“It’s dangerous for our children to even know your philosophy exists!” With Dems like these, who needs Iran? Seriously, I’m with Zorn: if this had been a Jew or Christian sitting in that chair and an elected rep harshed on their brand of faith? We’d never hear the end of it. But atheists are fair game, because we hurt children, or something.

Nice to see so many supporting comments at the original post, too. We’re legion, a true silenced but growing population and the fundies should fear us. Because they do our work for us, and make belief look bad all on their own.

Watching a religion-themed movie this morning as I enjoyed some too-strong coffee, I had the thought that I can explain simply why I’m an atheist.  Read more 

Here’s the trailer.

Release is scheduled for December, in plenty of time for the War on shopping Christmas, which of late has formed such an endearing part of our Holiday season here in the States.

The Christianists are going to hate this one, and they’re going to go even more batshit than they usually are.

Why? Here’s a profile of the author, Philip Pullman:  Read more 

(Props to Ursula LeGuin’s The Telling for the title.) PZ Meyers has a terrific post on Christianity’s sins against science over at Pharyngula. Read the whole thing, but my favorite is the twelfth sin:

XII. Faith. Faith is the greatest sin of religion. I despise it; I’m particularly appalled that it is so universally regarded as a virtue. Listen, if I ever call someone a “person of faith”, you should be aware that I have just insulted them terribly. It’s astonishing how easily that sails over people’s heads, though.

I should think that after the Bush administration, people would be more than willing to have faith-based anything shoved back into the closet, nay, the basement, nay, the cesspool, where it belongs, but no—WaPo gives small town scold and gossip Sally Quinn a whole new section on the noxious concept. Sheesh.

Meyers is just getting started:  Read more 

Garbage. I’ll make three points: Once again, the Times “selects” from a group of people who already agree with this theory, and fails to ask actual evolutionary scientists who are critical of it what they think. Gotta love the “balance.” Also, this piece mostly fails to apply the “logic” of the theory to non-monotheistic religions, implying that monotheistic belief is what is being “proven” here. Finally, group selection is bunk. Quoth Dawkins in this piece (and I suppose I should be grateful it got included) “sheer, wanton, head-in-bag perversity.” That’s rather established in evolutionary biology, and it’s irresponsible for the Times to treat it as accepted, peer-endorsed, current theory.  Read more 

Confession time…

In 2006, I ran for the US House against an unholy a far-right DINO and lost in the Primary. I drop the phrase, "I placed second in a three-way race", to either joke-it or to save face—it could be either. In reality, the incumbent got 86.2%, I got 10.0% and Mr.Last Place got 3.8%.  Read more 

Nicholas Kristof indulges in a faith-based slam against atheists.

The core message is exactly the same as what’s being said to the incoming Democrat-led Congress — the burden of years of excess by the Rabid Right is on you. Play to the center, and before you say anything… have a nice cup of STFU:

[whydoesgodhateamputees.com] is part of an increasingly assertive, often obnoxious atheist offensive led in part by Professor Dawkins — the Oxford scientist who is author of the new best seller “The God Delusion.”  Read more 

Right-wingers will doubtless (and they are doubtless, aren’t they?) think I’m talking about the Democrats who control the new Congress.

Alas, as far as I know, every man and woman in the 110th Congress — including each and every donkey — subscribes to a monotheistic faith.

So we’re talking hypothetically here, thanks to some interesting questions Frank raised in comments at Martian Anthropologist:  Read more 

This week, the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy introduces a sister site, “Bible Study for Atheists,” a place for non-believers to learn about the book sensation that’s Stepfordizing the nation.

From the dawn of man to the (spoiler alert!) final revelation, we’ll take an irreverent day-by-day, chapter and verse look at the Good Book.

The mission statement is here, and the home page is at http://bs4a.blogspot.com.

Come ye pagans, sinners, and holy folk, let’s see what’s been lurking in that hotel-room drawer all these years.

How does it feel to be so wise
To see through eyes that only see what’s real?

Elton John:

“From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”  Read more 

People are writing books that claim there is no God. (via)

As I sit here in this hotel room, I wonder: “Where are the books telling you that there is a God?”

In lieu of such a resource, I hope this blog post will put you on the path to spiritual enlightenment…  Read more 

Go say hi to these nice people. I met a bunch of them this weekend, and they are taking up the thankless task of taking on the right in the arena of religion. We had a couple of really good roundtables and I expect to hear more, but really- will we fix any of our nation’s problems in the long term if we continue to ignore religion? That’s our Achilles’ Heel on the left, and it’s getting past the point of being annoying.  Read more