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October 2008 Blog Posts (113)

Proof Prayer Does Not Work in 5 Seconds

Added by Left of Larry on October 31, 2008 at 7:43pm — 2 Comments

This age group thing.

I corrected the age group selection on my profile to reflect reality, but it made me think twice about my mental age. It may have been more accurate originally. Still, having both my age and age group separate is redundant. I definitely did not intend to make people think I was still a teenager.

Added by Atheist Insurgency on October 31, 2008 at 3:18pm — 1 Comment

Protecting Marriage

Protecting Marriage

The 2008 Republican Platform lays out the party's ideas of what constitutes a "real family." Unfortunately, many real families don't fall within the Republicans' idea of what a family ought to be, and therefore the Republican party labels these family as a threat to "traditional marriage." Here's an excerpt from the official 2008 Republican Platform regarding this issue:…

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Added by Scott Waybright on October 30, 2008 at 8:30pm — 4 Comments

FLORIDA COURT SETS ATHEIST HOLY DAY

My mom sent me this email. I laughed and then sighed.

FLORIDA COURT SETS ATHEIST HOLY DAY

In Florida, an atheist created a case against the Easter & Passover holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians, Jews & observances of their holy days. The argument was, it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized day(s). The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer,the judge… Continue

Added by Krista on October 30, 2008 at 6:41pm — 10 Comments

Best Practices 2: Encourage active moral reasoning

The second installment in a nine-part series on best practices for nonreligious parenting. Back to BEST PRACTICES #1.

If the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine High School, the April 20 massacre would never have happened. --former Republican Congressman and current Libertarian Presidential candidate BOB BARR, at a press conference on June 17,…

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Added by Dale McGowan on October 30, 2008 at 2:48pm — 1 Comment

“Spirituality”

I have been thinking about the idea of spirituality and its relationship to religion and then my own atheistic outlook. It is something that has actually been bouncing around in my mind because of some reading at the beginning of Godless by Dan Barker as well as some discussions on various podcasts. Well the most recent podcast is the Secular Nation Podcast #20 where David Driscoll is interviewing David E. Comings and the idea of… Continue

Added by John "Direwolf" Pollock on October 30, 2008 at 2:33pm — No Comments

I haven't blogged much recently

I have been meaning to blog more recently, but I just don't seem to find all that much time to do it.

Here are a couple of things that I've been meaning to blog about:

1. The forthcoming atheist bus advertisements in London. Due January 2009.

And there's more… Continue

Added by Dikkii on October 30, 2008 at 9:30am — No Comments

Dirty Filters, Dirty Business

The first job I had after high school was the Air Force. I sacked groceries in high school, or as I liked to call it a “packaging specialist”, but my first taste of the “real” job force was the military. One of the things you had hammered into you was total quality. If you saw a problem, you told your supervisor. If that wasn't enough, you went up your chain of command till the problem was resolved. In the Air Force at least, whistle blowers were encouraged. I have taken this job habit with me… Continue

Added by Roger Rotge on October 30, 2008 at 9:24am — 1 Comment

Religious Homophobia is Gay

Like always, science advances whereas archaic beliefs about the world stay the same and sometimes leave little room for interpretation. If you take a naturalistic view of the world, then nature does not have a specific purpose in mind. it doesn't think things are good or evil, it just simply is...Humans have tried to understand these things for a long time. Homosexuality is one of those things that has been pondered by humans and at face value has been seen as something that was "unnatural."… Continue

Added by RogAgainst on October 30, 2008 at 1:43am — 4 Comments

Um... Don't you guys have a rule about not lying?

Today I saw some lawn signs down at the local megachurch that said "Proposition 8 = Free Speech". As you should know if you're a Californian, Prop 8 seeks to make same-sex marriage illegal in California.

