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.
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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.
I’m an atheist and I write a lot about atheism. People come to my blog or read my articles usually knowing that I am an atheist and yet I get accused of “throwing atheism in everyone’s face.”
One hundred years from now we will be dead but it is entirely probable that our children may still be alive. I say “probable” and “may” because it really depends in large part to who wins the culture war. For simplicity sake, let’s look at the two opposing worldviews and see which one offers the best hope for our future.
Over the weekend, while I was out at lunch with the family, some nice Christian put a postcard on my car windshield titled, “Why Die and Go to Hell? When Jesus Made a Bridge to Heaven!”
Anyone who is a superfan of Star Trek: The Next Generation would know that before the Federation of Planets initiates first contact with an alien world, the people of that world must first develop the capacity to travel at warp speed. Warp drive is the test that the people of a planet must pass before First Contact can occur. But what if in reality the test is something different? What if the test is that a culture must abandon religion and/or supernatural beliefs?
There was a time when people lived clustered in groups and the various groups had to compete for food, fertile land, and resources. They didn’t have much communication with those from other groups and so it was easy to see other groups as alien. Each group marked their territory and attempted to conquer other territories. Things should be different now.