First, I want to talk about sex before marriage. People have sex for a variety of reasons. It isn’t just for procreation anymore… as if it ever was. Sex is also a very important part of a relationship and it is important to know that everyone involved are on the same page when it comes to the subject. Just as it is important to get to know someone’s personality before you marry them, it is important to get to know someone sexually before you marry them too. Sex isn’t everything in a relationship, but it is something… and for most couples it is a very important something.

Next, since Bethke focuses a lot on the negative, let’s look at divorce. Divorces happen. That is not necessarily a bad thing. People today live longer and healthy lives than we did back in the day. If you marry someone at 19, you aren’t just spending 20 or 30 years with them anymore. People are now living into their 90s and even into their hundreds. Over time, one thing is certain. You will change. You will either change with your spouse or change in a different direction.

I get my wisdom in the strangest places. A long time ago, I remember watching the first episode of SeaQuest DSV. At the end of the episode, Lucas (the boy genius) told an interesting story of how his parents fought all the time and he hated listening to them argue. He said that he just wished that they would get a divorce, but they wouldn’t. Captain Bridger asked why they didn’t. Lucas said that his father told him that they made a promise, but he guesses they didn’t count on things changing.

Like I said before though, sometimes people change together and when this happens, people can stay together for a very long time and maybe even their entire lifetime. One piece of advice that I have to help that is to marry someone who you are also friends with; more importantly, to treat your marriage like a friendship. One way to test whether you are doing that is to view the marriage ceremony as just that, a ceremony.

Getting married should not change the relationship or make the relationship more serious. Should just be a celebration of the relationship you already have. If you think you need to get married to make the relationship work, than you probably shouldn’t get married to that person at that time.

With that said, please check out my Examiner article on Jefferson Bethke’s video  “Sex, Marriage, and Fairytales.” Thanks!

Related articles

• Refuting ‘Sex, Marriage, & Fairytales’ video (examiner.com)

When you think about it, they should. I mean the whole point of the magic underwear seems to be that they protect the wearer spiritually. So who wouldn’t want to keep their babies safe? Are Mormons really so callous as to protect themselves with magic underwear, but allow their babies to remain vulnerable?

This of course brings up the question; at what age do Mormons get their magic underwear? Is there some rite of passage that must be passed in order to receive the magic underwear?

Maybe I’ll just hold my questions for Mitt Romney during the election.

I think when they add, “self-professed” in front of someone’s identification they are taking a shot at them. It is a way of delegitimizing them. A self-professed priest for example would mean that only that person recognizes his position and that everyone else thinks he is crazy.

When they say that someone is a self-professed atheist, they are saying that they really believe we really believe. Some Christians have this thing where they believe that atheists secretly know God is real and that we are just “rebelling” against him. Or that we secretly know that God is real, but are agents of Satan trying to lead good Christians astray so that Satan can eat their souls or something.

If you are ever interviewed about something as an atheist and the interviewer uses this “self-professed” crap, stop the interviewer right then and there and demand an explanation. Demand that the religious person be addressed as “self-professed” and start addressing the religious person as such. Do this especially in relation to their religious title or position.

This year, the convention was opened with a prayer to Jesus Christ. I have attended conventions in three counties and I have need had the convention open with a prayer. Even in Lancaster County which is much more religious than my current Delaware County, didn’t open with a prayer.

In fairness though, I could somewhat understand if there was a prayer that was non-specific. Most of this country is Christian and that Jews have a strong lobby and are very involved in politics. If there was a prayer to a generic “god” or something, I would still be pissed, but at least I would get what was going on. As it is thought, there tend to be a lot of Jews in the Democratic Party and in fact, there also tend to be a lot of secular people and atheists too. I even saw someone in the crowd who I think was a Sheik.

So, what the fuck? Why would the Democratic Party deliberately exclude all these people including atheists? What has happened to the Democratic Party? Now I know this might just be a county level problem, but sadly the national party hasn’t really done a great job standing up against religious extremism either.

I intend to complain to the county party about this and I hope that if anyone else is involved in politics (in any political party), and your local party starts bringing up religion (which if you are a Republican, that is going to be a lot), you will complain too.

This really isn’t about Christianity, but rather it is about most religions which create a problem which only they can solve for you. Christianity is just the most blatant example of this.

It’s a con game. The way it works is that religion spends a great deal of time telling you that you are broken and then continuing to push the idea that you are broken and that you need something. Christians call this a “hole in your heart.” Then they present to you a way to fix the problem that only they can provide. Oddly enough, all religions can fix the problem that any religion creates. This is why religions often spend time tweaking the solution so that only their solution will fix the problem. Christians often say that other religions try to get you closer to God, but with Christianity, God comes to us as long as you worship Jesus to get closer to God.

The way I see it is that we are who we are. We don’t have a hole in our heart, we are not broken, and we don’t need fixing. We should work to be better people here on Earth, but that doesn’t require anything special. We aren’t perfect, but why should we be perfect? What does perfect even mean in relation to human beings?

If there is anything broken about us humans it is because religion broke us and is trying to blame it on us instead of taking responsibility for what they have done and what they continue to do.

Related articles

• Refuting ‘Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus’ video (examiner.com)
• Can You Follow Jesus without Religion? (godlessgirl.com)
• Can you separate Christian religion from Jesus? This video has the answer… (pakos.me)

Alain de Botton is basically the British equivalent to Greg Epstein, but worse. Greg Epstein is the Humanist Chaplin at Harvard University and for the most part I don’t have much of a problem with his approach. I don’t like that he is trying to make Humanism more like the traditional theistic religions except without the God, but that’s his thing. But it seems that de Botton takes it much further and the fact that he confuses atheism with humanism makes it even worse.

Atheism is just a lack of belief in deities. It is not in and of itself a system of belief. Not all atheists are rational, nor do all atheists value rationality, reason, and science. These are Humanist values. While all Humanists are atheists and most atheists are Humanists, not all atheists are actually Humanists. When de Botton labeled his ultra-religious Humanism as “Atheism 2.0” he is confusing the already confused theists.

Take for example, the recent Huffington Post article, “Atheist Temple: Nonbelievers To Get Place Of ‘Worship’ In UK.” The fact is that Humanists already have meeting places so de Botton isn’t doing anything new really. There are Ethical Humanist Societies all over America and much of Europe too. But by labeling it as an “Atheist Temple” de Botton gets people’s attention. Plus, it seems like de Botton’s idea of an “Atheist Temple” would even make most Humanists cringe.

Again, while I disagree with Alain de Botton’s “Atheism 2.0,” I would support his efforts in that I think we need to take multiple approaches to the problem of religion. However, I don’t like his terminology which I think is confusing at best. For more on “Atheism 2.0,” check out de Botton’s TED Talk.

Related articles

• Atheism 2.0: Alain de Botton on TED.com (ted.com)
• Against Atheism 2.0 (resnikoff.wordpress.com)
• Do we need an atheist religion? (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)

Our country and our world will not get better until we take the money out of politics and our politicians start listening to scientifically minded people. When all four of the remaining Republican candidates for President of the United States don’t accept the science of evolution and global climate change and the current Democratic President seeking re-election doesn’t care to support the teaching of evolution in schools even from his bully pulpit, we have a problem. When the current President doesn’t act to prevent and reverse global climate change with anything more than his bully pulpit, we are in real trouble.

For decades now, Presidents have been talking about alternative energy during their State of the Union addresses, but when are they going to act in a serious way about this. Where are the wind mill construction projects? When will there be solar energy panels on every home? Will we ever have mainstream cars that don’t run on gasoline?

The state of our union is fucked up when school children can go to prison for stealing pencils, but Wall Street executives get billion dollar bonuses for stealing from the American people and clasping the economy not just in America, but all over the world. If there is going to be a “zero tolerance” policy, it ought to be on Wall Street, not Sesame Street.

Of course there are many more examples to show that the state of our union is fucked up, but the real issue is what we are going to do about it? We need to hold our vote hostage and demand that our politicians not just support taking money out of politics, but actively push for it. We need to occupy our congressional representatives in the House and Senate by writing letters to them at their homes rather than their offices. And we need to question our elected officials at townhall meetings the way Jacob Kramer did. Here is the video:

It was Immanuel Kant who is known for verbalizing the fact that our senses are filtered through our brains. What we find beautiful, other creatures may not. In other words, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder… literally.

When we see something like a beautiful sunset or the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), it is our brain which translates what we see into beautiful colors. Other animals may not find the same things as beautiful as we do. They may find other things beautiful that we do not.

The universe is what it is and we are here to observe it. Science allows us to understand the universe, but it does not take the beauty out of it. We don’t need imaginary deities to take credit for the universe.

It’s true, if atheists are wrong and Christianity is correct, then atheists will be tortured for all eternity simply because of our lack of belief. This is a possibility. It just isn’t probable. While we are talking about improbable possibilities, what if the Christian is wrong is Islam is the correct answer? What if the Mormons are correct? How about if the ancient Greeks or Romans were correct? There are a lot of possibilities out there all equally as improbable as Christianity.

So sure, I could be wrong and so could the average Christian. Anything is possible, but the real question is not what is possible, but rather what is probable. Atheism is probable because it simply demands that theists (whether Christian or not) supply evidence for their claims. The claims of atheists are simply that we lack a belief in deities. This is usually the case because no credible evidence has been presented for such beliefs. In the absence of such credible evidence, it is probable that no such god exists.

I am willing to admit that I could be wrong and that a god does in fact exist. All a theist has to do is to present credible evidence for their belief. But I think it is only fair that theists admit that they could be wrong and that god might not exist. Theists should reconsider why they believe what they believe and consider whether or not there are more probable explanations for those reason.

Is it more likely that they heard the voice of God giving them sage advice or that they were having an internal dialog with themselves and gave themselves that sage advice? Is it more likely that the football player won the big game because God had a plan for him or that he and his team practiced a lot and had more skill than their opponents? Sure, I could be wrong about the whole God thing, but so could you the Christian!

Related articles

• Why Are Theists Angry? (dangeroustalk.net)
• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)
• ‘Why Would You Risk Your Soul?’ (dangeroustalk.net)

I responded to the Christian asking why he or she would risk their Thetans by rejecting L. Ron Hubbard? My point is that they don’t believe Thetans exist (I don’t either btw) and that is why they don’t consider it a risk to not believe in Thetans. I don’t believe souls exist and that is why rejecting Christianity in favor of reality is doesn’t actually rick my soul.

In fact, I am so not worried about my soul being risked that I will gladly sell it to you along with all my Thetans to any Christian and Scientologist willing to make me a decent amount of money in reality.

The question itself however, is just a watered down version of Pascal’s Wager. To really protect you soul, you should believe in every religion. Protect your Thetan too with this once in an afterlife time offer. How much would you expect to pay for this protection? You get protection for your soul from every religion’s version of the devil and Hell, plus protection for your Thetans from the Evil Galactic Overlord, Xenu. Ten Million Dollars, you say? Well, it is certainly worth every penny of that. How about one million dollars? What a bargain. Slash that, for this one reality only event, I’ll give you all that protection for free!

What’s that, you will get eternal protection for your soul from every religion’s threat of eternal torment, plus eternal protection for your Thetans from the Evil Galactic Overlord Xenu, and a more enjoyable reality all for free? How do you sign up? It’s easily, use reason and skepticism and become an atheist.

No more risks to your immortal soul for working on the Sabbath. No more risks to your immortal soul for having fun in bed. No more risks to your Thetans for taking anti-depressants. You can live the good life by being moral for its own sake and embracing the real world. Become an atheist today!

Order within the next ten minutes and you will get a free sense of wonder and curiosity about the universe and everything. Hurry, supplies are limited.

Free Speech is kinda my thing. In 2004 and 2005, I personally went down to DC and lobbied several Senators on behalf of myself, against the Broadcast Decency Act. The bill passed both times with 99 Senators supporting it. The first time however, then-President Bush forgot to sign it. But he did sign it into law in 2005. That bill came in the aftermath of Janet Jackson’s half-second “wardrobe malfunction” and raised the fines of broadcasters who air “indecency” to absurd levels. This would shut down small radio stations if they got fined. But worse, the law created an atmosphere of fear and over censorship by station owners.

So yesterday, Dangerous Talk was quick to join the black-out strike against SOPA & PIPA and any other pieces of legislation that would or could censor the internet in any way. I was disappointed however, that many other atheist websites did not feel so moved to support the strike.

Atheists depend on the internet for many reasons. For one thing, it has become a place where we can go and be open about our lack of belief. It is also a place we can go to find other atheists, freethinkers, and humanists. But most importantly, the internet is a place where religions die. Freedom of information is the strongest weapon atheists have against religion. So one would think with so much at stake, that the atheist community online would be the first to lend their voice to support a strike aimed to call attention to SOPA & PIPA.

While I was initially disappointed that Google didn’t go entirely black yesterday and shut down their search engine, at least they and many other sites took part in the strike by calling attention to the issue and putting a link right up front so that people can learn what they can do and who to contact. Some atheist websites did this. Kudos goes out to Freethoughtblogs, AtheistNexus, ThinkAtheist, and many others for taking part in this strike in that way.

Most of the major atheist organizations did not take part in the strike and that is disappointing. American Humanist Association is one of the few that did take part and kudos to them. I sent a message to Hemant of the Friendly Atheist blog asking him to take part in the strike and he said no. That’s his choice, but it was disappointing.

As it stands now, it is very likely that SOPA & PIPA will be defeated. But just a few days ago that was not the case. The bills enjoyed massive bipartisan support. This of course has more to do with the fact that lobbyists run our country and the entertainment industry really wants to stop online piracy. It was only because of the threats made by large websites like Google, Wikipedea, Facebook, and Reddit combined with the public outrage shifted the tide of this fight. Most news outlets didn’t cover the problems with these two laws until the threat of the blackout began to look like a reality.

The blackout is over, but your support is still important. You should still contact your representatives in the House and the Senate and let them know you stand against any attempt to “put regulations” on the internet. Republicans hate “regulations” so that is the term to use. If you have a few extra minutes, find your representative’s home address and write them there too. Occupy their house!

For more information of SOPA & PIPA, check out: http://americancensorship.org/

Related articles

• Stop SOPA/PIPA!!! (gwynna.wordpress.com)
• SOPA blackout shows little hope of peace with Hollywood (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Outsiders Window Protests Against SOPA & PIPA (outsiderswindowmagazine.wordpress.com)
• Say NO to SOPA & PIPA! (jeenus.wordpress.com)
• Please Oppose SOPA & PIPA in Congress. Here’s why & how. (paulburkhart.wordpress.com)

The Bible which was written by multiple anonymous people decades after Jesus was alleged to have died and those accounts have been re-written by yet more anonymous people to suit their agendas. Contrary to popular opinion among most mainstream believers, we have no idea who wrote the Gospels. We do know that it wasn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Those were simply the names assigned to the books. The Gospels are anonymous! The Gospel of Mark was the earliest Gospel and Matthew and Luke plagiarized from Mark and another Gospel account which has been labeled “Q.”

The Gospels were edited over and over again by anonymous scribes. These various scribes changed the Gospels sometimes by accident and other times on purpose to suit their agendas. We know that whole verses were added and probably some were subtracted. The often quoted “He who is without sin, cast the first stone” story in John 8 for example was almost certainly added centuries later.

Another important fact that Christians need to realize is that there is no singular message of the Bible. The Bible is not one book by one author who has one message he or she wants to get across. The Bible is series of books written by many authors over a large period of time. Each author had their own agenda and was writing for people living in a particular time and place to address particular issues of that time and place. So when Christians try to tell you that the main point of the Bible is X, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Triskaidekaphobia, or the fear of the number thirteen was once a very common thing. If you have ever lived in a large city, you might take notice that many older buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor. They go to twelve, skip thirteen, and then proceed to fourteen as if changing the label on the floor would somehow erase the actual fact that the fourteenth floor is really the thirteenth floor.

Also, if you are an Astrologer, you are no doubt aware of the twelve zodiac signs, but if you are an Astronomer, you know that there are actually thirteen. No one wants to be born during a cursed zodiac sign.

Again, we laugh at this stuff today. Not just atheists either. You can go to your favorite fundamentalist Christian and ask them if they fear the number thirteen or consider Friday the 13th to be a cursed day. My guess is that most will laugh at the thought and it should be noted that fundamentalist Christians tend to be the most superstitious people and even they think it is a joke.

Did God release a new book in the Bible letting Christians know that they ought not to fear Friday the 13th? Of course not, so why is it that just a few generations ago large majorities of people (mainly religious) feared this cursed day and today we laugh at it?

Part of it I guess may be the ridiculously funny horror series of the same name. But honestly, I knew about the Friday the 13th movies before I even heard of the superstition around the day. I think what has accounted for our dismissal of this curse has been societies greater emphasis on reason. I know it doesn’t seem like much of an emphasis, but believe it or not people (even religious believers) consider reason a virtue. Sometimes they just don’t realize it.

So the more we can get people to reason and to value reason the less we have to deal with ridiculous curses like Friday the 13th. In fact, the more we can get people to reason and to value reason, the less we have to deal with religious superstitions and religion itself. Today’s silly superstitions were once yesterday’s divine realities. Which means that today’s divine realities are tomorrow’s silly superstitions.

Related articles

• Friday the Thirteenth (growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com)
• Superstitions on Friday The 13th (paulocoelhoblog.com)
• Why Friday (the13th)? (1fridayatatime.wordpress.com)
• Friday The 13th: A Brief Look At The Superstitiously Unlucky Day (huffingtonpost.com)
• It’s Friday 13th! (And there are THREE this year, which is bad news for the superstitious) (dailymail.co.uk)

It was an awesome lecture and I learned a lot about cosmology, the age of the universe, and how we know what we know about the universe. However, I almost certainly won’t be able to explain it. It was pretty complicated stuff and I don’t know it well enough to explain it. Fortunately, Dr. Krauss does.

While I talked about the substance of the lecture a little bit in my Examiner article, what I found more interesting was the theological implications. As we learn more about nothing, we start to understand more about the universe.

Krauss makes the argument that Edwin Hubble did for the creation of the universe what Charles Darwin did for the creation of man. Both men presented evidence which takes God out of the process. This leaves religious believers with nowhere to go. The gaps are closing and God is left out.

The lecture itself was educational and fun. Krauss had fun playing with the word “nothing” and cracking jokes about string theory (which he notoriously opposes). Hopefully his book will have the same wit and humor as his lecture. It is interesting to note that Christopher Hitchens was working on the forward to the book, but never finished it. Richard Dawkins wrote the afterward.

Buy the book: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing.

Politics is viewed in much the same way but just quite to the same extent. A great example of this is when people wanted to end the war in Iraq, the main criticism from the other side was that if we left without “winning” (whatever that meant) then all those soldiers died for nothing. Therefore, we have to send more soldiers to die because we were as they say in poker, “pot committed.”

In any case, these issues make people very passionate in their arguments and sometimes when this happens people let their passion control the argument. It is one thing to use passion in an argument to make a more compelling case, but when we let our passion run away with us, we lose control of the argument.

Sometimes we need to pause and consider. Sometimes we need to take a step back from the argument, calm down, and consider what the other person is saying. This refocusing will help us understand their point of view and if we still disagree, we can refocus the argument into a better direction using logic and reason.

The real trick is to get the other person to pause and consider too. Especially when dealing with religious believers, having them take a step back and re-consider their position without “fire in their belly” might help to shake them loss from their dogmatic delusions.

Related articles

• God is not great, but Christopher Hitchens was! (examiner.com)
• Doubting Personal Experiences (dangeroustalk.net)
• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)

First, it is important to point out that personal experience does not qualify as actual evidence. Anecdotal evidence is not really evidence. Obi Wan Kenobi put it best when he said, “Your eyes can deceive you; don’t trust them.”

Second and more importantly, it isn’t the religious believer’s personal experience that I doubt; it is their interpretation of their experience that I question. To best illustrate my point I am going to use a personal experience of my own. When I was in college, I was auditing a class on religion. There was a person in the class who told us about how they had prayed for money and then found a quarter in the cushion of the car seat. This was their personal experience and iron clad proof that God exists and had answered the prayer.

The problem with the story is that people lose change in the cushion of their car seats all the time. If you pray for money and start searching around in places where you are likely to find some, a more plausible explanation can surely be found. People love patterns and we love to draw conclusions based on insufficient data.

First X, then Y, therefore X caused Y. But that isn’t necessarily true. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. I have no doubt that the person in my class prayed to some deity and I am certainly not doubting that they found a quarter in the car seat cushion. I do not even doubt that the person considered this to be a profound moment of deep connection to the world around them. It isn’t the experience that I doubt; it is the interpretation of that experience that I question.

There is a lot going on in the world and there is a lot going on in our minds and bodies much of which we are not even slightly aware of. Here is another anecdote. Last week, my father got sick. Nothing serious, but he was puking and shitting a lot. He felt like crap and he blamed it on a food that he thought might not have been cooked properly. Earlier that day he noticed that the food in question looked a little discolored, but ate it anyway. Then he got sick. Conclusion: The food did it. However a day later, my brother got the same illness and he didn’t have the questionable food. This implies that it wasn’t the food that made either of them sick and that it was most likely some sort of virus.

According to my father’s personal experience, the food had made him sick. But later evidence suggested that was not actually the case. Religion works in much the same way. A Christian is in a rut. They have hit bottom. They pray. Then things get better. What they fail to remember is that they hit bottom and then they did something to help their situation. Things got better because they did something to make them get better.

I view the belief system of Christianity as a living system, like a virus. They system adapts and changes in order to remain relevant. It takes advantage of weaknesses within the human psyche and cements itself into people’s lives. While people push this belief on others, they do so because the belief system uses them to spread itself.

I don’t blame religious believers as much as I blame the system which has taken control of them. When someone is sick and pukes, we don’t blame the person for puking; we blame the illness for causing the person to puke. The same is the case with religious believers.

When a particular Christian hates gay people, it isn’t there fault as much as it is the fault of the belief system which has distorted their moral sense.  While there are a few Christians who don’t hate gay people, it is because the system of belief has identified that compassion toward gay people would be a liability toward the spread of the belief system in those cases. As a result, the system of belief has adapted to focus on some other issue while finding a way around this issue despite the obviously fact that the Bible strongly opposes homosexuality.

Ironically, much like how Christians claim to hate the sin and not the sinner, I hate the belief system of Christianity rather than the Christian. Curing the Christian of this system of belief is difficult and takes a great deal of time. Usually, the Christian has to find their own way out, but we can help my dismantling the excuses they use to protect them from the seeing the problems with the belief system. Some of those problems are logical and some are moral. These problems must be exposed so that the believer can see them clearly and find their own way out.

When we are doing a task which has a known final outcome, I can understand what perfect mean. For example, when doing a puzzle if we are able to put all the puzzle pieces in the correct spots, we can say we did the puzzle perfectly. But people are a little different. There is no single final outcome. This means that there is no real perfect in relation to people.

Sure we can always strive to be better people. We can understand what that means. It means that we observe that certain traits make us happy and make others happy. Certain traits lead to a better quality of life for all involved. Being a better person would entail maximizing those traits for the wellbeing of ourselves and others. But is there a perfect way to maximize those traits? Are there perfect traits to be maximized?

I don’t think so and if there are, we as a society have not yet identified them yet. We don’t know what perfect is or even if there is a perfect. We do know that we are not perfect. We make mistakes all the time. But that isn’t a bad thing necessarily. It can be part of the learning process.

