Earthquakes Explained: Promiscuous Girls The Cause

We so often hear religion is not incompatible with science because “science can’t tell us everything”, with the implication being that religion can tell us what science cannot.  This must be one of those things we need religion to explain to us, not how earthquakes happen but why they happen and how we can prevent them! [...]

Divine Serial Killer

Dwindling In Unbelief provides a full chart of all biblical claims of divinely sanctioned killings, replete with death totals and links to blog posts discussing the details of most of them.  A handy resource. Your Thoughts?

God Cites “Moving In Mysterious Ways” As Motive For Killing 3,000 Papua New Guineas

The Onion has full coverage of God’s remarks here and of Jesus Christ’s recent decision to hire an associate christ here. Your Thoughts?

Daily Hilarity: Accu-Wrath Forecast

A great, older Bill Maher bit I only just discovere: Your Thoughts?

“Where Was His Miracle?”

A poignant two paragraphs from Jerry Coyne’s piece reporting from the AAI that I mentioned Andrew Sullivan maligned earlier: It’s the first time I’ve been in a group of fellow atheists (and I haven’t detected one sign of stridency or militancy), and it gives one a warm supportive feeling. One of the functions of speaking [...]

What To Make Of “Bad” Theologians Who Do Good “Theology”?

Halden muses about the independent relationship between theological study and personal piety and virtue: Its hard to find a more scandalizing bunch of people than theologians, and not in the good way. One would think that among a guild of professionals dedicated to getting to know God as well as possible you’d see less infidelity, [...]

Thank God Prayer Doesn’t Work!

Good Atheist remarking on a campaign to pray for liberal politicians makes the following astute value judgment: It’s a good thing prayer does absolutely nothing (well, other than waste people’s time I suppose). If it did, can you imagine the kind of world we’d be living in? How many times have people prayed for terrible, [...]

Daily Hilarity: “Mr. Deity and the Skeptic”

Guest appearance by Michael Shermer! Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Shermer’s latest book is The Mind of the Market, on [...]

If These Are God’s Miracles, Where Are His Priorities?

Brand new from ZJ:  The French have a spring that is alleged to perform miracles.  ZJ reasons that even if it did perform miracles it wouldn’t speak much of the deity behind them: Mr. Deity on the other hand seems to understand these criticisms and that’s why he never intervenes: Your Thoughts?

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion

Rod Dreher confronts psychological research which illustrates the pervasive role of rationalization in our thought processes, which leads us reflexively to seek out information that confirms preexisting beliefs rather than challenges them among other techniques for seeing only what we want to see.  Turning to the implications of the realities of rationalization for the religious [...]

“Faith Killing”

You know, I’m tired hearing of these blood-boiling cases of children dying because of their parents influencing them to substitute prayer for medicine.  Here’s the latest such murder to make the news, via Mojoey)  I’m also tired of the term “faith healing” to describe these events.  I suggest we call it what it really is: faith [...]

On Meeting People Where They Are

While he was hospitalized a couple years ago, Daniel Dennett got irritated when people offered to pray for him and insisted that they thank doctors rather than offer their ineffectual prayers.  The Wittenburg Door was appalled and inferred (quite unjustifiably) that Dennett did not understand that all many people mean to say when they say [...]

The Evil Atheist Philosophy Professor Vs. A Piece Of Chalk

In response to a long running urban legend/chain intellectually insulting e-mail (which Snopes has a really good write up of here) comes this terrific comic stripization: The version of this story that deserves a separate cartoon of its own is a really disgusting one in which the professor’s closing challenge to God is to strike [...]

Atheist Testimonials In The Detroit Free Press

Mojoey, the founder and curator of the Atheist Blogroll to which we owe great gratitude, points us to a great series running in The Detroit Free Press in which atheists give their testimonials. Here’s the one Mojoey highlighted yesterday: I was at work when someone brought up that I am an atheist.A nearby coworker nearly [...]

Debate On Miracles

Michael Shermer vs. Adrian Holloway

James Randi Exposing Healing Frauds

James Randi, the former magician known as The Amazing Randi, in the ’80s went on Johnny Carson with some staggering footage and insight into how religious charlatans were faking miracles and swindling people.  This video shows a portion of what they uncovered.

Naturalism As True By Definition

Jason Streitfeld weighs in on the question of naturalism or supernaturalism, treated by Sean Carroll here, John Pieret here, and Shane and me in these this post and then this one. Streitfeld’s post is excellent so read it in full. Scientists do not rely on any notion of the supernatural to formulate their conception of [...]

Can Scientists Infer About Naturalism And Its Limitations?

John Pieret is not thrilled with Sean Carroll’s foray into the philosophy of science and metaphysics from Thursday. Particularly, he is (rightly) critical of Carroll’s dismissal of major theories of scientific demarcation as mere “mottos” and his apparently unnuanced and uncritical preference for Occam’s Razor in all cases.  Only in the final paragraph does he [...]

Science And Supernatural Hypotheses, Present and Possible Future

Via PZ Myers, comes a long and recommendable argument by Sean Carroll on the philosophy of science and how scientific understanding of the world thus far precludes any room for miracles (thus making the religion and science incompatible).  Excerpted from the much longer article with interesting things on the philosophy of science which I recommend [...]

The Cognitive Dissonance Argument Against Modern Religious Thinking

Making The Cut

Bradlaugh: A Yemenia Airlines plane crashed into the Indian Ocean Tuesday. Of the 153 people on board, only one survived, 13-year-old Bahia Baraki of Paris. Said her Dad:  “I can’t say that it’s a miracle, I can say that it is God’s will.” I guess the relatives of the other 152 passengers, the ones who didn’t make the [...]