Billy Ray Cyrus is scared of this adopt-a-highway sign.

In Billy Ray's own words: “A physical sign. It could have easily said ‘You will now be attacked by Satan.’”

Read more about why this sign scares Billy Ray, on the Friendly Atheist blog.

Billy Ray doesn't seem to understand that not only do we Atheists not believe in his invisible friend with super hero powers, we also do not believe in Billy Ray's super villain.

What scares you, sir? Our love of science and reason? Our dedication to equality for all humans? Our repulsion regarding superstitions like yours, which lead to things like the Inquisition and the Holocaust? Our efficiency at cleaning up areas around highways?

Surviving yet another apocalypse prediction

I saw this on YahooAnswers recently, and it brought back memories of my Bible Belt childhood:

Please help me.. I need it :(?
I am going crazy. I'm worried about the end if the world, not 2012, bu this year. People have been saying May 21-October 21 (5 month rapture) will happen. The world is going to be destroyed by fire.. I don't want to burn alive. And I'm just all out scared. What should I do?

I remember this fear. I was about nine years old, and book and movie The Late Great Planet Earth, were being talked about at churches all over the USA, including in my home town. All the talk had me convinced that the world was about to go up in flames. The book and movie asserted that the world would probably end by the end of the 80s. I was terrified. One night I cried so hard my mother had to console me.

The world didn't end. And within three or four years, I was realizing I wasn't a Christian. The 80s and 90s, instead, saw me learning just how often different human communities had been caught up in a belief that the world was about to end (if you are interested in this yourself, I highly recommend The Last Days are Here Again: A History of End Times by Richard Kyle, which shows how the belief that the world will end soon is deeply embedded in the human psyche).

And now the 2012 phenomenon is terrorizing various people, including children, with its proposal that it's all going away next year.

This 2012 campaign of fear bothers me on a lot of levels. Sure, the Earth could be destroyed next year. It could be destroyed later today. It could be destroyed a million years from now. Death from the Skies!: These Are The Ways The World Will End, the a book by American astronomer Phil Plait, also known as "the Bad Astronomer", explores the various ways in which the human race could be rendered extinct by astronomical phenomena, such as asteroid impacts, supernovae explosions, solar flares and gamma ray bursts. Plait isn't trying to be alarmist - instead, he explains the science behind each event and the odds of it occurring in our lifetimes.

People shouldn't live in fear of what might happen, in terms of pure hypotheticals, any more than they should ever believe yet another apocalypse prediction, religious or otherwise. To torture children with such a belief is reprehensible.

We don't know how humans will die, or how each of us will die, or how the Earth will end, or what will happen to each of us when we die. No one knows, though there are a lot of beliefs - that we sleep until the end of the Earth comes, and then some go to Heaven and some go to Hell; that we go straight to one or the other, no sleeping required; that we're reincarnated as a new living being, or even more than one; that we go into another dimension; and on and on. But no one - not even Atheists - know. What I'm pretty sure might happen:

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
- Edvard Munch

I'm okay with not knowing.

Happy Evolution Weekend

Over the last five years, more and more faith communities -- churches, temples and mosques -- in the USA have recognized the Sunday closest to Charles Darwin’s birthday (February 12), also known as Darwin Day, as an annual opportunity to reflect on what religion has to learn from science, in particular how Christianity can embrace the insights of evolution.

Many Atheists don't know that there are many Christians, Muslims and other religious adherents who are not anti-science. That's because mainstream media gives much more voice to the extremist religious elements that fight against science education. Adhering to religion does not mean turning one's back on the science of evolution, and many Christians, Muslims and others know this.

Comedian Stephen Colbert is a practicing Catholic, yet that doesn't stop him from believing in science -- and from brilliantly satirizing people like Fox News' Bil O'Reilly, who claimed that the regularity of the ocean’s tides proves the existence of God. When various people pointed out that the moon’s gravity causes tidal ebb and flow, O’Reilly dug himself in deeper by saying, "Okay, how did the moon get there?" Colbert likened O’Reilly to St. Thomas Aquinas since “Like St. Thomas Aquinas, Bill O’Reilly’s understanding of the world is also from the 13th century.”

The Rev. Carl Gregg blogged recently about the importance of Evolution Sunday to Christians and other communities of faith. He brought this to my attention:

In recent months, perhaps the most exciting dialogue between Christianity and evolution has been a series of free online teleseminars on The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith that have featured some of the most well-known luminaries of the religion-science dialogue, ranging from scientists to theologians to pastors. The series was hosted by Michael Dowd, author of the bestselling book Thank God for Evolution.

Great stuff! What a shame THIS doesn't get covered on mainstream media!

E pluribus unum means me too!

For more than 150 years, until 1956, the de facto motto of the United States of America was E pluribus unum, which means out of many, one. Originally, that motto was meant to show that out of the individual colonies or states of North America, between what is now Canada and Mexico, emerged a single, united nation. It was a motto endorsed by our founding fathers, who envisioned a secular nation. But by the 20th century, it was also seen to mean that many peoples, races, religions and ancestries make up this one country, creating a single people and nation.

It was an incredibly appropriate motto for my country. It was one that any citizen of our country could support and feel proud of.

Sadly, in 1956 -- just one year after the phrase "under God" was incorporated into the secular Pledge of Allegiance - the motto was replaced by a new, official motto: in God We Trust, a statement that isn't true for several million citizens of the USA, including the one whose blog you are reading now. My country went from a beautifully representative, uniquely American motto to one that sends the message that the USA excludes myself and my fellow Atheists -- we just live here, we don't belong.

I'm sure the speeches in Congress that urged support for this religious-based motto sounded a lot like the justifications used to call certain countries The Islamic Country of...(Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan...). And I'm sure the USA Christians that support the revised motto would cringe at the idea of living in a country where the official state religion wasn't their own. But it's just fine to exclude those that don't adhere to their religion fromthe national motto of the USA.

If there is a movement to restore E pluribus unum, let me know: I'll sign on!

Perhaps not-so-Godlike afterall?

Sorry for the silence! I got two short-term consultancies at once, and there were bills to be paid!

Sunday night, my husband and I stumbled upon a real treat: Clever Monkeys, on our local PBS station. It was originally shown in November 2008. To be clear: it was about monkeys, not apes. It was focused on monkey culture: how they pass information from one generation to the next, how the young learn to find food, communicate, recognize kin, even use tools, medicine, and language -- about all the things monkeys do that are from learning, not instinct.

It's jaw-dropping when you see monkeys, in the wild, using calls that have specific meanings for circumstances (snake!) and even combine calls to make sentence-like messages - this requires grammar! Or a monkey using deception on his family in order to have food all to himself.

The show presented the evolutionary history of modern human intelligence in an easy-to-understand, delightful way. And when you see intelligence and emotion exhibited by monkeys that, once upon a time, you were taught were uniquely human, it's humbling. And energizing. And wondrous. How we humans have evolved from monkeys has been an extraordinary journey, and the more you learn about it, the more extraordinary our world becomes.

Just one quandary: after the show was over, I turned to my husband and said, "So, what does make us human, as opposed to monkey?" We couldn't think of anything, other than Facebook use.

If you want more than even the video offers about monkey (and human!) intelligence, then read this excellent article on Humans And Monkeys Share Machiavellian Intelligence.

Religious people using facts & reason? Cool!

In his new book Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society, Jay Bakker, the son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Messner, asserts that homosexuality is not a sin:

The simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even. But before you say, "I told you so," consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law...

The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal."
Leviticus prohibits interracial marriage, endorses slavery and forbids women to wear trousers. Deuteronomy calls for brides who are found not to be virgins to be stoned to death, and for adulterers to be summarily executed.

Examining the original Greek words translated as homosexual and homosexuality in three New Testament passages, Bakker, and others, conclude that the original words have been translated inaccurately in modern English. What we read as homosexuals and homosexuality actually refers to male prostitutes and the men who hire them. The passages address prostitution -- sex as a commodity -- and not same-sex, consensual relationships, Bakker says. The word homosexual first appeared in an English-language Bible in 1958. Bakker is part of a group petitioning Bible publishers to remove the words homosexual and homosexuality from new translations and replace it with terms that more precisely reflect the original Greek - an action not meant to be more politically or socially correct, but to be more historically and linguistically accurate.

Bakker, 35, is pastor of Revolution NYC, a Brooklyn evangelical Christian congregation that meets in a bar. And he is not alone in the Christian community at this Biblical basis for saying homosexuality is not a sin.

All this came up in a blog by Cathleen Falsani, Religion Columnist aka "God Girl", called Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening? Why should an Atheist like me care? Because it's an example of religious people thinking and using reason, history and facts to explore the rules that should guide our lives. And I am always supportive of any effort based on reason, history and facts.

And note how this reason-based, history-based and fact-based exploration by Bakker and Falsani and others hasn't gotten rid of their belief in an invisible super friend. At some point, these folks, and others, have decided that faith in an invisible super friend doesn't have to mean ignoring reason, history and facts. I'm not actively trying to encourage people to abandon that overall belief, but I love any effort that encourages people of faith in an invisible super friend to think, to undertake research and to acknowledge human failings in religious dogma.

Many Atheists are frightened at the rhetoric and actions of many people of faith who are working to suppress science, knowledge, and even basic freedoms and human rights. It's nice to know Atheists aren't the only ones frightened by such.

Atheism: still doesn't cause violence

Yes, spree killer and congressional assassin Jared Lee Loughner as an Atheist. Much is being made of that by people on the far right in the USA. Not so much about his passionate devotion to the things they also feel strongly about, like the gold standard or complete mistrust, even hatred, of public officials. And these are the same people who refused to take any responsibility for:

• Michael Griffin, a Christian who murdered Dr. David Gunn of Pensacola, Florida in 1993.


• Rev. Paul Jennings Hill, who murdered Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, a clinic escort, in Pensacola, in 1994.


• John Salvi, a Christian who murdered two women in two clinic attacks in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994.


• Eric Robert Rudolph, a Christian whose bombing of the Atlanta Olympics killed two people and wounded 111 others (1996), and whose bombing of health clinics in Sandy Springs and Birmingham, Alabama and of an Atlanta lesbian bar in Atlanta killed two people and injured dozens of others.


• Timothy McVeigh, who said in an interview that he adhered to "core" Catholic beliefs and that he believed in God (Time, March 30, 1996).


• James Kopp, a Christian who murdered Dr. Barnett Slepian in 1998 at his home in Amherst, New York (and has been tied to other shootings of doctors and health care workers in Canada and northern New York state).


• Scott Roeder, a Christian who shot and killed Dr. George Tiller as he served as an usher at his church in Wichita, Kansas in 2009.

All of those people were driven by their Christian faith to commit those acts of violence. All of them felt their religious beliefs justified their acts. Many believed they would be rewarded in Heaven for those unspeakable acts of violence.

Ofcourse, Christians and others on the far right don't always shirk away from terrorists that promote their "values" through acts of violence: Joseph Stack, an anti-tax and anti-government fanatic crashed his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS worker, Vernon Hunter, who was a Vietnam veteran and church volunteer - Christian bloggers were oh-so-sympathetic to his "plight", one going so far to say "one can’t help but feel the anger and frustration of a man who feels his life has been wasted and his dreams thwarted by a system designed and run by the powerful and self-indulgent... for the most part, one can sympathize with this man."

Atheism has no agenda; it's merely a person's lack of belief in a deity. That's it. A huge range of values can accompany Atheism. The vast majority of Atheists I know are deeply caring, very thoughtful people who have a tremendous amount of compassion for others and enthusiasm for all humankind. But, indeed, I know some Atheists who think war isn't a bad thing, who are anti-choice (believing the government should decide whether or not a woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy or carry that pregnancy to term), and who are racists. Just as I know Muslims and Christians who believe all that as well.

Sorry, Fox News and others: you've got a long, long, long way to go to convince any sensible person that Atheism causes violence.