#Bill Flavell

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"The lifeblood of religion is not God, not theology, not salvation, not even money. It is indoctrinating children. Take that away and your religion will die within a generation." -- Bill Flavell

[atheistcartoons]

Don’t believe everything you hear.

[barrypurcell]

Crisis in International Atheism

RENOWNED ATHEIST Richard Dawkins once described the difficulty his fractious atheist colleagues had in organising themselves as akin to “herding cats”.

[…]

In 2017, AAI represented 36 member groups from all over the world. Some members were already concerned about what they saw as the AAI becoming moribund and the board agreed to put a reform programme to the vote at the 2017 AGM. However, critics claim there was no AGM at any point in 2017. The stated purpose of this mandatory AGMs in the original AAI bylaws is to “approve the accounts and elect directors”. The critics say these bylaws have since been completely rewritten and the bylaws which currently appear on its site have never been subject to a proper vote. Therefore, opponents claim, nothing AAI has done since 2017 has been subject to a legitimate democratic process.

In early 2018, two members of AAI - Atheist Ireland and the Freedom From Religion Foundation - offered to work on a (new) reform proposal to rescue AAI’s legitimacy. The board agreed.

However, while claiming to work on these reforms, the board invited selected members to an AGM without informing anyone else, according to protagonists. During that ill-attended May 2018 AGM, new bylaws were passed which meant that: directors would no longer be elected but appointed by the board; bylaws would no longer be changed by a vote but by directors; and requirements to hold AGMs and present financial accounts were removed.

THREATENING TONES

An example of the breakdown of civilised discourse in the organised atheist world came last February, when a breakaway group (confusingly called the International Association of Atheists, since dissolved) used an AAI subscriber list to ask for financial contributions to its new organisation. AAI accused it of theft and demanded restitution in threatening tones. The International Association of Atheists responded, denying the charges. The AAI then responded again with more bluster.

The allegations would appear to be substantively true, but some of the meeker atheists interested in international representation could only observe in despair as the back-and-forth press releases between AAI and the International Association of Atheists developed an tone edolent of a scene from The Life Of Brian. In one blog post, AAI threatened to call the police, adding that supporters of the International Association of Atheists “have said we will never take this step. Just watch us.” Nothing happened.

In March of this year, then vice president and current director Bill Flavell claimed in a Free Thought Prophet podcast that he “didn’t really understand” the protocols involved in advertising the 2018 AGM, which he was involved in arranging. Then president and current director Howard Burman claimed in the same podcast that the AAI “erred” when it failed to invite the majority of members to this clandestine AGM and that he had never spoken to Atheist Ireland’s Nugent despite multiple public records of emails and Skype calls including Nugent and other parties.

In April of this year, then AAI “blog manager” and current "at large director" Jason Sylvester replied to the allegations in a blog post which personally attacked AAI’s critics but also promised to “investigate it properly” with an “objective and neutral approach that such a serious allegation requires”. The results of (or any evidence for) that investigation have yet to be made public. Sylvester also claimed around this time that “Integrity will be restored”, any evidence for which has also yet to be made public.

In May of this year, the secretary / treasurer of AAI, Fotis Frangopoulos, sent an back-pedalling email to ex-affiliates admitting the substance of these allegations. For instance, the email admits that the bylaws were “temporarily” changed in order to “turn the organisation around”, challenging all claims of innocent errors or a lack of understanding of protocol. The email promised that a legitimate AGM with all of the affiliates would be held to “nominate candidates… and to vote”. However, the current batch of directors were “elected” by only 10 of the claimed 53 affiliates during the May AGM which was referred to by a prominent human rights organisations, the Greek Helsinki Monitor, as “very undemocratic”.

More recently, comedian and activist Kate Smurthwaite, one of the AAI Advisory Council which exists to “give support and advice” to the board, claimed in a tweet that the board never offered her “any input at all” and that she didn’t know why her name was on its website. There is no reason to suspect that anyone else on the advisory council, which includes such high-profile atheists as Gad Saad and Lawrence Krauss, had any more input into AAI policies and decisions than Smurthwaite.

