I’m currently working away on some new album artwork for a number of bands so as soon as I can I’ll get some of those up too but in the meantime keep and eye out on twitter for a few sneak peeks.

This promo will be for a limited time only and will run from 5th March 2012 through to 30th April 2012 so go visit the shop and save.

For those who are looking something more bespoke, i.e. a website, logo, album artwork; don’t worry you wont be left out! I’ll be offering ALL of the Arcane Media  services at a discounted rate for March and April. So if you’ve got a  project that needs some design work get in contact and receive a special rate by quoting SPRING MADNESS.

Here is a quick teaser trailer for the upcoming sequel:

A comic strip following our heroes exploits is also under development and I’ll keep you posted on that. We will be testing some of the effects shots for “Dead On Mate” very soon so keep an eye out for those (they should be suitably graphic and splattersome).

Another thing that I’ve been working on is the upcoming comic for “Aye, Dead On” which will tie in with the new film which will be out soon (hopefully), once there’s  a few finished panels I’ll upload them.

Before I get into it I just want to state that the authors I’ve mentioned are by no means the be all and end all in antitheist and atheist literature and knowledge. These are simply the authors that I have a great admiration and respect for, their books are also considered and concise when representing the facts. My views are based, however, on more than just the reading of their books but on countless other sources and experiences.

So to get to it…..

On consideration for writing this I’ve made a conscience decision not to write from an angry heart and head which I was compelled to do but reconsidered as it may render some of the arguments ineffective. I decided simply to outline the facts and express my concerns and grievances in as articulate and erudite way as I am able.

The things I will discuss will be a condensed version of the overall picture but I will try and provide as much information as I can as if this was the extended cut it may spill over and take over the entire website.

Leviticus 4:6 And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle of the blood seven times before the LORD, before the vail of the sanctuary.

Growing up in a country that has almost been torn apart by religion and its dogma; my personal religious experiences have been mainly to do with christianity and the world of yahweh.  This means a lot of what I’ll discuss will be based around this but the core points can be applied with a broader stroke to all religions.

My first of many objections of the biggest religion in the western world is the hypocrisy of it all. Those who submit to the christian doctrine have seldom read the text that the entire machine hangs on but will still practice the religion to the point of ridiculousness.  For instance; picketing funerals of high profile “celebrities” because they didn’t preach the word of god on the giant stage they had. What ever happened to “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”? These people are far from meek and are nothing more than bigoted zealots who wish to impose their own superstition and delusions onto others who have the capacity of mind to move on from antiquated fantasy.

A prime example of the hypocrisy from the christian flock is the story of American evangelical pastor Ted Haggard (aka Pastor Ted), who for years had opposed gay marriage and gay relationships seeing them as nothing other than pure sin, has had his world turned upside down due to escort Mike Jones bringing to the attention of the public that Pastor Ted had paid him for sex and drugs. The hypocrisy of the church is not just held with the people who follow the faith but it is inherent to the entire system. “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” Matthew 5:39, so don’t resist any evil just give in, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” Matthew 7:1 I don’t think it’s possible for christians to pass by on judgement for anyone or anything even if it is stated in the text they believe so vehemently.  Let’s not also forget the selectiveness of our christian associates when it comes to the aforementioned bible, I’m not even talking about the missing sections that have since been published as separate texts or the selected titles that made it into the final edition with others completely ignored, I’m talking about the published version of which each parable or book can be chosen at whimsy as to whether they believe that or not. I could go on and on about the hypocrisy and quote section upon section of the bible that each of the separate cults of the church ignore but I will instead share this paragraph from http://www.evilbible.com/christians_are_hypocrites.htm

I’d like to close this essay with how to catch a Christian in the act.  When you see them expounding a verse and ignoring another, call them on it.  I know what you’ll hear.  They’ll say, “That’s from the Old Law and we aren’t under the Old Law anymore”.  Trip them with this: “But aren’t the Ten Commandments part of the Old Law?”  “Yes, but we are obligated to follow them because they are reported in the NT” (Matthew 19:16-18, Mark 10:17-19 & Luke 18:18-22).  Immediately point out to them that Jesus omitted half of the Ten Commandments and invented a new one, “though shall not defraud” !  Before they can get a word in edge wise finish them off with: “According to scripture it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of law to fail” (Luke 16:17 & Matthew 5:18-19).  If sin is transgression of the law, as 1 John 3:4 says, then you should be following all of the Old Law.  This, from experience, is the best way to shoot down these idiots and bar them from getting away with their hypocrisy.

While ignoring certain sections of the bible and preaching the love of god our good friends on the “righteous path” fail to realise that what they are preaching and blindly obeying is quite a lot of inane babble (my personal favourites are unicorns, talking snakes and impossible floods) and violence (especially towards women). It’s this violence in particular that I find quite disturbing, particularly when you take into consideration the message that most christians try to teach when spreading their message. A question I always find myself asking when thinking about religion is; how can anybody believe this unequivocally when even the book they are basing this faith on is contrary to what they believe? Surely the belief and the doctrine should be one and the same. If not then why believe it at all? I would hope that most people have the capability to decide that violence is not necessarily the answer without having to discuss it with god (who would probably want them to consult the bible, as it is his word after all, as he might be a bit busy thinking of another great way to disguise his existence by planting more dinosaur bones). But here in lies the problem, if they did actually consult the bible they would only find more reason for violence.

“Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.” Isaiah 13:16

“If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods …do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him.” Deuteronomy 13:7-12

“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death” Deuteronomy 21

The last verse is one that I find very disturbing. When I first read this passage the predominant thought was about teenage rebellion and how most people go through some sort of unruly faze, which if it was left to our bible loving friends would result in most people being stoned to death. Neurological research in to the reason for this rebellious streak has shown that it is mainly down to with how your brain at that age processes it’s environment and stimuli and provides a greater reward for the behaviour. See http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/4/1471.abstract and http://bgoodscience.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/teen-rebellion-mapped-in-the-brain/.  This means, if we use christian reasoning, that god created us in his image, created our brain to work this way and provided us with the environment and stimuli to process but after all that we must die for it because our brain works.  I find this completely unacceptable and refuse the idea that there was any creator and that nothing other than evolution has created our brain to work the way it does.

The brain is just one biological reason for dismissing any and all creationist ideas. Evolution is the key to our existence and the reason that we are even able to conceive the idea of creation (ironic as that is). Irrefutable proof of evolution has been obtained on mass but still people refuse to acknowledge it and the great advance that Darwin provided when he published his findings. From left over organs in the human body, like the appendix, to our residual tail bone, the coccyx; which has now a new role in the body for support for various muscles, the evidence is overwhelming. But even this can be used by the religious to try and disprove evolution and support creation. As if using science to disprove science isn’t ridiculous enough, the main argument they have for creation is the human eye. This in its naivety is just plain laughable because the people that try and use this as a weapon against evolution have clearly no idea about the subject and fail to realise that they are inadvertently confirming evolution.  Usually thrown in when a creationist comments on the eye is a quote from Darwin which is; the evolution of the eye at first glance was “absurd in the highest possible degree” but what they forget to mention is the remaining part of the statement:

“if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.”

Darwin, of course, was completely correct. Scientists have since shown these gradual changes in the eye and confirmed the evolution from simple photoreceptive cells to the complex organ we now possess. Through examples like Trilobites who possessed early compound eyes through to evolutionary left overs, like the fact that our eye is “backward and upside down” when compared to the  eyes found in cephalopods whose eyes don’t have a blind spot due to the position of the nerves, we can plainly see that there is no other option other than evolution.

