Ever get those crazy emails from a right wing family member and you wonder if it's worth replying to them to dispute the distortions contained therein?  Well I received one of those yesterday and decided to hit 'reply to all' Below is the email and my response.

We pride ourselves on being part of the reality-based community.  Karl Rove's brand of slash and burn politics where truthiness^TM and gut instinct are more important than facts, data, and reason, is collapsing.  As Al Gore has so eloquently written about in his recent book "The Assault on Reason," appeals to fear in the mass media and our national discourse have coarsened the political climate.  Here's hoping that this community continues to take pride in living in the reality-based community and does the hard work necessary to argue its case from the evidence at hand.

As you know, President Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Research Bill today.  To be honest, I couldn't care less what the United Methodist Church has to say about ethics.  I think society gives far too much weight to the pronouncements of religious leaders.  But that's a whole other topic.  You do have to wonder who supports President Bush's position when even his own church disagrees with him.  

For other Kossacks in the Austin area, I wanted to let y'all know that John Edwards is coming to Austin next Tuesday.  Details below the fold.

I heard about this program about a history of atheism.  It has been aired on a few PBS stations around the country but not very many.  

Today, the Secular Coalition for America has announced the first U.S. Congressman to go publicly on record as holding no belief in god.

The Secular Coalition for America is the only organization in the nation whose primary purpose is lobbying Congress on behalf of atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans.

For too long, atheists, agnostics and all other manner of non-believers have been told by society, in essence, there's something wrong with not believing in God.  This comes in the form of open hostility and concern for the atheist "soul" with comments such as "we're praying for you that you find God."  Personally, I feel quite content with my atheism and with living a life guided by the principles of humanism and ethics not based on the existence of a supernatural overseer.  When religious family and friends tell me they are praying for me, I try to focus on the good intention behind their doing so while also communicating to them that I feel no lack in my spiritual life that needs to be filled by faith.  While there have been great people of all manner of belief systems throughout time, below I have posted a great youtube clip which does a little boasting for us non-believers.  

Recently, Paula Zahn aired a piece detailing the abuse a number of atheists and their families have undergone in their communities due to their non-believing ways.  This was followed by a panel discussion consisting entirely of theists, the majority of which agreeing that atheists should just "shut up."  

If this kind of bigoted journalism troubles you (whether you are a theist or not) please consider sending an email to the folks over at CNN:

CNN feedback form

The Governor of my state, Texas, believes I am going to Hell when I die and has publicly said so.

Richard Dawkins OWNED Ted Haggard in a discussion taped at Haggard's church for Dawkins' film "the Root of all Evil?"  Richard Dawkins takes Haggard to task on his belief that the bible is literally true and that evolution is false.

http://www.youtube.com/....

If you like Richard Dawkins in this video, check out his website,

http://www.richarddawkins.net

and his newest book, "The God Delusion."

So I was on a plane earlier this week in an aisle seat and I noticed that the woman in the middle seat next to me was talking to her travelling companion who was seated in the middle seat in front of her.  I decided to make a kind gesture and ask the woman in the row in front of us if she would like to trade places.  She was surprised that I would offer my aisle seat to her only to be cramped into a her middle seat.  She thanked me and accepted my offer.

This picture was posted on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site yesterday

Astronomy Picture of the Day

You can see our home planet Earth if you go about 85% over to the right of the image and then 60% of the way up from there. That's us in between two of Saturn's rings (n.b. the inset image in the upper left is a magnified view of the Earth with the smudge to the upper left being the moon).

I offer it to give a sense of perspective on our place within the universe and perhaps just a moment of respite for all of us activists trying so hard to change things here on our, as Carl Sagan put it, "pale blue dot."

I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins' new book "The God Delusion" and have noticed that he is going on a speaking tour in the near future.  Here is a brief biography:

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. The Wall Street Journal said his "passion is supported by an awe-inspiring literary craftsmanship." The New York Times Book Review has hailed him as a writer who "understands the issues so clearly that he forces his reader to understand them too." Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, and A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love.

The Dignitarian Foundation is working to foster the notion that all people, regardless of societal rank, are treated with respect and seen to have inherent worth simply because they are a human being.  Bob Fuller, a leader of this movement has written several books describing what he refers to as rankism, that is the pecking order we establish in society to give value to one person over another.  In such a system, janitors and garbage collectors are less prized than doctors and CEOs.  
What this way of thinking misses is that without janitors, cashiers, and others working at the lowly regarded jobs in our society, the "higher ups" could not function.  Imagine if your city's garbagemen just stopped picking up garbage and no one wanted to do those jobs because they are given such low dignity.