I wrote some of this years ago. I'm going to edit it a bit and post it here... with one addition: while heresy is a religious concept, atheists could fall prey to thinking in terms of heresy too.... so let's all be on the lookout for this type of thinking when it creeps up in our own thoughts.

HERESY

Definition:

"The act of asking one's pastor or priest a question he can't answer."

Ok, officially, "heresy" is an opinion or a doctrine at variance with established religious beliefs, especially dissension from or denial of Roman Catholic dogma by a professed believer or baptized church member.

Simply, 'not theism' or 'against theism.' In his Book XI of his City of God, Augustine makes interesting arguments concerning evil as a privation of that which is good; in other words, evil does not have substance (ontos). In the same way, anarchy is a privation of order, and atheism is a privation of the recognition of Theos. The best approach to protesting theism is to subscribe to anti-theism, but even that gives credence to the substantial claims of theism.

Very interesting.
-a-

This is the video I used to win Capn Awesome's Contest .

It is difficult to believe that there are still adherents to the old agricultural belief in reincarnation. Yet, they appear to be everywhere!

The belief in reincarnation assumes that a person's thought processes are governed by supernatural forces independent of the material body.

Understand this. If there was such a thing as a soul, or "spirit", and there was no need for a material brain to govern thought and feeling, then why would we have one? If we could leave our material bodies and somehow transmit our thoughts into another body, then why bother living a miserable life? Why not just self-destruct and try for a better life?

Nothing ruins a perfectly good night than when a friend calls your activism for secular causes a religion. I was out tonight having a good time with a couple of friends of mine when they both decided to attack the Rational Response Squad and me as being a religious extremist group that is no different than the christian right (they started it). I argued over and over about the fallacies of this argument but to no avail, because as far as their views go, they do not realize that we are not a religion but a group focused on bringing about the realization that religion and belief in god (faith) needs to be held up to the same standards of scrutiny as everything else.