Dining with the faithful

I had a business lunch today with a professional staffing agency which shall go unnamed. I met with a salesman and the president of the company. They were trying to establish a relationship. They had leveraged a 10 year old connection to get my time. I am a hard sell. I tend to develop long-term relationships with trusted suppliers. Getting my business requires a lot of effort. They made their best pitch today. I was impressed right up until they started talking about going to church, Sunday school, and Christian morality. The religious talk was light, but the message was clear, they were Christians therefore I can trust them.

I’m all business. Religion does not factor into my thinking when I’m trying to determine how best to staff a project or serve my company. For me, dealing with a suppler is based on direct experience and trust. As a supplier, what you do is far more important than what you say. Telling me you are a Christian does not automatically equate to you being a good business prospect. Experience, references, reputation, these things count more than going to church on Sunday.

Why is it that people think telling somebody they are a Christian will help in a business situation? They know nothing about me. Nothing at all, yet they make an assumption that can sink their sales pitch. They even went a little farther and asked obliquely about if I’ve every taught Sunday school. I deflected. How unprofessional is that?

I thought about mentioning atheism, but did not do so because I felt it would be unprofessional to discuss the matter with strangers in a business setting. I represent my employer in these situations, it does not seem right to impose my personal beliefs on the situation.

I am curious about how atheists handle situations like this one. What do you do?

Technorati tags: Atheism, Religion

Blogroll Update: Still more updates

Geez... You would think that not being able to update the blogroll for a few months would not be so much work, but it seems to never end. Thanks Larro!

Removed

• Day & Nite
• Freethinker Nation
• Godless Blogger
• Intrepidon
• Jeebus Freaks
• leaping rabbit/lapin sauteur
• Merit-bound Alley
• Spread Rationality
• The Blasphemous
• The Creationist Monkey
• The Humanist Life
• The O Project
• The Untraditionalist
• Greg Hartnett

Weirdness

• Atheist Rule! is gone, but they left  their cat

A note to the folks at Blogrolling.com. It takes significantly longer to maintain a blogroll. I am not exaggerating here. It used to take me 30 seconds to add a blog, it now takes 2 minutes. And edits, I’m guessing what used to take a minute takes 4 to 5 minutes. It’s friggen crazy. The removed list above took me an hour to find and remove in the two blogrolls that make up the Atheist blogroll. The UI is no work of art. We need a better design.

Technorati tags: Blogrolling.com, The Atheist blogroll, Atheism

Blogroll Update: Even More Updates

New blogroll members

• Forever In Hell
• Living With Mormons

Removed

• K H A L A S! – no updates since 2007
• Humans:  The Other White Meat-  no updates since June 2008
• Human Psyche of J. D. Crow- no new posts since June 2008
• Hot Dogs, Pretzels, and Perplexing Questions- Another great name, but closed up shop in a semi-angry way.
• Heretic's Altar- went on hiatus 'for a few days' back in August of 2008...  has yet to return.
• hell's handmaiden-  dead link
• Heathen.TV- dead link

Moved

• Homologous Legs-  Used it's legs to slide on over to a new URL:  http://www.naontiotami.com/

Thanks to Crystal of Sunny Skeptic for finding all these problems and the humor.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Blogging

Blogroll Update: New blogs

New Blogs

• Hamma Time
• Barking Nonsequitur
• The Daily Mull
• The Hidden Atheist
• Faith Project
• Nobody’s Business
• The Canadian Atheist

Saying good bye

The author of Tungtide was kind enough to say he was out of the game. Thanks!

I have 22 submissions for the upcoming Carnival of the Godless. Be sure to get your posts in before the deadline.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism

They use every opportunity

I had an opportunity to visit the memorial for four slain Oakland Police officers last Saturday morning. It was early and I had the city to myself. I was struck by the outpouring of sympathy from the citizens of Oakland. I took pictures to remember the scene. It was as intense as it gets.

An Oakland police officer watched me from down the street. I could feel the sadness in the air. I stopped to read several of the notes left by school children. I felt so sad. Although I have never been a big fan of the police, they should not have to die to protect us. There are some bad people in the world, and some dumb people too. I don’t understand this level of violence or stupidity.

I noticed the forces of religious idiocy at work. Some soldier for Christ used this opportunity to leave bible tracts. You can see the tracts in the lower right of the picture below the picture of Officers Mark Dunakin, John Hege, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai. I felt outrage when I saw tracts. I felt better after I put them in the trash,

Later that day my family was able to donate two beautiful flower arrangements to the massive floral display. We plan on donating to their memorial fund too.

Technorati tags: Oakland, Photography, Religion

The Center for Dangerous Thought

I took a few days off from blogging to attend my son’s wedding. I’m back now home now, so I’ve started to wade into the mess that awaits me. I have a 1 hour limit on the amount of time I will spend blogging. What follows is one hour of my time all spend fixing things on the Atheist Blogroll. Thanks to Larro for his painstaking research. I could not do it without him.

Changes

• End of Hereditary Religion – new url
• A Class Traitor – new name
• Becoming Awakened – new name
• DB – new name
• Seeing Beauty – Wacked (removed)
• Rational Expression – technical issues (removed)
• Russell’s Teapot – technical issues (removed)
• The Nate and Di Show now Shots from the Battery
• The Thermal Vent now An Unholy Racket
• Thought Room now Wonder what’s next?
• Thoughts and Opinions now Essays and Opinions
• Wishwords now Will You Get Lost With Me?
• Yet Another Blog now A Human Blog
• Nice Marmot – redirect to wordpress (removed)
• The Freethought Cafe now Everyday Brightness
• The Affable Atheist – inactive since June 08 (removed)
• Lab Kat – new url
• In Defense of Reason – new url

New Blogs 

• The Center for Dangerous Thought

I’ve got a bunch more to do. I’ll spend another hour on it tomorrow.

If you would like to join the blogroll, click here.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Blogging

In Oakland this morning

My family is in Oakland for the wedding of my son later today. This is the sight that greeted me when I woke up in hour hotel room this morning. The brilliant new morning sun highlighting a table lamp. For some reason it looked absolutely beautiful to me. Perhaps it is just my good mood. Everything looks beautiful today.

Oakland is an odd town this weekend. 20,000 people attended the memorial service for four slain police officers yesterday. The tension here is real. You can see it in the faces of the people who live here.

We managed a good meal at "B" Resturant near our hotel. I wrote a review on yelp. The meal was outstanding. Especially the cheese plate.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 4 Cops Shot, Suspect Killed in Traffic Stop (abcnews.go.com)
• Four Transplants provided from California Officer who was killed in the line of duty (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Thousands of Cops Arrive for OPD Funeral (sfist.com)

The 114th Carnival of the Godless

That's right, Deep Thoughts is hosting the 114th edition of the Carnival of the Godless. I want your best posts for the Palm Sunday edition. Please make your submissions using this form.

If you don’t know what the Carnival of the Godless is all about, check out  CotG 113 at Daylight Atheism, or CotG 112 at State of Protest.

The Carnival of the Godless is:

Posts from a godless perspective that address godlessness, atheism, church/state separation, the evolution/creation debate, theodicy, philosophy of religion as it relates to godlessness, etc.

I want to put up a big carnival and you can help make it happen. So send me your posts!

Technorati tags: CotG, Atheism, Blog Carnivals

Blogroll Update: More updates

Things that changed

• Nut Watch-  No new posts since June 2008
• Nothing Sacred- Says 'this website is coming soon'
• North Alabama Rant-  No new posts since 2007
• Non Credo Deus-  No new posts since May 2008
• Nobody's there...- New URL.
• No More Mr. Nice Guy!- Blog has gone dark
• No Gods Allowed- last post May 2008
• Nick Harding-  last post March 2008
• Nicest Girl and Destroyer of Planets- new URL
• Natural Reckonings – no longer active
• Mystery of Mysteries-  renamed Evolving Complexity
• My Godless Drama- No posts since August 2008
• My Case Against God-  No posts since Sept 2008
• Modern Agnostic- No posts since 2007
• Missives from the Frontal Lobe-  No posts since August 2008
• Mere Skepticism - No posts since 2007
• Memoirs of a (G)a(y)theist - No new posts since 2007
• Meet an atheist - dead link
• Let Go - Forget God – dead link
• ars nesciendi Blogger: Blog not found
• Atheist Anonymous Domain does not exist
• Atheist Peace Page load error
• Skeptic Journal Domain expired
• Agnostic Atheism redirects right to Wordpress home page

New Members

• Evolution of an Idiot
• Common Sense Atheism
• The New Atheist
• Mystical Poetry, Prose, and Political Viewpoints

I would like to thank Crystal of the Sunny Skeptic and Larro of the Ungodly Cynic for help with the dead links. I don’t have time to do the research myself, so the help is greatly appreciated.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Blogging

Kutiman-Thru-you – The best thing on Youtube

Some people see beautiful things in the chaos of life. I’m so jealous.

Blogroll Update: Rwandan Atheist removed

It appears that the Rwandan Atheist is ripping off content from Atheist Revolution. This blog has been removed from the blogroll. Vjack will have more to say tomorrow.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism

Blogroll Update: A new small button

Several members have requested a small button. I made the one shown below. It will work for starters. If anyone else wants to make one, please send it to me. I'll added it to the library and make a post telling the world what a wonderful person you are.

 

The code for this little masterpiece is shown below.

<a href="http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2006/09/join-mojoeys-atheist-blogroll.html"> <img border="0" alt="Join the best atheist themed blogroll!" src="http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu48/Mojoey/AtheistBlogrollSmall.gif"/></a>

 

If you would like to join the blogroll, click here.

Technorati tags: Atheism, The Atheist Blogroll

How does one impersonate an Atheist?

I found a disturbing story via Atheist Revolution. It seems that Baptist Pastor Chris Fox felt the need to impersonate an atheist in the comment threads of a post on Unreasonable Faith. He was attempting to build a dialog based on a lie. I put off posting because I needed to let my outrage build and then subside. You see, I don't dialog online much with Christians about religion or atheism, so when they do something stupid on an atheist blog, I write it off as conduct expected. I should know better.

I kept coming back to this story. There was something about the insipid artlessness of the impersonation that struck me as fundamentally tainted. It is difficult to believe that a person can be this ignorant.

What’s wrong with killing babies? I see no problem with it. I have enough mouths to feed. I don’t get the argument and I am an atheist. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything characterized as good, bad / right, wrong. So, what’s the big deal?

The closest analogy is sports. I have no interest in mainstream sports. I don’t watch them, read about them, or go to many games. I play disc golf. When I tell a sports fan about disc golf, their response is typical, they think I’m a dope smoking hippy. In reality, I am a highly educated IT project manager with a knack for managing complexity that few people possess. I am as far from a dope smoking hippy as I am from an amoral baby eater, and so are the rest of my brethren.

So how does it get this bad? How does a Christian pastor develop such a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an atheist? How do atheists develop the same bias? I think its obvious that ignorance and hasty generalizations promote the misunderstanding.

When I write about bad pastors, I don’t make the illogical leap of thinking that all pastors are bad. In fact, most pastors I know are good people who I am proud to call friends. The difference is in deeds. What people do is always more important than what people say. There are always outliers. The David Trotter's of the world are more than offset by the good of people like my friend Pastor Brad.

Vjack questioned his own motives in a post yesterday. He reads a few Christian blogs and takes the time to post comments, but wonders about the hostility of his iconic avatar. I know enough from my Christian friends to understand that simply asserting that there is no God is offensive to them. So yes, the image might offend. But the dialog is vital. And who better to do it? It is the rational dialog of the likes of vjack and Daniel Florien which present the best hope of offsetting our shared misconceptions.

Pastor Chris Fox apologized. His words were simple and honest. It could not have been easy.

I want to express to you how deeply sorry I am for coming on this site and making the remarks I did and violating my own faith. It was out of bounds. I allowed the “debater” part of me go too far. I messed up and I have come to ask for your forgiveness. Thank you for allowing me back on.

Daniel Florin graciously accepted the apology. Does Pastor Fox qualify for a profile on Hypocrisy Watch? I don’t think so. It comes back to my core value of acting on what people do, not what the say. When you own up to your mistakes you are not a hypocrite, you are simply human, just like the rest of us.

I don’t know how to impersonate a Christian. Nor do I think a Christian knows how to impersonate an atheist. The best we can do is try to understand each other.

Technorati tags: Atheism, Religion

Related articles by Zemanta

• Trolling for Jesus (scienceblogs.com)
• Baptist Pastor Caught Lying, Impersonating Atheists (atheistrev.com)

Pastor jailed for Oakland anti-abortion acts

Walter Hoye, an Anti-abortion activist and Baptist pastor at a Berkeley area Church, will play the martyr and spend 30 days in Jail 

A pastor at a Berkeley church was jailed Friday for 30 days after unsuccessfully arguing that an order requiring him to stay 100 yards away from an Oakland abortion clinic violates his right to free speech…

…Hoye could have disposed of the jail time in a sheriff's work detail or by volunteering. But he balked at the judge's order to stay 100 yards from Family Planning Specialists Medical Group at Second and Webster streets. Hoye argued that the order was more severe than Oakland's ordinance and stifled his First Amendment rights.

Something tells me we will see Hoye back in front of the clinic just as soon as he’s a free man. Of course, it would be a violation of his probation. I wonder if he has the guts to do two years in State prison? speech

Technorati tags: Walter Hoye, Free Speech, First Amendment

Go ahead, blame Satan

A 62-year-old administrative assistant blamed Satan for her alleged theft of $73K from her church.

A woman accused of taking more than $73,000 from the Arlington church where she was an administrative assistant blames the devil. Papers filed with a theft charge Wednesday in Snohomish County Superior Court say the 62-year-old Arlington woman told detectives "Satan had a big part in the theft."

Then there are the Christians who just act like Satan, like leadership of the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church who hid pastors Darrell Gilyard’s prior sexual offenses. Why would you bring a sexual predator into your midst?

The prior allegations against the Rev. Darrell Gilyard include a previously undisclosed 1996 settlement by Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church. Gilyard came to the West Beaver Street church in 1993 after resigning a Texas pastorate amid reports of affairs with church members.

I love this story. Pastor Gregory Clarke lost his appeal on a 21 month federal conviction for income tax fraud. Clarke, who is black, claimed the jury did not represent a fair cross section of the community. Of course, he means race, not the religious preference of the jury. Bad news Clarke, you are still a crook.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday there was sufficient evidence "from which a reasonable jury could have found Clarke guilty." The judges also found that the trial judge correctly calculated sentencing guideline ranges.

Yet they still protect them… Like the case of Rev. John Skehan, who stole thousands form his parish. His followers ask for leniency because he’s an old thief and prison would be hard.

After an almost two-hour hearing where defense witnesses asked a judge for leniency on behalf of the Rev. John Skehan, Judge Jeffrey Colbath said he had too many things to consider to hand down a sentence today.

And let’s not forget repeat offenders. Pastor Robert Wesley Bell is a former youth pastor arrested for sexual exploitation of a child. He was busted with child porn on his computer.

He was first convicted in 2006 and is awaiting sentencing for charges in 2008.

Police say, this time, Bell may have also had inappropriate contact with children in Colorado Springs.

Bell lives across the street from Corpus Christi Elementary School. Parents there want to know why Bell was allowed to live so close to a school.

The Catholics continue to have sexual abuse problems. A new lawsuit made the news this week when the Rev. Rudolf Renteria was sued for allegedly molesting an alter boy in the 80s.

A California man filed a lawsuit Friday accusing the Rev. Rudolf Rentería of sexually abusing him when he was the priest’s altar boy in Arlington in the 1980s.

The man, now in his 40s, is also suing the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese, accusing it of covering up the priest’s actions. His father told another priest at the time of the alleged May 1981 incident, but Rentería was allowed to continue in the ministry, according to the suit. Rentería was "recycled into ministry in the Dallas Diocese," the suit alleges.

My stomach hurts. These freaks piss me off. Remember, the next time somebody tells you Atheists are immoral, point them to Hypocrisy Watch. With over 475 posts covering all manner of religious hypocrisy, Christians have no claim to the moral high ground either.

Technorati tags: Hypocrisy, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Clergy Misconduct