I just had the chance to listen to the new Syqnys album. I was surprised to see I could listen to the whole thing free online. That’s smart, it made me buy it. His messages we’re on point. He said lots that made me think, and lots that made me want to go back and hear it a second time. Syqnys once wrote a song called “I am Rational Response Squad.”
Syqnys had all kinds of original thought in his album, which usually makes it one of those albums that you can listen to over and over. You should check it out, listen to it… then buy a hard copy for $10, once you buy the hardcopy you get the download for free. He also allows individual downloads for $1. I told Syqnys that my readers would want to know more, so I asked him a few questions and here is what he had to say:
What is the main theme of your new album?
Syqnys: The album is called “Hypatia’s Reign, which is a reference to the fourth century philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who was brutally murdered by a Christian mob for reasons that mainly had to do with her ungodliness and general lack of docility. This album represents the hope the secular community has for an era where rationality and reason dominate our public discourse. Where religion and other “conversation stoppers” have become as antiquated as alchemy is to modern medicine. “Hypatia’s Reign” is what the “Age of Enlightenment” was supposed to be.
By no means is the era a reality at this moment, but that is the point; it should be! It would be the ultimate historical irony, or rather justice, if the image of Hypatia came to represent the “Death” of unreason. The following line from the intro song sums up the idea perfectly, “Welcome to the Reign/come and feel the pain/ of the brilliant woman who was persecuted then slain/cut up into pieces by the followers of Jesus now the flames of ignorance will drown in her rain.” The album is also a reflection on my daughter Hypatia, who was still born nearly four years ago.
What do you hope the audience will take away from this album?
Syqnys: First and foremost I want people to really dig the music. If you are a fan of rap music already, there is no doubt in my mind you will appreciate this album. I’m not a conceded person at all, but I can rap my ass off, man. I try to be as creative and tricky with my word play as possible. With every song I want to say something that will either keep you on your toes, surprise you, impress you or simply plant the seed of a new idea, or even to validate something you’ve thought before, but never really had someone clarify it or express it in a way that left you confident that you were right about it the whole time. I’ve had this same experience reading Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and I hope I can have the same effect through music. Even if you’re not a fan of rap, you’ll find something on this album that will leave an impression. I’m willing to bet I can change the minds of a few anti-rap people out there.
What motivates you to speak out?
Syqnys: All I do is speak out, whether it’s with music, writing or just in conversations. Before I even knew what the hell I was talking about, I felt there were some serious flaws in what many of my peers and role models believed in and promoted. I remember debating my creationist friends about evolution and not knowing “shit about fuck” (as Robin Williams so eloquently puts it), but I KNEW they knew even less “Shit” about “Fuck”. All you have to do to figure out what motivates people like Brian and myself to speak out, especially on religion/atheism, is listen to ten minutes of Kent Hovind, Dinesh D’Souza or even the nuts of right-wing talk radio and you’ll understand perfectly what motivates us. Not to mention the religious extremist (actually their just the ones who take their holy texts seriously) of all stripes. People who don’t pay much attention to these issues can brush these lunatics off with a laugh… but they scare the shit out of me!
If you’re interested in Hypatia you can purchase Brian Trent‘s book at Amazon about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria.
Dear Fellow Atheists, Secular Humanists, Freethinkers and other Nontheists,
Why is it that we don’t see many Christian fundamentalists or Tea Partiers taking part in Occupy? Because of an alliance that began in the 70s. Back then, corporations wanted more of a voice and religious Americans needed more cash. The result was the “Moral Majority.” This 40-year alliance explains why religious right wingers, who claim to be moral and pro-family, vote with Tea Partiers against help for families and the working class – after all, we can’t afford all that and letting corporations off the hook in paying taxes.
Luckily the number of fed-up people has grown about as fast as a CEO’s annual bonus and we now have the power to cut the corporate influence that has infested our politics. Since six mega-corporations now control much of our prime time news flow (see Who Owns the Media?), mainstream media hasn’t been covering Occupy too accurately, to put it nicely.
And it’s not just FOX. The rest of corporate media minimizes the message by focusing on clashes, using words like “terrorism” and the “destruction and violence” that supposedly accompany “anticapitalist demonstrations.” With the Oakland fiasco, the networks covered the police brutality but played down the message. That night ABC first treated us to a story about Bernie Madoff’s wife. Only after did they show footage of tear gas flashing through a rose-colored fog, a symphony of yells, shouts, cries and screams in accompaniment. ABC punctuated its coverage by citing an unidentified poll showing the Movement’s “unpopularity.” A fact check, however, revealed the opposite – a thumbs up from the masses. The next day they completely ignored a meeting protesters had with Tea Party kingpin, John Boehner.
Other ways the anti-corporate message is diminished is by lowballing. Many local news channels claimed NYC had only a 1,500-2,000 protesters, while non-corporate news sources gave figures of over 20,000.
Local coverage mimics national coverage in painting this movement in unpalatable terms, utilizing words like “chaotic,” “anarchistic” and having “no common purpose.” I don’t know where the news crew was, but in the protest I took part in all one had to do is glance at the sea of signs to notice that the message was getting corporations to pay their share of taxes and take responsibility for the environment.
Then there’s unabashed neglect. A FAIR report noted that during the initial protests, only CNN briefly mentioned it. On his TV show (9/21/11), Keith Olberman said: “So five days … protesting corporate control of the economy, and you haven’t heard a word about it on the news?” He later remarked, “If that’s a Tea Party protest in front of Wall Street … it’s the lead story on every network newscast.”
Moral: Conservatives calling the media liberal is like Madoff calling his investors savvy. To get the whole story on the corporate social responsibility movement, supplement your news with independent news like AlterNet, truthout, OpEdNews, NPRor foreign news. Progressive non-corporate sources will also help you keep an eye on the Religious Right Wing and the Tea Partiers, or try People for the American Wayand the Center for Inquiry. For info on how your senators voted with respect to secular values, see the Secular Coalition’s Secular Scorecard.
Keep on protestin’
Emily Paine
References:
FAIR Activism Update: Some Breaks in the Blackout of Wall Street Protests
Whitewashing the Blackout of Occupy Wall Street
What if the Tea Party Occupied Wall Street? Corporate media skip anti-corporate protests
4 Polls That Show Occupy Wall Street is Just Getting Started
CNN’s Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street
The above letter was sent to me by email and posted here with permission from Emily.
Dr. Jerry Coyne is drawing lots of internet attention because of the events that transpired around his debate on October 12 at the University of Kentucky. Coyne debated John Haught a Catholic from Georgetown University.
What makes this event special? Apparently both parties agreed to videotape the event well in advance of the event. However after the event Dr. Coyne receives a correspondence from Dr. John Rabel (Coordinator of the debate) that John Haught didn’t want the video to be released. They agreed to release it before the event and therefore Rabel obviously couldn’t honor this request. Well Dr. John Rabel of the Gaines Center for Humanities agreed to not allow posting of the video because they didn’t get permission from Haught in advance to post the video. Someone correct me if my timeline is wrong.
Well what was that? Previous videos in this series with John Haught have been posted, Dr. Coyne knows as he studied them to prepare for the event in which Haught apparently came off as unpolished. Did Haught think this appearance was so bad it was worth censoring? Why didn’t he know there would be an annoying internet backlash? Slews of e-mailers flooded Haught and Rabel with e-mail over the last few days with claims of cowardice. Legal action has been threatened against Dr. Jerry Coyne for antagonizing all of this.
Of course Haught and Rabel are fully to blame. Do atheists really come off to Christian leaders like they can just roll over us and we’ll shut up? Sorry Haught, we wont just go away. We all want to see the arguments that you and Coyne made. In fact, now we want to see it more. Before we wouldn’t have cared. You drew our attention to it. You drew our attention to it just like Kent Hovind did when he sent in false copyright claims against youtube atheists. If you wanted it to be something that would just go away, something that you didn’t become known for then it is you John Haught that should have slowly and quietly walked away and given Dr. Jerry Coyne his copy of the tape.
Kudos to you Dr. Jerry Coyne for not letting this issue die. Might I suggest everyone head over to Amazon and buy your excellent book “Why Evolution is True.”
If you decide to write Rabel or Haught please remember to be nice.
UPDATE: We now have reason to believe that the video will be released. Haught changed his tune after the internet backlash. We still await the video.
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Religion creates another atrocity, god is great, eh? Listen Muslims and Christians… stop the fighting. You’re both wrong, it’s time to act like rational grown-ups and throw off your archaic belief system, you are destroying civilization, and will continue to do so until we’re gone. Abandon your superstitious nonsense, and evolve already! Ask yourself, what solid proof to you have to believe in your God. If what you have is a holy book, remind yourself that hundreds of holy books exist for hundreds of gods, and you don’t believe in any of them, so obviously a holy book is not sufficient proof.
Throw off your superstitious nonsense, and embrace things you know exist like humans for example. Make no mistake, today millions of folks around the world who have no belief in a god are sad for the people who were affected by this needless loss of life, just as we’ve been sad about all the other atrocities committed in the name of religion throughout the ages. Our thoughts are with the billions who have been negatively affected by religion since the dawn of time, and always are. In fact my life is dedicated to ensuring these sorts of things don’t continue to happen, you can start by breaking the cycle… throw religion off today!
We’ve restored the content on both the old Way of the Master watchdog site, and Ask The Atheist.
I’m currently looking for people that are writing articles, have written articles, or are willing to write articles exposing Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, Todd Friehl and any of the other loons that work with the Way of the Master organization. That site had been taken down quite some time ago, and is now available here: Way of the Master Watchdog
The OLD Ask The Atheist site is now in archive format only attached to our site as a subdomain: http://asktheatheist.rationalresponders.com
You can log in to both of the above sites to post a comment with your RRS login and password.
If you’re interested in being a thorn in the side of the WOTM team (seriously it’s easy, it just takes a little time and energy) please let me know. The best way to let me know is to read a few of the posts on the Way of the Master Watchdog and get a vibe of what we were trying to achieve, and to submit a story to me that you think is worthy of posting. I’m currently in need of a few good stories involving Ray Comforts destruction of “The Origin of Species.” So if you’re interested in coming up with a post or two per month about the current whereabouts of the con-men at Way of the Master, let me know.
Oh… and if you want to check out the current form of Ask the Atheist it’s available here.
