Not only does approving an abortion necessary to save a woman’s life in a case where her fetus would die in either case get you automatically excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, but so does seeking ordination while being female. Lifelong Catholic Janine Denomme this week was denied a Roman Catholic burial for having the [...]
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 [...]
Compared to the alternative… Some thoughts of my own on the pros and cons of religious moderates. Your Thoughts?
In an insightful video, which can be found here, Wafa Sultan, a Syrian born psychiatrist and theauthor of A God Who Hates, debates historian of Islam Daniel Pipes about whether there can be a moderate Islam which can be embraced or whether Islam is an inherently illiberal religion which should be opposed wholesale. In particular [...]
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 [...]
Christians who defend the Old Testament genocides are guilty of either relativistic authoritarianism (anything can be okay as long as God wills it and His will has simply changed from the Old Testament days to the New Testament one) or, possibly worse, theoretical agreement with all the normal justifications of genocide as long as God [...]
In discussing the response to Nidal Malik Hasan, Alonzo Fyfe draws the distinctions just right when he accuses atheists who leap from the act of one kind of theist to associate theism in general with violence as an instance of “The Bigot’s Fallacy”: Many of the people who embrace the Bigot’s Fallacy in this case [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Phil Goetz has one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read and it deserves to be read in its entirety. Here are the main points and a couple of key points of application to whet your appetite: You may have noticed that people who convert to religion after the age of 20 or so [...]
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 [...]
A teaser excerpt from Richard Dawkins’s upcoming defense of evolution is up online. His boldest claim—evolution deniers are as bad as Holocaust deniers. This book is necessary. I shall be using the name “historydeniers” for those people who deny evolution: who believe the world’s age is measured in thousands of years rather than thousands of [...]
Two 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 [...]
Faith is a form of loyalty. But more than that, faith is a form of trust which does not calibrate itself to objective standards of trustworthiness but trusts people despite their limitations as provably trustworthy people or even despite counter-evidence to the notion that they are worthy of trust at all. Even more than that, however, faith [...]
Unqualified Offerings lives up to its moniker with this post: I often hear people explain that it is simply impossible to be a scientist and religious. They have eloquent arguments for why there shouldn’t be any people who are religious and also accomplished scientists. It’s a great, well-argued, self-consistent theory with impeccable logical foundations. There’s [...]
Strangely, in a country with a government that outlaws homosexuality, transsexuals are allowed to change their sex. A documentary on the subject: Thanks to The Daily Dish.
Shane’s reply to this post addressing him (and you can find part 1 which initiated the conversation here): An excellent response! Much more in-depth than my teasing comment probably warranted. Sorry, but my response is a bit rambling. That comes with the blog commenting genre, I think. My earlier point wasn’t about intellectual virtues or [...]