Tom Flynn has been recounting the history of the year-end holidays – and offering his rollicking rationale for why secular humanists should just sit the merriment out – since his book The Trouble with Christmas came out in 1993. But 2010 is the first year that his presentation is fully illustrated in a lavish PowerPoint show containing more than 200 slides. (Fear not, as the angel never really said; some of those slides go by really, really fast.)

 

By Eric Jayne

On September 11, James Zimmerman delivered an engaging presentation before the Critical Thinking Discussion Group in Maple Grove. Zimmerman spoke about his experience as a practicing Jehovah’s Witness (JW) and the struggle he encountered from leaving the church and eventually becoming an atheist.

 

Exercise your right as a Minnesotan and make sure your voice as an atheist is heard!

 

 

Members of the La Crosse Area Freethought Society (LCAFS) (Jan Contreras and Hank Zumach) and Minnesota Atheists (August Berkshire and Matthew Richardson) took turns staffing a booth at the La Crosse Gay Pride festival on August 28. The weather was sunny, hot, and windy. Speaking of hot wind, outside the festival gates a handful of evangelical Christians held a peaceful, though misguided, counter-demonstration. August confronted them and was told that one reason they could "prove" homosexuality was "unnatural" was that gay people, on average, didn't live as long as straight people. August pointed out that the higher level of suicides for gay youth was attributable to Christian persecution. The Christians also pointed to AIDS as a consequence of "sin." August countered that lesbians have the fewest STDs of all sexual orientations, so they must be "god's chosen people." In the end, it is impossible to argue with fundamentalists who are convinced that even the worst god-ordained atrocities of the Bible can be "properly interpreted" (i.e. spin-doctored) so as not to reflect badly on their god or their religion.

by James Zimmerman

 

Disproving Christianity: Refuting the World’s Most Followed Religion, by David McAfee
96 pages, CreateSpace, ©2010

In Disproving Christianity, author David McAfee sets out to deftly, succinctly point out all the reasons why the Holy Bible can’t possibly be the word of a loving, all-knowing deity. And he does a respectable job.