Here’s a fun way to waste half an hour: look over the Conservapedia entry on atheism. It starts off with a picture of “The perverse and cruel atheist Marquis de Sade in prison,” which is a pretty good indication of the sort of material that is to come. In some ways, it’s a nice one-stop … Conservapedia on “atheism”

Take a reasonably secular bunch of people. They don’t participate in the local religious rituals, have a worldly morality that pays no attention to what the religious leaders say, and are inclined to think of sacred stories as a boring genre of fiction. They don’t identify with any particular religion, think religiously colored politics is … How secular can we get?

There appear to be a number of advertising campaigns going on to promote freethought, for example, AHA’s “Why believe in a god” and Freethought Action. I suppose these are necessary in the present age and circumstances. But in a more cynical mood (more even than my normal baseline level of high cynicism), I can’t help … Advertising freethought

Palestinians are in serious trouble. For decades, they mostly had to worry about the madness due to two monotheisms. Jews thought the land was holy, and Palestinians’ own predominant monotheism, Islam, also insisted it was sacred. Nowadays conservative Christian fanatics in the US are also in on the act. According to Jack Chick, God punishes … New Chick Tract

There are some questions about faith and reason that it would be helpful to understand and answer: Q1. Which is better, reason or faith?Q2. Is faith a real alternative to reason?Q3. Do reason and faith sometimes conflict with each other?Q4. Do reason and faith have separate and distinct intellectual jurisdictions, so that they can never … Faith and Reason – Part 4

LINK (HT to Jim Lippard)

I finished grading another batch of student papers where I get to see what a bunch of smart juniors think of evolution and intelligent design. As usual, their tendency is to split the difference. Many of them are classic god-of-the-gaps reasoners, eager to insert supernatural powers wherever it looks that there’s something significant that we … Combining evolution and ID

In Miracles and the Modern Mind, Norman Geisler summarizes Spinoza’s argument about miracles: 1. Miracles are violations of natural laws.2. Natural laws are immutable.3. It is impossible to violate immutable laws.4. Therefore, miracles are impossible.(MMM, p.15) Contrary to Geisler’s interpretation, Spinoza does not argue against the possibility of miracles. Rather, he assumes that miracles do … Skeptical Approaches to Miracles – Part 5