Reginald Hudlin on the Black Panther

Here are a couple of Reginald Hudlin discussing being a black writer in the Entertainment Industries

Dwayne McDuffie on the realities of the Black writer in the comic book i...

Here is a video of Dwayne McDuffie on the realities of being a comic book/Hollywood writer who happens to be black.

FistBump of the Day to "Thinking God's Thoughts"

I really enjoy reading Brennon's blog and his Facebook quote. I really wanted to call attention to a couple of things he posted today.

On the origin of morality

Many atheists, when trying to ground moral values, appeal to something like human well being as a guide for morality. This seems to be patently insufficient of a ground for morals, because it itself is simply a moral judgment. It is good to promote human well being and bad to stifle it is a moral value itself, and therefore can't be the ground of moral values. As I said to one commenter on Sam Harris' attempt to use this as a ground, "Saying that well-being of some sort is good is simply another moral claim, so it hasn't reached any sort of ontological base at all. If this is Harris' base, then he seems to have stopped short of a true ground for morality and settled for a branch. [In other words] you can't say that a moral value is itself the ground of moral value."

This is why most attempts at ethics today are silly little exercises in futility.

On Science and Teleology

So I'm picking on my ethics teacher again, which may turn into quite a habit for the next 12 weeks or so. This statement (the title of this post) was one of the supposed problems with Thomas Aquinas' natural law theory. My teacher really didn't argue for this assertion. How has Science done this?

Is it because it can now explain how things work? What does that have to do with whether they have an end they were designed for?

It seems to me that this is just an assumption that flows from, at least, methodological naturalism. But even if you accept that science can't access the reason for which something was created, but can only tell us how it was created/works, it certainly doesn't follow that it wasn't created for some reason.

Not to mention that this seems to be patently untrue anyway. Certain fields of science seem to make their living on detecting teleology. Archaeologists do this often.

I admit that I don't agree with everything he writes but I really like these posts. Thanks, Brennon! All I can say is "Amen and amen."

Thinking God's Thoughts: Settling for a Branch
Thinking God's Thoughts: Modern Science Rejects Teleology

Obama Critics, Out of Ideas, Call First Lady "Fat" - The Snob Blog - Danielle Belton's The Black Snob

When you can't demolish an opponent for his/her ideas or actions what do you do? You go after his/her spouse. What if you can't deal any dirt about the spouse what do you? Make fun of them. Danielle Belton has posted an article about how people have been calling Michelle Obama fat, although she isn't fat and it seems because they can't find anything mean or nasty to say without tipping off how racist they are. I liked how Ms Belton phrased the end of her post

It doesn't matter what she does. It'll be wrong because she'll still be doing it while black, the most wrongest thing in the history of America. After all, as the quote my mother likes to repeat says, "We were brought here to work and entertain." Every day upon which Michelle Obama adorns herself in finery and does whatever the hell she wants is a giant "screw you" to the slavery industrial complex. She was supposed to be poppin' out babies and pickin' cotton. Not having State Dinners and wearing couture and trying to help our fat-ass kids shed some pounds. The nerve!
BACK OF THE BUS, First Lady! BACK OF THE BUS!

I agree with her. The sad thing is that many of the Obama's detractors don't even understand what they are doing.

Obama Critics, Out of Ideas, Call First Lady "Fat" - The Snob Blog - Danielle Belton's The Black Snob

Related articles

• Diane von Furstenberg 'So Embarrassed' By Michelle Obama State Dinner Dress Flap (huffingtonpost.com)
• "Rush Limbaugh has mocked Michelle Obama over her weight" and related posts (celebritymound.com)
• Rush Limbaugh doesn't think Michelle Obama is fit to fight obesity. Seriously. (popwatch.ew.com)

My Common Sense is Tingling - Debunking Christianity: The Top Ten Misconceptions About Atheists

John Loftus posted a list of 10 things that are misconceptions of atheists. I think he's right that many people think this way about atheists and most of these ideas are wrong. His comments are in bold.

Let me correct some of the most egregious misconceptions believers have about us, in reverse order:

10) We don’t eat or molest babies. Nor do we agree with what allegedly atheist dictators did in the past century. Over-all we are good people. All you need to do is personally know one of us to see this. I have no doubt but that you probably already know an atheist. It’s just that you don’t give that person the freedom to tell you in this Christian dominated culture. I wish more atheists would “come out of the closet” because of this.

It's really unfortunate that people think this way. An atheist is no more evil than any other believers.

9) We do not worship the devil. We do not think he exists.

With one hand Loftus gives, and takes away with the other.

8) We do not fear threats of hell. So why make them? Christians don’t fear any threats of hell coming from Muslims. So why threaten us? The fact that you do shows us you’d rather see us burn in hell. That’s some Christian compassion in action!

Who says that Christians want to see anyone burn in hell? I don't. I can't send you or anyone to hell - that is a given. Only Jesus can save you from hell.. Nor do any Christians I know. How can you be threatened by something that you believe is not true?

7) We don’t claim to know more than God. We don’t think he exists. We do think that if God existed he could have done a much better job with this world though.

So the fact that I thought that some atheists like John Loftus are arrogant are true.

6) We don’t claim to be better than God. We don’t think he exists. We do think that if God existed he doesn’t appear to be good.

Again more hubris.

5) We don’t hate God nor are we angry with he/she/it. Again, we don’t think he exists. We can be angry with what believers do in the name of God though.

So the thought of hell shouldn't bother you either. The thing is what you believe doesn't make it true.

4) We do not agree with each other about a host of other ideas. But we all agree that a god probably doesn’t exist.

Right! I'm sure that not all atheist are as close-minded as others.

3) We don’t claim to know with certainty that a god of some kind doesn’t exist. Not even Richard Dawkins or Victor Stenger thinks it’s impossible that a god of some kind exists (I heard them both say as much in debates). We do think the God hypothesis is unnecessary and irrelevant to life though.

I know that not all atheists see things this way. If God is unnecessary and irrelevant then why does it matter if He does or does not exist? The very question makes God relevant and necessary. Is a father unnecessary and irrelevant for the help of his children? If you can say "Yes" then the society has slipped closer to hell than I thought.

2) We don’t have faith nor a religion. We base our conclusions on the available evidence. We do not take a leap of faith beyond those probabilities. And since to have a religion one must believe in supernatural beings and forces, we cannot be labeled as religious in any meaningful sense.

Interesting definition of "faith" and "religion". Not Biblical. Religion does not mean you must believe in supernatural forces and beings. Religion is something you believe and informs your behavior and the way you look at the world. If someone can tell me that their atheism has nothing to do with what they think and how they look at the world, they are truly deluded.

1) We are not a minority. In one sense, depending on how you categorize people, we are all minorities in some group or another. But we are the second largest denomination in America. Depending on how we define an atheist (if we include agnostics who are skeptics with regard to all "revealed" religions) we may even be upwards to 24% of the population. So says this poll. Worldwide we represent third place among the world religions, even though we're not religious.

Minority? Sounds like a lemming mentality. The desire to not be alone and stand for what you think. Atheism has historically mean belief in no God. Trying to massage it so you can include other people in your numbers is really sad. It is exactly what religious people do who desire to fill their church rolls and don't really care if the people are born-again or not.

Debunking Christianity: The Top Ten Misconceptions About Atheists