D Rizdek recently posted an interesting comment on one of the threads here which he kindly expanded into a post:…
Category Atheism
I was reading Kaveh Mousavi’s blog today and came across this short piece: Basically, if you’re not a historian, how…
I really respect and like what Dillahunty said in his closing speech here (the video is linked to the correct…
Someone with whom I once did teacher training is now a fervent Catholic and blogger at his site. We have had many a strong argument on facebook, and recently he alerted me to this blog post to see what I thought. I am now going to critique his piece on abortion and Dawkins.
I am having a massive debate on my facebook page at the moment with someone from the Unbelievable forum, which I have now left (tiring of the time-wasting silliness of some of the posters) about the Roman/Jewish burial practices after crucifixion with regard to Jesus’ death. Here is my latest comment on the thread:
Ok, so here is what I think. First, it is important to note that I take a sort of Bayesian approach; that being, the most plausible hypothesis should be taken to be the most likely to be true, and this involves evidence, prior probability and background knowledge.
RIGHTWINGWATCH provides this gem: H/T Anonymous Steve Right before chatting with a Republican congressman on his on “Trunews” program yesterday, End Times…
Kaveh Mousavi is a blogger over at Freethought Blogs (FTB) who very kindly reviewed my Beyond An Absence of Faith book on his One the Margin of Error blog. He is an atheist living in Iran; I have a lot of respect for such courageous people. Here is his account:
I already have written a very long book as my memoir to narrate my experience as an atheist in the theocratic Iran, and its name is the same as my blog, On The Margin of Error. First I wanted to choose some various excerpts for this guest post, but ultimately decided to choose one single excerpt which chronicles my deconversion. This is in the honor of Jonathan’s (and Tristan Vick’s) book, Beyond an Absence of Faith, a book which I greatly enjoyed. Chapter three of the book is the shortest chapter, and here it is.
I am quite often asked as to whether I am a Jesus mythicist. David Fitzgerald, in that camp, kindly wrote…
The term fundamentalism is bandied about with wild abandon, but what does it really mean? We have an intuitive sense of what it means, perhaps. When I use the term, I have in my mind ideas of hardliner, fanatical beliefs, adhered to by uncompromising believers in a dogmatic insistence that a particular (holy) text and/or ideology is correct.
Modern day Christians hold that Jesus and God are one. The Athanasian Creed for instance holds that “…there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost.
Metaphysical thought processes are more deeply wired than hitherto suspected
WHILE MILITANT ATHEISTS like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find that atheists might not exist.
Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged.
Over at another post of mine, we have been discussing whether religion can and should be destroyed. During that conversation, the idea came up that Christians, in all probability, hold more ridiculous beliefs which are unscientific in nature; and also arose the connected idea that Christians, in a generalistic sense, are not as good at doing science, because they have a higher propensity to give up searching for answers.
In debating whether religion is a cause of or an excuse for violence, moral wrongdoing and problems in the world (in a discussion on facebook), it is worth noting that:
I was involved in a little discussion over at Advocatus Atheist the some time ago with regard to whether a secular and skeptical approach can spell the end of religion. I found this to be interesting. Even if the evidence (does it not already) overwhelmingly ruled in favour of the disbelief in a personal god, would religion still tenuously hang on to the threads of desperate hope or ritualistic comforts that humanity seems to endure?
This excerpt is taken from my book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination, and details why Joseph returning to his ancestral town for a census, as according to Luke is a ridiculous idea.
I have spoken about Joseph of Arimathea before, in the videos linked below. Just reading a chapter by Robert M. Price in The End of Christianity, I came across this very simple aspect which shows, to me at any rate, that Matthew’s sole job seemed to be to contrive as many random prophecy fulfilments from the Old Testament as humanly possible.
Some weeks back I wrote a piece on the general incoherence of the Holy Trinity from a logical and philosophical point of view, taking into account existence properties and the like. In this post I want to return to the subject, though to look at it from a theological perspective.
This story is doing the news rounds. Another shocking example of how religion fucks everything up. Modern atheism prefer to argue vociferously about what happened in lift at skeptical conferences:
A 25-year-old woman was stoned to death and killed by her family outside a high court in the Pakistani city of Lahore, for marrying the man she fell in love with, according to police and a lawyer. Police said about 20 members of the family started attacking Farzana Parveen, and her husband Mohammad Iqbal, with sticks and bricks as they waited for the high court to open on Tuesday afternoon.
Kaveh over at On the Margin of Error on Freethought Blogs has read Beyond an Absence of Faith and has given a great review. Here is an excerpt. Check it the full review over at FTB:
Beyond an Absence of Faith is an anthology of 16 accounts of atheists talking about their deconversion and struggle with religion. It’s been co-edited by Jonathan MS Pearce (who writes the blog The Tippling Philosopher) and Tristan Vick (who writes Advocatus Atheist) and our own Jeremy Beahan (of Reasonable Doubts) wrote a foreword to it. It also happens to be my number one favorite atheist book that I have ever read. In this review I want to explain why.
I have posted this some time back. If you don’t mind Aussie swearing, then watch this diamond piece of comedy:…