A Song to an Atheist

I have a friend who wrote a song to me. (Free mp3 download courtesy of Anderson Productions, Ltd.) “Dear Friend” appeared on Russ Anderson’s 2003 album, “Arsenal Street”. All his CD’s are Available here. I recommend listening to the song before proceeding.

This nice, eerie, and sometimes psychedelic song is a heartfelt plea for me to discard my narrow, science-informed view of the world and just try to accept the ultimate truth of his favorite, ancient, re-translated book.
When my very Christian 11 year old nephew heard the song, he worried that it would anger me. He is fond of both Russ and myself, and the song conveys a basic disconnect. Conversations I’ve had with other Absolute Biblically Literal Truth Christians indicate that these are common misperceptions of atheist ideology.

Let’s examine some of the contentions in the song:

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The Temptation of Living Multiple Simultaneous Lives

“If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.”  Mario Andretti

Like most people I know, I try to keep quite a few balls in the air.   Those balls represent things such as prosecuting lawsuits against large unscrupulous businesses.  

Today, for instance, the two lawyers who constitute my firm’s consumer class action practice area (I’m one of the two) sued a large corporate dairy that has been distributing “organic milk” to large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target.  The problem is that the milk was not organic.  A federal investigation recently determined that the dairy engaged in willful violations of organic dairy farm standards.  Our plaintiffs are asking that the customers who paid big premiums for the “organic” milk should be refunded their money, at least the difference in cost between the price of the organic milk and the plain milk.  The plaintiffs in our suit are both mothers of small children.  They both reached deep to pay the extra money so that their children would not be exposed to the hormones and antibiotics of conventional cow milk.  One of the women is a chemist and the other is a biologist.  They had detailed reasons for paying the extra money for the organic milk.  Another reason is that they didn’t want cows to be mistreated in order to provide milk.  These women (and the thousands or millions of other customers in this potential class) were cheated out of substantial sums of money.  Just add up the cost of several gallons of …

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Al Jazeera English “for real news”?

Where do you turn if you really want to know what’s going on in Burma?

Harry Shearer compares the Al Jazeera English coverage to domestic news services and finds that Al Jazeera wins hands down.  CNN’s domestic feed is pathetic, while CNN has been working hard to make its international feed unavailable to those in the U.S.

How bad is domestic coverage of international news:

Once you watch BBC, CNNI, AJE–any of services we’ve been talking about today–and then venture back to the domestic swill, you realize the difference: the international channels are, despite their faults and differences, talking to grownups, the domestic channels are talking either to somewhat bright or somewhat dim children.

The comments fleshed out Shearer’s short post:

Whenever something significant happens in the world – I either go to CBC or to a lesser extent the BBC for a real news account. The American counterpart is 1% news and 99% hot gas telling us how we should feel about it.

Somewhere along the line – people like Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, and Sumner Rothstein decided that news was supposed to make money and pacify a nation of imbeciles – not inform the citizens of a self-governed nation. . . . And with names like those above – is it any wonder that the American public has been fed 35 years of anti-arab bias? I think back to my childhood watching cartoons – and even in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the arab is always portrayed as an

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The Evolution of Evolution

Contrary to the way it is portrayed by Creationists, the theory of evolution wasn’t handed down from the Goddess Athe to her true prophet Darwin, to whose faith all subsequent researchers have to slavishly adhere. From the day each of Darwin’s books were published, and for the century and a half since, serious and powerful researchers (as well as semi-educated and/or pseudo-scientific dabblers) have busily been trying (and mostly failing) to make a name for themselves by finding a flaw — any flaw — in the overall Theory of Evolution. Darwin’s singular contribution, the principle that those members of a population best adapted to an environment will survive, is rarely challenged.

I was inspired to write this post after reading Can God be scientific? Consider the evidence, Part II by Daniel Jarvis. His post makes it clear that Creationists believe that all fields of science that are cited in support of this basic principle of modern biology have to meet criteria set by Darwin. These include astronomy, geology, genetics, tectonics, crystallography, quantum theory, and many other fields of study.

Let’s look at one supporting pillar of biological evolution: Things take time. The best Creationist argument (IMHO) is that all the species could not possibly have evolved in the short time since the beginning of the universe (or just of the world, for those who accept astronomical science) a few thousand years ago.

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Feminism, Aliens, and James Tiptree jr.

One of the things that sends me straight up a wall to paw helplessly and violently at ceilings comprised of crushed glass, old nails, and asbestos fibers is when I hear a young woman blithely claim that she isn’t a Feminist and, in fact, “wouldn’t want to be one.” They…

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