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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

Advertisements and Logical Fallacies

Lately I’ve been thinking about logical fallacies used in advertising and marketing. The argument from authority when someone in a lab coat tells you what to buy, argumentum ad populum which is “appeal to the people” because everyone else is buying this product so you should too.

One of my pet peeves is multigrain labels emblazoned on foods lately. Technically the food has more than one grain in it, but they are touting the product as something healthy when they have still stripped all fiber and goodness out, so the health benefits are still lacking. This is very popular in cereals, and unless you read the label you’d think you were buying something healthy, when really it’s just as junky as cocoa puffs.

The “no sugar added” label is another one I find quite vague. There are several different iterations of this one. No sugar added, sugar free, the [...]

A Rational Chain E-mail

My friend Charles composed the following email as a response to a ridiculous christian forward he got call “Untimely Deaths”. He thought I might like to share it with you. So here it is, including the angry christian email reply he already got and his reply to that at the end. His version had the classical large fonts, underlines and bold text that inflammatory emails often have, but for the web, I had to strip most of the formatting. If you decide to send this on to your christian friends, feel free to make them more at ease by using insanely large font sizes, underlines, unreadable colors, etc. :P

Do you have the COURAGE to Read this whole E-Mail?????

The TRUTH about UNTIMELY DEATHS!

John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during an interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, [...]

Conversation With Anne About Religion, Truth, Science and History

The other day I got an email from Anne which I will post below. She asked some basic questions and I thought I’d share my answers with you (with her permission, under a pseudonym for her privacy). So here is her email:

Well I am new to religion totally as neither of my parents knew what to believe so they taught me nothing. I have so many questions and not nearly enough hours to google! lol jk

If you dont believe in a higher being such as God like the Christians what do you believe? (***Now please dont think I am questioning your beliefs I simply need a better understanding of what you hold to be true in this world.***) Do you believe that things happen simply because we choose that is how it should or is there a force behind events? I have gathered you believe in evolution [...]

Conversations With christians - Beth 6 - Realization and Conclusion

funny-pictures-basement-cat-wears-a-sweaterWhile I am a 7th degree black belt atheist, I do have a heart of gold, as I’m sure you know. (just kidding! I’m trying to lighten the mood! Ok, you’re right, I’m not kidding, I really do have a heart of gold)

Where was I? Oh, right. When someone comes to me and asks me to have a conversation with them about religion and atheism, I feel it’s my responsibility as an atheist to show that a discourse is possible. I want to show religious people that I am indeed a living, breathing ethical atheist. I am rather nice to people, especially if they aren’t visiting my home for more than one night. (Then all bets are off) I try to show people how to use reason, logic and facts to find out things for themselves.

Sure, sometimes I can get a bit testy when a christian insults [...]

How Far I've Come!

thinking-cat-is-thinkingLast week, I ran some errands with Butch. One of them involved me waiting for him to take a test which he thought was going to be a half hour. It turned out that it was an hour and a half, which was actually good considering they had 3 hours allotted.

I was bored out of my mind after about 12 minutes of sitting in the car, and started to find ways to occupy myself. I got out and wandered around to look at all the different lichens on the trees, but I didn’t have enough light to get any decent pictures. I paced , looking at ants, then sat in the car and read my book for awhile, tried not to think about how much Monster energy drink I had consumed on the way there, and let my mind generally wander around. It was excruciating. ’:P’

Rise of the Gnostic Atheist: A Deconversion Story

Alias: GMNightmare
Name: Jesse
Date: 29 July 2009
Birth: 1988 C.E.
Gender: Male

In my beginning, I was born to both a new mother and new father. My birth was a rather large event to my extended family, for I was the very first great grandchild. As my mother’s family is very close, of course many made an appearance. Near birth, I was blessed and baptized by my great grandfather under Christianity.

Under such pretenses I assume many would suspect that I was raised under a very religious setting. This was luckily not the case. It is worth mentioning that my mother’s ancestors stem from a long line of clergy, and they are all fairly religious… And while my mother is also mildly religious, my family couldn’t seem to find a church that we fit into.

Sure, my family tried—I understand that we were almost [...]

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 [...]

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