From the Editor

3Q 2011: The Importance of Being Earnest

Written by Tom Melchiorre | 30 June 2011

“It is sad. One half of the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me.” Oscar Wilde

Mea Culpa. I’ve been scorched and taken to task for a mistake of omission and another of perception. Let me explain.

At the World Atheist Convention, I sat on the panel “Communicating Atheism” and presented my view on how we can communicate atheism by advancing it, and I used a good cop/bad cop analogy. Unfortunately, I used technology to keep track of my notes, and for this ink and paper guy that turned out to be a jump head of disaster. My point was that in order to communicate and advance atheism, we as atheists have to offer an alternative to the religious, an alternative to the strident, in-your-face atheists who have made the atheist strides we’ve had so far, an alternative that will invite the religious to sit down and discuss our world view. This other group of atheists, mind you, are not humanists, freethinkers, rationalists or whatever other “nicer” — perhaps apologetic — name you want to use to downplay atheism, to sanitize atheism to the religious. No, the other group would be atheists in full name, and not apologists for atheism either. Just as strident, just as stern, just as demanding for our rights — just less vocal.

2Q 2011: What Price Freedom? Democracy? Secularism?

Written by Tom Melchiorre | 31 March 2011

I’ve been putting off writing this piece for several days. News of the people’s revolutions in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East is constantly changing, and keeping up with all the developments is daunting. Hundreds have died in these people’s current fights for freedom, thousands in the past under their repressive regimes, tens of thousands. Horribly maimed. Indescribably tortured. Things done to people just wanting freedom that make you wonder how one person can do such things to another. But today, March 20^th, is the 55^th anniversary of the day Tunisia gained independence from France, and today I sit and write.

And I do so because atheists need to take serious note of what’s happening. Most of us have the freedoms the people in these Muslim countries do not, but there’s an entrenched hatred, perhaps fear, maybe both, against us, and there is a reason many of us stay in the closet, just as two of this issue’s contributors do, because if their atheism were known they have no doubt they would be fired, blacklisted, and possibly worse. I know. I did. I’m there.

1Q 2011: The Big Bang

Written by Tom Melchiorre | 01 January 2011

Scientists made an explosive discovery, literally, last November in how the universe began when they produced a mini near Big Bang under controlled conditions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider beneath France and Switzerland.

And who knew the Big Bang looked like a child’s spin art, or a Jackson Pollock painting? But that’s what the photos from CERN produced.

Now, why, if the CERN scientists have been banging particles in the super collider since its startup, is this latest collision so freaking fantastic? All previous collisions produced “beginning of time” particles but on such sub/micro/nano/ infinitesimal time frames that to even say they lasted a blink of the eye would be off by a googleplex of eons.

This latest collision, say the scientists, lasted in what they referred to as “a time frame everyone could understand.” While the “source” wouldn’t say how long that actually was, he didn’t hide his enthusiasm to the extent that a seasoned reporter couldn’t deduce he was referring to many seconds, which in Big Bang terms is an incredibly long, long time, with reams of data produced that will take hopefully not eons to decipher but will certainly keep the CERN guys busy for some time to come.