Archive for the “Ideas” Category

It’s September already. Talk of Thanksgiving and xmas is already starting to fill the air. I’m sure by now the aisles of every Walmart in this country are being switched over to the xmas junk. I’ve seen xmas stuff out as early as August in previous years. So it’s just a matter of time.

I’ve been a full on, black belt atheist for about 8 years now. Every year I hate the holidays a bit more. But until just recently I’ve kept my godlessness to myself.

When my sister in law insisted last year that people say merry christmas instead of happy holidays, I just rolled my eyes and kept saying what I was comfortable with, even though it made her mad that I was not keeping christ in christmas. Read the rest of this entry »

You know the type, I’m sure. They’re all flashy and fun in the beginning. Mildly entertaining, shiny and interesting. Then they start to sputter. You see that you’re just dealing with flash signifying nothing, but it only happens for a brief moment. The flash and sparkly goodness comes back and you go on with your new friend.

But then the sputtering happens more frequently. And finally their spark and interest dies completely. And you are left with a flimsy little stick in your hand, wondering, why the hell was I even amused by such trivia in the first place?

You’re not necessarily mad at the person for being a “flash in the pan” but you’re kind of irritated with yourself for falling for the sparkle, the glamour. Read the rest of this entry »

This is so fascinating to me. I heard this a bit ago and wanted to share it with you. It’s a rough quote, because I’m not good at dictation:

“Studies strongly suggest that beliefs are encoded in the brain differently than facts. Different parts of the brain seem to light up when we recall facts than when we recall thematic beliefs or emotional conclusions or beliefs about things.” Steven Novella from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, episode 163, September 3rd, 2008.

How cool is that? I’ve always kind of vaguely wondered if there was a difference with how a believer thinks as opposed to an atheist. Now, before you go tearing me apart, Steven Novella said that this is all very new and not set in stone at all. If you know of any studies, let me know. He also mentioned that most of the studies were done with FMRI which is hard to do right, so you have to wade through the questionable techniques and stuff.

Still, all that aside, that’s pretty interesting to me, and I wanted to share it with you.

I stumbled upon this Craigslist posting for Kansas City. When I realized what I was looking at, my jaw dropped. Why didn’t I think of that!?

The offer is for pet care services for “good” christians. Apparently over half of America’s population has worried over what will happen to their beloved pets when the rapture comes. Jesus hates animals, so of course, they’ll be staying down here with the smart atheists.

So why not offer a pet care service to “good” christians? I wonder if an ad like this would get pulled on eBay? Or my local classifieds paper! I could try that. It’s got bible quotes in it and good wholesome stuff, so I’d have a great target audience.

What do you think? Worth a shot? Here’s the craigslist listing.

Stumbling around the web, I came across a page at lukeprog.com titled The Arrogance of Atheism. I almost moved on, but then I saw the subtitle: Why I’m an atheist, not an agnostic. Luke writes a page that is simple and concise, yet totally makes sense. I contacted him and asked him if I could share it with you. So here it is in its entirety:

The Arrogance of Atheism
Why I’m an atheist, not an agnostic.

When I tell people I’m an atheist, they say, “How can you be so arrogant to think that you know God doesn’t exist? At least say you’re an agnostic and admit that you can’t know for sure one way or the other.”

Atheism! How arrogant!

But is it?

Read the rest of this entry »

Show Bookmarks

Hide Bookmarks

Today has been a great day for building foundations. I’m working on a good follow-up to Be Skeptical, but I really needed to put more time into it than I was able to allow. So it’s half done, waiting for some quiet time where I can get the information and my thoughts together properly.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all!

Just wanted to let you know that I’m working on that as well as some other historical information. Comments and suggestions or questions for what you’d like to see go up next are most welcome. So let me know what interests you!

Have a great day!

On December 24, 2006, Sam Harris wrote a piece for The Los Angeles Times called 10 Myths - And 10 Truths - About Atheism. I found it just the other day and wanted to share it with you in its entirety:

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m reading a book that is so good, so interesting, that I’ve highlighted almost every sentence. It’s a gold mine of ideas and information, a real treat to read.

If you looked at my book list, you’ll notice that I haven’t read all the “traditional” books that all other atheists seem to love. That’s not to say that I won’t, but I became an atheist when most of those books didn’t exist. Once I reached the point where I was ready to shed the oppressive mantle of religion, I was so relieved and felt so free, I didn’t have a need to read anything else on the subject for a long time.
Since I let go of god - all gods actually - a lot of books have finally come out about atheism. At the time, I didn’t even notice them. It was nice that it was being talked about, but I was happily god-free and in no need of conversion anymore. Read the rest of this entry »

College is expensive. But if you look around, you might find that education can be free. We live in a world full of information, but sometimes you just have to know how to search for it.

A friend of mine wrote about MIT and their free classes online. It sounds great. The only catch is, you don’t get credits for the classes you take, so it can’t get you towards a degree, but it’s Free Information. It’s pretty hard to beat.

While looking into MIT, I found a lot of other great colleges and universities are now doing the same thing. Here’s a brief list. I’m sure there’s much more out there if you look: Read the rest of this entry »

Here at Believers Anonymous, when it comes to providing you information, only the cold hard facts will do. In some cases, this is not as easy as it may seem, as I’ve found out today.

I’ve just spent the last 2 days looking for information on something that I think will be helpful to you. It’s about the symbols and stories of christianity and how many if not all of them are merely taken from other earlier religions and myths.

While I know that such things as the cross, the fish symbol, wedding rings, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the trinity, the crucifixion, the theft of all the pagan holidays, the christian vestments and the baptism were all stolen, I don’t have any cold hard facts to cite for you.

I’ve found several sources. Unfortunately they are either laden with agenda and biased, or simply not cited and lacking any validity. While most of those sources basically say the same thing, that doesn’t make it fact.

This might be one of those areas where there just isn’t a lot of hard evidence. This is stuff that happened thousands of years ago, not to mention that pagan religions and myths were targeted by the church in an attempt to get rid of them during the Dark Ages and at other periods. Also the original texts of the bible have been cut and edited, rewritten and improperly translated so they aren’t all that reliable either.

So, I’m on a Quest of biblical proportions (pun intended) to hunt down some great historical information for you. If you happen to have wonderful texts sitting quietly on your shelves, secret stashes of links to great sites that contain hidden treasures of historical facts, or anything else that might be useful, please comment or email me at heavingdeadcats@gmail.com