One Nation Indivisible

Just Monday morning I was riding along a Florida Highway staring with irritation at a giant billboard looking just like the one below except it had the giant word “GOD” in the middle contributing to three phrases.   Atop and to the left of the word God it said “One Nation Under”, on the left […]

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What Exactly Are We Supposed To Be Doing?

You’re Not Helping responds to my defense of the Freedom From Religion Foundation: Camels with Hammers has posted a bit of commentary on the Do Nothings. First and foremost, they cry foul on us for unjustly misrepresenting the goals of the FFRF Wait, no, first and foremost, I agreed with You’re Not Helping that it is unfair to accuse […]

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The Gulf Disaster: Prayer And Priorities

Some atheists online have mocked calls for prayer made by Obama and legislators.  You’re Not Helping argues that while there is clearly something awful about treating prayer as a substitute for practical action (such as when true believers in “faith healing” forgo actual medical treatment for prayer) not all those who turn to prayer are […]

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Lord Mayor Bans Lord Mayor Bans “Intrusive And Outdated” Christian Prayers Before Council Meetings

From the Telegraph: Colin Hall said religion had no role to play in the conduct of council business. Mr Hall, who has just taken over the mayorship in Leicester, said the “majority” of councillors and city council staff were not practising Christians therefore there was little point in having the prayers, which were introduced in […]

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Obama Acknowledges Two Father Families In Father’s Day Proclamation, Christian Right Flips Out

Secular News Daily reports: As part of his Sunday proclamation, Obama included a reference to “two fathers”: Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian. Tim Wildmon, president of the far-right American Family Association, responded […]

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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 […]

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Bruce Bawer: Multiculturalism, Freedom of Speech and Appeasing Islam

Bruce Bawer is a gay liberal and the author of Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom and While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. And below is a powerful speech.  If you don’t have time for the whole thing, at least make time for the first part: The description of the video […]

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Confronting Conservative Christians With The Consequences Of Their Homophobia

Last month there was a day of silence in schools to promote awareness of schools about the dangers gay students experience. In solidarity with their gay peers who are frequently bullied into silence, students were encouraged (by outside activist groups, not by schools themselves) to voluntarily refrain from speaking in school all day. Unsurprisingly, for […]

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Say The Pledge Of Allegiance With Porky Pig

Without any reference to God. In honor of Flag Day in America, here is a clip from “Old Glory”, a 1939 Porky Pig cartoon which features a godless pledge in both print and recitation: Of course, Porky was not an atheist activist trying to prove a point, he just lived in that pre-1954 America that […]

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“Skipping Sunday School”: A Documentary On Parenting Without Religion And Growing Up Godless

(via Atheist Nexus) Learn more about the topic and the film here. Your Thoughts?

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Global Peace Index Shows Least Religious Countries Among Most Peaceful, Highly Religious Countries Among The Least Peaceful

Canterbury Atheist points out that the world’s top ten peaceful nations on the 2010 Global Peace Index are among the world’s least religious nations. CORRECTION:  I should have written, among the world’s top ten peaceful nations are a high percentage of the world’s least religious countries, measured in terms of personal religiosity metrics (like reports […]

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The Right To Apostasy

Former Muslims United claim the right to apostasy for American Muslims is in danger: FMU has asked me to note two corrections that need to be made in the article below: Wafa Sultan is the president of Former Muslims United. The right of apostasy pledge was sent to 111 Muslim leaders, not groups. In the fall […]

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“I Prefer John Locke To Jesus Christ, I Prefer John Stuart Mill To Jesus Christ…I Prefer Jon Stewart To Jesus Christ”

If you missed Ayaan Hirsi Ali on The Colbert Report last night, make time to see the interview here. And in either case I also recommend her first interview with Colbert, from March 15, 2007, in which he hardly knows what do with her. Ayaan’s books are Infidel, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women […]

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Islam Needs An I-Pod

The Amazing Atheist nails it (for the first five minutes anyway and then becomes rather hit and miss, missing the hardest on Ft. Hood): Your Thoughts?

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Pakistan Blocks Access To Facebook Over “Draw Mohammed Day”

Out of solidarity with the recently threatened South Park creators, tomorrow will be “Draw Mohammed Day”, an international day of defiance and protest by secularists against religious extremists’ attempts to silence free expression through death threats.  A Facebook group was created advertising this event.  Pakistan considers Facebook‘s willingness to allow such free speech so inappropriate […]

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Bill Maher Defends Contemporary Western Religion?

Compared to the alternative… Some thoughts of my own on the pros and cons of religious moderates. Your Thoughts?

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Obama’s Rawlsian Defense Of Separation Of Church And State

This video of a speech Obama made during his presidential campaign which is making the rounds among my atheist Facebook friends today: When the speech was made I commented on James Dobson’s faulty reaction to Obama.  As I implied in that post, in the part not addressing Dobson, I think this speech is a spectacular […]

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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 […]

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Answering Accusations Against Atheists: The Charge We Naively Blame All War On Religion

In this post I want to address Chris’s problems with the tactics and arguments of internet atheists. In two previous posts I have rejected his assumption that not liking the tactics or particular arguments that particular atheists use is somehow a reason to reject the essential atheist position that there are no gods, and then I have […]

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On Rejecting Atheism Because You Don’t Like Atheists

Chris begins an otherwise interesting reply to my post on Jon Stewart’s views on religion with this puzzling remark: Well I agree with Stewart’s statement to a degree, you can be a good person without faith, I know several aethists who are not the sterotypical ahole. I guess this comment is more of a bouncing off […]

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Is The Catholic Church A Force For Good In The World? (And Do The New Atheists Persuade Anyone?)

Do New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry turn off more people than they persuade?  I always emphatically argue no and the video below is solid evidence that I’m right.  Before this debate the audience was polled on whether they wanted to support the motion, “The Catholic church is a force for good in the […]

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A Brief Overview Of My Dissertation

Nietzsche’s writings on morality are famously provocative and controversial.  His criticisms of morality in both theory and practice are so extensive and rhetorically scathing that many philosophers assume that he can offer little or nothing constructive to moral philosophy.  Additionally, his glorification of the will to power sounds prima facie like a celebration of excessively […]

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The Religious Who Cry Offense

Michael Brull exposes exactly the hypocrisy and evasiveness at the core of religious attempts to silence criticism from atheists on the grounds that it’s inherently “offensive”: Facing a new attack with an international audience playing close attention, religions have as little rational argument in their favour as ever. There was a time when they could […]

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Turkey’s Evangelicals?

Turkey’s proudly secular state has a growing element who thinks what the country needs is more religion.  For what good?  I have no idea: Your Thoughts?

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Good Without God In New York Subways

Great to see the “Good Without God” campaign arrive via subway in my neighborhood now: Atheism Campaign Launches in New York Subways: Coalition of Faithless Advocates Focuses on Increased Secular Awareness The Big Apple Coalition of Reason, a collection of groups that advocate secularism and atheism, has launched a month-long ad campaign in New York […]

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