Basically, what makes someone like William Lane Craig and the other peddlers of Biola Bullshit, who think a god created the physical universe ~13 billion years ago, more reasonable or rational than Ken Ham who thinks a god created the physical universe ~6-10 thousand years ago?

Apocalyptic evangelical Christians will often quote-mine from the Book of Daniel, usually out of context, claiming that the bible is describing events of our own day, or events soon to come. There are two primary reasons for doing this. The first and most obvious reason is that they simply do not understand Daniel; they are repeating what they have heard from another source, likely an evangelical preacher. The second reason is more sinister.

Nuance is hard. Nuance is one of the hardest things to accept, and to manage. Many decisions are messy, with different values coming into conflict, and without one clear answer.

When pointing out potential problems with the Bible, one of the more common responses is, "But that's the OLD Testament". So, what does this mean? What exactly are they saying? Do they really know that they're admitting a problem and then trying to solve it...and failing?

A look at the Mormon idea of "eternal progression" and the reluctance of religious leaders to grant full disclosure to new converts.

Julia Galef's Skepticon 4 speech about the unrealistic portrayals of rationalism and skepticism portrayed in media and perpetuated in popular wisdom.

The confirmed existence of extraterrestrial life, even if we could never make physical contact with it, would have profound implications for our way of thinking, perhaps making us realize the pettiness of our own divisions. But assimilating that fact would not cause any real difficulties for those not bound by religious dogma.

Then how could he write down such illogical inanity as this? Let's break it in two, shall we? Start with his premise.

So of course religion had nothing at all to do with the decision made by the Brandon High School band director to spend all summer perfecting their rendition of the much beloved Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art” to perform at halftime shows this fall. And when the RCSD school board finally announced this past weekend that the band would not only not be playing that hymn for fear of incurring a fine, but would furthermore be choosing not to perform at all in protest...

Dr. Richard Carrier flew in from California to lecture the UNCG Atheists, Agnostics, and Skeptics on the historicity of Christ. The historicity of Christ has appeared in the public consciousness over the last few years because of such individuals such as Robert Price and Dr. Carrier. This topic deals with the analysis of historical data to determine if Jesus existed as an actual person.

I’ve decided that, at least in the United States, the religiously devout really do have the interests of rationalist nonbelievers at heart, at least as far as providing us with (a sick, unseemly sort of) entertainment goes. They strive ceaselessly and tirelessly, without remiss, on holidays, weekends, and during the work week, to provide us with new episodes of the tragicomic—though mostly tragic—reality-show farce that is religion, and at their own expense.

Theists hate moral relativism. They often accuse atheists and secularists of having it. For them, only the pseudo-moral absolutism of Divine Command Theory, where God’s commands decree morality, seems to work in defining some sort of objective morality. The problem is, though, that they aren’t very consistent. Because, it turns out, they actually adhere to something which I like to call (via Justin Schieber) Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism.

Fazzino is an instructor and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada, and a former Evangelical Christian. Her research explores social movements and identity, religious conversion and deconversion, and in particular how people leaving their religion arrive at a new worldview and community. In this interview she discusses challenges faced by secular groups and individuals in a city that is enamored with both sin and salvation.

There is another palpable difference between science and religion. What do you do when you make an assertion about the world that you know turns out to be false? In science it goes into the dustbin of discarded results like cold fusion or any number of falsified theories. When a religious claim is falsified like creation or Adam and Eve, it simply turns into a metaphor. “We didn’t really mean it, folks. It wasn’t meant that way. It means something else completely.”

The telling but unsurprising thing about this conference is that it’s posed as addressing a contentious and unresolved question—whether there’s conflict between religion and biology—but then choosing (as far as I can tell) only speakers who said “No–NO CONFLICT!” In other words, the conference was an expensive exercise in confirmation bias.

My talks about death are also among my least requested. In the five years that I’ve been a public speaker, I’ve been asked to speak about sex, about anger, about coming out as an atheist, more times than I can count. I’ve been asked to speak about death maybe half a dozen times. It seems that once the conversation gets started, atheists love to talk about death — but it’s really hard to get that conversation started.

Like other preachers of the prosperity gospel, these shiny-suited hypocrites proclaim that God wants to make you rich, and that by “planting a seed”, or in other words giving money to the televangelist, you’ll reap a manyfold return. Obviously, the only people who get rich from this theology are the ones who preach it, and Oliver doesn’t stint when it comes to describing the multimillion-dollar mansions, private jets, and other ludicrous wealth they accumulate from the gullible.

Part of the Atheist Debates Patreon project: http://www.patreon.com/AtheistDebates. You're more likely to hear about people's personal experience with religion in a testimonial form than any of the standard arguments for the existence of God. In this live presentation from Gateway To Reason, I talk about the problem with appealing to personal experience and how to think about those appeals when you're talking to believers. And, there's a bonus magic trick.

Mr. Deity commissions a former pastor to infiltrate big Atheism.

Russell's Teapot is a quirky comic strip by Chaz Braman based on a quote by Bertrand Russell about believing in God being just as ridiculous as believing that a teapot is revolving around the sun. Unfortunately, Chaz let his website lapse and many of his comics were lost. An incomplete archive is available below.