In a recent interview on CNN, Muslim apologist Reza Aslan made it clear that barbaric practices like female genital mutilation and the treatment of women in a few Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran has no place in the 21st century. However, he doesn’t think this has anything to do with Islam. The fact that so many countries ruled by Muslim theocracies also just so happen to treat women as horribly must be a coincidence.
Category Atheism
Religious believers often claim that atheists choose to not believe in God for various reasons. Some will even say that our choice not to believe is just a phase. Obviously I disagree with that point of view, but more than that I disagree with the premise that atheism or even belief is a choice at all.
I haven’t created a YouTube video in a while, so I figured now might be a good time to get back into that. In my latest video, I ask religious believers and former religious believers about the line of religious crazy. Basically, I am curious about what aspects of religion are too crazy even for the religious. Check it out:
When I think of what kinds of things atheists should be doing to change the way the general public perceives us, I will now be thinking of people like Jaclyn Glenn. In a recent YouTube video she and her friends went out on the streets of LA for two days to raise money for Children’s Hospital. The catch is that on the first day they had a sign saying they were doing it on behalf of the United Methodists and on the second day, they had a sign saying they were doing it on behalf of the United Atheists. Check it out:
The other day, I was picking up some fast food. When I returned to my car, I noticed that the car next to mine had the window open and there was a woman sitting inside. I smiled politely at her and might have even said hello as I unlocked my car door. It was at that moment when she extended her hand to give me a pamphlet.
I’m a pretty progressive person, but there is one thing that I think many of my fellow liberals get wrong. Maybe it is because I am a former radio talk show person, but I never liked political correctness. I see it as the enemy of free speech and free expression. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that words have power and there are consequences for saying certain things, but I also think that humor – dark humor in particular – can have a healing quality to it. The down side is that dark humor sometimes is politically incorrect and taken out of context might offend the very people it seeks to heal.
As an atheist activist and blogger, I spend a lot of time thinking about religion, talking to the religious, and intercepting religious evangelists so others don’t have to be bothered. When it comes time to go on vacation, I decided to go to a place where I don’t have to do any of those things – Vermont.
As an atheist, I get asked about the First Cause constantly despite the fact that any theist could just Google it and learn that the First Cause Argument was refuted hundreds of years ago. Not only that, but it has been refuted in multiple different ways. Still, religious believers will question atheists on this and insert their poor interpretation of what an atheist’s answer might be.
If you are an atheist and care about politics, then you really need to support Arizona congressional candidate James Woods. He is the Democratic challenger against a Republican incumbent in a heavily Republican district. On the plus side, he is doing everything right. He isn’t running from his atheism like most politicians in his position. He is actively using his humanist values as a positive.
While Robin Williams has played many great roles throughout his acting career, I will always remember him most as John Keating, the wise, rebellious educator in The Dead Poets Society. Coincidently enough, that film was all about depression and suicide; two themes now closely associated with Robin Williams.