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.
Tag atheism
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.”
I often criticize and argue against religious fundamentalists because I think there are more of them than people realize and that they wield a great deal of political power in this country. However, many religious criticize me and other atheists for “picking low hanging fruit.” They claim that we aren’t arguing against “real” Christians and that fundamentalists have religion all wrong. That’s interesting, because it seems that God in his all-knowingness couldn’t foresee that fundamentalists would or could “twist” his message so easily.
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.
Even though I am pretty open about my atheism to everyone except maybe the people at my part-time job, I still sometimes feel like I live two lives. I have one life with my wife, kids, family, and friends, and another life online. Well, real life is distracting me from my online life again.
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.
A few years ago, I got into a religious conversation with my ultra-Jewish cousin. This was a long awaiting exchange of ideas. My cousin is very smart and so I was expecting a pretty interesting debate-style conversation. What I got was the same typical arguments I have gotten from newly minted born-again Christians.
The Supreme Court just ruled that corporations can have religious exemptions from laws. This is ridiculously insane for so many reasons.