In case you hadn't tried it, DemocraticUnderground.com (DU) is a popular liberal blog, with an occasionally good Religion forum for believers and Nones to try and discuss issues reasonably.

After I was banned from DU, I asked here at A/N, in this discussion, "Are Democrats locking atheists…

(Note: I decided to change the title - it's one of the great things about episodes! They're adaptable.)

Following the suggestion of AN's own Steph S., I lurked moar before continuing this series on atheist morals and ethics. I'm glad I did. In addition to the discussion Steph S. started, which I found edifying, I was also…

Last time: I blazed through the observation that a-theism and an-archy share certain similarities, both in how each word is defined, and how each idea is redefined by its critics in order to dismiss either without addressing the problems each poses for ethics. I concluded by mentioning that these redefinitions serve to cut each idea off from the moral center of the individual. This time, I'll clarify what I mean by that, and introduce my thesis - tentatively one could call this a theory of…

In today's installment of this new episodic essay, I harangue readers with some thoughts on what I'll call "existential anarchy" from an angry, atheistic point of view. I want to consider the roots of two ideas:

A-theos: without gods.

An-archos: without rules.

Both words are defined by what they lack. Without the missing subject, each object would be meaningless, just as "no-thing" is ill-defined without the implicit missing subject -- the…

I know my intro post wasn't very clear. Let me start by laying out the scene a little better. About a month ago I moved from el Valle in Albuquerque, NM to a farm in the St. Francis Mountains (if they can be called that with a straight face) south of St. Louis, where I live with my GF and her grandma, who lost her husband a few months before. Oh yeah, plus our three dogs, three inside cats, three outside cats, and two inside birds. We don't count outside birds. :D

My GF -- let's call…

Out and proud! Brand spanking new AN member, here. I just moved from New Mexico to rural Missouri, and it's been both more and less of culture shock than I expected, in different ways. New Mexico is definitely more religious than Missouri (statistically, speaking) and heavily Catholic, while Missouri is primarily Protestant of some sort or another, from what I can tell.

But in NM, I used to wear my "Christianity Is Stupid" T-shirt openly, whenever I felt like it (y'know, from the…