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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

Information IS Beautiful!

Stumbling around the interwebs, I found a site that I think you might love. It’s called Information is Beautiful. David McCandless takes all kinds of data and ideas and visualizes it in appealing ways.

The one I found that I thought was amazing was Snake Oil?: Scientific evidence for popular health supplements. (That link takes you to the interactive version. See the static version here.) On the side is a show me button that flies out a list of  uses and types of supplements. Choose what you’re interested in to filter the results. The bigger the bubble, the more popular the supplement is. The higher on the chart, the more evidence there is that it works. Notice how many bubbles are below the Worth It line. Remember, the supplements are only good for the conditions listed inside the bubble, which [...]

Your Two Cents About the Faith Based Initiative Program

The Secular Coalition of America sent me a request a few minutes ago, asking me to write a letter to Obama about the Faith Based Initiative Program. I pretty much keep my nose out of politics, but I thought I’d pass this along because I firmly believe in the Separation of Church and State as my God Given Right! :P

Seriously, this country was founded on the incredibly important idea of religion and politics being separate. If you want to see a country where there is no separation, just go to Iran. I’m pretty sure they are a theocracy. Don’t hold me to that, though. My world politics skills have never been very sharp.

Anyway, I think letter writing campaigns work best when the people or organization targeted gets absolutely inundated from all over the place with the same request. Here is what the [...]

JFK Had the Right Idea

Wall CatI stumbled upon a transcript on the National Public Radio site awhile-back. It was a speech made by John F. Kennedy in 1960, given to a group of Protestant ministers a few months before the election. JFK was a devout Catholic, but he was also had a solid understanding of the separation of church and state; this speech has some excellent excerpts that exemplify this. JFK was the first Catholic elected president, and during the elections other religious groups (primarily the Protestant group) were concerned about rumors that he would send an ambassador to the Vatican and be taking direction from the Pope. As it turned-out, it was Reagan who established the first ambassador to the Vatican in [...]

Barbaric Law In Afghanistan Passed Reducing Women's Rights

Women-in-islamic-dressAnother abhorrent law has passed in Afghanistan, showing the barbarism of islam.

  • It is now legal for shia men to deny food and sustenance to their wives if they refuse to obey their husband’s sexual demands.
  • Fathers and grandfathers have full guardianship over the children
  • Women must ask permission from their husbands to work.
  • A rapist can avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her.
  • “Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband’s permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient.”

Apparently in a bid for votes in the upcoming election, Hamid Karzai has basically sold the rights of women to gain power. The election is Thursday, [...]

Separation of church and State Benefits Everyone

George WashingtonA friend of mine, DeletedSoul, emailed me today, asking for my two cents on a facebook debate regarding the separation of church and state. She just joined the Americans United for Separation of church and State cause there and someone she knows went for her jugular over it. That made me think. I don’t remember ever blogging about the issue. I guess it seems so black and white and simple I’ve never really felt the need. I mean, what more can I do than state the obvious? Yet the comments from the person were so full of propaganda, I thought it can’t hurt to weigh in and say a few things.

DeletedSoul also wrote an article about this issue called There is No War Against christianity. I have to agree with most of what she says there. For instance, I live in the upper [...]

Sheeple: Studies About Social Conformity

be careful of being a sheepleThe other day, a study was published that I thought was rather interesting. I then found 2 older studies that were sort of related and thought I’d share them with you. This is an area that is quite interesting to me. I’ve always been a bit of a black sheep, never really following the trends of the majority in much of anything. So when I read about how people make decisions, especially as a mob group, I find it to be a bit mysterious and fascinating.

Here are the studies:

Children As Young As Preschoolers Tend To Follow Majority Opinion
In this study, three- and four-year-old children watched as a small group of people (either three or four members) named a novel object. The majority of group members would use the same name for the object; the lone dissenter would pick a different name. The children were [...]

Why Do Atheists Have To Rock The Boat?

foundreligion

“Why can’t atheists just keep their lack of faith to themselves? Why do they have to write books and have blogs and speak out all the time? They’re in the minority. No one cares about their crazy godlessness. Why can’t they just shut up and stop criticizing us? Why do they even call themselves atheists? Can’t they just say they don’t know if they have doubts? Why do they have to be so militant about our dear lord and savior?”

This kind of questioning sets my teeth on edge. It’s extremely ignorant, but worse than that, it screams of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy: falseness; the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that his friend asked him, “What’s wrong with just saying “I don’t know, and no one really knows” in regards to spiritual questions?” My [...]

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