renegade4dio

A not insignificant number of the rather loose worldwide community of Atheists have been engaged in a "civil war" over a relatively small group of mostly women atheists who have set up shop on FreeThoughtBlogs. They have decided that simple non-belief in a deity isn't enough, they feel the deep need to work on what they want to call Social Justice issues. I'm totally with them this far. There is still so much work to be done in the area of social justice that I'm totally in favor of anything that promises progress on this front. They have named this "new" combination of atheism with social justice issues Atheism+.   The problems began soon

I'm an atheist. For those unsure of what an atheist means when he says that, it means that I don't accept any of the fantastic stories told by the various religions of the world. They all look the same to me, full of emotional passion, short on facts,  and virtually impossible to square with the reality we can actually observe. It does NOT mean that I'm absolutely certain there is no divine universal creator. I just see absolutely no more reason to believe any religious claims than I do to believe the claims that unicorns play in hidden glades, sasquach walks the forests, and gnomes live in our gardens or the claims that the moon landing is

6/1/1972 - 6/1/2011 ... 39 years "The memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of a man in his prime. You shuffle in the gloom of the sickroom, and talk to yourself as you die. Life is a short warm moment, and death is a long cold rest. You get your chance to try, in the twinkling of an eye: eighty years with luck or even less."  -- Roger Waters, "Free Four" The last gasp of thinking of myself as "young" dies this year. My daughter is a teen, exploring her first serious relationship. Most people that I meet in daily life are now younger than I am. It would be delusional to think that I'm not at the halfway point in my life, I d