Atheism

frankie boy wrote,

ROFLMAO This guy is so clueless, he doesn't even understand how he's viewed by most people who read his crap! Condescending bull shyt.

If "he" was smart he wouldn't worry about that. It has nothing to do with what he says, and shouldn't.

How do you know how most people regard my "crap"...or how they "view" me?

Thank you, cj. You are correct and I don't...and of course it shouldn't.

In fact, it doesn't impact on what I am saying at all.

ci is...how shall I put this...out of sorts!

From their absence, and comments made about you. Simple conclusion from the evidence.

How many people engage you? No very many. Their silence speaks volumes.

There's even a blog on

But I like Frank.
Then again, I like you too.

Averagely intelligent people cannot help being struck by the complete absence of art in Apisa's posts. His verbal toolbox is as prosaic as the knife and fork trolley of a canteen in a large engineering works and makes as much noise when wheeled out.

It is so, so from the heart that it is childlike.

Thank you, Neo. I like you, too.

hear hear

Ignore is the tinycockfest using restrainers.

Ready? Go.

Incidentally has anybody noticed it only seems to be atheists who run for the ignore button to block anybody who upsets them?
What are they scared of?
I never block anybody, it's much more fun slapping them around..

“Hi I’m Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist,” said the 56-year-old son of our 40th president. “And I’m alarmed by the intrusions of religion into our secular government. That’s why I am asking you to support the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics working to keep state and church separate, just like our founding fathers intended.”

His sign off: “Lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.”


People don't usually spout off about their atheism, so I was curious what led him to make the spot. Thursday, I reached Reagan, an MSNBC contributor, in Seattle, where he has lived after leaving Los Angeles in 1994.

He sounded subdued, and said he has not been working much, having just suffered through a personal tragedy. On March 24, he said, his wife of 33 years, Doria Palmieri Reagan, died of complications from a progressive neuromuscular disease that she developed seven-and-a-half years ago. A clinical psychologist, Doria Reagan was seven years older than her husband.

But he had made a promise to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which honored him in 2009, and he felt obligated to keep it. Reagan has been a nonbeliever since childhood, he said, and is surprised when people react with incredulity when they hear it.

Ron Reagan promotes atheism in a 30-second spot for the Freedom From Religion Foundation that ran May 22 on Comedy Central
“I think when you hold an opinion that you find entirely reasonable, you are surprised when you discover that other people don’t also consider it reasonable, and kind of get up in arms,” he said.

That’s a familiar reaction to people who are outspoken about their atheism or agnosticism, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based foundation, which considers its mission education.

“We get emails every day telling us we should leave the country. Very nasty stuff. Death threats," Gaylor said. "The crank mail and phone campaigns are unending and almost always in response to our work for separation of church and state--not for promoting free thought and atheism. But there’s no question that atheists and agnostics are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to social acceptance.”



Indeed. In 2006, a University of Minnesota study published in the American Sociological Review, found that atheists are “less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious and other minority groups.” Atheists topped a list called “I Would Disapprove if My Child Wanted to Marry a Member of This Group.”

Gaylor said her foundation has been inspired to raise its profile by the recent successes of the gay civil rights movement. “We already have an ‘out of the closet’ movement, but we need to turn up the volume.” (The foundation also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Hobby Lobby case.)


Comedian Julia Sweeney cut a spot for the organization two years ago, taking on the American Conference of Catholic Bishops' campaign against Obamacare’s contraception mandate. The ad aired 1,100 times, Gaylor said.

Getting a celebrity with Reagan’s name recognition was a coup, Gaylor said. His spot ran May 22 on two Comedy Central shows, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” The organization paid $155,000 for air time. She hopes to raise enough money to place the ad on “60 Minutes” in the fall.

Reagan’s spot has generated hundreds of responses. “Some are very poignant—‘I never thought I would live to see a commercial like this.’ There’s a lot of gratitude pouring in for Ron Reagan. He’s a big name, and that’s what our movement has lacked.”

Reagan, who, like his mother former First Lady Nancy Reagan, has advocated for stem cell research, said he worries that religion “often goes hand in hand with ignorance and scientific illiteracy.”

“I think what troubles me – whether it’s religiously inspired or not – is the ignorance, foolishness, and I might say, stupidity, in this country. This championing of anti-intellectual, anti-science, scientifically illiterate theories and lack of critical thinking is disturbing. Climate change is such a handy example.”

Religion, he said, is “delusion.”

“And when it morphs into believing that the Earth is 6,000 years old and insisting on teaching that to our children, that’s a very dangerous thing.”

So, hey, any freethinking celebrities out there who want to lend the cause a hand: the Freedom From Religion Foundation wants a word with you.

"If you know George Clooney," said Gaylor, "let me know."

One of the problems is that celebrities, just as is the case with politicians, are not going to risk their careers for such a cause. Ron Reagan has name-recognition, but he's not a celebrity in the sense of a big-name actor who would be putting his career at risk through such advocacy.

With the possible exception of politics (and we had an atheist PM) I can't conceive of anyone in Australia who would risk anything by advocating atheism. I find it amazing that the US has achieved what it has, because Jesus Christ it's fucked up.

The problem with atheism Wilso is that it only has the facts of life to go on and, as I know from experience, the facts of life are so gruesome and horrible that few people are willing to contemplate them never mind live by them.

It is possible to self-censor the facts of life so that they are toned down and selected but that is not allowed in grown up discussions despite it being mandatory at coffee mornings in the suburbs at which maiden aunts are present who are content to pull their own legs.

In this regard you might study with profit Michael Holroyd's 2 volume biography of George Bernard Shaw who was notorious for looking the facts of life as squarely in the face as he dared do in Victorian times for fear of arrest.

That's very funny, spendi! You wrote,

Now, change the word atheism with RELIGION, and you can arrive at the truth.

You understood that?