It’s “A” Week on Facebook, the week of the year where atheists all over Facebook change their avatar to an atheist symbol as a way of showing just how many of us are out there and in solidarity with each other. This year we are encouraged to make our avatars the beautiful blue “A” logo: [...]
Edward Tarte says everything that shouldn’t need to be said on the topic, but sadly does: The word poison is a bit unnecessarily strong, but the rest is spot on. Your Thoughts?
As part of an ongoing dialogue with Greg about the legitimacy of the term “evangelical atheism”, I wrote two posts in which I argued that despite some serious principled differences in methods that we should always stress distinguish us from faith-based proselytizers, some activist atheists should not bother defensively, or with offense, trying to deny [...]
In a previous post, I conceded that it was acceptable to call at least some activist atheists like me “evangelical atheists” on some possible senses of the word “evangelical”. Greg wanted to say that this could not be so because all that atheists do (or should) advocate is tentative, skeptical empiricism, and that we do not (or should [...]
Martin Pribble scores an interview with Dan Barker, the former music minister turned atheist activist, co-host of Freethought Radio, and author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists and the newly released The Good Atheist: Living a Purpose-Filled Life Without God: Dan Barker Interview – February 2011 by martinpribble Your [...]
Jean Kazez argues that the public square is not the place for atheists to be arguing that science and religion are incompatible. I strongly reject her position on this point because not only do I believe that ordinary people are quite capable of handling a vigorous, no-holds-barred debate about religion but because I believe the [...]
Jason Streitfeld gets to the heart of the matter of why some of us are so adamant about publicly advancing atheism: For atheists like me, there is one issue that matters most in all of this: the role of religious authority in society. I’m not saying atheists are concerned with this issue above all else. [...]
Don’t understand the cartoon? Understand it but don’t agree? Here are a few posts that will clear up what it means and why it is correct (to my mind at least): Distinguishing The Atheist Agnostic, The Theist Gnostic, The Atheist Gnostic, and The Theist Agnostic Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May [...]
GreenGeekGirl advises the atheist community (and she has a nice defense of the existence of an atheist community against those who do not believe one exists) that we should no longer bother arguing with theists, since this is supposedly futile, but should rather accept we have it pretty good in America and focus on protecting [...]
This is both hilarious and inspiring: via Blag Hag. Your Thoughts?
This is one of the most concise, eloquent, and accurate statements on the problem with religious absolutism in morality and the superiority of secular, non-absolutist approaches to morality I have ever heard. And it is certainly Dawkins’s best 2 and a half minutes on the topic of morality I have ever heard: Thanks to Lucy. [...]
Atheist Revolution argues we do but that it’s not our fault because religion started it and there is no avoiding it as long as religion perpetuates it, so we cannot be blamed for just acknowledging it’s there: I think that an “us vs. them” mentality was established long ago by religious believers and has been [...]
I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves. They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]
Yesterday, I offered 10 tips for religious people who want to reach out to atheists. Joseph wants me to mention one more thing: Very good! One thing that you missed and would have lived to see is the accusation from theists to us heathens that we are narrow minded or closed minded. This drives me [...]
In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Convincing? Your Thoughts?
Matt Dillahunty explains why he focuses his skeptical energies so much on religion: Your Thoughts?
Jean-Paul Sartre reasoned that the loss of belief in God causes an existential feeling of abandonment. He was referring to our losing the potential for divine guidance but Jon Adams’s feeling of abandonment is a new one to me. He wishes he could still believe there was someone up there who knew him completely: Atheist [...]
Last week I lambasted Rabbi Adam Jacobs who wrote an “open letter to the atheist community”. As someone else has astutely observed, the rabbi’s letter was practically a model for how not to address serious atheists. In hopes for better future discussions between believers and non-believers, I decided to give some advice to believers who [...]
In a post last weekend entitled ”Evangelical Atheism?“ I explored the ways in which some atheists may both be called “evangelical” with some justification and yet deserve to be spared the moral approbation aimed at the most notorious kinds of theistic proselytizers. In reply Greg Teed suggested to me that atheists could not be “evangelical” in any [...]
Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
In reply to my defense of what is sometimes called “Evangelical Atheism” on my personal Facebook page, Greg Teed thinks my account comes “so close” to correct but argues that I missed something crucial: All good points, but there is a radical difference *in kind* between what atheists/skeptics promote and what the religious evangelical proselytizes. Sometimes [...]
One Luke Muelhauser’s readers challenged him that all his pursuit of evidence just would not matter if only he would experience “believing in Jesus and God” for himself. In reply, Luke opens up about his emotionally intense experience of Christianity: Things went so well over the next year that I started to feel like quite [...]
So we activist atheist types who like to be outspoken about our atheism and network with other atheists are often derisively called “evangelical” or “proselytizers”. In all cases, the irony is clear and in some cases there are allegations of hypocrisy attached to the claim that we aim to “convert” people. Is it right to [...]
Through Facebook, I was recently contacted by an old friend from high school (who was actually the first girl to go on a date with me). She is working on her Master’s in nursing and has an assignment which involves interviewing people about their views on religion and spirituality, for the purpose of thinking about approaches [...]