Six Years

Uneventfully, last week marked the sixth anniversary of when I started this blog. Since then,  a lot has happened.

• The Boston Bombers killed 4 and maimed scores in another “faith based initiative”, were discovered, one was killed and the other captured, and (finally) read his Miranda rights.
• Congress failed to pass a weakened version of a bill designed to require people to get background checks when they buy a gun, despite overwhelming popular support.
• A fertilizer plant in Texas, that had not been inspected in decades, blew up, killing scores (we think – it’s so bad, it’s hard to count the bodies).
• Related to the last one, Texas legislators that voted against federal support for Hurricane Sandy relief came begging for federal support for West, Texas.
• Anonymous hacked The Facebook page of the Westboro Baptist Church, and have been running it quite successfully, and humorously, since then.
• Ricin-laced letters were apparently sent to President Obama and another US Senator.
• Multiple countries are legalizing same-sex marriage. New Zealand and, it looks like, France are the latest.
• A Pennsylvania couple, previously convicted of allowing their child to die by refusing medical care in favor of the power of prayer, apparently did it again.
• The poor are still getting poorer; the rich, richer.

All in one week!

The Real Problem With Atheism

A friend sent this link to an article on HuffPo to me this week. I took me awhile to read it, then a little longer to reply to my friend. I thought that since my reply was lengthy, and I havent posted anything in awhile, I’d reproduce my response.

Read the article first, then my reply.

__________________

The Historicity Of Jesus

There is an interesting discussion shaping up on the atheosphere, among other places. It started with the publication of Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman. Actually, it was just a bit prior to that. There was an article in the Huffington Post written by Ehrman that provoked a shocked response from Richard Carrier. He then followed up with a full scale review of the book.

Ehrman’s book (which I have not read yet) apparently concludes that Jesus was not a myth, but actually existed. Carrier is a mythicist, concluding that there is little evidence for an historical Jesus. So it’s not surprising that he might disagree with Ehrman. His conclusion, though, is not very dispassionate. In fact it’s downright harsh, to say the least, at times devolving into the personal.

# 475

Every once in awhile I check under the old WordPress dashboard to see what I’ve been doing. This here post is number 475, and falls a bit shy of the end of my fifth year of blogging. By the time I get to that particular anniversary (April 18), I hope to have received about 450,000 visits to the blog. I think that’s a lot, but in comparison to others, maybe not so much. Considering that about 425,000 are probably visits from Gideon, maybe I shouldn’t be so proud. 😉

I Get Searches

Every once in awhile I dig beneath the Dashboard of this blog to see what kind of interests the people have who show up here. March 9 was the day I checked for this post. Below is a list of all the searches that link to this blog.

Now some of them I can understand. All the searches for variations on the “atheist billboard” theme are explained by my last two posts. And of course anything with “spanish” (even if spelled incorrectly – go go Google!) or “inquisitor” in the search would show a link to this location. The “venus fly trap” inquiries are also obvious.

I Like This

Sometimes I run into some really lucid, spot-on comments and posts while wandering through the Atheosphere, that I feel the need to share. Over at Freethought Blogs, there are so many thoughtful, interesting posts that it’s hard to keep up with them. I like the idea of congregating much of the Atheosphere in one place, but on the other hand, it can be overwhelming, with much of the forest lost for the trees.

The End of A Troll

I hate to do this. I really do. I’m a firm believer in free speech. The 1st Amendment is like my Bible. I really believe, that as bad as some speech is, to ban it is even worse. When we start banning speech because of its content, we’ve lost our way in what I feel is the inexorable progress of human civilization. Speech leads the way, so banning someone from my blog is banning their speech, and I really hate to do that…and…

…Oh, who am I kidding. No I don’t. At least not in this case.

Ironic Hypocrisy

I’m not sure how I stumbled on this site, but suffice it to say I did. I read the article by the priest who wrote it, about how the big bad atheists are taking over the blogosphere, and maybe even the entire Intertubes, with their “aggressive’, “crude”, “negative”, “dismissive” commentary on all things religious.

As you would expect, I disagreed with him, and left a comment. I said something similar to this:

400,000!

I just noticed that my stats show that I turned over four hundred thousands visits to this blog. You can confirm it down in that little box at the bottom of the page.

Just Ruminating

I haven’t written any posts in awhile, partly because I have been having a long debate with someone on another blog post, in the comments, about the conflict between Religion and Science, which has gravitated, as usual, to the existence of god. This is as it should be. It is where atheist/theist debates should properly end up. One can talk about the merits of religion, or the efficacy of religious belief, or the overwhelming preponderance of theists in the world, but ultimately none of it means anything in the debate until you’ve resolved the TRUTH of religion – i.e. does god exist. If he does, then there should be significant consensus, if not universal and unanimous acceptance, of that one truth. It should be obvious. The fact that there isn’t even something close to human consensus gives the lie to the proposition.