Muggsy's Brain

I took part in an amazing event this past week on Madeline Island in Wisconsin: my dear friends, Amanda and Stacy, got married. I've known Stacy for over 20 years, and Amanda over 10 years, and both of them are truly amazing women. The ceremony itself was mostly private (a group of us watched from a distance) at the request of the Happy Couple™, but the amount of love and acceptance expressed at the reception was an amazing thing to see. It's kind of odd to find a destination wedding that also features a pot luck supper, but that's what they did, and no one was turned away, even if they weren't a wedding guest. By the end of the night, most of the food was gone, and I saw a lot of Native Americans from the local reservation walk by me with filled plates. Feeding the poor, that's a pretty cool thing to do. Strangers offered their best wishes to the Happy Couple™, and no one judged them because of their gender -- not one person. That is the way it should be. It ...

Where do you get your morals? To be honest with you, I was raised Roman Catholic and most of my morals come from there. However, one doesn't need to be religious, or to believe in some sort of Divine Punishment to know that killing, stealing and fucking your neighbor's wife are all shitty things to do. And there are plenty of cultures that came up with societal rules with absolutely no exposure to the Judeo-Christian God. You'll grow out of your rebelious phase. I'm 50. I've been an atheist longer than I was Catholic. So you want to outlaw all religion? Not at all. I'd prefer if you kept your religion out of my politics, however. You're what's wrong with society. That is an offensive statement without any merit. 95% of the world believes in God. Doesn't that say something? Ah, the old vox populi! That doesn't prove anything. 95% of the world could believe in u...

I found this in the comments section of this blog , which is devoted for the most part to debunking the claims made by pseudo-historian David Barton , who claims that the Founding Fathers, and Thomas Jefferson in particular, were Christians whose aim it was to create a Christian nation. ###### The Ten Commandments of our Founding Fathers 1. Your neighbor’s religion is none of your concern. “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782 “Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.” Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813 2. You shall not mingle religion with politics. And here, without anger or resentment I bid you farewell. Sincerely wishing, that as men and Christians, ye may alwa...

I ran into an old friend recently, back "in the day" I wanted badly to be her boyfriend but that never worked out. I hadn't seen her in years and she's still as pretty as she was then. She's also still a big proponent of what I call "mystical woo" and that just doesn't sit right with a skeptic like me. Let's start with the so-called "Law of Attraction," wherein a person thinks of something and that thing happens, or a person thinks of someone and then sees that person for the first time in years. Obviously, that subject came up, especially the second part. The first thing you need to know about the "Law of Attraction" is that is was made up around the turn of the century by William Walker Atkinson, an attorney, merchant and publisher -- you will notice a profound lack of the word "scientist" in his list of occupations. Like many people, he looked for some divine or mystical principal that drives something as s...

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS PRESENTED FOR PERSONAL ARCHIVAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT HERE TO CONTINUE THE DEBATE. THIS POST IS NOT OPEN TO COMMENTS. THANK YOU. The following is a debate between a dear friend of mine who lives in Texas and I regarding Natural Selection vs. Intelligent Design. He is of the opinion that the concept of Intelligent Design should be taught as an "alternative theory" to the evolution of species. I think that Intelligent Design, or ID, belongs in the philosophy classroom if it belongs anywhere. The following is a little debate we (and some others) had online, and I wanted to save it in my blog before it gets lost into the constantly changing pile of useless data that is Facebook . I need to acknowledge a couple of websites that helped immensely in forming my arguments: The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Rational Wiki (which is rather snarky, but full of valuable information). He says: I can't force anyone to believe in or love God ...

A very dear man I know died this week of cancer. He made it long enough to see his son get married, the new year and spring. He was a loving, generous man with an infectious smile and a wonderful attitude. He was also non-religious, and when his wife died a few years back he made it quite clear that he didn't want, "any of that religious shit" when he died. So there will be no church service, but that won't stop the religiously minded from imposing their ceremonies on the memorial gathering that is happening tonight. The gathering goes from 4 - 8 PM, but there's a "Celebration of Life" that starts at 7. This "Celebration of Life" will, no doubt, be a very thinly veiled Christian religious ceremony. They will invoke the name of Jesus, they will invoke the name of God, they will talk about Heaven... in direct opposition to the dead man's wishes. I have a huge problem with that. If people want to pray to God or Jesus or who/whatever they shou...

I gave up Catholicism for Lent. The last time I went into a church for religious reasons was probably around 1980, and even then it was because it was how I was raised, not how I felt or what I believed. I began questioning my own beliefs when I was a freshman in high school, and ultimately decided to leave the church. And I am not alone. The recent American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut found that more and more people are moving away from organized religion, some moving towards a more "spiritual" view, while others are giving it up entirely. Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor recently printed an article entitled The Coming Evangelical Collapse which suggests that Evangelical Christianity will all but disappear within the next 10 years. Good riddance, I say. Personally, I think Ka...