Offspring Murder Club: Victory Over Child Devil Soldier

UPDATE: Blacksun provided a link to a video and accompanying article about the murder of this child and the church that his assassins/parents attended.

The Offspring Murder Club is off to a strong start for 2007 with the induction of two new members, Joseph and Sonya Smith of Atlanta, Georgia:

A suburban Atlanta couple was convicted of murder Friday in the beating death of their 8-year-old son, a case that prompted authorities to raid the parents' church because it supports corporal punishment.

Prosecutors said Joseph and Sonya Smith beat their son Josef, locked him in a wooden box and confined him to a closet for hours at a time before he died in October 2003.

...

The Cobb County medical examiner concluded that Josef died from blows to the head, and firefighters who responded to the family's emergency calls said his body was covered with bruises.

...

A police witness said Joseph Smith's father acknowledged hitting the boy "four or five times" and told officers his son frequently needed discipline because the child carved death threats on the walls and claimed to be a "soldier of the devil."

The boys' parents told authorities Josef passed out and never regained consciousness after the family gathered in the kitchen to participate in a prayer session with their church via the Internet.

Score one for God! Let this be a lesson to all the 8 year old Soldiers of the Devil that God knows if you've been bad or good, and your own parents will bash your head in if you try to fulfill Satan's demonic plan on Earth. Hallelujah!

Seriously now, look at what happened here. A very religious couple had a son who they allege was claiming to be an agent of Satan. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the boy was indeed causing trouble and claiming to be a demonic soldier. If these parents didn't believe in Heaven and Hell, they would have more likely sought the help of mental health experts who could help the boy with his behavior issues.

But not this time. These parents probably believed their son's claims that he was a true soldier of Hell. At the least, they probably believed that their son wanted to be an agent for an entity they considered to be a very real threat, instead of some fantasy invention of imagination.

These two parents definitely passed the Abraham test. Their children may die at their own hand, they may rot in prison for the rest of their natural lives, and their church may be dashed by the Feds, but one thing will never waver: their faith. For all these reasons, Joseph and Sonya Smith are the newest members of the Offspring Murder Club!

When I first started The Offspring Murder Club, I didn't expect it to last so long or grow so quickly, but new people keep wanting in all the time, and I cannot deny that they are meeting the membership requirements with vigor. Here is a list of past posts related to this exclusive club:

I Cut Her Arms Off
Another Pro-Afterlife Mother Slays Own Child
The Offspring Murder Club Gets Some New Members
Andrea Yates Claims Christianity Insanity
The Offspring Murder Club: San Francisco Chapter
Andrea Yates: A True Death-Denying Christian
The Offspring Murder Club: New Male Member

Paul Manata on Self-Esteem

Talk about feeling good about yourself. In the comments of this post at Triablogue, a commenter by the name of Gray_Mouser began a dialogue with Paul Manata, and eventually condemned Manata for being rude and mean. Now whether Manata was being rude or mean is not the point of this post. The point of this post is Paul's response to Gray_Mouser's charge:

Your unbelieving worldview doesn't allow for these condemnations, and, to the extent that you're correct, the Bible tells me that I'm a piece of trash, with a bad personality. So, thanks for coming here and confirming the biblical view of man for us.

Emphasis mine.

Ouch! I wonder if Paul Manata would bluntly proclaim to the world "I believe my wife is a piece of trash!" or "I believe my child is a piece of trash!"?

I, for one, couldn't love someone that I thought was a piece of trash, and that includes myself. Trash is unworthy of love. Boy, it sure feels good to be an unrepentant sinner right about now! If getting in God's good graces includes reducing everyone to human trash, including oneself, then God can write me off his "nice" list. If a line is drawn in the sand; if a choice must be made between humans and God in such a way, I will choose humans. Every. Single. Time.

Anyway, what we have here is a perfect example of the anti-human values that Christianity demands. Paul Manata is the real deal. He is the quintessential Christian. And his esteem-damaging views serve, I think, as a very effective tool for atheistic evangelizing: "Look everybody, these are the "values" that Christians think are so damn good! According to them, every human is a walking talking piece of trash with a bad attitude!"

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don't need a psychologist to know that this value system is bad for the human psyche. Maybe this admission from Paul could be used as fuel for some kind of atheistic "argument from disgust" or something? It certainly disgusts me.

Kristian Kids Killing Kids

Check out the differences between Steve's post at Triablogue and Vox Day's post. Steve essentially claims that secularists have no justification for wanting to protect children, yet they feel moral absolutes deep down in their core. Vox Day, on the other hand, points out that the only moral absolute in the Christian worldview is that whatever God says is right. Let's get some money quotes.

From Steve at Triablogue:

Deep down, the unbeliever is conflicted. Deep down, he does believe in moral absolutes. He cannot escape the fact that he is living in God’s universe. So he constantly reverts to a moralistic position that is out of whack with his official creed.

And then Vox Day:

If I am correct that my God is the Creator God, that we are all his creations, then killing every child under two on the planet is no more inherently significant than a programmer unilaterally wiping out his AI-bots in a game universe. He alone has the right to define right and wrong, and as the Biblical example of King Saul and the Amalekites demonstrates, He has occasionally deemed it a moral duty to wipe out a people.

And as we are informed in Revelation, He will wipe out many peoples through the acts of (presumably) His angels. Jefferson can complain that this makes God unworthy of worship all he likes, but that's as irrelevant as complaining that Stalin wasn't properly elected according to the Soviet Constitution. Although in this case it isn't might makes right, it is a much simpler case of might = right. Obey or perish.

Oh, the insanity of it all.

Steve makes a straw man by claiming that secularists only want to protect children because of an instinct despite the fact that we realize it's an instinct. Steve is apparently unable to comprehend that the instinct to protect children is the biologically engineered effect, not the cause, of the value of keeping children protected.

And Vox Day accidentally exposes the whole "moral absolutes" thing to show that the only absolute, according to Christianity, is whatever God bellows. Vox then reminds us that, in the Bible, God ordered the destruction of entire peoples, and could conceivably and justifiably order the death of an infant or infants.

The thought experiment in regards to killing kids is this quote right here, from a commenter on Vox's blog by the handle of Jefferson:

If your god revealed to you in a set of flawless communications you could not dispute that you should kill every child you see under the age of 2, would you?

So what's Steve's moral absolute for not killing kids? Thou shalt not kill? Possibly. But what happens when God orders the death of an entire people, or of an infant, or of his own firstborn (a la Abraham)? Would Steve faithfully draw his sword?

I imagine that Steve would try to disqualify these questions in numerous ways, including the contention that God doesn't tell people what to do anymore through divine intervention or direct communication, or that God would never order such a thing. But that's just ducking the question. At least Vox Day had the honesty and cojones to take the question head on. I wonder if Steve could be coaxed into providing a direct answer to this thought experiment?

Steve would do well to learn that instinct does not equal illusion. It is instinct to find sustenance, but does that make the necessity of food an illusion? It may be an instinct to protect one's children, but does that make the value of one's offspring an illusion?

It is instinctual to brace oneself during a fall, but does that make gravity and the danger of hitting the ground at a high rate of speed an illusion?

The truth is that rules derived from inherent properties of natural existence are not illusions, while rules arbitrarily dished out based on the whims of a conscious cosmic creator are illusions. In the former, these rules exist eternally and independently of any consciousness, while in the latter, these rules originate from -and exist purely within- the mind of a conscious entity.

Note: The title of this post is a play on the name of an obscure rock band, Scary Kids Scaring Kids.

Stefan Molyneux on Strong Atheism

Weak atheism, strong atheism, what's the difference? Why say that God does not exist when you can merely say there is no evidence for him to exist?

Stefan Molyneux attacks this topic at his blog, Freedomain, with a tall glass of cold logic. You definitely should go read the whole thing, but I want to highlight a choice paragraph here:

If gods are subject to physical laws, then religion makes no sense whatsoever, and praying to gods makes about as much sense as worshiping a black hole, begging the Sun to grant you favors, or circumcising your son to appease the speed of light. If gods are not subject to physical laws, then the concept of “gods” is synonymous with the concept of non-existence, which makes religion even more deranged. Then, rather than praying to the moon, you would be in fact praying to the empty space between the Earth and the moon.

The italics are mine.

Stefan manages to make the logic of strong atheism engaging, and he has a clever way of pointing out the ramifications of silly god-based premises. Go check it out.

Ted Haggard Version 2.0

Introducing the new and improved Ted Haggard!

Update: Dr. Zachary Moore also wrote about the straigtening of Haggard's path, and I think his post is better than mine. So enjoy!

Faith in Florida

A handful of tornados ripped through central Florida recently, killing at least 20 people and causing untold amounts of property damage. Over 1,500 homes were damaged or destroyed, and the Church of God in the town of Lady Lake was completely leveled. Larry Lynn, pastor of the church, had this to say:

I'd like everybody to take a deep breath, and let everybody who has breath today praise God.

While I could make all kinds of jokes in response to pastor Lynn's statement, I think this time it will suffice merely to point out that Lynn is counting the hits and ignoring the misses, also known as selective observation. In his eyes, God didn't cause the tornadoes but He did save those who didn't die from said tornados. Either that, or he wants everyone alive in his congregation to thank God for not killing them yet (which is very doubtful but much more honest).

The Governor of Florida even paid them a visit:

"Pastor Larry, you told me yesterday that the building may be down, but the church lives on, and I can see that now," the governor said to shouts and applause from the congregation.

Congregants were worshipping in the actual church wreckage on Sunday. Now that's devotion!

Theists never really expect their faith to actually do anything other than make them feel better emotionally. The object of their faith didn't create those tornados, nor will it actually rebuild their church and their town. Appropriately, these faithful will not blame the devastation on their God. Yet strangely, once these flesh and blood people finish rebuilding their community, they will scramble to be the first to thank their God for fixing everything!

At the very least, these people will claim that God gave them the hope and/or emotional strength needed to rebuild their town. They will do anything to make their imaginary friend appear necessary. Who are they trying to convince, anyway? Perhaps themselves?

And what about a faithless town that is ravaged by a natural disaster? Can an atheist town not rebuild because it doesn't have enough spiritual or emotional strength? I've never ever heard of a community not being able to rebuild or carry on due to a lack of faith. But I have heard of a community that could not carry on or rebuild due to a lack of money or resources.

These people never question their faith regardless of what reality throws at them, because it's untestable and unfalsifiable. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, these people will believe on Sunday the same thing that they believed on Friday no matter what happens on Saturday. Fucking brilliant.

The Winter of Car Accidents

Last Thanksgiving, I posted about the death of my uncle in a car accident.

Well, last Friday brought another tragedy. Last Friday night, a friend of mine got in a car accident. In the accident, he hit his head in the exact wrong way, and it caused a very serious subdural hematoma. Aside from that, he had no other injuries whatsoever.

He was rushed to the hospital, and the doctors did scans and tests, and then determined that they needed to operate. They cut his head open and tried to fix the problem by relieving pressure and a few other things (I don't know all the details because I'm not a medical professional). Long story short, the operation did not work. My friend is now brain dead and on life support.

But the news gets worse. His chance of recovery is 0%. He is a vegetable. He will not wake up again, ever. The only reason he is still breathing is because a machine is pumping air into his lungs. His mom is probably going to pull the plug soon; the family has already had a priest and a nun stop by to give last rites (the family is Catholic).

This news has devastated me. Not only because he was a close friend, but also because it is the second fatal (or about to be fatal) accident of someone dear to me in only 2 months.

And to top it all off (as if it couldn't get any worse), my friend is only 22 years old. 22 years old!

His MySpace page is full of comments from friends and family, offering memories, support, wishes, and prayers. Actually, there are a lot of prayers in there with things like "God, hear this prayer!" and "I have faith that you will get through this." There is even one prayer in his comments section that actually says at the end "In Jesus' name, amen."

Many of my friends are religious, and I don't hold it against them. But these kinds of comments piss me off, and rightly so. Not because of their expressed desire for the guy to recover, but because of at least two other reasons. First off, it incorrectly places certainty where uncertainty is more appropriate. Secondly, it makes an appeal to the grand cosmic fuckhead who, if he did exist, was responsible for the accident in the first place! Why appeal to Him for a speedy recovery when this was part of His plan in the first place?

So like I was saying, the prayers piss me off. The best chance of recovery that my friend had was due to one thing and one thing only: the efforts and knowledge of our fellow man. The doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, etc. Those are the people who deserve the credit and the appeals, not some imaginary fucktard space ghost who has all the power in the universe yet fails 100% of the time to wield it properly.

Anyway, the prayers didn't work. The plug will be pulled. The priest gave his last rites. Maybe everyone should have prayed harder and stood on their heads while doing it. Maybe they should have performed sex magic. Maybe they should have drank chicken blood. But God forbid that anyone actually gives credit, trust, and responsibility where it is due! God forbid that anyone says "It's in the doctor's hands."

My friend will be no more. His consciousness will not go to another place. It will not go to a better place. It will not go any place whatsoever. It will simply be no more. To fail to recognize this is an insult to him, and a failure to recognize the severity of the situation. It does a huge disservice to fail to call a spade a spade in this situation. His consciousness will simply no longer exist.

Why do people always want to avoid the gravity of this kind of consequence? People would rather spare their feelings than learn from the reality of the situation. Well I say fuck that. My friend deserves better. He deserves truth between those who care about him.

The more that the afterlife gets killed, the less likely humans will be. This is because people will stop thinking that fatal accidents are a miraculous act of God and instead they will realize that accidents are preventable by our actions. They will realize that accidents can be prevented, and that by taking responsibility for ourselves, we can increase our chances of surviving and recovering from accidents. Putting it in God's hands prevents these things from happening. Putting the responsibility in God's lap retards our own progress.

I used to think that the afterlife was a shitty concept when I first started this blog. I'm surprised to realize that I feel even more strongly about this today. I don't think I have ever been so upset at the idea of making up silly childish afterlife myths as I am now. They are insidious. At first, an atheist may disregard them as silly or infantile. But that is not so. They are fatal. Truly fatal.

Kill The Afterlife. Save a friend's life.

Mac vs. PC Christoid Style

Got Tagged by Krystalline Apostate Again!

Ka has yet again gotten the best of me, and tagged me for the Five Things About Me meme.

Before I plot my horrible atheistic scheme of revenge for such treachery, I must respond like a proper man of honor and present my five random facts about me. I especially liked Ka's 14 martial arts awards fact. I don't think I can live up to that level of random fact coolness! Nonetheless, here I go!

1) I have Asperger Syndrome. Despite my Aspie status (some would say because of it), I am quite preoccupied with socializing and mingling, and most of my real life friends don't know that I have an autism spectrum disorder.

2) According to others, I talk, walk, and generally do everything very fast and purposefully, which is funny because it feels like a perfectly normal pace to me. I constantly get comments about my high energy level, and was even misdiagnosed as a child with ADHD (this was pre-1994, before Asperger Syndrome was in the DSM).

3) My highest IQ test score ever was 146, and while in high school I scored a "perfect" 99 on the ASVAB (but I never joined the military).

4) While practically everyone knows that I am an atheist and a Market Anarchist, not so many people know that I am hopelessly obsessed with aerospace.

5) I am addicted to the dance floor, and consider the song "Common People" by Pulp to be a great descriptor of me and my life (although for reasons other than the financial ones that the song references; I'm not rich). These two seemingly unrelated facts came together in an exceptionally profound way when, not too long ago, I was in the middle of the dance floor at a Junkie XL show and a house remix of that same song was played. My eyes got rather watery, for never before has the bittersweet reality of being my quirky self been so obvious to me, and never before have I felt so lucky to be so tragically uncommon.

Well, there are my five facts! Time to do some tagging. I hereby tag Zachary Moore of Goosing the Antithesis, Francois Tremblay of Check Your Premises, Olly of 10,000 Reasons to Doubt the Fish, Sean Prophet of Black Sun Journal. And Beep Beep of Beep! Beep! It's Me.

The Prayer Challenge

Update: The post seems to have been removed. Looks like Satan prevailed, as usual.

Brian Flemming and the Blasphemy Challenge team are worried. Very worried, in fact. This is because some group of Christians have begun an organized prayer front in order to thwart the Blasphemy Challenge movement through divine intervention.

Needless to say, I am also alarmed. I myself took the Blasphemy Challenge not more than a month ago. If these Christians get God to take away my free DVD or somehow change the past so that I never even did the challenge, then all my Evil Atheist Conspiracy plans will be ruined!

Oh prayer, how I despise you!

Fortunately, I came up with a great idea. I decided to infiltrate the prayer team and sabotage their efforts. I posted a comment at their blog, and have reproduced said comment below for your convenience:

Wow, great idea guys! Those Blasphemy Challenge sinners wont know what hit them! Glory!

Okay, I’m going to synchronize my West Coast prayer team to pray simultaneously with your forces. We have youth groups organized from about twelve different California churches, so the numbers are definitely there. But there is one issue of concern that I need to address: during prayer, should one have their finger interlaced or non-interlaced?

Studies have shown that interlaced fingers during prayer are up to 33% more effective on a per-prayer ratio than having non-interlaced fingers. This includes interlacing one's own fingers (in solo prayer) as well as interlacing fingers with another (in a prayer circle). If we are going to prevail over this Blasphemy Challenge then that means that we need every bit of prayer effectiveness possible, for I feel that the forces of Satan are exceptionally strong here.

Quite frankly I'm a bit worried that your prayer team may not perform proper and consistent finger interlacing technique, so please make sure that you advise your prayer battalion accordingly.

In fact, I have decided to conduct a pre-prayer session on Thursday night, where I will pray to God that all of our prayer groups will, through divine providence, simultaneously interlace their fingers during the super-prayer offensive on Friday. I can only pray that God hears my pre-prayer clearly. Actually, I might have to do a pre-pre-prayer session to ensure that He does just that.

In My Prayers,

Aaron Kinney

My sabotage strategy is twofold. First, it is a little known secret that interlaced fingers are actually 33% less effective than the flat palm prayer method (also known as the karate chop prayer style)! This means that I am removing 33% of their prayer power by tricking them into praying with interlaced fingers!

And second, while the prayer team is conducting their offensive, I will simultaneously be praying to none other than Satan Himself! Yes that's right, every single atheist in the world is secretly a Satanist. What, didn't you know?

I will be asking Satan to instead divert the prayer team's energy into framing more ministers at the New Life Church!

If my strategy is successful, then the Blasphemy Challenge will continue unhindered. Keep an eye on it this weekend, and if the Blasphemy Challenge still exists come Saturday, then you know that my invoking of the Prince of Darkness prevailed against these wretched Christians and their feeble Jesus. The showdown has begun!

Hail Satan!

A Year in Review and a Sign of Things to Come

Check out this post at Goosing the Antithesis.

Televangelist's Family Says Prayer Doesn't Work

Darlene Bishop is a popular televangelist with a new book out called 'Your Life Follows Your Words.' In the book, she claims that prayer works so well that it healed her family of various diseases. Most controversially, Darlene Bishop claims that prayer healed her brother of throat cancer.

I say controversial because Darlene's brother actually died from throat cancer 18 months ago! And now her own relatives are suing her over this big fat lie:

His children, Bryan, Justin, Olivia and Christian, have issued a lawsuit for wrongful death against Mrs Bishop because they claim she persuaded Perry to stop chemotherapy and rely instead on God's healing. They contend in legal depositions that at the moment Mrs Bishop and her brother were touring the country preaching about the miracle of his recovery, they were both aware that he had been advised by doctors that his illness was terminal.

Ouch.

Prayer doesn't work. It simply fucking doesn't. In fact, prayer can even be counter-active to recovery from an illness, because of two main reasons. For one thing, every moment you spend praying is one less moment that you can spend actually working on curing the illness (let's hold off on the blood transfusion, there's a-prayin' to be done!). The other reason that prayer is counterproductive is that you can lead yourself into a false sense of security over your condition and/or eventual outcome, possibly deterring you from seeking proper attention at all or ignoring the worsening of the condition altogether (my own mother once suffered from this kind of ignorance at the hands of her parents, and you can read about it here).

It is a shame that Darlene's brother died over a bullshit belief. It is an even bigger shame that countless others have suffered and died over bullshit beliefs too.

God, prayer, and the afterlife are all bullshit beliefs. They never have, never will, and never can rise to the challenge, because they are nothing but little imaginary concepts inside our heads.

Just Say No to prayer.