The A-Unicornist

"It’s simplistic to argue that belief in God alone makes people evil — obviously it’s more than that and we all know people who will say they’re better human beings because of their faith — but it’s willfully ignorant to avoid any discussion of how religion might contribute to violence." – Hemant Mehta

Right in line with his stellar talk at FreeOK in July, David Silverman goes on Fox 'News' to defend the lawsuit that's trying to get the 9/11 cross removed from the Ground Zero Museum:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Couple o' things. First, I can't help but laugh at the us-vs-them way that Fox is framing the discussion. Their second guest is introduced with a picture of a loved one lost in the tragedy, as though no atheists, Muslims, or people of any other faiths lost loved ones. Kelly coddles him and mocks atheists as he laments that atheists are "trying to destroy America".

Meanwhile, Kelly is predictably condescending and dismissive toward Silverman, basking in her Christian Privilege™. She completely dodges the actual issue at hand, which is that this isn't some 'symbol' found in the wreckage – it's a cross that was taken out, reshaped, blessed by a priest, and inscribed. There's nothing miraculous about finding a gna…

This seems pertinent in light of my previous post...
If your case depends on pulpit-style oratory, manipulating the emotions of your audience and playing with words, debates will probably work for you very well. They do not, however, work well for explaining science. Debates play to the emotions, to soundbites, to oratorical flourishes and, all too often, to sheer volume. They may make for good drama, but they do not make for good understanding. Fine if your goal is to grandstand; no good at all if it is to educate. - Richard Dawkins

Today over on Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta has a post talking about why atheists pay attention to creationists like Ken Ham. He says,
We go after Ham because, whether it’s right to take the Bible literally or not, more than 100,000,000 Americans already buy into that lie and he’s one of the ringleaders. It’s the same reason atheists love to quote horrible Bible verses. It’s not because we think people should take random lines (in and out of context) from the Bible at face value; it’s because so many people already do. But it's his next paragraph that hits home for me:
This is also why I don’t find it useful to pay attention to what “sophisticated theologians” have to say. Most Christians aren’t paying attention to them, either, so why bother debating a version of Christianity so few people even know about? Isn't that the truth? How many Christians have the slightest idea who Alvin Plantinga is? Alister McGrath? Even Francis Collins is probably way more famous for being the &#…

Short answer: duh.



This is a great talk that lightheartedly but poignantly mocks the sheer absurdity of the Christian religion -- particularly the fact that its beliefs are every bit as bizarre as any other cult or religion you can think of, which is obvious to most people who've studied comparative religion.

I particularly like the line about the Christian idea that "God needs blood to fix the universe, but only his own blood has enough magical power to do it, so he gave himself a body and killed it." I've asked countless Christians how it is that God can sacrifice himself to himself to pay the price he determined was necessary to free us from a curse he put on us (which is a pretty damn fair assessment of Christian doctrine), but I've yet to get a straight answer and I doubt I ever will.

Hide your kids! Hide your wife! Yet another poll shows what we all already know: the industrialized world is becoming less and less religious. But the latest Gallup poll shows not only a whopping 13% decline in those who say they are 'religious', but a 4% increase in those who identify as 'atheist':

The poll, called “The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism,” found that the number of Americans who say they are “religious” dropped from 73 percent in 2005 (the last time the poll was conducted) to 60 percent. At the same time, the number of Americans who say they are atheists rose, from 1 percent to 5 percent. What interesting is that this has all happened in the last seven years – the time frame of the 'new atheist' movement.
The seven years between the polls is notable because 2005 saw the publication of “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris, the first in a wave of best-selling books on atheism by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and othe…

I blogged about David Barton a long time ago. He's a guy who founded a group called Wall Builders, which claims that most of what you think you know about American history is a bunch of liberal nonsense. America is really all about Jesus, and the Founding Fathers were all ministers who basically wanted a Christian theocracy.

The snowball started rolling when NPR did a piece that exposed the outright garbage that Barton has been peddling as history. Conservative scholars who had yet to drink the Barton kool-aid were curious about this, so they looked into it. And, turns out, Barton – shockingly – is a liar. The result? His publisher, a conservative Christian organization, pulled his book:
Casey Francis Harrell, director of corporate communications for Thomas Nelson, tells the newspaper that it had gotten several complaints about the book and found enough errors to cancel it, halt new shipments and recall unsold copies. So, a small victory for truth and justice. But there was o…

Religious people, for whatever reason, like to quote Einstein. I suppose they imagine that some of his comments that seem pro-faith give a boost to religion by having a super smart guy in its corner. I'm talking about stuff like this:

Let's ignore the fact that, like lots of quotes attributed to Einstein, Einstein never actually said this. Ever. At all. Turns out that a quick Google search reveals Albert Einstein to be a veritable treasure trove of bogus quotes. That's the problem with the internet: people just share stuff without sourcing it.

