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 [...]
In “The Three Transformations of the Spirit” in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes the human spirit as successively taking three different forms: the camel, the lion, and the child. The transformations begin with the spirit of the camel, which Nietzsche characterizes as consisting of obedient, self-sacrificing, reverential, [...]
There are many virtues the religious have, even in distinctively religious forms which an atheist like I can appreciate specifically as religious virtues, but faith is not one of these virtues. It is a vice. And Matt Dillahunty’s video below features, especially in the last few minutes, an eloquent, passionate, personal explanation of what makes [...]
This morning, I posted a few of Evangelical Christian Drew Dyck’s condescending and disingenuous attempts to understand the growing trend of sustained apostasy among young Christians. In the last post I criticized his ideas and value prejudices which guided his discussion of the role that sexual development in young adulthood plays in leading people away [...]
Drew Dyck has written a book called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back. I want to focus on just a few passages from his interesting five page article from last fall in last November’s Christianity Today. Unlike many Christians who, despite living in a culture [...]
Below is a good video in which Colin McGinn first talks in personal terms about he became an atheist and then the philosophical case for atheism: Your Thoughts?
So, with Camels With Hammers down from Monday afternoon until yesterday afternoon, I went and wandered the internet. Before too long I wound up spending a good deal of time at Ophelia’s place after I responded to a post in which she did a superb job summing up the core value judgment that motivates [...]
A vast majority of believers, though probably not all, believed in God before they ever encountered any arguments for its existence. For obvious cultural and psychological reasons, the concept of God is intuitively understandable and believable for most children and by far most believers start believing in childhood. Even those who spend a short time as [...]
One often hears the dubious claim that rational arguments cannot persuade any one to abandon their religious beliefs or their religious faith traditions. I find when people perpetuate this idea they are usually trying to stop a debate that they find uncomfortable. Sometimes people dismiss the possibility of rational persuasion in matters of belief because [...]
In reply to this video on various immoral things outright commanded in what is supposed to be God’s law in the Old Testament, Loyal writes: Militaristic non-Christians often seize upon the many difficult passages where God is condoning morally repugnant acts. I am glad you admit that they are morally repugnant acts and neither morally [...]
John W. Loftus, the former minister turned atheist, author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, and the primary blogger at Debunking Christianity (whose updates you can follow daily in our blogroll feed) has a terrific summation of 30 extraordinarily unlikely ideas, at least most of which most Christians would have to [...]
Shane Wilkins, a graduate student in philosophy at Fordham (where we were fellow students and colleagues until just recently), has been an invaluable regular commentator at Camels With Hammers. He has served as my primary theistic foil since the beginning, when our 7-part debate (which started with my post Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellecuals 1) propelled this [...]
While I agree with, and vigorously defend, the notion that there is an important difference between lacking a belief in gods (as an agnostic atheist) and believing there are no gods (as a gnostic atheist), I also think that atheists should not, based on the best available scientific evidence and philosophical arguments, merely lack belief [...]
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 [...]
Yesterday on Friendly Atheist there was a vigorous debate in the comments section about whether there is a real and important difference between claiming one lacks belief in God (or gods) and outright claiming that there is no God (or gods). Here is a nice formulation of the argument that the distinction is an irrelevant [...]
Recently I posted a terrific video challenging the value of Pascal’s Wager from numerous perspectives. Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees, the creators of that video, have a new video replying to criticisms they received after posting the first video. Below is first the original video again for those who missed it (or who saw it [...]
NonStampCollector provides a hilariously fun, rapid-paced, guide to biblical contradictions through a cartoon quiz show. This video is, in short, a great resource which every Christian should take to heart and every atheist should memorize and have available for making the case against biblical credibility as in any way divinely guaranteed: Here’s a handy list [...]
And can you explain it in a 30 second video? (via) And even if you cannot (or simply are disinclined to) make a video, can you tell us in the comments section? Your Reasons For Rejecting Religion?
Atheist’s Wager provides sums up what I think the real wager would be were there any likelihood that a hell-threatening monotheistic God existed: I propose as my answer to Pascal’s wager, two choices and two outcomes. The choices come down to theism (of any religion, not just Christianity) vs. atheism. The outcomes include going to [...]
After a tasteless joke early on, he’s justly scathing and deserves to be heard: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKg4HLsu5gE&hl=en_US&fs=1&] 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 [...]
A really terrific video from DarkMatter2525 which spells out the numerous impossibilities involved in the Genesis flood story: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I225Vcs3X0g&hl=en_US&fs=1&] Daniel Florien has helpfully typed up the major points for easy reference here. Your Thoughts?
Andrew Sullivan, whose blogging I usually admire and emulate a great deal as he’s really my blogging hero, had an astoundingly nasty post about the fact that atheists dared to meet up together to listen to Daniel Dennett mock the emptiness of apophatic theological gobbledygook last weekend. They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as [...]
Writerdd makes an astute observation: I’ve been reading the comments here lately and I have noticed that a lot of Christian readers say the same things over and over again: “If you REALLY had been a Christian you would have never de-converted.” I’ve been struck by another thing recently as well: noticing that many de-converts [...]
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 [...]
The Gaytheist Agenda relays this horrific and upsetting story: The honorary consul to the British High Commission in Jamaica has been found murdered at his home in Montego Bay. John Terry, 65, was discovered with a cord and an item of clothing tied around his neck outside his house in Mount Carey on Wednesday. it [...]