Real Seven Sins

I don't believe in "sin", but here are seven actual things that I would qualify as truly wicked:

1. Credulity to the point of gullibility
   Believing in everything is stupid and dangerous. Believing "just in case" or accepting a claim as true by default and not requiring supporting evidence is foolish. Faith falls into this category.
   
   
2. Voluntary, willful ignorance
   Keeping yourself in the dark on purpose is a sin in my book. Knowledge is always a good thing. Sure, ignorance is bliss but it's also ignorant. I'd rather be happy I know (or don't know) something and know it. You should always be willing to learn and be willing to change your mind if you find out you don't have the right information.
   
   
3. Letting fear prevent you from understanding reality
   Being afraid of the truth because it hurts or is too scary to face can be reasons for committing the aforementioned sin. I might go as far as to say the main reasons for the existence of religion are to A) make the unknown less scary (by claiming it to already be known), and B) to provide a more palatable version of reality. Yes, the truth sometimes hurts. Knowing that your lost loved ones aren't waiting for you in some magical realm is sad. Knowing that you're going to die is scary. But replacing knowledge for a false reality because of fear doesn't change reality, and it only makes it that much harder to come to grips with. As one religious text says, the truth will set you free.
   
   
4. Limiting the rights and freedoms of others in order to make them abide by your standards
   The standards of your religion are up to you to follow -- don't push them onto others. This "sin" is probably the main cause for many atheists and freethinkers such as myself to speak out so fervently against religion. Almost on a daily basis in the United States, Christians are pushing to get their religious standards into the law of the land. (California's Prop8 is a current example.) Keep your God out of my government and I'll leave you to your delusions.
   
   
5. Sacrificing the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of a child in deference to your religion
   Forcing religion on kids is child abuse. A child can be told almost anything at a young enough age and believe every word of it. Not allowing them to learn or ask questions is tantamount to keeping them locked in the basement. And it goes much further than just the psychological trauma of telling them things like they'll go to hell: kids actually die because parents just pray instead of seeking medical attention. If you want to die for your beliefs then that's fine, but don't endanger anyone else's life -- especially a child's.
   
   
6. Wasting your one and only life worrying about and working for an afterlife that somebody told you might exist
   Not living your life to the fullest is something that I would consider sinful. Spending that life hoping for an afterlife is even worse. It's foolish to try to prepare for something that has not been demonstrated even one tiny bit. Sure it's okay to hope, but you can't waste your life -- the only one you know for sure you get -- on blind faith.
   
   
7. Only doing good based on the sole purpose of receiving a reward or avoiding punishment
   Doing good because God tells you, not for goodness sake. We nonbelievers can help people because it's the right thing to do. Humans are cooperative, social creatures. Together, we've made the world what it is today. We learn from each other, teach each other, and pull ourselves up from the pits of ignorance -- and we don't need a god to do it. If you truly think you need a god to be good, then please stop reading this blog and do whatever it takes to keep your theism!

To commit most of these sins requires a religious worldview, but for whatever the reason, ignoring reality for what it really is and trying to push your skewed view onto others is a transgression to humanity.

-STA

A Giving Heart

I was recently averred the story of a man who enjoyed parting and hanging out with friends; a completely "normal guy". He fell in love with a Christian woman and was eventually "saved" at her church. That day, I am told, the young man changed forever. Gone were the nights of drink and party. Lost were the days of reminiscence of such things. He sold all he had and moved to Africa to do missionary work because "God told him" to.

Since hearing this, I've been pondering the effects of the live-changing decision of accepting a religion. I too was once a "born-again" Christian, and once you accept the religion God gets credit for everything you feel you're doing right anyway. I began to wonder about this young man. Is it possible that he would have decided to do charity work without Christianity?

It occurs to me that several contributing factors might be at work here -- nothing supernatural of course. That particular religion is well versed in the art of applying culpability, afflicting its followers with a deep-seated sense of guilt and shame. One must also consider the state of things in the young man's life that led him to accept the religion in the first place. For many in such a position, one question to ask yourself would be, "am I doing good things...am I a good person?" The mind struggles with self-redemption, speaking from experience. For most people this is perhaps the first time they've ever studied this question. And since they are now under the banner of a specific religion, with specific models of virtue, a choice such as "follow Jesus" is generally high up on the list.

I am not criticizing the young man for giving up his life selflessly to help others (though I wonder about the true motives and indeed the work itself). We should do good for goodness sake, not to earn the rewards of a deity or because voices in our heads tell us too.


