Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
Off topic, but considering your interest in both skepticism and gay rights, I was wondering what your take on James Randi’s decision to publicly come out (he was already out to friends and family) on For Good Reason.
My response to it is pretty much, “Oh, that’s nice.” Combined with a strong feeling of how sad it was that he felt he had to wait this long to do it. And a fervent hope that the LGBT community is as accepting of him as an atheist as the atheist community is being of him as a gay man.
I am not so sure about this meme. I have heard other people who were themselves Christians that there is a sizeable contingent of Christians who believe that there are other gods, or supernatural entities if you will, but that they are “false gods”.
To these people “not believing” means “not paying homage to”, rather than “likely does not exist”. Therefore, they already know why they don’t believe in these gods, in the sense that they understand that word, and see no indication in that that their own god is false, as they understand the word.
I’m not sure I agree with this one either. Someone who – for example – believes in a sentient “universally powerful” entity that could be defined as God or as a god (or goddess) is NOT an atheist. It doesn’t matter if they believe in one flavor of god over another or if they believe that all religions are just different systems to worship the same life-force (or whatever), the point is that belief is there.