As are we all, of course, but Ebert is setting an example for us all.

Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it.

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled “Go Gently into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

There has been no death-row conversion. He has not found God. He has been beaten in some ways. But his other senses have picked up since he lost his sense of taste. He has tuned better into life. Some things aren’t as important as they once were; some things are more important than ever. He has built for himself a new kind of universe. Roger Ebert is no mystic, but he knows things we don’t know.

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

Ebert takes joy from the world in nearly all the ways he once did. He has had to find a new way to laugh — by closing his eyes and slapping both hands on his knees — but he still laughs. He and Chaz continue to travel. (They spent Thanksgiving in Barbados.) And he still finds joy in books, and in art, and in movies — a greater joy than he ever has. He gives more movies more stars.

There is no dignity in death, but we can achieve some grace in life…and clearly, Roger Ebert is doing it.

We’ve lost one of the lively voices of freethought.

HELEN KAGIN died early this evening following complications from cancer surgery. She was 76.

Kagin was a heroine and activist in the Atheist movement. Along with her husband, attorney Edwin Kagin, she co-founded Camp Quest, a summer camp for the children of nonbelievers, which has grown into an international outreach. She and Edwin were frequent guests at various conventions, and belonged to several freethought groups.

In 2005, Helen and Edwin were named “Atheists of the Year” at the National Convention of American Atheists. Helen was active in the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She worked closely with Edwin and others organizing countless demonstrations and meetings, including the Rally for Reason which attracted hundreds of pro-science supporters who peacefully protested outside the opening of the Creation “Museum” in Petersburg, KY.

She was an outstanding wife, mother, friend to so many; and Helen also had an illustrious career as an anesthesiologist

We will miss her infectious laughter, her wonderful friendship and stalwart support for the cause of Reason and state-church separation.

Helen Kagin will be cremated. Edwin Kagin asks that expressions of sympathy in the form of donations be used to send kids to Camp Quest. There will be further announcements, including details of a Memorial event.

I stayed at Helen and Edwin’s house when the 300 students of SSA made their assault on the Creation “Museum”, and they were both wonderful people—I feel a little bit of Edwin’s pain now.

On a trip to the grocery store this evening, I kept running into little old ladies with these hideous ash smudges on their foreheads — I had to resist the urge to pull out a hankie, spit on it, and clean them up. I was wondering what was going on, but then discovered what was up: They were honoring the victims of Catholic dogma.

On this date in 1600, Giordano Bruno (née Filippo Bruno) was executed for heresy. The Italian philosopher was burned alive at the stake at age 52 for refusing to recant heretical ideas. Born Filippo Bruno in 1548, he entered the Dominican Order at Naples at age 15, adopting the name of Giordano. After being accused of heresy, he fled his Italian convent and traveled throughout Europe (1576 to 1592). During two years in England, Bruno wrote and published six dialogs, including “On the Infinite, the Universe, and Worlds” and “The Ash Wednesday Supper.” A Copernican, he rejected Aristotelian dogma and challenged entrenched religious teachings, declaring pantheist views. Some academics today regard him as a path-blazing intellectual, others as a victim of his nonconformity. When Bruno returned to Italy in 1592, he was arrested by the Inquisition. Bruno was imprisoned for seven years in the dungeons of Rome, where he was tortured and isolated before being executed.

Isn’t that sweet? I felt like joining them and scrawling an ashy “A” on my forehead in solidarity.

When I was visiting Iowa, I learned about the UNIFI blog, and the students told me that they have a weekly series called Blasphemy Friday, sort of like the Friday Cephalopod, only with heresy instead of molluscs. I thought that was brilliant, so I decided to steal their idea (it’s OK, atheist, you know), and just change it around a little, and do it on Sunday instead of Friday for extra sacriliciousness, and I’m going to focus on blasphemous imagery.

There’s real peril here. After all, if these images are so horrific that they make gods weep in anger, then think what they’ll do to minds of mere mortals: they will blast your brain and sear your soul, and turn you into gibbering feral fiends wandering the streets and committing acts of rapine, robbery, and ruffianism. Now I know most of you are already atheists so that won’t change anything for you, but there could be innocents wandering by…so I’ll always put these blasphemous pictures below the fold. It’ll be your choice. Pass by, or click through and…suffer the consequences.

[Read more…]

In an appalling act of bias, Judge Cherie Blair suspended the sentence of a man convicted of assaulting another and breaking his jaw because the assailant was a “religious man”. Apparently just being a member of a particular cult is sufficient to get your criminal penalties reduced by a few years in her court; the scales of justice aren’t quite fairly balanced for the godless.

At least we have AC Grayling on the case, who sharply points out the ethical bankruptcy of Blair’s position, and then turns around and also slaps around the people who defended Blair. I wouldn’t want to be Hugo Rifkind, who tried to make the tired argument that we need an objective source of morality, i.e. that vicious thug God, and gets dismissed with an excellent lesson in history and philosophy.

This is an awful advertisement for wherever Mr Rifkind studied philosophy. Either that or he was not paying attention in ‘week one’ when it appears (from what he says) his ethics course took place. And he certainly seems to have stopped thinking since then. Let me direct his attention to Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, Hume, Kant, and a few dozen others among the thinkers he ought to have come across in his studies, whose ethics are not premised on divine command or the existence of supernatural agencies, but proceed from consideration of what human beings, in this life in this world, owe each other in the way of respect, concern, trust, fairness and honesty. The rich deep tradition of humanistic ethics stemming from classical antiquity has a tendency to make much of what passes for morality in religion (‘give away all your possessions’, ‘take no thought for the morrow’, ‘women must cover their heads in church’) look merely silly or trivial – at least in regard to what is distinctive to the religion, and not part of wider ethics whether religious or non-religious. Indeed Mr Rifkind is somewhat overexposed in philosophical ignorance here, for he ought to know that what is of practical value in Christian ethics is an import from the late Hellenic and Roman schools, mainly Stoicism, in the fourth century CE and later, to supply the want of a livable ethics in a religion that, to begin with, imminently expected the end of the world and had no use for money, marriage, and other aspects of ordinary life. So as the centuries passed it had to look about for something more sensible, and of course found it in the classical pre-Christian tradition. And to put matters in summary terms: the Roman Stoic conception of good character knocks Mrs. Blair’s (and Mr Rifkind’s) into a cocked hat, where they belong.

Bored and godless? Want something fun to do?

• Visit the Phillipines! The Filipino Freethinkers are having a film festival on 27 February. It’ll be a whole day of classic atheist documentaries and comedy films.

• Quick, catch a plane to Australia: the Adelaide Atheists are having a youtube party. This is a cool idea: show up at a bar with a laptop and a video projector, and browse through a series of youtube clips on atheism.

See? Lots to do!