Atheists should make more noise

[SecularMotion]

I am an atheist, don’t know why.

I’d like to tell you that I was one of those intelligent children who at age 11 gave the religion question careful thought and then alerted their parents that they wouldn’t be doing the church thing no more. Or that reading about the Holocaust had made me think of the open sky above Treblinka and wonder what kind of god didn’t care to notice the crematoria, especially when he could allegedly see a little sparrow fall.

In these cases, the first child is cerebral, the second anguished. I was simply oblivious and continue to be. Religion isn’t on my radar. Like the magnets in high school science experiments that repel each other rather than attract, I am programmed to tune out religious talk.

But atheism is an important phenomenon, and it is growing, the philosopher Alain de Botton now planning to build a $1.4 million (Cdn.) “temple for atheists” in London. There are a great many people like me but you rarely hear from us. Why would you? We don’t discuss this when we meet. It would be stupefying. Our lack of interest in religion bores even us.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1122905--atheists-should-make-more-noise

[onager]

1. Heather Mallick destroyed Bill O'Reilly...on his own show!

I couldn't find the whole column anywhere - the title was "My Fox Trot With Bill O'Reilly."

Excerpts:

Mr. O'Reilly is not a smart man. He's like one of those old guys you see on the street ringing a bell and shouting about eternal damnation. He talks to his trousers. You know the type....

And then he asked me if I was a socialist, and I said, "Certainly," and it was as if I'd said I like donkey semen in my latte instead of milk.

He then went into a mad rant about lefties...and how I was a typical Globe columnist. I said, no, truthfully, I think I'm regarded as "idiosyncratic" (the first six-syllable word ever spoken on the O'Reilly show), and he erupted again.

[iris27]

2. Kick.