Family Guy on Religion and Violence

I normally don't care at all for Family Guy, an adult animated comedy that--I think--cheaply satirizes popular culture, and blitzes people with fast-paced one-liners and scene transitions in horribly irreverent ways.  Okay, admittedly, I do enjoy a little irreverent humour: for example, George Carlin, Ed Byrne, Keith Lowell Jensen, and Billy Connolly.  But from what I've seen of Family Guy, it's usually vapid and principally uncouth.

Enough of my assessments, however.  I just watched a 19-second clip from Family Guy that had me chuckling and chortling quite loudly.  And now I present it to you:

Obviously the video is not historically accurate.  It is an entertaining mockery of religious people's predilections to violence, though.

Thanks to Atheist Media Blog for tipping me off to this clip.

Steven Wright and A New Pope

One of my all time favourite comedians is Steven Wright. I find myself in stitches almost every time I see one of his shows, or read some of his quips. So, in an effort to push some of you readers into a fit of raucous laughter, I have embedded a wee clip of his Comic Relief appearance. Enjoy!

And since this blog really wouldn't be complete without a little stab at institutional religion, I present you with the following brilliant little mock-up called, "A New Pope".

Work, Pray, and Lager

On one of the chat-boards I participate on, a member was concerned that his job was in danger. The situation is simply that his two bosses -- one an evangelical Christian, the other an orthodox Jew -- were requiring that each work-day start in prayer. To add, the employees were informed that they would be required to lead prayer.

Being as the concerned board-member is an atheist, he wanted to seek out advice for how to handle the situation.

The most creative response so far has been the following:

Recite this prayer:

"Our lager, Which art in barrels, Hallowed be thy drink. Thy will be drunk, I will be drunk, At home as it is in the tavern. Give us this day our foamy head, And forgive us our spillages, As we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us not to incarceration, But deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, The bitter, The lager.

Ramen."

My abdomen now hurts from laughing too hard.

What would you suggest this atheist do?

Yeah. Okay.

Don't you wish we could have some more 80's spandex-metal bands again? Don't you miss them?

It Speaks For Itself

The Onion Makes Me Laugh: School-Homing

In true Onion fashion, a blatant mockery of public schooling follows. Enjoy!

Mr. Deity and the Really Hard Time

I'm a big fan of Mr. Deity. I find myself howling in laughter most episodes. You really have to experience Mr. Deity for yourself, however. One caveat, though: his humour is ironic and playfully cynical. So if you're super-sensitive about your religious beliefs, brace yourself to be offended.

LOL!

The Onion Strikes Again!

Warning: The following material may offend most, and should not be viewed by anybody looking to avoid a laugh. Oh! And it's about sex.

Couple copulates. Kinda.

Shout-out to The Onion for this bit of hilarity!

Today's Thought

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

~ George Bernard Shaw.

Thought For the Day

"Fact of Life: After Monday and Tuesday even the calendar says W T F."

Author wished to remain anonymous.

A Stunning Senior Moment

Thank you, Uncle Steve!

26 Things To Do In An Elevator

1) Bring a camera, and take pictures of everyone in the elevator.

2) Move your desk into the elevator, and whenever someone gets on, ask if they have an appointment.

3) Lay down a Twister mat and ask people if they'd like to play.

4) Leave a box in a corner, and when someone gets on, ask if they hear something ticking.

5) Pretend you are a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exits with the passengers.

6) Ask, "did you feel that?"

7) Stand really close to someone, sniffing them occasionally.

8) When the doors close, announce to the others, "It's okay, don't panic. They'll open up again."

9) Swat at flies that don't exist.

10) Tell people that you can see their aura.

11) Call out, "GROUP HUG!" and enforce it.

12) Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering, "Shut up. All of you. Just Shut up!!!"

13) Crack open your briefcase or purse and while peering inside, as "Got enough air in there?"

14) Stand silently and motionless in the corner, facing the wall, without getting off.

15) Stare at another passenger for awhile, then announce in horror, "You're one of THEM," and back away slowly.

16) Wear a puppet on your hand, and use it to talk to the other passengers.

17) Listen to the elevator walls with a stethoscope.

18) Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.

19) Ask if you can push the button for other people, but push the wrong ones.

20) Stare grinning at another passenger for awhile, then announce "I have new socks on."

21) Draw a little square on the floor with chalk, and announce to the other passengers, "This is MY personal space!!"

22) When there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder and pretend it wasn't you.

23) Push the buttons and pretend they give you a shock.

24) Call the Psychic Hotline from your cell phone, and ask if they know what floor you're on.

25) Hold the doors open, and say that you're waiting for your friend. After awhile, let the doors close and say, "Hi Greg, how's your day been?"

