Sgt. Justin Griffith is trying to get the US Army to provide to atheists the same kinds of support and services that they provide to religious groups. He is organizing on March 31, 2012 Rock Beyond Belief, that is advertised as “a day-long event on the military base Fort Bragg, North Carolina, complete with children’s activities, rock concerts and [Read more…]
Religious people like to claim that belief in god makes people happier and that this alone makes religion a good thing, worth preserving. There are many ways to respond to this, one of which is to echo George Bernard Shaw when he said “The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
But is it in fact true that believers are happier than unbelievers? Via Greta Christina, I read this report of a study that [Read more…]
I hear via Pharyngula that those provocateurs at American Atheists are going to fly an airplane banner over the stadium where the Super Bowl in being played on Sunday. It will fly from 9:30-11:30 am local time and will say “Football beats church anytime – atheists.org.”
What were they thinking? Don’t they realize that children may be among the tailgaters and see that message and be irredeemably harmed? Oh, these godless people can be so cruel.
I wonder if any of the interminable pre-game shows will broadcast the banner. If they do, you can cue the outrage from Fox News.
The organization Young Americans for Liberty, in association with The Future of Freedom Foundation is organizing an interesting ‘college tour’ on the above topic covering “habeas corpus, the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary rendition, torture, regime change, and a general discussion about how the war on terrorism has infringed upon the rights of U.S. citizens in the name of making us safe.”
The four events are free and will be streamed live on [Read more…]
In a comment to the earlier post on Einstein’s view of god, reader M. Nieuweboer pointed out that as Einstein got older, he seemed to dissociate himself more and more from religion and the idea of a god, and became more explicit in rejecting attempts to make him seem religious.
This comment piqued my interest and I began to wonder if there was a correlation between the age of scientists and their levels of disbelief. As a personal aside, I myself [Read more…]
I made the mistake of reading Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead before her more celebrated work Atlas Shrugged that supposedly provides the clearest articulation of her philosophy of objectivism. After a promising start, The Fountainhead degenerated into a dreary polemic, with two-dimensional stereotypical characters behaving in utterly predictable ways, the whole thing written in melodramatic style. Although I completed it, it was such a bad novel that I simply could not bear the thought of reading another 1000 pages by the same writer and so never read Atlas Shrugged.
It is not that I am averse [Read more…]
You don’t often see the word ‘coulombs’ in the newspaper, let alone in the sports section. So when it does, people sit up and take notice.
In a National Hockey League game between the hosts the LA Kings and the visiting Columbus Blue Jackets with the score tied at 2-2, replays showed that the clock stopped [Read more…]
Glenn Greenwald carefully documents how the ramping up of hysteria and warmongering over Iran is following the same script as that which led up to the attack on Iraq, and asks “Aren’t war advocates going to have to find at least a few superficial plot changes to maintain dramatic interest?”
Many of you would have heard about the uproar generated by the Susan G. Komen abruptly terminating its funding for Planned Parenthood. Suspicions are that they did it as part of right-wing attack on that organization. Because of the massive backlash, they have none gone into serious damage control mode.
Tbogg takes down the Komen organization [Read more…]
Ayn Rand devotees will be delighted to hear that part two of the film made from their icon’s hit book will be released before the elections so that they can all – well actually I am not sure what the film is supposed to tell them to do, other than perhaps prepare them to go Galt if the Kenyan-Muslim-Communist-Alinskyite is re-elected in November.
The producers seem undeterred by the fact that [Read more…]