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Written by Blue Nine
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Monday, 10 November 2008 23:54 |
The first podcast I will talk about is "The Better Atheist". This is, obviously, a podcast about atheism. I picked it first because there are only four episodes. It is looking like there will not be any more. The domain BetterAtheist.com is taken, but the page is blank. BetterAtheist.net and BetterAtheist.org do not seem to be valid domain names. There is a blog and podcast called "The Good Atheist", but I have not gotten around to looking at or listening to those yet. Since there were only four episodes of The Better Atheist, I could probably summarize the whole thing in one post.
The host is/was Matt Navarre. He attended St. John's Seminary in California right out of high school, with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest. I guess he is one of those people who decided religion just didn't make a lot of sense once he took a harder look at it. Sort of like Daniel at UnreasonableFaith.com. (Perhaps I will start a section containing notes on blogs I read.) Matt Navarre has a page at LinkedIn. He is a software developer in Portland, Oregon.
The first episode was recorded on March 24, 2007. It was only a minute long and was Matt introducing himself and the podcast.
The second episode was recorded on April 18, 2007. It was Matt talking with a father and son who work for a small business Matt did some consulting for. The father and son were Christians, and the father was literally born in a church. The fifth pew. As Joe Biden would say, "literally, literally, born in a church." It was not argumentative or confrontational at all.
The third episode was recorded on June 30, 2007. This was an interview with Steve Gibson, who runs a site called Truth-Driven Thinking © (SM). He has a book called "Truth-Driven Thinking" and a podcast that I think I will listen to. It was discontinued, but the episodes are still online. The site defines Truth-Driven Thinking as "The Critical Thinking Alternative for an Emotion-Driven World". They talked about science, religion, atheism, etc. Steve Gibson has a mission statement here. This is not the same Steve Gibson that is co-host (with Leo LaPorte) of the Security Now Podcast. I listen to that as well.
The fourth episode was recorded on March 08, 2008. He brought the son featured on episode two back to talk about how things have changed in the past year. This conversation was shorter, but still pretty good. The son was firm in his faith, but not too judgmental of other people.
I downloaded this podcast a few months before I got around to listening to it. I usually listen to podcasts while doing cardio at the gym, or pranayama/chi kung in my apartment. By the time I listened to the episodes, the site was blank. He did not give any indication in the fourth episode if or when there would be any more episodes. Perhaps I will email him and see what his plans are.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 10 November 2008 23:59 )
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Podcast Notes