… and other responded back with their own:

What would you add to the list?

Let us know in the comments!

One random entry will win an awesome atheist t-shirt from Compass 120 Apparel, a new company that will go live next month. If you want to be considered for the prize, just include the word “Compass” at the end of your comment. They ship worldwide, so anyone can win!

If you reply (or crosspost your comment) on Twitter, be sure to use the #IfAtheistsTalkedLikeChristians hashtag!

Now, Harrison is back with a new book called 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True. (Details for how you can win a copy of the book are at the bottom of this post!)

Not surprisingly, the book offers rebuttals to (among many other things) psychic powers, homeopathy, Holocaust deniers, and moon hoaxers.

And anti-vaxxers.

The excerpt below is from Harrison’s chapter on why vaccines are safe and sound and avoiding them hurts us all:

DEADLY CONSEQUENCES

Heated debates that pit science against pseudoscience — evolution versus creationism, for example — rage on and on. But few of them rack up casualties and have the potential for mayhem like the anti-vaccine controversy. This particular clash between reason and irrational belief is literally killing children right now. Vaccination rates have plunged in parts of America and the United Kingdom because of misinformation and unjustified fears. According to the United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency, a drop in vaccination coverage levels has again made measles endemic in the UK after it had already been wiped out by vaccines decades ago.

Much of the fears were stirred up in 1998 when British doctor Andrew Wakefield published research claiming that the measles vaccine causes autism. He said the vaccine inflamed intestines, causing harmful proteins to leak out that then made their way to the brain, where they caused autism. This generated considerable coverage in the mainstream media which, of course, sent waves of fear straight into the hearts of millions of parents. Many of them made the decision not to vaccinate their children as a result. Predictably, this was followed by outbreaks of preventable diseases that killed children. Soon after Wakefield’s announcement, MMR vaccine rates dropped from nearly 90 percent to as low as 50 percent in some areas of London. Now comes the kicker: It turned out that Wakefield’s research is garbage. Other scientists could not confirm his findings. Something was wrong, very wrong. But not only has his work been deemed scientifically flawed, it has ethical problems as well. Investigative journalist Brian Deer reported that Wakefield’s study was funded by a lawyer who also was representing five of eight children used in the study for a suit against pharmaceutical companies. In 2010, the Lancet medical journal formally retracted Wakefield’s study that they had published, and the General Medical Council removed Wakefield’s name from the medical register. He can no longer practice medicine in England.

In the late 1990s, antivaccination activists set their sights on a preservative used in some vaccines called thimerosal. No studies suggested that thimerosal might cause autism, but pharmaceutical companies removed it as a precaution anyway. Now, years later, autism rates have continued to rise. “After all the research,” writes Michael Specter in his book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, “thimerosal may be the only substance we might say with some certainty doesn’t cause autism; many public health officials have argued that it would make better sense to spend the energy and money searching for a more likely cause.”

Multiple studies have failed to find evidence of an autism-vaccine link. In Japan, the feared MMR “vaccine cocktail” was withdrawn and replaced by single vaccines. A study of thirty thousand children there found that autism rates continued to rise even in MMR’s absence. Other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden removed thimerosal from vaccines only to see autism rates continue to rise. Meanwhile, researchers in Finland looked for an autism-vaccine link by analyzing the medical records of more than two million children. They found nothing.

It seems to me that vaccines are victims of their own success. People who are fortunate enough to live in countries with strong vaccination programs have been lulled into a false sense of security. Diseases once feared are not so scary anymore. Measles, for example, does not strike fear in the heart of the typical American. But it’s not a disease we should take lightly. It causes brain swelling and high fever and is often fatal. In the past, measles killed millions in Europe and America. It still kills more than one million children per year in the developing world today. Nevertheless, many parents are being scared away from the measles vaccine by warnings with no credible science behind them. The percentage of unvaccinated children in the United States has doubled since 1991. This is as infuriating as it is absurd. We are moving backward.

Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is one of the world’s leading experts on vaccines. He is also currently waging a professional war against the antivaccine movement. But it is also clearly personal for him. His frustration and concern for children are often readily apparent when he describes the irresponsible decision to deny vaccines. “The problem with waning immunization rates in the United States isn’t theoretical anymore,” he told me. “Recent outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, mumps, and bacterial meningitis show a clear breakdown in population immunity. Children are now suffering the diseases of their grandparents. It’s unconscionable.”

…

“THEY’RE NOT STUPID, JUST IGNORANT”

Nurse Shawn R. Browning is in the trenches on the frontlines of this issue. She has nearly two decades of experience in the medical field, most of it working with the US Navy. She regularly administers vaccines to military personnel and their families. She also has been involved with immunization education for many years. Irrational fears about vaccines are nothing new to her.

“I have had plenty of parents and patients that are misinformed about vaccines,” she said. “When they tell me they don’t want to get a particular vaccine, the first thing I ask them is, ‘why’? I have heard everything from the thimerosal content is bad for you, vaccines cause autism — particularly the MMR vaccine — and everything in between. By law I give them the VIS [vaccine information statements], but in addition I also educate them on the pros of receiving the vaccine versus not. What I have learned is that more times than not, people are willing to get the vaccine once it is explained to them in words they can understand and relate to. They’re not stupid, just ignorant. They have listened to their neighbors, the media, and everyone else and have formed an unjustified opinion. Drives me crazy! Many parents and patients have expressed their gratitude that someone has taken the time to explain things instead of just sticking a needle in them without any explanation. I think our particular patient population is more vaccine hesitant than antivaccine.”

Like most healthcare professionals, Browning is concerned that this reluctance to vaccinate might lead to major outbreaks of preventable diseases:

The biggest fear is that preventable diseases will rise to epidemic proportions again. Infants and children are going to die or be disabled because adults are ignorant and won’t vaccinate themselves or their children. The outbreak of pertussis [whooping cough] is the latest. People think that since they are adults, they don’t need a vaccine. Yet how many die from complications from the flu every year? [Influenza virus, the flu, kills as many as five hundred thousand people each year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.15] It’s very scary. We also have an obligation to get vaccinated to protect those [who] can’t be vaccinated due to various reasons [such as immune system problems].

There was this mom [who] came into our clinic a little more than a year ago to get her one-year-old daughter her immunizations. The corpsman that brought them back to the room started to explain the vaccines the child would be getting and their potential side effects to the mom. The mom politely interrupted the corpsman and proceeded to explain that this child was not her first baby. She had once been “one of those moms” who didn’t believe in vaccines, and her first little girl had died when she got the measles. Just how do you respond to that? Your heart breaks.

Offit adds, “The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism; six have shown thimerosal [preservative once used in vaccines] doesn’t cause autism; three have shown thimerosal doesn’t cause subtle neurological problems; a growing body of evidence now points to the genes that link to autism; and despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines in 2001, the number of children with autism continues to rise.”

In 1997, 4,138 children entered California kindergartens without being vaccinated because they had exemptions. By 2008, that number had more than doubled. Parents citing religious or philosophical objections to having their children vaccinated are putting not only their own children at risk but the lives of many others as well. Babies who are too young to be vaccinated can be infected and die. Children who have immune system problems and cannot be vaccinated have to rely on others around them to be vaccinated in order to keep the diseases at bay. When vaccination rates drop, danger to these vulnerable groups increases. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert, a parent’s decision to refuse vaccination means his or her child is thirty-five times more likely to get measles and twenty-two times more likely to come down with pertussis (whooping cough). Please don’t think for a second that this is exaggeration or fearmongering. Children are paying a price for this madness in small pockets across America now, and the potential for much greater suffering is real. In April 2011, for example, a private school in Virginia had to close because half its students were infected with pertussis. None of the children had been vaccinated. Many of the parents had obtained religious exemptions that officially sanctioned their negligence. News of several recent infant deaths in California due to pertussis either had not reached those parents or failed to impress them.

Why subject children to this unnecessary danger? To protect them from autism? Very large, thorough, and expensive scientific studies did not find any reason to conclude that vaccines cause autism. Therefore it simply makes no sense to withhold such important protection from a child.

From 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True (Prometheus Books, 2012). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

If you’d like to win a copy of the book, just leave a comment telling us about a belief you used to hold and what ultimately led you away from it! (God doesn’t count. We’ve heard that one before.) Please include the word “Bermuda” at the end of your comment if you’d like to be considered for the prize!

One of the chapters, Morality versus Worship, is republished below:

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” — Quote by Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor (26 April, 121 – 17 March, 180).

I would like to begin with this quotation because it outlines very eloquently one of the most popular arguments against Christianity, though it can be applied to many theistic traditions. Christians often preach, and The Bible states, that there are prerequisites for entrance into heaven beyond simply following the moral teachings of The Bible as you might interpret it, including the requirement of having accepted Jesus of Nazareth as Lord and Savior. The Bible explicitly indicates that acceptance of Jesus as Lord is a necessary condition for entry to heaven in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” This verse is, however, only one of the many indicating the necessity not of moral behavior to be saved, but of accepting Jesus Christ — who, according to doctrine, is supposed to have lived thousands of years ago and for whose existence we have little to evidence, neither as a man nor as part of the divine Christian God-head. It is on the basis of this acceptance requirement that missionaries began their crusades to spread the word of Christ, because those who have not heard the true word of Jesus would be sure to suffer eternal damnation. From this we can infer two things: firstly, that those who have heard of Jesus the Christ and deny him will not receive the gift of eternal communion with God; and, secondly, that those who have not heard of the teachings of Jesus will likewise be condemned as all humans are sinners according to this tradition and, in order to be forgiven for any sins, you must accept that Jesus Christ is God incarnate.

According to missionary authorities (Statistics according to “The Joshua Project” global mission statistics), somewhere around 2.74 billion people have not heard the “gospel of Christ” and are therefore subject to the punishment of God. The problem with this lack of Christian universalism lies within the worship/morality barrier. Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus, but simply finds no evidentiary reason to believe? According to any reasonable interpretation of Christianity’s key doctrines, the answer is a simple and firm “yes”. This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be “moral” without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level. It seems to me that this claim indicates that if a Christian were to lose his or her faith, he or she would no longer know right from wrong — a scary concept, to say the least. Yet, if there exists a person who follows biblical moral code strictly but doesn’t believe in Jesus’ divinity, the “merciful” Christian God promises eternal damnation. If it is the case that nonbelievers are punished based solely on nonbelief, and this is the purpose for early Christian missionaries to spread the Gospel, then we can conclude that those individuals who haven’t heard or cannot understand the teachings will be likewise damned. The problem is therefore extended from nonbelievers to those ignorant of Christ’s teachings to those incapable of believing due to mental defect or age. For example, because The Bible teaches that no man is without sin and does not mention the specific status of children in the afterlife, it is easy to conclude that, logically, children who die when they are too young to know of Christ’s word may not have a place in eternal communion with God. This debate led to various sects creating new Christian teachings promoting different purgatories and limbo-like layers of afterlife for unbaptized children. Many “modern” Christians stray away from this rather unpopular concept, but the fact remains that, biblically, it is impossible to enter heaven without first accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The requirement to obey and acknowledge God and Jesus Christ has caused the teachings of the Christian tradition to stray from morality to idol worship, creating a world in which a murderer can be forgiven and sent to heaven, whereas a loving and caring skeptic would be cast into damnation.

Not only do I believe that it is possible to maintain moral standards without the crutch of religion — but I would argue that it is the only way to achieve true goodness and express real altruism. Free from the constraints of organized religion, a human being is able to express decency from one’s self — as opposed to attempting to appease whatever higher power he or she may believe in. By separating worship and morality, we can act in accordance with our own human morals and be able to be less selfish in our motivations for kindness and moral behaviors.

If you’d like to win a copy of David’s book, all you have to do is tell us your favorite Biblical inconsistency

Just make sure the word “Mittens” appears at the end of the comment.

Make a video, create a graphic image, write a song, or try something else!

The deadline for submissions to this contest is Thursday, January 19th, 2012. Contestants must be from North America. The two plane tickets for the winning submission will only be offered from North American locations to meet Richard Dawkins at the Reason Rally. (If you cannot make it to the Reason Rally, you could elect to be flown to an alternate location where Richard Dawkins is visiting on his spring 2012 tour of the US.)

…

Your submission can use drama, humor, still images, moving images, images from the speech video above, or any images you choose. Finalist submissions will be selected based on their ability to: 1) persuade a broader public and 2) inspire organizing and action in our secular movement.

Not a bad prize at all. I assume if you win, you’ll invite me to dinner…

You can’t submit videos until June 1^st of next year, but if you have any ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments. Maybe someone can get to work and make them a reality! (I promise to demand at most half your prize money.)

More information is on Harris’ site and you can see last year’s winner below:

The summer after her freshman year at all-Mormon Brigham Young University, Marguerite Farnsworth falls in love with philosophy by way of falling in love with an atheist philosophy student.

Blasphemous! I like where this is going…

Author Therese Doucet has some experience with the subject since she’s an ex-Mormon herself. She was kind enough to offer a slightly risqué excerpt from the novel (see below) and she’s giving away a free copy of the book to one reader! (More on that in a moment.)

A little flustered by the attention, Marguerite said, “Well, I doubt you’ll convince me, but I’m not afraid of any arguments. The truth is the truth, and it should hold up no matter what anyone says.”

“Ah, well. That all depends on how you define truth. But come here, come sit by me, and let’s talk.” Damon patted the bench next to him.

Marguerite complied and scooted further down the bench to sit closer to him.

“What makes you believe in God, first of all? What reasons do you have for believing?”

“Well–” she blew air out of her mouth. “Where to start. There are so many reasons. The scriptures, of course, they say He exists and loves us. Then there’s so much beauty in the world, and so much goodness in people. There’s the fact that I was raised around a lot of people who believe, and it’s hard to imagine they could all be wrong.”

As she listed off reasons, he countered them. The scripture were flawed historical documents–why trust them anyway? Why should any human being be trusted solely on the basis of the authority he claimed to have from God? What about all the evil and ugliness in the world? All these things she called evidence were ambiguous and could be interpreted multiple ways. How could she be sure it was God and not something else, or pure coincidence behind them?

But Marguerite had an ace up her sleeve, and now she brought it out: There was also such a thing as personal revelation through spiritual experience. Mormons, Marguerite included, believed if you prayed, God would let you know through spiritual feelings the Church was true and He was real.

“Interesting,” said Damon, “but if that’s so effective, then what are you doing sitting here talking to me? If God came down and told you He exists, then why should you have any doubts about it?”

Marguerite hesitated. “I suppose it’s not as clear as God coming down and telling you what’s what–I mean, it’s never been that clear for me. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, did have a vision where God came down and said, ‘This is my church,’ but for me and most of the people I’ve talked to about it, it’s more like a feeling you get when you pray–a feeling of peace and calm and rightness.”

“Aha.”

“So I guess you’ll say that’s just another ambiguous piece of evidence like all the rest, because it’s just a feeling.”

“That’s pretty much what I was going to say.” He grinned. “This is going to be easier than I thought. You’re doing all the work for me.” His face sobered. “But you know, this is serious stuff. This is your life here we’re talking. We only live once, and it’s tragic, don’t you think, to waste it on something that’s not for real and give up your happiness because someone guilted you into believing in an imaginary God who’s going to punish you in the afterlife if you don’t obey. Aren’t you worried about that?”

Marguerite shrugged and tried to think of a way to answer him. While she was still considering it, Damon asked what kinds of things Mormons believed anyway–what sort of commitments and sacrifices did her belief system entail? Marguerite listed off the usual roster of don’ts, but when she got to the part about staying a virgin till you were married, Damon, who was already starting on his third beer, howled in protest.

“No, that’s not for real. You’re shitting me. Excuse my language. So, you’re telling me you’re still a virgin? A girl as cute as you?”

Marguerite squirmed in embarrassment.

“So, if you can’t have sex, how far can you go? Is oral sex okay? Can you get naked with your boyfriend? Can he feel you up?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend. And I guess the answer would pretty much be no.” She was still in shock at having heard the phrase “oral sex.”

“Oh, that is tragic. So all you can do is kiss, basically. God, that must be incredibly frustrating.”

“Well … I don’t know … I’ve never had a real boyfriend exactly, not what most people would consider a boyfriend. The truth is, I’ve never even French-kissed. Although that’s allowed, I think.”

Damon looked thunderstruck. With an expression of mingled pity, anger, and disgust, he said, “Now that’s just obscene. We really have to do something about this. I mean, doesn’t this upset you? Don’t you want to be with someone?”

Marguerite wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Well, yes, I mean–yes. But it’s not so bad. At least I never have to worry about getting pregnant or getting some awful disease. And in a way I kind of like it–the purity of it. It’s nice to feel naive and innocent, relatively speaking. And … I like the idea that I’m saving myself for my future husband, for someone who’ll love me enough to want to be with me for the rest of my life, and for eternity.”

Damon leaned back and rubbed his chin with the fingers of one hand. Then he said slowly, “But what if you never get married? Or worse–what if you get married and it turns out you’re sexually incompatible? I mean, if you can’t even fool around before you marry him, how do you know you’ll like how he does it to you?”

Marguerite struggled not to show how uncomfortable this phrasing made her. “I always thought that was sort of a myth–sexual compatibility, I mean. Everyone always says you can work on those things. If you have your whole life ahead of you to work on it together, surely you can get good at it at some point?”

“I hate to break it to you, but that’s not how it works. In any relationship, it’s an ironclad rule that the sex is best at the beginning, and it’s all downhill from there. Because in the beginning you’re all excited, and it’s new and it’s hot and you don’t know what to expect. If it’s lousy to start with, you’re in for a very long marriage full of bad sex, or more likely, no sex at all, because you’d probably just give up on it at some point. So you better be pretty sure it’s going to be hot with a guy if you’re planning to stay with him for life. And how can you even get a sense of that if you have no experience beforehand?”

Marguerite at last managed to look up and meet his eyes. “Luckily, I have a good imagination.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you do.” He laughed. “Jesus.”

I’m not asking for your personal scandalous stories… but I’d love to know how your views on sex changed from back when you were religious to after you came to your senses.

Leave your thoughts below, and if you’re interested in winning a copy of the book, put the word “Palmyra” at the end of your comment. I’ll choose one winner at random next week!

One of the categories they were nominated for was called “The One” which goes to…

…the most influential trendsetter that shaped opinion, moved people, and ultimately starting fire in Philippine internet. This person is ahead of the pack in terms of online popularity and content.

Guess what? They won!

They received a trophy and a $2,351 (USD) cash prize

“We are thrilled to receive this award, as the group would not have gotten to where it is now without the help of social media,” says Red Tani, President of the Filipino Freethinkers. ‎”However, we want to remind people that actions and conversations should not end in the realm of social media. Intelligent ideas are worthless if they’re not implemented in the real world. Online and on the ground advocacy and activism should go hand in hand.

‎”We’re also happy that we won the major prize considering the circumstances. Not only do we promote the Reproductive Health bill, we’ve been criticizing the Catholic church hierarchy without reservation. We were afraid that controversial issues such as these would keep us from winning. Maybe this recognition from Globe is a sign that the Philippines not only tolerates but welcomes our progressive ideas.”

Either way, a lot of us in America welcome their courageous voices. Congratulations to the group!

But Christians give a whole host of reasons for why we can’t see him. One Furious Llama rattles off a list:

1. It’s a test, or, your time on earth is a test or tribulation
2. He shows himself all the time you just don’t realize you’re seeing him (as in nature, apparent order)
3. He once did, people didn’t believe, people wouldn’t believe now so he doesn’t bother
4. Only evil people ask for a sign or proof, so don’t ask, he won’t give it to you anyway
5. He does manifests himself by answering prayers

He’s got another ten where those came from and they get progressively crazier (“His ‘matter’ doesn’t interact with photons and since we mostly use electromagnetic waves to detect things, we can’t, detect him”).

We can do better than that. What’s the most amusing reason you can think of to explain why we can’t detect god?

I’ll send a FriendlyAtheist wristband (sent to me by reader Shauna and her sister Danni) to the commenter who earns the most “likes”!

I have a copy to give away to one lucky reader, but first, an excerpt from the book. (Thanks to Simon & Schuster for that!)

It’s from the introduction, titled “The Humility of Loudmouth Know-it-all Asshole Atheists”… so you know this is going to be fun

You don’t have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is “I don’t know.” I remember sitting in a room full of skeptics when I first heard Christopher Hitchens say, “Atheists don’t have saints and we don’t have martyrs.” I’m a little afraid to put that in quotes, because no matter how brilliantly I remember any Hitchens phrase, when I go back and check, what he said was better than I remember. He is better at speaking off the top of his head after a couple of drinks than I am at remembering his brilliance later while referencing notes.

I know nothing about drinking, but I know that hitchens did drink, and when he made that comment he was sitting next to me on the dais with a drink in front of him. But the drink was irrelevant — I could never see that it made any difference to his abilities. My doctor’s brother (how’s that for a source?) said there is such a thing as state-dependent learning. This explains the brilliance of all the jazz cats on heroin and how Keith Richards could play even a specially tuned guitar while as fucked-up as… well, Keith Richards. They’re performing in the same state in which they practiced. Hank Williams was so fucked-up we don’t even know which of the United States he died in. Hank’s driver drove him across many state lines all night in his long white Cadillac and when they got to Oak Hill, West Virginia, Hank was dead. Hank’s genius might have been state-dependent, but his dying wasn’t even that.

For years it seemed Christopher Hitchens was always drunk, so he was calling up information in the same state (drunk) that he learned it (drunk). I did the Howard Stern radio show a lot in the late eighties. Many times I was on with Sam Kinison. I’ve never had a sip of alcohol or tried any recreational drug in my life, and I’d come in to the Stern show as rested as carny trash could be that early in the morning — focused and ready to work. Sam would come in fucked-up. Really fucked-up. Stern would kick off the show and Sam was always so good. I would be sweating into the mic, trying to get a clever word in here and there while in awe of how fast, insightful, profound, and motherfucking funny Sam was every second. Howard would keep us on for a long time, and at the end of the show i’d be exhausted, and Sam would just stagger out like he came in.

I used to wonder: if that was how he was in a fucked-up state, if he ever were sober, couldn’t he sweep the Nobel Prizes and throw in a Fields Medal?

You don’t have to be very smart, fast, or funny to be an atheist. You don’t have to be well educated. Being an atheist is simply saying “I don’t know.”

When i was a professional dishwasher, I worked with a man named Harold. Harold sent in lyrics and the little bit of money he saved up to “song-poem” companies that advertised in the back of the National Enquirer and Midnight. He’d pay a full week’s wages to have “song sharks” set his poems to music, record the songs, and try to sell them to make Harold rich. Part of the scam was to send the victim a copy of his song on a record. I now collect copies of those song-poem records. Nothing is labeled very well, and most of them are about Jesus or Nixon. I’ll never know if I’m listening to a song Harold cowrote with a rip-off artist, but when I listen, I feel like I’m in touch with him. most of the song-poems are unlistenable, but the ones that are good are heartbreaking. They are all you want in art — the cynical blasé skill of out-of-work studio musicians sight-reading hastily scribbled sheet music while a competent but bitter vocalist sings unedited, pure, white light/white heat lyrics from the heart of someone who doesn’t know what the word “cynical” means. Beat that, Bruce Springsteen.

Harold was fat and ugly and sweaty. He didn’t have any brainpower or hair at all, and I looked up to him. I knew other people who were a zillion times smarter than Harold, but Harold managed to show up for work, get the pots and pans clean, and deal with all the smart-assed punks, hippies, drunks, and drug users who washed dishes briefly and badly at Famous Bill’s Restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Famous Bill’s contained the word “famous” because they’d gotten a good review of their lobster pie in a travel magazine in the fifties. I was a hippie punk who worked with Harold for one summer and then went on with my life with Penn & Teller. Harold knew a couple little jokes, and he knew how to be polite and get to the restaurant on time and back to his apartment after work to write songs. I never talked theology with Harold — I don’t know if he believed in god — but I heard him say “I don’t know” about a lot of things. His smile when he admitted he didn’t know was unapologetic, unless you were asking a question related to his job. If you were asking him if he liked Kerouac or Thailand, he would just say “I don’t know” as a simple statement of fact. He knew very well that he didn’t know.

I try to claim that I was friends with the genius Richard Feynman. He came to our show a few times and was very complimentary, and I had dinner with him a couple times, and we chatted on the phone several times. I’d call him to get quick tutoring on physics so I could pretend to read his books. No matter how much I want to brag, it’s overstating it to call him a friend. I would never have called him to help me move a couch. I did, however, call him once to ask how we could score some liquid nitrogen for a Letterman spot we wanted to do. He was the only physicist I knew at the time. He explained patiently that he didn’t know. He was a theoretical physicist and I needed a hands-on guy, but he’d try to find one for me. About a half hour later a physics teacher from a community college in Brooklyn called me and said, “I don’t know what kind of practical joke this is, but a Nobel Prize–winning scientist just called me here at the community college, gave me this number, and told me to call Penn of Penn & Teller to help with a Letterman appearance.”

I guess that’s close to a friend.

My friend Richard Feynman said “I don’t know.” I heard him say it several times. He said it just like Harold, a simple statement of fact. When Richard didn’t know, he often worked harder than anyone else to find out, but while he didn’t know, he said “I don’t know.”

I like to think I fit in somewhere between my friends Harold and Richard. I don’t know. I try to remember to say “I don’t know” just the way they both did, as a simple statement of fact. It doesn’t always work. It seems that with “climate change” we’re all supposed to know, but I’ll get to that later in the book.

One attack I’ve heard theists make against atheists is, “So, you atheists think you know everything? You think you’re smart enough to know everything? You think science can figure out everything? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt…” That quote is from my good friend Mr. Straw Man, but it’s an idea we hear all the time: atheists are arrogant and don’t think they need god, because they’ve got it all figured out. I think people who make that accusation are confusing style with content. I’m a loud, aggressive, strident, outspoken atheist, and I’m an asshole — but what I’m claiming is not in any way arrogant. It couldn’t be more humble. It’s just “I don’t know.”

I don’t know how the world was created. I don’t know how humans got here. There are lots of good guesses, and we keep testing those guesses trying to find where they’re wrong. Science has helped a lot, but we don’t know. And maybe we never will. I mean, we, all of us, the people alive right now, will certainly never know, but it seems almost as likely that no humans will ever know. how could we? We will keep getting closer, we will keep knowing more and more. I guess string theory might explain some things, but I don’t know. I don’t understand jack shit about string theory. Evolution explains a lot. I think I get a little bit about that. Evolution really does seem to make a zillion pieces fall into place. It’s the answer to a lot of questions that, before Darwin, had to be answered with “I don’t know.” The theory of evolution keeps, you know, evolving — it keeps changing. Now, we do know a lot, but the number of “I don’t know”s is still infinite. Aren’t there a few different kinds of infinity? I don’t fucking know. I sure can’t picture infinity. What does it mean to go on forever? I don’t know. That’s how Harold’s coworker Penn, the dishwasher, would say it — a simple statement of fact: “I don’t know.”

Where is the humility in being a theist? There is none. What would it mean for me to believe in god? It would mean that I know. Not just that I might happen to know about Kerouac, Thailand, liquid nitrogen, and vector calculus identities, but that I know that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent power in the universe that I can’t prove to you, but that I know because I have faith. I know because I say I know. I can feel it. I would maybe have faith that this force in the universe is for good. Maybe it’s tied in with love. Maybe I know that this force in the universe will give everlasting life and cares very much where I stick my fucking cock. Maybe I would know that there is a supreme power in the universe and that supreme power cares about me. Not everyone who believes in god believes all of those things. But it doesn’t matter — whatever they say god is, they’re saying they know. There is no humility. They believe because they say they believe. Some people who believe in god distort the meaning to the point where… well, even I could say I believe in god. Some will tell you “God is love” and then defy you not to believe in love. But, if X = Y, why have a fucking X? Just keep it at Y. Why call love god? Why not call love… love? “Beauty is god.” Okay. If you change what the word means, you can get me to say I believe in it. Say “God is bacon” or “God is tits” and I’ll love and praise god, but you’re just changing the word, not the idea. Some think that god will answer prayers. They think that their prayer can influence the behavior of an omnipotent, omniscient power. How do you figure that? How come it’s rare to see people on TV saying that god made them lose the stupid ball game or killed that baby in the house fire? How come every time someone says that god told them to kill their whole family, the religious people say right away that the faithful murderer was crazy? You never see religious people saying “I wonder if that murder was a miracle. I wonder if god is speaking to us directly again.”

Maybe they really don’t believe this shit either.

I could scream at the altar of a church, with a crucifix stuck deep up my asshole, that I fuck Jesus Christ hard through the hand holes and cream on his crown of thorns, and I will never hit the level of blasphemy that’s required for someone to pray to god for their family’s pet dog to return home. The idea that someone can claim that they know there’s a god because they feel it, because they trust a book that they were raised with, because they had an epiphany, and then ask this god to change its mind about its plan for the universe is arrogant. Once you say you have the answer to everything, but you can’t prove it to anyone else, I don’t think you can accuse anyone else of being arrogant. I think you are the king of kings of the arrogant assholes.

And “I don’t know” doesn’t mean “There might be a god.” That’s the different kind of “I don’t know,” that’s not Harold and Richard’s honest, humble “I don’t know.” Being an atheist means you don’t believe in god. When someone asks if god exists and you humbly say “I don’t know,” you’ve answered the question honestly. Once you’ve answered “I don’t know” to the existence of a god, the answer to whether you believe in god pretty much has to be no. That doesn’t mean you’re saying it’s impossible for there to be a god, or that we couldn’t have evidence of a god in the future. It just means that right now you don’t know. And if you don’t know, you can’t believe. Believing cannot rise out of “I don’t know.”

Is there an elephant in your bathtub right now? If you humbly answer “I don’t know,” then when asked if you believe there’s an elephant in your bathtub right now, the answer would be no. Anything is possible, but there’s no reason to believe it until there’s some evidence. Once you’re an atheist, anything is possible. You are leaving open the possibility of Jesus Christ as lord, and Thor, and invisible gremlins living in your toaster. It’s all possible, but… I don’t know. And until I know — until there’s some evidence — I’m an atheist.

What could be humbler than that? You don’t have to be smart or well educated, you just need to be humble. And if you’re a libertarian atheist, there can be no commandments. There can be no edicts. It’s all down to the individual. No one knows what’s best for other people. I don’t even know what’s best for myself.

I was asked by Glenn Beck to entertain the idea of an atheist Ten Commandments. It was his rhetorical exercise to try to force the incorrect point that the biblical Ten Commandments were just common sense. Even though my heroes Hitchens and George Carlin have taken a pass at the Ten Commandments, I wanted to do my own. I wanted to see how many of the ideas that many people think are handed down from god really make sense to someone who says “I don’t know.”

Borscht Belt comics and a lot of web pages have used the gag “The Ten Suggestions.” All joking aside, that seems like the right feeling. This book is just some thoughts from someone who doesn’t know. I’ve tried to throw in a couple of funny stories, and there’s a lot of rambling. Some of the stories have nothing to do with atheism directly, but they will give you a feel for how one goofy atheist lives his life in turn-of-the-century America. If you’re still claiming that you’re religious, you can compare and contrast. I think you’ll find that I’m just like you, if you’re the kind of guy or gal who’s dropped his or her cock into a blow-dryer. Try to remember, when it all comes down, i just don’t know.

But… god? No! There is no fucking god!

Hmm… lots of shock-jock-y-ness in there. No doubt it’ll appeal to Penn’s fans, but I’m not sure it’ll bring him any new ones.

Anyway, I have a copy of the book to give away!

All you have to do is finish this sentence: “I don’t know _______________.”

(Leave the word “Teller” at the end of your comment if you’d like to be considered in the drawing.)

My friends at Filipino Freethinkers have been nominated at the Global Tatt Awards in two categories:

The first category is called “The Advocate.” Since they first formed in early 2009, they have fought tirelessly both in public events and online against the Catholic Church’s domination of Philippine politics and public policy, advocating for freethought, secularism, reproductive health rights, LGBT and women’s rights, and free speech.

The second category is called “The One.” This is for shaping society through advocacy with the best overall website and online presence.

Winning either of these will help them to bring more public awareness to the important causes they support, and will also give them a much needed $2400 cash prize. From their beginning they have funded most of their advocacy efforts out of their own pockets, while of course the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, (CBCP) has virtually unlimited resources.

I’ve been impressed with the Filipino Freethinkers’ energy and courage since I first encountered them two years ago, and since then they have shown enormous support for two of my letter writers. They really deserve some recognition and help.

To vote for them, you must have a Facebook account. Use this link to go to the official Globe Tatt Awards site.

Click on “The One” at the top of the category list at the left, and click your vote under the blue and red ff logo for Filipino Freethinkers.

Then click on “The Advocate” at the bottom of the category list and click your vote for them in that category.

To clarify, you can vote once in both categories.

Thanks!