One of the conditions for special consultative status at the UN is that an organisation “must have a democratic decision making mechanism”. The Council of Europe similarly demands of its members with participatory status “a democratic structure and governance”.

If the UN and the Council of Europe remove AAI’s privileges due to their undemocratic structure, there will be no international representation in these organisations for atheists and the world’s major religions will be free to continue making submissions to the UN and the Council of Europe without any counterbalance from a group many religious people regard as their mortal enemies.

The Phoenix, 10 September 2021 

[bountyofbeads]

As Disasters Multiply, Billions in Recovery Funds Go Unspent https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/climate/federal-hurricane-wildfire-disaster-funds-unspent.html

As Disasters Multiply, Billions in Recovery Funds Go Unspent

By Christopher Flavelle | Published Sept. 5, 2019 Updated 3:50 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 5, 2019 5:45 PM ET |

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent recovery money meant to help Americans recover from disasters, leaving people less able to rebound from the effects of Hurricane Dorian and other storms.

As of June 30, the government had spent less than one-third of the $107 billion provided by Congress following the hurricanes and wildfires of 2017 and 2018, federal data show. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which received $37 billion — more than any other agency — had spent less than $75 million.

That money is meant to help cities and states rebuild after a disaster. It is often used to fix roads, drainage systems and other infrastructure, or to repair or elevate houses in low-lying, vulnerable areas.

The funds are being held up partly by laws designed in an earlier age of fewer and less severe disasters. In addition, states and cities already reeling from earlier floods or fires often struggle to meet the federal bureaucratic requirements. As climate change amplifies the disaster risk, the logjam threatens to worsen, with increasingly dire consequences.

“If we had all the money, and everything was flowing, we would be safer,” said Laura Hogshead, chief operating officer for the Office of Recovery and Resiliency in North Carolina, a state now being menaced by Hurricane Dorian. This year, the state created a new office to try to speed up those funds — a model that Dorian could test.

“There’s a lot of suffering while you wait,” she said.

The bulk of the money comes just two federal offices: the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities recover from disasters by funding everything from clearing debris to rebuilding hospitals, and HUD, which helps repair homes, infrastructure and businesses.

The sluggish spending joins a long list of headaches for federal officials trying to protect Americans against climate change. Among them: The shrinking number of people with flood insurance  compared with a decade ago; the growing number of homes being built in floodplains; the refusal of many states to impose mandatory, up-to-date building codes; and the emphasis on rebuilding in the same place, rather than somewhere safer.

What sets this problem apart is that it’s largely of the government’s own making.

“There are opportunities to make the recovery process faster at every level,” said Marion McFadden, who ran the disaster recovery grants at HUD during the Obama administration. “We’ve got to fix this.”

Some delays are unavoidable, such as those associated with sprawling infrastructure projects — like building sea walls or deepening ports — requiring complex environmental reviews. But many other delays stem from a bureaucratic process for delivering federal money, coupled with state and local agencies that often lack the staff or expertise to spend it, observers say.

As a result, persuading Congress to provide money for recovery is just the beginning of the struggle for places hit by disasters.

“We build very complex systems in Washington,” said Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA under President Obama. “Then you apply it to a disaster, and it gums up the system.”

At the same time, the growing frequency of natural disasters, amplified by climate change, increases the urgency of rebuilding.

Part of the problem reflects the fundamental tension between speed and oversight, Mr. Fugate said. As disaster funding has increased, so has scrutiny from lawmakers wary of fraud and abuse. So FEMA and other agencies have responded by adding more safeguards and layers of review, which slows the process further.

States, too, have increased oversight, fearful of being ordered to pay the federal government back for money that might run afoul of the rules. For example, Florida audits every funding request its local governments submit to FEMA, Mr. Fugate said — a level of diligence he said slows recovery.

“Congress wants it both ways: They want it fast, but they also want full accountability,” Mr. Fugate said. “It is slowing down the process to a painful crawl.”

FEMA has yet to spend about $8 billion of the $34 billion allocated to it by Congress following the disasters of 2017 and 2018. An agency spokeswoman, Abigail Dennis, said that over the past few years FEMA has improved its Public Assistance program, which pays for rebuilding infrastructure and other needs, by simplifying the application process and retraining the staff who review applications.

The spending rate has been far slower at the Department of Housing and Urban Development: It has paid out less than 1 percent of its disaster funding from the past two years.

The department, which oversees the nation’s public housing, became involved in disaster recovery more by convenience than design, according to Ms. McFadden. After Hurricane Andrew struck Florida in 1992, Congress needed a vehicle for delivering large sums of money to cities and states, so it chose the department’s Community Development Block Grant program.

But the disaster-recovery function was never set up to be permanent. So Congress requires the department to essentially design a new program from scratch each time it receives disaster money, according to Ms. McFadden. That means writing new rules for how states and cities can spend that money.

“There is this period of a year or more where the money is just sitting essentially at HUD,” said Ms. McFadden, who is now senior vice president for public policy at Enterprise Community Partners, a Washington nonprofit organization. “That period is just lost.”

That problem has caught the attention of both political parties. In July, the House Financial Services Committee voted unanimously in support of a bill that would make the department’s disaster recovery program permanent, helping it get those funds to states and cities more quickly. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate the same month.

This year, Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, acknowledged that the program could be streamlined. “Some of the basic things that have to be done in order to get the grant money out is absolutely the same thing over and over again,” Mr. Carson told the House Financial Services Committee in May.

Reforming the federal government’s approach will solve only part of the delay in rebuilding, disaster experts warn.

Even once the housing department has set the rules for each batch of disaster funding, states must submit detailed plans for how they will use that money, and then help cities and counties spend it properly. That work often falls to staff who don’t have the time or expertise required, according to Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mr. Moore offered an example. “Your office is normally handling $2 million a year. You’ve got five people to do that,” he said. But then, “A disaster hits. Suddenly you’ve got $100 million to spend. You’ve got the same five people on your staff. And you’ve still got to do your normal job.”

That tension is now playing out in North Carolina.

The state hadn’t gotten disaster recovery grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development since 2003. Then it was hit by two hurricanes in quick succession: Matthew, in 2016, and then Florence in 2018.

With those disasters came a rush of federal funds. In August of 2017, almost a year after Matthew, the housing department awarded North Carolina $237 million in recovery grants. The state has drawn down less than $20 million of that money. (A spokeswoman for North Carolina, Bridget Munger, said the state has committed $98 million of that money to specific projects, adding that the $20 million figure “does not reflect the hundreds of projects that are in the planning stage or well underway.”)

“Things were not going very quickly,” said Ms. Hogshead, at the state recovery office. “And then Florence hit.”

[darintino]

  The 80’s teen comedy. Take the R-rated ones off the table. Then ask anyone who did time in junior high and high school during the decade to name their Top Three favorites from the era. The odds are very high two out of three will be a movie John Hughes either wrote and directed, wrote and produced, or just wrote.

His smart and funny scripts didn’t stick with one clique. A John Hughes movie was a party everyone was invited to. All the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, dorks, bloods, wastoids, and dickheads saw their lives reflecting back at them in scenes of hilarious highs and heart breaking lows. Having Hughes at the helm brought the teen comedy some respect.

Turns out, Hughes wanted more than to just entertain. He hoped to educate his audience on issues of strife and inequality. He was no fool, of course.  Hughes knew if not done just right, educational scenes in a teen comedy can come across preachy or too teachy. Either are capable of delivering doses of lethal-level boredom no amount of gratuitous boob shots can bring an audience back from. Putting preachy and teachy together in a teen comedy is guaranteed movie suicide. 

Otherwise called “Pulling A Porky’s 2.”  

