Quick rant: If I wanted to buy books by atheists on Amazon, one would think I could go straight to the atheist section and be done with it. Not surprisingly, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens grace the top of the list. But there’s something else also taking place… Currently, of the 25 “atheist bestsellers,” 9 are written by Christians attempting to refute the New Atheists. Are they properly categorized? You can argue that they are since they do discuss the… Read more
Last week, I ran this contest: We recently learned that one in five atheists actually believes in God. What other surprises did we discover from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey? Here are the Top 3 responses (with submitters)! 3| Atheists consume, per person, 3 times the national average of bananas. (Old Beezle) 2| The most popular type of “holy Mormon underwear” is the thong. (Cobwebs) 1| 1 in 5 atheists believes they are god. (Josha) … Congratulations to the winners!… Read more
Talking to a somewhat religious friend the other day, I heard her use the phrase “It happened for a reason” to describe an event in her life. The first thought running through my mind was, “No, it didn’t.” But I remembered when I was religious, I felt the same way. Letting go of that notion was probably the hardest barrier to overcome when I became an atheist. It means you go from seeing life as a series of steps in… Read more
Just a quick shout-out to one of the girls I coach on my high school’s Speech Team — she is representing Chicago in the National Texting Championship in New York City on Wednesday! I fully expect to get a share of the prize money when she wins. Of course, leave it to the Chicago Tribune to spell her name wrong in print (now fixed online) but correctly on their website days ago… Read more
This picture made me smile 🙂 (Click image for larger version) In case you wanted to check it out for yourself. (via MarsToSirius) [tags]Jesus Christ, Christian[/tags] Read more
The good news: I got my free-for-being-a-model Skepdude calendar in the mail today! The bad news: I just got the Skepdude Calendar. Month after month of partially-, semi-, or totally- naked men. And no Skepchicks. Blast! Now, what will I hang on my wall? [tags]atheist, atheism[/tags] Read more
Time is running out if you want to attend the three-day atheist party taking place at Half Moon Beach in Strasburg, VA (about an hour from Washington, D.C.) in mid-August! It looks like a great opportunity to meet other non-religious people. You can help the Beltway Atheists by signing up sooner rather than later. More details are on the Atheist Days website! [tags]atheism[/tags] Read more
I’m just going to pass along this brief anecdote from The Amiable Atheist: In Germany you are required to register in each town you live in. One of the things they ask you is your religion. They asked my boyfriend, and he told them he was atheist. The woman wrote “VD”, and he asked, “What does that stand for?” She replied “verschieden denkend”, which means different thinking. “No,” he said, “normal denkend” (normal thinking). 🙂 [tags]atheist, atheism[/tags] Read more
Cectic retells the famous joke: (If you have no idea what the referenced joke is, here you go.) [tags]atheist, atheism, Flying Spaghetti Monster[/tags] Read more
Building on an idea first popularized in Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz, a new website has been put up called “Christians Confess”. When most people hear the word “Christian”, they think of a lot of other words — likely all of them negative. Words like “hypocrite”, “judgmental”, “self-righteous”, and — well, you get the idea. For many people, meeting individuals who identify themselves as Christian is also likely to stir up past memories of hurt and pain. This site… Read more
