godlessness
pharyngula | August 26, 2008Cyberguy has a nice collection of short pamphlets discussing atheism, evolution, and the scientific method, and will soon be including a lovely pdf of Planet of the Hats. It's useful to have these sorts of things in simple, single page format.
I expect you all to make lots of copies, team up, put on your white shirts, get on a bicycle, and distribute them in your neighborhood.
pharyngula | August 23, 20089am Sunday morning — it's Atheists Talk radio. This week, they're broadcasting from the Minnesota State Fair!
pharyngula | August 23, 2008Since the DNC has chosen to not only ignore but outright spurn and reject the significant bloc of voters in their ranks who are not irrational people of faith, a demonstration is planned for 24 August at the Colorado Convention Center — you can RSVP if you want, but I'm sure you won't be turned away if you just show up. The Coalition of Secular Voters has also put together an open letter to the Democrats, and I've heard that the Boulder Atheists will be turning out, too.
Let your displeasure be known. The DNC has to be shown that they've made a great mistake by alienating an important part of…
pharyngula | August 22, 2008The Center for Inquiry has sponsored a new student-run initiative, Edger, a kind of group blog for young secularists.
Edger presents hard-hitting and reasoned news, views, and event promotion on issues pertaining to secularism, atheism, science, humanism, and the cosmos, and actively promotes and celebrates international freethought activism. Written in a youthful tone, but mature in content, Edger is sure to be a driving force in the new intellectual enlightenment.
MISSION
To create an outlet for prominent young freethought leaders to express their views and get them heard. Blogs are…
pharyngula | August 18, 2008I got a request from a reader that I'll just pass on directly to any musically-inclined readers here…
Any chance Pharyngula readers can help? I have been writing and posting songs under the band name Natural Wastage on Soundclick.com (a sort of music version of myspace/facebook, I guess) for a while, and whilst re-installing some songs last month, I was struck by the number of Christian related genres available. Therefore, in mid July I emailed Soundclick and asked
"Looking through the categories I note that while there is Christian Rock, Country and Rap, Contemporary Christian pop and Pop…
pzminion | August 15, 2008Sastra here, with a quick reminder to those who are going to Long Beach, California to hear PZ Myers speak at the upcoming Atheist Alliance International Convention that's coming up for the weekend of September 25th - 28th : the discounted convention rate for the Queen Mary expires August 26th, and the rooms are starting to sell out. It looks like this will be another great big fat rollicking atheist-fest.
According to the flyer, Professor PZ Myers will be speaking on the topic "Science as an Instrument of Change:"
Atheism is a natural consequence of the scientific way of looking at the world…
pzminion | August 13, 2008Guest blogger Sastra:
When I log into Pharyngula, as a matter of habit I usually glance at the little Recent Comment bar on the side, to see who has just responded to what. It helps to show which threads are particularly lively at the moment. Every now and then there's someone responding to an "old" post - one that's been otherwise inactive for days, weeks, months, or, in very rare cases, years. Given the recent major fuss caused by "Crackergate," we can still notice the occasional newcomer weighing in on the contents of PZ's kitchen garbage can. Presumably they've followed one of the many…
pzminion | August 12, 2008Guest Blogger Danio:
When I began to seriously question organized religion, years ago, it didn't take long to conclude that the myths I had been taught as a child were no more tractable than any of the other thousands of belief systems that have come and gone throughout human history. While I quickly and cheerfully discarded all god-belief without regret, the concept of the soul, a consciousness of some kind that could persist beyond the physical life, was significantly harder for me to relinquish. The idea that the essential 'me' would cease to exist upon my death was not nearly as…
pzminion | August 11, 2008Fellow minion Sastra checking in...
You know, whenever things get dull among atheists, there are a few surefire topics to spark some conversation. You can always do the atheism vs. agnosticism debate, of course. That's usually good for hours. Free Will perks at least some people up. But bring up a symbol for atheism ...
And here it is!
(Forgive me if the image is not quite clean, I'm still figuring this blogging thing out.)
Some of you may remember that last year I was thrown out of several print shops and refused service for ordering a poster which had to do with voting for an atheist…
pharyngula | August 10, 2008Sunday at 9am Central, tune in to Atheists Talk radio for a chat with Lori Lipman Brown of the Secular Coalition and Louis Appignani, Humanist Philanthropist.
pzminion | August 9, 2008Sastra here again.
We anticipate it. Or, at least, I do. Whenever some lunatic in a not-so-happy place in his life goes into a happy place with a gun and starts to shoot at random human targets, sooner or later someone blames it on atheism. Or links it to atheism. Or compares it to atheism. Or otherwise brings up atheism, as the not very random target of ultimate explanation.
It didn't take long for someone to use the recent tragic shootings in the Unitarian Church in Tennessee to illustrate the dangers of "militant atheism." The Life!beliefs section of my local paper regularly features a…
pzminion | August 9, 2008[[Oops. Forgot this on the first post. MAJeff here.]]
It appears we've got more than a few Ottawans here (Ottawegians? Ottawites?) It also seems they'd like to meet each other. I've also seen a few Massholes (what do we call ourselves?) saying they'd like to get together again. I'm not surprised. We are, after all, a social species.
It's kind of funny to see Nisbet complaining about the loners over here when we are actually engaging in very social activity by sitting here chatting. Some of us may be sitting alone in physical space, but the intensive communicative action in which we…
pzminion | August 8, 2008Matt Nisbet is railing against PZ and the image of the Angry Atheist again. In fairness, PZ would probably choose to comment on this on Matt's turf, rather than linking to it from Pharyngula. But PZ's on vacation, and I'm not inclined to be so noble, especially given the exceedingly smarmy tone of Nisbet's post:
For sure, atheists for a long time have been unfairly stereotyped in the mainstream media and in popular culture. But we also have a lot of lousy self-proclaimed spokespeople who do damage to our public image. They're usually angry, grumpy, uncharismatic male loners with a passion…
pharyngula | August 3, 2008You can now listen to today's Atheists Talk, or you can download the mp3. This was the session with Jeff and Lee of KKMS Christian talk radio, and I found it infuriating — they never answered any questions with a straight answer. Out of exasperation, I sent in this question, which was read on the air:
Jeff and Lee were asked a straightforward question: what is their best evidence for a god? Their reply was a shameless exercise in longwinded vacuity. Could they possibly simply ANSWER THE QUESTION, without babbling about the trinity and other such nonsense that even they admit they don't…
pharyngula | August 2, 2008Remember—Sunday morning at 9 Central tune in to Atheist Talk radio. This week, August Berkshire has two fundamentalist evangelical Christians on the show, Jeff and Lee from the Twin Cities Christian talk radio station, KKMS. I've dealt with these guys before, so my lip will be curled the entire hour. August will deal with them politely, you can be sure.
Hank Fox also tells me that Sunday is National Friendship Day. So what say you all try to get out and meet some new atheist friends? Look up your local godless group and see if they've got any fun events going on, and get to know someone new…
pharyngula | July 31, 2008
I must confess to a cruel game with this post. I saw this poster and thought, "What? But most of these people weren't atheists!" Surely someone could do a far better job with this idea than that, and everyone would see the problem here (at least John Wilkins did, as did many of the commenters). You were supposed to be inspired to make a better version. At least one person was, but they took it in a completely different direction than I expected.
Anyone care to try and do something better, with a positive message?
pharyngula | July 29, 2008The Birmingham city council has put up blocking software to lock out atheist websites, which is OK — they've got to crack that whip and keep their employees focused on the work at hand, of course. Unfortunately, they apparently aren't doing this to improve productivity, but simply to shut down a point of view some bureaucrat doesn't like.
The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or…
pharyngula | July 26, 2008Sunday at 9am on Atheists Talk radio it's…me! And C.L. Hanson, too! Listen, and if you're local, come on down to Q.Cumbers restaurant at 11 for a godless brunch. We shall have fun!
pharyngula | July 26, 2008I lived in Indiana for a short while long ago, and they didn't have any of these freethought groups in my neighborhood. It's good to see Hoosiers are wising up: FreeThought Fort Wayne is hosting Dr. Robert M. Price who will be speaking about his recent book, "Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today's Pop Mysticisms." The presentation with a Q&A will be on Wed. Aug. 6th at 7 PM in the Main Allen County Public Library theater located on lower level 2.
Get on out there — Price is very entertaining.