While I have talked about this topic before in my column turned blog post titled “Will the Real Christians Please Stand Up,” It seems that I have to go into a little bit more detail here. Every Christian (I can’t think of one exception) that I talk to seems to claim to have the monopoly […]
Filed under: Real Christians, Religion | 12 Comments »
One particular aspect of Religious Right Christianity which sometimes trickles into the mainstream of Christianity is the idea that all sins (or wrongs) are equal. I remember when I was younger, a Christian explained it to me with the following analogy: God is pure and can’t tolerate anything other than purity. Sin is like an […]
Filed under: Religion, sin | 45 Comments »
If you were to take a poll of Christians from 1700 years ago, I bet that about 95-98 percent of those polled probably couldn’t have a problem with slavery. If that same poll were taken 1000 years ago, the results probably wouldn’t change all that much. 200 years ago, that number would probably be closer […]
Filed under: Gay Issues, Religion | 20 Comments »
In modern society, the idea of the right to privacy is something that most Americans value. Liberals fight to keep government laws out of the bedroom and right wing groups are strongly support the idea of government non-interference. Whether someone is right or left, privacy seems to be a value that we all hold. So […]
Filed under: Religion, sex | 31 Comments »
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [may reach] unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” – Genesis 11:4 I was recently reminded of the story of the Tower of Babel and […]
Filed under: Religion, the bible | 17 Comments »
While most Christians believe that he Bible was divinely written by God, some Christians that I talk to, reject the idea that the Creator of the Universe actually sat down and wrote a book. It seems that I am not the only one who thinks this is utterly ridiculous. If the Creator of the Universe […]
Filed under: Religion, the bible | 28 Comments »
Many people today seem to be concerned about discrimination based on religion. Some how religion has become a protected class and I have to wonder why that is. Personally, I don’t support discrimination based on religion because that makes it seem like someone is being discriminated against based on some natural quality of that person. […]
Filed under: Religion | 20 Comments »
Without getting into the abortion debate, I want to talk about the terrorist attack on American soil that happened yesterday in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed inside a church of all places. Tiller is an abortion doctor who runs a clinic which performs the controversial late-term abortion. I do find it […]
Filed under: Current Events, Religion | 46 Comments »
Christians are always telling me that I need to worship their deity of choice. When I ask why, they warn me of eternal punishment and damnation in the fires of Hell. Sometimes, they will entice me into worshipping their deity with promises of eternal bliss in Heaven. But all threats and bribes aside, they still […]
Filed under: Religion | 8 Comments »
Often times when I am discussing religion with a fundamentalist Christian, they will change the subject on me and say things like, “well, you believe that the Universe came from nothing,” or “well, you believe that people came from monkeys.” I wish I was making that up, but it is true that fundamentalist Christians have […]
Filed under: Religion | 21 Comments »
Yesterday, I took my 3-month-old son Orion to the doctor. While we were there, the doctor asked us the standard questions about his medical history and then she asked if there were any religious beliefs, which would prevent him from taking certain medicines or treatments. My wife just laughed. Personally, I can’t imagine anyone letting […]
Filed under: Religion | 40 Comments »
Why is it that the Christian God is supposed to be all-powerful and yet it took him a full 6 days to create the world? Shouldn’t he have been able to do it with a snap of his metaphysical fingers? A real god should be able to think it and it happens. And while we […]
Filed under: god, god the father, Religion | 14 Comments »
For some reason, this argument has cropped up again in a conversation that I recently had with a Christian. Let me paraphrase the argument: The definition of God is a being in which no greater being can be conceived. It is greater to actually exist than it is to not actually exist. Therefore, God must […]
Filed under: Ontological Argument, Religion | 4 Comments »
The popular Christian argument is that in order for atheists to reject the claim that a god exists, we must first know everything. What they are claiming is that atheists must know the entire set of facts about the universe before we can look and that set and see that their God is not included […]
Filed under: faith, Religion | 14 Comments »
Since that lecture and that June 6th blog, I have posted a number of blogs talking about new polls, surveys, and studies, which show religion on the decline and atheism on the raise.
