The Atheist Mama

Today in the Gahanna News, I found this LTE:

Books fail to recognize true nature of Jesus

To the Editor:

We want to write a few lines in response to two hughly public books. The Da Vinci Code and The Gospel of Judas.
These books speak of Jesus but not rightly.
They recognize His goodnes, but not His holiness.
They propound His manhood, but not His uniqueness.
One suggests he fathered a child which is absurd to a Christian who knows Him as Prince (or Originator) of life.
The other presents Judas as a “model” disciple, who used his discipleship to betray his Lord. Really.
These books are profane and their effect pernicious.
The truth is that Jesus came into the world uniquely lived uniquely, died uniquely, and was raised uniquely.]
That He became Man is a blessed, glorious fact and endears Him to me yet His perfect, Divine holy nature has always been the same. His value is infinite and His work, eternal. His love’s without limit - time is all that runs out.

[Authors name]

[sic]

UGH.
The response that I just emailed in:

To the Editor:

In a letter published in The Gahanna News on June 28th, [Authors name] wrote of two books: The Da Vinci Code and The Gospel of Judas. [Authors name] claimed that these books were “profane and had a pernicious effect [on Christianity].”

I’d like to suggest that [Authors name], and others, have an open mind. So what if Judas was not the “traitor” that the Bible made him out to be? Why is the possibility that Jesus fathered a child so harmful to your faith?

That Christianity is threatened by the mere contents of a book is amazing to me, and should be embarrassing to you (Christians). You claim that your faith is strong, and that “He is the way,” yet you become defensive when a different theory is suggested. Some of the books that were chosen for the Bible, thousands of years ago, contradict each other. Isn’t it at all possible that some of what was written about Jesus is wrong?

The fact is this: no one knows the truth for sure. The assumptions made about Jesus in [Authors name] letter are no more a fact than are the stories written in the two books he spoke of in his letter.

Cassandra Cox

The ridiculous Constitutional amendment to “prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States” went down in flames today (ha ha). They were one vote short. How scary is that?

Among possible presidential contenders in 2008, six voted yes: Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana and Republicans George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Frist, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, and John McCain of Arizona. Five, all Democrats, voted no: Joseph Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Read the rest here.

Comments closed due to spam.

On this past Sunday (June 25th), I worked the at the booth that our local humanist group had set up at Comfest (which I wrote a little about a few posts ago UGH - never mind - I accidentally deleted the post that took me about 3 hours to write).

The festival was all weekend, but I was only able to work on Sunday evening. We passed out information on humanism, humanists, our group, and the AHA as well as other bits of information.

There was quite a bit of interest! I think that over the entire weekend, we had 42 people sign up for the HCCO newsletter. That’s me over there - the bright red one in the orange shirt - damn sunburn…

I learned, by working with some of the other people in the group, that there are so many different views of humanism. We all give ourselves different labels, and some of us don’t label ourselves at all. Some humanists don’t consider themselves atheists, and don’t like the word “atheist” because of the negative connotation. Some humanists are theists, which I don’t understand, but it’s never been explained to my by a humanist theist. It was hard for me to actually explain “humanism” to someone who had never heard of it without using “atheist” in the description, because I obviously label myself an atheist. So when someone approached the booth, and I ended up talking to them, I would tell them that humanists apply reason and science to life before anything else.

It was great being able to work for the group and help them out. It is also a great feeling, knowing that you are helping educate people, and suggesting that people give rational thought a try!!

…”lawless mob” of homosexuals… LMAO! Sorry, but can you picture it??

Anyway…

According to Agape Press (you know, “Reliable News from a Christian Source”):

The head of a Philadelphia-based Christian ministry says his group was targeted by a “lawless mob” of homosexuals at the city’s annual homosexual pride event — and that city police refused to enforce state laws against harassment and disorderly conduct at that time.

[…]

While being shouted down by the homosexual activists, Marcavage calmly preached over a microphone: “You don’t get to heaven by being a good person. You don’t get to heaven by doing good things. We have all violated God’s law, and the only hope we have is found in Jesus Christ.”

The person that they were “harrassing” was Michael Marcavage, head of Repent America (yup, that’s him in the picture).

This took place during the June 11th annual Gay Pride Parade in Philly. You can see the video that Repent America has of the “offense” here. I mean really, what was that “militant mob of homosexuals” thinking? They were interupting his gay bashing!!

According to a study at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, there has been no link found between smoking pot and head and neck cancers (tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus cancers).

The heaviest smokers in the study had smoked more than 22,000 marijuana cigarettes, or joints, while moderately heavy smokers had smoked between 11,000 to 22,000 joints. Even these smokers did not have an increased risk of developing cancer. People who smoked more marijuana were not at any increased risk compared with those who smoked less marijuana or none at all.

[…]

There was a clear association between smoking tobacco and cancer. The study found a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing both lung cancer and head and neck cancers, findings that were consistent with many previous studies.

[Link]

Surprise, surprise!!! What great news!

Thanks to D’Alliance for the tip.

The Carnival of the Godless is up over at Silly Humans!  Michael did a great job of putting the carnival together on this fine Sunday.  Go get godless!  :-)

This morning in The Columbus Dispatch, there’s a story about how Kent is banning their athletes from sites like Myspace and Facebook. University administrators are banning almost 400 athletes. This article is only mentioning the banning of athletes, but not other students.

Athletics Director Laing Kennedy recently told student-athletes they have until Aug. 1 to remove their Facebook profiles, citing a need to protect both their identities and the university’s image.

I’m a bit split on this issue. On one hand, universities are private schools, and the athletes do represent them. On the other hand, this is the first amendment they are dealing with. Gary Daniels is a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“There’s no clear connection between their roles as athletes and their use of these Web sites,” Daniels said.

“For the government to say that you can’t engage in First Amendment activities, they better have a really good reason. And saying, ‘I don’t want them to do it’ is not a goodenough reason.”

What do you think about this? How would you feel about OSU [or any other university] taking similar actions? As a parent, how would you feel about your college student having controlled access to the internet?

Cross-posted at weColumbus.

…and kidnapping, assault, conspiracy, larceny and housebreaking.

Am I the only one feeling sympathy for them?

Don’t get me wrong - what happened was terrible. What happened was a crime. But there is so much more to what happened here. These guys are in WAR.
There is an entirely different reality in their world.

They are trying to survive. Always afraid. Constantly on the look out. Sleep deprived. Hoping that they are going to make it home. Missing their families. Losing their friends and fellow soldiers. Seeing blood shed and gore. To top it all off, they are trained to kill the enemy. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how this type of thing isn’t happening more often.

In my last post I talked about the good news that I had. Well, I’ve joined weColumbus as a blogger. I started today.

weColumbus is a site (with a blog) that has all kinds of info about Columbus and everything that’s going on in this happening city. I first found it through Dave’s Beer.

So make sure you check it out, especially if you’re in Ohio!!

Today is the offical first day of summer.  Here in Columbus, we’re ringing in summer with a thunder storm.  I love ‘em.  I’m not so fond of the heat we’ve been experiencing lately.

Usually, I make sun cookies or a sun cake, or something else sunny, but it’s too warm to bake (I rarely use my oven in the summer), so I’ll have to come up with something else.  Any clever ideas out there?  Maybe pineapple rings (grilled if I can get out there between storms)?

My local humanist group had planned on getting together for trash collection (adopt a highway) and then planned on meeting in a local park later in the evening.  It’s not  something that I can attend with the kids, but I think that it is an excellent way to celebrate the solstice (it was cancelled due to the weather anyway).

Anyone have any interesting plans for today?  Or is the solstice just like any other day in your world?

Oh, and I have some good news (for me anyway) coming up in my next post.  Stay tuned…

You Are 60% American

Most times you are proud to be an American.Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there’s no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one’s going to take it away from you!

I’ve been having a hard time getting the news today because of the kiddos, but from what I can gather, it sounds like North Korea is wanting to test a long range missile that is able to carry a nuclear weapon, and it has the capability of reaching the west coast of the United States?  Is that what’s going on here?

I get that North Korea would like to test it’s missiles, but who could possibly think that this would be a good idea?  Now the U.S. is saying that they will attempt to shoot it down.  Well, yeah!  That makes good sense to me!!

What am I missing here??

