In an email exchange, an old friend and fellow English-prof colleague wrote this:
"I know you're 'the Jewish atheist,' but don't you feel a strong sense of identification with the Jewish ethos, aside from religion? You've sought out Jewish wives, and friends to some degree could be, the way I might seek out writers as friends. I think of my former Catholicism not angrily but gratefully. When I grew up, I decided on my own that I didn't believe. But my Catholic education was excellent;…
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on May 2, 2013 at 12:23pm —
7 Comments
Professionally I advertise myself as a “language expert,” which is quite accurate (see www.language-expert.net ), and I get a wide range of contacts from attorneys and private citizens regarding anonymous letters, plagiarism, contract interpretation, copyright infringement, and other issues where money, reputation, or something else of value is at stake.
I also get questions about grammar and usage, which I answer gratis, just to…
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on April 11, 2013 at 2:30pm —
32 Comments
I recently received an invitation to the bar mitzvah of the grandson of my first cousin; this ceremony is, as you may know, the induction of the youngster into Jewish adulthood.
The invitation itself was colorful and cheery, produced, no doubt, with invitation-creation software and thus exhibiting neither coherence nor originality but just an electronic mad mix of fonts, patterns, and such, chosen from among an infinity of alternatives.
Strangely, the trifold invitation had a…
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on March 17, 2013 at 9:00pm —
1 Comment
I didn't expect it to be so funny!!
I've had (literal) laugh out loud moments (in public too!)
Very very interesting. And I can see now how it builds on works like "Jesus interrupted" - the revelation about the last 12 verses of Mark / Jesus being Angry / The Woman Caught in Adultery - is just scratching the surface of the complexity in the world of beliefs prior to the New Testament actually being written.
This book is utterly fascinating.
Added by Richard Healy on February 9, 2013 at 3:05pm —
1 Comment
. . . b
ut someone has to take it and it might as well be me. As a writer and sometimes humorist I could be banned for life from the Writer’s Guild for not picking the low fruit. I ran upon this large sign in Barnes & Noble while book shopping.
I stood there for a moment and thought,…
Continue
Added by Donald R Barbera on January 7, 2013 at 9:04am —
8 Comments
At last, I have achieved my goal!
I recently had a comment exchange on Deviant Art:
http://pjarrett.deviantart.com/ (not a safe site, as my McAfee always reminds me...but they seem to have solved some of their problems...be careful, in spite of its name "Deviant Art" they allow underaged children to post right along with adults! If you're leary of the site...which I can't say I blame you...try my other blog at …
Continue
Added by Philip Jarrett on October 7, 2012 at 5:08pm —
1 Comment
(Several years ago, I undertook to read the Torah. For specific reasons, see below. But basically I wanted to find out, to my own satisfaction, just what it said, to the extent possible, given that it's such an ancient text that's been repeatedly copied and edited.
To rabbis, thus to most Jews, it is a repository of priceless wisdom. I set out to find it.
What I found was both enlightening and disappointing. …
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on July 30, 2012 at 3:30pm —
11 Comments
The mailed invitation to the presumed induction of the daughter of my first cousin to Jewish adulthood read “We cordially invite you to celebrate with us on the occasion of the bat mitzvah of our daughter Carly Sarah on Saturday morning, the Twelfth of November, Two Thousand and Eleven at Nine Thirty in the morning. Congregation Adath Jeshrun…Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.”
Apparently it’s more dignified to use no numbers and capitalize everything, as if it were 18th…
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on June 21, 2012 at 12:02pm —
4 Comments
Pennsylvania legislators recently adopted a resolution that among other things encourages Pennsylvanians to study the tenets of the Bible and says there is a "national need to study and apply scripture." The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed suit charging that the resolution violates the "separation of church and state."…
Continue
Added by Donald R Barbera on June 7, 2012 at 9:51pm —
9 Comments
“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”
H.L. Mencken
“Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.’
