Author Archive for ozatheist

Old Coots Day

Now I’d almost be willing for $150 Million to be spent on this: Old Coots Day as featured in the Sydney Morning Herald today.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to all the blogging Mums. I’ll assume you will be too busy getting showered with gifts and being looked after by the family to be blogging today, but hope you had a good day anyway. Technorati Tags: Mothers Day,Mum,Mom

Wealthiest Scientologist leaves Cult

It seems James Packer is distancing himself from Scientology according to this article in today’s SMH. Packer got in to Scientology at the lowest point in his life, as the SMH article says: He was overweight and depressed, his marriage to his first wife, Jodhi Meares, had ended and he was reeling from the humiliating and [...]

Food Porn Meme

Not another meme! I got tagged, by wineymomma, again, this time I’m supposed to answer some questions about food. Whilst I love food, I’m not big on picking out one particular item I prefer. I know which foods I don’t like: cheese, capsicum; but I don’t have too many favourites of foods I do like. [...]

Research Volunteers Needed!

Sam Harris is calling for volunteers - Christians and Non-Christians to take part in surveys which will help study belief. From the site: We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith [...]

CarnivUL of The fraudless: exposing the CULT

L. Ron Brown over at The Frame Problem has started a CarnivUL of The fraudless. Similar to the Carnival of the Godless, this CarnivUL is specifically for anti-Scientology postings. This is the first CarnivUL and as L. Ron says: This first CarnivUL(…T) will be dedicated to tracking major developments that have taken place since January in [...]

C-WYD - Letters to the editor

The following is a letter I sent to the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper today: I noted in today’s paper (page 10, SMH, 28 April) a letter to the editor that starts: “Please feel free to write a letter that does not mention World Youth Day” I would have to agree with letter writer Max, that if [...]

Pope - No; Cost - Maybe; Road Closures - Yes

It seems more people are put off by the impending road closures during Catholic World Youth Day (C-WYD), than the fact it’s costing us millions of dollars, or that it’s just about glorifying the Pope. It’s good to see Sydneysiders have their priorities right! The Sun-Herald reports that 64% of Sydneysiders are in favour of the [...]

Welcome to God’s mosh pit - the full post

Sceptics call (Catholic) World Youth Day just one big party; others insist it strengthens the faith, writes Linda Morris. I call it a big waste of taxpayers money! The thrust of the article is: do the World Youth Days actually encourage youth to attend mass and become part of the church? Apparently the youth have been [...]

Jesus got nailed

Matt had a question on my God and Free Love post, methinks it may have been the other way around: Some might say that was blasphemous, others say ‘blasphemy is a victimless crime’, others: pictures shamelessly nicked form somewhere or other Technorati Tags: jesus,blasphemy,nailed

Welcome to God’s mosh pit

Sceptics call (Catholic) World Youth Day just one big party; others insist it strengthens the faith, writes Linda Morris. I call it a waste of taxpayers money! More on this tomorrow - I spent way too long writing a reply on Matt’s blog I ran out of time to finish my own!     Technorati Tags: catholic WYD,World Youth [...]

The atheist spot

No, this isn’t a follow on from my last post, it’s not some ’special place’ only atheists have. What it is, is a new atheist blog aggregator / social book marking site; called The Atheist Spot. Like SEB said: … take Digg and whittle it down to a niche promoting atheism related topics The Atheist Spot is [...]

God and Free Love

Well it seems I’ve been wrong all along. I thought God had a problem with sex, particularly of the more kinky variety. Seems like people weren’t reading the bible properly. *** Caution *** The following contains words and links to material that some may find offensive. It is Not Safe For Work (NSFW) *** Caution *** Thanks to Possummomma, [...]

What makes Israel so f##in’ Important?

Clinton threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Israel attacked. That is the headline I heard twice this morning, and I thought to myself “what makes Israel so f###in’ important?”. Looking at the ABC news web site, I found this article which opens with the line: Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has threatened to “obliterate” Iran if it launches [...]

Jason Beghe - Full Interview Released

Recently Jason Beghe released a short video of him denouncing Scientology. As Xenu TV says; He is the first celebrity to leave Scientology and publicly discuss his involvement and then disillusionment with the group. The original short video was picked up by both Today Tonight and A Current Affair. You can see both of those reports on [...]

God’s never answered one of my questions …

So what makes anyone think he’s going to answer one of theirs? Especially when you ask it on the Internet! According to the Sun-Herald a new web site has been launched called Dear God where you can post a prayer, and, I suppose, hopefully have it answered. There are quite a few prayers on the [...]

More Wedding Blues

Getting married and being an atheist seems to be causing a lot of grief to some people. Walking down the aisle in the white-gown does have its attractions, but Church and atheism don’t really go together. Marriage ceremonies around the world, and the beautiful buildings some of them are held in, can be quite breathtaking, [...]

Pope and Bush - What a pair of hypocrites

President Bush held a ceremony for the visiting Pope and held talks afterwards. ABC news had this article on that meeting. Wow, what a pair of deluded hypocrites these two are, a comment from Bush: “In a world where some invoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need [...]

Expelled Exposed

Well I guess I might as well join the bandwagon and post a link to the Expelled Exposed web site. If it’s good enough for Possummomma, it’s good enough for me. PZ Myers has requested as many people to put the Expelled link on their site. In his own words: We need to get the NCSE’s counter-site [...]

There’s a sucker born every minute

A christian ripping off other christians, who’d have thought? See the video: (Note: the link will make you watch a short advertisement first) Church Conman Typical Current Affairs, but I liked the bit where they showed who he learnt his dirty tricks from. Apparently, he’d go to one church (Anglican churches apparently) and rip off as many mugs as [...]

IQ2 Debate - Who Won?

Well it looks like the debate “Islam is incompatible with democracy” was quite a success last night. So who won? 1200 people packed the City Hall last night, and after arguments from both sides, got to choose which side won. The verdict - the proposition went down by a narrow margin of 52 to 48 [...]

AARRGH - the fundies are attacking!

I’m an atheist, I don’t normally get religious correspondence, however, I had the most bizarre thing happen to me tonight. I received mail today (the old fashioned type from the post office), hand written addressed to me, which I opened whilst cooking dinner. Inside was a two page letter titled: The Importance of Jesus Christ. [...]

IQ2 Debate - right of reply

Yesterday I reported on the IQ2 debate, which is on tonight, and provided a link to the opening salvo from Daniel Pipes one of the speakers for the positive. Today, for fairness, I’m providing a link from Waleed Aly one of the speakers for the negative. The people are speaking: democratic Islam is no contradiction Waleed [...]

IQ2 Debate - Islam is incompatible with democracy

The IQ2 debate is tomorrow night, but Daniel Pipes has fired the first salvo today in his article in the SMH titled: Give Muslims time to find democratic feet Daniel’s opinion is, that given time Muslim countries could become as democratic as any other country. However, In the meanwhile, Islamism represents the world’s leading anti-democratic force. I’d have [...]

Operation Reconnect - an update

Well I was quite disappointed in not seeing any media coverage of the Operation Reconnect protest marches. Neither Channel 9 (NBN), SBS or ABC had any footage last night. Either they didn’t think it was news-worthy enough, or the the marches were so peaceful they thought it was too boring. At least today’s Sun Herald newspaper [...]

Operation Reconnect - April 12th

from Reconnect.org In our continuing efforts against the Church of Scientology, Anonymous is launching Operation Reconnect. Projected to take place in the month of April, this operation will shine a spotlight on families torn apart by the Church of Scientology. The name of this operation stems from the Church of Scientology’s notorious ‘disconnection policy’, under which individuals [...]

IQ2 Live Debates

Intelligence Squared Australia are putting on a series of live debates on some of the hot topics of the day. From the iq2 site this is the list of topics for this year: 15 April - Islam is incompatible with Democracy 20 May - China is not fit to host the Olympics 8 July - By 2020 only [...]

How cool is this?

Richard Dawkins is to appear, as himself, in the current series of Dr Who. Read all about it here.

Rugby and Hillsong - an odd mix.

As well as various other organisations, it appears the Rabbitohs (South Sydney Rugby League Club) are supporting the building of a new Hillsong mega-church in Sydney’s inner city. The proposed church has met with some opposition from locals who say it will flood the streets with noise and traffic. Not to mention flooding the streets [...]

C-WYD - crisis for Sydney or just a crisis?

There seems to be conflicting reports on the impact of the Catholic World Youth Day (C-WYD). The SMH reported: Keep out if you’re not a pilgrim, warning of all the road closures in  Sydney due to C-WYD. Sydney has been warned that The disruptive impact of World Youth Day would be as great as the Asia-Pacific [...]