Well, Evan and his friend have. They left it in the back seat of a NYC cab on June 6th. As soon as they realized that they didn’t have the Sidekick II, they sent a message to the phone offering a reward for it’s return. After a day, they got no response, and went out to buy a new one. When they put their SIM card into the phone, they discovered that not only did someone have it, but they were taking pictures, and signing into AOL IM on it. They found pictures from the phone on the T-Mobile website.

So Evan has put together a website called “How NOT to steal a Sidekick II” - it’s a long read, but VERY entertaining. I promise, it’ll keep your attention. The following is a message that Evan received from the brother of the girl who has (had?) the phone.

“listen you dumb mother fucker my sister bought that phone from some cab driver so what the fuck do you want. shes not going to return it if she bought it, and am military police so dont give me that bullshit about you going to the cops over a lost phone the nypd has better things to do then to worry about your friend losing her phone. you better stop harrasing my sister or you’ll have to deal with me and you dont want that”

I came across this article tonight about an adorable black and white cat named Lewis, who is on death row.  Check out the paws on that kitty!!

Neighbors say they have been terrorized by Lewis, claiming the gray and white cat has used his long claws and stealth to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush an Avon saleswoman.

The Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah, has offered to take the cat.  They claim to be the largest no-kill shelter in the country.

This reminds me of the cat that I grew up with, Gamishta Mush Kavits (ok, I’m probably way off on the spelling there, but that’s what my parents named him - we lived in Germany when we got him).  Mush was a very fat cat - he weighed about 17 lbs at the height of his weight.  He would attack people coming into the house to install the cable, inspect the furnace, or any other person who had a reason to come in.  My mother would leave a box by the door so that Mush could be covered up as the person walked by.  He would leap through the air and attach himself to the person’s leg.  He was declawed, but his teeth would do a hell of a job on them if they weren’t in pants!  Luckily, my parents were never charged with second-degree reckless endangerment!

Today my family and I went to the annual Blues & Jazz Festival held here in quaint Gahanna, Ohio. There’s lots of people, music, and food. There is a lot of vending and it’s very easy to find a lot of neat things to buy. This is the third year in a row that I’ve gone to this.

So while we were walking around, we came across a booth that was selling t-shirts. I stopped to look at what kind of shirts they were selling and was quite shocked to see shirts like this one. So I took a big step back and looked for the name of the company that was renting this table out at my local festival. GODinc. Christian Apparal (feel free to Google). So I pulled my husband over and stood there pointing like it was some kind of strange creature on display at a circus. I decided that it was best for me to keep on walking, and avoid a conversation with the guy taking the money.

There were several other shirts, with the same type of message, and obviously, it’s geared towards the younger generation. So, what kind of message is this? I think that this type of advertising is just as bad as the fact that McDonalds uses a clown to lure in children. Talk about peer pressure… I think it’s going to be hard enough to teach my children about the dangers of smoking, drinking, and drugs. Now I have to worry about my children thinking they’re uncool because they’re not in “God’s Army?”

Hey everyone, we’ve made the switch to WP. Now I just have a whole bunch of tweaking to do!

Thanks!!

This is an excellent map showing the position that the states are taking on the abortion battle. There’s a lot more information in the USA Today article. I’m pretty surprised that Colorado is dark blue, because it’s certainly a red state.

Hat tip to Pam.

A few new things actually. First, this site is in desperate need of a new look. I’m done with this “theme,” and I’m done with Movable Type. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great, but about a month ago I had the opportunity to set a blog up for a local business and I set him up with a WordPress blog. Wow. I was sold.
So today, I stopped by the Meme Machine Escappe’s blog, and learned that Lya had a new look too (looks great by the way). She used WP, and it got me all geared up for a change. Hopefully it’ll be ready soon.

I think that Lya and I have a bit in common lately. As you’ve read here in the recent past, I’m quite sick of the politics, and of religion. I’ve needed a break, and I’m enjoying it. :-) So following Lya’s lead, here are a few of my guilty pleasures.

1. General Hospital. I’ve been watching this show for as long as I can remember. Now, I don’t watch it every day, but I do have it recorded every day. Since having kids, it’s really taken a back burner, but I still sit down and watch a few episodes a couple days a week.

2. Chick magazines. Like Cosmo, or Red Book, or even Good Housekeeping. I only get to read them in the doctors office, but I love flipping through them.

3. Diet Coke. Ok, this may be more of an addiction than a guilty pleasure, but I love it. Good stuff right there.

Well, that’s about all I can come up with, other than the typical ones like cheesecake and ice cream. :-)
Your turn!

Um, have I been under a rock? Apologies in advance if this is old news…

The Unapologetic Atheist? Remember him? I had him blogrolled for the longest times. I totally loved his blog, and thought that he was such an excellent and talented writer. I even commented that I thought that I could learn a lot from him. He stopped posting one day because he said he was moving and didn’t have internet access yet.

Finally, I deleted him from my blogroll. I think it was because the link was broken. That was quite a few months ago.

So tonight, I decided to do a quick search for “Unapologetic Atheist” to see what I could find. I kept coming up with these stories about a guy who is HIV+ and having sex with women - 4 of them - and knowingly exposing them to the virus.

Here is Rob Richardson in his happier days of attempting to infect women with HIV. Ohhhh, and then I came across this creepy comment (well, creepy because of what we know now), left by Mr. Unapologetic himself. I wonder if he’s making apologies now?

Anyway, here are some articles on the situation. I’m just floored.

*** UPDATED ***

I’ve just been sick to my stomach about this whole thing. After I read Ebonmuse’s comment, I felt even worse. I would never forgive myself if I had posted all of this and then had it wrong. So I’ve been researching this frantically trying to make DAMN sure that the man that is being charged with exposing women to HIV is actually The Unapologetic Atheist.

Here are links to the reports from The Lawrence Journal-World (listed by date). Make sure that you read all of the comments following the article, and pay special attention to “Marion.”

- Resident accused in HIV infection case - Saturday, February 25, 2006

- Man charged with exposing others to HIV - Thursday, March 9, 2006

- Suspect faces second HIV exposure charge - Friday, March 24, 2006

“Marion” set up a forum dedicated to Robert Richardson. I guess that this is a site that is local to Richardson. There is a lot going on in this post.

Marion also managed to get a copy of The Un-Apologetic Atheist’s Blog. The photos didn’t make it, and the links don’t work. It’s basically a screenshot of the main page.
He also got a screenshot of just about every profile that Richardson had out there. This one is particularly interesting…

Personal Bio :: […] Somehow avoided the field of marine biology, main interest is virology and genetics… modeling career on hold while I save the world from HIV.

Anyway, go to that fourm and read more. They’ve really been doing their homework, and apparently, Marion has been communicating with Richardson.

Today is Sunday, June 11th. I am your host - The Atheist Mama. ;-)
We have a lot of great submissions today. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

Our first submission was written by Zachary Moore over at Goosing the Antithesis. He writes of a project that was taken on by the Atheist Spy. There are some pretty good points made here.

Is Atheism a Spiritual Orientation?

…some people are just born religious, and others are not- the obvious analogy is that of sexual orientation, and which the Atheist Spy refers to as a “spiritual orientation.”

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Next we have a post written by “Agnostic” over at The Agnostic Reader. This is a great, short read. Agnostic discusses why he considers himself agnostic, and what he feels is more important than the worship of a possible God.The Irrelevance of God

Is there a God? Who cares?

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The next submission comes from Richard over at Philosophy, et cetera. Here, he offers an interesting twist on “The Golden Rule.” Make sure you read the fascinating comments that follow.The Plutonium Rule

We’re all familiar with the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It famously suffers from the problem that others might have wildly different preferences from you. This has lead some to propose the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” That seems an improvement, though of course you can’t give everyone what they want, and doing so wouldn’t always even be good for them (say when people have ignorant or self-destructive desires). Still, I think the underlying idea here could be captured even better by what I will call - for want of a more sensible name - the Plutonium Rule…

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Now we have a post over at Paul’s Tips. Paul talks about how intelligent people are conned, everyday, all over the world. He makes some great points! Religion isn’t mentioned in this particular post, but it’s safe to say that the same ideas can be applied.The easiest way to fool smart people

Most smart people have a hidden weakness and it’s that they’re absolute suckers for anything that sounds clever.

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This is an interesting entry sent in by Steve at the Speculative Catholic. Apparently there is a race to get to the top of Technorati’s Archaeology blog list. The race is between an Evangelical and a Skeptic (there - a link for each of you :-).Claude vs. Martin

This post won’t affect the outcome either way, having an equal number of links to both sites, but I also blogrolled Claude to give him a bump. Why not do the same?

