100 Facts Every Atheist Teen Must Know

[thesummerqueen]

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Friendship.
Treating people with kindness and respectsets an example. Killing other people seriously hamperslong-term friendships and other relationships.
Kindness feels good.
If a god told an atheist to sacrificeher child, she would tell that god to go fuck itself with asolar-powered chain saw while standing a quarter-milefrom the Sun's searing surface. Theists would kill the kid.
Death is final.
Murder devalues human life; socially well-adjusted people value others due to empathetic responses,which are not the exclusive domain of god belief.In stark contrast, religious reasoning has justifiedmurder,torture,genocide,infanticide, andslavery. If anything, propensity forviolence increases in proportion to the fundamentalism of aperson's religious faith.

These feel more like humanist principles. It is not wise to say that atheists believe this or that, because not all atheists hold to these values.

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Pointless. Teens should be learning about sex, drugs (inc. booze), money, and their talents. Religion or the lack of it isn't about to land them any of these (unless they become a priest, then there are alter boys).

Not necessarily – it’s not a bad thing to give teens something of a resource to learn about the atheist movement without having to go to the 4 horsemen for their most readily available information.

I like it.

but than again, I'm not an atheist, so my perspective may be considered a lot less valid.

You and DeistPaladin seem to have a better grasp on principles of religion (or lack of religion) than some atheists that have been through here. I, for one, enjoy your two cents.

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The statement, “there is no god” is not closed-minded. It is simply a shorter way of saying, “there is neither empirical evidence nor any logical reason to believe any gods exist.”

Not all atheists arrive at that point through critical thinking. It’s not a bad thing to include a section about this, but make it clear that the two are not intimately intertwined. “There is no God “ is not a shorter way to express those sentiments.

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The atheist favors logicalconsistency, coherence, and observable evidence as truth; thetheist stands upon custom, faith, revelation, and intuition. Theatheist sees the world as nature presents it; the theist twists thenatural world with ideas that are inconsistent with reality.

Some atheists believe in fairies. You sound like you’re mixing skeptic and humanist movements up with atheism.

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I would put in more, but I really don’t have time to finish reading it here at work and I think it’s obvious you’ve got a lot of stuff all mixed up with each other. I think a little extra time on Wiki and a little more library research would benefit you.

Thoughts?

12 year old kids don't need to read Paine to be an atheist. They just need to be taught critical thinking skills.

Indeed. I figured it out when I was 10. The only thing that kept me quiet for so long is that I thought something was wrong with me. That’s why I think books like this are useful.

Our current culture is becoming increasingly inept at thinking outside of scientific restraints. I wonder if we could still come up with the genius of religious texts, let alone even appreciate them.

Er…wut?

Because “art” no longer exists?

Or a product of the American educational system.

The more likely scenario.

There are absolutely ways to have safe sex. Such as the time tested "sex through a sheet" method.

WTF. That is not the aspect of Judaism I meant for you to take away from our discussions!

I told you on the first page what teens are interested in.

Not fair – those weren’t the only things I was interested in as a teen. In fact, drugs weren’t even an issue.

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To be honest, the title ought to have something to do with secularism, and then you could include atheism. It's a short section.