Quote of the Day

I repeat: nobody said you can't go to the Creation Museum. Nobody is worried that you'll catch Christianity from a poorly done pseudo-museum. Nobody is threatening to ban Santa Claus or Christianity, either. But these baseless accusations are just so useful to inflame the martyr gland of the poor Christian majority. I have to feel sorry for them — their sense of self-worth seems to reside in a belief that they are persecuted for their beliefs, and it's just so hard to maintain when you're a dominant majority trying to force-feed religious absurdities on people with educations. - PZ Myers, on creationism

I'd also add that their self-worth seems to be related to their ability to get other people to believe the same made up bullshit they believe. For the hucksters, it's about money.. but for the honest "faithful", it's about validation.

It's not enough that supernatural beliefs are important to them. They have to feel validated by having as many other people as possible believe it as well. It's like a guy who believes he's been abducted by aliens. It helps to surround himself with people who are also convinced they've been abducted.

In the end.. they're just crazy as fuck, and the world would be a much better place if they stop investing their entire being into made-up bullshit. I'd settle for them just keeping their insanity to themselves.

Maybe for Christmas, I'll buy my favorite loons nail guns.. to make it easier when they nail themselves to the cross. Hammers are so first century.

...

/update

From another, but related, Myers post;

The second objection (to the idea of evolution) is to chance and the lack of purpose. People really, desperately want there to be a personal agency to causality — they become utterly irrational about it all if you try to imply that no, fate, destiny, and ultimate cosmic purpose guided them to their mate, for instance. It couldn't have been just chance. I suspect this is a consequence of the first contention: people want to believe that they are important agents in the universe, and one of the implications of evolution is that they aren't.

Indeed.. whack-a-loonery is an appeal to people's vanity. Nobody likes to think they are insignificant and meaningless. But, the truth is.. we are insignificant, and we are meaningless.. except.. and this is a huge exception.. to the other people in our lives who give us meaning and purpose.

NO.. it has absolutely nothing to do with some made up deity in the sky.

Ultimately, religion is an expression of human weakness and fallibility. It's also a tool for unmitigated evil.. a horrifying blood bath of human misery.. but that's really not the topic right now..

/update 2

Oh heck.. a quick other blurb while I'm thinking about it.

I was watching the History Channel yesterday, and they were doing a program on "torture devices of the Inquisition". I tried Googling the name of the device because I can't remember exactly what it is called and came up empty.

Anyway.. it works like this. They bind the hands of the accused heretic behind their back and attach a long rope to the binds.. which is in turn attached to a pulley a distance above them. The rope is attached to a wench, that lifts the heretic's hands behind their back.. and continues lifting as they come off the ground.. tearing the tissue of their shoulders. Then, they drop the heretic a certain distance (not to the ground) suddenly.. doing this repeatedly until their arms are torn off and they bleed to death. All done in the presence of the priests of the Inquisition.

They use that as a method to extract a confession.. and if they get the confession, they burn the heretic alive. So.. it's either you get your arms pulled off and die.. or you get burned to death..

In Jesus' name.. amen.