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.

Article makes case that world is more peaceful due to rise in Atheism.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still. 

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before. 

In America, millennials are the largest and least religious generation in the country’s history. The trend toward secularization in the US mirrors the movement in Europe and throughout the developed world. And poll after poll have shown that the nonreligious also lean more progressive and more pacifist on a wide variety of issues relating to violence: torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment, military adventurism and more. 

As long as humanity was in thrall to the violent morality of religious texts, our societies were warlike and cruel. As the American revolutionary Thomas Paine said, belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man. It’s only in the last few decades, as we’ve begun to cast these beliefs off, that we’re making real moral progress.

As an outspoken Atheist I of course want to think that the rise of non-deists is the reason for all kinds of positives in the world

And though I would agree that much of the warlike behavior we are witnessing in the world today is driven by religious ideologies,  I am not entirely convinced that doing away with religion automatically translates into a more peaceful world.

We kill for a variety of reasons, religion is just a convenient method by which to excuse our hatred or demonization of a group that we deem less worthy than our own tribes.

 So I am interested in your thoughts on the matter.

Star Trek actor, John de Lancie, discusses being openly secular.

I really enjoyed this because it so closely reflects my own experience as a very young child dealing with my own doubts about religion and my realization that I was going to see forever the world differently than many of my peers.

Part of my goal on this blog is to dispel the notion that Atheists, Agnostics, and those living a secular lifestyle are amoral psychopaths who hate the gods and want to engage in drunken orgies everyday. 

(Okay well maybe there is a hint of truth to that last part.)

Hopefully by presenting evidence of reasonable, critically thinking individuals, who are living a life free of superstition and a religiously constructed prison of fear and shame, that I am helping to do that.

CBS Sunday Morning aired a pretty good segment on Atheists in America.

I get asked sometimes why I insist on talking about religion and openly talk about being an Atheist.

I think this news segment might help to explain that.

You see somebody has to help to change the image of the Atheist as a person who hates God, lives a life of sin, and is somehow being influenced by Satan.

The fact is that the vast majority of us are simply people who have come to realize that the arguments for the existence of God are paper thin and do not stand up to scrutiny. While also believing that more people should scrutinize them.

We are essentially like everybody else.

There are honorable, and dishonorable Atheists.

Kind and unkind Atheists.

Loving and emotionally distant Atheists.

Wealthy and poverty stricken Atheists.

The only real difference between us and those who are religious is that we recognize the difference between believing something, and knowing something.

And for the more well adjusted among us the fact that we cannot yet know everything, that there is no comforting explanation for the universe and our place within it, is both exhilarating and inspiring.

(H/T to The Friendly Atheist.)

On British talk show fundamentalist offers a rather frightening view of humanists, only to be quickly corrected by an actual humanist.

The topic of this episode of The Big Question is a discussion concerning how the UK recently passed a ruling saying that humanist marriages are not to considered a legal form of matrimony in the country, while in Scotland, which embraced humanist marriages since 2005, they now outnumber Catholic weddings.

But things quickly go off the rails with the introduction of Taiwo Adewuyi, founder of the group Discuss Jesus. (Though to be honest it does not sound like he wants to rationally discuss ANYTHING.)

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Host Nicky Campbell presented Adewuyi, who said humanist weddings are “entirely demonic.” 

“It all goes back to the origins of humanism,” Adewuyi said. “Humanism is the cancer on thanks-giving. It is the Devil’s PR. It is a first-class ticket to the sea of wantonness and debauchery.” 

Humanism, he said, tries to “knock God off the throne” and put mankind at the top instead, which Adewuyi claims is wrong. 

Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association responded, “Well, if you’re going to wantonness and debauchery, you might as well travel first class.” 

“Humanism,” he explained, “is a nonreligious world view that — instead of looking to revelation or authority, we look to reason and evidence to understand the universe. Instead of looking to moral rules that come from outside human beings, we look to other human beings to generate values in the here and now and also to generate meaning in our life.” 

“Instead of looking externally for some meaning to give value and sanction to the existence we’re having, the humanist view is that men and women in the course of our lives create the sustained meaning together,” Copson said.

Okay I am not terribly familiar with this Andrew Copson fellow but I found his explanation of humanism to be very satisfying.

