The Atheist Blogger

I really had hoped to write something interesting for the 100th post on this blog (yay for the first milestone!), but this just appeared in my feed reader and I had to post it.

If you don’t know who Ray Comfort is, he is the guy behind the infamous banana argument / atheist’s nightmare:

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Nick from the forums wants to have a word…

I would like to invite all Christians to have a responsible and peaceful discussion. Although I don’t think a website devoted to Atheism is on the priority list for any Christian, I just want to have a discussion with you.

I will not be cross and will not use offensive (I never do anyway) or sarcastic remarks.

I was a Christian before but had a change of mind. I would maybe like to share my experiences with you.

If you still think I’m a jerk for being an Atheist, that’s fine with me, but if you would like to live a better life with peace of mind, I urge you to listen just as I will to anything you have to say.

Thank you.
~Nick

If you are a Christian and want to take Nick up on his offer, join the forums and reply to his thread.

I’ve read a few of the current “Atheist Thirteen” meme posts that are going around, and that got me thinking. What would a fundamentalist Christian say if they had to answer the questions? Probably something like this:

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

Satanism, devil-worship, false, Godless, infidels, idiotic, Hell-bound, unethical, evil…there are many words I could use. Atheists are evil wicked people with no morals who deserve Hell more than any murderer or rapist!

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Naturally. I was born a Baptist Christian and still follow our Lord Jesus Christ today. As a child I attended church every Sunday, and as I grew older I was born again and began to participate in church events, regularly attending services mid-week and at the weekends.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Truth

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Comedian, actor, writer, and atheist George Carlin died yesterday at 5:55 pm in Los Angeles. I unfortunately had to find this out via a deeply insensitive comment someone made a few hours ago on a video post I put up in February. I’ve deleted the comment out of respect but I’m sure you can guess what it contained.

In answer to that comment, I would say that George Carlin was an extremely courageous man. He was a vicious advocate of freedom of speech, and he was convinced that gods didn’t make the tiniest bit of sense. Although we’ll never sure, I’m positive this was his attitude upon death.

I’d ask anyone who reads this and agrees with me to respect such a great and brilliant man with a few moments of thought.

If you are interested, CNN has a nice obituary on the genius of George Carlin.

Popular cartoon blog indexed has a nice post that sums up his impact on us all.

On 29th June at 23:00 (UTC+1) I will be holding the second book club discussion of the chosen book this month: “I Sold My Soul on eBay” by Hemant Mehta.

Work out your discussion time using this handy chart. I messed up last time so I’ll explain how to work it out. The time for London is the time we are going for (UTC+1 at the moment). So find the difference in times between London and your nearest city, then just calculate what time it will be for you when London is at 23:00 using that difference.

Ewan (our server guy) is still working on getting an irc server for the website, and I’m now paying him in pizza so *hopefully* it will be up and running for the third discussion. So, as before we will be using the temporary channel over at MSGPlus.

To save myself typing all the instructions out again I have created a helpful page which contains all the info.

http://atheistblogger.com/irc-server

Keep your fingers crossed because since this month’s author is an atheist blogger and well known in the atheist blogging community, I have asked him if he would like to be part of the discussion. So if you would like to talk to Hemant about his book, atheism, the Secular Student Alliance, or anything we get onto now is your chance!

After the discussion, I will create a forum thread so that other people who couldn’t make the IRC chat can voice their opinions of the book.

Finally, we have to decide a book to read for July. This poll will be open for 7 days and the result will be confirmed on the 1st as per usual.

Only one other book was suggested in the submission forum so we have three books up again for the vote. Like last time:

Please don’t vote unless you intend to read the book and/or contribute to the discussion!

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I have mentioned in this poll that the book “Exmormon” is free for all reviewers and the book club is covered by this. I don’t want to try and alter people’s votes, but this would be a great opportunity for anyone who doesn’t want to pay for a book to join in.

Having said that, the other two books look very interesting as well!