A Delicate Issue
Criticizing the ReligiousWe live in a time in which people very similar to me criticize organized religion for the evils it causes. I ran into an article that challenged that claim. The rejoinder it...
View ArticleProving God
If there's anything more impossible than living around the turn of the millennium and not having heard of Morgan Freeman, it's proving the existence of God.Which God?Atheism can have a few meanings,...
View ArticleReminiscence
One advantage a person has in being a religious person and then becoming an atheist is that I have a very important set of memories. I understand what it feels like to be religious. For a while after...
View ArticleJustification
Recently I've been hearing the same line of thinking from a couple of sources - one from Sye, who has been patiently indulging in a little comment war here on my blog, and one from Rhology, who has...
View ArticleWhy Be Nice?
Rhology and Calvin have unwittingly prompted me to write a little bit on this topic. Why should a person be good and why, in particular, should one be 'good' in a desire utilitarian sense?Rhology...
View ArticleA Hiatus
My job has been very constraining on my time lately and I have been (to everybody's great disappointment, to be sure) unable to write here.Hopefully I can get back on it soon; there is plenty to...
View ArticleOpinions
Everybody has an opinion.I was criticized recently for some writing I did. First, as a reporter for the university newspaper, I covered a lecture and wrote an objective story. Second, I expressed my...
View ArticleLook What Reared Its Ugly Head
Just a cursory glance at Makarios' blog site shows that, despite the break he swore to take after a bit of a thrashing he took over the summer, he has been running wild with some irresponsible, bigoted...
View ArticleAwkward
As a journalist, I occasionally cover stories about Christian events. In fact, every week I cover a worship service for the university paper. Today, I sat in attendance beside a faculty member from the...
View ArticleAnthony Flew - It doesn't really matter
IntroductionAppeals to authority are valid arguments only insofar as the authority is an actual authority, and if the truth matches what the authority says.-On any given philosophical issue, citing...
View ArticleAdvanced
There are a lot of misconceptions about the idea of being "advanced."For one thing, "advanced" is a word. It describes a phenomenon or an idea - in this case, the idea of progression. In our eyes, we...
View ArticleCNN Messes Up
I think it was intentionalI found a link to a CNN article called Religious Scholars Mull Flying Spaghetti MonsterWhile I read through the article with some interest, and intend to watch the Nova...
View ArticleSapient on locking Christians away
"What do you think..."Rhology asked for my take on a Brian Sapient statement. I don't know the original context, but here is the question as Rhology put it in a comment.What do you think of the...
View ArticleDisagreement and Religious Belief, part 1
Two philosophy candidates visited my university during the last few weeks, and I'd like to write posts to cover their lectures. I'll start with the one I liked least, King's lecture on competing views...
View ArticleA simple argument against the "one true religion" idea
It is relevant to my "disagreement and religious belief" topic. Certainly this argument has been expressed by others, but here is what I see:The premises:1. There exists a just God (explanation of...
View ArticleThe T.O.E. and the Big Bang
Creationist misunderstanding of evolutionThis is a transferral of my conversation with Anonymous over at www.atheistethicist.blogspot.com, since I've clogged up enough of Mr. Fyfe's comment thread...
View ArticleFWD: Godless Short Stories
Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist suggested the idea of a short story writing contest in which prizes go to winners who write short stories "that boldly assert that there is no God."I think this is a...
View ArticleFree Rice
Just to get the word out there - everybody should go to www.freerice.com to play a simple and remarkably addicting word game. For every word you correctly match with its meaning, 20 grains of rice are...
View ArticleSome numbers regarding international aid
Rod over at Makarios really lost all shreds of my respect. Of course, most rationally minded people would probably call me silly for getting so upset at somebody clearly so stone-dumb closed-minded,...
View ArticleChristmas
Last year I wrote a blog post on Christmas full of news headlines. The most prominent included suicide bombings, reports that violence has become even more widespread in certain areas...This was to...
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