Now is the Time to Join or Donate!

If you've been thinking about joining Minnesota Atheists, now is the time. We rely on memberships and donations to spread our message of Positive Atheism in the community. Membership starts at $35 per year. That's less than $3 per month! Student memberships are only $20 per year.

Joining is easy. Click here to sign up.

To make a tax deductible donation, click here. To fund our efforts to have a building for Minnesota Atheists, click here.

Remember, you can make your membership dollar stretch farther by electing to receive eNewsletters only, rather than paper. To change your newsletter delivery option, send an email to address@mnatheists.org.

If you're not quite ready to take the plunge with a financial donation, or membership, there are plenty of ways you can get involved. One of the best ways is to get out there and attend our events! Go to meetup.com/minnesota-atheists to stay up to date. All of our events are free and open to the public.

Click Here for the Full PDF Newsletter!
To keep this email a reasonable size, only intros to highlighted articles are included. Also the PDF newsletter includes exciting puzzles, and photos you can only find if you read the PDF!

By George Kane

On a Sunday morning at the end of May, Dr. George Tiller, who was well known as one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, walked into Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita Kansas, which he had attended regularly for years. Inside the church, long-time anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shot and killed him.

Many online abortion opponents could not conceal their delight with Roeder's "street justice." Dr. Tiller had also for years been the object of incendiary attacks from Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, which many blame for inciting Roeder to the murder. Abortion opponents rankle, of course, at the notion that they bear any responsibility for the criminal violence of extremists like Roeder. They point out that the mainline anti-abortion organizations denounced Dr. Tiller's murder, and that few of them would ever engage in violence. Nevertheless, the argument on which religious opposition to abortion is always based, that abortion is murder, is inherently inflammatory. If they insist that Dr. Tiller committed hundreds of murders, they can hardly denounce his own murder as inappropriate or disproportionate punishment. Their arguments justify violating the law by appealing to a higher law. Read More.

Atheist Top 30

By Eric Jayne

Like it or not, Christian music is undoubtedly popular. Among my daughter's peer group "Jesus Take the Wheel," by Carrie Underwood, is a very popular song that her friends sing when they get together. During my own adolescence I was an unwilling participant in an evangelical youth group where many discussions took place regarding Christian artists like Amy Grant, Petra, and DC Talk. Given the seemingly timeless popularity and ubiquity of pious music I felt the need to come up with a list of my favorite pro-atheist songs, many of which are delightfully sacrilegious. Some of these songs promote rational freethought, some satirize religious beliefs, and others celebrate science. In creating this list I factored musical composition and anti-ecclesiastical lyrics. Although this list consists of only 30 songs I will pretend to be Casey Kasem and introduce them in the American Top 40 show fashion starting with number 30. Read More.

Electronic Minnesota Atheists Newsletters

If you currently receive a paper newsletter as a member of Minnesota Atheists, you can make your membership dues more effective by switching to this electronic format.

It costs us about $22.00 per year per person to print and mail a paper version of the newsletter and nothing to email an electronic version.

If you are interested in switching, feel free to reply to this email, and your preference will be noted.

Film Review: Drag Me To Hell

By Jack Caravela

You may be wondering why a group of atheists would choose to see a film titled Drag Me to Hell. The short answer is that the movie's co-writer and director, Sam Raimi, treats the concept of eternal damnation about as seriously as we do. Mr. Raimi, recently at the helm of the three blockbuster Spider-Man films, decided to return to his roots with his latest offering. Fans of the Evil Dead series which launched the filmmaker's career will welcome this throwback horror flick, whose first wink to the genre comes before the movie even begins, with the retro Universal Pictures tag (Raimi opted for the rotating Earth logo last seen in the early sixties rather than the modern version). Read More.

Beware the Little People

By Victor Tanner

Is “Atheist” a strong enough word for skeptical thinkers? It really only denotes a non-belief in gods and, as we all know, there are many more wacky things out there. What's stranger than believing that an invisible friend is watching over your every move? Or than believing that the world is only 6,000 years old despite the evidence to the contrary? How about believing that a race of tiny elves that cannot be seen by human eyes are inhabiting the world all around us?. Read More.

Film Review: Up

By James Zimmerman

If we take the word Cinema at its root (from the Greek kinesis, meaning "movement"), then pure cinema has been dying since the advent of synchronized sound. Too many movies are simply footage of people talking, or of a camera sitting idly by recording whatever happens to be going on in front of it. In its purest form, perhaps film continued to exist only in the creations of those (such as Chaplin and Hitchcock) who first mastered their trade and came to prominence during film's silent era.

But Pixar does an admirable job of bringing audiences a delicacy for the eyes. In a style first explored in Toy Story, expanded upon in Monsters, Inc., and brought to perfection in WALL·E, the animation studio succeeds in telling a tale via visuals with its latest offering: Up. Read More.

The Sunny Skeptic: How and Why

By Crystal Dervetski

When you join up with Minnesota Atheists, you are asked two questions: "How did you hear about Minnesota Atheists?" and "Why did you join Minnesota Atheists?"

I know, you're an atheist, you're a skeptic, and you're cynical about these questions. It's totally understandable if it seems like they are bordering on an intrusion of your privacy. You do not, of course, have to answer these questions at all. Please keep in mind, though, there are a few really basic reasons why we'd like to know these two things about you. Read more.