This is a piece of her review of Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe:

The release of a Greg Epstein’s book, Good Without God, is a welcome resource for anyone who wishes to have more than just a superficial idea of what it means to be a humanist. In his discussion, Epstein reaches out to a wide range of people: nonbelievers, nonreligious, atheists, agnostics, anyone who do does not feel that their morality is derived from a belief in a god. Even the progressively religious can be humanist, or at least friendly allies, since the basic framework for being a humanist is to seek the best in yourself and others, and to believe in your own ability to make a positive difference in the world.

Well done.

The U.S. Constitution is at the heart of what the Campaign for Liberty stands for, since the very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document.  Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a “living document” that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers.  Thomas Jefferson spoke of binding our rulers down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution, and we are proud to follow in his distinguished lineage.

With our Founding Fathers, we also believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy.  Inspired by the old Robert Taft wing of the Republican Party, we are convinced that the American people cannot remain free and prosperous with 700 military bases around the world, troops in 130 countries, and a steady diet of war propaganda.  Our military overstretch is undermining our national defense and bankrupting our country.

We believe that the free market, reviled by people who do not understand it, is the most just and humane economic system and the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known.

I’m not thrilled with what appears to be alignment and re-definition around the Republican Party, but the Republicans can only benefit from the attempt.

Also worth checking out:
The Evangelical Atheist: Why Theism Matters by Walter Scott Hudson

Also, it had been a month since my last post.  I need to do better.

American Humanist Association

This cool sticker showed up in the mail the other day.  Thanks AHA!

I can’t quite bring myself to send you money, but don’t feel bad.  I am very selective about my monetary support.  I give to causes that directly benefit disabled or disadvantaged people.  I was giving for a while to People For the American Way, which I’m sure is how you got my address. But for now, I have to focus on people rather than causes. Regarding humanism, separation of church and state, and higher thinking in general, I have chosen to use my right of free speech to get the word out, so that will have to do for now.

Best of luck… and cheers!

Sarah Silverman Interview On Larry King Live 04/20/2010

She and Larry both confess being agnostics at the end of the clip.

This is a picture of the leaders for every major religion, including a likeness of Muhammad (kinda) – this was how episode 200 actually showed it:

The 200th episode tries very hard not just to piss off celebrities, but pretty much all major religions as well.  If you assume everyone that self-identifies with one of these religions was not happy, then that’s:

Christianity (includes Mormons): 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Buddhism: 376 million

Offended Celebrities: what… maybe 50?

4.9 billion people who were offended (probably).

That leaves:

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion… that thought it was hilarious (I expect).  Naturally, not all of these people in the total counts have seen the episode, but it shouldn’t be long after they see this post that they’ll watch it.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out.  It’s worth it, and I’m not even a South Park regular.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267114

The script re-introducing Super Best Friends:

Announcer: In the great hall of the Super Best Friends there are assembled the leaders of the world’s biggest religions:
Jesus
Buddha
Krishna
Muhammad
Lao Tzu and Joseph Smith
…and the Mighty Seaman
Their mission… to right that which what is wrong and to serve all mankind.
Stan: Jesus, all we are asking is that you bring Muhammad to our town for like an hour.
Jesus: My son, much has changed since you were last here. Muhammad cannot make public appearances.
Buddha: We simply cannot risk any violence from the Muslim people.
Stan: Aww… not you guys too!  Jesus Fucking Christ!!

Matt and Trey talking about publishers pussing out (quite the head fucker):

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/13/south-park-turns-200.html

News flash: Muhammad (aka Mohammad, Mohammed, etc.) actually appears in an old episode.

Well done, blaghag.

http://www.blaghag.com/2010/04/atheist-barbie.html

This is the real undoctored web site

Deals to Good to Be True!  But, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch…

Millions in prizes at Corpus Christi church this Easter, but at a price.

“The Ultimate Giveaway” sounds like a promotion at a car dealership or a department store, not a contemporary, non-denominational church, but that is (in fact) the name of the Easter service series at Corpus Christi’s Bay Area Fellowship, where they’ll award $2 million to $3 million in prizes this weekend. It’s meant to sound worldly and materialistic so that they can draw in local unchurched populations, Cornelius insists. The church says it has only heard complaints over the campaign from fellow Christians. Well, you can officially register my complaint. Organized religion is already distasteful enough.  If the promise of everlasting life doesn’t do it, just give away cars!

The “twist” is that the real Ultimate Giveaway was John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
– John 3:16 (New American Bible)

Ugh…  please.  This mythology is so old and tired.  The story is fraught with so many issues, and using Easter as a marketing opportunity is giving plenty of people heartburn.  The price of course is the cheapening of everything.  Being a good Christian is now something people need to be tricked into… wait a second.  I guess things really haven’t changed, they are just more up front about it now.

Stop the madness… and don’t even get me started on the mess the Catholics have gotten themselves into.

One of my favorite passages from Chapter 1:

If you ever meet anyone who tells you his or her religion can offer all the answers, run for the hills.  Or at least hide your wallet.

…

We are all part of an amazing story in that, as Swimme and Berry put it, “every living being of Earth is cousin to every other being.” Our history began with the Big Bang, a “primordial flaring forth”; it continued with this galaxy’s first star, which appeared five billion years later, and the Milky Way’s birthing of our sun five billion years ago. With the formation of Earth a billion years later came the first living cell, and then two billion years after that came new kinds of cells that “invented” both sexual reproduction and the predator-prey relationship. These twin developments led to an ever-quickening spiral of change: from the first multicellular animals, to mammals who could sense their environment and feel emotion, to human self-awareness and the ability to stand upright and use tools, to the domestication of fire and the human creation of myth, agriculture, villages, religion, culture, cities, and eventually to the three universalist religions (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam), mass migration, liberal democracy, the multinational corporation, and American Idol.

Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University.

The table closest to me has made off with the other three chairs from my table and is running at full tilt to figure out how to partner with area churches to “mission” to the unsaved in our area.  Shame… all they had to do was look over their shoulder.  Although, technically I was “saved” about 30 years ago.

They are talking about recruiting high schoolers from the sports teams en masse to participate in various events.  They are handing out brochures of events in the area and thinking about how they can promote fund-raisers and fun runs to raise money for all sorts of shit.  Didn’t hear Haiti mentioned, or AIDS, or any other social problem.  Just getting the word out… that was the chief concern.  So annoying.  If the average belief/non-belief split  in the US is about 85/15, it’s got to be 98/2 in my neighborhood.  We have got to move soon.  I cannot relate to these people.

The Week – Talking Points
Friday, January 22, 2010

As news broke of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Pat Robertson said on his TV show that Haitians themselves were to blame because of a pact Haiti’s founders made with the devil.

“It’s no secret that the Rev. Pat Robertson is a yammering fool,” said Carl Hiaasen in The Miami Herald, “but last week he hit a new low.” As news broke of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Robertson explained to the million-strong audience of his syndicated TV show, The 700 Club, that Haitians themselves were to blame. In the late 18th century, he said, Haiti’s founders “swore a pact to the devil” in return for being freed from their French colonial masters. Robertson’s remark was not only heartless, said Peter Wehner in National Review Online. It failed to “correspond with any serious understanding of Christianity.” The Christian faith, at its heart, is about mercy in this world and redemption in the next. Only in Robertson’s distorted imagination would an angry Christian God dish out misery to an island full of innocents, to punish them for the supposed heresy of their great-great-great-grandfathers.

Or, maybe, religion is the imagined myths of our ancestors and is just as absurd as the voodoo believed by the Haitians.  Wouldn’t this all be so much simpler without weird superstitions polluting the issue?

Robertson’s interpretation of events was admittedly “obnoxious,” said Elizabeth McAlister in Forbes.com, but interpreting the unfathomable is a preacher’s job. The purpose of religion is “to make sense out of chaos,” to discern and reveal “the unseen forces that cause things to be the way they are.”

What a shame. Science, not religion, has been explaining the majority of the “unseen forces” that were formerly the purview of religion exclusively… say about 400 years ago.  Science and reason have been steadily capturing ground ever since.  It goes even farther back if we consider some of the great thinkers of Greece, Rome, China, India, Iran, etc.

The great irony here is that while Robertson’s remarks have outraged people here in the States, many Haitians have long suspected that there are supernatural underpinnings to the island’s horrible run of bad luck. And according to mainstream Haitian lore, said Eric Metaxas in FoxNews.com, the country’s founders really did hold a voodoo ceremony at which they slaughtered a pig and “made a pact with the devil.” No one knows whether or not the myth is true, of course, but is it so outrageous of Pat Robertson to suggest that “starting a nation this way might not be the best approach?”

No one knows if the myth about the voodoo myth is true???  And then a jackass preacher comes along with his own Christian myths to explain why the earthquake happened in the first place??  Really???  Is this how collectively enlightened we are in 2010?  Holy fuck.

That we are even “having this conversation is ridiculous,” said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. We long ago learned that earthquakes are caused not by vengeful deities but by the shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates, and they bear no “malice toward any particular man, woman, or child.”

Thank you, Kathleen!

Don’t tell that to Robertson, who said 9/11 was God’s punishment of a sinful America, said Michael Rowe in HuffingtonPost.com. Through such bile, Robertson solicits millions in donations from his spellbound flock, and shelters those ill-gotten gains behind his religious tax exemption. Who is it really, Rev. Robertson, “who’s made a pact with the devil”?

And thank you, The Week, for telling it like it is.