Atheists & Agnostics

That's quite a review you put together there, lindysalsagal. Reading it feels like a re-reading of his book in very condensed form. Thank you.

Looking up his book tour online, he's going to be in my neighborhood on Feb 2! San Antonio Feb 3 and Dallas on the 4th.

I finished his book Fighting God a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to jot down a few impressions but life keeps getting in the way.

~~David's claim that believers are mostly nice people that are simply victims of successful brainwashing strikes a chord with me. Most believers don't know that much about their own holy book. They're just skimming along the surface, on auto-pilot, doing the minimum, not thinking.

~~The more you know, the less religious you become. That's true in general terms, I think. But you get guys like Ben Carson that learned a whole lot of specialized shit, only to retain the silly religious belief. Maybe he crossed to the huckster side and only uses religion to pull the wool. The more you know, the less religious you become has also dawned on the religionistas. Hence the right's attacks on education, including "intelligent design." These days we're all drowning in information on the internet, and how do you really separate the wheat from the chaff?

~~We as atheists do no good for ourselves or for others by hiding in the closet. The more we come out and speak out, the more we encourage others to do the same. The more atheists that people see, the more accepted atheists will be.

~~David is proud of the "firebrand" label. He claims that the firebrand "primes the theist for the diplomat." Meaning simply the diplomatic (atheist) will be more palatable to the theist after the theist has been exposed to the firebrand atheist. Somewhat logical.

~~In thinking about the Catholic Church, David wonders if it would be okay for a major corporate executive to shuffle around pedophile employees to different locations and withhold information about them from the police? Uh, no. The RCC gets away with that due to this deference, this undeserved respect we give to religion. It's this religious privilege which the religionistas are fighting hard to keep.

~~Something you wrote reminded me of David describing how he tries to wear an "atheism" T-shirt as often as possible in public, especially while traveling in airports. In the early days, he got lots of negative attention and dirty looks. In the last few years, most of the attention is positive or non-existent. He attributes the difference simply to, "We're winning." We (atheists) are winning (the fight for acceptance). Any of ya'll regularly walk around with big atheist announcements on your clothes?

I really enjoyed the book. It's upbeat, optimistic and unapologetic. I have a tendency to highlight passages that I want to try to remember, and I marked this book up pretty good. Now....if I can just remember anything!!

I will certainly try to get out to support David in Feb.