What Will YOU Do When the Angry Voices Come?

One of the most riveting quotes from the Reason Rally stage was this one:

I will continue my fight until I die.

That was said by author/speaker/activist Taslima Nasrin.

Unlike most of us, who might say such things in the naive, comfortable bravado of our safe and secure lives, Nasrin has been under threat of death, under sentence of death by Islamic decree since 1993.

In her case, as I mentioned in Rusted Pickup at the Senior Prom, her statement is a fully-conscious admission of the possibility of murder.

As I also said in that post, I am in awe of such courage. I mean, I have my little adventures, parasailing and cliffside hiking and such, and they scare me, but nothing in my life comes anywhere close to this.

She is an avatar of courage that is both fantastically admirable and, in its example, personally demanding. Her entire life grabs you by the lapels and says “What will YOU do when the angry voices come?

Most of us will sit back and shut up. A very, very few of us will stand in place, look death in the eye, and demand change.

Taslima Nasrin, this incredible human being, is  joining FreethoughtBlogs under the banner No Country for Women.

Welcome, Taslima!

For all of us here, and for all of you reading, the bar is raised.

Think About This at Easter

One short thought on freedom of religion:

If we continue to define “freedom” as the right to believe and spread to others without opposition, all these myths, superstitions, fantastic stories – lies, to put it bluntly – that’s a damned poor freedom, isn’t it?

If we redefine it to designate the absolute right of every person, and especially every child, to know true things, that is a VERY different take on freedom.

As far as U.S. and broader world culture is concerned, it’s also a freedom we have not yet had.

Happy Easter (from the Church of the Dead Bunny)!

 

The above ad, in the spirit of the holiday, is from an actual church. It’s one of the rotating banner images from Conway Baptist Church, of Conway, South Carolina.

Sometimes you just have to gasp at the galaxy-class lack of awareness (or, just possibly, someone’s DEEPLY camouflaged sense of humor). Go take a look now, before church authorities become temporarily sane and realize how incredibly tasteless, in this context, the picture really is.

Also, as I suggest in the title to this blog post: Henceforth, I think Conway Baptist Church should be known as The Dead Bunny Church. As in “My grandmother goes to Conway Baptist; you know, The Dead Bunny Church.”

Ebola and Gonorrhea on Sale!

Science nerd alert!

Yes, now YOU can enjoy deadly disease microbes in the privacy of your own home!

From the commonality of the Cold virus or the season delights of the Flu to the exotic pleasures of Rabies, Syphilis, or even that sensational destroyer, Flesh Eating Disease, these pettable petri dish poxes will bring hours of eww! to you and your friends.

And they’re on sale.

Where else? ThinkGeek.

This Christmas, I’m giving someone Hepatitis.

THIS Is The Future I Want

Google’s “Project Glass.”

Don’t know if the reality will live up to the hype in this video, but … I’ve had dreams about something like this. I’m so getting a set of these when they come out.

Also: Won’t it be fun to virtually tag churches with atheist comments? So when you — or your friends subscribed to your comments — walk around town, you all get these friendly little warnings.

Sad News: Greg Laden Departing

Many of you know that Greg Laden and I are good friends. He has asked me to make an announcement.

I met Greg some years back at a cultural anthropology conference I was attending out of curiosity. He and I hit it off immediately, and became great friends. I loved his stories of life among the Ik, the Mountain People of northern Uganda, and he liked my stories of working with cowboys and mule packers in the mountains of California.

I lost touch with him after he moved to Washington state. The last I heard was that he was doing fieldwork with a physical anthropologist colleague, Gideaon Oliver, studying a tribe of Pacific Northwest Neo-Primitives. Continue reading “Sad News: Greg Laden Departing”

The Joy of Coming Out

Several speakers at Reason Rally spoke about “coming out,” and the phrase showed up in a couple of the sketchy news stories about it.

Speaking as someone who has “come out” twice, as an atheist and as – well, you know, this other thing I don’t usually talk about very much because it’s just not relevant to my work as an atheist blogger – I’d like to persuade you all to do it.

It can be rough at first, but you will eventually realize it’s one of the best things you’ve ever done. The freedom that comes with it will more than repay the transitory pain that might accompany the initial shock.

I remember my own coming out – the first one – very well. Continue reading “The Joy of Coming Out”