Standard blog post (Can't think of a better title)...

Damn,

With every passing day I feel an even greater urge to quit Biology. Seriously, we're doing coursework for A2 now. Fuck me, I'm lagging behind. Only main problem is that I dont want to upset the teachers by quitting (And I know I will), as they have done so much for me. I also need to either find my old textbook, or buy a new one. I cant win, I can picture their faces now...
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I also need to find some "Justification" for my existance, if I'm putting that right. I dont actually like the idea of an absence of a God, believe me, and I'm pretty sure that I'll remain athiest, or agnostic at the most thiest, for the rest of my life. Because of this, I feel a bit bummed that its all over when you die. However, Bill Hicks kind of helped me with a quote:

"...all matter is mearly energy condensed through a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively..."

Hopefully that is true. The idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed is a nice thought as well. Then again, Will told me a theory that in the end, the universe will be full of black holes, so no "Big crunch" or new big bang. I hope thats not true.

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I may also take up a new interest in subject, or at least become a layman in it. I may post a picture of Hubble's "Deep Space" photo, beautiful.

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Lastly, I've noticed I've gained weight. Put bluntly, this sucks.

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Anyway, toodles...

My birthday aftermath...

Oh, and I donated blood as well. Ouch...

Damn, I love my birthdays (Believe the hype)...

Tomorrow, on the 21st of June, I shall be 17. I'm fairly young compared to everyone else in my year, but still, there is a reason as to why I'm posting this thread before my birthday, and thats because I need to inform everyone that my birthdays kick the crap out of everyone else's birthday.

Seriously, Barham's birthday consisted of him telling us once that it was his birthda7y, and how he (Correct me if I'm wrong) got money to waste on driving lessons.

Leo got an Ipod.

Will refused a cake on his birthday, which me and Albert slaughtered.

Me, well, this is what I expect to happen tomorrow:

1. I wake up to a mountain of "Pop Tarts" and a nice coffee. I rip open the cards, take the money and laugh.
2. My family/friends phone me up telling me about how I've turned into a man. Joe is pleased.
   
3. I open some presents. A small hamster is offered to me. I accept and eat the hamster.
4. I make sure I'm not gaining weight.
5. I get into a limo and go into my form room...
6. Where I see Dan M wearing a bandana and reflective sunglasses carrying speakers. There is a large cake in the middle of the room. Everyone yells "SURPRISE!". Suddenly, "Ace of Spades" booms from the speakers. Strippers burst out the cake, everyone cheers. We party hard for the next couple of minutes, swigging whiskey, taking recreational drugs, trash the place and pass out.
7. We walk out the classroom, people cheering me on. I come across my friends, who give me many presents. Joe is pleased.
8. I guilt the poor ones who cant afford presents to buy me lunch. Once again, this pleases Joe.
9. I walk home, some homeless man gives me his money for the day. I walk on.
10. Once I arrive home, I see a massive banquit and party. Theres a vomitarian in the other room, and Steve and Albert seem to be playing Russian roulet. I open my presents, Sparky gets pregnent, we all cheer, and I go to bed...

And thats how I got my groove back.
The end...

Why I'm angry and upset at the following:

Hello all,

The main reason I’m posting this article is mainly to explain probable reasons for my behaviour, and to issue an apology to certain people. I know that some of my views would probably be considered offensive, to quite a few people, some of whom are my friends. They are only my views, and I do not wish harm upon the average Christian/Jew/Muslim etc.

So here it is:

I’m sorry if I have caused offence. I would like to explain myself:

By the way, this is a really long post. The blue text is the main reason. Skip past it if you want to, I have one or two new things further down as well…

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Perhaps I should explain my background with religion…

I was bought up in a fairly atheist household. I was not baptised, as my parents decided it was up to me whether or not I became religious. From a young age, I was fairly critical of religion. Despite the fact it was seen as a joke between me and my few friends at school, I still hated the Catholic church’s views on homosexuality. I had also heard of the actions taken by the Pope and religious extremists, and liked to think of organised religion as “For silly and mean people”.

However, I still believed in the Christian God, mainly because of all the churches in Croydon, and how if so many people believe in this bloke in the sky, it had to be true. I lived a Godless lifestyle, although when asked, I would confirm his existence.
This would continue up to around late year 10 to early year 11.

