Atheism Corner — Humanity in Progress

Glenn Beck Makes It So Easy to Be an Atheist

August 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

glennandirene — Glenn Beck - Jesus and Meteorological Forecasts

You might think that an atheist like myself would not like Glenn Beck, for all kinds of reasons, well, its not true, I do like the man and he does make some sense sometimes. But Mr. Beck has a taste for the over drama and those critical moment when all eyes are focused on one point, to make his statements and go way, way over the top.

So Glenn Beck used the coming hurricane to explain to people that it is a message and that we should all understand this message, or else. And that is exactly why I love the man, he reminds us, in one swift press conference, of time long gone. It has not been a good hundred years since anyone from the church had come out to warn the people that god is mighty upset with their actions and is sending messages before he starts making us pay.

Hurricane “Irene” ended up being downgraded into a mere tropical storm when hitting New York City, but this should not divert attention from Glenn Beck’s warning and he efforts to get some more members in the church of latter day saints, who believe in an almost unblieveable collection of freaky versions to the old and new testaments, including Jesus’s visit to the Americas. The system is the same as it was in history, fear and panic serve religions and they are used to pointing the finger and blaming us humans for being very, very bad.

But let us consider for a moment that in fact every day on this blue planet is a mini disaster (or an actual disaster if you compare to the actual damage of this last hurricane) with thousands of children dieing from disease, hunger and wars. Young adults are raped and killed by the hundreds, and millions of people suffer from extreme weather conditions around the world. If god is indeed trying to grab our attention it has been doing so, consistently, for a couple of decades now, only to see how many of us let go of this idea and turn to the reality of this life.

This Crazy Month of Ramadan

August 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ramadan is one holy month, Muslims pray and fast all day to try and focus on the important things in life – according to Islam and its book.

This traditional partial fasting, very much like the Jewish “Yom Kipur”, is not an original thought but a duplication of an already common practice in the ancient world. By the time Islam was around humanity was better able to provide itself with food and shelter and could start to focus on self inflicted torture in order to please a bunch of gods or just one of them.

This “holy” month is slowly becoming synonymous with bloody violence that floods the Arab world from the beginning of the Ramadan to its end, targeted mainly towards fellow Muslims and for many different reasons. The highlight of this years Ramadan was the Libya events, in which (we are slowly discovering) participated some segments of the local Al-Quida branch who happily executed anyone who does not seem like a proper Muslim to them. The second spot goes to the events in the south of Israel, where it seemed for a minute that the peace agreement with Egypt will collapse as a result of a wide offensive against Israeli civilians from Egyptian territory.

But do not let these confuse you, there is a lot of violence in the Arab world, and its going about its normal business without much attnetion, these final days of Ramadan has seen bomb and suicide attacks in Pakistan, Iraq and Algeria, most of the attacks taking place inside places of worship.

It looks like someone out there thinks that if killing bad Muslims makes Alla happy, but doing that during Ramadan makes the almighty eternally pleased. Maybe it would be a better idea for Muslims to skip this month and not lose thousands of lives due to extra holiness attracting blood thirsty killers.

The Egypt Israel Issue

August 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the recent weeks there has been mounting tension between Arabs and Israelis, as well as Muslim and Jews, in the south of Israel, along the Israeli-Egypt boarder as well as with the boarder with Gaza (which, in contrast to what many think, is a boarder, meaning no Israelis occupy Gaza and there is a clear physical barrier between Israel and Gaza). The main reason for the tension are terror attacks carried from within the Egyptian territory as well as the continuous bombardment of Israeli cities along its Gaza boarders by a wide range of “opposition organizations” who pretty much do whatever they want in that piece of land called Gaza.

Today (Friday) the Egyptians are planning a million man march against Israel. Egypt was the first to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and got a lot from this act, it got huge American support throughout the years, the second or third strong army in the middle east (based all on US funds) and steady flow of funds from the American congress. Israel gave Egypt the land they lost in wars that they initiated (not to save the Palestinians as they were of no concern before the 1980’s) and Israel kept its boarder clear and clean. Egypt had a couple of fall outs on the boarder, once a boarder guard got “crazy” and shot 7 kids on a bus, another time a solider decided he wanted to kill Jews and attacked a few Israeli cars.

The mounting tension is much more a result in the change of the Egyptian people’s internal politics and the fact that none of the candidates for presidency will defend the peace with Israel, due to religious reasons and nothing else, the Jews are the last thing anyone wants to accept in Egypt today. So a million men march will mostly mark the growing danger to the peace agreement on the Egyptian side of the boarder, and Israel can not do anything about it, not unless they all go to the embrace of Islam, which I doubt will happen anytime soon.

Is This the New Egypt ?

August 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It looks like Egypt is slowly becoming an extreme state, with a mob that is calling the shots locally, as well as an elite that is indifferent to anything that physically threatens its survival. At the moment Egypt is doing a diplomacy dance with Israel over the terror attacks of last week in the south of Israel, in this attack (it seems) that terrorists dressed as Egyptian soldiers attacked Israeli cars and buses, killing at least 8 and wounding 40. Israeli response involved heavy fire across the boarder, and left 2 (real) Egyptian soldiers dead, Israel did not apologize on the spot and it seems that this alone is a reason for the mob in the cities to call out to end the peace agreement with Israel.

This lack of tolerance to any kind of action by a non Egyptian or non Muslim in this country is now becoming a trademark of post revolution Egypt, where Christian Copts are now daily targets for anger ventilation by mobs around the country, only last week a Christian was left dead and 4 injured because of a road accident in the province of Minya in Egypt.

And all this is no mistake, as the Muslim brotherhood is taking over the country it is steering its population towards religion, the people who make this brotherhood are the same ones who planning and executed the murder of Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president before Mubarak, who set the peace agreement with Israel and reformed the country to a more secular approach.

But it looks like the Muslim Brotherhood will do everything in its power to move the time back, and march Egypt to the darkness of the past, where Christians and Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys rather than citizens and allies.

This Demented World 2011

August 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the last few weeks it has become clear that this world, with all its nations and peoples, is carefully stopping human progress and starting to fall back, with a clear purpose and conscience the leaders of this world do not believe in pushing the envelop, they prefer to deal with the banal and insane instead.

And so, our last superpower, the last nation on earth that could say it has done for humanity and for human progress more than any other in the recent decades, is now shutting down its NASA space program, its universities are seeking – and receiving funding by the millions from oil rich countries in the middle east so they will, at least at pretense, seem to be joining hands in a pro Islam and anti Israel campaign, and that can not solve its increasingly worrying economic problems with substantial resolve.

Our main economic superpower (China) can say nothing about contribution to human progress (maybe some effort for the Olympics can count), and any past contribution is made to look ridiculous by the middle ages approach to human rights and human decency, a country that is an economic giant but has millions working in semi slavery conditions, with poor health systems and an increasing ruthlessness towards any criticism, political or artistically.

A world in which a former superpower (Russia) is putting in all its weight to block a UN move against a country that is now, as these lines are being written, executing dozens of its citizens, where rivers run red from the hundreds of bodies that are filling it, and where tanks and artillery are used against unarmed population in order to have them submit to the rule of the current power.

Instead of reaching out to space, understanding our role in this universe and studying more about the origins of life the USA is now focusing on how to defend itself from enemies who believe that their god wants them to slaughter anyone who does not believe in him/her/it, instead of China getting on with human progress and respect for its citizens it is contemplating the situation of a nuclear Asia, and the terror of Chineese muslims in Xinjiang, and Russia, who has become the new ultra capitalist player in the world is more worried about the payments from Iran for the nuclear installations than the huge gap between rich and poor.

This is the world we all live in, only now it is moving backwards instead of forward, and no one even tries to hide it.