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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: After death experiences

Survival of bodily death, spirits, ghosts, reincarnation — these are part of our human history, but with some important caveats.

Frans de Waal and how natural our human nature is

Last week I attended the invigorating talk by renowned primatologist Frans de Waal, on the deep roots of what we had too long tended to think of as quintessentially human: tool use, social cooperation, empathy and a sense of fairness.

Ask An Atheist: Time before the Big Bang

Recalling that roughly 45 percent of the American people are Young Earth creationists who don't accept that there was a Big Bang, here's the go for the rest who do pay attention to the science.

Ask An Atheist: Silly Questions

They've all been thoughtful and honest, though occasionally carrying implicit assumptions that I have attempted to unpack as best I can.

Ask An Atheist: What happens after death?

All the atheists I know of don't believe in afterlives either, but I'm not aware of surveys on this insofar as nonbelievers are concerned generally.

Marching for Science? In 2017? Really? And why we still need to do this, in 2017.

Fly in the ointment: many, if not most, of the organizers of the March for Science are politically left (scientists have long trended leftward of the general population, and are also less religious), and so politics, including issues of social justice and economic policy, are becoming entangled.

Ask An Atheist: Is the bible an historical document?

I won't speak for all atheists, but will say definitely parts of the Bible reflect actual history.

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