I understand it. I really do.

If you ask a religious person about their beliefs, you might get back an unequivocal answer. Something that is directly from their religious text is essentially unquestioned if not unquestionable.

This post is going to use Christianity and homosexuality as its religion and topic, but the ideas translate, albeit often with less immediate social fervor, to many other religion/topic pairings. (Islam/hijab, Buddhism/vegetarianism, etc.) This particular topic is one I feel strongly about.

Because, you see, when atheists talk to strong Christians about homosexuality, it sometimes feels like this:

Agnes: Wait, so what’s wrong with…

(Continue reading…)

Two independent devil’s-advocate-sy thoughts, which I hope get imported to Facebook before tomorrow… Either way, these are more musings than structured posts, so you might need to get some context before responding to these.

There’s been a big brouhaha over Portal 2’s use of adoption as an insult. This is nothing new…it came up in the original Portal as well. This time, however, two characters consider it an insult. Hm.

I have adopted friends and adopted family, and it seems like one of those things that isn’t really an insult at all anymore. At least not in America. Now, clearly…

(Continue reading…)

I was criticized a week or so ago for never posting anything. In response is this rambling collection of thoughts based on a topic that’s come up between me and the criticizer a number of times.

I consider myself a “practical atheist”. The Oxford American Dictionary that comes with Mac OS X defines “practical” as “of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas” (among other definitions). This is what I mean by “practical atheist” — I’ll admit that (a) God may exist, but that for real life, my life,…

(Continue reading…)