Wikileaks is like wikipedia, the user-maintained, free encyclopedia, however it focuses on providing a forum for getting information, whatever it may be, out to the public.
This is essentially a free speech project. They are dedicated to “developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis”. That is certainly an ambitious goal. I am, personally, all for it. I wish them the best of luck, they are beginning to take on some of the most litigious groups in existence.
… a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logical principles and not be comprised by authority, tradition, or any other dogma. …
if, as a society, we don’t have access to information that would better inform our decisions. What I find particularly interesting, even damning, is the lengths to which religious groups go to actively suppress information regarding their practices and beliefs. I can understand a particular company or even the military (both within limits) having a problem with this practice since the former may lose a competitive advantage or the latter having our troops or even nations safety compromised. However what I don’t understand is a religious groups issue.
What does that say about your beliefs, religion and worldview if you send copyright infringement notices to attempt to squelch free speech. A copyright infringement? Do I have to pay royalties to worship your god? (I’m sure there’s a tithing joke in there somewhere.) Is that God™ ? Or just Mormon™?
Do you see how quickly these intellectual property/copyright infringement actions open yourselves to ridicule and ultimately serve to reinforce the “Mormons/Scientologists are just a secretive cult” stereotypes? Perhaps, the stereotype is based on truth but ultimately it is only within in the power of those groups to change those stereotypes.
Despite appearances I really don’t have any problem with those who hold religious beliefs. Really I don’t. I do have a problem however when someone attempts to use the government to enforce their religious beliefs or spends my money (tax dollars) to support someone’s religious practices. I am also concerned when groups, wielding religious authority, attempt to hide or obscure their true beliefs and practices. This goes against the spirit of a number of core values in Western society, namely, the right to self-determination and freedome of conscience.
There were a lot of interesting reactions and replies to the idea.
I think there has been a serious misunderstanding over the years of reading too much into the word atheist. Many theists continually use the word to imply the “religion” of the unreligious, and many times this use is intended as a derogatory slant toward anyone who doesn’t believe whatever specific dogma they call their own. It is a loaded word with a negative connotation built right into it. It is reminiscent of the Romans calling the early believers of Christ “Christians” or little anointed ones in an effort to slight their belief in a monotrinistic (oxymoron: belief in one trinity god) god.
Many atheists convolute the problem by giving too much importance to the label. Much of this is in self-defense. I know I have certainly found myself having to explain what my definition of atheism is and having to justify it with numerous arguments and posts. It is such a mind-numbing waste of time and energy arguing repetitive points to people over and over. It is necessary, but it takes time away from the more important topic; and that is, what do you center your life around that gives it meaning and value while leading you astray of organized belief in God?
I find I hardly ever dedicate time to this question, which I have read several times in different places and phrases. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in something.
The following is part of my reply to VJACK as to why atheists do not need to compete or mirror their organizations after churches, especially since there are already plenty of worthy, secular candidates to choose from to donate your time and energy to:
I don’t want to get caught up in a theological arms race and waste loads of cash and time that can be better spent by donating to local secular charities and organizations.
The reason why there is not a proliferation of atheist churches is because (at least from my point -of-view) atheism is not the central tennent of their belief systems. It’s already been said, but the only thing the label “atheist” does is let others know one’s stance on religion.
Being atheist is not what is important; it is secondary. What is important are beliefs that different atheists stand for and what their lives are built around, such as teaching, practicing science, medicine, etc.. There are no holy books that must be scrutinized and regurgitated. The closest atheists come to dogma is learning how to think critically and rationally and the scientific method and peer-review. Those things are there for our education, not for worship.
The punny guy that I am, I do find the idea of “atheist churches” to be attractive from the perspective of irony and ridicule. But it is not worth the problems it will cause by adopting the idea, no matter how comforting some of the social aspects are of belonging to a church. Even if most atheists are by metaphor black sheep that have been led astray of the flock, there is always some comfort in simply talking with like-minded people in a brick-and-mortar building no matter how effective and helpful the internet freethought community may be.
Somebody explain this to me. James Randi showcased this clip at the end of this week’s SWIFT. I don’t think it is Einstein’s special relativity because the motion isn’t uniform. Maybe it is general relativity with warped spacetime? My guess is we are seeing Newton’s third law in action which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This feeds back to the first law Newton’s First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force. I will hunt for the answer. I would love for you to answer this for me!
Unlike Sally Kern’s legislation in Oklahoma for religious viewpoints anti-discrimination act (or whatever form of academic freedom they will choose next to slip religion into science class), God did it will not be an acceptable answer!
Today’s News-Sentinel features an article written by Bob Caylor about John Loftus’ lecture tomorrow night. Here’s the link to the article online, Ex-preacher says goodbye to God.
I really should have told him to use my first name only, if at all, I am still closeted after all. Here’s the part that pertains to us, hopefully this comes off well,
Wednesday night, he’ll speak to atheists and agnostics in Fort Wayne who want to hear more about why his skepticism changed him from preacher to atheist. He’s speaking at a regular monthly meeting for “freethinkers,” atheists and agnostics. It’s something like church for the willfully unchurched.
