Freethinker Sermonettes
revere | March 22, 2009Don't blame me. People aren't becoming atheists because there are atheists on TV, newspapers and the internet. There are atheists on TV, newspapers and the internet because people are becoming atheists:
revere | March 15, 2009Every once in a while we use this space for news clips reporting someone sighting the face of Jesus or the Virgin Mary or Mother Teresa or Michael Steele on a wall or a piece of toast. Like this:
The point is less about the benighted souls whose over active pattern recognition is featured as to point out the collosal drivel dished out by local TV news outlets, the main source for this kind of crap (Fox News seems particularly fond of these stories, but they're all guilty). It's not an aberration, either. The sheer volume is almost as mind numbing as the content. The following compilation of…
revere | March 1, 2009Most of the world believes in Darwin, but of course, not everyone thinks Darwin was right. And even some people who were brought up believing in Darwin can losw that belief:
revere | February 22, 2009I've never read a column by Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen before, but I think I've been missing something, at least judging by his recent observations on how three Ottawa city councillors (by name: Marianne Wilkinson, Rainer Bloess, and Doug Thompson) have done so much to advance the cause of atheism in the city. Ottawa public transit allows religious organizations to adorn the city's buses with their propaganda, but the "Sensitive Three," as Gardner calls the councillors, don't want the bland freethinker message, "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" to be…
revere | February 15, 2009Just a few days ago we celebrated a pair of birthdays of two remarkable men, one an Englishman, Charles Darwin, the other an American, Abraham Lincoln. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of their births, Darwin and Lincoln celebrations were held in many cities and towns, and at least one American town celebrated both together with readings from the works of the two men. I was honored to participate and here is some of what I read.
Although exact contemporaries, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln never corresponded or met each other. Yet there are striking concordances in their lives and…
revere | February 8, 2009It's the long weekend of the stimulus watch. The fate of the nation hangs in the balance (well, maybe just the fate of my 401K, but I'd like to stop working before I'm 92). Meanwhile a few Republicans and some Democrats, who may as well be Republicans (Ben Nelson representing Nebraska, Joe Lieberman, representing the insurance and pharmaceutical industries), are working hard to empty it of things that would create jobs and provide benefit and instead to stuff it with things that will create wealth for their cronies. A leader of this gang of irresponsible ideologues, Republican Senator Susan…
revere | February 1, 2009Forget about climate change. We're not going to make it that far. December 21, 2012 is earth's final day. If you'd like to know the details you can buy the exciting video teaching from Drs. Jack and Rexella Van Impe, December 21st 2012: History's Final Day. Everyone seems agreed on the date. Everyone, in this case, being ancient Romans, ancient Mayans, the Chinese I Ching, and a 16th century English prophetess named Mother Shipton.
This is not parody. The Reverend Jack van Impe and his wife, are among the world's most experienced at predicting the End of the World and selling videos about it…
revere | January 25, 2009Our weekly feature:
So we had a joyous inauguration, although the obligatory religious bookends were a bit hard to take. The Invocation by Pastor Rick (Warren) was a real piece of work, typically self-righteous and obnoxiously exclusionary. It goes without saying he alienated atheists, but then he went on to do the same for non-Christians (invoking Jesus as his Lord and Saviour) and then Catholics (by reciting the Protestant version of the Our Father). Obama, at least, had the courtesy to include non-believers in a short list of religious affiliations. I agree with PZ that it was a small…
revere | January 18, 2009What with college bowl games, NFL play-offs, the Superbowl and the NCAA basketball tournament around the corner, God is pretty busy these days, helping teams win and athletes look gook. Maybe this accounts for His lack of attention to poverty, war, cruelty, hatred and every conceivable kind of tribalism. Of course athletic competition is pretty important and folks in Kansas take it pretty seriously. They also take religion pretty seriously, or so I'm told. So when columnist Bill Mayer at KUsports.com observed that athletes who thank the deity for scoring a touchdown in football or a three…
revere | January 11, 2009Atheism is making the rounds in the United Kingdom. Street by street. Bus stop to bus stop. A message of godlessness is being emblazoned on the sides of some 800 buses:
Really not offensive, unless anything questioning God's existence is offensive. Apparently to a great many people it isn't. The atheist bus campaign was fueled by public pledges in response to another bus campaign, the Jesus Said ads on London buses last June:
These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in…
revere | January 4, 2009It's time once again for the inimitable Marcus Brigstocke on The Abrahamic Religions. Yes, I know we've done it before, but some of you may have missed it and those who have seen it will get to see it again because you can't see stuff like this too often. Especially when two of the main Abrahamic religions are duking it out and doing their best to kill innocent people because they are of a different tribe:
Kudos to Firedog Lake and Huffington Post for keeping the brutal slaughter in Gaza in front of us where we have to see it.
revere | December 28, 2008This June we lost George Carlin. He was only 71. We've had him often on our little Sunday get togethers, so on this last Freethinker Sermonette of the year of his death, why not again? You've seen it. Many times. Classics are forever. Joe Bless you, George:
revere | December 21, 2008Forty Fifty years ago this week, in a world even more strife torn than today's, the Apollo 8 spacecraft was approaching the moon, not to land there, but to orbit it:
Apollo 8 had set off a few days before Christmas. It was the most daring space mission ever, taking astronauts William Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman further from Earth than humans had ever been.
Early on Christmas Eve, the craft reached Lunar orbit. The first Moon landing, by Apollo 11, would not take place for another seven months, but Apollo 8 was a test of whether the spacecraft worked. It did, and at 3am London time on…
revere | December 14, 2008The French philosophe, Denis Diderot (1713-1784), was a guiding intellect of The Enlightenment and a principal author of its central document, L'Encyclopédie, which set the tone for the modern view where religion is just another superstition.
Classic Diderot is always bracing. Here is some:
Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian.
Denis Diderot, Addition aux Pensees philosophiques, from John Daintith, et al,…
revere | December 7, 2008It seems Republicans have been inaccurately crediting George Bush with keeping us safe from terrorists since 9/11 (conveniently omitting the anthrax attacks which came from within the US weapons establishment; I guess that means whoever did it wasn't a terrorist). It took a Democrat in the Kentucky legislature to identify the real Protector -- God. And not saying Loud and Proud is against the law. At least in Kentucky:
A lawmaker says the state's Homeland Security office should be crediting God with keeping the state safe.
State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister who was instrumental…
revere | November 23, 2008When my sister and brother-in-law were stuck in Wichita Falls, TX during his military service (we're talking the 1950s, folks) it was a godforsaken part of a godforsaken state. No longer. God has moved in and set up shop. The Wichita Falls Times Record has the genesis of this development:
In the beginning, the state of Texas created a Bible course. And the course was formless and void. Darkness hung over the details of the course.
Eventually, the state said, "Let there be K-12 instruction in religious literature that includes the Old and New Testaments."
And the Wichita Falls Independent…
revere | November 16, 2008The latest hilarious dust-up over religion has to do with an ad on DC buses scheduled for the holidays by the American Humanist Association (AHA):
Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on the outside and inside of DC Metro buses starting next Tuesday and will run throughout December. Newspaper versions of the ads ran in The New York Times and The Washington Post this week.
The advertising campaign is part of an effort by the American Humanist Association to reach out to like-minded individuals around the nation's capitol and elsewhere who might…
revere | November 9, 2008Breaking up is hard to do. We all know that. Once science and religion got along. They even thought they could make a go of it. But let's face it, they lived in different worlds. It just wasn't to be. It's probably better for the children: