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Wit and Humor

Posted on June 16, 2013

Sam and Becky welcome Seattle comedian and atheist podcaster Travis Simmons for this week’s show. In between musical interludes featuring bands to play at the June 21st AaA benefit, we also hear from clergy project graduate Jerry DeWitt about his Secular Sunday Service.

Evil Spock Becky is…an atheist?

by Becky Friedman

Posted on June 10, 2013

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It’s no secret that I’m a school teacher by day. And despite my not talking about my activism with students, it doesn’t surprise me when they occasionally find out about my work with Ask An Atheist or in the local freethought movement…which made a situation that occurred in during an instructional exercise the other day all that more surprising.

Ms. Friedman is not what she seems…

The scene: 7:55 am on a Tuesday. 27 freshmen Spanish students. One teacher.

The task: As a class, create a model profile for the teacher in preparation for creating their own profiles as cheat-sheets for their final exam. Hit all key points (personality, likes/dislikes, defining characteristics, favorite foods, activities, etc.) while being very descriptive, if not slightly ridiculous, and possibly flat-out false. Use correct grammar and rich vocabulary from all the year’s units of study.

The resulting profile:

Age: 172 years old
Hometown: Jupiter
Current home: under a rock
Favorite foods: fried kittens and roasted bunnies. Only the cute ones.
Favorite drinks: the blood of the innocent
Family members: Dracula–grandfather; spouse–Eduardo Cullen; paramour–Jacobo el licántropo.
Physical traits: beautiful, wears magical eye glasses, has an extra toe, a beard, hidden antlers.
Personality: evil, talented, orderly, cunning, stingy, and …atheist.

Nope, definitely not what she seems…

I was caught so much off guard that I paused, broke into English, and asked “Why would you chose that to describe my fake personality?” The student quickly backtracked and responded that it was supposed to be an “opposite” profile, not necessarily an evil one. He then said “Aren’t you Jewish? And atheist is, like, the opposite of Jewish…”

I settled the matter by saying that yes, it’s no secret that I grew up in a Jewish family, but religious preference is so varied that there’s not really one opposite. If students wanted to add their religious identity as part of their profile, they could make an additional category and feel free to mention it with the correct conjugations and grammatical gender agreement.

We all agreed at my urging not to include a religion on my model profile, and moved on to the bigger and better subject of favorite classes: herbology, divination, and defense against the dark arts. I’ll need them after all.

Light Headed

by Sam Mulvey

Posted on June 9, 2013

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This week Sam, Becky and Dan talk about living on air alone. Or not living, as the case may be. We follow up with some questions about interviews, chaplains, and… well, cake.

The Atheist Rabbi

by Ask an Atheist

Posted on June 2, 2013

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Becky goes to her roots and talks with Rabbi Jeff Falick about how to be an atheist and a Jew. Sam referees, Mike tries to make sense of it.
Oddly, Jeff manages to build a window into how Sam & Becky’s relationship works.

Happy June! Now go buy a ticket…

by Becky Friedman

Posted on May 30, 2013

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Fans and friends: it’s the end of the month, which means you’re probably getting paid. Don’t wait till mid-month to buy your ticket for our summer music benefit–ten bucks is all you need for a fantastic evening of local indie-rock! Our headliner Bodybox features occacional AaA voice Nick Kennedy lending his talent on bass. It’s an all-ages show at Louie G’s, which has awesome pizza and burgers, a range of brews on tap, and a small classic arcade with skee-ball. SKEE-BALL!!! Besides being a rad place to take your kids now that school’s out for summer (without some weird mouse-man), the whole place is fully wheel-chair accessible.

Events like these are a major way in which Ask An Atheist stays on the air–contributions and advertisers alone don’t cover our costs. Coming out to the show will help keep a secular voice on terrestrial radio and will show our local Puget Sound community that atheists are fun-loving patrons worthy of future collaboration. Help us out, purchase your tickets in advance, and see you on Friday, June 21st!

Ducks, Wheels, and Daniel Dennett

by Ask an Atheist

Posted on May 26, 2013

2 Comments

Becky and Sam caught up with Daniel Dennett, at a town hall meeting in Seattle. He’s promoting his new book “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.” Additionally, Mike joins us for some emails and news that just makes him happy.

Suffer for Our God

by Ask an Atheist

Posted on May 19, 2013

2 Comments

Sam and Libbie talk with author and activist Valerie Tarico about acquisitions and mergers of hospitals into Franciscan and Providence Catholic health care systems in Washington State.

There are show notes.

Summary via Facebook

by Sam Mulvey

Posted on May 13, 2013

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I did something I haven’t done in a while this week– I looked at an argument from a creationist line by line.

When we started out, I said I wanted to get the “who created god?” question out of the way at the outset. This Facebook comment from regular listener Cheryl give me a chance to explain why.

Her comment:

“Infinite recursion”…. That’s why God is called the Prime Mover — the Uncreated, the one source that begets all other effects. I’m not asking you to believe in God, just trying to correct your perception of what believers believe.

Cheryl

And my response:

Your correction is really the next move in that particular dance, so I’m hesitant to accept it as a correction. “Why is god the great exception, and not the universe itself? Why not something else?”, is the move after that. Every atheist that’s willing to say so publicly has heard this argument.

I brought it up because while it’s a valid question that atheists have, I wanted to get it out of the way so I could talk about things that are a bit more vital. The immutability of god is not an interesting conversation to me when god remains unproven.

The more interesting question for me is why the “big banger” has to be an intelligence. Many things are formed of natural processes. Many things are created by life, but not intelligent life. Even if this line of thought leads to evidence that something had to cause the big bang, we’re still very far away from proving an intelligence behind the creation of the universe. Even then, we’re light years away from proving that the intelligence behind it is the primitive tribal god of people in the middle east from five thousand or so years ago, as Professor Keeft would like me to believe.

Bad Arguments U

by Ask an Atheist

Posted on May 12, 2013

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This week, Sam is joined by Becky and Nick as he talks about a recent argument from “Prager University”, a project by talk show host Dennis Prager. Sam has blogged about him previously. We also go over some similarly bad arguments coming out of the media, as well as catch up on a few emails and updates.

There are show notes.

FBB’s Pathfinder Project!

by Becky Friedman

Posted on May 6, 2013

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We spoke with Foundation Beyond Belief founder and director Dale McGowan back in March, and it turns out they are working on a promising new project: The Pathfinders Project! It is envisioned as a year-long volunteer service commitment like Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, programs that many non-believers already take part in.

The initial Pathfinders will dedicate a year to clean water, human rights and construction projects, and will serve as a pilot group to evaluate programs for inclusion in a future Humanist Service Corps.

But there’s only 3 days left in their IndieGoGo campaign, and they are falling short! I’ve a hunch that Peggy wouldn’t mind if you donated some of your extra cash not only to help keep the voice of nonbelievers in commercial media, but also to help opportunities for nonbelievers doing good works around the world!