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.
Since at least 1998, I have been boycotting Chick-Fi-A. I know some people just found out recently that they hate gays and are massively fundamentalist Christian, but this has been kind of there thing for a long time.
There is an article on CNN’s “Belief Blog” making the rounds that talks about “the six types” of atheists. This is hilariously funny… to me any way. Interestingly enough, a few years ago, I came up with a list of six reasons why people become born again. But that is a little different from saying six types of Christians.
Recently, Hemant Mehta had a dialog with a Christian mega-church pastor at the pastor’s mega-church. About 6000 people got to hear Mehta talk about atheism. One of the things that Mehta talked about was that he (and most other active atheists) have heard all the questions before. It was after this that his pastor friend brought out a questions that no atheist has every heard before.
The other day, while at work, I was approached by a Jehovah’s Witness. Personally, I love when they come to my door to tell be about their ridiculous beliefs. We can have an actual conversation and I can explain to them that their beliefs don’t match up with reality, but at work while on the job, I can’t have that conversation. I am in affect a captive audience.
One of the events that I am planning is the annual Philadelphia Coalition of Reason picnic. On the flyers and press release, I invited atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, etc. Well, someone messaged me demanding that I openly invite theists too.
I recently saw the new Superman film, “Man of Steel” and the religious media is ablaze with talk about how the film was “filled” with Christian references. To be honest, I really didn’t see any Christian references in the film… at least not any more than one can pull out of any film if you were intent on finding them.
I recently started working part time in retail and I can foresee some issues that might come up and I want to hear your opinions on them. For starters, I see a lot of my fellow coworkers wearing religious necklaces. Should I wear atheistic jewelry?
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The Bible contains a lot of extremely silly and ridiculous claims and unless you are a diehard Bible literalist, that should be pretty obvious. When religious believers come face to face with these silly and ridiculous claims of their religion, they typically fall back to the old, “that part is a metaphor” card. Let’s examine that briefly.
For starters, I would like to inquire about this so called “metaphor.” What exactly is the claim a metaphor for, exactly? I mean when Jesus says that it is better to pluck out your eye and chop off your hand rather than to steal or feel lust, he prefaces it why saying that it is better to lose these body parts than to have one’s soul tortured for all eternity. So what exactly is that a metaphor for? Maybe that wasn’t one of those metaphor parts of the Bible?
There is an atheist meme that states that any part of the Bible that contradicts science or is just blatantly ridiculous is obviously a metaphor. Basically, this meme is making light of the ever sliding scale of biblical credibility.
The old “metaphor” card seems to be the new “God of the Gaps” excuse. It seems that as time goes by and our scientific understanding of the universe grows, there also seem to be more and more metaphors in the Bible. Funny how that works out.