I’m about to start the Secular Student Alliance Board meeting, so I’ll be away for a couple more days, but PZ Myers posted my talk on Atheism and Dating on his website. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet (it’s always weird to watch yourself…) but you can let me know what you think. I was told later that the word “midget” is a slur. My bad. I should have used the words “little person.” Or perhaps omitted… Read more
The Iowa atheist bus ad will be going back up later this week. (Woo!) Not surprising (to me, anyway), the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers have a *lot* of people on their side. Check out the emails they received after all the publicity — some against them and many more for them. Even better is this editorial in the Des Moines Register: Perhaps a way out of this dilemma is to turn the advertising job over to an outside agency that… Read more
I’m still in Ohio for a couple days wrapping up work with the Secular Student Alliance… more updates to come. Until then, there was a nice little piece about atheists “converging on the Creation Museum” at ABC News. (There may be more big stories to come…) One mistake in the article that has not yet been fixed is in this excerpt: In the singular moment of noticeable conflict, Derek Rogers, a computer science major at Dalhouise University in Nova Scotia,… Read more
Isn’t this ultimately what religion is all about? Taking questions that are currently (or forever) unanswerable, and not only offering fictional answers, but also being emphatic that those answers are the correct ones. Sometimes, the question mark is all you can be sure of. (via nakedpastor) Read more
Reader Dallas was playing around with Google Trends when he noticed something odd. Look what happens when you type in “Humanism”: To explain: The past few years, people have Google-searched for the term “Humanism” during the fall, winter, and spring. But not so much over the summer months. That doesn’t happen when you search for atheist/atheism. Even with “Humanist,” the contrast isn’t as stark. Does anyone know why that is? (Thanks to Dallas for the link!) Read more
I’m at the Secular Student Alliance conference right now, and I have no real Internet access (thanks, iPhone!), but I did want to mention this: The atheist bus ads will go back up in Iowa! It’ll be the original version, so kudos to the Iowans for not budging on that: “By honoring the freedoms protected through our shared civil liberties, DART, like other businesses that accept advertising, will be in the position of displaying messages and images that may be… Read more
(Hemant’s note: This is a guest post from frequent commenter and forum admin JulietEcho. She is a polyamorist.) … As atheists, many of us have faced some level of negative reaction from those around us, on account of our deviation from our culture’s expected norms. I’ve found that atheists, in general, tend to support GLBT rights and other civil rights issues despite opposition by an offended religious majority. After all, atheists have no religious inhibitions that lead them to view… Read more
A couple months ago, some shit went down between Center for Inquiry founder (and father of Secular Humanism) Paul Kurtz and former CFI leader R. Joseph Hoffmann. Kurtz wrote an article on “The Future of Secular Humanism in America” in the latest issue of Free Inquiry. While discussing the three decades since the Council for Secular Humanism was founded, he is still publicly upset over his ousting: I recount the history of our movement because our publications constantly bring in… Read more
Dear Richard, While I am fairly open about my atheism around my friends and my apparently deist father, much of the older generation is devoutly Catholic. My grandparents know that I do not need church to be a good person, and have left the issue alone, but my great-aunt pressures me to come back to the church every time she sees me. I am probably the most vocally philosophical in my family, and my grandmother and I share a fascination… Read more
Well, that was a quick turnaround. First, this Iowa atheist ad went up on 20 buses in Des Moines: A couple days ago, we found out the ad would be taken down. The reason? Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) advertising director Kirstin Baer-Harding wasn’t sure. She said that the ads never should’ve been put up in the first place… and that there were too many complaints, presumably from Christians offended by I-don’t-know-what. Which was it? Who knows. Governor… Read more
