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    I’m Daniel Florien—blogger, writer and designer. I was an evangelical Christian for over a decade but am now an atheist & skeptic.

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Pray for Obama

By Daniel Florien on November 20, 2009 in Christianity, Fundamentalism, Oh the Stupidity!, Politics, Religion.

Pray for ObamaWe heard about Pastor Wiley Drake praying for God to kill Obama. Now it seems others are too. There’s a cafepress gift shop with slogans like “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8″ which seems to be Christianese for “Kill the President.” Psalm 109:8 says:

May his days be few; may another seize his position. (NRSV)

Of course God works in mysterious ways and often needs his followers to do his dirty work. So if this movement gets enough momentum, it’s only a matter of time before some lunatic tries to act on this “biblical advice.”

The ironic thing, of course, is that these Christians seem forget one of Jesus’ main teachings: “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:24)

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The Book Burning That Wasn’t

By vorjack on November 20, 2009 in Christianity, Fundamentalism, Oh the Stupidity!.

by VorJack

Burning BooksYou folks may remember a previous post on Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina and the book burning they were planning to have. The Church, run by Pastor Marc Grizzard, was planning to burn the usual targets: heavy metal music and smutty movies. But they also planned to torch all translations of the bible other than the KJV:

“We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, ESV, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT [...] These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.”

And then there would be fried chicken with all the sides.

Well, the best laid schemes of mice and morons often go awry. The blog “Right Wing Watch,” declares it the Worst. Book Burning. Ever:

“But when the big day came around, a combination of rain, protesters, and a state law against burning paper all conspired against them. Here’s what happened:”

Bless their hearts.

They tries to make the best of it. According to their website:

Our goal was to destroy garbage as noted below, and we did just that. We didn’t care how it was destroyed; only that it was destroyed. These same people must have never heard about “Paper, Rock, & Scissors.” Scissors cut paper, and paper tears real easy. We destroyed everything as planned. Praise God!

No word on the fried chicken.

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The Stupid Virus

By Daniel Florien on November 19, 2009 in Politics, Superstition, Videos.

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2009 Bad Faith Awards

By Daniel Florien on November 19, 2009 in Atheism, Religion.

The New Humanist 2009 Bad Faith Award polls are now open. Lots of unreasonable people to choose from, though my list would have been quite different. I mean, how can a list like that not have Ray Comfort on it?

Who gets your vote?

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Rapping the Story of the Bible

By Daniel Florien on November 19, 2009 in Christianity, Music, Videos.

Here’s Shai Linne, a Christian rapper, rapping the “greatest story every told” — no, not your favorite story — the one in the Bible about God killing himself so he can save some of humanity:

I have no rap sensibilities, so I have no idea if this would be considered good or bad in style, but the lyrics seem pretentious. I mean seriously:

Where He laid down the law for God-ruled government. Commonly referred to as the Mosaic covenant. Sin was imputed. So for man to know he’s unrighteous, God instituted animal sacrifices. This was to show our constant need for atonement.

Would anyone appreciate that except a room full of theology-obsessed evangelicals?

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Back to Regularly Scheduled Blogging

By Daniel Florien on November 18, 2009 in Meta.

A big thanks to Jesse Galef for a great week of blogging. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

Tomorrow we’re back to regularly scheduled UF blogging!

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Jesse the Breakdancing Portable Atheist

By Jesse Galef on November 18, 2009 in Meta, Pictures.

by Jesse Galef

This is my last post in the week of guest-blogging for Dan.  As you could probably tell, I’ve had a fantastic time doing it and I hope you enjoyed this past week on UnreasonableFaith as much as I have.  As noted earlier, I usually write over at FriendlyAtheist, but you made me feel welcome and right at home.

The internet is doing so much to help us foster a sense of nontheistic community.  Please feel free to add me as a friend on facebook!  I just recently started a twitter account, so you can follow me while I figure it all out.

I came up with a parting gift for this visit to UF. Since Dan brought up my breakdancing in his introduction of me, I spent some time in the gym to get this shot:

Galef_Bboy_AtheistJesse Galef reading The Portable Atheist while breakdancing

I feel like a portable atheist myself, as this is now the third atheist blog I’ve written for.

Have a wonderful evening, and I hope to see you again either at FriendlyAtheist, here at UnreasonableFaith, or at another place in the world/internet!

All the best,
Jesse

Comments (12)

Meaningless Deepities

By Jesse Galef on November 18, 2009 in Comics, Philosophy.

by Jesse Galef

When I was a kid, I was something of a smart-alec.  To be honest, I still am.  I can definitely relate to the wise-ass kid in today’s SMBC:

That kind of misleading statement always upsets me.  I want expressions to have meaning, and I feel cheated when the meaning disappears upon close examination.

Far too many sayings *cough theology cough* try to appear meaningful without actually asserting anything.  At the 2009 Atheist Alliance International Convention, I got to see Dan Dennett give a wonderful talk on the subject, described by Jerry Coyne thusly:

a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

You can watch the whole hour-long speech on the RDF website if you like; I certainly enjoyed it.

Comments (15)