Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Are Atheists Because We're Open-Minded

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Atheists are open-minded, and we are willing to consider the possibility that we might be mistaken. In fact, most atheists used to be believers — it’s the fact that we are open-minded and willing to change our minds that made us become atheists. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Are Atheists Because We're Open-Minded
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Atheist Meme of the Day: Religion Is Not Necessary

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Religion is not necessary for a society to function. Many countries have high rates of freely chosen non-belief, and those countries not only function — they have lower crime rates, better health care and education, and stronger metrics of happiness and social responsibility generally than more religious countries. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Religion Is Not Necessary

New Fishnet Story: "I Wish You Were Braille"

Fishnet logo
I sat up and kissed him hard; part of my brain wanted to take a chunk out, to consume him, chew him up and swallow. We knelt on the bed facing each other. Finally I could reach his ears, his neck; I ran my tongue in the hollows of his collarbones and followed the thumping vein in his neck up to the back of his ear. His hands were all over me, under my clothes, on top of them, like they were another layer of skin that felt just as good to touch as my bareness underneath.

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That’s an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I’m editing: I Wish You Were Braille, by Louise Lagris. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "I Wish You Were Braille"

Atheist Meme of the Day: You Can't Have It Both Ways

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

If you’re going to point to all the wonderful things in the world as evidence of God, you have to explain all the horrible things in the world as well. With a better explanation than “mysterious ways.” Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: You Can't Have It Both Ways

Why Does Porn Matter?

Marieandjack
Why does porn matter?

In my career as a sex writer, I’ve written many times in defense of porn. I’ve written about why it’s morally defensible. I’ve written about why it’s legally defensible. I’ve written about why it’s a valid thing for people in monogamous relationships to enjoy. I’ve written about why it’s feminist… or at least, why it can be feminist, why it’s not automatically and by its very nature sexist (even though a fair amount of it is).

Today, I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about why porn matters. I want to talk about what porn contributes: to individuals, and to a culture. I want to talk about why porn has redeeming social importance… even the “no redeeming social importance” stuff, the sleaziest, skankiest, artistically shabbiest, porniest porn you can imagine. I want to talk about why porn, simply by its nature as porn, has value.

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Thus begins my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, Why Does Porn Matter?. To find out why I think porn — not sex art, not erotica, but regular old “purely for the sake of turning people on” porn — is important and valuable, read the rest of the piece. (And if you feel inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog — they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Why Does Porn Matter?

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Are Happy

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Atheists are happy and fulfilled, as much as anyone else. Many of us seem cranky in arguments on the Internet — but that’s because we’re in arguments on the Internet. In the rest of our lives, we have as much satisfaction, contentment, and joy as anybody. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Atheists Are Happy

Why "The Universe Is Perfectly Fine-Tuned For Life" Is a Terrible Argument for God

This piece was originally published on AlterNet.

Radio control knobs
“But the Universe is so perfectly fine-tuned for life. What are the chances that this happened by accident? Doesn’t it seem like the Universe had to have been created this way on purpose?”

As I’ve written before: Many arguments for religion and against atheism are so bad, they can’t even be considered arguments. They’re not serious attempts to offer evidence or reason supporting the existence of God. They’re simply attempts to deflect legitimate questions, or ad-hominem insults of atheists, or the baffling notion that “I want to believe” is a good argument, or attempts to just make the questions go away. Or similar nonsense.

But some arguments for religion do sincerely offer evidence and reason for the existence of God. They’re still not very good arguments, and the evidence and reason being offered still don’t hold water…. but they’re sincere arguments, so I’m doing them the honor of addressing them.

Today’s argument: the argument from fine-tuning.

Orbits
The argument from fine-tuning goes roughly like this: The Universe is perfectly fine-tuned to allow life to come into being. The distance of the Earth from the Sun, the substance and depth of the atmosphere, the orbit of the Moon, the nature of matter and energy, the very laws of physics themselves… all are perfectly tuned to let life happen. If any of them had been different by even a small amount, there could not have been life on Earth. And the odds against this fine-tuning are astronomical. Therefore, the Universe, and all these details about it, must have been created this way on purpose. And the only imaginable being that could have created the universe and fine-tuned it for life is God.

Okay. We have some serious misunderstandings here.

The Perfectly Fine-Tuned Puddle Hole

Let’s assume, for the moment, that the Universe really is perfectly set up for life, and human life at that. I don’t think that for a second — I’ll get to that in a bit — but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it’s true.

Does that imply that the Universe was created that way on purpose?

No. It absolutely does not.

Yellow_dice
Here’s an analogy. I just rolled a die ten times (that’s a six-sided die, all you D&D freaks), and got the sequence 3241154645. The odds against that particular sequence coming up are astronomical. Over 60 million to one.

Does that mean that this sequence was designed to come up?

Or think of it this way. The odds against me, personally being born? They’re beyond astronomical. The chances that, of my mom’s hundreds of eggs and my dad’s hundreds of millions of sperm, this particular sperm and egg happened to combine to make me? Ridiculously unlikely. Especially when you factor in the odds against my parents being born… and against their parents being born… and their parents, and theirs, and so on and so on and so on. The chances against me, personally, having been born are so vast, it’s almost unimaginable.

But does that mean I was destined to be born?

Does that mean we need to concoct an entire philosophy and theology to explain The Improbability of Greta-ness?

Lottery_winner
Or does it simply mean that I won the cosmic lottery? Does it simply mean that my existence is one of many wildly improbable outcomes of the universe… and if it hadn’t happened, something else would have? Does it simply mean that some other kid would have been born to my parents instead… a kid whose existence would have been every bit as unlikely as mine?

Yes, life on Earth is wildly improbable. And if it hadn’t happened, some other weird chemical stew would have arisen on Earth, one that didn’t turn into life. Or life would have developed, but it would have evolved into some form other than humanity. Or the Earth would never have formed around the Sun, but some other unlikely planet would have formed around some other star. (Maybe one with cool rings around it like Saturn, only Day-Glo orange with green stripes.) If life on Earth hadn’t happened, something else equally improbable would have happened instead. We just wouldn’t be here to wonder about it.

Douglas Adams (of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame) put this extremely well in his renowned Puddle Analogy. He said:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”

Puddle
Yes, the hole fits us rather neatly. But that doesn’t mean the hole was designed to have us in it. We evolved to fit in the hole that happened to be here. If the hole had been shaped differently, something else would have happened instead.

And how perfect is this hole, anyway?

Bitter Expanses of Cold and Blasting Chaotic Heat — The Perfect Vacation Spot!

Douglas Adams’s puddle analogy doesn’t end there. It continues:

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

How perfectly fine-tuned for life is the Universe, really?

Life on Earth has only been around for about 3.7 billion years. Human life has only been around for 200,000 of those years (more or less, depending on how you define “human”).

Sun red giant
And since the surface temperature of the Sun is rising, in about a billion years the surface of the Earth will be too hot for liquid water to exist — and thus too hot for life to exist.

The universe, on the other hand, is about 14 billion years old. (Post Big Bang, at any rate.)

Therefore, the current life span of humanity is a mere one 7,000th of the current lifespan of the Universe.

And after Earth and all of humanity has boiled away into space forever, the Universe will keep going — for billions and billions of years.

How, exactly, does that qualify as the Universe being fine-tuned for life?

To use Adams’ puddle analogy: The sun is rising. The air is heating up. The puddle isn’t getting smaller yet, but it’s destined to. And yet, many droplets in the puddle are still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright… because this world was supposedly built to have us in it.

