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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).

Triple play on atheism in Spokane

I haven’t yet reported on the pair of atheist speakers who spoke to secular groups here last month: Pete Boghossian (a philosopher professor at Portland State University) publicizing his new book “A Manual for Creating Atheists,” and Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker, former evangelical Christian preacher and inveterate debate lover who spoke all over the region during the Darwin Day period (once in Spokane for the local FFRF chapter, the Inland Northwest Freethought Society, and again over in Coeur D’Alene for a North Idaho College philosophy club.

Ask An Atheist: If evolution exists….

Evolution is indeed very "dumb"— just like geology or astrophysics.

Ask An Atheist: Do atheists believe in anything?

Just about everybody believes in lots of things (and just how boring do you have to get to get by in life without believing in anything?) so the fast answer is, atheists believe in things too.

Strange harmonies: the Sochi Closing Ceremony

I caught the closing spectacle of the Sochi Winter Olympics, which had gone off without any troubling interludes from potential terrorist attacks or embarrassing Pussy Riot human rights moments. With the Putin sock-puppet removed in Ukraine just as the games were ending, though, I couldn’t help wondering what thoughts were running through their team’s minds as they counted down the time to their make good on their transport home.

Ask An Atheist: Why don’t atheists believe in God?

Which God did you have in mind? The framing of the question contrasts the different view the believer tends to have compared to how an atheist or agnostic approaches the subject.

Ask An Atheist: Why do you think there is no creator?

The first is a general philosophical one, does there need to be a creator in the first place?

Ask an Atheist: Why don’t atheists believe in God?

Which god did you have in mind? The framing of the question contrasts the different view the believer tends to have compared to how an atheist or agnostic approaches the subject.

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