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Spokane
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Jim Downard

Jim Downard is a Spokane native (with a sojourn in Southern California back in the early 1960s) who was raised in a secular family, so says had no personal faith to lose. He's always been a history and science buff (getting a bachelor's in the former area at what was then Eastern Washington University in the early 1970s).

Ask An Atheist: Defining Life

Life as an organic replicator seems as good a shorthand one as any, though even if a particular organism is incapable of replicating (some defect in its biology) that wouldn't make it not alive, would it?

Ask An Atheist: Don’t you have to acknowledge God to deny God?

The notion that professing to lack belief in something presupposes you had to believe in the existence of that to begin with (and moreover, that the object had to be real also) falls completely on its face.

Ask An Atheist: Explaining without offending

But for those who could suffer backlash as a non-believer, you could answer in a way that is technically correct, something like, "I don't think I attend the church you do," smile, and change the subject to something less controversial, like politics.

Interfaith For All—When you like it … and even more when you don’t

To show that respect for others’ beliefs doesn’t mean the weakening of one’s own, but recognizing the dignity and conviction of others who are as certain of their certainties as you may be of yours, and being OK with that.

Ask An Atheist: How did everything come from nothing?

What science can tell us is that all the observable universe dates back to around 13.8 billion years ago, and commenced in a burp when the matter/energy/spacetime we can see originated. But from what?

Ask An Atheist: What Does Civility Look Like?

Civility is at heart being honest and kind.  Civility is not failing to call out ignorance, or hiding one's deep convictions, but how those are presented in public.

Ask An Atheist: Where is Atheism Found?

Everywhere. Now in most of the places on Earth it can still get you dangerously in trouble

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