Ladies and Gentlemen...

This is my first post to my new shiny blog, and since I no doubt have zero followers, I can damn well type anything I want. But I will try to keep it civil.

I guess I'll lay down some ground work and do a little 'splainin about who I am and what my intentions are.

I am an atheist living in a very conservative Christian part of the United States. Being an atheist here is quite difficult. I would say it's akin to being a born again Christian in Kabul. You just don't go blabbing your views around town and you choose your close friends very carefully. To put it as Rene Descartes once did, "He who hid well lived well".

Now one valid argument that an atheist would make is you are not helping the cause by stifling your views. we all need to be courageous and speak up... I whole heartedly agree with this point. I'm not a coward because I think it would help the situation for all of us. I do it because I am not good at arguing. As we all know, your ability to win an argument is by no means a reliable indicator that you are right. It just means you are good at arguing or your opponent is not. If, by some Scott Bakula-esque Quantum Leap, I were to suddenly find myself infront of cameras as the token atheist in a panel of creationists debating the finer points of genetic mutation, I would crumble and probably wet my pants. Not because I am wrong, but because the I.D. folks have made a business out of debate and propaganda. They are not concerned with evidence or facts. They are concerned with convincing you that they have all the facts.

So what are my intentions with this blog? Here I plan to lay out my observations and ideas about why I think religion is destructive, and why I think it's proponents have surrendered the most powerful organ we have ever encountered, the human brain, to thought processes that are tribalistic, violent, and irrational.

I also plan to post on non religious issues that interest me, but that would no doubt bore you silly! My blog, my rules!