Sunday, October 30, 2011

Via The Thinking Atheist - Interview With Matt Dillahunty





Saturday, October 1, 2011

I Missed It!

Evidently yesterday was International Blasphemy Rights Day: a day founded in 2009 by the Center for Inquiry to commemorate the publication of the Dutch Mohammed cartoons.

"International Blasphemy Rights Day takes place every September 30th, to commemorate the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed cartoons. The purpose of this event is to set a particular day as a day to support free speech, support the right to criticize and satirize religion, and to oppose any resolutions or laws, binding, or otherwise, that discourage or inhibit free speech of any kind. The focus on 'blasphemy' is simply because it is such a salient issue, and one for which a lot of consciousness-raising is necessary."


Us versus Them

I like to read the comments on news articles. It is something of a masochistic hobby. I love reading what conservatives post, yet I get so frustrated and angry at the misconceptions, ignorance, and stupidity these people try to pass off as reasonable, rational statements. The worst part of it is that they honestly think they are making well thought out arguments. However, to any rational, measured observer, the responses are completely facile and vacuous with "facile" and "vacuous" often being too generous a description. Most of the time the comments consist of a disparaging remark without any kind of substantial addition.

My favorite site to find conservative comments would have to be the Drudge Report. Ever since the politicized Monica Lewinsky scandal in the 90's, Matt Drudge has been purveying sensationalistic headlines appealing to a conservative audience. The news stories he posts often have comment areas where his audience can post their "thoughts".

Judging from the commenters, if they are a representative sample, his audience largely consists of older, white, conservative, Christian Americans. From my experience these people are ignorant, bigoted, unreasonable, intolerant, and afraid of any kind of social progress that goes agains their traditional moral foundations. It is this group of people that has inspired me to open this blog. These people vote. If I can do anything to nullify their inherently theocratic efforts by writing this blog, then I shall feel accomplished by some measure.