The Atheist Mama

Today I had my dog out for a walk in my few wooded acres. After awhile I sat on a log while he stuck his bloodhoundish nose into everything and anything. I basked in the sunlight and 60+ weather (about 20 degrees above the average for this date), with beauty all around me. I got to thinking about how marvelous the day was and how wonderful this little tract of land. Then I wondered, would it be more comforting if I believed this day was a gift from a loving god rather than a chance happening, and I decided it probably would be. I remain an agnostic/atheist (so I’m weaseling), but knowing someone cared enough to send the very best has a certain appeal. Now I wonder, am I alone in such sentiments for a “non-believer?” For the record, I come out of a nominal Christian family background, so maybe its a residual effect. Plus, its getting near Christmas and its such a wonderful, warm, and comforting story and time of year!

Your comments would be appreciated.

Jim

During Richard Dawkins’ reading of The God Delusion at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a member of the audience posed a very interesting question: in effect, he asked Dawkins what evidence he would need to conclude that God exists.

Regretfully, Dawkins went on to address another part of the audience member’s question, and never got around to answering it.

So I put it to you, all you atheists and agnostics, heathens and humanists, unbelievers, nonbelievers, and disbelievers:

What evidence would you need to conclude that God exists?

I’ll give you my answer in a future post.

–Allen

Did you know that every day 150,000 people die? People just like you and me. Every 24 hours 150,000 people pass from time into eternity. Do you ever think about that? Isn’t there something within you that says, ‘I don’t want to die?’ That’s your god given will to live.

So says one of the floating, talking men of The Way of the Master.

I tried their 10-commandments quiz and am thrilled announce that I’m actually not doing as badly as one might imagine! First, the negatives:

• I certainly take the name of god in vain, though generally only in bed.
• I sometimes work seven-day weeks, thus violating whichever Sabbath you might chose to declare holy.
• I may have dishonored my parents on several occasions as a teenager.
• I have committed adultery. Well, only if you count the sex-before-marriage sort. However, this seems to be a popular sort to count.
• I have lied on occasion (“Yes Suzie, I loooooove your new haircutâ€?).
• I have coveted, among other things, a bagel one of my students was eating in front of me at work last Sunday. What can I say- I was hungry.

So, I’m not entirely biblically pure. However, it’s really not all bad news.

• I can honestly state that I haven’t put any other gods before “god.â€? I don’t believe in any of ‘em, so there is no need for deity prioritizing.
• I haven’t committed idolatry. This is another benefit of atheism.
• I haven’t stolen.
• I haven’t murdered…. though if thoughts could kill, I might be answering this one a bit differently.

In summary, I have only violated 6 of the 10 commandments, leaving me 40% biblically pure. That’s probably the most chaste I’ve scored on an Internet purity test yet.

Also on this site is a video describing how to convert an atheist. The cool floaty men (though in this video they are sitting rather than floating) oh-so-pretentiously describe their method as “bait and hook.� The bait draws the atheist into the conversation by framing the debate in rational terms. Apparently, logic is to atheists as worms are to fish. Then, once the atheist is happily munching on his or her juicy worm, BOOM, comes the hook, the emotional draw of GUILT in the form of the Ten Commandments. It’s something like this: logic, designer, cars, Ten Commandments, stealing, lying, YOU’RE BAD, guilt, fear, DEATH.

Unfortunately, even the possibly pretend atheists in the video didn’t really seem to reel in perfectly nicely, though they were significantly less eloquent than most real atheists I know (note: a lapsed Christian is not the same as an atheist). Apparently, atheists (even pretend ones) are adept at picking the worms off the hook before swallowing ‘em. Or perhaps they’re just getting their worms from other sources. (shrugs) Something like that. Either way, definitely go check out the videos at The Way of the Master. Just watch for those pesky hooks!

(cross posted at Irreverent Musings)

Very much by accident, I came across a rare television series about atheism, Jonathan Miller’s A Rough History of Disbelief, produced for BBC 4 in England. It’s a three-part program in which Miller explores the origins, development, and current implications of atheism through conversations with scientists, historians, writers, and philosophers. Miller himself is articulate and insightful, and his personal observations bind the series together in a very compelling way.

One minor criticism I have is the captioning; not only is it distracting, but often inaccurate. If you can get past that, however, it is an hour well-spent.

Part 2 can be found here, but part 3 seems to have disappeared since I first found it a month ago. This really is a shame; perhaps someone out there can make sure it finds its way back.

Enjoy!

Allen

I spent part of last Saturday working a shift at my local humanist group’s booth at the Columbus International Festival. I expected to enjoy it, but I was surprised by just how extremely happy I was to be sitting underneath a humanist banner, smiling at visitors, and stamping their festival “passports.� I really love situations where I can be openly non-theistic, especially without feeling as if I’m directly pushing on someone else’s belief system. I love the chance to portray atheism with a just smile rather than an argument.

There are valuable fights in the political sphere; there are lawsuits to be filed and debates to be won. I’m all for aggressively protecting our right to not be governed by others’ superstitions, of whatever variety. However, this sometimes feels like fighting symptoms rather than a root cause.

I think in the end we’ll come closer to winning the larger battle against superstition when a lack of theism becomes… well… normal in the eyes of the general population. It’s not always viable to be “out� in all spheres of life and I admire those who are more open about being atheist than I am. While I never pretend to be Christian, I’m also not interested in antagonizing myself out of my income and certainly wouldn’t consider myself “out� in the community where I run my small business. However, I think the more we can each do to expand the number of spheres where we feel comfortable expressing our lack of theism, the better off we’ll be as a whole.

The more often we drop the phrases atheist, non-theist, humanist, separation of church and state, and freedom from religion into everyday conversation, the more listeners become conditioned to hearing them. Those who know individual atheists are less likely to be nervous by us as a group. The more people who see us smile, laugh, work, raise children, vote, volunteer, eat pudding, and simply live, the more atheism becomes a non-threatening, viable, visible alternative to theism.

(cross posted at Irreverent Musings)

::Waves:: Guest blogger here.
__________________________

This is interesting.

Atheists think they are superior to/smarter than/know more than everyone else.

That’s the contention I’ve come across on several message boards recently.

This contention is interesting to me. Now I know all Christians aren’t like this, but let’s take a fundamentalist Christian who believes the Bible word-for-word and who believes you must believe certain things about Jesus to go to Heaven. This person will tell you that she knows without a doubt I am going to hell unless I accept Jesus before I die. She will tell you that she knows without a doubt that the judeo-christian god created the world. She will tell you that, if you have enough faith in Jesus, you can move mountains. You can drink poison and handle snakes and not be hurt. She will tell you that her god has a plan. She has an explanation for evil in the world. She believes her god answers all prayers (although she is quick to add that god is free to deny us the answer we want). She is sure that any force which would draw her away from Jesus is a Satanic one. She believes her god is more real than science.

But the atheist realizes that there is so much she doesn’t know. Although science has saved more lives than prayer, the atheist realizes that science has given us incomplete answers at best and that there is so much we don’t know. And so we are inspired to keep searching. Questions fuel science. There is no resting on your laurels, no easy “god did it” allowed. There is this quote from Carl Sagan, now deceased, that I just love. The book it comes from is The Demon Haunted World.

“This is one of the reasons the organized religions do not inspire me with confidence. Which leaders of the major faiths acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies?…What rewards are religious skeptics given by the established religions…? Science…is forever whispering in our ears, ‘Remember, you’re very new at this. You might be mistaken. You’ve been wrong before.’ Despite all the talk of humility, show me something comparable in religion. Scripture is said to be divinely inspired - a phrase with many meanings. But what if it’s simply made up by fallible humans? Miracles are attested, but what if they’re instead some mix of charlatanry, unfamiliar states of consciousness, misapprehensions of natural phenomena, and mental illness? No contemporary religion..seems to me to take sufficient account of the gradeur, magnificience, subtlety and intracy of the Universe revealed by science. The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on its divine inspiration.
“But of course I might be wrong.”

As for me, there are (Carl Sagan voice) “billions and billions” (/Carl Sagan voice) of things that I don’t know. Someone might know some of these things, but I sure don’t.

Among them:
1. What the hell is outside the universe anyway? I mean, is there a brick wall out there or what?
2. I’m sitting here typing this, so I guess I exist. But how the hell did that happen? I’m not talking about evolution - we’ve figured out that part. I’m talking about matter itself. If it always existed, then holy crap. If it didn’t always exist, then holy crap. Either one, if you allow yourself to think about it, is just mind-boggling. And believing god doesn’t get you out of it either, because where the hell did he come from?
3. What is the optimal societal arrangement?
4. Do I agree with Sam Harris that the world would be better off if all religion ceased to exist?
5. Is it even possible for religion to cease to exist?
6. Is there some kind of more intelligent power out there? (Note, I’m not talking about god, especially the god of the bible, as I have already rejected him having not been persuaded of his existence).

And so on..

