Wow, it’s been a long time. No promises of more posts to come (I’d like to start writing in here again, but who knows if I’ll have time), but here’s a funny atheist video that my colleague Tim sent to me.
The clincher was the reverend claiming some kind of “mutation” explaining everything. Brilliant.
I wanted to clear something up before it becomes a potential issue:
I am an atheist. I am a skeptic. But I do NOT think that the two go hand in hand. I have a fair amount of this page dedicated to religion. While this site is a skepticism/science blog, it is my personal blog and atheism is a topic dear to me.
Skepticism and atheism are two different things. They are related in many ways, but they are not one in the same. Skepticism follows the principles of scientific inquiry, providing evidence for claims. Atheism is simply a lack of belief. If you are a religious person for purely personal reasons and make no claims of “proof” of your beliefs, I don’t have a problem with you. If, however, you say that you can prove that your god or belief exists, then I want you to present me with your supporting evidence. If you cannot or do not do so, then I have a problem with you.
We all have our sacred cows, myself included (which I will not go into for, as fits my statement above, personal reasons). I am a skeptic despite this.
Dr. Steven Novella, neurologist at Yale and president of the New England Skeptical Society (and host of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, blogger at Neurologica, blogger at Skepticblog, and blogger at The Rogue’s Gallery) has put together an excellent blog about the battle against creation science as a part of his multi-part blog on the Skeptical Battlegrounds. It is an excellent read that I highly recommend.
“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”
-Wilson Mizner
Education has kept me very busy lately. Faith never does.
“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that’s the way it is, period.”
-Pat Robertson
He said that in 1992, yet he is still, now 16 years later, a major figurehead of the Christian fundamentalists. How it is that someone as intolerant and bigoted as he is could still have notoriety blows my mind…
And pisses me off to no end.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of thenon-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe
Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors, and certainly my favorite fiction author. Its a shame that he is now dead, because we sure could use an skeptic and atheist with his creative wit.
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright
During my youth, if you were to say to me something about “nature” I would have had visions of forests and trees, wild animals, grassy plains, winding rivers, etc. As I have gotten older and studied more about the world and about science I think of nature in more discreet ways. I envision small things like microbes, cellular components, atomic particles. I envision large things like stars, planets, galaxies. I do still have a place in my heart for nature as I once knew it, but my broadened sense of what Nature truly is has instilled in me an awe, contentment, and happiness I never found in religion.
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…we need believing people.”
-Adolf Hitler, Excerpted from a speech made on April 26, 1933.
I’ve heard the argument made by some people (including Bill O’Reilly) that Hitler was an atheist. Hitler’s religious views continue to be a point of controversy, but it is generally accepted that he was not an atheist; the statement above is just one of many that indicate that he was not an atheist. For more information, visit the Wikipedia page regarding Hitler’s religious views.