Cosmic_Heavyweights_in_Free-For-All-_One_of_the_most_complex_galaxy_clusters,_located_about_5.4_billion_light_years_from_Earth.
And that doesn’t even take into account the mind-boggling vastness of space — the mind-boggling majority of which is not hospitable to life in the slightest. The overwhelming majority of the universe consists of unimaginably huge vastnessess of impossibly cold empty space… punctuated at rare intervals by comets, asteroids, meteors (some of which might hit us, by the way, also negating the “perfectly designed for human life” concept), cold rocks, blazingly hot furnaces of incandescent gas, the occasional black hole, and what have you. The overwhelming majority of the universe is, to put it mildly, not fine-tuned for life.

In other words: In the enormous vastness of space and time, one rock orbiting one star developed conditions that allowed the unusual bio-chemical process of intelligent life to come into being for a few hundred thousand years — a billion years at the absolute outset — before being boiled into space forever.

Somehow, I’m having a hard time seeing that as fine-tuning.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the question: If biological life was intentionally designed by a perfect, all-powerful God… why did he do such a piss-poor job of it? Why does the “design” of life include so much clumsiness, half-assedness, inefficiency, “fixed that for you” jury-rigs, pointless superfluities, glaring omissions, laughable failures and appalling, mind-numbing brutality?

Big bang
Today, I’m asking a similar question: If the universe was “fine-tuned” for life by a perfect, all-powerful God… why did he do such a piss-poor job of it? Why was the 93- billion- light- years- across universe created 13.73 billion years ago… just so the fragile process of human life in one tiny solar system could blink into existence for a few hundred thousand years, a billion years at the absolute most, and then blink out again? Why could an asteroid or a solar flare or any number of other astronomical incidents wipe out that life at any time? If the universe was “fine-tuned” for life to come into being, why is the ridiculously overwhelming majority of it created to be so inhospitable to life? (Even if there’s life on other planets, which is hypothetically possible, the point still remains: Why is the portion of the Universe that’s hospitable to life so absurdly minuscule?)

Atheists are often accused by religious believers of being arrogant. But it’s hard to look at the fine-tuning argument and see any validity to that at all. Believers are the ones who are arguing that the Universe was created just so humanity could come into existence… and that the immeasurable vastness of stars and galaxies far beyond our reach and even beyond our knowledge was still, somehow, put there for us. Maybe so we could see all the pretty blinky lights in the sky. Atheists are the ones who accept that the Universe was not made for us. Atheists are the ones who accept that we are a lucky roll of the dice; an unusual bio-chemical process that’s happening on one planet orbiting one star that happens, for a brief period, to have conditions that allow for it. (I know this is kind of a buzz-kill; here’s a nice humanist philosophy about it that might cheer you up.)

Red_and_blue_dice_3
Yes, the existence of humanity is unlikely. But so is my personal existence, and the existence of the Messier 87 galaxy, and the roll of a die in the sequence 3241154645. That doesn’t mean these things were designed to happen. We are a puddle that evolved to fit in a convenient hole. There is no reason to think that the hole was created for us. And there is every reason to think that it was not. If “The existence of life in the universe just seems too unlikely” is the only argument you can make for why the universe was designed by God, you’re going to have to find a better argument.

Also in this series:
Why ‘Life Had To Have Been Designed’ Is a Terrible Justification for God’s Existence
Why ‘Everything Has a Cause’ Is a Terrible Justification for God’s Existence

Why "The Universe Is Perfectly Fine-Tuned For Life" Is a Terrible Argument for God

Atheist Meme of the Day: You Almost Certainly Know Some Atheists

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

You almost certainly know some atheists. (And not just on Facebook.) In the U.S., non-believers are about 10% of the population. You almost certainly have atheist neighbors, co-workers, family members. If you think you don’t, it’s because atheism is stigmatized, and many atheists don’t feel comfortable or safe revealing their atheism. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: You Almost Certainly Know Some Atheists

On Being Age-Appropriate

What does it mean to be age-appropriate?

And should we care?

