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Celebrating life beyond belief

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From The Australian : THEY came from everywhere, the true unbelievers: from Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, New Zealand and beyond. There was a honeymooning couple from North Carolina who had met on an atheist internet site; and two friends from rural NSW, both extroverted women who had been raised Catholics and were now seriously annoyed with it.  Author Richard Dawkins had a few words to say about the sanctification of Mary MacKillop. An Iranian man who had seen unspeakable things done in the name of religion asked a speaker, philosopher A.C. Grayling, how it was that humans could be so kind and yet torture and kill each other. An Iraqi who migrated to Australia 40 years ago gave $4000 of his money to support this unusual gathering: the 2010 Global Atheists Convention, held in Melbourne at the weekend. The idea of atheists congregating seems counterintuitive. After all, they are defined only by an absence, a belief they don't have. But congreg...
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Suffering For The Will Of god

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By TheRedneckProfessor ~ I magine, if you will, a seedy hotel room in the dirty part of town.    In the corner there is a small table, the drawer of which contains a Gideon bible.    A garishly ornate lamp casts a pool of dingy yellow light upon the wall behind it, covered in peeling wallpaper, the fading floral pattern now more a study in browns after decades of dust and cigarette haze.    In this room we have a 10-year-old girl: a singular expression of innocence and unfettered hope.    Beside her, on the bed, is a 39-year-old pedophile rapist: the epitome of sociopathic sadism, a monster.    He is neither her father, nor her uncle.    He is, in fact, no one with whom this little girl should be alone.   We know what is going to happen in this room; there is no need to provide further detail.   This is the essence of meaningless, purposeless, gratuitous suffering inflicted upon innocence, examples of which can be s...
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Paul the Apostle: The Original "I" Connoisseur

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I magine for a moment scrolling through your favorite social media feed, only to find that every post is a selfie—with a divine twist. That’s Paul the Apostle for you. His letters, replete with the singularly majestic "I," might just qualify him as the original poster obsessed with himself, albeit with heavenly credentials. The Many, Many “I’s” If Paul were alive today, his Instagram bio might read, “I, me, and I—delivering divine revelations one letter at a time.” A quick glance at his epistles reveals an unabashed love affair with the first-person singular. In a literary world where collaborative spirit is often celebrated, Paul’s incessant “I received,” “I saw,” and “I declare” almost reads like the ancient equivalent of a Twitter feed completely dominated by his own thoughts. Is it narcissism, or is it just really, really, really confident storytelling? One might joke that if self-absorption were a sport, Paul would have been the undefeated champion of the apostolic ga...
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Reason over Revelation

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L ately, I’ve noticed an interesting trend at the fitness center I frequent: as the years tick by, an existential panic seems to be driving many of the older regulars  into the welcoming arms of a trendy "Faith over Fear" version of Christianity. Meanwhile, my own enthusiasm regarding life after death has waned, much like my childhood fascination for Froot Loops that long ago lost any appeal to my more mature  palate. I refrain from openly scoffing at the comfort faith may provide to some; I appreciate the very human desire for safety and assurance in the face of the unknown. But while some people see the horizon of mortality approaching and find solace in the idea of something beyond the grave, I’ve found a peculiar kind of peace in simply accepting that one day I won’t exist. And strangely enough, that doesn’t bother me. Understanding mortality from a naturalistic perspective means letting go of the idea that I need a cosmic encore to make my time here meaningful. The fa...
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