Comments for The Good Atheist

Comment on Some guy sues Scientology and Tom Cruise by Madeleine

Madeleine — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:12:08 +0000

“…when the lawyer’s wife answered, said he was her husband’s homosexual lover.”

Nice. Real nice.

Comment on Allah-Burger by garth

garth — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:43:28 +0000

i have a feeling he’s trying to help.

Comment on Some guy sues Scientology and Tom Cruise by garth

garth — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:33:53 +0000

scientology has a unique niche in crackpottery, like a boutique religion. too bad they’re so…sooo evil.

hey! you canananadians did something cool: http://www.benedictionblogson.com/2008/06/27/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed-not-a-hit-with-canadian-reviewers/
that’s how you tear ben stein a new one. nice work, mooseriders!

Comment on Church cancels teen gun giveaway by Josh Nankivel

Josh Nankivel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:45:23 +0000

Ever the skeptic, I did a little digging.

From what I can tell, everything out there is a copy of the original KOCO story. The church has stated that the below two points are false, and that they have a donated shotgun that will be given away.

*False statements: 1) That a gun had been purchased for $800; 2) That the local TV channel intervened to keep us from giving away an AR-15.

http://www.whbcyouthconference.org/?c=events

Personally, I don’t see the big deal about giving away a shotgun whose purpose is lawful hunting or target shooting. As previously said, parts of the country including rural areas tend to have a strong hunting culture. Now if it had really been an assault rifle, I think we may have had something to bitch about.

Keep up the great work Ryan and Jacob! We love the show!

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by Laura

Laura — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:25:21 +0000

This most recent podcast of yours is actually the first one I’ve ever listened to. I picked you guys, at random, from a list on iTunes… and I’ve gotta say, I’m amused. I’m hooked. I enjoy the banter back and forth. I particularly liked the part about the mathematical hoops and barrel rolls we’d have to go through just to have intelligent life alive at the same time we are…. so after smiling my way through THAT podcast, I listened to your last one about the mysterious word in the gristle. Good stuff.

I do indeed have a message for whichever one of you lost the watch: he WILL throw it in your face until you get him a new one, so either give him the $50, or buy him the equivalent in beer. What do ya think?

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by C.S

C.S — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:21:50 +0000

The discussion about P.Z. Myers might have been oversimplified. Okay, yes, maybe he is technically an asshole for the desecration of a wafer, but I don’t think it was done simply out of a desire to be an asshole. Before he even put the nail in the Eucharist, just the act of threatening to do so got him an enormous amount of hatemail, quite a bit of which was abusive and threatening (and not just to him, but his family as well). Additionally, you can just peruse the massive comments sections of the relevant threads on Pharyngula to see just how many Catholics demanded that he go and desecrate a copy of the Koran.

What I’m trying to say is that for a religion that claims to be about peace and love and living up to the lessons of Christ, it really didn’t take much to cause them to flip right the fuck out. And honestly, for all they know, that Eucharist was never consecrated in the first place.

“Materialist” is a word that gets thrown at the non-religious quite a bit, but I can’t really think of any physical item in this world that if someone threatened to disrespect it I would feel the need to start e-mailing death threats.

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 06:02:58 +0000

Hey listening to your podcast made me rememeber there was once a philosopher (i think Bertrand Russell) who appearantly used to get a ton of letters about alien life forms contacting people, so to verify their claims he asked the senders about the aliens, they would tell him every sort of detail about the way they looked, lived, etc. Eventually the man got fed up with the letters and replied to every one asking for a brief proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem to verify their claim of alien life and never received a single reply.

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by Nick

Nick — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:24:04 +0000

The U.S. president that saw a UFO was Jimmy Carter. In fact he does not believe that the object he saw was an extraterrestrial spacecraft. He thinks it was some other object, such as a star, planet, or a terrestrial aircraft. The widely spread factoid that he saw a flying saucer is just spread around by UFO conspiracists looking for ways to give their claims more credence. The SGU (another great podcast) did and interview with him discussing this. Here is a link to the episode:http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2007-07-25.mp3

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by Reverend Clint

Reverend Clint — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:42:28 +0000

That Astronaut Ed is kind of a nut.

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 23 (Broken Promises) by Tom

Tom — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:37:58 +0000

Come on guys, Anheuser-Busch got bought out by InBev which is a Belgian company, not German. Ironically, InBev is a global brewing conglomerate that owns many brands you are familiar with, including the Brazilian lager Brahma.