And this in a nutshell is how many people in the religious right characterize those of us who are living our lives free of religion or oppressive dogma.

Everything to them is black or white, right or wrong, good or evil. And if you are not one of them, believing exactly as they do, then you are an agent of Satan and you, and your dangerous ideas, must be rejected out of hand.

And the struggle continues. 

Good news for secularists in Anchorage, Jerry Prevo's church will no longer host high school wrestling event due to public prayer.

Prevo on the left.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

The Anchorage Baptist Temple’s school will not host this year's state wrestling tournament for small high schools, as it has in the past, after the Alaska School Activities Association asked it to stop its practice of including a public prayer in the event. 

An attendee of the 2013 event had complained to a national church-state separation watchdog group, which told the ASAA that as a public entity it couldn't sanction prayer at a school extracurricular event. 

Removing the prayer "was a show stopper for us,” said Tom Cobaugh, the administrator of the private Anchorage Christian Schools, the Anchorage Baptist Temple's education ministry. “That’s who we are.” 

The prayer issue made its way to the pulpit of the Anchorage Baptist Temple Sunday morning, when pastor Jerry Prevo used it in his sermon as an example of what he described as a “battle against prayer” in public schools. 

For seven years, Anchorage Christian Schools hosted the wrestling championship for small schools in its gymnasiums, Cobaugh said. The school, which shares an East Anchorage campus with the Baptist temple, serves about 650 students from preschool to high school.

This is yet another victory for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They have been advocating on the side of secularists and Atheists for a number of years now and have managed to achieve some rather impressive wins.

I particularly like this one as Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple is an especially disruptive and dangerous member of our community. He has almost single-handedly manged to oppress our LGBT community, and has had very unfortunate and pernicious influence on our politics.

Seeing him lose in this way does nothing but fill my heart with joy. And I hope it is only the first of many defeats that are coming his way.

The number of secular people in America may be much larger than previously believed.

Courtesy of Religion News:

If you’re dismayed that one in five Americans (20 percent) are “nones” — people who claim no particular religious identity — brace yourself. 

How does 38 percent sound? 

That’s what religion researcher David Kinnaman calculates when he adds “the unchurched, the never-churched and the skeptics” to the nones. 

He calls his new category “churchless,” the same title Kinnaman has given his new book. By his count, roughly four in 10 people living in the continental United States are actually “post-Christian” and “essentially secular in belief and practice.” 

If asked, the “churchless” would likely check the “Christian” box on a survey, even though they may not have darkened the door of a church in years. 

Kinnaman, president of the California-based Barna Group, slides them into this new category based on 15 measures of identity, belief and practice in more than 23,000 interviews in 20 surveys. 

The research looked at church worship attendance and participation, views about the Bible, God and Jesus, and more to see whether folks were actually tied to Christian life in a meaningful way or tied more by habit or personal history. 

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, once called nominals — people attached by name only — “survey Christians.” They don’t want to cut ties with their parents or go all the way to atheism, Stetzer said, “so they just say ‘Christian’ since it is the default category from their heritage.”

I think these findings probably reflect what most of us see in our own lives. 

I have met numerous self described Christians who have not attended church services for years, or who only show up for holiday celebrations like Christmas or Easter.

Many of those people also have a perfunctory understanding of the Bible, and embrace few, if any, of the doctrines of Christianity.

I personally believe that a number of these people are actually agnostic of atheist but lack the courage to come out of the closet if you will and risk attracting the wrath or disappointed of family and friends.

That is why it is so important in my opinion to remove the stigma attached to atheism so that people will feel more comfortable in allowing people to accept them for who they truly are.

Heathen scum who hate Jesus. (Sorry couldn't resist.)

Barney Frank and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe are teaming up in campaign to help end discrimination against the non-religious. Hey, that's me!

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe have signed on to a new campaign to end discrimination against atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious. 

Openly Secular, a coalition of more than two dozen secular organizations, seeks to debunk misconceptions about secular people by encouraging nontheists to come forward and raise awareness for the 29 percent of Americans who identify as nonreligious. 

In an Openly Secular campaign video posted Friday, Kluwe, who described himself as "cheerfully agnostic and openly secular," urged nonbelievers to advocate for their rights. 

