By Avangelism Project — J ennifer is my daughter. She’s three. Puss-puss was my mother-in-law’s cat. It was hit by a car several weeks ago and, yes, its name really was Puss-puss. Last week Jennifer and I went for a walk. Just out of the driveway, she asked me to hold her hand because, “I don’t want to get runned over.” Image by JLee G via Flickr I explained her grammar error and obliged. Without any regard for my explanation she went on, “If I get runned over, I will be dead and gone like Puss-puss and you won’t see me anymore.” That’s a pretty good summary of being dead, isn’t it—gone and seen no more? I hadn’t really thought about it until she said that, but when the cat died, I explained that it was simply gone and not coming back. Apparently, she understood it. It certainly gives lie to the silly idea that death is something children can’t understand, doesn’t it? Death isn’t confusing at all: We’re gone and won’t be seen anymore. What makes death confusing and...

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our ...