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	<title>Jewish Atheist</title>
	<link>http://thejewishatheist.com</link>
	<description>Jewish Atheist is a resource, meeting place and forum for those who want to live humanistic lives without God.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:36:58 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>For new visitors: The essential Jewish Atheist</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It would be a pity for humanity to have come so far, just to be done in by our inability to abandon our primitive stories.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=146</link>
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		<title>A peek into the believer’s brain</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How many died in the Holocaust, in every pogrom and act of mayhem over the centuries, because rabbis kept telling Jews to leave it in God’s hands?
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=392</link>
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		<title>The cult of one billion: is it too late?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans and people all over the world are shocked by each episode of Muslim violence.  They shoudn't be.  Violence is what Islam is all about.  Mealy-mouthed apologists (and they crawl out of the woodwork every time Muslim violence disgusts and horrifies the civilized world) insist that theirs is a religion of peace.  Sure, you can find that in the Quran, and these people may really believe it.  Maybe it's true for them.  But worldwide -- and for the non-Muslims on the receiving end of the bomb or firearm, for those of us watching as our President is burned in effigy over CARTOONS -- the reality is quite different.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=91</link>
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		<title>The Battle for Zachary’s Brain</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The realization that religion is a mass make-believe is almost unbelievable, but there it is.  Same for the reality that religious fantasies are much beloved and honored in most societies, including most certainly this one, though they are the cause of much suffering and death.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=391</link>
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		<title>Channeling Michael Jackson</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Knowing certain basic laws of physics and biology – among them that once the dead are dead, they are incapable of communicating with the living – I suspect that something not real yet very vivid is indeed happening in your head, something that feels and sounds like you are incessantly channeling Michael Jackson.  
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=390</link>
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		<title>Secular Wisdom updated</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Winston Churchill advised reading books of quotes.  Emerson hated quotes: “Tell me want you know.”  Well, sometimes what we know can come from the benefit of other people’s observations or experience.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=389</link>
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		<title>Wedding RSVP, not (yet) sent</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Any time “merriment” is mentioned on the invitation, I know it’s going to be another dreary event full of temptations to overeat or overdrink out of stupefying boredom, trying to make small talk at the top of my lungs, with frequent trips outside to escape the loud music and bad speechmaking.  Hope I’m wrong.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=388</link>
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		<title>4th of July a Bittersweet Holiday for Lovers of Liberty</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Until the BP oil spill is stopped, every entry will have the following preface:
America’s thirst for oil has created a disaster. Before the spill is stopped, the entire Gulf of Mexico could be ecologically exterminated. I hope I am wrong. But until this disaster is fixed, I hereby call for an immediate moratorium on the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=95</link>
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		<title>Supreme Court: No Judicial Experience?  No Problem!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I hope Justice-elect Kagan appreciates how, like Palin plucked from deserved obscurity, she’s in the right place at the right time.  That she has not shown the humility to recuse herself on Day One implies an arrogance and/or an ignorance that I don’t want to see in a Supreme Court justice.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=387</link>
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		<title>Greek Orthodox Poo-bah gets secular humanism all wrong!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[All the good that religion does can be done without all the fantasies and delusions.  All the evil that it causes results from differences in superficial, superimposed matters of doctrine and dogma.  My god’s stronger than yours.  My story’s the right one.  Who cares?  If all the resources spent in worshipping and otherwise propitiating imaginary deities were invested in improving the human condition, we would have a much better world.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=386</link>
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		<title>In Memoriam, George Carlin, d. June 23, 2008:  The deconstruction of bullshit</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s not money that’s the root of all evil.  The root of all evil is the human mind and the horrendous behavioral decisions it’s capable of making.  The fertilizer for that evil is bullshit: the invitation to turn off your thinking mind and let someone else decide how you should live.  


Bullshit is the music of mindless conformity.  Without bullshit, we would not have governments of psychotics taking over countries and leading them to ruin.  Without bullshit, we would not have centuries of religious atrocities, which continue to this day.  Without bullshit, we would not have our frantic hyper-consumptive (and probably unsustainable) culture.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=268</link>
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		<title>Oil Spill, Day 57: Environmental hypocrites</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I just saw a Funny Times cartoon about when we would finally get serious about the environment: when beer, TV, Viagra, and meat are no longer available.  We're not there yet.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=297</link>
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		<title>City wins championship; sport-as-religion behavior in abundance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Both religion and sports are heavy on shared honor-by-proxy.  YOU’RE special because Jesus died/the Hawks won. ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=385</link>
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		<title>The goddamned DUMBEST solution to the indefinite pronoun problem I have EVER seen (and from linguists, yet)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Replace the pronoun with another word which is appropriate in context; recast the sentence with the plural or with <em>I</em>, <em>you</em>, or <em>we</em>; enough already with <em>she</em> and smug, self-conscious political correctness.  Your pronoun usage is not a sign of your enlightenment.  Be a little creative and avoid the problem.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=384</link>
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		<title>D-Day, 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let us dedicate this D-day to thought and reason.  To discourage these, as politicians and clerics do, is to make perpetual war inevitable.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=84</link>
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		<title>Memorial Day: not for MY freedom</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Of all the wars that America has fought in my lifetime alone, only one – World War II – had anything to do with my freedom.  Mostly they had to do with politicians’ vanity; or their need to prove their toughness by sacrificing others (if it’s so necessary, why don’t THEY go?); or America’s wish to forcibly impose its will on other countries.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=79</link>
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		<title>Oil Spill Officially Nation&#8217;s Worst as America Honors Dead, Prepares for Another Indy 500</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It's bad enough that we still depend so much on cars, partly because of the requirement that so many of us put in "face-time" at the office (picture thousands of cars, idling bumper to bumper, air conditioners at full blast, day after summer day, as repairs are done on the numerous "expressways" in this great land of ours). <em><strong>But it is unconscionable to burn fossil fuel for amusement.  No society that is serious about fuel conservation and energy independence can burn this much gasoline for amusement. </strong></em> 




How many gallons of irreplaceable fossil fuel will be vaporized during this racing season?  The Indy 500 (1-2 miles/gallon) must use thousands upon thousands of gallons.  Daytona, NASCAR, I can’t even begin to name them all…there’s immense social approval for it, as well as lots of logos and money (and with Danica Patrick, sex), so gentlepeople, start your engines.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=379</link>
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		<title>Rand Paul’s Critics Don’t Understand the L-word (updated)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Founding Fathers didn’t get it completely right, especially as regards women and forcibly transported Blacks, slave and free.  But they did focus on one shining concept that promised to improve the state of humanity on earth: liberty.  Not “relentless dogmatism” (Zorn).  Liberty from millennia of kings, czars, and other despots.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=383</link>
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		<title>Let&#8217;s Get Going on Draw Muhammad Day! (And supplementary project)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[That a TV comedy could cause other people to commit or even threaten violence is sad evidence of the barbarism that is Islam.  Where are the clerics speaking out against this bullshit?  Where are the moderate Muslims?  The governmental leaders?
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=376</link>
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		<title>Creating Skeptics: Why Every Kid Should Have a Teacher Like Matt Lowry</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The magician is only a little more clever than you; schools don’t do enough to teach critical thinking; too many are afraid to confront the Bible as fantasy; and too few students get a physics teacher who urges them to examine the evidence before they conclude that a house is haunted.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=382</link>
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		<title>Report from Highland Park, Current Vortex of PC</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the same insane school-administrator mentality that suspends students for having an Advil or nail clipper.  Students learn, in no uncertain terms, that the adult world is irrational, demanding, rigid and ruthless. Students at Highland Park High are getting a valuable lesson indeed.   Perhaps a few brave spirits will not be broken.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=381</link>
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		<title>Affirmative Action: New Low</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When, when, WHEN are black people going to get it: a double standard hurts everybody?  The achievements of the protected class (yes, that’s the term they use) are forever tainted (would you want an affirmative action brain surgeon?), while the resentment of the unprotected class continues to fester.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=380</link>
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		<title>Guest writer: On Children, Monsters, and Magic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ At a crucial age, when parents should be carefully shaping their kids' boundaries between fantasy and reality, these gooey New Age-y parents are blurring it.  And priming them for the adult fantasies: that a political leader or religous figure or brand name can save you...these involve serious amounts of power and money.  It is important to marketers, politicans, and clerics that the people's capacity for fantasy and magical thinking be cultivated early and maintained throughout life.  

Anti-monster sprays are NOT harmless story-telling.  They are the foundation for much bigger myths.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=378</link>
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		<title>Deep Gluteal Therapy and the Love of Angels</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Perhaps New Age sewage is an innocuous, de-fanged, relentlessly ecumenical (you believe my BS and I’ll believe yours) yet non-violent alternative to the barbaric Abrahamic faiths, perhaps a stepping stone to the eventual marginalization or abandonment of religion. Or maybe it’s a crutch.  Religious beliefs get retained for particular reasons.  Reincarnation is a powerful antidote to fear of death.  As for memories, if the mind retains them, why not the body?  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=377</link>
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		<title>Death to Bullies</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there ONE organization where boss-abuse, the adult form of bullying, can be reported and curbed, by a reporting structure that goes right to the CEO, such that even senior management assholes get called on their behavior and told to reform?  No, I don't think there is.  In many cases, senior management confers the right to be an asshole.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=303</link>
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		<title>A Pious Jewish Prick</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If religion were unfailingly to deliver a better class of people, a more moral and humane individual, and if in fact it made for the gradual and palpable improvement in the human race and the human condition, then I might see some justification for all the fantasy and ritual. But when people cling to that fantasy and ritual and use it as a cover for immoral, inhumane behavior, then there is no excusing religion; there is only wishing for its disappearance and demise.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=375</link>
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		<title>Happy 4/20!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Governments decide what drugs – and what drug users and traffickers -- are to be the scapegoated (in <em>On Liberty and Drugs</em>, which I heartily recommend, Thomas Szasz points out the historical relationship between the two meanings of <em>pharmak</em>-, ‘scapegoat’ and ‘remedy.’  After all, scapegoating was the way to rid the tribe of all its evils.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=374</link>
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		<title>The World According to Gates</title>
		<description><![CDATA[All of his advice some from a highly privileged and lucky individual who probably doesn’t know why he’s so successful, so it’s all suspect.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=373</link>
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		<title>Letter to Felix the accountant</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, Felix, everyone gripes about taxes, but not everyone regards them as an obscene, outright betrayal of our birthright of liberty.  Is it not ironic, Felix, that you escaped from one oppressive bureaucracy in the USSR, only to be the administrator of another USSR-style bureaucracy right here in the US today?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=239</link>
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		<title>Reply to Brett&#8217;s bar mitzvah invitation (not sent)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sorry, Brett, but today, there is no way a 13-year-old can be considered an adult. Neither the mind nor the body is fully formed enough to make adult decisions, and the moronic behavior of teenagers and twentysomethings illustrates this fact eloquently.   Childhood actually seems to be getting longer: the 30s are the new 20s.  So the whole adulthood thing is a sham, a transparent excuse for a flagrant display of conspicuous consumption and adult conformity.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=302</link>
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		<title>&#8220;Getting Back to God&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am truly disturbed that an American citizen welcomes “brainwashing.”  I hope there are few like Marilyn Taub, but I am afraid there are many.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=372</link>
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		<title>Not Ready for Liberty, May Never Be</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There would be no shortage of ways to downsize government, if the political will were there.  Here’s one: A new law says that all government agencies, except for the few that actually serve Constitutional functions) would have five years to do a feasibility study to see if they could function standalone. If not – generous packages and turn out the lights.  I happen to think private regulation would be superior to the politicized FDA, but we’ll never know till we try.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=371</link>
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		<title>Scrabble is Dumbed Down; Depth of Dumbth Increases</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dumbth has progressed since 1989.  There’s creeping dumbth as well: an ever-fresh supply of new conspiracy theories, Obama’s a Muslim, aliens, etc.  And there’s a thick foundation level of Basic Dumbth (ignorance cultivated in the soil of religion, militarism, politics, and advertising).
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=370</link>
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		<title>Urgent flocking: the pilgrimage to fulfillment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There is something unctuous and repulsive about marketers defining me, just as with rabbis.  Both would offer me fulfillment in exchange for suspension of skepticism, willing acceptance, and long pilgrimages to be the first to purchase gadgets or light torches.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=369</link>
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		<title>On Coming Out</title>
		<description><![CDATA[An atheist candidate would make a good movie premise too.  The candidate – or perhaps congressperson – who is already popular in his/her own right…defiantly denies the truth of the Bible, opposes all state funding of religious organizations, ardently supports the separation of church and state and the taxing of religious real estate and income (billions!).  



