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+37 +1
Ignorance is Bliss: Why Religious People Seem Happier Than the “Nones”
A new Pew Research Center study released last week that examines the relationship between religion and everyday activities brought out a number of eye-catching headlines, including “Highly Religious Volunteer More, Lie Less, and Claim to Be Happier” from the Houston Chronicle and “Strongly Religious People are Happier than Non-Religious” by the Christian Daily.
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+4 +1
Secular has two contexts and definitions
Secular and non-religious are synonyms. Insofar as we know what it means to be religious we also know what it means to be non-religious. Secular can describe individuals or institutions. A secular individual can have, or a secular institution can represent, opinions that range anywhere between being pro-religion and anti-religion.
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+3 +1
Answering Creationist’s Unanswerable Questions
A creationist who regularly trolls the SGU Facebook page recently posted this video, which is a great opportunity to meet my creationist debunking quota. Like all creationist propaganda, the video does not make any serious or legitimate scientific points. The purpose is just to provide a plausible screen for denying one of the most solid scientific facts every established – that life on Earth is the product of organic evolution.
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+13 +1
It’s time to ponder whether a Jesus really existed
I’m always surprised at how much rancor is directed toward “mythicists”—those who deny that there was a real Jesus who, whether or not he was divine, was the nucleus around which Christianity accreted. I’m also surprised at how certain many biblical scholars are that Jesus existed (Bart Ehrman, to give a prominent example).
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+10 +1
Way of the Mister: Science & Religion are Mortal Enemies, Part 3
The values of science are at war with the values of religion.
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+10 +1
Persecute Me, Please: God’s Not Dead 2 and the Evangelical Lust for Victimhood
Evangelical Christians want to be persecuted. At some level, they need to be persecuted. It’s woven into their central narrative. It is a part of how they were taught to understand themselves. But what happens when Christians inhabit a country like the United States, whose freedoms are already built around them and their own concerns? What happens when a nation is comprised of more Christians (whether culturally or otherwise) than people of any other faith?
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+23 +1
Fallacy Friday #1 The Argument from Popularity for Believing In a Deity (Any of Them).
It’s time for the first ever Fallacy Friday! So what’s a “Fallacy”? I know most vocally irreligious people have encountered theists who will try and either convert or re-convert them (depending on one’s original stance relative to the questions concerning the existence of a deity), so we tend to be familiar with their arguments and with the fallacies that at least a few of these arguments present to us.
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+10 +1
If peace on earth is our goal, atheism might be the means to that end
The nonreligious are more liberal and more pacifist on most issues relating to violence: torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment, imperialism and more.
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+9 +1
Biblical Contradictions and the Christian Mind
This is a post I once made for John Loftus at Debunking Christianity and I remembered it recently, so here it is. I had been discussing the contradictions of the Bible. Many are fairly irrelevant in the scheme of things and don’t really invalidate the core claims of the Bible, only the claims of inerrancy. What it does show, however, is the rationalisation process of the average Christian.
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+9 +1
Undeniably awful: Lobbyists for Christian privilege issue fallacious ‘report’
Every year, Liberty Institute–which has restyled itself “First Liberty” for ironic reasons we’ll get to later–issues a report on hostility against Christians in America. The report is entitled, with no hint of satire or shame, “Undeniable” and it is full of mischaracterizations and specious claims. It is less a report and more a long list of press releases copied and pasted into a PDF. It is certainly not the scholarly proof of Christian persecution that it purports to be.
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+5 +1
Darcy's Heart-Stirrings: Not A Nice Story
From babyhood they said "You are a dirty sinner, there is nothing good in you, you are destined for hell because of your nature."
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+25 +1
Atheist Debates - Minimal facts apologetics approach
The "Minimal Facts" approach isn't a method designed to find the truth, it's a method designed to bolster confidence in the proposed (read: preferred) explanation.
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+20 +1
Duggar cult survivor wants you to meet the powerful women who make other women’s lives a living hell
Quiverfull is a contemporary manifestation of capital-p Patriarchy, but what if I told you that the majority of fundamentalist Christians pushing women to live Quiverfull lives of wifely submission and prolific childbearing are WOMEN?
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+21 +1
The Psychological Need For Certainty = Goddidit
Psychologically speaking, humans really struggle with a lack of certainty, with ambiguity and the unknown. If you think back to your own behaviour and pasts, I am sure that you can find anecdotal evidence for this.
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+27 +1
Is this the new Intelligent Design creationist strategy?
If you watch the Discovery Institute, you’ll discover they’re constantly playing games, trying to find that winning PR technique that will persuade the hapless ignorati.
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+9 +1
Faith, hope and secularity: Ireland on brink of change as church power wanes
Ireland goes to the polls an increasingly liberal country – yet religion’s place in state education is staving off the decline of the Catholic church
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+21 +1
Disbelieve it or not, ancient history suggests that atheism is as natural to humans as religion
People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods, a new study suggests – casting doubt on the idea that religious belief is a “default setting” for humans.
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+34 +1
BBC continues to reduce its unpopular religious programming
The BBC's latest annual report indicates a general reduction in the hours the Corporation devotes to religious broadcasting. The only increase was on BBC1 which devoted 86 hours to religious programmes.
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+54 +1
Why Candidates Ignore Secular Voters
I think I have three answers to the question why candidates ignore secular voters. The first one deals with the strength of secular identity, the second with the intersectional identities of many in the movement, the third is the lack of sophisticated political thinking in the secular community and its organizations.
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+7 +1
The rise and fall of “family values”: How “religious freedom” became the rallying cry of the Christian right
The nuclear family was once a driving force in American politics. Changing demographics have bred a new rhetoric
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