Atheists have adopted Donald Trump's favorite catch phrase, but I do not think he will appreciate how they put it to use.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Nick Fish, a spokesman for American Atheists, claimed the signs aren’t meant to offend, but to spark a dialogue by adding a topical tag line.

“It’s a way of starting a conversation not just with this organization but within a community,” Fish told NBC News on Wednesday. “The choice is often between being provocative or not being heard at all. If we can start that initial conversation, then we’re doing our jobs to get the ball rolling and get our foot in the door.” 

Since the signs were put up on Nov. 30, many atheists in the affected areas have come forward in support of them, Fish said. These atheists claimed that the billboards made them feel as though they weren’t alone in their community. 

American Atheists, which has gone after Christian groups as well as other organized religions since they formed in 1963, specifically targeted areas that they felt were particularly religiously homogeneous. 

“It’s about targeting areas where religious identity is assumed. Albuquerque is not necessarily a conservative place,” Fish said, “but there is a lot of religious expectation there and we want to challenge that.”

There is of course very little in the Bible that is supported by the facts, so defining it as "fake news" seems perfectly reasonable.

Of course if reason was something that the majority of Christians were to embrace there would be a whole lot fewer Christians.

Before leaving office President Obama signs bill protecting Atheists and Freethinkers. I knew I loved this guy.

Courtesy of the Progressive Secular Humanist:  

For the first time, atheists and other nonreligious persons are explicitly named as a class protected by the law. 

President Barack Obama has signed into law the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act. The new law protects atheists, humanists, and other freethinkers around the world from religious persecution. 

Congress passed the international religious freedom bill protecting atheists, humanists, and other non-theists last week with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Obama signed the legislation into law last Friday, Dec. 16. 

The new law explicitly protects atheists, humanists, and other non-theists, and upgrades the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. 

I have to admit that as impressed as I am that Obama signed this bill, I am even more impressed that it received bipartisan support.

That is good news for this country, and even better news for those of us shunned by society for our critical thinking skills.

Also keep in mind that it is HIGHLY doubtful that this bill would have been written, or signed during a Donald Trump presidency.

Even with one foot out the door President Obama has our backs.

Ray "Banana Man" Comfort wins award for best science film. Wait, what happened?

So this is apparently an award given to Comfort for his ridiculous attempt to attack Atheism in a film which uses clips of Banana Man confronting scientists and college students with poorly presented "facts" and then carefully editing their responses to make them seem incapable of responding rationally.

Comfort claims to attack Atheism with science, but in fact the simply misrepresents science, refuses to accept correction, and calls that a win.

Here is how The Friendly Atheist responded to news of this "award.":  

The only time “science” appears in the movie is when Comfort asks random people how DNA could have possibly evolved on its own, a rhetorical question that he believes points to the truth of Intelligent Design. It’s not like he explains DNA. He doesn’t add to our scientific understanding of anything, unless you count ignorance as a virtue. 

The Friendly Atheist also points out that "Int'l Christian Film Festival" seems like a fly by night organization, and that there appears to have been no other films competing against "The Atheist Delusion." 

I think it is quite telling that a Christian film festival only gives a "Best Science Film" award to a movie that does nothing but attack scientific knowledge.

Pretty much says it all, don't you think?

My new favorite response to this stupid question.

I have literally never understood this question.

I put it right alongside "Well if there is no God, how would we know right from wrong?"

Makes my fucking head hurt.

The country's largest voting bloc is now the non-religious. That's right politicians, start pandering.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

More American voters than ever say they are not religious, making the religiously unaffiliated the nation's biggest voting bloc by faith for the first time in a presidential election year. This marks a dramatic shift from just eight years ago, when the non-religious were roundly outnumbered by Catholics, white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants. 

These numbers come from a new Pew Research Center survey, which finds that "religious 'nones,' who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters." That represents a 50 percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters compared with eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent of the overall electorate. 

"In 2008, religious 'nones' were outnumbered or at parity with white mainline Protestants and white Catholics," the survey's lead researcher, Greg Smith, said in an interview. "Today, 'nones' outnumber both of those groups." 

The growth of the non-religious -- about 54 percent of whom are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 23 percent at least leaning Republican -- could provide a political counterweight to white evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc for Republicans. In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify as white evangelicals, while 28 percent of Democratic voters say they have no religion at all.

Of course as the article goes on to point out the Achilles heel for the non-religious politically is that most of us are non-joiners.

That means we do not have a group around which to organize, unlike religious groups which have "Get out the vote" or "Souls to the Polls" programs in place.

Which raises the question, how do we mobilize a voting demographic that are predisposed to resist being directed to do anything, by anyone?

But just imagine all that we could accomplish if we could answer that question.

Just a reminder that there is a difference.

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion." Steven Weinberg.

There are now more non-believers in England than believers. Sooo jealous.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

The number of people who say they have no religion is rapidly escalating and significantly outweighs the Christian population in England and Wales, according to new analysis. 

The proportion of the population who identify as having no religion – referred to as “nones” – reached 48.5% in 2014, almost double the figure of 25% in the 2011 census. Those who define themselves as Christian – Anglicans, Catholics and other denominations – made up 43.8% of the population. 

“The striking thing is the clear sense of the growth of ‘no religion’ as a proportion of the population,” said Stephen Bullivant, senior lecturer in theology and ethics at St Mary’s Catholic University in Twickenham, who analysed data collected through British Social Attitudes surveys over three decades. 

“The main driver is people who were brought up with some religion now saying they have no religion. What we’re seeing is an acceleration in the numbers of people not only not practising their faith on a regular basis, but not even ticking the box. The reason for that is the big question in the sociology of religion.”

I don't want much folks, but I want to live long enough to see America become a nation where the majority are non-believers as well.

That my friends, will be a great day indeed. 

Okay well that's just hurtful.

Well I would argue that this is mostly nonsense and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of Atheism but apparently I am stupid, ignorant, and blind.

Creationist Ken Ham takes to Twitter and preacher man-splains the Reason Rally and what Atheists actually believe.

So the Reason Rally is getting ready to start on June 4th, in Washington D.C. and people could not be more excited.

Well not all people.

The "Reason Rally" 2016 advertised as "world's largest atheist party" is really a worship service--they worship man pic.twitter.com/InBNlhIYOg

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

I really don't think "worship" is the correct word in this context.

Atheists at Reason Rally 2016 are really worshipping the god of self--they exalt reason--they're faith is they arose by natural processes

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

Okay that's a little closer, but I think the word "faith" is once again being misused.

We need to be calling atheism for what it is--a religion-an anti-God religion--a religion that exalts fallible human reason-a worship of man

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

Okay seriously, worship, faith, and religion are all words that simply do NOT apply to Atheists.

Atheist Lawrence Krauss speaking at Reason Rally 2016 says "Forget Jesus...the stars died so you can be here.."--He is worshipping the stars

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

Okay well now we're just being silly.

Atheists work hard against Christianity cause they're putting their hands over eyes & ears and shouting "I refuse to see and hear truth!"

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

Atheists believe universe & live arose by natural processes--that's their religion--it's a blind faith religion--it's an anti-God religion

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) May 15, 2016

Yeah well it kind of goes on from there. And on, and on, and on, and....well you get the point.

Essentially the problem seems to be that there are more and more people thinking for themselves, and not looking for purpose in any of the books sanctioned by any organized religion.

And that REALLY seems to agitate folks like Ken Ham who depend on people NOT thinking for themselves for their livelihood.

Gee, maybe it's time to start making an honest living Kenny.

Christians are receiving special training so that they can confront Atheists at the Reason Rally. Oh this ought to be fun!

Courtesy of Reason Rally Outreach:  

The Atheists will be having another “Reason Rally”. They will be gathering, which gives us a great opportunity to witness to 20,000 atheists in one day. Our hope is to get 1,000 Christians to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. If you love to share the gospel or not this will be a great opportunity for you. With so many other believers sharing the gospel you will get to learn from other and enjoy great Christian fellowship. 

Friday night we will have a special training with Ray Comfort, Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport. Ray will be sharing an exclusive sneak peek of the first 10 min. of their upcoming film “The Atheist Delusion”, only to those that attend the Friday night training.

Wait, was Ray "Banana Man" Comfort on that list of trainers?

Holy crap this will be a debacle.

Here is more courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

It’s telling that they need training before approaching atheists. The idea here is that we’ll challenge them with arguments they don’t have responses to, so they need to know how to really get their message across. Given that trainer Ray Comfort’s past efforts have included exaggerated movies and a silly banana, this will inevitably be a crash course that takes the crash part literally.

Damn, I hope somebody takes footage of some of these exchanges between the Reason Rally attendees and the newly trained evangelists showing up to save their immortal souls.

You can bet I'll be posting it if they do.

A flyer apparently being handed out by Christians to stump Atheists.

What can I say?

There is simply no way to refute this logic.

Ken Ham has no idea what Atheists think.

The atheist religion -& that’s what is a RELIGION - is intolerant of Christianity as they worship nature & shake their fist at God

— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) March 19, 2016

For the zillionth time Atheism is NOT a religion.

We have no rituals, no holy books, and really no consensus on anything except for the fact that there is not enough evidence to convince us to accept the existence of any the gods worshiped by our fellow humans. 

As for shaking our fist at God, we do that exactly as often as we chase Leprechauns, shoo unicorns off of our lawns, and get into fistfights with Bigfoot.

Best argument for being an Atheist that I have seen in a while.

Apparently Bernie Sanders and I share the same religion. Update!

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

"Every great religion in the world -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism --essentially comes to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you," he said during CNN's Democratic town hall event on Tuesday night. 

Though Sanders was raised Jewish and believes in God, he identifies as a secular rather than a religious Jew. He doesn't often address his religion, and The New York Times notes that he sometimes even shies away from using the term "Jewish." 

But asked about his faith on Tuesday, he boiled it down to the belief that "we have got to work together." 

"It's very easy to turn our backs on kids who are hungry or veterans who are sleeping on the street, but I believe that what human nature is about is that everybody in this room impacts everybody else in all kinds of ways that we can't understand." he said. "That's my religion. That's what I believe in."

You know that's also what I believe in.

I obviously would not characterize it as my religion, but it is my philosophy.

I have to admit this is the answer concerning religion that I have been waiting to hear from a presidential candidate, and it is like music to my ears.

However having said that, it is also yet another reason why Sanders is unlikely to win a general election.

For all intents and purposes Bernie has just outed himself as an Atheist, more or less. And NOBODY is more reviled and mistrusted in this country than Atheists.

Christians especially are terrified of those who do not identify as religious, believing that morality is impossible without an all encompassing belief in God.

Preferably their god.

So even though Bernie Sanders has lived an incredibly ethical and honest life, the mere fact that he refuses to identify as religious, or let's face it Christian, makes winning the presidency a fantasy.

And believe me, probably nobody wishes that were less true than I.

Update: For those doubting my premise about the mistrust felt toward Atheists:   

Social science has long revealed high rates of secularphobia – the irrational dislike, distrust, fear, or hatred of nonreligious people – within American society. For example, a study by Penny Edgell of the University of Minnesota, from back in 2006, found that atheists come in last place when Americans are asked to rank members of certain racial, ethnic, or religious groups as potential spouses for their kids. And a Gallup poll from 2012 found that 43 pecent of Americans said that they would not vote for an atheist for president, putting atheists in last/worst place, behind Muslims (40 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a Muslim for president), homosexuals (30 percent wouldn’t), Mormons (18 percent wouldn’t), Latinos (7 percent wouldn’t), Jews (6 percent wouldn’t), Catholics (5 percent wouldn’t), women (5 percent wouldn’t) and African Americans (4 percent wouldn’t). 

Additionally, psychology professor Adrian Furnham found that people give lower priority to patients with atheist or agnostic views than to Christian patients when asked to rank them on a waiting list to receive a kidney, and legal scholar Eugene Volokh has documented the degree to which atheist parents have been denied custody rights in the wake of a divorce.

THAT is why no national politician in America will actually cop to being an Atheist, though in my opinion Bernie comes the closest.

I have read other interviews with him where he is even more blunt that belief in God plays virtually no part in his day to day life, nor on his political point of view.

0% of Icelanders 25 and under believe that the God created the world.

Courtesy of Iceland Magazine:  

Iceland seems to be on its way to becoming an even more secular nation, according to a new poll. Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God.

Gee, yet another country that is far more enlightened than America. 

Oh well, I think we're getting there.

Well this is good news, but I am still never going to Bangladesh.

Murdered Atheist Ahmed Rajib Haider

Courtesy of BBC: 

Two students have been sentenced to death in Bangladesh for the killing of an atheist blogger there in 2013. 

Six others were convicted of involvement in the murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death as he was returning home from a rally in the capital, Dhaka. 

A five-year sentence was given to the head of Ansarullah Bangla, the group suspected of carrying out the attack. 

Five more secular bloggers and writers were killed in Bangladesh in 2015.

As hard as it is to be an outspoken Atheist in America, it is NOTHING compared to the dangers of speaking out about religion in countries where the faithful believe such apostasy is justifiably punishable by death.

Sarah Palin COULD see herself voting for an Atheist, but only if the other choice was an ISIS sympathizer. Sadly I think that might be progress for her.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

During an interview on CNN, host Michael Smerconish noted that Palin’s latest Christian devotional book was very political. 

“Real world stuff, yep,” Palin agreed. “It’s really important that people of faith, atheists, anybody who would be looking for answers today, the best place to go to look for answers that deal with personal problems and political problems that our world, certainly that our nation is facing, it’s already spelled out for us — the answers — in the Old and the New Testaments.”

I'm sorry. So people who do NOT believe in a god nor have faith in the Christian religion should look for the answers to "real world stuff" in the Bible?

Is it possible that Sarah Palin has no idea what defines an "Atheist?"

What am I saying, of course that's possible.

However that does not keep Palin from reviling us as revealed by her response to Smerconish's next question, "Could Sarah Palin vote for an Atheist?" 

“Oof, gosh,” Palin stuttered at the idea of voting for an atheist. “If it all came down to that versus someone who believed in a religion that was hell-bent on destroying those who didn’t agree with their religion, who would literally want to kill those, the infidels who would not say, ‘Okay, I would go along with you,’ then I would.” 

“Which means, anybody who is sympathetic to what’s going on today with Muslims terrorists, who would crucify children and behead women and stop at nothing to try to destroy us and Israel and our allies, I’d choose an atheist over that!”

Smerconish then boiled that down to, “Okay, you’re voting for an atheist over an ISIS supporter.”

To which Palin essentially agreed but expressed displeasure that he "made it too simple."

So Sarah Palin MIGHT vote for an Atheist IF their opponent were a Daesh member or sympathizer.

Now see THAT'S why she never gets invited to my Saturnalia parties.

And by the way, it's not easy being so enlightened sometimes.

How some Christians respond when Atheists try to give back to their communities.

Does this qualify as a hate crime?

Because it seems like it should.

(H/T to the Friendly Atheist.)

There is a thing called "NRA News" and they blame just about everything on the "Godless Left." Hey!

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

After the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the Daily News deployed all of its tabloid cover in an attack on what it called America’s “gun scourge” and the “cowards,” meaning the politicians, hiding “behind meaningless platitudes” instead of fixing the problem. “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS” was the headline. Now the National Rifle Association has fired back, with its own screaming headline, directed at the Daily News specifically and the “Godless Left” in general. Narrated by a grim-faced Dana Loesch, and interwoven with video footage of what appears to be first responders, the NRA video leaves no stone unturned and none of its demons unscathed as it connects the dots, as the video’s introduction says, between “the global alliance of elitists, media activists, Hollywood celebrities, campus radicals and political power mongers who have openly attacked sacred American values and the people who cherish them with ruthlessness, contempt and downright hatred,” and who share “the same fanatical fervor to tear apart the foundations of America as the terrorists who threaten our very survival. Only hours after an attack of radical jihadi terror on American soil,” says Loesch, a conservative radio host, in the video, “the New York Daily News became the loudest, vilest, most condescending voice for what many people call the Godless Left. “These false prophets at this failing excuse for a newspaper claimed to enjoy special knowledge of God’s plans somehow … even as they mocked the entire concept of religion. But they weren’t alone. As a horrific act of terror unfolded in real time, the majority of Americans turned to earnest prayer for the dead, the wounded, their families and the world — while political and media elites joined forces to insult and mock and disparage them … and in so doing, laid bare the utter moral depravity of the Godless Left.” 

She manages to interconnect all of the following: Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, the media, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood attacks, the “unconscionable scandals at the VA,” the “weaponizing of the IRS,” Obamacare, and the “demonizing” of Christmas and Christianity, not to mention “the only religion in the world that contains a segment” that “condones” terrorism. By the end, she finally gets around to guns. “As the families of the victims in San Bernardino called out to their fellow Americans for prayer, the Godless Left launched a vitriolic attack on the twin pillars of American freedom: the First and Second Amendments.”

This vile Dan Loesh woman is another Sarah Palin disciple, who has established herself as a conservative talk show host, and now a spokesperson for the NRA.

Clearly in her mind, and I imagine the NRA's, the real terrorists in this country are those trying to protect its citizens from gun violence. After all how can you trust the "godless?"

Of course it is not at all accurate to suggest that all, or even a significant portion, of the people supporting stronger gun laws are atheists or even liberals.

After all bullets do not use faith or ideology to discriminate as to whose body they rip to pieces. They simply kill.

However I guarantee that this kind of hyperbole will work to galvanize the simple minded NRA supporters and the next thing you know there will be thousands of emails and mountains of snail mail headed toward Washington DC to let lawmakers know that the only way they can restrict access to firearms in this country is to pry them out of their "cold dead hands."