Cognitive Dissonance and You

Feeling as Gleeful as I want to be? Think that we're looking at a whole new era? 

Think again.

The sad thing is, rather than realize their errors, owning up to them and moving forward, many of Camping's followers will, due to the dissonance they will experience (cognitively), actually strengthen their resolve and adherence to their ideology.

Especially those who made public proclamations, as it has been shown that a public statement of belief lessens the willingness to retract said belief/heightens the threshold for evidenciary based retraction. 

So, as much as we may be laughing and in our heart of hearts hoping that this will finally be the catalyst to a more rational future....it's not going to happen :(

RANT: Religion and Masturbation

I recently watched a movie entitled 'Teeth.' The movie (which wasn't very good but I digress), an indie horror with some comedic elements (it mostly failed on both fronts....some of it was amusing, none of it was scary, but again, digressing...), is about a very religious teenage girl who has taken a vow of 'purity' (aka abstinence) and goes around to other schools prattling on to younger kids and other teens about the 'evils' of sex and how it's only right to save your 'gift' until marriage, and blah blah.

The Ask an Atheist Project Website!!!

askanatheistproject.com

The project will be slowly migrated over to the site, and any and all new entries will be uploaded there going forward.

Tell your friends, atheists and theists alike!

Thanks a ton to PaladinSkye for getting the thing off the ground. Without his initiative, this would never have happened.

Christopher Hitchens Letter to the AAI

Dear fellow-unbelievers,

Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.

That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools. But in the past few years, there have been heartening signs of a genuine and spontaneous resistance to this sinister nonsense: a resistance which repudiates the right of bullies and tyrants to make the absurd claim that they have god on their side. To have had a small part in this resistance has been the greatest honor of my lifetime: the pattern and original of all dictatorship is the surrender of reason to absolutism and the abandonment of critical, objective inquiry. The cheap name for this lethal delusion is religion, and we must learn new ways of combating it in the public sphere, just as we have learned to free ourselves of it in private.

Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.

As the heirs of a secular revolution, American atheists have a special responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution that patrols the boundary between Church and State. This, too, is an honor and a privilege. Believe me when I say that I am present with you, even if not corporeally (and only metaphorically in spirit...) Resolve to build up Mr Jefferson's wall of separation. And don't keep the faith.

Sincerely,

Christopher Hitchens

The Grand Design Book Review

Note: I don't normally do book reviews, and I am consequently not well versed in the art of producing them. Nor do I desire to be. This is as much an overview and discussion about my experience with the book as it is a review.

9 Reasons Why We Don't Believe in Religion

Here are a collection of 9 reasons to help the religious understand why we don't buy into their belief systems. This is neither all encompassing nor to be taken as some finalized mission statement. I wouldn't consider this the most compelling list I could write, but it hits a fair number of things and does a few of them decently.

Atheism: Revelation!

Note: This is an old forum post that I made many months ago as a follow up to the previous blog detailing my 'story' in terms of my atheism.

I....had an experience this morning. I have been wrong my whole life............

Atheism: My Story

In this blog I will share with you my story. Why I am an atheist (although the answer is rather simple), how those around me handle(d) it, and the beliefs of those I associate with. I will frame it as an interview (why....I dunno). So, let's begin, shall we?

Debating Religion with Theists: Pointless? (Short Post)

CLAIM:

Arguing with theists about religion is pointless. It never goes anywhere, and accomplishes nothing. 'Tis futile and a big waste of time!

RESPONSE:

Answering Creationist Questions

Answering Some Creationist Questions

These questions were derived from:

http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/sciences/scienc8.htm

and

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/ee/origin-of-humans

Woman Whipped In Public For Wearing Trousers. Get Ready to Get PISSED OFF

Lauren Rose's Election Experience, and A Moron's Response(s) to Her.

Lauren Rose's Election Experience, and A Moron's Response(s) to Her.

Link to the Story

Lauren Rose is an atheist who was perturbed to have to go to a church to cast her vote in a federal U.S. Election. She wore a tshirt expressing her displeasure at this concept (voting for a public election in a christian church) as well as identifying herself as an atheist.

Doctors WITH Borders: Doctors Withdraw Treatment from Patients Who Thank God

Doctors WITH Borders: Doctors Withdraw Treatment from Patients Who Thank God

AP, Worldwide.

