Jim Downard

A group of students from a traditional Christian High School write in to Ask An Atheist about religion, God, Jesus, hell and much more.

Atheists don't believe they "go" anywhere — we die, just as all people have since organisms started doing that. To sleep, but not perchance to dream.

It is not an uncommon perspective to be heard for atheists and agnostics, which is the reason why local secular organizations have been formed over the years, as a support group and place of refuge as well as lighter socializing and connection to a broader world of thought.

How do we "know" all that dark matter and dark energy exist at all? Well, it's precisely because astrophysicists know so much about how the regular matter operates.

I haven’t yet reported on the pair of atheist speakers who spoke to secular groups here last month: Pete Boghossian (a philosopher professor at Portland State University) publicizing his new book “A Manual for Creating Atheists,” and Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker, former evangelical Christian preacher and inveterate debate lover who spoke all over the region during the Darwin Day period (once in Spokane for the local FFRF chapter, the Inland Northwest Freethought Society, and again over in Coeur D’Alene for a North Idaho College philosophy club.

Evolution is indeed very "dumb"— just like geology or astrophysics.

Just about everybody believes in lots of things (and just how boring do you have to get to get by in life without believing in anything?) so the fast answer is, atheists believe in things too.