Dress_shopping
Since I’ve been losing weight, I’m having to do a bunch of clothes shopping. Which means I’m having to completely re-think what kinds of clothes I want to wear. The kinds of clothes that looked good on me when I was fat just don’t anymore, and a bunch of things that looked suck on me when I was fat are now looking pretty great. (I am so happy to be wearing jeans again, I can’t even tell you.) And I’m having to re-think, not just what looks good on me now, but what I personally would like to wear.

But since I’m doing all this sartorial exploration at age 48, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for clothing to be age-appropriate. And, indeed, what it means to be age-appropriate in areas other than fashion.

Yes, this is one of my “thinking out loud” pieces. Deal with it. 🙂

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Tongue
In writing and thought about fashion and style, the idea of being age-appropriate is very common. And my reflexive reaction to this idea has always been, “Fuck that noise. Why should I obey society’s strictures about what I should wear at what age? Any more than I obey its strictures about what I should write or who I should screw or what god I should believe in?”

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But I’m also feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the kinds of clothes I wore in my 20s and 30s. A part of me does think that, if I want to wear ripped fishnets and Doc Martens, or mini skirts and brightly colored patterned tights, or black leather motorcycle jackets with chains, I should bloody well be able to do that. But another part of me — a larger part — has been feeling genuinely uncomfortable in outfits like that. They don’t make me feel sexy or creative or tough. They make me feel like an idiot. Like a batty middle-aged lady who’s trying too hard to not look her age.

So I’ve been looking at this question. Trying to decide what I really think about it, and trying to put what I think into words. And while I think there is some validity in that “Fuck what society says is age-appropriate” resistance, I think it’s also ignoring some important realities about fashion.

The main one:

I think fashion is a language.

Language
Fashion is a language we use to express different concepts about ourselves, and of our relationships to other people. Fashion is part of how we say “Person who accepts social norms” versus “Person who defies social norms.” Fashion is part of how we say “Sexually liberated” versus “Sexually conventional.” Fashion is part of how we say “I want attention” versus “I want to blend in.” Fashion is part of how we say “Masculine” versus “Feminine.” (Whether we’re male or female or neither/both.) Fashion is part of how we say “trendy urban hipster,” “suburban soccer mom,” “ex-hippie,” “Fortune 500 CEO,” “heavy metal biker chick,” ” organic farmer,” “gangster rapper,” “college student.” Etc. Etc. Etc. Not to mention all the nuances and balances and combinations of all these extremes: “I want to express my sexuality in a way that challenges gender norms,” “I want to stand out in a way that commands respect,” etc. Fashion is even part of how we comment on the language of fashion itself: part of how we say “I care about the language of fashion and want to stay current with it” versus “I wear clothes so I won’t be naked.”

And of course, we use different fashion language in different contexts. (Again, just like regular language.) We dress differently at Thanksgiving dinner than we do at a nightclub; we dress differently at a baseball game than we do at a funeral. (Most of us do, anyway. If we don’t, that’s a form of language as well.) Fashion isn’t just about expressing who we are individually: it’s about expressing who we are in different social situations, how we do or don’t fit into different niches, how we feel about those niches.

It’s a language with different meanings in different cultures and subcultures, obviously. (Just like the regular kind of language.) The meaning of a short skirt and stiletto heels in Manhattan is different from their meaning in, say, Dubai. And obviously, it’s a language that changes. (Again, just like regular language.) The way we use clothing to say “respectable matriarch” or “cheerful if somewhat flighty young man” is different now than it was 20 or 50 or 200 years ago. And as part of society, we can and do have an impact on how that language does or does not change. (More on that in a bit.)

Jeans
But the fact that the language of fashion changes, and that it varies from culture to culture, doesn’t alter the idea that it is a language. A language uses commonly- understood, generally agreed-upon vocabulary terms to express particular meanings, and combines those vocabulary terms in different ways to clarify those meanings and express their complexities and subtle shadings. Which is exactly what fashion does. “Fish” means something different from “laundry,” not because the meanings were handed down from on high, but because we all more or less agree on what those words mean. In the same way, jeans mean something different from a business suit… because we all more or less agree on what that fashion vocabulary means. And jeans with muddy boots and a baseball cap from the feed store mean something different from jeans with Doc Martens and multiple facial piercings, and something different again from jeans with stiletto heels and a $500 Dior T-shirt… because those combinations clarify the meaning. (Jeans being the fashion equivalent of the word “run,” with approximately eleventy thousand possible meanings that have to be clarified in context.)

Girl_at_fence
And part of what this language expresses is age. An outfit that expresses “10-year-old” is different from one that expresses “25-year-old”; different again from one that expresses “48-year-old”; different again from one that expresses “70-year-old.”

And that’s where dressing in a way that’s age-appropriate starts to make sense.

When I dress in a way that says “25-year old,” I feel like an idiot — because I’m saying something that isn’t true.

I want to dress in a way that expresses love and respect and value for who I am, and for the age that I am. Dressing in the language of a 25-year-old doesn’t do that. It makes me look like I’m trying too hard. It makes me look like I’m trying to look younger than I am.

Mannequin_girls
Our culture places a high premium on youth, especially for women. It assumes that sexuality and creativity and exuberance belong to the young — especially for women — and that becoming older means becoming asexual, conventional, and boring. It’s an idea I have tremendous problems with, and always have, even when I was younger. It’s an idea I want to loudly and passionately defy. And I think part of my “Fuck that noise, I’m going to wear ripped fishnets and Doc Martens if I bloody well want to” attitude was coming from that defiance.

But the more I think about it, the more I have to re-think that stance. Because I don’t think dressing like a 25-year-old makes me look like I’m defying our ageist society. It makes me look like I’m agreeing with it. I don’t think it says, “I think middle-aged women are gorgeous and hot, and fuck the society that tells us any different.” I think it says, “You’re right, society. Looking gorgeous and hot means looking like a 25-year-old. If I want to express my gorgeousness and my heat, I need to look as young as I can.”

Ageless-desire-juliet-anderson-dvd-cover-art
So if I want to express my position that middle-aged women are gorgeous and hot and sexual, I need to find a way to do it in the fashion language of middle-aged women. I need to find ways to say, “Middle-aged women don’t have to look like 25-year-olds to be hot.” My sexuality and my feelings about my body are very different than they were 23 years ago. They’re calmer, more sophisticated, better-informed, more secure, less boisterous, less about seeking attention, less about wanting to explore a hundred different things all at once. I still want to dress in a way that expresses my sexuality, and my feminism, and my defiance of gender norms. I just want to do it in a way that expresses how I feel about those things now — not 23 years ago. And I want to dress in a way that honors my middle-aged feelings about these things — not in a way that obscures them.

(Some of my specific strategies about that, btw: Revealing cleavage or legs, but not both. Or wearing clothes that are slinky and clingy, but that don’t show a lot of skin. Or wearing black patterned stockings instead of ripped fishnets or brightly-colored tights. Or wearing clothes that are high-necked but sleeveless, showing off and eroticizing a different part of my body than the standard ones. Or wearing clothes that are sexy, but well-made and classy. If y’all have other thoughts on this, I’d love to hear about them.)

Now. All that being said.

High-heels-x-ray
I do think it’s completely valid to resist and refuse some particular aspect (or aspects) of the language of fashion. I am, for instance, passionately resistant to the idea that high heels are an obligatory part of being a respectable woman. I think high heels are our era’s version of corsets and foot-binding — a way that our culture cripples and immobilizes women in the name of beauty and desirability — and while I don’t criticize women who choose to wear them, and even occasionally have fun with them myself (hey, I wear corsets sometimes, too), I have grave objections to the idea that all women must wear them all or most of the time if we want to be taken seriously. Fuck that noise.