There is a new movement growing worldwide. Called 'Doctors WITH Borders,' the movement consists of doctors who are sick and tired of having their hard work passed over when it comes time to extend credit, in favour of that entity known as 'God.'

These doctors have decided that any patient who, after receiving medical care, states that god has saved (or is saving) them, is no longer eligible to receive medical treatment. Patients are having IV's pulled, prescriptions withdrawn, casts cut off, dialysis machines shut down, life support unplugged, and, in one recent case, two recently transplanted lungs removed.

Religion and Doubt: How Religions Demonize Intellectual Honesty

DOUBT

Religion and Doubt: How Religions Demonize Intellectual Honesty

Christians, as well as people from other religions, often express doubt. Quite often, in fact. This is something that I find interesting, and I would like to spend a couple of minutes on.

Eternal Torment and a Just God

As you read this blog, please keep in mind that while this does not take into account the idea/doctrine of repentance, it's not relevant here, so please ignore that and focus on the people that DO end up in hell. Including nonbelievers, which, according to the bible, commited the only unforgiveable sin (nonbelief). Also, this is only directed at the subset of christians who believe in eternal hellfire. Those who prettied up their theology need not apply.

So, allow me to ask you a series of questions:

So, You Have a Relationship with the Creator of The Universe?

How fortuitous! There's this omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, eternal being which has the power to create entire universes and all of the life within them, and this being has decided to bestow upon you, one lowly human out of around 7 billion lowly humans, the very distinctive honor of having an ongoing relationship with him/her/it.

So, having made the decision, for seemingly no reason at all, to grant you this honour, this being enters your heart, hunkers down in one of your aortic valves, and remains there until the day you die, guiding you, helping you, being your spiritual guide, your confidante, your friend. And then, upon your death, this being grants you the even bigger honour of living with him/her/it for eternity in his/her/its eternal amusement park.

Ongoing Debate With Rhology, the Christian Apologist: Special Pleading and Hypocrisy?

EDIT: Here is his response to this post.  I will be responding to it in time. It's headache inducing, so I may have to do it bit by bit ;)

This is a response to THIS POST, which itself was a response to MY RESPONSE to THIS POST by the user Rhology. That post of his is a response to my Initial Post which was a response to an older post of his (linked to in my original response post).

This might be starting to get confusing. Just follow the links, it's not nearly as confusing as it may sound. Basically, this is the thrid or fourth round in an ongoing debate of sorts with the Christian Apologist Rhology from the RHOBLOGY BLOG.

This response is definitely the most heated of what has thus far been a very civil, but strident, debate. I think I may have just opened the gates to some anger and perhaps even insults, although this was certainly not my intention. Sometimes, to be honest, you have to ruffle some feathers. Regular readers of mine may be scratching their heads at this point, wondering if perhaps I have sustained a head injury or something, as I am known for my fiestiness and proclivity to 'let someone have it' if they, in my estimation, deserve it. I only make these disclaimers in this case because this is someone who, up until this particular comment of his that I am responding to, was open and honest, with a respectful demeanor. Well.....I am afaid the demeanor may have remained intact, but the intellectual honesty seems to have taken the night off.....Let's get into it, shall we?

Response to the Response to my Response by a Christian Apologist

This is a response to THIS POST by the user Rhology (who I accidentally refer to as Rhoblogy in this...sorry man). That post of his is a response to my Initial Post which was a response to an older post of his (linked to in my original response post).

Here goes.

Response to a Christian on the topic of Atheist Morality

I have been engaged in a discussion with a christian apologist, who seems to have been at it for a long time. After some back and forth (during which he was refreshingly honest about his opinions, specifically those relating to the issue of morality in the Old Testament) this was the message directed at me, regarding atheist morality, atheistic inconsistency, and the accuracy of atheistic claims in the comment section of this person's blog (THIS is the post in question).

I Should Believe In God? Okay, Help me Pick One! (Enjoy!!)

Here's an incomplete list of gods proposed at one point or another throughout history. Please help me decide which one I should be following. For the sake of brevity (lol) Yahweh and Allah (same god anyways, no?) have been left out.

Agdistis or Angdistis

Ah Puch

Ahura Mazda

Alberich