Why I am an atheist – SmartLX

I am an atheist because I was only ever a theist due to an emotional bond which had time to fade, and reason did not save it.

My mother is Catholic, and I was raised and confirmed in that tradition. Regardless of my present unbelief, the Church will count me among its ranks until the day I die. (Even if I convinced some priest or bishop to unhappily record my renouncement, I suspect he would not pass on the minus-one to the higher-ups.) As a child, I often quietly spoke to God as if He were a foot away and could hear my every thought. Every time I did this I would wonder if He was really listening, but it was nice to always have someone to talk to.

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WTF, NatGeo?

Oh, it’s another crappy television show put on by a purported science-positive network that I completely missed. National Geographic ran a show called “Chasing UFOs” on Friday, and since about the only television I ever watch any more is commercial-free movies on Netflix, I wasn’t tuned in. Fortunately, Robert Sheaffer did, and found it “lurid and sensational”.

A fellow named Kacey Simmons claimed to have seen UFOs in a particular forested area, so the UFO Chasers decide to go there to check it out. At night, of course. So they attach themselves to absurd-looking night vision equipment with long booms protruding from shoulder braces, looking very much like people with broken necks wandering about. We repeatedly hear one or another excitedly exclaim, “What the (bleep) was that?” They take a video of a light in the sky “changing sizes,” not realizing that is the operation of their camera’s auto focus function, trying to bring the light into focus. We hear coyotes howl in the distance, and they have an almost-encounter with a wild boar. Such are the hazards facing those who dare to pursue extraterrestrials. They photograph an aircraft with three lights, and wonder if it is from earth.

Great. The ghosthunter tactic. I guess people tune in to these things, so it must be effective television for some segment of the population, but every time I’ve seen these horrible green screen/night vision videos with everyone running around with a camera on a boom pointed at their face, I think it’s television for people who want to laugh at how stupid and gullible other people are.

Now why would National Geographic want to sully their good name with this tripe? Here’s a clue: they did a survey. 77% of Americans believe that there is evidence that aliens have visited the Earth, and 36% are sure that they have; 79% of Americans believe the X-Files was a documentary, and that the government has been covering up the Truth about the aliens.

Another nugget of information: Rupert Murdoch owns a 2/3 stake of the National Geographic Channel. Much is explained.

By the way, I know it’s in vogue in these parts to mock the old-school skeptics who track down Bigfoot and UFOs and other such weird phenomena, but I think the contempt is misplaced. As the survey shows and this series exploits, the gullibility of the population for these topics needs to be addressed. If serious organizations with good reputations like National Geographic are going to be pandering to idiocy, we need skeptics like Bob Sheaffer to counterbalance them.

Why I am an atheist – James

I am an atheist because there is no proof for any gods and the rationalist and sceptic in me insists that the burden of proof relies solely on those making the claim for a religion. This may seem to be a fairly straightforward position to those who read this site but it still amazes those religious people who ask the question. The path to this realisation was an interesting one.

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Why I am an atheist – Danielle

I am an atheist because of Alcoholics Anonymous. My mom is an alcoholic, and had been in the group and sober for as long as I can remember. AA was my religion growing up, even more than Christianity. While I would go years without setting foot in a church, I sat outside of AA meetings and listened to everyone share and repeat the twelve steps and the Lord’s Prayer several times a week. I learned all of the twelve steps and all of the slogans. I was taught my mom had a disease, and that her disease would kill her if she didn’t attend these meetings. I was taught that while I was important, god and AA had to come first in her life. I was also taught that alcoholism was a family disease, that it was genetic, and that I was doomed to either become alcoholic myself or marry an alcoholic.

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Secular Woman

Say, look: it’s a new organization promoting godless values, called Secular Woman. You should join. I just did, and they didn’t even balk at my Y chromosome!

The Blaze is hot on this story! They say it’s “yet another point of evidence that non-believers are working feverishly to harness and secure power”. They’re wrong. It’s another point of evidence that we’re working steadily and confidently to take over the world.

Pharyngula podcast tomorrow

Remember! Tomorrow (Saturday) at 10am Central I’ll be opening up Google+ and setting up a public chat about those silly creationists. The resulting youtube video will be posted here, if you want to sleep in, or you can watch it streaming live, and even join in.

If you want to talk, come prepared with your favorite creationist foolishness…and also, your refutation of it.

(If you’re reading this shortly after I’ve posted it, you’re awake for it: it will be about this same time tomorrow. Or you can convert US Central time to your time zone.)

The worst diffuses well

It’s really a shame: the United States does have some very good things, like an excellent higher education system (which is declining with drooping support, but that’s a different subject), a fine Constitution, and good pizza, but what is making headway in the rest of the world? McDonalds and creationism. Turkey has the creationism bug even worse than we do, and guess who infected them?

In the 1980s, Turkey was still reeling from a military coup d’etat. The socially conservative government that took control after the junta relinquished power changed the science curriculum in schools, Kence says. After the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case “Edwards v. Aguillard,” which prohibited the teaching of creationism in American public school science courses, he says creationists’ gaze moved abroad. Turkey came calling.

“In collaboration with American creationists, the Minister of Education in Turkey called the Institute for Creation Research and asked for their help,” he says. New textbooks were printed and distributed, and over time teachers began to teach creationism and evolution side by side.

A spokesperson at the Ministry of Education confirmed that government-sanctioned biology textbooks label evolution as a theory, as do scientists everywhere, but also teach creationism alongside it, as a rival theory.

It’s pathetic and sad, too, when I look at the Turkish creationist literature, like Harun Yahya’s junk: it isn’t original or interesting or exotic, it really is exactly the same crap the ICR and similar evangelical creationist missionary outfits have been peddling since the 1960s. You can look at that ghastly Atlas of Creation that Yahya was mailing out to scientists everywhere and trace everything in it back to Duane Gish and Ron Wyatt and all the wacky Ark hunters who go off to Turkey to hike around Mt Ararat and spread gospel tracts.

The people who gravitate to creationism really are the bottom of the barrel, without a single original idea in their heads. And that seems to be true world-wide.

1 + 0 = 10

It’s homeopathic math, and it really works! Biodork analyzes some personal lubricants, and discovers that all you have to do is add some homeopathic dilutions of boring stuff like salt water to the functional ingredients, and you can write florid ad copy for it and charge twice as much.

Homeopathy really is magic that way — it potentiates profits.

Also, calling it “Yoni’s Bliss”? Genius! Who wouldn’t want blissful yonis?

Why I am an atheist – Jason W.

The reason I have decided to become an atheist was based around my experience with religion growing up. I come from a Catholic family, that by alot of means were very liberal in their practices. I remember tending a Catholic preschool at a very young age when my grandmother was deeply involved with the church. It was then my first exposure to religion had taken root. My mother, who practiced her religion very loosely, had decided that the teachings of Christ should be taught to us through the means of a protestant church. So beginning at the ages of 5, we would begin going to a baptist church located in the down town area of my city. I can vaguely remember the smell of old wood and mold in the place as the pastor and his constituents would do their best to ease the anxiety of all of the new kids tending to their Sunday services.

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