Let me give an example: I was at a wedding over the weekend and I knew that someone there was very religious. It was very tempting for me to start a religious discussion. But I knew that this was not the time or the place for such a discussion and that such a discussion would distract from the event. But I still have to admit that the desire for such a discussion was definitely there.

It really isn’t hard to get such conversations started because usually the fundamentalist religious believers will don’t feel the guilt and so they start these conversations without me even having to passive/aggressively nudge them in that direction.

I feel the guilt. I know that I shouldn’t pick a fight with these believers in certain settings. I also feel guilty because I know I know more than they do and that they are ill-equipped to defend their ridiculous beliefs. It is sort of like me being a bully in a sense and that is why I feel so bad when I get into those conversations in those settings with those people.

But it is so much fun. They are just so cocky and so ignorant of reality… not to mention so ignorant of their own Bible and the history of their religion. Not in all cases mind you, but usually. I try to be good and not get into those discussions in those types of settings. Sometimes (like this weekend) I am successful. Other times, not so much. ];-)

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• If We Don’t, Who Will? (dangeroustalk.net)

While there was serious talk about me officiating wearing Jedi robes, we all thought better of that. Sure it would have been fun and funny, but I think in this case it would have been too much. I did write a speech that had a little humor in it, but I wanted it to also strike the right tone of seriousness, wisdom, and a touch of tradition.

While in college, I was ordained via the internet to the Universal Life Church with a friend. This technically grants me the right to perform weddings. However, I had also been considering becoming a Humanist Celebrant through the American Humanist Association. But for the purpose of this weekend’s wedding, the couple got paperwork to do a “self-uniting” ceremony which would allow for anyone to marry them as long as there were witnesses willing to sign the paperwork.

Everything went well and I am happy to report a successful ceremony. Congratulations again to my friends Shaun and Ginny and a special thank you to them for giving me the opportunity to officiate.

So I decided to have “that conversation” but to do it in a light hearted way. I asked him with a smile on my face, “Why not? It’s no big deal.” Before he could answer I continued, “Who cares, they deserve to be happy too, right?”

He kept my light hearted tone and say that the Bible says no to gay marriage. Clearly he really doesn’t know what the Bible actually says on the matter and I could have quoted verses to him. I could have also pointed out the Bible’s support for slavery, genocide, etc. But I still wanted to keep the conversation non-confrontational.

I continued in my light hearted tone, “The Bible is wrong. It was written a long time ago by people who didn’t know how the world really worked.” I then said something about society learning and progressing.

The old man actually seemed to agree with me on that. He said in an obviously defeated tone that he supports all the rights for gay people, but he just doesn’t think it should be called marriage.

I just laughed it off and told him that that sounded like semantics and that I have friends who were gay married and their relationships are fine. I continued in my jovial tone and told him that it doesn’t really matter what you call it, it still is marriage, so we might as well just say so.

He nodded in agreement and oddly enough that was when our orders were ready. I held the door for him on the way out and he told me that the other day a woman held the door for him too. He told me that she said that she didn’t hold it for him because he was old, but because she thought he was cute. I told him that I didn’t swing that way and that I just hold the door for everyone.

He chuckled and we went our separate ways. I actually think I changed his mind on the subject right there on the spot and that doesn’t happen very often. And they say you can’t teach old people new tricks.

Now of course God is fictional and so it really doesn’t matter. However, I think atheists have been trying to convince religious believers of this reality for a long time and that a different tactic might just be to inspire religious believers to rebel against their God. When their God doesn’t come around to smite them, then they will stop believing that their deity exists.

With that said, many atheists often refer to God as a tyrant and this question about accountability proves it. Just as religious believers claim that we must be accountable to God, we have to claim that their God must also be accountable to us. After all, only tyrants believe they are unaccountable.

This brings us into a full conversation on morality in which religious believers will no doubt ask about our moral grounding. We can of course turn this around and ask about God’s moral grounding. If God’s moral grounding comes down simply to God’s whim, than all things are permissible and morality is meaningless.

Enter the “God is perfect” argument and all we have to do is point out that we only have his word on that and his actions according to the Bible seem to contradict that word. We can then either point out our favorite atrocity from the Old Testament or even some of the “metaphors” that Jesus uses that seem particularly violent from the New Testament. Of course the whole concept of Hell (which comes from the New Testament) is also evidence that God is certainly not perfect. Even our justice system as flawed as it is, allows for people to be redeemed rather than sentencing everyone to eternal torture.

But the point here is that religious believers need to hold their deity accountable. If they don’t, who will?

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That being the case, I want to try a thought experiment. I saw this view on YouTube yesterday by melodysheep called “We Are Stardust.” The video is a synthesized song using the words of a few prominent scientists. To me honest, I thought they should have used more scientists or just stuck with one. But that’s another discussion:

I want people to pick one or two friends or family members who are not involved in the greater community of reason and who might not even be atheists. The friends in question have to be mainstream, not fundamentalists. Then, show them this video, get their reaction, and then report back.

I want to know if they have heard of any of the people featured in the video, what they thought of the song, the message of the song, and then maybe what they think of science in general. Were they inspired by the song or bored by it?

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• Atheist converts to Christianity: Media’s coverage (examiner.com)
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• Krauss and Dawkins discuss Something From Nothing – Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins – YouTube – NacidoAteo (richarddawkins.net)

With that said, let’s face facts. He wouldn’t have done it at all if Vice President Joe Biden didn’t come out with his statement on Sunday’s Meet The Press. Right afterward, David Axelrod issued a statement claiming that Biden wasn’t really for gay marriage and that his position was the same as the President’s position. But that didn’t hold any water and everyone knew it. So the President felt he had to come out in support of gay marriage.

I am really glad he did. I have been complaining about Obama’s “evolving” position for a long time. But I am concerned with his couching this with, “I personally believe” and then falling back on the “states can do what they want” approach. I would prefer that he would “evolve” toward a federal amendment on this issue. But if he is going to fall back on the states thing, he can at least promise that he will personally campaign on this issue state-by-state.

The thing is that Republicans have been using gay marriage as a wedge issue for a long time. Now, the numbers favor gay marriage (60%). So maybe Obama should be out there using it as a wedge issue. Conservatives have gay family members too and this is an issue that many Republicans have realized or in the process of realizing that they are going to lose if they stand against the tide of history.

Now that Obama has “evolved” on gay marriage, it is time to push him to evolve on greater support for the atheist community too. He can start by stopping with the “God bless America” bit that almost all politicians use. We get it, he’s a Christian. But he doesn’t have to push it on us. So now is the time to put the pressure on him more on promoting gay marriage state-by-state across the nation and on atheist and secular issues too.

Oh, I guess we need a lobbying organization for that. If only people weren’t calling to de-fund our lobbying organization…

Related articles

• Gay marriage: How Americans, like Obama, are ‘evolving’ on the issue (abcnews.go.com)
• Obama campaign turns gay marriage issue on Romney (politico.com)
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Let’s look at the Catholic Church for a moment. In that religion, whatever the Pope says goes and yet there are some very Right Wing Republican Catholics and some very Left Wing Democrat Catholics. Paul Ryan is a Catholic and John F. Kennedy was a Catholic. So if it is this hard to herd Catholics who are supposed to do what the Pope tells them to, why should it be any easier for atheists considering we aren’t even a religion.

Oddly enough though, most atheists agree on most issues despite our lack of a Pope. But we aren’t going to agree on everything. Edwina Rogers is a Republican and so it is pretty likely that most atheists will have disagreements with her on various issues. But when it comes to secular values, she claims to agree with us 100% and the board of the Secular Coalition for America agrees.

As a movement, we are going to have internal disputes, but at the end of the day we need to work together. This means we sometimes have to put our person opinions aside and work with people we disagree with to get our common goals achieved. We don’t have to play nice and she can still call bullshit where we see bullshit. But just because someone is full of shit on one or more issues doesn’t mean we can’t work with them on other issues. You can read my defense of Edwina Rogers and the SCA HERE.

There is also some internal drama going on with the National Atheist Party. They just fired their VP of Administration. I’m not sure what the drama there is yet, but it is drama we don’t need.

Atheists tend to be very opinionated and we get passionate about our opinions. But we have to remember that at the end of the day, we are all on the same side. We all want to support secular values and all want a more secular nation.

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• Edwina Rogers: The Secular Coalition’s New Republican Lobbyist (atheistrev.com)
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• People Can Change (dangeroustalk.net)

The first goal of an argument is that the person wants to win the argument. They don’t care what you say, they just care about winning. So they will say anything. They will misrepresent your position, they will appeal to authority, they will get overly emotional, and they will do whatever it takes to win the argument. Notoriously, these people will be the first to suggest that they know they won’t be able to change your mind on an issue because they are projecting their own mindset into you.

Arguing with these people is often a waste of time. Sometimes however, you can get past their stubbornness and get them to actually care about learning something. But this is difficult because their goal isn’t to learn, it is just to win.

That brings me to the second goal of an argument and that would be to advance one’s knowledge. One puts out an opinion and someone else challenges that opinion. But the goal isn’t to win and to hold your opinion; it is to try to see where the other person is coming from and to maybe change your opinion if one is presented with a valid argument or some credible evidence.

This goes beyond just a willingness to change one’s opinion; it is desire to genuinely understand where the other person is coming from. It means that you don’t just take what they say at face value, but that you also try to understand the meaning behind their words.

Let me use an example. Recently, Sam Harris wrote a blog post about profiling and in that post he was advocating that we profile Muslims and anyone who looks like they could conceivably be a Muslim. Some people too this to mean that we can only determine what a Muslim looks like by a glance. In other words, they take Harris’s words at face value without trying to genuinely understand what he might have meant.

Even after Harris clarified what he meant in his addendum, people still clung to the idea that “looks like” means very superficial characteristics like skin color. I didn’t have to wait for the addendum to figure out that Harris meant all kinds of other traits including behavior when he said “looks like.”

While I have been pretty vocal against profiling, I don’t want to get into that argument here. My point here is to talk about arguing itself. When we argue an issue like this, what is our goal? Is it to win the argument and be proven correct? Or is it to genuinely understand where the other person is coming from and be open to changing our opinion if that is where the argument goes? We should give the person we are arguing with the benefit of the doubt. If they say something that seems out of character for them or that is pretty absurd on the surface, we should ask for clarification and/or we truly understand what their position actually is. This is how we have a reasonable conversation.

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On the surface, there are two references to gods. The first was when Captain America was about to get in the middle of a fight between Thor and Loki. Black Widow warned him that they were “like Gods.” The Captain responded by saying that there is only one God and that he doesn’t dress like that.

Christians may look at this and say, “See, Captain America believes in God!” I look at it and say, “See, Captain America believes in God. This is how far we have come since WWII, the idea that there is a God is ‘old fashioned.’ Captain America doesn’t know who Stephen Hawking is and that is why he still believes in ancient superstitions. How quaint.”

The second reference to god in the movie is when Hulk picks up Loki and smashes him against the ground repeatedly. As he pulverizes Loki, he exclaims, “Puny god!” This of course is what all atheists do. We pick up the concept of god and smash it against the ground with reasoned arguments… repeatedly.

But what else is there to learn from this movie? We can learn a lot actually. While the movie starts off with our heroes already being heroes, there is a moment in the movie where they really own up to being heroes. This is a journey we all can take and it doesn’t require a god. To be heroes, we don’t need to be a god like Thor, have super strength like Captain America, or be zapped with gamma radiation like the Hulk. Half the heroes in the movie are people with no super powers at all! More than half if you count Nick Fury, Agent Hill, and Agent Colson. Plus, Pepper Potts has no power and she contributed at least 12 percent to the team.

There is also a great deal of pro-science in the film and even a scene where Tony chastises the other heroes for not reading up on the latest science. Science itself is responsible for three of the heroes: Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk. Okay, the Hulk was a mistake of science, but there is still a scene where Tony puts a positive spin on that to Bruce Banner.

At the end of the day, The Avengers is about people helping other people. It isn’t about praying for some deity to perform miracles.

I think I have already addressed the first point in other blog posts, but it is the second point which I think is important and relevant. People can change. Most atheists are living proof. How many atheists in our community started out as religious? How many were once even fundamentalists? How many were fundamentalists who at one point in their life asserted that they would never lose their faith in God?

I believe in the power to change people’s minds with new information and evidence. As a result, I try not to judge people too harshly because I am hopeful they can change. This goes for Bill Maher on the issue of vaccinations, Sam Harris on the issue of profiling and it goes for Edwina Rogers on issues of politics. This belief in the power of people to change (based on evidence and observation) motivates every conversation I have with the religious.

It also applies to me. I can change my opinion on an issue too and have done so in the past. It would be arrogant and naïve to assume that all my present opinions and beliefs are the right ones and that they will never change. If you think I am wrong about something, present evidence and new information and try to change my opinion.

Change isn’t easy, but it does happen. As Humanist, I believe in people. Sometimes I think our greater community of reason has lost sight of that. We get so wrapped up in “take downs” that we lose sight of our empathy and compassion. We get so wrapped up with winning an argument, that we lose sight of our real goal of expanded knowledge. We focus so much on trying to change other people’s opinions that we forget to open ourselves up to the possibility that our opinions and beliefs can change too.

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I have a better idea; let’s fire those politicians and start coming up with actual solutions to our nation’s problems. I know that sounds crazy and all, but we gave the whole National Day of Prayer thing a shot for 61 years and it doesn’t look like it’s working. Let’s try a new approach. I call it trying to actually fix out problems ourselves!

It’s very American. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and with some hard work, we can change the world. We need to stop asking for handouts from this God guy and start being independent. So instead of praying, maybe we can find some alternative…

Recently, a progressive Christian attempted to give progressive Christianity credit for all that is good and justice in our society. I had to disagree. So the very first thing I asked was about whether progressive Christians believe in Hell. I got two responses and I think they are both interesting.

The first response was that most progressive Christians reject the concept of Hell entirely. I wish that were true, but it has the same ring to it as when Dinesh D’Souza claims that only about 5% of Christians reject the science of evolution. He is just pulling a made up number out of his ass. I don’t think most progressive Christians reject the concept of Hell, just that they prefer not to think about the concept much. To the credit of progressive Christians, they do focus more on this life than they do on the next life. But I question how many truly reject the concept of Hell entirely.

That brings me to the second response which was alone the lines of, “It doesn’t really matter where I think you go when you die, it is really up to God and I’m not judging.” Note that this isn’t an exact quote but it is a pretty accurate summery. This person apparently is part of that tiny small minority of progressive Christians who don’t reject the concept of Hell outright. This I think is actually the more typical progressive Christian view and it is a view I have a serious issue with.

Can you imagine if we showed the same indifference to the Bush/Cheney torture program? For me, the issue is simple. If you believe in Hell, then you most take a stand against God. If you believe that God exists and that Hell exists, then the moral thing to do is to criticize God for torturing anyone for all eternity. You can’t hide behind God’s judgment. Torture is wrong and eternal torture is ridiculously wrong. If God does it or even allows it to happen when he has the power to stop it, then God is immoral, period. Further, if you believe in God and Hell and you don’t take a position against God, then you are also immoral. Think about it!

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So if profiling doesn’t work, what would work? Well, I’m not a security expert, but I think aside from watching out for suspicious behavior we also should be doing more in addressing religious fundamentalism. We seem to be fighting the so called, “war on terror” with our hands tied behind out backs. Our government should be actively speaking out against religious fundamentalism. We should be making the case that religion is bunk.

Sure there will probably be political reasons to hijack a plane, but I think it takes religion to get a hijacker to crash a plane into a building ending his or her own life in the process. We live in the information age and yet we are fighting terrorists in the same manner we fought the Nazis. Armies, tanks, and fighter jets aren’t going to cut it. We have to use the power of the internet and social media to show that religion is ridiculous.

But we can’t do that, because we live in a country that is religious. We can’t set out to prove that Allah is imaginary without also proving that Yahweh is imaginary. But if we could show just how ridiculous Islam is, then we wouldn’t have to worry about profiling possible Muslim terrorists… or Christian terrorists. If we could convince the religious that religion is ridiculous and false, then our terrorism problem would all but go away.

Before I end today’s blog, I want to make a point in defense of Sam Harris. While I disagree with him on this issue of profiling, I take issue with people within the greater community of reason who are quick to label him a racist because he supports profiling. I think people throw these kinds of labels around too liberally and in doing so they are watering down the term.

When we look at actual racists, we look for a pattern of behavior. Harris doesn’t want to profile because Muslims are black, he wants to profile because Muslim fundamentalists flew planes into our buildings. While I disagree with Harris on profiling, labeling him a racist is absurd. Any generally reasonable person who does this should really be ashamed of themselves. See my blog post: The Benefit of the Doubt.

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For a long time now, people have been getting fed up with our journalists who have far too often exchanged hard hitting questions to politicians for political access. As a result, our politicians can get away with pretty much anything because no one is going to question them about it or hold them accountable… except late night comedians apparently.

Usually it is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who ask the tough questions and that is why neither will likely host the Correspondence dinner every again. This weekend, it was Jimmy Kimmel’s turn to host and he made some great points practically right to the President’s face.

He talked about some of the important social issues like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, guns, and appeasement. Obama is notorious for his position of “evolving” of gay marriage and so Kimmel’s jokes about how all marriage is pretty gay hopefully hit pretty hard. I just wish some of the “journalists” in the audience did their job and followed up with the President on his position.

Sure it is easy to joke about legalizing pot, but the fact is that doing so would seriously fix our prison problem in this country, save lives, and probably help to balance the budget.

But the greatest joke of the night in my opinion is only really funny because it shows the primary problem with the Obama presidency. It is a problem that I have often wondered if Obama was even aware of. So the fact that he had to fake chuckle at the joke is at least an acknowledgement of his awareness. That is at the very least a good first step. Now, we just have to make sure he realizes that we really consider this to be a huge problem that threatens his re-election. In any case, here’s the joke:

“President Obama wanted to move the dinner to the Kennedy Center this year, but the Republicans wanted to keep it here at the Hilton so they compromised and so here we are at the Hilton.” – Jimmy Kimmel

Why can’t our journalists ask Obama about his history of Republican appeasement?

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These types of religious believers want atheists to be afraid. They hope to use our fear to force us to accept their claims and their beliefs on insufficient reason. It should also be noted that they want us to embrace their values which are often hateful and immoral.

This is terrorism and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it such just because they are Christians and not Muslims. Don’t get me wrong; most of these threats of eternal torture are empty. Christians make these claims, but most don’t actually intend to do anything about them. Instead, they just leave it up to their invisible enforcer. And since I really don’t believe their enforcer or their place of eternal torture actually exists, I generally don’t find myself in any type of real fear. These are usually empty threats… but they are threats of a terrroristic natural nonetheless.

It should also be pointed out that there are a few crazy fundamentalist Christians out there who not only make these threats, but imagine themselves as God’s enforcers (because we all know that the all-power deity is much too busy to do his own dirty work). There really are people out there who will take it upon themselves to try to “send” you to Hell to be tortured for all eternity.

The fact that these threats are put up on billboards astounds me. While Christians complain about atheist billboards being “offensive,” they are putting up terroristic threats unchallenged and unreported on the news. Atheists have to start holding these Christians fundamentalists accountable for their terroristic threats even if they are not always threats we take seriously.

We have to start pointing out to Christians that when they start talking about Hell, they are issuing a terroristic threat. We have to call attention to this to the general public. We have to make it clear, claims that non-believers will be and ought to be tortured for all eternity is not okay. It is not that it is offensive to us, it is a terroristic threat. It doesn’t fall under Free Speech either. You can’t go around threatening people under the First Amendment.

So when Christians “inform” me about Hell, I ask them whether they believe I should be tortured for all eternity for my lack of belief or whether they think God is immoral? I find that this puts them into a position in which they have to defend the indefensible. At the very least it will get them questioning the morality of their deity.

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Tyson here is making the same kind of argument that Sam Harris made at the AAI convention a number of years ago. I find this type of argument quite compelling; almost enough to get me to stop using the label altogether… almost.

But at the end of the day, I would rather have people take both approaches. People like me and Hemant who are vocal about our non-belief and who seek to form a community around our atheism and people like Harris and Tyson who don’t want to be lumped in with Stalin every five seconds. I will still label Tyson an atheist because at the end of the day, he still doesn’t believe in any deities any more than I do. But I respect that he doesn’t want to be part of a united front in this culture war, but instead wants to go it alone and who is willing to fight battles on his own terms and without the baggage that the label “atheism” carries.

At the end of the day, the substance of Tyson’s position is the same as my position. So I really don’t care what label he uses. As a point of fact however, Tyson is wrong in his usage of the terms, but I suspect he knows that. His point is that he doesn’t want to be lumped in with people like Dawkins, Hitchens, and ironically Harris (who never really embraced the label either). I’m less concerned about labels and care more that Tyson is out there educating people about science and promoting the values of reason and critical thinking.

Oh, and while I disagree with Hemant Mehta on this, here is evidence that I can be friendly

Thanks to Joel for taking the photo at the Reason Rally.

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The Republicans did run the gambit on issues. Some of the more socially liberal Republicans agreed with me on legalizing pot and gay marriage. I met middle ground with them on gun laws too. But the more hardcore Republicans insisted that gay marriage would destroy America, but when I asked how he just restated that position with a, “you’ll see” at the end of it.

The Republicans seemed okay with Romney, but there was a Ron Paul woman working the polls that even the Republicans weren’t fans of. The Republicans told me about the Ron Paul plot to become convention delegates and override the vote’s decision at the convention so that Paul could be the nominee.

For VP, the best choice most Republicans preferred was NJ Governor Chris Christie. Marco Rubio of Florida was the second choice with Republicans fearing a “Palin Pick.” When I brought up Santorum’s name, the Republicans I talked to were united in their glee that he was out of the race. They were not a fan with one prominent Republican saying that Ricky shouldn’t have weighed in on the Terry Shiavo case when he was Senator.

The fun part for me is talking to my co-workers and the politicians. You see, my precinct is almost entirely Republican and few if any Democratic candidates come around. Republican candidates on the other hand love to come out. So I get to talk to all these people about politics and religion… outside the polling place when it is slow.

