High-res latimes: Atheist teen speaks out, lands $44,000 scholarship: A Rhode Island teen is learning that it pays to deny the existence of God: Prominent atheists plan to present Jessica Ahlquist with a scholarship of at least $44,000 — and possibly more. It seems they were impressed with the way Ahlquist, 16, handled herself amid a roiling controversy that began in July 2010, when she complained about a prayer banner hanging in the auditorium at Cranston High School West that referred to “Our Heavenly Father.” School authorities brushed off her complaint, saying the banner was artistic and historic, as it had been hanging there for decades. Ahlquist later joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit alleging that the banner made her feel “ostracized and out of place.” After much legal wrangling, a court ruled that the banner needed to be removed — and an uproar ensued. Photo: Jessica Ahlquist, top center, sits amid supporters during a school committee meeting at Cranston High School in Cranston, R.I. Credit: Stephan Savoia / Associated Press

latimes:

Atheist teen speaks out, lands $44,000 scholarship:

A Rhode Island teen is learning that it pays to deny the existence of God: Prominent atheists plan to present Jessica Ahlquist with a scholarship of at least $44,000 — and possibly more.

It seems they were impressed with the way Ahlquist, 16, handled herself amid a roiling controversy that began in July 2010, when she complained about a prayer banner hanging in the auditorium at Cranston High School West that referred to “Our Heavenly Father.”

School authorities brushed off her complaint, saying the banner was artistic and historic, as it had been hanging there for decades. Ahlquist later joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit alleging that the banner made her feel “ostracized and out of place.”

After much legal wrangling, a court ruled that the banner needed to be removed — and an uproar ensued.

Photo: Jessica Ahlquist, top center, sits amid supporters during a school committee meeting at Cranston High School in Cranston, R.I. Credit: Stephan Savoia / Associated Press

“It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists.”

Gandhi (via how-hitchens-poisons-everything)

Yeah, I just want to point out that atheists aren’t fighting against something that they don’t believe exists. Atheists aren’t defying God any more than they’re pissing off unicorns and leprechauns.

What atheists are fighting against are the very real, very damaging, very proveable repercussions of genuine belief in just such a cruel, hateful, misogynistic, homophobic, genocidal, fictitious invention.

I don’t think that’s a surprising thing for an intelligent person to do at all.

(via cocknbull)

Thank you, cocknbull. :)

(via apoplecticskeptic)

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Christopher Hitchens destroys David Berlinski’s assertion that the Nazi party was Darwinistic or in anyway secular.  

“What about Fraulein Fritzl in Austria? Whose father kept her in a dungeon where she didn’t see daylight for 24 years… and came down most nights to rape and sodomize her, often in front of the children who were the product of the previous attacks and offenses….imagine how she must have begged. Imagine how she must have pleaded. Imagine for how long. Imagine how she must have prayed every day, how she must have beseeched heaven. Imagine for 24 hours and no answer at all, nothing. Nothing! Imagine how those children must have felt. Now you say it’s all right that she went through that because she’ll get a better deal in another life? I have to ask you if you can be morally or ethically serious and postulate such a question. No, that had to happen and Heaven did watch it with indifference because it knows that score will later on be settled, so it’s well worth her going through it, she’ll have a better time next time. I don’t see how you can look anyone—ANYONE—in the face or live with yourself and say anything so hideously, wickedly immoral as that, or even imply it.”

Christopher Hitchens (via amitheonlysaneone)

(via cocknbull)

High-res To the consternation of many of my fellow atheists, I often argue that the concept of “atheism” is unnecessary and misleading. […] But there is another way to see the problem with the concept of “atheism.” Consider [Ludwig] Wittgenstein’s clever disparagement of Freud’s notion of the unconscious: Imagine a language in which, instead of saying ‘I found nobody in the room’ one said, ‘I found Mr. Nobody in the room.’ Imagine the philosophical problems that would arise out of such a convention. (The Blue Book p, 69) “Atheism” is another version of Wittgenstein’s Mr. Nobody. When in the presence of Christianity, it’s Mr. Sorry-but-I-won’t-be-in-church-on-Sunday.  Being Mr. Nobody : Sam Harris

To the consternation of many of my fellow atheists, I often argue that the concept of “atheism” is unnecessary and misleading.

[…]

But there is another way to see the problem with the concept of “atheism.” Consider [Ludwig] Wittgenstein’s clever disparagement of Freud’s notion of the unconscious:

Imagine a language in which, instead of saying ‘I found nobody in the room’ one said, ‘I found Mr. Nobody in the room.’ Imagine the philosophical problems that would arise out of such a convention. (The Blue Book p, 69)

“Atheism” is another version of Wittgenstein’s Mr. Nobody. When in the presence of Christianity, it’s Mr. Sorry-but-I-won’t-be-in-church-on-Sunday.

 Being Mr. Nobody : Sam Harris