Comedy Central doesn’t have to make any effort at all to tick people off and generate controversy. I love it.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – It’s not on the air yet. It’s not shot yet. There’s no pilot yet. There might not even be a script yet.

But Comedy Central’s plan to develop an animated project about Jesus Christ has the biggest names in the TV watchdog business forming a protest supergroup to preemptively smite the show.

Brent Bozell (president, Media Research Centre), Tony Perkins (president, Family Research Council), Michael Medved (talk radio host), Bill Donohue (president, Catholic League), Rabbi Daniel Lapin (American Alliance of Jews and Christians) and Tim Winter (president, Parents Television Council) are joining forces to form the Coalition Against Religious Bigotry.

Comedy Central’s “JC” is in development, which means it’s still a couple of steps from getting the green light as a series. The project is about Jesus trying to live as a regular guy in New York City and wanting to escape the shadow of his “powerful but apathetic father.” Because Comedy Central recently censored “South Park” for its portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad, some Christian leaders see the prospect of a Jesus cartoon as proof of an offensive double standard.

Hilarious. Some of the biggest bigots in the USA getting together to form a Coalition Against Religious Bigotry. We all know how horribly intolerant and prejudicial it would be for someone to make a cartoon involving a mythical, historical, political, or religious personality. How do they sleep at night?

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/oukoe_uk_jesus

On the question of whether you believe a god exists, you can only be a theist or an atheist. Gnosticism addresses a different question: Whether you know, or believe it is possible to know, (gnostic) or not (agnostic). Since they are separate questions, you can mix them any way you want. When someone says they are an agnostic, they are not revealing whether or not they believe in a god. They are expressing whether or not they have that knowledge, or whether they think it is possible to have that knowledge.

Here is a rough breakdown of possible mixes. If you say:

• I don’t know if a god exists, and I don’t believe in any particular god. Then you are an atheist (agnostic).
• It is possible to know whether a god exists, and I know that no god exists. Then you are an atheist (gnostic).
• I don’t know if a god exists, but I believe a god exists. Then you are a theist (agnostic).
• It is possible to know whether a god exists, and I know that a god exists. Then you are a theist (gnostic).

Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?
~Steven Colbert

In my experience, I have found that most people who call themselves agnostics are actually atheists, but are either wanting to avoid the scary label of atheist, or don’t understand that the definition of atheist includes themselves. The latter seems to be the most common, and was my category before I learned that I actually was an atheist.

The problems I have with the self-labeling of “Agnostic” on the question of god are the following:

• It completely dodges the question of god, and answers a different question about knowledge.
• It implicitly mis-characterizes atheism as only gnostic atheism (i.e. the affirmative claim that no God exists).
• It reinforces misconceptions about atheism.

I have found that some people who label themselves agnostics or agnostic theists, believe in some sort of nebulous pantheistic divinity, many of which will describe that deity as something like “energy” or “nature” or “love.” Now agnosticism can be a philosophically interesting topic and should be the default position on any claim that doesn’t have evidence. However, it just seems silly and unreasonable to say that you don’t have any kind of knowledge about something, and then to continue conjecturing about what you think its attributes or qualities are, when you still have no reason to believe it exists in the first place. And if you are going to define god as energy or nature, then you are detracting from both words’ meaning by conflating them or making them otherwise ambiguous. Doing this is less than helpful in any conversation where you are trying to convey your belief in a god. Of course this is just my point of view, but I would honestly like to know what people who call themselves agnostic theists, really believe, and what reasons they have for believing it.

(Image from Pharyngula)

Charles Darwin‘s life and work have contributed in innumerable ways to science and human understanding. It still amazes me that so many people still believe that evolution is a false notion, especially in well-developed nations where people are privileged with education. Evolution has proven itself time and time again, and is the only working scientific theory that can explain how life on earth could be here as it is today, and it does so with lucid accuracy. The world of science accepted it as a fact a long time ago. It’s about as questionable as the theory of the earth rotating around the sun.

Coming from a Latter Day Saint (Mormon) background, it’s frustrating to see so many members act as if they value science (many do so exhaustively), but then brush off evolution as if it was just some separate and mistaken idea. While the leadership of the church has not taken an official stance, they have continued to this day to support and repeat previous positions, which claim that it is nothing more than the “theories of men” (See Mormonism and Evolution). Many church authorities today simply dodge the question, like the late Gordon B. Hinckley, who said “People ask me every now and again if I believe in evolution. I tell them I am not concerned with organic evolution. I do not worry about it. I passed through that argument long ago.”

I’m sorry, but if you don’t accept evolution by now, you are either willingly ignorant, or you don’t understand what science is, or how it functions. You might as well believe that the world is flat, or that babies come from storks. Evolution is not a controversy like Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, Glen Beck, or Ben Stein would have you believe. To get a hint of the ridiculous lengths you would have to go in order to say otherwise, watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Apart from giving us no information of an alternative theory (supposedly this would be Intelligent Design, but this theory isn’t even a theory because it gives science nothing to test), this film uses every form of rhetorical trickery and fallacious logic known to human kind, including but not limited to appeal to emotion, appeal to ignorance, guilt by association, etc. My wife and I literally laughed our way through it.

If you still aren’t sure about evolution, there is a lot of information out there. Just read. Read online articles like Wikipedia’s, or read from scientific journals. Richard Dawkins recently published a book, The Greatest Show On Earth, that focuses on the mass amount of evidence that exists, a short video introduction of which I include below.

I spent the first 22 years of my life being a devout theist; or more specifically, a deeply indoctrinated Mormon. I’m not going to go into the details right now, but just know that religion has played a big part in my life and the lives of those closest to me. My desire to post on the topic of theism should therefore be an obvious or likely one.

Thanks to many good influences in my life, I have gradually been able to unlearn the myriad superstitions and untie the blindfolds. Over the last couple years, I have finally found peace and comfort in calling myself an atheist, although I must admit that I stopped believing in the church of my upbringing about 8 years ago. “Atheist” has always been a much scorned word and label that has persistently been the target of unnecessary hate and violence. Indeed the Mormon leaders have felt it necessary to declare a “new battle … against atheism” (1996 President Gordon B. Hinckley). This is likely because “Atheism has always been hostile to religion”  (2009 Elder Oaks). The funny thing about the word atheism is that it is often given far too much meaning than it deserves. An atheist is someone who simply does not believe in a deity. To my own surprise, I found that it was not necessarily a truth claim or any kind of affirmative statement. An atheist does not necessarily claim that there is no God (no atheist that I have ever met or read would make such a claim); only that the atheist does not have reason to believe in one. I don’t believe in leprechauns either, but I could never say that I know they don’t exist.

After being able to see the world in a different, and much less narrow light, I find it more and more difficult to remain quiet about my views in order to not disturb others or hurt feelings. I am starting to agree with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the many other atheist writers and bloggers that I read. There is no reason to continue lending the outrageous amount of protection from criticism, to Religion.  Further than this, and my strong belief in the separation of church and state, I have found a lot of life-affirming happiness in leaving the dim world-view given by religious beliefs, and I would really love to share it with those that I care about. I wish someone had shared it with me at an earlier time in my life.

I can’t remember where I found this comic. If someone else knows, please kindly inform me.