Hello there

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to introduce myself, I'm a new publisher on this blog and I hope that it will be at times fun and thought provoking for all. Please remember that this is ONLY my opinion and not the law, and like many other things in life, reading this blog is a choice. If you don't like what you read, then stop reading. It is that simple.

I will say that I am educated, well-traveled, divorced and childless (by choice), and a well respected professional with many friends. One of my hopes is that believers will start to see atheists as humans, and not as social degenerates or monsters.

So in this blog you will see that I will post things usually when I'm irritated or absolutely angry and then somedays my mood will be more upbeat. Yes, I have more than one mood because I'm not a machine, so if you don't like it then move on.

Laters.

Born Again Atheist

Atheist seemed like too strong a word. It seemed too hostile towards religion. What changed? Why am I now calling myself atheist?

Oddly enough it started with volleyball last week. I'd like to play volleyball, but all I know of are church leagues or nonsocial pay-for-play competitive leagues. It occurred to me before to check into Secular Humanism, and here was a good chance. Perhaps there are Secular Humanist social volleyball leagues? As it turns out, no, not that I can find. There just aren't enough attendees.

As the web goes, one link lead to another, one Wikipedia article lead to another, and I found myself touching upon atheist web sites. Oh the uncomfort. Why are they so hostile? Wait a minute, I've been feeling more and more hostile towards organized religion lately. The bullshit they spout, and I don't just mean Biblical dogma. I mean blaming man-made and natural disasters on homosexuality. I mean fighting contraception. Attacking the separation of church and state that keeps this continent from being a constant holy battleground like some other continents.

That and reading a couple of atheist books helped me realize that I'm not the agnostic I claimed to be since my teens; I'm an atheist. Spirituality I can tolerate. Organized religion is really pissing me off, though.

Certainly hostility will come through this blog from me, but it's not the focus or purpose for my blogging here. I think once I get over the pent-up hostility from suppressing my atheism from myself I'll work more towards being a tolerant and accepting atheist.

Then I can start building pent-up hostility for suppressing my atheism from my acquaintances. Yeah, I'm seriously worried that one of the more nutty Christians would want and try to hurt me. Hopefully not one of my acquaintances, but surely they would scurry away and pray for me at their next service, and all it takes is one nutjob.

I had lunch with a coworker today. We had a nice conversation about our weekends and families, and being the pious man he is worked Abraham into the conversation. It didn't bother me like it might have a couple of weeks ago now that I'm come to terms with my atheism, but I did wonder how tolerant he would be if I talked about my atheism.

Surfer Jesus is Here

OK, so we've just started up this new blog in the hopes that we can spark some good interest in this growing athiest revolution. That's right, we're in like an athiest renaissance and I'm excited to be a part of it.
We've got a small team of bloggers here and all of us are reformed christians. I personally remember going to church every weekend of my childhood and I hated it. I would pull any trick I could to keep from going. On many occasions I unplugged my parents' alarm clocks, or snuck in early in the morning and set the clocks either backwards or forwards to keep from having to go. It didn't always work, but it worked enough to make it worth my while.
There were so many things that just never made sense to me and I'll definitely be talking about all of them eventually.

Getting out of church is the best thing that ever happened to me. Since I don't quite have a topic this time as this is just my little intro, I'll leave it here. However, I would like to go ahead and tell how I got my name. I was sitting around with my wife a few days ago and we were talking about Jesus and the like, and how bad the old testiment is. She said that she much prefers the Jesus that gets depicted as the hippie at Berkley who just sits around and chills... kinda like the Buddy Christ from the movie Dogma. And I said, yeah, more of a surfer Jesus. And we liked that phrase so much I just made it my online name. There's something about the surfer Jesus that I really like the idea of. Certainly it's more what religion is meant to be like other than the uptight assholes running around sticking their foot in your door while you're trying to relax on sunday morning.

Anyway, more to come.

Faithinate's Intro

Wow, my first ever post on The God Dam. I think we'll start out light, with an intro and a few little thoughts and links.

I'm a recovered Southern Baptist (I'm feeling much better now, thanks) and I'll be the somewhat treehuggery and slightly forgiving female voice here on the GD.

This whole thing started out as another one of our around-the-house conversations on god and God and religion and organizations partaking therein, and dear hubby SurferJesus suggested a YMAA (Young Men's Atheist Association, "For People Who Aren't Retarded"). The idea quickly blossomed.

Today's news item comes from Canada: Religious groups want Russian cartoon channel shut down. "Christian and Muslim groups are demanding that 2X2 be shut down because it airs cartoons, such as South Park, which they deem to be anti-religious, violent as well as promoting homosexuality." Yet again, we have the cardinal rule: Religious People Must Police Everything Everyone Else Does. Terribly sorry, but why the fuck do you care if some going-to-hell sinners make a show that going-to-hell sinners watch, regardless of whether it's "promoting homosexuality" or not?

Remember, I'm the gentle blogger here.

Moving right along. On a personal note, my grade school stepdaughter told me a couple of days ago that her mother (a psychopathic hypocritical Xtian if I've ever seen one) said that Barack Obama wants to kill everyone in America, because he's the type of person who wants to kill all Americans. Turns out since he was raised Muslim, he's gonna be president and drop da bomb on us all. This poor kid is now afraid that we'll all die if Obama gets to be president. Sigh. Is this the stupidest woman on god's green earth, or are there a few earthworms that can't outthink her? Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of bigoted ignorance that drives us into frothing rages, and into creating this very blog.

Another news item. I missed Sally Kern saying that homosexuals are worse than terrorists (ah, you're also competing with earthworms), but I caught the very eloquent response from a high school senior who has lost a whole hell of a lot more to terrorists than to gays.

Oh yeah, and while we were kicking around ideas about god/religion/the GD yesterday, I ran across The Atheist Bible Study, and specifically the article concerning whether God is evil. Nice.

I don't really believe in god or God or gods or goddesses (that cover it?), but I guess I don't particularly disbelieve in a higher power, necessarily. I just disbelieve in YOUR god/God/gods/goddesses. The Atheist Bible Study made an excellent point: the God presented in the Bible is an asshole, srsly. This is the God of love everyone's been going on about?

That's plenty for our first round, so let's get to fightin'!