Praise be Christian Piatt! One of my fellow contributors on Huffington Post is the very liberal Christian, Christian Piatt. In the past, his articles almost seem to be atheistic. His newest article takes on the same article I took on yesterday. But more than that, his article gave me an interesting thought that I want to share today.
Tag Jesus
There was a recent article on Huffington Post about whether Christians should be watching Game of Thrones. This to me is just another example of Christians being afraid of fiction.
Many times when I get into conversations with Christians online, I get some Christian who inevitably tells me that not all Christians believe X. That “X” could be Creationism, Hell, Original Sin, Sin itself, even God. Many of these Christians accuse me of painting all Christians with the same brush. The thing is that I haven’t.
I’m pretty excited because on Saturday I’m going to the Wizard World Comic Book/Sci-Fi convention. This got me thinking about the link between science fiction fans and atheism.
Wolfe Blitzer infamously asked Rebecca Vitsmun if she “thanked the Lord.” Arizona State Representative Juan Mendez presented a humanist “prayer” during the House prayer time. And all across the nation, whenever atheists put up a billboard (no matter how watered down) it generates media attention and controversy.
A Christian blog I read recently wrote about an old question asked to public intellectuals in 1908 by G.K. Chesterton. The question was, “What is wrong with the world?” Of course I have a very different take on the question than my Christian counterpart, but I think it is an interesting question to explore.
I made a comment on the Huffington Post Religion’s Facebook page the other day that I didn’t believe Jesus actually existed. Now one can debate whether my belief is valid or not, but that isn’t what one Christian chose to do. No, one particular Christian decided to lash out in hate toward me instead.
Strictly speaking, atheism is simply a lack of belief in deities. However, being part of the greater community of reason for several years now, I have noticed something. Most active atheists tend to also be humanists… even if they don’t like that term. In this sense there are atheist values.
Last night, I was a guest lecturer at a community college sociology class. The subject was atheism and secular humanism. I started out talking about the beginnings of religion and at one point outlined how the Old Testament came together. One fundamentalist Christian in the class questioned my account and well she should have because it is pretty damning to her fundamentalist beliefs and because I think it is important to question everything.
Obviously, it is my strongly help opinion based on the complete lack of evidence and compelling counter-evidence that the entire Christian mythology is fiction. While I am fond of spreading the real “Good News,” that Hell is imaginary too, I think just talking about the concept of Hell is a win for atheism.