I’ve got to hand it to Edward Current – just when I was beginning to tire of his videos, he throws out this little gem.
Filed under: atheism, humour | Tagged: Edward Current | 3 Comments »
I’ve got to hand it to Edward Current – just when I was beginning to tire of his videos, he throws out this little gem.
Filed under: atheism, humour | Tagged: Edward Current | 3 Comments »
As a fan of Bill Maher’s Real Time series on HBO, I’ve been eagerly anticipating Religulous since I first caught wind of its existence well over a year ago. While Maher’s paranoid delusions about western medicine hardly make him the ideal poster-child for atheism, it’s always nice to see a witty and outspoken non-theist in a position to reach the (North American) masses.
After a series of tortuous delays made all the more painful by Maher’s continuing plugs on his weekly political chat show, I finally got to watch Religulous last week – here’s my review of the film, for those that are interested.
Maher has said before that so much footage was shot they could have made a 10-part television show, and after watching the film, I wish that this were the avenue they explored, given how it feels like a 100 minute teaser-reel for an upcoming miniseries.
Maher takes viewers around the world, highlighting various peculiarities of world religions, and while the journey is always fun with Maher’s wisecracks, the exhaustive pace at which topics and countries are jumped between obfuscates what exactly is the point of this fantastic voyage.
The film seems to tackle every aspect of religion it can manage – the plagiarism of Christianity from ancient religions, the violent overtones of Islam, the ludicrousness of Scientology, and the blatant racism of Mormonism stand out in particular. As well as this, Maher spends considerable time on the hypocrisies of all religions, the nefarious double-standards of ‘free-speech’, the outright lies perpetrated by creationists, the malleability of sacred texts by various cults, and the disgusting interweaving of the Judeo-Christian god with American politics and patriotism.
The style of the film is quite loose, possibly to imbue it with a sense of being more raw and honest, but it is quite distracting when the boom mic slips into view, or the director and crew are visible in a shot. Compounding this sloppy feel is the ADHD style of editing, in which interviews are interrupted by sudden non-sequitur clips, facetious subtitles are overlaid to lazily ridicule interviewees in post-production, and sound effects are dubbed in to add drama – as a result of these I found myself not trusting the editor, and trying to establish if clips were deliberately manipulated for cheap laughs.
After a while, it seems apparent that the reason the film doesn’t have a narrow focus because there is no overarching theme other than ‘look at how ridiculous you all look!’. For this reason, Maher can be forgiven for talking to the volume of lay-people that he does, as they are ill-equipped to deal with his rhetoric and only serve as comedic fodder.
Just as soon as you’ve let your guard down, ready to dismiss the film entirely, you’re sucker-punched, as all of a sudden the epic music swells, the low angle shots of Maher begin, and the stirring monologue about how “Religion must die for mankind to live” cut to a rapid-fire montage of scenes of pollution, terrorism, mass supplication and sheer corruption starts up. Maher, standing next to the rather-subtle sight gag of a burning bush, lambastes all religions for their focus on end-times, draining motivation to improve life on Earth, and impoverishing the species as a result.
I’m not sure if I’m bothered by the fact that this thesis hasn’t really been established and bolstered over the course of the film – on the one hand, the sudden tirade lends a certain gravitas to the final ten minutes tacked onto the first ninety of light hearted jokes and cheap shots – on the other hand, it arguably renders those first ninety minutes obsolete, which might explain why Atheist Media Blog posted just the last ten minutes of the film before putting up the whole thing.
Despite the dichotomy of thought on this one, I’m inclined to recommend Religulous – if you’re like me and you’ve watched similar documentaries before, it won’t offer any new information, and the production may grate, but it’s enough fun to make it a worthwhile investment of your time.
Filed under: atheism, ethics, humanism, religion | Tagged: Bill Maher, Documentary | 4 Comments »
Last night, I had a dream.
It was a beautiful summer morning. The birds were chirping, the sun was just finished rising, and I was standing in a pristine field of green. I looked up at the sky and saw fluffy clouds lazily drifting by.
