This one coming via email from Paul Kurtz, chair of the Council for Secular Humanism and the “father of the secular humanist movement”: May I then disagree with [Harris’] subsequent “seditious proposal” that we should not call ourselves “secularists,” “humanists,” “secular humanists,” “naturalists,” “skeptics,” etc. “We should go under the radar for the rest of our lives,” he advises. We should be “responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.” That sounds lofty but in my view it… Read more
Bethany Keeley runs a wonderful website called The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks. A couple days ago, I asked Bethany if she received more or less religiously-themed pictures when compared to her other submissions. She said that she didn’t really see much religious content on her site. Just a couple amusing signs here and there. But this one from today seems to have given both of us pause: I don’t know what it means either… [tags]atheist, atheism, Jesus, Christian, McDonalds[/tags] Read more
A few of you have sent me links to A. J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically: I’ve started reading it and a review will be posted soon enough. (A preview: Buy the book. It’s awesome.) If you haven’t heard of the book yet, go here and find out more. Or you can listen to yesterday’s episode of NPR’s Fresh Air, where Jacobs was interviewed by Terry Gross. (Thanks to Christina for that link!) In the meantime, the author… Read more
I’m adding this to my gift list. I don’t care that I’m not someone’s daughter. (Thanks to Ashley for the link!) [tags]atheist, atheism[/tags] Read more
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and Nobel laureate (as in “Watson and Crick”), was in Chicago tonight! I learned a couple pieces of trivia: Mario R. Capecchi, who was announced earlier today as one of the 2007 Nobel Prize winners in Medicine, was one of Watson’s grad students. Harvard University did not raise Watson’s salary the year he won the Nobel Prize. Watson was in Chicago promoting his new book Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a… Read more
The Internet Infidels are currently running the Second Annual IIDB $10K Challenge. For over a decade, the Internet Infidels Inc. has maintained the Secular Web Kiosk and Library and the II Discussion Board with large grants donated by a handful of generous individuals, and smaller amounts donated by others. As the sites grew, our webhosting costs increased. The cost to operate the IIDB alone is nearly $10,000 annually. Please consider helping them! They provide a lot of great reading material… Read more
If you bid a lot of money on this wafer, you win the eBay auction. If you *don’t* bid a lot of money on this wafer, we all win the eBay auction. But if you’re a true Christian, you just have to ask yourself: How much is Jesus worth? 🙂 Brilliant marketing, I say. A priest gave me a consecrated communion wafer when I last attended Catholic mass. Instead of eating it right then and there, I decided to save… Read more
After many atheists commented on Sam Harris’ speech at the Atheist Alliance International convention where he talked about shedding the “atheist” label, Harris is responding back. And he names names: Is it really possible that PZ Myers and Ellen Johnson think I was recommending that we stop publicly criticizing religion or that I am hiding my own atheism out of “shame and fear”? I would not have thought such a misreading was possible, given the contents of my speech and… Read more
The Sacramento Bee has a positive story on a gathering of atheists: Billed as a “celebration of reason and church/state separation,” the event brought together atheists, secularists and humanists, who explained their faith in man and nature and their disdain for the unseen and unprovable. “Humans have the ability to lead ethical lives for the greater good of humanity without the supernatural,” said Mel Lipman, president of the American Humanist Association. Those who don’t believe in God, he said, “are… Read more
Nica Lalli, author of Nothing: Something to Believe In, has a piece in today’s USA Today where she talks about how atheists, just like various religions’ followers, do not speak in just one voice: … the word “atheist” has become synonymous with one kind of non-believer: the kind that writes books about atheism and is not very nice about religion. … But there is more than one kind of atheist. And even in the pool of (mostly male) writers who… Read more
