Buds, buddettes. Been a while.
Clearly I have my priorities misaligned because I should spend every extra minute on this site instead of doing anything else. ;)
Since I was here last I started and finished Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists. I've only seen his youtube videos prior to this, and I enjoyed them immensely. B has RD's seal of approval, so I just went for it. Maybe you haven't noticed but I doubt that I can ever have enough godless reading material. So anyway, it was a decent read. There's no way I am going to become a street epistemologist as B suggests in his book though. There were some hilarious anecdotes (B's so-called impromptu "interventions"). Especially the ones that revealed how unapologetically insensitive he is to religious apologists. Employing the Socratic method in his mini-spur-of-the-moment sessions is brilliant. He challenges and compels tight-lipped taciturn strangers to somehow (albeit circuitously) question themselves and everything.
Boghossian's definition of "faith" is probably the best one out there.
Faith = pretending to know things you don't know.
So when someone says "I have faith in God," it actually means: "I pretend to know things I don't know about God."
Or similarly, when someone says this "Life has no meaning without faith," it really translates to this: "Life has no meaning if I stop pretending to know things I don't know."
And finally, "My faith is true for me," actually means: "Pretending to know things I don't know is true for me."
What's up next on the atheist reading agenda? Maybe Darrel Ray's God Virus? Or Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil? Has anyone read these? Would you recommend them or something else?
Oh, and yes, I did finish book #3 - Club Dead - of the Southern Vampire Mysteries. It was more entertaining than the first two. So I look forward to #4! And all the rest.
[One other thing, so this past Tuesday was another voting day. Too late now but I would hope that if you don't know who the fuck, or what the hell you are voting for, that you don't vote. If you can't do good, at least do no harm, right? Have you ever seen exit polling data? It shows that the vast majority of voters do not have any idea who or what they voted for (except knowing they just voted a straight party ticket) even though they just stepped out of the voting booth 3.2 seconds ago!]