- The Soft Landing
The Loft • January 31, 2009
Although it's much too early to look forward to a world without religion, one thing we can be confident of is that the numbers and influence of atheists will continue to grow in the near future. Census figures over the last few decades have consistently shown the rise of the nonbelievers in the educated and [...]
- What We're Up Against
The Rotunda • January 30, 2009
This past week, the Times ran a story about the extent of the gains made by the reconstituted Taliban, not just in Afghanistan or in the semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but well within Pakistan itself:
Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed "un-Islamic" [...]
- The Catholic Church Welcomes a Holocaust Denier
The Rotunda • January 29, 2009
I knew the Catholics were having trouble finding enough people to be clergy, but I didn't think things had gotten this bad (HT: Pam's House Blend):
I believe that the historical evidence — the historical evidence — is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolph [...]
- Ambassadors for Atheism
The Garden • January 28, 2009
In the world of Philip Pullman's fantasy series His Dark Materials, each human being is accompanied everywhere by their daemon, an intelligent animal-shaped spirit that is the outward manifestation of their soul. When Pullman's heroine, Lyra, meets a boy who's been severed from his daemon by a cruel experiment, her reaction is one of disgust [...]
- The Miracle of Fatima
The Observatory • January 26, 2009
On May 13, 1917, three Portuguese children in the town of Fátima, a small village seventy miles north of Lisbon, claimed to have witnessed a vision of the Virgin Mary. According to the account given by Lúcia Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Mary had appeared to them, clad in luminous white, above [...]
- Book Reviews: The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father
The Library • January 24, 2009
On November 4, I decided that it'd be worthwhile to read the two books written by our new president Barack Obama, to get a better sense of where he intends to take the country in the next four (hopefully eight!) years. I finished the second one just before the inauguration, and here follows a brief [...]
- Administrative Notes
The Foyer • January 23, 2009
• I've posted a new revision of the comment policy. The first version of this policy was too short; the second one, I think, was too long, and misguidedly tried to enumerate every forbidden behavior while eliminating every possible loophole. I think that was a mistake, and this newest revision is intended to be more [...]
- Popular Delusions XII: Qi
The Observatory • January 22, 2009
A popular notion in traditional Asian cultures, as well as the garbled versions of Asian culture imported into the West by the New Age movement, is the idea of qi (or chi), the vital energy that permeates the universe and flows through living things. A wide variety of pseudoscientific beliefs are based on qi, and [...]
- On Agent Causation
The Library • January 20, 2009
Among the band of philosophers who hold that free will is supernatural, one of the reigning ideas is called agent causation. This hypothesis states that volitional acts are a special category of event, one that is caused not by any other event but - in some deeply mysterious way - by the agent itself. Philosopher [...]
- On Fear and Seeking
The Garden • January 17, 2009
Slacktivist, a progressive Christian blogger whom I read regularly, has some words of advice for the new atheists on how best to win converts. You'd wonder why a Christian would want to give advice to atheists about how to do this - indeed, such "advice" is usually just concern trolling when it comes from the [...]
- The Contributions of Freethinkers: Frances Wright
The Loft • January 16, 2009
Although the success of the feminist movement has secured equal legal rights for women virtually everywhere in the West - a guarantee de jure, if not always de facto - there are still pockets of institutionalized sexism that survive. The Catholic church is the most obvious example, but other Christian denominations also deny the equality [...]
- Obama's Inaugural Cavalcade Continues
The Rotunda • January 14, 2009
Following up on my earlier post about Obama's choice of the disgraceful bigot Rick Warren to preside at the inauguration, this news: In a response to progressive anger, the transition team has announced that V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop, has agreed to appear as well. (Obama's spokespeople said this was not a [...]
- On the Morality of: Patriotism
The Library • January 12, 2009
With the American presidential inauguration soon to arrive, this seems like an opportune time to say some words on patriotism. Is love of country an emotion that can be felt by a freethinker? Is this an allegiance as irrational as the tribalisms of human prehistory, or can there be something about one's country that makes [...]
- Poetry Sunday: This Is Just A Place
The Foyer • January 11, 2009
For today's Poetry Sunday, I'm featuring the American poet A.R. Ammons, who was first showcased last year for his poem "Gravelly Run".
Born in North Carolina in 1926, Ammons grew up on his family's farm during the Great Depression and attended a Pentecostal church, whose hellfire sermons terrified the young man. He first began to write [...]
- The Price of Abstinence
The Rotunda • January 10, 2009
A much-heralded study in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics has concluded that the premarital "abstinence pledges" so beloved by evangelical Christians are ineffective. Teenagers who sign up for religious programs such as True Love Waits or Silver Ring Thing, in which participants pledge to remain abstinent until marriage, are just as likely to [...]
- Enemy of Faith
The Garden • January 9, 2009
It seems that the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, which apparently exists, has released a list of the top ten instances of "Christian-bashing" in America in 2008 (HT: PZ). Taking a bold stand, this group has announced, "It is time for... Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens".
Perusing the list, you'll soon discover that [...]
- On Cryonics
The Loft • January 7, 2009
Last summer I wrote a post, "Why I'm Skeptical of the Singularity", which gave some reasons for doubting that godlike machine intelligences will ever come into being. Today I'll discuss another idea popular among enthusiasts of transhumanism, namely life extension through cryonics. Here, too, I intend to offer a qualified skepticism.
Overcoming Bias presents a strong [...]
- The Story of Atheism
The Observatory • January 5, 2009
In my previous post, I wrote some thoughts on the power of storytelling and how atheists can use it to our benefit. In this post, I intend to apply those principles to tell a story: the story of atheism.
Because gods are fundamentally human creations, this is also a story of humanity. It opens in the [...]
- On Storytelling
The Garden • January 4, 2009
Back in November, Greta Christina wrote about how to overcome religious influence in politics, specifically in relation to Prop 8 and gay rights. At the time, I left some thoughts in a comment, which I think is worth developing into a full post.
I wrote back in 2006 about The Da Vinci Code, noting that although [...]
- No Holy Ground
The Rotunda • January 3, 2009
The world's attention has been riveted these past few days by Israel's assault on Gaza, in an attempt to oust the Hamas-run government and put a stop to rocket attacks on southern Israel. Hundreds of Palestinians were reported killed in a wave of airstrikes, over a thousand wounded, and as of this writing, a ground [...]
- Rebutting Reasonable Faith: Is There Non-Culpable Unbelief?
The Library • January 1, 2009
Early on in Daylight Atheism's tenure, I wrote several critical reviews of the CAP Alert site, but I later gave that up as providing insufficient sport. However, I've set my sights on a new and worthier target: the Christian apologist William Lane Craig and his weekly Q&A Archive from his Reasonable Faith website. I'll begin [...]
