Sadly there is more drama within the atheist community. Last night, Lee Moore of A-News published a report of voter fraud within the now Secular Party of America. Over the summer, the National Atheist Party (NAP) took a vote to change their name and that vote was allegedly fixed.
There are a lot of great books written by atheist authors over the past few years. While I can’t say that reading any one particular book was the key to my own de-conversion from Judaism to atheism, I have heard from a lot of fellow atheists about how this book or that really got them thinking critically about religion and lead to their de-conversion. None of those books are going to be on my list.
The company that I was working for a number of years ago had a special workshop on inappropriate imagery in the workplace. The idea of the workshop is to make sure that all the employees treated each other respectfully and didn’t offend each other. One of the topics covered dealt with shirts and jewelry of an offensive nature. So I brought up the crucifix.
September 13th through the 15th is the PA State Atheist/Humanist Conference! Tickets are still available, but they are going fast and there is only a very limited number of tickets at the door. This is the second year of this conference and this year it is in Philadelphia.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Here is the thing about moral arcs, prayers don’t bend them – people do!
I love social media. I use it not only to keep up with friends and family, but also to gauge what news stories are worth looking into. This is why social media has let me down in the last few days.
Yeah that’s right, I interviewed Ray Comfort! Last week, I read an excellent interview that Hemant Mehta did with Comfort and I thought to myself, “I want to interview him too.” My plan was slightly less friendly than the Friendly Atheist. I don’t think it is fair that Ray edits his interviews so my plan was to edit my interview with him. But that Ray Comfort is a wily one. No, no, you can’t con a con.
Every once in a while, I have to force myself to step back from the whole religion debate and get some prospective. Religious believers ask me every day why I don’t believe in God and I can rattle off any number of debating points. I can point out the lack of evidence, the contradictions in the Bible, the aspects of the Bible which have been shown to be false through science, the “creative” process that has gone into the writing of the Bible, the logical arguments against the concept of God, etc. All that being said, sometimes I just have to remind the religious believer that the whole concept is flat out ridiculous!
Yesterday, Private Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for a crime he didn’t commit. As a whistle blower on the military’s illegal killing of civilians, Manning should not have faced any charges and those who he exposed should have been charged and hopefully convicted. To date, no one except for Manning has been changed much less convicted.
While fundamentalist religious believers certainly have a lot of ridiculous beliefs, I actually can understand their position much better than I can understand the position of the more nominal believers — as the old saying goes, in for a pinch; in for a pound.