Interesting video

The music is a good choice. You can just feel the irony.

Vegetarianism

I've tried being a vegetarian before, but living with omnivorous family and my former roomate made that very difficult to do. However now that I'm living in my own place, I have decided to give it another chance. For the past week and a half I've eaten no meat other than seafood, and that only when I'm at a restaurant with friends where there are no fully vegetarian meals that appeal to me. Expect for a bit of sushi at lunch the other day :)

So why am I doing this? The latest motivational push came from watching An Inconvenient Truth. Meat processing consumes more energy and feeds less people than does using the grains and plants to feed people rather than cows. I am convinced that global warming is a real issue, and I want to help do something about it. Eating less meat is one of the suggestions on the AIT website, and I think that is a great thing for me to do.

Of course, there is also the issue of eating less fat and cholesterol. Then there is the horrible treatment of animals in the mass meat industry. All good enough reasons for me to go veg.

Someday I might even give up fish and go fully vegitarian, but not until I've figured out where a few more veg friendly restaurants are around here, and convinced my family and friends to go there when we go out.

If anyone out there has any good and quick vegitarian recipes send them my way!

Controversial chocolate Jesus exhibit canceled - CNN.com

This chocolate is my flesh...?

Honestly, I can't believe they even tried this.

Controversial chocolate Jesus exhibit canceled - CNN.com

Quiz: What's Your Spiritual Type?

These are my results from this quiz on Beliefnet. Interesting...my result is in bold below.

25 - 29		Hardcore Skeptic -- but interested or you wouldn't be here!
30 - 39		Spiritual Dabbler -- Open to spiritual matters but far from impressed
40 - 49		Active Spiritual Seeker – Spiritual but turned off by organized religion
50 - 59		Spiritual Straddler – One foot in traditional religion, one foot in free-form spirituality
60 - 69		Old-fashioned Seeker -- Happy with my religion but searching for the right expression of it
70 - 79		Questioning Believer – You have doubts about the particulars but not the Big Stuff
80 - 89		Confident Believer – You have little doubt you’ve found the right path
90 - 100		Candidate for Clergy

Might be a quarter life crisis, who knows?

First heard of this concept in a John Mayer song on a CD I used to listen to constantly while I was in college just because I related to so much of what he was singing about.


Never thought I'd encounter the phrase anywhere else, but check this out. Bit scary actually, given some of the thoughts I've had in the last few months.

Quarter-life crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Characteristics of this crisis are:

• feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at his/her academic/intellectual level


• frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career


• confusion of identity


• insecurity regarding the near future


• insecurity regarding present accomplishments


• re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships


• disappointment with one's job


• nostalgia for college life


• tendency to hold stronger opinions


• boredom with social interactions


• financially-rooted stress


• loneliness
  
• desire to have children


• a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you

I guess at least I know I'm normal, if that's any consolation. I can relate to almost every one of those points. I this on Grey's Journal, a website linked to the article:

While I was happy at the job and in the flat, a nameless unease grew within me. It took a long time to realize that I had passed a fundamental divide in my life without noticing: from always working toward the end of something -- be it high school, college, summer jobs or teacher training -- to having no end in sight, save that of retirement and death.

Anyone have ideas for how to deal with this?

Thankful to feminism for...

hell’s handmaiden » Blog Archive » Five for Feminism

I have been tagged by hell's handmaiden to list the file things I can thank feminism for. This should not be hard :)

1. Women's suffrage! I never miss a national election.


2. I can work in a field that is typically dominated by men, and no one thinks anything of it.


3. I have freedom to express myself sexually without feeling dirty.
   
4. I'm not under pressure to just get married and have kids as soon as I'm old enough.


5. Feminism has shown me that I deserve respect equal to that which is due to any of my male friends.

I could go on, but no doubt this is my top 5.

I have tagged Beep Beep It's Me .

WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY :: Baptist leader sparks furor with "Is Your Baby Gay?" article

You have got to be kidding me. What would be considered "prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation"? More religious craziness...

WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY :: Baptist leader sparks furor with "Is Your Baby Gay?" article

(NEW YORK) -- The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has suggested that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven. He also says prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified.

The Reverend Albert Mohler has been attacked by liberals and conservatives for his views. Mohler is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality is a matter of choice.

Gay rights supporters are upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based.

An article on Mohler's personal web site published earlier this month was titled, "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?"


(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

South Park Personality Quiz

a lot of pennies from Heaven

Did this guy really think people would fall for it?

WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY :: Man who tried to cash $50,000 check from God arrested

The stinkiest stinker

I am re-reading Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion and I came across this passage that I think is totally hilarious. This is from Chapter 3, "Arguments for God's Existence" and Dawkins is reviewing a few of Thomas Aquinas's most famous arguments.

Let's move on down Aquinas' list.

4. The Argument from from Degree. We notice things in the world differ. There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection. But we judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum. Humans can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in us. Therefore there must be some other maximum to set the standard for perfection, and we call that maximum God.

That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference by a perfect maximum of of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God.

LOL

atheist gratitude

It can be hard to be an atheist in the United States. I read about it in stories on the Internet, talked about it in the extian email list, seen it on ExChristian.Net, talked about it in the local Atheists Meetup group, etc. I've contributed my share of material to these sources to share the fear, religious pressure, fights with my parents, etc, that went along with the discovery within my family that I was not a Christian anymore. Some of that you can read on this blog from the last few years.

However, things have smoothed out since then, and I am very grateful for that. Religion is no longer a source of open conflict between my Mother and I--and I think that this is more to her credit than it is to mine. Maybe it is because she knows that she is not going to bring me back to her church by arguing with me, so she has toned down a lot. Maybe it is because I'm at least going to a church now, even though it's not really a Christian church. Better Unitarian-Universalist than totally heathen :) Could also be that she is seeing that I have not really changed my basic values much after embracing my atheism. What I do know is that she loves me, religion or no. Dad too, of course, but there was never much conflict between us. And I am grateful for all of that.

Another area where I have been incredibly fortunate is in my workplace. I work as an IT Programmer/Analyst in a moderate sized company in Jeffersonville, right across the river from Louisville. One of the striking things about this this working environment is the incredible amount of open mindedness and diversity. I have co-workers there from many different national and religious environments, and religion has never been brought up yet in conversation as anything but a cultural interest. And there is no prostelization and no pressure of a religious sort that I hear that atheists encouter all to often in office settings. And I am very greatful for that.

There are other areas which I'm also greatful, my Unitarian-Universalist church, the internet which gives me the ability to share my thought and communicate with people from other parts of the U.S. and the world about this stuff, and many things that I'm just not thinking of now, for sure.

Dang, I almost forgot to mention that I'm even dating an atheist. How sweet is that? :)

Five Favorite Quotes Meme

I've been tagged by Stardust [I stand corrected :-p] to list my five favorite quotes (of the moment). So here goes :)

1. "I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved [and I cannot resist forming one on every subject], as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it."
   
   Charles Darwin (Freedom:Quotes and Passages from the World's Greatest Freethinkers


2. "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
   
   Douglas Adams (Pulled from Positive Atheism's List of Quotations)


3. "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
   
   Another one from Douglas Adams (from The Quotations Page)


4. "When he looks into his hand, he can see thousands of generations before him and thousands of generations after him. He can see that he exists not only in the evolutionary tree branching along the axis of time, but also in the network of interdependent relations. He told me that he never feels lonely."
   
   Thich Nhat Hanh (from Peace is Every Step)
   


5. "If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?"
   
   
   Carl Sagan (from The Quotations Page)

I have tagged Luminous Phenomena and Contemplative Activist.

Life Quiz

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7
Mind:	7.2
Body:	8.4
Spirit:	7
Friends/Family:	3.2
Love:	6.9
Finance:	7.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Dance classes

This is something that I've really always wanted to do since I was a kid--I have started taking dance classes. While doing an internet search, I found a fairly new dance studio in town that offers dance classes for not a whole lot of money. I got a $40 a month membership so I can take as many of the classes as I want, and I've been going for a week now.

I enjoy this a lot because it means that I'm learning some new skills--which makes it challenging--and I'm getting exercise. And it's a great social activity, especially since this is ballroom dancing, with a partner.

So far I've learned the basics of the tango, salsa, waltz, and samba. With a bit more practice I might get really good at this :) I figure that this is a prime time in my life to pursue these interests, while my time after work and on the weekends is still free.

What does it mean to believe in something?

This morning's message at church was about the pagan holiday Imbolc, which is the holiday celebrated to make note that the days are growing in length and that Spring is on the way. For the benefit of people in the congregation who are not Pagan, the minister gave a brief explaination of earth-based religion and it's place within Unitarian Universalism. She had an interesting thing to say about belief. I don't remember the exact words, but the gist of it was that it doesn't matter whether the things you profess to believe in are (literally) true or not, what matter is whether or not they help you to connect with...well...people, nature, or whatever it is you want to connect with.

This brought up in the mind the difference, often unspoken/forgotten/confused, between "believing in" something and believing something. Believing is having an idea of how you think the world really works when you don't or can't know for sure. To believe something is to believe that it is true objectively. If this belief is true, then it is true for everyone. It's not knowledge I'm talking about, though some seem to confuse belief and knowledge. (The phrase "I believe and KNOW" comes to mind--as if a belief that is believed strongly enough counted as knowledge. But I digress...) Belief of this sort is a placeholder for knowledge--it's a hypothesis that maybe just can't be tested yet, but should be as soon as that is possible. And then that hypothesis should be accepted or rejected according the evidence.

"Believing in" something, on the other hand, is the belief that that something is good, or useful, or thinking that there is some sort of virtue in believing it. It looks to me as if there are many religious people who "believe in" things without really "believing" them. It's like people saying that they believe in God when what they really mean is that they believe that one should believe in God. Or magic. Or the immortal soul. Or karma. Or [fill in the blank].

I don't really don't think there is anything wrong with "believing in" things, just so long as you don't get so carried away with really believing them that you insist that all other people must also believe them or they are just WRONG WRONG WRONG. "Believing in" is by nature subjective and I suppose this is what people mean if they talk about subjective truth (a concept which has long bothered me and still does to some extent).

I went to the Imbolc ceremony that the CUUPS group put on at my church tonight. Even being the scientific rationalist that I am, I can't resist a bit of ritual from time to time, and no group does ritual quite like Pagans. I've looked into Paganism before but was turned off by what looked like a lot of mumbo-jumbo and superstition. I still am turned off by a lot of this, esp. if someone tries to talk me into some astrology or tarot or something of the sort. But what I like about Paganism is the way that it follows real cycles in nature and in human life. There is nothing superstitious at all in celebrating the fact that the days are now getting longer and Spring promises to come, even though we are right in the middle of Winter. It is a season of hope--that from the dead of winter, life and warmth will return again. I have found that I can fully participate in this even while staying firmly grounded in reason.

I don't believe that the Lord and Lady of Paganism (mentioned many times in the ceremony) are real but I do believe in hope. I do believe in persevering though the Winter in the hope that Spring will come again.

Overzealous censor edits 'God' out of 'Queen' - CNN.com

LOL Seldom do I find censorship amusing, but this one takes the cake.

Overzealous censor edits 'God' out of 'Queen' - CNN.com

getting settled in

I've been in my new apartment for one week and two weekends now. It's been really nice having my own place, especially now that I've finally got cable and internet and a landline phone now. Even though I am now at Mike's house using the wireless network I just set up :).

One of the benefits of having my own place is that I can read when I want to without being interrupted. I finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I highly recommend it. I had gotten tired of reading about arguments against the existence of god(s) quite a while ago after I'd become quite secure in my atheism--I felt it was time to quit beating that point into the ground and go on. But that sort of stuff makes up only a very small portion of this book. Most books on atheism seem to be written by philosophers, and as much as I like philosophy, it was a breath of fresh air to see a distinguished scientist tackle the issue head on. He is not interested only displaying that the supernatural claims of religion are imaginary, but he took some time tackling the question of how we ended up with religion in the world in the first place. I found his discussion about the evolution of religion from a Darwinian perspective pretty interesting. I ought to go back and spend some time reviewing the book, and then write a real review. If I ever get around to it.

Getting a place of my own

I've decided to get into an apartment for a year and try to save up for a house while I'm there. I'm going to sign the lease Friday evening and start moving in ASAP.
Finally, a place of my own!

Amusing Video

The rant gets a bit old, but hold out until the middle of the video and it gets funny. This is for every one who has been awoken on a Saturday morning by Mormon missionaries.

Atheists say they've been threatened over their views

I was at the atheist meetup group in Louisville where this guy interviewed our group. I just happened to stumble on the story on the internet today. It's not bad :)
Atheists say they've been threatened over their views

Atheists say they've been threatened over their views

DYLAN T. LOVAN
Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The note on Blair Scott's windshield wasn't a nice one.

The anonymous writer had to have seen Scott's atheist-themed bumper sticker, an uncommon sight in the small south Alabama town where he lived at the time.

"It just amazed me that people would take time out of their day to return to their car, grab a pen and paper and write a 'You're going to hell and you're going to burn in a lake of fire,' and stick it under my windshield," said Scott, a 36-year-old veteran who installs computer systems in prisons.

Outspoken atheists like Scott remain a minority, but there are dozens of atheist chapters sprouting up around the country, and even many in Southern states dominated by conservative Christians.

Many who consider themselves atheists said they're afraid to mention their views on religion or that they don't believe in deities. It's an especially unpopular opinion in the South, they said.

"Do I think that any of these people are really afraid if someone knows they're an atheist that they're going to get shot down on the street tomorrow? No. But the thought is always there in the back of your mind," said Joe Mays, Louisville computer technician who helped organize an atheist group that meets monthly.

Atheism is generally considered a disbelief in god or other deities, but some self-described atheists said they feel it is better described as a conclusion one arrives at sometime in their life.

"I don't really care for the word belief," said Edwin Kagan, a northern Kentucky lawyer who has defended atheist clients. "People say do I believe in evolution? It's not something to be believed in, it's something to be learned. Like the multiplication table. Do you believe in the multiplication table, or do you use it, do you learn it?"

Some estimates say as much as 15 percent of the population is atheist, though few call themselves by that title, said Jim Heldberg, national affiliation director for American Atheists in San Francisco. Heldberg said his group has 60 independent groups in many cities around the country. And there are many high-profile people who have expressed atheist views or a disbelief in God, including cyclist Lance Armstrong, golfer Annika Sorenstam and actresses Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster.

At a meeting of the Louisville atheist group earlier this year, several members spoke of a fear of retribution if they mentioned their views around family or at work. Most didn't want to be identified. The members - including a factory worker, a nurse, a real estate agent, an accountant and some who work in computers - considered putting up flyers in local bookstores to attract new members, but they scrapped the idea when one said they would likely be torn down.

"Nobody's your friend when you're an atheist," one member said. Another member, Christopher Helbert, wryly suggested that he would rather his parents know he was gay than an atheist, because they would say "gay is curable."

A study at the University of Minnesota this year lends credence to the group's discussion. It found that Americans favor gays and lesbians, recent immigrants and Muslims over atheists in "sharing their vision of American society." Respondents also said they were least accepting of intermarriage with atheists than with any other group.

"I think the key to this animosity is probably this idea that somehow morality and religion are deeply linked and if you lose any kind of religious doctrine, you inevitably lose some purchase upon morality," said Sam Harris, best-selling author of "Letter to a Christian Nation."

Harris' book is a response to Christians who have criticized his writings on atheism.

"People think unless you've found Jesus, you can't love your neighbor in any significant sense," he said.

Some atheists have gone to court to challenge American institutions, most popularly the "Under God" portion of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was added in 1954.

In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools, agreeing with a suit filed by atheist Michael Newdow of Sacramento, Calif. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision. Newdow has since revived the case and last year a federal judge ruled in his favor.

Newdow said atheists cannot get elected to office and that elected officials consistently side with people of faith on many issues.

"Government sends the message that it's a bad thing to be an atheist," Newdow said in a phone interview.

Scott said when he was living in Mobile, Ala., people were tipped off to his atheist views after he wrote an editorial to the local newspaper protesting a proposed bible class at a public school. He said he never mentioned that he was an atheist in the letter.

Scott said after that, his car was bashed up by a baseball bat and a cross was planted in his yard.

He has since moved to Huntsville and now heads a local atheist chapter in that town, which he said is much more tolerant because of the number of NASA scientists who live there.

"I think there's almost an unwillingness to come out of the closet for most atheists, especially in the Bible belt, because of the type of repercussions from people of faith," he said. "Some nasty stuff has happened to people, some really nasty stuff. And people are afraid of that."

---

On the net:

"Letter to a Christian Nation" http://www.samharris.org