Thanks to all gagillion of you who emailed me to remind me that today is Atheist Day (Madelyn O’Hair and Thomas Jefferson’s b-day). OK I forgot, OK? Maddy and Tom won’t be too pissed.
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Does anyone else think that Madelyn Murray O’Hair maybe isn’t the best person to celebrate? Her truculence and ornery attitude made her a poor ambassador for atheists, and for a good while she practically synonymous with atheism to a lot of Americans. She may have done more harm than good.
Oh, and I had no idea today was “Atheist Day”. How was this decided and why wasn’t I consulted! and shouldn’t we celebrate someone like Thomas Paine or Robert Ingersoll rather than that wishy-washy deist Thomas Jefferson?
Apple:
Well, she got a lot done. Wrote some good pieces.
Her personal interactions w/others, however, leave a great deal to be desired. Her personal life was a disaster, to put it mildly.
Jefferson’s sorta a personal hero o’ mine, but hey, to each their own.
For a great atheist, maybe we should have a Baron d’Holbach day. Or a Nietzsche Night, or something like that.
We have our own day? I had no idea.
Hooray for us!
Despite what any of us may think of her, she took a stand for atheists and atheism in a very dark time when it was assumed that if you were an American then you were a christian. Atheists weren’t even allowed in the room, much less at the table metaphorically speaking.
Could there have been a better spokesperson? Probably. But she was the one who took the mantle when no one else was willing to do so and for that reason alone should be honored.
whatever faults she had lack of courage was not one.
KA:
Neitzsche? Oy… He was a lunatic! I mean, seriously nuts!
KA:
If we’re talking philosophers, how about Bertrand Russell? I imagine we could all get behind that one.
How about writers instead of philosophers? Like Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut? Sure, Asimov and Vonnegut were more humanists and skeptics than atheists, but they’re still great. Not sure what Huxley was.
There’s one thing that’s for sure: there’s no shortage of atheist role models.
Apple,
Ay. I always find it funny though that my favorite authors are mostly atheists or skeptics. Maybe atheists and skeptics just make better authors. Though, I do like O’Connor and she was religious.
what about constantine the great.he united the roman empire and invented a religion.not bad for an atheist in the middle of a bunch of peasants.
Thomas Jefferson was an idiot, he nearly destroyed our country.
(look at the first congress & Napoleonic wars.)
We would still be British here if John Adams listened to that idiot, and we got involved in the Napoleonic wars.
Also; all that early “secular stuff” Jefferson gets praised for was picked from Ben Franklin’s brain…
Seriously, It’s amazing we survived TJ.
Casadia your jealous because you don’t have as many slaves as TJ.
sorry for typo Cascadia.
Hm… I always thought it was John Locke that TJ stole everything from. But I’m sure there’s enough credit to go around.
(And yes, I’m being facetious… well, partly anyway.)
Nietzsche went crazy at the end. The Founders were influenced by Locke.
Jefferson instituted the 1st amendment clause for religious freedom, wrote the DOI – he got more done in 1 lifetime than most of us combined.
CascadiaEventHorizon:
Prove that.
Madison & Jefferson gave us the SOCAS, but Madison was a lousy president.
I’ve got a ‘Profiles in Atheism’ goin’ on at my blog – & I got a good working knowledge of this.
Democritus, Bradlaugh, Gosala – there’s an extensive list. I’m up to 15, there’s quite a few more, & I haven’t even gotten to the 20th CE.
Paul Krugman has an interesting op/ed piece
in the NYTimes. It’s about the religious
rights attempts to “infiltrate the existing
institutional order”. You can see it without needing an TimesSelect subscription by going to:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041307D.shtml
Man, I didn’t even know that there was an Atheist Day. I can’t believe I missed an opportunity to go door-to-door in my neighborhood wishing people Happy Atheist Day!
I think that MMO’H is the perfect person to celebrate for atheist day. That combination of intellegence and belligerance is a shining example for those who are fighting their own personal struggles for freedom. (Sounds like a Nation of Ulysses (DC hardcore punk band) song or something). And if we don’t celebrate, then who will??
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I miss him.
I am glad we have a day. I will bake a cake and put a big “A” on it.
Yippee. I still miss Kurt.
So it goes.
vjack & karen
Atheist Day what a great idea! But I’ve overshot by two days cos it’s the 15th here already. I had the best business day Friday tho, so lady luck was smiling on me… (phreedy dots)
There are no gurus.
When I first lost my religious beliefs, I started searching for a hero or a guru who had things figured out.
For ten years I searched philosophers, authors (hundreds of them), political leaders and more. I headed mostly for the existentialists trying to find someone to follow- someone to model my ideas after.
I found one thing to be consistent. Each person had some ideas or qualities I admired and some ideas I despised.
It happened with Madelyn (her personal life), Jefferson (his reluctance to do anything about slavery), Plato and Aristotle (opinions about women), etc.
Then it hit me. I don’t need a guru! I AM my own guru. I’m not a follower any more. I don’t look to an authority figure in any way for guidance.
Atheist day for me is MY BIRTHDAY!
Phideaux,
Happy Birthday!
I like what you said. I think that’s probably one of the best things I’ve heard (at least this week). It’s very self-determining and empowering.
I think that’s probably what all of us should practice as atheists. I think that that is what it means to be an atheist, to guide yourself, to determine your own destiny.
What Robin said.
And I think it is cool there is an atheist day. It is not pre-printed on my calendar like lots of the religious holidays. I get ideas, like reverse trick-or-treating -going around giving out candy and wishing ppl happy atheists day. At least someboby put us on the map as existing! Happy Day to us!
What:
I read Krugman’s breathless piece on “infiltration”… yawn.
Look, secular progressives have been bleating incessantly for years about a non-existent threat from Christians in this country!
What you should REALLY be worried about are the attempts to squelch free speech that are coming from the left, the marxists in this country, not us Christians! Another huge threat is coming from the Islamofascists that are starting to assert their new-found power to silence ANYONE who disagrees with them or says anything they don’t want to hear.
There are so many examples I hardly know where to begin. The best example I can think of at the moment is Don Imus.
More atheists:
Napoleon Chagnon- anthropologist who studied the Yanomamo in the Amazon Basin. While he’s never said he is an atheist, it is known that he has an extreme dislike of catholic missionaries.
“Chagnon has been critical of the missionaries and was especially bothered back in the 1970s when a missionary showed a group of Yanomamo paintings of Indians falling into a fiery hell because they had taken drugs. He has encouraged the Yanomamo to think for themselves and recalls with delight an incident, also in the 1970s, when a Yanomamo chief paid a visit to a Salesian mission to see the power of the Catholic god.”
“I talk to the priest and say [the chief] wants to see the crucifix,” Chagnon recalls. “He takes him into this little chapel and tells him the story of the crucifixion and points to Christ on the cross. This little guy stands there, naked except for some feathers and paint, and starts to laugh. ” ‘That’s the hekura [spirit] they worship?’ ” he says. ” ‘His own people did that to him? I don’t think we have to be afraid of that hekura.’ “
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Chagnon_00.html
Margaret Sanger- women’s rights activist and birth control activist. Her newsletter The Woman Rebel used the slogan “No Gods and No Masters.”
Katherine Hepburn- American actress. Played in Philadelphia Story, Guess Who?s Coming To Dinner, The Lion in Winter, The African Queen, Adam?s Rib, Bringing Up Baby, and Little Women, just to name a few. She was a known feminist and atheist. Also, one of my favorite actresses.
?I?m an atheist and that?s it. I believe there?s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.?
Of course there are tons more.
Phideaux:
I think that’s an admirable sentiment, but I also think that the atheists we’ve mentioned in this thread are people we look to as role models, and people we can learn from, which is a bit different.
It’s likely though that some atheists look to them as “gurus” as well as you describe, and that’s unfortunate. Idol worship is what theists do!
Tim:
Are you KIDDING me?!?!? The Iraqi invasion, Robertson’s Regency graduates in key places, Blackwell’s ‘above the law’ mercenaries, the efforts to ignite Armageddon?
Stop listening to Doc Savage. He’s fulla BS.
ROFLMAO! Communism’s a farce long buried in this world. Marxists? Sheesh. This ain’t 1958 anymore.
Both sides need to work on the free speech thing, obviously.
Pfft! Like you feeble-minded neocon sock puppets, they’re about as disorganized (or even less so).
Talk about crap. Imus was fired from his job in accordance w/company policy.
Just like the BSA, the radio station was well w/in its rights to include/exclude people.
But you’re just here to cause trouble, aintcha?
tim i think you are right that marxists and islamofascists are a grave threat.i would point out to you that it is liberal christian/jews who push pc.i am confident you will not find atheists
condoning the barbaric acts of islamists.
KA- muslim riots over cartoons the killing of countless moderate muslims.the western elites are always making excuses for muslim crime just like they did for red crimes during soviet era.even bush turns a blind eye to what goes on in saudi arabia.
Phideaux, that is one fine philosophy there. When theists ask me how I can live without God’s strength, I answer, “Atheists do not need God’s strength. We find our strength within.”
reason:
Tell me something I don’t already know. Sheesh.
evilatheistconquerer wrote:
Also, On Golden Pond (one of my favorites).
Tim
Find your happy place. You’re going to need it.
rna,
I always loved Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner myself. And Philadelphia Story. I always thought Katherine Hepburn was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood because she seemed so natural and real. Plus I liked the idea of her and Spencer Tracy having that romance. Too bad he was a catholic and wouldn’t leave his wife.
I am glad somebody called one day of the year Atheist Day. Too bad we don’t beat the believers over the head with it like they do us with their holidays. We could make them all take the day off, like we do for their christmas crap. We could cloud television, radio and the newspapers with our world view for a few weeks coming up to the day. We could get the business world to make special sales and marketing to cash in on us.
You get the idea. I just wish we could force them to at least acknowledge our existence. To give us a small portion of the respect we allow them.
While Jefferson was not atheist he did cut up bibles in the white house siting at the big desk, he did so in five languages. So he did have some cool hobbies. He was deeply flawed in many ways, but he did push the 1st amendment in Virginia then the U.S. as a whole. He died in extreme d_ebt. His home was sacked to pay creditors. A group of Jews eventually bought the home to preserve the history of the man that allowed them to exist in the US. Without his influence non-christians would still be legally murdered by the state as heretics.
Obviously we all have mixed feelings about the man, but we owe him a great deb_t. We are allowed to live. Jews and Muslims are allowed to live. America is a marketplace of ideas thanks to that influence.
Personally Carl Sagan is my favorite historical Atheist. He was a great skeptic and writer who changed the world view of many people. As a child in a christian school Cosmos changed the way I thought and understood the world. I de_bt I could never hope to repay. A truly great man without the baggage of Jefferson or O’ Hair.
I think we can all find atheists we admire without considering them to be our “gurus.”
My personal choice would be (of course) Robert A. Heinlein. Not sure if he was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but he was certainly a skeptic and a man of science and reason. Plus, he wrote stories that make me HAPPY, and gave me my blog name (which is also my cat’s name).
His birthday is July 7 (one day after mine!). That’s MY atheist day!
I’m going to the Heinlein Centenniel convention in Kansas City, MO the weekend of 07-07-07. Let me know if any of you are planning to attend.