Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchins will debate the controversial tenants of Christianity and Atheism on April 6th at 8 pm at the Phillips Center for Performing Arts at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Tickets are free.

More info here: http://www.sg.ufl.edu/accent/

Related posts:

1. Hitchens and D’Souza to Debate at UCF

If the Judeo-Christian god is first in line, with none others before him, that line should be at the unemployment office.  Not because we need him to provide jobs, but because he doesn’t.  There are thousands upon thousands of unemployed fathers and mothers who pray and wait in vain these days for any half-crappy job — preferably one that makes it possible with great restraint and resourcefulness to both buy food and pay the electric bill.

I know about unemployment offices because two times in my life, when a young adult, I  had the demeaning privilege of asking for assistance in finding a job.

That there are unemployment offices across our land being visited by Christians is evidence to me that their god ought to get in line because he needs a job he can succeed at.

Truth is, thanks to public education, science, technology and the forward march of civilization, there is much less work for a god to do.  The work has not been shipped overseas, but has been transported from the supernatural realm to the natural, where things get done.  Insuring bountiful crops, curing disease, punishing transgressors for their “sins” (crimes) — for these we’ve got agribusiness, the medical profession, and penal systems.  Etc.  Etc.

For centuries the role of gods has been shrinking.  What jobs are left?  To provide humans something mindless to say after a person sneezes?

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For Immediate Release
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

ST PETERSBURG, Fla.—Governor Charlie Crist has been accused of assaulting a man for identifying himself as an atheist during a campaign event held in St. Petersburg. On Friday, March 5th, University of South Florida graduate student Michael Middlebrooks approached the Governor downtown and was greeted with a smile and a handshake until he mentioned he does not believe in a god. Crist reportedly became irate, ripping a campaign sticker off the man’s shirt that was placed there by a staffer moments earlier, and then shouting over his shoulder (as he turned his back), “I feel sorry for you!”

Atheists of Florida President John Kieffer sent a letter to Governor Charlie Crist on Monday asking that he issue an apology to the man targeted for this mistreatment.

“Imagine instead if you had ripped a campaign sticker off some other religious minority,” Kieffer wrote, “say a Jew or a Muslim, shouting, as you did here, that you felt sorry for them. The outrage in such a case would create newspaper headlines around the world.” He continued by referring to the event as an attack on a minority worldview which is an affront, an outrage, and possibly even qualifies as a hate crime “because [Governor Crist] committed this battery while denigrating [the victim's] personal religious worldview.”

Kieffer’s letter is available for public view at the Atheists of Florida web site (http://www.AtheistsofFlorida.org), along with a discussion area where others may read or contribute their own comments.

Rob Curry is a native of St. Petersburg and serves as Executive Director for Atheists of Florida. He added, “Crist should be ashamed of such boorish behavior. His actions and words this past Friday deeply dishonor the town we both call home by making it the setting for a grotesque mockery of his constitutional duty to treat all Florida citizens with equal respect under the law.”

Atheists of Florida members have been actively seeking to end official government prayers at Tampa City Council meetings since January, and more recently at Lakeland City Commission meetings. Their stance is that government should be neutral with respect to religion, neither advocating nor discouraging religious beliefs and rituals.

About Atheists of Florida
Atheists of Florida, founded in 1992, is a nonprofit, educational corporation created to heighten public awareness about atheism and to monitor state/church separation issues throughout the state. The organization is a founding member society of the Atheist Alliance International.

Atheists of Florida serves the needs of a growing nonreligious community of reason whose members disagree with supernatural doctrines while valuing personal liberty as a precious heritage for everyone. Recent national surveys show that 16% of the American population is nonreligious, an increase from 14% two years prior.

Objectives include: (a) advocating state/church separation, (b) defending the civil rights of atheists and others with minority views on religion, (c) educating the public to dispel common misconceptions about atheism, (d) offering social support for atheists, (e) encouraging an inclusive sense of community, inspiration, mutual understanding and respect, and (f) promoting freedom, honesty and integrity

Contact:

John Kieffer
President
(813) 919-9161

Rob Curry
Executive Director
(727) 851-6452

Related posts:

1. The Charitable Atheist

Most people don’t have to think very hard to come up with organizations they believe are compassionate and moral. Churches and faith-based organizations usually come to mind. It’s a misconception, however, that “religion” is the only measure of morality and that only religious people do good work.

