That Atheist Blog

 Malala Yousafzai is my hero. This young lady spoke out against the Taliban in Pakistan.

Using religion and calling it a culture to hold people back is wrong. Using religion to not educate women and calling it culture, is wrong.
The Taliban are thugs and bullies.

Malala took a bullet in the head from a coward in the Taliban and because she lived, they said they will still come back for her.

Here is her amazing story:

I was reading over at the Thinking Atheist run by Seth, a former evangelical youth minister who runs a really great site, and he published a piece that echos exactly how I feel about prayer.

And now, here's Seth.

It's curious.

All over Facebook, people beg for prayers for their loved ones, often describing horrific and near unthinkable accidents and illnesses with life-and-death outcomes.

My mom is in Intensive Care at Hospital X.  Please pray!  I have a spot on my lung and I'm going in for further tests.  Please pray!  My sister miscarried at 12 weeks.  Please pray.  A baby's body is ravaged with cancer.  Please pray.

Ask yourself what all of the prayer posts really imply.

Ahhh election year, the year when all the political candidates dress up in their best clothes and tell their best lies.
One that I hear a lot (again) is "American is a Christian Nation".

John McCain and Sarah Palin (our last horrible presidential choices both said it, in fact Palin said it was "mind boggling" that anyone would think otherwise.

Our current Republican choices are equally frightening. Mitt Romney is a Mormon and for a little Mormon 101 watch What Mormons Really Believe.
The other, Paul Ryan, is alternately an Evangelical Christian and then not.

"God" needs to come off our money and religion needs to be taxed.
Religion already had its chance to run things, that time period was called "The Dark Ages".

Yes, there are a lot of Christians in America.
However, anyone that says that American is a Christan nation or worse, believes it; seriously needs a history lesson and here it is from Seth (thanks Seth).

Meet Cecilia Gimenez. She's tried to do something from the heart and no one appreciated it.
She attempted to restore a 100+-year old fresco in her church and painted of the face of Jesus and turned him into a beast-looking.....thing.

Cecilia Gimenez maintains, "Everybody who came into the church could see I was painting"

Here's the story....An elderly parishioner has stunned Spanish cultural officials with an alarming and unauthorised attempt to restore a prized Jesus Christ fresco.

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez has held pride of place in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza for more than 100 years.

I was flipping around on television the other night because usually I like to watch television while I work out and I ran across a show called, "Christian Fitness".

I actually wind up watching a lot of Christian themed television shows because I live in Ohio and even though I was born and raised in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, complete with Blue Laws on Sundays, there are far more religious based shows on my Ohio cable system than anywhere else I have ever lived.

Christian programming is like a train wreck usually. The budgets are low, people get filled with power from having a camera pointed at them and they tend to make bizarre claims (like, "I raised the dead!").

I was intrigued.
What did they do?
What made it Christian? Would I get a better work out?

So I watched an episode, it was pretty lame, extremely low impact and some of it was just bizarre.
The exercises were seriously made for people who cannot get off their couch from watching television long enough to work out.
I guess any movement is good.
Pillow Twist is a weird workout.

Here's a clip from that pretty much sums up what I viewed.

Working out to the song that sings about "Feel his nail pierced hands...."   not exactly what I wanna sweat to.