But I wonder. So many people have this idea that atheists are snobbish, and I wonder why they get that idea? There is some disdain for “blind faith” and the illogical reasoning one sometimes finds in religious apologetics. Maybe that’s it. And then there is the suspicion that people start from a place of belief and then search for ways to buttress that belief, and this method can hardly be called intellectually honest. Is there any atheist scientist who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old? Of course not. The atheist scientist has no reason to try to make it look like the evidence says the earth is 6,000 years old. But the person who believes in the Bible, and who has counted the generations, and who has determined that the earth is about 6,00 years - this person has a motive to make it look like the evidence says the earth is 6,000 years old. And so you get people like Kent Hovind selling scientifically questionable videos to a captive audience. And atheists don’t tend to respect blind faith. There are those who believe that blind faith is not something to be respected - that it is irresponsible and dangerous, among other things. And so, a Christian who, when backed into a corner says, “well, that’s just what I believe”…well, it’s hard for an atheist to respect that position. In science it is never “this is what I believe, despite all the evidence”. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins notes what was, for him, a touching experience. A scientist had held to a particular theory for (what was it, 15?) years. At one point he attended a lecture by someone presenting evidence for the opposite contention. At the end of the lecture he said, “I have been wrong all of these years”. I love that Professor Dawkins included that in his book because I think it is touching, too.

Unlike the scientist Professor Dawkins describes, the fundamentalist Christian we met above believes things and insists on believing them even against the weight of the evidence. She refuses to believe in evolution even though the scientific community is in consensus w/r/t its truth. She still believes that being gay is a “choice” and isn’t natural, even though science proves otherwise. She still believes prayer can heal people, even though a recent study says it doesn’t. She believes the faithful can handle poisonous snakes, and when her hypotheis is proven false, she doesn’t reject that belief.

The really nasty Christians, and these ones are so rare that it seems almost not fair to mention them, they will claim that Satan is guiding the non-believer, that the non-believer lives in darkness, that the non-believer is a fool not capable of doing any good. The nasty Christian will delight in telling non-believers that they are “so lost” and “should be afraid of Jesus” and so on.

So do atheists come across as arrogant? Maybe some do. But I can’t imagine it’s more arrogant than the fundamentalists holding a belief that there is one way to heaven and that they know exactly what it is and that everyone who doesn’t see it has been blinded by Satan. If atheists do come across as arrogant, is that because they actually feel superior, or is it because they refuse to accept unviable explanations (like, “you just have to have faith”) and results-based science? Or could it be because some of them refuse to pretend the bible is a holy book that should be respected? Could it be that they see science saying, “test me, test me!” and religion saying, “believe without question” and that they just can’t respect that kind of reasoning?

I don’t know. What I don’t understand is how a fundamentalist can accuse an atheist of being arrogant when it is the fundamentalist who refuses to acknowledge that she could be wrong.
Cross posted at MomSquared.

It’s a bitter-sweet morning for this central Ohioan voter.

I am ashamed to admit that I voted Straight Democrat. Why is this embarrassing to me? Well as most of you know, I’m not a Democrat - I’m a Libertarian. I was quite happy with my Libertarian choice for governer - Bill Pierce. But I didn’t feel comfortable with the overwhelming possibility that the Republicans would remain in control. So I voted democrat, all the way across the board. I feel that I wasn’t true to my beliefs, but I’m satisfied with the outcome.

I am happy to say that I voted “NO” on all Ohio issues, but disappointed in the fact that several of them passed. “Smoke Free Ohio” is one of those issues. Of course, I also voted no on “Smoke Less Ohio” as well. I just don’t support a smoking ban. Period. But apparently most Ohioans do support the idea of the government making yet another law. So it goes.

I was also disappointed in the fact that Ohioans voted to “Raise the Wage.” I’m not a supportive of a minimum wage hike. I don’t think that it can do anything but harm the economy. Small businesses have a hard enough time making ends meet. Now they’ll have to pay employees more, and as a result some of them may end up unemployed. A better idea would be to fix the heath insurance issues! Bring the price down so that people can afford it and employer can afford to help their employees pay for it. Anyway, this is a whole different post.

The only issue that I was unsure of how to vote for was Ohio’s Learn and Earn. Learn and Earn? Ha…
Let’s just call it what it is - Gambling in Ohio. Anyway, I voted no, but I tossed that one around a bit. I don’t like the idea of telling people whether they can gamble or not. But that’s not what this is about. I guess I would just rather they not do it here. There are plenty of places in this country that allow gambling. I have no problem with that. I enjoy it myself occasionally. But is it really necessary here?

I am cautiously optimistic. I really hope that “the change” all of our democratic candidates were talking up is something that we will see. They need to show the American people that they made the right choices!!

Why didn’t Jesus write His own life story?

I mean, if we are to believe He is God, all-powerful and such, why couldn’t He be bothered to produce and preserve a clear, first-hand narrative and explanation about His life and message to humanity? Why, in His infinite wisdom, did He leave the details of the most significant event in the history of the world in the hands of fallible humans?

–Allen

The picture of Ted Haggard in the post below was just asking for it!!

But be warned, this picture isn’t very safe for work.

You know, this is just so big that I don’t even know what to say that hasn’t been said already. But I’ve come across some really great pieces written by others, so I’ll start there.

This one is from Secular Rebellion on Myspace. He listed this under “Parties and Nightlife” LMAO! I loved the title.

Evangelism is SUPER, thanks for asking!

It seems that no matter how many of these mega-church pastors and evangelists make grave and outright lies to their congregations… the sheep that are under their control just lie down and take it as some sort of a ..test of faith.. or ..the influence of Satan… Jim Bakker, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Robert Tilton and now Rev. Haggard are all cheats, liars, deviants and philanderers- yet somehow through their ..higher calling.. they are forgiven by the sheep which they lead.

This came from Gary Lenaire, also on Myspace. He posted this as a bulletin.

Please notice […] that Ted Haggard has been lying and then changing his story. He lied and said he DID NOT KNOW the gay escort Mike Jones. Once Haggard found out that Jones could prove his affiliation with Haggard, Haggard changed his story. Now, being forced to tell the truth, Haggard is saying that he does know Jones, paid him for a “massageâ€? and bought meth from him. Haggard is now saying that he didn’t have “sexâ€? with Jones and that he bought meth but “threw it awayâ€? without using it.

PLEASE NOTICE: Haggard knows that there may be no way for Jones to prove the sex acts or that he actually used the meth. It seems to me that becuase of that Haggard is again lying about the allegations that cannot be proven. I mean, he bought meth and threw it away? Received a “massage� from a gay escort but didn’t have sex? Yeah right.

He then listed a few quotes from articles that are floating around. I also want to mention that Gary Lenair recently wrote An Infidel Manifesto. It’s coming out on December 11th. Check it out!

Here’s my thought about the meth. Haggard says, “I was tempted but I never used it…”
He was tempted to buy and use meth?? I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around fighting my meth temptations. Let me be honest, I’ve done my fair share of experimenting. But the typical person doesn’t just jump into speed without some past drug use. I’m sure it happens, but if a person is tempted to use meth, odds are they smoke a little bit of pot, or do a little coke, before asking to get hooked up with a “$100 or $200 supply.”

But I must say, Haggard’s choice in male prostitutes is quite good! Mike Jones is a hottie! Check out those muscles. I’m sure he gives one hell of a “rub down.”

CP @ GifS

So check this out - I got an email this morning (a long with several others) with a subject that said there there was a new post at Multae Sententiae.

Here is the link:

www.multisententiae.blogpot.com

Thanks!

Marco

I thought that it was strange to get an email like this from Marco, but I followed the link anyway. I was confused when I arrived at the site. Take a look to see what I mean. I had to go back to the email and look at the link closely.

So of course, I had to do some investigation and I figured that I would post this public information here.

blogpot.com

Registrant:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one (BLOGPOT-COM-DOM)
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7275428374
amazingbible@verizon.net

Domain Name: BLOGPOT.COM
Status: PROTECTED

Administrative Contact:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one amazingbible@verizon.net
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7275428374

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Doug Powell (DME) use this one amazingbible@verizon.net
PO Box 10142
St Petersburg, FL 33733
US
+1.7275428374

Record last updated on 22-Aug-2006.
Record expires on 30-Oct-2008.
Record created on 30-Oct-2002.

Domain servers in listed order:

Name Server: ns1.ebibleonline.com
Name Server: ns5.dnsmadeeasy.com
Name Server: ns6.dnsmadeeasy.com

Feel free to drop him a line!

Update:
I guess this guy has been around the block a few times.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Ted Haggard/male prostitute scandal. What a scumbag.

The Rev. Ted Haggard stepped aside as senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church and resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations by a former gay male escort that the two had a three-year sexual relationship.

Here’s a short clip from Jesus Camp - Ted Haggard talks about homosexuality.

I was shocked at the number of emails and messages I got about hiding the zodiac on Myspace. Since the hack, I lost that file and the link that is out there was broken.

So here it is! Let me know if you run into any issues.