The God-forsakin' Blog

You'll often hear Evangelicals complain that atheists are too in-your-face about their atheism. The "joke" they make is "How do you know if someone's an atheist? Wait two minutes and they'll tell you!" And they'll even complain that atheists are trying to "shove their beliefs down our throats" and force them to give up their own values to comply with the values of atheists. Right... Darn those frothing-at-the-mouth atheists, always trying to push their beliefs on other people.  Look at 'em, wearing their atheist symbol necklaces and tee shirts, plastering their oversized vehicles with atheist bumper stickers, bowing their heads as a family in restaurants and loudly proclaiming how thankful they are to atheism for the food they're about to eat,  tipping their servers with pamphlets about atheism instead of money, flying atheist flags on their homes, getting up early on Sundays to meet with groups of atheists each week to declare publ...

  I saw this meme today: And now I'm imagining what that prayer would sound like, if the people doing the praying actually had any self-awareness... "Oh Lord, our pastor seems really stressed and overwhelmed lately. I can't imagine why. I mean, he hardly does anything, it's not like he has a real job that requires him to provide actual goods or services. He just has to talk for an hour a week. ... and referee the bitching, gossiping, and infighting between dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who have nothing in common except that they claim to believe in universal love. ... and coordinate the schedules of several group of volunteers who are supposed to do all the building maintenance, driving, childcare, cooking, cleaning, landscaping, music, and budgeting. ... and try to live on the salary we pay him. ... and be available all week in case someone needs counseling, or someone to complain to, or comfort when they're dying or their family members are dying, so he can...

A friend posted a poem the other day that had been posted by a friend of a friend, so I'd like to be able to credit the original author but the closest I can get is that their name is K... "Elizabeth Dilley This poem was written by my dear friend K on the occasion of Pat Robertson's death. It's as profoundly theological as anything my clergy colleagues have shared, and certainly more theologically robust than anything I could say about it. I'm posting because I'm going to want to remember this poem for years to come. Maybe you will, too: Ruminations on the death of Pat Robertson I don’t like to think About Pat Robertson going to hell. That lets him off too easy. I like to think about Pat Robertson finding himself In a heaven he never believed Would exist. Where Divine is reading in drag To the children murdered at Sandy Hook and Ulvalde. While Edie Windsor And Gertrude Stein drink coffee In the breakfast nook talking politics with Harvey Milk. Where Matthew She...

When I first became an atheist, I still held onto the idea that Christianity (if done right) had a lot of good stuff, even though the god stuff isn't true. The first thing I wrote as I tried to process my thoughts and feelings about it eventually became the first post to this blog, titled "The Atheist Christian". But since then I've learned more about humanism, and realized that anything that was ever valuable in Christianity was just humanism with extra steps. Loving and serving your neighbor, helping those who can't help themselves, striving for justice and peace, being merciful to those who need mercy... none of that needs a religion or ever did. The religion is at best a symbol for those things, but more often a distraction from them, or worse still a path in the opposite direction (as it has become for American Evangelicals). No point in adding the extra steps, really. We can just have humanism, and it works much better that way.

In an online group, someone asked the question "As an atheist, what's your favorite guilty pleasure that religious folks might consider a sin?" And my honest answer is: None. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, I sin exactly as much as I want to, and that amount is zero. I make the same exact choices now that I did as a Christian. I haven't started doing harmful things just because there's no cosmic Elf on the Shelf looking over my shoulder. I'm still faithful to my wife because of fucking course I am. I love her and I promised her to love only her in that way for life, and that hasn't changed and never will. I still don't gamble because, while I'm bad at math, I'm not THAT bad at math. I still don't smoke because I watched my grandmother slowly die of lung cancer when I was a kid and the idea has somehow never appealed since then. I still don't drink to excess because I saw the effects alcoholism had on generations of my family. I still don...

  I saw this post on Facebook today: People of all genders, ages,... - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs | Facebook The caption read, "People of all genders, ages, sexual orientations, races, and branches of service have experienced military sexual trauma (MST). Learn about the many VA care options specifically designed to help MST survivors." I noticed that about a quarter of the reactions were laugh reacts, and a number of the comments were based in rape culture and bigotry.  Now, all the people who are such shitty excuses for human beings that they would laugh react at a post offering help for rape victims, or insist that rape never happened when they served back in 'Nam, or insist that rape and assault and trauma are just occupational hazards of being in the military, or respond by just generally bitching about how including all genders in the post is "woke nonsense" and there are only two genders... I don't know for a fact that the overwhelming majori...

  “I have more faith in God than you, but you have more faith in humanity”.   My agnostic kid said this earlier today as we were talking about evolution, theism, humanity, life, the universe, and everything.   And I realized afterwards, there’s a heavy correlation between increased faith in a god and decreased faith in humanity. So I wrote this in response:   The Evangelicals who raised me talked a lot about total depravity and sin nature and how all humans are worthless vile sinners who deserve eternal torture for our sins, so all our faith has to be in our god because humans will never be able to do anything good without him. The less faith they had in humans to make the world a better place, the more faith they placed in a god to do it for them.   But the thing is: Humans definitely exist. You don’t NEED faith to believe in humanity; you can rely on EVIDENCE instead.   And believe me, I’m with you in bemoaning the mountain of evidence...