How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Part 2 (UPDATED!)

Some have called my previous blog "intolerant." I know it is. A couple of blogs ago, I told everyone to check the Wikipedia entry for Sam Harris, as he epitomizes the beliefs of myself and many other up-and-coming hardcore atheists. Like him, I am openly advocating a form of intolerance, where we take religion off its pedestal and expose it to the same logical scrutiny we use in our everyday argumentation and decision-making. Religion is not an ethnicity, race, gender or class (though it may be the cause/effect of these things) -- it's a set of beliefs, and should not be sacred or beyond reproach, as moderates would have us believe. Islam is a fundamentally violent, hateful religion, as is Christianity. The fundamentalists of all religions have it essentially right (hence the title "fundamentalists"), but are allowed to operate because of moderates and the demands of "tolerance" which they hide behind. Check Harris' Wikipedia entry; it's fascinatingly refreshing.

I therefore stand by my assertion that anyone with a beating heart and a functioning brain eventually embraces atheism, no matter how many friends it costs me.

Next I would like to point everyone to my buddy Micah's blog page -- my two previous blog entries were born from comments I left there (please excuse the redundancy). It began as an expose on the papyri which the LDS church's Book of Abraham were based on (and, upon their re-discovery 40 years ago, disproved Joseph Smith as a prophet of God), but has since devolved to address the moral relativist justification for religion (which is essentially what all religious discourse eventually boils down to because it's the only leg theists have to stand on and they know it). It's good readin' with pictures and everything!

Other than that it's been kind of a slow summer (other than the Middle East spiraling into all-out war in the region and the Bush Administration's blatantly opportunistic stall tactics), so here's some of my favorite news pieces of the last few months:

Hate groups are infiltrating the military and using it as training/practice for their coming race war. Dumb, sick fucks.

The White House has changed its mind about the Gitmo detainees' access to Geneva protections. And two years ago they called us flip-floppers!

The URL is self-explanatory: abunchofgreedyrightwingliarswhoworkforwalmart.com. On a related note, working for Costco rules -- any company whose praises are sung by Mother Jones magazine has to be fucking cool!

The Feds have been giving The Hope Line some noise about privacy issues and taxes, eventually setting up a competing service and cutting off their funding. 1-800-SUICIDE will be turned off Saturday. It's a little late to make a difference now, but check their site and MySpace page anyway; add them as a friend, sign their petition, give them money and flood your Senators with irate letters about this extremely fucked-up situation. I promise it'll make you feel better about yourself.

Midterm elections are coming up! I'll skip the requisite "get registered and vote you apathetic bastards" routine and get right to the fun shit: here's a post about how to hack a Diebold Voting Machine -- you know, those electronic ones Utah and many other states will be rolling out this election! Get ready all you impoverished, non-white folks -- your votes are about to be rendered truly meaningless!

And San Francisco has added yet another (mostly symbolic) reason why I want to move to their fair city.

Lastly, can I get a "fuck yeah" from everybody who loves video games and doesn't support the war in Iraq for Joe Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut's Democratic primary? Finally! I've been sick of that asshole's dozen-year crusade against video game violence (and by extension, parental responsibility) since I was in fucking elementary school -- he was the first senator's name I learned! The witch is dead, bitch! On a slightly more relevant note, could his defeat mean that liberals in this country have finally grown some fucking spine, become proud of their leftist beliefs and sick of right-leaning Republi-crats? Could Hillary Clinton be the next to fall before the phoenix-like wrath of the new, unapologetic left? Let's fucking hope so!

(UPDATES: I fixed a few broken/dead links, Micah's blog among them -- Micah has deleted his MySpace account, but information on the Book of Abraham [sans Micah's caustic-yet-informative commentary] is not hard to find -- Wikipedia is a good place to start. Also, The Hope Line has earned $10,000 in donations and will be able to keep 1-800-SUICIDE open for two more weeks. They still need donations to stay open but at least the immediate pressure has been lifted.)