You can do it! There’s a petition asking President Obama to speak out on behalf of jailed Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan. It needs 25,000 signatures by mid-August to get a response from the White House. Easy, right?
Being someone who is deeply interested in history and who is trying very hard to find a job as a history teacher, my tale o’ atheism is essentially historical, with the subject being myself. When I was little my mother tried very, very hard to convince my younger sister and myself that her liberal Methodist faith was an integral part of being a good and wholesome person. We all went to church, we went to Sunday School, mom ran the Children’s Church program, we sang the songs, we missed NFL games on Sundays so we could help clean up the kitchen on communion days, and so on and so forth. I can’t say any of it was ever super-intense, in your face, be-saved-or-be-damned like many churches seem to be, and all in all it wasn’t too bad. I heard over and over again that it was a good thing to do good things, and I figured that wasn’t a bad idea at all. It wasn’t until I got older and started to think seriously about making the religion plunge that I began to see that “doing good things” included doing a lot of things that didn’t seem particularly good at all. I learned it was a good thing to go vote for the anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, borderline racist candidates with R’s next to their name. I learned it was a good thing to help buy the church a new jumbo-screen and a fancy new building (with a gift shop!) with a giant sign, even though there wasn’t a thing wrong with our building.
The Atheist Foundation of Australia would like their prime minister to answer one simple question:
Dear Prime Minister. Against the strongly expressed concerns of mental health professionals, teacher unions and secular organisations, why do you allow the outrageous situation to continue where largely unqualified, religious evangelists have access to young children in public schools, in the form of the National School Chaplaincy Program?
She’s been dodging it, of course, and I suspect that if she were backed into a corner she’d be entertainingly frantic in her efforts to escape. So let’s corner her! And she has made the mistake of making that possible.
Dear members and supporters,
OurSay is giving us the opportunity to directly ask Prime Minister
Julia Gillard a question, and we have chosen to focus on the
outrageous taxpayer funded National School Chaplaincy Program.This Saturday, Gillard will answer three of the most popular questions
as chosen through OurSay. One of these questions could be ours.Please follow these simple steps to make sure that we have a seat at
the table:1) Sign up for OurSay
2) Vote seven times for our question:
3) Recruit a friend to do exactly the same
Click here to get started: http://oursay.org/s/2ea
We only have until Thursday but, if we all came together – we could
make sure that this important issue is being heard by Prime Minister
Gillard and all of Australia that very Saturday.Regards, David Nicholls
President – Atheist Foundation of Australia
PS. Make sure that you sign up and vote seven times to get an answer
from Gillard on Chaplaincy.
It’s a poll with some teeth. Let’s make Gillard dance!
I was talking with a couple of Christians after a band practice one evening. It dawned on me how primitive but totally defended their ideas were. Of course if they were rational they would not be religious. I noticed the religious invoke God or the supernatural (capable of something illogical or inexplicable) whenever I have cornered them or their arguments and was able to show their views were wrong, self contradicting or baseless. They use invoking the supernatural as a ploy in any argument they are losing. They also use a supernatural claim when they do not know, understand or accept evidence.
I wish I could be there. The Humanist Film Festival is happening on 26-28 October, and they’re looking for submissions. If you’ve got anything that fits their categories, send them in soon. They’re looking for films that speak to humanist themes, including:
Reason, Critical Thinking and Skepticism (such as claims of the paranormal, critical thinking education, rational living, etc.)
Ethics and Human Wellbeing (including human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, rational ethics, challenging scriptural ethics, sex education and attitudes about sex, etc.)
Science and the Natural World (e.g. science appreciation, science education, evolution, global warming, pseudo-science and pseudo-medicine etc.)
Freedom of Thought, Speech and Critical Inquiry
Challenging the Claims and Value of Religion (e.g. anti-apologetics, education about atheism and atheists, uncovering problems with religion, etc.)
Separation of Church and State
Joie de vivre and human thriving (art and aesthetics, living the good life, human progress etc.)
And here’s their mission:
The Portland Humanist Film Festival is an outreach event designed to broaden the understanding and acceptance of a secular, humanist world view. It specifically addresses audiences who are friendly to our views but who are not necessarily familiar with atheism or humanistic ethics, or why we value reason and scientific thinking. The Film Festival presents these themes through an accessible, entertaining medium.
Got any suggestions? If you’re a godless filmmaker, think about sending them something!
Massimo Pigliucci lays out the story of the misogyny wars tearing bloody great rifts in the atheist/skeptic community. I doubt that it will heal anything, though, because the reasonable position he lays out is exactly the one that the freethoughtblogs and skepchick communities have been arguing for since the very beginning.
But one can hope that one more reasonable voice might wake up a few more people.
They’re not much alike, except in one thing: they’re both supporting creationist schools.
A group of creationists has gained approval from the Government to open a fully state-funded Free School in 2013. The group are behind the plans for ‘Exemplar – Newark Business Academy’, a revised bid from the same people who proposed ‘Everyday Champion’s Academy’ last year. Everyday Champion’s Academy, which was formally backed by Everyday Champions Church, was explicitly rejected due to concerns surrounding the teaching of creationism.
In February 2011, while promoting the Everyday Champions Academy bid, Everyday Champions Church leader Gareth Morgan stated that ‘Creationism will be taught as the belief of the leadership of the school. It will not be taught exclusively in the sciences, for example. At the same time, evolution will be taught as a theory.’
And the United Kingdom won’t even have the compensatory advantages of great jazz, cajun food, and a willingness to party all night long. Creationism, boiled cabbage, and Morris dancing? There’s not one win anywhere in there.
Follow the link, read the details, and complain to your government!
But it is so stupid that we can poke fun at it!
I grew up fundamentalist Protestant in the deep South. Church three times a week, Bible reading and prayer most nights at home, the whole nine yards. Looking back on my childhood, though, I think religion’s grip on me began to slip at an early age. The problem was, I simply didn’t feel guilty about “sins” such as swearing, petty gambling, and such. (I mean, seriously, how many real sins does your average eight-year-old commit, anyway?) I felt pangs of conscience when I hurt somebody, but not when I committed a victimless “sin.”
This is a story that I have written numerous times, however I never feel that it is comprehensive enough, or at the same time concise enough. That is how I am with my writing. Especially in factual cases, such as this; I aim to write with honesty and provide each detail of the events that led to my atheism showing the logical progression that it took, being both in-depth and at the same time avoiding the sense of clutter and babbling that plagues me. I often feel that my writing becomes incoherent and am never totally satisfied with the final result. But here I begin once more the story of my deconversion from the Christian faith.
Like the majority of middle class westerners, I was born into the dominant religion of Anglo-European tradition – Christianity. My earliest and fondest memories of family include attending church and reading Bible stories. Though my early childhood wasn’t a particularly religious one, there was always an element that was drawn to the warm sense of group identity that came with visiting my ‘uncle’s’* church. *(He wasn’t actually my uncle. The pastor of a Baptist Church and my mother’s former guardian during her time under the care of the Bernardo’s foundation as a child, I had come to know him and his wife colloquially as aunt and uncle, and their children were referred to as my cousins – due to this I still have a strong familial bond with them to this day.) This church remained an occasional place of attendance during my growing-up and was a significant influence on my developing faith.
