How Genesis Is Not Only Literally False, But Metaphorically False

Mary Midgley argues that only the views of fundamentalist literalists are refuted by the fact of evolution: Appeals to evolution are only damaging to biblical literalism. Certainly the events described inGenesis 1 are not literally compatible with what science (from long before Darwin’s day) tells us about the antiquity of the Earth. But this is not [...]

Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist

Yesterday on Friendly Atheist there was a vigorous debate in the comments section about whether there is a real and important difference between claiming one lacks belief in God (or gods) and outright claiming that there is no God (or gods).  Here is a nice formulation of the argument that the distinction is an irrelevant [...]

Daily Hilarity: Death’s Complaints

The really funny new Mr. Deity is below. And this time the now regular plea for donations at the end has some moments that are even funnier than the episode.  It’s all really hilariously done. 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 [...]

God’s Cool Designs

An older Edward Current piece, brilliant as all of them: Your Thoughts?

What Would Jesus NOT Do?

This is another truly spectacular video from Non Stamp Collector, whose new video we featured yesterday.  In this one he shows the real ways that a divine human could have provided evidence of his divinity and how a loving incarnated God could have morally and materially benefited humanity and demonstrated its benevolence and ethical interest. [...]

Sam Harris’s Case Against Collins

President Obama’s recent choice to head the National Institutes of Health was Francis Collins who was both head of the human genome project and is an outspoken proponent of the complementarity of religion and science.  Here are some of  Sam Harris’s objections to his nomination: Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be of concern? There is [...]

Is God Needed For Us To Care About Starving Kids A World Away?

A few weeks ago now, I wrote a post, Commitment To Value Without God, in which I discussed how even when I was a Christian, I realized that I did not need to make reference to God in order to either psychologically recognize the value of sumptuous food or good friendship or any of various [...]

Daily Hilarity: “Mr. Deity and The Evil”

Dave’s posts on karma and on The Thinking Atheist’s very well made video on the problem of evil earlier tonight stirred some thoughts on the subject in me that I hope to sketch out at another time.  In the meantime, I felt like this is a good time to post one of the best Mr. [...]

Gays and Christianity 3: If God Exists and Is Good, He Cannot Oppose Gay Love

In two previous posts, I have addressed current tensions in the Anglican church over gays.  You can find those posts here and here.  In reply to my second post on the topic, I received several excellent comments.  I decided to reprint the one which challenged me and my reply to that comment here to keep [...]

XTC’s “Dear God”

Why Worship Someone With Mysterious Motives?

The Conversational Atheist raises a good point: When you ask a person to explain God’s apparently contradictory actions, you will inevitably get a shoulder shrug, and perhaps a “How am I supposed to know the mind of God?” Atheists need to figure out the kinds of questions that get a bit deeper. Don’t ask a [...]