Posted on January 25th, 2011 by Staks
Yesterday, I heard an excerpt from the new Piers Morgan show on CNN in which Christian motivational speaker Joel Osteen commented that he isn’t judging gay people, but God says it’s a sin. He claims that is in the “scriptures.” Joel Osteen doesn’t hate gays, God does. Joel is a really nice guy. He loves […]
Filed under: conversation, culture war, family values, god, Judge God, wwjd | 11 Comments »
Posted on January 24th, 2011 by Staks
Christians sometimes argue that everyone “knows” there is a God. I always find this line of argument comical for so many reasons. First, it is sort of childish. I could just as easily declare that the Christian knows there isn’t a God. It is an assertion which needs no justification. The argument can’t go anyway. […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, Lord-Liar-Lunatic, Projection | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 12th, 2011 by Staks
Surprisingly, there are many religious believers (some even ardent fundamentalists) who have never actually thought about what they believe and why. Last night, I read an article from one such believer… I think. In any case, I think it is important to reach out to these religious believers and to get them to actually think […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, culture war, discussion, Personal, Religion | 2 Comments »
Posted on December 23rd, 2010 by Staks
Now that 2010 is almost over and Jupiter has still not turned into a second Sun, I want to take a moment to let everyone know about a few of the things Dangerous Talk has planned for 2011. On January 12th, I will be a guest of the fundamentalist Christian radio show “Bob Enyart Live.” […]
Filed under: atheism, billboards, conversation, culture war, Disproving God, End of Days, Media, Religion, The Rapture, Vague Higher Power | 3 Comments »
Posted on December 16th, 2010 by Staks
My friend and aspiritual leader, Jake recently wrote a post on his blog, AfterFaith.com, that reminded me about an issue I’ve been wanting to write about for some time. Lately, I have been getting a lot of e-mails from recent de-converts from religion and I wanted to talk about the betrayal many of them feel. […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, de-conversion, Decline of Religion, Religion, Religious Manipulation, Self-Help | 3 Comments »
Posted on December 9th, 2010 by Staks
Last week, I was having a conversation with another atheist who isn’t as vocal as I am. She asked how Christians can believe this stuff and commented that they must be stupid. I found myself in the odd position of defending Christians. It is not that Christians are stupid, but rather that the system that […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, de-conversion, discussion, ignorance, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 14 Comments »
Posted on December 1st, 2010 by Staks
As a critical thinker, I criticize a lot of ridiculous ideas. 9/11 Truthers, grand conspiracy theorists, ghosts, aliens, psychic powers, etc. are all things which I am critical of even though I actually believe in some of them to some degree. But when it comes to religion everyone gets offended. Let’s start with Christianity. I […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, culture war, ignorance, islam, jews, Mainstream Christians, Religion, Religious Manipulation, Skepticism | 8 Comments »
Posted on November 23rd, 2010 by Staks
Thanksgiving is a few days away and that means for many atheists an uncomfortable long weekend with religious family members. The question is always the same, how vocal should an atheist be during Thanksgiving? I’m pretty lucky in that my family pretty much knows where I stand and expects me to be vocal. Most of […]
Filed under: conversation, Offensiveness, Personal, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 4th, 2010 by Staks
There is nothing worse than sitting in a firehouse for 13 hours being forced to listen to church gossip. Tuesday, I had to sit in my polling place all day as the Minority Election Inspector and all my coworkers were Catholics. First, I want to say that one was a liberal Catholic and the others […]
Filed under: Catholics, Church, conversation, culture war, Election, Personal | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 1st, 2010 by Staks
Over the weekend, Jon Stewart held the Rally to Restore Sanity and tomorrow is Election Day so I thought I would talk about this myth that both political parties are equally extreme. Toward the end of the rally, Stewart gave his closing speech in which he talked about how people from both sides of the […]
Filed under: church/state, conversation, culture war, Current Events, Election, End of Days, People of Reason, Political Activism, Politics | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 26th, 2010 by Staks
Over the weekend, I seem to have gotten into a few conversations with various progressive Christians. These are Christians who take their faith seriously, but who tend to focus more on poverty issues than the culture war issues. They are the so called, “good cops.” First, I got into a conversation with the progressive Christians […]
Filed under: conversation, culture war, discussion, good cop-bad cop, Progressive Christians, Religion | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 21st, 2010 by Staks
Yesterday I talked about the perception that criticism and mockery is often considered going negative. Today I want to talk about the value of criticism and mockery. Quite simply, it is how we learn. When presented with an idea (good or bad) we have to think about the idea. Sometimes we don’t do that or […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, Criticism, ignorance, Religion, Skepticism | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 20th, 2010 by Staks
A lot of people criticize me and other atheists because we criticize religion. They seem to think that criticism is “being negative.” Oddly enough, these people don’t think they are being negative when they criticize us for being negative. People keep asking me to stop being critical of religion and to stop mocking religion. But […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, Criticism, culture war, ignorance, Offensiveness, Religion | 5 Comments »
Posted on September 22nd, 2010 by Staks
I got a message today from a fellow atheist asking why so many atheists take a literal view of the Bible rather than argue the Bible from a more metaphorical position. I think it is a fair question to some degree. For starters, here in America we tend to run into a large number of […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, good cop-bad cop, image of god, Religion | 7 Comments »
Posted on September 21st, 2010 by Staks
