My grandmother recently died. That was sad for those of us who loved her, but no great surprise. She was 88, in failing health, and she had had a good life. But the process of her dying was perhaps unnecessarily difficult. She had a massive stroke which destroyed her left brain hemisphere. Her wishes for … Euthanasia

A nephew was recently visiting here in the Northwest, up from California. He is an atheist in a public junior high school with students who are mostly Catholics and Evangelical Christians. His skeptical and anti-religious views have not been warmly received by other students. So, he was asking me for some ammunition to take back … Faith and Reason

“It should be seen as a metaphor.” That has has to be one of the the most common moves to save a supernatural belief from criticism. If educated people can no longer take the Bible at face value, well, maybe the creation stories, miracles, and so forth are all metaphorical. If astrology looks brain dead, … Can we stop at metaphor?

I highly recommend Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, by Lawrence Bush. This is more of an intellectual memoir than a comprehensive argument, and that’s exactly its merit. Bush comes from a background where New Age and liberal Jewish spirituality are the most prominent alternatives to nonbelief, and he details the … Waiting for God

New Scientist ran a brief article highlighting Fred Adams’s work, casting doubt on the popular notion that the universe is specially fine-tuned for life. Work done by Adams or Vic Stenger tends to show that when a wide range of cosmological parameters are varied, achieving conditions for complexity is not that amazing. I don’t want … Not so fine-tuned

In Chapter 2 of The God Delusion, Dawkins gives an argument for atheism. Here is my reconstruction of this argument (see “An Argument for Atheism”, posted 7/17/08): 1. Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.Therefore2. Any creative intelligence, … An Argument for Atheism – Part 2

The Wall Street Journal has a story about a Dutch drawer of offensive cartoons, against interest groups such as religions, who has been arrested and may be prosecuted for violating a law preventing discrimination on the base of race and religion. Islamic sensibilities, as is often the case, appear to be at center stage. I … Censoring critics of religion

The philosopher Richard Purtill proposed the following definition: A miracle is an event (1) brought about by the power of God that is (2) a temporary (3) exception (4) to the ordinary course of nature (5) for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history. (“Defining Miracles” in In Defense of Miracles, IVP, … Purtill’s Definition of “Miracle” – Part 4

In Catholic cultures, you run into believers who perceive miraculous images of the Virgin Mary appearing in odd circumstances, or who see the face of Jesus on a burnt tortilla. Islamic religious imagery is usually non-representational. But like Catholics who constantly encounter Mary and Jesus iconography, many devout Muslims live in an environment saturated by … “Allah meat”

The Texas Freedom Network posted this portion of an e-mail from some religious right organization called The American Family Association. Someone named Jeffrey Howard (anybody ever heard of him?) can teach you how to refute evolution in just five minutes! You can confute “hardened skeptics” and “leave scientists with their mouths hanging open!” Actually, I’m … Refute Evolution in Five Minutes!