Atheism
sa smith | November 20, 2008Journalists and journalism shouldnt exist anymore.
Theyre no longer relevant.
In todays world of Twitters and Bloggers and YouTubers-- there is no point in getting a 'degree' to be a journalist, when we all have the capabilities of being 'civilian' journalists. Civilian journalists that are, flat out, better than the for realsies journalists that exist today.
Case in point: Tom Krattenmaker
Toms just a dude. Degree in journalism. Writes articles for USA Today and other dying forms of media. Nothing against him.
Except for this idiotic, insipid article he just wrote, Atheism, a positive…
gregladen | November 19, 2008One of the most amazing scenes in Bill Maher's Religulous is the scene from The Holy Land Experience, which is like Disney Land, but instead of fictional characters that are sometimes charming sometimes scary and that everybody goes nuts over, it's got ... well, fictional characters that are sometimes charming sometimes scary and that everybody goes nuts over. Maher interviews Jesus Christ, Son of God. Then, they show some film of Jesus being crucified and shit. Fine. But the strangest thing is the audience. They are in a theme park, there is an actor playing Jesus, and a bunch of actors…
gregladen | November 15, 2008Atheists are smarter than Calvinists in Dutch Study. But, the Calvinists are quicker at identifying small shapes than the Atheists.
Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of religious background on attention. Here we show that Dutch Calvinists and atheists, brought up in the same country and culture and controlled for race, intelligence, sex, and age, differ with respect to the way they attend to and process the global and local features of complex visual…
gregladen | November 2, 2008Next congressional election: If someone running for the US house was an outed atheist/agnostic, and every atheist/agnostic donated one dollar to that campaign, or if ten percent of the atheists/agnostics gave ten dollars to that campaign, it would be the best funded congressional campaign ever.
Of course, you'd have to be an otherwise competent candidate, probably with a liberal stand on most issues, pro-science, pro-education, pro-rational, etc. etc. But mainly we need you to be an Establishment Clause nut.
Pass it on.
clock | October 30, 2008I am sure that you have already heard about the despicable TV ad that Elizabeth Dole aired against Kay Hagan. You probably heard about it online, perhaps on Twitter or FriendFeed or blogs. Here's a quick selection:
My godless money. Take it or leave it.The Worst Insult of All?Thou shalt not bear false witnessNC: Hagan responds to 'Godless' ad; Dole's immigrant bashingElizabeth Dole ad falsely suggests opponent Kay Hagan is 'Godless.'North Carolina Senate Race Degenerates Into Shouting Match About AtheistsGODLESS AMERICANS.Sen. Liddy Dole (R-NC) attacks Sunday school teacher: 'There is no God…
gregladen | October 12, 2008Do not delay. Do not equivocate. Do not think twice. Just get to the theater and buy your tickets, find a seat, turn off your cell phone, and sit back and enjoy Bill Maher's Religulous!
In this film, Maher makes a handful of critically important points. Like, if our world is led by people who are expecting, waiting for, even hoping for, The End Times (or some similar event) then ... well... then we are all deeply fucked. This is probably the main point, backed up by lot of other important points about religion.
The other objective of the film is to make fun of religion and religious…
sa smith | October 12, 2008From these negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, I knew 'Religulous' was gonna be good:
"[Maher's] scattershot and ad hominem attacks against many different forms of religious hypocrisy don't add up to a coherent critique, and he's not qualified to provide one."
"One of the rules of satire is that you can't mock things you don't understand, and Religulous starts developing fault lines when it becomes clear that Maher's view of religious faith is based on a sophomoric reading of the Scriptures."
"In the end, for all its genuflections towards free inquiry and rational debate, Maher is as close-…
gregladen | September 30, 2008Happy New Year!
I was a good little atheist today, and made a reasonably convincing argument that Bill Maher has NOT gone too far in trashing religion. After all, no one expected the Spanish Inquisition. Or at least, the elderly Jewish and Catholic people were nodding as I was ranting about it, so I think they were agreeing with me.
Dinner included conversation among an investment banker, an S&L officer, a couple of corporate lawyers, and so on, and the general consensus is that something must happen in the way of a bailout. The US Senate, it turns out, has a plan they will try…
gregladen | September 24, 2008... say the athesists of Louisville, Kentucky.
Since she was a teen, she had harbored growing doubts about the conservative Christian faith, "but I was so programmed against the word atheist," she said.
When she eventually decided she was one, a "feeling of almost euphoria" descended upon her, said Childers, now 28.
"I no longer had to justify why a good and loving God would allow (bad) things to happen," ...
Here is a nice article on the Freethinkers and Atheists of Louisville.
Oh, and while I've got your attention, please have a look at this post if you have not already. I don't want it…
gregladen | August 25, 2008I am currently reading Charles Darwin (Blackwell Great Minds), and so far I mainly like it.
Ruse, as you may know, is a philosopher, something of a science historian, and a science writer who has criticized what he calls "strident" atheism for being too fundamentalist. So that is as annoying as hell. The volume at hand has a large chapter on this issue, and if you read it not knowing about this earlier debate, I think you would come away not being too annoyed, and might even enjoy it, if you consider yourself a .. ahem ... 'strident' atheist. It is annoying, however, that Ruse places "…
sa smith | August 12, 2008There was something bothering me about Nisbets latest boom-boom.
It felt so... familiar.
And not in the sense that Nisbet is like Britney Spears 'Gimme More' stuck on repeat.
In the sense I heard this story before somewhere else.
I figured it out last night: Hogfather.
Nisbet is Teatime-- "I do so hope we're going to be friends..." "We're all friends here!"
"I'm an atheist...but a friendly atheist."
PZ is Death-- Remember that scene at the end, where Teatime is trying to make the little kids afraid of Death?
Teatime: "Ive caught this bogeyman!... A nasty, creepy, horrible skeleton!... A…
gregladen | August 9, 2008Technically, Nisbet did not say that. He simply showed a picture of PZ Myers ... a rather funny picture of PZ that is not what I would call a glamor shot ... and made the statement paraphrased as the title of this post in reference to all atheists who have strong views and who are, well, not appeasers of religion.
I've been getting private emails from friends and colleagues asking me if I can talk to Nisbet .. and convey a message to him (I won't repeat the messages here). What I want you to understand is that just because I am a Sbling, etc., does not mean that I'm in touch with the guy.…
clock | July 19, 2008Silly, but funny to see how people react when treated to a dose of their own medicine:
"Australian filmmaker John Safran is so fed up with mormons ringing his doorbell early in the morning that he flies to Salt Lake City Utah and tries to convert Mormons to atheism. Needless to say, the locals were not pleased."
[Hat-tip: Tanja]
grrlscientist | July 17, 2008tags: explicit atheism, godlessness, religion, theism, rational living, freethinking, philosophy
Phylogeny of Christianity.
Image: FrostFireZoo.
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
~ Baron d'Holbach, 1772.
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) was recently added to the Atheist Blogroll. You can see the atheist doohickey on my left sidebar, which looks like this;
The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to atheist bloggers from around the world. As a new member, I was invited to write a little blurb (blurp?) about…
gregladen | July 16, 2008This beats running in one of those crazy marathons...
Apparently, folding proteins is rather difficult. Or at least, the computational simulation of protein folding is processor intensive. So this is a job that has been worked up into a system that allows regular people like you and me to participate in, using our home computer to take part in curing Alzheimers, Huntington's Parkinsons, and everything.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2008tags: atheism, crackergate, religion, religious zealotry, fundamentalism, freedom of speech, eucharist hosts, transubstantiation, cultural observation
Not so very long ago, Americans mocked muslim nations for rioting and issuing death threats over the publication of a few cartoons in Danish newspapers. A little over one month ago, Americans once again sat back in a cloud of smug judgmentalism as they laughed at the uproar caused by a teddy bear that was named "Mohammad" by a classroom full of kids. American christians aren't so backward and superstitious as all those muslims, the religious…
clock | July 11, 2008I guess it is unlikely you have not already heard about the big brouhaha that erupted when Bill Donohue targeted PZ Myers for showing disrespect towards a belief that made some religious nuts go crazy and violent against a child (yes, Eucharist is just a cracker, sorry, but that is just a factual statement about the world). If not, the entire story, and it is still evolving, can be found on PZ's blog so check out the numerous comments here, here,here, here, here, here and here.
Also see what Greg Laden and Tristero say. [Update: see also John Wilkins and Mike Dunford for some good clear…
sa smith | July 6, 2008ugh.
Another timeless addition to the philosophical metamind is going to be squeezed through the tightly clinched buttocks of a Southern Baptist later this month: Atheism Remix!
HAHAHAHA HE SAID 'REMIX'! HES HIP AND CURRENT! HAHAHAHAHA! HES GETTIN JIGGY WITH IT! HAHAHA! THATLL APPEAL TO YOUNG PEOPLE!
ugh.
Yeah.
This 112 page literary triumph is one big FUCK YOU to the Four Horseman, containing shocking slaps in the face like:
The New Atheists are BOLD!
The New Atheists reject the Christian god!
The New Atheists reject Jesus Christ!
The New Atheists treat science like its RELIGION!
The New…
sa smith | June 16, 2008I like these tag games when theyre nice and short :)
Q1. How would you define "atheism"?
Lack of belief in any form of deity. It doesnt mean you wont fall for a pyramid scheme. It doesnt mean you dont believe in ghosts or astrology or Tom Cruise.
It just means you dont believe in a deity.
Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
My mom is 'Jewish' and my dad is 'Catholic.' I have cousins who are 'Southern Baptist', 'Mormon', 'Lutheran', 'Pagan', 'Deist'...
So no. I wasnt raised in a religious household.
Q3. How would you describe "Intelligent Design", using only one word…