Filed under: Decline of Religion, Religion | 12 Comments »
While much of this country is focused on conversations with their imaginary friend, the secular would have decided to celebrate today as the National Day of Reason. It is a day for people of reason everywhere to step up and celebrate and to raise awareness of the attacks upon reason, freethought, and the wall of […]
Filed under: Religion | 10 Comments »
For some reason, Christians often claim that atheism is a religion just like Christianity. I see this as their attempt to bring people of reason into the mud with them. Clearly religion is starting to get a bad reputation and being reasonable, skeptical, and doubtful or ridiculous claims are all traits, which are starting to […]
Filed under: Atheism NOT Religion, Religion, Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
I always found it interesting that Christians today seem to prefer the feudalistic dictatorship of Christianity where God is Lord and humans are serfs over the Democratic ideals of the American system. In grad school, I shared a class with a liberal evangelical who at least recognized this as a problem. His solution was to […]
Filed under: god, Religion | 9 Comments »
It seems that I run into the same problems over and over again. Many of the Christians that I talk to have no idea how the scientific method works.
Filed under: Religion, science | 8 Comments »
The other day I was talking to a Christian friend of mine and she made a comment that I always find even more ridiculous than most Christian comments. I wish I could say that it was a unique comment by some random schizophrenic or something, but I can’t. The sad fact is that my friend […]
Filed under: god, Religion | 10 Comments »
While I often talk about conversations that I have with Christians of the various varieties, I don’t often talk much about other conversations I have. Since it is pretty well known that I am somewhat of an atheist activist, I often come across people who are not Christians who are not well-informed atheists. They may […]
Filed under: Religion, Trinity | 12 Comments »
“The Lord, Liar, Lunatic Argument,” was first created by C.S. Lewis in his book, “Mere Christianity,” but has since been repeated and popularized by Christian hack, Josh McDowell in his book “More Than a Carpenter.” McDowell’s book is a favorite among college aged Evangelical Christians. While possibly one of the worst arguments for Christianity, it […]
Filed under: Lord-Liar-Lunatic, Religion | 16 Comments »
Why many Christians are not aware of this, there is actually a god named Syllogism who created the laws of logic. Because there are laws of logic, Syllogism must be a real God. Of course that would be a circular argument, which is a fallacy of logic. Besides, I am obviously joking about the existence […]
Filed under: Ontological Argument, Religion | 38 Comments »
Many times when I am discussing the dangerousness of Christianity with Christians, the Christians will ask me why I am not discussing Islam, which they claim, is more dangerous. This of course doesn’t absolve or defend against the charge that I am making about the dangerousness of Christianity. In fact, Islam could be the most […]
Filed under: Evils of Christianity, Most Dangerous Religion, Religion | 14 Comments »
Almost every time I get into a prolonged conversation with a fundamentalist Christian the issue of morality come up. The claim of the Christians is almost always the same, “without God there can be no moral grounding.” Personally, I find that to be a pretty arrogant and inaccurate statement. The way I see it, with […]
Filed under: morality, Religion | 51 Comments »
I recently received the following argument, “In Deuteronomy 23:9–14, we learn that human wastes were to be buried, away from human dwellings. Today we call this sanitary waste disposal, and its benefits are widely understood but not always practiced—especially in poverty-stricken areas — and God put this principle in the Bible thousands of years before […]
Filed under: Religion | 9 Comments »
Last week, ABC’s Nightline (a division of ABC News) aired a debate on the existence of the Devil. First, I should mention that last year they had a debate on the existence of God. And while both debates are absolutely ridiculous for a prestigious news organization to dignify with airtime, at least the God debate […]
Filed under: Religion | 23 Comments »
One frequent argument I hear from Christians is what I call the “Judge God Argument.” Here, Christians tell me a story about a teen that is speeding, driving drunk, or some other illegal act that teenagers might commit. In this story, we are the teen and after being caught by the police we are brought […]
Filed under: god, Judge God, Religion | 22 Comments »
Quite a few Christians on the more liberal side of the spectrum (I’m talking to you Tony Campolo) claim that the Old Testament is no longer valid and that Jesus abolished the Old Testament in favor of the New Testament. They think that this strategy will allow them to get out of stoning people to […]
Filed under: Religion, the bible | 3 Comments »
An argument that I hear a lot from Fundamentalist Christians is that atheists reject God because we love sin and don’t want the responsibility of living a “Godly Life.” Of course this is a ridiculous argument because it assumes that atheists really do believe in the Christian God, but just don’t want to admit it […]
Filed under: morality, Religion, responsibility | 12 Comments »
