Well, This Is Disturbing.

April 23, 2013 By 4 Comments
bill-the-cat

Before I started A Citizen of Earth, I blogged as The Blue Collar Atheist. The name was mostly intended to underline my lack of a college degree, or any great amount of advanced education, to make the point that giving up religion, become an agnostic or atheist, is not something you need a Ph.D. to do. You can be a complete doofus and still reason yourself free of it. Speaking of which, even *I* can see the gaping holes in some of the stuff from this site (hat tip to commenter Chris for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blue Collar Atheist, Religion & Atheism, Sciency Stuff 4 Comments

Shoving Orphans Away From the Table

April 22, 2013 By 2 Comments

How many times have you seen it? Someone convenes a panel of talking heads to discuss morals, justice, or any of the other “goodness” issues, and the speaker’s table is filled with a priest, a minister and a rabbi (and here lately, to prove our generous and inclusionary nature, an imam). As far as the organizer is concerned, and large swaths of the audience, atheists don’t exist. Because we don’t know anything about morals, you see, or deep human convictions, or even feelings. We … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Atheist Culture, Beta Culture, Godder Antics, Religion & Atheism 2 Comments

The Freedom of Vanished Ripples

April 11, 2013 By 3 Comments
stones

I Carried the Stone the first time when I was 3 years old. I don’t remember it, of course, but my father was so proud he filmed it and I watched it years later. There I was, all 35 pounds of me, carrying a 10-pound Stone. I managed to carry it almost all the way across our living room before I fell with it and chipped one of my baby teeth. In the movie, my mother picked me up and inspected the broken tooth, glancing angrily at my father, but of course she stayed silent. A chipped tooth is … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Religion & Atheism, The Light Side 3 Comments

Drum Roll, Cymbal Clash, Fanfare of Vuvuzelas!

April 1, 2013 By 8 Comments
picture of red fox

Hey there! Say hello to another FreethoughtBlogs alumnus, moving over to further infiltrate Patheos with steely determination, pointed wit, and violent, wanton godlessness. For those of you discovering Hank Fox (me) for the first time, an intro: I’m the author of Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods & Faith. I’ve blogged as the Blue Collar Atheist at Freethought Blogs and elsewhere for a couple of years, but I recently changed my blog banner to A … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Atheist Culture, Meta, Religion & Atheism 8 Comments

Is the Internet Killing the Baby Jesus?

January 17, 2013 By 17 Comments

According to an article in yesterday's Salon, Religion may not survive the Internet Tech-savvy mega-churches may have twitter missionaries, and Calvinist cuties may make viral videos about how Jesus worship isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship, but that doesn’t change the facts: the free flow of information is really, really bad for the product they are selling. But, but, but ... if everybody becomes an atheist, who's going to read my blog?? Actually, I'm not panicking just yet. I think … [Read more...]

Filed Under: News and Views, Religion & Atheism 17 Comments

Seeing the World Through Sane-Colored Glasses

December 18, 2012 By 23 Comments

Lest we forget, "The Crazy" is totally still out there. I'm probably reminding ME more than you. I've made an effort to be saner, to get all the religious craziness out of my head, and I've succeeded (with the religion part anyway) so well that I never think in any religious or superstitious way at all. I tend to tune out the nuttier stuff. As a result — is it the Dunning-Kruger Effect? — I always think the world around me is fairly sane. I'm prone to see humans as rational and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Religion & Atheism, Serious Shit 23 Comments

Connecticut Shooting: Warm Lies, Cold Truth, Free Minds

December 17, 2012 By 13 Comments

This is a reaction to some of the goddy rhetoric surrounding the shooting in Connecticut: Even as an atheist good with words, I can barely express how repulsive I find the claim that those children are in Heaven, skipping along beside Jesus as he gives them a tour of Heaven. Yet we’ve heard exactly that, and more than once. When I posted on Facebook a day or so ago about a mental image related to the tragedy, one of my readers told me she almost threw up when that same image came to her: the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Atheist Culture, Beta Culture, Earthman's Notebook, Religion & Atheism 13 Comments

Fill ‘Er Up, Jesus — This Time With High-Test!

October 21, 2012 By 8 Comments

Did I post about these guys before? Forgive me if I did, but I'm newly horrified by the Christian Prayer Center. After 3 months of unemployment due to downsizing. Standing in faith & sowing down to my last $2.00 in my wallet/empty bank account; I have been blessed with a better job & benefits than my previous 2 jobs. I start this on Monday. I was offered another job @ less money $10,000 less than I made last year, but God told me not to accept it out of fear, but to trust HIM as this was … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Godder Antics, Religion & Atheism, The Light Side 8 Comments

Sam Harris Nails ‘Moral Cowardice’

October 3, 2012 By 7 Comments

Sam Harris hit one out of the park with his Sept. 19 piece On the Freedom to Offend an Imaginary God. The latest wave of Muslim hysteria and violence has now spread to over twenty countries. The walls of our embassies and consulates have been breached, their precincts abandoned to triumphant mobs, and many people have been murdered—all in response to an unwatchable Internet video titled “Innocence of Muslims.” Whether over a film, a cartoon, a novel, a beauty pageant, or an inauspiciously … [Read more...]

Filed Under: News and Views, Religion & Atheism 7 Comments

Our Lady of the Shitty Tools

September 30, 2012 By 23 Comments

Anybody who’s ever worked with hand tools will recognize what I’m about to say: You can buy shitty tools. I mean, there are companies out there who actually make and sell shitty tools. Tools deliberately MADE to break, or perform badly during use. It’s a price-point thing, of course. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Religion & Atheism, Sciency Stuff 23 Comments