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Unbelief As A Thought Experiment

Just something that popped into my head a few days ago:

To be an atheist, you don’t have to grapple with questions of the Bible or the provability of the nonexistence of God. You just have to perform a simple thought experiment: What if there were no God?

In larger society, that thought experiment has been done. In fact, there’s an entire culture, a incredibly powerful shared human endeavor, based on it. It’s called Science.

Someone asked “What would things look like if there were no God? How would things work? How would they fit together?” Out of that came biology, geology, physics, real medical science, so much more. The experiment was fantastically, astonishingly fruitful in providing answers that you could not just think about, but use. Continue reading “Unbelief As A Thought Experiment”

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Flash vs. Substance

[If you liked my piece on Transition and Turbulence, maybe you’ll like this too. It might also work as an entry in the Book of Good Living.]

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We live our lives on a human stage.

Which means: A great deal of the stuff we do, we do for the benefit of the people around us.

And by “benefit,” I don’t necessarily mean “to help them,” although that can be a part of it. I mean this: “Human stage” implies an audience of some sort, and that audience is the people around us. They see us, they watch us, they applaud or boo or simply stand by indifferently as we go through each day. Continue reading “Flash vs. Substance”

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Reader Question: Atheist Blood Drive

I willing to bleed for my fellow man (and woman).

I used to donate blood fairly often, when I lived in Houston. I got my gallon pin and then donated a few more times before I moved to a little mountain town in California and it became much less convenient.

I’ve been thinking for years I should get back into it.

But the way I imagine it happening is through an atheist blood drive. I did a little research and found that freethought/atheist groups all over the U.S., possibly the world, have already had the idea and made it happen regionally. Continue reading “Reader Question: Atheist Blood Drive”

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Get Real: Losing the Love of God

Note for new readers: I lost my Dad, Dan Farris, a few months back. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and what it’s doing to me. I keep a digital recorder with me all the time, and I record thoughts and impressions about the process and the milestones.

Here is one such thought. I relate it for the same reason I wrote my book, Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist — we have plenty of books and speakers to tell us about the WHY of atheism, but very few to tell us about the HOW. Yes, getting free of religion is about understanding the emptiness of religion, why it doesn’t work, why we shouldn’t accept it. But staying free of it, living your life day to day in the real world, is about figuring out the minute-to-minute HOW of thinking and living outside religion. Continue reading “Get Real: Losing the Love of God”

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Answering John Loftus: Is There an Atheist Community?

John Loftus, of Debunking Christianity, writes:

I want to briefly make the case that there is no atheist community. There are only atheist communities. There is likewise no atheist movement. There is only an atheist momentum. Atheists do not even share the same goals.

It’s a sound point, and I agree with several of his arguments, at least in the sense I believe he’s aiming. But it isn’t the only point, I don’t think. It will take me a bit to explain why: Continue reading “Answering John Loftus: Is There an Atheist Community?”

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Help Me Pharyngulate (wait, can I say that?) This Poll

The Christian Coalition of America is

… conducting a nationwide survey of America’s politically active Christians so we can show the politicians and the media exactly where we stand on critical issues.

[ In case you have trouble connecting, the URL is http://cc.org/webform/2012_american_values_survey ]

[ Also, see Afternote 2/Warning at the end of this post. ]

And they want to make sure your voice is included.

I say we pitch in. After all, it doesn’t say only Christians, and nobody else.

And it’s not like the questions are politically loaded or anything. They’re all open, honest, think-your-own-well-informed-thoughts-and-answer-according-to-your-independent-conscience questions. No, really. Continue reading “Help Me Pharyngulate (wait, can I say that?) This Poll”

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Puppies or Poison

I found this on Facebook. It was worth a mere chuckle at first, but then I started to really think about it. The more I thought about it, the more telling and terrible it became.

Take two groups …

One with a nightmare vision of the future, a vision of screaming and pain and merciless death, a vision of the end of human life on Earth. A vision that they LOVE, that they ardently WANT TO HAVE HAPPEN …

And the other with a vision of good things, of diseases conquered and lives extended, a vision of human reason and creativity, exploration and prosperity, a vision of learning to live with nature …

Who would you pick to live and work with? Who would you pick to help design YOUR future? The future that stands the better chance of bringing about the most positive experience for everybody and everything? Continue reading “Puppies or Poison”

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Thoughts on the History of Broken Glass

Did you know they used to make baby bottles out of glass?

They did.

Amazing, isn’t it? You’ve got this item that, when dropped, shatters into razor-sharp and needle-sharp fragments, glass shards which are virtually invisible in low light, but capable of cutting deep enough to sever tendons, nerves, major arteries. Hell, every silver screen bar fight aficionado knows you can make a closely similar bottle into a deadly weapon simply by whacking it on a nearby chair. Continue reading “Thoughts on the History of Broken Glass”