]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=368</link>
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		<title>Happy Easter, bloody Easter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To a Jewish humanist, Easter is when Christians engage in some of their creepiest, ghastliest, most gruesome beliefs and practices.  It's when they get in touch with their inner Mel Gibson.  The color of this Easter is red, as in blood. . .
The worst thing that Christians have done with Christmas is to commercialize it.  That's nothing compared with the dark underbelly of Easter: centuries of blood, barbarism, and death.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=60</link>
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		<title>A truly Humanistic Passover Seder: Final draft</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If the story didn’t happen and it’s not about freedom anyway, then how can we celebrate Passover as a holiday that self-respecting humanists can live with, yet that retains at least some of ancient themes that are so dear to us?
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=224</link>
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		<title>Drugs, lies, and politicians</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The politicians are waging a war of lies against human nature itself.  So where else are they lying or shading the truth?  If they would dare to tell the truth about marijuana, I might believe them on other issues.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=367</link>
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		<title>PS on Twitter: A response to the Fear of Fears</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s no answer as to how best to spend your life.  For now, I invite you to examine your use of the phrase ”waste time.”  You probably use it every day.  What does your usage tell you about how you think you should spend your life?  Each day, each moment wasted…can never be regained.  Maybe some changes are in order.  Maybe you’re living someone else’s version of your life.
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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=366</link>
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		<title>Let my people go!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Soon many Jews will be condemned to the tedious, rigidly ritualistic Seders commemorating events that didn’t happen, engineered by a deity that’s nothing but a bully with superpowers.  They will be expected to pretend that they respect this nonsense, even participate in it (I always passed on the reading).  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=365</link>
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		<title>Extreme makeover: notes on a truly Humanistic Passover</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If the humanist follows his/her integrity where it leads, we have to arrive at a new understanding of Passover -- one which connects us to the old, yet is consonant with our own integrity and dignity.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=223</link>
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		<title>Encounter with a fanatic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Crazed Muslims spewing nonsensical shit over the net are one brand of fanaticism.  Another is the quiet, yet equally arrogant and condescending kind that I encountered.  But in intransigence, incorrigibility, and resistance to reason and evidence, one is the equal of the other.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=364</link>
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		<title>The J.S.S.F.W. Concept of the Torah</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Torah is just something some folks wrote. I went through all of its commands -- and there are hundreds -- and found that there are only 29 at most (not counting repetitions) that modern people can conscientiously obey (there were some judgment calls: I included the prohibition against bestiality). It is, as we would expect, Morality 101. Don't have sex with family members (Leviticus 18:6-20). Don't make your daughter a harlot (Leviticus 19:29). Keep your vows (Numbers 30:3). Try to return lost items (Deuteronomy 22:1-3).

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=363</link>
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		<title>&#8220;I can&#8217;t afford the Twitter.&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I can’t afford the luxury of thinking my every thought is of interest to everybody.  I can’t afford to waste time.  I can’t afford being told by a machine how to communicate.  


I can’t afford the Twitter.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=362</link>
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		<title>Memo to Toyoda-san: A real Samurai would fall on his sword (rev.)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How can Toyota owners get into their cars each morning?  Incredibly, many are still loyal.  This kind of brand loyalty is far from innocuous, unlike the believe-no-matter-what attitude that accompanies religion or Cubs fandom.  It can cost you your life.  But still they believe.  If I had a Toyota, I would sell it to the first sucker -- sorry, buyer -- today, if possible.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=361</link>
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		<title>Suggested Obama foreign policy Toronto speech draft</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The conversion of America from a war-ready military empire to a peaceful nation will take time and be resisted in many quarters.  I dedicate the rest of my Presidency to this prpoject.  It may cost me my re-election, but at least the project will be started, and future Presidents will have to implement it.  At least that is my hope.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=360</link>
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		<title>Another jihadi crashes plane into building</title>
		<description><![CDATA[He was a <em>jihadi</em>, a striver, a struggler.  And a martyr.  He gave up on this world as irremediably broken and corrupt.  But the key difference:  Muslims blow themselves up for the sake of a religious fantasy.  He did it because he refused to stop confronting reality.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=359</link>
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		<title>An Open Letter to Teabaggers and Other Patriots (updated again)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Jefferson was supposed to have said that we need a revolution every now and then, and, great nation that we are, we've shown we can do it (fairly) peacefully -- as with minority rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc.  Peacefully -- but emphatically.   It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong, but nothing is more American.

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		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=321</link>
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		<title>Valentine&#8217;s Day 2010: Love and Death</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The men who died on St. Valentine's Day did so in vain.  We have not learned the awful lessons of drug prohibition.  And maybe we never will.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=279</link>
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		<title>Denied tenure, she opens fire</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Tenure -- guaranteed job security -- was supposed to protect professors from being fired for being controversial.  What a joke.  Nowadays profs are anything but, hewing to the same diversity/multiculturalism party line espoused by corporations and the government, only with stricter speech codes.  Controversial would be marching in the streets to end this horrendous deficit, these obscene wars.  But profs don't march anymore. They have tenure.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=358</link>
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		<title>Destroying the earth for our amusement</title>
		<description><![CDATA[<em><strong>It is unconscionable to burn fossil fuel for amusement.  No society that is serious about fuel conservation can burn this much gasoline for amusement. </strong></em> 
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=272</link>
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		<title>Suggested Obama foreign policy speech draft</title>
		<description><![CDATA[At this moment there is on the desk of each of the Joint Chiefs of Staff an official Predsidential order to begin evacuation of troops from both countries.  In 36 hours, the Joint Chiefs are to report to me with phased withdrawal plans, which will be implemented immediately.  We knew how to send those kids in -- and I notice with shame and humility how few of us, who have sent so many to their graves, had the guts to do that.  Not very many, I would think.  We sent them in, we know how to get them out.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=356</link>
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		<title>On &#8220;f***ing retarded&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So <em>REtard</em> is undergoing a watering-down process. <em>Retarded</em> has moved on, weakened, generalized, become a general term of opprobrium.  That's how it was used in the offending expression.  The speaker was not talking about the feebleminded (an archaic term which I like).  <em>Retarded</em> can now apply to ANY person, thing or idea.  If a person, then it means 'insentitive,' 'naive,' 'elementary in his/her thinking,' 'lacking acuity,' 'not up to speed/snuff in some way.'  Applied to ideas, it means 'obvious,' 'simplistically stupid,'  'impractical for obvious reasons,' or even 'archaic' (<em>the retarded idea that women should stay home and have babies</em>).
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=357</link>
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		<title>The existential message of &#8220;Groundhog Day&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Perhaps on Groundhog Day, we can realize, as Phil eventually did, that through it all, the only thing that we can certainly change is our own mind and behavior.  Like Phil, all we can do is keep at it till we get it right.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=206</link>
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		<title>The meat thinks: On (Un)Certainty; why religion is ineradicable; a Modest Proposal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If religion is perpetual, let it pay its own way -- perpetually.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=355</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Third Party: Now&#8217;s the Time, America</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Maybe, just maybe, America can halt its decline into into bankrupt welfare state/unsteady world emperor (needless to say, a Libertarian President would bring troops home, in large numbers).  Or will we keep declining and bottom out, running up debt, getting bought up by the Chinese, and sinking into long-term economic decline, all the while listening to the politicians' siren songs even as we drown in their bullshit?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=354</link>
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		<title>In memoriam, Martin Luther King, Jr.: 40 years later, Blacks still enslaved (revised)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[American companies waste tons of time and money on diversity activities and recruiting minorities, all of which makes them less competitive in a global marketplace that doesn’t give a damn about “proportional representation.”
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=200</link>
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	<item>
		<title>&#8220;No Negro Dialect&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This nation's smugness on putting a person of minimal competence with the right pigmentation (but no Negro dialect) in the White House makes me want to vomit. I am not impressed. The one thing our political process will never produce is a Chief Executive who will put religion in its proper place (e.g., by revoking the tax-exempt status of churches) and who truly respects the Constitution.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=353</link>
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		<title>Memo to Obama re rhetoric (revised)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslim men should find love in this world; that's the ideal solution. Then they wouldn't have to resort to suicidal fantasies.  But their religion won't allow that.  That's the real enemy.  It's a case of killing the snake by cutting off the head.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=352</link>
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		<title>More Humanist Holidays!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The point of creating and celebrating humanistic holidays would be to reinforce Atheist Alliance International's OUT theme.  To go public.  To be (politely) in believers' faces, just as they have for millennia been in ours.  To question the public prominence of religion and the extraordinary and undeserved respect accorded to primitive superstitions and divine Imaginary Friends.  Years ago, I said what AAI is now saying: that atheism is the new homosexuality.  Atheists, notably in the US military, suffer the same discrimination faced by gays 50 or 100 years ago.  We are 16% of the population.  It is time to come OUT.  And what better way than celebrating our holidays all year round?  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=349</link>
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		<title>Suggested New Year’s resolution: Live YOUR life</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Can’t we all just get along, live and let live in ’10 and beyond?  Didn’t Jesus and Mohammed want that?  If they wanted people to kill in their names, then they were evil and psychotic and should be rejected.  The same goes for the people who commit horrible acts of religious violence.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=192</link>
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		<title>Minarets: Scary Symbols and Noisome Nuisances</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is time to identify the real enemy, the elephant in the living room: religion. Religion creates a fantasy world which can be used to manipulate young people's minds and turn them into suicidal maniacs that wreak havoc and threaten whole societies.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=351</link>
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		<title>What Would YOU Like from Santa?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It's staggering.  When we see how humanity is bound by its own mental constraints, it's enough to call for Santa Claus to break up the logjam, to get people to see that they are killing each other for no reason at all, other then that they cling to religious myths that have long since outgrown their usefulness, if they ever had any.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=350</link>
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		<title>The real miracle of Christmas</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The truth is, we are our own saviors: any salvation will be accomplished on this earth, by ourselves and through each other.  Only we can take responsibility for our sins, only we can repent, only we can offer and seek forgiveness.  And we know that real friends are infinitely more important and powerful than imaginary ones.

Ever since I can remember, clerics have been urging their flocks to “put the Christ back into Christmas.”  I think we should take him out.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=190</link>
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		<title>Tiger, Tiger burning bright* (edited)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I always say when an icon is brought low by sex scandal -- and this one, to me, is of the order of Elliot Spitzer and the elegant, humiliated Silda -- why does it always go one way?  How often do you hear of a prominent FEMALE athlete or politician embarassed and toppled by the revelations of male paramours?  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=347</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Santa Claus and the Evolution of Fantasy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Santa can generate another teachable moment, this one for older kids: asking a kindly old man for what you want in life, whether sitting on his lap or bowing in prayer, doesn't work.  Christmas presents come from stores and such, procured by the labor of adults.  Similarly, all virtue comes from people.  So does all forgiveness and salvation.   If humans don't kill each other, there will be peace on earth.  Let human beings be proud of what they've accomplished, instead of handing credit to God or Santa.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=336</link>
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		<title>Happy Hanukkah – sort of</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hanukkah celebrates, in part, the rededication of the temple in the second century CE by a bunch of Jewish Taliban.  It was the restoration of the old time religion.  Once again, the relatively primitive, tribal Jews were in (temporarily victorious) conflict with a secular, rational, cosmopolitan culture.  (We caught up quickly once the Enlightenment opened up secular opportunities.)
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=181</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Aftermath of the Tobacco Wars: Civil Disobedience in the 21st Century</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Mindless consumerism and all-absorbing media have achieved a degree of complacency that Hitler or Stalin could never achieve with violence.  The government moves to expand its wars, but with no draft, even at a trillion dollars a year, who cares?  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=348</link>
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		<title>Targets of Flesh</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The purpose of the military is to defend the country.  It is not to prop up hopeless governments in irrevocably divided countries by serving as targets of flesh.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=346</link>
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		<title>Thanksgiving 365</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I'm turning into a crochety curmudgeon (so did my patron saint, George Carlin, but he was much funnnier about it).  I am increasingly annoyed by highly organized, one-virtue-focus holidays, especially government-designated ones.  I don't need the government to tell me when to be grateful.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=345</link>
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		<title>The Skeptic&#8217;s Burden: Yes, Kendrick, it IS worth it.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is nothing less than the battle to rescue humanity from centuries more of ignorance and bigotry, persecution and murder in the name of religion.  Each generation is like a new inning, no outs, batter up.  Repeat the truth, over and over and over.  Then if, when one is breathless and exhausted, a single believer comes to question and abandon his God, his afterlife, his end-times, his holy book...it will have been worth it.      ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=344</link>
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		<title>Oprah is my shepherd; I shall not want</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Like other deities, Oprah changes form.   One hour a day is not enough.  No!  There must be 24/78 Oprah.  She's going to end the show and have her own network, so that her subjects need not lack -- even for a single moment -- knowledge of what the Goddess wants them to do.  She is reincarnated, now a disembodied spirit, always there for us.  Is this sounding familiar?

And there is more to come.  Mushy-brained fawning Paul Begala and other fatuous talking heads on CNN speculate on whether she would run for President.  Yes, she could! they all agreed.  She has everything you need, i.e., image, fan base, and money.  So yes, America will elect her after Obama's second term.  Her face will be on huge screens everywhere, just as in the dystopic sci-fi movies.  She will convince Americans to abandon the Constitution (it's too hard to understand anyway) and make her President for Life.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=343</link>
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		<title>Intervention of a fanatic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We discussed how tolerant atheists should be of believers.  I suggest we split the person from the fantasy as much as possible.  Beliefs exist apart from an individual, and you're not stupid just because you've been programmed to accept (or blithely go along with) religious belief.  There was some discussion of working with religious moderates, and I pointed out that there were two kinds: (i) issue-oriented people, real religious believers with a conflict (e.g., Catholics for gay rights) and (ii) wishy-washy go-alongs, non-boat-rockers, people who refuse to turn a rational eye on religion's ravings.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=342</link>
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		<title>Observing the Sabbath: Give it a rest!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The "anything you'd rather not be doing" definition of work is the simplest and purest I have enountered.  It defines work as no more than what it is: giving your time and energy FIVE or SIX days a week to create the monetary energy to sustain you during the, say, 15% of your life you're not working, as well as to save for some future time when youi won't have to work (when is that?).  This sounds like a losing investment for the worker: five days a week, 50 weeks a year, is a LOT of your life.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=341</link>
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		<title>Beyond fun linguistics</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What about linguistics not as a source of cocktail party chatter... or as a way to play linguistic "gotcha" games of correctness and one-upmanship --but as a legitimate branch of knowledge, as the search for truth?  What do the facts of language tell us about ourselves and the way we shape our world and manipulate each other?  If these subjects are never discussed, then all the bullshit and manipulation can continue unquestioned, and for some people that is unquestionably a good thing.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=340</link>
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		<title>Race Relations and the Affirmative Action Presidency</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The costs of reverse discrimination continue to pile up.  The Muslim murderer at Fort Hood was allowed to remain in his position, even promoted, despite his avowedly radical views (anybody who puts the Shari'a above the Constitution should be immediately and dishonorably discharged).  To do otherwise would, it was felt, be politically incorrect.  I do hope the victims' families understand this logic.  I sure don't.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=338</link>
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		<title>Veterans’ Day, 2009 – Not for MY freedom</title>
		<description><![CDATA[War is not only the failure of governments to settle their differences peaceably, as sad as that is.  War also represents old (mostly) men’s decisions that young men and women should suffer and die.  All of us must pay for the old men’s pretensions and politics.  What is history, asks economist and historian Thomas Sowell, but a tale of “how politicians have squandered human blood and treasure?”
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=167</link>
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		<title>Another child lost</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The video made me close my eyes and bite my lip with grief at the prospect of another life lost to religion.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=339</link>
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		<title>Paying for Praying</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;I prayed for freedom for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs&#8221;
Frederick Douglass
If we humanists weren&#8217;t so passive as a group, busily planning meetings where we talk to ourselves, the Trib story on the possibility of insurance companies&#8217; reimbursing for prayer would not have gone unnoticed, and perhaps would have [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=337</link>
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		<title>Follow-up: Allah and all gods are impotent or out to lunch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I deeply regret that we do not use religion as a psychological weapon against our enemies.  Openly desecrate their Quran.  Have soldiers do it right in front of detainees.  No need to waterboard.  No need to lay a finger on them.  Cover their walls with ALL kinds of pictures of Mohammed.  Photoshop him on a surfboard, in a strip club.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=335</link>
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		<title>Desecrating the Quran; Pictures of Mohammed</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This whole desecration thing is so bogus, creepy, and frightening that I hardly know where to begin.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=334</link>
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		<title>Secular humanist religion: daily practice</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Each day, see if you can commit some minor act of charity, forgiveness, or whatever.  Think how that will train your brain -- and how it will add up over the months!  


Such good thoughts and good deeds are, of course, completely independent of prayer and worship.  Yet they are the essence of religion -- and the only way we improve our lives and the lives of those around us.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=31</link>
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		<title>Shedding of the burden of God (newly revised)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;I do not believe in God.  I believe in cashmere.&#8221;
Fran Lebowitz
A bit of history is made today, as a &#8220;Good Without God&#8221; billboard appears in Chicago, and other cities as well, paid for by a coalition of secular groups.  The news story in the Trib (self-serving commercial: The Jewish Atheist is honored to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=39</link>
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		<title>Existential Baby Boom Divorce Boom?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[These are Existential Divorces.  A man or woman gets to a certain point where the thought of serving out one's brief time on earth chained to this person is a soul-deadening prospect, and one will go through a great deal to be free in the remaining years.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=331</link>
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		<title>Bosses&#8217; Day, 2009: Caligula&#8217;s boast, bad bosses, and Secular Humanism in the workplace</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I think Peter Drucker has it right.  He says that "leadership is all hype," and he notes that "we've had three great leaders in this century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao – and you see the devastation they left behind."  As for modern, so-called "post-heroic" leadership, Drucker says "It's nothing but hard work and conscientiousness" (quoted in <em>Forbes</em>, 2/21/94).  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=121</link>
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		<title>To Forgive or Not to Forgive: A Rational/Humanist Perspective</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In recent years, some shrinks, especially of the New Age persuasion, have been marketing a version of forgiveness that is bland, saccharine, and unrealistic.  Under this definition, you don't seek revenge, don't bear a grudge, but you exonerate the offender, find excuses for what happened, purge yourself of all negative feelings, even REWRITE HISTORY so that you are less of a victim, more of a hero.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=329</link>
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		<title>Another Olympic Grinch Speaks Out</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here's a thought:  since the Olympics entertain only those who choose to go or watch, why bother the rest of us with it?  And why continue to enrich the few, tax the rest of us, and wine and dine the pompous preening morons in the IOC?  Let's...just....do it in the same place every time.  Yes!  Somewhere in Greece.  All nations would contribute to the building of a permanent Olympic village.  Every four years, those countries who wanted to enter could finance that year's games, paying in proportion to their number of contestants and GDP.  Pick a place in the Alps-- same for the Winter Olympics.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=328</link>
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		<title>RIP Saturn (1984-2009): The Little Car that Might Have Been</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I agree with Michael Moore: contemporary capitalism all too often consists of people behaving badly.  The problems are so complex that I couldn't begin to suggest solutions (one soution is NOT to bail out failing companies).  But Saturn represented a Camelot moment in the American auto industry, a moment when people believed that the sins of the past could be overcome in a single leap.  They were, for a bit.  Then the muck of the system -- make money, screw the workers, screw management, get the stock price up -- sucked it into mediocrity and now, death.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=327</link>
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		<title>Critiquing Ratzo’s rhetoric (with guest blogger!): World&#8217;s leading fantasy merchant visits Czech Republic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Cardinal Ratzinger (or “Ratzo,” as we used to call him in seminary – JUST KIDDING!) is an unflinching exponent of the hard line, the straight path.  The one true path, the one way to salvation.  The one Church that Jesus established.  Us.  Ratzo believes it, and he says it, over and over.  


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=326</link>
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		<title>Out of Afghanistan/The Ease of Killing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“They make a desert and call it peace.”
Tacitus
“War is the faro table of governments, and nations the dupes of the games.”
Thomas Paine
“…[The US] must have clearly defined military and political objectives…
“…Nor [should] the American people sit by and watch US troops committed as expendable pawns on some grand diplomatic chessboard.”
Caspar Weinberger (from The Weinberger Doctrine)
Of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=325</link>
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		<title>Blasphemy Day: What humanists believe in</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Faith is believing what you know ain&#8217;t so.&#8221;
Mark Twain
On Blasphemy Day 2009, I thought it appropriate to re-publish the following manifesto, for those who first happen upon the site.
A cartoon shows two people standing on a front porch, showing the homeowner a handful of pamphlets, which are blank.  One of them explains, &#8220;We&#8217;re atheists.&#8221;
To [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=94</link>
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		<title>YOM KIPPUR: THE CHALLENGE TO HUMANISTS</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We are not, as the worshippers call us, "nonbelievers" or "unbelievers."  We do believe in something: we believe in human power and rational thinking. We believe in courage and freedom, dignity and justice -- not because God says they are good, but because history and experience have shown that they are the paths to a better life here on earth.  And because we believe that this is the only life we have, we are obliged to do our utmost to make it better for ourselves and our fellow human beings.  
	
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=141</link>
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		<title>Blasphemy Day: Out of the Closet</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have been an atheist my whole life.  Like some other CFI members, I believe we are engaged in a war for the minds of humanity, a war which may already be lost.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=324</link>
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		<title>GM reborn?  Again?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When GM is transformed from the inside, the change will be reflected in the cars they market.  They will be ahead of the competition in innovation (because good ideas won't be suppressed) and quality (ditto).  Maybe they'll win back a generation of buyers who don't remember the bad old days.  I'm sticking with Acura.   ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=323</link>
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		<title>High Holidays 365</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Right now there is a LOT of interest in the Jewish All-powerful Imaginary Friend, what with the High Holidays coming up.  In countless synagogues and homes all over the world, Jews will do all kinds of weird things – not change clothes, not shave, fast, berate themselves, prattle about the ridiculous story of the Binding of Isaac, and beg the Imaginary Friend to treat them nicely.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=322</link>
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		<title>A Really Troubling Shortage</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The shortage I'm worried about is a paucity of skepticism.  Billions of people remain enslaved to traditional religious dogma and the literal truth of phantasmagoric ancient texrts, billions more to (usually crappy) political regimes, doctrines and leaders.  Most of the rest -- most women, in my experience -- are gauzily attached to outrageous New Age bullshit, relentlessly debunked but thriving nevertheless.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=308</link>
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		<title>Sept. 11, 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Each generation of politicians is committed to maintaining the insane wars started by his predecessors, including the drug war.  I say: Let the Afghan poppies bloom!  The country could become rich.  Heroin has its uses, which will never be discovered under the present idelogical regime.  Who the hell is the American government to decide what substances people can put in their bodies, as long as they harm no one else?  The drug war costs $40 billion a year and 5,000-10,000 lives in America alone, AND IT SUPPORTS TERRORISTS.  It drives other nations' drug policies AND IT SUPPORTS TERRORISTS.  Hypocritical politicians who smoked pot in their youth must take the Vow of Hypocrisy and never bring up what is now the Third Rail of Politics -- the war on drugs.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=320</link>
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		<title>The Queen of Chicago</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So she begins the 24th year doing what she does best: promoting herself. Twenty-four years.   There are among us oldsters those who remember The Time When There Was No Oprah.  But we'll soon be gone, and soon no one will know a Time When There Was No Oprah.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=319</link>
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		<title>On Killing and Basterds</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To destroy the enemy, you must understand him.  In this case, the enemy is war.  The question is, how can a man (and it is usually a man) be convinced to kill a stranger for no personal reason?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=318</link>
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		<title>Ted Kennedy, Liberal Tapeworm</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I do not deny the Kennedy family's many humanitarian activities.  But those who entered politics did so with the supposition that they were better informed and empowered than Americans themselves to make decisions about every aspect of life. They are our self-appointed rulers, and the press is pretty much their PR organization.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=317</link>
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		<title>End urban violence?  End the drug war!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you‘re a politician, it’s good to have multiple wars going, real and metaphorical, because then people forget about all but the most recent one you started.  And all wars make politicians and government very, very important.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=316</link>
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		<title>Liberal Epiphany: Camille Paglia finally gets it!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Government is, like fire, a dangerous servant and a frightful master (attributed to George Washington).  It is inherently fascistic.  Its laws are not optional.  It's composed not of wise, impartial solons with nothing in mind but the nation's welfare and the Constitution....but of people no smarter than you and me, probably dumber, because most of them couldn't hold real jobs, what with all the accountability for budgets, timeframes, cost-savings, debt, and other such trivia with which the politician need not bother.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=309</link>
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	<item>
		<title>What the F*** Has Happened to Writing?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Recently there has arisen a new kinds of writing that just....creeps me out.  In order for your site to be found by search engines, you must have content, in the form of articles rich in keywords.  Hundreds of them, written by hacks for a pittance...or by people in Asia for whom $5/hour is a good day's wage.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=306</link>
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		<title>Birthday thoughts, 2009: War, Suffering, Death</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We are 99% the same genetically as chimpanzees, who spend all their time in fighting, feuding, confrontations, power struggles, and outright murder. Language and technology haven't stopped it – they’ve just made us better at it.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=307</link>
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		<title>If Religion Is a Mental Illness, Let&#8217;s Treat It</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Religion is dangerous. It's not good for you or for your health. Here in the West, we are very much concerned with risks to our health.   We read eagerly of the next nutrition fad or antioxidant.  Well, don't you think religion is a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, weighing people down with guilt, fantasy stories, and promises of an afterlife?   And how many people die each year from religious persecution and violence?  Surely the number must be comparable to those who suffer and die from breast cancer, smoking, alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, and so many others, against which we mount crusades, conduct walkathons, collect the money, and badger politicians for special programs and research grants.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=305</link>
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		<title>Holy Places: Restored Religious House of Fantasy Recalls Bad Old Days of Belief</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ancient Jews in the Torah story had a movable holy place -- the Tent of Meeting (see Exodus, Ch. 40).  The establishment of synagogues (surely an original experiment in franchising) represented a vast increase in the number of holy places.  True magic wasn't focused only in the Temple any more.  

Jews are now preparing to mourn the destruction of two those precious temples (by a culture that for all its awful excesses had contributed far more to the good of humanity), a holiday called <em>Tisha B'Av</em>, which occasionally falls on my birthday.  I challenge them to take a good hard look at what those temples represented: primitive, fantasy-based, priest- and rule-donimated, misogynistic, xenophobic Judaism.  Something no modern person would identify with.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=304</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Let&#8217;s ALL make our homes into churches!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So yes, wouldn't that be an awesome form of protest: secularists (as many as 15% of the population) beome ordained en masse and apply for tax breaks just like the churches.  We tie up the system with our suits and appeals.  We make noise, for a change.  We show religious people and politicians how unjust it is for fantasy merchants (at best) and child-mutilators/molesters (at worst) to get special relief, JUST BECAUSE of the harmful activities that go on in their tax-exempt buildings.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=301</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Dilbert is Darker these days; so is Capitalism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Competition is inherent in capitalism; there's no separating the two.  So it's competitive advantage that trumps everything.  Companies will never treat employees they way they say they do; the tragedy is that they know how to say the right words, they know what they should be doing, but the system forbids it. 

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=300</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Are We Getting Smarter? Depends on What You Mean by &#8220;We.&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Whatever is done with computers and pharmaceuticals will not improve the intelligence of 1 billion Muslims, 1 billion Christians, over 700 million Hindus, and all the other religious believers of the world, who insist on immersing themselves in fantasies and enthusiastically join in the violent conflicts that inevitably follow.   All of the imams, rabbis, priests, and other religious leaders will continue to believe what they believe, propagate what they propagate, and inflict religious superstition, not only on educated people who should know better, but on the poorest people of the world, those who need some hope IN THIS WORLD, those who can least afford to be taken in by the stupid con games. (Charity and humanitarianism, great. But skip the missionary stuff.) 

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago will not be made one iota smarter by computers or pharmaceuticals. He will continue to believe the same busllshit he believes.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=299</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Jews riot over religious trivia, after centuries of being slaughtered</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To the extent that rabbis over the centuries excouraged passivity and trust in divine deliverance, they were just as responsible for the persecution and slaughter as the actual perpetrators. It takes two sides to make a Holocaust. Can anyone find me just one more historical example of a people who repeatedly acquiesced in its own humiliation and destruction? 

