I cannot tell you how excited I am to be joining Freethought Blogs. Interestingly enough, I was asked to join FtB exactly 2 years after I started blogging about skepticism and atheism. I am a relatively new voice in this atheist/skeptic/oh-my-god-don’t-conflate-the-two blogosphere, though I have been blogging for 14 years.
Many of you know me, but some of you do not. So hello! I’m Ashley, there’s a bio over there that basically says I know too much about movies and talk a lot. The thing that most people seem to find shocking about me is that I worked on Toddlers & Tiaras. What else? They should be bringing my archives over eventually, but my old site is http://ashleyfmiller.wordpress.com
First off: Anyone who has had an incident at TAM, however small, should write it down and send it to DJ ([email protected]) ASAP.
DJ’s explanation of the event:
Hi Ashley, I was wracking my brains trying to place the incident you are blogging about. So we looked up in our database of last year’s attendees anyone fitting the description and location of the man you mention in your blog post, and I believe we now know who it was: someone who was being asked to leave the private speakers reception (he wasn’t a speaker, nor invited to the reception, and appeared drunk).
DJ goes on to say he was confused because I thought I’d meant the guy had been kicked out of TAM not just from the reception. DJ e-mailed me the guy’s Facebook profile and I confirmed that it was the correct guy and DJ asked for a full report, which I have sent him. I assume that with an official written report, at this point DJ will have to stop saying that there’s never been a report. I suppose it will now be that there’s only ever been one report.
Phil Ferguson, of Skeptic Money, is the person who brought the guy to DJ’s attention:
This was at the speaker reception. There was one person that was not supposed to be in the room (i do not know if he was even at TAM) he was rude and talking to several ladies with inappropriate language. I told you about him and you took immediate action and talked to the gentleman and you took him from the room.
The guy was a TAM attendee, he was wearing his badge and was in TAM’s database.
I want to reiterate that my complaint is not about how DJ handled this, he handled it swiftly and efficiently and everyone in the room was impressed. He also made the effort to find out who it was and get a report after I wrote my blog post. He is absolutely to be commended, he is doing a great job of handling these things when they arise.
The problem is that he’s going around saying that women are making unfounded complaints because there has never been a report of bad behavior at TAM and women like me, who complain about bad behavior on blogs, are why other women aren’t going to TAM and that’s my fault.
TAM felt it was important enough to kick the guy out of the reception, but did not think it was important enough to get detailed accounts or write down what happened, even though several people congratulated DJ for doing the right thing.
Since there are a number of incidents, detailed after this, where JREF staff helped someone who complained about behavior but DJ has no knowledge of any reports of behavior, I recommend that when they help someone who complains verbally they make a note of it and make sure they understand what happened, so that DJ has a more accurate record of what his staff has actually done and what incidents have been acted upon. I think many people, myself included, made the assumption that telling someone on the staff what was going and them acting on it means that you’ve reported the incident, but apparently if you did not write it down, it doesn’t count.
someone had blown through the nearly empty hallways while a session was ongoing to make lewd remarks to someone sitting at the tables; it was reported, I heard, and I joined in with another fellow to look for the “gentleman”…he’d escaped, so it didn’t happen? There was also an incident on twitter in which a prospective attendee threatened to grope Rebecca Watson on an elevator at TAM; I thought his registration was revoked
From Kitty Mervine:
I had an issue at the Del Mar [pre-DJ], was handled very well by two members of the JREF staff and South Point. I’m not kidding, my hair was set on fire. So well resolved except he showed up at South Point at the Del Mar. I talked to the South Point security and they assured me ONE WORD from me and he would be OUT. (and they had no clue WHO I was, but this guy is in their “data base” as a bad one). They were even “do you want us to remove him now? Do you feel uncomfortable?” The man was NOT attending TAM, he was simply at the Del Mar with his wife and talking quietly, so I said “no”. But later a security person from South Point (she informed me she was a veteran) came over to check with me again. I was “no I’m fine”. I would say South Point security has as their first goal the comfort of all their guests. A person can just be making you feel uncomfortable, and South Point will react quickly. I admire them so much.
And what follows are several other people’s memory of the speaker event that I talked about in my previous post.
I was a little surprised, since the day before (or within a couple of days before) I tagged him in a comment where I referenced how well he handled that situation, and why I took that as a good sign for how well the JREF was handling policing TAM. … Well, it wasn’t just you. Jenn had the exact same experience as you with the same guy at the same time. And I’m relatively sure it was made clear that it was as much of an issue as it was because the guy was going from woman to woman.
—
This guy was being very
persistent in his attentions to you, and then to Jamila Bey. Possibly to
other women as well, although I didn’t witness that. I didn’t see him
grope anybody, but I did see him follow you around persistently and be
very invasive of your physical space. I remember that he was drunk off his
ass. I didn’t personally witness DJ escort him out of the room, but I
heard second-hand that that’s what happened.
—
I remember the guy. He was definitely violating our personal space and hopping from woman to woman
—
I clapped DJ on the back and the other guy who helped kick creeper dude out. I can’t wildly speculate as to how insignificant was this event or how widespread were events similar such that none can be recalled, but it was memorable to me. And this wasn’t three women looking for something to bitch about- this guy was egregious enough to be obviously a nuisance (at LEAST) to the entire roomful containing both genders.
—
As I recall, DJ was approached because a drunk man was repeatedly bothering women, and it was my impression at the time that DJ either personally asked him to leave the reception, or saw to it that someone else escorted him out. I agree that he was ejected just from the reception and not from the entire TAM conference. I don’t recall the exact words that were used, so it’s possible that what DJ took away from the conversation was merely that someone was drunk and disruptive, but I know that it was clear to all of us that he was harassing women specifically, and we all believed that that was the reason this action was taken. As Jarrett said, we all were impressed at the time that the incident was taken seriously and we thought it was handled well.
—
To reiterate the specifics, I remember that he reached a certain level of extreme that had Ashley and Jen (I believe it was only the two of them standing together at that moment) that finally another gentleman (whose name I don’t recall) decided to go get DJ and explain the situation to him, as, in a way that’s not remotely surprising given everything we normally hear in these situations, Ashley and Jen were not comfortable stirring up MORE trouble on their own.
That said, I wasn’t privy to the conversation that this gentleman had with DJ, so it is purely ASSUMPTION on my part that he described the situation accurately. It’s possible he merely stated that the guy was drunk and obnoxious. I do recall overhearing DJ ask more than one person if they knew whose guest he was, implying he was trying to track the person’s validation for being at the reception, and shortly thereafter I noticed the man in question had been successfully removed.
So among a reasonable number of people it was known that this person was drunk, obnoxious, talking three inches from the faces of any women he could get near, and saying suggestive things to them. What I can’t say for certain is how well this was communicated back to DJ in the process of informing him that this man was harassing the women at the reception.
Earlier this year I had to make a financial choice — I could either afford to go to DC for the Women in Secularism conference or I could afford to go to Vegas for The Amazing Meeting. I say this not to denigrate TAM, but I could not have made a better decision. The Women in Secularism conference is far and away the best atheist/skeptic conference that I’ve ever been to. If you missed it, and you probably did, you need to not miss it again.
One of the things that I have trouble with in this movement is the lack of focus on issues that “matter”. I came to the secular movement from the LGBT movement, fresh off of the Prop 8 loss, I discovered that out-and-proud atheists also had a movement, and I was eager to join a fight that I thought impacted everything, including LGBT and women’s issues. So I went to the OCFA conference, to local skeptic and atheist meetups, I went to TAM, to Dragon*Con’s Skeptrack, to the SCA lobbying training, I wrote about it here, I wrote about it for secular.org, I gave speeches. In short, I got involved.
Photo by Brian Engler
This month is my two year anniversary of being involved with this movement and, as someone who cares deeply about social justice, it has very often been a very difficult movement to be a part of. For me the great appeal of secularism, the great tragedy of religion, and my own personal passion for this cause is all centered around the fact that religion is the source of many evils or used to justify those evils perpetrated against humanity. As was said several times over the weekend, UFOs and Bigfoot aren’t that important to me, skepticism is much more interesting when applied to issues that impact people’s lives in serious ways. Children, minorities, people of color, women, poor people, the disabled, the elderly, LGBT, and other marginalized groups would benefit so much from having the tragic consequences of religious bigotry removed from their lives.
So when people in charge of important organizations speak on a panel at TAM to say that social justice isn’t and shouldn’t be within the purview of skepticism, or people in my local atheist group leave because they think it is inappropriate that someone posted a link to a story about the Rally Against the War on Women because who cares about that feminist bullshit, or important people in the movement tell me not to bother submitting something to TAM if it has anything to do, even tangentially, with women’s issues, I start to doubt why I am even involved.
This conference was the antidote to that. If you are someone in this movement who wants it to be about creating change in the world, this is the conference you should have been at. If you are someone who thinks all that atheists and skeptics should do is talk about is why the bible is stupid and why UFOs aren’t real, then it really wasn’t for you. I think that UFOs and critiquing the Bible and all of that are important discussions, but I think they are a reflection of an old, traditional, white male scientist way of thinking, and it’s not why I want to be involved.
I know why I am involved, and this conference was it. In reality, it wasn’t the “Women in Secularism” conference, it was the “Secularism for Social Justice” conference. I am proud to have been a part of it.
HIGHLIGHTS (all quotes paraphrased)
Typing 13000 words while liveblogging
I place as much value on anonymous comments made on blogs as I do on statements of eternal love made after a late night drinking at a bar. – Susan Jacoby
This conference is a good start, the first of its kind, but these panels BELONG in regular conferences. There are places for these issues at every conference we hold. Especially on science and education. Things have not changed enough, and women are the primary educators and caregivers. Secular organizations, if they want more women, are going to have to address this. The reason men aren’t here isn’t because the conference isn’t welcome, but because men in the movement don’t give a shit about this. – Susan Jacoby
Both religion and sexism are hard to give up. They’re ingrained and it’s tough to overcome, especially because it’s not conscious. Giving up religion feels freeing, but giving up sexist beliefs as a man isn’t necessarily freeing because it means examining, acknowledging, and confronting privilege. It feels like reentering a place where you’re made to feel guilty. But sexism impacts men too, and men don’t seem to realize it. Men get called girly as an insult and are driven away from being themselves if they’re not “man enough”. They don’t care about reproductive rights. As though they don’t have to deal with getting a girl preggo. – Jen McCreight
Sikivu and Ophelia disagreeing strongly, and talking about it rationally and pleasantly.
Recognition of the underground acknowledgement of the bad guys in the movement and how women are afraid to speak up about it because it will hurt them instead of the well-known man.
Panel arguments that were over details of implementation and how to fight, not over whether there was a problem in the first place
I have never found a trace of morality in my own religion – Wafa Sultan
The complete rejection of the Prime Directive and everyone agreeing that helping women in other cultures is a moral duty, not cultural imperialism.
It’s cultural imperialism to help these women? Tell the to the girl who had her clitoris cut off, tell that to the girls who had acid thrown on their faces for going to school, tell that to the women being stoned to death for the crime of being raped. Tell that to them and then FUCK YOU. – Greta Christina
Having a military base in Saudi Arabia isn’t imperialism but opening a school is? If you can invade a country how can you not open schools? We need more secular schools, not more army bases! – Wafa Sultan
Wafa Motherfucking Sultan. For many personal reasons, it was a very difficult and traumatic talk to sit through and I was nearly sobbing by the end of it, if I hadn’t been transcribing, I’m sure I would have been. I hope that this talk goes up first, it needs to be seen.
A lot of people are talking about issues that apparently have nothing to do with secularism, should Catholic hospitals get public funding and refuse to give the morning after pill, should black boys be frisked without probable cause in NYC, we are skeptics, we’re good with numbers, we should care about it. These stories, we who are skeptical, we who believe that morality does not come down from on high, we who understand that it is our obligation as humans to first do no harm and make sure that others are not harmed, have to — HAVE TO — tell our stories. – Jamila Bey
We’re so foundational. If I can convince people to spend more time thinking about things, using critical thinking, it’ll fix a lot of these other problems I’m fighting for. Because our message is so basic and foundational, I think that it is a part of everything else. – Debbie Goddard
NITPICKS
Some of the talks were either too broad and not focused enough. I say this with absolute love, because there was not woman who spoke that I didn’t want to hear more from, but many of the talks were so detail rich on such a broad topic that they were very difficult to follow. Annie Laurie Gaylor was particularly guilty of this, I’m afraid I didn’t retain very much of what she talked about because it was basically just a list of names. Her argument, which was that women have historically been freethinkers, could have been made in a way that wasn’t as hard to follow. I just didn’t know any of the names or have any point of reference. Susan Jacoby did a lot of the using names without explaining who they are thing as well.
Using cards to take questions was great, but I didn’t have access to any and would have had to interrupt the session or leave to get cards to be able to ask questions. I think there needs to be a stack under each chair. Especially since my neighbors all grabbed all of the cards immediately when they sat down so I had none!
The talks were too long, I’d rather have heard shorter talks from more people and some of them felt a little stretched out, I’m thinking of Bernice Sandler’s in particular, but just generally I think hour long talks are excessive when you’ve got so many other people who didn’t get to speak. The panels were the perfect length.
Attendance. I would have liked to see a lot more men and people of color in the audience. I said it was the Social Justice in Secularism conference, and I think that’s how it should be advertised, because it wasn’t just about women and it wasn’t just for women and women’s issues are human rights issues. So much of what we covered this year was new territory for these conferences, I hope that the conference continues and continues to expand into covering topics like prison reform and drug policy — things that impact women even though they aren’t traditionally thought of as “women’s issues” and were brought up several times over the weekend.
I admit that, because I work in media and I study media, I am unusually focused on this, but I wish that there had been more time spent on addressing the representation of women in the media. And if you need someone to rant about that next year, I’m sure I’m only one of a whole lot of women in the movement who could go on and on for hours.
Readin’ a list; Photo by Brian Engler
And my final complaint, which is not a nitpick and not the fault of the conference, is the tragic performance of Edwina Rogers, who literally read a list from an old power point presentation over the course of 15 minutes and then left the conference entirely without taking any questions. She had been there before the speech, available to be approached, so she wasn’t hiding entirely and I wouldn’t accuse her of that, she was just avoiding having to publicly answer questions. And she clearly was not hired to be a charismatic public speaker and I never missed the overly enthusiastic rabble rousing of Sean Faircloth more. This wasn’t just my response, I heard this from several people who didn’t know anything about her background.
I also had the opportunity to meet her and I was disappointed in that as well. She just threw talking points at me about opening state chapters, and she and Woody, her handler from the SCA, both acted like they didn’t know who I was. This despite the fact that I was recruited by the SCA to be one of the the first bloggers for their organization’s website, I spent hours and hours last year with Woody, led a panel discussion for the SCA last year, and have sent them much feedback and, admittedly unsolicited, advice about Edwina. If they don’t know who I am, it’s insulting, and if they do know and they acted like they don’t, that’s even more insulting.
That said, Melody Hensley did an amazing job with this and deserves all of the credit in the world. Conferences, especially first ones, are incredibly difficult to pull off. This was so much better than I had hoped for, I have come away impressed by everyone involved. Well, almost.
I will be adding a list of resources mentioned while I was taking notes over the weekend, for people who want to read more or watch videos that were recommended.
As part of a fundraising effort for a cancer charity, the local Pastafarians at USC group took donations, in exchange for which the atheist members agreed to be sent to church. I was sent, along with three other students, to Brookland Baptist church, in West Columbia, SC.
Brookland Baptist Church
I have not been to church in a long time. The closest I’ve been in the last five years is probably the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship, but as their minister is an atheist, I’m not sure how much that counts. I have actually been to Brookland Baptist before, at the very end of 2006, when John Edwards was speaking there. I was highly skeptical of him, but after seeing him demand healthcare for all and declare we needed a way to be patriotic besides war, I absolutely fell in love. Which turned out real well.
Back to the church:
Brookland Baptist Church is a largely African American megachurch, founded in 1902. On Sunday, not only are the parking lots full, but the lots across the street are not enough. The church claims 5,300 members, seats 1,600 on the floor and 500 in the balcony.
Dove with laser beams
I arrived before my fellow heathens and had to wait outside for them. Initially, I was quite self-conscious because everyone was staring at me, but when I realized it was just because I was the only white person there, not because I was an atheist, it became less worrisome. For better or for worse, church services seem to be very heavily segregated. Just as you’d only find one or two African-Americans at your average Episcopalian service, you’ll only find one or two white people at your average Baptist service. They were, despite the staring, very nice and friendly.
The rest of the cohort arrived and we were sent up to the balcony because one of our members wanted to film some of the service. I was a little disappointed not to be in the middle of the throng of people, but also relieved that no one would be judging me for being on Facebook during the boring parts.
And boy were there boring parts!
I am a temporally minded person and therefore was already highly irked that the service started 15 minutes late. I was even more irked when it turned out that the service lasted nearly two and a half hours. I would have much rather re-watched The Hunger Games with that time! How someone sits through that every Sunday is beyond me.
Aside from the absurd length, I didn’t really note too many significant differences in the structure and audience participation than the last time I went to an Episcopalian service. Admittedly, that service was at one of the churches that left the American Episcopalian church to join the Rwandan one because they hate gays so much, but you know, Episcopalianish. Brookland did, however, have one of the best announcement voices I’ve ever heard — it was like the “In a world” voice, but he was just reading the locations and dates of events. It was awesome.
This is the song that never ends
There was a lot of singing. Interminable singing while the collection plate went around. As much as comedians joke around that the Anglican church is joyless, but the Baptist church goes crazy with the music, there was no evidence of that. The musak style choir songs were not joyful, just very long. Fortunately, I had a book, since we were subjected to what probably added up to over an hour of this.
We were, however, very fortunate to have attended the day that we did because the focus was on education and they were recognizing the scholastic achievements of their students. I don’t know what there normal services and sermons look like, but this was a perfect illustration of how important churches are to the minority community here. It’s heartwarming to see an institution take so much time and effort to help children succeed and overcome the shortcomings of their schools and local environments. It is a real shame that, in most cases, the only place they can find this support is in churches. I know I’ve said it before, but I will say it again, secularists need to pick up minority causes — they are basic human rights issues and we should be on the front lines supporting them.
The church gave out scholarships to graduating high school seniors, and then had a college graduate come and deliver the speech for the day. Anrae Jamon Motes graduated from MIT in 2010 and currently works as a consultant; he came to give advice to students in the congregation. He was fantastic.
Motes plays with legos; I love the internet
The entire thrust of the speech was about using education to empower yourself, especially economically. This is an important message to this community, a community that does not generally have economic power. He did not really talk about religion until the very end of the speech, where he focused on the support system that the church had given him. Truly it is not faith that changes these people’s lives, but the actions and support of this community, and that’s something that is quite moving.
That said, he did give some of the credit to Jesus, but I was very impressed by how pragmatic and practical the overall message of the entire day was. This was not a day about God’s achievements, it was a day about people’s achievements, and much more enticing to an outsider for being so.
At the very end, the deacon made a call for people to join at a protest/celebration for the arrest that has finally come in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. There was a general call for people to be more proactive, to do more than just talk and complain and protest, to actually get out there and vote to change things. Their goal is to empower people through evangelism, education, and economic change and they emphasized that their community “is about more than winning souls for Christ, it’s about changing lives.” And to that I can certainly say, “Amen.”
So, I sent my blog post yesterday to the Reason Rally essay contest and won two seats in the VIP section. Because I got here early, I actually got a seat in the front row. If you’d like to follow me, I will probably posting mostly on facebook, which you can follow, or twitter.
The essay also got posted on RichardDawkins.net. I am so stoked I might explode.
I have posted so much about the Reason Rally in the last few weeks, but I have one last thing I want to talk about: why I care so much about this event.
Many of my friends talk about this event as a rallying of the troops, a way to build morale and group identity among secular America. Plus, it’s a big party with others like us! This is important, absolutely, and I wouldn’t want to take anything away from those who are going for this reason, but it is not why I am going. I am going to demand a voice.
I came to the atheist movement in a somewhat circuitous fashion. I’ve been a non-believer since I was eight. I found my teeth in my mother’s jewelry box and, having already been quite suspicious of the entire thing, concluded that there was no Tooth Fairy and, therefore, no Easter Bunny, no Santa Claus, no Jesus, and no God.
I didn’t become vocal about my atheism until after reading Hitchens’ “God is Not Great”, but even though I cared deeply about secularism, it was not my primary cause. I was more interested in being an activist, and I didn’t see any opportunities for activism for secular causes. Instead, I spent my time fighting for civil rights for LGBT, women, and minorities. When I lived in California and campaigned against Prop 8, the gay marriage ban, I finally met atheists and skeptics who were fighting, actively, for political change.
Secularists need to join one another, not only to create community and acceptance, but to demand it. I am incredibly lucky that, despite being from South Carolina and the Bible Belt, my family tolerates my non-belief — mostly in the hope that I’ll get over it, but still. There are so many people I know, including those who are active locally, who cannot speak publically about their lack of belief for fear of losing their families and their jobs. There are so many people I know who have been mistreated by the religious, so many children hurt and abused because the law gives special rights to religion, and many others who feel they can never make an impact politically unless they kowtow to the Christian Fundamentalist majority in our state and our country.
Change is started, yes, by coming out of the closet, and this is a national coming out day for the non-religious, but change also comes from demanding your voice be heard politically. The public attitude towards women, minorities, and gay people has been changed by individuals demanding a voice AND by the movements demanding legislative change and support.
I could not be more excited to see Tim Minchin and Eddie Izzard, two of my favorite performers, but I am also excited to see Sean Faircloth and Herb Silverman, who have made significant legislative impacts, and to see two brave men who serve in Congress and are willing to risk the political stigma of associating with atheists. I am excited that we are not just speaking to ourselves anymore, we are speaking to the world, to the country, to the government that should be serving us.
We are going to Washington not just for ourselves, but because we absolutely have to. We have a voice and we refuse to be ignored any longer.
Two of the most badass women in the atheist movement are going to be in Columbia, SC during the next week. It’s pretty amazing.
Tomorrow night (2/23) Sikivu Hutchinson will be here talk about, among other things, Strom Thurmond, race, and religion. Which gives me an excuse to post the following picture!
Strom "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement" Thurmond
Then!! Then it will be Greta Christina, who is tied with Jen McCreight and Heidi Anderson as my favorite people of all time ever in the atheist movement, on Sunday! I AM SO EXCITE. She will be talking about sexuality and religion, which gives me an excuse to post THIS picture:
The Heroes Columbia Deserves
Details for Sikivu’s talk here: http://www.facebook.com/events/298007953588030/
Details for Greta’s talk here: http://www.facebook.com/events/389913497701994/
Cee Lo Green changed a line in Imagine from “no religion too” to “all religions true” and the atheists and BeatlesFreaks are pissed. The sacred line about “no religion” was changed in a song about everybody getting along to be about everyone getting along in a slightly different way, and so people naturally are not going to get along about it…
What Cee Lo did is way more respectful and less cowardly than the way most people just cut the line entirely. And the way Cee Lo changed the line is actually completely in sync with Lennon’s intentions. He wasn’t trying to say there shouldn’t be anything religious, he was saying that all religions should get along. Lennon, on the lyrics, “If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion—not without religion, but without this ‘my God is bigger than your God’ thing—then it can be true.”
Compare MLK’s dedication to the worldview expressed in “Imagine.” The song doesn’t advocate any action, it doesn’t detail any specific problems or solutions it just sort of drifts along and says, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if things were great?” Not every song needs to be a treatise on geopolitics but shouldn’t a “meaningful” song actually mean something?
We’re talking about a guy who was unbelievably wealthy who brought the nonsense of eastern mysticism to millions of people singing about no religion and no possessions. I call bullshit.
I agree that the sentiment of the line is stupid, but the fact of the matter is that it is exactly what Lennon was trying to say, because Lennon was a namby pamby, non-committal, everyone is equally good sort of person, apparently just like Cee Lo Green.
Nearly a month ago, I introduced you to the Columbia Coalition of Reason, which had put up a billboard inviting local non-theists to contact us. The reaction from Christians was predominantly negative, but we also received a lot of very positive responses from both non-believers and believers.
This week, a local church decided to put up a billboard in the same location in the digital rotation along with our billboard as a direct rebuttal.
This is fantastic. One, it means we’re in the news again, and two, it means we’ve opened a dialogue with local people of faith.
Dustin Tucker, the guy who has coordinated the billboard effort, was interviewed by local TV station WLTX and spoke to how great it was that the opposing view was speaking up and expressed hope that the atheists would be able to do some sort of joint charity effort with Park Street Baptist Church, something that’s already in the works.
Unlike the responses to the previous news stories, the ones to this seem much more level and reasonable. Here are my two favorites:
Wow…if the billboards can co-exist..perhaps the believers and non-believers will find a way to co-exist as well.
If one wants to see God look into the eyes of a child and you will see Innocent little angels. Those who choose not to believe live very empty lives.
I love kids, don’t get me wrong, but they are definitely demons.
If you’d like to know more about the billboards you can go over to Friendly Atheist, where the president of the Pastafarians at USC has done a nice write up, go listen to the podcast I did at A Matter of Doubt, or:
TUNE IN TONIGHT! (Sunday, 12/18) at 8PM EST to Reason Podcast where someone from the group will be chatting about it live!
Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. – Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)
