Hence, I have decided to refocus my efforts on my book and music projects. This blog and my sexy Bible readings have in reality been a huge distraction from these projects, and have delayed them considerably. The thing is, I really wanted to keep engaging with my fans on the internet, as I really enjoy it, and you’ve been so incredibly supportive of me. I may not have the most fans of any model, but I think I have the best fans—I don’t think any other model’s blog can compare with the level of discourse here. But the fact of the matter is, if I can make my outside projects successful, it will eventually mean I will be able to devote much more time to my internet activities than I can now. But to get there, I have to wind them back for now.

I probably won’t be able to stop myself posting articles here every now and again, as there’s just so much I want to say about what’s going on in the world, and I will continue to respond to everyone’s comments. But my pace of posting will probably slow down; indeed, you’ve probably noticed that it already has to a degree. I have every intention of returning to my sexy Bible readings when the time is right—I basically just need to find a way for me to reach a wider audience. If by some miracle they suddenly become an internet hit for some reason (even without a public channel on YouTube), I will restart them as soon as possible. I still strongly believe that the approach I use in these videos is one of the most effective ways of dealing with this issue, and I really think I can make a significant impact if I can just reach a wide enough audience.

In fact, a recent study of religious knowledge in the US has further reinforced my belief that the best way to tackle religion is to give people more knowledge of it. It is very hard to fight religious faith with scientific facts and ideas alone, because faith by its very nature ignores logical analysis, and encourages blind belief in spite of the facts. But when people learn more about what they think they believe in, they start to see the problems with it, which plants the seeds of doubt—and that in turn makes them open to accepting the facts. A common misconception among theists is that atheists “don’t care”, but in reality, most of us care very much. Most of us have arrived at our position by studying all the alternative belief systems very carefully, rather than just blindly sticking with what we were brought up with (the most reliable indicator of a person’s religion is what culture they were born into). This is borne out by this study, which shows that atheists have the greatest knowledge of religion in the US, while those from the “Bible Belt” know the least. Surprise surprise surprise…

Since YouTube suspended my original Sexy Bible Readings channel, we’ve been considering our options for re-posting them. We decided the safest thing to do was to upload streaming versions of the videos directly to this blog, as neither YouTube nor anybody else could censor them here. To do this, my webmaster Lee decided to upload them to an unlisted YouTube channel and download the YouTube video files, as their compression is very efficient and they use our preferred video format (H264 MPEG4). However, seeing as we had to create a new YouTube channel anyway, we figured we might as well save ourselves some bandwidth and try using it—given that the channel and videos aren’t publicly accessible or searchable on the YouTube web site, hopefully they won’t censor them again. And even if they do, we can immediately switch over to our locally hosted versions anyway.

Another advantage to having locally hosted copies is that the people who can’t access YouTube in their country can now view them right here—we will now be linking to the locally hosted version in each sexy Bible reading post. Also, as it is now nearly a month since we tried to post my last Bible reading, we’re also posting my latest reading—click on the link to view the locally hosted version. And as always, there’s an extended, super high quality fully nude version for my web site members.

Possibly my favourite article on this blog so far is the Religion and Morality post. I was originally intending to conclude that article with some statistics on how atheists and theists compare on the sorts of issues people normally use to judge morality, but as the article was very lengthy already, I thought I should save it for another post. So here it is.

Before theists trot out their usual arguments that the greatest mass murderers in history were atheists—or that the communism is an example of how atheism leads to unhealthy societies—please read my Religion and Morality article, which covers these misconceptions thoroughly. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, check out the results of Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index. As is graphically represented in this Epiphenom article, the most atheist countries are the most peaceful—and the most religious countries are the most violent. These results may not mean religion makes people more violent though—it could mean violence makes people more religious. So to make these comparisons as meaningful as possible, we have to eliminate socio-economic factors as much as possible. Hence, it is most instructive to compare the US—which is by far the most religious western country—with other western countries. As can be seen when we do this, the US rates alongside such countries as China, and is behind (often well behind) other western countries.