There are also many secular/atheist charitable organizations in the United States and around the world made up of caring, compassionate, moral, ethical, intelligent people doing tireless work to ease pain and suffering and educate and promote peace. Think of Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International , Oxfam International, The American Red Cross, and The Union for Concerned Scientists, to name a few. Many secular, atheist, agnostic, nonreligious individuals also quietly contribute to charities of their choice and to their communities.

It’s not surprising, however, that nonbelievers have not been acknowledged as participants in charity. Historically, our communities have been structured so that churches are the main means for large numbers of people to gather to promote and implement charitable work. The following quote from the web site Beingism.org makes this point:

It may be that nonreligious individuals are less likely to form communities than their religious counterparts. Certainly, the lack of a preexisting community (such as an established church) is a relative hindrance to community-building. No doubt also willingness to question pervasive social norms, particularly when they are part of belief systems from which most people derive emotional, social, and/or financial support, probably tends to accompany an individualistic (rather than community-oriented) approach to life. In addition, social stigma reduces the community resources available to nonreligious people, both financially (e.g., nonreligious institutions are not given the same financial benefits as faith-based organizations) and socially (e.g., fear of discrimination leads to increased difficulty in reaching out to find others with similar values). Unfortunately, these factors have fractured communities of nonreligious people, making it extremely difficult for them to agree upon or articulate a positive vision for the future or to create change. This lack of community also leads religious communities to conclude that nonreligious people are without ethics.

One of the biggest myths still being perpetrated is that atheists/nonbelievers are selfish, immoral heretics. The very word ‘atheist’ conjures up images of Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin. Take Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News interview with Richard Dawkins. O’Reilly implied that it was ‘atheism’ that led these heinous men to commit crimes against humanity. Mr. Dawkins was given little time to rebut this stupidity.

Religion is everywhere. We are inundated with religious television programming seven days a week. Religious pundits regularly demonize and dismiss secular humanists, atheists, agnostics, and those who are nonreligious, leaving no room for further dialogue or understanding.  The Internet has many sites educating the public about nonbelief, but I doubt that many Christians or other religious folks visit these sites. If they do, it’s to excoriate what is said there, not to understand it.

Few religious people have any grasp of the challenges that atheists must deal wth. People risk losing their jobs, family, friends, and their standing in their community when they go public about their nonbelief. They’re left to feel that they exist in a secret, underground, fringe community whose freedoms are in jeopardy if they speak their truth. I think most religious people would be shocked to learn how many nonbelievers there are in the US. Some are probably sitting in pews on most Saturdays or Sundays, right next to believers.

Nonbelievers come from every walk of life. We’re teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, technicians, engineers, gardeners, janitors, soldiers, homemakers, florist, bankers (good ones), politicians (also good ones), you name it. What distinguishes us is that we have learned to THINK FOR OURSELVES; we are free thinkers. We don’t need religious dogma to tell us how to do good work or what it means to be a moral, compassionate human being.

Most atheists who donate their time, money, and energy to charity are not motivated by the wrath of a supernatural entity, by institutionalized pressures to do good work, or by expected Earthly or Heavenly rewards. Yes, there are atheists/nonbelievers who are hateful, inhumane, and mean spirited, just as there religious people who are hateful, inhumane and mean spirited too. These negative descriptors are not synonymous only with atheism.

It must be frightening to religious believers to realize that the number of nonbelievers is growing. Due to the prevailing ignorance perpetuated by believers with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, it’s time for organizations of nonreligious freethinkers to do whatever they can to educate the public and dispel the age-old myth that atheists/nonbelievers are immoral, selfish, and not charitable. Atheists need to become more vocal and visible in numbers, not just as lone activists doing anonymous good works, not for recognition per se, but for educational purposes so that anyone now and in the future can be free to choose not to believe.

Related posts:

1. FL Governor Crist Assaults Atheist; Apology Demanded
2. Getting Support as a Nonbeliever
3. Foundations of Freethought

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Lately I’ve been listening to the archived episodes of the Skepticality podcast. A few weeks back I heard a good quip, one that I’ve been thinking a lot about in the meantime. Unfortunately I’ve managed to forget not only the exact quote, but also the guest who quoted it as well.

Leaning hard on my poor old memory, I’ve narrowed it down to either Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptic’s Society, or Phil Plait, president of the James Randi Educational Foundation and good astronomer. Maybe.

Still, it went a bit like this… It’s okay to preach to the choir, but every once and a while you’ve got to get out there and SING!

Many of us freethinkers (and I’m not exempting myself from this by any means) spend an awful lot of time getting together in meetups, blogs, or forums and talking about how we feel. We’re fed up. We want change. We’re disappointed, frustrated, and even angry. We have a bit of a reputation, deserved or no, of being grumpy, and of always talking about how damned grumpy we are. Of course, the atheists and freethinkers I know are not particularly grumpy or angry, at least not more or less than anyone else. Some of us are pretty friendly and sometimes even, I hate to admit it…downright perky. But when religion begins to step on civil rights or muck about in politics or insinuate itself into our educational curriculum, well, then we do get angry. And, since these things happen pretty frequently, we get grumpy pretty frequently, and we have a whole lot to say about it.

But at some point we have got to get beyond just talking – or grousing – and get out there and DO something!

Are you worried about creationism sneaking into the school science curriculum? Donate some science materials to your school, volunteer as an aid, offer to come in to show-and-tell with your telescope, give a lecture on the scientific method, or, if you can, run for your local school board.

Are you tired of being misrepresented in the news or in TV programs which are entirely one-sided in favor of a religious point of view? Write letters to the editor or producer, get your local meetup group to send a mass of letters, write opinion pieces for local papers or newsletters, or make story suggestions to local news personalities.

Do you have a skill or talent that might help? Write a blog, a song, a book , or an article; create a podcast, a short movie, or an online video; craft an atheist comedy routine and go to open mic night; become a motivational speaker and quest speak on a podcast or news program, if that’s how you roll!

If you don’t have the time to begin a project on your own, see how you can help someone else; offer your talents or at least your assistance to a local atheist or skeptic organization. And of course, never, ever cease writing to your local government representatives – remind them that you exist and that you vote.

There are unlimited ways that you and I can get involved. Even if you don’t have a lot of time, the occasional letter or donation can go a long way. To find out more, or for many, many other great ideas, visit some of our favorite secular and skeptical sources of information like those listed on the main page of this site; find out where you might best be able to help. And, of course, also take a peek at the inspiration for this piece, Daniel Loxton’s “What Do I Do Next?”.

It’s fine to keep on preaching to the choir – we love to hear from you, and we all need to vent from time to time – but, now what are you going to do about it?

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There is a preacher for every intelligence level.  On the feeble fringe of the bell curve you’ve got the droolers watching Pastor Benny Hinn on cable TV perform his forehead-shoving healing miracles. Toward the other end of the believer IQ spectrum you’ve got well-groomed men who can tie a real tie and confident women capable of dividing 60 by 4 without a calculator or paper and pencil. In church these second class of folk hear, in passing, about the miracles that occurred back then . . . in another time and place, or, in other words, out of the range of what can be verified. Their spiritual leader talks about themes relevant to today: loving thy neighbor, setting a good example for thy children, etc.

On one pole you’ve got folks praying to win the big power ball drawing in this life. On the other pole are generally better educated and more affluent people who know, on some level, it is futile to ask their god for a specific favor today. And so they go to church and read their dusty Bible and perhaps lead Saltine cracker lives because their toast points and caviar will arrive many tomorrows later–when they close their eyes for a final time.

One of my aunts spent her last years in a nursing home. Throughout life she had a personality that was half kindness, half spitfire. Her good cheer stayed with her to the end. Pretty much. Some might say that she remained relatively upbeat because she knew, as she herself repeated, that she was “going to a better place.” In my aunt’s case, the literal interpretation of her words was absolutely true. Most cemeteries are far more beautiful, cheery, and peaceful than your average intensive care unit or nursing home.

Sometimes, when envisioning my last moments, I think it would be nice to have a little bit o’ religion. On the verge of the big good-bye, while other people can think “Jesus is waiting” (with open arms rather than a dope slap), what will I do? A Porky Pig imitation? Th-th-th-that’s all folks! Will I squeeze my wife’s hand, smile a sad smile, and tell her, again, how much I love her and have loved her and enjoyed our life together?

For those who cherish life, death sucks. There is no denying it. Why try? Oh sure, we can rationalize that without death, life would be meaningless and good parking spots even harder to come by. But the tough truth consists not of the fact of death alone, but also of the value we place on life. If we didn’t care about life, what would death matter? It’s a question of cognitive dissonance: of holding two conflicting perceptions in your mind at once. Without the two–both the love of life and the finality of personal death–no discomfort would arise. Normally, people resort to a number of strategies, conscious or unconscious, to deal with the discomfort cognitive dissonance brings. They deny; they lie; they distract themselves; they suck on their thumb and wait for the conflict to slip from their mind.

What do you do?

I suppose I could ease my own cognitive dissonance by de-valuing life, by convincing myself that life is shit, so why be bothered with the fact I will one day lose it. Or maybe I could deny that death will be the end of me. No death, no loss of all I value. But it seems to me that imagining a heavenly-life end-run around death might, beyond the possible reduction of death-bed discomfort, cause problems years before. By believing in a more important next life, the value of this life gets down-graded from first class to economy. Compared to an eternity in heaven, what is a bunch of decades on earth worth? Next to unending paradise, why get worked up over roughly seven dozen rides around the sun on a spinning planet?  Worse yet, with a better life waiting, a person may be more willing to squander his or her life on earth. And perhaps the lives of others.

Imagine three people standing on the deck of the sinking Titanic. All life boats have been dispatched. As if descending slowly downward in an elevator without walls, the freezing ocean waters rise. There is no way out; death is certain. One person paces back and forth. He screams frantically into the wind, No, no, no! This is not fair! I can’t die! It isn’t right! The second person takes a seat on the tilting floor. He believes that after the cold waters have caused his heart to stop beating he will be plucked from this world into a next. Yes, he’s apprehensive about the suffering he may endure, but his god awaits. The third stands, hands to the railing. He watches his frosty breath drift over black waves toward a distant darkness punctuated by stars.  Although he does not protest the coming of his final night, neither does he abandon his love and appreciation for the great opportunity he had. When to his neck in frigid water, he marvels at the taste of salt spray, the weight of clothing, the buoyancy of flesh.

I aim to be the third person. Sure, my inner pacing man will undoubtedly be there too, at least in the background of my mind. But with sufficient emotional maturity I can keep his cries from distracting me, of subtracting from those final precious moments as they count down to none.

Related posts:

1. Life Just Is…And So Is Death!
2. The Hot-Air Balloon of Spirituality

As a child, I always had a deep reverence for the Presbyterian Church I attended in the Philadelphia suburbs. It wasn’t so much the religious teachings that inspired me as it was the ambiance – creaky wooden floors, hard brown pews, arched doorways and windows, a pleasant musty smell, rich stained-glass, colorful tapestries, graceful floral arrangements, stirring organ music, and other artifacts found mainly in houses of worship.

I felt peaceful in that space, even if the droning minister in the pulpit was a bore. At age 13, as I was being confirmed on Palm Sunday, the minister collapsed and died of a heart attack in front of us.  Despite this emotional experience, I soon began to question in myself many of the church’s teachings. Why, I wondered, do I always have to go through Jesus to get to God? How is it possible that everything could be done in Jesus’s name? Most preposterous to me as I reached my teen years was the notion that somehow almost 2000 years before I was born, Jesus had died for my sins. I remember thinking, that doesn’t make any sense. If anybody’s going to die for my sins, it’s going to be me.

My creeping doubt came to a head during the early 1960s, when our next minister participated in one of the first civil rights marches, in predominantly Black Chester, Pennsylvania. This outraged the White Republican church members, many of whom were in upper management in large Philadelphia-area corporations. Having somehow received a sensitivity gene in a family with an extremely bigoted father, at age 20 I was proud of what our minister had stood up for. But my support and that of my mother in a subsequent church tribunal was not enough to save the minister from losing his pastorate. Hypocrisy abounded in that church. I was ripe for change.

When I was 23, I converted to Reform Judaism shortly before I married a Jew. This seemed like a natural progression to me, since Jesus played no part in the Jewish religion and I could be directly connected to a God that seemed less vengeful and more whatever I wanted him or her, or it, to be.  I also became painfully aware of anti-Semitism, my first taste as a formerly clueless WASP of the sting of discrimination.