After that, I started to become more “Jesus” orientated. I started to pray, every day every night before bed. I was determined to pray at least once every day, and I felt very uncomfortable when I didn’t (Although the cause of this was unknown at the time, I believe this could have been due to obsessive compulsive disorder). I still had a very liberal view of Christianity though, especially my views on gay rights and other religion. The first time I spoke properly of it was in a P.E lesson in year 11.
I asked David if he believed in God. Barham responded with a no, and that if a God did exist, he would hate “The Bastard”. I got offended by this, and wondered why he would act in such a “Spiritually ignorant” way…

Around this point, I started getting into the ideas of near death experiences. I went onto many NDE sites, and soon developed a small obsession with the (Fraud) Reiki healer, Tiffany Snow. I loved the idea though. Who wouldn’t? The idea of dying, and then seeing a light made out of love, made me feel amazing, special etc.

In February 2005, I joined a forum called “TheUndertaking”. It was a forum with a lot of (nerdy) people from my school. I first made my “Theist debut” (Comfirming myself as a theist) on a thread about the 2004 Tsunami. I saw David’s comments on there as “Unloving”, “Blasphemous” and “Ignorant”, and so I posted a fairly obnoxious post saying how he was “wrong” and such. I was high on the idea that this is what God wanted me to do, so I was pretty smug.
Dave responded with a fairly harsh (At the time), but well explained post telling me why I was wrong. Looking back on his “Cretin” remark, it made me slightly upset that this is what people thought of me, and how awful an impression I had made to everyone.

I was still high on new age Christianity right up to around October. At this point, I had got full blown OCD, and it was dominating my life. It want that bad, because I had Jesus to turn to, if you know what I mean, and I guessed I would just have to wait and let it go away. I was wrong.

During the holidays in October 2005, a series of events would happen that would make my life take a turn to the worse. A member of our family started preaching to me, my Dad and Jenny, about the return of Jesus, the tribulation, Revelations and such. This was in the bible, so it had to be true, but I just couldn’t believe it. There went my religious beliefs. At my Grandparents house, I searched for more information on “The rapture”, and “The tribulation”. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes…

I got the basics of the Tribulation, and learnt a bit more about this Antichrist fellow, but I didn’t know how it was supposed to end. I thought it would be a happy ending for all of us, that love would triumph, and evil will be destroyed. I heard a bit from my family, but they hadn’t told me bluntly. I didn’t know what I was in for. On the 30th of October 2005, on my own, in my bedroom, I read Revelations for the first time…

The moment I finished Revelations, I stood up, calmly placed the Bible on my shelf, rested my head against the pillow, looked up at the ceiling, and for about half an hour, went into a vegetative state. I felt sick. Thinking about this, this was one of the worst events of my life, and I can recall almost every detail of it. I suddenly felt really heavy, and slowly got up to go for a drink of water. When you’re extremely stressed, you basically go blank, feel very tired, and yes, become very sick.

I basically realised that I had to get about three quarters of my friends and family to “Submit to Christ”, or they would face eternal hellfire for being “The unbelievers”. This was a horrific and very hard task to do, as most of my loved ones were strong atheists, or new age. I remember on the 31st of October, Halloween, running up to my church, opening the doors, turning the lights on the right side of the building, and I just dropped to my knees, and screamed/prayed. I remember tears running down my face, I was sobbing like mad, and I just kept asking God to forgive them for being atheists. I begged God that if I could make my Dad or other parent a believer, I would evangelise for the rest of my life. I ran home, and calling my Dad, asked for them to pick me up.

I decided that if I could get my Dad and Step-Mum (Or second Mum, the preferred name) to become Christian, it could get Mum to become a believer as well, creating a triple whammy. From then on, I would try to convert siblings and friends. I remember crying half the time at my Dad’s home. I just didn’t have the courage to tell my family that I had to convert them to Christianity or they would be “Cast in the Lake of Fire”.

I also had the need to pray and “Praise” God every 30-60 minutes. This was bought over by OCD. I also started undergoing some new changes.
I started becoming more right wing, and I had become unbearably homophobic. Around this time, I developed a huge avoidance to gays, and if I did have to be with them, I felt the need to talk to them about how great Christianity was. I was scared of the idea of having to preach to friends, as I was still very conscious about my reputation, and I would be scared about what would happen if David, Steve, Will, Albert, Jess (David’s girlfriend and a regular poster/mod on TheUndertaking), so, you know, huge amounts of stress.

