Please join Westchester Atheists in celebrating Treaty of Tripoli Day on June 10th.

Please RSVP to our 2011 Facebook event; and, on June 10th, help celebrate the separation of church and state by changing your Facebook profile picture to an image of John Adams with the following caption:

Did you know that on June 10, 1797, then President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which states that “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”?

Here’s a good picture to use (image link):

Please see our new page: Atheist Responses to Theist Challenges

Thank you to the American Atheists for initiating this Q&A list.

Our own Eric & Elaine Stone were featured in an article about yesterday’s “Judgement Day”.

We all had a great time at our Rapture Party which featured our “Wrong Again” cake, photo of the “Rapture is Nonsense” billboard near the Oakland Bay Bridge (American Atheists) and the theme song “Looks like we made it” by Barry Manilow (which we lamely forgot to play!!).

We had a very interesting discussion of some potential tabling events for our group at some festivals this summer which would feature “Ask an Atheist.” I will be furthering more info on these as we acquire it.

We also discussed the recent exciting American Atheist Convention in Iowa and the possible coming Reason Rally in Washington DC which could be the largest secular event ever staged anywhere. This would be a great event for all of us to participate in with our families. Stay tuned.

I was phone interviewed today by a reporter from this newspaper about the purpose of our Rapture party on Satd evening. I told him that it was not our purpose to disrespect these theists who predict the end of our world but only to make them more accountable for the fallacy of their predictions. By increasing the awareness of the public to the false predictions they make we can encourage more rational thinking in the public and decrease the likelihood of dangerously irrational acts (like starting a nuclear war and thinking you and your loved ones will escape the consequences in heaven). Interview will appear in Satd’s paper.

Eric

An open atheist letter to my religious friends – Come with us into the future

Eric A. Stone, PhD

Westchester Atheists

You can lead successful, happy, fulfilled and, above all, more honest, constructive and ethical lives by joining with us rationalists in our search for objective truth in the workings of our universe.

Although it was once necessary for our survival, you no longer need to belong to a sectarian or religious group for your safety and survival in the present world.  We now live in societies in which the rule of democratic law, not of the jungle, governs and protects us.  Millions of atheists, like myself, are now living happy and meaningful lives throughout the world.  Our common purpose is to bring rationality and respect for evidence, the two most important and universal human facilities for problem solving, survival and adaptation, to all phases of our work and lives.  Supernatural dogmas have separated us into groups that hate, fight and kill each other and are unable to deal with the very real problems of the future now facing humankind.  Irrational loyalty to these religious and sectarian groups has greatly increased the chances for war, genocide and ethnic cleansing for both your own and opposing groups in many parts of the world.  Giving up these irrational dogmas and loyalties will increase the harmony, cooperation and understanding between once bitter enemies, allow us to better cope with future problems and lead to a brighter future for us all.

You will no longer have to adopt and keep alive ancient or historical hatreds or celebrate ancient massacres, infanticides and genocides that you find repugnant.  Hatreds such as these occur only when you pledge unconditional and irrational loyalty and allegiance to a religion, a “people” or a “nation” and are prepared to be violent toward your enemies.  They constrict our lives and actually increase the chances for conflict and war.

You will no longer have to hate people who don’t accept your dogmas or kill people who violate your religious or sectarian “laws.”  You will no longer have to defend indefensible illogical dogmas with your lives.  .

You need be loyal only to reason, the common language of all humanity.  You can be brothers and sisters to all other humans who respect reason and who may have once been diehard religious and sectarian enemies and will be able to reach all other people through common reason instead of through logically absurd dogma and mythology.  It is because of the common allegiance to reason and evidence among scientists, that science has been the single most successful endeavor in all of human history allowing us to reach from the moon and stars to the innermost recesses of the atom.  Scientists do not kill each other when they have differences in their theories; they let the evidence and reason decide.  It has worked for them, and it can work for us all.

Reason and respect for evidence are the two greatest weapons we have against bigotry and hatred.  They work by revealing the fallacies to all of the irrational dogmas that underlie these unfortunate byproducts of our evolution.  They are far stronger than religious injunctions, which are also based on irrational assumptions of the supernatural and which are not accepted by all of humankind.

You will no longer have to humiliate yourself by being totally submissive, obedient, worshiping and enslaved to an imaginary and cruel deity who permits tsunamis and earthquakes to kill millions of men, women and children.  You will no longer have to try to pretend that these terrible tragedies are somehow “good” when they are really bad.  You will no longer have to pretend that killing adulterers or disrespectful children are good things when they are actually bad.  You will therefore contact the true source of human morality, which is our biological and cultural evolution and history.  You will no longer have to believe in and fear a devil or a hell in which you are punished for all eternity simply because you didn’t worship the deity.   In fact, you will be actually able to help abolish evil and suffering by a true understanding of where they come from, how they work and how to stop them.  This will achieve much more than prayer and superstition, which do not work.

You will no longer have to contribute most of your savings to pay for the advancement and maintenance of the power of religion and of its hierarchies as well as for the so-called “free” charity that it provides at considerable cost to us.  If we all work together to remove the tax exemption for religion we will pay much less in taxes and wipe out the current budget deficit here in the US and throughout the world.  This will permit us to rebuild our infrastructure, restore our economy and jobs, our educational system and our medical and scientific research.

You will no longer need to deny the obvious facts of biological and physical evolution and will be able to participate with us in the greatest scientific revolutions in the history of humankind, the use of the genetic code to cure disease and prolong life and the understanding of how our awesome universe came to be and whence it will go.

Come with us into the future.  It is yours and mine.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stark Sponsors
National Darwin Day Resolution
SCA Urges Support for Recognizing
‘Science in the Betterment of Humanity’ on Feb. 12

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) announced today the introduction of H. Res. 81, calling for the designation of Feb. 12, 2011, as Darwin Day in order to recognize the work of Charles Darwin and the importance of science in the advancement of humanity.

Rep. Stark, the American Humanist Association’s 2008 Humanist of the Year, collaborated with the AHA, a Secular Coalition member organization, to produce the resolution.

“Darwin’s birthday is a good time for us to reflect on the important role of science in our society,” Stark said. “It is also a time to redouble our efforts to ensure that children are being taught scientific facts, not religious dogma, and to fight back against those who seek to undermine the science of climate change for political ends.”

The resolution recognizes the importance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by the mechanism of natural selection, which is further supported by the modern understanding of genetics. The advancement of science and the academic integrity of the nation’s education system are singled out in the resolution as needing protection from those who are unconcerned with the adverse impacts of climate change and who are intent on the teaching of creationism, respectively.

A recently published survey in the journal Science found that only 28 percent of biology teachers present evidence for evolution as recommended by the National Research Council, while 13 percent “explicitly advocate” creationism.

The Secular Coalition firmly supports this resolution and urges anyone who supports the advancement of science of reason to call or email his or her U.S. representative and ask that the representative vote in favor of H. Res. 81. You can read the entire resolution here.

To contact your representative using the AHA’s Action Center, please click here.

Please join Westchester Atheists in celebrating Treaty of Tripoli Day on June 10th.

Please RSVP to our 2011 Facebook event; and, on June 10th, help celebrate the separation of church and state by changing your Facebook profile picture to an image of John Adams with the following caption:

Did you know that on June 10, 1797, then President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which states that “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”?

Here’s a good picture to use (image link):

Joy Behar asked Miss America if she would vote for an atheist and Miss America said YES!!!

Our message is getting out, people!!

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/29/joy-behar-asks-would-you-vote-for-an-atheist

http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/thoughts-on-science-and

Religion and Science

On this site they show lots of great scientists were either catholic, protestant or jewish

http://www.adherents.com/people/100_scientists.html

problems:

1) in those days when most of these scientists lived, one didn’t have much of a choice – if you didn’t espouse the religion or if you advanced any theory that was against church teachings, the church either burned you (bruno), jailed you for life or excommunicated you (galileo, spinoza).

2) they somehow failed to mention that 95% of the present US National Academy of Science biologists do not believe in god and this figure is probably representative of most of the world’s current biologists

3) they don’t allow comments or corrections on their page which is pretty much how religious propaganda works

4) they misidentified a number who were in fact staunch atheists such as:
albert einstein (identified as jewish – who did not believe in a personal god or in religion)
sigmund freud (identified as jewish – who abhored religion)
james watson (was somehow not identified as an atheist although he is very outspoken)

5) they left out a number of very famous atheists such as:
thomas alva edison who said: “Nature made us- nature did it all – not the gods of the religions. Religion is bunk and all Bibles are man-made.”