A Halloween Thought

http://soundbites.typepad.com/soundbites/images
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Whether it has pagan or religious roots, I happen to love the fun of Halloween.  There is one small fly in my ointment for Halloween however, and that is the penchant for most of the costumes for women to be all whored up.  Now I understand that these costumes may be doing double duty later on in bedrooms across the US, but should this be trending into tween's costumes too?

http://www.inofashion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/
Ballet-cheerleader-Halloween-costumes.jpg

Ok maybe I'm too sensitive but this reminds me too much of the tween and younger pageants - and what is the value to those kids again?  What do they get for all their effort? What lesson do they learn from those competitions?  It says something about what we value if nothing else, and science isn't what we value.  A young girls competition for the best science project will probably never get the press that these pageants get or a reality tv show either.  Pageants do though, so what does that tell you about what we value?

So not to sound like a conservative dress nazi, but where do we decide the line between fun and inappropriate lies for halloween costumes?  And do you want to even think about how bad it could get?  Are you shocked that an Atheist thinks about these things too?

And for another related subject

Incongruously Definitively Obligated

Oy vey!, so I have to define what an Atheist is for you? 

Fine, for some excellent definitions go here: 

http://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/what-is-atheism

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/strong_weak.htm

 

I tend to think of anyone who says they’re Atheist as meaning that they are not believing in God but it just means a lack of belief in God or Gods. Now that may seem a bit weird and not terribly helpful delineation, but the critical bit is the “lack of belief” vs actively believing that Gods don’t exist. 

He makes a very good point.

Many Atheists just quietly go about their lives not talking about God, not acknowledging their status as atheists because they don’t have belief in one or many Gods. This doesn’t mean they’re agnostic, though they might define themselves that way just to avoid the stigma that seems attached to the term “Atheist” but it does mean that they lack belief, (or for the religious – faith). 

Now this means that the only people who don’t have a little bit of Atheism in them, are those crazy folks who manage to believe in all gods at the same time (I haven’t met one and don’t anticipate that I will). Those folks believe in all the pagan gods of Zeus, Aphrodite, Loki, Thor, Isis, Amen’Ra etc. etc. as well as believing in all the flavors of the Abrahamic religions, and any other gods you could name. So which ones don’t you believe in? (no that doesn’t make them Pantheists – that’s something else, so go look it up.)

Yep, if you’ve chosen a faith and excluded all the other beliefs as false, then you have a little bit of Atheism in you. So I guess the question is? Are you okay with your lack of belief in those other gods?, with having a little bit of Atheism in you? Or do you now believe you’re going to start eating babies? Or are you now a tool of Satan!!! Or is that little bit of Atheism in you trying to get out? Maybe it’ll come out like a chest bursting alien. . . yuk! Truly, you should be careful what you choose to believe.

https://isaacspictureconclusions.files.
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alien-chestburster.gif?w=800

Atheists just take it one step further and they have a lack of belief in any gods, even yours. They may have many reasons for this lack of belief and of course there are some who believe that there are no Gods at all, and that the mysteries yet remaining in our natural world are simply not yet explained by science, that we all just have a lack of knowledge. There is no proof yet of either the existence of God, or the nonexistence of God, but there is a preponderance of evidence mounting against the existence of God, and if a God does exist, it’ll be nothing like what has heretofore been imagined by human beings.

Grim Truth

Grim Truth - Existence or Non-existence of God?

Who cares. . . whatever. It really doesn’t matter one way or another. If there is a God he’s too busy to be bothered with us. We’re too tiny and insignificant to matter unless our penchant for procreation and expansion leads to us becoming too big for this universe (seems a ridiculously long way off), until then we’re just the proverbial tiny cluster of cancer cells that haven’t yet grown into a significant tumor in the flesh of the Universe, and might fail to grow beyond our fragile ecosystem because of stupidity and greed.

Too grim for you?

More grim than an eternity of burning pain from eternal fires that never manage to burn all of your flesh away?, or some other manner of eternal torture?

More grim than being shuffled around like cattle, starved, tortured, experimented on and then finally killed, all for just being of a different religion and cultural background?, (and for a political need to unify a nation for war?)

Is it more grim than being stoned to death by your family just for not covering up your hair?, (which apparently sends mind controlling lustful thoughts into men. . .?!)

More grim than having your parents decide that you can’t get your appendix surgically removed, because God would be offended, and it’s decided that you have to be healed by prayer? (So your last minutes of life are surrounded by people who claim to love you, them murmuring to their invisible friend instead of getting you the readily available help that you need?)

More grim than being exiled from everyone you ever knew and loved, just because you happen to prefer being with the same sex, and are honest about it too? (and oh yeah, some religious cultures execute for that too. . .)

Is it more grim than being put in an isolated boarding school full of sadists and bullies (the staff and "teachers") who starve and drug and torture their "students" for years, all just because your super religious family doesn't want their child to have an opinion on God that's different from theirs?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb
/f/f9/Salem_witch2.jpg/300px-Salem_witch2.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

That’s just a couple of the grim examples of what religious folks have done, and don’t get me started on Jihads, Crusades, Witch Trials and the Inquisition. 

Really, the non-existence of god would be a far friendlier world for us all, if God were really responsible for these atrocities. Unfortunately, all that hate and blood is on human hands rationalized maybe by what those people held to be true, but still it’s not on God’s hands because no God did these things.  God is innocent, if he/she exists at all.

So grow up Humanity! Start taking responsibility for what you do, for the killing, the cruelty, the torture, and the bullshitting.

Wonderfully Dark

I Love it, especially the attention to the history of Ornament.

This Land is My Land

No one is defined by a single term

Finally! below is a link to an article that provides a good summary on the various points of views amongst non-believers.  If you need a starting point on where you are this is a great way to figure it out.

www.salon.com/2014/09/25/7_different_types_of_non_believers/