First of all, it doesn't matter what Einstein thought about religion. He was a brilliant physicist and undeniably a smart fellow, but that doesn't preclude him from being wrong from time to time. Let's not forget that after Isaac Newton discovered the laws of motion, the laws of optics, universal gravitation and differential calculus, he spent the rest of his life dedicated to the pseudoscience of alchemy. When you resort…

Long ago – actually, back when this blog was still called The Apostasy – I did a post called The Problem of Suffering. To this day I'm very proud of it; while I might add to or revise many of my older posts if I were to write them now simply because of all I've learned, that particular post is one that I think still holds up as well as the day I wrote it.

At the top of the site page, there's a tab for something called The Gospel Challenge. It was a post that I wrote that I felt concisely summarized my objections to the claim that the gospels are divinely inspired, and I felt it worthy of sticking up as a fixture to the site (since the overwhelming majority of my theist visitors have been Christians). I'm going to do the same with the content that follows here.

I've been thinking about the problem of suffering again, prompted by William Lane Craig's recent lecture on the topic here in Tulsa, along with a recent article penned by Oxford theologian Alister McGrath…

Here's some food for thought:

What do you call someone who mocks something the church considers sacred? You guessed it – a blasphemer.

What do you call someone who questions or openly criticizes church doctrine? You guessed it – a heretic.

What about someone who abandons the church for either another church or no church at all? You guessed it – an apostate.

Now, think about someone who openly questions, criticizes or mocks a political ideology. What's the name for that? Can you think of one? What about someone who changes political parties? Or maybe you can think of a name for someone who changes their mind about a philosophical issue, or a scientific one. I sure can't, though.

Religion has such a rich history of suppressing critical inquiry that it actually has names that marginalize people with dissenting views. These aren't innocuous labels, either; for most of religion's history, being labeled a heretic, apostate or blasphemer was sure grounds for imprisonment,…

We've landed on Mars, and holy shit! There are aliens everywhere!



Okay, those are from Prometheus... which I just found out today has been officially given the green light for a sequel. Great news for guys like me and Roger Ebert who think it's awesome. Maybe not such a big deal for people who think it was total shit though.

Anyway, we landed on Mars! Well, not us, but a robot! Again!

Don't get me wrong, it's cool and all, but when are we gonna get the terraforming? The chicks with three boobs? Kuato? "Quaaaaaaiddd... start... the re-ac-torrrrr...."

No, in case you forgot already, this is what the action-packed surface of Mars looks like:


I guess it's kind of a fixer-upper.

I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I've changed my mind on a lot of things. I deconverted from Christianity after a lengthy study of theology and comparative religion that included several extended dialogues with clergy. Nearly a decade later, I deconverted from an agnostic theist to a full-on atheist. More recently, I've refined my views on topics ranging from free will to the value of philosophers to the ethics of industrial farming and animal testing.

That's happened because no matter what I think, I seek out contrary views. I treat my own ideas with skepticism. It's important to understand that no idea is sacred; nothing should be above skeptical scrutiny, criticism, or even mockery.

In the last week, I've had a couple of visitors to my blog who clearly have a different sort of mindset – a guarded one. It's not the first time this has happened, but it pops up occasionally. Someone finds me through some search engine or RSS, finds me talking …

Hemant Mehta brought to my attention an article from Alternet (which I tend to avoid) in which some guy named Ian Murphy, whom I suppose fancies himself a fantastic atheist, labels five fairly prominent non-believers as "awful atheists". He begins,
Many notable atheists believe in some powerfully stupid stuff—likely owing their prominence to these same benighted beliefs, lending an air of scientific credibility to the myths corporate media seeks to highlight, and thereby eroding the credibility of all atheists in the long-term. In other words: The crap always rises to the top. It's true that being an atheist, just like being very intelligent in general, is not a buttress against believing in some stupid and/or simply erroneous things. But what makes this article worthy of an old-fashioned facepalm is the haste and hubris with which Murphy dismisses and ridicules their views. I'll reprint Hemant's summary, because I think it's pretty fair and accurate:
Sam …