Daylight Atheism » Debating

Creationist Target Practice

Ebonmuse — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:50:56 +0000

Yesterday, someone calling himself Rev. Skeens posted the following comment. I rejected it since it had no perceptible connection to the post it was submitted under, but then I had second thoughts. Granted that this is beginner-level stuff and hardly challenging, but it's been a while since we honed our debating skills on an actual creationist around here, so I thought it might be entertaining to throw it out there and use it for target practice. ... [visit site to read more]

My Notes on the Ideological Turing Test

Ebonmuse — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:20:26 +0000

Following up my post analyzing the results of Unequally Yoked's ideological Turing test, this one lists how I voted on each of the atheist candidates. I took notes as I was going through them, trying to flag what stood out to me as evidence of genuineness or fakery. As you can see, some of my criteria turned out to work, some of them didn't.

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Thoughts on the Ideological Turing Test

Ebonmuse — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:23:05 +0000

The ideological Turing test that was running at Unequally Yoked has concluded, and if you're like me, you couldn't wait to find out how we did. Well, the results are in: here's the answer key (some real surprises there!), and here's how the voting shook out for the visit site to read more]

Cast Your Ballots Now!

Ebonmuse — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 04:01:37 +0000

I wrote last month about the ideological Turing test going on at Unequally Yoked, and the first round of voting is now beginning. Leah has posted 15 sets of answers to a standard set of questions, some of them written by genuine atheists, some written by Christians pretending to be atheists.

Do you think you can tell the real ... [visit site to read more]

Take the Ideological Turing Test

Ebonmuse — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 20:57:07 +0000

My guest blogger alumnus, Leah of Unequally Yoked, has proposed a very interesting challenge for Christians and atheists alike which she calls the "ideological Turing test":

One of the greatest gifts of my time at Yale has been living, writing, and arguing in a community of smart people with whom I fiercely disagree... The imitation test has helped me make sure I really understood what I was ... [visit site to read more]

You Call That Religion?

LeahAdmin — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:56:34 +0000

This is a guest post by Leah of Unequally Yoked. Adam is on vacation.

Spoiler Alert: the post below discusses the final number of the musical The Book of Mormon.

The Associated Press, in a review titled "Zany Musical 'The Book of Mormon' Will Convert You" said despite the sacrilege you might expect from a show imagined by the creators of South Park, the ... [visit site to read more]

The Mormon Test

LeahAdmin — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:50:42 +0000

This is a guest post by Leah of Unequally Yoked. Adam is on vacation.

When in argument with Christians, it can be hard to find a good way to explain why you doubt their precepts. John Loftus has a good idea with his Outsider's Test for Faith, but most Christians believe that their faith can pass the test; it's hard to show them how their ... [visit site to read more]

Adapt or Die

LeahAdmin — Fri, 27 May 2011 03:30:01 +0000

This is a guest post by Leah of Unequally Yoked. Adam is on vacation.

My previous two posts on mockery have drawn a lot of criticism, including charges that I am an accommodationist. If that were the case, the definition of accommodationism had gotten way too broad. ... [visit site to read more]

Atheists Don't Debate (Except When We Do)

Ebonmuse — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:52:08 +0000

A Review of When Atheism Becomes Religion, Part II

In chapter 3, Hedges gives a two-and-a-half-page-long excerpt of a debate he had with Sam Harris at UCLA in May 2007, moderated by the columnist Robert Scheer, about whether Islam encourages suicide bombing:

HARRIS: OK, well, let me deal with your taking the measure of the Muslim world. Happily we do not assess public opinion by having New York Times journalists go out and live in the Muslim world and make friends and ... [visit site to read more]

Creationists Flee from Criticism

Ebonmuse — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:38:57 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was alerted by a Google alert to a post, "Conversation With An Atheist", on the site Everyday Christian. Since I'm always interested to find Christians who want to converse with atheists, to see what they have to say about us and to us, I checked it out. It turned out to be a fairly run-of-the-mill creationist argument by a Christian apologist named Jack Wellman.

Since my interest was piqued, I posted a ... [visit site to read more]

The Three Kinds of Theism

Ebonmuse — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:36:08 +0000

If you're an atheist who's setting out to debate religious believers, there are three main categories of theism you can expect to meet. Although religious belief is one of the most diverse of human phenomena, with a limitless variety of gradations and exceptions, I think these three suffice to classify nearly all of the theists that a nonbeliever is likely to encounter. If you want to debate, it's important to keep this in mind, because your strategy for dealing with each group needs to be ... [visit site to read more]

Thoughtful Iconoclasts: A Response to Madeleine Bunting

Ebonmuse — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:56:29 +0000

I last mentioned Guardian columnist and Templeton Foundation fellow Madeleine Bunting in 2007, in "On Being Uncontroversial". She's recently written another column attacking atheism, alleging that the New Atheists are drowning out, in her words, "real debates" about religion and faith.

Personally, I don't ... [visit site to read more]