What’s more, there’s just no escaping the fact that all the most peaceful countries are the most atheist, and the most violent countries are also the most religious (unless we falsely consider the Russian Federation to be atheist, which would make it the lone exception anyway). Even if we accept that violence makes people more religious, clearly atheism does not make people less moral as theists often assume—otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be possible for the most atheist countries to be the most peaceful. We may be able to overlook the religiosity of the most violent countries on socio-economic grounds, but it is impossible to ignore the peacefulness of the most atheist countries.

Okay, so what about other measures of morality, such as the abortion rate? As atheists generally do not even consider abortion to be immoral in the first place, surely this one would work out in favour of more religious countries? Curiously though, exactly the opposite is true! Why is that? Because along with resisting abortion, most religions also resist sex education and contraception. By far the best way to avoid abortion is to avoid conception—most religions say the best way to do this is through abstinence, but as the statistics show, that simply doesn’t work in practice. People will always have sex, and it seems they will nearly always abort any unwanted pregnancies that may result as well, regardless of how religious they are. The only difference is how willing they are to use contraception. So religion not only leads to higher abortion rates, but higher rates of STDs as well—as is so tragically the case in many third world countries.

Okay, okay, but surely it would be even more instructive to look at the statistics within just one given country? That way we can largely eliminate all the socio-economic, political and historical complications altogether. In that case, how about the percentage of atheists in US prisons relative to the general population? It just so happens that the US Federal Bureau of Prisons has detailed statistics on the religious affiliations of inmates. Depending on who you ask, atheists represent between 8-16% of the US population, and given the unwillingness of many atheists in the US to admit to their lack of beliefs, it is entirely possible that the real figure may be as high as 20% or more. Yet atheists represent only 0.2% of the US prison population. That means atheists are up to 100 times less likely to go to jail than theists in the US! This statistic is even more stunning when you consider the fact that most Americans view atheists with suspicion, so one would imagine that US juries would be far more inclined to convict atheists than theists, all other things being equal.

Even many atheists fear social anarchy should all theists accept that God doesn’t exist. Happily though, the statistics unambiguously show the opposite.

As today is my birthday, I thought I should post my latest Bible reading, as the members’ version features me playing a brand new piano piece—in only my birthday suit! I am currently working on several piano pieces for… well, hopefully you will see soon enough! Oh, and if you would like to send me a birthday present, check out my Amazon wish list.

UPDATE: YouTube has decided to wish me a happy birthday by suspending my YouTube account, even though my videos did not breach their guidelines at all (this is similar to what they did to my Blasphemy Challenge video). This is totally outrageous censorship of atheists’ right to free speech!

I’ve now updated this post as well as the other sexy Bible reading posts to display the videos from my new, unlisted YouTube channel—together with links to locally hosted versions for all the people who can’t access YouTube, and to give us backups just in case YouTube censors my channel again.

We’ve been performing some major updates to my blog over the past week, so as I haven’t been able to post for so long, this post will be a bit of a grab bag. First of all, I’ve just posted my latest Bible reading (as always, along with an extended, super high quality fully nude version for my web site members). Secondly, as I mentioned we’ve performed some major updates to our blog software to bring it up to date, and we’ve made a few refinements to the design of the site at the same time—we want it to be the cleanest and most elegant blog on the net! And last, but certainly not least, I want to bring your attention to GodBlock (thanks to Joe Miller for the tip!). It has always amused me how hysterical people get about “protecting” children from pornography, when I am not aware of a single scientific study that shows it harms children at all—certainly, it is very difficult to understand how nudity could do any harm to children anyway. It seems to me that this widely held assumption is yet another form of sexual suppression brought to us by religion—which ironically, actually has been shown to have done serious psychological damage to children in many cases. So GodBlock turns the usual internet filter on its head, by protecting children from what could really harm them: religion.