26) Drop a pen, and wait until someone reaches to help pick it up, and then scream "That's mine!"

Thank you kindly, Ojar!

Honest Thievery

By way of Pilgrim.Not.Wanderer

ROFLMAO!

Now here's a brilliant piece of work detailing the Dawkins legacy. I almost feel vindicated enough by this presentation to finish reading the claptrap that is The God Delusion.

Hilarious!

Remember the atheist bus ad campaign? Here's a humorous mock-up of the same thing: the Atheist Bust Ad Campaign.



Thanks to the Friendly Atheist for this one!

Nasty Remark

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."  H.L. Mencken

Can I get an 'amen'?

Karl W. Giberson Comments On Jerry Coyne's "Seeing And Believing"

I have posted two articles (with more to come) that offer critical reflections on Jerry Coyne's article Seeing And Believing. In that article, Coyne deals most specifically with two "Darwinian churchgoers": Karl W. Giberson, and Kenneth R. Miller. The following two articles will be critical reflections from both Giberson and Miller themselves in response to Coyne.

I hope you enjoy!

"I enter this conversation feeling vaguely like a wishbone being stretched. On the one hand, I believe that the world is the creation of transcendent God that I perceive dimly behind the almost opaque curtain of my experience; but I also believe in the extraordinary power of science to unfold the nature of that world with astonishing clarity and conviction. I have one foot in each of Gould's non-overlapping magisteria and the space between them seems, at least in this conversation, uncomfortably large.
Discussions like this that juxtapose "empirical science" with "revealed religion" rarely seem like appropriately balanced encounters to me. When Ken Ham and his merry band of biblical literalists talk disparagingly about science, I can barely recognize it. But I had the same problem with Dawkins's send-up of believers in The God Delusion.

Coyne, who affirms Dawkins's approach, speaks of "theologians with a deistic bent" who inappropriately presume to "speak for all the faithful." The implication is that the "faithful" are the more authentically religious and the theologians are an aberration. This seems unfair to me. The great unwashed masses of these "faithful" should be juxtaposed with the great masses of people who "believe" in science but are not professionals. Most Americans -- and the rest of the world, for that matter -- are attached to both iPods and a belief that medical science is their best hope when they are sick. They "believe" in science. What do you suppose "science" would look like, were it defined by these "believers"? The physics would be Aristotelian; astrology and aliens would accepted as real; General Relativity would be unknown; quantum mechanics would be perceived as a way to influence the world with your mind. And yet all of these people would have had far more education in science than the typical religious believer has in theology. Science as "lived and practiced by real people" is quite different than the science promoted by the intellectuals in this conversation.

Empirical science does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Darwin showed only too clearly. But empirical science also trumps other empirical science. Einstein's dethronement of Newton was not the wholesale undermining of the scientific enterprise, even though it showed that science was clearly in error. It was, rather, a glorious and appropriately celebrated advance for science, albeit one not understood by most people. Why is this different than modern theology's near universal rejection of the tyrannical anthropomorphic deity of the Old Testament, so eloquently skewered by Dawkins? How is it that "science" is allowed to toss its historical baggage overboard when its best informed leaders decide to do so, even though the ideas continue to circulate on main street, but religion must forever be defined by the ancient baggage carried by its least informed?

The world disclosed by science is rich and marvelous, but most people think there is more to it. Our religious traditions embody our fitful and imperfect reflections on this mysterious and transcendent intuition -- an intuition that, as articulated by some of our most profound thinkers, seeks an understanding of the world that is goes beyond the empirical.

Coyne is correct that books like those he reviewed—Ken Miller's Only a Theory and my Saving Darwin—have not been particularly successful in securing a peaceful overlap for the magisteria, at least not for most people. Coyne would say there is no such peaceful overlap. But there are many well-informed believers who have come to peace with science, and who live happily on the rich, but thinly populated, turf where the magisteria overlap.

I think we can all agree though that, wherever we stand, there is a great need for a discussion of how America's conversation on origins should proceed. We need to wake up to the reality that current strategies have been an abysmal failure and ask some tough questions about why that is. There is a widespread fear on America's main streets that evolution is destroying a cherished belief in God. As a consequence, anti-evolution has assumed the proportions of a military-industrial complex but the battle is a proxy war, aimed not at evolution, but at materialism. I wonder what would happen if, in the name of pluralism and diplomacy, we could all agree that it was OK for people to believe that evolution was a part of God's plan. I suspect that cultural changes would be inaugurated that would eventually make both Eugenie Scott and Ken Ham irrelevant."

By way of richarddawkins.net

Poking at Atheism

Disapproval