Unsought Input

Here is the trailer for the new documentary Religulous with comedian Bill Maher. Its a Michael Moore style documentary where Maher goes around and investigates religion and what is it exactly that people believe and why they are passionate about it. Of course Maher acts like a total ass in the process but what else is new. This is part of a growing trend of people questioning the notion that religion is an essential and necessary part of society and you can’t be a good person with out it.

Magician Criss Angel will join Uri Geller on Phenomenon on NBC. The show is billed as American Idol for magicians and “mentalists,” but that’s not really interesting. Within the next few years there will be an American Idol-style show for every profession, hobby, and pursuit in the history of man.

What’s interesting is that Geller, who has for years gone on TV all over the world claiming to have psychic powers, is still able to get on TV at all. He’s been caught cheating and had his powers debunked so many times it’s not even funny anymore.

He was probably most famously exposed by James Randi (The Amazing Randi). Watch the video below for some entertaining history.

Yes, that’s right, Geller is so busted that he flaked out on Johnny Carson. In 1973. That’s more than 30 years of being busted.

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They go door-to-door. They are affable and conspicuously pleasant to deal with. And they both want to save your soul. But in the end, there can be only one, so we ask: what happens when Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses collide?

Okay, that was fun. Most of us turn off the lights and hide when either group comes knocking (that is, unless you have some yardwork for them to do). But what if both groups showed up at your door- who should you listen to and who should you direct to the curb?

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A student group of Atheists at University of Texas, San Antonio, have started a campaign which allows people to trade their bibles for pornographic magazines, such as Playboy and Penthouse. Their logic being that the bible is a very negative force in world history and porn would be more beneficial. They came up with this campaign as a creative way to exercise their freedom of speech. Obviously religious groups on campus were less than pleased with the idea. There are similarities here to my previous article in which a local church tried to use less conventional methods to attract new people. However, what the atheist group is doing is a little different.

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Recently Yahoo featured Preacher Dan Smith as its person of the week. Dan Smith is most famously known for his internet video parody of Baby Got back, Baby got Book.

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Don Herbert, best known as Mr. Wizard, passed away last week. Mr. Wizard taught and inspired two generations of children on his television shows Watch Mr. Wizard (1951-1965) and Mr. Wizard’s World (1983-1990).

More than just demonstrating how to measure the height of a tree from by its shadow, Mr. Wizard taught kids two very important lessons. First, he taught them that science is about how the world works, and the world doesn’t always work the way you think it does.

Second, he taught them that science was not just for old men in lab coats with millions of dollars of equipment, that a lot of interesting experiments and demonstrations could be done with household objects and a little adult supervision.

This is a particularly bad time in our nation’s history to lose Mr. Wizard, because science is being attacked on exactly those two points.

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Noted author and atheist Christopher Hitchens takes the opportunity to crap all over Jerry Falwell’s warm corpse. His latest book God Is Not Great attacks all forms of religion so it is no surprise that he takes this position. Of course after listing all the crap Falwell did when he was alive it is hard to blame him.

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In honor of the passing of Jerry Falwell, who made a mockery of Christ’s teachings, we present the best mockeries of Jesus himself. Actually, that’s a bit harsh - these aren’t really mockeries, more like satire.

1. First off, in Passion of the Christ 2, Judgment Day, we see Hollywood logic extended to Mel Gibson’s blockbuster. A box-office hit deserves a sequel, and any self-respecting sequel needs twice as many explosions.

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Imagine you are a high-school principal charged with keeping your students away from illegal drugs, at least during school hours. Trained dogs might be accurate, but they are too expensive. It takes too long to go through every single locker. What can you do?

Buy a $900 dollar dowsing rod designed to find drugs! Pot heads, your days are numbered. This nugget of practical information comes from the video below (about a third of the way through). It turns out the dowsing rod will find drugs - if you keep opening lockers until you find them.

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The talk is by Skeptic Society founder Michael Shermer. Perhaps skeptics are just a source of resistance to new ideas, obsessed with ridding their lives from false positives. But I’ll take $1 worth of skepticism over a $900 dowsing rod any day.

This video is blowing up in the interweb, but if you haven’t seen it, take a look. Mike Daisey, probably best known for his descriptions of working for Amazon.com during the dot-com bubble, is performing a pretty funny monologue. Unfortunately, a Christian group is there to protest, and there ain’t nothing Jesus hates more than the F-bomb.

Recently there been a big deal made about the movie 300 and its portrayal of pederasty. After seeing the movie I can’t understand what all the hubbub is about. First off there is really no hard core pedo action in the film, what a disappointment. Not even a little ball tickling. That’s probably why it only got 1 pair of bloody underwear out of 5 on the NAMBLA website.

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Here is a nice little summary from Matt and Trey. I mean, they sum it up so nicely.

What can you possibly have against Mormons? They are such gentle creatures, truly the best definition of passive aggressive. How can anyone be so nice? All the time? It’s just not…natural. Anyway, I have decided to inform you about Mormons. It’s my civil duty as a scientist of sorts to document these strange human-like creatures. I am just going to fill you in on the main “points” of this 177 year old religion.

1. This church was created by Joseph Smith Jr on April 6th 1830 in Western New York. Apparently he was visited God, Jesus and by the Angel Maroni, who is the son of Mormon, an “original” white Native American who was hanging out with Jesus while Jesus was hanging out in North America (Jesus is white, too, in case you were wondering). The stained glass window to the right here shows you the family resemblance that God and Jesus have, proving that Joseph Smith really did speak to them which later helped him to find mythical golden plates and seeing stones called Urim and Thummim (a Hebrew divination process ironically given to Joseph Smith as well) and establish Mormonism.

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Little Mosque on the Prairie
Wednesdays @ 8PM on the CBC (Canada)
In a Nutshell: Father Ted/Vicar of Dibley/Ballykissangel + 24

This is one of the best new shows I’ve seen all year. It’s a comedy - a sitcom, even - about Muslims. And I’m not talking it’s “about” Muslims like Blue Collar Comedy is “about” rednecks, it actually centers around a group of Muslim people and the goings-on in their daily lives. They deal with their kids, their neighbors, their customers. Oh and yes they do deal with practicing their religion.

The premise of the show, which was written and created by Torontonian Zarqa Nawaz, is that a group of Muslims living in a small Canadian prairie town needed a place to hold their prayer meetings, so they rented the activity room in the local Anglican church. At first the group hid the fact that they were holding prayer meetings there under the guise of using the space as contractor Yasir’s (Carlo Rota) office but the Anglican minister and some of the town’s busybodies quickly caught on. As it turned out, Reverend Magee (Derek McGrath) didn’t really care - membership was down in his church and they could use the rent money. (more…)

Don’t you just love finding cool little things on the internet and sharing them with everyone you know? I do. So, that is why you are getting yet another video from me. Yes, I know this is lazy blogging but you love it and you know it. And I just know you will love this. I just know it. So, use that overexposed mouse finger you have there and click on the “play” button, I know it doesn’t say play but it’s the triangle. I don’t know why they picked a triangle to signify play but maybe they thought that the forward looking motion means something to someone. Or, maybe triangles are really playful. I think that it’s the second of the two. Playful triangles. Frolicking around when there is work to be done, which is done infact, by squares. Definitely.

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