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=298</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Palestinian Kids with AK47&#8217;s: Brain, Mind, and Religion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Religious people like to say religion's a mystery, and it definitely is.  The idea that religion is madness goes back to my fellow secular Jews, Freud and Marx.  Why do these psychotic fantasies get so much public respect, when their exact equivalents (imaginary voices, imaginary histories, imaginary worlds and afterlives) are to be found as bona fide mental illnesses in the <em>DSM-IV</em>, the psychiatrist's Bible of all that can go wrong with the human mind?  Religion is officially, medically nothing more than sanctioned insanity.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=296</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Remembering Pops</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Louis Armstrong was an immensely talented and passionate man who transcended the limitations of a racist, drug-prohibiting society to become a figure for the ages.  All Hail Pops!]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=295</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Why America is (NOT) a Christian Nation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There is one sense in which America is not and never will be a Christian nation: the holy books of the Christians will never guide the hand of government.  Humanity has learned much since the ancient times and the ancient world reflected in the Bible.  It would be insane to assume that these largely irrelevant ramblings must be the foundation of our government's policy.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=294</link>
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	<item>
		<title>July 4: Heartbreaking holiday for lovers of liberty</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Who cares what the government does?  Indeed, mindless consumerism and 24/7 entertainment have enabled a level of political complacency and obedience that Hitler or Stalin could never have achieved through force.


Liberty – a word you don’t hear much in today’s political rhetoric.  For me and for all who love liberty, the 4th is a bittersweet holiday indeed.  The essence of America is not World Empire (those people have been around for a long time too).  It is not Government-as-Grandparent (Al Gore).  It is not Christian Nation.  

It is Land of the Free.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=265</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Suggested Obama follow-up Mideast speech</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A little while ago I spoke in Cairo of how peace might be achieved in this most troubled of regions.  I spoke of politics, policy, and diplomacy, but I ignored what we in America call the elephant in the living room -- the monstrous beast that everyone pretends isn't there -- the one gigantic obstacle that stands between us and peace: religion.  Insofar as religion influences governments, it will be difficult or impossible to achieve peace by the reasonable means that I articulated in my previous speech.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=293</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Reason Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let us proclaim June 21 as Reason Day.  Everything else has a dedicated day, week, month, even year...so why not the one thing that makes us human, the one thing that makes us just a little more than naked apes?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=291</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Remembering George Carlin: Three Oxymoronic Words We Can Do Without</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A true oxymoron directly contradicts itself.  And here I have three candidates.   They're deeply embedded in the language.  People actually think they mean something.  But what?  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=290</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Chimps with nukes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What puts us over the top, of course, is language.  To the extent that early hominids acquired language, they were able to organize and overwhelm those groups who hadn't.  How did langauge start?  It's all very complex evolutionarily, since the capacity for language had something to do with the development of the hand as well as the vocal cords.  But language was the killer app, so to speak.  To the detriment of humanity, language has enabled us to magnify our simian traits, to amplify them, and, lately, to coordinate our own destruction.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=289</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Flag Day: Missing the Point</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Liberty is not an obvious idea to everyone, that many people really like the government to do things for them, and that – most importantly -- there is, in their age cohort too, emerging, like hordes of disgusting insects from their slimy pupa shells (as our cicadas did this summer), an army of busybody control freaks who will become their generation’s politicians and keep the current corrupt system in place by rewarding everyone who supports it.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=185</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Affirmative Action, &#8220;Diversity,&#8221; and Racial Guilt</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Aside from being irrational and inhumane, aside from being a racial-guilt punishment, diversity/affirmative action, like the religion and politics that support it, is founded on intellectual bullshit.  



Companies aren’t better for preferential hiring and promotion, because they compromise competence and waste a ton of time on diversity activities.  Individuals aren’t better, whether they’re the recipients of the preferences (their competence is ever in doubt, often rightly so) – or the screwees. 

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=165</link>
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	<item>
		<title>D-Day +1: Tough Jews and Survival</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It was tough Jews who founded Israel.  Over the centuries, Christian Europe proved it could not live with Jews without trying to exterminate them.  So, like the Italians and the Dutch, the Jews had to have a homneland, where no one could persecute them and from which no one could expel them.

Unfortunately, the safety and security of that homeland is being threatened not only by external enemies, but from within, by religion.  Yes, it's true: the Jewish religion threatens the Jewish homeland.  Jewish fanatics insist on a divine land-grant, deny rights to Arabs, and get their foreign policy directly from the Book of Deuteronomy.  Religion obstructs the path to peace by introducing, into the political and diplomatic process, a monkey wrench of irrationality and intransigence.  On both sides.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=288</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Suggested Obama D-Day speech</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We are one species; we don't even have Neanderthals to kick around.  But we have 98% of our DNA in common with chimps.  Perhaps in that 2% lies the solution.  Perhaps we can be truly human...and see religious fantasies as the divisive, destructive forces that they are.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=287</link>
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	<item>
		<title>How Many Kinds of Jews are There &#8212; Really?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There are dozens of reasons why people engage in prayer and religious ritual, but one of them cannot be that it does them or anyone else any good in the real world.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=286</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Collapse of GM a failure to practice humanistic values</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On this day of tragedy for General Motors, let us remember the root cause of this terrible defeat and final humiliation: inhumanity.  The failure to respect human dignity and independence.  Specifically,

-- the failure to treat workers humanely, thus causing the animosity that resulted in strikes (can you imagine? they had the luxury of NOT WORKING!) and lavish material concessions to the workforce, which dragged down GM in the form of long-term pension and medical commitments, abouot $1,000/car, last I heard.

-- the failure of management to question its own omniscience and take creative suggestions from below.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=285</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Litmus Test for Supreme Court Nominee</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What is really necessary is for the national government to step out of drug policy entirely.  It's not in the Constitution, and the states and the people (see the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) can decide these things for themselves.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=284</link>
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	<item>
		<title>The Deadly Mix of Religion and Militarism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is not enough to have secular humanist groups, gatherings, conventions, publications, and meet-ups. There must be an aggressive stand against religious superstition and a considerable decrease in the respect which society accords it.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=283</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Indy 500: Destroying the planet for our own amusement</title>
		<description><![CDATA[<em><strong>But it is unconscionable to burn fossil fuel for amusement.  No society that is serious about fuel conservation can burn this much gasoline for amusement. </strong></em> 


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=243</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A Walk on the Wild Side: A Peek at Fundie Disdain and Fury.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why does he need constant obeisance, prayers, praise, and general ass-kissing?  Sounds like a pretty vain and petty SOB to me.

I'm getting more and more convinced that believers' brains work differently, having been conditioned since childhood to do so.  Only a lucky few escape.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=282</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Mitzvah creep; Obama killing me softly with his song; psychic scams: Earth Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m just getting a chance to comment belatedly, though I hope not irrelevantly, on the recent Jewish solar worship mitzvah.  That last word is critical.
The specter of Jews on rooftops, a couple of weeks ago, welcoming the sun because it was ostensibly at the same place as when God created it&#8230;oy, vey.  The [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=281</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Important Passover concept: dayenu</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Is there someone or something upon which you can pronounce <em>dayenu</em> today or during this Passover, thus making your life easier and bringing yourself closer to nirvana?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=245</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Muslim Awareness Week &#8212; no thanks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Islam is in the news every day, and I learn more about it, whether I want to or not.  I guess that means that every week is Islamic Awareness Week.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=280</link>
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	<item>
		<title>GM wants bigger government bailout?!  What would Roger think?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There will be a government bailout of GM, so close is the auto giant to bankruptcy.  Can't let the colossus of American industry, with all the attendant jobs, go out of business.  Capitalism isn't that ruthless.  There's got to be SOME protection for incompetence.

Ironic.  Not too many years age, GM was so successful that the government was talking about dismantling it!  Trust-busting, I believe they called it.


But that was then.  GM, with a lock on the domestic car market, was on top of the world. 

 . . . . . .  .

Roger’s Smith's career...working his way up, innovating, leading change, while at the same time maintaining boss dominance, face-time, and contempt for the competition (and the customer)...encompasses all that is right – and wrong—about American business.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=179</link>
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		<title>Nation gorges on self-congratulation, but we&#8217;re not there yet.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A secular President would be very good for America.  He/she would have no trouble separating church and state.  He/she would show how to lead a good, moral, secular life without God and would abolish prayer at official functions.  And a humanist President would lead the world away from destructive, divisive, fantasy-based religions and towards a peace that encompassess all humanity.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=278</link>
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		<title>More war, moral dilemma</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Secular humanistic Jews, like the tiny handful of secular Muslims, identify with the culture but don’t believe in any of the religious fantasies.  Nothing in the Torah happened, though most Jews sort of pretend that it did.  Jews in fact do have a rich and fascinating history, but the Torah is not it.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=214</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Question for believers: And then what?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The future is far more elusive than prophecy.  The Mayans didn't have a clue, and neither do we.  

As many wise people have observed, life must be lived forward -- but understood backward.  Yet, as many others have noted, the seeds of future events can be seen, if only one knows where to look.  The 9/11 report makes it quite clear that the disaster could have been prevented, but too many government officials were criminally negligent.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=276</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A New Appreciation of New Age Wacko BS</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Much of the New Age stuff is for people who want another, perhaps more exotic kind of religion.  That’s fine.  More than fine.  As a friend has pointed out, New Age, however wacko, may represent a traditional stage between the violent, confrontational Western religions…and none at all (look at Europe, which as Bill Maher points out, has “grown up”: atheistic/agnostic numbers are around 50% and rising). 

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=275</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On not letting religious nuts off the hook; Batman; and Our Savior</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s no Batman and no Savior.  We’ve got to do it all ourselves, whether it’s fighting crime or repenting of our sinfulness, or, in the spirit of the season, practicing peace and good will.  The bracing cold of winter reminds us of the reality that no amount of prayer will solve our problems.  Spring will come when it comes.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=274</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Hanukkah Rededication: Forward</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One choice we can make is to let go of the past by looking back on it all and acknowledging how little we actually had responsibility for.  This is one of the building-blocks of Moving Forward.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=183</link>
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	<item>
		<title>The Triumph of Identity Politics; The Bottomlessness of White Guilt</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama is not only the apparent answer to all problems that beset Blacks.  He is not only a sign of the bottomless guilt of whites: At last – a person of color they could elect President!  How much guilt does that wash away?



He is the latest incarnation of the Magic Negro.  Since the beginning of his campaign, and encouraged by his Biblically-tinged rhetoric, people have projected all their hopes onto him (much as Barbra Streisand once gushed, “Bill Clinton’s gonna fix everything”).  His election means that all of America’s problems will magically disappear, via “change we can believe in.”

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=273</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Election Eve: Learning to listen to – and love – political BS</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Can’t we just declare victory, exit, and tell the Muslims that we’re done expending our blood and treasure, and they have all they need to build a prosperous country? THEY are the ones who must decide when the killing is over.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=218</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Jewish Atheist endorses Bob Barr</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The statue of Jefferson – his memorial so placed that he could keep an eye on the politicians – now sheds a tear, like the Native American seeing the filth that the white man’s civilization brought to his land.


In this case, the pollution is not physical, but mental.  Generations of Americans have been brainwashed to believe that there must be government involvement in every phase of life…and are now being schooled in a permanent war mentality, which makes the government very, very important.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=257</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Dedicated to George Carlin II:  The power of feel-good words</title>
		<description><![CDATA[NOWHERE in this bullshit-saturated campaign would you find evidence that the country has a founding document which limits and enumerates the powers of government.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=271</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Building a Secular Earth</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We must be compassionate and must separate the beliefs (mostly infantile and degrading) from the believer (capable of enlightenment)...and in turn separate those from the merchants of belief: the clerics, who often operate from the darkest of motives and incite people to discrimination and violence.  Even if innocent of these sins, they perpetuate infantile fantasies and enslave people to the ramblings of primitive ancestors. 


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=270</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>&#8220;Diluting&#8221; one&#8217;s Jewishness: Max Feinberg&#8217;s Nazi eugenics</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Pious people who practice the rituals and repeat the songs and stories of a religion …and yet ignore its deeper moral teachings – these are the worst kind of hypocrites.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=269</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On Christie Brinkley&#8217;s husband&#8217;s porno habit</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Once again I am not surprised when the husband of a beautiful woman turns to Internet porn and adulterous affairs.  The husband of Christie Brinkley (she’s still red-hot at 52), is apparently guilty of these things, and his shame follows closely upon that of Elliot Spitzer, who, wed to the elegant Silda, still paid tens of thousands of dollars for pretend sex.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=266</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>In Memoriam, George Carlin: beyond &#8220;fun&#8221; linguistics</title>
		<description><![CDATA[George Carlin did his share of fun linguistics and weird language questions…but he went WAY beyond that to tell the truth about the way we give people, through words, far too much power over us.

The tide of bullshit continues to rise, but Carlin’s statue will never be washed away.  He told the truth.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=264</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>I confess to having seen “Sex and the City” (R).</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My excuse, aside from the fact that it was a date movie, was intellectual.  I wanted to see if, stripped of all the fashion porn and NY glitz (gays must have loved this movie), it reflected my experience (including reading) -- and how it compared with a humanist’s understanding of love.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=263</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>In Memoriam, Tim Russert: an opinion from outside the Beltway</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;The true traitors seem to be occupying the White House itself.  They have repeatedly lied and betrayed the positions of power that we, the people, gave them&#8230;.[T]he media let our nation down.  It&#8217;s clear that the media were mostly cheerleaders and did not do their job in proving the veracity of Bush&#8217;s claims [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=262</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The single most STUPID drug war atrocity (to date)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Drug use is a personal, moral, medical, cultural, and social issue.  It has no place on the federal government's agenda.


