(picture and text via Kukmin Ilbo, reposted from my Tumblr)


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I watched
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Following up a post on the religious instruction of children, I'd like to address a second point about missionaries. I will reproduce the relevant paragraph I'm responding to; for the full comment, see the earlier post.

The comment I'm responding to said in part (emphasis mine):

I also don't think it is fair for missionaries to go disrupt established ( Read more... )

Here are some remaining thoughts from the three-post saga about my arguments with atheists over on We Hunted the Mammoth. Specifically, I'd like to address points raised by commenter Lea about parents instilling the fear of hell in their children and missionaries using fear and need to proselytize. I have direct experience with the former situation ( Read more... )

In the past two posts I detailed how I got into a spat with an anti-theist about his seeming proposal to ban the religious education of children, with a detour into how I was a raging asshole to another commenter. I was curious whether movement atheists had discussed the issue of forbidding the religious instruction of children by their parents and ( Read more... )

As previously discussed, a commenter on a site I frequented at the time, EJ, seemed to be advocating a horrific curtailment of religious liberty. Partly due to the conversation but mostly because of other real-life stuff, I made two mistakes: First, instead of staying away from the internet in my impaired state I grabbed my phone to check on new ( Read more... )

What a week. I traveled to China on Monday for a conference, made a presentation Tuesday, got back Wednesday night, went to work on Thursday, and went to school on Friday for a seminar and another presentation. After the travel-and-academics whirlwind it'll be a relief to settle into a boring workweek, but I am resolved to slack off this weekend ( Read more... )

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So for the past couple of months I was subscribed to fantasy author Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways site. I hadn't bought anything prior to unsubbing, but got periodical e-mails and downloaded a free lesson. I found her content often common-sense and semi-helpful if not groundbreaking. A lot of the time they were things I knew already, but ( Read more... )

(Apologies if this becomes a double post, crossposting from DW does not seem to be working at the moment.)

Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.
-Mark Twain

So I casually mentioned on sohawkeward's LJ that I used to be Christian, and she asked me why that was in the past tense. It was a fair question, since I was the one who brought it up ( Read more... )