Why I am an atheist – Melissa

Am I an Atheist?

I haven’t had a moment where I’ve decided I don’t believe in God, a “conversion” to some other position. My faith questions and doubts have been a journey that I’ve reflected here on my blog in several posts. But after my post on spiritualizing the night, I got several comments and emails asking when I had become an atheist. I am still thinking about this question, because I don’t really know the answer. I’m not even sure I am an Atheist.

When does one become an Atheist? Does it happen when you don’t feel a spiritual connection with God? Is it when you start to disagree with stuff in the bible? Are you an Atheist when you associate with other Atheists? Or only when you declare yourself one? I don’t know.

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Looking for #2

I would have thought that it was a relief, a minor bit of unconcern, that Mitt Romney nominally supports evolution (he’s one of those waffly theistic evolutionists, so he doesn’t really…but at least he wouldn’t be brazenly contradicting all of the evidence). But there’s a potential problem looming: who will he pick for vice president? Who does he turn to advice on education? Ken Miller discusses the situation, and points out that his key advisor on education reform and potential VP pick is…

Bobby Jindal, creationist governor of Louisiana.

Jindal has an elite résumé. He was a biology major at my school, Brown University, and a Rhodes scholar. He knows the science, or at least he ought to. But in his rise to prominence in Louisiana, he made a bargain with the religious right and compromised science and science education for the children of his state. In fact, Jindal’s actions at one point persuaded leading scientific organizations, including the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, to cross New Orleans off their list of future meeting sites.

What did Jindal do to produce a hornet’s nest of “mad scientists,” as Times-Picayune writer James Gill described them? He signed into law, in Gill’s words, the “Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), which is named for what it is designed to destroy.” The act allows “supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials” to be brought into classrooms to support the “open and objective discussion” of certain “scientific theories,” including, of course, evolution. As educators who have heard such coded language before quickly realized, the act was intended to promote creationism as science. In April, Kevin Carman, dean of the College of Science at Louisiana State University, testified before the Louisiana Senate’s Education Committee that two top scientists had rejected offers to come to LSU because of the LSEA, and the school may lose more scientists in the future.

And now Jindal is poised to spend millions of dollars of state money to support the teaching of creationism in private schools.

But don’t panic! Jindal is currently just one possibility for VP, and there are plenty of other Republicans Romney might pick…like Nikki Haley, or Rick Santorum, or Michele Bachmann…

OK, panic. There’s no way we’ll be happy with anyone he chooses.

Why I am an atheist – Fay

I’m an atheist because I could no longer continue to do mental gymnastics.  I kept arguing with my own mind, trying to convince myself that the faith that my parents followed, was the only true way.  Eventually I had to look myself in the mirror and admit I saw things differently.  No, I was not destined to be less than all men given all the men I successfully competed against in school, in my profession etc.  No I could not believe that I was miraculously born into just the right family to have just the right faith to save me from hellfire. No I could not accept that ancient books that were supposedly written by a god, who created the universe state things about the universe that are demonstrably false.  No I could not accept that women were to blame for male lust and sexual violence and so needed to be covered up.  No I could not accept that my future had already been written but I would be punished or rewarded for how my life turned out.  I could go on and on.  The mental energy required to keep supporting religion was just too much for my brain.  I had to let religion go and set my brain free.  Life is more beautiful ever since.

 

Fay
Michigan

Another conversion story

Richard Muller used to be a doubter — he didn’t think global warming was a concern, and he didn’t think people were responsible for it. Now he has changed his mind, and he explains why.

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

You mean, sometimes evidence works? Wow.

The cables!

I saw this on @cstross‘s twitter feed and had to laugh. Audiophiles and other bewildered purchasers of high-end electronics can get thoroughly deranged and start throwing ridiculous sums of money at the most trivial components — like cables. How would you like this extra-special X-Box cable? I found one place selling it for $85; the non-elite cables without the virus protection are about $8.

If you really want an amazing deal, though, go for an AudioQuest K2 terminated speaker cable.

It’s only $8,450. And Amazon has 5 in stock! Order fast before they’re gone!

I don’t think they’re selling, though. The most wonderful thing about over-priced (or possibly typoed) cables are the reviews. You must read the reviews! Even the 5 star reviews are loaded with snark, but my very favorite is this one-star review. It’s a whole tragic story.

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long… I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this… accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the… whispers… began.

Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly… we began to UNDERSTAND.

No, no, please! I don’t want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out… oh, god, the screaming… the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!

WHY CAN’T I FORGET THE WORDS???

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

Do not use the cables!

I want to read more of the author’s work. Alas, after that one flash of brilliance, most of Whisper’s work is pedestrian: shoes, exercise equipment, computer accessories. No audio gear, though, which is only to be expected if he has to wear earplugs all the time.

Why I am an atheist – Steven Kukula

I had been a skeptical believer from my youth, taking everything with a grain of salt, but knowing that as I got older I’d know more. At 17, when I graduated from my Catholic high school, I left the church, believing it to be nothing more than an authoritarian organization. I consider myself to have been an agnostic at that time, not knowing whether there was a god and for a while not caring.

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What strange beast is this?

The Institute for Creation Research is going on and on again about Haeckel and gill slits. It gets tiresome; I’ve explained so many times that Haeckel’s theory was wrong and he skewed his drawings to fit his model, but that it really is true that human embryos have pharyngeal arches that are modified in a peculiar way to build the face and neck, and this really is evidence for our evolutionary history. Fortunately, this time, I don’t have to go into it because Troy Britain has covered all the details. Yay!

But I do want to mention one really strange thing. The ICR is going on and on about Haeckel faking his embryo drawings, but this is what they used to illustrate their own article.

CHRIST JESUS, WHAT IS THAT THING? That is creepy — no human embryo ever looked like that. They’ve neatly painted out any kind of branchial structures, and it has no post-anal tail — yet it’s supposed to be a 7-8 week embryo. I guess reality was too uncomfortable for them, so they dug up some uninformed stock art that leaves out those vestiges of our ancestry, tails and gill slits, that refute their claims.

Either that or they performed an abortion on a Grey. Good for them, those UFO pilots are always sticking probes up our butts, it’s only fair that someone grabbed one and did a D&C on them.