University students celebrate blasphemy

This Wednesday, the 30th of September, we at the Campus Atheists and Agnostics of IPFW (Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne) will be having our first Blasphemy Day International celebration. We’re joining other secular groups, including the Center for Inquiry, in protesting the United Nations Human Rights Council’s decision to adopt a non-binding resolution that indicated [...]

Freethought Music: “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”

Music doesn’t get much more freethought-friendly than this:

 
Die Gedanken Sind Frei, 19th c.
 

Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
sie fliegen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!

Ich denke was ich will und was mich beglücket,
doch alles in der Still’, und wie es sich [...]

Freethought Music: Cantus Buranus

Back in May the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, in conjunction with IPFW and the Fort Wayne Children’s Choir, performed German composer Carl Orff’s setting of the Carmina Burana, a piece I love for reasons I explained, alongside a little history of the piece, in a previous post. (At that link you can watch [...]

Being better off without religion: A Dial-an-Atheist follow-up

In this month’s Dial-an-Atheist call-in show, Rachel and I talked about living without the yoke of religious dogma. We were able to get through a couple broad points—deriving humanistic values from the realization that this life is all you have, and unchaining one’s exploration of the world from the tether of an all-consuming narrative—but [...]

Freethought Music—Ave Verum Corpus (Really!)

It’s Sunday, so how about some church music? Although, in my experience, this surprises many people, many of us atheists like the transcendental sublimity of sacred music just fine; we just feel no compulsion to ascribe the response we feel to any supernatural explanation. What’s being “transcended” is the ordinariness of our typical emotional states, [...]

Pinkos in my tubes?! (DOS attack open thread)

In case you haven’t heard, South Korea says that either N. Ko. or pro-N. Ko. groups are responsible for the massive DOS attacks. I’m finding the time-outs more widespread than most sources (that I can still connect to) are reporting.
Here’s a list of sites that have been timing out all morning:
en.wikipedia.org
www.scienceblogs.com
cnn.com
[...]

You can’t escape the Thriller—not even in math class

So you want a Michael Jackson post? Well, this isn’t one, exactly, but I do want to indulge in a little ’80s nostalgia. One tiny twig of Jackson’s branching legacy was the music videos on Square One TV, a high point in PBS’s kids’ educational programming. Square One taught grade-school-level math and its applications, [...]

Monday, 7:00 p.m.: Dial-an-Atheist

[ June 15, 2009; 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm. ] Be sure to tune in for Freethought Fort Wayne’s first episode of our new live call-in television show, Dial-an-Atheist. That’s right, we’re takin’ calls! The one-hour show, which airs on Fort Wayne’s public access television (Comcast channel 57 and Verizon Fios channel 27), will have the format of a two-host talk show, where the hosts [...]

Something written on a wall

One of our flyers that was posted in a student lounge at IPFW [1] has had a little message to us written on it:

Flyer retrieved from IPFW campus on 31-May. Click for an enlarged image.

The handwritten text reads:
Ironically, In traditional Christianity the desire to search for answers and quest after more than the world is [...]

Freethought music: Carmina Burana

We’re going to try to post some more music around here, so for my first entry I’d like to share with you all this recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana:

Carmina Burana: UC Davis

 
This performance is by the University of California, Davis University Chorus and Alumni Chorus, the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, and the Pacific Boychoir [...]