Now for how that phrase became shorthand in the land of Hollywood, we’d need to take a tangent starting at PORKY’S – the first teen comedy featuring a scene involving a character putting his junk someplace funky, simultaneously opening the door and raising the bar on raunchy for every flick in the genre since. It’s not even a debate as to how much a certain pastry based franchise owes its box-office life to PORKY’S.

Naturally, the movie was a huge hit. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even John Holmes for that matter, to deduce producers wanted a sequel. And so two years later writer-director Bob Clark brought back the gang from fictional Angel Beach High School for a follow up. Thus, considering its ‘Next Day‘ concept, the returning cast of PORKY’S 2 holds the dubious distinction as The Oldest Looking Teen Movie High School Seniors this side of the BEACH BLANKET BINGO fluff from the 1960’s. 

You’d think Clark would stick to the original’s winning formula and up the ante on the raunchy antics audiences would be back for. Instead, he went in the opposite direction. So far so, he didn’t even bother bringing back Porky, despite the character’s name remaining in the title. Clark wrote a script about the gang defending the school play they’re rehearsing  – Shakespeare’s Mid Summer Night’s Dream – against a new villain – the cartoonish Reverend Flavel and his flock. 

Replacing the type of “sexy hijinks” scenes that made the first movie a hit, we get the gang rooting for their principal as he goes head to head with Reverend Flavel (Bill Wiley, clearly relishing the role) as the two men – prepare yourself, now – read the salacious parts of plays by Shakespeare agains quotes from the Bible as our high school heroes cheer as if at a football game. No, it’s true. See the scene itself – given a much needed tweak or two by our resident movie manipulator, Olivus Stoney.

Porkys grossed north of $112,000,000 against a budget of just 4 to 5 million.

Porky’s 2: The Next Day, tag priced at 7 million, struggled to scrape up $33,000,000.  The sequel proved to be such a damaging burn to the audience, when producers poured practically double the original’s budget into a third movie bringing back bad guy Porky in PORKY’S REVENGE, their attempt at celluloid reconciliation barely brought home the box office bacon of $20,000,000.

That’s how Porky’s 2 – trying to preach and teach in a teen comedy – killed the original’s bright future as a successful franchise. The cautionary tale of Hollywood cautionary tales.

And so…

John Hughes was quite aware of the perils of pulling a Porky’s 2 could have on his impending writing and directing debut, SIXTEEN CANDLES. If he intended to include scenes of educational awareness in his teen comedies, Hughes knew infusing such moments would require something akin to being on an almost subliminal level. So, that’s what he set out to do.

One of the best examples is in WEIRD SCIENCE.

Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science. So many missed opportunities. Damn you, PG-13

An ode to teen-age male wish fulfillment fantasy, Weird Science is John Hughes doing raunchy. Unfortunately it’s PG-13 raunch. Its far-out plot involves two losers – stars Anthony Michael Hall at his geek peak… and the other guy. They build a beautiful woman using cutting edge floppy disk technology, porn magazines, and toy doll. Don’t ask how it works. Besides, when their creation comes to life in the form of smoldering, sexy Kelly LeBrock, things like plot logic tend to take a back seat.

The message put in Weird Science proved Hughes way ahead of his time at identifying a certain form of racial entitlement continuing to permeate society today.  Casting Kelly LeBrock, unfortunately for Hughes, meant the message was missed due to the scene stealing sex appeal the actress generated in just her second movie role. It would remain unseen by the viewing public.

Until now.

Thanks to a new breakthrough in technology here at Tinseltown Takedown, we’re able to bring the subtextual message to the forefront. For the first time, audiences of yesterday & today, can see the message as John Hughes meant for it to be seen.

I know.

As always, you’re welcome. 

REVEALED: Hidden Messages Nestled Gently Yet Firmly Between The T&A Of WEIRD SCIENCE The 80's teen comedy. Take the R-rated ones off the table. Then ask anyone who did time in junior high and high school during the decade to name their Top Three favorites from the era.

[quakerjoe]

THE HUMAN LOVE AFFAIR WITH GODS

“You have known Jesus for years, felt his closeness and love, asked for advice and received it, asked for favours and received them, and you truly felt he was the only person in the world you could completely depend upon. Perhaps there have been times when you have loved Jesus more than you love yourself.

After all that, it must be very hard when you realize all those experiences were only feelings--nothing more. Your brain gave you what you wanted and, if you had been born in Mumbai, your brain would have given you the very same feelings but focused on a different hero, perhaps Vishnu or another god or goddess.

In this human love affair with gods, gods are not the constants, our deceptive and needy brains are the constants. Gods change with time and place.

Human brains remain the same.”

- Bill Flavell

[question-everythinng]

In the bible you’ll find an omniscient god with the morals of an Iron Age chief, the temperament of a spoiled toddler, and the knowledge of the cosmos of someone who has never looked through a telescope.

Bill Flavell

[theonion]

SUN PRAIRIE, WI—Folding the board to funnel a jumbled mess of cards and pieces into the game box, negligent oaf Patrick Flavell reportedly packed away a Monopoly set on Thursday without so much as a thought for future players. “Man, I can’t remember the last time I sat down and played this,” said the mindless slob as he gathered up the other players’ multicolored money and haphazardly tossed the piles into the box, ensuring that the next group of players would have to completely re-sort the bills. “With all the technology we have now, it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be to play an old-fashioned board game.” Reports indicate that hours later, the unthinking doofus—who had swept a trail of muffin crumbs into the box along with a number of unused hotels—discovered he had the top hat piece in his pocket.

[javierpenadea]

"Here’s what’s in the infrastructure bill that Biden will sign today." by BY EMILY COCHRANE, CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE AND ALAN RAPPEPORT via NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3cdLW1g

[automatismoateo]

Take the bible bible as your geography book and you'll miss 99% of the world. Take the bible as your history book and you'll be bottom of the class. Take the bible as your biology book and you'll get no marks at all. Take the bible as your cosmology book and you'll know less than nothing. Take... via /r/atheism

Submitted September 08, 2021 at 09:41PM by thesunmustdie (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3yQzTzT) Take the bible bible as your geography book and you'll miss 99% of the world. Take the bible as your history book and you'll be bottom of the class. Take the bible as your biology book and you'll get no marks at all. Take the bible as your cosmology book and you'll know less than nothing. Take...

... [take] the bible as your medical book and you'll be sued for malpractice. Take the bible as your military ethics book and you'll be sentenced for war crimes. Take the bible as your childcare book and your children will be taken away. Take the bible as your law book and you'll in up in jail. Take The bible as your human rights book and you'll be tried at the Hague. So yes, take the bible, take it as far away as possible and leave it there.

Bill Flavell

I found this a usefully concise quote and hope you do too. Let me anticipate some objections some people might have:

"But the bible isn't supposed to be a science textbook"

It makes claims about reality and those claims are accepted by many people in the world now and throughout history. So just because you now have the secular means to discount these claims doesn't mean a lot of people (who you might claim as (Not True Christians™)) don't.

The quote contains a number of other subjects the bible fails at. It makes me wonder what is it supposed to be about? Like... if it spectacularly fails in science, in geography, in history, in ethics, in morality, in law, etc. what's left for it to succeed in doing?

"Well of course, it was written by an ancient society."

Then what's special about it? Isn't the whole point that its the inspired word of God (God breathed) and that it's all useful for instruction?

"Br@ve, 3dgy, etc."

Grow up. Every idea is subject to criticism (and punchy quotes of criticism) and religion is/should be no exception. Trying to handwave away opposition to it with ad hominem attacks is orders of magnitude more cringe in my opinion. Try to offer actual reasons why you find this quote to be wrong or unhelpful. I will concede it's a little... facile... (for lack of a better word) but it's not wrong.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Q1: Your children are not growing up how you wish. Do you: a) Show good behaviour by example & keep in touch? b) Drown them all and start again?

Q2: Your son offends you. Do you: a) Talk to him and tell him how you feel? b) Kill your grandson?

Q3: Your son delivers newspapers on Sunday. Do you: a) Praise him for his enterprise? b) Stone him to death?

Q4: You'd like to impress your children. Do you: a) Work hard to be a good father & successful at work? b) Arrange to have every first-born in the country killed?

Q5: Your children do not believe what you say. Do you: a) Reason with them and show them evidence? b) Torture them in your basement forever?

[atheistcartoons]

Religion has had its time. We can do better.

[our-umair-mehry-stuff]

By BY CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE from NYT Climate https://ift.tt/2Vc95g1

[quakerjoe]

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION

The resurrection of Jesus is one of the pillars of Christianity. If it didn't happen, Christianity is a lie. If the resurrection is unbelievable, then Christianity is unbelievable.

In this video, the renowned historian and New Testament scholar, Bart D. Ehrman, explains how historical evidence is assessed and the reliability of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If you don't have time to watch the 13-minute video, here is my summary of his arguments.

1. What is good historical evidence?

a) Contemporary (written down at the time of the event by eyewitnesses) b) Many independent sources c) Consistent between sources d) Sources unbiased

2. What are the sources for the resurrection?

The only sources are found in the Bible and they are the gospels of Mathew, Mark Luke, and John.

3. Are the Gospels good evidence?

a) None of the Gospels are contemporary, not even close. The earliest (Mark) was written 35 - 40 years after the event. The latest (John) was written 60 - 65 years later. None of the authors were eyewitnesses. All the Gospels are anonymous--the names were added long after they were written.

b) There are really only two accounts: Mark and John. Matthew and Luke are similar to Mark in vocabulary, grammar, and structure. Also, significant proportions of Matthew and Luke are word-for-word identical to Mark. Consequently, scholars believe Matthew and Luke were copied from Mark and embellished.

c) The Gospels contain dozens of inconsistencies (even the copied Gospels show many inconsistencies).

d) Christians were set on converting people to their new religion. Stories of miracles would have been influential (especially in the 1st century when people more readily accepted such stories than they do today), so it is likely that stories of miracles were used to convert people to Christianity. In other words, the storytellers were biased.

4. The biggest problem of all

Historians try to establish what MOST PROBABLY happened in the past. Miracles are by definition the least probable event. The least probable event cannot ever be the most probable event.

If Jesus was raised from the dead, it would have been a miracle, which is the least probable event. And the only evidence we have is the Gospel accounts which fail every test for good historical evidence.

5. Conclusion

The resurrection cannot be shown to have happened using historical evidence. It can only be believed on faith.

"If you believe in the resurrection, it is for theological reasons... it is not and cannot be based on historical proof." --Bart Ehrman

"This is not rocket science." --Bill Flavell

[tdevansh55]

By BY EMILY COCHRANE, CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE AND ALAN RAPPEPORT from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3lqd82Y

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bill Flavell

Published: Jun 5, 2018

Across the globe and across time, humans have loved and worshipped thousands of gods. But, if one god was real and all the rest fake, we would know. Consider three possible benefits of believing in a god:

1) PRAYER Believers in fake gods would be constantly complaining their prayers are never answered whilst believers in a real god would be jubilant over their amazing success rate.

2) COMMUNION Believers in a fake god would bemoan the fact that they never feel the presence of their god whilst believers in a real god would talk to their god daily and be certain of it.

3) GUIDANCE Believers in a fake god would ask their god for advice yet still make many bad decisions whilst believers in a real god would find their god deftly guiding them through life’s obstacles.

It would be obvious which gods were real, and obvious that the others were not. But, here is the interesting thing, it is NOT obvious. Religious people all report these benefits whichever god they worship. It seems that all gods work equally well!

We have to conclude that, either there are thousands of real gods, or there are none. But since gods are so different, and are contradictory in many ways, it is impossible that all gods could be real. So we can rule out the option that all gods are real, and we are left with only one option–none are real.

The fact that all gods work equally well is clear evidence that they are all  equally imaginary. The reported benefits of answered prayers, communion and guidance could be nothing more than imagination with a large dose of confirmation bias.

Is there any other reasonable conclusion?