Cafe Leone

As both of you know, I am an atheist. As both of you know, my dad is dying with Lou Gehrig’s disease. As both of you know, this has become a source of unbearable stress on the entire Leone clan. We are all dealing with it as a family, but in our own way.

A conversation I got into recently (actually an amalgamation of a few conversations I have had recently) boiled down essentially to some variation of this statement: If you believe in God, and therefore heaven, then at least you can find comfort in knowing that you and your dad will be together again some day. In the meantime, you could be happy knowing that your father will be with God in heaven. Don’t you want that for him?

It is important to note that I don’t believe in god in the same way I don’t believe in Santa Claus. I may want so badly to believe that a jolly fat man will land on my roof every year and provide me with a Hot Wheel loop-the-loop track. But wanting it does not make it happen. Desire does not validate . I can drop to my knees, pray to any one of the gods, look to the heavens, speak in tongues, belt out hymns in a church, drink chicken blood and absolutely none of that will make Santa drop down my even more non-existent chimney.

What keeps me up at night; what makes me cry at the drop of a hat; what worries me; what stresses me out and what can grab hold of me and punch me in my face is not that my father is going to die. Death is a part of life. What gets me mad, is that my dad will suffer. He is suffering. His body, his spirit and his dignity are slowly slipping away from him as this fucking disease chips away at each nerve ending. He is reduced to writing his words on paper; he needs to excuse himself from the table as he has to clear the food from his cheeks with his finger; the disease makes him laugh and cry uncontrollably and often at the exact same time; his sense of balance is compromised; he cannot cough efficiently and his swallow muscles are quickly becoming paralyzed.

When he goes, I will miss him. I will weep for him. I will find constant reminders in my day to day life of him. I will celebrate his life and mourn his death. But, as when anyone dies, there is no “other side” to look forward to. My dad’s soul will not rise into the clouds or sink into the ground. When he is gone, he is gone except for his memory. I do not look forward to or think about a day when I will join him. I only look forward to the day he is free from this unbearable suffering. The day after he dies, I will leave up to nature.

My opinion until I change it. Thank you for allowing me to express it.

atheism, my father | 14 Comments »

Mr Lady at Whiskey in My Sippy Cup wrote this haiku in a recent post (I am shamelessly cutting and pasting without asking her permissions….shhhh don’t tell her):

Fourty days until
Easter? Crap! I’m giving up
religion for lent.

I TOTALLY wish I said that! I am so mad. Wit is something I lack (in other words, I am”wit-out” wit or witless). Then pure genius comes along and says something funny, irreverant, thought-provoking AND then manages to squeeze it into the seventeen-syllabled straight-jacket of a haiku

Meanwhile, I site here pondering another post about the urinals in the men’s room!

atheism, blogs way better than mine, funny | 4 Comments »

I sought, but I can assure you that I did not find Jesus.

He was nowhere to be found….I felt that I was ripped off! But I have been told that is how this whole religion thing works. You need to believe without seeing, feel without thinking, look without touching, seek without looking, right brain without left brain, submit without question, ask without begging …Or some variation of the above. Then and only then, Truth, with a capital T, will reveal itself unto me.

In the meantime, I still haven’t found Jesus.

(Of course, I am playing around and not trying to offend. Just revealing my own ignorance….again! My devoutly Christian wife and I took the kids to see this display in my hometown and thought it was funny that Jesus wasn’t in the manger. The point here is that he wasn’t born yet as Christmas was two days away. I didn’t realize that someone sneaks in around midnight and drops off the albino Jesus with his plasticized goodness for all to see on his “real” birthday)

atheism | 10 Comments »

Nothing I write below is meant to insult anyone’s beliefs or belittle them. Both of you readers are extremely important to me and it is never my intent to alienate you. This post was written as much for me as it was for anyone interested.

I have often been asked how I can celebrate Christmas when I have no belief in God. In fact, I remember a debate I got into with a marginally religious friend. In this debate, he stated that I had “no right” to celebrate the holiday since it involved celebrating the birth of a figure I do not even believe existed. Don’t get me wrong, this was a friendly debate. We all enjoy those from time to time. Typically I stay from more vigorous debates where people stop using their intellect and resort to name-calling, judgments or pointing to books that mean nothing to me.

If you will allow me a few minutes of your time, I would sincerely appreciate it.

Here are a few basic assumptions that I am making to form the basis of this post:

1. God does not exist. I do not believe in the Christian, Hebrew, Muslim or any active creator of the universe. This I call “First Cause.” An argument that doesn’t address this first point, isn’t an argument.
2. The all too common habit of relabelling this active creator into more marketable (and capitalized) terms like: Love, Spirit, Source, Self, Higher Self, The Truth, The Word, The Unknowable, The Light, Mother Nature, Eric Clapton, Gaia, Mother Earth, etc is a nuisance and completely sidesteps the question of the existence of a deity that created the universe and has an active stake in it.
3. If God doesn’t exist, then The Bible is pointless to me as a source of “truth.” The Bible does not prove the existence of God in the same way that a book of Greek Mythology does not prove the existence of Zeus, Poseiden or Hades.
4. The fallacy of the Bible does not mean that there are no stories in it of value or even beautiful and inspirational stories in it (though we all need to ignore many horrific stories in the Bible in order to find a good one, especially in the Old Testament).
5. Whether you think that not believing in God is a bleak or depressing outlook on life, means nothing to me. EVEN if that were true, I do not find the alternative, blind faith, to be less depressing. I can’t believe in something only because it makes me happy.
6. Knowing that all I have is myself, family and my friends and that this is the only lifetime I have to live and that there is no one judging me based on my ability to blindly follow is most certainly NOT bleak.
7. Morality exists without God.
8. It is not “safer” to believe in God (Pascal’s Wager).
9. There are good Christians and good Atheists. The converse is true too. Neither side has a monopoly on goodness.
10. This is important: It is OK to talk about religion. I have trouble with the argument that religion is a taboo topic. Every time I mention religion in a post, I will get one comment that states something along the lines that “you are entitled to your opinion, Dan, but religion is so deeply personal, you really cannot discuss it.”
11. Many of the people I love are devout Christians (many of the people I love are also homosexuals, conservatives and have myriad other opinions that don’t agee with mine). I don’t love people less because they are Christians or love them more for being an atheist.
12. My wife is a Greek Orthodox Christian and my children are being raised in that faith. This doesn’t bother me, but I would be happier if they were not indoctrinated until they were old enough to think for themselves. My children know I am an atheist. They sometimes still love me.
13. I love many of the traditions of religion. Many people decry the ritualism of Catholicism and I have found myself craving them. Of course, this does not mean God exists, but the traditions of religion is a very powerful tool to bring families together.
14. I think many of you will agree with me that Christmas has almost nothing to do with the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. This saddens me as much as it does you.
15. If you have regular two way conversations with God, then good for you. You would have to forgive me for not latching onto your conversations as proof of anything. I have a friend that says she was abducted by aliens when she was 12 too. What do I do with that information?

So, here we are. How can an Athesist celebrate Christmas? I am looking forward to bringing the kids to the IHOP parking lot to buy a tree, bring it home, decorate it and put gifts under it. I look forward to watching the kids open their gifts and cebrate with a delicious Italian and Greek feast. How is this possible if I don’t believe in Christmas? Well, please notice that nothing I said has anything to do with Jesus. More importantly, in this crazy life, a few moments of calm, peaceful, reflective togetherness as a family, is so rare, that I cherish these occasions, regardless of their relgiousness.

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being my friends. I sincerely wish you and your families a wonderful holiday…however you celebrate it.

Question for BoMR: How do you maintain your traditions, religious or otherwise, during the holidays year after year?

atheism | 17 Comments »

“You are being hypocritical!” - That, my friends, is how my most recent comment began. It was not a comment about any of my posts. It was about the small SECONDARY tag line on my blog, Cafe Leone - Words unRead or Thank God I Am An Atheist. It appears that she believed she caught me in some form of logical trap. “How can you call yourself an atheist but infolk [sic] his name?” She then proceeded to tell me that she didn’t care if I believed in capital H, Him, or not because “the time will come” when he will judge all of us. But she was clearly proud of her logical prowess as evidenced by her final line: “atheists are really good at talking circles around the issue, but it the F A C T of the Lord’s love that will A L W A Y S prevail.”

Now, I think I am a reasonable man. Many of the people I hold close to my heart are Christians and Jews. I am not trying to be antagonistic. I also know that this woman does not represent a reasonable Christian and certainly does not speak for most believers. But, I will take the bait and explain the tag line of my blog: Thank God I Am An Atheist.

I have not had the luxury of a personal visit from God. He has not come into my house and broken bread (is this cannibalism?) with my family. No doubt, many of you are saying that He in fact has visited me, but I was too [insert appropriate adjective here. IE, distracted, close-minded, not-ready-to-accept, blinded...whatever] to pay attention.. The point is that the only concept of God I have is what I have experienced in Church, reading the Bible (which I have read front to back three times in my life), toying with New Age-y spirituality in the 80’s, lengthy conversations with my theistic friends and whatever the Jesuits wanted to throw at me at Boston College. None of these experiences were negative. In fact, they have without a doubt all been VERY positive experiences.

“Thank God I Am An Atheist” is nothing more than a mere, silly play on words. I once believed I was the one who invented the phrase and wanted to use cafepress.com to create and sell some T-Shirts. I was proud of the word-play so I kept the tagline. I am merely saying that based on the concept of God, certainly as conceived by the institutions of religion, I am glad I don’t believe in Him.

I am simply, stupidly and with a bit if irony saying, that I do not believe in the concept of God and because of that, I am an atheist.

As I have said in other posts, God does not exist as far as I am concerned. Until I know he exists, there really can be no discussion on which God is the correct God or how to best utilize his infinite, but fickle, resources.

I respect BoMR (Both of My Readers) and respect their beliefs. We are all on different paths. I get that. I am happy, downright ecstatic that there is a broad spectrum of opinions on this issue and I would love to hear what your thoughts are. I also respect that God is a deeply personal experience and not worthy of sharing with me on my irrelevant blog. But, anyone that agrees or disagrees with me is invited to comment or send me an email. I truly love hearing your thoughts. In fact, I believe the only reason I post anything at all is to hear what you have to say (that sentence is more sincere than you will ever know).

To believers and non-believers everywhere, as always, thanks for listening.

My opinion until I change it.

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atheism | 7 Comments »

Someone I know, who is a devout Christian, and I were having a conversation about something. I made a rather flip comment that I had sold my soul to the devil many times in my life. I said this about something I no longer remember. She stopped, looked at me and said quite calmly: “that’s OK, because you can only go to hell once.”

That was one of the most profound things I ever heard! Now it really doesn’t matter to me since I  believe in neither god nor the devil, but it doesn’t change how funny the statement was.

I feel it might be time to sell my soul once again….

atheism, funny, quote | 3 Comments »

I overheard a conversation the other day and I am wondering what this means:

“I needed to get home really fast in order to meet the delivery truck and I prayed that god would give me all green lights and instead he gave me all red lights.”

To all believers out there, do you sincerely, and I am truly being sincere, that god steps into every minute of your life…even the mundane moments like trying to beat traffic? How do you reconcile the fact that while god is granting you green lights, he is also making everyone else’s lights red?

atheism | 6 Comments »

I neglected to mention in my previous post, “Why I Am An Atheist”, that I was inspired by a post I read on one of the most haunting and stays-in-your-brain blogs I know. You can read Why Paisley’s post here:

http://why-paisley.blogspot.com/2007/05/for-those-of-you-that-read-this-on.html

In it, she reveals her internal conflict in regards to god. Please read her post(s).

She received some great comments including one from another excellent blogger, Stephanie at http://remedialrumination.blogspot.com . Stephanie states that perhaps I have something to offer on my blog ( I mean with a title like cafeleone - Thank God I Am An Atheist, you would think I have written about this before). Well, the reality was that I have been avoiding posts about atheism only because I have been avoiding posting about anything.

So, in order to at least meet the minimum requirements of running an atheist blog, I decided to put a single post together called Why I Am An Atheist. I thank Why Paisley and Remedial Rumination for inspiring me in more ways than they imagine.

I wish you, Paisley, strength on your journey.

atheism | 4 Comments »

I am an atheist because god doesn’t exist. You do not need to read further.

It truly is that simple. If god doesn’t exist, then nothing else in this thing called religion matters. No bible, no life after death, no hell, no Messiahs, no miracles, no prayers, no spirituality, no devils, no angels….no….well, faith.

It does not matter to me that religion gives people hope or inspiration. That is all wonderful and I guess I am happy that people have something to latch on to. But without first addressing the fundamental question of god’s existence, nothing else matters to me. God was not the first cause. You can call god, God, or you can call it The Light, or some other new-agey term and god still does not exist.

I would never try to convince anyone that believes in god, that god does not exist, but I also should not try to convince anyone that purple elephants are not living in my butt. I am happy to hear that god provides people the answers they need in life or that god is what is left when nothing else in life makes sense. But to me, god does not exist, so it is not simply a “choice” to be an atheist no more than it is a choice for the believer.

I have been told that my lack of faith is bleak. Of course, I do not believe that it is. But more importantly, even if it was a fact my existence is a bleak one, does not alter even for a second the notion in my head that god does not exist.

I have been told that I am lazy because I am not willing to do the work of faith. That is simply ridiculous. In my head, that is the same as saying that I am lazy because I don’t want to do the work in proving 2 plus 2 is 5.

I have been told that I must have had negative experiences as a child that clouded all the true glory that is god. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I have very happy memories of growing up Catholic and sincerely crave some of those traditions and rituals. A priest never touched me.

There is nothing in this universe greater than myself (no, that is not the same as saying that god lies within). I am happy to be an atheist, but more importantly, I am BOTH happy AND and atheist. If your journey is different than mine, then I wish you happiness too.

To BoMR (Both of My Readers): I am happy to elaborate and even happier to hear your stories, but I will not post comments that are offensive to me or Christians. I am in control of very little in my life, but this blog and its contents is one of them.

Thanks for listening. I will happily rephrase my words if I appear intolerant of anyone’s belief system. Not my intent.

atheism | 12 Comments »

Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism
by tearing down real science, but their arguments don’t hold up.

Though I would like to think that I was born without a right-side to my brain, my scientific-ness has only reached the level of wannabe. Anyone that knows me, knows that I am stunned at the way the creationist movement has infiltrated our daily lives. It seems that in the last few years, creationists have played their mind games and word disassociations with impressive results.

If I am not wrong, the Dover Pennsylvania became the first school system in the country to mandate teaching of creationism or intelligent design in schools. They cited flaws in the theory of evolution and used that as a springboard to promote their own religious agendas. This is the equivalent of suggesting that the Theory of Gravity is “just a theory” and that Theory of atom-sized humans held our feet to the ground and prevented us from being hurled into space.

I know that there are more examples of creationists that learned to play 3-Card Monte and are using this to make a case for teaching Intelligent Design.

Although I have a few books on the subject, I believe this article is an excellent synopsis of just want to say when creationist start spouting off their nonsense and then have the nerve to make you defend yourself because Evolution is “just a theory.”

My opinion until I change it.

atheism, science | 1 Comment »

Another article to add to the “I Wish I Wrote This” file.

I was scouring the internet because I was interested in the subject of bias and what makes us lean in a certain way or take a certain position. This was partially due to events in my life where I am being forced to make changes. There is a bias in my head that essentially states that the alternative to the status quo is automatically a bad thing. At this time, I do not even know what the alternatives are! So part of the bias can be based on the fact that the unknown is always intimidating and the another part is based on the fact that the status quo is usually appealing.

When following the trail of links involving bias, I came across this on wikipedia.org. I won’t pretend to have know that there in fact was a list of biases, but apparently there are.

Decision-making and behavioral biases

Many of these biases are studied for how they affect belief formation and business decisions and scientific research.

* Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.
* Bias blind spot - the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.
* Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
* Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
* Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.
* Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
* Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
* Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.
* Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.
* Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
* Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
* Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.
* Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
* Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
* Loss aversion - the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains (see also sunk cost effects)
* Neglect of probability - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
* Mere exposure effect - the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
* Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
* Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
* Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
* Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
* Pseudocertainty effect - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
* Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
* Status quo bias - the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.
* Von Restorff effect - the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
* Zero-risk bias - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Biases in probability and belief

Many of these biases are often studied for how they affect business and economic decisions and how they affect experimental research.

* Ambiguity effect - the avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown”.
* Anchoring - the tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
* Anthropic bias - the tendency for one’s evidence to be biased by observation selection effects.
* Attentional bias - neglect of relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.
* Availability heuristic - a biased prediction, due to the tendency to focus on the most salient and emotionally-charged outcome.
* Belief bias - the tendency to base assessments on personal beliefs (see also belief perseverance and Experimenter’s regress).
* Belief overkill - the tendency to bring beliefs and values together so that they all point to the same conclusion.
* Clustering illusion - the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.
* Conjunction fallacy - the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
* Gambler’s fallacy - the tendency to assume that individual random events are influenced by previous random events — “the coin has a memory”.
* Hindsight bias - sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the inclination to see past events as being predictable.
* Illusory correlation - beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.
* Ludic fallacy - the analysis of chance related problems with the narrow frame of games. Ignoring the complexity of reality, and the non-gaussian distribution of many things.
* Mind projection fallacy - The notion that probabilities represent intrinsic properties of physics rather than a description of one’s knowledge of the situation.
* Myside bias - the tendency for people to fail to look for or to ignore evidence against what they already favor.
* Neglect of prior base rates effect - the tendency to fail to incorporate prior known probabilities which are pertinent to the decision at hand.
* Observer-expectancy effect - when a researcher expects a given result and therefore unconsciously manipulates an experiment or misinterprets data in order to find it (see also subject-expectancy effect).
* Optimism bias - the systematic tendency to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.
* Overconfidence effect - the tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities.
* Polarization effect - increase in strength of belief on both sides of an issue after presentation of neutral or mixed evidence, resulting from biased assimilation of the evidence.
* Positive outcome bias - a tendency in prediction to overestimate the probability of good things happening to them (see also wishful thinking, optimism bias and valence effect).
* Recency effect - the tendency to weigh recent events more than earlier events (see also peak-end rule).
* Reminiscence bump - the effect that people tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods.
* Rosy retrospection - the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.
* Primacy effect - the tendency to weigh initial events more than subsequent events.
* Subadditivity effect - the tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
* Telescoping effect - the effect that recent events appear to have occured more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
* Texas sharpshooter fallacy - the fallacy of selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data is collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly.

Social biases

Most of these biases are labeled as attributional biases.

* Actor-observer bias - the tendency for explanations for other individual’s behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation. This is coupled with the opposite tendency for the self in that one’s explanations for their own behaviors overemphasize my situation and underemphasize the influence of my personality. (see also fundamental attribution error).
* Egocentric bias - occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.
* Forer effect (aka Barnum Effect) - the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.
* False consensus effect - the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
* Fundamental attribution error - the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect).
* Halo effect - the tendency for a person’s positive or negative traits to “spill over” from one area of their personality to another in others’ perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).
* Illusion of asymmetric insight - people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers’ knowledge of them.
* Illusion of transparency - people overestimate others’ ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
* Ingroup bias - preferential treatment people give to whom they perceive to be members of their own groups.
* Just-world phenomenon - the tendency for people to believe that the world is “just” and therefore people “get what they deserve.”
* Lake Wobegon effect - the human tendency to report flattering beliefs about oneself and believe that one is above average (see also worse-than-average effect, and overconfidence effect).
* Notational bias - a form of cultural bias in which a notation induces the appearance of a nonexistent natural law.
* Outgroup homogeneity bias - individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.
* Projection bias - the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.
* Self-serving bias - the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).
* Self-fulfilling prophecy - the tendency to engage in behaviors that elicit results which will (consciously or subconsciously) confirm our beliefs.
* Trait ascription bias - the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.

