Posted on June 3rd, 2011 by Staks
I get into a lot of conversations with Christians and often times when the Christian gets backed into an intellectual corner and their ideas have been shown to be unreasonable, illogical, and flat out ridiculous, they throw up a brick wall. One of the most common brick wall tactics is to insist that I open […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Belief, conversation, delusion, discussion, faith, Glory to God, god, Personal, prayer, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 3 Comments »
Posted on May 31st, 2011 by Staks
While atheism is a label used to define what I don’t believe, I sometimes talk about my beliefs in Humanism and Star Wars. In fact, I take my Star Wars very seriously (you can ask my wife). With that in mind, an old college friend recently asked me the following question: How are those that […]
Filed under: delusion, discussion, Personal, Religion, Star wars, the bible, wwjd | 20 Comments »
Posted on May 18th, 2011 by Staks
One of the things I love about being the Minority Election Inspector in a heavily Catholic Republican district on Primary Day is that I get a glimpse inside “enemy lines.” Not to say that I consider the people I work with enemies, I don’t. However, I do consider their affiliations to be enemy affiliations. First, […]
Filed under: Catholics, Church, church/state, conversation, culture war, Obama, Personal, Politics | No Comments »
Posted on May 17th, 2011 by Staks
With less then a week before the Rapture, I know many people couldn’t care less about November elections, but for those of us who are just a little skeptical that May 21st will be the beginning of the end, Primary Day still has some value. I know this is an odd election year and aside […]
Filed under: Election, Personal, Politics | No Comments »
Posted on May 16th, 2011 by Staks
I was thinking about this the other day. I recently started a new website called “RaptureSurvivor.com” to sell some t-shirts and stuff and while promoting the site, someone jokingly mentioned that the joke would be on me if Camping and friends really got Raptured away. This prompted me to question, “what if Camping did disappear?” […]
Filed under: Current Events, delusion, End of Days, Personal, prophecies, Religious Manipulation, The Rapture | 2 Comments »
Posted on May 6th, 2011 by Staks
When I was an undergraduate in Philosophy, I had a strong interest in Psychology as well. In fact Psychology was one of the fields on my short list for majors. When I started the Dangerous Talk radio show, one of the formats I toyed around with was a call-in advice show; sort of a Dr. […]
Filed under: atheism, Coexist, discussion, Parenting, People of Reason, Personal, Self-Help | 2 Comments »
Posted on April 27th, 2011 by Staks
As the Coordinator for PhillyCoR, I have had this great idea for a new billboard campaign for awhile. Despite my horrible photoshop skills, I created a mockup with a stock photo to show around and see what people thought. My initial plan was for it to be a modification of UnitedCoR’s standard billboard. I showed […]
Filed under: atheism, billboards, culture war, Media, Personal | 8 Comments »
Posted on April 18th, 2011 by Staks
I really love this time of year; I get to easily destroy two of the three Abrahamic religions without trying all that hard at all. First is Passover. Yesterday, I published an Examiner article which talks about the fact that the Jewish Exodus never happened. This is the widely accepted view of pretty much every […]
Filed under: Biblical Scholarship, Easter, jews, Personal, Religion | 2 Comments »
Posted on April 14th, 2011 by Staks
The other day, I received a “Prayer Carpet” in the mail. This church out in Oklahoma sent out a letter with writing all over the envelope addressed to “Current Resident.” The envelope was pretty think too. Inside, it contained a piece of paper folded several times. It had the printed image of a carpet on […]
Filed under: delusion, image of god, Personal, prayer, Religious Manipulation | 3 Comments »
Posted on March 10th, 2011 by Staks
Last night I was pretty surprised to get an e-mail from the executives at Examiner.com. I write for Examiner as the Philly Atheist Examiner to help fund Dangerous Talk. Apparently, they received a complaint about one of my articles and determined that a statement I made might be libelous. The article was the one I […]
Filed under: Blasphemy, censorship, Offensiveness, Personal, Raelians, Religion, scientology | 3 Comments »
Posted on February 28th, 2011 by Staks
I have been writing the Dangerous Talk daily blog almost every weekday for two years. Before that, I wrote the daily blog on MySpace for about another two years. That’s a lot of blogs. Within the past few days, I have been reminded about some of my older blog entries that I really love. So […]
Filed under: Personal | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 21st, 2011 by Staks
Over the weekend, I had a little problem with a particular Christian. A few weeks ago, a Christian e-mailed me asking for a collaborative project where we each ask each other 5 questions on our Examiner pages and then we each answer them. The way it was pitched to me, we would refrain from personal […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, Coexist, conversation, debate, Personal, Religion | 4 Comments »
Posted on February 14th, 2011 by Staks
Sometime last year I promised a friend that this Valentines Day I would tell the tale of the Braveheart Question. This could be a tale of romance or it could be the tale of a demented psycho stalker. That, my friends, is the question. The film Braveheart is now considered pretty old by some standards, […]
Filed under: conversation, discussion, Love, Personal, Valentines Day | 17 Comments »
Posted on January 12th, 2011 by Staks
Surprisingly, there are many religious believers (some even ardent fundamentalists) who have never actually thought about what they believe and why. Last night, I read an article from one such believer… I think. In any case, I think it is important to reach out to these religious believers and to get them to actually think […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, culture war, discussion, Personal, Religion | 2 Comments »
Posted on January 6th, 2011 by Staks
Recently, news organizations like CNN, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post (among others) have been reporting on a study that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study was called, “Anger Toward God: Social-Cognitive Predictors, Prevalence, and Links With Adjustment to Bereavement and Cancer” and it includes atheists anger toward God. CNN’s […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, ignorance, journalism, Media, Personal | 5 Comments »
Posted on January 4th, 2011 by Staks
I sometimes get accused of focusing too much on the religious right and not giving the religious left a fair hearing. While I don’t actually think this is the case, a few years ago I decided to put an end to such accusations. I went to the library and borrowed the book, “God’s Politics” by […]
Filed under: Media, Personal, Progressive Christians, Religion | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 20th, 2010 by Staks
I love the greater atheist community, but sometimes there are people in our community that are stupid and/or annoying. While these people do make up a very small percentage of our community, they are there and some how I get cornered into talking to them or sitting next to them. The thing about these annoying […]
Filed under: atheism, Criticism, Personal | 4 Comments »
Posted on December 14th, 2010 by Staks
I have often written about the psychological reasoning for the born again experience and the path in which many religious people take towards losing their religion. But today I want to talk more about the trends involved in the exodus from religion. There are two pretty interesting trends that I have noticed in regard to […]
Filed under: atheism, de-conversion, People of Reason, Personal, Religion | 3 Comments »
Posted on December 8th, 2010 by Staks
It was thirty years ago today that John Lennon was murders. Lennon was not only a great musician with the Beatles and on his own, but he was also a strong activist for social change. He took an extremely optimistic view of Humanity and was the world’s most visible Humanist and atheist. John Lennon wrote […]
Filed under: atheism, culture war, Personal | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 6th, 2010 by Staks
For too long, Christians have claimed the monopoly on the winter season. While they have allowed Jews into the club despite the fact that Hanukkah is a relatively minor holiday. A few years ago many in the atheist community made our claim for inclusion in the winter season with the holiday of Human Light and […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, atheism, Atheism NOT Religion, Christmas, church/state, culture war, Current Events, free speech, humanism, Neighbor, People of Reason, Personal, Tree of Knowledge | 4 Comments »
Posted on November 29th, 2010 by Staks
Over the weekend, I attended a family function. It was my Uncle’s 90th surprise birthday party and it was being held at a Knights of Columbus Hall. The Knights of Columbus is like the super Catholic Freemasons. Outside the Hall was a lawn sign which read, “Keep the Christ in Christmas.” So right away I […]
Filed under: Catholics, culture war, Personal, Religion | No Comments »
Posted on November 23rd, 2010 by Staks
Thanksgiving is a few days away and that means for many atheists an uncomfortable long weekend with religious family members. The question is always the same, how vocal should an atheist be during Thanksgiving? I’m pretty lucky in that my family pretty much knows where I stand and expects me to be vocal. Most of […]
Filed under: conversation, Offensiveness, Personal, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 18th, 2010 by Staks
Unlike Christians, atheists have no support network. If an atheist is suffering emotional, financial, or even physical distress, they have no one to turn to. Christians on the other hand can go to any church and get help. We need to start building an atheist support network. Earlier this week, the President of the Freethought […]
Filed under: atheism, humanism, People of Reason, Personal | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 16th, 2010 by Staks
So last night I was at the monthly meeting of the Freethought Society and our President Margaret Downey was speaking about how she de-converted and got active in activism. Afterward, she invited others to briefly give their de-conversion tale. So when I was up, I talked about how I came from a mostly secularized Jewish […]
Filed under: atheism, de-conversion, jews, Personal, Religion | 3 Comments »
Posted on November 11th, 2010 by Staks
Today is the day that everyone thanks all the veterans for their service and if you are a thoughtful person who doesn’t think that every single veteran deserves thanks, you are un-American apparently. Last year I wrote a similar blog and some people didn’t bother to read what I wrote and just labeled me a […]
Filed under: blood sacrifice, Current Events, Personal, Veterans Day | No Comments »
Posted on November 4th, 2010 by Staks
There is nothing worse than sitting in a firehouse for 13 hours being forced to listen to church gossip. Tuesday, I had to sit in my polling place all day as the Minority Election Inspector and all my coworkers were Catholics. First, I want to say that one was a liberal Catholic and the others […]
Filed under: Catholics, Church, conversation, culture war, Election, Personal | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 3rd, 2010 by Staks
I don’t know what was more discouraging yesterday, the Republicans winning in so many places or top progressives like Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold losing. In my state of Pennsylvania, the Republicans really won big. They took the Governor position. Crazy former Constitutional Party wacko Pat Toomey defeated my congressman Joe Sestak for Senate. Bryan […]
Filed under: church/state, Election, Personal, Politics | 3 Comments »
Posted on November 2nd, 2010 by Staks
Today I will be performing my duties as an elected official. Last year I won the race for Minority Election Inspector for my local precinct. I won this election by exactly one vote… mine. Let this be a lesson to everyone, if there is no candidate for a local office that you like, don’t be […]
Filed under: church/state, Current Events, Personal, Politics | No Comments »
Posted on October 28th, 2010 by Staks
While the forces of sanity and fear square off in our nation’s capital, the forces of reason are also converging. For those going to the Comedy Central rallies hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, atheists are gathering together at the event. I just posted an Examiner article with all the details. Unfortunately I will […]
Filed under: atheism, church/state, humanism, People of Reason, Personal, Political Activism, Politics | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 21st, 2010 by Staks
For most atheists, when we get into conversations with the religious, we tend to discuss facts and evidence. When we argue, we use logic, reason, and point out fallacies. But when the religious argue, they use personal connection. Religious people will try to get to know you. They don’t really care about the details of […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, culture war, de-conversion, Personal, Religious Manipulation | 3 Comments »