Isaac Asimov
“Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless…
Continue
Added by Alan Perlman on June 7, 2012 at 8:29pm —
7 Comments
Stolen from an actual conversation on Facebook between "J" an Intelligent Design proponent who thinkings evolutionary theory is not to be believed and some fellow believers in woo....
Irony abounds...
J: Why is it that young-earth creationist papers (published in creationist journals and peer-reviewed by other creationists) generally quite explicitly start off by assuming what they're trying to prove?
K: Confirmation bias.
J: Many of the…
Continue
Added by Richard Healy on May 30, 2012 at 1:27am —
4 Comments
Here is the setup, I am the only science teacher in my community. Four to five weeks ago, the bible study class for youth started on this small, remote island, with Austin at the head. Since then, I have been targeted by students because someone in the congregation, I’m not saying Austin directly, but someone is teaching these kids intolerance for science. I finally manned up and decided to address the problem at its most likely source. Here is the entirety of my initial email…
Continue
Added by Nate Julian on May 30, 2012 at 12:23am —
2 Comments
Chatting to a believer on facebook:
They had posted a status about their car. Thanks to a canny deal with the insurance this allowed them to pay off a loan outstanding and own their car completely, all the actions of which they attributed to the movement of the divine hand:
"we needed to give God another Acclamation (as He is due every moment of every day) for His next blessing in this saga. After giving us the value of the car in…
Continue
Added by Richard Healy on May 27, 2012 at 9:30am —
13 Comments
Hello all....
We have in the last month started a podcast titled Godless Prophets.
Godless Prophets Podcast: a North Carolina based podcast dedicated to spreading truth and reason in society. We are in no way professionals or experts in philosophy or science. We are just two guys talking, sharing ideas with occasional guests.
Both of us have different backgrounds when it comes…
Continue
Added by Bradley Freeman on May 4, 2012 at 4:46pm —
No Comments
Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, took time out from her swim in the shallow end of the Graham family gene pool this weekend to assure everyone that she would NEVER vote for an Atheist.
This isn’t particularly unusual. The Graham family has a long-held antipathy toward Atheists and other minorities. Son Franklin Graham entertains rather birther-like suspicions that maybe Barack Obama isn’t a Christian.
No Wisdom for the Ages
NO WISDOM FOR THE AGES - And thus…
Continue
Added by Omnipotent Poobah on April 9, 2012 at 5:16pm —
No Comments
Terry 1:1 In the beginning no god created anything. Amen. The End.
Added by Terry Groff on February 12, 2012 at 9:32pm —
9 Comments
My wife and I were privileged enough to be able to see the world premier of Hamlet in the Original Pronunciation (since Shakespeare's time) this past weekend. There were some odd cuts in the script, and the original brogue took a little getting used to, but over all it was an excellent production beautifully acted and directed.
Why am I posting this on an Atheist blog? Because of one particularly amusing bit of directing. In the scene where Hamlet is reading a book and…
Continue
Added by Jas Brimstone on November 15, 2011 at 12:31pm —
1 Comment

If an atheist rewrote the Bible in the 21st century, what would it look like?
Probably a lot like, The Last Testament of God: A Memoir by God / with David Javerbaum. Lol.
Here it is, folks. God Telleth All. Finally!
Here are the answers to your questions about the Bible and why Christians, particularly…
Continue
Added by Trance Gemini on November 1, 2011 at 8:30am —
2 Comments

One man’s immorality is another man’s religion, even if the immorality of that religion is pointed out by atheists. It’s common for religious adherents to sometimes act immorally – and sometimes hypocritical – despite what their religions supposedly teach. The same is true for atheists and what they believe. People…
Continue
Added by Omnipotent Poobah on September 16, 2011 at 8:19pm —
4 Comments
[Cross-posted from
the Teapot Atheist]
Today I had the grave misfortune of encountering on Hemant Mehta's
Friendly Atheist blog a video of a very small, rather unformed human being with not much grasp of her language or the subject matter to which she applies it babbling…
Continue
Added by Christopher Ray on June 22, 2011 at 6:30pm —
No Comments