Archive for the 'Atheism & Religion'

I had an interview a few weeks ago with a reporter from Germany, and it has resulted in a very nice write-up about The Atheist Experience in the The Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest national print newspaper. You can view the original article in context here, under the title ”Gottlose Gesellen”. The attempt to get an English version from Google Translate was a bit laughable, so one of our native German followers has kindly provided a much better translation for us: Read more

Just now I rejected three identical comments to three different blog posts from the same person. The text read as follows: Hello and to all atheists concerned: I am currently pursuing a masters in theology and this week’s class project requires that I interview 3 middle/high school candidates concerning a particular set of questions (If you are in your twenties that’s okay even if the requirement is middle school or high school age-this class is about youth ministry). Candidates must be “unsaved” (Their words-not mine) but preferably they once attended church and had some idea as to the concept of “God” and what that means. This is not a troll, a trick, or some sneaky method to get unsuspecting atheist youths in my spider’s web of church deceit. I just have several questions that need to be answered by 3 candidates that match the aforementioned profile. NO CONVERSION ATTEMPTS! I just need these questions answered that are enumerated below: a. How do you describe your religious background and church involvement if any (past and present)? b. To you, what is God like? Describe God or at least the concept of God if you believe this entity to be a myth. Read more

Fishing for stuff out of email today, I’m getting a letter by John from Ireland, who is a bit irritated with us that we haven’t replied to his previous messages.  John has decided to show us how much he cares by reading through the ACA FAQ page and rebutting the answers to our questions.  I thought I’d throw John a bone and give him the full blog treatment. Subject: referring to your FAQs This message was sent via the contact form on the ACA website: Dear Atheists, I have wrote numerous times to yourselves to have my questions answered by someone, to no avail, and lately to ‘Scepticon’ asking them of their most irrational of premises - How to rationally approach Death Read more

A lot of atheists really like to argue about inconsistencies in the Bible, and let’s be honest here, there are a lot of them.  A quick look at the “Contradictions” section of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible will show us all kinds of gems such as the following: Is Salvation by faith alone? To kill or not to kill. Were there men or angels inside or outside the tomb when the women arrived? How did Judas die? There are hundreds of them.  Dan Barker seems especially fond of this kind of argument, as he has his “Easter Challenge” in which he asks Christians to reconcile the death of Jesus from the four Gospels into one coherent story. Read more

Over at the “Evangelical Realism blog”, Deacon Duncan has been going back through all of Stephen Feinstein’s posts and discussing the presuppositionalist arguments from another angle.  If you just couldn’t get enough of this discussion while it was happening, here’s more of it! Seriously though, DD is doing a great job and writing some interesting posts, so you should check out what he’s written so far with Fallacies of a contingent God and The Christian metaphysical understanding of God.