Tag Archives: faith

Albert Mohler Calls Closeted Atheist Clergy “Charlatans and Cowards”

Who’s being the coward here? Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an unapologetic young Earth creationist, plays rough with secretly atheist clergy members who have talked in confidence to Daniel Dennett’s The Clergy Project, writing at … Continue reading

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Seven Reasons I’m an Antitheist

I’m an antitheist. I don’t think, on balance, that religion functions as a force for good in the 21st century. Seven reasons: Religion perpetuates women’s inequality. One element of religion that is quite bad, and that makes me an antitheist, … Continue reading

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The Stockholm Syndrome and Religion

The Stockholm Syndrome is where love and threat are coming from the same source; it’s a form of hostage taking, and it’s what religions do emotionally with people when they make God the source of love and acceptance if you … Continue reading

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Alan Sokal on Faith

Physicist Alan Sokal, the famed skewer of postmodernism, in an article at Massimo Pigliucci’s Scientia Salon, gives faith a well deserved towel snap: “Faith” is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. “Faith” … Continue reading

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A Get Rich Quick Scheme Using Religion That Actually Works

The basic formula. How might you make big bucks in the religion racket? Try using the following formula on people: God is mad at you, pray this prayer, God won’t be mad at you. It’s that simple. Selling this psychologically … Continue reading

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An Awesome Example of Confounding Variables!

__________ Talk about deep doo-doo! So much of life, philosophy, and critical thinking resonates in this ironically captioned image. Take the atheist-theist debate, for example. Is God, though silent and invisible, lurking beneath the yellow noise of the cosmos? Do … Continue reading

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Free Thought Road or the Orthodox Route?

Wow. I like this Anglo-French Enlightenment inspired cartoon from 1890: __________ Talk about push-back to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress! “Freethought Road” takes you past a secular schoolhouse and Investigation, Reason, Education, Humanity, Justice, Science, Virtue, Love, and Liberty, with “Truth” shining … Continue reading

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Is God Necessary for Morality?

In a recent article, Dennis Prager claims that God is necessary for objective morality, writing the following: If there is no God, the labels “good” and “evil” are merely opinions. They are substitutes for “I like it” and “I don’t like … Continue reading

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A Poem on the Death of God

PROCESSIONAL (After Thomas Hardy’s “God’s Funeral”) I. At twilight, a people-train prepared to move. Dead God carried at the front; mourning contagious. I am my own sadness at the death of God. II. I saw Him. He first appeared a man. Then a … Continue reading

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Atheist Tim Minchin on Faith

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Why I Prefer Evolution to Intelligent Design

First, it is perverse to reject evolution outright. Darwin was largely right, and people who try to reset science to pre-Darwinian assumptions are engaged in folly. The converging lines of evidence from numerous scientific disciplines point to the fact that … Continue reading

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Steven Pinker Embraces Scientism

At The New Republic, Steven Pinker comes out swinging against those who direct the pejorative term “scientism” at atheists and agnostics. Pinker thinks that, just as gays turned tables on the bigots and came to embrace the pejorative term “queer,” atheists … Continue reading

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A Nice Example of Ad Hominem

Ad hominem, adding or attacking the man as opposed to the argument, is on display for over nine minutes in this hilarious Fox News interview with Reza Aslan. Professor Aslan, you see, is a Muslim who wrote a book about … Continue reading

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Why I Am an Agnostic and Not an Atheist

As Thomas Aquinas formulated it, I think the first cause argument is sound. To stop the infinite regress, there must be a first cause that has no cause and a first condition that has no conditions, and, as Aquinas puts … Continue reading

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An Update on My Request to Mayor Parris for the Expression of a Moment of Doubt at City Council Meetings

I’m a member of the doubting community, not the faith community, and since my local city council in Lancaster, CA., gives an alternating member of the faith community a turn every two weeks to say a sectarian prayer at the … Continue reading

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Stephen Barr on God and Science

Below is a talk by Stephen Barr, a Catholic and physicist who teaches at the University of Delaware. He has thought a lot about the relationship of science to religion, and his views are interesting. He also has an excellent book … Continue reading

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The Lowdown on the Religions of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, Moses, and Paul Kurtz

The six great world religions come with messages of good news and bad. Here’s the lowdown: Islam and Christianity. Good news: God and heaven are real and you can go there! Bad news: Get with the program or God will … Continue reading

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A Film That Appears To Be Worth Seeing

This looks good and has gotten a lot of recent attention and critical acclaim. It has also generated controversy. It opens in New York and Los Angeles May 24, 2013. Directed by Rasha Burshtein, an Orthodox Jewish woman who lives … Continue reading

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Awesome

This comes via The Huffington Post (in case you missed it): Employees at a Motor Vehicle Commission office in New Jersey called the police on Feb. 2, when a man claiming to be a “Pastafarian” — a follower of a … Continue reading

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Where was God at Sandy Hook?

Randy Newman told us years ago the universe is like this. It doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.

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