Over a couple of months, I had shed some OCD, but it was still fairly bad, and I was still worried about the status of my loved ones. Eventually, I spoke to a Judaistic follower, who showed me the contradictions in the New Testament and Revelations. This was around March, and I quickly developed my new senses as a follower of Judaism. I called myself a “Son of Noah”, and started to become a bit more liberal, although not much.

This was short lived however, and in the craziest moment of my experiences as a theist, I became a follower of Islam for a weekend. This was one crazy motherfucker of a weekend, and one of the lowest points in this period. It gave me a Calvinistic viewpoint, the idea that we’ll be worshipping God for the rest of eternity (Providing we’re not in Hell for doing something that’ll piss Allah off, such as not worshipping him 5 times a day). At this point, I received a speech by my Dad and “Second-Mum” on why I shouldn’t be religious. It worked kind of, and when I got back to Ticehurst, I got rid of Islam, and adopted the new age practices.

It was quite relaxing at first, and I had gone back to my old views on homosexuality and such. I also developed my whole beliefs around Edgar Cayce, the supposed psychic. This was very short lived though.

And then out of the blue, one night, I was on Wikipedia, looking up techniques used by false psychics to get money of unsuspecting people, and there it was, “Edgar Cayce was often accused of Shotgunning and cold reading”. The moment I read that, the moment I turned an atheist.

So, you can see, I have a huge dislike of religion. When I mean that, I hate Christianity/Judaism/Islam a lot. This doesn’t mean, that I hate Christians, Jews and, Muslims. Far from it, I have many friends and family who believe in God, and we’re still getting along.

I am sorry if I do offend anyone on here, but these are just my opinions and views.

Anyway, to the next piece of this blog…

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Right, I know there is a very small chance of her actually seeing this, but if you are looking at this blog, Ania Jack, then fuck you, piss off, and stop acting like such a fucking bitch.

With the very rare exception, every time I have ever spoken to you online, you should respond with “Fuck off” or “Go away Lynch”. Every time I tried speaking to you, I got a hostile response, no matter how friendly I was trying to be. I was just trying to be a nice person, and as soon as I said hi, I would be told to go away, or at least be spoken to in a uncaring manner so. You hurt my feelings really badly.

And with that in mind, there is no reason why I should keep you as a contact and/or talk to you…

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Also, yes I know I’ve changed my official picture, but you know, I love googly eyes at the moment, they look so great…

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Barham, if you’re reading this, perhaps we should discuss the whole “Team Atheist” comics more, get the idea circulating around. Hopefully the A+ coursework will go down well…

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Me and David have also got some funny responses from the love of Tiffany Snow and “Billy Clark”. Ask us if you want to know what they say, but the fact they “Come in love”, have degrees in psychology (Controlling of masses “:-p”) and charge people for money for claiming that they can heal you… Billy Clark looks funny.

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Anyway, toodles guys, I shall return tomorrow to see how many comments I’ve got ( Its like a new Myspace for me).

Toodles…

Answers in Genesis, Team Athiest, and the FMA...

Answers in Genisis

I've actually been very interested in creationism and science. I've always liked how they can make it seem as if dinosaurs never existed, and tried to explain how Genesis can be explained with these little pseudo-answers.

I went on a site called "Answers in Genesis", a website which tries to use science to support the young Earth argument. Its a bit of a rofl, and some of the things sounded a little made up.

Apparently, this incidents happened in real life:

"A young man approached me at a seminar and stated, ‘Well, I still believe in the big bang, and that we arrived here by chance random processes. I don’t believe in God.’ I answered him, ‘Well, then obviously your brain, and your thought processes, are also the product of randomness. So you don’t know whether it evolved the right way, or even what right would mean in that context. Young man, you don’t know if you’re making correct statements or even whether you’re asking me the right questions.’

The young man looked at me and blurted out, ‘What was that book you recommended?’"

Now why would a man go up to someone and without saying anything, just blurt that out?
Seriously, how does that story not look made up?

Ok, now, heres the other story:

"On another occasion, a man came to me after a seminar and said, ‘Actually, I’m an atheist. Because I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in absolutes, so I recognize that I can’t even be sure of reality.’ I responded, ‘Then how do you know you’re really here making this statement?’ ‘Good point,’ he replied. ‘What point?’ I asked. The man looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Maybe I should go home.’ I stated, ‘Maybe it won’t be there.’ ‘Good point,’ the man said. ‘What point?’ I replied."

