I often state that religion can be defied on reason alone. Simply put, if there is no evidence for it, there is no reason to believe it. There is also no reason to disbelieve it, though if evidence can be brought against it, the claims become increasingly absurd and defy Occam’s razor to the point of ridiculousness.
Thus, it’s often seemed silly to me that so many of us are forced to argue the specifics of Bible passages and the like in order to make our point. The thing is, though, that many of the people we’re debating against are willing to make great rationalizations for what they believe. They’re incredibly forgiving with the book. They variously condemn us for taking a phrase too literally or, alternately, not literally enough.
Read more...
Filed under: Gadfly by Gadfly
No Comments »
Editor’s note: The JREF YouTUBE account has been restored, news and information here, James Randi Speaks: YouTUBE Suspension.
I don’t know how to respond to this – primarily because I have no clue why it happened – but all I can say right now is that this is stupid on the face of it. James Randi is an amazing illusionist (it’s right there in his stage name) and he’s also an excellent resource for looking into the false claims of psychics, scam artists, con artists, and televangelists who claim faith healing and other unproven and grossly bogus activities.
And now his channel has been suspended by YouTUBE. It is not uncommon for people like the above to run false flagging campaigns, to misuse the DMCA, and to otherwise abuse the law and other resources to attack venues like YouTUBE in order to suspend their detractors. And YouTUBE, following the DMCA law and their own policy in a fashion bereft of actual wisdom—suspend on whim.
Read on for information on how to help.
Read more...
Filed under: Blogs by Amerist
2 Comments »
Once again, Mill Ave is shut down due to the visitation of the Tempe Art Fair. White tents take up the center of the road, leaving the street open to all comers and passersby. The Resistance was sparse today but thick enough to entertain themselves on the preachers who came out to do some speaking. As usual, they found them set up in the middle of the intersection at 5th and Mill Ave—the diagonal between Urban Outfitters, Coffee Plantation, Hippie Gypsy, and American Apparel.
The Resistance consisted of Rocco and Gadfly, with a visitation by Kazz and Spyral.
Amazingly, the old-school core components of the Way of the Master evangelical group made it out! The preacher crew turned out to be Al, Jeremiah, Richard, and one other new individual of unknown disposition. This created an unexpected reunion of evangelical preachers who haven’t been out in a very long time. It’s been several months since either Richard or Jeremiah have been seen by the Resistance. Much to the amusement of all, Jeremiah took the stand later in the night and delivered his usual speeches—the rest didn’t really spend much time on their amps for the time people were out there to listen.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
2 Comments »
A couple of our members followed traveling university preacher Brother Jed down to the University of Arizona yesterday, and they passed out some of our tracts while they were there. If you got one and you’ve made your way here, feel free to post comments, join the forum, or just read through the archives to get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.
There is a particularly busy thread of comments on our post refuting silly Creationist theories about the Recession of the Moon, and if you post a question in the forum then we’ll make sure to give you some answers.
This has been an odd week, and we haven’t kept up our post-a-day pace we’ve had since the beginning of the year, but we should be getting back on track and putting up some good new stuff next week, so please come back and check it out, and participate if you’ve got anything to say.
Read more...
Filed under: Kazz by Kazz
No Comments »
He quotes Dave Gross from a February, 1991 article in the Mustang Daily:
And nobody can argue that it doesn’t work. The crowds he gathers are as angry, rude and ill-behaved as any mob that ever vilified any prophet. And so later in his speech, when he talks about how today’s students are obnoxious and have no morals…well, you can’t really argue. (p. 142.)
Yes you can.
Read more...
Filed under: Books, Reviews by Amerist
No Comments »
It’s been a pretty fun week so far with Normal Bob Smith, Brother Jed and a few of the crazy local preachers thrown in for added ridiculousness, but sadly Normal Bob has to go back to New York this weekend and he won’t be here for the last day of Jed’s stay.
Tomorrow though promises to be a crazy day, much like today. This time Jed’s wife “Sister Cindy” and two of their daughters were out, and Cindy is just as crazy as her husband. Between them and the locals, there was pretty constant action all day, and although we had a pretty good crowd dealing with them, these people can’t have too many hecklers. So if it sounds fun or interesting to you then tomorrow would be a good day to show up.
One of the most amusing events of the whole week happened today, and may continue tomorrow. One of Brother Jed’s own converts (who seems to have surpassed Jed in his study of the Bible) got into multiple animated close-up shouting matches with him, to the great amusement of the masses. We’ll try to get some video of the events posted soon for those of you who missed it, but you may still have a chance to see Jed get the smack-down for his “porno preaching” from Monty if you come out tomorrow.
Read more...
Filed under: Kazz by Kazz
No Comments »
Don’t look now, but Jed’s antiquated sexism is showing. Sure, he spends some time trying to rebut this before the fact in a previous chapter in a section called “Politically Correct” but even that reeked of sniggering gesticulation (p. 106-107). Readers might as well re-title that entire section “We Saw What You Did There.” Jed basically goes on about how the Political Correctness movement (which actually has nothing to do with these labels) could get people wrongfully labeled as homophobic or sexist for showing disagreement with mainstream mores. Well, okay, we can see that. Disagree with affirmative action and possibly get wrongfully labeled a racist. Display old fashioned traditional sensibilities with women and potentially get called sexist.
Keep reading for the rest of this review.
Read more...
Filed under: Books by Amerist
No Comments »
Like most autobiographies, Who Will Rise Up? by George “Jed” Smock is a self-important narrative that smacks of purple prose, and overwrought acclaims to his own prowess and condemnation of exaggerated villainy in the world. The strange bias of his writing is steeped in most paragraphs, any number of which take swipes at his old life. He also intersperses his text with Bible verses, which, instead of using italics for emphasis, he bolds so that they break up the narrative and legibility of the text.
Read on for the first part of the review.
Read more...
Filed under: Books by Amerist
No Comments »
According to Brother Jed, before he found Jesus he was a cowardly hippie having sex instead of fighting in Vietnam, but he would be killing people in Iraq today if he wasn’t so old. Is this really what Jesus would want, or did Jed get the wrong message?
Maybe converting to Christianity wasn’t the best thing for him. As little as I want to think of him making love, making war is much worse, and thinking that your killing is justified by the creator of the universe may give you a self-righteous feeling about your killing, but it doesn’t make your victims any less dead.
As Jed himself suggests at the end of the video, maybe he is a false prophet. Maybe we should think more broadly though and consider the likelihood that all “prophets” are false.
Read more...
Filed under: Videos by Kazz
No Comments »
The Resistance didn’t see much in the way of anything to resist when they put foot on the Ave. They congregated for a while at different restaurants and mingled. It took them a while of wandering around the Ave before they eventually found a single, lone preacher way out by the now closed Borders. That would be Al.
Rocco held a sedate discussion with Al most of the night about civil justice. The crux of the argument hinged on how positive law and social justice work and how harm is involved. The usual assertion involves something to the end of “any transgression against an infinite god is therefore an infinite crime deserving of an infinite punishment.” Except that social justice is a system based on harm. Thus the suggestion of transgression suggests two things (1) that the Christian god can and must be harmed for a transgression to happen and (2) that harm is comparable to “infinity.” It seemed interesting that someone decided to take an argument about justice to this particular quote rather than the obvious argument by definition: “a finite harm to an infinite object is infinitesimal, a harm that approaches nothing.” Although, this did have a stake in Rocco’s argument as well as sidebar.
Read more...
Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Amerist
1 Comment »
