Here in my home state of South Carolina, a common expression when things look particularly gloomy is, “Thank God for Mississippi.” Even atheists have been known to utter this cliché. But after hearing about the August 6 public prayer event designed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, some of us in South Carolina are now saying, … Creeping theocracy

This post is a bit off topic, but I think people interested in higher education (which include many followers of SO) need to know that higher education is presently under strident, well-funded, ideological attack here in Texas. Be warned. If it succeeds here this campaign will be coming soon to a neighborhood near you: Presently … The Attack on Higher Education

Say you run into a conservative Christian church that advertises that next Sunday, the minister is going to call on the power of Jesus and resurrect a dead member of the congregation. You stop by, thinking the attempt might be amusing. As you walk into the service, it looks more crazy than fun. They really … Natural miracles?

If you are an atheist in Texas, you can never be bored. There is always something interesting going on. Our Governor, Rick Perry, has declared that August 6 will be a day of “prayer and fasting” with a big prayer meeting at the Houston Reliant Center. Now, from what I see on TV, several days … Texas Day of Prayer and Fasting. Yee Haa!!!

An interview with me is appearing today on the “Think Atheist” radio show. They tell me that “The show will air at 5PM Pacific/8PM Eastern but then be available to stream from our archive immediately after it concludes.”

I’m not always comfortable being publicly identified as an atheist. The label is accurate enough; I don’t think that any God or other supernatural entities exist. But the word “atheist” has other connotations as well, and I don’t always want to take them on board or fight against them. For example, in a piece in … Being identified as an atheist

John Loftus’ latest anthology, The End of Christianity has been printed by Prometheus and is now being distributed. I have an essay in the book titled “Hell: Christianity’s Most Damnable Doctrine.” (BTW, John and Victor Reppert are having a knock-down-drag-out squabble on their respective blogs–Debunking Christianity and Dangerous Idea–about what John calls ‘the outsider test … Unabashedly Self-Promoting Blurb

We usually debate weighty issues on SO, but I thought I would offer something a bit lighter. For fun I am writing a memoir (I was inspired by Bill Bryson’s Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) of growing up in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia in the ’50’s and early 60’s. These are my … Religious Reminiscences

I’m going to make two objections to standard justifications of the correct answer to the Monty Hall problem. The conclusion to an unsound argument can still be true, so if I’m successful at showing that there is a problem with the reasoning supporting the accepted answer to the problem, this will not show that the … The Monty Hall Problem – Part 3