchosatano)