State Constitutions & Discrimination against atheists

"The owner of a coffee shop near Birmingham, Ala., has banned members of a secular group for atheists, agnostics, and other questioners from meeting in her cafe.

"It's not OK to discriminate on the basis of race or sexual orientation anymore, but it's perfectly valid for someone to say I would never vote for an atheist for president," says Mel Lipman, president of the American Humanist Association."

Discrimination against atheists -

52% of Americans claim they would not vote for a well-qualified atheist for president. [3] More recently, a 2006 study at the University of Minnesota showed atheists to be the most mistrusted minority among Americans.

Tonight I decided to look up something I've been thinking about, which I heard about a few weeks ago in health class. Serotonin, a chemical in the brain, or something. I vaguely recalled hearing something about it's levels showing relevances to tendencies to follow logic and sound evidence, so I thought 'hm, maybe it might have something to do with religion, too, and the reasons why some people just won't respond to logic.'

Well, from what I could find, in a study of serotonin levels, the people with low levels of serotonin in one of the receptors had a higher tendency to have 'spiritual experiences', while the people with higher levels were the 'technician types' who believed only what they saw with their own eyes.

How did you come to be an Atheist?

I think it would be interesting to find out how you became and Atheist, did you come from a religious background and what happened to bring you to your current position or have you always been an Atheist.

I would also be interested in knowing if you consider yourself a weak, strong or just Atheist.

I found this thing, one of my crazily christian fellow graduate students posted it for me.

http://www.trivialsolution.com/?p=428

This is the first-ish of what will be an indefinite series of brief articles outlining my thoughts on big issues outside astrophysics. Today I will talk about faith and a significant misconception that many people, both religious and nonreligious, have carried for a long time.

Faith, a word synonymous with religion today, has a distasteful reputation among many who consider themselves to be scientific or simply intelligent. The single greatest reason for this disdain is the perception that faith is incompatible with reason; that is, that religious belief is “irrational.”

Well, this is what a well-meaning mother of a friend told me over Thanksgiving. She is a school nurse. I respect her very much. She follows all religions and none. Very confusing for me, but she seems happy with her philosophy. We got into a semi-heated debate over what should be taught in school. She thinks Intelligent Design should be taught right along with evolution and let the students have all necessary information in order to decide for themselves. I argued that intelligent design has already been beaten and should definitely not be taught in school. If they need to mention it at all it should only be made an example of in history class.

The Agnostic Fallacy

I'm sure many of you have seen this before. I share it here so that it may be passed on. I can appreciate agnosticism in the sense that it is a safe place to hang out for all the time one needs before they make a decisive decision. And to get over the fear & discrimination tied into being Atheist. The info below comes from the link at the bottom:

All theistic arguments have failed - when one is willing to accept this fact, then one realizes that Atheism is the most rational position.

The modern definition of agnosticism turns around a lack of knowledge about the god question. The word a-gnosticism itself means not-knowing, just like a-theism means not-belief in god.

i discovered this website by checking the fourms on my school in myspace. there was enough attacks on christianity so i took it to consideration to retaliate.

we all beleive something, in a god, in no god, its just human nature to be skeptical. i know i was once but i've seen the true power of christ. im not here to say to come to christ, i only want to get somethings clear. let me touch on some topics which christianity definitly wins

christmas:
this is a god believing holiday, it represents the birth of jesus christ. over time people got the meaning of it wrong. how come no one is offended by haunica or quanza? i find it sad and kinda somewhat quincidenal. you take santa and rearange the letters you get "satan". they come once a year trying to get little kids away from the the true meaning

What do you think of editions of the Bible where they change the actual meeting of what it says? Not talking about editing errors or where they try to correct it to the actual original meaning, I'm talking about where they change the bad or absurd things in order to make it more palatable - like certain modern English versions (I hear fundies hate these, too.) What does the Bible itself have to say about those who would add to or subtract from it?

The Absurdity in Religion Explained

The 'Invisible Pink Unicorn', the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' & the 'Celestial Teapot' explained, utilizing humor to show the absurdity of religious dogma.

* The Invisible Pink Unicorn:

The Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU) is the goddess of a satiric parody religion aimed at theistic beliefs, which takes the form of a unicorn that is paradoxically both invisible and pink.[1] These attributes serve to satirize the apparent contradictions in properties which some attribute to a theistic God.[2]

The IPU is commonly used to highlight the perceived fallacious or arbitrary nature of supernatural beliefs by, for example, replacing the word "God" in any theistic statement with "Invisible Pink Unicorn".[3] A quote from the alt.atheism FAQ sums up this use of the Invisible Pink Unicorn:

I found this while browsing Kurt Saxon's website, kurtsaxon.com. He doesn't actually believe what he writes here, but it is much more plausible than the whole sky fairy idea and would explain a lot of the issues with omnipotence/benevolence/onmiscience and other contradictions with the idea of a god. I personally got a good laugh out of it. Hopefully you will too.

Source: http://kurtsaxon.com/atheist013.htm