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+19 +1
The Magic Of Reality: What Growing Up Christian Had To Do With Believing In Santa
Atheists are stereotyped as Philistines with no grasp of aesthetics or ritual. That described my church upbringing more than it describes me.
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+15 +1
7 Ways Lifer Atheists Differ From Ex-theists
You see, the Prince here is suffering from a bit of culture shock. He doesn’t get what he sees and hears around New York City; it’s all pretty foreign to him. He’s lost… a happy lost, but lost nonetheless. This is kinda how an atheist lifer feels around religion of any kind. Sometimes, even around ex-theists.
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+25 +1
How Hands Made Humans Human
New insights from the strange species Homo naledi. By Greta Weber.
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+44 +1
Médecins Sans Frontières: A Year in Pictures
Top stories and photography from the Médecins Sans Frontières Picturedesk in 2015.
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+8 +1
My First Christmas Without Christ
About a year ago, towards the end of my deconversion, I wasn’t comfortable saying I was a “Capital A” Atheist. I still kept praying and wanting some belief. I dabbled in paganism for a bit, trying to plan a solstice celebration of sorts because the solstice was on a new moon, which I thought was special, but I didn’t know enough about solstices or new moons to do anything.
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+22 +1
Consciousness Wars
The western esoteric tradition has been a victim of what we might call a “consciousness war,” which has been taking place over the last several centuries. By Gary Lachman.
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+19 +1
The Religious Right Is Right to Be Scared: Christianity Is Dying in America
Why try to understand complicated things like demographics for the decline of your faith when you can blame gays and liberals for waging a ‘war on religion?’
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+22 +1
Americans support religious freedom for Christians, but not Muslims: Poll
WASHINGTON — Americans place a higher priority on preserving the religious freedom of Christians than for other faith groups, ranking Muslims as the least deserving of the protections, according to a new survey. Solid majorities said it was extremely or...
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+22 +1
2015: Another Bad Year for Blasphemers
From the horrific January 7 Charlie Hebdo attack and Saudi Arabia’s first flogging on January 9 of blogger Raif Badawi (who was found guilty of insulting Islam in 2014 and sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison), there were early signs that 2015 would be another year where blasphemy would be punished harshly by governments and vigilantes alike.
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+19 +1
A Human(ist) Revolution
There is a piece being circulated widely in the past few days which appeared in the Opinion pages of the New York Times on Christmas Day. It is entitled, “The Christmas Revolution,” and makes the case that much of what can be considered secular humanist values have grown out of Christian theology and practice. Ryan Bell examines this claim.
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+18 +1
Religious delusions are destroying us: “Nothing more than man-made contrivances of domination and submission”
We managed a year of Charlie Hebdo, Franklin Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Duggar and more creationism. The year just past was, for rationalists, an unremitting annus horribilis. It leaves us with little reason to think 2016 will be much better.
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+7 +1
We Are Witnessing the Birth of a New Trickster God.
Trickster gods are fundamentally untrustworthy; they operate by their own rules. They are rarely omniscient or omnipotent, so they can be bargained with, tricked, and fooled–though always at the human’s own risk. The bargains struck with these godlike beings are usually very one-sided–and often end with the human making the bargain being shorted in some way. Stories about tricksters are stories about up-ending expectations and normalcy, the ultimate “what if…?” of imagination.
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+6 +1
My Final Answer To A Question Theists Can't Stop Asking Me
I have to say that it is utterly exhausting to have to defend my own morality day in and day out, but these questions illustrate how faith thieves people of their class, respect for other people and empathy. What sort of human being goes around demanding that others, who’ve done no wrong as far as they can tell, explain how they know right from wrong? This is biblical morality? Am I supposed to be impressed? ‘Cause I’m not impressed. Like, at all.
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+8 +1
“People Will Be Terrible. Deal With It.”
I first encountered Kent Keith’s Paradoxical Commandments* when I was a high school freshman and I immediately loved them, got a hold of a poster with them on it, hung it on my wall so they would face me straight across the room whenever I was propped up on my bed facing forward, and read them countless times throughout high school.
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+48 +1
Why Are Exorcisms as Popular as Ever?
“While the influence of institutionalized churches has waned, few sociologists today would claim that science is eliminating belief in the supernatural.” By Joseph Playcock.
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+11 +1
The Parable of the Undercover Boss
Whenever a theologian talks about how beautiful it is that Christ came to earth and died, not to appease God’s wrath, but instead, as the image of God who suffers with us, even to the point of death on the cross, I imagine that, if it were real, it would be the worst episode of Undercover Boss ever.
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+18 +1
The "New" Atheists Aren't
There’s nothing “new” about “the New Atheists”. Just as, at some point, we’d stopped using Vespucci’s “New World” label to denote the western hemisphere, it’s probably time to abandon the adjective ‘new’ when referencing the above-mentioned trailblazers, especially now that the trail has been well-traveled, paved over, widened to four lanes, and features a Starbucks at every off-ramp.
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+25 +1
Religious decline does not equal moral decline, says researcher
Morality is not rooted in religion, and religion matters less for moral values now than it did thirty years ago, says a researcher. Based on the analysis of European survey data, researchers found that religious decline does not equal moral decline.
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+33 +1
Why humans find it hard to do away with religion
The new atheists decry religion as a poisonous set of lies. John Gray asks what if a belief in the supernatural is natural?
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+29 +1
The Trumpification of atheism
Amy Roth makes me sad with her perspective on the history of involvement with skepticism and atheism. How do you destroy a movement? By making enemies of the people who care about it.
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