Further justification, if you’re in need of any, to deny religious dogma can be found by looking through the annals of history where you will find it littered with atrocities committed in the name of god. The christian church have no equal when it comes to the devastation caused by a single regime. People may scoff at this any say things like “What about Hitler? He was an atheist and he killed millions.”. There’s no denying that the Nazi party and Hitler committed horrible atrocities such as the extermination of jews, which some christians will also deny, but this pales in comparison to the scale of death that follows the christian church. From its early brutal beginnings the church has carved a path through time leaving a trail of blood and domination behind, early opponents to the church such as the pagans were condemned to death and slaughtered if they didn’t convert, even after the bible had been “amended” to allow for similarities to appear between the two religions . As everyone knows the crusades also left millions dead but this is not the end of the bloodshed, “witches”, native peoples in America, Vietnamese Buddhists, Rwandans and many, many more; all butchered at the hands of the church. And don’t think that these are all in a distant past and the church has now moved on from such savagery, the slaughter of several hundred thousand Rwandans was in 1994!

These few things that I’ve outlined are just a small number of reasons to refute religion, question faith and refuse superstition. What those who do oppose this tyranny need to do is make themselves heard, stand up and be counted, don’t let religion rule uncontested. Participate in helping rid the world of religion and don’t just stand by thinking that you can’t make a difference. There are many resources at hand to further this cause, check out places like the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, the Thinking Atheist and Atheism UK for starters.

I’ll end this blog with a quote from one of my favorite atheists Richard Dawkins who simply states:

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
– Richard Dawkins

Its’ been a while since I’ve updated the blog, so I thought I’d share some musings.

With my recent (all be it very small) foray into the movie biz with “Aye, Dead On” (check it out here) I’ve been thinking about movies and the process of film making in general.  “Aye, Dead On” was shot over a weekend and was gruelling from start to finish, with early starts and late finishes with a whole lot of hard work in between. Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome and the final product came out great but it showed me how much work is needed just to get a few minutes of footage.

With its huge amount of production companies; Hollywood can churn out film, after film, after film like some sort of “movie of the week” construction factory. Most of the time these movies are…well… bollocks but every now and then a gem slips from the production line in to the public conscious and shines like a beacon of hope for filmmakers every where. Some of my favourite Hollywood movies have come from directors who all started their film making careers with “B Movies” and have been able to capture that quality that gives B movies their charm; on big budget movies.

Directors Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro are two of my personal favourites and show that as long as you have belief and the vision for your movie they can be not only huge box office successes but layered and multifaceted which can be appreciated by B movie film buffs and art lovers alike. Peter Jackson, for example, produced 3 of the highest grossing films of all time with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. With some of the greatest production values ever seen on screen he still managed to keep the B movie essence, even using locations he previously used in his splatstic full length feature film Braindead, Not forgetting Guillermo Del Toro who on more than one occasion has returned if not all then part of his directors fee back into the budget of the film just to make sure it’s the best it can be and to ensure his vision is created.

Creating anything always takes a lot of hard work and dedication and I believe that we should hold the small independent film makers in very high regard. After all these people are the future of film and may yet be the “next big thing”. They’re creating films on shoe string budgets, pushing boundaries and creating things that stay below the surface where only the dedicated will follow. They work very hard and are dedicated to what they do. Sometimes a pop corn fodder movie is exactly what’s needed, but remember when you find some hidden B movie classic remember to spread the word. Smaller film makers are in danger of disappearing if people don’t share their films because word of mouth can turn these directors into Hollywood players who can create Hollywood films that you actually want to watch. So remember when you find that ridiculous splatter movie in the £1 bargain bin and it turns out to be a belter then share the love and let us know, B movies are what keep film alive and where would we be without them?

On a related topic, check out RUBBER. This is a truly incredible movie, a true B movie at its core but with Hollywood production values. It’s a ludicrous story about a tyre with a penchant for exploding people’s heads and literally rolling through town causing havoc but it is much, much more than that. It’s from the guy who created flat beat (remember the old Levi’s advert with the yellow puppet? Him) but don’t let that put you off. Check it out.