Religious Retard Attacks Science – People Should Stop Learning

Did I say “Retard”? I shouldn’t degrade mentally retarded people by comparing them to someone who willingly rejects knowledge and embraces ignorance. At least retarded people try to learn.

Pope says some science shatters human dignity

The Pope VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict said on Thursday that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had “shattered” human dignity.

In an address to members of the Vatican department on doctrinal matters, Benedict said the Church had a duty to defend the “great values at stake” in the field of bioethics.

The speech was the latest in a series in which the conservative Pope has told his listeners that scientific progress should not be accepted uncritically.

Benedict, who headed the same department for years before his election in 2005, said the Church was not against scientific progress but wanted it based on “ethical-moral principles.”

He said this included total respect for the human being as a person “from conception until natural death,” and respect for the natural transmission of life through sexual intercourse.

Practices like freezing embryos, suppression of embryos in multiple pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, the prospect of human cloning and artificial insemination outside the body had “shattered the barriers meant to protect human dignity,” he said.

MySpace Deletes Largest Atheist Group in the World

 I deleted my MySpace profile weeks ago due to my disdain for the way myspace is run, this recent news makes me even happier I did.

MySpace Deletes Largest Atheist Group in the World

Cleveland, OH.— Social networking site, MySpace.com, panders to religious intolerants by deleting atheist users, groups and content.

Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.

What’s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

“MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,” said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group’s moderator. “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

“It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the world’s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics– and if this situation goes unresolved I’ll have little choice but to believe they do,” said Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain of Harvard University. News Corporation, Murdoch’s global media corporation which also includes Fox News, purchased MySpace in 2005.

“My personal profile was deleted as well, and despite weeks of emails to customer service, plus a petition signed by 500 group members, MySpace won’t budge. I think these actions send a clear message to the 30 million godless people in America (and to businesses whose money was spent displaying ads on our group) that we are not welcome on MySpace,” said Pesta.

For a Wikipedia article on the now defunct atheist and agnostic group, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_and_Agnostic_Group.

For links to Pesta’s defunct group and profile, visit http://www.MySpace.com/aiffb.

Scientology – The Cult of Greed

This week we’ll be going all out on Scientology, what with the ANON war going down, we feel it’s in the spirit of things..

The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn’t yet turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help “philosophy” group he had discovered just seven months earlier.

His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own investigation of the church. “We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie,” Lottick says. “I now believe it’s a school for psychopaths. Their so-called therapies are manipulations. They take the best and brightest people and destroy them.” The Lotticks want to sue the church for contributing to their son’s death, but the prospect has them frightened. For nearly 40 years, the big business of Scientology has shielded itself exquisitely behind the First Amendment as well as a battery of high-priced criminal lawyers and shady private detectives.

The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to “clear” people of unhappiness, portrays itself as a religion. In reality the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top Scientologists, including Hubbard’s wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents — many charging that they were mentally or physically abused — have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases judges have labeled the church “schizophrenic and paranoid” and “corrupt, sinister and dangerous.”

Yet the outrage and litigation have failed to squelch Scientology. The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to become more insidious and pervasive than ever. Scientology is trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-enforcement campaign against the church. Many of the group’s followers have been accused of committing financial scams, while the church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and even remedial education.

Continues…

“Anonymous” releases statements outlining “War on Scientology”

 This ought to be interesting.

“Anonymous” releases statements outlining “War on Scientology”

The Internet-based group “Anonymous” has released statements on YouTube and via a press release, outlining what they call a “War on Scientology”. Church of Scientology related websites, such as religousfreedomwatch.org have been removed due to a suspected distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) by a group calling themselves “Anonymous”. On Friday, the same group allegedly brought down Scientology‘s main website, scientology.org, which was available sporadically throughout the weekend.

Several websites relating to the Church of Scientology have been slowed down, brought to a complete halt or seemingly removed from the Internet completely in an attack which seems to be continuous. The scientology.org site was back online briefly on Monday, and is currently loading slowly.

On Monday, the group released a video titled: “Message to Scientology” on YouTube concerning their intentions to attack the Church of Scientology. A robotic voice on the video begins with “Hello leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous,” and continues by explaining their motivations: “Over the years we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent and your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed.” The message goes on to state that the group intends to “expel Scientology from the Internet”. As of Wednesday, the video had been viewed 370,347 times, favorited 2,473 times, and is currently YouTube’s top third video of the day.

The “Message to Scientology” video was highlighted as the “YouTube Video of the Week” by The Michigan Daily. Commenting on the video, the piece states “if this video is any indication, it seems like the assailants mean business”. In a blog post on USA Today‘s website, Jess Zielinski wrote that it was “not a shock that hackers hold a grudge against Scientology,” and in a followup post on another USA Today blog, Angela Gunn wrote that “those of us who remember … the adventures of Operation Clambake are fascinated to see this kind of thing flare up again”. Blogging for Wired magazine, Ryan Singel wrote about the incident in a piece on Wednesay titled “War Breaks Out Between Hackers and Scientology — There Can Be Only One”. Singel wrote that the Project Chanology wiki page “directs Anonymous members to download and use denial of service software, make prank calls, host Scientology documents the Church considers proprietary, and fax endless loops of black pages to the Church’s fax machines to waste ink”. According to Wired, “The Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to a call for comment”.

Italian government near collapse after Vatican ‘plot’

 Isn’t it great when religion and politics mix?

Italian government near collapse after Vatican ‘plot’

The Vatican has been accused of trying to bring down the Italian government after a Catholic minister abandoned Romano Prodi’s coalition government, leaving it facing collapse.

The prime minister was forced to call a vote of confidence after Clemente Mastella, the former justice minister, withdrew his support on Monday.

Mr Mastella’s Udeur Christian Democrat party has three crucial seats in the Senate, where Mr Prodi had a majority of two, at best.

New elections could be called, or a caretaker government could be appointed to reform the complicated electoral law if Mr Prodi loses the vote of confidence in both chambers.

Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition, said yesterday that he wants “elections in the spring”.

Mr Mastella resigned from the government last week, after he and his wife were implicated in a cash-for-favours scandal.

He promised that his party would vote with the government, but changed his mind over the weekend. Now he has said Mr Prodi’s coalition was “dead, dead, dead”.

The impetus for his change of heart appears to have come from the Vatican, which has voiced its disapproval at Mr Prodi’s stance on gay rights and abortion.

The Vatican also shook the government last year, when Mr Prodi lost a vote on his foreign policy on the same day that a gay marriage bill entered parliament.