Called my local Holy Henry station

Last week I was listening to "The Ed Sossen Show" on Christian station KIXL in Austin. The temporary host (Sossen was absent for the day) was speculating with his callers about the underhanded motives of Michael Newdow in the pledge of allegiance case. The host rather flippantly said, "Well, I've never met an atheist who is really happy. They're all so full of vitriol and hate that..." etc.

I really wanted to call, but I had to be somewhere at the time.

Luckily, I got a second chance today. The regular host was back and the co-host was repeating his earlier comments. In the last few minutes of the show I called. I told the call screener, "Hi, I'm a happy atheist!" and got on the air in less than a minute.

The conversation was short but it went pretty well. I was nervous as hell, and I hope it didn't come through in my voice too much. I said I am happy as an atheist, and I have a lot of happy atheist friends. He asked "Did you have a bad experience when you were young?" I said "No, I had a great childhood. My father was an atheist physicist. I'm a fourth generation atheist, in fact, and I have a newborn son who may be fifth generation."

I also said that I enjoy the show (which is mostly true; Ed Sossen is a rare Baptist with a sense of humor). And I invited him to watch our cable access show. He said "Well I'd say God Bless You but I don't want to offend you..." and I said "Don't worry about me, you have to have pretty thick skin to be an atheist in Texas."

After I hung up there was about five seconds of dead air. I think my call really took them by surprise. Ed finally said "Well, I hope God DOES bless him, and I'll pray for him."

Later, I sent this letter.

Hi Ed,

This is Russell, the "happy atheist" who called at the tail end of the show today. I got home from work right after I called, and I don't have a radio that receives AM in the house, so I didn't hear if you said anything else. But I thought you wouldn't mind if I send you a quick follow-up.

You may have a hard time believing that somebody could be an atheist and still be happy and satisfied about their life, but it is true not only of me but of a fairly large percentage of my family and friends. You'll just have to take my word for that. Christians tend to incorrectly assume that all atheists had some kind of horrible, traumatic experience that caused them to rebel against God. The reality tends to be much less dramatic. Many of us are former Christians; a few (such as myself) come from atheist families; but nearly all the atheists I know are very thoughtful people, who became solid in their atheism only after long periods of thought and inner reflection. Ultimately, we just decided that the available evidence just doesn't seem to point to the existence of any deity. We aren't "fighting God"; we just don't believe in him.

I'm not writing to argue about that with you. I'm sure you've already formed an opinion about all such arguments that you've heard in the past, and so have I. The reason I called you today is that it's the second time I heard Richie claiming that all atheists are hateful and unhappy, and I decided I couldn't let that go unchallenged a second time. I can't tell what Richie's experience has been, but he might want to consider the fact that atheists seem hostile to him because of his own approach. After all, it can be difficult for an atheist to be friendly to someone who has the preconception that all atheists are rude people who hate everybody, even before they've opened their mouth.

Ed, you seem like a reasonable guy to me. I meant it when I said that I enjoy your show regularly. As such, I believe that you wouldn't want to intentionally say untrue things about a group of people just because they don't usually call in to defend themselves. You probably don't know very many atheists and don't realize that they can be nice people who love their families, volunteer for worthy causes, and make good neighbors.

I'll even try to offer you a Christian perspective on why you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that atheists are bad people. According to Christianity, all humans are born into sin and continue to struggle with sin even after they get saved. Becoming a Christian doesn't magically make you perfect, right? It just means that your sins have been forgiven by the grace of God. You get to know enough non-Christians and you may realize that these are decent people who struggle with the same issues in their lives that you do. They happen not to share your belief system. There are some complete scoundrels who are Christians and equally many who are atheists, but there are plenty of good people in both camps who are willing to talk to each other.

The Atheist Community of Austin exists for two reasons: first, because it provides a social outlet for atheists. We're not in the habit of doing weekly organized activities like church, so it gives us an opportunity to meet each other. Second, we want to defend ourselves against the constant cry of religious leaders who insist on painting horns on atheists and trying to make an image of them as scary people who are trying to corrupt your children and shouldn't be allowed to exist in peace.

Feel free to respond or not, by email or on the air. You don't need to, but I'll be pleased to chat with you if you like. I'm not asking you to agree with my opinions or stop believing in Jesus. I'm not even asking you to become "politically correct" or champion the atheist cause. I'm just letting you know that most atheists aren't misanthropes, aren't chronically depressed, and aren't really all that interested in taking over the world.

Introducing... mini-me

Benjamin Jack Glasser was born on Sunday May 26, at 1:26 PM. He weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces, and was 20 1/4 inches long. Both mother and child are in good shape, and I'll be home from work all week.

Some fundamentalist on the Motley Fool took the opportunity to make a crass dig about abortion:

Congratulations on becoming a father! Glad God saw fit to allow him to enter the world!

But at what point did Benjamin become a "mini-me"?

If he had died six weeks ago, would he have been just a non-Benjamin, "mini-non-Kazim"?

Would you have lost the son you have now, or just some fetal tissue?

I replied:

If there had been a miscarriage a few days after conception, as is common with very many births, we would have lost the son we have now.

If we had not chosen to have sex on that particular night, we would have lost the son we have now.

In either case, we might have had a different son or daughter on a different date. And we would love him or her just as much.

But he's here now, and he's the one we love now. Hypothetical situations don't apply anymore. If we hadn't intended to have a son or been prepared to care for one, then we wouldn't have. But we did, and we do.

Swordfish [movie, *]

Note, 2/16/2007: I just found this in an old message board post which I wrote on 12/31/01. If you are reading on the feed, don't mistake it for new material.

I rented Swordfish last night and I have to say that it is probably the worst movie I have seen all year. And I'm talking about a year when I made the mistake of renting "Dude, Where's My Car?"

It was bad on so many levels. It raised badness to an art form. It had a plot that made no sense and occurred in more or less random order, and characters whose motivations changed so many times that they must have been determined by rolling dice. The action sucked. The chases sucked. The women literally sucked, but that's a different subject.

Of course, for us professional computer geeks, there was a whole other dimension to the awfulness, which was the standard Hollywood treatment of computers and the people who use them. I mean, I have to give Hugh Jackman a little tiny bit of credit. The script was probably not his fault, and for a few minutes on screen when he was walking around muttering to himself, he was halfway believable as a coding nerd. But I just have a few questions:

1. Hugh is introduced by every character as "the greatest hacker in the world." Is there some sort of ranking system? Is there an awards ceremony? Who's the second greatest?
2. The guy is internationally known as a computer genius, and he lives in complete poverty? When the movie was being made, somebody like that could get a job offer for $50 an hour and feel insulted.
3. Who the hell came up with the standard "Movie Operating System"? It never changes. MOS uses a 40 point font, and even the simplest task requires the computer to pull up a giant blue spinning 3d model of some abstract shape. Who can work like that? Real code nerds use VI.
4. Are we supposed to be impressed when John Travolta shows off his giant super mega computer? Oooooo, it can access a whole bunch of different systems simultaneously. Wow, it has seven monitors. I've got news for you, John. For the last fifteen years or so, most of us have been using something called "Windows". Even the Unix guys have x-windows so they don't have to keep walking around squinting at different screens. And they're ALL able to connect to a bunch of different systems at once.

Okay, to end on a positive note: Halle Berry has breasts. Yes, they look exactly like breasts. The shot is very well framed. If half the effort of setting up that shot had gone into writing the script, this might have been a good movie.

This is not the first post

Hey! If you're looking for the very first post I ever wrote on this blog, this is not it. I know it's confusing, but it will all be explained for you if you click here:

http://kazimskorner.blogspot.com/2005/05/first-post.html