The character of God as he is thought about in Christianity and other religions is deeply flawed. He’s flawed because he is alleged to be perfect. God can’t learn. He can’t progress. The flaw is that his journey is over.

God can’t love us despite our flaws. In fact, he can’t love at all. Love is a journey; it changes and there is no room for change in perfection.

Usually when I compare the Bible to some other work of fiction, I am comparing a particular aspect of the books. For example that they both list real people and/or places. Like when I use the DeVinci Code for comparison. Sometimes, I will compare the Bible to Star Wars when talking about moral themes (to which Star Wars blows the Bible out of the water).

Another comparison I often make is on the fancifulness of the story with the Harry Potter series. Sometimes I will compare characters like Jesus and Superman. It isn’t always even a negative comparison either. Superman is a great guy. But it doesn’t matter. Religious believers still get angry.

My thought is that the Bible is fiction and when it is talked about in the same breath as other fictional stories and/or characters, it becomes all the more obvious just how fictional the Bible really is. This is why Christians hate when the Bible is compared to other works of fiction even if those comparisons are positive.

Well that is a graphic analogy, but if that is the analogy they are going to use, I guess I’ll stick with it. Expanding from that analogy, it seems my nose has cancer and so it would be stupid to not cut off my nose to save my face. Your nose as cancer too, but you are probably going to die because you refuse to cut it off to save face.

Politics is not a horse race in which you win if you back the winning horse. Politics also isn’t about our gang colors. I’m a Democrat because I agree more with their stated platform than I do with the Republican platform. But if there is an individual candidate who I strong disagree with, I am not going to vote for them because we wear the same gang colors.

I don’t believe any politician is entitled to my vote. No politician owns my vote either. Every politician has to work hand to earn my vote. Obama isn’t doing that and he doesn’t get my vote by default.

Obama supporters have to stop blaming the victim. If I don’t vote for Obama and he loses, it isn’t my fault; it is his fault for not earning my vote. If he was a better President, he would have earned my vote. I value my vote, but it seems that Obama doesn’t. He seems to think he is entitled to my vote or that he can use fear to terrorize me into giving my vote away.

Then his supporters tell me that we lost a lot of seats in 2010 because Democrats like me didn’t vote Democrat (although for the record, I did vote Democrat). To this, I point out that the Party hasn’t learned their lesson. They are going to do the same thing they did in 2010 and they are expecting a different result. I think that is the definition of insanity or something.

I never liked using BC and AD and to be honest, I am not even a fan of BCE and CE since the “Common Era” seems to perfectly coincide with the “Year of Our Lord.” But given the choice, I would prefer BCE/CE over BC/AD any day. Still, I think we can do better and fuck with the Christian Right at the same time.

We could base our new year on anything and someone will object. Some people think we should base it on the publication of the Origin of Species, others suggested the birth of the internet. People use whatever significant event in their field of interest, but it doesn’t really make a point.

I recommend that we base the year on the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I say this for a couple of reasons. First, the American Revolution set the seeds for resurgence in democracy all over the world. Second and more importantly, it puts the Christian Right in a difficult place. These are people who generally wear their patriotism literally on their sleeves and who always talk about putting America first. Well now they have the chance to put America first and Jesus second.

The problem for them is that they also put God first. So how are they going to choose what to put first, America or God? Obviously I think they will go with God. But then we can question their patriotism and criticism them for not putting America first.

It will be fun. So I am once again asking people to write their politicians and tell them that you want them to propose a bill to change the dating system to the American system. This would make the new year 236 AE (American Era). Anything before the signing of the Declaration of Independence would be BAE (Before the American Era).

Twas the blog before Christmas, when all through the blogosphere
Every atheist was stirring, even Christopher Hitchens was here.
The banners, signs, and billboards were hung by the crèche with care,
In hopes that Dr. Dawkins would soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of the Flying Spaghetti Monster dancing in their heads.
And Stephen Hawking with his robotic tone, and I with my Kindle,
Exciting my brain for a long winter’s cosmology riddle.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a the Wright brothers,
Tore off my boxers and threw up the covers.

My frontal moon on the breast of the new-fallen rain,
Gave the lustre of distain to those who are sexually constrained.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But an annoying politician, and eight homophobia Christians coming near.

With a little old preacher, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be a prick.
More vapid than reasoned his angry slurs came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called me many an ugly name!

“You Satanist! You slut! You communist and Nazi!
You heathen! You homo! You enemy of orthodoxy!
Get out of this country, you are making it unwell!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away before we send you to Hell!”

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on my computer,
The reasoning and sound arguments of many a YouTuber.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
There over my speakers, Hitchens was the sound.

The microphone in hand tight to his lips,
his voice was steady as he refuted the apocalypse.
He had a broad face and a slightly round belly,
He pointed when he laughed and called his opponent Machiavelli!

He was witty and articulate, a right jolly guy,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of the passersby!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke such fantastic words and went straight to his work,
He eviscerated his opponent, then called him out as a jerk.
Laying my finger onto my mouse,
I give a nod and turned toward the window of the house.

I sprang into debate, refuting their God with a shout,
And away they all ran, out of the fear of their own doubt.
But I yelled and exclaimed, before they ran out of sight,
“Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good-night

Related articles

• Put the Chris in Christmas (examiner.com)
• God is not great, but Christopher Hitchens was! (examiner.com)
• The Remarkable Mr. Hitchens (dangeroustalk.net)
• A Few Christian Replies to Hitchens’s Death Worth Noting (freethoughtblogs.com)

The other day, I posted an Examiner article about how Christians have been tweeting death threats to atheists. Yesterday, a Christian called me out on this. He claimed that all those people who left those death threats were probably atheists who are part of the hacker group Anonymous pretending to be Christians to make Christianity look bad.

I pointed out to him that I cited at least ten twitter accounts with their twitter identities and that it wouldn’t be hard to just look those people up and see how long they have had their accounts for and what the content of their tweets has been. This would certainly show that they are Christians. He wasn’t having it. Instead, he insisted that the members of Anonymous are devious.

So I had to point out to him that threatening violence and even carrying out violence is not really out of character for many Christians. Without going into the long history of Christian violence (from the crusades to the inquisition),  I told him that often times all it takes is an atheist wearing an atheist themed shirt, going into a fundamentalist church and that atheist is sure to be threatened if not beat up. I also told him that it doesn’t even have to be a fundamentalist church sometimes nor does it even have to be in a church at all. I have had Christians yell threats out of a car window because I had a Darwin Fish on my car.

But I guess the old saying is true, God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son and that whoever believes in him will believe in ANYTHING!

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• Christianity: The Religion of Peace (dangeroustalk.net)
• Censoring the World for Santa (dangeroustalk.net)
• Christopher Hitchens’ ‘God Is Not Great’ Trends on Twitter, Christians Threaten Violence (wazaghun.blogspot.com)

It is pretty rare for atheists to threaten Christians over some expression of their religiosity. Sure, there may be atheists that do, but it is extremely rare. It is even rarer for threats to come from an atheist who is part of the greater community of reason. What do I mean by that? I once worked with a guy who was a fellow atheist, but he wasn’t knowledgeable about religion, didn’t attend any atheist groups, and was just an angry guy in general. He was not part of the greater community of reason. People who go to atheist groups or write and advocate about and for atheism tend to be humanistic and not prone to violence or to delivering threats. Atheism is just a lack of belief in gods.

On the other hand, it is not unusual at all for church going Christians to issue threats and act violently. Yesterday, I posted an article on Examiner about how Christians made threatening tweets on Twitter over an atheist hash tag.  This wasn’t an isolated incident either. Christians are always making hateful and threatening comments and actions towards atheists because we lack belief in their ridiculous deity.

The only thing Christians can do is to jump into the No True Scotsman defense. But that doesn’t really work because anyone who reads the Bible will see that it is a series of books which often advocates a great deal of violence. Sure Jesus said to love your enemy, but he also said that he didn’t come to bring peace, he came with a sword. He also advocated cutting off your hands and plucking out your eyes. The God of the Bible is over the top violent. So if he the the example that Christians want to live up to, it really is no surprise that they act so violently.

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• Christians issue death threats over Twitter hash tag (examiner.com)
• Some atheist parents take kids to religious services (examiner.com)
• Dear Bill Donohue (dead-logic.blogspot.com)
• Hitchens and the Christian Reactions to His Death (atheistrev.com)
• The Good Atheist (secularcentered.wordpress.com)

People tweeted about seeing an empty coffin and others saw him arguing with religious believers. Then before their eyes, he just vanished into another dimension. Christopher Hitchens has defeated death itself. He has fulfilled the prophecy, died, and on the third day he has risen.

Now, no religious believer with even the miniscule sense of reality would accept this as true. Yet these people on Twitter have no reason to lie. In fact, talking about their experience only opens them up to ridicule and might even cause them to lose their jobs in our theocratic infested nation.

So who wants evidence that Christopher Hitchens had really risen from the dead and is alive today in another dimension? Who will accept the testimony of these people on Twitter as proof of this? Who will pretend that this is a claim that has nothing to do with science or that it is somehow beyond science and yet equally as valid as anything that the scientific method has done or could do?

Now let me offer this; Adolf Hitler didn’t believe that Hitchens returned from the dead. Therefore, everyone who doesn’t believe that Hitchens did not return from the dead must be like Hitler. In fact, not believing that Hitchens returned from the dead leads to the mass murder of Jews.

Think about it, how many people who believe that Hitchens rose from the dead are in prison today? Zero! How many people who believe that Hitchens rose from the dead killed Jews or anyone else? Zero!

Admittedly, these are all terrible arguments and yet atheists have to address these very arguments on a daily basis from Christians. How can a Christian really prove that Hitchens didn’t rise from the dead as so many people claim that he has and that they have seen him? They could present the body, but that doesn’t really deal with the issue since we all know that the body is just an empty vessel and that Hitchens’ personality lives on in another dimension in the form of spaghetti sauce or something.

It actually takes more faith not to believe that Hitchens has risen on the third day than it does to believe that he has. One would have to claim to know everything in the entire universe in order to reject the belief that Hitchens has risen. How arrogant! These people must hate Hitchens and are just angry people. One must at least be willing to admit that it is possible that Hitchens did rise on the third day and that he is the world’s true savior. Kneel before the Hitch!

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Here is how it works. First, we offer to meet halfway and let them know that we are willing to consider the possibility that there might be a god and that we can’t rule it out with 100% certainty. This seems like a reasonable concession to make.

Then we ask them to admit a concession. Specifically, we ask them if they are willing to at least admit that on the surface, the whole Christian story does sound a little farfetched. You can go into the whole virgin birth, walking on water, raising the dead, raised from the dead thing in you want, but the point is to get them to at least try to understand why someone might not take such a stseriously. It is pretty absurd.

That’s as far as we need to go. While the whole god concept is possible and we can’t rule it out with 100% certainty, it is extremely improbable and as we just pointed out and they admitted, it is a bit ludicrous.

Now we have given them something to think about and we don’t need to concede another inch. We’re done here. The seeds of doubt have been planted and watered.

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Late last night, when I heard the news I posted an Examiner article on his death. But after reading it this morning, I am not happy with it. While my writing skill could never match or even come close to Hitchens, I really thought that I could do better and that I should do better. So this morning I wrote a second Examiner article.

But the real tribute to Hitchens didn’t come after he died, but rather while he was still alive to appreciate it. Last month, atheists raised their glasses to Hitchens. Today, atheists all over the world will surely be raising our glasses to the remarkable Mr. Hitchens.

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The idea of Takei’s campaign is that instead of saying gay, you can say Takei. He created a logo for the campaign featuring the Starfleet insignia and rainbow colors. Last night he posted a contest on twitter to create a new logo. I answered his call and as far as I know, I was the first to do so.

If my logo makes it as a finalist (which I think it might), then voting will be on Sunday, December 18th 2011. George Takei will create a special photo gallery on his facebook page for the contest and the logo that gets the most “likes” wins.

You don’t have to vote for mine, but I hope you will because you all love me so much and I don’t want to brag or anything, but my logo is pretty kickass. Take a look:

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According to most Christians, Jesus saves not by works, out of grace. This means that it doesn’t matter what you do in life as long as you accept Jesus as your savior before your death. So when Christians come to proselytize to me, I can tell them that I am waiting to die… or more accurately right before I die. I can tell them that this way I can sin all I want and not have to worry, but that moments before I die, I plan to accept Jesus’s sacrifice. I can even encourage them to do the same.

Now of course, I have no intention of doing that. That type of Pascal’s Wager just doesn’t appeal to me. But it might get the proselytizer to pause and consider. If I can get them to leave religion until they are ready to die, they might just end up leaving religion all together. At the very least, it might get them to stop trying to proselytize to me.

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For example, if I were to make the statement, “The English love to tea,” it would be a fallacy to conclude that there is an “assumed all” in the statement. It is probably that there are at least a few English who do not in fact love tea. The statement about English loving tea is a general statement.

Loving tea is not in this case a defining characteristic of being English and so therefore it should be interpreted as a general statement about many or most English rather than “assumed all” statement about every single man and woman living in England.

Now, let’s take this fallacy into a more controversial application. “Christians oppose same-sex marriage.” This again is a general statement and not a statement about every single Christian. To assume that this statement refers to every single Christian and not to Christians in general would be an example of the Assumed All Fallacy.

“Muslims use fear and terrorism to suppress criticism.” Again, this statement is not a defining characteristic of all Muslims; it is a general statement about many Muslims. In fact, it has become such a common characteristic that the Muslim culture has become known throughout the world for this tactic. Obviously there are Muslims who do not use fear and terrorism to suppress criticism just as there are English people who do not like tea. But the statement in general is true. When people “assume all” in such statements they are being fallacious.

Now I have talked about the purpose of life before, but I really am curious as to what religious believers think their purpose in life is. It seems like their only purpose in life is to die quickly before they sin too much. The faster they get through this life the better. This life is evil, sinful, and full of temptation to them. The next life on the other hand is an endless paradise of bliss kissing God’s ass for all eternity without free will and without caring about those former loved ones now being tortured for all eternity in Hell.

Of course you would be hard pressed to find a Christian who is so eager to die quickly and just move beyond this evil, sinful world. But they should want that, right? Instead, they come up with this copout that they have to do God’s will here on Earth before they die. In reality, these believers cling to life much more than the most vocal atheists do and yet they are still living life waiting to die.

It really doesn’t make much sense, but neither does religion. You have people claiming that this world is evil and bad and that they are waiting for the next life and yet they cling to this life as if it were the only one that truly matters. For me, this is the only world that truly matters because it is the only world I believe actual exists. So I don’t want to waste a minute of my life.

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The fact is that Christmas doesn’t belong to Christians. It doesn’t even belong to the pagans. While the pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice, that really isn’t the reason for the season either. It is just the excuse.

The reason for the season is obvious. It is fucking cold outside, trees look like they are dying, it gets dark earlier, and people get seasonal depression. People need to be cheered up and the best way to do that is to celebrate with family and friends.

The evergreen tree is a symbol of life because it is the one tree that is still green during this time of year. So we decorate that tree. We give presents to people because that makes people happy in this depressing time of year.

In this cold, dark, and dreary season, it is our humanity that keeps us warm. The spirit of good will toward each other warms our hearts better than any magical births of deities.

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For starters, he would almost certainly be a large voice supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think he would make some interesting and unique contributions to the movement. While, some Occupiers have tried to mirror his famous “War is Over” campaign, John would almost certainly have new ideas for getting the world to take notice of the corruption on Wall Street.

Would Lennon be a more vocal atheist in 2011? This is hard to say. He was a fairly vocal atheist back in his day, but he is also someone who seeks to harmony with everyone. So he probably wouldn’t be like Christopher Hitchens. He might however take up a more Humanist angle on the issue and present a very positive face for atheism.

My guess is that he wouldn’t actually identify himself with the greater community of reason, but would be similar to people like Neil deGrasse Tyson in his positioning. Neil speaks out against religious extremism and doesn’t hide the fact that he lacks belief, but he also doesn’t actively encourage people to disbelieve. John would probably be like that too.

Yoko Ono has continued to do some activism over the years, but she lacks the showmanship that John had. On the other hand, it is possible that over thirty years, John’s activism would have become stale. The right-wing could marginalize him as a polarizing figure like Michael Moore and if their campaign was successful, it might diminish Lennon’s impact. Still, even people on the right loved the Beatles.

The world that could have been… We miss you John.  Wish you were here.

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Last weekend, atheists rallied to protest our exclusion from the “Free Speech Zone” in West Chester, PA. The local newspaper covered the story. I went online to read the story and found a slew of angry and hate filled comments by Christians. This isn’t the first time this has happened either. Any news story that even mentioned the fact that atheists exist on virtually any news website gets filled up with angry, hate filled comments by the religious.

The way I see it, it is a lot like the Santa myth. It just takes one kid to know the truth and the myth is shattered for everyone. The belief is so weak that it can’t stand up to any scrutiny or criticism without falling apart completely. So the mere existence of people who make it known that they don’t believe is enough to get those who do believe on the defensive.

Most religious believers really can’t even attempt to defend their beliefs and so they get angry at atheists for forcing them to think. If everyone believers in God, then they can continue to live in blissful delusion, but if just one person rejects that belief then the delusion is diluted. The possibility arises that God might not exist. The more people reject the belief in a god, the more religious believers have to accept the possibility that they are wrong and that God doesn’t exist.

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Yesterday, I published an Examiner article about a news anchor who told the obvious truth about old St. Nick toward the end of her 9pm news broadcast (9:45pm to be exact). I defended anchor Robin Robinson and to my surprise, atheists went ape-shit.

I had fellow atheists tell me that I am taking away people’s happiness, that I am angry at Santa, that I must not have ever experienced Santa, that I hate children, and I even had a few people threat to beat me up. Now, it isn’t the death threats I typically get from Christians mind you, but that is pretty extreme coming from atheists. The funny thing is that all these responses resemble typical responses Christians give when I inform them that God is imaginary.

To me this all boils down to control. This is something I often talk about in terms of Star Wars to my Jedi friends, but I will have to just get to the basics of it here. People can control themselves, but you can’t control the world. If you want to lie to your kids about Santa Claus, that’s on you. It seems that some atheists believe that lying to their kids about Santa Claus will help their kids to think critically and to learn to discover the truth for themselves. That’s cool, but I see it as undermining my trust to my children.

What you can’t do however is to force the entire world to support your lie. Religions do that. Christians get all bent out of shape whenever anyone says anything that doesn’t support their worldview. They have to control the flow of knowledge and information to protect their lie. I had one of my fellow atheists tell me that if I came to his house and told his kids that there was no Santa, I would be in trouble. Like with Christians, I told him that I didn’t have to come to his doorstep, I was already inside his house. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Parents tell their kids about God and kids believe it because they trust their parents, their religious leaders, and their community. But when just one atheist is out there no believing it becomes a threat to them. The same is true with Santa. It just takes one kid watching the news at 9:45pm and it is all over. My point here is that you can’t protect your kids from learning that Santa is a myth by trying to censoring the entire world just like religious believers can’t protect their belief in God by censoring the entire world.

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One example of this comes from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s take on the Isaac story in a recent HuffPost article. We all know the actual story. Abraham is commanded by God to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. At the last minute, God sends an angel to stop him because it seems clear that Abraham is actually going to do it. The angel claims that God was testing Abraham and he passed! The obvious interpretation of this story is that when you hear voices in your head telling you to kill your son, you should do it… well sort of. Most people see this as a test of faith. Will you follow God no matter how crazy or insane the command is? The answer should be yes.

But Rabbi Boteach talks about the interpretation by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, which is to view Isaac as religion itself:

“The test, therefore, was this: Would Abraham follow G-d’s commandment to kill off his religion or would he put his religion before G-d’s will? What really mattered to Abraham? G-d or Judaism? And if they were to be put in conflict, what would he choose? The religious fanatic is the man or woman who has ceased to serve G-d and has begun worshipping their religion, making their faith into yet another false idol.”

In other words, this isn’t about God ordering Abraham to kill his son at all because that would be heinous. What self-respecting deity would actually expect a follower to kill their own child as a sacrifice to satisfy the deity’s ego? But the interpretation of the Isaac story is pretty obvious and yet we have a gymnastic interpretation put forth to defend the religion.

It seems to me that Rabbi Boteach is sacrificing common sense for his religion and in so doing; he is making his faith into yet another false idol.

Epicurus has put his problem this way:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Christians claim that non-believers and unrepentant sinners will go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. This they claim isn’t God’s fault despite his all-powerfulness, but our fault for not worshipping his ass for creating this situation. Fortunately the situation doesn’t actually exist, but Christians believe that it does. So let’s look at it for a moment through part of a conversation I recently had with a Christian:

Christian: “When you die and you are face to face with GOD the fact that you died not believing and denying gets you eternity in HELL, not by GODS choice but yours.”

My response: “Are you saying that God can’t save me if I don’t repent, or God won’t save me? Is he willing to save me from eternal torture, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able to save me from eternal torture, but not willing to save me from eternal torture? Then he is a cruel asshole.”

And there it is, the Problem of the Cruel Asshole. God created a situation in which people will be tortured for all eternity (which is a pretty long time) and then has decided that unless we believe in a bunch of ridiculous claims without sufficient evidence and worship him as a peasant would worship a Lord, we will be tortured for all eternity. He could stop it but doesn’t and then blames us for his choice to torture people for all eternity.

Free-Will doesn’t apply since as I stated before it would be an uninformed choice based on insufficient evidence. If God were to reveal himself to us and give us an informed choice, then Christians could try to pull out the Free-Will crap. But as it is now, the Christian God is just a cruel asshole. Fortunately this is all a fictional situation anyway and the only real cruel assholes are the Christians who propagate this type of cruel nonsense.

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So here it is:

“@dangeroustalk No other Religion Give respect to women as Islam gives.”

I should add that this was one tweet out of about two dozen sent to me within minutes of each other by the same person. This guy pretty much spammed my twitter with these ridiculous pro-Islam statements. But this one just took the cake.

For the record, I don’t believe that Islam, Judaism, or Christianity gives respect to women. All three Abrahamic religions have an absurdly bad record on the feminism front. Islam is notoriously the worst, which is why I find the tweet so damn funny.

The problem with Liberals is that we just too damn honest. Yeah, that’s right we don’t know how to lie to win. Maybe we should.

Maybe we should plant a story in the blogosphere that during the last Republican debate, all of the candidates on the stage left out “under God” when pledging allegiance to the flag. This is easy to disprove because there is video of the debates, but so what? No one is going to fact check this. The media is too damn lazy for that. Let’s fake some outrage.

Is this immoral? Yes, but it will also serve as an interesting experiment on our media and on Republican voters. It is an absurd and meaningless story. The reality is that it makes no practical difference if the candidates “omitted” god or not and we all know that all the candidates are super religious. Interestingly enough, I am pretty sure that they don’t even say the pledge at the debates.

Hey, we can make it more interesting if we say that Jon Huntsman was the only one who did say “under God” and see if that make Republicans more likely to vote for him. We can see if he actually moves up in the polls. So let’s spread this meme around the internets and see what happens.

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The next time a Christian offers advice to me about how atheists should conduct our movement, I would like to point out to them that Gandhi must have eagerly awaited the advice of the British when he was conducting his protest. Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. consulted with the Grand Wizards of the KKK before his famous speech.

I wonder what their advice would have been. I bet it would have been something along the lines of stop fighting for your rights and don’t shove your concerns in the face of the entire nation. Interestingly enough that is the same advice Christians give to me about atheism.

Just the other day, I wrote about the new American Humanist Association billboards and a Christian told me that he thought they were offensive. I asked him in what way they could possibly be offensive and he told me that one of them used the word, “God.” That billboard said, “Don’t believe in a God? Join the club.” So his advice to me was to not mention “god” or “belief” or “even “atheism.” In other words, his advice was to just put up a billboard that said, “Join the club.”

Thanks for the advice but in the immortal words of Jack Napier, “I didn’t ask!”

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The Amazing Atheist did a great video on this in which he mentioned that term “omit” implies that something was supposed to be there and then taken out. There is no evidence that “God” was ever in Obama’s speech and so it wasn’t that he omitted it, but simply chose not to include it. He also didn’t include Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Easter Bunny. Why does President Obama hate the Easter Bunny?

How arrogant is it for Christians to expect that every speech the President of the United States gives should include a personal shout-out to them and their ridiculous beliefs. More to the point, the Constitution of the United States also doesn’t include any shout-outs to any deities. In fact, the Constitution actually makes it clear that should shout-outs are inappropriate at best.

Where is the Christian outrage that the framers of the Constitution omitted God?

PS It’s Cyber Monday, please use the Amazon search bar in the sidebar. Thanks!

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There is only one kind of evolution and that is evolution via natural selection in which organisms change over time by genetic mutation. The evidence for evolution is so extensive that one would have to bury their head in the sand to avoid seeing it. Even Creationists have to admit that evolution is a fact of life.

This is why they decided to split evolution in half so that they can accept the indisputable facts of evolution while still clinging to their dogmatic belief that God created man in his present form. By making up this idea of micro and macro evolution, they can accept the obvious evidence for evolution yet still claim that the evolution that occurred over millions of years didn’t happen because they didn’t see it happen before their eyes. It is their way of having their cake and eating it too.

There is a problem with this however. It is a huge concession on their part. The second a Creationist starts spouting off about micro and macro evolution, they are admitting that they lost the argument.

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First, criticizing a particular idea or belief isn’t “bashing,” it is criticism. If you don’t want your ideas and beliefs criticized, don’t put them out into the market place of ideas. In the market place of ideas, all ideas and beliefs should be open for criticism.

Second, Christians are first on the scene to exploit people’s misfortune. This is because the Christian belief system advocates converting others at all costs. So when people are suffering, Christians are often the first to shove their Bibles in the faces of those in need. Also, atheist organizations are relatively new but individual atheists are often there on the ground and helping others alongside those of every other religion. We’re just not dicks about it.

If Christians really just want to help others, that would be great but they should leave their Bibles at home. Don’t go into third world nations and try to buy converts with bribes of food, water, and medicine. That isn’t right. Also, don’t go to Africa (where there is an AIDS epidemic) and tell people that condoms cause AIDS (like the Pope does).

The Gates Foundation for the record has done more to combat Malaria in Africa than any Christian group and Bill Gates is an atheist. But he doesn’t go down there to preach Humanism; he just helps people in need.

I am criticizing the idea that Christianity preaches that spreading “The Word” is the most important thing a Christian can do. I am criticizing the idea that it is more important to save the soul than to save human lives. That’s honest criticism, not “Christian bashing.”

Supporting the Spread of Reason

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In fairness, Ron Paul got some cheering for arguing against torture, but we should keep in mind that Ron Paul supporters will cheer at anything Ron Paul has to say.

It used to be that torture was universally acknowledged as a bad thing. But the Republican Party of today doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, many religious believers in particular don’t seem to think so. A study done a few years ago showed that the more religious someone claimed to be correlates to the greater the likelihood that they would support torture. Conversely, atheists were the least likely to support torture.

What will the Republican Party advocate for next? Rape? The question is, has the Republican Party hit a moral bottom. Not long ago they cheered people dying from no health insurance and booed a United States soldier for being openly gay. At this point, if someone told me that the Republicans cheered the cannibalism of babies, I wouldn’t really be surprised.

Getting back to the original point, if waterboarding isn’t torture, then what the fuck is torture? Let’s waterboard these candidates and see if they think it is torture then. A few years ago and right-wing radio host set out to prove that waterboarding wasn’t torture by being waterboarded. It was probably the only case in which torture yielded some useful information. He realized that waterboarding was torture!

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With a church on practically every street corner and church bells sounding every day at noon, my two and a half year old often asks, “What’s that Dada?” How am I going to explain that to my son? It’s a building people go to listen to make-believe stories? He’s start thinking that churches are libraries when they are pretty much the opposite of libraries. People go to libraries to learn and churches prevent learning.

I know I have to explain religion to my son at some point, but I was thinking that when he was old enough to understand and think logically, I would take him on a tour of various religious houses of worship and have him talk to various religious leaders about their beliefs. That way he could ask reasonable questions right from the source and he could compare what they say with what other religious leaders say. My hope of course is that he would see them all as equally ridiculous.

The thing is that right now, he is not old enough to really understand what is being preached. He is too young and his brain hasn’t developed enough for such an exercise. So what do I tell him in the meantime without indoctrinating him in my own lack of belief? I want to educate him in an unbiased fashion, but because religion is so focused on indoctrination, it makes it nearly impossible for me to educate my son about religion without some form of indoctrination.

So when we see a church on the street corner or hear the church bells cause noise pollution at noon, how am I going to explain it to my kids?

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My friend was a fundamentalist and was a member of a Christian group called, “Christians In Action” or CIA for short. He decided to put on this program where he would refute the science of evolution and advocate for Creationism. It was a pretty silly program and a few biology professors even showed up to witness the ridiculousness of it all. But the really fun part happened after the program.

Apparently, some Christians from out of town came to the program. They actually were the people who provided my friend with all his props and information. Most fundamentalist Christians on campus already knew me and knew enough at that point not to challenge me on religious matters. But these people were new in town and didn’t get the memo.

So they came up to me after the program because they saw my shirt. One young woman asked me in a confused voice if I really believed that. I was confused and asked what she was talking about. She pointed to my shirt and said, “Do you really believe you are God?” She seemed really sincere and was not asking that to start an argument, but genuinely wanted to know. I was pretty surprised by such a reaction, so I said the only thing any young smartass atheist could say, “Yes!”

What followed became a conversation of near legend. I really got into the role of being a deity. She was skeptical of my divine power and even down right atheistic. The more I played into the role the more fundamentalist Christians gathered around to ask me questions, which I was more than willing to answer. In fact, I answered many of their skeptical questions the same exact way they answer questions about their deity of choice.

At one point, I told them that I created their God and Satan too and then they started arguing over these soul things like children. I told them that I don’t even know what they do with them and added that I think they just put them on a shelf or something.

One person asked me, “If you created God, who created you?” To which I answered, “I always am and always will be.” He actually said to me that, “That doesn’t make sense.”

For me, it was fun to use all their arguments against them and to get them to use all the atheist arguments without realizing them. Sure, not one of them went home that night thinking I was serious and it is extremely doubtful that any of them were actually convinced that I really was, “god,” but I guarantee they will remember that conversation in which they met up with some crazy college kid who claimed to be God. They will remember the arguments that they used against my claims and when atheists in the future use those arguments against them, they may pause for a moment to consider.

I have no idea if any of them are still Christians or not, but I would like to think that the seeds of doubt were planted that night and that some of them have de-converted in part as a result of that conversation.

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When I started to talk to all the Republican officials, party leaders, and candidates none of them liked anyone in the current field of candidates. There were no Republicans who were enthusiastically supporting any candidate in the Republican Primary. One guy said that he liked Rick Perry for a while, but Perry went off the deep end. I got a few people who actually said they kind of liked Herman Cain despite the sexual harassment scandals, but that they weren’t die hard supporters. They just kind of liked him. A few people shouted out other names like Chris Christie or that one guy from Florida whose name I forget but neither is running.

I asked them if their candidate was Mitt Romney… because it probably will be, would they still vote for him. Every Republican I talked to without fail said in an Obama vs. Romney matchup they would hold their nose and vote for Romney. No one said they would stay home or write in another candidate.

Republicans are disciplined. They vote no matter what and they vote party before people. On Election Day, they don’t care how much they hate the candidate they vote Republican no matter what. Democrats like me are a little different. If I don’t like a candidate, I don’t vote for the candidate. Even in this year’s off-year election, there were candidates I didn’t vote for. There was a Democrat running for county office who was a Creationist and a Democrat running for Judge who is a member of a Christian Legal Society whose mission it is to serve “Jesus Christ through the practice of law.” So I couldn’t vote for her either. I don’t think either won.

The bottom line is that if it is an Obama vs. Romney match-up which is likely, then it will be close and Obama will need every vote. So if he wants to win he best start trying to earn my vote.

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Political campaigns are entertainment. The goal is to get people’s attention and to excite them into supporting you, donating money to you, and voting for you. However, most political campaigns are pretty standard and don’t really stand out. If they don’t stand out, they aren’t entertaining. If they aren’t entertaining, then they aren’t getting anyone’s attention. If they don’t get people’s attention, they aren’t exciting people to support, donate, and vote for the candidate.

Obama won the Presidential election in 2008 in large part because of his entertainment factor. He had cool posters and entertaining speeches, an interesting logo, and an exciting message of hope and change (which he has yet to deliver on).

Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to the general election because I didn’t have an experienced team behind me and the head of one of the county parties found a primary opponent to run against me which sucked all of my resources away. For the record, she has now lost the race three times because she ran boring campaigns that were politics as usual against an entrenched Republican in a largely Republican district. But don’t get me wrong, in certain situation there is nothing wrong with a boring campaign. If the district is a tightly contested race, it is better to be boring than to test out something that might not work and loss the entire district for a long time to come.

Herman Cain however is in the lead in the Republican primary because he is entertaining. Now it is true that he may even be a joke, but that only makes him more entertaining. In a general election, Obama may have a serious problem against Cain. Cain is more entertaining and people are skeptical about Obama’s messaging. In any case, here is the Rachel Maddow clip:

PS Tomorrow is Election Day, so I will be at the polls all day… or at the hospital if my wife decides to give birth. Either way, there won’t be a Dangerous Talk blog tomorrow. Don’t forget to vote even if it is for “None of the above” or to just write-in “Occupied!”

A few years ago, I wrote a different Republican congressman where I lived about an issue and he sent me back the wrong form letter. Writing your congressman has about as much good as writing Santa Claus. The fact is that you already know where your congressman stands on an issue and no argument you make will persuade him because the lobbyist money is far more persuasive than anything you have to say and your congressman will almost certainly never read your letter anyway. Some intern will read it, mark a comment on a note pad, and file your letter away.

Calling your congressman is even more useless. In fact, the only thing less useful then calling your congressman about an issue you disagree with him on is e-mailing him or signing an online petition. Going to his office and talking to him in person might have some small affect, but not nearly as much as the donations he gets from lobbyists. So don’t waste your time.

Not to worry, I do have a plan that just might get your elected representative to seriously consider what you are trying to tell him. Write them at their homes! After all, they send you all kinds of crap every election season so now it is our turn to send them something with a bit more substance.

They probably get about the same amount of mail everyday as you do so when they get a hand written envelope at home, either they will read it personally or their spouse read it first. If their spouse does read it first and you make a good argument, there is no lobbyist money to counter it because family trumps lobbyist most of the time.

If you want, address the letter to the spouse or to the household in general. Make good arguments and really sell them on your ideas. Get your friends to do it too. Do your research and learn about your representative personally and what they believe. Find out how politically active their spouse is and use every scrap of information you can find to help sway them.

The lower on the political chain you go the more effective this strategy will probably be. State representatives will be more easily swayed than congress people. County and local representatives will take you really seriously if you write them at their home.

Politicians get a lot of mail at the office, but their home is their castle. They get the same amount as you do. A hand addressed envelope gets more attention than a piece of junk mail so it is pretty likely you will get your message to your elected official without getting the intern screening the mail. If enough people do this, they will also be annoyed enough to take you seriously. They might even have to hire someone to go through their mail at home. That would create a job. So this plan actually is a job creator. We’re coming… We’re coming to their house!

