Image via Wikipedia By Valerie Tarico Atheists are arrogant. Who hasn’t heard it? Arrogance is just one of their repellent qualities, of course. They are also ungenerous, cold, lonely, untrustworthy, amoral, and aggressive. You shouldn’t leave them around children. When I spoke last week to a group called Seattle Atheists , the organizer positioned me far from the door, and I speculated aloud about whether I should be worried for my safety, given what we know about atheist ethics. But the most common accusation hurled against atheists is that they are insufferably arrogant. In my experience, this accusation is rarely about a specific encounter: I was talking with Joan, my atheist neighbor down the street last week and do you know how I was treated by that insufferable witch?! No, it is more like a mantra. In Seattle, there’s a chain of hamburger joints called Dick’s. People who find themselves on the topic of hamburgers will say, “Dick’s is great” almost as an opener, before they move ...

Image via Wikipedia By Lance_ec I was just watching the movie " The Golden Compass " and was intrigued by the use of the word Demon (Daemon?) for the spirit of a person that walks along side them in animal form. My kids raised their eyebrows when they first heard it in the movie, since they were already familiar with the negative Christian use of the word. So I looked the term up on Wikipedia, and a few other places and found a whole slew of differing ideas regarding demons from Greek , Roman and other mythologies . Mostly they seem to be something between divine and mortal. Some were good demons that helped and advised people, others were more of a hindrance. This is not really all that unexpected, as people attempted to make sense of the random events of the world and attribute these events to some intelligence that they assumed was moving behind the scenes. It also makes more sense to the ancient mind than a single god, since the random events of daily life are too s...

Image of Sam Singleton Sam Singleton , Atheist Evangelist, Sets Forth New Naming Protocol for Atheists, Believers, and Agnostics Can’t nobody tell Brother Sam nothing about the abuse gets heaped on atheists every day. I’m a goddamned authority. I figure I get abused as much as about anybody short of Brother Richard Dawkins himself. But you don’t have to be any full-time professional God slayer to feel the cold sting of stigma that comes with proclaiming yourself an atheist . There isn’t a one of us that hasn’t been talking to someone and, having divulged our atheism, gotten the look, the one that says You might as well just save your breath because I quit listening back when you dropped the A-bomb. Even Brother Sam can see why so many atheists are casting about for a tag that isn’t so off-putting to the believing class. As for me, I personally do not give two shits. The believing class can accept me as I am or kiss my atheistic ass. But some atheists dislike the way the word itself de...

By DocMike Do you have a guy like this at work? Many Christians feel the need to save the rest of the world, whether we like it or not. Why can't they just leave us alone?

Image by DClemm via Flickr By Valerie Tarico Rick Warren , author of The Purpose Driven Life and founder of one of the country's most successful mega-churches was chosen to give the invocation at the Obama inauguration for the same reason Sarah Palen was chosen as McCain's running mate: as a valentine to Evangelicals . Warren represents the kinder, gentler side of Evangelicalism, what many people like to think of as the Evangelical mainstream. He belongs at some midpoint between Jim ( God's Politics ) Wallis on one hand, and Fred (" God Hates Fags ") Phelps. Theologically, Warren has managed to steer clear of the worst excess of Prosperity Gospel - the God-wants-you-to-be-rich message that has made Joel Olsteen rich indeed. He acknowledges institutionalized injustice as a moral issue and thinks its OK for Christians to care about our planetary life support system. For those looking desperately for someone to embrace--for a way to build bridges between fu...

The entire history of life and the cosmos rolled into under 10 minutes. Video footage used from several educational documentaries. Music includes: American Beauty Soundtrack - Thomas Newman - Any Other Name A perfect circle - Imagine

More Nature Videos at 5min.com Watch evolution unfold before your eyes in this creative video featuring fish, amphibians , reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals, and primates .

A video by the University of Southern California College Center for Religion and Civic Culture Jared Diamond , professor of geography at UCLA , received the Pulitzer Prize for non- fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science . His most recent book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004). Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years. This lecture is approximately 80 minutes long.

SAIU trip to the Creation Museum from Secular Alliance on Vimeo .

Submitted by Roan7995 Gott Mit Uns translates to God is with us . All the photos starting around 3:45 link Nazism and Christian icons/ language. Pause the video and look if you don't see how. Some in the academic sphere may consider a Reductio Ad Hitlerum argument to be in poor taste, but I think it gets the point across when there is such abundant evidence to support it. The first song is a cover of the Undersea Palace theme from Chrono Trigger that I made. If you want it, shoot me a message. The 2nd song is Hell Bent , by Kenna . Check out the video for it. Religious Affiliation of U.S. Presidents http://adherents.com/adh_presidents.html United States Constitution, Article VI, section 3 Denial of Equal Rights to Religious Minorities and Non-Believers in The United States, B. H. HARTOGENSIS, Yale Law Journal , vol. 39, pp. 659-681 http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a... The Encyclopedia of Unbelief by Gordon Stein Related articles by Zemanta Jesus, we are yours!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife By Brother Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist When believers send this kind of crap to Brother Sam, God invariably drops what he’s not doing and annotates it so it can be taken down word for word. Just as surely as Brother Sam employs an amanuensis, so too does God, and that’d be Brother Sam. And Brother Sam hopes he’s not telling tales out of school, but if you ever heard some of God’s messages directly you’d understand why his children have such difficulty with language. As for the crap folks send in, and the aforementioned annotations, Brother Sam lets the human errors stand, but feels obliged to clean up God’s work out of respect for what he used to be back before he turned out to not exist. You shoulda seen him then, slaughtering babies, drowning just and unjust alike, all manner of plagues― Brother Sam has color coded the parts. Brother Sam Believer/Crap Sender God Barber Why God Allows Pain (blue parts sic ) This wa...

Image by laurenipsum via Flickr By Bill Jeffreys Occasionally I have to deal with a certain religious person in my life who seems to struggle with being friendly or reasonable with me. This person struggles with being nice to me when I don't do what he wants or when I don't agree with him. It's not that I am trying to be difficult. I attempt to compromise, even though I often feel like telling the person to go jump in a lake. Sometimes I roll my eyes and try to take the high road, meaning I just go along with any request, because it means less drama. I get tired of his attempts at shaming me, guilting me, or simply insulting me and raising his voice at me. I'm constantly walking a fine line with this relationship. So how do I deal with this relationship today? Do I fight this person, or do I run? Am I for, or against this person? The person I am today understands that if I want to know the truth of a matter, I can neither be "for" nor "against" some...

Faith healing has been around for many years, but the real question is, "Are these supposed healings really miracles ?" To address that question, this six-part documentary follows some well known faith healers on their crusades.

Image by Steve Wampler via Flickr By David S This is actually my second writing to this website in the last month. In mid-December, 2008, I submitted my testimony as to why I shunned Christianity (and all religious beliefs). So why am I writing again? Because I truly have a passion for people to spread the word about the false promises and lies that Christianity spreads. My wife of three years commented to me the other night that I have "hoodwinked" her and let her down because we no longer walk hand and hand with Jesus, our Lord and Saviour (well, her Lord and Saviour). My wife is what many would call an extreme Christian, who loves Jesus, believes the Bible is the literal Word of God , etc. When we married I too was walking with Jesus, but certainly was never "hook, line, and sinker" like she. I question how a man could spend 72 hours inside the belly of a whale without being digested; my wife accepts it as truth. Religious beliefs stunt intellectual growth...

By DocMike The Bible describes a flat, circular Earth sitting on pillars, with a dome over it, which contained the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. God lived in and on the dome. The Moon made its own light and the stars were just smaller lights in the night sky. The Earth was the center of everything. It remained still, while the Sun, Moon, and stars moved over it. Of course this is probably what everyone believed around the time the Bible was written, but wouldn’t the creator of the universe, an omniscient god, know better? Here are some verses that illustrate the Bible authors’ obvious ignorance about these things: Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 1 Samuel 2:8 … for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them. 1 Chronicles 16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved. Job 9:6 Which shaket...

Image by Travlr via Flickr By Dano I no longer believe in the God of the Bible. He is too vindictive, jealous, mean, and easily offended. In other words, he is too much like a human tyrant. So, I pray to my own version of the creator, or supreme being, if you will. My version of god is bigger and certainly more resourceful and intelligent than Bible-god, who can't even figure out that since he made everything, including all forms of life, that he is ultimately responsible for how we all behave. I figure that a true god, being perfect, wouldn't need or want a bunch of "educated monkeys" worshiping him, and I figure that any God worth his/her salt can do anything. So I pray that he will make it possible for me to win the lottery. Yes! I buy a ticket every month! Why not? That's what gods are for, isn't it? To ask for things? Certainly me winning 90 million dollars would mean very little to a supreme being who is capable of creating a universe, or many univer...

Image via Wikipedia As Madison Avenue has shown us, sex, with the right mix of pop culture and edge can sell almost anything –Coca Cola, the Joker—or, as it turns out, the theological equivalent of either. By Valerie Tarico This weekend's NYT Magazine featured a piece by Molly Worthen about Seattle megachurch Mars Hill : " Who Would Jesus Smack Down ?". The article, like the church itself, leads with titillation. And as in the church itself, the titillation is an opener for Calvinism – the kind of fundamentalism that says we are all utterly depraved, doomed to eternal torture – except that the God of Calvin has chosen a lucky inside group for salvation. Having been to Mars Hill, I can assure you the racy talk in the article doesn’t happen just during sermons about sex. At a evangelistic rally on the University of Washington campus last year, the church’s founder and star, Mark Driscoll , began by expressing the angst he felt when his zipper got stuck right before...