“It can be a bit isolating in Fort Wayne to be a non-believer when the people you work with are believers, you drive past six churches to work every day and half the cars on the road say ‘In God We Trust,’” said Jeremy Diller, who helped arrange Loftus’ presentation. “It can be very refreshing to be able to spend a couple hours every month talking and laughing with people who aren’t trying to save your soul and just enjoy your opinions.”
I don’t really know about the “willfully unchurched” bit. Some of us including myself are very well “churched”. It’s the churching that drove us ultimately away from a supernatural worldview.
Hopefully there are some freethinkers in Fort Wayne who may be looking for a great group of people to hang out with. Hopefully, those who attend that don’t share our opinions will come with an open mind and behave themselves.
Sorry to keep the few people who recently submitted haiku to our first contest waiting, but I’ve been on vacation the past week and have been out of town for most of it.
Without further ado, it is my pleasure to announce my pick for the winner of best haiku:
A whale gulps Jonah
Then vomits him up–yeah, right!
That’s some fish story
By agnohumanist
I gave it to agnohumanist for the effort and quality of all of his haiku, but I really liked the fish story the best. It mirrors my sense of humor.
Agno, you can take your pick of any of these luxurious prizes! Keep it under 10 bucks though, my money tree is not yet fully grown! I will also need an address to mail it to, so you can contact me at jakedoelling@gmail.com.
I am preparing some slides for The Enlightenment Show which we are shooting next Sunday. Mark and I saw the movie on Sat. There were about ten folks in the theater, (noon showing). I will talk on the whole movie later but first everyone should see this. (Steve Mirskey and John Rennie at Scientific American first pointed this out) I think it is easier to see in the two pics below.
In the first slide, I am showing Ben Stein’s voiceover as he was walking to Holocaust sites. Ben states the quote and then reveals the vile author as CHARLES DARWIN before going into the horror areas. (He doesn’t reveal the source as The Descent of Man perhaps in hope that we won’t look it up?) The quote is surprisingly missing a lot of information. In a way, I think Ben is practicing in his own form of Holocaust denial. He won’t look at the racism for what it was and instead he turns on science. Ben is an economist and he went to Yale so surely his scholarship would be excellent? Either he is a complete fraud or he is incompetent by blindly relying on his ideological producers and not checking their sources. The very next sentence and paragraph says the exact opposite of what they are trying to imply! Darwin thought it would be overwhelmingly evil to unprotect the weak and it would be against our most noblest nature! Stein and fellows are fraudulent and are praticising propanda not that unlike the Nazis… Shame on you Stein. (This is available on http://darwin-online.org.uk/ Search for asylums) Click on the pictures to enlarge them. I added the formatting to show what Ben cut.
BTW: None of this says anything about science or gives any credibility to intelligent design. It does show what a great thinker Charles Darwin was….
This is from Jacob Bronowski - The Ascent of Man. Science is admitting we don’t know everything and is anti-dogmatic by being grounded in evidence. I saw this on PZ Meyer’s Blog.
OK, my girl is far from being stereotypically nerdish, but she is a Latin scholar and Classicist and smart girls are my type. Anyway, a little bit of fun on a beautiful sunny Sunday.
The Friendly Atheist has another contest going. Our very own theodoersing placed in the top 3 on this one, I only got 10th, I’m pretty sure theo cheated These are fun to do, I created an atheist motivational poster on my personal blog, here. Here are the top 10 atheist motivational posters on FriendlyAtheist’s site to get your creative juices flowing.
I’d be curious to see what some of my fellow authors could come up with. Post them here if make something good. No cheating this time theo, I’m watching you.
Here’s the challenge
Create a poster/saying about atheism or faith that becomes humorous with a *slight* change in spelling
You can create posters here. Make sure you send the URL to your poster to friendlyatheist [at] friendlyatheist [dot] com
Here is my entry.
Edit: Forgot to mention this is a reference to this facebook group, which is real group supporting the movie that really spelled the name wrong. The irony is overwhelming.
I just wanted to brag about placing 3rd in the Friendly Atheist’s simile contest. This is the post where I should be showered with praise. Ok, more likely laughed offstage! He’s got a new contest going on where you have to make up a poster on atheism. I think I’ll give that one a whirl as well…
There was only one entry (not including mine) in our last contest here at FFW. I think I’ll extend it through this next weekend just to not make it so easy for agnohumanist. If no one bites, I’ll duel him in a one on one haiku death match seen live via satellite pay-per-view around the world! Or we’ll post corny haiku at each other until one of us gives up. Whichever comes first. Remember:
These are fun to do, I created an atheist motivational poster on my personal blog, 
Skeptigator
yosoyju
mightymjolnir
neuralgourmet
andyscathouse
dystressed
theodoersing
agnohumanist
