10 posts tagged “atheism”

From Leo Laporte's Twit:
MySpace deletes hacked web site for atheists and agnostics.

I am not one to talk about my atheism and anti-religious view. But apparently it is OK to 'force' the Bible on young children but not letting them watch an 'atheist' movie?

From San Francisco Chronicle:

"It's not courageous to make a simple statement about personal beliefs,'' he told about 70 people at the San Leandro City Hall. "What is courageous is to stand up in Congress and say, 'Let's tax the rich and give the money to poor kids.' Now that's courageous.''

Thomas was even happier to see that most of the people at the town hall meetings weren't interested in talking about Stark's position on God. Instead, Iraq, health care, global warming, immigration and other national issues that drove the hour-long sessions.

"It's great that (atheism) didn't come up,'' he said. "There are far more important things to be concerned about than what Congressman Stark believes.''

From The Gospel of Prothero on MSNBC:

In Prothero's utopian world, Americans would have enough religious knowledge to debate ethics positions using holy texts, to understand Biblical references in political speeches, to question their own beliefs about God—and to encourage others to question theirs. Only then will we enjoy one of the greatest privileges of the educated, which is to change our minds.

I know I should have owned a video camera, so I can take The Blasphemy Challenge! (via ABC News)

Do Brian or Kelly worry their rhetoric and antics might land them in hell?

"No, because hell doesn't exist," Kelly says.

On this 'holy' day of Christmas, I'll present you all something about atheism:
The 10 myths and 10 truths about atheism

What are the things in life that you're truly passionate about? 
Submitted by Jess.

From now and for the foreseeable future, Climate Crisis and Atheism.

The God Delusion

3 comments

If you want to see how an atheist rationally (and I may say, restrained at times) responds to an organised attempts by religious students to hi-jack the Q&A session, read this post and watch part 2 of the video. It is rather long, 69 minutes, but it is well worth your time I promise!

(For some reason, Vox's YouTube search does not find the video even though I can find it easily on YouTube site. Here is a short clip below.)

From RichardDawkins.net:

Most Americans appear to believe that without faith in God, we would have no durable reasons to treat one another well. The political version of this morality claim is that our country was founded on "Judeo-Christian principles,” the implication being that without these principles we would have no way to write just laws.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I don't get insult/stress/windup easily. Mainly because I believe in that the insult only works if one believes in it. For example, if you were to call me stupid, why should I get angry at you? Is it because I am not stupid? To me, it is preciously because I know it is not true that I have no cause to get angry.

So whenever 'faithful' people tell me that not believing in God will mean I will burn in hell, my reply always is, "I don't believe in Hell, so why would it bother me?"

Anyway, I don't wear my religious belief (or there lack of) on my sleeve. As a science graduate, I obviously have no religion yearning but I have no issue with other people's religions/believes. They can practice whatever belief system they want. But like a portion of the American population, I have been alarmed with the increasing swing to religion for answer in almost everything. The moderates sugarcoats it as 'faith' while the hardcore fundamentalists (i.e. evangelicals) just plain called it 'religion'.

But being an Atheist is not easy, even with thick skin like me. Newsweek has an article about being an Atheist in America isn't easy. Good read and it raises good point about both camps.

I found this to be particularly alarming:

In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.)

"Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."

Anyhow, if someone with 'faith' can answer these following questions (not the full list of course, just some that pop into my mind right now) without invoking the Almighty God, aliens from Andromeda, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then I'll even spend some of my brain time chunk it over.

• Why do people need religion to explain (justify in my opinion) their action?
• Why is moral teaching the sole domain of religion in this country (or any other predominantly Christian countries)?
• Why does someone must believe in something/someone because otherwise that person would not ever be happy?
• Why only people with 'faith' can do good?