When I first heard that the Australian Labor party had ousted Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, I wasn’t happy. Labor wasn’t doing that badly in the polls, so I just felt they were panicking too much; indeed, I feel they’ve been doing this for some time now, which I think is the main reason why they ended up doing so badly in the polls in the first place. I think they’ve actually done a pretty god job of running the country under very difficult circumstances—for example, Australia survived the global financial crisis better than any other first world country. Yes, they’ve made some mistakes, but I feel their mistakes are vastly outweighed by their achievements. The problem is that their mistakes have all come in the last few months (with an election looming), and the electorate has a very short memory.

I also feel Kevin Rudd has been unfairly blamed for circumstances beyond his control. For example, he fought hard to get a deal with the Coalition on carbon trading, only to have it dashed at the last minute by a surprise change of opposition leader, accompanied by a complete reversal on climate change policy. Then he fought hard to get a deal at Copenhagen, but as we know that was dashed as well. Delaying further action on carbon trading was pretty much the only practical thing he could do under the circumstances, but the electorate saw this as a back down, and (I think unfairly) judged him to be without principles. Strange how his predecessor John Howard broke promise after promise, while the electorate just dismissed it as what politicians do, and kept voting for him. Ironically, Rudd was a victim of the fact that people actually believed he would deliver on his promises—and in fact he did when the circumstances allowed. But this back down made the electorate see him as another lying politician (once again, I think unjustly), and punished him in the polls for their disappointment.

Still, Rudd certainly wasn’t perfect. His devout Christian beliefs led him to make illogical decisions sometimes, such as his basically “go forth and multiply” population policy. This led him to continue the Howard government’s baby bonus, for example, which must be one of the worst social policies in Australia’s history: it is basically an inducement for people who can’t afford to have children to have them, which obviously has very negative consequences for those children and society as a whole. But like his predecessor, all Kevin could see was the fact that it raised Australia’s birth rate, which he saw as a good thing. His Christian beliefs also made him a social conservative, which meant that he refused to legalise gay marriage, for example. So while I felt he was a huge improvement over our previous Prime Minister John Howard (which he certainly was), it often seemed as though he wasn’t a true Labor leader; more a compassionate conservative. Hence, even though I was relatively happy with him as Prime Minister (compared to Howard), I would have preferred a more progressive leader.

So in spite of the fact that I don’t feel Kevin Rudd got a fair go from the media, the Australian public or his own party, I can’t help but feel elated about the leader who has replaced him. Much has been made of the fact that Julia Gillard is Australia’s first female Prime Minister, but for me the biggest thing about her is the fact that she is a childless and unmarried atheist—and even more remarkably, she has the balls to openly declare it publicly! And in the biggest policy shift since she came into power, she’s already announced a sustainable population strategy. This has been widely interpreted as simply immigration control, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she scraps the baby bonus after winning the next election (indeed, I’d be disappointed if she didn’t). And I believe Julia’s position is genuine: I do not think it is simply code for xenophobia and populism, unlike the opposition with their scare mongering over asylum seekers—Julia’s own comments in that regard have been very measured.

I feel very proud to live in a country where our leader can be a childless, unmarried, atheist female—and I’m even more happy about the fact that the Australian public seems to largely be responding to her very positively. I guess I shouldn’t get too excited until she wins the next election, but it has often puzzled me how politicians in Australia have always gone on about supporting nuclear family values by default, when in reality, the nuclear family is rapidly becoming the exception rather than the rule here. We have a so-called “Family First” party (although so far their only representative in the senate has just espoused the same old conservative values, often to the detriment of working families), but we’ve never had a singles first party, even though there are more and more of us here. Politicians frequently go on about Christian values, but until now, no one has ever been outspokenly secular, even though that’s what this country is really all about, and we have a huge (and growing) non-Christian population here, including many atheists. For the first time ever, we have a leader who represents these important, widespread, yet previously almost totally unrepresented values, which to me is a far bigger deal than the fact that she’s a woman (although that is of course significant).

In related news, there’s currently a senate enquiry looking into a proposal for religious organisations in Australia to have to pass a public benefit test to receive tax exempt status. Also, the Australian Secular Party (of which I am am member) has just been officially registered as well. At a time when we are threatened with having the most conservative, overtly Christian Prime Minister in Australia’s history (the leader of the opposition Tony Abbot), we finally have a completely secular alternative!

