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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

A Chart of Religiousness, IQ, Morality and More

My friend Gerald found this interesting chart chock full of information. Of course, remember correlation does not necessitate causation, but it is striking how the numbers fall.

Links on the full page [...]

Being Good Without God Is Natural

I walked away from religion when I was 12. While it took me almost another 2 decades to become and accept that I am an atheist, I have basically lived without god for a long time. In fact, I’ve been an atheist for about 9 years and in that time, I have managed to refrain from killing anyone, stealing anything, cheating on my husband, and many other bad behaviors.

I do still drink copious amounts of coffee and swear a lot, but hey, nobody’s perfect. :P

I’ve met christians who have said they would kill, rape, steal and basically go on a rampage without god watching their every move. I’m very glad those amoral people are afraid of burning in hell because they have no moral compass like most of us do. Those few people who think they need god to be good need [...]

Why I Am Not A Christian

Bertrand_Russell_1950by Bertrand Russell

Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards’ edition of Russell’s book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays … (1957).

As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is “Why I Am Not a Christian.” Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word Christian. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I [...]

Don't Give Up!

treeofknowledge2009To the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, don’t give up! Fight the good fight!

I just read an article by Staks Rosch in the Philadelphia Examiner about the FSGP and their Tree of Knowledge. It’s an evergreen tree decorated with book covers (how shocking, how impudent!) from books representing knowledge, education, science, philosophy, morality, diversity and curiosity. (I am so offended! What? No Twilight?! No Dan Brown?!) Here is a complete list of the books represented.

Staks makes some points that I really like: “[The Tree of Knowledge]  is not an attack on religion, but rather an expression of an alternative set of values (i.e. knowledge and reason).”

How horrific! Now I understand why the good christians of the area are so up in arms, vandalizing the tree and organizing call campaigns [...]

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 [...]

I Have 2 Dogs, But Neither Is god. I’m Sure.

1718295_222350_110564f499_pI’m bored. I have about 5 matters I should be attending to, but I’m uninspired to tackle any of them at the long end of a productive day. So I’m doing what every self-respecting blogger/Geekess/hermit does. I’m stumbling the internet.

Oh, and now is the time to remind you that I officially live under a rock. Someday I’ll take a picture of my rock so you can see how nice it is. But suffice it to say, I’m not a newshound, always up on the latest and greatest of everything.

So in my stumbles I come across a BusinessDay article, a South African paper. This is how I learned this awesome explanation of the difference between an atheist, 2 kinds of agnostics, and a theist. Here we go:

The difference between an atheist, an agnostic and a theist can be summarized by their responses [...]

My Personal 10 Commandments

picdump-20Butch and I had Brent and Tim (my fellow Morgantown Atheists cohorts) over for dinner the other night. (oh, and Tim brought his standard poodle Lucy, who was highly interesting to my crazy mutts. They were in love with her sexy Frenchness!) Anyway, over pizza, Tim challenged me to come up with my own personal list of 10 Commandments. The New 10 Commandments.

First let’s look at the old fashioned set that so many people want festooned on government property to hopefully force everyone to be good, obedient, god-fearing christians.

According to the bible, there are 3 sets of commandments by Moses’ god. (see Wikipedia’s page here)

Most of these commandments are the words of an angry, jealous, childish god. They aren’t helpful, moral or ethical. They don’t advance us as a species. In fact [...]

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