atheism, science | 1 Comment »

How Hubble Killed God…
Though I do not agree with the conclusion that the stunning image taken by Hubble kills the argument for god, I do love the article. The image and the article does seem to put a hole in the “6000 year old universe” argument but I do not know how many Christians take the bible that literally. I am also not so sure about combining the Christian god and the Muslim god in drawing his conclusion. I have no idea if Muslims claim that the universe is only 6000 years old. Ultimately, I don’t care because god doesn’t exist. The rest is just trivialities.

Good job

atheism, blogging, science | 6 Comments »

Julia Sweeney is the well-known comedian from Saturday Night Live. She is perfomring in a one woman play called “Letting Go of God.” Very nice.

atheism, funny | No Comments »

My Atheism is way better than anything you can imagine.

atheism, quote | No Comments »

1. I am an atheist. God simply does not exist. Any argument that doesn’t address “first cause” is not an argument. No books, no “authorities” in the name of pastors, ministers, priests etc, no mythological stories and no quasi-historical figures can be factored into the equation. BUT, believe it or not, I am not an angry atheist. I was never touched by a priest. God was not the cause of 9-11 and he is not the solution. I have to, and do, accept that others believe differently. In fact many of these people are those that I love and respect dearly. But, in my little head, the sentence “I believe in god” is exactly equivalent to “I believe in giant purple bunnies living in my butt.” Hard for me to wrap my head around it. I am not trying to be arrogant or smug; simply stating some relevant and not interesting stuff about me. My opinion until I change it.

2. I cannot tolerate superstitions (reduntant, as I don’t see much difference between 1 and 2. From the ubiquitous “god bless you” when someone sneezes to baseball players wearing the same socks for “good luck.” I would happily walk under a ladder with an open umbrella while breaking thirteen mirrors, stepping on a sidewalk crack and watching a black cat prance by me in order to prove it to you.

3. There is very little room in my world for people who believe in the supernatural. There is no astrology, no psychic ability, no afterlife, no soul, no aliens visiting from outer space, no John Edwards and his ilk, no palmistry, numerology, tarot and no telekinesis. There is no such thing as good or bad luck or fate. The problem is that I lose a bit of respect for people that do believe in that junk.

4. Despite all the above, this will be the first time I admit that I cried when I walked into the Vatican about 8 years ago. I am still stunned by the majesty of it all. I was transfixed by the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and my favorite work of art is Mozart’s Requiem. All beautiful expressions of HUMAN creativity and NOT divine inspiration.

5. If, huge if, I were smarter and 20 years old, I would be studying astronomy or mathematics.

6. Much less dramatic: I hate balloons. I think I fear them. I hate when the kids have a birthday party and I need to blow them up. I cringe at the mere thought of the sound and fear the snapping rubber hitting my face when it explodes. My kids hate it because my balloons are wimpy 6 inches in diameter.

7. I NEVER EVER read the fortune in a fortune cookie. No good reason other than it is pointless. Interestingly, there are many other “pointless” things I do in life, so I am not sure why the need to make a statement with fortune cookies.

8. I am a bleeding heart Liberal and am still stunned that people voted for, and still defend, George Bush.

9. I pay attention to sports just barely enough to allow me a chance at a resaonable conversation.

10. I used to be a raw food vegan and when I was, I never felt better physically. I ran 4 of my 5 marathons as a vegan and never had so much energy. I even miss it. BUT, I am a million miles and 50 pounds away from those days. Food is an addiction, just as cigarette smoking is.

and one more for good luck:

11. I can’t stand practial jokes. I don’t care if they happen to me, but I hate setting people up or watching people get set up. I do not watch Candid Camera, Punk’d, or that show where people try to get themselves fired. In fact, this has been to my detriment because it also means that I hate giving surprise parties. It is not that a joke is bad in and of itself or mean-spirited, it is I hate seeing people in a state if unknowing while the rest of the world does know. I really do not know the psychology of it all but I bet it could be interesting.

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