Judaism had it’s own set of mesmerizing artifacts and rituals, but after another 23 years my commitment to theism seemed to have run its course. I yearned for a spirituality that I could practice daily without the pronouncements of some venerated supernatural being on high.

Living at the time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I had my pick of religions to try out. I attended Siddha Yoga services for a time, and then the Korean Zen Buddhist temple. The latter seemed more to my liking. Buddhism has no gods. It’s more a sane psychology for living than a religion in the typical Western sense of the word. Many people who attended services at the Zen temple were also Christians or Jews or other theistic religions. They had no difficulties incorporating the Zen lessons into their theistic dogma.

In 1998 I moved from Michigan to Florida. While there are ethnic Buddhist temples in the state, none are easily accessible for me so I practice on my own. Living in the so-called Bible Belt, I again feel the discrimination of being in the minority.  Only recently have I begun to identify myself publicly as an atheist.

Years ago, when I was living in the Northeast US, religion didn’t have a prominent place in the national discourse.  We all coexisted amicably without the need to force our religious views on each other. There was no public outcry that spoke of the Christian foundations of our nation.  It was clear to all of us, without having to talk about it, that religion was something separate from the public sphere.

These days a very vocal minority of fundamentalist Christians has been trying to change that. Their inaccurate interpretations of our founding documents threatens to turn us against each other in a way our founding fathers never intended.

We are not a Christian nation, though many Christians worship freely here.  I, like everyone else, have had the luxury of worshipping however I want. Or of not worshipping at all.  No one should be discriminated against for what they do, or do not, believe.  Religion and spirituality are private matters and should stay that way.  That practice has served us very well for over 200 years.  Why mess with it now?

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Because I don’t pray, nor imagine some invisible alpha watching over me, I am free to live in a state of hedonistic anarchy.  Yah, right.  The reality: I have inner, pro-social, drives.  Call them “voices” if you must personify.  I have a conscience, in other words.  This conscience no doubt originated in my parents’ teachings about right and wrong, which I internalized.

Actually, it probably originated before that, in the instincts I genetically acquired that allow me as a social animal to live harmoniously with groupmates.  Certainly the applause and condemnation of peers, real or imagined, also plays a role.  As do other factors.

A fear of hell, because I thoroughly lack it, has nothing to with my squeaky-clean driving record.  Likewise, a pledge to obey a set of religious commandments exerted no influence over the love, loyalty and fidelity I have shown my wife in the two-plus decades we’ve been married.

If morality were simply belief-deep, Christians would have the lowest divorce rate in our land.  They don’t.   If behaving well were simply a matter of reading and reciting words in a book, Christians would be convicted of crimes at a lower rate than non-believers.  They aren’t.  So please, keep the nonsense about religion being necessary for an upright life to yourself.  There’s no truth to it.  But that’s not surprising, for we are talking about mere matters of faith.

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Is killing a god a crime?  If it is, I hope habeas corpus rights demand that the body be presented before I am convicted.

As an atheist I could be accused of killing God.  But that’s impossible.  For there is not one god, but millions, perhaps billions.  There is one god, or more, in every mind of a believer.  I could only kill the single god in my own mind.  The human imagination, not heaven, is the abode of gods.

To those that insist there is but one god, please provide a specific address.  I’ll MapQuest it and go knocking on that god’s door.  I welcome any real evidence of deities.

As for “my” god, I didn’t really kill him.  I merely pulled the plug on the artificial life-support.  Without it he died, as all gods do, a natural death.

If it were a killing–which it wasn’t–you could call it a mercy killing.  All gods have a terminal illness.  As human knowledge progresses, the abilities-of and need-for gods atrophies.  No, they don’t bring rain, nor cause volcanoes to erupt.  They aren’t responsible for disease or the remission of disease.  What is left for gods to do?  Blow on the silver ball at the roulette table to answer one gambler’s prayer and deny another’s?  It is only a matter of time, whether decades, centuries, or millennia, before all gods will be useless.  They’ll be brain-dead relics of a primitive era in human physical and cultural evolution.  Why not say bye-bye sooner rather than later?  I think it’s the humane thing to do.

Related posts:

1. Scientific Conclusion: Prayer Doesn’t Work – Part 2