Seems Kind of Cruel

''My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.”

—South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, arguing that government food assistance to lower-income residents, including food stamps or free school lunches, encourages a culture of dependence, Jan 24. 2010

I realize that this is an old quote but I stumbled upon it today and just had to say something, first of all what reasonable person would take advice from a person that isn’t as intelligent as an animal behavior specialist over the psychological ramifications of feeding a stray animal. Personally I am for these types of programs, it makes sense people shouldn’t go hungry at all sometimes its disturbing how many christian politicians are in favor of such repeals, now feeding someone and making sure that no one goes hungry isn’t a religious issue its a human rights issue, I have no problem helping these people, so long as the benefits are reviewed and scrutinized every few months not yearly, I see no issue. To me I see this comment as being a little condescending towards the least affluent.

 I think that sometimes people think that atheists don’t care about other people, that we lack moral standing and are apathetic towards our fellow man, Leave your comments below and let me know what you think, please be sure to leave your religious affiliation so that I can tabulate the results and see how atheists and others who may view this blog, feel about the Lt. Gov’s Comments. 

I apologize for the short post tonight I have to be up at 7 tomorrow morning so I have to get some sleep with Kali around.

Atheist In Texas: A Brief Explanation

It’s been a couple of posts in and I’ve decided to write a formal explanation of the purpose of this blog;

                       1) This blog is to discuss the current prosecutions of Atheism in the United States and around the world.

                       2) Provide written commentary on current issues from an atheist point of view, whether they are social or political.

                       3) Further down the line I intend to set up a section on atheist parenting and my adventures with raising an Atheist child in Texas.

                       4) Discuss current breakthroughs and studies in science that provide evidence to the absence of supernatural beings.

Some things I won’t do and some rules to follow;

                       1) Talk down to believers unprovoked, I don’t have a problem with religion, I have a problem with people who don’t treat ALL religions with respect.

                       2) Allow threats of any kind to be directed to towards anyone, we are atheists, we are the voice of reason, and threats tend to stem from a lack of reason.

My changing life and DOMA

I realize that my last post was forever ago, and I would post often but recently my daughter was born, so I've been a little caught up in being a father. Kim who is my wife by common law, has some family members who believe that we need to get married, because god says that we are horrible people for living together and having a kid together, yet the kid is here and the apartment is our home so I could really care less. I don’t want to get married not because I don’t love my wife, but because I don’t support DOMA, also known as the Defense of Marriage Act, I don’t believe that marriage should be defined by clear cut boundaries set by a thousand year old bigoted belief system, because love isn’t about that. I love Kim, and I would lay down my life without question in her defense. Below are a few of my arguments against state sponsored marriage;

* DOMA is wrong because technically the Federal Government of the United States has no legal qualification to define such an act, as well as our State Governments, in fact by following the constitution, Marriage in and of itself is a religious belief, besides a husband and wife are really just exaggerated boyfriends and girlfriends.

*DOMA is wrong because it defines marriage can only exist between heterosexual a couple, which again is a religious viewpoint, modern science shows us that homosexuality is NOT a choice but instead a complex chain of events involving brain chemistry and physiology, much like love.

*DOMA forsakes the most important aspect of making a commitment of that magnitude, Love. Yes, two people who hate each other can get married so long as they are heterosexual, but two people who love each other can’t if they are homosexual.

"If gays want to get married and be miserable like the rest of us, then I say let them."
- Peter Griffin

           
Maybe one day everyone will have the same rights but until then Kim and I will choose to remain “sinners”, it’s not like my daughter will know the difference, it’s just a slip of paper after all, it won’t change anything about our love.

More to come...

Vote For Rick Parry! With an 'A' like America and Iowa

First of all I need to thank Stephen Colbert for showing us what may be the greatest thing ever...Rick Perry's supporters are disturbingly ignorant, not only to politics but even the names of the candidates that they support! You can watch the video by following this link.

For those who don't live in Texas you might be wondering why an atheist blog is so concerned about this, you thought this was just going to be a blog about Atheism, well it is I just like politics, mainly because it always astounds me how a entire group of people can be so ignorant of the issues, I'm talking about Tea Partiers and the Christian Fundamentalists who claim they want to take back America and bring it back to the way it used to be, which of course would be an Equal and Secular Freethinking Non-Christian society, but of course Christians need Priests to do the thinking for them, especially in Texas, and Priests tend to change the facts to suit the needs of the time, so this may explain why only 17% of US High School Seniors pass history, now watch this I'm going to use christian logic(that's the definition of an oxymoron) to defeat christian ignorance, since about 17% of the US is either Atheist, Agnostic, or Secular, its obvious that Christianity's account isn't correct because if they were 80% of students would pass their history test. Our forefathers must be rolling in our grave.

 Now that my rant is done, my main issue with Perry is mostly how he acts, the man has no respect for the separation of church and state, oh and that whole Gardasil incident, but I'll talk about that another time, lets begin. The prayer rally was a blatant violation of the separation of the two, here's why Perry will contend that its a prayer for America and its crisis, mostly he is referring to the economic crisis, however following that line of logic, where was Perry back in 2008 and the housing market collapsed sinking the economy because republicans didn't want a lot of regulations in the US Mortgage industry, and because of this almost every bank in the world insured their mortgages with one US company, which was bleeding out like a dead hooker in Perry's trunk, which probably happened at some point too. He goes running with a gun all the time, I'm all for 2nd amendment rights but the man perpetuates the negative stereotypes of Texans, seriously it seems like he picked up a book on rednecks and just uses it now as a self help book, including the time when he hired a creationist to the Texas Board of Education.

Anyone who has been to Texas will realize that we have too many Evangelists, seriously Atheists everywhere could tie them together and use them as a float to Europe which seem to tolerate us pretty well, especially since the reason we are here is because they were religious oppressors, I got to make a stop in Amsterdam but hey at least they like us, back to the point Evangelists were worried about having potential GOP candidate who is Mormon, to qoute cnn's article over the issue;

 

"We think a them Mormons as bein' in kind of a cult," one of the Houston rally attendees told me. "I couldn't vote for one a them when we got a real Christian like Governor Perry runnin'."

(see what I have to put up with daily)

So Rick Perry what do you say now about your prayer, seems to me like the rally only served to have you viewed as a "True" Christian. As a side note you can get a preview of the future of America with Perry in charge, while the prayer rally had 30,000 people in attendance,  nearby a separate event was being held giving out free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations and fresh produce to the needy, over 100,000 so many showed up the event had to be closed early, job creation only works if you can replace the jobs that you lost in the first place or get better ones, not the other way around.

More to Come...