Atheism For All

When You Know God Personally

2013-03-31T10:17:00.001-07:00

When you know God personally, there is no question God exists. When Christians say something like this, I have to think they have nothing else to offer us as non-believers. It's a last resort appeal to subjective experience. If they actually had any evidence, that would clearly be the first thing they would offer up. Instead all we are left with is "If you believe it, you 'll believe it."

Assuming the World is Evil Without God

2012-03-27T13:54:00.001-07:00

It seems that those who claim God is good for healing people assume that without God nothing positive could happen in the universe. I saw a post today on Facebook about a woman who had breast cancer that had a mastectomy, survived, and had a child. The caption for the picture was "She survived breast cancer and is now having a child. GOD IS GOOD . Who all agrees ?" The number of people agreeing that this was due to God's providence was astounding to me. They all seem to believe that the earth is an absolutely horrid place and that God is responsible for any good that may come about.

Why Do People Believe This Stuff

2012-03-26T05:49:00.003-07:00

I've often heard it said by apologists that Jesus must have been the son of God for Christianity to take off otherwise no one would have believed it. I offer this as my rebuttal:

"Hippies head for Noah’s Ark: Queue here for rescue aboard alien spaceship"

2012-02-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

How many Christians take comfort in the belief their opposition is going to hell. For example, I've seen so many Christians giddy with joy that Jessica Alquist is going to end up in hell someday for suing to remove the prayer banner. Have they really thought about what that means? They're in love with the idea that someone would burn eternally in part because they took down the Christian "team flag". More love and compassion from the followers of the supposed religion of peace that surpasses all understanding.

Just Found This Gem Because of Glenn Beck

2012-02-16T08:38:00.000-08:00

I was listening to the Glenn Beck show yesterday on my way home. They were talking about a shocking expose on Planned Parenthood's subversion of children. I found the video this morning. I'm not sure if they're serious or it's a Poe but it's sad for the fundamentalists that I can't tell the difference.

God's a Moral Monster

2012-02-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

I'm trying something of an experiment now. If Christians claim they're going to heaven, I'd like to challenge them how much they really love their God. It seems a basic tenet of Christianity is that to enter heaven, you must love God above all else. My question to Christians is simply how they can love God when he condemns tens of billions of good people to burn eternally in hell simply because they sinned once (this not counting the entirety of a lifetime of supposed sins). If they try to worm their way out of it, I'm going to hold them to it. I can't believe many people could possibly love something who would burn almost all their relatives, ancestors, and children for all eternity. If anything, I hope some level of intellectual or emotional discomfort will creep in and unsettle their faith a bit.

Right to Believe and Feeling Attacked

2011-11-12T13:14:00.001-08:00

Why is it that so many people, when confronted with a contrary opinion, feel it necessary to think their rights are under attack? George Takei wrote a fantastic post on his Facebook fan page that science is not a liberal conspiracy. Reading through the comments, I saw someone replied, "So you're welcome to a belief but I'm not?" It got me to wondering why so many people feel as though their right to believe something is being encroached upon when someone asserts a contrary belief.

I've noticed this typically happens when someone's belief can be easily demonstrated to be false or whenever people hold their beliefs to define their existence. Unfortunately for these people, they don't realize that accusing someone of abrogating their rights is not making a meaningful argument or refutation of the assertion. Using this defensive tactic, they'll never know whether or not their beliefs actually line up with reality.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial

2011-11-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

Exodus 21:20-21

2011-11-06T10:45:00.001-08:00

"Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."

Another Reason I Don't Want Anything to do with Religion

2011-11-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

I've read this kind of story so many times: "Devil Child: Teenage Atheist Shares Her Story"

Kiss Hank's Ass

2011-11-05T10:03:00.001-07:00

Christian Love Includes Death Threats and Rape

2011-11-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some great examples of Christian peace and love. These are viewer responses to a Fox News story about the American Atheists lawsuit over the cross at the Ground Zero memorial. Atheists are threatened with rape and death for supporting the cross removal.

Stay classy, Fox News viewers.

Ireland Says "Hey, Hey, Hey. Goodbye!" to the Vatican

2011-11-04T20:44:00.001-07:00

Ireland just announced it will be closing the Vatican embassy for not yielding any economic returns.

"Dublin's foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because "it yields no economic return" and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.

The source said the Vatican was "extremely irritated" by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values."

Does this mean the official government position in Ireland is now that Catholicism has no value? One can hope.

Sir David Attenborough on Creationism

2011-11-04T09:48:00.001-07:00

"My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'."

Objectivity and Subjectivity

2011-11-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

So many people will assert a behavior as being immoral or disgusting because of their own personal feelings about it. I felt compelled to write this post after reading the comments for a while on an Entertainment Weekly story about two couples on Glee that are going to be intimate for the first time.

"Gleeks you MUST tune in for next week’s episode of Glee, called “The First Time.” It’s without a doubt one of Glee's best installments ever and features two popular couples on the show having sex for the first time."

I found the story through the popular, conservative Drudge Report, so I knew the comments would be entertaining but incredibly frustrating. What I noticed in many of the commenters is something I've often noticed is something about myself. Too often I act as if my own personal feelings are an actual objective description of the world rather than my own subjective interpretation of it. Observing how I feel about an issue tells me nothing more than how I'm reacting to it. Unfortunately, most people seem to think their personal feelings are an objective description of reality. Some examples from the comment section to demonstrate this:

DISGUSTING! As if it's not disgusting enough to show teens who have no business having sex, have sex, now we have to see unnatural things taking place before our eyes."

"This is disgusting. Homosexualists make a choice to do the vile things they do. Did you know evolution dosen't support the gay gene theory? Did you know gays are promised a special place in hell according to the bible? These perverts and thier unnatural acts only shame themselves and their worthless families that raised them. And only perverts will tune into watch kids sodomize themselves!"

"This is sick. It's bad enough we have to sexualize our teenagers at such an early age. Now, we have to intoduce them to gay sexuality. What is next, beastiality? Why not show teenagers saying no to sex, resisting temptation, showing virtuous behavior, or showing them being good citizens. Now, I know some of you will say that the show is just displaying the reality of teen life. My response would be there are still teenages with good moral values."

It's unfortunate that most people will never experience the freedom that comes from being able to discern their own subjective experience from objective reality. From personal experience, it seems the ability to understand the difference is far from most people. Most people either do not understand the distinction or refuse to make it after being told about it.

There is a fantastic book on happiness from a Buddhist perspective I would highly recommend to everyone: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. It was from this book I learned that my own interpretation of the world had no relation to how the world actually is. For example, if I find someone attractive or ugly, it's not an objective description of them. It's how I feel about them. I still get stuck in the trap of thinking my feelings are more than they are but it's helped me immensely.

2011-11-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

I think the biggest difficulty in being an evangelical skeptic and atheist is that communicating new ideas to people who are completely resistive to them is incredibly difficult. I try and try to get people outside of the intellectual prison they have confined themselves to and yet they refuse to come out even though I'm holding the keys to them. They refuse to think.

So often I encounter someone who, no matter how eloquently I explain something or no matter how well thought out my provocative questions are, simply shuts down a discussion with a snide remark or an assertion of fact without actually backing it up.

Who else feel like this?

Always a Classic

2011-11-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Always a classic story: a student determines hell is exothermic.

Via The Thinking Atheist - Interview With Matt Dillahunty

2011-10-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

Interview With David Silverman

2011-10-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a great interview with David Silverman covering his last appearance on the O'Reilly factor, defining atheism, and a bit of his past.

Another Win for Evolution over Intelligent Design

2011-10-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins Demonstrates Laryngeal Nerve of... by blindwatcher

I Missed It!

2011-10-01T08:55:00.002-07:00

Evidently yesterday was International Blasphemy Rights Day: a day founded in 2009 by the Center for Inquiry to commemorate the publication of the Dutch Mohammed cartoons.

"International Blasphemy Rights Day takes place every September 30th, to commemorate the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed cartoons. The purpose of this event is to set a particular day as a day to support free speech, support the right to criticize and satirize religion, and to oppose any resolutions or laws, binding, or otherwise, that discourage or inhibit free speech of any kind. The focus on 'blasphemy' is simply because it is such a salient issue, and one for which a lot of consciousness-raising is necessary."

Us versus Them

2011-10-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

I like to read the comments on news articles. It is something of a masochistic hobby. I love reading what conservatives post, yet I get so frustrated and angry at the misconceptions, ignorance, and stupidity these people try to pass off as reasonable, rational statements. The worst part of it is that they honestly think they are making well thought out arguments. However, to any rational, measured observer, the responses are completely facile and vacuous with "facile" and "vacuous" often being too generous a description. Most of the time the comments consist of a disparaging remark without any kind of substantial addition.

My favorite site to find conservative comments would have to be the Drudge Report. Ever since the politicized Monica Lewinsky scandal in the 90's, Matt Drudge has been purveying sensationalistic headlines appealing to a conservative audience. The news stories he posts often have comment areas where his audience can post their "thoughts".

Judging from the commenters, if they are a representative sample, his audience largely consists of older, white, conservative, Christian Americans. From my experience these people are ignorant, bigoted, unreasonable, intolerant, and afraid of any kind of social progress that goes agains their traditional moral foundations. It is this group of people that has inspired me to open this blog. These people vote. If I can do anything to nullify their inherently theocratic efforts by writing this blog, then I shall feel accomplished by some measure.