I should also mention that my area is pretty Catholic and most of my co-workers love to gossip about the drama of their local church. While they tend to be Republican, they also tend to be socially pretty liberal and so that gets into all kinds of fun conversations.

Last time, I had a great time asking the Republicans who they wanted their candidate for President to be. This time I get to ask them, how they like their candidate? Will they vote for him? Will they campaign for him? And who they want for VP? It should be fun.

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But what if the money that was spent on Democratic candidates focused on changing people’s opinions about particular issues or about how to think critically about the issues? This type of shift would leave individual candidates scrambling to find cheaper and more creative ways to get their message out, but the battlefield would be changing more to their advantage in the meantime. They wouldn’t have to make their case; they would just have to let people know where they stand on the issues.

I bring this up because in my congressional district the Democratic challenger entered the race late and I know nothing about the guy. I went to his website to find out where he stands on the issues and left his website no more informed. He listed a small handful of issues which he didn’t even articulate a clear position on. He could be a right leaning Democrat or a progress and I have no idea. For all I know, his positions could be the exact same as the Republican incumbent.

If he can’t even inform people about where he stands, how is he going to persuade people to change their position on an issue? Why would anyone fund this guy rather than fund the actual issues to set the ground work for the future? Donating to his campaign seems like a waste of money even if you think he is the better candidate. That money like the money Maher donated to Obama would be better spent funding campaigns for individual issues that are important to Americans.

Because of the two party system people who vote don’t usually vote based on the candidate anyway, but rather based on the political party. Dynamic candidates are bold and they can get their message across better, but that has less to do with money and more to do with style.

In the end, politicians come and go, but it is the issues that remain important from election year to election year. That is what we should be funding. Then politicians will be more vocal in their support for issues that more voters support. The key is to get more voters to support the best positions on the issues. That is where Maher should have donated his million dollars.

Religious groups have been demanding that exemptions from laws that they don’t feel like adhering to. The most talked about example these days is of course the contraceptive health care coverage debate. The law wants to make it so all employers pay to cover the contraception needs of their employees. But the religious want to be exempt from this law.

There is of course the law that pharmacists have to fill the prescriptions that doctors prescribe… except that the religious want an exemption from that and have been lobbying congress to include such an exemption.

The religious are also pushing for an exemption to adoption laws that require agencies to not exclude gay parents. This debate got so heated that Catholic Charities even tried to hold our nation’s capital hostage over the situation. Fortunately they failed.

But the point is that more and more bills headed to congress are including religious exemption and are creating two sets of laws in this country; one set of laws for the religious and one set of laws for everyone else.

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• US Supreme Court sides with church on decision to fire employee on religious grounds (lesliebrodie.wordpress.com)

Religious believers also like to stick “Truth” or even “True” in front of everything to change it to mean the opposite of what it does. For instance, if you see a group that calls themselves “Freethinkers” they probably are free thinkers. But if you see a group that is call, “True Freethinkers” then they probably aren’t.

While at the Reason Rally, there was a group called, “True Reason” and guess what? They weren’t very reasonable. In fact, while I was walking to lunch, I ran into an elderly couple handing out postcard advertisements for the Reason Rally. I told them that we were already there and that we will be going back after lunch. They handed us a postcard anyway and while sitting at lunch I noticed that they were really advertising for the “True Reason Rally.” Guess what? It was all about being unreasonable and having faith.

I bet next they will come up with “True atheists” who believe in Jesus. Frankly, I’m surprised some Christian hasn’t actually thought of that. Maybe we should create an organization dedicated to the, “One True God,” no god at all.

Related articles

• Christian proselytizers coming to Reason Rally (examiner.com)

This is where things got interesting in the conversation. I told them that I might be wrong about the world and that they should likewise consider the possibility that they may be wrong as well. The older “Witness” then told me that “doubt is the devil.”

Now, I took that opportunity to joke about how I have just as much doubt about the devil as I do in God before trying to move the conversation along to the idea of continuing to search for answers even to questions we have already think we settled. Here I talked about how last year scientists thought that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity might be wrong and that this was actually pretty exciting for many scientists.

I tried to explain to them that the Theory of Relativity was settled science and as solid a theory as the theory of gravity (of course I had to take a moment to explain the difference between a layperson’s use of the term “theory” verse a scientist’s use of the term). So even though we know that the Einstein was right about Relativity, we actually for a moment had to re-question that view.

My point here was that even though they know that Jesus died for their sins and that God exists, that maybe they too should re-examine that view. But doubt is the devil was again repeated by the older witness. He said that if you have the answer, there is no need to keep searching for it.

Still, he was not my target and so I encouraged the younger witness to doubt and to not be dogmatic. I encouraged him to do his research. I pointed out several books that he could read or even search YouTube for lectures on those books. I again repeated that I too would keep an open mind and that he should as well. I told him that doubt wasn’t the devil, dogmatism was. We should doubt everything, even things we think we know with certainty because you never know when you might be wrong about something.

This was pretty much where the discussion ended. The older witness closing off discussion by insisting that doubt was the devil, the younger witness agreeing with him publicly, and me expressing the radical view that none of us know everything and that we might be wrong and as a result we should keep an open mind to new evidence should it be presented.

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One of the guys was an older man and the other was a younger guy. It is unlikely that the older “Witness” would de-convert. He grew up in a Baptist Church and converted to the JW later in life. He actually told me that he has “all the answers.” But the younger “Witness” grew up in the JW and he has never known anything else. He was my focus.

I also know that I was not going to de-convert anyone on the spot. This is true with almost any topic (not just religion) with almost anyone. It almost never happens that someone makes an argument and the other person goes, “Oh, that’s a great point. I’m sold.” The most you can expect is for someone to say, “Oh, that’s a great point. I’ll think about it.” So my goal was to give him something to think about and to direct him to sources that would help him with his thinking.

I asked them if they ever use YouTube. Some religious believers rightfully fear the internet, so I wasn’t actually sure if these two Jehovah’s Witnesses were internet savvy or not. They were which is great for me.

So when the old First Cause Argument came up, I told them about Dr. Lawrence Krauss’s book, The Universe From Nothing, and told them that he actually has about an hour long presentation on YouTube. I admit that I had to struggle to remember the name of the book, but I think that will help the younger guy remember the name.

It isn’t enough to just tell these believers where to find the information though, I have to encourage them to actually go to these places and look for themselves. I encourage them to have an open mind, just as my mind is open to their message. I make sure to let them know that I am willing to believe God exists. All they have to do is provide some valid evidence for their claims. I tell them that I hope they will provide me the same courtesy and be open to new evidence. This is where things got interesting. I’ll talk about this part of the conversation more tomorrow.

Atheists have a problem with messaging and this contest might be able to help. One problem atheists have is that we tend to be rational and therefore expect others to be rational as well. But most people don’t think rationally. So by taking some of the irrational things that Christians say and turning them into atheist things with our message we do two things. 1. We expose their irrationality. 2. We create our own messaging.

Some of the phrases will be in the first category and some will fit more in the second. Here are a few that I liked:

@rksteg you can’t be a good, moral person if you believe in God.

@DEIgebrandt If Jesus turned water into wine – how come there is still water?

@BetterOffDamned There’s no such thing as a Christian. You just hate reality!

Here are my contributions so far:

@DangerousTalk You’d have your answer if you reasoned it out sincerely.

@DangerousTalk You have a science shaped hole in your brain.

Tweet your message using the hashtag #IfAtheistsTalkedLikeChristians

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First I get the extreme answer: “Yes, children who don’t believe in God go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity and that is why it is so important to spread the message of Christ to everyone.” I actually don’t have a problem with this answer logically, but let’s face facts here. That is not a moral answer. Those who hold this opinion are saying in no uncertain terms that children should be tortured… for all eternity no less. This answer shows just how morally corrupting religion can be because these people who express this opinion believe they are good moral people and yet they believe that children should be tortured!

The second answer I get from Christians is the non-committal answer: “I don’t know; that is for God to decide.” But just a moment ago this same Christian was telling me that non-believers are going to be tortured for all eternity in Hell and now they don’t know if children go to Hell or not? Here we have a case of conscience meeting dogma. Christians like this have no problem telling non-believing adults that they will go to Hell, but even they realize that torturing non-believing children for all eternity is wrong. But they don’t want to take a side. “Children might go to Hell and that might be okay, but that is for God to decide.” Let’s put it in another context. “North Korea might be torturing children and that might be okay, that is up to Kim Jong-un to decide.”

Finally, we have the third answer from the more apologetic camp: “No, children don’t go to Hell. The Bible lists multiple passages which can be vaguely interpreted to tell us that God will not torture children, ever!” Here we have people of conscience and intellect who realize that torturing children is wrong and that morality is not just God’s will (although they won’t admit the latter). So because they know torturing children is wrong, they will re-interpret any verse they can find that vaguely mentions children to show that God wouldn’t torture children. But the fact is that it doesn’t really matter what the Bible actually says, it is the answer of their conscience that tells them that torturing children is wrong.

So how does our conscience know that it is wrong? Because we empathize with a person being tortured and we empathize with children who are defenseless. Based on our empathy, our compassion as human beings tells us that torture is wrong and torturing defenseless children is that much more wrong. Doing it for all eternity is just extra special wrong. It isn’t some vague Bible verse which needs to be understood in the light of some other vague Bible verse that tells them that children shouldn’t tortured for all eternity in Hell, it is a sense of human decency.

The Bible could flat out state that non-believing children go to Hell and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to these apologeticists. “That verse must be interpreted in the light of verse X and only applied to person Y in the special case because of situation Z.” The apologeticist can turn any verse completely on its head if it doesn’t fit with their view.

Apparently, God’s plan was to hire a hit man to have this woman’s daughter brutally murdered. Or maybe that was just the first step in a much larger plan involving world domination… or something. I’m not sure.

Aside from the ridiculousness of people talking to an imaginary deity and claiming that that deity is responding literally, I take issue with this grieving mother’s rationalization. For starters, it shows an obvious contradiction within the belief system. Either everyone has free will or God used this murderer as a pawn in his master plan. Both can’t be true.

More than that, it takes responsibility away from the killer. He had no choice; he was just playing his part in God’s plan. In this sense, God is really the killer and the guy who pulled the trigger was just a hired gun… or worse, he was the actual gun with no choice but to fire when God pulled the trigger.

I feel bad for the mother. I have two small children and I couldn’t imagine what I would be feeling if one or both of them were brutally murdered. It is easy for me to be rational now, but if I were in her situation, I hope someone would help me stay rational instead of allowing me to lose my mind to ridiculous superstitions. This is one of the reasons why therapists exist.

Here is the clip:

Now I have a lot of issues with the clip as does Hemant, but let’s focus on the question of meaning. This is how I would have answered the question about meaning in that setting:

It depends on the meaning of the word meaning (laugh). Seriously though, if you are referring to one singular purpose like that of writing for a pencil, then I don’t think you are going to find it. But if you are referring to a purpose greater than yourself, something to strive for, then I see no reason why we should limit our meaning or purpose to just one thing or to allow someone else to tell us what the meaning or purpose in our own lives should be. This is the great existential question of human existence and I for one am glad that we live in a society that gives us the freedom and the tools to answer it as individuals rather than imposing some answer from an invisible deity from on high on us. We have the freedom to create our own meaning in our lives. For me, one of the meanings in my life is my children. But I also find meaning in learning about the world around me and in advancing human knowledge, fighting for human rights, and human dignity. Today, I find meaning in refuting ridiculous beliefs which are detrimental to human well-being and which stifle freedom.

What do you think of my answer? How would you answer this question?

That’s right I just want Christians to present a new argument in support of their claims. If a Christian can present a new argument I will be very impressed. I will dedicate a blog post and possibly an Examiner article to the new argument and name the Christian who presented it to me directly. More than that, I will even post a link to the website of the Christian’s choice.

The argument doesn’t even really have to be that good although, I would recommend that it be the best argument you can possibly put forward since I will be making it very public and if you put forward a ridiculously stupid argument, it will just reflect poorly on you and your alleged deity.

Who knows, maybe if the argument is good enough, I might even convert to Christianity… but I doubt it. Still, I am certainly open to new arguments to sway me. So where are the great Christian thinkers of our time? Come forward in the name of your deity of choice and present your best original argument. You can contact me through any social network or through email (DangerousTalk@gmail.com). Let the challenge begin!

Related articles

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First, I should point out that the author, Suzanne Collins, is a Catholic. However, that really didn’t play into her writing of the book or the screenplay. Her focus was on politics, economic, and government, not on religion.

So the claim being made by Christians is that early in the film, when Primrose Evergreen was called to the hunger games, her sister Katniss sacrificed herself in the same way Jesus sacrificed himself for the sins of humanity… Except that Katniss wasn’t on a cross, didn’t die for three days, wasn’t resurrected, etc. In other words, there are no similarities at all. In fact, the sacrifice itself is entirely different.

Or starters, Primrose didn’t commit any crimes nor was she even accused on any crimes. According to Christianity, the Jesus sacrificed himself to pay for the crimes of all humanity. Katniss sacrificed herself to save her sister from being called to the hunger games where she would have almost certainly died.

Not all sacrifices are like Jesus. If Primrose had murdered someone and was found guilty and sentenced to death and then innocent Katniss told the judge that she would accept the death sentence so that Primrose could get away with murder, then we would be having a serious conversation about Christian themes in The Hunger Games.

That, after all is the theme of Christianity. All human beings are wretchedly evil and guilty of breaking God’s laws. God, acts as judge, jury, and executioner and has found us guilty. But then along comes Jesus (the only innocent person) to take our place in Hell… except that he doesn’t actually take our place at all, but I digress.

The Hunger Games was a good movie, but it has nothing at all to do with religion. Religion isn’t mentioned at all and the film has no religious themes in it at all. It simply doesn’t pertain to that subject matter.

Many atheists really love this time of year because it is just too easy to criticize two of the three Abrahamic religions without much effort at all. Jews and Christians just make it so easy; it is like they are handing atheists the logical death blow to their own beliefs.

First, let’s start with Passover. There is this great Huffington Post article (if I do say so myself) that talks about the fact that the Jewish Exodus never actually happened. What this means of course is that the Jewish religion is built on a proven fictional story. Down goes Judaism!

Next comes Easter, which most Christians consider the holiest of holy holidays. The problem is that Easter is NOT a Christian holiday! I know Christians hate to hear that, but it’s true. I don’t recall reading in the Bible about Jesus ever owning a hare. And what is the deal with Easter Eggs? Where does the Bible talk about egg hunts, in the gospel of Luke perhaps? The Bible doesn’t mention anything at all about Easter and Jesus didn’t even own a pet bunny. All the stuff about Jesus being needlessly tortured to death and rising from the dead has nothing to do with Easter. Christians should call their holiday Zombie Sunday or Zombie Jesus Day or something, but it is not Easter.

Easter is actually a combination of various Pagan beliefs mostly centering on the goddess Eostre (who the holiday is actually named after). I’ll get to the Goddess Eostre shortly but first I want to focus on the half-god Attis who like Jesus was born of a virgin, died on March 23nd and resurrected on March 25th. Let’s count that one out. How many days was he dead for again? One, two, three day? Just like Jesus. What a coincidence.

Now let’s look at the story of the Goddess Eostre. While there are actually many different versions of the Eostre story, the most prominent story claims that the Goddess came upon a little girl who had found a dying bird. The girl asked Eostre for help because the bird was not use to the cold weather. Eostre then melted the snow and brought about the spring. She then turned the bird into a hare that laid rainbow eggs and told the young girl to watch every year for the hare as a sign of the spring season. Traditionally, the Eostre Festival had focused on fertility to mirror the new life of nature and change to mirror the changing of the seasons from winter to spring.

Atheists should celebrate Easter even though we know that Attis, Eostre, and the Easter Bunny aren’t real. We also know that Mickey Mouse isn’t real, but we can still go to Disneyland and have a good time. Atheists should celebrate Easter because it is fun, symbolizes human sexuality, the changing of the seasons, and because Jews and Christians have made this time of year really fun for us with their ridiculous beliefs in obviously ridiculous stories, which are so easily refuted.

Happy Easter!

I read quite a few articles about Greene’s conversion and they all said about the same thing. Greene converted because Christians paid him $400 and because evolution can’t explain the huge, massive differences between humans and other animals. So I asked Greene what he meant by the huge differences in human and other animals. He told me that he was referring to brain size and physical characteristics.

This was pretty shocking because humans don’t have the largest brains… not even proportionally. But, I told him, even if we did, that wouldn’t disprove evolution and it certainly wouldn’t prove God. More than that, it wouldn’t get you to Jesus either. So what convinced him?

“What got me to Jesus was very simple.  With the education levels and knowledge of the societies back 2,000 years ago, Jesus had to be the son of God, because the people there would not have the imagination to make up stories like walking on water, rising from the dead, and changing water into wine.”

Wow, I never heard that argument before and I thought I had heard them all. Congratulation Patrick Greene wins a prize. You have to admit that is a pretty solid argument (snicker, snicker). Jesus has to be real because Christians lack the imagination to make this shit up.

Holy shit, I am sold!

Oh, there is of course the fact that people 2000 + years ago had awesome imaginations a while Greene might be correct that Christians back then might not have had great imaginations, they could just steal their stories from everyone else. Oh look, that seems to be exactly what happened… either that, or the Greek gods must be real too.

I always said Zeus was real. I knew it; the ancient Greeks didn’t have the imagination to make that shit up.

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Now, I couldn’t care less about the comment itself; my inbox is filled with such nonsense and I obviously take it as seriously as I do threats that Voldemort is coming. However, what bothers me is that this person isn’t even my friend and yet he or she felt the need to go onto my page and tell me (a complete stranger) that I will be and ought to be tortured for all eternity.

Sure, I could change my privacy settings, but that isn’t my point. The point is that he or she felt it was okay to tell someone they don’t know that they should be tortured for all eternity. I want to send a message that this type of crap is not okay. It is not civil and it is in fact immoral. I guarantee that if an atheist left a comment critical to religion on a Christian’s page that they were not friends with (or even friends with), they would be reported and it would be considered an instance of angry atheists pushing our non-belief.

For the most part however, atheists don’t do that. We tend to keep our non-belief confined to our own page or that of our friends. We tend to be polite and we would never tell anyone that they should be tortured for all eternity. That’s beyond just rude, it is downright immoral.

We shouldn’t accept that kind of crap from religious believers and we should let them know it. Their beliefs are not just wrong they are rude, hateful, and immoral. If they come to your page, you should let them know that and then report them!

I’m not a fan of reporting people for exercising their free speech, but I think we should start doing it. They won’t think twice before reporting us for less and we have to start sending a message.

The problem is that they don’t think what they are saying or doing is hateful. They don’t understand that when they are telling people that they should be tortured for all eternity, that that could possibly be considered rude, hateful, or violent. It seems like such a no-brainer to me, but religious faith has a way of warping people’s minds.

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Normally, I don’t care if I offend the religious, but I am a small guy and usually traveling with two small children and when religious people get offended, they often get violent despite their claims that their religion of choice is one of peace. So for my own safety and that of my children, I have to walk carefully to some extent. I still have my atheist bumper sticker on my car though.

That was one of the great things about the Reason Rally. I didn’t have to be afraid while I was in DC wearing my Dangerous Talk shirt. There is safety in numbers and we had a lot of numbers despite what the media wants to report.

After the Reason Rally, I was on the metro with my brother and I noticed a shady looking guy wearing a huge crucifix staring at us with an angry look in his eye. Then all of a sudden, another guy came over and was also wearing an atheist themed shirt. He started a conversation with us because we too were wearing atheist themed shirts and he was happy to meet new atheist friends. But the really interesting part was that the angry Christian walked away from us without confrontation or incident as soon as our conversation with our fellow atheist began.

Later in the night, my brother and I were the added support for a woman wearing an atheist themed shirt on the metro. It was obvious she was felt afraid, possibly because she was a woman alone on the metro at 9 o’clock at night, but I am sure the atheist themed shirt she was wearing might have added to her fear knowing how “loving” some Christians can be.

I remember thinking that it was pretty great to know that there are visible atheists everywhere and that it is like we invaded Washington DC. We didn’t have to worry as much about our safety; our fellow atheists had our back whether they realized it or not. Just being there and being visibly atheist was enough to provide some sense of security.

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It seemed so funny to me because the guy was so serious and most of the atheists treated him like a zoo animal in that he was our entertainment. Sure, some atheists asked him questions to try to trip him up, but most just laughed and saw him as this strange, exotic creature trapped in a cage of his own dogmatism.

Later, when more street preachers arrived, it seemed even more entertaining. Instead of just one animal, there were now several; each one with their own unique brand of crazy. How did they get like this? Did they realize that they had become our entertainment? Did they realize just how silly and clownish their rhetoric was?

The fact that while they were telling us that we should be tortured for all eternity was met with our desire to take photos of ourselves with them while laughing, should have been a clue that we weren’t taking them seriously. They were the side show who interestingly enough stood literally on the side of the Reason Rally.

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I remember telling the guard something about secular values. I might have mentioned Humanism, but I certainly didn’t use the dreaded “A” word. I had to make a calculation on that, and I calculated incorrectly.

In any case, after we ate and were heading out, the same guard was talking to three other atheists who were not as shy about the “A” word as I was. They told him in no uncertain terms that the Reason Rally was for atheists and that we don’t believe in God. This started an interesting discussion that I jumped in on.

The guard was asking us all kinds of other questions about the goal of the Reason Rally, if we had any values, if we wanted to “convert” people to atheism, if atheism was a religion, etc. His questions were inquisitive and not argumentative. However, he had a constant smirk on his face as if he knew something we didn’t.

Surprise, surprise, I did know what he “knew.” His smirk was that of a fundamentalist Christian who “knows” God exists and that we are all going to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. Still, he was polite enough and so the group treated him nicely and respectfully. We answered his questions cheerfully and I have to give credit to the girl from Philadelphia who took lead on the conversation. She was awesome.

When I first came to the Reagan Trade Center, I still felt like I lived in a Christian dominated world and so I wasn’t as outspoken as I should have been. The guard was looking for an argument, but in the end he just got respectful answers to his questions.

Part of the theme of the Reason Rally is to get us to stop hiding in the closet. While I am definitely out of the closet, there are times that I make the calculation to go back into the closet and avoid confrontational conversations with people I don’t wish to offend. But this example is one which shows that having the conversation is better.

