1. It was a bad year for God.

Comment #109266 by Mr C on January 8, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Back in a 'good' Soviet days, somewhere in a Russia, an atheist propagandist was talking to a crowd of a peasants. The atheist was a very skillful one, outlining a good case why the peasants should cease to believe in God. In the end, to demonstrate his point, he asked peasants to raise their fists and shake them towards the heaven to prove that they will not be strike down by the lighting and therefore should not be in fear of God anymore. Some enthusiastically, others reluctantly, but all, except of one, raised their fists and shook them. The atheist then approached the peasant who did not raise his fist and enquired as to why he did not. The peasant's answer was a somewhat unscientifical but nevertheless logical. He said, 'Well, you made such a good case that there is no God, then you have asked us to shake our fists towards him. If God is not existent, then who do we shake our fists against? But if He does exist, then I am scared to do that.'

Sure that's just Pascal's Wager in Soviet Russian form. Here's the wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascals_Wager

What puzzles me about it though is that, as is my understanding of a faith-based belief, one cannot 'choose' to believe simply because the returns are better. Did Pascal not think that god would notice that he just chose to believe rather than truly, eh, 'feeling it'? And if so then surely this nullifies the wager, rendering it more healthy to be skeptical!?

2. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #81934 by Mr C on October 25, 2007 at 12:18 pm

Atheists don't believe in anything, except the power of reasoned rational thought, free investigation and the unfettered human spirit to succeed.

3. Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah

Comment #73711 by Mr C on September 25, 2007 at 11:58 pm

There is a very good documentary on this church and on the search for Jeffs - Banking on Heaven. It was realeased in 2006 before his arrest.

The film is very powerful in that it conveys the secrecy and power of this church in a way that the above text cannot. Definitely worth a watch.

4. The Atheists Interviews

Comment #69705 by Mr C on September 12, 2007 at 9:36 am

Thanks for the helpful hints bouwe (32). We should collect these and others up to form a conversion advice centre!

5. The Atheists Interviews

Comment #69539 by Mr C on September 11, 2007 at 4:38 pm

I am one of those who have unconsciously been an atheist for many years. Whenever people mentioned their god it smacked of being infantile, but it took RD's God Delusion for me to realise that I am a fully-signed up atheist. I think the word and its ingrained societal negative connotations meant that I couldn't ever bring myself to recognize it as applying to me.

It's just that in my recent zeal for atheism and the debates that I've since been involved in, I find it so hard not to be ridiculing towards others' beliefs. This is even more so when I tell them of strange practices in religions other than theirs and they respond as I do to theirs. In any case, my scorn for all things religious means that I find it very hard to even engage with a believer in the hope of getting them to at least question some of their fundamental assumptions.

As we secularists expect not to be preached at by the religious, does that mean we secularists should not attempt conversions of the religious?

6. 'The Day They Kicked God out of the Schools' & Rebuttal

Comment #34180 by Mr C on April 23, 2007 at 1:05 pm

The video sickened me as it should any rational person. I'm only sorry that we share a world with people that require it to be replied to. There are more enlightening things to put our minds to. But fair play for fighting the enlightening fight.