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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: Every Society has a Religion

It is true that natural human societies have religious beliefs.

Things that go Trump in the night

The real hobgoblins and scaries, the spirits of envious hatred and fear, seem set on holding on all the way to Nov. 8 and beyond, four years at least, wearing especially unpleasant garb like pointed white hoods or swastika armbands, dreaming of high walls built by somebody else to keep the “other” at bay, while so many of the “wrong” sorts get stopped and frisked along the way.

Ask An Atheist: Why is the Pacific Northwest such an unchurched area?

It doesn't seem on account of any shortage of churches

Ask An Atheist: Did people from sacred texts really exist?

I don't know any historian of note who has the slightest that Muhammad existed, and I'm not aware of any who doubt the historicity of Buddha either.

Ask An Atheist: Is atheism a religion?

That is, if the word "religion" is used in anything like the way normal people use it, which is belief in supernatural entities that involve claims about the history of things, proscriptions about behavioral dictates, and degrees of veneration or worship.

DNC: Aiming High after others tried Low

Whether the Trump camp were taking notes for yet more plagiarism-is unclear, but there was plenty copy-worthy to go around, as that most admirable First Lady reminded us of what really matters when we step up every four years to vote for president, and how the choices we make set the course for years to come, ideally to inspire and protect our youth, not frighten or betray them.

Ask An Atheist: Why do we die?

Add language and written messages to the mix and you get an even more interesting process. We humans can achieve an "immortality" quite independent of death, cellular or multicellular.

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