Just to let everyone know that there’s a Halloween version of Jesus-Dress-Up. Go check it out. Also, for all you flyer-people out there, you can download PDF versions of fun stuff here. Great stuff for public laundromats and bus stations, or to hand back to the religious nut who hands you something first.

Here’s a nice interview with Bill Maher (Maher: ‘I’m spreading the anti-gospel’) about religion. He says he’s not really an atheist, but he sure sounds like one a lot of the time. (Hey, you all know that M. Murray O’Hair used to say that agnostics were just chickenshit atheists.) Some tidbits:

…referring to Jesus as an “imaginary friend”… “I think so much that’s wrong with our society stems from religion”… “That’s one of the things that really bugs me about religion. If you don’t know the answer, just say, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t make up stories and make people believe them, and then work backwards in everything in life from the dumb little story you made up, you know? We don’t know. Be a good person just because it’s the right thing to do. How ’bout that?”… Maher’s memories of the Catholic portion of his childhood are hardly fond… “I remember a nun said to me, ‘The boy who is slumped over is going to go to hell.’ For slouching.”… He uses words like “poison” and “stupid” to describe his early religious indoctrination… “I believed all this stuff when I was young,” Maher begins, smiling wryly. “I believed there was a virgin birth, I believed a man lived inside of a whale, and I believed that the Earth was 5,000 years old. But then something very important happened to me — I graduated sixth grade.”… One of the many things that annoys me about religion is that it’s arrogance masquerading as humility”… “it justifies insanity… Flying planes into buildings was a faith-based initiative.”

It’s not all good; but enough to justify a read.

Very disturbing article that people seem to be talking about: Without a Doubt. I’d suggest you take a read, before the free phase expires. Or, if it does expire, you can read the story here.

“I’m going to come out strong after my swearing in,” Bush said, “with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.” The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us “two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I’ll be quacking like a duck.”

Joseph Gildenhorn, a top contributor who attended the luncheon and has been invited to visit Bush at his ranch, said later: “I’ve never seen the president so ebullient. He was so confident. He feels so strongly he will win.” Yet one part of Bush’s 60-odd-minute free-form riff gave Gildenhorn — a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a former ambassador to Switzerland — a moment’s pause. The president, listing priorities for his second term, placed near the top of his agenda the expansion of federal support for faith-based institutions. The president talked at length about giving the initiative the full measure of his devotion and said that questions about separation of church and state were not an issue.

Not that anyone would be surprise by any of this. But it does become more and more real as the day approaches. No wonder so many think the Xian Republic of the United States is within reach.

I never knew it fell on a Sunday this year before reading this story: Baker officials hope to ban ’satanic’ holiday. Cool historical note, too:

Halloween started as a Celtic New Year celebration in honor of the dead. It began long before the foundation of Christianity and continued after the Roman conquest of what is now Britain in A.D. 43.

But, of course, when xians get a hold of something that they didn’t invent (i.e., just about everything Pagan), they either assimilate it without ever mentioning what they’ve done (i.e., xmas and easter) or call it EVIL.

Ever get that feeling that someone’s full of shit when you listen to them? If not, then you’ll definitely get it after viewing Robert Wright interviewing Dennett on design and purpose. The interview can be found here, and Dennett’s reply to the interview here. Wright sounds like some wanna-be lawyer or used car salesman (with all the bullshit fallacies, of course). A nice take on the interview can be found here.

Ah, the divine joy of “Killing Kids Slowly and Painfully 101″: Prayers for Cody Help Family Through Difficult Time

At age 6 Cody was like every other boy his age. He played tee ball, loved the Astros and, in spite of his shy and gentle nature, he made those around him laugh. After complaining of hip pain, every parent’s worst nightmare came true. Cody was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The doctors offered no hope of survival from the first day of the Johnson’s journey. But Mike and Keely are not the type of parents that base truth on doctor reports, but rather on God. [...] When Cody was told about his cancer he said, “I want the worst kind of cancer there is so that when God heals me, everybody will know it was God who did it.”

And Cody, a nice 6-year old boy who could have had a very good life, is now dead. Praise God.

Christopher Reeve died yesterday; he apparently “went into a coma on Saturday when he suffered a heart attack during treatment for an infected pressure wound and died in Northern Westchester Hospital on Sunday afternoon without regaining consciousness” (news story here). He wasn’t a great actor, but he was a rocking advocate for stem cell research and the rights of the disabled; and he didn’t hesitate to place the finger of blame on the pandering right-wing “pro-life” politicos for getting in the way of the science with the greatest promise for helping him and those like him.

He’s also one of us. You can check out a few of his coments on religion at the (somewhat out-of-date) Celebrity Atheists site. As usual, the eulogizing will probably miss this a fair bit — especially in political cartoons, where he’ll no doubt be pictured as Superman in heaven. I guess it’s a little awkward to point out at his death that a decent and sympathetic person is, in the eyes of the majority of his countrymen, now headed for an eternity of burning in hell.

R.I.P., Chris; we know you will.

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