I currently have no plans for Thanksgiving.

( Mess o' links on AIDS, terror, physics,and atheism )

Georgia (the US state) governor leads group and prays for rain. Not, of course, performing a rain dance, nor sacrificing to Zeus, or spending money to, I don't know, pump water up into the reservoir.[1]

Greta Christina on the "trendiness" of atheism.

"Atheists just need a Hallmark card.". Later notes that you don't find Christians in the US having to post under pseudonyms, lest their families find out their beliefs and ostracize them, nor expressing concern for their jobs or personal safety.

[1] To be fair, an article like that probably wouldn't tell everything. Apparently Georgia is trying to retain water normally released to Florida and Alabama; of course, that would then just pass on the water shortage.

Sign that the US has a rather privileged place in the Internet: drought.gov.

Analysis of the famous UFO trip of Betty and Barney Hill. Conclusion: an aircraft warning light combined with deprivation of sleep and sensation, and an already-stopped watch.

Kowloon Walled City, an organically developed micro-arcology. Wow. Probably a good setting for a pulp game, too.

Parody of reviews of The God Delusion.

Anthony Flew: converted ex-atheist or confused old man?

Non-theist billboards

L. Ron Hubbard wikiquotes.

* "There is no more ethical group on this planet than ourselves."

o L. Ron Hubbard, KEEPING SCIENTOLOGY WORKING. 7 February 1965, reissued 27 August 1980

* "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace."

o L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 15 August 1960, Dept. of Govt. Affairs

Greta Christina takes on Lewis's Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? trilemma. A commenter rejoins with the Riddle of Epicurus: "God:weak, wicked, or non-existent?"

In my experience, most agnostics are practically atheist. They don't believe in god or afterlife, they're not praying, they're not worrying about it all. There are exceptions, from the occasional "agnostic theist" to a more common agnostic who is "seeking", or struggling, or wistfully wishing X was true, or on their way from being Christian to being atheist. But even those could largely be seen as functionally not-theist.

Conversely, most atheists are philosophically agnostic. Some do say that they've proved God can't exist, or think that has been proven, but most, if pressed, will disclaim certainty. They don't need it, being happy with implausibility rather than impossibility, because their (our) key argument is not "I know you're wrong" but "there's no evidence that you're right."

Greta Christina


1. Why atheists are angry;
2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;
And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.

So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.



And I'm angry that Christians still say smug, sanctimonious things like, "there are no atheists in foxholes." You know why you're not seeing atheists in foxholes? Because believers are threatening to shoot them if they come out.

She links here, with the quote [Highlights]: Hearing Chapman also say that for a woman to be religious, it was like "a freed slave still living on the plantation." Which is maybe *too* strong, but I think it's got something to it, especially for Western Abrahamic religions.


Greta again on religion as fan-fiction

Given the rough outline of a narrative, human beings are unbelievably good at filling in the gaps, fleshing out the characters. And if the basic outline of a narrative has flaws and inconsistencies, we are unbelievably good at creating explanations and rationalizations and apologetics. We are unbelievably good at making the inconsistent consistent, making the indefensible defensible.

And that's exactly what religion looks like to an outside observer. It doesn't look like an internally consistent, evidence-based description of a consistent, reasonably predictable world. It looks like an unbelievably complex -- brilliant, even -- attempt to make sense of a story. And while the stories it's trying to make sense of are often fascinating and compelling, they're still stories: made up by people, with the inherent inconsistencies and gaps, cultural blind spots and flat-out mistakes, that any story made up by people is going to have.

I read Pharyngula, which leads to reading Skatje, which led to Ebon Musings, a big site of atheism essays, many of which I've now read, in a great gorging upon sympathetic ideas. Some particular finds:

Atrocities, and related articles on God as domestic abuser (perfect fit!), and the evil great sage.

What archaeology has to say about the Old Testament. No evidence for patriarchs, emphatic absence of evidence for Exodus and conquest -- and isn't it rather odd that Exodus doesn't *name* the Pharaoh? The Bible is hardly name-averse, after all.

Did Jesus really exist?

The Argument from Locality -- not a new idea, and one I've had, but he names it well.

Faith vs. reason in religion, with something at the end which made me think happy Technocratic thoughts again but that's me.

Relatedly, see the Catholic Encyclopedia defend censorship.