Category: FreeThought Blogs

Echoing welcomes elsewhere on FTB, a warm howdy to all the new unbelievers, skeptics and outright atheists — all famous elsewhere —  just shown up on FreeThought Blogs!

 

 

To quote DarkSyde, of Zingularity:

Dana Hunter at En Tequila Es Verdad is a science blogger, SF writer, complete geology addict, Gnu Atheist, and owner of a – excuse me, owned by a homicidal felid.

Al Stefanelli owns and operates A Voice of Reason, he is a veteran journalist and bravely serves as the Georgia State Director for American Atheists, Inc.

Russel Glasser at The Atheist Experience is a fourth generation atheist and both his parents are physicists, gotta love that!

Ian Cromwell of the Cromunist Manifesto is a polymorph and long-time observer of race and race issues. His interests, at least blog-wise, focus on bringing anti-racism into the fold of skeptic thought.

JT Eberhard blogging at What Would JT Do? is a young rabble-rouser who serves the Secular Student Alliance and contributes to Atheism Resource.

Justin Griffith at Rock Beyond Belief is, praise no one and pass the ammunition, an atheist soldier serving his country and serving as Military Director for American Atheists.

Kylie Sturgess at Token Skeptic, she hosts a podcast and regularly writes for numerous publications and CSICOP’s Curiouser and Curiouser online column.

 

Fellow FTB blogger and poet extraordinaire Cuttlefish penned a dynamite piece on the bust of the Phoenix Goddess Temple — and accused bawdy house — I referenced in a previous post.

After very thorough searches
Of some Arizona churches
Cops arrested 20 people whose religion didn’t pass
But their reasoning was shoddy
Christ demanded, “Eat my body”,
Is partaking of a wafer less ridiculous than ass?

Go read the whole thing at The Digital Cuttlefish.

___________________________

Clarification: Cuttlefish’s verse appeared on Sept. 10. My “Oh God” piece appeared on Sept. 18, so any implication that his/her piece was in response to my post is incorrect.

I’m writing a piece called “10,000 years of speed bumps,” and I accidentally clicked the Publish button midway through it, and then kept writing.

So if you were one of the 46 people who apparently read it … ahem. I have no idea what you read, but it wasn’t finished. Pretend you never saw it, and I’ll post the completed piece soon. Sorry about that.

(I’m just glad I didn’t write a piece on Dick Cheney, and accidentally post it before I’d edited out the several dozen f-bombs.)

 

One of the cool things about WordPress, and CSS, is that the content of a web site is separate from the formatting instructions. Which means you can change the site layout in seconds, simply by dropping in a new format — called a “theme.”

You’re seeing it here in FreeThought Blogs’ airy new appearance. The left sidebar has vanished, and a few new things are happening on the right sidebar.

One thing to notice is the tabbed boxes in the right column. Comments and Archives now share a box with Recent Posts, via tabs on the top. You can alternate between FTB Recent Posts and FTB Most Active in the same way.

The Comments sections have a neat new look too.

To tell you the truth, I’m still exploring it all myself, so that’s about everything I know right now, but if I discover anything especially fantastic — like a coffee cup holder that extrudes from your screen, or a one-on-one chat window with Jeri Ryan that opens anytime you visit the site — I’ll let you know.

Worth reading:

But the scary part is what comes out of it, and by now you have probably guessed my point. The Tea Party and things like the Tea Party. Strongly held anti-social illogical destructive beliefs with no hope of critical self evaluation, in a large and organized part of the population. It is obvious why this happened in the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party, but people on both sides of the political aisle have contributed. Literalist, libertarian, paranoid, self-centered, easily frightened, reactionary, sub-average in intelligence, deluded in self worth and unmovable in conviction and belief despite all evidence to the contrary.

 

It isn’t just that the terrorists won on that day; It is much much worse than that. First they beat us, then they recruited us to do ourselves in.

 

Oh, god.

I’ve challenged Camels With Hammers to a duel.

The weapon: Philosophy.

The place: The Field of Free Will.

The time: Now.

And I’M NOT READY!

With the slap of my challenge glove still stinging on his face, lightning-quick Daniel Fincke whipped out his rapier and carved a 2,600-word attack onto my chest! The agony! Continue reading “The Bite of the Camel 2”

Daniel Fincke of Camels With Hammers sent me an email asking me if he could quote and critique a comment I left on his site (“The Moral Argument for Free Will“) a few days ago.

I thought your second comment on my free will post yesterday raised a lot of important points for clarification and I think I want to base a post around replying to it. I often do this with my commenters’ remarks. In this case, though, since you’re one of my peers here at FTB, I’m cautious because I want to make sure you’re comfortable with remarks you make in the comments section (which sometimes aren’t as considered as an actual blog post) being put up prominently in the body of a new post and scrutinized and countered in detail. I don’t want to come off as picking on you. I am just excited because you are a gifted writer who can eloquently put the “blue collar redneck” case against “too much philosophical analyzing” and I like the idea of putting that case up and showing my philosopher’s reply to that.  But I worry about it coming off as patronizing or something.

Scrutinized and COUNTERED?? Dan, you madman, you think you can COUNTER my simple homespun redneck wisdom?

Do your worst, sir! Go ahead and be a phil-ossi-fer if you like!

Expect a visit from a couple of friends of mine, though. You’ll recognize them by the overalls and gappy teeth.

And banjos.

Dee-dee ding-ding-ding-ding-ding ding-dang.

Fellow FTB blogger Jason Thibeault, the Lousy Canuck, just gave me an “I couldn’t have said it better myself” moment with his repost of “Why don’t atheists just shut up and stay home?”

Well worth a read:

We atheists have been silent for a very long time; our voices are understandably rusty. For every encroachment into our personal space — for every incentive that discriminates against faithless — for every demand that people be allowed to share their love of God with others — we are being told to shut up, to stay silent, to dare not demand the same right to share our love of reason, our love of logic and our love of science. We do not speak up to evangelize atheism, for that is antithetical to our position, and we have bigger issues presently — buffering an outright attack on us by the religious.

Your right to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose, yet when your fists connect with the noses of atheists we are told to accept it and dare not swing back. I am tired of being a punching bag. I am tired of being told that I am immoral, that I am evil, that I am an abomination against society.

That is why I do not merely allow people to preach their faith on my doorstep without an answer. And that is why, when I AM at home, I reserve the right to occasionally shut the door on their faces. And that is why when I am NOT at home, I reserve the right to counter people’s vociferous shouting or unfair double standards or ridiculous pandering or antiscientific nonsense with my voice — rusty though it may be. I reserve the right to scream out, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!”

My voice is the only weapon I have against this encroachment and viral spread of religion and antiscientific thinking. And short of death, my voice will not be silenced.