Many a religious person defending her own religious beliefs will argue that a given politically, morally, or intellectually unflattering interpretation of her faith is simply not a true representation of her faith. While the question of who has the right or the adequate means to decisively determine with any rational clarity which competing interpretation of any [...]
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Category Archives: Rationalism
Bursting The Chains Of Monkish Ignorance And Superstition
July 4, 2010 – 2:46 pmI should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or "In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence")
June 21, 2010 – 5:18 amA 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 [...]
Freethinking Islamic Scholars
May 15, 2010 – 12:07 amAmira 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 [...]
How PZ Myers Differs From Rush Limbaugh
August 17, 2009 – 4:36 pmPrometheus Unbound takes issue with PZ Myers: I certainly understand why people like PZ Myers’s style. It is easy and uncomplex, and impatient with nuance. It’s what makes Fox News so popular. And it may well draw a crowd of young people. Myers is ever on the ready to stir the shit. And he is [...]
In Defense Of Mocking And Embarrassing Religion
August 15, 2009 – 8:23 pm(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: [...]
Religion As A Morally and Politically Ambivalent Force
August 14, 2009 – 4:59 pmTwo weeks ago, I profiled various remarks from Jerry Coyne for the incisive way they challenged assumptions that (1) religion is indispensable for moral progress, (2) that religion is even on balance usually an aid to moral progress, and (3) that moral progress is even something observable over the course of history. Coyne’s remarks were written [...]
For God or Morality? On Those Who'd Hold Morality Hostage For Faith
August 1, 2009 – 9:49 amIn his recent critique of Francis Collins, the Christian Evangelical and geneticist recently appointed by Obama to head the National Institutes of Health, Sam Harris referenced the slides from one of Collins’s speeches. I want to take two posts (but possibly more if there are comments or if I otherwise have extra relevant ideas on [...]
When (And How) Should We Bother To Push The Issues?
July 27, 2009 – 1:27 pmNjustus offers a probing challenge to my recent post in which I defend Daniel Dennett’s argument that atheists should stand up for atheism rather than take the attitude that the religious beliefs that they do not share are good for their neighbors and should be encouraged. I argued that Dennett’s position is not “ideologically narrow” [...]
How Atheists Can Avoid Other Fundamentalisms: By Focusing On Rationalism First And Foremost
July 26, 2009 – 11:37 pmI agree with this a whole lot (I most recommend the last link to PZ Myers’s assessment of Hitchens on war): The real-world implications of the “New Atheists” ideas are not insulated from the same dogmatism and intolerance that they decry. To get back to my original point about rationalism, the religious aspect is only [...]
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