Not-so-pointless poll on Australian chaplains

The Atheist Foundation of Australia would like their prime minister to answer one simple question:

Dear Prime Minister. Against the strongly expressed concerns of mental health professionals, teacher unions and secular organisations, why do you allow the outrageous situation to continue where largely unqualified, religious evangelists have access to young children in public schools, in the form of the National School Chaplaincy Program?

She’s been dodging it, of course, and I suspect that if she were backed into a corner she’d be entertainingly frantic in her efforts to escape. So let’s corner her! And she has made the mistake of making that possible.

Dear members and supporters,

OurSay is giving us the opportunity to directly ask Prime Minister
Julia Gillard a question, and we have chosen to focus on the
outrageous taxpayer funded National School Chaplaincy Program.

This Saturday, Gillard will answer three of the most popular questions
as chosen through OurSay. One of these questions could be ours.

Please follow these simple steps to make sure that we have a seat at
the table:

1) Sign up for OurSay

2) Vote seven times for our question:

3) Recruit a friend to do exactly the same

Click here to get started: http://oursay.org/s/2ea

We only have until Thursday but, if we all came together – we could
make sure that this important issue is being heard by Prime Minister
Gillard and all of Australia that very Saturday.

Regards, David Nicholls

President – Atheist Foundation of Australia

PS. Make sure that you sign up and vote seven times to get an answer
from Gillard on Chaplaincy.

It’s a poll with some teeth. Let’s make Gillard dance!

Why I am an atheist – Paul

I was talking with a couple of Christians after a band practice one evening. It dawned on me how primitive but totally defended their ideas were. Of course if they were rational they would not be religious. I noticed the religious invoke God or the supernatural (capable of  something illogical or inexplicable) whenever I have cornered them or their arguments and was able to show their views were wrong, self contradicting or baseless. They use invoking the supernatural as a ploy in any argument they are losing. They also use a supernatural claim when they do not know, understand or accept evidence.

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Portland, Oregon is having a humanist film festival!

I wish I could be there. The Humanist Film Festival is happening on 26-28 October, and they’re looking for submissions. If you’ve got anything that fits their categories, send them in soon. They’re looking for films that speak to humanist themes, including:

  • Reason, Critical Thinking and Skepticism (such as claims of the paranormal, critical thinking education, rational living, etc.)

  • Ethics and Human Wellbeing (including human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, rational ethics, challenging scriptural ethics, sex education and attitudes about sex, etc.)

  • Science and the Natural World (e.g. science appreciation, science education, evolution, global warming, pseudo-science and pseudo-medicine etc.)

  • Freedom of Thought, Speech and Critical Inquiry

  • Challenging the Claims and Value of Religion (e.g. anti-apologetics, education about atheism and atheists, uncovering problems with religion, etc.)

  • Separation of Church and State

  • Joie de vivre and human thriving (art and aesthetics, living the good life, human progress etc.)

And here’s their mission:

The Portland Humanist Film Festival is an outreach event designed to broaden the understanding and acceptance of a secular, humanist world view. It specifically addresses audiences who are friendly to our views but who are not necessarily familiar with atheism or humanistic ethics, or why we value reason and scientific thinking. The Film Festival presents these themes through an accessible, entertaining medium.

Got any suggestions? If you’re a godless filmmaker, think about sending them something!

A voice of reason

Massimo Pigliucci lays out the story of the misogyny wars tearing bloody great rifts in the atheist/skeptic community. I doubt that it will heal anything, though, because the reasonable position he lays out is exactly the one that the freethoughtblogs and skepchick communities have been arguing for since the very beginning.

But one can hope that one more reasonable voice might wake up a few more people.

How is Britain like Louisiana?

They’re not much alike, except in one thing: they’re both supporting creationist schools.

A group of creationists has gained approval from the Government to open a fully state-funded Free School in 2013. The group are behind the plans for ‘Exemplar – Newark Business Academy’, a revised bid from the same people who proposed ‘Everyday Champion’s Academy’ last year. Everyday Champion’s Academy, which was formally backed by Everyday Champions Church, was explicitly rejected due to concerns surrounding the teaching of creationism.

In February 2011, while promoting the Everyday Champions Academy bid, Everyday Champions Church leader Gareth Morgan stated that ‘Creationism will be taught as the belief of the leadership of the school. It will not be taught exclusively in the sciences, for example. At the same time, evolution will be taught as a theory.’

And the United Kingdom won’t even have the compensatory advantages of great jazz, cajun food, and a willingness to party all night long. Creationism, boiled cabbage, and Morris dancing? There’s not one win anywhere in there.

Follow the link, read the details, and complain to your government!

Why I am an atheist – TD

I grew up fundamentalist Protestant in the deep South.  Church three times a week, Bible reading and prayer most nights at home, the whole nine yards. Looking back on my childhood, though, I think religion’s grip on me began to slip at an early age.  The problem was, I simply didn’t feel guilty about “sins” such as swearing, petty gambling, and such.  (I mean, seriously, how many real sins does your average eight-year-old commit, anyway?)  I felt pangs of conscience when I hurt somebody, but not when I committed a victimless “sin.”

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Why I am an atheist – Fred Santos

This is a story that I have written numerous times, however I never feel that it is comprehensive enough, or at the same time concise enough. That is how I am with my writing. Especially in factual cases, such as this; I aim to write with honesty and provide each detail of the events that led to my atheism showing the logical progression that it took, being both in-depth and at the same time avoiding the sense of clutter and babbling that plagues me. I often feel that my writing becomes incoherent and am never totally satisfied with the final result. But here I begin once more the story of my deconversion from the Christian faith.

Like the majority of middle class westerners, I was born into the dominant religion of Anglo-European tradition – Christianity. My earliest and fondest memories of family include attending church and reading Bible stories. Though my early childhood wasn’t a particularly religious one, there was always an element that was drawn to the warm sense of group identity that came with visiting my ‘uncle’s’* church. *(He wasn’t actually my uncle. The pastor of a Baptist Church and my mother’s former guardian during her time under the care of the Bernardo’s foundation as a child, I had come to know him and his wife colloquially as aunt and uncle, and their children were referred to as my cousins – due to this I still have a strong familial bond with them to this day.) This church remained an occasional place of attendance during my growing-up and was a significant influence on my developing faith.

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The FtB crew also did another podcast tonight

Here we go again: this time, Ashley Miller, Chris Rodda, JT Eberhard, and I hung out to chat about the perfidy of Christian corruption of education and government.

Some other people asked to join in midway through: these are chats among the community of bloggers here at Freethoughtblogs, so they’re a little bit exclusive…but maybe in the future with some advance warning we could think about bringing in an ‘outsider’ or two to give us a different perspective. Write to one of us and ask!

Pharyngula Podcast #3

We had another fun Google+ Hangout this morning with Esteleth, James Rook, Tommy Leung, and Yankee Cynic, building on a couple of articles I mentioned before. Basically, we talked about the attractiveness of the premises of evolutionary psychology vs. the extravagance of their conclusions, and the unreliability of brains and how we have to work hard to overcome them. It turned into a kind of discussion about psychology, of all things.

And now you can watch it all, too.

Isn’t it amazing how you can assemble a small group of people, give them the seed of an idea, and then they can go on to talk about it for an hour, easy?

We’ll probably do another one in about two weeks. Make suggestions! I’m also planning to do the next one at sometime in my local evening, so maybe we can bring in an Australian or two.