In no particular order:
1.
You have to think for yourself. Nothing is beyond question. Continue reading “12 Things You Can’t Learn in Church”
Why Adam & Eve REALLY Got Kicked Out
With apologies to Samuel L. Jackson …
Probably NSFW, so click ahead at your own peril. Continue reading “Why Adam & Eve REALLY Got Kicked Out”
Gosh.
Thanks to Camels With Hammers and The Digital Cuttlefish for reading and commenting on Blue Collar Atheist!
I am empoemicized! Or at least the subject of holding voting in churches is.
Cuttlefish has a fantastic short verse on the subject, including these delicious lines: Continue reading “Gosh.”
Score One for Atheist Meetup
Capital Region Atheists & Agnostics scored a win for freethinkers with a story in today’s Times Union, the Albany, New York, daily newspaper.
Rick Martin, one of the founding members of the group — formed in 2007 and now possessing 300 or so members (including me, who manages to get to almost none of the meetings) — was interviewed by the TU’s religion reporter.
The interview questions were neutral, neither supporting nor attacking, and Martin was able to say his piece in a non-adversarial atmosphere. For instance: Continue reading “Score One for Atheist Meetup”
Jesus is My Co-Voter
Why do you suppose we have the secret ballot?
The answer is something most of us understand instinctively. In the one vital moment when a citizen gets to express his/her own individual political opinion, no one – not mom and dad, not your wife or husband, not your boss, not the local sheriff, not stern-faced community or union leaders, not your well-meaning neighbor – gets to loom over your shoulder and help you vote “right.”
The principle is enshrined in election law all over the world. Here in the U.S., various measures prevent overt campaigning within a certain distance – as much as 300 feet in some places, the length of a football field – of the polling place. Not only can you not stand outside the door and hector people entering, in many places you can’t even wear your own quiet campaign buttons as you go in to vote.
It’s really an issue of freedom, isn’t it? On the theory that every woman and man has the right to wrestle with their own political conscience and vote their heartfelt private values, we protect from outside influence those final moments prior to voting.
Except when we don’t. Continue reading “Jesus is My Co-Voter”
Bibles! Innn! Spaaaaace!
Got an extra 5 grand? You could start the bidding on
the first ever “lunar Bible” — a little square sheet of microfilm, just an inch and a half on a side, carried to the lunar surface by astronaut Edgar Mitchell on Apollo 14 in February 1971.
It doesn’t seem to have a lot of holy power, seeing as how it barely made it to the moon. Its Holy Author first allowed a mistake on Apollo 12, leaving it in the orbiter rather than causing it to go to the actual moon, then allowed the catastrophe on Apollo 13, only getting it right the third time, with Apollo 14.
But hey! Bible. Moon. Wowsers! Wotta prize!
I’d feel better about the auction if the money was going to an actual astronaut, or the space program.
The really bad part is that you can only read the Looney Bible if you have Jesus’ microscopic super-vision.
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Weird. There’s also this.
Fearsome creatures
I take pictures, did you know? Sometimes it’s just scenery, sometimes events with people in them.
But sometimes it’s scary things. It’s fairly woodsy here in upstate New York, and though I know most people from outside the state picture wall-to-wall cities, parts of it are actually pretty wild. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but the state has some pretty big predators.
Living as I do on the edge of the wilds, I get to see them sometimes. Usually they’re safely distant, but just a few evenings ago, one of them came up INTO MY YARD. Right outside my window, in fact, in broad daylight!
I was lucky to have my camera. Picture after the fold.
(Click the pic to go to the source, which is on Flickr.)
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[ Note: I just want to make sure newcomers are familiar with the way to get to the rest of these “folded” posts, here and elsewhere on the FreeThought Blogs site. Click on the “Read More” link on the lower right, just below this sentence. ]
What? ANOTHER atheist book? Jeezus.
Inevitably, I have to talk about my book.
Most books on the subject address the WHY of atheism, this one deals with the HOW. How to be, how to think, like an atheist.
Here’s a chapter on the subject of morality: Good Without Gods
More about the book here, and several nice reviews on the Amazon page.
(And yes, that’s me on the cover, riding the bull. Badly.)
Published late last year, it’s been pretty well received.
Greta Christina (!) reviewed it warmly:
For anyone — believer or atheist — who thinks atheism is only for a formally educated elite because the hoi polloi ‘need’ religion, this book is absolutely mandatory. Knock that idea out of your head right now — Hank Fox is as passionate and unapologetic about his atheism as Richard Dawkins. And his writing is smart, clear, straightforward, and often drop-dead funny. Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist is a pleasure and a page-turner: I got lots of good new ideas from it, and new ways of looking at well-traveled godless terrain. Bravo.
There’s even a sales-pitchy YouTube video. About the video … ahem. In my defense I can only say:
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6yDUMnPgE
Launch Day: Welcome!
If you’re new to FreeThought Blogs, welcome!
If you’re new to Blue Collar Atheist, or to my writing, a double welcome!
Probably I should tell you something about me.
The Blogging Part
I’ve been at it for a bit, both as a blog reader and writer. I won the second-ever Molly Award at PZ Myers’ Pharyngula (actually I was one of two people that month) for blog commentary, and was called a “master of metaphor” — along with less flattering names — along the way.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I usually write long. Whatever subject comes up, I want to explore it completely and explain it carefully, and the brief quip doesn’t work for me. What that means is that you probably won’t see the 5-posts-a-day that some bloggers manage (cough*PZMyersEdBrayton*cough), but I hope you’ll find worth reading the ones I do write.
For some of my characteristic posts, try these:
Kitten, Cat or Tiger – Part 1
Kitten, Cat or Tiger – Part 2
Kitten, Cat or Tiger – Part 3
Kitten, Cat or Tiger – Part 4
The Blue Collar Part Continue reading “Launch Day: Welcome!”
180 Degrees: Pastor Mike
PZ has a post about Pastor Mike’s plan to create a database of “known” atheists, and a really disgusting plan it is.
That someone could come up with such a thing, and then broadcast it into the public sphere, shows a breathtaking unawareness both of history and of the consequences of one’s actions in the real world.
The idea is both incredibly ugly and yet so blithely inept in concept that I imagine we have nothing to fear from it. But we DO have to point out — yet again, to those unaware of history — that nothing of the sort can be permitted. And that even proposing it, however idly, shows a meanness of spirit viciously at odds with civil society. Continue reading “180 Degrees: Pastor Mike”