I am so proud: I invented a phrase that is widely used now in atheism. I first brought it up at TAM London in 2010, and then discussed it again in Montreal in 2011, and now it’s widely used.
That term is “Dictionary Atheism“.
We’ve been waiting for this. After the murders of multiple secular bloggers in Bangladesh, there has been a mad behind-the-scenes (because no one wanted to alert the murderers) scramble to get our very own Taslima Nasrin, who was on the execution list for these Islamist fanatics, to a place of safety. She’s out! She’s currently in the US!
Now comes the hard part, though. She needs a long-term commitment to her safety, and CFI is setting up an emergency fund to support her and other threatened secularists. That last bit is important; Taslima is not the only one trying to survive under a death sentence.
If you want to help out, donate to the Freethought Emergency Fund.
Molly Worthen attended Sunday Assembly, the church for atheists, and came away with the wrong idea, and a few right ones.
Is this what secular humanism — the naturalist worldview that many nonbelievers embrace and religious conservatives fear — looks like in practice? In one sense, secular humanism is a style of fellowship intended to fill the church-shaped void, but it is also a strand of the liberal intellectual tradition that attempts to answer the canard that godlessness means immorality.
There is no “church-shaped void”. I also don’t have a Jesus-shaped hole in my heart. I don’t even believe that most Christians feel that way — people aren’t sitting around pining for an opportunity to sit on a bench and go through a boring ritual for an hour or three on Sunday morning. People like connecting with other people more generally, and church has been the opportunity and obligation for that. It’s a mistake to confuse the substance of human interaction for the trappings of a particular and peculiar institution.
A site called “Biblical Gender Roles” contains a terrible list of 8 steps to confront your wife’s sexual refusal. There are so many assumptions packed into that site, there doesn’t seem to be much point to arguing over the details — first thing to fix would be this Biblical attitude that women are chattel who must be subservient to their husband’s commands. The author is very concerned about this little problem:
How should you as a husband handle it when your wife directly refuses to have sex without a valid reason? Is there anything a Christian husband can do about this?
I wish he’d explained what a “valid reason” would be. I think “I don’t want to” is a valid reason, so maybe all of this Christian writer’s steps are irrelevant. But here’s all of his advice to control an uppity wife.
Why do so many ‘spiritual’ people seem like dishonest sleazeballs? Because they’re trying too hard. It’s a competitive game, this ‘spiritual’ life.
A new show is coming to television: Lucifer, based on Neil Gaiman’s version of the Lord of the Underworld.
It has just been announced that you can now register for Skepticon 8. You may do so. Only…the announcement includes an ominous warning:
We know that Skepticon 8 is 6 months away, but we can hardly stand it! We want to see you all again! In the coming weeks we’re going to start announcing speakers and this year, for the first time EVER, there will be NO REPEATS!
YOU HEAR ME? NO REPEAT SPEAKERS!
Get excited! I know we are!
Alex Berezow is annoyed. Slate is picking on poor Republicans and Christians for their anti-science views! How dare they! Don’t they know Democrats and atheists are just as bad?
It’s a complaint that ignores reality. We can look at the voting record of congress: it’s eerie how polarized it is, and how the Republicans line up in lockstep to vote against any policies that might combat climate change, for instance. We can look at the current slate of Republican presidential candidates, and it’s terrifying — Huckabee, Santorum, Carson, etc.? Are you really going to argue that it’s one-sided to point out that the anti-science agenda of the Republican party is blatantly in contrast to that of the Democratic party (not that I’m a big fan of Democrats or Obama or Clinton: they are lukewarm swill against the toxic, corrosive sludge of the Republicans)? Of course he thinks it is.
I’m not very impressed with this listicle about 5 Ways Atheists Argue Their Cause (That Aren’t Helping). It makes a few correct points, some bad ones, and the ones that it gets right are poorly argued.
All our evils are acquired. It’s like the whole nature vs. nature controversy!
Michael Seewald, who is some relative by marriage to the Duggar family, comes up with some slimy excuses for Josh Duggar’s abuses. The appalling thing is how typical this is for Christians: they have a demeaning vision of human nature dunned into them from an early age, and they think this sort of behavior is normal, and you can only be rescued from it by Jesus Christ.
There are many who seem shocked that a child from a Christian family would do such things. While it is always alarming when we find out about our children’s sins, we should not be surprised. Christians (and many other reasonable people) believe that we are all born with a sinful nature. David, king of Israel spoke of his inborn sin like this when he was repenting of his adultery and murder by proxy: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Psalm 51:5. The prophet Isaiah concurs. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6. While not all of our sins find a way to manifest themselves externally we all know the corruption that is present in each of our hearts. It is a mercy of God that he restrains the evil of mankind otherwise we would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.
