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What I'm reading now:
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (this is excellent. Well written and fascinating. Highly recommended)
God Is Not Great (Hitchens is extremely erudite but I agree with him a lot here. Excellent so far)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Listening to the audio version. Excellent!)


What I just finished:
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Recommended. The first half is a great read. Thorough and detailed but easy to understand.)
Letting Go of God (I listened to the audio version. It was poignant and funny. Highly recommended!)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (best trilogy I've ever read!)

Series

Happy Atheist Love

Conversation with Anne About The Meaning Of Life

The other day I wrote to Anne in response to some questions she emailed me. She replied not long after in another email. Here is an excerpt (I’ve removed the more private information): (Note: I’ve added some happy puppies playing in the snow since this topic can be rather serious, and we are having the biggest snow in WV that I’ve seen since we moved here 5 years ago)animals_125_42-P

Thank you for answering my email. I am only 21 and it seams that I am searching for myself and what it is that I can believe. I see how people lie on a daily basis to make the even more entertaining than the event really was so I find it hard to believe anything that is told to me. Giving this way of living I find it tremendously hard to base my life and way of [...]

Young Earth Invasion

funny-pictures-kitten-is-disappointed-with-baby-foodRecently, a friend of mine went to the Center For Inquiry in his hometown. There was a book discussion about “50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a god“. This is part of his email to me about it:

The guy who leads the Scientific Evaluation of Religion things for this location has done a pretty good job the two times I have gone. I really have to give him credit and say I was impressed at how he handled this meeting since IT GOT HIJACKED BY A GROUP OF YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISTS! That’s right, you heard me. It was pretty interesting for me to see first hand their pulling out all the old cliché arguments for Christianity. They got started when there was a chapter summary that mentioned that most religious people are skeptical of other peoples faiths but not their own, they took issue with [...]

Why I’m An Atheist, Not An Agnostic

Stumbling around the web, I came across a page at lukeprog.com titled The Arrogance of Atheism. I almost moved on, but then I saw the subtitle: Why I’m an atheist, not an agnostic. Luke writes a page that is simple and concise, yet totally makes sense. I contacted him and asked him if I could share it with you. So here it is in its entirety:

The Arrogance of Atheism
Why I’m an atheist, not an agnostic.

When I tell people I’m an atheist, they say, “How can you be so arrogant to think that you know God doesn’t exist? At least say you’re an agnostic and admit that you can’t know for sure one way or the other.”

Atheism! How arrogant!

But is it?

Even More Skeptical

Recently, I talked about being skeptical. I wanted to show the importance of thinking for yourself, and not taking everything at face value. It’s an easy concept to understand, but it can also be easy to slip into gullibility or false reasoning.

In my article yesterday, I made some assumptions and didn’t clarify my reasoning, as well as only did some surface work on the research. A perfect example of falling into the exact trap that needs to be avoided when trying to break free of false belief systems!

Lesson learned, and thank you for the excellent [...]

Be Skeptical

My friend sent me a link to the Times Online this morning, to an article titled Red Bull gives you wings – and heart trouble?. My husband drinks Red Bull, and my friend thinks I do too. I don’t actually. I drink Java Monster. It’s delicious and is in a 16 ounce can instead of the paltry 8 ounces you get from Red Bull. So of course I read the article because I don’t want my husband and I to be harming our health unknowingly.

My friend – we’ll call him Sam to protect his identity – said that he always knew this stuff was bad for you. And that was that for him. Case closed. I said I wanted more data. He said, “I don’t.. that stuff’s loaded with enough caffeine to explode an elephant’s heart… no more data needed.”

What? Are you kidding [...]

Reason and Polls

I just posted an interesting piece by Sam Harris that I found regarding the truth about atheism. It was written in 2006 for the LA Times and holds some ideas as to how atheists as a general rule view the world, and how religious people view atheists.

Here at Believers Anonymous, I want create a place for folks with a “believing problem” to be able to easily find resources, whether that be an article that concisely talks about atheism, opinions and “testimonies” of other people finding their way, or well, just about anything that might be helpful to you.

This is a journey for me as well, because, while I’ve been an atheist for a long time, I’ve come to feel that I need to be a bit more proactive about my lack of faith. Hence the creation of this site, obviously. I’m comfortable in my [...]

An Inadequate Supply of Cold Hard Facts

Here at Believers Anonymous, when it comes to providing you information, only the cold hard facts will do. In some cases, this is not as easy as it may seem, as I’ve found out today.

I’ve just spent the last 2 days looking for information on something that I think will be helpful to you. It’s about the symbols and stories of christianity and how many if not all of them are merely taken from other earlier religions and myths.

While I know that such things as the cross, the fish symbol, wedding rings, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the trinity, the crucifixion, the theft of all the pagan holidays, the christian vestments and the baptism were all stolen, I don’t have any cold hard facts to cite for you.

I’ve found several sources. Unfortunately they are either laden with agenda and biased, or simply not cited and lacking [...]