Dear Friend Who Voted for Romney: I’ve spent a week trying to process the fact that you voted for Mitt Romney. I still don’t know what those “conservative values” of yours are – you couldn’t tell me, and I can’t figure out what in the Republican Party platform you could agree with. I’m still hoping …
Category Archive: religion
Nov 14 2012
“She Had a Heartbeat, Too”
That is the phrase I want all of you “pro-life” people to remember: “She had a heartbeat, too.” And now she doesn’t, because people like you placed a doomed heartbeat above her own life. Look at the woman your morals killed. “She had a heartbeat, too.” Remember that. There is a life carrying that fetus …
Nov 04 2012
You’re Right. I Didn’t Love Jesus Enough.
Dear Christians who like to tell atheists-who-used-to-be-Christains that we just didn’t love Jesus enough; You may be on to something in my case. I was a Christian for only a few years, and a super-duper Bible-believing church-going God-is-an-awesome-God-and-Jesus-is-Awesome (yeah, they were heavy on the awesomes) Christian for only a few intense months. I loved Jesus …
May 30 2012
Thomas Paine: “A Calamitous Necessity of Going On”
I’ve been reading the works of 18th and 19th century heretics. I feel cheated. My education elided freethinking. If mention of a freethinker was necessary, textbooks and teachers focused on something else they’d done, not the actual freethinking bit. This allowed Christians to slumber happily in the delusion that in days gone by, not a …
May 24 2012
An Astute Observation on the Bible, Which Made Me LOL
I’m reading a lecture called “How the Bible Was Invented,” delivered by M. M. Mangasarian to the Independent Religious Society Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Illinois, although I’m not sure what year. The 10th edition of that lecture was printed in 1900, so I assume this was in the late 1800s, when lots of freethinkers were …
May 21 2012
“Don’t Think Your Life Didn’t Matter”
Leaving religion can be soul-crushing, at first. The memory of all that pain has faded for me, and it wasn’t as if I’d spent my life immersed in faith. I’d just been raised to believe God was out there, somewhere, and had a fleeting flirtation with Pentecostalism, before a years-long seeking after something. Something huge, …
May 02 2012
Praying for Murder
There’s a women’s prayer group praying for breast cancer. Stop for a moment and reflect: what do you think I mean? Do you picture a group of respectable middle-class women sitting in a circle, praying fervently for breast cancer to be cured? Is that your knee-jerk response when someone tells you a women’s prayer group …
Apr 30 2012
Teach the Controversy
And if you do, I’m bloody well going back to high school. It would be awesome. Raison d’etre for this post here.
Apr 28 2012
This Actually Is a Review of Victor Stenger’s New Book
Right. So. I promised a review of Victor Stenger’s God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion. Here it is. I kid. Although Mano Singham’s review is actually very good and straight-up and I recommend it. I’ll be playing the funny to his straight, as it were. Also, I’ll be focusing …
Apr 26 2012
A Book for Believers
Thank you for the excellent responses to my post sounding out the idea of a book for believers. With such a great many excellent suggestions, I got fired up and ready to go. I made a little list of points, and then figured I’d best see what’s out there already, so I fired up the …
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