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 May 19th, 2011 by Staks
On Primary Day, there was another conversation I had with a Catholic Republican that I forgot to talk about yesterday that I think is worth discussing. It’s in odd because I couldn’t figure out at first if his attitude could be attributed to his religious faith and to his political affiliation. After some thought I […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Catholics, culture war, discussion, faith, Politics | No Comments »
Posted on February 11th, 2011 by Staks
I often hear the argument from Christians that because I spend so much time thinking about and arguing against their imaginary deity, I must secretly believe. One Christian even told me yesterday, that I haven’t sufficiently convinced him that I was an atheist (as if I had to convince him I don’t believe). So it […]
Filed under: conversation, Religion, truth | 11 Comments »
Posted on February 7th, 2011 by Staks
I have often said that if there is anything in me that could be considered faith, it would be faith in people. But the fact is that that is really a misuse of the term. Generally speaking, we have trust in people based on past experience which serves as evidence for trusting them further. Faith […]
Filed under: faith, Hope, morality, People of Reason, Religion | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 27th, 2010 by Staks
I once joked that if there is anything in me that could be considered faith it would be my faith in people. This however is a slightly different use of the term “faith” and so it would be more accurate to say that I don’t really have anything in me which could reasonably be considered […]
Filed under: faith, Hope, Religion | 3 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 9th, 2010 by Staks
It has been a busy weekend and I will take a few days to talk about everything. Today, I want to talk about the Lehigh Valley Humanist picnic featuring Sam Singleton atheist evangelist… sort of. I think it is really important for people or reason to have summer picnics. It gives us a chance to […]
Filed under: atheism, 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 »
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 »
Posted on June 2nd, 2010 by Staks
I am a pretty outspoken atheist and I criticize religion often and in some cases extremely harshly. I generally argue against particular religious ideas and lines of “reasoning” rather than arguing behavior (although I do argue against some behavior of particular religious people or groups of people from time to time). Often when I present […]
Filed under: church/state, conversation, culture war, People of Reason, Personal, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 4 Comments »
Posted on March 9th, 2010 by Staks
What does it mean to claim that we “know” something? Religious people often throw this term around in relation to their deity of choice. They know that their god is real. But what does that really mean? For starters, we have to understand what it means to know. I could say that I know that […]
Filed under: atheism, faith, logic, Religion, science, truth | 2 Comments »
Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Staks
Many well reasoned atheists disagree on issues of taxation, foreign policy, states rights, etc. So I can understand why not all atheists are politically active and that all the atheists that are politically active may not all be Democrats. But what I can’t understand is how any well reasoned atheist could possibly be a Republican. […]
Filed under: atheism, church/state, culture war, evolution, free speech, Gay Issues, global climate change, palin, People of Reason, Politics, Religion, science | 22 Comments »
Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by Staks
This seems to come up a lot and in many different forms. Often times, Christians or some other believer in the Abrahamic God will accuse atheists of being the very thing that they themselves are. For example, it is not uncommon for a Christian to claim that the atheist position (that no credible evidence has […]
Filed under: atheism, Atheism NOT Religion, faith, Projection, Religion | 16 Comments »
Posted on July 10th, 2009 by Staks
The other day, I got an e-mail from a Christian claiming that I should believe in God even though I can’t see him. After all, I can’t see the wind either and yet I surely believe in the wind, right? As absurd as this argument is, it is not the first time I have heard […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, faith, god of the gaps, Religion, science | 19 Comments »
Posted on June 19th, 2009 by Staks
Guest Blog from The A-Team: Also check out The A-Team at the Examiner: One thing that always bugged me about Christians is their stance on death. Christians hold the viewpoint that death is a positive thing so long as you’re on Jesus’ saved list, since now you’re with God in paradise. But if this is […]
Filed under: death, Religion | 9 Comments »
Posted on May 19th, 2009 by Staks
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 »
Posted on May 12th, 2009 by Staks
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 »
Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Staks
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 »
Posted on April 16th, 2009 by Staks
One of the biggest issues that I have with Christianity is the anti-intellectualism that it perpetuates. It isn’t hard to miss. For starters, the majority of Christians in America are ignorant and proud. The fact that the most idiotic President in our nation’s history was elected mainly because of the support of the Christian Right, […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Religion | 14 Comments »
Posted on February 4th, 2009 by Staks
A lot of times in my discussions with Christians of various degrees on the wacko scale, I am told that I just need to have faith. Faith is seen by the vast majority of Christians (from liberal to fundamental) as a virtue. Let me re-state that because it bears re-stating. Belief without evidence (the definition […]
Filed under: faith, Religion | 12 Comments »
