Coming Out Godless

Thanks to Atheist Revolution I've discovered a new site, Coming Out Godless. This is a place for all atheists to post to let people know how they became atheists. For most I think they had to fight out of the claws of a Christian family, for me it was different. I always was an atheist, even when I didn't know what one was. My mom tried to raise me as a Jew but it didn't take and after my Bar Mitzvah I told her I was done with this religious stuff.

In my late 20's I became a Buddhist which was pretty interesting and I still retain some Buddhist ideas, but really, Buddhism shouldn't even be called a religion though it is often practiced that way. It is also completely atheistic. The type of Buddhism I was in required faith which is something I was never good at, my natural skepticism just kept coming out and I had to give it up. It really is quite a relief to no longer need to make sense out of nonsense. With a rational and skeptical world view everything just makes sense and there is always new amazing knowledge - real knowledge - waiting just around the corner to discover.

But I'm very glad to say I was never a Christian.

So take a minute to stop by Coming Out Godless and email Intergalactic Hussy your story to post. Then stop by Atheist Revolution when you have time.

Right now I should mention Google Reader. If you have a lot of blogs you want to follow or just a few, put them into Google Reader and it keeps track of them for you and lets you know when there is a new entry to read, and you can even read them all in the Reader. Very handy.

Biologists Helping Bookstores

This a blog about a biologist in Orange County who has taken it upon himself to rearrange the books on the shelves.

Particularly Intelligent Design books that are placed in the Science section. He quite properly removes them and places them in the Religion section, but he doesn't pick only on Christians, he also moved Hitchens' book, "God is not Great" over to the philosophy section.

This is unacceptable, and something must be done. Booksellers are not scientists, maybe we shouldn't expect them to be able to discern between science and books desperately trying to wrap themselves in scientific credibility. I, however, am a scientist - and I can clearly see when an error has been made when stocking the shelves of the science section.

It is my mission to correctly re-shelve books to the appropriate section of the bookstore.

I would think he's only helping out the bookstores, after all, anyone who would read Behe wouldn't have any reason to be in the science section.

Harry Dresden

I went and picked up Dresden Files #2 a couple of weeks ago even though I was less than thrilled with number one. This one is Fool Moon, all about werewolves, liked this one much better. Harry still got beaten, battered and shot throughout the book but it made more sense this time and didn't come off making him look pathetic, like he was lucky to be alive, let alone come out the victor. In this one he was facing some really difficult situations that anyone would have trouble with, but if he doesn't get better at not getting hurt he isn't going to be alive much longer. Like a quarterback who shortens his career because he runs more than he passes and gets tackled a lot. Of course, with Michael Vicki it really didn't matter in the long run, career is over anyway.

I was at the bookstore yesterday and was surprised that I made a bee line straight to the B's for Jim Butcher to see if I could find book three. I did, Grave Peril, and bought it right then and there. Usually I wait to order online because it's cheaper but I didn't want to wait, I wanted to start reading it last night. Guess I liked #2 more than I thought. I really wasn't thinking about Dresden at all and was at the bookstore purely by accident. It surprised me how quickly I scooped up the book and how much was I'm looking forward to reading it last night.

Also picked up a copy of Skeptic only to find they have a book review of Dawkins “The God Delusion” by, amazingly, Deepak Chopra. I tried to talk myself into this being a good thing, you know, the hearing both sides argument, but I couldn't buy it and am much annoyed that they would put in Skeptic.

Kansas Classroom

Here is a great cartoon on the state of our education these days thanks to the fundie, science and knowledge haters. Click once on the image to get a larger view that is more readable:

Atheism On The Rise

From a Toronto newspaper:
(Quotes are blue, my comments in black)

A City University of New York survey found the number of non-religious adults grew from 8% to 14.3% between 1990 and 2001, to more than 29 million Americans. The current issue of The Atlantic magazine cites a study that showed 14% of Americans "were distancing themselves from organized religion as a symbolic gesture against the religious right." A 2006 Pew study found that 20% of today's 18-to 25-year-olds have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, up from 11% in the late 1980s.