But there’s a difference between resisting some particular form of the language… and resisting the very idea of language itself. Feminists, for instance, resist the idea of sexist language like “policeman” and “fireman,” and press for these words to be changed to “police officer” and “firefighter.” We don’t, however, resist the very idea of there being words to express “someone who enforces the law” and “someone who fights fires.” Similarly, I object to the idea that “woman who respects social norms and expects to be taken seriously” should be expressed with “shoes that impair your mobility and will ultimately cripple you if you wear them for too many years.” But I don’t object to the very idea of expressing the trope, “woman who respects social norms and expects to be taken seriously.” That’s a valid concept that many women want to express. (Some more than others, obviously…)

Rebelwithoutacause
And if what you want your clothing to express is “rebellion against social norms, including the social norms of fashion” — then mazeltov. That’s a valid concept to express, too. But I think that if we want to express that, we have to take responsibility for the fact that that’s what we’re expressing. It makes no sense for me to say, “When I wear fishnets and ratty mini-skirts and sky-blue Converse high-tops with Tweety Bird on them [I actually used to dress like that, btw], I’m just expressing myself, and I don’t care what anyone thinks”… and then get upset when people treat me like an unpredictable space cadet who doesn’t care if people take me seriously. Any more than it makes sense to say, in words, “Did you know that Picasso was a Scorpio, just like me, that’s why we’re both creative and love the color blue, and yesterday I was having the most amazing psychic conversation with a bluebird outside my window”… and then get upset when people treat you like an unpredictable space cadet who doesn’t care if people take you seriously. If we’re going to say “Fuck the social norms” in the language of fashion, we have to expect that people who do respect the social norms are going to react accordingly.

Tweety
Of course our clothing expresses who we are. It does that because it’s a language, with commonly- understood vocabulary terms that express particular meanings. Without that language, there’d be no expression, and sky-blue Converse high-tops with Tweety Bird on them wouldn’t express anything different than cowboy boots or Doc Martens or Gucci loafers. It doesn’t make any more sense to say, “How dare you make assumptions about who I am just because I’m wearing sky-blue Converse high-tops with Tweety Bird on them” — any more than it would to say, “How dare you make assumptions about what I mean when I use the word ‘fish.'”

And — to bring things back on topic — in the language of fashion, sky-blue Converse high-tops with Tweety Bird on them don’t just mean something different than Gucci loafers. They mean something different on a 25-year-old than they do on a 48-year-old.

Sarah six feet under
There’s a bit from the TV show “Six Feet Under” that always stuck with me. Sarah — Ruth’s sister, the fifty-something free spirit who runs the artists’ colony in Topanga Canyon — says, “Somewhere along the line, I started to realize I was no longer the youngest or prettiest girl in the room. For a while I satisfied myself with being the most intriguing  but eventually I just became the one in paisley.”

I don’t want to be the one in paisley.

Boobquake
I don’t want to be a batty middle-aged lady who’s trying to hang onto her youth. I want to be a comfortable, confident middle-aged woman who loves herself the way she is; who sees herself as part of society even as she’s critiquing it and trying to change it (indeed, whose critique of society is a central way she engages with it); who’s unconventional and adventurous but in a more thoughtful way than when she was younger; who loves her body and her sexuality and lives that out in a way that’s calm and secure; and who values her age and the knowledge and experience she’s gained from it.

That’s who I want to be. And in the language of fashion, that’s what I want to say.

Still trying to figure out how to do that, though.

Thoughts?

(Related post:
The Aging Slut)

On Being Age-Appropriate

Atheist Meme of the Day: Open-Minded /= Gullible

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Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Being open-minded doesn’t mean thinking all possibilities are equally likely. It means being willing to consider new ideas if strong evidence supports them. And that’s just as true for religion as anything else. Atheists aren’t close-minded — we’ll happily reconsider the god hypothesis if we see some good evidence for it. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheist Meme of the Day: Open-Minded /= Gullible