That’s a slogan around here, especially for retirees like myself.  I’ve been an atheist activist many years and an atheist all my life.  I can remember once debating Rudy Guiliani outside chemistry class in high school days in Brooklyn about the existence of God.  And that’s when it was very unpopular and unfashionable not to believe, the late ‘50s.  I just couldn’t get past the belief that Eve was created from Adam’s rib.  “Gimmee a break,” I remember telling my nun second-grade teacher as an eight year old.  Brooklyn kids were feisty in those days. 

I’m the author of Mirror Reversal which has just been published on Kindle and starting to do pretty well.  Much of the book deals with humanist philosophy and ideals, in particular the question, when God is out of the picture, what’s left—us.  In spite of the polemics, it’s a farce, an allegory of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.

I’m a friend of Barbara G. Walker, an early feminist writer and author of Man Made God, one of my favorite books because some of my ideas are in there.  We both concur that mankind would be a lot better off without the influence of organized religion.

Rich

Welcome to the CFI Forum, Rich, glad to have you here. Re. the creation of Adam and Eve, it’s worse than that, since there are actually two entirely different creation stories of humankind in Genesis. Gen. 1:27, and Gen. 2:22, just as there are two separate creation stories of the animals (Gen. 1:25 and Gen. 2:19) all of which were “good”, apparently including the serpent.

It’s a fun story in its way but makes absolutely no sense.

Cheers,

I checked out the first couple of pages of your book.  It looks like it might be fun to read.

Welcome Rich! Glad to have you here. I might check out your book on my Kindle after I finish the one I am currently reading.

Welcome Richard; that’s cool to hear that you debated Giuliani - he definitly loves his catholicism.

Welcome Rich.  Glad to have you here.  I enjoy reading Barbara Walker’s works.  She has some very fascinating insights.

Thanks for the comments.  There’ll be some reminiscences of what it was like going to high school with Rudy later on in this thread.  He certainly did:  “love his Catholicism.” 

I learned a lot about writing from Barbara Walker.  I have a nifty review of Man Made God on Amazon, as I was one of the first people to read it.  There’s even some material from our previous conversations over the years.  The review called it one of the most important books I ever read. 

Here’s an example of why.  As stated, I grew up in Brooklyn and attended a grammar school called St. Anthony of Padua.  Being an impressionable kid, it seemed reasonable that the patron saint must have been a good and heroic individual (to have a school in the New World named after him centuries later.) 

Then, decades later, Barbara’s book reveals that St. Anthony was a first-class, sans pareil, no-holds-barred bigot and misogynist!  St. Anthony believed and asserted that women were at the spiritual level of animals and only put here on Earth by God to tempt men and do the devil’s work.  I wonder how far the feminist movement would have gone in the thirteenth century. 

The Kindle author’s description of Mirror Reversal asserts that this book is “critical of and inimical to organized religion.” I can’t help it, because the more I study history and what religion has done to humanity the more riled and irate I become.  But Barbara is a trained journalist and her style of simply laying out the truth objectively and dispassionately is far more effective.  She just presents the evidence and lets the readers make their own judgments. 

Barbara allowed me to use her “Compilation of Biblical Quotations” as the epilogue of Mirror Reversal.  It’s a perfect example of what I’m trying to say.

Stuff like: 

BIBLE MORALITY (compiled by Barbara Walker)

1[color=purple]. KILLING.  (As in “Thou shalt not”???)

The biblical god personally kills a total of 371,186 people, not counting his slaughter of every living thing in Genesis 7.  The biblical god also orders the killing of a total of 1,862,265.

Gen. 22:2 - God accepts human sacrifices (including that of Jesus, later).
Ex. 12:29 - God kills all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.
Ex. 15:3 - God is a god of war.
Ex. 21:15,17 - Anyone who strikes or curses a parent must be killed.
Ex. 22:18 - Every witch must be killed.
Ex. 22:19,20 - You must kill anyone who “lieth with a beast,” or who worships any god other than Yahweh.
Ex. 31:15 - Anyone who works on the Sabbath must be killed.

I told Barbara when she handed out hard copies, “Boy, you really hit them on the head with your own beliefs.”  It shows how asinine and whacky the Holy Scriptures are.  (There I go again letting my emotions influence what I write.  Can’t help it because this religious nonsense is endangering the whole planet.) 

The above is just the first two books.  I’ll present more in future posts.   

Thanks again,
Rich Goscicki

Welcome to the CFI forums, Rich. I hope you stick around and contribute to the discussions.

Welcome Rich,  I checked out your book and the first page drew me in. I definitely want to read it. Loved the pac-man reference!  Hope to read more of your posts in the future.

Cap’t Jack