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Doing My Part: Christopher

[ This is a response to Doing My Part for the Godless Future. If you’d like to submit one of your own — what you’re doing to help the world, or just yourself, get free of religion — email me via the link in that post. ]

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My very small part is to reply to xtians who use the “Love the sinner but hate the sin” in the same way I did to my sister when she stated that Jesus said, “Love the sinner but hate the sin.”

So I asked her, “When did you become Hindu?” “Whaa?” she said.  Then I informed her that, no, Jesus didn’t say that, even though far-too-many xtians do, that is a quote from Gandhi.  Makes a nice little wake-up punch, a real two-fer: plops them into a religion that many of them consider paganism, and shows they don’t even know what their bible says. Continue reading “Doing My Part: Christopher”

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Doing My Part: Cory Brunson

[ This is a response to Doing My Part for the Godless Future . If you’d like to submit one of your own — what you’re doing to help the world, or just yourself, get free of religion — email me via the link in that post. ]

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I do a lot of the familiar stuff at the personal level: I sit at Ask An Atheist tables, i write letters to the editor, i regularly post religious commentary on Facebook. I cross out “In God We Trust” on dollar bills and write in “E pluribus unum”. These things matter. but they feel reactive, and marginal, like online comments on an op-ed.

Here’s something i wish more people would do: Continue reading “Doing My Part: Cory Brunson”

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Doing My Part: Stephanie

[ This is a response to Doing My Part for the Godless Future. If you’d like to submit one of your own — what you’re doing to help the world, or just yourself, get free of religion — email me via the link in that post. ]

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I’m 25 years old and I’ve been calling myself an atheist officially since I was about 19. I stopped believing in God before that, but the word atheist was scary at first – so final. It’s understandable to me why people are afraid of atheism. I was at first, in my early teens when I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong and why everyone had told me God was real when more and more evidence was piling up in my head to the contrary. I feel like religious people clutch their religion to their chests like a child with security blanket. The blanket is all ratty and worn out and dirty. So an adult goes to them and says, Continue reading “Doing My Part: Stephanie”

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Doing My Part for the Godless Future

Read Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway, before you read this.

In this followup post, I’d like to ask readers what we’re all doing to make that better-time-to-be happen.

I hope to raise consciousness among the people who read this …

First, that fellow readers are taking various actions in their own lives. In other words, that you and I, ordinary people, CAN do things that make a difference.

Second, that each of us really NEEDS to be doing something to make  a difference. Continue reading “Doing My Part for the Godless Future”

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Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway

As I’ve said here in the past, I still get emails from old friends in Texas. Some of those people have gotten so goddy over the years that we seem to have nothing at all in common anymore.

Every time I get one of these things, it’s like waking up in a cold cabin with the fire gone out. I remember how warm it used to be, and some part of me hopes there’s still an ember in the coals. Thinks that if I go back to Texas someday and feed it new fuel, the flame of our friendship will burn again. Continue reading “Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway”

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Top Five Regrets of the Dying

This Guardian article must have been written by a nasty atheist, because there’s no mention of all those people who must have said “I wish I’d spent more time in church.”

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

If you don’t want to read the short article, the Top Five Regrets are: Continue reading “Top Five Regrets of the Dying”

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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.

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Greta Christina has a new book!

What Ed said.

And DarkSyde.

And Greg Laden.

And Greta herself!

Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, by Greta Christina, is out on Kindle!

Greta will also be publishing the Nook and Smashmouth versions in the near-future (think hours). The physical edition will be out in April.

There is a very good reason why every time I go to type (fellow FtB blogger) Greta Christina’s name, my fingers first insist on typing, instead of “Greta,”  “GREAT.”

I kid you not, this is something you’re gonna want to BUY and READ.

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The Things Atheists Do

I picked up my very own Master of Christian Logic today at Unbelief as a Thought Experiment, and had a rousing set-to in comments  over weighty matters such as science and the supernatural. I probably didn’t cover myself with glory — the thing seemed to end in that snippy back-and-forth stuff and I just got tired of it. I did beg him to Come to the Dark Side, offering the standard promise of freedom and joy, but he wasn’t having any of it, intoning (can you intone in a blog comment?): Continue reading “The Things Atheists Do”