For most atheists, when we get into conversations with the religious, we tend to discuss facts and evidence. When we argue, we use logic, reason, and point out fallacies. But when the religious argue, they use personal connection. Religious people will try to get to know you. They don’t really care about the details of […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, culture war, de-conversion, Personal, Religious Manipulation | 3 Comments »
Posted on September 17th, 2010 by Staks
I get into a lot of conversations with a lot of fundamentalist believers. Even though I love these conversations it sometimes seems like I am having a conversation with a wall. We have all had these types of conversations. But sometimes we forget that there might be flies on that wall and they might benefit […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, de-conversion, discussion, Jehovah's Witness, Religion | 5 Comments »
Posted on September 15th, 2010 by Staks
I recently had a conversation with a Christian whose concept of God is so vague that he couldn’t define it. Now, I often talk about how Christianity has two main God concepts, the first being the character of God as portrayed in the Bible and the second being some sort of vague higher power concept. […]
Filed under: conversation, god, image of god, Vague Higher Power | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 13th, 2010 by Staks
Over the weekend, I had a barbecue to celebrate 9/11 (which just so happens to be my Birthday). Even though many people jokingly inquired about burning some holy books, no holy books were burnt during this celebration. I did want to take a moment to thank all the people on facebook and twitter who sent […]
Filed under: conversation, discussion, Personal | 5 Comments »
Posted on September 9th, 2010 by Staks
A lot of times, Christians will insist that their belief was not a product of brainwashing, indoctrination, or some other form of emotional trickery. They will insist that there are logical and reasonable reasons for their belief. Okay, what are they? They will give you a million different arguments for God and Christianity but which […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 8th, 2010 by Staks
One thing that I love to point out to proponents of the “One True Religion,” (whichever religion that might be) is that no one has yet disproven past religions. The fact is that even though no sane person still believes in the God Zeus, no one has actually disproven Zeus’s existence. Why is it that […]
Filed under: Coexist, conversation, Decline of Religion, Religion, Zeus | 9 Comments »
Posted on September 7th, 2010 by Staks
I was talking to a Christian over the weekend and he asserted that there are three kinds of knowledge, empirical, rational, and faithful. I think this is a brilliant move to assert that faith is a kind of knowledge. What is the argument for that? Where is the evidence? Oh wait, if there is an […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, faith | 4 Comments »
Posted on August 20th, 2010 by Staks
In this final installment of my response to Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s article “Why God is Great,” I want to talk about a few paragraphs within his article dealing with sexuality. In fact, I would like to even focus on Mr. Kuhner’s particular view of masturbation. First, I would like to give credit where credit is […]
Filed under: Blasphemy, Catholics, conversation, Religion, sex | 3 Comments »
Posted on August 19th, 2010 by Staks
In my forth blog post addressing Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s Washington Times article, “God is Great” I will focus on Kuhner’s ignorance about history and logic. I will also discuss his unquestioning political dogmatism. In the article, Kuhner makes a point to his fellow conservatives that Christopher Hitchens is NOT a “fellow traveler,” but rather Hitchens […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Catholics, communism, conversation, logic | No Comments »
Posted on August 18th, 2010 by Staks
Today’s installment of the series dealing with Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s article entitled, “Why God is Great” deals with one of my favorite subjects, morality. But Kuhner isn’t making the old moral grounding argument this time. Instead, he is making the moral norms argument. Interestingly enough, I first heard this argument while watching Christopher Hitchen’s film […]
Filed under: conversation, morality, Religion | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 18th, 2010 by Staks
Filed under: conversation, morality, Religion | Comments Off on Why Hitchens is Great (Part 3): Christian Morals
Posted on August 17th, 2010 by Staks
In Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s article, Why God is Great, he makes the ridiculous claim that, “Mr. Hitchens is unable to restrain his anti-Catholic bigotry.” This is not a new claim that Catholic apologists make and I have probably even written about it before. But it is worth addressing again. You can’t be a bigot against […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Catholics, conversation, Religion | 5 Comments »
Posted on August 16th, 2010 by Staks
On Friday, a Dangerous Talker sent me an interesting article from the Washington Times. The article was written by conservative columnist and talk show commentator, Jeffrey T. Kuhner and was entitled, “Why God is great.” It was basically an attack piece on Christopher Hitchens. After reading the article, I thought that I would spend a […]
Filed under: conversation, culture war, Religion | 8 Comments »
Posted on August 13th, 2010 by Staks
I know the Anne Rice thing is getting old. The story has been around for a few weeks now and I just can’t let it go. Like I did with Stephen Baldwin, I have written an open letter to Anne Rice. I am confident she will read it since she has been so accessible in […]
Filed under: conversation, de-conversion, faith, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 11th, 2010 by Staks
I have been a vocal atheist for almost twenty years now and have been an active member of the greater atheistic community for about half that time. Over the years, I have discussed and argued with people from many different religions and many different sects of the varying religions. A few years back, I even […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, discussion, humanism, People of Reason | 3 Comments »
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 by Staks
Last week, Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice made news when she publicly left Christianity… but remained “committed to Christ.” Pretty soon after her announcement, I wrote an Examiner article on the subject. I even started to follow Anne Rice’s facebook page. I was surprised at how approachable she was for someone of her […]
Filed under: conversation, de-conversion, facebook, Progressive Christians, Vague Higher Power | 1 Comment »