I'm absolutely enraged. How the fuck do these people say that they follow a religion whose 9th commandment is to not lie (or bear false witness against one's neighbor) and get away with proudly posting such blatant lies in public? It's absurd. It's obscene. Proposition 8 has… Continue

Added by Becky Garcia on October 29, 2008 at 10:25pm — 4 Comments

Fear That Smile

For the first time that I can think of since realizing I was an atheist, I felt real fear from the normal Christians that surround me. After printing out and showing a few people the dialog from the wonderful “Kissing Hank's Ass” flyer, I got the bright idea to ask a select few of my co-workers a simple question. If they had the power to go back in time, and assuming He existed, would they save Jesus from execution? My answer is predictably a resounding, “hell ya!” Honestly, I expected a few… Continue

Added by Roger Rotge on October 29, 2008 at 9:10am — No Comments

My Atheist relevant posts on Associated Content!

I've written just a few editorials about subjects relevant to atheists for publication on Associated content but they seem to get a huge response. Some of the discussions in their comments are more entertaining than the articles themselves!

I was a little afraid to post anything that made it clear I'm an atheist for fear of getting bashed, possibly physically again but I went ahead and started doing so about a year ago on another site. I've gotten plenty of nasty pm's and emails but… Continue

Added by Kylyssa Shay on October 28, 2008 at 2:30pm — 1 Comment

Window Woes

On Saturday, a lady brought in a 2002 Ford Escape. Her issue was the driver window would not go up. She said it would go down, but not up. No crunching was heard when she tried. I was tasked to drive her down to the outlet mall a block away with our dealerships shuttle van. Along the way, she confided in me that she'd stopped going to a certain dealership because they had “screwed” her and she wanted to try us because we were close to where she worked. I told her it was my belief that our… Continue

Added by Roger Rotge on October 28, 2008 at 9:02am — No Comments

The results are beginning to take shape; we have nearly 1500 responses so far

I have started to take a closer look at the data....no big surprises, rather a conformation of what most of us sense in any case: there is a big stigma in the US and not so much in the rest of the world.

Added by tom arcaro on October 27, 2008 at 11:02am — No Comments

From Pharyngula - Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/sarah_palin_ignorant_and_antis.php

"Sarah Palin gave a policy speech today in which she claimed that she wanted more support for children with disabilities, more tools to test for disorders, and while also decrying the expense of scientific… Continue

Added by George on October 27, 2008 at 8:00am — 2 Comments

On the Evolutionary Origins of Religion

Is religion a parasitic meme or is it a cultural adaptation?

The divide on the question of the naturalistic origins of religion is between the adaptationists and the by-product theorists. The adaptationists are led by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Haidt, while Daniel Dennett is the major proponent of the religion-as-a-by-product hypothesis. In this post, I outline the issue briefly and mention some implications of these ideas.

The application of evolutionary theory to… Continue

Added by Ajita Kamal on October 26, 2008 at 9:30pm — 3 Comments

God Needs Your Prayers And Fellowship For His Survival

Does God need your prayers? This is a question I placed recently to some Christian friends of mine. The answer I received was interesting, 'As Christians', they claimed 'we know that "God does not need our prayer but he needs us to pray to him"'. 'Why' I asked, '"Because it is one of his requirements"' they reply. So as God's creation you are required to pray to him according to Christianity.

Also, the Christian religion teach that the reason why God needs us to pray to him… Continue

Added by THE GRENADIAN FREETHINKER on October 26, 2008 at 12:30pm — 1 Comment

When semantics takes its toll.

I should be entertaining myself with homework and assignments, but I've realised there's something bugging me far too much for me to let it go unnoticed any longer. I've been out of the whole online debating scene for a few months. I'm not sure whether I've grown tired of always fighting the same people or if I've become physically unable to tolerate their use of the same, old, stretched arguments over and over again. Whatever the reason, the mere idea of logging in on a public forum and engage… Continue

Added by Fabio on October 26, 2008 at 11:18am — 3 Comments

The Enlightened Observer

I also post to a blog at The Enlightened Observer

http://enlightened-observer.blogspot.com/

Added by Dr. Terence Meaden on October 26, 2008 at 7:30am — 1 Comment

Will the internet be the end of religion?

In the past, the only information people had access too was the story’s and ides of the people around them. Whit the advent of the printing press people now has access to information in the books they could get ahold of but there access to information was still limited and most would never leave there town or city. People had no information on where the world came from, where humanity came from why people got sick, what lightening was and why it strikes where it strikes. They had no… Continue

Added by Lone Wolf on October 25, 2008 at 11:05pm — 1 Comment