-STA

STA Answers Frank Turek, Part 2

(Read Part 1 first!)

#5 - Logic and Reason Exist
Thus begins Frank Turek's short-list of "evidences" for his God being real. He states the fact that logic and rationality work and cannot be explained by materialism. In a materialistic worldview, Turek suggests, our brains are "just molecules and atoms" and therefore cannot be capable of…creating logic? This part of his argument gets a bit fuzzy for me (perhaps it's because I don't have a God to look up to?). I suppose he's saying that logic and reason are objective, thus there must exist a creator for these, and it's Jesus's daddy.

Again this is the same argument spun anew: "there is law, there must be a law-giver". While direct theism again doesn't follow this argument, a question that can be extrapolated from this is, "why does nature work the way it does?" To me, this question is nonsensical; it's equivalent to asking, why is water wet? Things are the way they are. We don't know why. But when we do find out -- just as we've found out the naturalistic explanations of so much else -- the answer won't be "God did it".


#6 - Mathematics
I'm unsure as to why Turek decided to make this a separate argument from the aforementioned as he's essentially arguing the same point, that is, math exists and can't possibly come from matter alone. This argument contains the same pitfalls of the god-of-the-gaps argument he made before as well as the fallacy of asking "who made it so".

Turek states that "mathematics is the product of mind not matter". However, mind is what the brain (matter) does. It's hard to believe that in this day and age there are people who don't seem to understand that the brain controls the body, and it's where thoughts are stored.


#7 - Human Freedom and the Ability to Make Choices
"If we are just molecules in motion," asks Turek, "how do we have human freedom?" Turek seems to be arguing against determinism here, and proposing in a round-about way the idea of theistic free will.

We are not "just molecules in motion", Frank. We have our own worth because we can say that and understand its implications. However, I will remove subjective worth from the equation and allow the argument to be predicated on the original fact. Sure, we're just a collection of molecules in motion. How then comes choice-making, you ask? You think something like that requires your God? Can you seriously not find a naturalistic mechanism for the ability of the human brain to pick something? I'm quite sure you could if you really cared to look for it, so I'll leave the task in your hands. If you'd like to ponder the philosophical ramifications of determinism, I highly suggest you read Richard Carrier's book, Sense and Goodness without God.

Turek also ties this in with his morality argument, even absurdly blurting, "What is the murder molecule? How much does justice weight? These are questions that can't be answered in a materialistic worldview!" Turek is clearly an imbecile.


#8 - Consciousness
"Why are some carbon-based molecules conscious and others are not?" begins Turek. He appears to be hell-bent on trying to show that we are more than mere chemicals and molecules (which I would agree in a sort of way), and that this is the direct result of an intelligent creator (which I wholeheartedly disagree).

After misinterpreting a sentence from Daniel Dennett's book, Turek merely asserts the proposition he used again and again before: there is consciousness, therefore there must be a consciousness-giver. Again he provides no evidence for making the claim, and again his argument does not follow through to theism. Turek is simply using a god-of-the-gaps argument over and over.


In summation of the above, Turek wrongfully charged Hitchens to explain the following from an atheistic perspective:

• how the universe arose from nothing
• how extreme fine-tuning and design arose from chaos
• how life arose from non-life
• how morality arose from materials
• how reason and the laws of logic arose from matter
• how mind arose from mud
• how mathematics arose from molecules
• how human freedom arose from blind, repetitive forces
• how consciousness arose from chemicals

Although Hitch ignored most of this list (and rightfully so, I feel), Turek seemed to forget the burden of proof rests on his affirmative shoulders -- not Christopher's -- to explain why the answer to all of them must be "God" (and then further, a specific god). He of course offered no such evidence.

Essentially, most of these arguments come down to us non-believers freely admitting that we don't know; we do not yet have an answer. Many of these questions have at least begun to be explained in naturalistic and materialistic terms, some of them are just the wrong question, some are incorrectly based on false pretenses (Turek's use of Thermodynamics' Second Law, for example), and some are the result of Turek not taking the time to research and learn what we do know, or at least the state of science now. It seems that when he discovers a reputable source on a subject, Frank Turek's first instinct is to ridicule and take sentences out of context.

I wrote this response in order to show how those who hold to a theistic worldview must grasp at straws and liberally apply logical fallacies to their arguments for their God, yet none of them can provide the necessary and convincing evidence. The same arguments get used time and again -- these arguments are usually phrased incorrectly, are fallacious, or have already been shown to be unsubstantial. No new arguments can be made, only these incorrect ones. And yet, somehow, these arguments are convincing to theists, even touted as flawless by many. If one fails to see the invalid and dangerous way of thinking that this kind of pseudo-logic delivers, then I fear one is doomed to the mires of ignorance forever.


-STA

STA Answers Frank Turek, Part 1

In a recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek, hosted by the United Secular Alliance at VCU in Richmond, Virginia and focused on the question, "does God exist?", Turek employed the oft-used apologist tactic of volume -- that is, listing off as many "proofs" of God as he could in the hopes that at least a couple would stick. While I'm not going to dissect the debate (you can watch it for yourself), I would like to answer Turek's arguments, worn-out and defeated as they may be, for myself.

Turek gave three main arguments (two of which I will separate) and four minor points for why he believes in a theistic universe (note, specifically theistic, not deistic), and peppered Christian theology in along the way. He also offered a list of attributes for this deity: a space-less, timeless, immaterial, personal, powerful, intelligent, moral creator. I shall deal with these throughout my discussions on his arguments.


#1 - The Cosmological Argument
Turek summarizes this as "how could something come from nothing"? Hoping that if no one can answer this question scientifically then his premise must be true by default, Turek offers the idea that time, space, and matter all came into existence at the same time -- effectively, nature was created in the Big Bang -- and therefore the Big Bang can't be explained naturalistically because nature didn't exist to cause it, and can only be explained in supernatural terms.

I have no problem in saying that nature came into being during the Big Bang. I am not a scientist, but I do know that what is said in Big Bang cosmology is that space-time itself expanded. Turek himself has no problems with Big Bang theory at all and even did a fairly decent job in providing some proofs for it. The only difference is that he thinks he knows for sure "who banged it", that is to say, he believes his particular God was the root cause of the Big Bang expansion. As I said, he's fallacy is that since no one can provide the answer as to what was "before" the Big Bang, then it must have been Jesus's daddy. Obviously this does not follow -- you simply cannot move from the question "what caused the Big Bang" to theism. I, just as his opponent in the debate did, will grant deism as a slim possibility, but one requiring evidence to first be put forth as an answer.

Since it created space, time, and matter, Turek apples the first three attributes to his God here including that it must be powerful because "it created out of nothing", yet Turek offers zero evidence for this claim. Turek then asserts the following: "you can't go from a state of nonexistence to a state of existence without making a choice", therefore this God is a personal deity because only personal beings make choices. Yet again, he offers no evidence for this bold-faced claim. The onus is still on you, Frank Turek, to bolster your claim that existence demands choice.


#2 - The Teleological Argument
Turek uses the standard fine-tuning argument to try to prove theism. Essentially he states the various ways at how things seem to be precisely set just for us to exist -- the position of the sun and other planets, the tilt and rotation of the Earth, the force values of gravity, etc. He didn't have time to get into them all, but doing a simple internet search will provide you with these standard Christian apologetics for the argument from design.

Frank Turek is effectively capitalizing once again on the ignorance we, as the human collective, have. We do not yet have full understanding of all the laws of the universe. We don't know for sure that messing with any of the constants would result in complete absence of life. Regardless, even if we did know for sure that no life could exist with any other configuration of constants, the fact that he's using it as an argument for a specific brand of theism misses the point altogether: we wouldn't be here talking about it if it hadn't been the case. Welcome to the Anthropic Principle, Frank.


#3 - Irreducible Complexity
Continuing on his buffet of tired old arguments, Turek cites the complexity of DNA as a reason for the existence of a particular God. This tied in with the argument from design of course, being touted out as a reason for the intelligence attribute Turek ascribed to his God at the beginning. The amazing amount of information contained within our DNA, as well as various quotes mined from Collins, Crick, and Hoyle, was given as a proof for a theistic God that must also be intelligent.

Again, Turek is guilty of capitalizing on the ignorance of his audience (as well as a non sequitur). A simple search through any reputable source for evolutionary biology will yield extensive amounts of research and results that stifle the argument of "irreducible complexity". I won't waste time here, read them yourself.


#4 - Objective Morality
One of the major arguments Turek gave (and indeed a topic that Hitchens spent a great deal of his time on) dealt with morality. Turek made it clear that he wasn't saying that atheists can't be or are not moral people, nor that atheists don't know what morality is. His argument was, "atheists cannot justify morality" because there's no authority outside of them.

I personally think that morality can be justified without the need of a deity, but as an argument for the existence of a specific God, Turek's argument is pretty weak. I've written on matters of morality before, so I won't go into it here. Nevertheless, as Turek is strained to point out, the subject is objective morality. Perhaps in some sense there cannot be objective morality? We don't need an authority to be moral, Turek freely notes that he doesn't need Christianity to be moral. And, as Turek is arguing for the Christian God's existence anyway, wouldn't Yahweh's rules on incest and rape and murder have to be the objective moral standard? If so, count me -- and millions of other sane, compassionate human beings -- out. (This also raises the question of God's morality and the Euthyphro Dilemma, subjects covered elsewhere.)



I'll post Part 2 soon.

-STA

Achoo!

Although I often still catch myself doing it, I tend to avoid saying "bless you" when someone sneezes in my presence. If you're a non-believer like me, what is there to do that appropriately takes the place of such a colloquial icon? Aside from respectfully ignoring it as with most other bodily functions, here's nine things I've found to say (in no particular order):

1. "Goddamn you!"
2. "Hurry up and die already!"
3. "Blue shoe!"
4. "Gesundheit." (German for "good health")
5. "Stop that! And cover your mouth when you sneeze, idiot."
6. "I hope you don't sneeze again."
7. "Salud." (Spanish for "your health")
8. "Are you okay?"
9. (quoting Dane Cook) "Nothing happens when you die!"


Oh, and before I go I'd just like to say, fuck Dane Cook!

-STA

And Their Eyes Were Opened

I find that I can’t argue with someone unless one of us accepts the other’s framework of reference. Therefore, most of the time you’ll see me take the “let’s-assume-this-is-all-real” approach when I’m blogging. I’ll be doing the same for this post as well. After all, if we believe it’s 100% true then we’ll be more likely to throw it out when we see it doesn’t fit with reality.

According to the book of Genesis, once Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she and her husband became “as gods, knowing good and evil”. I say having knowledge is never a bad thing, but that’s not the road I’m on here. Assuming their lineage passes down to us (and that there is a standard of Good and Evil apart from God), we should have the same knowledge about what good and evil are that god does. In a sense, we should be in agreement with decisions God makes (and vice-versa) regarding right and wrong, right? Furthermore, we humans should all be in agreement with each other about such matters.

Since this isn’t the case in either way, we must resolve this by one of three ways: 1) the godly knowledge Adam and Eve acquired was not passed down to us, 2) either God or humanity is going against the Knowledge, or 3) God’s views on good and evil ARE the same as the views of us humans: to each his own, so to speak. I won’t speak to number one, but for number two, I can personally judge God’s knowledge of good and evil to be at odds with my own. I make this judgment based on his record of inhuman and evil acts all throughout the book of which Genesis begins. Perhaps I do so via number three – morality is subjective.

Genesis says that once they learned right from wrong, Adam and Eve clothed themselves. Nudity is bad. Remember, when they were clueless, being naked wasn’t shameful. So we see that one of the edicts of this god-like knowledge of good and evil is that being naked (as we were created?) is evil. Nope, not in my book (pardon the pun). My morality doesn’t decree such an inane idea. So without having to leave the book of Genesis, we can come full circle and resolve the issue of this divine secret that God tried to keep from his creation.

Sure, it’s fun to psychoanalyze and tear down these old stories, but it’s best to realize that they aren’t real. Genesis is not a history book. It was written by people trying to make sense of it all, and trying to tie together the ideas that were around during their time. The fact is that we don’t need a God or a book to tell us how to be kind to one another, what good and evil mean to us, or whether or not being naked is wrong. If you think we do, read this book again and try to practice the morality it prescribes. Oh, and have fun in jail.

-STA

Braving the Storm

If you haven't read it yet, check out Tim Minchin's poem "Storm":

Inner North London, top floor flat
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Rice Paper partitions
Modern art and ambition
The host’s a physician,
Lovely bloke, has his own practice
His girlfriend’s an actress
An old mate from home
And they’re always great fun.
So to dinner we’ve come.

The 5th guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown
Us together for a favour
because this girl’s just arrived from Australia
And has moved to North London
And she’s the sister of someone
Or has some connection.

As we make introductions
I’m struck by her beauty
She’s irrefutably fair
With dark eyes and dark hair
But as she sits
I admit I’m a little bit wary
because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy
Tattooed on that popular area
Just above the derrière
And when she says “I’m Sagittarien”
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.

Chatter is initially bright and light hearted
But it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything,
Knowledge is merely opinion”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis a vis
Some unhippily
Empirical comment by me

“Not a good start” I think
We’re only on pre-dinner drinks
And across the room, my wife
Widens her eyes
Silently begs me, Be Nice
A matrimonial warning
Not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave
Of a morning
When deciding whether to leave
Her apartment by the front door
Or a window on the second floor.

The food is delicious and Storm,
Whilst avoiding all meat
Happily sits and eats
While the good doctor, slightly pissedly
Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history
When Storm suddenly she insists
“But the human body is a mystery!
Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”

My hostess throws me a glance
She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance
That I’ll be off on one of my rants
But my lips are sealed.
I just want to enjoy my meal
And although Storm is starting to get my goat
I have no intention of rocking the boat,
Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle
Because - like her meteorological namesake -
Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency
At the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs
When herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals
When homeopathic solvents
Can resolve it?
It’s time we all return-to-live
With natural medical alternatives.”

And try as hard as I like,
A small crack appears
In my diplomacy-dike.
“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”

“So you don’t believe
In ANY Natural remedies?”

“On the contrary actually:
Before we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy
Derived from the bark of a willow tree
A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free
It’s got a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Masprin?
Basprin?
Asprin!
Which I paid about a buck for
Down at my local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates
As our hosts collects plates
but as they return with desserts
Storm pertly asserts,

“Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy…
Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,
It can’t explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics?
Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”

I’m becoming aware
That I’m staring,
I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed
Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dike groans
And the arsehole held back by its stones
Can be held back no more:

“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore you
But there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds
Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines
These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands
And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.

By the way,
Why is it OK
For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Is it not totally fucked in the head
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died
And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?
That’s just fundamentally sick
Do we need to clarify that there’s no such thing as a psychic?
What, are we fucking 2?
Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?
Do we still think that Santa brings us gifts?
That Michael Jackson hasn’t had facelifts?
Are we still so stunned by circus tricks
That we think that the dead would
Wanna talk to pricks
Like John Edwards?

Storm to her credit despite my derision
Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision
Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

“You’re so sure of your position
But you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find
Your faith in Science and Tests
Is just as blind
As the faith of any fundamentalist”

“Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit
Oh wait, my mistake, it’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”

Everyones just staring at me now,
But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

“Life is full of mysteries, yeah
But there are answers out there
And they won’t be found
By people sitting around
Looking serious
And saying isn’t life mysterious?
Let’s sit here and hope
Let’s call up the fucking Pope
Let’s go watch Oprah
Interview Deepak Chopra

If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo.
That show was so cool
because every time there’s a church with a ghoul
Or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.
Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance I have offended
Think but this and all is mended:
We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time,
For all the chance you’ll change your mind.

The Road Ahead

Well, there's another year down. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves as we said goodbye to 2008 and looked forward to -- hopefully -- a brighter and better year. We made some great progress but we still have a hell of long way to go. I got a lot of time off to spend with friends and family. I played music with my friends and hung out with my brother-in-law (who's soon leaving for overseas military endeavors). And I got to visit with all of my bigoted, racist, bible-thumping, homophobic Southern kinfolks...

It just wouldn't be Christmas without them!

As I look back at my January '08 post, I'm forced to think about the resolution I had made for myself and whether or not I have fulfilled it. It was simply to "be more open about my stance on religion", and I think I did succeed for the most part; I joined a number of online communities and had numerous discussions with religious people. A few other people in my personal life have become aware of my disdain for religion and superstition, and I'll continue to slowly announce myself when and where it is called for.

Last year was a great time for me. It seemed atheism was riding a big wave with the release of several books and lots of mentions on television news channels (though most were degrading). Seeing rational thinking force its way onto brain-dead TV gave a good feeling. I continued to read and learn more about the way people think and some reason for why they believe what they do. Like I said, I created accounts on several social networking sites including Gather.com and Atheist Nexus, as well as started making video blogs on YouTube. As for this blog, I didn't keep up a steady stream of posts; spreading myself between work/family/medical needs was a tad trying. I'll attempt a better effort this year, but I'd like your help. My past resolution is still going for this year as well, but I'd like to know what my readers want from me. Do you like the running series (Atheism 101, Fallacy Friday, Day in the Life, Movie Review, Unholy Word)? Want more small snippets or do you prefer longer articles? What are you getting out my work? Let me hear from you, and together we can change the world.

But right now I'm gonna go change a light bulb.


-STA