Ah, there's hope for the next generation.

In Canada, the number of people who categorize themselves as atheists, agnostics, humanists or no-religion rose to 16.2% in the 2001 census, up from 12.3% in 1991, and 7.4% a decade earlier.

That "no religion" designation is a tricky one. I've known some hardcore Christians who say they have no religion because they don't belong to a specific sect or congregation. So we can't necessarily say that category means they are atheist or agnostic (I consider both of those the same thing).

There are now dozens of atheist groups in the United States and Canada, under such banners as the Atheist Alliance International, the Secular Coalition for America and the Humanist Association of Canada. Membership in these groups is still relatively small, usually in the several thousands. Most report a leap in interest since the books came out.

It began in 2004, with The End of Faith by Sam Harris, followed two years later by Letter to a Christian Nation, which intended "to demolish the intellectual and moral pretenses of Christianity in its most committed form." Then came The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, who espoused an aim "to raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one."

And the only one of all the books that I've read. I usually find atheist literature boring, I read to learn something and often I can write the same thing in the books only better. In fact here (10 myths—and 10 truths—about atheism) is another blog of mine where I did that very thing with something Sam Harris wrote. But Dawkins is always a good read, I'm usually in total agreement with him in these matters and he is one guy who writes better than I do. And he managed to say a few things I didn't know, too. Very good book, I even wrote a review on this blog: The God Delusion.

The most recent addition was Why God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens, which paints religion as a collective form of idiocy. The New Yorker calls them "atheists with attitude;" the publisher behind a new collection to be called The Portable Atheist (edited by Mr. Hitchens), said we are living in "atheism's moment."

I have so many books piled up to read I will probably never get to all of them, so I'm going to pass on Hitchens' book because I hate the guy. As vigorously as he attacks religion, he just as vigorously supported Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq, and still does. Then he turns on his new neocon buddies and blasts their religion. I do kind of have to admire a guy willing to piss off everyone . . . but that doesn't mean I want to give him my money.

I don't think these books are converting people to atheism, although there must be a few. What it is mostly doing is taking the stigma out of being atheist. I think there are a lot of people in the closet, people who think they don't know any atheists, that it's weird, that their family will disown them - they stay hidden for all kinds of reasons. But when Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins go on TV looking intelligent and confident, and they read the books which give them a basis for being atheists, something they can argue with, they become more confident and more willing to come out.

I also think there are a lot of people who don't really call themselves atheists but deep down really are, or they follow their faith entirely out of habit and lost all belief years ago. Sometimes they are lying to themselves, sometimes they are just scared of being different, or perhaps haven't even thought about it much. When these people read the books it also gives them confidence to accept what they already know is true.

Dawkins says something similar in the article:
In describing the collective impact of the new atheists, Mr. Dawkins recently told CBC Radio, "I'm not that optimistic that I am shaking people's faith ... What I think I, and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are doing is making it easier for those who are already skeptical to come out and admit the fact."

A Trip To The Bookstore

Few things in life are more fun than a trip to Barnes & Noble and I scored today. Got the latest Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer. The subtitle of SI is Science, God, and (non)Belief - YUM! Also got my favorite magazine Scientific American Mind, all kinds of stories on the latest research into the mind. It only comes out quarterly so I love it when I get one. Then there's the books, I've been dying to get the first Dresden Files by Jim Butcher ever since the Sci Fi Channel's show came out and I found it. Just a little way into it so far and he's got a pleasant, easy to read style. And it's written in first person narrative, a favorite of mine, probably from reading all those Heinlein books as a teenager. Then a surprise find, something in the same genre as the Dresden Files but by a writer I never heard of, Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark. It just had a whimsical feeling to it that looked interesting so I gave it a try. I'll write reviews on all these as I read them but it will take a while, I'm a slow reader. This stuff will keep me busy for months, heh heh.