Amanda Donaldson is an atheist suffering from breast cancer and earlier this year lost her job and health insurance because she is an atheist. Now she needs your help to pay for the overwhelming medical bills that come with this devastating illness. The story is heartbreaking and highlights the injustices many atheists face in today's world.
For the full story on how Amanda was fired please go here
This story was also featured on examiner.com by Stacy Cornell, the Dallas Atheism Examiner. You can read her articles here and here.
To find out how you can donate, please vist her website's donation page. Let's show everyone that atheists can be just as charitable as those who claim a moral authority from god.
(This was reposted from my examiner.com article.)
While this is not the case, and we do have a lot of contemporary evidence for George Washington, and even far back as Herod and Caeser, who existed during the same time period that Jesus is said to have existed, there is no first hand account of Jesus at all, especially the amazing miracles he is said to have performed.But, as you comb the records, you find something strange: you cannot seem to locate any first-hand sources. Though Washington is claimed to have done many wonderful things - leading the Continental Army, freeing the American colonies from British rule, presiding over the convention that wrote the U.S. Constitution, becoming the first President of the United States - somehow, there are no records of these deeds written by people who actually saw them happen, or even by people who were alive at the time. The historians who were alive during Washington's lifetime, as well as the ones that lived soon afterward, do not mention him at all. The first mentions of him come in disputed and scattered records written decades after his death; over time, these mentions grow more numerous until, by about a hundred years after his death, a chorus of historians who had never seen or met Washington themselves all testify to his existence and his deeds. It is their writings, not any first-hand evidence, that have filtered down to modern times to create the abundance of records we have today.
Would you begin to conclude that there was something very wrong here?
To assume that not a single person who witnessed these monumental events would have felt compelled to write them down, or that no one bothered to preserve those records if they had, violates all standards of credulity. Jesus' healings alone, if news of them became generally known, would have attracted a flood of people from every corner of the Roman Empire desperate to be cured of their ailments; and if in addition news got out of his ability to revive the dead, as the gospels say it did (Matthew 9:25-26), those crowds would have been multiplied tenfold. Surely at least one person somewhere would have written about this, even if only to dismiss it as a peasant superstition. And events such as the darkening of the sun and the resurrection of the saints, if they really happened, would have left a vivid imprint on humanity's collective memory and would have produced a flood of awed and astonished records. To suggest that the succeeding generation simply let all memory of them disappear crosses the line from unbelievable to absurd.
The current period through and beyond the year 2012 heralds a unique time in the cycle of human history and is a profound transition referenced in many different spiritual traditions, including Mayan, Christian, Hindu, Hopi, and Taoist. [...] The conference includes presentations from four well-known experts and a special series of workshops. Topics include the Mayan background and history associated with the 2012 shift; the scientific and astronomical underpinnings for wide-scale planetary change; and, most importantly, how, on a practical and existential level, individuals can move beyond the limitations of fear-based thinking towards a positive, mindful, and meaningful engagement towards a sustainable, egalitarian world.The organizers hope "to offer a unique platform for exploring the amazing opportunity for growth and change that the 2012 phenomenon presents," for $195.00. Boston Nonsense Watch official recommendation: the wisdom on offer in the chambers of this event isn't worth $2, let alone $200.
As the world becomes increasingly chaotic and the structures and systems that we have relied on for centuries seem to be failing, The Emergence Project seeks to examine the relationship between the current state of humanity and the shift in consciousness that has been predicted throughout the ages centering on the year 2012. We are a concerned group of spiritually-aware individuals who seek to explore the opportunities that currently engage our awareness and who also believe that change is simply the sum total of our collective intent to not only experience the shift but affect its outcome in a positive and constructive way. The Emergence Project seeks to bring available information, understandings and resources together on the subject of 2012 and provide a platform for in-depth discussion, dialog and debate around the issues, experiences and implications of the 2012 phenomenon. Above all, the Emergence Project seeks to educate, prepare, and empower both the individual and communities for the coming paradigm shift.Conference co-chair Annette Farrington seems to be the driving force behind The Emergence Project; she's a local -- from Winchester, MA -- so we can look forward to similar convergences of the ridiculous with the expensive in the Boston area. Of course, her reign of nonsense can't last very long, if the predictions about 2012 come true.
Ben Tremblay over at Daily Common Sense has a series of articles explaining why we should not be too terribly worried about the fatal augers that point to 2012 as the end of it all.
He further complains that atheists have brought lawsuits to “stop ecumenical Christmas displays, or to expunge the mere mention of God from the public discourse.” What if the displays were of the Qur’an or Hindu gods? Would he fight for their right to exist on public property? Of course he wouldn't, because in his mind this is a "Christian Nation" and everyone else must shut up and put up-- a true violation of the First Amendment. Atheists don’t want atheist symbols in the place of Christian, rather they want no symbols so that no one gets offended or oppressed whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, etc…Quite rightly examined, Jackie. The expression of personal traditions -- the religious kind are the most prominent -- does not need, and indeed should reject, government sponsorship in the form of funding, placement on government property, or preferential acknowledgement. The quick corollary to such seemingly benign support is preferential support, which leads easily to exclusive support. The solution is not to invite all traditions (be they secular, supernaturalist, or other) to queue up for billboard space on government property. Such a scheme would drown the courthouse lawn come December in the trappings of every sectarian holiday. Instead, such expression should take place in the private sphere -- homes, etc. -- and only in the public space when they are the immediate act of individuals. This guideline would preserve freedom of speech and separation of church and state. Smartly examined, Jackie.
Above all, rather than combating religious belief at every turn, many nonbelievers would cheer if the President initiated a genuinely multicultural approach to both believers and secularists in today’s America. This might entail, as was not done at the Democratic National Convention last August, inviting secularists as well as believers to platforms that normally exclude the irreligious (i.e. the “values and unity” event preceding the Convention that was exclusively for religious believers). It might entail as much political attention being paid to nonbelievers as believers at public events—transforming moments of prayer into moments of silence. In other words, it would mean abandoning the implicit assumption of so much of American public and private life that religious values, norms and practices apply to everyone—and show respect to American’s enormous nonreligious minority.
For Aronson, the rejection of the autonomy myth is not only crucial to the formulation of a secular world-view that will allow us to feel at home in a universe without God, but also necessary if we are to move toward a more just and peaceful world. He says that to appreciate our mutual interdependence (which, he points out, has increased and intensified in recent times) can enable the secularists among us to experience our lives as deeply meaningful.-- James Farmelant, in his review "Together without God" of Ronald Aronson's book Living without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided (Counterpoint Press, 2008).
Living without God isn't easy. But its very difficulty offers one other consolation—that there is a certain honor, or perhaps just a grim satisfaction, in facing up to our condition without despair and without wishful thinking—with good humor, but without God.-- Steven Weinberg in his essay "Without God" for The New York Review of Books, an essay based on the Phi Beta Kappa Oration given at Harvard University in June 2008and, to a lesser extent, on other of his lectures and reviews.
We atheists always have a problem with appearing bad mannered when we say what we believe. Take the God is Back duo's deployment of studies purporting to show that “Christians are healthier and happier than their secular brethren”, citing a Pittsburgh doctor's belief that going to church added three years to someone's life and a 1997 study that religiosity reduces blood pressure. To which I can riposte with all those other studies showing even better health outcomes for owning a pet. Which may appear churlish of me.-- David Aaronovitch, on the thesis that belief in God is enjoying a resurgence, from his article "Rumours of God's return are greatly exaggerated" in the UK Times.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.Says Picco, an organizer with the Connecticut Valley Atheists: "Great news for the good guys. I know that once we are able to get the word out, people can easily decide what the real truth is."
The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.
And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.
