Why I am an atheist – Meggan

As a child, Christianity never made sense and seemed unfair and rather limiting. After learning about mythology and how people believed the Gods to be real and the source of phenomena that can now be scientifically explained, I made the connection that the same could be said for Christianity. My parents weren’t non-believers, but they had no interest in religion. And when I felt the inevitable social pressure to go to church, my dad flat out said “No, church is for people who need it. They go in on Sundays and act holy, but the rest of the week they are assholes.” And after witnessing numerous examples of such behaviour over the years, I decided he had a point.

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Physiologically impossible, historically improbable

It’s official: Ken Ham’s Ark Park will include…fire breathing dragons. They’re quite definite. Because people have mentioned dragons in the past, and because the Bible specifically says that all air-breathing creatures were on Noah’s Ark, dragons must have been aboard. No other conclusion is possible.

Using this same reasoning, though, they’re also going to have to pack Bigfoot, chupacabras, chimeras, Greys, and unicorns on their big wooden boat. It just gets sillier and sillier.

Why I am an atheist – Rob McCallum

I am an atheist because I was born that way.

I grew up in a Catholic family. Not crazy fundamentalist Catholic or anything. We were a liberal family, but we went to church every Sunday, said grace at dinner, and all of the other calendar related business that I can barely remember. Outside of weddings and funerals I haven’t attended a church in over twenty-five years, so the rituals are fuzzy.

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Holy crap, the BBC’s racist apologetics

I have completely tuned out the Olympics because the jingoistic, shallow American commentary makes me want to puke…but I was just sent this clip from the BBC coverage. Watch how it goes from Darwin to eugenics to Hitler to slavery in order to explain how so many black athletes excel at sprinting events…because, obviously, being able to survive shackling in a slave ship and a lifetime of menial stoop labor in the cotton fields clearly selects for genes of benefit in short foot races.

Who authorized that kind of drivel to even be made? It’s bad science and bad history.

Why I am an atheist – Patrick Kelley

I was raised alternately in general Protestant and Lutheran churches, and my parents can’t be blamed for a lack of trying.  I can’t claim ignorance, so I’m among the worst of the damned in the eyes of some.  I started out believing, right up until I got a less than satisfactory answer to the doctrine of ignorance and original sin and salvation.  I came from an abusive home, and obsessed over fairness since punishment in my home was often disproportionate and arbitrary.  It was at that moment I recognised God as he’d been described as an abusive parent.  I could not believe that such a being as my stepfather ran the universe, or rather one so apparently powerless as my mother stood by and allowed suffering and death.  I was eight.  This was the beginning of my doubts.  I realized that the people claiming to know God’s will were like me claiming to know when I’d be yanked out of bed over a dirty dish, or yelled at for literally doing nothing. Whatever there was, they had no idea when it would act or why.   

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Don’t go into the light…until I’ve milked this story for another book

A while back, I wrote a couple of articles on near-death experiences: The NDE delusion and Near-death, rehashed. It’s a topic I’ve been following off and on for quite a few years.

So I was quite surprised to see this name popping up in the news lately: Melvin Morse. Morse is one of those gullible paranormalists who has a couple of sloppily breathless books out about NDEs — he gets mentioned a couple of times in this nice article debunking a couple of well-known cases. His specialty is describing NDEs in children.

Yeah, children. Which adds a little extra disgust to the news.

He has been arrested for waterboarding his own daughter, punishing her by holding her head under a running faucet so she couldn’t breathe.

The daughter told police she “could never understand what she did to be punished” and felt scared, court documents reported. Once, she said, her father told her he “was going to wrap her in a blanket and do it so that she could not move.” In another instance, she said Melvin Morse told her that “she could go five minutes without brain damage.”

…

After her father did these things, the girl said she would “go outside and cry,” prompting Melvin Morse to come outside and then “hold her nose and mouth with his hand,” police said in court records.

“He would tell her she was lucky he did not use duct tape,” police said in the documents. “He would not let go until she lost feeling and collapsed to the ground.”

It sounds like he was trying to do a little “research” on his own child. There’s good money in almost-dead children, you know.

A little victory against a wingnut

Everyone go congratulate Chris Rodda. She’s been battling that dishonest dirtbag David Barton for a long time, and now he’s getting his comeuppance (although without acknowledgment of her contribution): NPR slammed him hard, and now his publisher has yanked his latest book off the shelves for it’s crappy scholarship.

Here’s a taste of his sloppy knowledge of history. Did you know the founding fathers already had the creation/evolution debate? And decided in favor of creationism?

Why I am an atheist – Darci

As a child, I was brought up in a vaguely Christian way – my mother was raised Lutheran and my father Methodist, but neither held too closely to tradition. They read me Bible stories, the non-threatening ones meant for children, and prayed with me at night; I learned to think of God as a benign watcher who would save me from bad dreams. The only times we entered a church were weddings and funerals.I grew older, and made friends with girls who went to VBS and AWANA at the Baptist church, so I of course wanted to go too. This was allowed, and I excelled at AWANA because of my great skill at memorizing Biblical verses (I am good at memorizing in general, it’s my one talent). The father of one of my close friends became more deeply involved in the church, and by the time he went to seminary school she was all covered up even in the summer and her mother listened to Christian radio all day. She had to grow her hair and it wasn’t long before I wasn’t allowed to be her friend anymore. Nobody put it that starkly, but there was a serious sense of disapproval from her parents and I got to see her less and less. It was confusing, since I was only 11 and didn’t think I had done anything wrong. It was years before I understood that I actually hadn’t. 

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Are you going to Skepticon?

All the cool kids are going to Skepticon, so if you’re not, you’re not cool. If you’re waffling, the organizers are having an IAmA on Reddit right now, for a few hours. Go pester them with questions, requests, and demands.

They’ve already answered a question about whether they’re wearing pants with photographic evidence. I think it’s safe to say you really can ask them anything.

Recovering from Religion

Lately, it’s been rage and battle and fury and berserkergang all over the place here, so how about something soothing for a change? I spent last weekend talking some with Jerry and Sarah of Recovering from Religion, they’re good people and it’s a good cause doing good in the world, so why don’t you catch your breath and browse some over there.

I think I’ll go make some soup.