"It's important for secularists to be vocal about who they are ... in a truly functional society, in a stable society, everyone is afforded the same freedom to be who they are no matter what that is as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of other people to be who they are," Kluwe said. "If you want to enjoy your own beliefs, then you have to fight for everyone else's beliefs just as hard, because if you don't, someday you might be on the other side of that line and you're not going to be very happy when that day comes."

Is it weird that I want to say amen to that?

Personally I am in favor of anything that will de-stigmatize Atheists and allow people to understand that we are not attacking their religious beliefs. We simply do not want them shoved down our throats.

Air Force changes its rules after airman refuses to say "so help me God" as part of his oath for reenlistment.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  


After an airman was unable to complete his reenlistment because he omitted the part of a required oath that states “so help me God,” the Air Force changed its instructions for the oath. 

Following a review of the policy by the Department of Defense General Counsel, the Air Force will now permit airmen to omit the phrase, should they so choose. That change is effective immediately, according to an Air Force statement. 

“We take any instance in which Airmen report concerns regarding religious freedom seriously,” Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said in the statement. “We are making the appropriate adjustments to ensure our Airmen’s rights are protected. 

“The Air Force will be updating the instructions for both enlisted and commissioned Airmen to reflect these changes in the coming weeks, but the policy change is effective now. Airmen who choose to omit the words ‘So help me God’ from enlistment and officer appointment oaths may do so.”

Okay that is just great news and a real step forward for the non-theists in this country.

I am very excited about he progress that we are making right now in tamping down the rampant religiosity and embracing a more secular point of view.

Nobody wants to deprive people of their religious freedom, but there is no excuse for it invading the lives of those who choose a different path.

Fundamentalist parenting versus secular parenting.

You know when I visualize terrorism I am really mostly thinking of the kind of parenting demonstrated on the left.

Threatening to blow somebody up or shoot them in the face cannot really ever hold a candle to the threat of eternal suffering and being denied access to your loved ones in the afterlife.

Nebraska Senate hopeful, and Sarah Palin endorsee, believes the only thing wrong with America is too many Atheists. Well of course he does.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Ben Sasse, who is widely expected to to win the seat being vacated by Sen. Mike Johanns in November, authored a dissertation — The Anti-Madalyn Majority: Secular Left, Religious Right, and the Rise of Reagan’s America — in which he argued that the modern conservative movement began not with “the Reagan Revolution,” but with two Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960s in which mandatory public school prayer and Bible reading were struck down as unconstitutional. 

The first of them, Engel v. Vitale, inspired a Republican Congressman from New York, Frank Becker, to action. He was a true believer — a man who, according to Sasse, was a “tenacious focus derived less from a studied assessment of his audience than from his heartfelt conviction that the hope of America lay in its special relationship with the Almighty, and in the nation’s resolve to doggedly oppose the most formidable system of atheistic imperialism the world had ever known.” 

Sasse identified Becker’s failed efforts to “oppose the most formidable system of atheistic imperialism the world had ever known” as the origin of a “bottom-up” rebellion against the “elites” — many of whom were Jewish — who wanted to remove religion from public life. He claimed that Nixon and his rhetoric of the “silent majority” spoke “effectively to and for the small-town values still prized by most of the country.” 

“Indeed angst about secularization, more than any other complaint,” he wrote, “provided a lens through which Americans could see all other social problems as sharing a common root, a liberal root.” He claimed that these forces existed outside of conventional politics, a sentiment he echoes today on the campaign trail.

Great, another religious zealot who believes all the country needs is a little more Jesus. 

This is exactly the kind of politician that this country cannot stand to have any more of in Washington.

Ron Reagan's new FFRF advertisement.

Apparently this ad will be run on Comedy Central during the Daily Show and Colbert Show on May 22nd.

It is the video version of a radio ad that started playing back in November of last year.

Here is an interesting quote from Reagan that I had never heard before: 

Famously asked by The New York Times three weeks after President Reagan died whether he’d like to be president, Ron replied: “I’m unelectable. I’m an atheist. As well all know, that I something people won’t accept.”

Hopefully with more ads like this, and more people coming out as Atheists, the religious litmus test for political office will no longer be relevant for much longer.

Personally I can hardly wait.

New film, "God is not dead," attacks higher education, secularism, and logic, all in equal portions.

Yes that was the guy from Duck Dynasty that you just saw in that trailer. And that dude who played Hercules too.