Again, why would someone just blurt that out to a religious person? Never once during my times as a religious person did David or Olix come up to me and say:
"I am an athiest. I do not believe in God as God cannot do everything (See Omnipotence paradox). Because of this, I am unsure of what to make of life"

They also seem to dig the whole "Family values" thing, which is pretty awful.
I noticed a very hilarious article on "The root of all evil" by Richard Dawkins. You can guess what happens. It is worth a look though
www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0123root_dawkins.asp.

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Team Athiest

I'm actually going to start a comic/flash cartoon (Not sure how it'll be presented) about a team of athiests going round like a special forces team defeating these religious fundamentalists and such.
If you would like to know more, then send me an email at josephhq@msn.com, or contact me on IM.

I could do with a writer/artist mind...

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Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA)

Yeah, I know I'm getting a bit too involved with this religion and America thing, but I would like to point out a little gem of a quote from Wikipedia concerning the activities of the White House and the proposed ban on gay marrige in the Federal marriage amendment:

"Early in January of 2005, Bush told the Washington Post that although he still supported the amendment, he would not lobby heavily for the passage because he believed that until a federal court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, there would not be enough votes for passage.

On January 25, 2005, according to the New York Times, Bush told a privately invited group of African-American community and religious leaders that he remained committed to amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. [4] Over the course of the next two days, it was revealed by the Washington Post and USA Today that the Bush Administration had paid columnists to promote its views on marriage. The Department of Health and Human Services paid Maggie Gallagher $21,500, and Mike McManus $49,000, to write syndicated news columns endorsing the FMA. [5] [6] Additionally, Gallagher also received $20,000 in 2002 and 2003 to write a report on government initiatives to strengthen marriage. McManus leads a group called Marriage Savers that works with other organizations to promote marriage as defined between a man and a woman.

Vice President Dick Cheney (whose daughter Mary Cheney is lesbian) has declined to endorse or condemn the FMA, maintaining that constitutional amendments are an issue for the states."

Wow, thats depressing...

Anyway, toodles for now. Sorry if I'm laying into religion, it can be irritating, but I still have a lot of anger still...

But yeah, toodles...

Photo comparing...

Anyway...


Doing a little experiment to see how awesome I look when I have my photo taken.
Just to get rid of any bias that could occur from these photos, I will not edit them.

I will have three photos uploaded:

1. A random photo of myself
2. One of those teenage "joke photos"
3. The Myspace photo

Yeah, I do know this is extremily dodgy, and you know, nothing says "I'm worried about my appearance" than posting loads of pictures up on your blog and waiting for the comments to roll on in ("Aw, you're not that ugly Joe" and such).

Anyway, here we go...
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A random photo of myself

Fuck, when did I beat Barham in terms of sexyness? Whos betting that could scar a child with that photo? This is the type of photo which makes you drop to your knees and thank God you're a woman... Or gay.

Style: 10/10
Sexyness: 10/10
Scaryness: 10/10
Coolness:10/10
Anti Myspaceness: 10/10

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One of those teenage "joke photos"

Reminds me of how those teenagers try to make themselves funnier (Like me) by doing these sorts of expressions. You can still see that I'm the one holding the camera, which is something that really irritates at the moment. If your camera can do a timed shot, then please use it. It gives you one more hand to mess around with...


Style: 7/10
Sexyness: 10/10 (It is me after all)
Scaryness: 4/10
Coolness: 6/10
Anti Myspaceness: 5/10

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The Myspace photo

Shit! I've just merged in with those 50,000,000 Myspace users. He needs a cheeky smile on his face, brighten the place up for one fucking day. Any suggestions? Maybe if parents held the camera for the people taking their photo, it would give them a little more "style".

Style: 0/10
Sexyness: 10/10 (It is me, I can't be hard on myself)
Scaryness: 7/10
Coolness: 0/10
Anti Myspaceness: 0/10

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Just so you know, I didn't want people to call me emo because of my hair. I've usually tried keeping it fairly long pretty much since the beginning of my secondary school years. Anyway, back to work, I may need to limit how many entries I do per day/week.

Anyway, toodles...

Albert and Sir Peter Vardy...

By the way, this is a little comic I used to work on.. I called it "The wonderful (Mis)adventures of Albert Morvay".