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The next post was submitted by Chris Hallquist over at The Uncredible Hallq. As stated in the beginning of his post, Chris offers a summary and some commentary on a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the evidence for the resurrection. He links to the debate, which is a pretty lengthy .pdf file. Thanks for the summary Chris!!Craig-Ehrman debate

Ehrman began by explaining that the gospels are not ideal historical sources. They were written decades after the fact by noneyewitnesses. Ehrman describes in some detail how oral traditions were circulated, emphasizing just how many hands a story might have passed through before finally getting written down.

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Our next submission comes from Ebonmuse over at Daylight Atheism. He discusses how most of humankind is helplessly dependant on a certain substance. Can you guess what it is?Fossil Fuels

Nevertheless, our technology has a weakness. Like the biblical King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of a greatstatue with a head of gold and feet of frangible clay, there is a vulnerable point upon which the whole system depends.

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Next, J.A. Bartlett over at Best of the Blogs talks about how our planet is treated as a rental apartment. How would things here be different if we treated the planet Earth as a home purchase instead??The Screen Door and the Apocalypse

Remember the apartment you had in college? The one with the toilet that ran all the time unless you jiggled the handle just right? The one with the screen door that always got stuck? You could have fixed the toilet or the screen door with a couple of dollars’ worth of materials and half-an-hour’s time, but you probably didn’t. You weren’t going to live there forever, so what difference did it make?

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The next entry comes from GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). She talks about how her Catholic neighborhood celebrated the Eve of The Rapture! $100 says that her neighbors are all still there…The Rapture of the Week

666? The Mark of the Beast? The End Times? Or is 666 the emergency number for the local fire department?

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Next is a post that was submitted by Jon Swift at Jon Swift. He is talking about Ann Coulter and her shameless appearance on The Today Show to promote her book, Godless. He discusses how Ann attacked the widows of 9/11 for enjoying their position in the spot light.Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers

Coulter is understandably frustrated at how the liberal media fawns over these women and hangs on their every word, while she has struggled to get her message out through the occasional television appearance, talk radio, college campus tours, her syndicated column, her website and her bestselling books.

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Interestingly, and absolutely coincidental, our next entry comes from Modem Butterfly at the Neural Gourmet | Feed Your Brain where she begins with her own thoughts on Ann Coulter. She goes on to discuss how the Left is trying to “out-god” the Right lately.You say ‘godless’ like it’s a bad thing: politics and religion don’t mix

Mixing religion with politics has been a great way for the GOP to get votes, but it’s been a disaster for our nation. Why the Democrats seem to wish to join this healong rush to theocracy is beyond me.

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The next entry is a hysterical piece from Mark over at the skwib. He talks about the unfortunate sectarian violence erupting between the Pastafarians (satire, of course).Pirates, Vikings and The Lost Boys

Like other Pastafarians, they believed that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But while other worshipers thought it was the declining number of pirates that has caused the increase in global warming,
hurricanes and earthquakes, Dr. Tundra had been preaching that, in truth, it was a lack of Vikings.

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Noell, over at Agnostic Mom talks about a recent experience at a local wine bar and bistro. Was her experience about the wine? The music? Chemicals in her brain? Or was it God?Spirituality At Your Favorite Alcohol Distributing Venue

It was one of those experiences that will mean less to you as you read about it on your computer. You were not in the moment, but at the time, my heart swelled up to my throat and I felt how incredible it is to exist.

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The next entry was submitted by hell’s handmaiden. The maiden talks about something very evil, and absolutely harmful. You’ll just have to go and read for yourself…The Five Letter Word

It is worse than the four letter words, and the four letter combos and permutations. It cuts deeper and infects the wound. Carlin’s list, original or revised, has nothing on this five character, two syllable utterance. Yet the FCC
doesn’t bat an eyelash.

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Last, but not least, this entry comes from Greensmile at The Executioners Thong. This is an excellent post about gambling, and how we seem to belong to a “wagering species.” This is a great read!Something odd about playing the odds

I can’t quite put my finger on the nature of the error that lets us think we can manipulate the unknown. I suspect it is founded upon a less detectable error that makes us want to have control when the critical information is unavailable.

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I hope that you enjoyed the submissions! Leave a comment and let us know what you think!!