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I should stress that there really is no substitute for going to one of the protests, so if you can protest, you should protest. However, if you can’t (like in my case my wife is about to have a baby any minute) I have two ideas to pass on to you today and a third idea which I created and will share tomorrow (assuming my wife hasn’t had the baby yet).

First, we have to fight money with money. So if you have some money please consider donating some to the Occupy effort or to the Wolf-PAC. Wolf-PAC was set up by Cenk Ugyer of The Young Turks to create a grassroots movement to force a Constitutional Convention so that we can create an amendment to the Constitution that would end corporate personhood. I’ll let Cenk explain it:

The second idea was present to me a few days ago and I think it is pretty brilliant. You can use your junk mail to send a message to Wall Street. How awesome is that?

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Interestingly enough, Republicans want to gut the government and get rid of all regulations (i.e. rules) which sounds a lot like anarchy to me. So they can’t have it both ways. Either liberals want government to control your lives or liberals are anarchists.

In truth, I just want government to regulate corporations so that they don’t pollute my air and water in order to save a few dollars. I think some regulations and laws are good if they protect the general public. Some laws are bad however if they start policing what people can do in their personal lives which don’t hurt others. For example, car companies should be required to put seat belts in cars, but people shouldn’t be required by law to use them (although it is usually a good idea to use them). It should be illegal for corporations to screw you, but legal for you to screw any consenting adult.

Sure I can suspend disbelief and tell them that if it were all true I would be forced to accept that God exists, but I still would refuse to follow such a tyrant and so my fate would be eternal Hell. I would then tell them what Socrates said to Crito that it is always better to receive an injustice than to do one and so I could never be a Christian even if it were all true.

However, it is more likely that Star Wars is all true. If you think about it, the Star wars films are far more consistent with much less plot holes (and even they have a few). So what if Star Wars is all true and there really is a Force that surrounds us and binds us together? Shouldn’t you try to learn about the Force?

But there really is no need to get into the fictional world of Star Wars to address the fictional world of Christianity here. We could ask that same question with any religion. What if Islam is all true and Allah is the one true God? Would a Christian start praying toward Mecca? I doubt it. Or, how about Scientology or Mormonism, what if they are true?

For me, as a Humanist, it doesn’t matter if these religions are true, they still preach immorality and so they are still bad for humanity. Even if they were true, I would never worship in those religions. While Christians believe that morality is just God’s whim, I actually have a solid objective foundation for moral judgments. So even if Christianity were true (which for the record it isn’t), it still wouldn’t be a moral path. Calling it a moral path or “the” moral path doesn’t make it so.

So if Christianity were true, then I would believe in God and I believe I would tell him to go fuck himself for being such a cruel tyrant who created a flawed system on purpose in which trillions of people will be tortured for all eternity and who believes that is the moral thing to do.

I want to encourage people to dress in scantily clad and/or blasphemous costumes and knock on the doors of the ultra-religious even when their lights are out. It really is that simple. Some people are just easily offended and so I have no problem encouraging people to oblige offending them. I should also use this opportunity to remind readers about the ongoing Halloween Forever project.

Here are a few articles I wrote on Halloween. Please consider sharing them on all your social networks:
Halloween: An atheist perspective
Atheist Halloween Costumes
Why do atheists celebrate Halloween?

Happy Halloween!

I don’t consider myself to be a very attractive person (although my wife would disagree). I am also not a very athletic individual. So when I was growing up, I took the attribute about myself that was the strongest (my intellect) and focused on using it to get ahead. I used my intellect to get attention from others and to validate myself as a person. I even hated those who used other attributes the way I used my brain.

But when you really think about it, what really is the difference? If I were a super good-looking guy, I would probably use my looks to get ahead. If I were athletic, I would probably use my physical skills to get attention. If I were a super sexy person who everyone wanted to bed, I would probably use my sexuality to validate myself the way I use my intellect now.

Some people are naturally smarter than others. Some people are more athletic. Some people are naturally better looking and some people are naturally more sexual. Others have to work at those traits and some may never have those attributes in abundant no matter how much they work at it.  Aside from lingering religious prejudices, the only reason I can think of for why sexuality is demonized is envy.

What does it matter to someone else if another adult enjoys having multiple sex partners? Who cares if someone likes to express their sexual? With that said, if someone wants to be scantily clad, that’s fine with me. I appreciate it. Don’t let the haters get you down. There is nothing wrong with having multiple sex partners and there is nothing wrong with wearing sexy outfits… especially on Halloween.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out the new Book of the Month: Fighting the Crusade Against Sex: Being Sex-Positive in a Sex Negative World

Atheism 101: Why has Christianity demonized nudity, sex and sexuality? 

As it turns out, most people in the greater community of reason tend to put a value on morality. We care about the feelings of others. We are considerate people. The religious don’t seem to care and aren’t considerate and they have no problem using our consideration as a weapon to silence us and force their religious upon us.

Sometimes that is unintentional as it probably was in my friend’s case. Other times, it seems like it is very intentional like I think it was in the funeral case. Religious believers know that they can push us around and force their ridiculous beliefs on us and that we will stay silent because we have a desire to be respectful and we don’t want our objection to be disruptive to others. If we do end up saying something, we then reinforce the old “angry atheist” stereotype. It is a win/win for the religious.

Being in the majority helps them to bully us, but the truth is that they don’t need to be in the majority to bully us in this fashion. All they really need is a screwed up sense of morality… check. They don’t care about people’s lives. All they care about is people’s afterlives. Because of this, they have no problem pushing their religion in any and every situation without regard for appropriateness.

In my friend’s case, her teacher casually brings up religion in a lecture or discussion and if my friend raises an issue about it, it derails the conversation from the topic that is supposed to be discussed.  It was inappropriate for the educator to insert religion into the conversation without consideration of the religious beliefs (and lack of beliefs) of his or her students. In my case, the pastor used the highly emotional situation to push his beliefs knowing full well that we were all grieving and that it was an inappropriate occasion to push religion on those he knows don’t share those beliefs.

I don’t have an answer to this problem. As outspoken and vocal as I am, there are times in which I think it is inappropriate to challenge the religious on their bullshit. The funeral was a perfect example of this. There is no right answer, but there are plenty of wrong answers. In these situations we have become victims of religious bullying because we want to be kind and considerate people and they don’t care to be either.

It seems like the only way out is to be just as inconsiderate and inappropriate as they are. But then we become no better than they are. So we are stuck being pushed around by these religious bullies.

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Okay, they still have an afterlife according to most Christians, but that afterlife is filled with eternal torture. What would you think if you were told that someone had half a dozen people locked up in their basement and tortured them for a week? That would be a pretty heinous crime, but not nearly as bad as what I have done according to the majority of Christian believers. I am responsible for torturing people for all eternity merely by dissuading them from their religious beliefs. My words are weapons of eternal torture.

Of course, there are extremely few religious believers who actually think that I am a worse criminal that a serial killer or someone who tortures others in real life. There are no laws on the books protecting the eternal lives or innocent souls. No one is even trying to pass that legislation. Not even Fred Phelps or Pat Robertson. Why not?

Because despite all their talk about how sincere their beliefs are concerning eternal torture and eternal bliss, part of them has their doubts. In fact, I dare say that part of them knows that it is all make-believe. If they really believed this stuff, then they would consider me to be a worse criminal than any serial killer.

Apparently in some Muslim countries they do take their belief in an afterlife seriously. De-converting people away from Islam is a serious crime. In the west, even the most hard-core fundamentalist Christian thinks that type of thing is absurd. Christians just don’t think souls have rights… and neither do I. That is why I continue to murder souls. If you are a Christian, yours may be next.

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Even though he made it clear that he was a Secular Humanist, I had feared that his funeral would be religious. I asked Brother Richard from Friendly Atheist for advice on how to deal with such a dilemma should it have arisen.

In my mind there are essentially two ways I can think of to response should the funeral be religious (although there may be more). The first is that I could be respectful and not vocally object. The second is that I could vocally object, call attention to the rudeness of disrespecting my friend’s Secular Humanist values, and for using the situation to reinforce their religious beliefs.

Brother Richard advice fits in with the first and at the funeral that is exactly what I did. Every situation is different and in my particular situation, part of me wishes I said something. To say that the funeral was religious would be an understatement. In fact, the pastor (who was a non-blood relative) actively tried to convert non-believers. He made a point to insult my friend’s Secular Humanist values too. The family didn’t seem to know my friend and they didn’t seem to want to know him either. Except for one of his aunts who came over to us (his friends) afterward, the rest of his family just wanted to pretend he was someone that he was not.

There were two big musical numbers both of which were super-religious in nature. The pastor cut short the time his friends could speak about our beloved friend so that he could preach to us and talk about how our friend had a God-shaped-hole in his heart. I did get a chance to speak and I talked about our conversations about religion and humanism. But I didn’t really speak out the way I wanted to. I really bit my tongue (metaphorically speaking).

There was a repass scheduled for after the funeral service to gather and talk. I had originally intended to go to that so that I could talk to his other friend about him and remember him better. But it was clear after the funeral service that I would almost certainly have been vocal about how insulting I found the funeral. It turns out that his other friends didn’t really want to go either so we decided to go out for lunch together to talk about all the good times we had with our friend. So once again his family squandered the opportunity to get to know him better through his friends.

I really feel that his family engaged in a form of psychological/religious bullying and it was really inappropriate, disrespectful, and insulting. Part of me wishes I would have been more vocal about my outrage at the funeral, but I just don’t know if that would have been the right thing to do either. I do know that the aunt who was dancing in the isle yelling, “Praise Jesus” every few minutes was not the right thing to do.

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Jesus told his followers to leave their family and friends behind and to go and preach the “Good News” from the rooftops. The mission was to warn everyone that the End Times was coming very soon. He preached that a generation would not pass before the end came.

Paul also believed this to be true and that was what he preached. They really didn’t preach that 2000 years later the world would end. Revelations was not a prediction of the future; it was a poetic telling of the recent past.

Jesus was a failed prophet and today Christians ignore all these details and many still believe that the world will come to an end “soon.”

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In May of this year, Camping bought a ton of billboards and many of his followers drove around the country in vehicles with Camping’s End Times prediction on them. The media loved it and was quick to quote Bible verses at Camping and his followers. But Camping spent decades “calculating” his dates. On his website he accuses those who quote scripture at him of taking those verses out of context. He then offers other verses to support his claim that, “we can know.”

When the world is still here on Saturday, it is unlikely Camping will pick another date. He is getting old and it is unlikely he will survive for another Rapture. Of course he could always predict the Rapture at some time in the future past his life expectancy, but this is really unlikely.

Despite what many people believe, I don’t think Camping is lying. That is to say that I don’t think he is laughing all the way to the bank. I think he really believes this crap. He really wants to live to see the End Times and he isn’t alone. As such, all his predictions have been within his live time.

The shock of being wrong about his October 21st date won’t drive him to suicide either… at least not alone. He might predict that in order to be Raptured one must be Rapture Ready. This might imply leaving one’s material body behind and allowing the soul to be free to be Raptured. In other words, it means multiple suicides! But maybe not. He could just be disappoint that 7 billion people haven’t died and then live out the rest of his life. Only time will tell.

Harold Camping Article – Please share them on your favorite social network site:
Rapture: For real this time?
On Faith: What is the appeal of the Rapture?
Advice for May 21st Rapture believers
Interview with former Harold Camping follower
End Times according to atheism

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First, it really looked like “The Donald” would be a tough challenge for Romney. But that was pretty much a joke. So then Bachmann captured the soul of the Religious Right. That was a fun time for everyone except Buchmann and her gay husband. Rick Perry drew his wit and lost. Some still consider Perry to be a threat, but he pretty much lost the religious. As wacko as he is, they think he is too liberal.

