I’m going to talk about abortion again this week. This time, I’m taking a completely different tactic. I’m going to apply my own personal moral principles to the problem and see how well I do against those of the religious right, supposedly backed by their god. Guess which one will come out objectively better? Hopefully, …
Category Archive: faith is not a virtue
Dec 20 2010
How useful is faith for obtaining knowledge?
This is a typical conversation between a theist and an atheist, and in fact something very much like it occurred over a lengthy series of back-and-forth comments on this blog last week. Please excuse this paraphrase; I want to boil the conversation down to its most important features, and I hope I’ve portrayed the theist …
Jun 05 2010
Random Thoughts at About.com
I’ve mentioned before that I try to spend time at About.com’s Agnostic/Atheist section hosted by Austin Cline. The site offers a lot of good things, not the least of which is a good atheist community forum and an often-updated blog. Recently I posted a few comments to some of the blog posts there, and thought …
May 07 2010
Easter Sunday (a bit late)
I mentioned on Saturday that my fiancee and I went to church on Easter Sunday. I’ve been meaning to write a post about the experience for a while, but I never got around to it. Luckily, she blogs too, and has done my work for me. Enjoy! Belated Easter Tidings
Jan 24 2010
“Unknowable” basically means “who cares?”
Occasionally we’ll hear a believer define his god as an “unknowable” being. Bizarrely, these folks tend to think that’s a real gotcha! moment, because obviously, that means we cannot disprove its existence, and so unless we want to be “closed-minded,” then we must admit there is at least the tiniest possibility that it might exist, …
Jan 14 2010
We Can’t Please Everyone
It’s pretty obvious that Jen and Russell received mixed reviews on the theist guest experiment. I will let the viewers continue to figure out their feelings about it. But the event also triggered some e-mail responses, and one in particular was from “a fan of the show” who also notes he is “a Christian…currently in …
Dec 03 2009
Bogus miracles, fake news, intellectual and moral cowardice
Okay, this is fun. The other day we got an email from a fellow who described himself as an atheist, but who professed he was a bit taken aback by a miracle claim that had come his way, about a Florida doctor who is supposed to have prayed a man back to life. He pasted …
Nov 10 2009
Antichrist gonna getcha
This morning I was listening to Christian radio. (Yeah, I still do that. I’m not going to apologize for it, he said defensively.) Thanks to my long commute, when I’m bored of the available audiobooks and podcasts, I occasionally switch to NPR or Christian talk for a few seconds to check if they say something …
Apr 28 2009
How to Stack a Deck
Last night I watched three episodes of a program called “Paranormal State.” It is billed as “true stories of a team of paranormal researches from the Pennsylvania State University Paranormal Research Society.” One episode was of the variety I find most disturbing. It involved a young autistic boy. I won’t examine that particular episode, but …
Apr 10 2009
Religion fails to provide believers with sound epistemological tools
Wow. That original correspondent from the email I dissected in Wednesday’s post, whose name I now know but will not reveal out of courtesy, has replied. She’s written a very lengthy, sincere, eloquent, and almost entirely misguided letter in which she basically confirms an opinion I’ve held for a long time (and one which I …
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