Atheist Alliance International has launched the international Atheist Census. It’s kinda neat to watch the map update, as news of the census spreads internationally (Australia was recently overtaken by Brazil, as home to the most atheists–but it only launched today, so numbers are greatly in flux).
Spread the word, and stand up and be counted!
It must be mid-November; I’m starting to get lots of hits for “Atheist Christmas” and related terms. So I thought I’d make it a little easier, and bring this one back to the top of the stack for a bit. I’m working on one (which, by the way, is very strange for me, but I have been very busy) which I quite like, but for now this will have to do.
An Atheist’s Christmas
We’ll all open presents, and cook a big dinner,
And share in traditions we learned long ago
But Christmas is different for this humble sinner,
No “birth of the saviour”, just people we know.
It has nothing to do with a babe in a manger
Or kings being led by a star up above,
But rather in family, friend, and in stranger,
In kindnesses done for the people we love.
A spirit of hope, and a season of giving,
A promise of peace in a troubling day,
A chance to examine the way we are living–
The courage to say what we’ve wanted to say.
You don’t need to think there’s a god up above you
To want to be good to your fellows on Earth.
To give to your friends, and to tell them “I love you”
Has nothing to do with some son of god’s birth.
For love, and for giving, we say “tis the season”
For caring, for kindness, for sharing good cheer
But why limit ourselves? I mean, what is the reason?
Why can’t we be giving the rest of the year?
This Christmas, my wish for each sister and brother,
To you, and to everyone you may hold dear;
Remember, this Christmas, to love one another—
Not only this season, but all through the year!
Related posts: An Atheist Christmas Card
Tis the Season
The War Against Christmas Comes Early
And yes, feel free to use this in any personal projects. If you use it in some money-making scheme, talk to me first. If you use it in a money-making scheme without talking to me first, you are agreeing to pay me 150% of the gross. Merry Christmas.
You may have already seen this, but there are the beginnings of what might be a vigorous but civil discussion over at NPR, on the subject of voting for an atheist candidate.
NPR gets some great commenters, but I happen to think mine are even better… so I’m pointing you that direction so you can cross-pollinate. After all, FtB discussions have pretty much already looked at everything in the NPR article many times over, so you are more than prepared.
Back to grading…
It’s not often that a re-post is *so* appropriate. I had completely forgotten about this one, and it’s only from a year ago. Substitute “Sandy” for “Irene”, and it all works.
Inspired by PZ’s post, back just prior to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene hitting the east coast, about David Silverman’s appearance on Fox. Basically, Silverman was invited on so that the hosts could ask him how atheists prepare for storms, and then make fun of him for not praying.
Of course, preparing for a potential disaster takes many forms, but the forms that are actually effective have one thing in common: they are among the things that atheists would do. Batteries? Check. Water? Check. Food? Check. First aid kit? Check. Prayer? Not so much. Candles? Matches? Check; check. Rosary? Nope. As Silverman said, the best thing you can do is prepare like an atheist.
Which got me thinking, and then composing. So below the fold is… not a verse, but a song. In my head it even has an actual melody and accompaniment–original, not a parody of any song I am aware of. For style, think John Hiatt, with a gospel choir backing him up. After the jump:
[Read more…]
I’m considering a caper
With a printer and some paper
But my brain has turned to vapor
And I’ve only so much ink
I am looking for quotations
I can pin up in locations
That will tickle the sensations
And might make the readers think
If you know a bit of writing
That’s important or exciting
Whether feather-soft or biting
Or just something that you heard.
Give me statements; give me questions—
I am open to suggestions—
Just some atheist expressions
Cos I’d like to spread the word
Ok, so I’m looking for quotes I can use for a flyer campaign (yes, there is more to it than that; no, I’m not telling you). These would need to be relatively brief (since they will be printed on a sheet of paper and posted to a typical university bulletin board, and will be ignored if they are too wordy), interesting (my goodness, there are an awful lot of boring quotations about atheism out there!), and accurate (founding fathers quotes, especially, have been distorted to the point of pain, by both sides; I don’t want to propagate lies).
Examples:
Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.
–Emma Goldman, 1916
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
–Douglas Adams
The collections of atheist quotes I have seen collected elsewhere have (because they were collected for other purposes) tended to be too wordy, too familiar, and sometimes flat-out wrong. There are pragmatic reasons for briefer, pithier quotes here–something that can be read from across a room. And I tend to see the same quotes over and over again, so it would be cool if we could throw out the interweb databases altogether and just go with books, songs, movies, fortune cookies, poetry, users manuals, celebrity tattoos, or whatever you might have seen a nice quote hiding in.
And of course, it goes without saying that this would be a nice collection for anyone else who wants to use it–say, just as a public service, an atheist quote of the day/week/month/whatever in your local student paper, or chalked on the sidewalk next to the stuff the campus christian crusade wrote.
Anyway… Got quotes?
I turned on my engraver, and I scratched a bit of metal
And repeated this procedure many times
Now I’m looking at a little pile of atheistic money—
Godless nickels, godless quarters, godless dimes
If you want a godless penny, I’ve got some, but not too many
And I don’t have any dollar coins so far
Now you might well find it funny, scratching “God” off all my money
But you know? I like them better as they are.
So I saw the “atheists are hypocrites if they spend money, cos it says ‘In God We Trust’ on it” argument one too many times. And I’ve decided that from now on, whenever I see that argument made, I’m going to de-god another big batch of coins. I already have a marker I use on bills, but paper money only stays in circulation for maybe a couple of years, whereas coins stick around for decades. And yes, I just got done de-godding a big batch this morning, while waiting for a battery to charge so I could do my next task.
I’ve also decided that any and all donations to this site (there’s a donate button down there on the right) will be converted to coins and de-godded. Then comes the fun part–getting them into circulation. Coins tend to stick around in mason jars or cracked mugs until you get fed up and decide to roll them up and bring them to the bank–or worse, to a coin-star machine (why would anyone use those?). Godless money, on the other hand, I am very motivated to get into circulation. So I’ll be an atheist benefactor, topping off parking meters, pre-loading washing machines at the local laundromats (hey, people who use laundromats are generally people who could use some help–I remember those days well), throwing a handful of quarters into the buskers’ guitar cases, loading up the UNICEF boxes at halloween… and, yes, spending them myself–I’m only a part-time altruist; I do need to eat. But now, each quarter (or, if any of you are extremely generous, I’ll have the chance to wear out my engraver on some dollar coins!) spent will have two purposes–helping a particular individual, and spreading godless money.
Does this seem a tad obsessive? Not at all; it is the tiniest fraction of the effort used to put God on all that money in the first place. You want obsessive, try looking at the members of Congress who continue to affirm a motto that is in no danger of ever being recognized as the violation of the first amendment that it is. If this is simply ceremonial deism, then I am doing precisely nothing to these coins.
Call it ceremonial de-deism.
The fundamental atheist—the fire-breathing kind—
Is as radical an entity as any that you’ll find.
He or she’s the mirror image of the faithful they despise
Though they’ll claim they’re vastly different—just another of their lies
An example of the power of the god-belief they lack?
Though we changed the pledge to put in God, they want to change it back!
We put God on all our money, but they want it taken off!
And they never say “God bless you” on the chance you sneeze or cough.
They complain about religion, which itself is quite a shame,
But they never see, their own demands are really just the same!
When we pledge “one nation, under God”, and they refuse to stand
It’s the same as forced compliance, under law, across the land
It’s a crystal-clear agenda, and it’s radical and brash
Like the lunatics who spend their time de-Godding all their cash
Fixing money in a workshop, twenty quarters at a stint
Is the same as printing millions with the power of the mint
You can see, they’re all extremists—fundamentalists, in fact—
Driven solely by beliefs they held, or those they claim they lacked;
But you never will convince them all (and Lord God knows I’ve tried)
That the atheists and faithful are the same on either side!
Over on NPR’s Cosmos and Culture blog, Adam Frank writes about Religion, Science, and Easy Answers (although, strangely enough, the URL says “religion-science-and-no-easy-answers”, and the headline bar says “Religion, Science And Magic Fairy Cellphones”; I guess there was some toying around with different possibilities). Immediately, in the comments, came the predictions, and realities, of what commenters would say.
So today’s verse comes courtesy of those who see atheists as just as extreme as fundamentalists. Even the small percentage of us who actually do cross out “God” in our money’s “In God We Trust” (as I’ve said before, I sometimes go a bit further and use my engraver to remove God from my coins as well) could not possibly be the equivalent of a the system that imposed that God on an entire population. Refusing to say the pledge cannot possibly the equivalent of requiring the nation’s schoolchildren to recite it. If the act of removing God from something is seen as radical, surely (equal and opposite, and all that) the act of putting God there in the first place must be seen as radical as well, and on a far grander scale.
A bit of a strange contrast today, in my aggregator. Clearly, Christians have taken notice of the growing numbers of atheists, and have seen the need to… do… well, something. Our first attempt comes out of San Antonio, TX, where they ask the musical question
Ever wonder what atheists truly believe and how you could be a better friend and witness to them?
Not a bad start, actually. This could be an introduction to a presentation by actual atheists, don’t you think? Which would be a real first step toward understanding. Let’s read on!
Join us for our Unpacking Atheism simulcast with Lee Strobel, Mark Mittelberg, and William Lane Craig.
Oh. Three Christian apologists. I have to wonder, even if they are being scrupulously honest, what sorts of differences exist between their view of “what atheists truly believe” and, you know, what atheists truly believe. Anyway, you can show up for a live simulcast, for fifteen bucks, if you are among the first 300 to register.
Oh, look! If you click to the registration page, the description of the event changes–no more being a better friend here:
Atheism is on the rise. If you haven’t been confronted by it yet, you will be. Your children are already being challenged by it. The effects of it are seeping into our culture and, increasingly, into the church. We must confront this challenge! We need to be ready–and help our church members become ready—to not only “give an answer” (I Pet. 3:15), but also to “take every thought captive” for Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).
Yes, these are precisely the people I want to tell me “what atheists truly believe”.
*sigh*
But you know? There is hope. Our other example of an attempt at understanding atheism comes from the [D]mergent blog; it’s a thoughtful essay by a Christian minister, whose first response to the New Atheism was… to read up on it, and on science.
Over the past several years I have spent a lot of time becoming acquainted with the New Atheism and the critical responses to it. My bookshelves, and more recently my Kindle’s memory, are full of books about this matter. A topic closely related to it, the relationship between faith and science, also occupies a good amount of space. I believe for the church to move faithfully into the future the matter of the relationship between science and faith, and the growing number of those who claim no faith or belief in God, is something we must try to fully understand and engage.
Atheism is also a personal matter for him; he has lost a couple from his congregation, because they now consider themselves atheists/agnostics. Another member of his congregation, who attends regularly and participates, is a declared atheist. Having an atheist as an active member of his congregation has framed the question differently for this writer.
I won’t take the space to critique the new atheism, or present any of the critical responses to it. ( To clarify, I do believe in God and have some philosophical troubles with atheism.) It is simply true that more and more people in the Western world are identifying as non-believers, With such people, if they want, is it even possible for them to have a place in the church. I guess I am asking, can someone who doesn’t believe in God find room to live among the people of God?
Twenty years ago, I would have firmly answered, “No. It is not possible.” But over the past two decades, because of my studies and my life experiences, my own understanding of God has changed a good bit and I have become more grace-filled and understanding toward those who don’t believe like I do and toward those who don’t believe at all.
Recognizing a change in the culture, he could have reacted against it as today’s first example is doing, but he accepted it as part of a new reality.
I have come to understand the Christian faith no longer as adherence to a certain belief system, but primarily as way of life rooted in the teachings of Jesus, a way of life rooted in love, grace and the struggle for peace and justice.
Understanding the Christian faith in this way, allows us to partner with any and all people, who wish to pursue the same kind of world. I may call it the realm of God, they may call it something else, but together we call it hope.
His essay is worth considerably more than the fifteen bucks a head the simulcast is going to charge, but it’s freely available right there at the link.
If you’ve ever seen an atheist,
And wished you could have simply chucked a stone
You’re not alone
If it nearly feels reflexive, like
The rock was waiting, wanting to be thrown
Well, that’s well-known
If your holy book commands it
Or your sense of self demands it
You can send a stone in transit toward a head
If you’re faithful, you can show it—
Buy a rock or two, and throw it
And pretend that heathen know-it-all is dead!
Since it’s being done for charity
Just tell yourself your money is well placed
And not a waste
And because the “stones” are water-filled
Balloons, there’s no real danger to be faced…
It’s just bad taste [Read more…]
[Y]ou don’t by any chance have any “thank-you doctor for your skills and services” type poems hidden away in your ink bladder do you? Living in the Deep South, and getting older, I would like a poetic way to thank the docs and leave the dog out of it.
A brilliant idea. Too brilliant to be selfish about*, so here’s my first draft, which I hereby explicitly make available to anyone who wants to use it (exception: you can’t simply steal it for profit–you can edit, and you can add, but you can’t screw people over). I see the first stanza on the outside of the card, and the rest on the inside, with plenty of room left for you to personalize it for your own particular hospital heroes.
I’ve heard I had an angel who was watching over me
And who saw my operation safely through
But the heroes and the heroines, as far as I can see
Had no wings attached—and so, I’m thanking you.Thank the doctors and the nurses, the technicians, and the staff
Thank their teachers, too, for all that they have done
Thank the EMTs and drivers, thank the folks who made me laugh
Thank the donors—even those who think it’s fun.
Thank the people on computers making sure it all goes well
Thank the bureaucrats who made it go at all
Thank the people I’ve forgotten (likely more than I can tell)
Thank you, all of you, for answering my call.
I have a few photos that could go along with this, but not on this computer. If you make any, please share them here!
(If you have suggestions for categories, or for rhymes, feel free to send them. Can you improve on my rhyme? I don’t doubt it for a minute–but if you can, do! What other situations need atheist thank you–or other–cards?)
*This is why I never make any money off of my poems.