Posted on June 29th, 2012 by Staks
A few people on FreethoughtBlogs (AronRa & PZ) are talking about Presupposition Apologetics. As it so happens, this subject interests me greatly because I think it is the best argument religious believers have. What I mean by that is that it is by far the most convincing and the hardest for most atheists to refute. […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, Belief, faith, logic, Projection, Religious Manipulation, science | 12 Comments »
Posted on May 11th, 2012 by Staks
We atheists think of celebrities, the names that come to mind are people like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and other prominent scientists. To us, science is cool and scientists are awesome! Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn’t share our view and that is very unfortunate. That being the case, I want to […]
Filed under: culture war, science | No Comments »
Posted on March 8th, 2012 by Staks
Yesterday, I talked about one of Aaron Tabor’s favorite arguments. Today, I want to talk about his other favorite argument. Aaron claims that Richard Dawkins believes that aliens seeded the Earth with life and since Dawkins is the Pope of atheism, all atheists are wrong and therefore Jesus. Aaron has presented this type of argument […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Atheism NOT Religion, Authority, Creationism, god of the gaps, Religious Manipulation, science | 4 Comments »
Posted on March 7th, 2012 by Staks
Over the weekend, I got into another conversation with Aaron Tabor. You don’t know who he is? He has more friends on facebook than anyone! He runs the “Jesus Daily” page with 12 million fans. Every once in a while, I’ll post an article on the page and to my surprise Aaron always responds. But […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, Argument by Design, Creationism, evolution, ignorance, science | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 2nd, 2012 by Staks
It seems to me that every time I talk to a Creationist or an Evolution Denier, they tell me that Evolution is “just random chance” and that they see so much order and design that there must be a deity behind it. Many of these people claim to have some knowledge of evolution too. For […]
Filed under: Argument by Design, Creationism, evolution, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 29th, 2012 by Staks
This is a topic I have talked about often, but recently two advocates have come forward in support of two competing visions for the future. These two views represent a stark contrast from each other and we really need to think about this now. The future of humanity is being written right now and we […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, culture war, education, humanism, People of Reason, science, The Future | No Comments »
Posted on February 8th, 2012 by Staks
I was having a conversation with a Christian and he actually told me that fossils prove God exists. Note that he didn’t say that fossils present strong evidence for the existence of God, but that they actually prove it. This clown assured me that he was well versed in science, too. The only thing I […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, evolution, Religious Manipulation, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 24th, 2012 by Staks
The universe is a wondrous place filled with beauty and mystery. One thing that really ticks me off is when religious believers ascribe the wonders of the universe to their deity of choice. The universe is not “God’s handiwork!” It was Immanuel Kant who is known for verbalizing the fact that our senses are filtered […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Argument by Design, Glory to God, science | No Comments »
Posted on January 12th, 2012 by Staks
Apparently “Nothing” is almost all there is in the Universe and that “Nothing” is something after all. Last night, I attended a lecture by Dr. Lawrence Krauss about his new book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. It was an awesome lecture and I learned a lot about cosmology, the […]
Filed under: Creationism, First Cause Argument, science | 3 Comments »
Posted on November 16th, 2011 by Staks
After I really get into it with a Creationist, they will often admit that they agree with “micro-evolution” but reject the “belief” in “macro-evolution.” So what is macro-evolution? The truth is that there is no such thing as macro-evolution. Creations made it up. There is only one kind of evolution and that is evolution via […]
Filed under: Creationism, evolution, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 18th, 2011 by Staks
Last week, when I was at the Silverman/D’souza debate, Dinesh D’souza accused David Silverman of being dogmatic about his “belief” concerning death. Silverman asserted that there is no afterlife. He later walked back his assertion to say that we know that to the degree that we can know anything. But the thing that gets me […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Belief, Certainty, death, Dinesh D'Souza, Religion, science, Soul | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 14th, 2011 by Staks
Thinking with your brain is important, but some things only your heart knows. The only problem with this is that hearts don’t ‘know’ anything. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood. Religious believers are always trying to separate human compassion from the brain and transfer that capacity onto the heart. I get that there […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Love, science, Soul | No Comments »
Posted on September 14th, 2011 by Staks
Fundamentalist religious believers love to ignore and attack science. Some will claim that there are other sources of knowledge. It is not unusual to hear some religious believer talk about spiritual knowledge or to claim that they can know God through faith. I maintain that without science there is no knowledge. I guess I am […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 23rd, 2011 by Staks
It seems that many religious believers can’t understand a life without authority figures. When arguing with a Christian recently, he told me that Richard Dawkins believes in Intelligent Design therefore I ought to accept it too. What he did was he took a clip from the ridiculously edited film Expelled in which Dawkins says that […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Authority, People of Reason, Religious Manipulation, science | No Comments »
Posted on July 29th, 2011 by Staks
Religious believers love to try to lower science to the level of faith. They love to talk about how science requires faith and some will even say that it requires more faith than… actual faith. Faith is dogmatic by nature and so religious believers like to claim that science is equally as dogmatic. It isn’t! […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, culture war, Religious Manipulation, science | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 28th, 2011 by Staks
I am tired of churches lobbying to pass laws that force schools to teach their religion in science classes. Sure we can fight their efforts again and again, but it is time we go on the offense. It is time we start pushing laws that force churches to teach the science at least once a […]
Filed under: atheism, Church, church/state, culture war, education, evolution, global climate change, science | No Comments »
Posted on March 1st, 2011 by Staks
The other day I was having a discussion with a Christian and I cited a scientific study. In return, the Christian cited an opinion poll. Then she said that since we both have resources that support our point of view, it must be a wash. It seems to me that many Christians don’t understand the […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, logic, science | 3 Comments »
Posted on February 23rd, 2011 by Staks
Religious believers often tell me that science can prove God exists. It is at this point that I start laughing in their face. But still they insist on continuing this line of evangelism. Next the theist will use the argument by design, the first cause argument, the fine tuning argument, and a handful of other […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, discussion, god of the gaps, Religion, Religious Manipulation, science | 12 Comments »
Posted on February 10th, 2011 by Staks
Part two of the interview I did with Bob Enyart is now online. I want to discuss a few of the techniques that I noticed Bob used in this episode. You can listen to the hour plus interview at the end of this post. Note that Bob cut off the books I was recommending at […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, Authority, evolution, Religion, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 2nd, 2011 by Staks
I was watching a clip from a local news in Alabama which was covering the American Atheists convention. One of the Christians interviewed made the argument that all an atheist has to do is look around and see God’s miracles in the trees or something. I hear this a lot and even big bad Bill […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Argument by Design, culture war, god of the gaps, Religion, science | 8 Comments »
Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Staks
I got into a conversation with a Christian yesterday and the guy said to me, “There are countless things that we could not scientifically prove, that does not mean that they don’t exist.” It is this type of argument that really pisses me off. This guy isn’t even a fundamentalist. He is a mainstream Christian […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, faith, ignorance, Religion, science | 8 Comments »
Posted on January 20th, 2011 by Staks
Something that really annoys me about many religious people is that they are so eager to give credit to their God when humans do all the work. While this is obviously noticeable during football games and other sporting events, it happens in relation to science even more often. For example, science has proven that God […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, culture war, People of Reason, Religion, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 14th, 2011 by Staks
Continuing from yesterday’s analysis of my debate on the Bob Enyart radio show (first half-hour now on yesterday’s blog), I wanted to point out a particular trick that Bob used in our debate. Perhaps it is because he believes in authoritative doctrine, that he assumes that science is authoritative too. So his style of attack […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Atheism NOT Religion, Authority, Creationism, culture war, debate, evolution, science | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 7th, 2011 by Staks
It seems that many religious people are offended every time an atheist makes his or her lack of belief known. This is why organized atheism offends them so much lately. Why are they so offended by our mere existence? In George Orwell’s book 1984, there is a very interesting and often overlooked conversation. In this […]
Filed under: 1984, Alternative Worldview, Authority, Blasphemy, culture war, deathbed conversion, Offensiveness, Religion, Religious Manipulation, science | 4 Comments »
Posted on December 17th, 2010 by Staks
One of the most common attacks that Creationsists make is that “Evolutionists” are responsible for Hitler’s Eugenics program. This is of course ridiculous and in reality is no different than claiming that Gravitiests are responsible for the crimes of murderers dropping people out a window. First, I take issue with the term “Evolutionist.” Evolution is […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Creationism, culture war, evolution, morality, Religious Manipulation, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 19th, 2010 by Staks
Mathematics is one of those things that is not open to interpretation. It doesn’t matter who counting the numbers, they should always add up the same. But there are a few instances within Christianity in which the divinely perfect numbers just don’t add up. The first an obvious mathematical equation that doesn’t add up is […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, ignorance, logic, Religion, science, Trinity | 4 Comments »
Posted on September 28th, 2010 by Staks
After 9/11, four atheists started to write books criticizing religion. While the media has dubbed these atheists “New Atheists,” Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett have jokingly labeled themselves as “The Four Horsemen of Atheism.” Now I think there is a fifth horseman, Stephen Hawking. At the beginning of the month, Stephen […]
Filed under: atheism, culture war, discussion, good cop-bad cop, science | 4 Comments »
Posted on September 3rd, 2010 by Staks
Even though physicist Stephen Hawking has been an atheist for quite some time, this seemed to be breaking news yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I think Hawking did make breaking news yesterday, but it wasn’t his lack of belief in a deity. The media has a really short attention span, because it was just three […]
Filed under: culture war, Current Events, Decline of Religion, First Cause Argument, god of the gaps, science | 2 Comments »
Posted on July 22nd, 2010 by Staks
Last week, while on my vacation I heard about something which must make the Religious Right go even more insane then they are already. I heard about the latest technique in women’s breast augmentation… using Stem Cells! During the Bush administration the Religious Right pushed to limit Stem Cell Research. Their view on this was […]
Filed under: culture war, Religion, science | No Comments »
Posted on July 21st, 2010 by Staks
Let me tell you a true story. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there were star wars. First there was a massive clone war and then there was a rebellion against a galactic empire. Just because I have no evidence for this, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. I derived this […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, culture war, faith, god of the gaps, Religion, science, truth | 1 Comment »
