Amy Atheist

About me:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” - Buddha

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Emerson

I'm a born-again atheist - Gore Vidal

"I believe in people, and people, when given the right encouragement to think for themselves about all the information now available, very often turn out to not believe in God and to lead fulfilled and satisfied - indeed, liberated - lives." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold - Isaac Asimov

"Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it" - Emerson

"Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer." - Mignon McLaughlin

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If someone tells you you're SUPPOSED to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it. Maybe you should, but maybe you should decide that for yourself. People who long to be told what to do or who are afraid to follow their hearts are sad, sad little sheep, and they make me sick.

To religious nut jobs - I'm only going to say this once, so squint real hard and make your atrophied brains concentrate: Please ask Santa to SAVE me from your deluded, self-serving, archaic bullshit. Amen.

To free thinkers, philosophers, naturalists, environmentalists, intellectuals, revolutionaries, and other people whom the unenlightened teachers didn't particularly like - I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter! Love, Amy

This video is from my UMass Amherst Graduate Commencement, May 25, 2007, where the community bravely and loudly stood up to the Administration's regrettable decision to plant a black eye on the ceremony and the University's reputation by giving Andrew Card an honorary degree. Check out my blog on it for more details. I'm as proud to be a member of this community as I am of my hard-fought degrees! Many thanks to Trap Rock Peace Center for filming and creating such a memorable record of this event!

All riled up now? Good! That gets me every time I watch it. Okay then, you've earned yourself some kittens...

I'm interested in the evolution of our species away from religious superstition and towards an enlightened approach that accepts human responsibility for our frailties and credit for our amazing capabilities. I don't believe in religious fairy tales any more than I believe there are oogedy-boogedies hiding under my bed waiting to grab my ankles and gobble me all up.

"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT." - Frank Zappa

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." - Arthur C. Clarke

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning American physicist

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal (he of the wager)

"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." -Isaac Asimov

"Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance." - Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Haden Planetarium

"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." - Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbs

I believe that feminism is a pursuit of human rights, equality, and the freedom to orchestrate one's own existence. If you really respect women but think you're not a feminist, you should try listening to someone other than Rush Limbaugh and Ann 'She Who Shall Not Be Named' Coulter about what feminism is. If you dislike feminism, you dislike women and you should probably get to work figuring out what went wrong in your emotional development.

"Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." - Ann Richards, Ex-Governor of Texas, 1933-2006

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose." - Dolly Parton

I am a passionate environmentalist and as an urban planner, am interested in the history of the 20th century and how we got ourselves into the current energy and development messes that we find ourselves in today. It seems increasingly true that we get the government (and civilization) that we truly deserve.

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” - Thomas Edison to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, 1931

I have a great appreciation for irony and self-deprecation - "The ability to quote is a servicable substitute for wit." - Bertrand Russell

Sink Showering Monkey
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids....