It comes with great sadness to announce that my favourite podcast of all time, Reasonable Doubts, will no longer continue to be. This upsets me because there is no greater podcast on the internet than this one. RD has been with me for a good number of years and has provided ample stimuli for me to pass on in my own way.
Category Atheism
The Atonement is one of those funny things in Christianity. It is the central tenet, the main raison d’etre of the whole shebang. Jesus existed as God incarnate in order to be sacrificed and die in order to pay for our sins, past, present and future.
Only it makes absolutely no sense.
In very simplistic terms, I see it like this:
You can’t beat it when such incisive atheology is delivered in such a trivial and comedic way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPriOQkKd6k Well…
Franz Kiekeben studied (University of South Florida) and taught (Ohio State University) philosophy, having written for the SKEPTIC magazine and published academic articles on determinism and time travel. He recently sent me a book he has written called The Truth About God to review.
In Jonathan’s post titled, “Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism,” a hypothetical exchange between an atheist and an Xian highlights the morally relativistic nature of a fundamentalist worldview that defends the idea that executing a man for picking up sticks on a Saturday is obligatory at time T, but morally impermissible at T+1. In the exchange, the snarky hypothetical atheist wants to know exactly when T occurred in order to know exactly when people became morally obliged to refrain from executing Sabbath breakers.
Further to my post yesterday on Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism, I would like to make a few more points (which I have mentioned before here) on morality concerning God. Divine Command Theory (DCT) is the Christian/theistic ethical system whereby whatever God commands is rendered morally good and right on account of God commanding it. As Franz Kiekeben states in The Truth About God (pp. 133-134):
This post is one of my most popular pieces on this blog, and I am revising it slightly to make it even tighter, reacting to previous comments on the last version of this piece. I have tried to be detailed enough for it to be fairly comprehensive, though it could be more detailed; then again, it could be shorter and more digestible. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In a statement issued at the weekend, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the killing of Niloy Neel, the fourth humanist blogger in Bangladesh to be hacked to death by Islamists this year, and called on the Government to do more to prevent further attacks. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed his call, and reiterated its own similar desire to see further violence prevented.
I was recently sent a book to review, by Franz Kiekeben, called The Truth About God which is a whistlestop tour, I think, through atheism and counter-apologetics to arrive at the conclusion not that God is improbable, but that God is impossible. I will be interested to see where that goes (click on the image to buy it).
This news comes from the British Humanist Association:
Taking questions in the Senedd, the Welsh Minister for Education and Skills, Huw Lewis, has announced that he wants to see a transformation of the way in which Religious Education is taught in Wales. Under the new proposals, and in a significant break from the current system, the subject would be renamed and incorporated into a new ‘Religion, Philosophy and Ethics’ syllabus
Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs, as you can see from the various accounts. Dan Yowell was put on to me by contributor Cody Rudisill who has posted the occasional article. I thank MLC for his contribution. Please check out my book of deconversion accounts, edited with Tristan Vick, which can be bought from the sidebar over there >>>, or by clicking on the book cover. The previous accounts can be found here:
Dawkins has just been trashed by a feminist guest contributor to The Friendly Atheist. TFA is usually well on the money, but this recent article had me annoyed. A lot.
It all started with this seemingly innocuous tweet:
Just to let my British readers know… I will be speaking in Bournemouth to the Dorset Humanists, co-presenting an Understanding…
This is always an interesting question because it challenges your own worldview, assuming you are an atheist. It’s the classic line of questioning you get when you are in an interview:
“So, Mr Pearce, what do you think your biggest weakness is?”
Of course, I have no weakness…
New findings by the National Centre for Social Research have confirmed the long-term collapse in affiliation with the Church of England and the huge increase in non-belief.
Strikingly, the research also found that there had been a ten-fold increase in those identifying with Islam in the past 32 years. In 1983, Islam represented around half a percentage point of Britain’s population but in 2014 it had reached 5%, the research found.
This is a reminder of a project I am working on for which I need your help: I was thinking…
Religion is a highly psychological affair. In fact, I would argue that the entirety of that which religion really is, to humanity, is psychological. Everything that religion is and does for its adherents is psychological in nature. One of the strongest dimensions of religion is its dealings with death. I have talked about this before with regard to Terror Management Theory.
This fascinating Dutch article (to which I do not have a link, unfortunately) was translated by a facebook friend Leon Korteweg:
My translation (aided by Google Translate) of an article that appeared in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. Reading and translating this article made me somewhat emotional: I’m delighted by the rise of atheism exactly where it is most needed, which gives me hope, but I’m also saddened by how many victims it takes to make that change happen.
I was recently listening to the latest Reasonable Doubts podcast featuring an interview and some songs by Australian singer-songwriter Shelley Segal. Segal comes from an orthodox Jewish background, but came to reject theism in favour of atheism, and became involved in atheist activism. This, as is usual for songwriters, permeated her music and lyrics to the point that she wrote a mini-album, “An Atheist Album”.
I have been very busy lately and then the call from OFSTED, the government school inspectorate, came this week, I ended up camped at work for 3 days. It’s over now. To get the ball rolling again is a guest post from ML Candelario. It is interesting toying with the idea of moral nihilism, which all depends on how you define objective or ontic reality. Anyway, over to Cendelario: