Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
On Christmas Eve, a letter to the editor in the Coloradoan newspaper caught my eye. Titled ‘Democrats force secular-humanist views’ kind of gave away the view point of the letter writer. The letter gives a good example of faulty irrational thinking and is a good opportunity to show how one can debunk such thinking.
Here is the letter that was published on 12/24 (emphasis is mine):
I remember the time when I revealed to my family I was a Humanist. It was at our family Christmas shindig. I wore my Humanist Community T-shirt. My Grandma asked me if I was a heathen and some cousins asked how could I celebrate Christmas if I was an atheist. Holidays may have strong religious ties but atheists can enjoy them if the believers work a little harder to include us.
Herb Silverman wrote a couple of posts about the interaction of atheists and believers on the holidays.
A new book titled ‘Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century‘ by Lex Bayer and John Figdor, included a set of 10 ‘non-commandments’ for the non-believer. The authors also held a contest to crowdsource an alternative set. I was pleased that I agreed with a majority of the items judged the winner. They are good guidelines for living as a non-believer.
For some years there has been a faction of atheists who use their atheism to be bigots. When asked to take some action on social justice issues like feminism or racism, some of these atheists go out of their way to ‘prove’ why their lack of values causes them to either ignore social justice issues or to support the status quo. Activist and blogger James Croft calls out these bigots and makes some great points why atheists shouldn’t use their atheism a cover for their bigotry.
This weekend social media blew up when comedian Bill Maher and actor Ben Affleck debated Maher’s views about Islam on his HBO show. Affleck makes the same mistake most liberals make when religion is involved in a debate, they conflate criticism with ‘racism’. Ideas like that lead us to blasphemy laws.
The heated portion of the debate started after comments from author Sam Harris: