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GODLESS WEDNESDAY: It's #aweek12!

Did you know that this weekend in Washington DC (which is exactly when the famed Cherry Blossoms are in peak bloom!) there will be a rally and conference by American Atheists? Watch the following video by the president of American Atheists, David Silverman, and be informed!

In fact, this week, from March 18th through March 24th is designated "A week" This is a Facebook event decided to raise awareness of being "Good without Gods":

Join thousands of people from all over the world in a global shared experience. Display an 'A' as your Facebook profile picture for one week starting 18 March 2012 to raise awareness of how many people are ‘Good without Gods’ and don’t need religions to influence their lives. 

You can find more instructions on how to change your Facebook profile image at the following link.

I would love to attend these events but I will be in Los Angeles at Fusion 2012, the LGBT People of Color Film Festival this weekend.

For more information on A week, follow the Twitter hashtag #aweek12.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Agnostic or Atheist? Both!

For this week's Godlesss Wednesday this helpful diagram (see above) from Atheist Revolution explains the differences between being atheist and being agnostic, which very many people confuse (and conflate).

Using the above chart I would describe myself as as an Agnostic Atheist, which I usually just shorten to "atheist" since that is what most people understand. I most definitely do not believe any god exists, but I don't claim to know that no god exists. However, I think the preponderance of the evidence (i.e. there is no credible evidence that god exists) and simple logic (Occam's Razor) should suffice to allow one to come to the conclusion that god does not exist.

What do you think?

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: I Married An Atheist!

For today's edition of Godless Wednesday I point you to an amazingly well-written blog post about atheism which just so happens to have been written by my husband, at his blog sentientmeat.net. So, yes, I married an atheist!

Here's an excerpt from "Atheists Do Not Have Faith":

Atheist. I don’t believe in god. Believe is a verb, and I don’t do that verb with most people’s concept of God. Or if you like, belief is a kind of confidence, a sort of mental wager or opinion about some infinite being who typically:

• Answers prayers
• Demands tribute or worship
• Exacts vengeance or judgment
• New! Favors one religion over others, or over no religion

I say no to this wager. I think it’s a bad idea. I refuse it, I negate it. I withhold belief in it. I abstain from believing in god, praying to Him, or living my life in perpetual fear of His judgment. This abstention is enough to call myself an atheist. I don’t need faithin His nonexistence. That’s silly.

I’m not sure I’m right, but I’m pretty sure. I’ve evaluated all the reasons people give for believing in God—I believed in God for 20+ years, so you may be sure my evaluation was very thorough. I’ve had many, many spiritual experiences, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need God to explain these. Neuroscience, physics and other disciplines are enough. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but God doesn’t offer any better ones. If not science itself, then the assumptions behindscience are enough for me to frame all the stories I ever care to invest in with that wager called belief.

You should really read the entire piece.

Godless Wednesday: NYT Covers Black Irreligiosity

Praise Allah! No less an important media outlet than the New York Times has recognized that African American Atheists exist! SentientMeat brought this article to my attention and suggested it would be a good subject for a Godless Wednesday post. He reads more things than Cactus and Succulent websites after all.

In a piece published this week titled "The Unbelievers" the Paper of Record examines the (ir)religiosity of Black people in this country:

RONNELLE ADAMS came out to his mother twice, first about his homosexuality, then about his atheism.

“My mother is very devout,” said Mr. Adams, 30, a Washington resident who has published an atheist children’s book, “Aching and Praying,” but who in high school considered becoming a Baptist preacher. “She started telling me her issues with homosexuality, which were, of course, Biblical,” he said. “ ‘I just don’t care what the Bible says about that,’ I told her, and she asked why. ‘I don’t believe that stuff anymore.’ It got silent. She was distraught. She told me she was more bothered by that than the revelation I was gay.”

[...]

African-Americans are remarkably religious even for a country known for its faithfulness, as the United States is. According to the Pew Forum 2008 United States Religious Landscape Survey, 88 percent of African-Americans believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with 71 percent of the total population, with more than half attending religious services at least once a week.

[...]

According to Pew, the vast majority of atheists and agnostics are white, including the authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Seeking a public intellectual of their own, some black atheists have claimed the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, interpreting his arguments against teaching intelligent design in the classroom to be an endorsement of atheism. But Dr. deGrasse Tyson is loath to be associated with any part of the movement. When contacted last week by e-mail, he noted a Twitter exchange he had in August, in which he told a follower, “Am I an Atheist, you ask? Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you.”

Methinks Dr. Tyson doth protest too much, don't you? Anyway, it's cool that there are blogs like Godless and Black and Words of Wrath as well as organizations like African Americans for Humanism and facebook pages like Black Atheists of America. Hopefully MadProfessah's Godless Wednesday will join this list of Black Atheist resources.

Godless Wednesday: Americans' Discomfort With Atheist President

The Friendly Atheist has a great post up today discussing the new poll results from the Public Religion Research Institute which demonstrate that Americans would be more uncomfortable with an atheist President than a Mormon President or a Muslim President!

Friendly Atheist takes a closer look at the graphic above and provides the following analysis:

67% of all voters would feel somewhat or very uncomfortable with an atheist president.80% of all Republicans, 70% of Democrats, and 56% of all Independents feel the same.So Democrats would be more uncomfortable with an atheist president than a Muslim president.
Republicans — not surprisingly, a higher proportion of them than Democrats — would be equally uncomfortable with both an atheist president and a Muslim president.
Overall, though, a non-theistic presidential candidate has a bigger hurdle to overcome than a person of any faith at all. It’s unbelievable that in this day and age, America still has this much of a hangup over a leader who would put more weight in evidence and logical thinking than in an imaginary god and ancient books.

Hear, hear! Friendly Atheist also notes that 31% of Americans would be somewhat or very comfortable with an atheist president while 33% of Americans would be somewhat or very comfortable with a Muslim president.

His suggestion to change these numbers is to encourage more people (and people who run for office) to come clean about their lack of faith and their belief in free-thinking instead of wishful thinking.

This is my first post in what is hopefully going to be a weekly series focusing on atheism and agnosticism and the foibles and failures of faith. I'd love to hear feedback from readers about Godless Wednesdays. Suggestions for a better title would be welcomed!