Reason Rally Ahead!!!

   Soooooo busy lately with warm weather (product of global warming? probably at least in part) bringing about an early gardening season and preparation for the Reason Rally! As a result, I have not had a lot of time to blog, though I have much to blog about!

   Speaking of the Reason Rally, if you found this blog site via the QR code on my T-shirt, welcome fellow freethinker! Here on The Midwest Atheist, I blog quite a bit about general religious topics. I try to comment on the latest political news when I have the time and I also have goals to blog on feminist issues, though I have not gotten around to those much. Additionally, I have been posting my responses to the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist."

   I hope you will consider subscribing to my blog and I will try to pick up on posting come April. In the meantime, I am posting the 7 finalist videos from the Ten Point Vision challenge. The videos are below the fold.


   The following video, I must say, is my favorite...probably because I am jealous of the man's musical talents. Oh, there's a part near the end where the video producer discusses Jesus being a "brilliant moral philosopher," but based on earlier parts of the video, particularly the part about commandments vs. modern ideas, I don't get the impression that the producer agrees with this notion—at least to the extent that Jesus would not be one for this day and age.




   I like much of the message of the next video. I do have a slight disagreement in that I would not say we are seeing the erosion of the wall that separates church and state—or at least this isn't some recent phenomena. I have been reading Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers and it would seem there has always been a struggle to keep the wall up. There have been periods where the wall stood tall and firm and other times where it has been banged up. I actually think the wall is in pretty good shape right now. That's not to say it couldn't be better or that there aren't politicians, especially in the Republican party, aggressively attacking the wall.




   I think the following video is pretty good, too. I am annoyed by the number of people calling themselves "agnostic." I don't really like that term because it feels too accommodationist to me. Which is probably because of the accommodationists I have encountered that use that term that make it sound like belief is just a simple matter of choice because they claim there is evidence for both sides, or some relativist bullshit like that. Now, I don't mind so much if these people have honestly not taken a hard look at the evidence, as I was once a person who called myself an agnostic. Unfortunately, too many idiots have tainted the word that it has, in some ways, become a meaningless term. (Or, rather, you must ask one what they mean by the term to understand their position. And that is impossible to do in the case of the people in this video.)




   The following is a simple video promoting equality, freedom, and respect. These are ideas I hope we can all get behind...as long as it is respect for the person and not for the belief (or lack thereof).




   This next video uses part of a presentation from Sean Faircloth as the audio. It adds in some pictures of its own and is a message about children and how religion can harm children. It is a reminder of why respecting beliefs (see comments on video immediately preceding) is not a wise idea.




   We're now getting into the videos that I found to be less impressive. I'm not even going to bother commenting more.