When I read about this story, I just had to do a post on it! The infamous 62-foot tall statue of Jesus outside Solid Rock Church (yes, that really is the name of the church!) in Monroe, Ohio has burned to the ground—after being struck by lightning! The statue is known by the amusing nicknames “big butter Jesus” (apparently a reference to its colour) or more commonly “touchdown Jesus” (referring to its rather absurd pose, which looks a lot like the touchdown signal given by referees in American football). Although it was destroyed—in the words of the insurance company—by an “act of God”, a giant Hustler Hollywood store across the road was untouched! Yes, the humour in this story may be endless, but this kind of incident really does pose some very serious questions for theists, such as:

Why would God destroy a statue of his own son, while leaving a shop selling pornography completely unharmed? Could it be that Christians are actually worshipping the wrong God? Perhaps they should be worshipping Thor (the Norse God of thunder) instead? (Seeing as Scandinavians are so sexually open, I guess it makes sense that their God would like porn.) Or maybe this is how God enforces the second commandment (no “graven images”)? But if that’s the case, then why doesn’t he destroy all statues and images of himself and Jesus? Indeed, why the hell are Christians so fond of statues and images of God and (especially) Jesus anyway, when the second commandment expressly forbids it?

And this is not an isolated incident: in fact, religious statues are among the objects most commonly struck by lightning. In 2008, lightning singed the fingers and eyebrows of Christ the Redeemer, the 130-foot statue of Jesus that stands over Rio de Janeiro. In 2007, lighting struck the 33-foot Jesus statue at Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado, making one of Jesus’ arms fall off. And believe it or not, actor James Caviezel was struck by lightning in 2003, while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ! None of this makes any sense from a religious perspective: God ought to destroy all graven images, or protect objects of worship (and those who worship them). Greater than normal lightning strikes on religious statues (but not all of them) is not what you’d expect from God.

However, if you take religion out of the equation and instead turn to science for an explanation, all of this makes perfect sense. The statues that are struck by lightning are large structures placed at the highest available location: they’re the tallest objects in their immediate vicinity, for maximum visual impact. And lo and behold, the first object lightning will strike in a given place is the tallest one. In the case of touchdown Jesus, it was made of highly flammable materials, apart from its metal frame—and metal attracts lightning. So as the tallest object in its immediate area and with a metal frame, it’s no wonder it was struck by lightning; and as it was made mostly from highly flammable materials, it’s no wonder that it rapidly burned to the ground when lightning did strike it. As is usually the case, trying to explain things as the work of God requires extreme contortions of logic, whereas science explains everything simply, clearly and accurately—intervention from God only complicates things.

The video above from my old favourite Darkmatter2525 makes another important point: if lightning struck some well known atheist figure such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, you can be absolutely sure some theists would claim it was the work of God. Well I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways: you may try to pick and choose what you want to attribute to God, but it’s all or nothing.

Here’s my latest Bible reading video. And to go with it, we’ve also posted an extended, super high quality fully nude version for my web site members.

Here is my second Bible reading video from the ten Commandments, and third Bible reading overall. As with my last reading, there’s also an extended, super high quality topless version for my web site members. Sorry my hair is a little messy, but I thought I’d better not brush it on the Sabbath Day.

Seemingly unable to come up with any genuine criticism of my first Bible reading, Christians mostly responded to it in one of two ways: do the Koran instead, or talk about the “good” stuff in the Bible, such as the ten commandments. So for my second Bible reading, I’ve done exactly that—here’s what the Bible has to say about how to discipline children, so as to comply with the fifth commandment (“honour your father and mother”). I will tackle more commandments in my next few Bible readings.

For this new reading, I’ve also done an extended, topless version for my web site members—this is something I will be doing every month from now on. And even better, so that as many people can see these new videos as possible, I’ve dropped the price of my web site membership to only $9.99 for one month (and $4.99 per month recurring)! Also, so as not to disadvantage anyone who has joined recently, if you joined earlier this year you can claim a $10 credit to use at my online store!