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We've gone around the sun again!  Just like we do everyday (see my follow up post if you're not following)... but I wont be a debbie downer... Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone gets what they want out of this coming year.  What resolutions will you be making?  What resolutions do you think you'll give up on in 2 weeks?

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I must've heard the words "an atheist can do no good" hundreds of times in the last few years.  It must be so hard to imagine how atheists can do good without the upstanding moral code imparted to us in the Bible or the Quran.  Sure I wouldn't sell my daughter into slavery, or kill a man simply for being gay, but I can do other good things instead. 

I'm proud to donate clothes to Goodwill and give money to charity.  But I take a bigger sense of pride in atheist volunteers which was created to unite and showcase acts of goodness by the men in black who apparently can do no good.  Well the door to that argument is being shut more and more everyday as atheists aren't as scared as they once were to show their face (we have religion to thank for our original fear).  We used to do acts of kindness simply because we liked doing acts of kindness.  But after being accused so often of being no-do-gooders some of us decided to show off what we've been doing all our lives while letting others know we don't believe in a god.  We believe good deeds are the work of men.  If good deeds are the works of god, well certainly bad deeds are as well.

I was tempted to write an essay, but I don't feel like going to the trouble of it with an entertainment system. Fortunately, it doesn't require one. This is very simple.
Before you can ask why, you must at least know what. Where, when, how, and even who (what, personified) can be helpful, but aren't inherently necessary, yet they can be depending on the why question.
To ask: Why is the sky blue?; you must first know that the sky can be blue at various times. If you don't know that the sky is blue, then the question is assuming that the sky is blue. In fact, the sky is not blue, it is black. But it appears to be blue to our eyes, and that is sufficient to ask why it is blue.
Life exists. We know it does. But we DON'T know exactly WHAT life is. 100,000 years of human history, and we still don't have a definition that fits all life, and only life. How then, can anyone ask why, when they don't even know what?

a "bible basher" comes to your door to spread the "good news"?

Sorry if my choice of words is offensive. Not sure what else to call them but at this time of year(in my neighborhood) there are many different sects(mormons, jehovah's witnesses, and I'm not sure what other sect of christianity but the ones that are very loud) going around handing out leaflets from door to door.

I usually let them say their piece and say, "ok, I'll read it, thanks, Merry Christmas", because 1) we do have decorations up b/c we do celebrate the winter solstice with typical seasonal decor and 2) there are SO many of them out this time of year I just couldn't stand to argue with each one of them on their flawed logic. and 3) why dash someone's hope at this time of the year?

But, I was wondering what other atheist say when approached by a smiling "believer" that has a leaflet in their hand that says something like, "Is God listening?" with quotes from the bible in it. So please share what your experiences have been.

 

What the best way to respond to a question like this when talking to a theist?

A colleague of mine was asked this very question by his own mother when he shared his doubts about God or an afterlife. He said he really didn’t have an answer and even if he did he didn’t want to hurt his mum’s feelings. He’s a lovely person and very much a ‘mummy’s boy’ as he dad left when he was very young.

I told him that his mother was using emotional blackmail and wishful thinking because she didn’t have a rational argument but he said he could never say something like that to her.

Is there a god?

I have no reason to think so, and some reason to think not. But, it really doesn't seem to matter. With a god (or gods), or without: We are still affected by our decisions, and other's decisions still affect us. We still have to work to live. We still do better in groups than alone. We still have to work within the confines of our society and its mores. We still blunder into suffering - whether we "deserve" it or not. We still blunder into windfall - whether we "deserve" it or not.

Even if there is a powerful arbiter of justice out there punishing evil after life, the damage of that evil is still with us. We still have to clean up the mess ourselves. The suffering still happened. We still have to watch for evil to protect ourselves. We still have to work very hard to improve the conditions of our lives.

 As I hope many people already know, John Lindstein filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and David Miscavige on the 25th of November this year. A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you, Mr. Miscavige.

The document details Scientology 'business' practices that should be more or less common knowledge by now: human trafficking, child labor, imprisonment, providing abhorrent living conditions and zero compensation to their 'employees' (hereafter referred to be the only word that can give proper justice to what is done to those unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of the 'church': slaves).

Let's imagine a hierarchy of assuredness. At the extreme end we have things that are clearly impossible. Like for instance how you cannot fit a gallon of water inside a one pint bottle. Everybody understands this. Nor can you eat an entire chocolate cake and then throw it back up intact. Both those things are impossible (but for different physical reasons). The next step is to introduce things that are possible. This is the arena of speculation and belief. You wonder about how things might be explained. What causes existence to be? Where does life come from? There are a lot of "possible" explanations, but only a very few ones that will stay intact at the next level, which is that of being plausible. Lots of things are possible without being plausible. For instance, it is possible that my wife is cheating on me with the mailman but it isn't plausible. I don't believe that. This is by and large because I have faith in my wife. I have chosen to believe her when she says that she loves me and that she doesn't want anybody else in her life like that. I believe her. I even consider this a necessary belief. That is to say, an issue of trust. Do you see my point here? It is possible that my wife is fucking the mailman, but I don't believe that. It's not plausible.

Modern Behavior of Early Humans Found Half-Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2009) — Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists.

The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried out. This kind of designation indicates a formalized conceptualization of living space, requiring social organization and communication between group members. Such organizational skills are thought to be unique to modern humans.

Attempts until now to trace the origins of such behavior at various prehistoric sites in the world have concentrated on spatial analyses of Middle Paleolithic sites, where activity areas, particularly those associated with hearths, have been found dating back only to some 250,000 years ago.