I'm new here so just to get it out of the way, I'm not an Atheist. I'm a Born Again Christian. My first question to Atheist would be how does your argument get off the ground? ( I mean my words here with repect I might add. Theres no place for cheep shots or sarcasim on this topic. It adds nothing to the debate, only stirs up unwanted bitterness towards eachother. One thing we can both agree on is the importance of the search for truth. God or no God. To take it lightly is to not respect it, and to not respect it is to be unworthy of the discussion. I'm not saying we need to take life too seriously, that we miss out on some of the best parts of it, only there is a time and a place. Furthermore, we are all people of different levels of "faith" and we're all in different places in life.)

Hello My first blog entry, first time ever in any blog.

My name is Rene´ im 29 years old, im from a town called Aalborg In denmark and im still living there.

Okay here we go, how can we expect believers being comfortable as atheist if soceity doesn't allow it? Now thats a hard nut to crack,
I can easily change my opinion about politics and other things, if i have a discussion about my opinions and i run out of arguments and answers, one of two things has happend.
1: I have not thought enough about the subject to have a valid opinion
2: I am simply wrong and my arguments are flawed, i will gladly change my mind and be comfortable with my new opinion.

The bulk of my family, on both sides, is Catholic. My mother's side is Italian: the people who invented Catholicism to market the tyranny of the state to the Christian rabble. And my father's side being Filipino: people who had Catholicism rammed down their throats by the marauding Spanish who invaded the archipelago some 500 odd years ago. Miraculously, I can count the number of times I've been to church on my hands; and they're all weddings, baptisms and funerals. Almost everyone in my family pays some kind of lip service to their religion. They're just normal people, not fanatics; which means living out the casual hypocrisy of being religious and having a mainstream life. It must be a weird situation.

After following the forums for some weeks, engaging in some "debates," and abusing some of the more bizarre believers, I've lost some interest in arguing about religion. Religions are completely artificial in origin, and fictional in content. If it isn't obvious to a person, there's something getting in the way of their seeing it objectively. Fear or tradition being the usual suspects. We don't need to carry the anthropomorphising of nature into the future, and neither should we dignify the question with elaborate debates. There is no cosmological/ontological/whatever explanation necessary to exclude the possibility of something there's no cause to even consider.

A national, general strike is in the works and we need as many people as possible to participate. The strike will occur on the much remembered date of 11 September. If you are angered, or even just worried at the path the US is taking, then please participate and make yourself heard. We can turn a day of mourning and loss into a day of truth and change.

More information (and flyers) can be found at the website provided below:

http://www.strike911.org/

Without enough people, this will just be another faint sigh of quiet dissent.

Cheers!

Homeless in NEW YORK

So, I feel I must write about homelessness. I, as some of you may or may know, was homeless for a breif period of time. However, those were the worst times of my young existence. Anyways, I feel I must write this, as it was 4 years this past Wednesday the 8th, that I moved from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, my birth place.

So, I begin.

We arrived on August 8th 2003. We were to live with a friend of my mother's. We were doing fine, my mom had some jobs, Josh (my brother) and I were going to school. It was a good time. Although the living space was cramped, but it was somewhat tolerable dispite certain personalities in the home.

My grasp on scientific terminology is limited so forgive the simple verbiage.

The argument is that if there is no god or master plan regarding humanity (or life in general I suppose) then we are merely the sum of matter and energy. This implies that when we make a 'decision' we are not actually expressing free will or choice. Basically, if all we are is matter and energy responding to external stimulus that the choice we make is determined before we make it. We are incapable of making a choice outside that which our chemical make up and interpretation of experiences decides for us.

So far as I can tell, this is supposed to be a blow to the atheist ideal and show that atheism is merely the proof of absence of free will. This is a pretty offensive idea because we generally cling to our choices as meaningful. My instinct is (and I responded accordingly) to rebel from such an idea and to defend the idea that I make my own choices and that I am not a drone.

I CAME TO ATHEISM BY ACCIDENT, AND I DECIDED TO STAY
By Rook Hawkins

Looking back from where I am at now, my life has always been one of luck. I am one of only three brothers to survive past one year of age, I have the most caring and understanding—if not down right supportive—family a guy could ever hope for, and I’ve really never been denied anything I’ve sought after save perhaps a full career serving my country which is something I think I’ll never get over. My parents did divorce when I was four years old, and even among the normal bickering that parents do when they think they know what is best for their child, I never really felt like I was in a bad place, even if my childhood was something other then what would be considered ‘normal.’

In the first RR show, there is discussion about whether George Bush is stupid, misguided, or plain evil.

I just wanted to say that I think he is an idiot. That is the only thing that would explain his (non) reaction to the 911 news and the fact that he takes advice from someone who claims to be spiritually connected to a higher power.

Adam