The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast for March 26 interviewed Eugenie Scott who is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Eduction. The major topic of discussion was the events surrounding the creationist movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. She was highly informative, entertaining, and very engaging. Her one request for bloggers is to link to a site which addresses the misinformation of this piece of propaganda. Hopefully the traffic will be high enough that it'll be the first site that pops up when one is doing a search. Sounds good. Let's all link to it!
Expelled Exposed!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I've got some explaining to do....
Two of my pet peeves are people who feel they have to continue to explain something even when they've been told they have been understood and those who don't tell me that they already understand something I'm taking valuable time explaining.
The later is obvious, I really appreciate it when people say "Hey, I get it." Those are thoughtful and nice people. Thanks to anyone who has actually do this to me. On the other hand, I've noticed that not many people are like me. I recently had someone get extremely upset with me when I informed them that I understood the situation and the lengthy explanation was not needed.
On a different occasion, an acquaintance was trying to console me when discussing my aunt's recent death. She wasn't aware of my atheism and proceeded to go into great detail about how my aunt was not suffering and in a better place. I could tell it was going to be a long lecture so I quietly said "thanks, but I'm an atheist and I don't believe in heaven or hell." To my surprise and relief she stopped right away and expressed simple and appropriate sympathy for my loss.
I'm just guessing here but I got the feeling she appreciated me letting her know that I would not have been comforted by her explanation and thus spared her and me the agony of time spent talking about something I didn't believe and she was just quoting as a Christian. If a person is going to talk to me about their religion then I have every right to express my lack of belief. It's only fair, right?
The later is obvious, I really appreciate it when people say "Hey, I get it." Those are thoughtful and nice people. Thanks to anyone who has actually do this to me. On the other hand, I've noticed that not many people are like me. I recently had someone get extremely upset with me when I informed them that I understood the situation and the lengthy explanation was not needed.
On a different occasion, an acquaintance was trying to console me when discussing my aunt's recent death. She wasn't aware of my atheism and proceeded to go into great detail about how my aunt was not suffering and in a better place. I could tell it was going to be a long lecture so I quietly said "thanks, but I'm an atheist and I don't believe in heaven or hell." To my surprise and relief she stopped right away and expressed simple and appropriate sympathy for my loss.
I'm just guessing here but I got the feeling she appreciated me letting her know that I would not have been comforted by her explanation and thus spared her and me the agony of time spent talking about something I didn't believe and she was just quoting as a Christian. If a person is going to talk to me about their religion then I have every right to express my lack of belief. It's only fair, right?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Too busy to blog
It's been a couple of weeks since my last post which is an unforgivable oversight. DH and I own a business and we've had to get our records organized for tax purposes. I'm also on 3 different tennis league teams and I've had to play every day (practice and lessons included). I'm in great shape but these past two weeks I've been tired to the point of exhaustion. As a result of all this activity my blog has suffered.
A couple of interesting things have happened to me directly related to my atheism that I wish to share. I hope to get a post in describing these events in the next day or two.
Good news is my tennis win/loss record is 10-2. This is my best season ever!
A couple of interesting things have happened to me directly related to my atheism that I wish to share. I hope to get a post in describing these events in the next day or two.
Good news is my tennis win/loss record is 10-2. This is my best season ever!
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