My friend Dale McGowan is writing the book Atheism for Dummies and blogging about the process. He recently had a chance to offer input on the book’s cover and created a checklist for the image that would grace his book: – Embodies natural worldview – Represents desire to understand world – No religious negation – Directly accessible/relatable (no galaxies or atoms) – Wonder-inducing – Aesthetically pleasing – Not typical. Provokes thought/question. OK if connection not obvious – Owns the illusion… Read more
Actress Julia Sweeney filmed a segment for Chris Johnson’s multimedia book about atheists and what gives them joy and meaning in life… though in the segment below, she talks about how she has dealt with death. It’s a short clip, but she puts things into perspective so well: (via The Atheist Book) Read more
Hey, FOX News headline writer person, you got it wrong. American Atheists’ billboards didn’t come down due to “complaints.” They came down because AA staffers and the advertising company were hit with threats. THREATS! Presumably from Christians who couldn’t handle criticism of their beliefs. I’ll be right here. Waiting for you to apologize… Read more
Articles declaring that science is just like religion, or that science must not address religion, annoy me. Partially because they’re wrong, but mostly because they tend to thoroughly and willfully misunderstand both science and religion, to the detriment of both. Exhibit A: Sometimes Science Must Give Way to Religion, a column appearing in the latest issue of the journal Nature. Daniel Sarewitz, a graduate of Cornell’s geological sciences PhD program, begins by contemplating the deep similarities between religion and science… Read more
After I posted Marco Rosaire Rossi’s piece criticizing the pro-life atheist groups (from the latest issue of The Humanist) a few days ago, there were a lot of commenters agreeing that the groups in question really were anti-science, as the headline suggested. Now, the group Secular Pro-Life is responding back to what they see as “baseless accusations”: Next, we get to fetal pain, where Rossi begins by stating that there is “no clear consensus from doctors or medical researchers as… Read more
Last weekend, the Atheists, Humanists, & Agnostics (AHA!) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison marched in the Wisconsin Capitol Pride parade in support of their LGBT allies: Atheists for the win 🙂 Read more
Teresa MacBain is one of the increasingly popular group of pastors-turned-atheists. She was the first female graduate of the Clergy Project and now works as Director of Public Relations for American Atheists. Back in June, Teresa spoke about her religious “shift” at the FreeOK Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma: Like many former pastors, she’s *really* hard not to pay attention to when she speaks — she has the cadence and the oratorical skills. At least she’s an atheist now so we… Read more
This is the city seal for Austin, Texas: Activist Joe Zamecki (who co-founded Atheists Helping the Homeless) spoke yesterday to the Austin City Council about why they needed to remove the cross from the seal. His basic argument? It doesn’t fairly represent the population of this great city, and our government should never actively promote religion in such a blatant and unnecessary way. He explains why he argued against the current seal here: And here’s video of his speech in… Read more
A couple of days ago, Pastor Rick Warren explained why he canceled a forum featuring President Obama and Mitt Romney by saying this: “The forums are meant to be a place where people of goodwill can seriously disagree on significant issues without being disagreeable or resorting to personal attack and name-calling. But that is not the climate of today’s campaign. I’ve never seen more irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads, and I don’t expect that tone… Read more
