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You can support this site by making your Amazon purchases via the links below even if you don't buy these books! (it costs you nothing extra)

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

Happy Halloween!

funny-pictures-cat-makes-evil-plansHappy Halloween everyone!

I wanted to share some great lolcats with you on my favorite holiday, while warning you of some issues that may have passed below your radar for this All Hallow’s Eve.

Don’t buy candy for today! Halloween is Lucifer’s holy day and the candy in the store has been cursed and filled with demons according to Charisma Magazine. Kimberly Daniels wantonly tells us about the horrors of this most satanic day of the year.

I know, it’s probably too late for you. You already bought your Halloween candy weeks ago. My suggestion is to eat all of the candy in one sitting while praising Lucifer as you unwrap each blasphemous piece of chocolaty evilness. If you can’t light a bonfire to dance around naked in your front yard, light a candle and roast marshmallows over it. That will suffice.

Don’t give the candy [...]

Logical Fallacy 9: Argument from Ignorance

Hello everyone! I hope you’re having a great day!

This is one of those catch-all posts where I have several items to share with you.

Some atheist news and education which is great, and some church news that is horrible. So the score for the day is Atheists 2, churches -100.

bigapplecorFirst, the United Coalition of Reason is getting ready to post ads on the subway in New York. These are different than the ones they posted for us here in Morgantown, WV.

The bus ads say: A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you? That’s awesome! The NYTimes wrote a long article about it, and our Morgantown billboard even gets a mention!

:)

Next, I saw a video on The Friendly Atheist of Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining the Argument from Ignorance. [...]

Atheism at a glance- BBC Style

mbm-2

I thought I’d share this with you. The BBC has a page for each religion where they give a bit of information at a glance, and one for atheism too.

Atheism is the absence of belief in any gods or spiritual beings. The word Atheism comes from a, meaning without, and theism meaning belief in god or gods.

  • Atheists don’t use god to explain the existence of the universe.
  • Atheists say that human beings can devise suitable moral codes to live by without the aid of Gods or scriptures.

Reasons for non-belief
People are atheist for many reasons, among them:

  • They find insufficient evidence to support any religion.
  • They think that religion is nonsensical.
  • They once had a religion and have lost faith in it.
  • They live in a non-religious culture.
  • Religion doesn’t [...]

Logical Fallacy 8: Cherry-Picking

funny-pictures-cat-eats-a-churchCherry-Picking is when you count the hits and ignore the misses. It is used when only certain quotes, data, studies or research are used to support an argument while ignoring other valid and credible quotes, data, studies and research.

Cherry-picking is rampant in the religious population. For example, in my Conversations with christians, I have run across religious people using this logical fallacy in 15 out of 19 entries.

This is Part 8 in a series about Logical Fallacies, Misconceptions, False Beliefs. We are going through one fallacy at a time. There are many types of fallacious arguments. I’m going to try to explain them with examples then find ways to help you refute those arguments when they occur. Please comment or email if there’s a particular fallacy you want me to tackle, or if you have success with refuting an argument using a good [...]

A christian Couple Wears A Scarlet ‘A’ For A Day

creation museum

I was stumbling around the interwebs the other day and came across an article on Skepacabra that was so interesting, I have to share it with you.

Apparently when the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) went to the Creation Museum recently, a christian couple snuck in to see what it would be like to be an atheist. It was a bit of a social experiment. Apparently they were not prepared for how they were treated. They didn’t wear atheist gear, but got name tags that proclaimed them as part of the group. They were appalled by their treatment.

First, they noticed that security had been beefed up a great deal since the wife’s last visit to the museum.

While I did not have a T-shirt (a symbol anyway) it was obvious that there was a distinctive way that we were being treated because [...]

Palin Divorce! The Hypocrisy of the Religious Right Strikes Again!

tpI only have a few minutes, but I wanted to share this with you.

Palin is supposedly getting a divorce. Apparently there were affairs on both sides! This is hypocrisy of the highest order, isn’t it? So much for “good” christian family values.

See the full breaking story here at Alaska Report. There’s also a video there about “hurt feelings” of Palin.

A note by the editor of that site says: AlaskaReport was the first website to report that Sarah Palin was running for governor of Alaska and the first website to report that Sarah was picked as John McCain’s VP candidate.

So, it seems this is probably accurate. If you hear more comment and let us [...]

Oh Lordy, Kill My Oppressors, Please!

fairy tales are for childrenWiley Drake, a southern baptist preacher in California went on Fox News Radio’s Alan Colmes show on June 2nd and said he’s praying for god to kill President Obama. Drake used to be the 2nd vice president of the southern baptist convention.

Apparently there’s a special kind of prayer from psalms where you ask god to kill people for you, to vindicate your innocence and relieve you of your oppressors. It’s called imprecatory prayer.

Imprecate: To call down by prayer, as something hurtful or calamitous. To invoke evil upon; curse.

Drake prayed to his god for the death of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in his church on May 31st. Drake called his death an answer to prayer.

(emphasis of the following quotes are mine, with my comments interspersed)

“Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk [...]

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