101. Battle of the New Atheism

Comment #46489 by CruciFiction on May 31, 2007 at 12:58 pm

HELLO!?!

Can we get a decent portrait just like these with the "Fourth Muskateer"? One without him holding a butt.

102. Liberty U student plotted to set off explosives, police say

Comment #44033 by CruciFiction on May 23, 2007 at 7:56 am

Mark Uhl has a myspace page: http://tinyurl.com/29gcvs

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

This is BS
Current mood: pissed off
Category: Life

I've come to the conclusion that I am insane. I work at school, I work at work, I work at home, I rarely have fun, and if I do anything at all in my free time I think about things that if I do anything about them it will make them worse, which is why I only get 1-4 hours sleep, if I'm lucky. I can't wait to actually use my BS training because, now, life is a frustrating cycle of BS. Hooah!

103. Hubble Finds Ring of Dark Matter

Comment #43398 by CruciFiction on May 21, 2007 at 9:18 am

A ring of "dark matter" in space reported on the same day Fallwell dies. Interesting.

104. Hitchens on Falwell

Comment #41886 by CruciFiction on May 17, 2007 at 9:07 am

Here is audio of the full two part interview with Hitchens and Ralph Reed on Hannity & Colmes:


1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnklkODSX_o

2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBruSdg0W4

105. Hitchens on Falwell

Comment #41847 by CruciFiction on May 17, 2007 at 7:30 am

The video linked at top begins about 30 seconds into the interview.

Catch it all here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfw7hUEujUw

He hit the nail right on the head with this one!

106. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41709 by CruciFiction on May 16, 2007 at 4:18 pm

Wow! Hitchens killed Falwell for a second time in one day with this interview on Anderson Cooper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBJDQnnYsxk

You go, boy!

107. The Creation Museum: Prepare to believe

Comment #41015 by CruciFiction on May 15, 2007 at 10:45 am

PROTEST RALLY PLANNED

http://www.rallyforreason.com/

108. Face-Off: Can You Prove God Exists?

Comment #40520 by CruciFiction on May 14, 2007 at 11:56 am

Cast your vote at ABC news poll: "Does God Exist?"

http://abcnews.go.com:80/Nightline/story?id=3148940

109. Facing Off on Evolution

Comment #40510 by CruciFiction on May 14, 2007 at 11:34 am

Best part is when Brian says about Kirk: "Oh, god, what a numbnut." ROFL

110. Hitchens, Sharpton and Faith

Comment #39672 by CruciFiction on May 11, 2007 at 1:43 pm

There is now a link available to video of the entire debate:

http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1007

111. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #39671 by CruciFiction on May 11, 2007 at 1:42 pm

There is now a link available to video of the entire debate:

http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1007

112. Lou Dobbs w/ Hitchens on Al Sharpton's Bigoted Remark

Comment #39670 by CruciFiction on May 11, 2007 at 1:41 pm

There is now a link available to video of the entire debate:

http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1007

113. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39584 by CruciFiction on May 11, 2007 at 8:09 am

The highlight is when they come to Impe and he's crying like a baby. Oh, my. Then you get to painfully hear him blowing his nose and sniffling through to the end. ROFLMAO!

And then some claim Christianity is not a brainwashing cult?

Hey Impe, her name is Ellen Johnson (American Atheists) who was on Barbara Walters' show. Not Helen!

They also mentioned creation museums, which will soon be springing up all over the United States of Jesusland.

Well, there are many secular/atheist organizations arranging a mass protest in Kentucky on May 28th in response to the new "Answers In Genesis" creation museum which will be opening for the first time that weekend.

See: http://rallyforreason.com/

"Join us outside the gates of "Answers in Genesis," Bullittsburg Church Road, Exit 11, off of 275 West from 1-75, Petersburg Road, Boone County, Kentucky"

114. More on the Atheism Front

Comment #39200 by CruciFiction on May 10, 2007 at 6:49 am

Christopher Hitchens appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 on May 9 to discuss his new book "God Is Not Great".

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugU2xQfOIh8

115. Hitchens, Sharpton and Faith

Comment #39196 by CruciFiction on May 10, 2007 at 6:47 am

Christopher Hitchens returns to Lou Dobbs on May 9th to discuss the controversy over Al Sharpton's bigoted remark during the debate concerning Republican presidential candidate and Mormon, Mitt Romney:

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbgfp_2JQf4

116. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #39194 by CruciFiction on May 10, 2007 at 6:46 am

Christopher Hitchens returns to Lou Dobbs on May 9th to discuss the controversy over Al Sharpton's bigoted remark during the debate concerning Republican presidential candidate and Mormon, Mitt Romney:

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbgfp_2JQf4

117. Christians and Atheists to Debate Existence of God in First-Ever 'NIGHTLINE FACE OFF'

Comment #38605 by CruciFiction on May 8, 2007 at 6:14 pm

Some clips provided by the RRS from the Nightline debate to be shown tomorrow online (abcnewsnow at 2PM) and edited for Nightline tomorrow night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-rKiGJrcNw

118. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #38560 by CruciFiction on May 8, 2007 at 3:51 pm

Hitchens is superb in this one. There's lot's of good laughs too.

A very worthwhile hour and 32 minutes (ignoring the last 20 minutes of religious music that follows - WTF?).

"New York Times" article on the debate ACCEPTING PUBLIC COMMENTS:

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/hitchens-sharpton-and-faith/

119. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #37470 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 2:23 pm

Hitchens is debating Al Sharpton on May 7. Should be a goody.

http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=2677

120. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #37469 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 2:22 pm

GoodbyeGodNz,

Eat me!

121. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #37453 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 1:48 pm

"I've updated the info, and moved the link to your youtube video. I didn't receive a notice from you, in the future please email links to design@richarddawkins.net. Thanks." ~ Josh
=====

Thank you, Josh. That is much appreciated.

I emailed my YouTube link on yesterday to "contact@richarddawkins.net", just as I had recently done with my Bill Maher on Scarborough Country capture. As that was promptly posted, I naturally assumed it was the appropriate address for this submittal as well. I've made a note of the preferred address you've supplied here.

Though it's true anyone may capture the same television segments for themselves and post them simultaneously, I have a genuine dislike for those who instead resort to outright stealing videos (as 'onegoodmove' has done here) from others who make the effort and expend the energy to share them with others.

Thanks,
Jack

122. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #37419 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 12:16 pm

"Thanks to Ranjani for the link."

HUH?!

Yeah, never mind that it was I who recorded and then uploaded this video to YouTube yesterday (5/3) and then emailed you the link within the hour of broadcast. Richarddawkins' staff instead chose to wait nearly a day later for onegoodmove to first steal the video from me, give them the credit, and then even upload it to their own YouTube account. No permission requested or even a polite notification. I know it's mine because the interview begins late, at the exact same point I started.

Okay, so no integrity to be found here. Thanks for nothing. That's the last time I submit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ_l3Utr670

123. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #37371 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 8:49 am

Lou Dobbs seemed to have actually read the book and obviously loved it in this interview with Hitchens on May 3, 2007.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ_l3Utr670

124. Christians and Atheists to Debate Existence of God in First-Ever 'NIGHTLINE FACE OFF'

Comment #37367 by CruciFiction on May 4, 2007 at 8:11 am

And with this GREAT interview (below) with Christopher Hitchens yesterday on Lou Dobbs, non-belief is really getting a lot of media attention!!! YAY!

Hitchens (new US citizen) on Lou Dobbs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ_l3Utr670

125. Christians and Atheists to Debate Existence of God in First-Ever 'NIGHTLINE FACE OFF'

Comment #37169 by CruciFiction on May 3, 2007 at 2:39 pm

ABC debate streaming is re-scheduled for May 9 at 1 pm ET

http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/002645.html

An ADMIN needs to change the time posted at top of page from 2PM to 1PM.

http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/55873003.html

126. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #36527 by CruciFiction on May 1, 2007 at 12:28 pm

["we have to admit that the spontaneous appearance of life is a matter of faith for an atheist, and so is extraterrestial life."]

The appearance of life on earth is not a matter of faith -- it just is. And atheists are content, until science is able to demonstrate how life began on earth, to live with an "I don't know" answer rather than make any leap of faith in explanation. Neither is faith involved in alien lifeforms. Most atheists only say that life elsewhere in the universe is a possibility and nothing more. In these assertions, your concept of "faith" is skewed.


["Dawkins said, rather halfheartedly, that Hitler was Catholic. This was untrue and easily dismissed by O'Brien."]

Hitler was raised Catholic, and always remained so. It is only the lying denial of the church and Christians who says otherwise. Hitler made strong religious statements in support of Christianity/Catholicism throughout his life:


---------------------------------------------
http://profnewport.blogspot.com/2007/04/myth-of-atheist-hitler.html

The myth of an atheist Hitler

One of the main arguments that religious people throw up is that the great genocides of recent times were committed by atheists. They tend to focus on both Hitler and Stalin, ignoring the fact that both were brought up in religious circumstances and held religious beliefs. Hitler especially saw the Christian faith (well his ideo of the faith) as essential to an aryan Europe. Here are some quotes from the bastard himself which illustrate this fact. How anyone can call a man who honestly thought he was guided by god as an atheist is a mystery?


I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work. [Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland. [Message, signed Hitler, painted on walls of concentration camps; Life, August 21, 1939]

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]

I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it. [Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed. [Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922, published in My New Order, quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]

This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152]

And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174]

Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.309]

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so [Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 171]

I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 1]

I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 2]

...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]

Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 6]

Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I]

The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right]

But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

....the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11, precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings]

Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created? [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!' [Adolf Hitler's prayer, Mein Kampf, Vol. 2 Chapter 13]

The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life [Adolph Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933]

Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years. [The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872]

Atheist Hall Converted
Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers

Wireless to the New York Times.

BERLIN, May 13. - In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership.

The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members ... [New York Times, May 14, 1993, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree]
---------------------------------------------

And this source on

Hitler's Christianity:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

127. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #35910 by CruciFiction on April 29, 2007 at 9:20 am

http://profnewport.blogspot.com/2007/04/myth-of-atheist-hitler.html

The myth of an atheist Hitler

One of the main arguments that religious people throw up is that the great genocides of recent times were committed by atheists. They tend to focus on both Hitler and Stalin, ignoring the fact that both were brought up in religious circumstances and held religious beliefs. Hitler especially saw the Christian faith (well his ideo of the faith) as essential to an aryan Europe. Here are some quotes from the bastard himself which illustrate this fact. How anyone can call a man who honestly thought he was guided by god as an atheist is a mystery?


I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work. [Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland. [Message, signed Hitler, painted on walls of concentration camps; Life, August 21, 1939]

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]

I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it. [Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed. [Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922, published in My New Order, quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]

This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152]

And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174]

Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.309]

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so [Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook. [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 171]

I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 1]

I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 2]

...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]

Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

I had so often sung 'Deutschland u:ber Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 5]

I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian- Social movement, especially in Lueger's time achieved a certain virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its success. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 6]

Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 7, reflecting on World War I]

The more abstractly correct and hence powerful this idea will be, the more impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend on human beings... If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this earth... In its workings, even the religion of love is only the weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however, lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human development of culture, ethics, and morality. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 8]

The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles. The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right]

But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win new followers for their doctrine-- an activity which can boast but very modest success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular-- right here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from a moral point of view, are not favorable. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10]

Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

....the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11, precisely echoing Martin Luther's teachings]

Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1 Chapter 12]

Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless of how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1]

A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand, would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself and the rest of the world. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created? [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

For the greatest revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2]

Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 5]

The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

In the ranks of the movement [National Socialist movement], the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another. [Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10]

For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!' [Adolf Hitler's prayer, Mein Kampf, Vol. 2 Chapter 13]

The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life [Adolph Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933]

Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years. [The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872]

Atheist Hall Converted
Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers

Wireless to the New York Times.

BERLIN, May 13. - In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership.

The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members ... [New York Times, May 14, 1993, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree]

128. Bill Maher - APATHEIST

Comment #35537 by CruciFiction on April 27, 2007 at 2:21 pm

+++++++++++++++++++++++

[Comment #35503 by William on April 27, 2007 at 11:44 am

I'm noticing an interesting trend while reading through these posts. Those that support Maher are for the most part awkward, ill-spelled, ungrammatical, vulgar, peevish, fawning, irrelevant, defensive, and occasionally outright belligerent. Funny, that. I suppose you can tell a lot about a fellow by the type of audience he attracts.]

+++++++++++++++++++++++

As I had commented on my support for Maher, I suppose this means that you can tell, in all your all wise and knowledgeable judgement, that there is also something wrong with me.

Well I resent your arrogant and snobbish attitude! Nearly every reason you've given in this thread for your dislike of Maher, I find, are solidly good reasons for disliking you.

You seem apparently of the same ilk as our American breed of fascist neocons who, when failing in their attempts to destroy another's message/opinion, turn instead to destroying the messenger -- even if it means a complete character assassination job. I abhor them and their ways, as I abhor your snide, insulting, and degrading remarks here.

You have [so far] posted 15 comments in this thread. Just why the sick and unrelenting obsession in attacking Maher and everyone here who likes/appreciates him? In your persistent quest to trash Maher and all his fans, you've done no less than expose an awful lot about you and your own character. And it is just that -- AWFUL!

I have no doubt that I, as well as others here, might have strong dislikes for publicly known figures whom you like/respect very much. I might, given the occasion and the opportunity, offer such a negative opinion and explanation to you. But I'm certainly not going to travel down that nasty and futile road of beating you over the head until you agree with me as you are attempting to do here to us. I'm sure that my negative opinion would hardly dissuade you of your positive opinion. And so, neither has your scathing opinion here dissuaded me in any way of mine in respect to Maher. So why not just chill out and learn how to play nicely with others.

129. Bill Maher - APATHEIST

Comment #35333 by CruciFiction on April 26, 2007 at 10:32 pm

Well, I've always been a huge fan of Bill Maher. The guy has real courage and a great sense of humor -- and is quick at it. Of course, I'm aware there is a general divide in personal taste between the people of the UK and US in preferred comedy style, so that difference is probably part of the mix in difference of opinions here. But Maher is strictly American style comedy/sarcasm -- and I just can't get enought of him.

I don't know of course, how many of his detractors here reside outside the US or have ever watched his [very popular] TV shows. But the likes of his progressive, politically-left, and anti-religion views are seldom heard anywhere else on American talk shows. He reaches far more American citizens than does Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett combined! And I'd wager a bet that well over half of the US population has never even heard of Hitchens.

Maher then, is a huge force in countering the theocratic fascists and neocons, whose poisonous influences are felt overwhelmingly at every turn here. His voice is overall, greatly needed! And I for one greatly appreciate him.

130. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #34763 by CruciFiction on April 25, 2007 at 6:55 am

Bring on the Fourth Muskateer to battle Winston.

131. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34486 by CruciFiction on April 24, 2007 at 7:55 am

DreaMasteR,

Thanks for your post and the optimism for the future of which it lends itself.

132. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #33956 by CruciFiction on April 22, 2007 at 9:04 pm

I think the common practice of religionists in labeling passionate and outspoken nonbelievers as "militant atheists" or "fundamentalist atheists" is just the same as when white bigots used to use the term "uppity niggers" during the days of segregation -- it was a powerful way of keeping an oppressed group down by insinuating that they are out of line for defending themselves and being proud.

But as for atheists to belch such names upon other atheists, well, there was also the term, "Uncle Toms", that just may well apply to them.

I absolutely refuse to be subservient to religion. Nor will I be silent, shy, or timid, when it comes to opposing religionists' dangerous and irrational dogmas being pushed on society and government. We've tried that for too long and is directly responsible for the huge mess in which we find ourselves today.

133. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #33917 by CruciFiction on April 22, 2007 at 5:01 pm

Epstein, who obviously gets his rocks off by being called "chaplain", clearly suffers from his own kind of religious delusion and is no different from any of the real clergy in trying to use his self-righteous position for his own personal gain and fame.

He's a worthless fart who's going nowhere, and rightly should be utterly ignored by nonbelievers.

134. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33594 by CruciFiction on April 20, 2007 at 4:58 pm

LONG LIVE THE MUSKATEERS!!!

135. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #33313 by CruciFiction on April 19, 2007 at 8:58 pm

"filthyatheist" makes a good point above in suggesting Dr. Dawkins appear on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

I've emailed the MSNBC Countdown program to request they invite Richard for an interview with Olbermann. Having his book on the NYT Best Seller list for nearly 30 weeks, and currently at #10 nonfiction certainly qualifies him.

email: countdown@msnbc.com

136. Dinesh D'Souza says I don't exist: an atheist at Virginia Tech

Comment #33310 by CruciFiction on April 19, 2007 at 8:48 pm

Dinesh D'Souza is lower than a sea breeze. Scum.

137. The Empty Wager

Comment #33128 by CruciFiction on April 19, 2007 at 11:51 am

I would urge all to also consider posting their comments at the link to the "On Faith" page where Sam's article appears for exposure to many more eyes.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/04/the_cost_of_betting_on_faith.html

138. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #32832 by CruciFiction on April 18, 2007 at 11:52 am

Sam concludes the debate as the brilliant master he is:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/214/story_21446_2.html

This debate produced an absolutely marvelous series of pieces from Sam. Bravo!

139. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #29972 by CruciFiction on April 5, 2007 at 8:03 pm

Well, that's it then. I found it to be nothing more than emotion laden, irrational and incoherent poppycock, where he also resorts to finishing off with several bald-faced lies intended to try to save face among his long-time fans and other believers (perhaps he subconsciously needed to lie to himself too). But when considering the [public/business] situation in which he finds himself, he may not have had much choice in ending this any other way than he did. He basically said he's just done talking about it (very typical of Christians) and then crawled his pathetic self back inside that ancient faith-based cornucopia of safe and comfortable, myths and fables.

As a life-long atheist, I've just never been able to fathom why some people cling to a life immersed in that kind of "Alice In Wonderland" mindset, nor how they can so thoroughly block/dismiss critical and reasoned thoughts that conflict with it.

140. Creation Science 101

Comment #28329 by CruciFiction on March 28, 2007 at 7:00 pm

Judging by the video comments on YouTube, and in spite of recent books like Dr. Dawkins' to enlighten the world, it appears the human race is still on track in its dumbing down toward a universal mind meltdown driven by religion.

I lost count of the "evolution is false because it's only a theory" bullshit comments there. It really is quite alarming to say the least.

141. Richard Dawkins: Author of the Year!

Comment #28321 by CruciFiction on March 28, 2007 at 6:25 pm

More like "Author Of The Decade"!

Congratulations Professor Dawkins!

142. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #27920 by CruciFiction on March 27, 2007 at 8:45 am

Muck Chiseler should try sticking his banana into the peanut butter.

143. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #26904 by CruciFiction on March 22, 2007 at 8:21 am

"But I can no more be reasoned out of faith than I was reasoned into it." ~ Sullivan

Well this is at least consistent with one of my favorite quotes:

"It is impossible to reason someone out of something that he did not reason himself into in the first place." — Jonathan Swift

I think it's a sad indictment on the human mind and certainly a detriment to our very survival as a species.

144. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #26901 by CruciFiction on March 22, 2007 at 8:14 am

"Just because you can prove the entire religious basis for a sciety wrong does not mean that your replacement is superior..." ~ gelf

And "the entire religious basis for a society" has indeed been proven wrong.

So why do we struggle to find a cure for cancer? After all, if we don't die from cancer, we will each die of something else -- maybe even in a worse or more tragic manner.

Does your logic still follow then, that we should just stop in our quest to cure cancer? To do so would be illogical and anti-human, just as the slavish worship of an imaginary master in the sky is illogical and the epitome of anti-human.

You did get one thing correct in your post however: "I don't get it."

145. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #26715 by CruciFiction on March 21, 2007 at 9:20 am

"Some humor would be a good idea right now." - justme

Well this line got a laugh out of me: "The 14th century got along fine without you (well, not so fine)."

I'm very pleased to see Sam try to hold Sullivan's feet to the fire by returning to those important arguments that Sullivan has previously chosen to ignore.

Come on, Andrew, it took you a very long time to concede that you were terribly wrong about the Iraq war. When are you also going to come to your senses on the clear fraud of Christianity/Catholicism?

146. Free Speech

Comment #25591 by CruciFiction on March 14, 2007 at 7:50 am

Wow! Thanks for that link. It really was a superb lecture.

I too, am eagerly awaiting his next book.

147. Atheist Apostle

Comment #24362 by CruciFiction on March 6, 2007 at 7:22 am

It really is all about "dogma" that lies at the core of Harris' urgent warnings, people. Whether it's the extremely potent god-endorsed religious dogma or ideological dogma (Stalin,etc.).

It was painful for me to watch Sam have to reiterate this point over-and-over at the recent Beyond Belief Conference to his peers, and the word has not even been mentioned once here.

148. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24294 by CruciFiction on March 5, 2007 at 5:56 pm

rydrum2112,

I think I said there is no certainty.

I apologize to the board for the derail, I'm done here with this.

149. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24281 by CruciFiction on March 5, 2007 at 4:41 pm

["What the margin of error is saying is that 95% of the time you conduct this poll, the value you will find will be within the x +/- 3% range."]

rydrum212,

Huh? This is what I've been saying all along. Our 'x' is 2%, so the +/- 3% margin of error indicates 95% of the time, other polls should result with their own x within a range that's no higer than 5% (but of course I realize a negative number of -1% on the low end is invalid).

But it was you who originally challenged me by saying: "that does NOT mean that you can add the reported erorr percentage to the reported number and the true value is in that range".

This appears to a contradiction of yours, because adding and subtracting the error percentage to the poll's percentage is exactly what is done to obtain a range.

Now the idea of the range when including the margin of error in this or any other poll, is to best ascertain a range of actuals -- but of course, can never be with absolute certainty.

150. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24235 by CruciFiction on March 5, 2007 at 12:37 pm

Rydrum2112,

A "margin of error" is a calculation applied differently to different types and means of statistical analysis.

In our case, a poll, the +-3% margin of error provided does indeed mean that statistically, based on the number of people participating in the poll, the given percentage (2% atheists) could fluctuate either 3% up, or 3% down, with a greater sampling of people in a similar poll. And so a greater sampling would better reflect a more accurate representation of the actual percentage (in this particular poll that margin of error predicts a greater sampling would put the number somewhere in a range from 5% to -1%). And the fact that it extends a range into negative territory only demonstrates how tiny their sampling must have been -- and likely very far off as well.

Being a statistician yourself, I'm surprised you are not aware of this. The explanation of margin of error as applied to polls can be found here:

http://www.stats.org/in_depth/faq/margin_of_error.htm

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"If people are selected randomly and some basic statistical assumptions are made, there is a mathematical formula for the margin of error. The way to understand a poll result such as "49 percent of American voters prefer Bush to Kerry, with a margin of error of three percent" is that 49 percent of those questioned prefer Bush to Kerry. If the poll were conducted again (with a different sample of the population), the percentage of those questioned preferring Bush over Kerry is likely to be a value from 46 (49 minus 3) to 52 (49 plus 3). How likely? The margin of error is calculated so that a new poll's result is 95 percent likely to lie within the margin of error. If a hundred similar polls were conducted, we would expect that in 95 of them, 46 to 52 percent of people would support Bush over Kerry."
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