Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”)

A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand.  Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one [...]

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 [...]

More On Pascal’s Wager From Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees

Recently I posted a terrific video challenging the value of Pascal’s Wager  from numerous perspectives.  Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees, the creators of that video, have a new video replying to criticisms they received after posting the first video.  Below is first the original video again for those who missed it (or who saw it [...]

If You Know The Bible, You Know It Is Riddled With Clear Contradictions

NonStampCollector provides a hilariously fun, rapid-paced, guide to biblical contradictions through a cartoon quiz show.  This video is, in short, a great resource which every Christian should take to heart and every atheist should memorize and have available for making the case against biblical credibility as in any way divinely guaranteed: Here’s a handy list [...]

How Did You Come To Be Irreligious?

And can you explain it in a 30 second video? (via) And even if you cannot (or simply are disinclined to) make a video, can you tell us in the comments section? Your Reasons For Rejecting Religion?

Atheist’s Wager

Atheist’s Wager provides sums up what I think the real wager would be were there any likelihood that a hell-threatening monotheistic God existed: I propose as my answer to Pascal’s wager, two choices and two outcomes. The choices come down to theism (of any religion, not just Christianity) vs. atheism. The outcomes include going to [...]

Pat Condell’s Case Against The Catholic Church

After a tasteless joke early on, he’s justly scathing and deserves to be heard: Christians are too blithe when they distinguish the evils perpetuated by Christian institutions from those same institutions’ claims to moral and spiritual authority as founded by God or, at least, to their being the church of God at all. How in [...]

The Logistics Of Noah’s Ark

A really terrific video from DarkMatter2525 which spells out the numerous impossibilities involved in the Genesis flood story: Daniel Florien has helpfully typed up the major points for easy reference here. Your Thoughts?

Smug Atheists?

Andrew Sullivan, whose blogging I usually admire and emulate a great deal as he’s really my blogging hero, had an astoundingly nasty post about the fact that atheists dared to meet up together to listen to Daniel Dennett mock the emptiness of apophatic theological gobbledygook last weekend. They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as [...]

Do True Christians Ever Leave The Faith?

Writerdd makes an astute observation: I’ve been reading the comments here lately and I have noticed that a lot of Christian readers say the same things over and over again: “If you REALLY had been a Christian you would have never de-converted.” I’ve been struck by another thing recently as well: noticing that many de-converts [...]

Camels With Hammers Philosophy

After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.”  This post will [...]

“This Will Happen To All The Gays”

The Gaytheist Agenda relays this horrific and upsetting story: The honorary consul to the British High Commission in Jamaica has been found murdered at his home in Montego Bay. John Terry, 65, was discovered with a cord and an item of clothing tied around his neck outside his house in Mount Carey on Wednesday. it [...]

Disambiguating Faith By Soul Searching With Clergy Guy

Please don’t dismiss this post as too long to take a shot on reading through.  The debate it features promises to be candid and thorough and, I hope, thought-provoking for believers and unbelievers alike.  I hope you find it as worth your time to read as I found it worth mine to write.  It set [...]

Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Preconditioned By Doubt, But Precludes Serious Doubting

On Unreasonable Faith, there is thread chatting about doubt in the context of discussing  a quote from Descartes about the necessity to thoroughly doubt at least once in one’s lifetime.  In the ensuing discussion, Clergy Guy writes: Just wanted to chime in to say that I think one can have faith and doubts at the [...]

On The Possible God Of Philosophy And Cosmology Vs. The Personal, Historical God Of Faith

This post is inspired by some excellent remarks from Daniel Dennett in reply to William Lane Craig’s vigorous cosmological arguments for the existence of God (which you can see him make in a separate debate here).  Here is the Dennett video, below it you’ll find a rough transcript I have produced of it, and then [...]

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Subjectivity Which Claims Objectivity

In a previous post, I wrote the following of Rod Dreher’s decision to inculcate in his children a faithfulness that would safeguard their faith against intellectual faltering: I can say that it is utterly depressing you could be so self aware about inculcating your children to believe regardless of truth or falsity, to put faithfulness [...]

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Corruption Of Children’s Intellectual Judgment

Earlier today, I challenged Rod Dreher’s recent post wherein he lamented the difficulties we have in overcoming our minds’ propensities for rationalizations.  In that same post he had argued from the experience of his own loss of Catholic faith that the intellect was an insufficient ground for religious beliefs and that the will needed to [...]

Equating All Gays To Rapists And Animals

I’m not exaggerating in saying that I have never before seen with my own two eyes a contemporary preacher who lived down to the worst caricatures of hatred and poison-spreading religiosity as what I saw in this disgusting video.  Even in my Evangelical “homosexuality is a sin” days, this would have turned my stomach something [...]

Character As Fate And Environment As Variability

In reply to this post from late last night in which I took a first pass at trying to sketch out my views on fate, George writes: Dan, Again I find myself thanking you for this blog. Good blogging is all for naught without good readers (and especially without good readers who contribute excellently and [...]

On The Meaning Of Meaning

In reply to some remarks I made about the recognition of genuine meaning without reference to religion, George replied with this challenge: Dan, Now you have got me thinking…. I’m not entirely clear about your point of meaning in everyday events. My logic tells me that a completely statistically probable event happens and I impart [...]

The Complicated Relationship Of An Apostate To His Religious Friends And His Reilgious Past

In reply to this post from the other day and subsequent discussion in the comments section about the ways that religious belie can interfere with both reason and love, George writes, For the past year I have been trolling blogs and websites trying to wrap my brain around religion in general and evolution denial in [...]

Love, Religious Style

Daniel M of Good Reason relays this poignant anecdote: I was on a long car trip with my very Mormon mother. Out of the blue, she said, “So you think it’s okay for gay people to get married, do you?” “Yeah,” I said. “I think it’ll be fine.” Mom said “What if your sons turned [...]

What’s In A Name? On Redefining Belief In God Rather Than Rejecting It

VorJack summarizes Robert Jensen’s thesis that God is mystery itself, rather than a principle that hopes to explain them: Jensen is not saying that God is a mystery. Instead, he is saying that God is mystery itself. God is what we call all those things about the universe that we don’t or can’t understand. Let [...]

In Defense Of Mocking And Embarrassing Religion

(I’m moving this post from last summer to the front page today since its topic is relevant to “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.) Unreasonable Faith just profiled this interesting looking documentary on a tour of debates between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson. In the comments section to that post, Custador wrote the following about Christopher Hitchens: [...]

Almost All My Opinions Remain Disputable

In a previous post I discussed part of my thought process in leaving Christianity and then contrasted my experience in Christianity, spent desperately trying to rationalize what were apparent falsehoods, with my experience of thinking free of faith ever since: it took me (and is taking me) years to painstakingly develop my own constructive conception [...]