It would always revolve around my good friend Albert meeting his horrific end in each comic, often in front of scarred school children. It makes it funnier, eh?

Anyway, I noticed a little more activity about the Sir Peter Vardy's Emmanuel Schools Foundation going around than usual. For those who dont know about this, the Sir Peter Vardy's Emmanuel Schools Foundation consists of three different schools set up in Doncaster, Gateshead and Middlesbrough, started up by the millionaire car dealer Sir Peter Vardy, a devote evangellical Christian.

It has been in the media quite a few times, often for negative reasons. Parents who have had children go to the schools had noticed that the school had an exclusion rate ten times the national average. Theres also been rumours of the schools doing this mainly to get rid of the "slower" students. If you look at the school's GCSE results, and the fact that Emmanuel College has had 97% of pupils gain five GCSEs at A*-C, it does seem a little fishy.

Children at these schools often get in trouble for minor things, say, not having a Bible in their bag (I've heard at one point it was two), smoking (One boy was expelled for smoking), getting a kiss from your "other half", walking down the wrong corridor (You cant make this stuff up, oh wait, suppose you can) and, well, Rampaging red hot homosexual love.

I've visited the schoo'ls website, seems pretty obnoxious. They've launched a minor assault on a Channel 4 documentry involving them, saying that the presenter was twisting facts to come to his own conclusions... Actually, if you watched it, you would have seen two hundred parents complaining why their children are getting so screwed at school.

I could go on more, but I need to get back to work. The links at the bottom should give you more information, but for now, toodle oooo...

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,,1785743,00.html- The full story.

http://www.emmanuel-schools.org.uk/index.htm- The school (Man, those girls look hot).

Oh, and a very suspiciously similar school/story:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/studentsrevoltassixthformcollege.html

Is there any way I can get this blog noticed? Maybe by doing something shocking, I dont know...

Anyway, toodles...

Additional stuff to note (Oh, and my official picture)...

Pretty sweet picture, no?

Additional notes:

Oh, and being as I would like to give the impression that I am a Pseudo-Intellectual, I need to start posting current events as shown:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5044428

Finally, I need to do an "About me" section, here goes:


Key words that mean a lot to me (Excluding human family members) in no real order:

* Metallica
* Jazz (The coolest dog on Earth)
* Sparky
* Internet
* Bill Hicks
* Bill Bailly
* Richard Dawkins
* NSS
* "Click to donate sites"
* Steve
* Will
* Albert
* Dave B (Not that anyone cares about who "Dave B" and "Will" are)
* Leo
* "Love all the people"
* "The Misadventures of Albert"
* Taunting + Phil
* Schnoof
* Jazzfish
* Jazzwick
* Vikings
* Keeping healthy
* "Customisation"
* Psychology
* Sci-fi
* Iain M Banks,


Take care all...

Oh, and if it would be ok, please comment, I dont like the idea of just talking to myself...

So this is blogging....

Hmm,

I used to have a blog before, but it kind of failed because I didn't have the effort to keep it updated.
I also "mumbeled" too much, and I didn't really have a point to make. I'll try and make an effort...

For those who actually care about what I have to say, I would like you to help me make my blog better, no idea how, but it would be quite nice if you helped me out.

Anyway, my name is Joseph Lynch. I currently reside in a pretty shabby village lurking around England. I attend Sixth form, and at time of writing, am doing Psychology, Biology, A+, English retake and Citizenship, although I doubt I will be able to make it into the next year of sixth form, especially the way I'm going.

I have two wonderful families, which consist of my Mum's family and my Dad's family.

I have five siblings, two cats (Named Mustard and Muesli) and two dogs, Jazz and Sparky (The former is pretty much worshiped)

I would consider myself of low academic intelligence and creative IQ, although thats never stopped me taking a shot before.

At the time of writing, I would consider myself secular. I am currently planning on joining the National Secular Society, and have a mild feeling of admeration toward Richard Dawkins.
I believe that humans screw up, its only natural. We're not evil, just a little bit stupid.

I believe that athiesm is a good path to follow. Quite a few actions by believers of a religion would be doing it to please a God or Diety, whilst athiests do it because they believe it is morally right (That, or for personal gain, I dont know).

Lastly, I believe the world would be a better place if we followed Bill Hicks. He might seem a little shocking at first, but as he said, "Listen to the message, not the words".

Anyway, hope to be posting here many times.