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 Rise Of Islamo-Erotica

(Image: “God Is Great” by Makan Emadi) Betwa Shermer has a really interesting piece about Muslim artists in America who incorporate nudes into their art.  Defenses of nudity in art as permissible by Islamic standards: The Lebanese-born artist, who now lives in New York, insists that the taboo stems from a conservative society and not […]

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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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Theocratic “Dominionist” Janet Porter Goes Down Swinging

Janet Porter recently lost her radio program for her increasingly dominionist theology, which aims to further politicize Christianity and Christianize the United States government.  It was Christians who opposed her and then Christians who fired her.  In a new article comparing secularists to Nazis, she argues that her Christian enemies who oppose dominionism are the […]

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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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Thank God For The New Atheists?

Reverend Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World thinks that the New Atheists are really the new prophets.  The Infidel Guy Show interviewed him a couple weeks ago for an hour. In the audio, he argues that God is not […]

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U.S. Bishops Argue Employers Should Be Allowed To Consider Being Gay A Fireable Offense

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter addressed to the United States Congress people opposing ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act For the sake of clarity, permit us first to state two basic tenets of Catholic Church teaching on this issue. First, persons with a homosexual inclination “must be accepted with respect, compassion, […]

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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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On Secular Uses Of Hallowing Halls

A federal judge has ruled that a public school cannot hold its ceremony in a church building: [Bridgeport-based federal judge Janet] Hall ruled that use of the church for graduation violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, even though some of the symbols were to be covered. Earlier this year, members of the Enfield Board of Education […]

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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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Muhammad’s Worst Enemy

Below is an intense and stark video from the usually much more sardonically off the wall DarkMatter2525, as his contribution to last week’s “Everybody Draw Muhammad” protest: Your Thoughts?

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Are Noble Lies “Blasphemous”?

Renegade Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan is harsh with his condemnation of those who think we should “insincerely support religious faith because it is good for others or for society is”, calling this a “profound blasphemy” and cynical, and saying he respects us atheists and agnostics who outright reject faith more than both those noble lie […]

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Freethinking Islamic Scholars

Amira Nowaira laments that well over a thousand years ago, Islamic scholarship had more room for rationalists than it seems to have today: Although many of those thinkers, according to Badawi, did not attempt to disprove the existence of God, they lashed out against the notion of prophethood and argued against the privileged position occupied […]

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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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120 New Jersey Clergy Petition In Favor Of Marriage Equality

via Rosi Efthim, Pam’s House Blend, and Friendly Atheist: 120 Clergy from 19 Faiths in the State of New Jersey Monday, January 4, 2010Senate President Richard J. Codey Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr. The State House Trenton, New Jersey 08625 Dear Governor Codey and Speaker Roberts: We are 120 clergy members across New Jersey from […]

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Bishop Spong Releases Manifesto Resolving Not To Legitimize Homophobia By Debating It

Bishop John Shelby Spong holds nothing back in criticizing Christianity’s awful legacy on the treatment of minorities, women, gays, and “heretics”: I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians […]

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Gay Marriage = Religious Freedom

Another great video from before the inception of Camels With Hammers worth catching up on in case you missed it.  This one is from robtish, who has other terrific videos on his youtube channel. It’s not just a cheerleading or general argument video but an in-depth information video with a bunch of important facts refuting some […]

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The Peaceful Atheist Reconsiders Religion

It will be most interesting to see where Lily, who lost her faith at Wheaton College, will wind up in the future.  And then in the future after that.  Her interesting thoughts upon finishing Barbara King’s Evolving God are here.  Each paragraph is too interesting and her thoughts only make sense in context, so I […]

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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 […]

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The Value Of Religious Moderates And The Danger Of Isolating Religious And Political Fundamentalists

Recently Karen Armstrong is coming out with a book arguing for an extremely apophatic conception of God that rejects all manner of biblical literalism but still insists on some important reference to God and is critical of the New Atheists.  Recently she and Richard Dawkins both responded to a Wall Street Journal solicitation for their […]

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Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition’s Advocate And Enforcer, Opposed To Merely Provisional Forms Of Trust

David appeals to MacIntyre to raise a really interesting question: What is your assessment of faith as the starting point of tradition constituted inquiry as understood by MacIntyre? This is accepting the standards of argument, explanation, justification internal to and partially constitutive of the extended argument that constitutes what MacIntyre calls a tradition. In this […]

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Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason

In reply to Rod Dreher’s recent post explaining his decision to train his children’s wills to be faithful since the intellect was not a firm foundation of faith, I critically characterized his position as essentially boiling down to the following: So, the solution is not to train your children to be intellectually scrupulous but to […]

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Disambiguating Faith: Can Rationality Overcome It?

Evangelos asks another excellent question in reply to my latest installment of the ongoing “Disambiguating Faith” series: I hope you can do an entry on the practicality of rationality. As you know, human beings are by default not rational beings; as a psychology professor once told me, “our brains have evolved for survival, not calculus”. […]

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Buzz-Killing The Atheists Are Awesome Videos

George dissects the atheism videos we featured earlier today which showed just how awesome atheists are and how much everyone would miss us if we took our awesomeness away.  George kills some buzz with a little fact checking: I am going to begrudgingly play devil’s advocate here so don’t panic, I have not gone off […]

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