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+3 +1
Yes, even a "Redemptive Hell" is the work of a Tyrant
After a Twitter discussion with Randal Rauser the other day, I had exclaimed that I would prefer it if my suffering happened for "no reason" rather than for a "redemptive reason". My justification for this view is that I'd prefer it if my life were not the plaything of some divine tyrant.
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+27 +1
Belief in Belief
Daniel Dennett has suggested that most people today do not believe in gods. Instead, they believe in belief.
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+24 +1
Argument # 12: Christianity is not a religion. It is a personal relationship with God.
To set Christianity apart from other religions, some like to use this line when witnessing to others. They will say that Christianity is not a religion in the dictionary sense that involves a system of impersonal rites, rituals and worship to an abstract impersonal deity. But rather, it involves a personal one-one-one relationship with Jesus Christ. And that’s what makes it special because you are having a personal relationship with a living being.
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+20 +1
What It Would Take For Godless Mom To Endorse The Pope
Recently, the Pope went on a crime spree around the USA, leaving christ-dust on the critically ill, his holy fluids on Kim Davis and little Popemobile skid marks in his wake. “He’s so cool! He took a selfie one time!” I heard echoing across social media. “He’s the best! Did you know he tweets?” I heard the faithful cry. “He says all dogs go to Heaven!” the Papal fan club exclaimed. “He acknowledges evolution! And the Big Bang!” The scientific community celebrated.
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+28 +1
The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory: Matthew Flannagan's Failed Defense
Theology has no salvageable theory of morality. Theists complain atheists have no reason to be moral. But in fact theists have no reason to actually be moral, as in: to elevate compassion, honesty, and reasonableness above all authority, even the authority of their own gods. Unless they covertly adopt a naturalistic moral theory (and most do), they are not actually moral people. They are minions. Theists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of whatever monster manufactured the universe.
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+22 +1
A Case Study in Creationist Quote-Mining
When I read creationist literature, I assumed its authors, as fellow conservative Christians, were being just as honest with their quotations from scientific literature as they would be with the Bible. After 40 years of granting creationists this favorable assumption, it took only a few weeks of reading actual scientists’ work to see how unfounded my trust had been.
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+29 +1
bending truth
A reflection on the importance of acknowledging that we can all be manipulated.
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+34 +1
Six Foolproof And Effective Things To Do To Bring Atheists Back To The Lord
A few years ago, I told my mother, a Christian woman from Mississippi who had freshly aged into her 60s, that I was an atheist. She didn’t speak to me for three days straight.
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+22 +1
Merely molecules in motion
I’ve been listening to the infuriating Frank Turek. He’s got one argument against materialism which he seems to be well known for: those damn atheists are saying you’re merely molecules in motion, and you know you’re not, so therefore atheism is false, to paraphrase.
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+32 +1
Atheist Debates - Divine Hiddenness
A lecture at Baylor University on why I prefer the problem of Divine Hiddenness to the Problem of Evil.
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+33 +1
The Christian Obsession With Insulting Atheists
I have been, as an atheist, told I deserve eternity in hell. And not just by the random Christian. But by their book. A straightforward reading of their book says that I deserve eternity in hell.
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+16 +1
Neil deGrasse Tyson - "Do you believe in god?"
During the Q&A, a ten year old boy asks Dr. Tyson if he believes in god.
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+25 +1
An updated Pascal's Wager: Just as bad as the old one
I am continually told that I should not engage in philosophy without professional credentials in that area, even though I am now co-author with a Credentialed Philosopher™, Maarten Boudry, on a peer-reviewed philosophy paper. But this credential mongering loses force when I see real professors of philosophy engaged in lucubrations that are so transparently dreadful that even a biologist can recognize them as tripe. Even worse—these lucubrations often appear in places like the New York Times.
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+19 +1
Beyond Blasphemy to Rights
International Blasphemy Day has always been intended to highlight the fact that religions are sometimes afforded more rights than people. The traditional observation of the day–public blasphemy–can be a good way to do that. It isn’t hard to blaspheme. Depending on your background, it can feel freeing and fun. And yet it is sobering to realize that those small, silly blasphemies can be punishable by fines, imprisonment, and even death in many parts of the world.
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+27 +1
“This Is Not Your Fault”: The Good News Of Atheism (For Christians)
I used to sit, silently, in deep meditation, every communion, in deep gratitude for what I thought Jesus did for me. Although I didn’t admit it at the time, it was humiliating to have that gratitude. The trauma of realizing how Jesus suffered crippled my psychology, I think. I don’t think it does this to everyone — but if you really feel, deep inside, what Jesus did for you, profoundly and sincerely…I think your sense of gratitude would also be perpetual and overwhelming.
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+25 +1
Skepticism, and Emotional Responses to Terrible Ideas
Where on Earth did we come up with the cockamamie notion that being a good skeptic means not having an emotional response to terrible, harmful ideas, and not treating those ideas with the contempt they deserve? Where did we get the notion that being a good skeptic means treating every idea, no matter how ridiculous or toxic, as equally worthy of consideration?
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+10 +1
Nine Ways Atheists Get More Joy Out Of Life
Mardy says in no uncertain terms that atheists are joyless. This is a sentiment I’ve heard more than once, and I’ve never quite understood it. As someone who has had a life filled with joy and lacking religious belief since day one, it’s completely absurd to me. I think, for some religious people who say this, that they are just trying to make us feel small; that they don’t really believe that we can’t feel joy. For others, however, I get the sense that they truly believe we live without joy.
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+25 +1
‘Classical Atheism’ vs ‘New Atheism’ – Dispelling the Myth of ‘New Atheism’
This essay will attempt to compare and contrast ‘Classical Atheism’ with ‘New Atheism’. [1] The greatest challenge posed by such a comparative examination lies in the definitions and possible non-existence of any intrinsic, coherent and definable qualities, of the two phenomena which this essay seeks to compare. What is, if anything, ‘Classical Atheism’? What is, if anything, ‘New Atheism’?
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+21 +1
‘Bible Belt Atheist’
When we learned about the former pastor Jerry DeWitt’s struggles with being an “outed” atheist in rural Louisiana, we realized for the first time just how difficult being an atheist can be in some communities, where religion is woven deeply into the social fabric.
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+26 +1
The Twin Selling Points of a Fundamentalist Rapture Scare.
Like most Rapture scares before it, the Blood Moon scare has given itself quite a lot of wiggle room by providing a wide range of dates for its predictions.* In this case, the end of the world will be on one of four different dates ranging from April 15, 2014 to September 28, 2015. And like most Rapture scares, its authors are being painfully vague about just what the end of the world will look like, as one of them said:
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