Comment on Allah-Burger by Charles

Charles — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:16:09 +0000

I figured that I’d help you guys out with the Allah burger. I just listened to your podcast and figured I’d try to help you out. The Allah burger was “discovered” in Nigeria, which is in Africa and one of the largest oil producing countries in the world. Also, while you were discussing the language which they used you mentioned Arabic (the second ‘a’ is soft air-rah-bic) and Afrika… The main language in Nigeria is English.

However, in the gristle Allah was spelled in Arabic. I do enjoy the show, I’m just trying to help.

Comment on Poorly Thought Out Bill Seeks to Undermine Evolution by Peggy

Peggy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:38:23 +0000

We may be fighting a losing battle. My daughter’s 7 year old friend is a the child of jehovah’s witnesses. I’ve never met the parents, but it is hard to argue science with a 7 year old who is perfectly happy to not celebrate the great pumpkin, xmas or even her own birthday!!

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 22 by Peggy

Peggy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:25:18 +0000

At what point did Ben Stein stop being a washed up game show host to become an expert on science and religion?
I know how to turn on a calculator, but that does not make me a mathimatician, much less an expert on choas theory.
And, I half-assed believed you when you said you were taping another podcast on the Sunday following this podcast.

Lying lips are an abomination to the Gods and I pray Kali does not appear unto you and smack you with the severed head she carries around.

Comment on Allah-Burger by Accomando

Accomando — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:27:49 +0000

More “data mining” on the Anthropogenic Global Warming FRAUD.

“…I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”…”

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

Read the whole thing…

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

Comment on Poorly Thought Out Bill Seeks to Undermine Evolution by Kevin K

Kevin K — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:32:43 +0000

I get the vibe those who proposed the Bill are shying away from coming out and saying they want to specifically “critique” Evolution. Perhaps this is the case because they fear being shot down for overtly trying to get Creationism back into public schools.

Therefore, the way around this is to simply demand to see a list of the Theories they want to review– _and_ the science behind their proposals.

They want to analyse scientific theories? Fine. But let’s see which ones they want to ‘fix.’

If this were demanded, the legislators would’ve clearly seen it’s Creationists up to no good. And in that case, they could easily terminate the proposal with justification.

As Jacob pointed out in an earlier podcast, Creationists use all kinds of ridiculous tactics to get their way(remember “Teach the Controversy?”). Now they’ve resorted to using BS semantics, perhaps their most effective approach yet.

All we need to do is call their bluff.

Comment on Church cancels teen gun giveaway by Reverend Clint

Reverend Clint — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:29:01 +0000

I won a shotgun at a national Wild Turkey Federation get together when I was like 10. It was not a religious thing but like t3k said a rural thing.

Comment on Church cancels teen gun giveaway by t3knomanser

t3knomanser — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:21:59 +0000

Because religion and rural areas go together. The relationship isn’t religion/guns. It’s rural/religion and rural/guns.

Actually, that sounds like a really fun day, if you take all the god stuff out of it. As a teen, I would have totally dug that, and would have hoped to win the AR-15. Good plinking gun with loads of options.

Comment on More on penis thieves by Reverend Clint

Reverend Clint — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:29:16 +0000

I guess you guys have found a side job stealing cocks.

Comment on The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 22 by Kyle (from alaska)

Kyle (from alaska) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:32:37 +0000

It’s not a Sweater Vest, or a Smoking Jacket it’s called a Tweed Jacket dumb fucks!

Love the show.

Comment on A Day to Think About the Meaning of Freedom by Rohit Sidhu

Rohit Sidhu — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:37:09 +0000

That’s the problem with capitalism, corporations control government. But in communism the government is the corporation.
Both are seemingly perfect in theory:
Capitalism : To promote individual business, to create competition to improve quality and standard of life. Ends up with one or a few company on top with a monopoly and super high prices that could be dirt cheap if there was actual competition.
Communism: To create equality among the people, same pay, choice of job, massing of product by single entity resulting in lower quality product.

What I think would be perfect would be a balance of the two. Implement some aspects of capitalism into communism, and make a way so that their is no chance for dishounesty, because that’s what gets us in the end, human nature (desire for power, money etc), greed, envy.
For example look at Norway, they have an amazing government, leaning towards communism, but not completely.