The current champion is Herman Cain who no one really takes seriously despite being the current front runner. His 9-9-9 pizza plan is ridiculous. It lowers taxes on the super-rich and raises them on the poor. Aside from being a GOP wet dream, it has zero chance of passing and his gamble to make it the center-piece of his campaign will obviously fail. Plus, it is doubtful that the Tea Party would ever vote for a black man.

Huntsman took a gamble of his own yesterday by purposely skipping the debate in protest. Maybe it will pay off for him, but I doubt it. I like Huntsman the most out of the Republicans and I am routing for him to win their primary, but it won’t happen.

Santorum had a good night last night though. He jabbed with Romney, Perry, and all the rest. He focused on defense and family. His strongest moment was his claim that he could win Pennsylvania which would put a Republican over the top in the Electoral College votes. Republicans might just eat that shit up. Send a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex into a debate and he comes out a king shit.

So my prediction is that Santorum will take his turn as a frontrunner. He may not be ahead on Romney, but he will be right up there for about a week or two.

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D’souza kept beating the point that we can’t know what happens after death. This however doesn’t square with his belief in a very specific view about death. He admits that he has a belief in Heaven and Hell. These aren’t just some vague concepts. They are very specific ideas based on no real evidence or reason.

We observe that all creatures die. We are creatures. Therefore we die. There is no reason to believe that we are different at a fundamental level from any other creature. Do mosquitos go to Heaven or Hell too? If not, why not? The Christian would say that mosquitos don’t have souls and humans do. But do we really? How do you know?

There is no evidence for this soul thing. It is just a dogmatic belief created to explain why humans have an afterlife while mosquitos don’t. As an atheist, I am willing to entertain the possibility that an afterlife could exist, but there seems to be no reason to believe that one, let alone two specific destinations exist. In fact, there seems to be good reason to support the idea that there isn’t an afterlife.

We know that our brain is essentially who we are. If our brain is damaged, our personality is damaged. We can adjust the chemicals in our brain in order to adjust our personality. When our brain dies, we die. Our brains are physical. So how can we live on without our brains?

Now, are religious believers willing to entertain the possibility that not only is their specific view of an afterlife is wrong, but that there is no afterlife at all? No, I don’t think they are. In fact, I doubt very much that even D’souza would honestly entertain that possibility. So who is the dogmatic one?

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When we say, “Rest In Peace” what are we really saying? The dead don’t really rest and they have no feeling of angst of inner peace either. We all know this and yet the phrase is still used even by atheists.

People don’t like to say that someone died, so they often say that they “passed away.” I guess this one isn’t so bad, but to me it also smacks of supernatural. Passing implies moving from one place to another and there is no place that the dead have passed away to.

In the case of my friend, he was “taken too early in life.” Taken where and by whom? All these phrases imply an afterlife, which almost certainly don’t exist.

Then of course, there are the obviously religious phrases which just beat us over the head; “He went home to God,” “God took him to a better place,” etc.

To me, I would like to say that I miss my friend and that he will be remembered. He isn’t in Heaven or Hell, he lives on in our memories. A fellow friend put it this way, “He was a bright light in the world and a deep thinker who thought about the issues of our time… It is not how long you live, but how you lived.” He will be missed.

Religious believers are always trying to separate human compassion from the brain and transfer that capacity onto the heart. I get that there is a certain metaphoric use of the heart as the center of emotion, but I think that some religious believers take that metaphor literally.

Our brain is the center of both our cognitive reasoning and our emotional feeling. As a matter of biology, we are our brains. This is why our brains are so tasty to zombies.

While the debate was held at the University of Pennsylvania, I noticed that the crowd was heavily religious. When I left, I saw many of the people getting on a bus. So I am guessing that they were bussed in probably from D’Souza’s Kings College in New York. It is also interesting to note that the moderator identified himself as a Conservative Christian and often times when Silverman was speaking; D’Souza appeared to be conferring with the moderator.

Silverman started out strong. He focused on the three S’s, “Society, Science, and Sex.” He cited specific studies showing that religion was indeed not good for society. The main study he cited was on societal health of various nations. One statistic he quoted I found particularly interesting was that 95% of Christians have pre-marital sex. He also mentioned that Christians have a higher divorce rate and that they actively push to prohibit others from marrying (i.e. gays). There were several other statistics cited on a range of issues. On the issue of Creationism, he had a great quote that I will try to paraphrase, “Christianity dumbs down society so Christians don’t have to admit they are wrong.”

D’Souza started out with his usual opening that he will rely on facts and reason and that he will make no appeal to the Bible. This is great for him because no one really wants to defend the Bible. In fact, later in the debate D’Souza actually distanced himself from the Bible and claimed that “atheists view the Bible as fundamentalists” and that the Bible isn’t a science book or a book about politics. This is interesting considering that much of his later argument was geared toward showing that Christianity is responsible for our government.

He pointed out that the charges Silverman made (Stem Cell Research, gay rights, abortion, and Creationism) only relate to America currently. He actually said, “Christianity is only bad recently.” This to me was a pretty surprising confession that went largely unnoticed by the audience and even by Dave Silverman.

A large amount of time was spent talking about how Jefferson used the word “Creator” in the Declaration and that humanity is all a bunch of evil sinners. Dinesh then talked about how Christianity opposed slavery and MLK Jr. was a Christian. Then he practically called moral philosopher Peter Singer a Nazi and claimed that only about 5% of Christians really believe in Creationism.

Silverman correctly pointed out that none of the positive attributes D’Souza credited Christianity with are actually in the Bible. I thought he should have mentioned that slavery was in the Bible, but it came up later in the debate anyway. Dave tried to refocus the debate on how Christianity is bad for America…Today!

When D’souza touted out a handful of scientists who were Christian like Newton and Kepler, Silverman pointed out the difference between Christians and Christianity saying, that there are good people who are Christians, but the belief system of Christianity is not good for the world.

There was a cross examination part of the debate where each opponent grilled the other. This got pretty heated and I think it worked against Silverman because D’souza kept throwing more stuff out there in his answers and Silverman didn’t really get a chance to respond to those things. I was surprised when Dave actually wanted to have a second round of this when there wasn’t really supposed to be a second round.

In this cross examination, Silverman asked the main question of the debate, “Why is Christianity good for America?” Dinesh responded by saying that the Constitution was created on the mountain of Christian principles. I have heard this type of reasoning before and I will have to write an Examiner article on that down the road. It is a theme that Dinesh used quite a bit during the debate.

Silverman also asked which D’souza had more loyalty towards, the Constitution or the Bible? This really backfired on Silverman. Dinesh used it to transition into a conversation on morality which Dave really couldn’t address in a short amount of time. Even if he had, it would have been too much of a distraction from the actual debate. This is a real problem that atheists have to deal with. We really need to be able to explain the entire field of ethics in a short sentence or two. I’m not really sure how to do that yet.

In any case, the debate started to spiral out of control at this point. One interesting thing that D’souza said that again got left unnoticed was when he compared morality to taste. This is normally not something Christians do and I am sure Dinesh didn’t mean to do it. That might be why it was ignored by Dave and even the audience.

Within the morality debate, D’souza also made an interesting point that morality doesn’t come from the Bible. He said that morality comes from our conscience and that the Bible ratifies our conscience. To me, this is Ivory Tower Christianity. It is an interesting idea, but it isn’t the belief that the vast number of Christians in America today hold. In fact, it reminded me of Dinesh’s earlier statement that only about 5% of Christians actually believe in Creationism. According to the Harris Interactive poll, that number is actually closer to 45%.

Silverman asked which Christianity does D’souza believe is good for America, pointing out that there are 33,000 different denominations. Here D’souza climbed back up to his Ivory Tower and tried to distance Christianity from Waco… you know, those people who picket funerals. I think he meant the Westboro Baptists, but they both have start with “W” at least. He insisted the the core of Christianity was the same and that “mainstream” Christianity had the monopoly.

D’souza questioned Silverman on the afterlife. Silverman claimed that when we die we don’t go anywhere. This Dinesh claimed was dogmatic. He says he doesn’t know but later claimed that Heaven and Hell could be other universes outside our own universe with their own separate laws of physics. At the end of the debate he even talked about how much he was frightened of Hell. It seems like he was being dishonest when he said that he doesn’t know what happens when we die. I think he does claim to know… just not when he wants to make Silverman look like the dogmatic one.

Silverman re-traced his steps to say that he knows it as much as he can know anything. He pointed out that every creature dies and that there is no reason to believe that we are any different. D’souza claimed that caterpillars don’t die, they turn into butterflies, but that seems like a poor analogy to me.

The audience Q&A was pretty boring and D’souza actually altered the rules so that he got to respond to every question even the ones directed toward Silverman. One interesting thing was that all the Christians who got up to ask a question started out with a long sermon and their questions weren’t really all that clear. In fact, Dave had to ask one person which question he should answer. The atheist questioners on the other hand asked one pointed question and then gave up the mic.

During this period, Dinesh attacked Richard Dawkins as a scientist, while crediting Christianity for most of the scientific discoveries in history. He even stated that there was plenty of reason for a flat Earth. I found that surprising and no one really bat an eye at it. He also tried to distance himself from the Bible’s support of slavery to which Silverman accused him of cafeteria style Christianity.

Then the Hitler/Stalin card was played by a questioner. D’souza jumped on this and claimed that communism was a result of atheism. He then continued by conflating evolution with eugenics. If that wasn’t enough, he stated that this was  “admitted by Dawkins.” I really don’t know where these Christians come up with this nonsense.

Silverman then summarized D’souza’s position as “everything good is from Christianity and everything bad is from atheism.” Christianity takes the credit for everything.

One Christian audience member thought he had a point no one has ever considered before and brought up the Argument by Design… after he gave some sermon about a variety of other topics. Another audience member delivered some rambling sermon which eventually ended with a question about the Shroud of Turin proving Christianity. The conservative Christian moderator was so embarrassed by this question he just skipped that guy completely and went on to the next question.

The final question was for Dinesh dealing with the 9/11 Cross case that American Atheists is fighting. He went into a tirade about the evil establishment clause and then called it, “religious bigotry.”
The moderator then wanted Dave to give his closing statement, but Dave pushed to address that 9/11 Cross case before he began his closing remarks. Three quotes stood out to me in his closing:

1.    “Ignorance of facts is not evidence for fiction.”
2.    “I dare and beg you to research your religion.”
3.    “Christianity is not just bad for America, it’s bad.”

For Dinesh’s closing he talked about how Christian missionaries exploited the people of India to convert to Christianity because the caste system was so bad. I don’t think that helped his case, but maybe I missed the point there. Then he accused atheism of the before mentioned dogmatism in saying that when we die we are dead. He concluded by talking about his fear of eternal Hell.

There was a lot of stuff covered in this debate and I surely left a lot out. Overall, I think Dave Silverman did okay, but I think he could have done better at some points. I wish he could have talked about the various civil rights fights and name dropped prominent atheists in those fights. By ignoring that, he conceded that Christianity was responsible for those fights and that just isn’t true. I wrote an article on this for Examiner: Human Rights: Religion vs. secularism.

Also, I wish Dave could have really gotten into the morality debate, but I don’t think that would have been possible. The sad fact is that ethics is a pretty complex subject matter and I really don’t know how to boil it down to a sound-byte. I think that Sam Harris’s book, The Moral Landscape is the best book on the subject matter. At one point during the morality back and forth, I thought about John Rawls and the idea of the original position also.

My view is that when you can’t give a good sound-byte, you should direct people to a good source so that they could do their own research. I was glad that Dave really pushed people to go to the internet and research their religion but I think he should have recommended particular websites and books. But overall, I don’t think any of the Christians there were particularly swayed. Still, the debate might lead to some interesting conversations on their bus ride back to King’s College in New York.

My friend and fellow Examiner, ShaunPhilly also wrote up his analysis of the debate.

Here is an additional thought about formal debates with the religious in general: Formal debates are a win for atheists.

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The political debate is focused on persuading people to support other people while the religion debate is focused on persuading people to change fundamental ideas about the world. In politics, the intended audience for the debate might not have an opinion or if they do, their opinion is generally not resistant to change. That isn’t the case for religion debates. The audience generally comes into the debate fully supporting a particular position. In a way, they are rooting for their champion.

For the Republican Debate, I don’t have a dog in that fight so for me it is pure entertainment. I enjoy watching the candidates out crazy each other and attack each other’s positions. Although, I have to admit that I occasionally find myself rooting for Jon Huntsman.

With the religion debate, I am much more invested. I am definitely excited to see how Dave Silverman does. I consider Dave to be a friend and I obviously agree with his position in the debate. However, I try to put myself in the shoes of a neutral party when observing debates and I have been known to be very critical of my fellow atheists in these situations.

D’souza is a very smart guy and he knows his way around the debating podium. He knows how to distort facts and name drop to make it seem like he has the scientific high-ground when he doesn’t. Normally, I would think this debate is a bad idea for Silverman, however I think that Silverman’s debate style may be perfect for this situation. When most people debate the religious, they tend to give legitimacy to them by arguing their points specifically. This implied that their points have at least some level of credibility.

This is where I think Silverman might be the ideal opponent against Dinesh. Silverman isn’t known for debating particulars. Instead, he tends to focus people back on to the ridiculousness of the proposition. I’ll let you know how it works out.

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A while ago, I did a two-hour Dangerous Talk radio show on the history of cults. I did a lot of research into that show. Now however the tape of that show has been lost. I can’t find my notes either. However, I remember some of it and now I also have the benefit of Wikipedea which I didn’t have back then. So I want to talk about this topic briefly.

The original meaning of the term, “cult” was a religious practice. In this original sense, all religions are cults by definition. Christians often tell me that they don’t have a religion and that they just have a relationship with God. That is a cult too!

Then in the 1940s (although I remember that my original research suggested that it was closer to the 1960s but I’m not going to argue with Wikipedea), Christians got their hands on the term and turned it into a pejorative. The new definition was any religion other than the established view of Christianity.

If I remember correctly, “good” Christian parents became worried that their children were leaving Christianity for other more hippy religious ideas. Christian parents started to hire professional “de-programmers” to get their teenaged children back into Christianity. The problem occurred when some teens became Born-Again Christians when their parents were more mainstream believers. So the parents started to hire the same de-programmers to get their children out of the fervent fundamentalist Christianity.

This is where the definition of cult changed again to its current definition of a religious belief which uses mind-control, psychological and sometimes physical abuse, etc. Even by these newer standards, I think the case could be made that most religions today fit the bill. Religious mind-control starts at an early age. When it comes to most forms of Christianity, children are psychologically abused into believing that if they doubt or reject the beliefs, they will be tortured for all eternity in Hell. Guilt concerning sexuality and “sins” is also very psychologically damaging. Many Christians are fans of corporal punishment which is physically abusive.

The main difference I see between cults like Scientology and Christianity is that Christianity is much more subtle and the form of abuse it uses has become much more accepted as “normal” while Scientology is much less subtle in their techniques. Christianity used to be more in-your-face like Scientology but over time they took over society and used that domination to control people without overtly torturing them.

Mormonism is no more or less a cult than most other forms of Christianity. Sure, there are some factors within Mormonism which may seem more cultish to outsiders, but a look at evangelical Christianity shows similar rituals and beliefs.

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The problem is that I think these people don’t really understand what the term “reality” means. We don’t all live in separate realities. There may be other parallel realities out there, but as far as I know no one has been to one and no one can even prove they exist. While it makes for great sci-fi, going to another reality is not yet a reality (sorry, couldn’t resist).

So for practical purposes, there really is only one reality and we all live in it regardless of what religious believers might believe. For example, no one would take me seriously if I said that in my reality babies can fly. In fact, if I really believed that and tried to throw a baby off the roof, I bet you that those people who claim that they have their own reality will be pretty certain that my reality is not really reality.

It seems to me that claims of individualistic realities are really just a way of expressing false tolerance. It isn’t a statement that everyone’s realities are equally valid. Instead, it is just a way of protecting beliefs that have no evidence and are usually even contrary to the evidence. Anyone who claims that the laws of physics are different in their reality just isn’t living in reality (metaphorically speaking).

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Personally, I find it unconscionable to push unverified beliefs on people who are not in a position to physically, cognitively, or emotionally to disagree. Even though many people agree with me on this, the argument has always been made that at least the Missionaries are saving lives and helping people. Even many atheists are willing to let this extremely immoral behavior pass because of the services these religious people provide. Now however, there is an alternative.

For example, in the horn of Africa there is wide spread drought and famine. Tens of thousands of people have already died due to the famine and millions more are at risk. Church groups see this as a perfect opportunity to proselytize. Atheists on the other hand see this as a great opportunity to help people and not push beliefs on them. In this way we can also lead by example and show people how wrong it is to take advantage of these people.

Foundation Beyond Belief is working with various other secular organizations to help those in this region of Africa. As a community, I think it is really important to help other human beings in a secular way without pushing religion on them. You can help. Please check out the Foundation Beyond Belief and donate to their campaign.

According to David Axelrod, Obama’s re-election strategy is to make it clear that progressives can either vote for Obama or vote for the insane Republican candidate. This however is not a solid strategy if Romney is the candidate. Romney is a super corporatist candidate, but Obama isn’t much better. Romney isn’t as insane as Perry or Bachmann either. Most moderates realize that Romney is actually pretty liberal on many issues, but that in order to win the nomination he has to appeal to the wackos.

Romney’s record isn’t really crazy. Sure there are tons of areas that progressive do and should disagree with him about, but rhetoric aside, moderates kind of like him and few are really scared that he will blow up the planet because of some ridiculous religious belief. He could be President and the world won’t come to an end. Sure it would be worse, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Now Obama will need every vote he can get. He will need his base which has become pretty disillusioned with him as of late. Personally, I think this is a great thing. Based on Obama’s record, in 2012 he is going to try to appease someone. He is either going to try to appease the right or he is going to try to appease his base. Up until now, his strategy has been to appease the right and give his base the choice of the insane Republican or him. Now, he can’t use that strategy so he might actually try to appease his progressive base.

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Let’s be honest here, if you write a letter to Rick Perry and tell him not to use religious language, he almost certainly won’t pay any attention to you. However, if enough of us wrote to Democratic politicians, we can probably get them to stop using religious language. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write to Republican politicians, we should. It just means that we aren’t going to win that fight right now.

I also think we should start writing letters to the editor of various local newspapers and let them know that you find it unacceptable when local politicians invoke religion in order to appear more pious. You can even cite Matthew 6:5-6 to support your point.

The goal is to make politicians pay a price for their use of religious language. That price is our support and also in their public image. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but if we call our local politicians out on their use of religious language consistently, they will slowly stop using this language. Non-religious people are a growing demographic and they know this. We need to show them that this is actually the case and that they have to work to get our vote and support. By using religious language, they are intentionally alienating us and we will no longer accept that insult.

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It is one thing for the wacky Teabaggers to reject solid science in favor of Biblical bullshit, but when this crap infects Democratic candidates… well my tent just isn’t that big. I can’t abide this type of religious bullshit.

When I first heard about this, I asked the candidate on facebook if he indeed rejected the solid science of evolution in favor of young Earth Creationism. I of course asked that in a more polite manner since I actually wanted to get an answer from him. He dodged the question so I pushed him on it a little bit more. He again dodged the issue. So I let it go. Now months have gone by and so I asked him again. He immediately unfriended me and threatened to report me to facebook for “harassment” if I contacted him again. I found out this morning that despite not contacting him again, he still reported me to facebook and I had trouble logging as a result.

I didn’t realize that asking a candidate about his position on an important issue was considered harassment. I was pretty polite every time I talked to him. My tone was not combative at all. I wonder who he will threaten to report me to if I called his campaign office or confronted him at a party function. I really think we need to start holding candidates (all candidates) accountable for their religious rhetoric and in some cases, extreme religious beliefs.

To anyone in Delaware County, PA please be aware that Keith Collins who is running for County Council is anti-science and apparently anti-questions about his views on the subject. I won’t tell you who you should or shouldn’t vote for, but I think everyone should be aware of his extreme beliefs before voting.

If you don’t know what Blasphemy Day is or why it started, I posted an Examiner article on that yesterday. For me, the only thing that is really blasphemous to me is when religious believers attempt to restrict free speech or when they complain that certain forms of speech are indecent. This is why films today have almost no nudity and very little sexuality. There are whole organizations dedicated to preventing “indecency” in the entertainment industry and every other industry too.

Since sexuality drives these religious believers so crazy, I decided to put together a small gallery of the sexiest blasphemy photos I could find on the web (without nudity because the religious have partially won this war already) in my latest Examiner article. Please check it out and pass it around to all your favorite social networks.

What I would love to do is over the next few years, start taking back that partial victory that the religious believers have won. I want to see anti-nudity and indecency laws repealed.

Yeah, there are countries where the laws are so extreme that people are jailed for life, tortured, and/or killed for indecency crimes. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do here in America too. No one in America gets the death penalty for being topless but there still shouldn’t be restricted from being topless. In fact, while HBO and other premium television channels feature topless actresses, they never show men’s penises? Why not? My wife wants to know. Quite frankly, she is right and I think these stations should show men’s genitalia too.

When was the last time you saw full frontal male nudity in a mainstream film? Over the last twenty years there has been less female nudity in mainstream films too. This is because the religious fundamentalists have organized and have been successful. Now it is our turn. Blasphemy Day is our opening volley.

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Well surprise, surprise, the Bible supports two contradictory extremes of the economic spectrum and no middle ground. On one side there is the prosperity gospel. This is the view that God rewards the righteous with prosperity on Earth. This means that the rich are wealthy because they are righteous and the poor are poor because they are not. The supporters of this view often cite Malachi 3:10, Matthew 25:14-30, John 10:10, Philippians 4:19, and 3 John 1:2.

Then there is the opposite extreme. Instead of God rewarding the rich, he rewards those who give away all their wealth… all of it! To best illustrate this view, check out this video from GodIsImaginary (skip to the 2:15 mark… or just watch the whole video because it is awesome!):

“Being a freedom fighter, a force for good, is a wonderful thing. You get to make your own hours, looks good on a resume, but the pay… sucks.” – Alfred Bester, Babylon 5

Being an atheist activist or any activist for that matter is a lot like being a freedom fighter in that sense. Sure there are a handful of people who might write a best-selling book and make a lot of money, but most of us are not so fortunate.

Yesterday, Sam Harris posted a blog post about how the nature of publishing had changed and how making money publishing books is becoming harder to do. In my opinion, this fact will make it even harder for activists to make a living. Most blogger activists like me hope to publish at some point, but as it becomes increasingly harder for publishers to make money, it will also be increasingly harder to get published.

Self-publishing is one avenue, but it rarely makes enough money to support someone. For me, the only revenue I get for my activism is the occasional donation (mainly from the same three or four people) and my Examiner articles (which don’t pay much). I am super grateful to the people who do donate (especially to one person in particular) and I do my best to use those funds to further my atheist activist activities. I often use some of the Examiner money for the same purpose.

Ideally, I would love to be able to not just fund further atheist activism but to also be able to pay my bills. I have noticed that a lot of atheist activists are having the same problem. Even people like Sam Harris who does presumably pay his bills through his work are struggling to find ways to increase their income. I have the pre-requisite amazon bookstore, google ads, and shirts for sale and none of that really helps.

So I am open to suggestions. How can atheist activists make a living? How can we continue to push memes and get ideas out there in the market place of ideas and pay the bills through our hard work?