I have been tempted to write something about this film a couple of times now. But to be honest I found the damn thing so irritating that I did not want to get my self all worked up over something so ridiculous.

However that was before I stumbled across this entry about the film on Wikipedia:

Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), a devout Christian and freshman college student, enrolls in a philosophy class taught by a dogmatic and argumentative atheist. Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) demands that all of his students must sign a declaration that "God is dead" in order to get a passing grade. Faced with a choice between passing the class and betraying his beliefs, Josh refuses. As Josh is the only student in the class to do so, the professor strikes a bargain: Josh must defend his position that "God's not dead" in a series of debates with him, with the class members ultimately deciding who wins. If Josh loses, he flunks. When Josh accepts the challenge, he gets more than he bargained for — jeopardizing his faith, his academic future, and even his relationships. 

There are several struggles and personal beliefs going on as well in the film. Ayisha (Hadeel Sittu) must hide her Christianity from her devout Muslim family and father. Mina (Cory Oliver) must deal with her mother who is suffering from dementia, her rich executive brother Mark (Dean Cain) who refuses to see their mother, and her personal relationship with Radisson (which proves a struggle as Mina is a devout Christian and Radisson is an atheist, and Mina is frequently belittled in front of Radisson's colleagues). Amy (Trisha LaFache), a businesswoman and animal right's activist, is diagnosed with cancer and Mark (her boyfriend, Mina's brother) breaks up with her, seeming to care more about his business life than he did about Amy. Martin (Paul Kwo) is a foreign exchange student from China, whose struggles are similar to Josh's: his father does not want him screwing up his brother's scholarship (as Josh's girlfriend, Kara, did not want him standing up to Radisson as it might affect her scholarship). 

Radisson has Josh spend 20 minutes at the end of every lecture to give his arguments on why God exists, but Radisson constantly has a counter argument against all of Josh's debates. Ultimately, it comes down to a debate between Radisson and Josh, who both make compelling points from both sides. Josh questions Radisson, asking why he hates God. After Radisson gives his response, confirming he hates God for his mother's death that left him alone despite his prayers, Josh asks Radisson how he can hate someone that doesn't exist. In the end, every member of Josh's class, including Martin, stand up and say "God's Not Dead", causing Radisson to leave the room in defeat. 

After the last lecture, Martin excitedly tells Josh that his lectures have changed his heart and he has become a Christian. Josh invites him to come to the Newsboys concert with him because he had an extra ticket (due to Kara breaking up with him). Radisson ultimately has a change of heart upon reading a letter from his late mother, and leaves to find his ex-girlfriend Mina, who is shown to be attending the same Newsboys concert. He is struck by a car while crossing the street and his ribs are crushed, leaving him slowly dying of internal hemorrhaging. Pastor Dave (David A.R. White) finds him, and helps save Radisson, who becomes a born-again Christian moments before his death. Mark is shown taunting his mother, stating that he as a non-believer has a great life while she, a faithful person, is riddled with a disease. A suddenly lucid Mom makes a point about how the devil helps some evil people to succeed so that they won't turn to God, but that the person's life is like that of a prisoner whose barred door will ultimately slam at life's end. The cancer-ridden Amy is shown confronting the Newsboys in their dressing room moments before their show, presumably to ambush their faith, but ultimately revealing that she wants to know God. In the closing moments, the Newsboys show a video of Willie Robertson congratulating the "young man" who took up the argument against his professor that God was alive. The Newsboys close the movie with their song "God's Not Dead", dedicating it unknown to themselves, to Josh, saying they support and commend him for taking up the gauntlet against Radisson.

Holy crap is that a bunch of hooey.

First off I am sure that those of us who attended college know full well that professors do not make statements like that in their classrooms.

I took philosophy in college, and a class on comparative religious studies, and I cannot even tell you for sure if either of those instructors were, or were not, atheists. In fact I don't think I ever knew, or cared, WHAT religion my instructors identified with.

However THIS is how these fundamentalist types view higher education in this country. As an aggressive assault against their faith. 

And I cannot tell you how ironic I find it that Kevin Sorbo is playing this educator.

As you may or may not know, he played one of the worst versions of Hercules every imagined. Hercules of course was mythological person who was said to be half god, and half man.

Sound familiar?

It is actually not surprising that the plot for this movie is so hyperbolic and over the top, since it appears that it is at least partially based on one of the most laugh out loud funny Chick Tract ever produced.

Perhaps you've seen it.

If you click the link at the top you will see that the movie mimics the comic almost frame by frame.

Look I understand that when your belief system relies on keeping people as uneducated as possible, that your fear of college must be almost overwhelming. But this kind of transparent propaganda cannot really be helping.

After all if what you believe has real value, wouldn't people be flocking to your church, and not have to be tricked and lied to in order to be convinced to show up?

The importance of Atheist organizations.

Courtesy of Alternet:  

Atheists want the benefits of a secular society, but too many refuse to do the work. They are more concerned with a dictionary definition of atheism that they forget what is at stake. 

Without atheists united in some form of community, the US would be lost overnight to a theocratic right. Ready to overturn whatever secular laws remain in the constitution. 

While some atheists are worried about definitions, the right is worried about overturning women's rights, ending marriage equality and enforcing bad economic policies that drive more Americans into poverty. While we are busy infighting claiming, "no one speaks for me", the right is speaking and gathering followers. If we continue to run around unorganized, they will overtake this nation. 

So there is, and should be a strong atheist movement, groups like American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Secular Coalition for America, Freedom From Religion, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and countless others are atheist based organizations all fighting to enforce secular laws in this country and around the world. 

These are the groups who put the weight on their shoulders to make sure the theocratic right do not overtake the US and anyone who believes in upholding the secular history of this nation and the further secularization that rebuilds the wall that separates church and state that the right has spent decades taking apart. We should be thanking these groups and individuals in this fight, not chastising them for being "the face" of atheism as many have. 

We may not elect atheist leaders, but many people shine through and stand up for all of us. We don't have to claim to agree with what every group does or says all the time either. Just as each atheist is unique in many of their own ways, so are groups.

Just so you know I am the king of the non-joiners.

Sure I can work as a part of a group for short periods of time, but after awhile things like clashing egos, mismatched ambitions, and attempts to define ourselves always force me to reevaluate why I joined and typically I walk away.

I identify as an Atheist simply becasue it is the label that best reflects my view of God, mankind, and the universe.

I have never formally joined any Atheist group and never really planned to in the future.

However there is some sense in what the author of this piece, Dan Arel, is saying.

As a group we are woefully unorganized, and we are often dealing with a group that is not only organized, but also well funded and with vast political connections.

As much as I hate to say it, the time may have come for those of us who want to keep religion from infiltrating our schools, and fight the oppressive laws that are dictating what women can do with their own bodies, as well as whose love is worthy of marriage, to get off our asses and start working together to help shape the world that we want our children to inherit. 

Hell yeah we have morals. And they're good ones too!

You know I actually don't think that Atheists are necessarily more moral than religious people.

I just hate it when somebody makes the assumption that without religion we are without a sense of morality or empathy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And I have known many truly wonderful Christians, Buddhists, Jewish people, etc. in my life.

However I have to admit that when I hear somebody describe themselves as a "Good Christian" that always raises red flags with me, because it seems to so often be followed by the statement, "I had no idea such a good Christian would do something so horrible to the Robertson's dog."

It seems that people use Christian camouflage to cover a devious nature so often that it immediately makes me suspicious. That's undoubtedly unfair, but there you have it.

The View of Life. A matter of perspective.

I am interested in your feedback to this brilliant graphic.

I read it the first time from the top to the bottom, and did not think too much of it, but after rereading it the other direction I was struck by how deftly it represents the two disparate views of God.

Want one.

"The stockings were hung by the chimney with flair,
In the hopes that Richard Dawkins soon would be there."

How come religious people have such trouble understanding this?

I feel the same way when we are accused of "hating god." How can you hate something that you have found no proof even exists?

Now religious people themselves? Well that is a different story.

By the way G.W. Foote was a secularist who founded "The Freethinker" in 1881. And it is still being published today.

This is something that people need to be reminded of every day.

I really think that THIS has much to do with the rise of Atheism and the increase in secular education these days.

Information has never been more readily available, and the excuses for being unaware of other cultures, other religions, and other philosophies are simply no longer viable.

And that is also why we are seeing such extremism among those whose way of life is directly threatened by education and increased intelligence.

Final palate cleansing thought for the day.

(Source.)