A great collection of quotes from Atheist Blogger. Here’s one of my favorites that I’d not seen before:

If I look over my life, every single step of maturing for me, every single one, has had the exact same common denominator, and that was accepting what was true over what I wished were true. — Julia Sweeney

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[ 101 Atheist Quotes | atheistblogger.com ]

Image from sketchesofexistence

Let me get this straight. You think the Creator of the Universe cares personally about your life, and that you know, with absolute certainty, what he wants for all of humankind.

While I think that we’re basically alone, not very special, and are just fumbling through our random existence trying to do the best we can.

And I’m the arrogant one?

An excellent piece of commentary.

I need to address something that’s come up in the last couple of months regarding my treatment of religion here on the site. A couple people have written me, either directly or via the comment functionality, to say that my treatment of religion seems too extreme.

Their main point seems to be that some good people exist that are religious, and that it’s not a simple matter of someone either being an atheist (and therefore good), or being religious (and being therefore bad).

First off, let me start by apologizing for conveying this. I mistakenly assume that people who read this site know me well enough that they’d never be able to come to such conclusion. This is obviously not the case.

Secondly, let me assure you, this is not how I view religion. I don’t think that it’s a 1 or 0 — that you’re either an atheist or you’re an evil bastard. Not only have I met atheists that were pretty shitty people (although the numbers are notably small), but I also personally know hundreds of people who are both somewhat religious and are beautiful people.

I even know a few people who are religious extremists who I consider to be excellent people as well (although, admittedly, I’d say the numbers are also relatively small).

Most importantly, though, many of my best friends are non-atheists, as is my father and, as far as I know, my entire family (German Lutheran Preachers on my father’s side). While I might have a higher number of friends than usual that are atheists (just because like interests attract people), I’ve never done the calculation of how many atheist friends I have vs. how many non-atheist friends I have. It’s simply not valuable to me, as a metric, for judging who will or will not be a good person or a good friend.

So the situation is this: the overwhelming majority of the people that I love and respect in this world are believers in some way, shape, or form. I don’t consider all religious belief to be the same by any measure; in fact this is one of my main thoughts about good, thoughtful believers: they create their own religions guided by their own morality.

So, ironically, I am much like a friend who has too much Jesus (TMJ). I will rarely pass up an opportunity to talk about philosophy/religion, and I feel that since I have a more true way of approaching things (my belief) that I should share that with people I care about. It’s no different, in this respect, than a friend who always talks to you about “getting to know God”. Except I don’t think anything worse will happen to you if you ignore me. ;)

Basically, and all my close friends know this, I am obsessed with two things:

1. Having interesting experiences.
2. Sharing them with people I care for.

And not to get too hippy on you, but that group extends not only to my close personal friends, but also to people who share interests with me — people who I interact with through my site. Many of you would no doubt be close friends of mine if I were able to meet you and spent time with you, but life’s randomness has built a system where we interact only through the tubes (although I’d love to change that at some point if the opportunity ever arises).

The point is that I try and share things I’m passionate about with the people I care about. If I love a particular book, or movie, or idea — I literally can’t wait to see if my friends enjoy it as well. Seeing the enjoyment or fascination that I feel for a particular thing resonate in my friends is one of the most enjoyable things that happens to me.

It all comes down to the cycle again:

1. Find cool stuff.
2. Learn about it.
3. Share it with friends.
4. Experience it again when they love it.

Kind of selfish, if you think about it. I get to enjoy stuff (1 + NumberofFriendsWhoLikeIt) times.

So anyway, the basic idea is this: if you’re religious and you read my site, I apologize if you’re ever offended. I know that not all religious people are bad people, and I clearly separate the concept of religion from kind, thoughtful people who have religious beliefs.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing what I’m doing, but perhaps I’ll try and take time to point out more often, for those who don’t read this, that I realize there are multiple types of religious belief, and that not everyone who isn’t an atheist is some kind of extremist.

In short, I’ve heard your comments, and hope this helps clarify things a bit.:

What follows is an excerpt from a letter Professor Dawkins recently wrote to address a person who had been duped by Ben Stein’s horribly stupid movie, Expelled. This particular piece addresses what many religious and/or anti-evolution people consider to be a major problem with evolution, i.e. the linking between what evolution says about how life evolves vs. how we should build our society as humans.

Richard Dawkins handles the issue quite well (bold emphasis mine):

Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil’s Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave.

I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.

So don’t ever let anyone give you this lame argument. Think of the female black widow killing its male mate after they have sex. Think of the countless animals that regularly kill their children.

In short, there are countless examples of things that happen in nature, which are worth studying, that we shouldn’t try and emulate. To put it another way, just as we study black widows in order to understand how they live yet don’t promote women killing their mates after sex, we can also study Darwinistic Evolution without applying its principles to human society.:

I’ve just put up another piece in my /writing section. It’s titled An Atheist Debate Reference.

An Atheist Debate Reference | dmiessler.com

Want to see how backward the Vatican still is? Look no further than #1 on the Vatican’s new list.

1. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control.

Great. You’re still threatening ignorant people with eternity in hell for trying not to bring more pain into this world.

Most of the people listening to you can barely feed themselves and the family they have today, and you have the audacity to essentially guarantee that they produce more children — children that are almost guaranteed to suffer from a lack of adequate nurturing, education, and opportunity.

Oh, and by the way, the people aren’t leaving your church because they don’t know enough about you; they’re leaving because they’re finally realizing what you really are.: