The Four Horsemen...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890

It's been a while ... seemed liked we, me and them.. lol
had come to an agreement. But as they usually do, they cheated.
IT'S ME... Your old Atheist government employee

I'M 2 WEEKS FROM RETIREMENT.

And as a farewell gift, they have suddenly become aware... that there has been an error, for over a year, in my time sheet, and unfortuntely... lol, a bill will be generated.

Luckly .. I expected this retrubution, and have money in reserves...

No harm done.

Hi,
I had lost this blog for a while (to a nasty spammer) but blogspot has restored it to me. Yeah! In the mean while, I had started a new blog over at Atheist Exposed 2. I've included a link on my sidebar.
I hope you'll join me there.
Best Wishes,
Shirley Setterbo

Well, I think that's about it. If anything else noteworthy ocurs, I'll be sure to post. Thank you for joining me. It was scarey at times, but well worth the risks. Everyone at work, is treating me well. The female officer who decided if I could stay in the US, greeted me the other day, with, "Hey Momma". My Boss is cool, the Secretary is cool, even the lady who was offended by my movie is treating me kindly now. I think it was a sucsess. I put my faith in good people, and they didn't let me down. My best wishes to you all. Shirley

Ok, I have a confession to make. I went in a little late to work today so I could watch the Space Shuttle return safely at the hands of Eileen Marie Collins, Commander. Monday when the crew woke up, NASA was playing the old 80's hit "Come on Eileen".

"Come on Eileen, well I swear (what he means)
At this moment, you mean everything"

It got me excited that a woman was the Commander, and I was so disappointed when they didn't land on Monday. I just HAD to see it. I held my breath as they became subsonic, a tiny spec on the camera, then slowly the speck became the recognizable shape of the space craft. I recall thinking, Man I wish I believed praying would make a difference, so instead, I just hoped really really hard. Please let them make it. And held my breath. LOL You never know, it might help! Please, please come home safely. I flashed back to those horrific sights of the shuttle pieces falling out of the sky in the northern parts of Texas, and quickly pushed them out of my mind. And it's coming down, looks a bit wobbly, but still okay. Alright, they are touching down! YEAH! She did it. I'm so proud to be a woman in the United States of America today. I'm so proud to be an American. Yeah!

That was well worth having to work later tonight to make up the time! Yeah, Eileen!

Too-ra loo-ra too-ra loo-rye-aye

Off to work. The sweet secretary greets me with her big sweet smile. "Good mornin' Ms Setterbo", and then glances at the clock with an inquiring gaze. I grin, and tell her I just HAD to watch the space shuttle land safely. I start dancing around and singing "Come on Eileen". I tell her how proud I felt to be a woman, and she is laughing and says, "You are so crazy, Ms Setterbo".

I notice her glancing around the office and I notice that we are alone. She says, "You know, normally I wouldn't talk about this, but I know you are .... well, interested in all sorts of things, different religions and stuff." I'm totally frozen. Still smiling, but kind of in shock, I manage to mumble, "Uh huh". My mind is racing, I can't imagine what she is about to share with me. She asks "Have you ever read the book WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN?" I answer that I've heard of it, but no I haven't read it. She gets excited and starts to explain, "Well, before the times of Jesus and the birth of Christianity, women were worshipped like God. Woman, were in charge. We had all the best jobs. We might have a husband, but only for the use of their seed. And if we had a husband, he was at least 10 years younger." I giggle, "That sounds good, what the hell happened?" Sadly she tells me, "Oh Ms Setterbo, it was the Romans. They took over, and destroyed everything for us women. They burned the books that we had written, destroyed the statues, changed all the laws, and took all our rights away". I exclaim, "Bastards!" She grins, nods her head and tells me, "Yes, and then they put together the chapters of the bible that were only favorable to men, and formed the society, that we are still living in today." Suddenly I feel safe enough to share something negative about the bible with her, and I say, "You know there are some really horrible things said about women in the bible. Like in Leviticus, I can't remember chapter and verse, but one that really gets me angry, is when the Lord tells Moses to tell the Israelites that after a woman gives birth she is unclean for 33 days if it's a boy, but 66 days if it's a girl. That just makes me so mad! Like women are so dirty that it takes longer to purify the vagina after passing one of us." She whispers to me "The bible is full of that sort of thing". Just then, in walks the boss. The secretary and I look at each other like two kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and then quickly look away acting all nervous. "What's going on here", the boss asks, kinda joking. "Nothing boss" I say with a grin. "We were just talking about the bible". I shot a quick wink to the secretary, and head for my office wondering what in the world has just happened.

I have GOT to read this book. Is it possible that my sweet little secretary has been reading blasphemous materials??? Oh my gosh. Has anyone read it? Is it Christian based?

One of my inmate orderlies went to court yesterday, and when I saw him upon his return to the institution, he looked terrible. He was flushed in the face, frowning, and just looked really stressed out. I walked over to him and asked, "What's the matter? Are you okay? Did something happen in court today?" He shook his head no, and I told him to come to my office so we could talk.

