The Atheist Blogger

Carrying on from last week’s YouTube Thursday segment, I have 4 more videos that I’ve seen over the past week which I want to share with readers. Before I do that, you will be pleased to know that NoGodTube is already showing potential! As I reported last week, YouTube removed the anti-gay advert “audition tapes” so I wasn’t able to share them, but some clever person has uploaded them to NoGodTube:

Next up is a video that really isn’t suitable for work, although technically none of these videos really are. But yeah, if you do watch videos at work, you ought to put headphones on for this one! It’s about The Real History of Jesus Christ and will definitely offend believers. I found it quite amusing though, so I’m sure other atheists will.

The next is a video that I personally saw a year ago when it was featured on a load of atheist blogs. However it’s been making rounds again for some reason, and it is a rather funny rap even if it is ambiguous about the position it is taking.

Our penultimate video is from a classic YouTube atheist, The Amazing Atheist, and it is a response to a Christian fundamentalist’s video on “Why Homosexuality Is Against God’s Will”. The response is hilarious, and just really quite surreal. However, it seems that the “fundamentalist” behind the video, Jesusophile, may not be a fundamentalist after all. He may just be a very good example of a Poe, and if he is, his performance is great! Satire or not, The Amazing Atheist does a good job at ripping into his video, and then going off on a complete tangent:

And finally, a video that everyone has probably seen recently. A new “advert” by Answers In Genesis that is rather creepy, and doesn’t really explain itself very well. I honestly have no idea what to make of the message; is it trying to create a link between murderers and atheism? Or is it saying that without God, you aren’t going to be loved by anyone? Make your own decisions about it.

A simple philosophy that is so mindbogglingly easy to follow, yet the religious seem to be up in arms about gay marriage, and they get worse every year. Somehow the religious seem to think that they came up with this great idea called “marriage” and that is has been violated by homosexuals. The truth, as it so often is in these cases, is completely the opposite.

Marriage predates verifiable recorded history, essentially a social extension of the mating procedure for reproduction. The Greeks and Romans had marriages, both opposite sex and same sex. There were no civil ceremonies, only an “agreement” for husband and wife, or husband and husband, wife and wife accordingly.

So what violated this traditional standard of marriage? Oh that’s right…it was the Christians.^[1] In 342, the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans banned same-sex marriage. In 390, three other Christian emperors, Valentinian II, Theodoisus, and Arcadius, made homosexual sex a crime punishable by death (burned alive because Christians are so merciful).

As I write this, religious fundamentalists across several different religions are rallying together to support a California proposal that effectively bans homosexual marriage. Marriage, they reckon, should be up to the religions, not the state. I ask, why can’t you have it both ways?

It would be simple. Define a state marriage that has all the perks of “regular” marriage, allowing anyone to marry anyone. Let the religions decide what they want to do about marriage within religion. There would be no difference in opinion either way. Religions would still reckon that state marriages weren’t governed by God, whilst the religious homosexuals forced to take a state marriage as their only option would argue that they were.

It has worked in the UK for the last few years, and there is no reason why it couldn’t work anywhere else. Secularisation is the only sufficient train of thought that respects the wishes of all groups. It calls for a separation of church and state. The state cannot control the church and the church cannot control the state. A very simple relationship that allows people to either align with one or both, depending on what they want to do.

So yes, let’s be traditionalists. Let’s take marriage back to its original status: An agreement between two people to be loyal and faithful to each other for the rest of their lives.

John Barrowman, the popular Scottish-American actor from Doctor Who, Torchwood, and various TV Quiz shows has tried to figure out why he is gay. The BBC filmed a documentary about his journey back to America where he visits various scientific institutes trying to prove that homosexuality is something you are born with, not a lifestyle choice.

Barrowmans journey, which is available on the BBC iplayer (non-UK residents may have to use a proxy to view it) first goes to Chicagos Northwestern University, where he went through a Penile plethysmograph, and also a FMRI. Both tests conclusively came up with a “gay” verdict.

He then visited his parents to question them about his growing up and whether there was any influence in his childhood that could have caused his homosexuality. Ranging from playing with dolls to having a best friend who was a girl, to dressing up in a bikini for a fancy dress competition, Johns childhood was anything but normal for a boy.

However, John travels back to Chicago to meet an expert in early childhood behaviour. The expert looks at various videos of children from their childhood, and compares their actions with their sexual orientation today. One film is of a young girl playing with a toy truck, smashing it off a table, and generally breaking things. Another shows a boy who has dressed up and is dancing. Both children grew up and are openly homosexual today. The studies show that 75% of boys who exhibit female behaviour traits whilst very young tend to be homosexual.

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It turns out that the corporate fast food chain McDonald’s has incurred the wrath of the American Family Association, and by their logic, God. The AFA has issued a boycott against the popular restaurant due to their sponsorship of the 2007 San Francisco Gay Pride parade, as well as donating $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Just to makes things crystal clear, McDonald’s donated 0.0001% of their 2007 earnings to a pro-homosexual organization. God must be pissed.

Of course when the AFA boycott something, they really go all out. They claimed that “McDonald’s will aggressively promote the homosexual agenda.” based on this obviously aggressive quote from the CEO:

Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world … and we do.

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