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Freethought in the light of the sun
Last month, I posed a list of questions to people who identify as pro-life. In the long comment thread which ensued, there were a fair number of people who stepped up to respond, both some who were traditionally religious as well as some who said they were atheists (but more about that later on ...
Yes, you get a Christmas post! Atheists don't take the day off just because people think a mythological savior-god was born on this date thousands of years ago. So my wife and I were watching Miracle on 34th Street last night (the original, not the remake). In spite of everything I'm about to ...
What strategy should the atheist movement adopt during the holiday season? Should we focus on doing good works as a visible proof that we're caring and moral people, or should we redouble our efforts to be loud and uncompromising in the face of an onslaught of religious schmaltz? That's the subject ...
It's two more days before you can open the gifts under the tree, but I have some early presents: • Now hear this: I'm on the New Books in Secularism podcast, discussing my book Daylight Atheism . • Big news out of the Philippines: The legislature has finally passed a national Reproductive ...
On a related note to my last post, you've probably heard that the Pope recently took a bold step forward into the 21st century by joining Twitter. This is significant because it marks, to my knowledge, the first time that the Catholic church has ever taken a bold step forward on anything. (He chose ...
Even though I just published a long list of reasons why good people should leave the Catholic church, it seems like new ones are piling up every time I turn around. Herewith are some of the latest arguments for all people of common sense and conscience to sever their association with this corrupt ...
[Editor's Note: This is a guest post by AJ Johnson. Raised Baptist in the Bible Belt, she became an atheist after learning about evolution and the immoral verses in the Bible. She's a former development director of American Atheists and currently serves on the board of Recovering from Religion and ...
I hate having to write posts like this, but it's too huge a story to ignore. Less than two weeks before Christmas, America is again reeling from a mass killing - one of several this year, but the worst in a while - at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Not counting the ...
As I mentioned earlier, I took part in a discussion panel at Skepticon V last month, How Should Rationalists Approach Relationships and Marriage? The video of that panel is now available online, so if you'd like to see it, enjoy: Thanks to Jesse Galef for inviting me to participate, and ...
We're talking about diversity in the skeptical community again, this time occasioned by some unfortunate and ignorant comments from Michael Shermer about atheism and skepticism being "a guy thing", which drew a predictably sharp response. As Jacques Rousseau said, it's just barely possible that ...
All throughout this year, I've been hearing people excitedly claiming that December 21, 2012, one week from today, will be the date of some major world event. Amusingly, the many New Age authors who've written about this date all have completely different ideas of what specifically is going to ...
Summary: A personable, good-humored example of the liberal-theist cherry-picking ethic. I recently wrote about the evangelical writer Rachel Held Evans and whether her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, can undo Christianity's entrenched ideals of patriarchy. I still don't think that's likely ...
This article was originally published on AlterNet. The renowned physicist Max Planck once said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with ...
In an interview late last month, Republican senator Marco Rubio, who's widely viewed to be laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential run, announced that he doesn't know how old the Earth is: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible ...
In my previous post on "Southern Slavery As It Was", I cited two modern-day Christian pastors who claim that black slavery was a positive and beneficial institution. To throw some cold water on their rosy claims, in this post we'll hear from a person with firsthand experience of it: Frederick ...