fbpx
47 F
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).

The Golden Globes discover the missing half

But they do signal trends, popular and otherwise, and this year’s ceremony ran smack into quite a big one, the Me Too outrage over the generational toleration and enabling of the physical abuse and marginalization of women in all branches of the economy, and entertainment media most ostentatiously and hypocritically.

Ask an Atheist: What happens after death?

Nothing. Dying is not unlike going to sleep, when our consciousness shuts down, only this time no waking up.

Ask An Atheist: What about our atmosphere, oxygen?

I am presuming the questioner means how is it that we have the atmosphere we do today.  That's a fairly easy one.

Ask An Atheist: How do you explain design throughout the universe?

First, what does "apparent design" mean?  In practice, it involves living systems in the first place (fewer people talk about the "apparent design" of canyons or galactic nebulae, or subatomic particle fission tracks), and that their components do all sorts of neat stuff (like metabolizing food, and parasitizing the brains of animals).

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

At no time in my life did I have a belief in the reality of any gods (which I imagine includes whatever one you believe in), so it is not a matter of not believing "anymore."

Ask An Atheist: Taking belief away from others

I have never claimed that religions cannot comfort people. It would be a peculiar assertion for anyone to make, atheist or otherwise.

Ask An Atheist: Argumentative atheists

Many atheists are truculent; theists can be too.  Many atheists are amiable pussycats; theists can be too. 

Must read