Ugh. Persistent sore throat. Headache. Tired and achy.
I had hoped to finish the short series on dealing with fear, with a post on dealing with the fears attendant on being an atheist.
But it ain’t happening today.
Back soon, I expect.
Dealing With Fear: Side Note Side Note
The previous post came out of an answer to a comment by anthonyallen on Dealing With Fear — Part 1: Everyday Life. This post comes out of an aside to THAT answer, and actually has nothing at all to do with fear. It’s all a bit meta, I guess, but I hope worth reading. Continue reading “Dealing With Fear: Side Note Side Note”
Dealing With Fear: Side Note
One of my readers, “anthonyallen” has submitted a couple of good comments on two other posts, The 30,000 and Dealing With Fear — Part 1: Everyday Life. Dealing With Fear was even written to address his first comment on The 30,000. But the reply I wrote to his second comment (which was long and also about dealing with fears), I thought I’d include as yet another post of its own. He inspired some thoughts that were, to me, well worth thinking, and then worth writing, and I hope the larger audience here will find them worth reading. Continue reading “Dealing With Fear: Side Note”
Dealing With Fear — Part 1: Everyday Life
The subject of fear came up in the comments on a recent post, one writer lamenting the life-freezing effects of it. Because the writer’s words felt soooo familiar, I both winced and chuckled. Winced because I’ve been there, chuckled because once again I realized that I’m not the only one who feels this sort of thing.
Quoting Richard Nixon, “Let me just say this about that …” Continue reading “Dealing With Fear — Part 1: Everyday Life”
Greta Christina Says Something Fantastic. Again!
Well worth reading:
We’re Telling Them They’re Wrong: Why Coming Out Atheist Is Inherently Oppositional
I think we need to acknowledge that, for us, coming out is an oppositional act. That’s not all it is, of course. It’s also an act of visibility, of community building, of personal honesty and integrity. It helps overturns myths and misinformation about us. It helps normalize atheism and make it seem less scary, both to believers and to incipient atheists. It makes it easier for other atheists to come out… which helps make our communities stronger… which, in turn, makes it easier for still more atheists to come out.
But it is also an oppositional act. Even in its mildest forms. Even when all we do is put up billboards saying something as innocuous as, “You can be good without God,” or, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone”… we are saying, implicitly, “If you believe in God, you’re mistaken.”
Read the rest. And there’s a Part 2 coming up!
The Immortality of Gullibility
One of my readers left a comment on my Religion vs. Science piece and provided a link to the site “Soulgineering.” Muddling around in there, I came across this article, Physics and the Immortality of the Soul.
I can’t argue the science, but – being a writer and editor – I do have something of a feel for language, and the article is a not-very-artful mess of waffling and padding. If this was an article about heroin addiction, the writer would be easily recognizable as an enabler. Continue reading “The Immortality of Gullibility”
The 30,000
Say someone gave you $30,000, in cash, and the deal was, you had to live on it as long as you could. You couldn’t do any other income-producing work in that time, you just had to live on the 30 grand.
You’d have to pay all your bills on it, provide for all your daily needs. You’d have no additional money coming in, and all your entertainment needs, your health needs, your travel and leisure needs, all would have to come out of that one chunk of money.
How long could you live on it? Continue reading “The 30,000”
Religion vs. Science and Roads Not Taken
Any serious writer could tell you: Not everything you write ends up on a page somewhere.
Some of the stuff just isn’t good enough. Some of it is good enough, but not germane to the piece you’re currently writing. And some of it is good enough but … just doesn’t fit anywhere.
This is a piece of a piece that never made it into my book. It’s sort of a double reject — the chapter in which it appeared was edited out of the book, but even before that decision was made, this bit was edited out of the chapter. Still, it struck me as worth saving. So, here: Continue reading “Religion vs. Science and Roads Not Taken”
Pro-Science Presidential Speech (repost)
This was buried fairly far down in a previous post, Obama’s Speechwriter … sort of, and I thought I’d pull it out on its own and repost it. Because, damn, I’d love to hear him make it, or something like it. (Click through to the earlier story to read the context, which was a freelance speech I wrote for the 2008 campaign.)
——————————–
ABCD Speech
(1,188 words, about 10 minutes to deliver)
One of the major issues of this presidential campaign, for all of the candidates, has been the war in Iraq. Yet in speaking of the war, and of so many other issues – issues of national security, energy issues, economic issues, issues of the global environment – we have reacted to emergencies now before us, rather than taking a more thoughtful, proactive approach, to foresee and avoid potential emergencies to come, and to foresee and help create the countless opportunities which may lie in our future.
America has had a number of great victories in military battles, but one of our greatest victories in recent memory was not a victory of war, it was a victory of this type of forward-looking proactivity, a victory of invention and research, a victory in an epic quest for a quintessentially American achievement. Continue reading “Pro-Science Presidential Speech (repost)”
Are We There Yet? Well, Yeah. Pretty Much.
- “The Rapture” — by Robert Bissell
I was in a Schmuckapalooza supermarket in my hometown in upstate New York, at 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, when I realized the end was coming.
I remember it exactly because a Christian minister, Harold Camping, had predicted that precise time and date for the Rapture. According to Camping, 200 million Christians would be spirited into Heaven at just that moment. The rest, the left behinds, would live out their days on an increasingly violent Earth until the entire planet was destroyed just 5 months later. Continue reading “Are We There Yet? Well, Yeah. Pretty Much.”