Sure, the religious believer might be offended, but if that happens we should just make it clear that our intent isn’t to offend. Instead, we should be respectfully inquisitive. The conversation with the guard could have gone in many different ways. I think it went in the best possible direction and that is largely because we were all friendly, direct, and respectful. We didn’t mean to offend and so I don’t think the guard was offended.

Still, not all conversations with the religious should be this way. There is a time for respect and a time for ridicule. This was an example of the former.

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My brother and I were wondering around the Rally much of the time and I remember as we were coming out of the Organization Tent and heading up the side toward the stage, we saw a television crew. I’m a bit of a media gigolo, so I had to go over there.

The “reporter” was talking to a young couple about various topics. There were two cameras on the couple both of which were facing away from the crowd. I actually didn’t notice this until someone pointed it out to me. But then there it was the obvious spin in the “No Spin Zone.”

The couple on camera seemed to be pretty intelligent people who were obviously knowledgeable about atheism. The interviewer on the other hand asked leading questions clearly from a fundamentalist perspective and his smug grin was extremely unprofessional.

I know my way around the media and I don’t recall reporters spending 15 minutes or more on a single interview like this guy did. Usually reporters want a sampling, so they have a few questions that they ask as many people as they can find. This “reporter” wanted to argue with the couple about philosophy and theology.

As I watched what was going on, it became clear to me that he was trying to get the couple to say something he could edit and turn into his story. He was basically giving them space to talk with the intent of taking their positions out of context to fit his narrative. It is no surprise that I later learned he was from Bill O’Reilly’s show.

I don’t know if it aired on “The Factor” yet because I don’t watch the show. But I am sure the spin will be misleading and that the editors did their job to make smart people sound stupid. That is new for them though since they usually spend a lot of time making a stupid person sound smart… and usually failing to success.

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There are four different groups of Christians at the Reason Rally. The first group was the street preachers. These guys are used to being the lone wacko since they are pretty far out there even for Christians. So they had no problem being open about their ridiculous beliefs.

The second group was the Westboro Baptist Church people. Surprisingly the Phelps were a little shy at the Reason Rally. They showed up toward the end and hung out blocks away from the Rally. While I wouldn’t go as far as saying they were closeted, they certainly weren’t their usual selves. It seemed like they were afraid. Personally, I think they were afraid of Nate Phelps, their son who was speaking at the Rally as an atheist. Maybe Fred just didn’t want the kiddies to hear their brother speak.

The third group was the True Reason people. They are fundamentalist Christians who posted on their website that they would be going to the Reason Rally to hand out water and proselytize. They even informed the media of their intention. I wrote an article about them on Examiner and was looking forward to seeing them. What a letdown, they were hiding in the closet.

My brother, ShaunPhilly, and I walked right past them and ShaunPhilly didn’t even know they were Christians. I told him who they were and he suggested that we talk to them. They looked really bored, so I agreed. There were only three of them and they really needed us to get them into a conversation. I should add that they were across the street from the Rally too.

It seemed to me that “True Reason” was a little afraid of all the atheists. They had pamphlets (not books as promised on their website), but they weren’t really giving them out. They were just handing out water to people without coming out as Christians. I thought the whole point of them being there was to proselytize. That’s kind of hard to do when no one knows you are even a Christian. They weren’t even wearing Christian t-shirts.

Then there was the final group of believers. Those were the people who were completely in the closet. Yeah, there were Christians who were walking around the Reason Rally afraid to come out, but curious about the Rally. I talked to one on Twitter, so I know they were there. There were probably not very Christians of this sort, but there is no way to tell because they were completely closeted. Too bad too, because they would have had some great conversations with people if they had just come out and told an atheist that they were a curious Christian. We wouldn’t have eaten them or anything and we certainly wouldn’t have told them that they deserve to be tortured for all eternity for their ridiculous beliefs. We would almost certainly had a nice pleasant conversation with them.

I don’t want Christians in the closet; I just don’t want them to be dicks.

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While the numbers don’t really matter too much since everyone who came had an awesome time and atheists who couldn’t make it will be watching clips on YouTube or getting the DVD in the coming weeks, it does seem like the narrative that the media wants to paint is that the Reason Rally was a failure. It wasn’t!

I have never been to a rally like this before, so I have no idea how to judge crowd size. But the National Mall Park Service does and they were telling people in the organization tent that it looked like more than 30k people. I also asked some friends who have been to huge rallies before and they told me that it looked like about 25k to 30k to them.

Does the media just make up these numbers? Where are they getting their information from? Interestingly enough, the more religious the media outlet, the less people apparently showed up for the Reason Rally. The smallest numbers came from the most religious outlets with the Religious News Service reporting 8 to 10 thousand people.

The Religious News Service is pretty liberal too, so this isn’t conservative spin, it is religious spin. The religious (even the liberal religious) are afraid of us. They are afraid that they are losing ground and that atheism is on the rise. They see it, every poll and survey shows it, but they still want to pretend that it isn’t happening.

Religion is dying! They know it too. The Reason Rally is a sign that atheist is on the rise and that it is only a matter of time. But we have to keep the pressure on. We have to keep spreading doubt and getting people to think. We have to continue to push for more critical thinking and give people the tools of logic. We have to continue to be outspoken about our lack of belief in ridiculous ideas. The time is now!

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My brother and I got to the Rally at 7:30am and there were just a handful of people. So we went to the Ronald Reagan Trade Center to get some breakfast in the foodcourt. On our way we met up with some atheists from Boston. When we left, we met up with some atheists from my backyard in Philly. When we got back to the Rally site at a little after 8am, the first person I saw was my favorite atheist, Fred Edwords.

For those who don’t know, I think Fred Edwords is the greatest atheist ever. Even though we are friends and technically he is my boss (since I’m the head of PhillyCoR), it is still always a thrill for me to see him. So if you ask me who the best speaker of the day was, I would have to go with Fred seconded by maybe Penn Jillette or Jessica Alhquist. But to be honest, I didn’t hear a lot of the speeches and performances but I made it a point to listen to those speeches. I figured I’d hear all the speeches either online or on the Reason Rally DVD. I wanted to focus more on meeting people on the ground and asking people where they were from and what their experiences were.

I didn’t really stay in one place like most people, but kind of just roamed around talking to people. I popped in and out of the organization tent a bit too.

It was great to meet some of my friends on facebook in person and some of the people I have been talking to for years. I would love to give shoutouts to all the people that came up to me and told me how much they love my Examiner articles. Wow, it really amazed me. I felt a little like a celebrity at times. I’m not used to that, but I do appreciate it.

There is so much to talk about. My official story on the Reason Rally is HERE. I will be talking about lots of little conversations and incidents over the next week or two.

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I plan on wearing my signature Dangerous Talk shirt and if I can remember, a nametag. I’ll be hanging out mainly at the Freethought Society table and the UnitedCoR table. But I do intend to walk all over the place and stop by all the various tables. Although Christians will be there and I love to converse with them, I think I try not to do that this time around because I can do that anywhere. This is a great event because it will have so many atheists in one place and I want to talk to so many different atheists that I just don’t want to waste my time with crazy theists. I want to talk to you, so find me and say hello.

I should add that I am terrible with names, so even if I have corresponded with you a ton of times, I still might not remember your name. Don’t be offended, just remind me about some of the conversations we have had or just introduce yourself.

I probably won’t be going to the big blogger afterparty for a few reasons. First, it is only for the first 150 people and out of the 10,000 expected, the odds are that I won’t be one of those. Second, the food looks pricy and not really my taste. Third, I would rather talk to you than other bloggers. So my plan is to meet some cool people and go to a venue of our choosing.

Finally, it is supposed to rain on Saturday, so we should all chant, “Rain, rain go away and come back another day.” If enough of us chant that at the exact same time, we should be able to alter the laws of physics and stop the rain. Ready? Go!

PS No blog tomorrow. I’ll be busy getting ready for THE REASON RALLY!

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When someone says something that I think is wrong, I will assume that the person making the error is unaware that they are mistaken rather than assume that the person must be deliberately lying to me unless that person has a history of deliberately lying. I give people the benefit of the doubt.

People within the greater community of reason tend to be humanistic minded. They tend to be good without gods. As a result, if someone is in the greater community of reason, I am that much more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. So if someone tells me that some prominent atheist in our community holds some crazy view, I am going to be skeptical and ask them about it. Usually, I will discover that their “crazy view” is more nuanced than others have given them credit for. They still maybe wrong, but they probably aren’t crazy or dishonest.

It seems however, that I am one of the few who do give this benefit of the doubt to people in general and those in our community in particular. Far too often, my fellow atheists label other atheist as women-haters, homophobes, anti-vaxers, racists, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I have little doubt that some people in our community fit those labels, but I think we should give people the benefit of the doubt. Most probably don’t.

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The Rally is for everyone in our community and shocker, not everyone in our community likes or agrees with everyone else in our community. There are plenty of prominent atheists I think are irrational, but this Rally isn’t about me, it is about us. We all have our pet causes and pet peeves, but this Rally is not about those things. It is about our community as a whole.

Stop with the drama and let’s focus on the values we all share. Let’s focus on showing the Washington and the nation that we are here, we are godless, and we vote (or can vote)! If you have an issue with someone, take it up with them. Don’t bring your drama to the Rally. TNT knows drama and last I checked the Reason Rally will not be televised on that network.

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Obviously, I am being sarcastic here and if you can’t read that between the lines then you have a serious problem. However, there are people who are upset that Senator Tom Harkin, Bill Maher, and Penn Jillette will be delivering pre-recorded video speeches.

The issue with Harkin isn’t that he irrationally believes in Catholicism (which carries a host of ridiculous superstitions), but rather that both he and Maher believe in alternative medicine. It is unlikely that either will actually be talking about their views on alternative medicine or that either will have something negative to say about the audience at the Reason Rally. Instead, Harkin is presenting a nice speech welcoming people to the National Mall for our rally even though he doesn’t agree with us on every issue. Maher will undoubtedly be keeping his remarks aimed at the religious.

So why are people upset that these people are allowed to speak? Have we really gotten to the point where everyone needs to be vetted for their atheist purity? Have we learned nothing from that South Park episode featuring Richard Dawkins? Okay, forget South Park, have we learned nothing from the religious or even from history?

I get it if we wouldn’t want Rick Santorum to speak at the Rally because he would obviously say some negative crap about us as an audience and he would promote a lot of things that we as a community stand against, but we have to have some bounds of reason here. Obviously we can’t allow everyone with ridiculous ideas to speak, but there are some people who are on our side on most of the important things but disagree with some of us on a few issues.

I really think that those who have a problem with these individuals speaking really need to pause and take a deep breath. Is it really reasonable to be upset that some people speaking might not agree with you 100% on every single issue?

We are a diverse movement and we have diverse opinions on a diverse range of issues. Let Harkin, Maher, and Jillette speak. They aren’t even speaking about the issues you take issue with, so get over it.

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I know when atheists have testimonials of this sort about how we became atheists it is because we want to understand the process of how people de-converted so we can replicate that. But for Christians, God does all the work. So there is no need for such an understanding. Besides, it doesn’t really seem like that is the reason why Christians do it anyway.

Atheists also have started doing testimonials to inspire closeted atheists to come out of the closet. Christians don’t have those concerns. So what is the point of a Christian testimonial to other Christians?

The only thing I can think of is that it is a way to reinforce their belief. They have to keep reminding themselves how great their deity and their faith is because it is pretty hard to see otherwise. I see it as a form of brainwashing, but I am open to alternative explanations. I just can’t see any practical reason for it otherwise.

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I found this pretty interesting on a few levels. First, what miracle would you ask for and would you show up? Three characters were offered this deal. The first said that he wanted to see God to give him a big fuck you personally. He didn’t show up. The second, wanted his dead loved one back, but he left early. The third wanted all guns to disappear. He also left early.

For me, I am more in line with the guy who wanted all guns to disappear, but I don’t think I would put it that way. But I think I would show up and stay the course with this. Even though I am an atheist, I would go and I would stay. Would you?

Now I know we can’t do this for every wacko who claims to speak for God, but some people are more sincere than others. In the setting of this show, this character is pretty trust worthy. He isn’t playing games and he really believes his shit. So yeah, I would show up and I would want my miracle to help all humanity. For me, I would play Pascal’s Wager on this one.

So my question to you is this. If a really trustworthy Christian friend told you that God would grant you a miracle if you showed up at a particular place at a particular time (maybe within 20 miles of your home and within a week) what would you ask for and would you go… and stay?

I like this idea. First, it should be pointed out that the WBC go where the attention is. So if atheists are going to have a huge rally in DC, the WBC are going to go whether they are invited or not. No one every invites them anywhere so it isn’t like they are sitting around in Kansas waiting for invitations to be assclowns. So if they are coming anyway, why not invite them?

Inviting them sends the message that we aren’t afraid. It sends the message that we are welcoming. No one likes the Westboro Baptist Church and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore most people will be more sympathetic to us just for having these clowns nearby. The general public gets to see the worst of Christianity next to the best of atheism. It’s a win/win.

Plus, we know the real reason why most of the religious don’t like the WBC anyway. You see, religious believers often call the WBC extreme, but they really aren’t that extreme when you think about it. Ask your favorite fundamentalist what part of the WBC do they disagree with. They really can’t tell you.

The fact is that most fundamentalist Christians believe that, “God hates fags.” They just don’t like how the WBC pickets funerals with the message. It isn’t that the Westboro Baptists believe something more extreme than Kirk Cameron and other fundamentalists; it is that they talk about it so openly, in your-face, at funerals, and with clownish signs.

That’s why I love the Westboro Baptist Church. They are really honest fundamentalist Christians… and yet, they are still pretty liberal by the Bible’s standard. I mean… the Bible talks about stoning gays to death. Compared to that, the Phelps are downright polite.

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Grinbank also writes for Examiner as the “Christian Apologetics Examiner.” However, I just learned that he also writes as the “Worldview and Science Examiner.” Fortunately this clown has no audience and no one takes him seriously at all. Oddly enough, despite all the other wacky Christians out there, this guy still can’t manage to find an audience.

Now, let’s look at this strategy and put it to the “Staks Test.” If we were to swap out this Christian and put some other religious group in its place, how would people react? For example, what if a Muslim were to write under the title of “Christian Examiner” and for every article, he would trash Christianity with bad arguments?

I can’t speak for all atheists, but I for one would never write with the intention of fooling Christians into thinking I was a believer just so I could refute their ridiculous beliefs. No, I’m an honest broker. I want Christians to come to my articles knowing that I don’t believe their bullshit. This way, those who have already started to question will come and see what I have to say. I don’t however have a problem with going to forums they frequent, like the religion section of the Huffington Post.

As a Christian I am sure that Grinbank believes he is doing the right thing. Even though his own Ten Commandments claims that lying or deceiving is a sin punishable by death, Christians like Grinbank believe they are forgiven from such rules because of their belief in Jesus. So they often don’t have a problem breaking their own rules if they believe it will help to spread their message.

Let’s start a massive grassroots campaign asking some of these celebrity atheists to come to the Reason Rally. Why should be bother? Well, if some really famous people showed up, the media would be more likely to talk about it. It brings attention to the Rally and to our movement. Plus, I would love to see some really cool famous people wandering around the National Mall.

If we are going to draft famous people or even semi-famous people, we need to find a way to contact them. Twitter is usually the best option but if someone has another avenue, let’s hear it. If you know their twitter handle, share it. The idea is to have lots of people tweet (or whatever) to that person and tell them that we want them to consider coming to the Reason Rally and include a link to the Reason Rally website (reasonrally.org).

Now, who should we draft? I have a few names, but am open to suggestions. Here is my short list:
Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie
Bill Maher
Ricky Gervais
Howard Stern
Natalie Portman
Morgan Freeman
Jodie Foster
Adrianne Curry
Cenk Uygur
Seth McFarlane
George Takei
Hugh Laurie
Eva Green
Daniel Radcliffe
Rachel Weisz
Miley Cyrus
Pretty much almost any famous comedian

And just for kicks, Denzel Washington.

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Aaron has presented this type of argument to me multiple times and every time I refute it. But he keeps using it. Over the weekend, I got him to concede slightly. Now he claims that Dawkins “may” believe that aliens seeded the Earth with life, but he still continues to argue as if Dawkins seriously believes this.

So where is Aaron getting this from? Well, as it turns out there is a scene in the film “Expelled” in which Dawkins talks about this. For starters, Expelled is a ridiculous film starring Ben Stein. It is basically Creationist propaganda. The film makers heavily edited the Dawkins interview and Ben Stein talked over him a lot. Here is that interview.

So there it is, proof that Dawkins believes aliens designed life on Earth. Well not exactly. The point that I think Dawkins was trying to make was that even if life on Earth were designed, the designer would also need to be designed through a natural process of evolution via Natural Selection. In other words, the question of who designed life could just as easily be applied to the question of who designed God. I think he was also probably trying to make the point that many things are possible, but that doesn’t make those things probable. Dawkins has stated many times that he does not in fact believe aliens seeded the Earth with life and that he finds that possibility to be highly improbable.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that Dawkins really did believe something like this. Who cares? How does it relate to what you or I believe? Dawkins isn’t the Pope of me. No one is. Atheism isn’t a religion and as a point of fact, most Catholics don’t even agree 100% with their actual Pope of them. One of the great things about being an atheist is that we are free thinkers. We think for ourselves and we have no dogma, no doctrine, and no sacred text. Sure, we joke about The God Delusion or The Origin of Species being our Bible, but it is a joke. I think you would be hard pressed to find any atheist who would worship either of these books in the same way Christians worship the Bible. No, our only holy book is evidence!

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First, I’m not up on the latest science on this topic. So I really don’t know if that is even true and Aaron tends to flat out lie. But let’s for the sake of argument assume that it is true and that the leading scientists in the field have no idea how life on Earth began or at the very least don’t have any strong evidence for their hypothesis. How exactly does that lead to the conclusion of Jesus?

I tried to explain to Aaron that I have no problem saying that I don’t have an answer and no need to make up an answer if I don’t have one. Also, just because I don’t know an answer doesn’t mean that I have to accept an answer which doesn’t seem plausible and is downright silly… especially when there is insufficient evidence for that answer.

But let’s give Christians like Aaron the benefit of the doubt and let’s say that their answer isn’t as ridiculous as it actually is. At most, they are making an argument for some kind of divine creator. But which one and how do we even know that it is just one? Even this extremely weak line of reasoning doesn’t get us to Jesus.

The tides go in and the tides go out… and even if we couldn’t explain it (and we can) it still doesn’t support the idea that God did it and even if it did, it wouldn’t support the belief that the Christian God did it. To make matters worse, Aaron is a doctor who conducts gene research. He should fucking know better!

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What does this photo speak to you?

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For a while now I have been trying to get published on Huffington Post for this purpose. While there is certainly no shortage of atheist comments on their articles, there are very few atheist articles on there and yet their primary audience is liberal religious believers with a few fundamentalists mixed in.

One of the editors of the religion section of Huff Post told me that, “We don’t have many atheists who write on huffpost religion because most of them tear down other people’s beliefs and that is not what huffpost religion is about (we also don’t have Christians who tear down Jewish beliefs etc.)” I had to call him out on this, so I wrote back, “I want to point out that there have been a great many articles in the Religion Section usually written by Rabbis which primary function has been to tear down atheists. If you would like a short list, I can certainly provide that.” Indeed, just today an article from a Rabbi was published attacking atheism.

Still, I submitted an article that didn’t criticize religion. My article on atheists being spiritual was accepted. Now I need your help. I need to you follow me on Huffington Post, spread my article, and comment on it there. I know a lot of my readers don’t like the term “spiritual” and I understand that. But it isn’t about the word, it is about the experience. More importantly, it is about getting me established there so that I can be more vocal down the road. This article is just my foot in the door.

If my article does well I will be able to post new articles there. At first, they will be sanitized to accommodate religious sensibilities. I hope to publish articles that are supportive of the greater community of reason rather than criticize the ridiculous ideas of religion at first. The idea is to let liberal religious believers see what kind of people we are and to remind them that we exist. In time, I will be more vocal in my criticism of ridiculous religious ideas as my popularity as a contributor rises. Hopefully in my next piece there, I will add some minor criticisms of ridiculous ideas.

Currently, there are a few other atheists on there, but they seem to be mostly from the extremely accominationalist camp like Alain deBotton. So I am hopeful I can start to change that tone over time with your help.

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If there seems to be some sort of design in life, that is because there probably is some sort of design in life. But that doesn’t mean that there has to be a designer. The designer in the case of evolution is a natural process called “natural selection.” While there are random chances and mutations within all species, it isn’t random which mutations or traits are passed on and cause the species to evolve. That is determined by natural selection.

Here is an example. Let’s say I hire 20 people randomly to do a job. Over the course of a week, 5 of those people get burnt out and quit. The following week, 6 people are fired because they did a shitty job. After another few weeks, 4 more people are either fired or quit. Eventually, the people who stay with the job will be the people who have learned how to do the job best and who are the most skilled. They will then be the ones who will hire and train that next batch on workers. The skills that of those who survived from the original batch will be passed on to the new batch. The new batch will then learn even better ways to do the job and will pass those skills onto the next batch and so on down the line. That is natural selection.

Now, five years later the company is doing really well and is known to have the most skilled workers in the industry. How do you explain such skilled workers? Someone comes along and says that the head of the company must have designed the perfect workers using genetic cloning because those skilled workers couldn’t have possibly been hired by random chance. Someone else says, “No it wasn’t genetic cloning, but such perfect workers couldn’t be random chance, so it had to be aliens.” Because those workers are so skilled, it leads one to believe that there must have been someone infinitely more skilled than those workers who had taught those workers because you can’t have a less skilled worker teach a worker to have more skill; that goes against the law of master/apprentice. In fact, people will start to make up all kinds of ridiculous stories to explain what Darwin explained with Natural Selection.

Natural Selection is a slow process, but it works. We see it working every day with all kinds of systems, not just biology. We talk about evolution in all kinds of human endeavors. If something doesn’t adapt to change, it dies out. If something continually adapts to change over time, it gets better. That’s evolution and it isn’t “just random chance.”

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First, I don’t want to speak for all atheists, but I will say that I have never met an atheist or a theist for that matter who literally believed in nothing. Even Nihilism which is often misrepresented as a belief in nothing is not really a belief in nothing. But I digress.

Maybe religious believers can take a moment to dial down the hate and actually ask an atheist what we value and/or what we believe. While atheism isn’t a belief system in and of itself, every atheist does believe something (usually on pretty solid evidence) and in the interest of compassion, it might be nice to ask that atheist what that something is.

As it turns out, most atheists in our greater community of reason tend to share a certain set of beliefs and values. We tend to value reason, logic, science, evidence, and in most cases humanistic values like compassion, equality, justice, fairness, etc.

It’s true that every Christian is different too. Not every Christian values the same things and not every Christian values the values they do share in the same priority. However, Christianity is at least a common belief system. Atheism is simply a lack of a god-based belief system. Atheism doesn’t tell anyone about what an atheist values. Christianity at least gives you a general ballpark.

I tend to generalize Christians into about three categories in my writing to a general audience, but on a one-on-one basis I make a point to inquire further into someone’s beliefs and values because every Christian is different. This is once again an example of my humanist values giving a greater courtesy to the religious then the religious generally give to atheists.

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First, I give you my former Senator and one of the leading candidates for President of the United States, Rick Santorum. Santorum recently came out against college education. I’m not kidding. Santorum actually said that college is bad. Santorum favors home schooling with no standards for education. This is because education has a notorious liberal and atheistic bias:

There is little doubt that Santorum wants a new dark age in which religion runs the world and education is vilified. The scary thing is that Santorum might be the Republican nominee and he might beat Obama and become the President of the United States. That crowd loved his speech and they loved the fact that he spoke out against education. So it isn’t Santorum; he is just an advocate for this point of view. The problem is already there.

On the other side of the coin is Neil deGrasse Tyson who is advocating for the future in which people are motivated toward science. While promoting his new book, he spoke to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last week. Here is the video:
We are on the cusp of one of these two visions of the future. But we don’t have to be hapless bystanders. We can fight to help make Neil deGrasse Tyson’s view of the future a reality. It will not be an easy fight, but we have to be vocal and not only promote a scientific future, but criticize Santorum and his view. We live in an interesting time and we have a responsibility to those who come after us to give them a better future.

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Are Christians claiming to know with 100% certainty that their particular god exists? If so, they are dogmatic because no one can possibly know this with such certainty. If they are not and for the record, many will admit to doubts even if it is the same amount of doubt Dawkins has toward his lack of belief, then they aren’t really Christians at all according to their own definitions. They should call themselves agnostics. Therefore, if someone calls themselves a Christian, they must dogmatically believe with 100% certainty that their particular god exists.

Now, of course I am just having a little fun here. I don’t seriously believe that all Christians are dogmatic, but I am trying to make the point that Christians often try to pigeon-hole atheists in this exact same way and that it is just as fallacious when they do it to us as it is when I do it to them.

I commented on this initially in an Examiner article and have been discussing it on various comment boards on the web… including on the Religion News Service, which initially reported the “story” and on their Monday Roundup which reported on their reporting of the “story.”

Also, the very first article in my Atheism 101 series is on the terms “atheism” and “agnosticism.” Feel free to check it out. Thanks

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If I were shown indisputable proof that there is in fact a god and that god is the Christian God (which if God were God, he would already have shown me), I would obviously be forced to believe God existed, but that is where my conversion would end.

I could not worship such a cruel deity. Despite and because of the threat of eternal torture for all those who refuse to worship this deity, I could not in good conscience worship this deity. I would believe, but not follow. This would be a true use of free will from the Christian point of view.

While I reject the idea of free will, Christians often assert that God gives us a choice to believe or not believe. But in the absence of evidence, it is not a real choice at all. A real free will choice would be if God revealed himself to everyone and we had the choice to follow or not to follow without the threat of eternal torture. But I digress.

My point here is that it takes more to be a Christian than just believing in their deity of choice. One must follow and worship that deity. That is something I cannot do.

Some atheists were raised religious and have rejected the deity of their former faith. Some atheists were never religious in the first place. There might even be some person somewhere who might not have ever heard of this whole God concept thing.

Atheism also doesn’t tell anyone the degree to which we lack belief. Is the concept something that is worth considering or is it so laughably absurd that it is rejected out of hand? This is where people start throwing around the word, “agnostic.” But that is a different issue entirely.

My issue is when we parse our lack of belief with terms like weak, strong, hard, or soft. I understand what people are saying when they use these terms, but we don’t use these terms for anything other than a lack of belief in deities.

Are you a weak aunicornist? Or are you making a claim that you KNOW with absolute dogmatic certainty that unicorns don’t exist? Religious believers have set us up for a trap and we keep falling into it. For atheists, god is no different than unicorns. We are perfectly comfortable telling people that unicorns aren’t real without parsing our words with levels of certainty about this claim. It doesn’t take more faith not to believe in unicorns than to believe in unicorns and we should have to make excuses about how we are open to the possibility that unicorns exist. Of course we are open to that possibility, just not that probability. We are scientific minded people and that means that we are always open to possibilities given strong compelling evidence. But we still don’t go around telling people that we only weakly don’t believe in unicorns.

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• Really? Atheism is a religion, but Christianity isn’t? (dangeroustalk.net)

This might get a little uncomfortable, but think about it. The circumstances had to be just right for your parents to meet, to be attracted to each other, and have the game to get it on. That is a lot of chance that goes into that. What if they met someone else they liked better first? What if one of them wore the wrong color or went to a different destination the day they met? What if one of them said or did the wrong thing and as a result your parents never had sex?

The odds aren’t looking in your favor, but that is just the beginning. Let’s say they did manage to beat those odds and have sex at some point. What are the odds that out of the millions of sperm that your dad shot to impregnate your mom, that the one particular sperm with the right mix of your particular genes was the one to make it to your mom’s egg? If a different sperm made it, then you would have a different mix of your parents’ genetic material and would be someone completely different. If there are multiple universes out there the odds that you would be in one looking and acting anything close to how you are today is astronomical.

If that wasn’t enough, multiple that times your parents’ parents and their parents and so on down the family tree. The bottom line is that it is extremely improbably that you would have ever been born with the traits that you have and yet here you are. It must be fate… or perhaps you would have been born a different person or not born at all.

Or maybe, the more likely possibility is that if something happened differently, you wouldn’t have been born and someone else would have. That person might now be asking the same questions, but we will never know because the odds were just too much for them and they never existed.

The odds look differently after the fact than they do before the fact. What were the chances that the Giants would beat the Patriots with a score of 21-17 in the Superbowl? Would you take that bet today after the game was already played? Sure, because the odds change after the fact. The chances that you would be born as you were are now 100% since that was in fact the outcome.

The people I am grateful to for my existence are my parents. They had sex and then spend the rest of their lives raising me. I am grateful to my friends and family for helping me to succeed in life and for contributing to my happiness. I only hope I can earn their gratitude with my support for them as well.

Football players waste their gratitude on deities instead of the coaches, trainers, teammates, and countless others who have helped them win their big game. So while they may be grateful to imaginary friends, they are ungrateful to those who actually matter most. It is the same with most who profess gratitude to the supernatural. Misplaced gratitude is no gratitude at all.

Related articles

• Why Are Theists Angry? (dangeroustalk.net)
• Pushing Beliefs: Atheists vs. Theists (dangeroustalk.net)

At some point in these conversations, the Christian will tell me that not giving a shout-out to their deity is pushing atheism. In other words, according to these believers, if you don’t mention God you are pushing atheism. Could this really be the case?

If you pick up a book on golfing and it doesn’t mention Christianity, then the book is pushing atheism? According to this self-absorbed view of Christianity, the answer is yes. I would ask, what is the reasoning behind this?

The answer: Well, atheism is a lack of belief in God, so if something lacks a mention of God, then it is pushing atheism. This is the type of logic you get from people who don’t respect logic. Atheism isn’t the lack of all things God; it is the lack of BELIEF in gods.

Pushing atheism would be pushing everyone to lack belief in gods. I’m more than happy to do that, but it should be pointed out that most atheist billboards don’t even do that.

Related articles

• ‘Atheists Must Believe X’ (dangeroustalk.net)
• Pushing Beliefs: Atheists vs. Theists (dangeroustalk.net)
• Really? Atheism is a religion, but Christianity isn’t? (dangeroustalk.net)
• Atheists Show Too Much Restraint (dangeroustalk.net)
• Atheism (himalayanatheist.wordpress.com)

Over the weekend, I was at a party that a fellow atheist was hosting. Knowing that my friend has some very religious family members, I pulled him over and asked him about the religiosity of the other guests. I didn’t want to say anything that might offend someone who was overly religious. I shouldn’t have had to do that.

On many other occasions in our society, atheists show remarkable restraint. The crossing guard down the street offers her blessings to God for me when I see her. She doesn’t know I’m an atheist and I don’t tell her because it would no doubt offend her. Instead, I show restraint and thank her for your blessings to God on my behalf. She shows no restraint in pushing her beliefs with her blessings, but this isn’t out of malice; it is because the Christian belief system has so twisted her sensibilities that she doesn’t realize she is being rude.

Time and time again, atheists are compelled to show restraint out of fear of offending the religious. We shouldn’t have to. We have actual evidence on our side. We don’t just make up a bunch of stories and demand people believe them on insufficient evidence.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t show that restraint, but I am calling attention to the fact that we do show that restraint. We live in a society dominated by people who believe in ridiculous crap and we rarely even point it out. People who value evidence, logic, and reason are made to feel like we are the most disrespectful people on the planet by people who push their ridiculous beliefs on all of society without even the courtesy of even presenting valid reasons for their beliefs.

I’m a pretty vocal atheist, but I don’t shout people down on the street. I don’t knock on anyone’s door on Saturday mornings, I don’t tell everyone I meet on the street that they are delusional. Unless someone else brings up religion, I generally won’t. I bet most of my readers show the same restraint I do but we shouldn’t have to. We do it because we are the respectful ones. We are the people who try not to be rude unless we have to.

Related articles

• Pushing Beliefs: Atheists vs. Theists (dangeroustalk.net)
• Some atheist parents take kids to religious services (examiner.com)
• Atheist Exemptions (dangeroustalk.net)
• ‘Self-Professed Atheist’ (dangeroustalk.net)
• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)

On paper, Libertarianism is all about individual freedom. How can anyone be against that? Who is seriously going to argue against freedom? But it isn’t the freedom part I have a problem with, it is the individual part.

Sure, we could go Full Monte Libertarian in our society and grow our own food, weave our own clothing, do our own dentistry, and be completely self-sufficient and free. There would be no government restricting pollution (because no individual could pollute enough anyway) and there would be no law. It would be the perfect Libertarian paradise. The thought of it alone would make Ron Paul ejaculate.

But as a humanist, who loves science, reason, and logic, I think it would be better to have an actual society. It would be better for people to work together to form a government by the people to provide for the general welfare of everyone. Now, doing that Full Monte isn’t good either. That would be strict Communism where the state directs our lives completely. Instead of government providing for the people, the people provide for the government. But isn’t there a middle ground?

Yeah, it is what we got now. It is the delicate balance of trying to maximize individual liberty in an actual society in which governments provides some important services for the people. What should government do and what should individuals do for themselves?

These aren’t easy questions. Some regulations are important, like government regulations on pollution, food and product standards, etc. Some regulations like who can legally be allowed to marry, what drugs and unhealthy foods people can knowingly take, and what sex acts can be performed with your consenting partner(s) in the bed are not things that government ought to be regulating.

Capitalism is great, but government still has the important job of protecting people from the abuses of Capitalism. When wealth gets concentrated into the hands of the few at the expense of the general welfare of society, then the government needs to step in to protect the people from becoming de facto slaves of the wealthy.

Unfortunately, right now the wealthy have bought to government and the job of the government has ceased to provide for the general welfare and has instead become to provide for the wealthy alone at the expense of the general public.

It isn’t that there is too much regulation as Libertarians claim; it is that there isn’t the right kind of regulation. The best way to navigate through the role of government is to remember that governments are instituted by men [and women (except apparently when it comes to women’s health of course)] to provide for the general welfare of the people.

First, Dawkins should have known that since he has spent a lifetime educating people about Darwin and evolution. But that isn’t my point here. My point here is that evolution isn’t a religion. I don’t know the name of Newton’s book or paper on gravity, yet I accept the theory. But if someone claims to worship Jesus and the only source of information about Jesus comes from a collection of books, It is reasonable to assume that the person should know at least some basic facts about that collection of books.

I’m an atheist, and I know the Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Hell, I even know that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as source material. More importantly, I know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t actually write the books ascribed to them. But I digress.

My point is that there is some pretty basic information that not only should everyone know, but that Christians in particular should know. Now, it probably wasn’t a good idea for Dawkins to use general knowledge of Christianity as criteria for Christianity, but that is another story.

As it turns out though, Dawkins wasn’t the only survey to reach that conclusion.  The British Social Attitudes survey had a similar result.

Related articles

• Richard Dawkins, Famous Atheist, Appeals To God For Answer On Evolution (huffingtonpost.com)
• How Religious is Britain? Not Very, Says Richard Dawkins (patheos.com)
• Richard Dawkins unable to remember Charles Darwin’s seminal work (dailymail.co.uk)
• Dawkins loses title challenge (thejc.com)

For example, one Christian recently told me that I must be a rapist because without a belief in their deity of choice, there would be nothing holding my sex drive back and so I must believe that it is okay to fuck every woman I see. This is ridiculously silly of course, but this Christian tried to maintain that it was perfectly logical and that all atheists ought to be rapists. Apparently Denzel Washington agrees.

Now sure, I can try to explain to this guy that atheists generally are against rape and I could point to all kinds of statistic of prison rates and society of health indicators which show that countries that are more atheistic have a lower crime rate including a lower rape rate, but who are we kidding here. The very next time this Christian talks to an atheist, he is just going to say the same thing.

Let’s take a page from Louis C.K. and have a different argument. Why should religious wackos have all the fun? We can make up “logical” conclusions too. As a Christian, they must believe that in the Ten Commandments, right? Sure. So they should be out there murdering adulterers, atheists, and everyone working on the Sabbath. It’s right there in the Ten Commandments. If you want to include the rest of the Bible, every Christian should be out there murdering gay people too. Plus, Jesus said they should give away all their money. Why aren’t any Christians doing these things? They must not really believe.

Then we can talk about what a strawman is and how they ought to actually listen to what an atheist think before projecting what they believe we ought to be thinking. Now we can have an actual conversation and explain to them that atheists aren’t the evil sociopaths they believe us to be. Who knows, they might even decide that they don’t really believe in God either, but it was their fear of losing any sense of morality which kept them believing. Who knows?

Related articles

• Pushing Beliefs: Atheists vs. Theists (dangeroustalk.net)
• I Could Be Wrong… And So Could You! (dangeroustalk.net)
• Formal debates are a win for atheists (examiner.com)
• Christianity: The Religion of Peace (dangeroustalk.net)
• ‘Self-Professed Atheist’ (dangeroustalk.net)
• Atheist Exemptions (dangeroustalk.net)

Our first destination on our journey into the concepts of love and marriage is going to be the Bible. Yeah, back in Biblical times, people didn’t marry loved ones. Women were nearly akin to property and barely a step up from a slave. Kings (including the wise King Salomon) had large numbers of wives. They amounted to nothing more than his fuck toys.

Marriage was a business arrangement between two men, a father and a potential husband. The father would sometimes sell his daughter off to a worthy suitor. Or sometimes he would buy a prominent man to marry his daughter to get her out of this house.

The idea of marrying for love is relatively new. In marriages, each person is generally treated as an equal partner today (in mainstream society). This too is new. It wasn’t long ago (and is still prominent within many religious cultures) that the man was the boss. In fact, it was just a few decades ago that the television show “Who’s The Boss” was considered funny because it was a women who was in charge of the man in the house. But the show wasn’t revolutionary enough to have them actually married.

Today, love and marriage are changing again. People love, marry, fall out of love, divorce, and re-marry. Support for gay marriage is at an all-time high and state after state are beginning to recognize the right for two people of the same gender to love each other and marry.

So when religious believers claim that we are trying to change the definition of marriage, they are right. But they are wrong to think that this definition has never changed or that change is somehow a bad thing. Change is good and when we can change the law to allow for more people to love and be loved, that has to be a good thing.

Happy Valentine’s Day. :-*

Actually they do need to present evidence for their claim about God’s love and God’s existence. Sure, I do love my wife and I know with reasonable certainty that she loves me back. We show each other affection. But more than that, if I really had doubts, we can take it to a lie detector and see. Even more than that, we could go and have a brain scan. We can find out if the part of our brains that light up when we feel love light up when we are prompted to think about each other.

But we don’t really need that level of certainty. The fact that we show each other affection is enough for us. Now, has God shown me any affection? Do you have any evidence for this? Christians will say that God created us and therefore call that affection. They might even throw in some good fortune. But there is no evidence to their claims. God can’t even present himself and make the claim for himself, let alone present any evidence that it was he and not some other deity or natural process that’s responsible for the universe and those good fortunes.

Can we test God’s existence? No. Can we test the love between loving individuals? Yes. As mentioned before, we can through lie detectors, brain scans, and the affection we show to each other.

But the basic fact is that this is a category error. Love is an emotion and God is an alleged being. It’s like comparing “Silly” to “Oranges.”

Related articles

• Fossils Prove God? Good Grief! (dangeroustalk.net)
• Terminology (atheistheresy.wordpress.com)

One person commented on my article asking why we can’t have an atheist exemption from the gay marriage bans in some states. I think this is a great idea. I think we should definitely push for such a thing.

Since we don’t believe in any deities or the Bible, we don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin and therefore, the government’s prohibition on gay marriage is a restriction on our secular values. We should be exempt from the government prohibition on same-sex marriage and the government should respect and legally recognize our right to marry gay and lesbian atheists.

While we are at it, we don’t believe in Hell for those who kill themselves, so we should demand an exemption from the laws against euthanasia too. While I’m not fond of the pot, I don’t see why atheists should be prohibited from using marijuana for medical purposes either. I want an exemption!

If the religious can get away with demanding exemptions from laws they don’t like, why shouldn’t we do the same? Not only will we raise the awareness of atheists in our society, but we will also gain a great deal of support from others who don’t normally think about religion, but will support what we are trying to do here. It’s great PR and supports great causes. It will cause people to think about religious identifications why use, but don’t really believe.

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• Pushing Beliefs: Atheists vs. Theists (dangeroustalk.net)
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The only thing I can possible think of that this guy was talking about is the old Creationist claim that there are no transitional fossils… therefore God. This is of course wrong in many ways. First, every fossil is a transitional fossil so the claim that there aren’t any just shows a lack of knowledge about how evolution via natural selection actually works.

Second, it is a little bit like the underpants gnomes. Step one, steal underpants. Step three, profit. Even if it were true that there are no transitional fossils, I don’t see the step from this to the, “therefore God.” Of course there is also the missing step of, “therefore my God.”

And that brings me to the Bible. The fossil record clearly contradicts a literal reading of the Bible (which is what Creationists believe). So therefore, not God would be more accurate.  Now if you want to take a figurative view of the Bible, then you can make any shit up to justify your position. If a Christian really wanted to go there, then maybe God is a metaphor and these Christians are really atheists. But I digress.

The point is that there is no way that fossils prove or even could be evidence in support of a god concept. Fossils certainly don’t prove the Christian God. But I do love how Christians love to try to show how something that disproves their fairytale actually proves their fairytale if you stand on your head, close one eye, and look at it through a funhouse mirror.

If you added up all the atheist billboard, bus, and aerial campaigns in the entire country, they would no doubt be less than just the billboard campaigns in almost any given state by Christians. How many times do atheists come knocking on you door with pamphlets and the God Delusion in hand?

Do atheists erect tax-exempt anti-theist centers on nearly every street corner? No, but do the religious erect their anti-atheist centers on nearly every street corner at the tax payer’s expense? Yes! Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, etc. are everywhere and their central message is that God exists and he wants you to believe. Some religious leaders even take to the pulpit and proclaim that atheists are fools and that we are evil.

Next time you are out on the road, count up how many religious bumper stickers you see and see if it is more than the number of atheist bumper stickers you see. How about t-shirts? How many religious vs. anti-religious t-shirts do you see on any given day?

Now, take out your wallet and let me know how many dollar bills say, “In No God Should You Trust.” I will bet you all your money that you will see a religious billboard on your money. The religious actually push their religion on our money! Every dollar bill is a billboard for religion. How fucked up is that? There is no way that atheists could possibly push our ideas is such an effective way.

But what are atheists really pushing anyway? Are we telling people that if they don’t believe as we do they will be and should be tortured for all eternity? No, that’s what the religious do. We are simply telling people to think critically, learn about science and history, and embrace reality. If you don’t, you will be tortured for a lifetime of ignorance. That’s it.

Atheists have every right to advertise out ideas. When religious believers complain about it, they simple are afraid of the obvious. Atheists have evidence to support our claims and we demand religious believers present evidence for theirs. We don’t need to promote atheism on dollar bills, or door-to-door. Our ideas are so scary good, that we just have to promote them a little bit and we become strong competition for the billion dollar religious campaigns of bullshit.

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• Some atheist parents take kids to religious services (examiner.com)
• Why Are Theists Angry? (alwaysquestionauthority.wordpress.com)

First, there is the claim that atheism is a religion. This is pretty popular lately. My sister made this claim on facebook a few days ago and former MTV Vjay, Kennedy, made this claim on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. I have already written an Atheism 101 article on this subject and this past week, Bill Maher responded to Kennedy’s claim on his show on Friday:

Then there is the second claim, that Christianity is not a religion. This is almost always followed by the statement that it is a relationship with God or Jesus or both. If you ask me though, it is more of a religionship than a relationship. We have relationships with actual people who actually exist. And in relationships, we don’t pray to our loved one either.

When religious believers have such things as atheism being a religion and Christianity not being one mixed up, how can anyone possibly take them seriously? Can’t we just laugh at them and call it a day?

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• Atheism 2.0 (dangeroustalk.net)

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!

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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.