Talk:Sandbox

David Attenborough - Atheist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8DL-o-POcU

Hope I'm doing this right. (Hence the double link - not sure if I was supposed to put the link in double brackets or if that was referring to something else)

Anyways, in the interview he says:

Q: "Was it a religious upbringing?" Attenborough: "Not at all, No."

Q: "Have you, at any time, had any religious faith?" Attenborough: "No"

"I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man's side in a trance."

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I've got two quotes by Shakira and I wonder if these qualify her for ambigious.

"Because we're animals as well, and we're territorial, and we are more often than not put in survival mode, and it becomes the law of the jungle. We follow it when we see our own kind endangered; it's part of natural selection."

"I do think libido is the engine of the world. Forward or backwards. For good or ill. Sometimes when we repress our libido we regress. When we were in the Dark Ages, it was a question of humanity somehow managing to forget about itself. We put God in the centre of society, and people forgot about their own nature and desires. There was a huge deal of repression."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/22/shakira-music-colombia-poverty?INTCMP=SRCH

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Actress Amber Heard is a self-declared atheist. She said the following in an interview with Playboy.

"I can definitely make an argument for atheism. I was very educated in scripture and dogma and the church, particularly the Catholic Church. I could not possibly know that I disagreed with religion unless I knew what I was disagreeing with. I’m not saying that this is the only way to be or it’s how everybody should live. Some of my best friends here in LA are devoutly religious people. I’m completely supportive and interested in people doing their own thing. That’s a motto that I try to live by, and I hope that’s how other people treat me. Live and let live."

http://ericspitznagel.com/content/other-interviews/amber-heard/

Stellan Skarsgård

The actor Stellan Skarsgård said in an interview with a German newspaper: "Religion doesn't make anyone a better person"

In the Frankfurter Rundschau of 3/4/2012, Stellan Skarsgård said:

Interviewer: "What values can religion give?"

Skarsgård: "I do not think that religion makes anyone a better person. The three monotheistic religions are a big problem. A god means a truth. And anyone who says that there is only one truth,should have his brain examined. Because that's the end of each dialogue, understanding one another and of all interpersonal communication."

Interviewer: "... especially as the various religions seem more and more radicalized."

Skarsgård: "The fundamentalists now have political influence in the West. Someone like Rick Santorum is not far removed from an Iranian ayatollah. After 9/11 I have read the Bible to understand what drives George W. Bush. I do not believe that he has read it. It is a tale from the Bronze Age. It's hard to imagine that anyone still believes in it."

Here's a link to the Interview (in German): http://www.fr-online.de/leute/schauspieler-stellan-skarsg-rd--religion-macht-keinen-besser-,9548600,14643434.html

Video of the Interview

hxxp://youtu.be/dQmcq3RIHog

Kyrsten Sinema

Kyrsten Sinema is the new congresswoman from Arizona representing the 9th District. A democrat, she is the first openly bisexual woman serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is formerly a Mormon, but has since rejected the faith tenants of Mormonism.

As a public figure serving in the Arizona state congress and now in the U.S. Congress, many articles have been written of her, but this one from the Washington Post seems the most revealing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/kyrsten-sinema-a-success-story-like-nobody-elses/2013/01/02/d31fadaa-5382-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html

Since she can't be pinned down to a particular religious label (The Daily Kos website originally listed her as non-theist, but her campaign has denied this), maybe we can list her as Ambiguous.