I’ll be giving a public talk on “Islam and Science” in the Madison Public Library this Thursday evening at 7:00. (More information.) It’ll be based on An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam. I jut thought I’d mention it, in case anyone who reads this lives in the vicinity.

We’re pretty used to an atheist having a snowball’s chance in hell of success in American politics. Here is something I hadn’t come across before: a “values voter” firmly decided she’s going to vote against Barack Obama because his mother was an atheist and father was a Muslim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wQfQtpDAc Does this mean there is someone … His mother was an atheist (horrors)

I’ve added links on the bottom-right frame of the Secular Outpost to two new blogs.

I’ve been reading Phil Zuckerman’s Society without God. It’s a very interesting book, and I’ll write a short review at some point. But one paragraph of statistics he cited caught my attention: Sociological studies have consistently shown that the more educated a person is, the less likely he or she is to accept supernatural religious … Does education have any effect on religious belief?

I was looking at an ad on the Amazon site for Daniel Keeran’s book If there is no God, and I saw this blurb for the book: “Atheism is more than a belief in no god or gods. Take the unbelief test. Do you believe: 1. humans have souls? 2. there is an afterlife? 3. … Take the Unbelief Test!

In Chapter 2 of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins gives an argument for atheism. The argument is a chain of reasoning consisting of five inferences. The first inference is a non sequitur, but I have attempted to rescue the argument by making explicit an unstated assumption, and by clarifying the first two premises. In my last … An Argument for Atheism – Part 4

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, 1997, p.72). In my last post on this … Purtill’s Definition of “Miracle” – Part 6

My brother just passed on a bit of weirdness to me, knowing I like this sort of stuff. A British psychiatrist, Imad Hassan, is promoting a Muslim blend of creation and evolution. He accepts common descent, even denouncing Harun Yahya. Humans, however, are a partial exception, and he is convinced intelligent design is the overarching … Extraterrestrial Cattle

Politically aware American nonbelievers worry a lot about religious right politics. And this worry centers on evangelicals, though conservative Catholics also have a very important part in the Religious Right. In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church, journalist Christine Wicker suggests that we need not worry so much. Looking … The Fall of the Evangelical Nation

In a book I’m reading, I came across the story of an evangelical woman who one day realized she didn’t believe in hell. I found this interesting, particularly because a former student recently emailed me that he had come to the conclusion that there is no hell, and had in fact been drifting away not … Rejecting hell