The Snarky Humanist

While extremely disappointing to see, the latest example of sexism in the online atheist community has nothing to do with atheism. Or our community. Whatever personality defect that causes people to behave in this manner online (we all know full well that internet assholes don't have the balls to say things like this in real life) is not at all related to their intellect or belief-system. They don't represent us , and I kind of wish the major bloggers (Greta, Jen, Hemant, etc.*) would leave it alone. Every online community has this problem. It's not going to go away. All we're doing now is feeding the trolls, and they're reveling in it. I speak from experience, having formerly been a member of an online community dedicated to the following of a particular jam band where everyone was faaaaamily and good vibes were spread and a bunch of other hippie horseshit. The comments in that Reddit thread are similar to some of the stuff I used to read on those music bo...

There have been a lot of comments, inquiries, and jokes made about Hitchen's position on faith after finding out he had terminal cancer. A lot. You can find examples here and here . Presumably in anticipation of this, Hitchen's did take the time to assure everyone that he was indeed still an atheist despite his diagnosis. It amuses me that so many people appear to think that atheists will have a sudden change of heart when they're at death's door. While I can hardly speak for all the atheists in the world, I am certain that my atheism will stand strong in the face of death. The incredulity displayed by those who were waiting, hoping, (needing?) for Hitchen's to suddenly change his mind reaffirms the idea that faith in God is an awfully convienent way to deal with fear of death. These people are basically conceding that Hitch's life was good without God, but his afterlife won't be. That's not a terribly compelling argument on the side of faith.

Jerry Coyne over at 'Why Evolution is True' has been posting Hitchens tributes submitted by readers all week. Madscutter's is included here , and it delighted me to no end because he was actually willing to sit for a photo shoot. Madscutter if often considered to be an elusive creature in photograph-land, and it's no exaggeration when I say that I have 10 times more the number of pictures of my year and a half old kitten than I do of my favorite bald atheist. I think it's a good picture, and Jerry's response time to my various emails was quick and courteous. Since I consider him to be a big-famous-busy-atheist, this impressed me. Another big-famous-busy-atheist not only responded to the query I sent to him regarding what we could do about this , he took it upon himself to repost my blog here , which resulted in the people going over to the ACS's wall to ask them why they suck so much. ACS reposted their initial response again, and then apparently had ...

This happened a few weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing about it. Madscutter came home from work one day and I said "Hey honey, I did a good deed today! I convinced K. not to donate money to the American Cancer Society!". Then I started laughing because I realized that I would sound like a monster to anyone not aware of the drama surrounding the ACS and an atheist organization who wants to donate an assload of money to them, but isn't allowed. Anyway, K. is organizing an event at work to raise money for a specific kind of cancer, so when she mentioned donating to ACS, I countered with links to stories about the drama and suggested a smaller charity that's specific to the kind of cancer she's raising money for. She agreed that the ACS isn't worthy of her efforts, which made me feel a bit victorious. But then I realized that the ACS has no idea that their behavior is costing them donations from other avenues that aren't at all athei...

As you may know, on December the 15th, 2011, at the age of 62, the great Christopher Hitchens shuffled off the mortal coil . While hardly unexpected, I still find myself more than a bit saddened by our collective loss. You see, if it weren't for Hitch, I wouldn't be writing this post. I've never really believed in gods and I was always rather apathetic about the whole subject. It didn't really matter much to me what other folks believed, and in general, for about 30 years, I pursued a "live and let live" kind of attitude. So Hitch didn't bring me to atheism. But about year or two ago, I stumbled across the world of the "New Atheists". The author of a webcomic that I read had posted a link to Jen McCreight's blog and I followed it. I don't recall what the post was actually about. But I browsed her site for a bit and was intrigued (admittedly, I was initially interested in Boobquake for less than purely ideological reasons). Here was som...

"We should applaud him [Tim Tebow], not tear him down. We need more heroes like this for young kids to look up to" - Kathy Lee Gifford So my understanding of the realm of feetball being pretty limited, I have to take the word of those more knowledgeable than myself when they say that Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos are doing WAY better than they should be this year. I'll defer to folks like Tebow's pastor, Wayne Hanson , who runs the Summit Church in suburban Denver, when he says "the Broncos wouldn’t be winning games if God hadn’t decided to reward Tebow’s religious beliefs." Tebow is a nut. And not a good one, like a cashew or a Brazil nut, but one of those crappy ones, like hazelnuts or whatever. To think that an imaginary God cares who wins a sporting event is crazy. There are pious and devout people praying for both teams, I'm sure. How is God to decide? Is it, as Pastor Hanson said, a reward for the quality of Tebow's devotion? NO!! It doesn...

I was watching the Today show this morning, and there was a story about a young model who walked into the moving propeller of a small plane. Apparently it was dark, and obviously it was an accident, though you have to wonder how one unknowingly does that. She sustained some pretty serious injuries although it appears that she's going to survive. Ann Curry was interviewing the girl's parents and asked "Since it would have been so easy for this accident to have been fatal, do you consider this a miracle?" Of course I laughed because yes, I would totally consider it a miracle for my beautiful young daughter to lose a hand and an eye in a freak accident. Then I wondered if it's standard practice to find out the beliefs of someone when preparing for an interview like this. If I were the type to go on news shows to discuss personal tragedies (I'm not), it would be beyond offensive to be asked a question like this. The parents answered in the affirmative, and a...