1. More atheists are sharing their views

Comment #254495 by ARomanticRationalist on September 25, 2008 at 7:15 pm

#254444 by LaurieB:

While I appreciate the sympathies, I would much rather be in a large metro area like Boston, though Seattle is more my style, than where I currently am. One benefit of being around Boston would be the opportunity to join a group such as the New England Skeptical Society (http://www.theness.com/home.asp). According to their web site, Michael Shermer will be in Boston on October 10. I do not always agree with Dr. Shermer, but I have always enjoyed his books and would love the chance to hear him speak. Of course, if I had to choose to between hearing Dr. Dawkins or Dr. Shermer, "I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for Dr. Dawkins." (Thanks to T.H. Huxley for inspiration)

2. More atheists are sharing their views

Comment #254319 by ARomanticRationalist on September 25, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Several years ago I attempted to start a skeptics/freethinkers group at the small university I attend in the high plains of the North American mid-West. I was not having any luck and the Center for Inquiry's (CFI) website suggested that if one was having problems finding like-minded people in their area (a far, far more common phenomena than atheists in the UK and Europe seem to realize) that one could look up a local Unitarian/Unversalist (UU) group. I did this and was surprised to find one in this backwards-ass place (Rapid City, SD-USA; do a Google News search and you will see just how screwed up this place is: I can say this because I grew up here, but left immediately after High School and did not return, except for short visits, for over 20 years and as soon as I have my degree, I am gone…for hopefully the rest of my life this time).

The town I am in has maybe 100,000 people that live, work, shop, or send their kids to school here (70,000 inside the actual city limits) and most of them are religiots of one sort or another. Locally, there are so few people who are of like mind that I am literally starved for intellectual stimulation. As an example of what I have to put up with…one day, not too long ago, someone at work used the phrase "since Christ was a corporal" as a euphemism for "a long time ago," to which someone else chimed in "Christ has always been Lord." I wanted to yell and scream at the stupid twit, and immediately resolved that this is a person whose every word I will consider to be utter rubbish. My current "base of operations" is full of people like that.

Initially, I thought I had found a circle of more rational friends with the UU group here. The group was quite small and never had more than 50 people in attendance on any given Sunday and I like the fact that after every speaker had finished there was a Q&A period. I went for nearly a year but the lack of people my age that were not busy with families (many members were 60's hippie leftovers) and most especially, the amount of pseudo-scientific, New-Age woo-woo spouted by people there caused me to stop going. One of the reasons I abandoned the religion of my upbringing was that I refused to "check my brains at the door," and I was starting to feel the same way about UUism.

My point is that the social needs of human beings are real and at best, tangential to one's maturity level. The need to associate with other human beings with whom ideas and opinions can be exchanged in an intellectually honest way (both formally and informally) is vital to our emotional, intellectual, and mental health, not to mention essential to the continued survival of human beings on this planet. In post #13, Ms. Kirby suggested chess or book clubs, dog-training groups, or other such things as social outlets. In the far more secular UK and Europe, this would be great. However, in the religiously assertive climate that prevails in the US (except for maybe on the East and West Coasts), one cannot belong to such groups and still not be assaulted by the bat-shit crazy utterances of the religious nuts in the group. Having to constantly fight the urge to choke the shit out of (I mean that mostly figuratively) the religious morons in the same gardening club who want to pray for rain or thank their personal sky-fairy for a bounty of tomatoes this season, tends to negate the benefits of the healthy social interactions such groups should afford. In most of the US, peoples religious nonsense can pop up anywhere unless one can start/join a group that "by design" excludes it.

3. Richard Dawkins on five of his favorite books

Comment #133803 by ARomanticRationalist on February 26, 2008 at 8:41 pm

Fiction:

1. LOTR
2. Count of Monte Christo (glad to see it was on someone else's list as well-I had just finished it when the U.S. aircraft carrier I was on pulled into Marseilles-too cool!)
3. The Razor's Edge by W. Sommerset Maugham (love the 1946 B&W movie too)
4. The Foundation/Robot Series by Isaac Asimov
5. A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens

Non-fiction

1. Cosmos by Carl Sagan
2. The Blind Watchmaker by whatshisname (LOL)
3. The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer
4. Beyond the Moon by Paolo Maffei
5. Thomas Jefferson's autobiography

4. God vs. Gridiron

Comment #121042 by ARomanticRationalist on February 2, 2008 at 10:02 pm

I seem to lack the typical American male gene for televised sports (actually going to games is fun though) but I refuse to waste any of my intellect on following professional sports. If the subject comes up, I tell people that professional athletes are among the most useless people on the planet, even more useless than phone sanitizers, hairdressers, and manicurists.(insert nod to Douglas Adams) I usually also include televangelists in this group. If an impending disaster were to doom the entire planet (see "When Worlds Collide" at the IMDB) professional athletes need to be left behind (especially the religious ones-pun intended).

5. The Science behind the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #116628 by ARomanticRationalist on January 26, 2008 at 9:29 pm

I am majoring in "Interdisciplinary Science" at university with an emphasis on science literacy for both the public and for policy makers and would like to see more of this young lady. She is articulate, animated, and yes, photogenic.

6. Heath Ledger Death: Baptist Group To Protest At Memorial

Comment #115762 by ARomanticRationalist on January 24, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Having been a believer for the first 18 or so years of my life (I'm 43), I can say with some confidence that one factor in the loathing felt for (especially) gay men is simply that, to a male fundie, the idea of another man looking at them and thinking of them in the generally degrading way they look at and think about women, makes their skin crawl. To me this indicates that the real problem is with the fundie's attitude towards women not some other guys sexual orientation.

7. Heath Ledger Death: Baptist Group To Protest At Memorial

Comment #115711 by ARomanticRationalist on January 24, 2008 at 2:47 pm

In Comment #115680 MissC77 said:

"...PROVE the Bible is false! All you are doing is claiming theory based on personal bias to promote your views on homosexualism! Prove it is wrong to murder or steal! Who made those rules and why should there even be laws since there is no god in the first place? Your name I assume you are Muslim anyway."

MissC77:
Oh goody! Where do I start? How about with the first thing you mentioned, to wit: your demand to prove the bible is false...

I do not have to. If someone knocks on my door and says that I am the illegitimate father of some child I never met, whose mother is a woman I don't remember being intimate with and that I owe $1,000,000 (US) in back child support, it is not up to me to show that I am not the father. It is the job of the person making the accusation to prove that I am the father! If you cannot get the simple logic of that, then please, never serve on a jury.

What is it with fundamentalist types and their penchant for inventing words? Perhaps you meant "homosexuality?"

Any group of humans living socially would have to have rules governing the conduct of members of the group, otherwise that group would not last very long.

As for the atrocious grammar of the ad hominem attack on al-rawandi, "Your name I assume you are Muslim anyway." that gets an "F."

One last question for you, is it a sin to get into an intellectual battle with an unarmed opponent? If it is, I guess I'm going to hell too.

8. Dinesh D'Souza: Winner of the 2007 Bad Faith Award

Comment #112334 by ARomanticRationalist on January 16, 2008 at 9:19 pm

I agree with military_atheist in #28...I think Huckabee should have won. If that clown gets the nomination, I am joining the Rebel Alliance. As a 20+ year US Military veteran, that is not what I swore to "uphold and defend."

9. What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Comment #105767 by ARomanticRationalist on January 1, 2008 at 7:37 pm

Happy New Year All!

Great essay by Dr. Dawkins, as always. In reply to SF's question in post #10 of this thread as to confirming or refuting Zahavi's hypotheses: in addition to the work done on African widowbirds as recounted in The Blind Watchmaker there is also the work done by Marion Petrie on pea fowl. Not only do peahens actually prefer males with tails that have been artificially enhanced beyond what nature normally allows, the offspring of males with naturally longer tails generally weigh more as chicks and are more healthy as they mature.


This work was well summarized in PBS's documentary series "Evolution: Why Sex?" and the relevant segment is available online at http://home.earthlink.net/~nkardos/id25.html.

Cheers All!