In over 30 years I have not seen one iota of change at the national level, and there seem to be only the dimmest prospects.  I now regard the drug war as permanent, like the war in Iraq.  Did I mention that politicians love wars?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=261</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>$5/gallon gas &#8212; can we PLEASE stop burning it for our own amusement?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How many gallons of irreplaceable fossil fuel will be vaporized during this racing season?  The Indy 500 must use thousands upon thousands of gallons.  Daytona, NASCAR, I can’t even begin to name them all…there’s immense social approval for it, as well as lots of logos and money (and with Danica Patrick, sex), so gentlepeople, start your engines.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=253</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Obama nominated; orgy of self-congratulation ensues in Affirmative Action Nation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama's nomination is a triumph of identity politics.  I say “a” triumph because we have many more categories to elevate to national office, each one demonstrating how far we have supposedly come.


We can progress to a female, an Asian, a Hispanic, a gay, maybe even a transsexual or a Secular Humanist (the two are of equal probability), each one taking decades of struggle, each accompanied by an orgy of self-congratulation.  How tolerant we are!

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=260</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On forgiveness, rats, and Scott McClellan</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I suggest that in the case of Scott McClellan, Dr. Mengele, David Dirt, and countless others who murder and torture their human fellow human beings, we withhold our forgiveness (and maintain our distance) until we get the answer to the essential question: Why did you do it if you thought it was wrong?  Did you ever think it was wrong?
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=258</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Secular Humanistic Judaism Classic, V: The soul, the self, and why some whites can’t “bring themselves” to vote for Obama</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Religion is bad for you. It insists upon humiliating people before deities, falsely states that salvation and forgiveness come from deities or in the hereafter (whereas they really come, of course, from human beings), and weds humans to destructive delusional fantasies, with a lot of violent acting out against nonbelievers and other-believers, especially by Muslims.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=256</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Secular Humanistic Judaism Classic, IV: Spirituality &#8212; Real, Fake, and Humanistic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Spirituality is sometimes mistakenly identified with religiosity.  

People who pray, bless/damn others, and talk about divinities a lot may consider themselves to be (and claim the right to regarded as) spiritual.  In Humanistic terms, such spirituality is worthless.

Similarly, when people give religion undue prominence outside their home or place of worship -- when athletes thank Jesus for sports victories, when prayer and creationism force their way into the school day, when politicians bow their heads at prayer breakfasts (in a show of fake humility), when demagogic Black preachers sow fantasy and victimhood among their followers, when Muslim mobs burn the Pope in effigy for quoting what someone said about their religion 600 years ago, or when smug clerics or televangelists explain natural disasters as God’s wrath upon this or that group -- that's religiosity.   

Worthless and harmful.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=255</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Humanistic Judaism Classic, III: God and gods</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Atheism is not a goal, but a product.  It is not a philosophical position, so much as it is the result of being consistent about how we view the world: those things/entities that are demonstrably real are regarded as real.  Those which show no observable evidence of reality are believed to be unreal.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=254</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Secular Humanistic Judaism Classic, II: A scientific perspective on the ancient texts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What would impress me would be the courage to see that deriving all wisdom from the Torah cuts us off from a great deal of learning, tremendously increases our intellectual burden by confronting us with a lot of stuff that’s irrelevant to us, and, worst of all, through selective quoting and other devious techniques, makes us intellectually dishonest and perpetuates the pretense that there is something profound in this often well-meaning but ancient and largely irrelevant document.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=63</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Humanistic Judaism Classic, Part I: The case against theistic religion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Humanity must outgrow the need for the religious fantasies which have given false comfort and set one human being against another for far too long.  Holding onto these fantasies -- and to the antagonisms and grudges they breed -- not only retards one’s development as a human being.  It now endangers the entire human race.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=37</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>New Hope for America: another libertarian in the race</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I haven’t lost hope.  Because I still believe, along with Lincoln, that “America is the last, best hope on earth”   So I’m going to keep libertarian ideas alive until American is ready to hear them...because I still hope that someday, somehow, America will, in Lincoln’s powerful words, have “a new birth of freedom,” and be reborn as a nation where there is truly “liberty and justice for all.”

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=252</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On the stupidity of crowds</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The idea may be called liberty, it may be called individualism or Secular Humanism, it may have various other names.  But its basic message is simple: <em><strong>it is not the stupidity of crowds that should guide our lives and our governments, but the wisdom of the individual, the freedom of the individual, the dignity of the individual.</strong></em>

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=251</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>What are you going to do with your crumbs?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If Americans are struggling, it is because they are taxed half to death.  Families are working two and three and more jobs just keep their heads above water.  The politicians promise relief, but the only actual relief will come in the form of a reduction in the size and power of government and the amount that it forcibly lifts from everyone's bank account.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=250</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Beginning of a dialogue with a believer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I’m not real big on “for God and country.”  In terms of what is worth fighting for, I consider it 0 for 2 (unless it's self-defense).  Both religion and militarism turn off the conscience by getting people to turn rational thought and responsibility over to others.  They become killing machines, praying machines, or both.  When a head of state thinks he acts with divine authority, it usually means a lot of suffering and death.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=235</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Tom and Jerry: A Secular Humanist view of Black religious demagogues</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I like to think of religious good works as a Subway sandwich (or hoagie, as we used to call them in Philadelphia): a lot of good bread, meat, cheese, veggies, and seasonings, and, just before serving, the whole thing is smeared with a thick layer of shit.  



Couldn’t we just skip that last step?
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=249</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The single most hideous drug war death EVER</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What is really necessary is for the national government to step out of drug policy entirely.  It's not in the Constitution, and the states and the people (see the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) can decide these things for themselves.


Drug use is a personal, moral, medical, cultural, and social issue.  It has no place on the federal government's agenda.



In over 30 years -- I have not seen one iota of change at the national level, and there seem to be only the dimmest prospects.  I now regard the drug war as permanent, like the war in Iraq.  Did I mention that politicians love wars?


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=246</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Farewell to Humanistic Judaism (as practiced)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[While amiable humanistic rabbis recount Torah stories, orthodox Muslims are being programmed to destroy themselves and other human beings, to create a Muslim world.  What stands in opposition?  An equally virulent Christianity.  We must be a very loud voice for reason.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=248</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On privacy and fascism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The givernment needs to act more efficiently in the war on terror.  Alas, the fact that they could make up an irrelevant war and sell it and carry it on at $1 trillion a year ($3,300 per person, on average, and that's excluding the Pentagon's operating budget -- another $500 bil) shows the degree of their ineptitude and makes me afraid, very afraid.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=247</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Farewell to &#8220;John Adams&#8221; – but not to the promise of liberty</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Libertarians, like the Founders, are pro-choice on everything that is done peacefully, honestly, and consensually.  Thus, in a libertarian America, conservatives can have their parochial schools and worship services and their free enterprise and small, unintrusive government; liberals can have pot smoking, decadence in the arts, homosexuality, personal liberty and equality, and all manner of religion and unbelief.  Everyone agrees that America is a secular state, with freedom of (and from) religion.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=244</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Farewell to Ratzo: The difference between Catholics and Klingons</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Look at all the respect afforded this charlatan and fantasy-merchant Ratzinger.  When you realize that all the so-called Abrahamic religions are founded on consensual, mutually-maintained psychotic belief systems, with fantasy-based accounts of everything from the origin of the universe to its distant future, you begin to appreciate the amount of consensus-maintenance that must be carried out.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=242</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Ghostwriting for Ratzo: World&#8217;s leading fantasy merchant visits USA</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Pope Benedict XVI is one very bad dude.  He started off studying theater and philosophy, but at some point the God-stuff got to him.  
Cardinal Ratzinger (or “Ratzo,” as we used to call him in seminary – JUST KIDDING!) is an unflinching exponent of the hard line, the straight path.  The one true path, the one way to salvation.  The one Church that Jesus established.  Us.  Ratzo believes it, and he says it, over and over.  

This guy is a true believer, totally invested in a supernatural fantasy.  And since he has more power, more adherents than any other fantasy merchant that I know of, he must be accurately described as "the world's leading fantasy-merchant," his brand-image outstripping even Marlboro and Chevrolet.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=241</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why politicians are NOT funny</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I see how quickly this war was made up and sold, and how easily a supine and suck-up Congress allowed one idiot president and his power-mad cronies to make up and carry out a war that has no end in sight...I am so dumbfounded that I cannot help asking: Are we citizens, subjects, or just well-fed slaves?   
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=238</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why do middle-aged men kill themselves?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Perhaps the success ethic is itself flawed.  Daniel Goleman can write a dozen books on EQ, but the sad and disturbing fact of life is that for all the smiling and networking and elevator speechmaking and EQing one does, there are legions of people – they’re in every profession – who succeed mightily despite obnoxious personal traits…or even because of them! 


By the time he was my age, Adolf Hitler had wrecked a continent and helped cause 50 million deaths.  Pretty impressive for a clever pathological shit who made it big without consulting Dale Carnegie at all. ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=237</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Mixed reviews for Reverend Foley&#8217;s life so far: Good works, evil war, and God-babble (rev.)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To the extent that Reverend Foley is going to Iraq to help soldiers maintain military obedience and execute the insane mission of Bush and his cronies...then yes, he is aiding and abetting evil.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=231</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>There’s a special place in hell for Douglas Feith</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am pretty sure that Douglas Feith does not view war as I do: as a sort of "glory hole," into which young people are sucked by red-white-and-blue words like Glory, Valor, and Honor and Country... and which they are blown out the other side of like excrement, broken, maimed for life, psychologically scarred, or dead.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=236</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Losing Paris and Albania (revised)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What do secular humanists believe in?  The short version:


(1) Human power as the only solution to human problems on earth.
(2) Reality is determined by reason and science, hypothesis and documentation.
(3) Honest use of language -- no saying what you don't mean (notably praying).
(4) Human dignity, individuality and choice are valued above all and are to be respected by religion and government.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=93</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>McCain’s 100 years in Iraq versus “reintroducing America”</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Humility, the ability to admit you were wrong.  That’s the sign of a great nation.  The way we will reclaim world respect is to earn it.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=234</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Bless America?  Damn America?  What’s God got to do with it?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[People whose situation is desperate, who lose faith that there is an end to suffering and indignity in this world, take refuge in fantasy.  Jews have done it too.  They give up on reality and people – which is most unfortunate, since that is the only way Black salvation has taken place.  


Every minute praising Jesus is time that could be spent loving your neighbor and doing good deeds.  We are our own salvation.  Will Blacks <em>en masse</em> ever face this truth?



If brave civil rights workers had not stood up to the fire hoses in Selma, Alabama…Jesus or Mary would not have done it for them.  Martin Luther King put himself in the line of fire, but Jesus didn’t take the bullet for him.  


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=233</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Watching &#8220;John Adams&#8221;: it was about LIBERTY!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Above all, Americans found they preferred protected serfdom to liberty (see Hayek, <em>The Road to Serfdom</em>).  Thus we have government confiscating 1/6 of our national wealth for farm subsidies, price supports, corporate welfare, Social Security, all manner of government preferences, grants, and handouts, a $40 billion-a-year war against drug use (inflicting grievous harm on America and other nations without limit), and two actual shooting wars, with the potential of skyrocketing taxes and deficits.   Foreigners own huge portions of our debt, and we continue to run up the tab.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=232</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Reply to Anthony Stanford: Religion loses another; welcome, Anthony!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Abandoning religion is an enormous unburdening!  No longer do you have to worry about the church’s doctrines controlling your life...or about what God thinks, says, wants, or means in this or that Bible passage.  You are absolutely free to seek the truth wherever you want and not to feel guilty or excluded or ostracized.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=230</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Contribution to Blogswarm against Theocracy: Religion, politics, and the Vortex of Evil</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Where the two axes -- insane, inhumane religion and politics -- intersect and take over whole societies…where politicians claim the guidance and blessing of divine beings…where people suffer and die for mistaken, horribly wrong ideas – there we find the Vortex of Evil…and the bottomless pit of human misery.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=229</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Happy anniversary to an American tragedy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[An America that sees the world in good/evil terms, an America that acts violently, arrogantly and without restraint...such a country simply multiplies its enemies -- and urges other nations to act the same way.  James Madison said that “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=228</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Obama in Philly: Speechwriter&#8217;s analysis of an &#8220;instant classic&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I do not believe the Framers sought to create "a more perfect union" in the universal, Oprah -- or even the Humanistic -- sense.  They knew that there'd be conflicts.  The phrase refers to their efforts to draw the boundaries between State and Federal power. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make that intention clear (to me, at least).
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=227</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why are there prostitutes?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What really bugs me is the way the sex trade exploits men’s weaknesses and REALLY makes them pay for the fake titillation.  WHAT EXACTLY is worth $1,000 an hour?   The high-class call girl is up there in the CEO pay range.   She’s getting the same compensation as executives who are responsible for billions of dollars of assets and thousands of jobs!

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=226</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Heretical remark on “diversity” orthodoxy triggers high-tech lynching</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In a manner that could never have happened a few decades ago, the rhythms and idioms of Black culture permeate Obama’s campaign.  He speaks in the cadences and images of Black preaching.  He dances.  He's just religious enough (in a Black way).  He’s hip.  He’s whatever you want him to be.  He is just Black enough – an AFRICAN African-American.  Oprah endorses him.  There’s a lot of BS about how it’s “time” for a Black President.



So Geraldine Ferraro spoke the truth -- Obama IS lucky -- in a nation besotted by diversity dogma and identity politics.  And in a society where speaking the truth on this subject is taboo, she was lynched as a heretic.  Because it seems the only sign of progress in America today is a minority achieving some high rank, never mind how incompetent they are.  


Alternatively, I would consider it a sign of progress in America if the government showed any signs of returning to its Constitutional limits, but that’s not going to happen.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=225</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A Secular Humanist’s Axis of Evil</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Where the two axes -- insane, inhumane religion and politics -- intersect and take over whole societies…where political leaders believe that they act on a deity’s advice and with his blessing, where people attack each other and suffer and die for mistaken, horribly wrong ideas spouted by insane clerics and politicians – there we find the Nexus of Evil…and the bottomless pit of human misery.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=222</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On religion, drugs, and the question of whether Moses was stoned</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Although many religious believers find that non-thinking comes naturally and is the path of least resistance, others, as science progresses, have to fight harder and harder to hold on to their faith.  There is much talk of Faith and Doubt (often capitalized).



It takes a lot of effort to maintain belief in nothing, and I sometimes feel sorry for them.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=221</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Oprah and Eckhart launch an O-gasm of BS</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ I hereby challenge Opera to make <em>The God Delusion</em> her book of choice.  If their faith is so strong, let it grapple with Dawkins’s mighty doubt.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=220</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Naps and Face-Time: bosses must wake up to the realities of humane management</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What is wrong with bosses and managers, that they insist on face time and prohibit afternoon naps?  They've already claimed a good two-thirds of people's lives, if not most of their waking lives, with ever-growing jobs and ubiquitous technology.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=219</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Another nail in the coffin of Creationism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The beauty of science is revealed to us via the patient pursuit of evidence.  The more we investigate, the more wondrous our universe seems.  However, there is no evidence for the events in the book of Genesis.  It is a storybook, not an actual record of events.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=217</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Flip-through review of “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life&#8217;s Purpose,” by Ekhart Tolle</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you find you have a mission…well done!  Maybe 2% of us get to make money at something that completely fulfills us.  If not, don’t worry about it too much.  Simply dealing with life with a modicum of tranquility, acceptance, and self-awareness is enough of a challenge.  Tolle and Oprah shouldn't make us wade through hundreds of pages of BS to get to these simple truths.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=212</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>It’s official: Obama is definitely a BS artist, maybe a plagiarist</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sigh. Iraq, unbelievable as it is, looks like Viet Nam in slo-mo, without the draft, and with a lower body count.  But at this rate, how long will it take before this war and the resulting terrorist acts tear America apart, put severe pressure on the politicians, and convince American leadership that world empire just isn’t worth it?   



It took about 12 years for the entire arc of the Vietnam debacle.  Say….35 for Iraq?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=216</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>“Invasion”: Rooting for the aliens</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What’s so bad about promoting the oneness of humanity?  We are genetically one species; we don’t even have Neanderthals to kick around.   This fact, to a Humanist, is far more important than our different colors and stories, over which people kill each other.  I think Jesus, if he existed, would agree with that.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=215</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Darwin Day/How much respect do religious believers deserve?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I can only guess at the deep psychological and existential needs that motivate believers to cling to their religious fantasies and rituals, but as long as they do cling to them, they will continue to threaten the very intellectual foundation of our civilization...and to drag us backwards to the days when heretics were tortured and burned (that's what they would like to do to us today, but they have to settle for anger -- and taking over the government and the schools).
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=213</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Missin’ Ron Paul Blues; what real change looks like</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I'm sorry, folks, we have the wrong guy playing Ron Paul.  Maybe Romney should play him.  Maybe Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck should play him.  Maybe Fred Thompson should play him.  

But it's too late -- Ron Paul is already cast as Ron Paul.  The closest we can come would be to have Clint Eastwood run, because Eastwood is a bona fide libertarian, and he would have the star power of Schwarzenegger, if not more.


But we are stuck with Ron Paul.  Does he look exasperated or amazed (another knock)?  Perhaps his eyebrows do seem a bit high.  But so what?  Maybe Ron Paul IS amazed -- at what his country has become.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=211</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Evolution vs. Genesis &#8212;  no contest</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The scientific point of view is true by virtue of reason.  The creationist point of view is true by reason of faith.  It’s your mind.  How do you choose to believe?
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=210</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Idiocracy II: the sequel</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let's say, in a country that thinks no deeper than advertising slogans, a competent candidate presents himself for President.  In a society where identity and gender politics have run amok, an articulate, competent person can rise to national prominence if he/she is the right gender and color, and this fellow certainly is: he is -- get this -- not even African-American.  


Not in the usual sense, anyway.  He is LITERALLY African-American.  He is half-white and half-African.  Now is that high-concept, or what?


In this Idiocracy of the future, the same can be said of the mega-talkshow hostess who decides to support his campaign.  She gets lots of points for being the right gender and color. If she were white and male, she would still be a competent newscaster.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=209</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Blogswarm Day of Shame invitation and reply: Colin Powell – Ultimate team player sells out his country</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Though my life has been insignificant compared to his, I will never have to deal with the kind of guilt that must weigh upon Colin's shoulders.  I too consider myself an American patriot.  And I will never let my country down the way he did on that shameful day.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=208</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The many names of God, part two: same old, same old</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The goal is understanding: What possible good can it do us to keep spinning out stories of comfort, deliverance, and salvation at the hands of mysterious nonentities?  What deep human needs – to belong, to exclude, to find (or invent) meaning, to explain the unexplainable, to face death, and many more – must drive otherwise intelligent people to construct such elaborate, fantastic rationales for their faiths and fears?  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=207</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Political semantics: Liberal, Conservative, “change,” and other betrayals</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With both parties preaching more government -- one party using it to enforce its concepts of social justice and economic equality; the other party using it to control personal behavior -- there will be, as a result of the 2008 election...more government!

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=205</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Going to war over P; life lessons from Saddam Hussein</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Saddam's invasion of Kuwait –- and all of the chaos and death that followed -- was triggered by an insult over sex!  Kuwait's leader said he would not stop flooding the oil market "until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute."


Saddam was enraged.  He vowed revenge upon this desecrator of Iraqi womanhood, whom his sons were probably raping at that moment.  


I know, it’s weird.  But in many cultures, no matter how cruelly you treat women, the thought of someone else violating your personal P, even verbally, is intolerable.  It must be punished by violence and death.  And that's what Saddam ordered.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=204</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Mr. Huckabee, tear down that flag!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is disingenuous in the extreme for Southerners to pretend that they don't know how Black people react to the Confederate flag.  The only reason to keep it up there is the same demented logic that results in displays of nooses and other racially sensitive symbols: a reminder that some people haven't forgotten the good old days and wouldn’t mind bringing them back.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=203</link>
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		<title>The many names of God, part one: anticipation, revulsion, and prediction</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let's go over it one more time: there is no conflict between evolution and the Bible, not because of whatever mealy-mouthed word games I'm going to find in this article, but because one is a story written from the imagination of human beings long ago, while the other is an account of the way things actually used to be in our world, based on the evidence that we have found so far.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=202</link>
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		<title>Good Jews, bad manners</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If your religion is humanistic, and someone offers you hospitality, you accept it.  I can even quote the Torah to that effect.  


In Genesis, Chapter 18, Abraham is visited by three strangers.  The passage shows that Abraham took great pains to feed his guests who, conspicuously, did not turn away his food because of their peculiar dietary laws.  As the Torah says, "he waited on them under the tree and they ate" (Genesis 18:8).

But if your religion is ahumanistic, you place imaginary deities and their arbitrary commands ABOVE the offering of your host.  You spurn your host's offerings, you bring your own food instead, as evidence of your piousness and religiosity.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=201</link>
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		<title>Vain sacrifice: John McCain and the glory of war</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The tragedy of John McCain's life -- and of the 4,000 US military people who have already died in Iraq, and the 56,000 who died in Vietnam, and countless more -- is that their sacrifices are indeed in vain, just what McCain says he's going to avoid.  






They are in vain because they are in the service of gutless politicians who make up wars on false pretexts and send young people off to suffer and die.  They are in vain because politicians' wars do not make the world better or safer for America.  Quite the opposite.  They are in vain because these young people are not given a clear mission, at the end of which their suffering and dying will be over…so what, exactly, did they die for?

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=199</link>
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		<title>The next 9/11</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We must make them play a different game.  We must have the guts, the balls, to declare fundamentalist Islam to be the fantasy-based psychosis that it is.  



Like all theistic religion, it is an appalling waste of effort and life on imaginary events that did not happen and deities that do not exist.  Like them, it demands vast amount of respect it does not deserve (instead of praying five times a day, why don’t they do five good deeds or make five non-Muslim friends?).   
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=198</link>
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		<title>Hillary’s veil of tears</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hillary really believes in public service.  She once described herself as a “policy junkie,” by which she means “someone who likes to dream up ways for the government to run your life.”   Look at that heath-care plan she made up.  That’s policy porn for a girl like Hillary.   
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=197</link>
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		<title>Paul withdrawal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dr. Paul should really watch his mouth when he talks about “war” on religion.  He should realize that he is using one of the most incendiary and overused words in the language. Often the use of this word is accompanied by the abandonment of reason.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=196</link>
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		<title>Benazir Bhutto is dead.  ENOUGH!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The truth is that there is no divinity; that divine interventions and impossible events did not happen; that human beings are responsible (to one degree or another) for their fates on earth; and that clerics of all kinds, after hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary, encourage the maintenance of belief in willfully shared delusions such as the literal truth of the Bible or Quran.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=195</link>
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		<title>Bounteous opium crop could be great news – but not today</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the national politician with the courage to object to the obscene, unconstitutional war on drugs?   As has been frequently observed, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.   

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=194</link>
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		<title>On Benazir Bhutto, Will Smith, and good and evil</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Whatever will induce a person to destroy him or herself, along with countless other innocent people, in exchange for an immediate trip to an imagined paradise, merely on the say-so of another deluded psychotic…such a thing is vile and poisonous and contrary to every principle of human dignity and well-being.  Whatever the correct name for this culture of fantasy and death, this perversion, this sickness, it is definitely not “religion.”  ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=191</link>
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		<title>Got ink!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I, along with Dawkins and many others, would just like more-balanced coverage.  Ultimately, I would like to see religion accorded the importance it deserves, which, to us Humanists, is little or zilch.
 
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=189</link>
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		<title>Happy Eid!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It's just a story.  Abraham and Isaac never did anything for humanity.  My favorite name-out-of-a-hat alternative is Julius Rosenwald.  Nobody knows anything about him, yet he was a great, generous Jew who did much more for humanity than Abraham and Isaac put together, since he was one of the major philanthropists of the 20th century.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=188</link>
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		<title>An infinity of synapses: Music, God, and the brain</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Many of us Humanists are tired of being non-people.   I for one would like to see the Immunity Idol taken from the hands of the priests, rabbis, and “radical Shiite clerics” (is that a job description?).  I would like to see religion subjected to the same verifiability criteria as other things that people claim to be true.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=187</link>
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		<title>Humanistic fellowship, Festivus, and the rest of us</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Humanists should use sites like meetup.com, organizations like the Brights and Center for Inquiry, Facebook, and other ways to find each other and generate a “community of believers.”  



Like religious folks, we come in all shapes and sizes.  Unlike them, we’re looking for answers in entirely different places.  We’re good people trying to live good lives without God.  But first, we have to shake hands and get acquainted.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=186</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Idiocracy 2: the sequel</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let's say, in a country that thinks no deeper than advertising slogans, a competent candidate presents himself for president.  In a society where identity and gender politics have run amok, an articulate, competent person can rise to national prominence if they are the right gender and color, and this fellow certainly is: he is -- get this -- not even African-American.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=184</link>
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		<title>Latest from Willard/Mitt: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The real issue is: does the politician really believe?  It doesn't matter whether it's some Mormon fantasy or some Christian or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu fantasy.  If they believe it’s truth, then they should not be in charge of the affairs of state.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=182</link>
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		<title>Praisin’ Jesus: gospel music, religious mesmerism, and mind control</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To the extent that people embrace religion, they have actively given up on salvation through human action in this world.  They show that they've given up on themselves and other people by putting things in God's hands, praying/begging God for favors, and preparing for an afterlife.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=180</link>
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		<title>Intelligent design: House of fog, foundation of sand</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Intelligent design and creationism are houses of fog built on sand.  They are desperate attempts to warp science education, by people who really, really want to believe in religion.  

<em><strong>The real question is not “Which version is true?” but ”Why do they cling to their fantasies?”</strong></em>

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=178</link>
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		<title>In defense of crazy ideas</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The true Secular Humanist feels deep compassion for people trapped and enslaved by religious myths, trekking on their pilgrimages, separating their milk and meat, waging their wars, mutilating their virgins, humiliating women in general, obsessing over their holy texts, munching their wafers, prostrating themselves with their butts in the air (classic primate submissive posture), and chanting, praying, and singing their obedience to invisible divine authority in endless, degrading services and rituals.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=177</link>
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	<item>
		<title>The babbling species: Homo loquens and Homo sapiens</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Language is what makes us distinctively human.  Other species can communicate, but only human language can do certain things that make it very powerful -- too powerful, in fact, for humans to operate without a license.  The careless use of language is one of the reasons why religious and political fantasies persist and even gain strength. 
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=152</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Letter to the Trib: On religion in the media</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The reporting of every religious story, every religious festival, should be accompanied by quotes from kind, thoughtful Humanists -- and there are many, starting with Richard Dawkins -- to the effect that the religious fantasies being celebrated did not in fact occur and that continuing religious belief may indeed be bad for humanity.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=176</link>
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	<item>
		<title>An atheist&#8217;s definition of God - and why people still believe</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I do not mean to imply that God is not real to the people who believe in him.  There is abundant evidence that <strong>the reality created by the mind can be perceived <em>by</em> the mind as identical to reality produced from outside</strong>, i.e., from the sense organs.  Classic examples include hallucinations, psychoses, phantom limb pain -- in fact, many psychosomatic illnesses, including chronic pain that seems to have no physiological basis.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=7</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A Thanksgiving challenge to religious believers: just go cold turkey!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I just read about a prayer network of Christians who pray for celebrities  (Chicago Tribune, 11/20/07).  It&#8217;s sad to see well-meaning people wasting their time when they could be out enjoying themselves or helping others. 
Also, Thanksgiving is upon us, which means a lot of thanking of God and similar chimeras.
Amidst an ongoing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=12</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Muslim fanaticism and barbarism: a result of inbreeding?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So about the Muslims, one cannot resist asking: Is there a connection between centuries of marrying your cousins…and the perseverance of childish beliefs and animalistic behaviors?   Have the critical faculties which lead to tolerance and secularism been permanently stunted?   Does the Muslims’ combination of inbreeding and relentless indoctrination guarantee a supply of fanatics and <em>jihadis</em> who will plague us until the end of human history?
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=175</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Mired in folly: religion, politics and the war in Iraq</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There is no way to stabilize all of this cobbled-together country long-term because of ineradicable religious grudges; Bush and cronies were too ignorant of history to realize that.  I cannot see religious/sectarian violence ever going away.  Too many people are invested in its stories; too many people benefit from it.  There are too many Quran true-believers for Muslims to live peacefully in the world.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=174</link>
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		<title>The Ron Paul candidacy: time for Americans to put up or shut up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The truth is that Ron Paul and all libertarians represent the core beliefs OF OUR NATION'S FOUNDERS about the role of government.  Generations of devious politicians and their obedient citizen/subjects collaborated to create the nanny/welfare state that is America today.  They have sold out the founding principle of LIBERTY in exchange for "security."
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=173</link>
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		<title>Blog supplement to “This Week in God” ®: Praying for rain</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.”
Elias Canetti
I first started reporting Stupid Religious Tricks some time ago, when I realized that “This Week in God” couldn’t keep up with them.  Now that the whole show is off the air (writers’ strike), [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=172</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Believing in something</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Religious believers are acting out a mutual fantasy, fake for some, but very real – albeit subjectively – for others.  They are pretending someone is listening, pretending their prayers are heard, pretending that God lets or makes things happen on earth, pretending their texts are sacred and literally true (or true with lots of spin, as in the case of liberal clerics) pretending that ritual objects are other than what they are, pretending, pretending, pretending.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=42</link>
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		<title>Losing Iran and Pakistan</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Fundamentalist Muslims have shown in most cases that they cannot organize any higher than a tribe.  Holding a country together – a country run by strangers, in societies where most Muslims still marry their cousins -- requires a cultural change and a level of sophistication of which many of them may not be capable.  Failing that, it’s dictatorship or monarchy.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=171</link>
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		<title>Lord Cheney</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We are fortunate to have the Web as a snapshot measure of what’s on the minds of the billion or so people now online.  Cheney now occupies a prominent place in our consciousness: A Google search of “Cheney and “evil” turned up 185,000 hits.  There were over 60,000 hits for “Cheney” and “Darth Vader.”  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=169</link>
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		<title>Religion fails to save young men, with violent results</title>
		<description><![CDATA[P drives history, and clerics and politicians have found that if they regulate the availability of P, by maintaining traditions of marriage and other civil and church law; by illegalizing prostitution and lionizing chastity; by making rape a military tactic; by setting rigid rules of courtship; by genital mutilation; by creating caste systems and passing laws of matrimony and patrimony; by enforcing rigid and arbitrary rules of morality in sexual behavior; and in countless other ways… they found THEY COULD CONTROL THE FLOW OF AND ACCESSIBILITY TO P  – and thereby exercise power over both men and women, indefinitely (the most powerful men get the best P on earth; believers get it in paradise).

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=166</link>
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		<title>Gangsters and real criminals</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Why are there gangsters, gangs, gangbangers?  There are many complex reasons, perhaps some yet to be discovered, but one theme is never absent: PROHIBITION.  Gangs exist to run enterprises deemed morally unacceptable by the state.  They facilitate immensely risky and profitable black markets.  Al Capone referred to himself, accurately, as a “businessman.”]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=164</link>
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		<title>&#8220;Rendition&#8221; – a great old word acquires a sinister new connotation (and other political abuses of language)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One kind of language change that I like to observe – and a constant trend of the last half-century or more -- is that governments and other organizations continue to spew out euphemisms that cover deeds ranging from questionable to unspeakable.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=161</link>
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		<title>On the Colbert candidacy (3): Keep laughing, America!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Many of you (us) are politically active and/or support some libertarian or anti-government-waste or taxpayers-rights organization.  But they’re just nibbling at the margins of the problem: a government that has far outgrown its Constitutional limits…and that arrogantly continues to grow.



Things wouldn’t be as bad as they are if most Boomers and Xers weren’t such apathetic pussies, swallowing politicians’ promises before they get elected, after which the politicians shove their policies down your throats.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=160</link>
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		<title>On the Colbert candidacy (2): Keep laughing, America!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am probably the only person in America who suffers from Stephen Colbert over-exposure.  I think it struck me the moment I saw him on the cover of <em>Parade</em> Magazine, detailing his triumphs over adversity.  I didn’t read it.  Then he’s on Larry King, coyly avoiding the question of whether he will run.  He’s all over the place.  



There is nothing wrong with entertainment, but when Colbert exercises this kind of cultural influence, there’s an obligation that comes along with it.  I don’t know what that would be.  It’s his life, after all, and people like him and Oprah have to decide how to use their enormous power.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=159</link>
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	<item>
		<title>RELIGIO-fascism Awareness Week (Month, Year)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let’s never forget that Islamo-fascism is mirrored by an equally odious and pervasive Christian fascism, which threatens to run America by the principles of the Bible.  Since the Bible is an ancient text that’s barely relevant to modern life, that is a really dumb idea.


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=158</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Obama panders to African-American churchgoers, stirs evil brew of religious and political fantasies</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Religious beliefs are childish fantasies based on faith.  Humanity should have abandoned them ages ago, and might have – if politicians everywhere had not found them so advantageous, had not insisted on running whole societies according to their ancient stories.



Ancient religion cannot be the basis for the government of a modern real-world nation.   For politicians to consciously maintain religious fantasies is to lock voters in a childlike state in which anything is believable if the right authorities say it is.  As many secular Americans (including a letter writer in today’s Trib) have pointed out, we need a government based on facts, not faith.


It often seems to me that the worse a people’s life – the less control they have over things -- the more they turn to Orthodox religion, which gives them an explanatory fantasy (including an afterlife that’s much better then this one), as well as some demons to blame (Sunnis, Jews, whites, etc.).  Mediaeval Jews with hellish lives created the phantasmagorical Kabbalah, perhaps even without hallucinatory drugs.  


]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=157</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Torah police issue two citations against rabbinical shenanigans</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am a self-designated Torah Cop.  I'm a police force of one, dedicated to the honest, respectful treatment of the Five Books of Moses.  No spin.  



Honesty and courage, another Humanistic value, compel me to respect the Torah for what it is: an ancient text from, perhaps, the eighth century B.C.E., with multiple authors, archaeologically unprovable history, and, of course, impossible divine events and interventions.

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=156</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Please, no more debates about God’s existence!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The real debate is not about whether God exists.  It’s about how we use our minds to decide WHAT exists: Do we use scientific knowledge of reality and experience (including hypothesis and conjecture) in order to decide what’s real?  Or do we take the religious path and believe impossible stories because influential people and large groups insist they’re true? 
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=150</link>
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		<title>Spiritual practice: self-acceptance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just as important as my venomous diatribes against organized religion...are the posts on secular spiritual practice. Rabbi Wine always taught that humanists had to be FOR something, and so I want to give appropriate attention to what Secular Humanism offers as the alternative to religious ritual and practice.]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=155</link>
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	<item>
		<title>On the Colbert candidacy: Keep laughing, America!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There is nothing wrong with entertainment, but when Colbert exercises this kind of cultural influence, there’s an obligation that comes along with it.  I don’t know what that would be.  It’s his life, after all, and he and people like Oprah have to decide how to use their enormous power.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=153</link>
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		<title>In memoriam/post-Ramadan message for Muslims</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If life on earth is shitty enough, orthodox religion will always find psychotic, easily-molded losers for these suicide bombings.  The more orthodox rthe religion, the more desperate and psychotic the losers.  However, even educated people can fall for religious insanity, if it resonates with some deep need they have.  We're talking about two different "parts" of the mind.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=138</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Politicians play word games while Americans die</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Bush has no ideas of his own...and limited mental resources (not helped by all the booze and coke), so he relies on Daddy's friends and connections.  He'll believe whatever they say to believe, whether it's Laura pushing God or Cheney pushing war.
]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=154</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Mormon Dreams: The dangers of delusional politicians</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The real issue is: does the politician really believe?  It doesn't matter whether it's some Mormon fantasy or some Christian or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu fantasy.  If they believe it’s truth, then they should not be in charge of the affairs of state.  

]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=151</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Secular Humanist meets all kinds of Jews: Relative religious encounters</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Religion, n.  A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
Ambrose Bierce
Here’s my report on the religious beliefs of our family, the result of conversations – or previous acquaintance – with various family members at a recent gathering (I really tried not to talk about religion, but sometimes it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=149</link>
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	<item>
		<title>On workiness</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“The dignity of a man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.&#8221;
Martin Esslin
A reader offered some thoughtful observations on my entry on “Self-Acceptance.” 
You can read it verbatim. 
He raises some very provocative questions about how we view work, seek ever more possessions, and escape basic questions of life by running [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=148</link>
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		<title>End marijuana prohibition NOW</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“War is the health of the state.”
Randolph Bourne
It&#8217;s disgusting to watch Presidential candidates maintain the hypocrisy of the drug war.  
McCain says that medical marijuana is unnecessary; there are better remedies for pain. With all the pain he&#8217;s suffered, I&#8217;m amazed he hasn&#8217;t discovered the efficacy of cannabis.  Perhaps it might have helped [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=114</link>
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		<title>Being in the office: Inhumane, infantilizing face-time ethic lives on – and on</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Measure not dispatch by the time of sitting, but by the advancement of the business.”
Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, “Of Dispatch”
An article by Barbara Rose, in the October 1 Chicago Tribune, announces, “Hours, not output, still dominate.”  
It was greatly disheartening to me to read, after 22 years of corporate experience (and 400 years after Bacon&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=147</link>
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		<title>Self-acceptance: dayenu</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;I just turned 65 last month, which is about as festive as walking into a brick wall, but I&#8217;m okay now.  And when I look back on my messy life with all the wrong turns and failures in days I wish I could rewrite, and then I think of the shining child whose picture [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=145</link>
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		<title>The man who would be Führer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.  There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.”  
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Leaves from a Notebook,” 1903
“We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.”
Stephen Vincent Benet, “Litany for Dictatorships,” 1935
Since this blog is intentionally low tech, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=144</link>
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		<title>Quotes from a Year of Silence</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Zen wants absolute freedom, even from God.”
D.T. Suzuki
&#8220;Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and device that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.  Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=143</link>
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		<title>Zionism 101: Brief tutorial for the President of Iran</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“O Jerusalem of gold, of brass and of light,
For all your songs
I will be your harp.”
Traditional Hebrew song
Dear Mahmoud:
You are causing much unnecessary grief with your calls for Israel&#8217;s elimination.  Give it a rest.  It&#8217;s not going to happen, and it should not.
To explain why, I need to give you a short course [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=85</link>
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		<title>Capitalist Fables: Horatio Alger lives on!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[WALL STREET JOURNAL CARTOON
Manager, in samurai gear, to employees: “The Protestant work ethic isn’t cutting it, so we’re switching to Shinto.”
“Justice, justice shall you pursue.”
Deuteronomy 16:20
I just read a Wall Street Journal review of the book How Starbucks Changed My Life.  At first I thought that either the review or the book &#8212; or [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=142</link>
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		<title>More religious stunts: The blather about the binding of Isaac story</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of God.  It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men.  There are but a few good characters in the whole book.”
Thomas Paine
“The Bible, itself the ultimate curse, is an [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=140</link>
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		<title>Yom Kippur atonement I: sins of others</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Albert Camus taught that every human being has responsibility for all humanity.  We are our brother’s keeper, and we atone for his sins as if they were our own.  The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, said:  ‘If a man has beheld evil, you may know that it was shown [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=139</link>
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		<title>Happy New Year!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increased noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.  Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.&#8221;
Jean Arp
If you live anywhere in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=137</link>
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		<title>Humanism, life, death, religion, and comfort</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“THEOLOGY—An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms not worth knowing.”
H.L. Mencken
Here is a message I received via e-mail from a valued friend and colleague &#8211;and fellow musician:
“Here&#8217;s something I wound up telling someone the other day.  I&#8217;m an atheist, and I have no trouble with the presumed spiritual &#8216;loss&#8217; that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=136</link>
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		<title>Sept. 11, 2007 blogswarm: No war with Iran!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;A house divided against itself cannot stand.&#8221;
Abraham Lincoln
&#8220;War [is] like children&#8217;s fights &#8212; all meaningless, pitiless, and contemptible.&#8221;
Jallaludin Rumi
Two hundred and thirty-one years ago, a group of courageous British colonials put their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” on the line.  They risked everything to create a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=135</link>
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		<title>Reply to Osama: No, YOU convert!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There ain’t no answer.  There ain’t going to be any answer.  There never has been an answer.  That’s the answer.”
Gertrude Stein
I just heard that Osama bin Laden, that most reclusive of media stars, has made a new video, again [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=134</link>
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		<title>“The Process of Awakening”: secular humanism censored yet again</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Where you are wanted,
Go a little.
Where you are not wanted,
Don’t go at all.”
Jacob Perlman
I have in other writings discussed the deliberate or perhaps even inadvertent omission of the secular humanist viewpoint from the mass media.  In every newspaper or TV story about religion, the beliefs are regarded as valid and taken seriously and no [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=133</link>
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		<title>Agnosticism: hypocrisy, cowardice… or just pussyfootin’ around?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Agnostic: One who doesn’t know whether God exists, but is afraid to say so loudly, in case God might hear him.”
Eugene E. Brussell
It&#8217;s clear from the title of this post that I have little sympathy for agnostics.  But it&#8217;s not as if I haven&#8217;t tried.
After many years of work, after much effort to achieve [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=132</link>
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		<title>Labor Day, 2007</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;The more you want people to have creative ideas and solve difficult problems, the less you can afford to manage them with terror.&#8221;
Daniel Greenberg
Chairman, Electro Rent Corp.
Seventy years ago this year, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, staged an acrimonious sit-down strike; it was a watershed moment (some would say a low [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=131</link>
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		<title>Let&#8217;s get spiritual!  The many meanings of &#8220;spirituality&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.&#8221;
Confucius
I recently heard some women discussing a &#8220;women&#8217;s spirituality group.&#8221;  They wanted to determine whether there was such a thing as &#8220;female spirituality&#8221;?
It&#8217;s impossible to say, since no one can really be sure what someone else means when he/she uses this word.
Spirituality is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=15</link>
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		<title>In the interest of interfaith brotherhood</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Jonathan Swift
I just read about a Reform Rabbi addressing a convention of Muslims in the spirit of outreach.  Good idea!
And good theater.  There was fake humility on the part of the Rabbi (“We know nothing about [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=130</link>
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		<title>Separating the belief from the believer; more on God and government</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You cannot reason a man out of something he did not reason his way into.”
Jonathan Swift
&#8220;Stolen souls&#8221;
A commentator (whose comment I mistakenly deleted) asks me how religious believers can ask for respect, when they [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=129</link>
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		<title>Humanism’s Warriors</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Where is my light?
My light is in me.
Where is my strength?
My strength is in me.
Where is my hope?
My hope is in me.
And in you.”
Humanist anthem,
Rabbi Sherwin Wine
The word &#8220;warrior&#8221; is much in use these days, mostly as a term of approval.  It&#8217;s good to be a warrior!  In sports, it&#8217;s a compliment.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=128</link>
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		<title>Rabbi Wine and Reverend Graham</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”
Voltaire
Yet another book about Billy Graham (The Preacher and the Presidents, by Gibbs and Duffy) has just been published.  There must be a whole library of them by now.  It&#8217;s interesting that it should appear so soon after the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=127</link>
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		<title>Desperately seeking reality: second-lifers pursue third lives online</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.”
Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (1945)
Is anyone else as worried as I am about the number of people who now have complete second lives on the Internet?
Seductiveness of the Internet
Back in the day, when I was tapping out word processing documents on the monochrome screen of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=125</link>
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		<title>Why is Mitt Romney still a candidate for President?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“If you ever injected truth into politics, you [would] have no politics.”
Will Rogers
Why is Mitt Romney still a candidate for President?   I am by no means the first to point out that his recent statement that his five military-eligible sons are serving the country by helping him run for President represents a new [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=126</link>
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		<title>A humanist’s guide to behavior at religious services: first thoughts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.&#8221;
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary
&#8220;Prayers are to [people] as dolls are to children.  They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.&#8221;
Samuel Butler, &#8220;Unprofessional Sermons&#8221;
Since 90% of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=124</link>
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		<title>One-sided dialog with a believer, part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own &#8212; a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.&#8221;
Albert Einstein
A few posts ago (see One-sided dialog, Part 1), I began responding to a July 14 letter to the Chicago Tribune, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=123</link>
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		<title>Pointless?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“We want lives of simple, predictable ease – smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see – but God likes to go off-road.  He provokes us with twists and turns.  He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension – and yet don’t. By his love and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=122</link>
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		<title>PDB Blogswarm contribution: anniversary of the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[They could have known about 9/11.  They could have prevented it, just with the information and tools they had.  They needed no new laws, no new infringements on individual freedom.  
But they did not want to know.  And so Dubya sat, for nine whole minutes after the first tower had been [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=120</link>
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		<title>Life before death</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Peacefully they will die…and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death.  But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall  allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.” 
Fyodor Dostoevsky
An email correspondent writes:
“From an atheistic point of view&#8230;..what has now happened to Rabbi Wine&#8217;s spirit?  Has [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=119</link>
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		<title>One-sided dialog with a believer, part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Fear was the gods’ begetter in this world.”
Petronius
I am convinced that the victory over religious superstition must be three-pronged, dealing with physical evidence (e.g., astronomy, physics, biology &#8212; how can horrible genetic mutations be the result of “intelligent design”?)…intellectual logic (“who made God?”…or “how can God allow evil” &#8212; and other, more sophisticated word-battles)…and language, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=118</link>
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		<title>Giving up God</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[Stendhal] robbed me of the best atheist joke which precisely I could have made: ‘God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.’”
Nietzsche
An email correspondent writes:
“Perhaps being both Jewish and an atheist is easier because you can give up God without feeling that you&#8217;re giving up everything, while a Christian feels that he/she is giving [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=117</link>
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		<title>Mormon Dreams: the dangers of a delusional politician</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure weithout a substructure.&#8221;
Ambrose Bierce
A few weeks ago, a Time magazine cover story was concerned with what Mormon Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney believes.  Once again, Time grappled with the thorny issue of a politician&#8217;s non-Protestant religious doctrines.  More recently, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=77</link>
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		<title>Dayenu/carrying on</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“An inch ahead…total darkness.”
Buddhist saying
“Beliving in God is religion only if you are intimidated by God.  If…you stand up straight and refuse to surrender you may be a humanist…Denouncing God is not very useful.  Pursuing dignity is.”
Sherwin Wine
By now every person whose life was touched by Rabbi Wine feels gut-punched by fate.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=116</link>
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		<title>Letter to the Chicago Tribune: Where&#8217;s Sherwin?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[(I emailed this letter today.)
Dear Voice of the People:
It has been several days since the death of Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, and I wait in vain for a follow-up piece.  A profile, perhaps.  Even better: an opportunity for you to acquaint your readers with a truly great man and to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=115</link>
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		<title>For Sherwin: believing in something</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Judaism is a human creation, as are all putatively immutable faiths.  Humanism has the last word.”
Joseph Chuman, “The Courage and Creativity of Sherwin Wine”
By now a tidal wave of tribute to Sherwin Wine is building within the world of people who knew, loved, and followed him, and deservedly so.
It&#8217;s a disappointingly small part of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=113</link>
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		<title>In memoriam: Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As those in the secular-humanistic community, and perhaps others besides, already know, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, died yesterday in a car accident.
This was the sort of man who comes along only a few times in a century: a nearly-unique combination of humor, brilliance, charisma, empathy, courage and integrity.   

That he [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=112</link>
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		<title>Religion really DOES poison everything</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
George Bernard Shaw
Religion corrupts the mind.
In these writings I’ve mostly been concerned with the harmfulness of religious beliefs at the personal level – you have to silence [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=111</link>
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		<title>A one-sided dialogue with religious believers, Part I</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;As long as every question is answered by the word &#8216;god,&#8217; no scientific inquiry is possible.&#8221;
&#8220;The churches have no confidence in each other.  Why?  Because they are acquainted with each other.&#8221; 
Robert Ingersoll
It is my firm contention that we must always strive to understand the adversary, which is religious belief, not believers themselves, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=110</link>
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		<title>Being Jewish</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Just listen to my Mother call me ‘Shoi-win.’”
Rabbi Sherwin Wine, on being asked how he could call himself Jewish.
A reader asks how I can be both an atheist and a Jew.  This dual identity has been a part of me for so long that I take it for granted.  During my years at [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=43</link>
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		<title>Withdrawal from folly: religion, politics and the war in Iraq</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;You wanted blood [after 9/11], and now you want to forget you wanted blood.  In your desperation to be strong, you were weak.  America always has been a war happy nation, and until we take responsibility for that &#8212; instead of blaming these bad leaders we somehow randomly keep electing &#8212; we&#8217;re going [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=109</link>
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		<title>Ratzo shoots himself in the foot on “salvation,” badly needs PR counsel (or does he?)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.”
John Morley
Pope Benedict XVI is one very bad dude.  Cardinal Ratzinger (or “Ratzo,” as we used to call him in seminary – JUST KIDDING!) is an unflinching exponent of the hard line, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=108</link>
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		<title>Evangelical Humanism©: change in the real world</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“[What] Francis Bacon called an ‘idol of the tribe’. . . is a truth based on insufficient evidence but maintained by constant affirmation by a tribe of believers.  Idols do not fall easily or often.  Tribes are capable of exerting will based on principles, but they are capable only with the greatest difficulty [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=107</link>
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		<title>Restoring the Latin Mass &#8212; a humanist view</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As a Jew, as a secular humanist, and as a linguist, I have some comments on the current debate about whether individual Catholic Churches should conduct their Masses in the original Latin.
Foreign = mysterious
I myself come from a tradition in which a service was conducted in a foreign language &#8212; in my case, Hebrew.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=106</link>
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		<title>Muslim and Christian fundamentalists: a dangerous new alliance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Fanatic: A lunatic with a hobby.
-Leonard Levinson
Fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to convulsive extremes.
-William James
There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.
Denis Diderot
In this time of political correctness and people who riot when a far-off country chooses to honor a man whose writings it admires, it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=105</link>
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		<title>Michael Moore and Me, part 2: Sicko</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I noted in an earlier previous post, I have “known” Michael Moore for a long time.  (Hey, Michael, how’s your friend Ben Hamper, The Rivethead?  Hope he’s OK.)  So I’m familiar with his propaganda techniques and liberal-left slant.
His latest movie documents the inadequacies of American healthcare and touts the benefits of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=104</link>
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		<title>Support for Michael and Ashley: Blood, Margaritas, and the Great American Disconnect</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=103</link>
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		<title>Michael Moore and Me, part 1: GM and Flint</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;When a product is manufactured by workers who find their work meaningful, it will inevitably be a product of high quality.&#8221;
Peter S. Gyllenhammar
Managing Director
(Volvo) Sweden
I am a great fan/non-fan of Michael Moore.  I’m a fan because I admire his  his audacity and his take-no-prisoners documentarian/propagandist techniques.  I am not a fan because [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=102</link>
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		<title>Religious people who lack religion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least to do no harm.&#8221;Hippocrates
I never thought I would devote a post to the amputation of a foot, but as the British say, there it is.
This is the most compelling thing that is happening in my life at the moment. Shiites [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=99</link>
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		<title>Tag-erific Memery</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today’s entry represents a recreational break from my many weeks of humanistic philosophizing and relentless hammering of religious believers…and an attempt to get to know my fellow bloggers and vice versa.
After 30 years as a linguist, writer, and teacher of writing, I&#8217;ve concluded that word processing and email have improved people’s writing; there is an [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=97</link>
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		<title>Life and death: a humanist view</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.&#8221;
I have, unfortunately, been compelled to consider yet again these wise words from James Thurber.  
If humanists are to offer anything positive to religious believers, it must certainly include a way to think about and deal [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=92</link>
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		<title>Evangelical secular humanism©: getting the words right</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control – these three alone lead to sovereign power.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
That&#8217;s right, you read correctly: evangelical secular humanism (© Alan M. Perlman, 2007).  It is knowing how to talk to people whose minds are at least open to dialogue and to change.  It’s catchy because it co-opts believers’ vocabulary. For the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=90</link>
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		<title>A new movement: Positive Humanists International (PHI)©</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.&#8221;
Edmund Burke 
In previous entries, I have described the grave dangers posed to humanity by religious belief, especially fundamentalism/orthodoxy. 
I’ve noted the immense undeserved social prestige that’s accorded religious belief and practice, especially the Abrahamic religions, which continue to occupy [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=89</link>
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		<title>Where have you gone, Doug and Nancy?   The alarming phenomenon of adult-onset Orthodoxy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My Mother, still living in our home town after over 60 years, tells me that two of the four children of a childhood family friend &#8212; now adults &#8212; have become ultra-orthodox Jews.  I had to remind Mom that the correct prefix was &#8220;ultra,&#8221; since she really didn&#8217;t know anybody that was more Orthodox [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=51</link>
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		<title>The most dangerous cult in the world</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Cultic behavior, broadly speaking, is mindless obedience.  We find it in organizations of every kind &#8212; the military, corporations, government.  In most cases, it means unquestioning adherence to whatever the boss thinks.  In religion, it means following the leader &#8212; plus unquestioning belief in the truth of some creation myth and/or imaginary [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=87</link>
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		<title>Rush to folly: cultic thinking and the war in Iraq</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It has been almost five years since the genesis of American’s latest foreign military fiasco, and I have so far not spoken of the unspeakable.  Others have done an excellent job.
Part of the reason has been that sometimes the reality itself leaves me speechless.  
Bizarro World
I often feel as if I’ve slipped out [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=88</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Evolution vs. creationism - losing ground to ignorance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Citizens in more than two dozen states agitate to introduce the supernatural in public school science classes.  Legislators introduce bills in support.   The U.S. President and more than a few U.S Senators and governors call it a good idea.  School boards demand that Bible-based creationism or its latest iteration, intelligent design, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=10</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Blood, Margaritas, and the Great American Disconnect</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://thejewishatheist.com/?p=86</link>
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