Deprogramming : I Might Be Wrong

One question most Christians aren’t prepared to answer is, “What would it take for you to change your mind?”

As a Christian, I was always ready to share my testimony, my favorite scriptures or worship songs, my reasons for following Jesus, but for many years I was simply closed to the possibility of being wrong. I had been coached, and had even coached others, to walk away whenever conversations took this turn.

That’s a mistake I don’t intend to repeat. If there’s one thing I learned a little late in my faith but now maintain as a free thinker, it’s that I could always be wrong. Now, it takes more than authority claims or veiled threats of eternal punishment to get my attention. I require sound reasoning and, when available, verifiable proof. Continue reading…

Video on Boy Scouts and discrimination

Here is an extremely articulate explanation of what is wrong with the Boy Scouts of America:

Any person who is atheist, agnostic, or homosexual may not be a member or leader of the Boy Scouts of America”

via Reddit

Michael Shermer on the Colbert Report

Last night Michael Shermer appeared on the Colbert Report to discuss his new book The Believing Brain. The book describes evolutionary advantageous mechanisms, such as pattern recognition and observation about the world around us and explains how much of what we know and revere does not lead us to truth. Natural selection favored that humankind be cautious, not that humankind seek the truth and thus we are left with many, many untrue concepts in society today. Shermer goes on to note that we reinforce these false beliefs and that the best way to determine the truth is the mechanism of science, or similarly strict methods of taking in information.

On the following clip, the segment ends with a discussion in religion. Colbert, as many of you know, is a Catholic. Please, enjoy:

Atheists looking for jobs

Here is a great response by the Friendly Atheist (whom I interviewed on Episode 34) to a reader who worries about applying to jobs as an atheist. I might also add that the Friendly Atheist has great content when it comes to personal accounts of readers and they are often coupled with a response based on the personal experiences of one of the authors of the site. Have any of you had similar problems with employment? I’ve personally had to remove many of my accomplishments from my legal resume because of it.

Man kicked out of council meeting for wearing atheist shirt

Check out this FriendlyAtheist article detailing how a man was kicked out of a city council meeting for wearing an atheist shirt.

To see more of what transpired yourself when the same man approached the city council to address it:

Being thrown out
Being allowed back

Atheist billboard in Jersey sparks debate, counter billboard

Coming in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel, both on the New Jersey (yuck) side and the Manhattan side, there are billboards up. Coming into New York there is a billboard (which purportedly cost $20,000 for a month) that reads “You know it’s a myth. This season celebrate Reason.” Coming out of New York there is a billboard put up by the Catholic League and Bill Donahue reading “You know it’s real. This season celebrate Jesus.”

While I think the Atheists’ billboard is more clever and a little catchier, I feel like their Jesus-looking President’s, David Silverman, attitude is partly to blame with the way we godless heathens are portrayed in this country. He’s smug and insensitive. Don’t get me wrong, I can be smug and insensitive too, but I try to put a little more seriousness into my arguments than, “You know the big daddy invisible guy in the sky is fake” while being interviewed on television. Come on, Silverman. What’s your fucking problem? You want people to come out of their religious “closet” then be more articulate and smart about what you say to journalists.

That’s not to say Bill Donahue’s a gem, though. He’s just as smug and just as annoying. In fact, even more so because while Silverman’s making an ass of himself on television, at least his opinion is a little more fact-based than the Catholic League and Donahue’s is.

Oh, well, either way Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and I guess Happy Kwanzaa

Sam Harris appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Last night, Sam Harris made an appearance on The Daily Show. He was mainly there to pitch his new book The Moral Landscape. Harris describes his new book as a way for science to look at moral questions, ultimately asserting that it is a myth that science and morality are distinct, separate, and incapable of unification. Harris is well known for his other works, perhaps most famously, Letter to a Christian Nation.

It is good to see more atheists on his show because Jon Stewart has been notoriously over sympathetic to religious claims in the past. One example of this is when Marilynne Robinson appeared on his show and he made the statement: “I’ve always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.”

The scientific community typically refutes the idea that morality comes from science. This is especially because religious people often (especially Creationists) say that morality does come from science, and that it is evil. The claim is that, for example, Darwinism leads to social Darwinism, which leads to eugenics, which leads to an elite mutant class that eats Christians. Instead, Harris takes the view that science should stop claiming that we do not or cannot receive morals from science, but rather that science can provide a more objective standard for morality. Harris, in his interview, and certainly in his book, elaborates further on some of the ways science could go about determining a common morality. You can watch the entire interview here.