All of a sudden, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, something red in the sky, and I slowly spun to gaze at it. It seemed to evade my eyes every time I tried to focus on it, and see what it was. It was like a blob of red paint, hanging in the sky, and it was getting bigger. The sky began to get darker, the clouds spun away at frightening speeds as if chased from the sky. The sun reversed it’s course in the sky and began to set, defying all logic. As the red blob slowly got bigger, I could see a sickly patch of black emerge from within it.
I was terrified, rooted to the spot, jaw gaping, barely able to breathe, watching this horrific thing unfold from the sky itself. The form emerging from the sky began to take shape. A ball? A fist? Some fingers? A hand!? An arm was emerging from the sky, as if someone was trying to reach out from some other world into ours. My mind shook with the realisation that this was exactly what was happening. Some…Thing was pulling itself through a hole in the sky! It was impossible! I could not believe what I was seeing, but seeing it I was, and it felt so surreal and yet so wholly real at the same time that I could do nothing but watch in horror as this thing slid another arm through the sky, and forced it open wider, making an awful tearing sound that bore deep inside of you and made you feel like a tin can being ripped apart inside a car as it crashes head-first into a wall.
The ground shook. My heart pounded. The Thing pulled what could only be described as it’s head through the rent in the sky. It looked like a disgusting mass of tentacles where it’s face should be, but as it shrugged them back they resolved into strands of hair, and it’s face emerged from behind the mass of hair. It looked human, dark-skinned and surprisingly normal, for a being ripping it’s way through the sky. The being laughed, or made a sound that could reasonably be approximated to a laugh, and the ground shook with a vicious tremble, forcing me to the ground.
I gazed up at the sky, and saw it turn blood red in the matter of seconds. Things were beginning to fall from the sky and all of the animals around me in the fields began falling over stone dead. The things resolved into flaming fireballs, and rocketed into the ground, shaking me to the core as I gripped the grass trying to steady myself. The Thing laughed it horrible laugh once more, and as I looked up, I could a vicious evil grin on it’s face.
It then reached it’s enormous hand towards me, and before I knew what was happening, I was enclosed in an enormous fist which was pulling me at an impossible speed towards the sky. I screamed and struggled, trying everything to break free of this being’s grip, but all to no avail. Flames rushed past my head as the fireballs streaked towards the earth. The being lifted me close to it’s face, and I struggled to push all of it’s features into focus, but it was simply too massive for that to work. The being eyed me with it’s evil grin, and spoke in a voice that felt like it could rip the skin from my bones. It seemed to scream past me towards the ground as it said “Here’s Jesus!”. I looked up at one humongous eye in pure terror. It blinked at me. I screamed.
I woke up bolt-upright in my bed, screaming at the ceiling as I slowly realised that the dream was over, and I was alone again. My heart pounded inside my chest, threatening to break free. My breath came in whispery gasps, and I struggled to regain my sanity as the door exploded open in a shower of splinters. A burly, indescribably hairy man burst through the now empty doorway wearing a burnished bronze chest-plate and a horned helmet. He towered over me as I quaked with fear and said, rather casually in an Australian accent, further accented by a severe lisp, “G’day mate. My name if Fhor!”. He blinked at me. I screamed.
I woke up bolt-upright in my bed, screaming at the ceiling as I slowly realised that the dream was over, and I was alone again. My heart pounded inside my chest, threatening to break free. My breath came in whispery gasps, and I struggled to regain my sanity. I stared at the door, willing it to stay complete and splinter-free. Thankfully it complied.
I threw myself against the bed.
Never again will I read the Bible before going to sleep while eating cheese covered chocolate biscuits.
NEVER!!!
Filed under: atheism, humanism, humour, religion, skepticism | 2 Comments »
This Friday music, I’m finally getting around to posting about Greydon Square – an atheistic rapper who has been featured on popular sceptical podcasts such as Skepticality and Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. Rather than regurgitating what I learnt about him from the aforelinked, I’ll let you look into it yourself if you’re interested (Skepticality spend a bit more time with him).
The song I’ve embedded below is called ‘Squared, and it’s from his album, ‘The Compton Effect’. I downloaded this album over the summer, and found it generally enjoyable for sheer novelty value alone, as it’s quite satisfying to hear rational lyrics accompanying some funky hip-hop beats. That said, I don’t think I’d be doing my job as a sceptic if I didn’t highlight some negative aspects before slapping a hearty seal of approval on it, so bear with me for a bit.
After a few listens, the lyrics begin to cause some dissonance – I’m aware that rap is generally predicated on exaggerated metaphors and healthy narcissism, but it’s still hard to take a self-professed sceptic seriously when he uses a line like “What makes Republicans and Democrats any different than Bloods and Crips? / Absolutely positively nothing” (from the song Pandora’s Box)
Due to the constraints of the medium, Greydon either over-simplifies his topics or interrupts the flow to get his points across, which is hopefully a shortcoming that will be addressed in the next album, (which I intend on downloading over the next few days).
For the low low price of $3.99 from Soundclick, you can get 19 very varied tracks of atheistic-infused hip-hop, DRM free (and at a bitrate of 320kbps) – which is an absolute bargain. Even if you don’t like hip-hop, you should support this artist, just to hear some bitesize atheistic rhetoric – for less than €3(!) what have you got to lose?
Please to enjoy:
Filed under: atheism, Friday music, Video | Tagged: Greydon Square | Leave a comment »
Since I was too slow off the mark to get my post in yesterday for Music Friday, silly XNA programming has gotten me addicted, I’ve decided to come up with my own regular feature, Shameless Plug Saturday. Most likely it won’t be a regular feature unless I regularly come up with things of my own invention/creation that I feel need a shameless plug, but for now I have at least one!! And, of course, it’s related to everything irreligious and Irish, since I’m Irish,and irreligious.
It’s a song about the typical mindset of staunch believers, and how they fail to think for themselves or seek their own evidence for extraordinary claims.
“Faithful” by Ignorance Manifest (that’s my solo musical project):
Thank you for listening (or bypassing my post entirely…either way!)
Anyway, on another note, thanks to this post it appears that I have spent the past 3 years being a devout student of Islam, and now I seem to have converted to Mormonism thanks to my Final Year Project.
Who would’ve guessed it?
Filed under: atheism, humanism, religion, Video | Leave a comment »
In today’s Comment is Free AC Grayling makes the point I was trying to make in this post. As you might expect he does a much better job than I did.
Let us look at some comparisons. In Afghanistan the Taliban stop girls going to school, beat up women who show a millimeter of skin, ban music, kill gays, and in general force their choice of life and belief on everyone, thus illustrating the less charming aspects of enforced observance of religious orthodoxy under which most of humanity has suffered for most of history. By comparison, secular liberals of Europe and North America say that they think religion is a load of nonsense and that religious folk should keep their fantasies to themselves. Some comparison, eh? Some jihad! Its effectiveness, though, is a sign of insecurity among the faithful. Mark Twain defined faith as “believing what you know ain’t so”, and the level of insecurity among the faithful when criticised suggests that almost all of them really agree.
Please go and read the rest of the article here.
Filed under: atheism, debate | Tagged: ac grayling, secularism | Leave a comment »
As some of you know I’m something of a fan of the ACA‘s ‘The Atheist Experience‘ (as are some of the other posters here). The show is now available live via Ustream, the show airs on Sunday’s at 22.30 Irish time.
I’ve embedded the stream below but if you go to the Ustream page you can participate in the text chat during the show.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Filed under: atheism, Video | Tagged: ACA, texas, The Atheist Experience | 2 Comments »
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Filed under: atheism, humour, Video | Tagged: Colbert, the word | 1 Comment »
This is part 1 (of 6) of an extended version of the interview from the Channel 4 series “The Enemies of Reason“.
The rest can be found here.
Filed under: atheism, skepticism, Video | Tagged: Derren Brown, Richard Dawkins, The Enemies of Reason | Leave a comment »
Hello all,
I would just like to take this opportunity to share this greeting with you all:

Have an worry-free Winterval, a yuley Yuletide, a salacious Solstice and most of all, enjoy the bloody snow when you can get it!!!
Filed under: atheism, debate, humanism, religion | Tagged: FFRF | 3 Comments »