We sit down and he begins shaking his head, "Oh Ms Setterbo, I was with this old man all day today, and he just talked, and talked all day. He wouldn't shut up. He was so angry, and he just kept saying that the *Atheist* were taking over the country, and that the *Atheist* were the reason we are getting all these long sentences. He just drove me crazy"!!! He now has his head in his hands.

I'm just sitting there with my mouth hanging open. I finally am able to push out a sound and then I react with, "Aah,....That is totally insane. If anyone is taking over the country, it's the Christians. I can assure you, that back in the 80's the Atheist had nothing to do with the "War on Drugs". Nor, the sentencing guidelines, nor the mandatory minimums. Back in the 80's, most Atheist were just quietly living their lives. That's just crazy!"

He raised his eyes to met mine, and in the meekest voice said, "I'm just so glad he didn't know about you, Ms Setterbo." Oh......what a dear, dear man. I laughed a small laugh, smiled, and told him I was so sorry he had a bad day. Told him to go lay down and rest a bit, and not to worry about me. As we left my office, I whispered to him "I'm a lot tougher than most people know." We both grin, and I was left with a very warm feeling.

Thank goodness... Mr Harris says it's okay.

No problem, Shirley. Feel free to link, paste, forward, etc.
Best,
Sam

But thanks for all the good advice. I'm new to this, and appreciate the good directions. I know your just looking out for me.

All my best wishes,
Shirley

08.02.2005 Sam Harris - A recent post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/sam-harris/the-politics-of-ignorance_5053.html

The Politics of Ignorance
President Bush has now endorsed the pseudo-scientific notion of "intelligent design" (ID) and declared it to be a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution. This is not surprising, as he has always maintained that "the jury is still out" on the question of evolution. But the jury is not out -- indeed it was well in before President Bush was even born -- and anyone familiar with modern biology knows that ID is nothing more than a program of political and religious advocacy masquerading as science.

It is for this reason that the scientific community has been divided on just how (or whether) to dignify the spurious claims of ID "theorists" with a response. While understandable, I believe that such scruples are now misplaced. The Trojan Horse has passed the innermost gates of the city, and scary religious imbeciles are now spilling out.

According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality. Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium. Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts. Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn't; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn't. It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort. The issue is not, as ID advocates allege, whether science can "rule out" the existence of the biblical God. There are an infinite number of ludicrous ideas that science could not "rule out," but which no sensible person would entertain. The issue is whether there is any good reason to believe the sorts of things that religious dogmatists believe -- that God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings; that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception (and, therefore, that blastocysts are the moral equivalents of persons); etc. There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.

Imagine President Bush addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in these terms: "Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus." Imagine his speech to Congress containing the sentence "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that Apollo is not neutral between them." Clearly, the commonplaces of language conceal the vacuity and strangeness of many of our beliefs. Our president regularly speaks in phrases appropriate to the fourteenth century, and no one seems inclined to find out what words like "God" and "crusade" and "wonder-working power" mean to him. Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world; we are positively smug about it. Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world.

The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.



Richard Dawkins - a response to Mr Harris' post -

Congratulations to Sam Harris on a characteristically brilliant broadside. His book, 'The End of Faith' is one of those books that deserves to replace the Gideon Bible in every hotel room in the land.

Articles like Harris's are valuable, not because they will change the minds of religious idiots like Bush or those who voted for him, but because they will have a 'consciousness-raising' effect upon the intelligent. There are millions of intelligent atheists out there who are too frightened to come out and admit it, because American society has allowed itself to drift into a state where religious mania has become the respectable norm. But every time a Sam Harris raises his voice in public, it will give courage to other intelligent people to come out. Maybe there are some – intelligent but not well educated – who didn't even realise atheism is a respectable option.

I know, I agree, it is easy for me, living in Britain where religion has no power and it is religious people who feel the need to apologise (despite the paradoxical existence of an established church with the queen as its head). But America will change only when a critical mass of people is prepared to 'come out'. The more that do, the more that will.

I really don't mean to sound presumptuous or condescending, but my appeal to my American friends is this. When you read something like this Sam Harris article, don't just nod in silent agreement and go on keeping quiet yourself. Start shouting, to encourage the others. I am hard at work on my own book, The God Delusion, for precisely this reason.

Posted by: Richard Dawkins at August 3, 2005 03:21 AM



My letter to Mr Dawkins:

Hello Mr. Dawkins,

I read your post... Thank you for your support of Mr. Harris, whom I consider a national hero.

When you read something like this Sam Harris article, don't just nod in silent agreement and go on keeping quiet yourself. Start shouting, to encourage the others.

After I read "The End of Faith", I felt exactly that way.

It's not much, but here's what I did...

http://atheistexposed.blogspot.com

I'm a really big fan of yours, and any advice or encouragement you can give we Americans to try to figure out what to do about this mess, is greatly appreciated.

My very best wishes to you.

Shirley Setterbo