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Tag Archives: religion
If You’re Religious, Do You Put Your Soul At Hazard By Watching Comedy Central?
Below are four pretty good reasons for thinking humor is dangerous to religious belief: Humor is dangerous to any confident expression of metaphysics, for it lampoons pretense. It deflates and complicates; it speaks on behalf of the sorts of contending truths … Continue reading
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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Tagged albert mohler, atheism, clergy, Clergy Project, faith, God, religion
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Aquinas and Superstition: Thomist Philosopher Edward Feser Is An Aquinastitionist. What Is That?
Aquinastition. When you mix Aquinas with superstition you get Aquinastition. So an Aquinastitionist is an intellectual Thomist who makes apologies for religious superstition. Thomist philosopher Edward Feser is an example, as displayed in his recent essay, “Religion and Superstition,” in The Routledge … Continue reading
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Tagged aquinas, edward feser, God, philosophy, psychology, religion, superstition
3 Comments
The “Little Missionary”: A Child Healer in Brazil
Six years old. She’s called the “Little Missionary,” and the money is rolling in. Religion exploiting children. Is this a bug or a feature? Brazil’s evangelical revolution sees miracle healers take centre stage Poverty and technology contribute to boom of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, critical thinking, culture, God, Jesus, religion
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Holy Shit! The Atheists Really Are Coming!
From 16% to 23% of the American population. That’s how fast the religiously unaffiliated have risen in America over the past eight years. Stunning. The Republican Party and the Internet have ruined Christianity in America. Republicans have politicized religion, and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, atheism, Christianity, critical thinking, God, Jesus, religion, Republican party
3 Comments
Saturday Night Live: Is This A Representation Of The Prophet Muhammad–Or Not?
After Charlie Hebdo and Pamela Geller, Prophet Muhammad drawing is amusingly dealt with below by Saturday Night Live. In a picture drawing game, what could a blank canvas be inferred to be–but the Prophet Muhammad himself? So was the Prophet … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged comedy, humor, Islam, Mohammad, religion, saturday night live
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How to Save Adam and Eve from Genetics and Darwin
Darwin and genetics have blown up the idea that Adam and Eve had a special creation physically. No new species tends to bottleneck down to two (unless perhaps two stray birds get isolated on an island and start a new … Continue reading
Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace: Traditionalists Turn Gay Marriage Into Greek Drama
A wedding ceremony needn’t consist of drama–unless someone objects. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” If someone objects, then the Greek drama starts. As in the conflict in Sophocles’ Antigone, in which King Creon feels he has to stop … Continue reading
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Tagged America, gay marriage, God, religion, women's equality
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Let Them Eat (Or Not Eat) Wedding Cake: Religious Conscience, Gay Marriage, And Empathy For Others
With regard to bakers who might balk, out of conscience, in making a cake for a gay wedding, I think many of us who are heterosexual and support gay marriage have a problem: our empathy goes all in one direction–toward … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, empathy, evangelicals, feminism, gay marriage, God, religion, women's rights
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Does The Holocaust Render Natural Law Problematic?
Think about the Holocaust in relation to natural law. Even if the Holocaust doesn’t give you pause in relation to God’s existence, it nevertheless functions as an impasse to comprehension. What was God up to in letting the Holocaust happen? … Continue reading
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Tagged God, Holocaust, natural law, philosophy, religion, thomism
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How Do You Know? Factive Verbs in Relation to Political, Religious, and Scientific Discourse
I’m thinking about factive verbs this morning in relation to such things as global warming, God’s existence, evolution, the future of the stock market, etc. ESTABLISH, for example, is a very strong, emphatic verb, as in, “I’ve established the truth … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, God, language, philosophy, Politics, religion, science, verbs
3 Comments
How Global Warming Denialists Are Likely to “Reason” about Berkeley Physicist Richard Muller’s Findings
I suppose Berkeley physicist Richard Muller is a fool for putting together a team that included a Nobel Prize winning scientist, revisiting all the data on climate change to date, and coming to the same conclusion as the current scientific … Continue reading
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Tagged climate change, global warming, psychology, religion, science
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Letter Writers Heart Richard Dawkins
The beloved Oxford evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, reads out representative samples of the love he attracts from those who follow his work. __________ The tone and content of the letters remind me of numerous pronouncements made by famous theologians and … Continue reading
An Atheist Leads a Prayer at a City Council Meeting…
No, it’s not the beginning of a joke, but it made me smile. Naturally, before Preston Smith, an atheist, got started on his invocation, a number of the pious council members of the fine city of Lake Worth, Florida, split … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, blasphemy, church, God, Politics, prayer, religion
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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
The Aztec Sun God and Jesus the Son of God Bled for You. Feel Guilty? Ready to Sacrifice Your Life to Them? Then the Stories Worked!
The Aztec worship of their sun god was rather barbaric because humans were sacrificed to the god. The rationale for this sacrifice had to do with Aztec myth, which held that the sun god sacrificed his very own blood to … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, Aztecs, God, Jesus, life, psychology, religion, thanksgiving
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Thomas Aquinas on Exterminating Heretics
In the Summa, Thomas Aquinas says that you can reason with someone who holds a different doctrine from yours so long as that person is open and searching. On the other hand, if the person persists in his view, and does … Continue reading
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Tagged aquinas, atheism, Catholicism, fundamentalism, God, heretics, religion
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Thomistic Essentialism and Sex in the Real World
Virtually every healthy human adult on the planet has a sex life of some sort, and the effect of Thomistic sexual ideology (use sex organs for procreation only), were it to be seriously followed everywhere, would be the generation of … Continue reading
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Tagged Catholicism, gay marriage, philosophy, religion, sex, thomism, women's equality
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What are Sex Organs For? Thomism vs. Evolution
We know that evolution high-jacks organs all the time to different purposes depending on context. The first tongue may have had the singular purpose of tasting, then it got used by the cat for cleaning the pelt, then by humans … Continue reading
Thomas Aquinas Says We Are Children of Wrath. Is He Right?
In the fourth book of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, chapter 52, there is quite a dark vision of the world on display. At one point, for example, Aquinas, echoing the apostle Paul, speaks of all humanity as “children of wrath.” God, … Continue reading
Prometheus Unbound 