Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Good news. My book of short stories, ‘Dancing in the Banana Factory’ is now available on Scribd.com
Scribd.com is known by most people for being the place to upload documents in order to embed them on websites, but it also has a book subscription service that operates like Netflix – you pay a monthly fee and can read unlimited books on their site.
A tendency with organized atheists that burns me up sometimes is the need to tone police other atheists. Basically someone will have a problem with how someone says something – especially if it’s provocative or might be offensive to believers or even other atheists. So it might seem ironic that I will tone police an essay, written by Ed Brayton, I read yesterday. I’ve been told for years that we need to tell people what we are for and not what we are against but that doesn’t seem to apply when speech is policed by other atheists. I just see far more ‘don’t do this’ and not enough ‘this is better’ essays. These police actions sap energy from organized atheism and actually doesn’t fix anything.
I want to state, out of the gate, that Ed Brayton can say and write anything he wants. I don’t have a problem with Ed or his viewpoints in general. I like his blog and he’s a credit to organized atheists** every where. I happen to disagree with a post:
Back on March 11th, Hemant Mehta, over at his Friendly Atheist blog, had a guest post by Kristine Kruszelnicki that attempted to give some secular arguments against abortion. Naturally Mehta received some heat for the post. However his need to ‘debate’ abortion didn’t include allowing a rebuttal from the group Secular Woman. I agree with Secular Woman that abortion shouldn’t be debated like some kind of flavor of ice cream.
Kruszelnicki’s post was a response to a comment American Atheist President David Silverman made to a reporter that there were secular arguments against abortion.
It seems the now secretive work of economic development to hide giveaways to corporations who may or may not create any jobs in Ohio has arrived in Hancock County. On Tuesday, the county commissioners went into executive session to secretly discuss what they claimed was economic development issues. It seems the Ohio state legislature put in the recent budget law a section that allows county and city governments to close meetings to the public when it will be discussing economic development. How much do you want to bet that soon we will see county taxpayer supported slush funds for corporate giveaway like the state’s JobsOhio.
After reading the story about Rep. Paul Ryan’s false ‘no free school lunch’ story he told at CPAC and the general feeling among conservatives that kids need to work for their free lunches, I wanted to tell my free school lunch horror story. Yes, when I was a kid I had free school lunches and it made me feel so ashamed, but not for the reason you might think.
While growing up my family was on and off public assistance. It was during the 70s and early 80s. Being on public assistance made me eligible for a free lunch at school. It usually consisted of a punch card just like the ones used by kids whose families paid for lunch in advance so unless I told someone, no one would know my card was free to me. That isn’t my horror story.