A former Seventh Day Adventist pastor who pledged to live 2014 god-free in order to test his faith, now says he is contemplating leaving religion for good.
Category Atheism
A few days ago I responded to Jason Engwer of Triablogue as he critiqued some posts I had made, and my book, on the nativity. I responded here. This post is the second in the series. It might go on for some time as he has responded here to my first response.
Triablogue’s Jason Engwer has written a criticism of some of my recent posts (as well as my book The Nativity: A Critical Examination) on the Nativity accounts in Matthew (and Luke). Here, I will respond to him and his points.
This is the advert that someone I know took out in the newspaper, The South Bend Tribune,which is in South Bend,…
It’s that time of year when those nativity accounts get brought up. And summarily debunked. My book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination, hopefully does a good job of dealing with the many attempts to harmonise the contradictory accounts in Matthew and Luke.
Despite the fact that most scientific skeptics do not find themselves formerly associated with a religion, this time of year tends to nonetheless bring out the giving spirit in many of us. Although Tom Flynn wouldn’t approve, many of us celebrate (in a secular fashion) Christmas, or Kwanza, or Festivus, or the Solstice, or Hanukkah, or just like to give presents because it’s fun.
Enough said:
Myself and author James A. Lindsay were both involved in contributing chapters to John Loftus’s recent excellent addition to his growing number of titles.
As I have said before, Holidays are coming, holidays are coming… It’s that time of year, you know, the interminable…
Here is a broad selection of claims and quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia article “The Nature and Attributes of God” compiled by my friend Julian Haydon:
God is infinitely perfect
He is infinitely good, intelligent, wise, just, holy, etc
no Theist of average intelligence ever thinks of understanding literally the metaphors he applies, or hears applied by others, to God
Thus God is said to see or hear, as if He had physical organs, or to be angry or sorry, as if subject to human passions
Before I get stuck in, I want to emphasise how I am a liberal commentator and am happy to be shown where I am wrong; I do not want to level accusations at Islam which are wrong and which have developed out of a biased media caricature of what Islam is. It is easy to fire from the emotional hip and to rely on emotional social identity theory of ‘us and them’ such that I present an attack on Islam which is either straw man or unwarranted.
Moreover, there is an issue here with the while notion of causality, something which I have looked at in the post “Have I ever killed someone?” I will not so much deal with that in huge depth here as I want to look at the two ideas in unison in the next post on this matter.
From the BHA: A new survey published today has revealed that most of the British public does not think that…
Or a least, so it looks in my hands. I have a chapter in John Loftus’ voluminous anthology which looks…
John Loftus’ third anthology in the series, Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails, is out now, available in various formats for your delectation. It’s shaping up to be a great contribution to the counter-apologetics movement. Here is the list of chapters, where you will see mine towards the end in Part V:
Holidays are coming, holidays are coming…
It’s that time of year, you know, the interminable run-up to Christmas when big corporations vie for your hard-earned cash in an attempt to exploit the seasonal goodwill brought on by the imaginary birth of a godmanspirit.
With the conference season now over and done with, the British Humanist Association has declared it a successful season with…
I am pretty excited about the upcoming Christianity Is not Great, John Loftus’ latest anthology which comprises a plethora of fantastic authors and chapters, it seems (I have not read the chapters, though cannot wait). This is really shaping up to be a corker. Get it pre-ordered!
Today the British Humanist Association (BHA) is sending every state-funded secondary school library in Northern Ireland a copy of The Young Atheist’s Handbook: Lessons for Living a Good Life without God. The initiative, funded entirely by public donations, is part of the BHA’s work to ensure that young people have access to resources that enable them to come to their own decisions about their values and beliefs.
A great video:
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. Void is a frequent poster here, and it is great to get posters involved with the blog as a whole. I thank him for his contribution. The previous accounts can be found here: