Dangerous Talk is moving to SkepticInk.com! Don’t worry I am not retiring this site entirely. I will keep DangerousTalk.net up running because I have years of blog posts here that I love. But for the foreseeable future, I will not be posting new content here. The Daily blog will now be part of the Skeptic Ink […]
Filed under: atheism, Personal | 1 Comment »
Over the weekend, I friend of mine sent me an article by a Christian missionary to Japan. I love articles like this one because they just throw out a bunch of bullshit and see what sticks. What they don’t realize is that when they do this, they lose any credibility that a reader might have […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, missionaries, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Many religious believers believe that we not only have an immortal soul, but that this soul is our true self. When we die, we live on as our soul. They often ask in a serious manner, “Where will we be in 1000 years?” Of course the reality is that in 1000 years we will be […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, culture war, End of Days, Hope, humanism, Sci-fi, The Future | 3 Comments »
This week, I’m doing a big push to get my three-year-old potty trained. He is of course being difficult and so I went online to find some good guide books. Then it hit me; Christians are always telling me that God wrote the best guild book of all – the Bible. Of course the Bible […]
Filed under: the bible | No Comments »
I get into discussions with a lot of religious believers and after a while I tend to hear the same arguments and the same “conversion” stories over and over again. This can often give the appearance that all Christians are the same. But they aren’t. When I address an audience usually through writing, I use […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, conversation, discussion, Personal Experience, Religion | 1 Comment »
Every once in a while my Christian friend Greg sends me an e-mail. It usually is just one question that someone at his church convinced him would stump an atheist. Greg isn’t looking for a debate or discussion though; he just wants to push his point and be done. The other day, I got this […]
Filed under: argument, Evils of Christianity, hell, morality, torture | 1 Comment »
I have been watching this situation pretty carefully. The killer, James Holmes, does not have much of an online presence so it is difficult to learn much about him. A few details have surfaced however and they make his religious affiliation uncertain. His parents are Christian and he at one point went to church fairly […]
Filed under: Atheism NOT Religion | 1 Comment »
I was watching a short-lived British sci-fi show yesterday and there was a conversation between a religious leader and an atheist. The religious leader asked what the atheist is hopeful toward. What does he have to look forward to? The atheist jokingly said, “Dinner.” Obviously, he was joking because if he were really serious, he […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, death, hell, Purpose, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »
Every few years and now, every few months I see an article being passed around with the breaking news that Chick-Fil-A donated money to an anti-gay group. Then I see the stream of comments from people who are shocked by this. Really? Are these the same people that were shocked by Elton John came out […]
Filed under: culture war, Evils of Christianity, Gay Issues, ignorance | 1 Comment »
Over the weekend, I had a pretty long conversation with an old friend of mine who up until recently was a Christian. In fact in the ten or so years that I have known him, this was the first conversation we had together in which we were both atheists and he is still having difficulty […]
Filed under: de-conversion | 6 Comments »
In his book, “Lying,” Sam Harris has argued that lying is always wrong in every situation. While I think honesty is a good general rule, I don’t think it ought to be an absolute commandment. For starters, it is not altogether clear what being honest fully entails. I knew a girl is college who didn’t […]
Filed under: morality | No Comments »
I was at a presentation earlier this week and the speaker mentioned that he doesn’t like to argue with religious believers. Interestingly enough, during the question and answer part of his presentation two religious believers attempted to argue with him and one atheist questioned why we should even bother arguing with religious believers at all. […]
Filed under: argument, atheism, de-conversion | 1 Comment »
It’s true, as an atheist I happen to think reason is better than faith, knowledge is better than ignorance, and evidence is better than assertions. I, like most atheists, am in intellectual snob… and proud of it. And why shouldn’t I be? Why would anyone take pride in not being intellectual? I look down on […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, atheism, education, People of Reason | 3 Comments »
When talking to fundamentalist believers, the two traits I run into the most are pride and ignorance. Interestingly enough, I find that these believers take pride in not being prideful and that they are generally ignorant of their ignorance. Still, I think that if we can get these believers to stop being prideful and ignorant, […]
Filed under: atheism, Religion | 2 Comments »
Atheists have a problem that we need to address. We need to communicate our ideas better. Religious believers don’t tend to have that problem. You ask them a question and the answer is either a Bible verse or God did it. If you ask why God did something that answer is that God works in […]
Filed under: atheism, conversation, culture war | 1 Comment »
Christians often ask atheists about the purpose of life. But I think a better question is what is the purpose of our morality? On this question, the divide between Christians and atheists couldn’t be wider. For Christians, morality amounts to God’s whim, while for atheists morality is about the well-being of sentient creatures. Christians tend […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Car Bomb Argument, missionaries | 2 Comments »
The Christian blog, “The BitterSweet End” has posted an atheist challenge of ten questions. Okay, I’ll bite. Thanks to VJack over at Atheist Revolution for making me aware of this. 1. If there is NO God, then their is no Measurement or Standard for morality? Then what will define morality? Well, I think you are […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, argument, Criticism, ignorance, morality, Nothing, Projection, Purpose, Religious Manipulation | 10 Comments »
Today’s blog post follows from yesterday’s blog post. In the comments section of the Think Christian article, one Christian is ready to address the Christian problem with gays. He explains that he isn’t hateful toward gays at all and that Christians just need to communicate better. That’s all this is, a communication problem. Well, in […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Coexist, Gay Issues, Progressive Christians, the bible | 3 Comments »
Nathan Albert over at “Think Christian” wrote an interesting article in which he advocates for liberal and progressive Christians to apologize to gay people on behalf of the wacko fundies. Nathan’s heart is in the right place, but he just isn’t thinking clearly about this issue. I guess he is thinking too much like a […]
Filed under: Coexist, Evils of Christianity, Gay Issues, Progressive Christians, the bible | 3 Comments »
One of the most prominent themes in Christianity is that everyone is an evil sinner. One Christian I talked to recently put it this way, “We are all wicked, evil doers. ‘There is no one who does good, not even one,’ Romans 3:12.” Through the lens of Christianity, the glass is completely empty. Through the […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, culture war, Evils of Christianity, morality, Religious Manipulation | 2 Comments »
One of the ways religious believers try to sidestep criticism of their ridiculous beliefs is to claim that anyone who has any criticism must “hate God.” The conversation usually goes down like this, “You must hate God and therefore your argument is invalid.” There is actually a logical fallacy for that. When religious believers claim […]
Filed under: Ad Hominem, argument, Religion | 1 Comment »
I was having a conversation with my wife the other day about how atheists tend to be less outspoken about our views than religious believers… even very outspoken atheists like me. We both agreed that atheists usually have an internal governor which helps us to determine when it is appropriate to talk about our lack […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Coexist, culture war, morality, Preaching | No Comments »
For me, have to admit that it is a guilty pleasure to argue with fundamentalist religious believers in situations when I probably shouldn’t. I try to be good and not to start the discussion, but I admit that sometimes I will passive/aggressively get them to start the discussion. Sometimes however, I try to be good […]
Filed under: argument, atheism, conversation, Personal | 2 Comments »
Religious believers often try to defend the ridiculousness of God’s commands in the Bible by asking me, “Who are you to question God?” Who am I indeed? I think the question I would like them to answer is, “If we don’t question God, who will?” Now of course God is fictional and so it really […]
Filed under: Authority, culture war, god, Judge God, Religion, responsibility, wwjd | 3 Comments »
There are two ways I can go with this blog. First, religious believers often tell me that they know that nothing they say will convert me to their religion of choice and that they know that I have already made up my mind. Second, it bothers me when people take something I said years ago […]
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Certainty, conversation, culture war, forgiveness, People of Reason | 2 Comments »
Whenever I get into a discussion about religion with a progressive Christian the first thing I like to bring up is Hell. It is easy for progressive Christians to speak out against Dick Cheney’s torture program here on Earth, but for some strange reason they are much more hesitant to speak out against God’s eternal […]
Filed under: culture war, hell, Progressive Christians, Religion, torture | 10 Comments »
I get e-mails, messages, and comments from Christians all the time either telling me flat out or eluding to the belief that I will be tortured for all eternity in Hell. It is more than them just stating a belief however; they are also making the claim (either upfront or covertly) that I should be […]
Filed under: de-conversion, God Fearing, hell | 4 Comments »
Many Christians talk about non-believers being tortured for all eternity in Hell by their all-loving deity. This is when I like to ask them if non-believing children go to Hell to be tortured for all eternity. I get a variety of answers on this one and they are all comically funny for atheists. First I […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, hell, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 3 Comments »
I was reading an article this morning about the mother of one of the Virginia Tech victims five years after the shooting. The mother was extremely religious and when her daughter died, she said that she stopped talking to God for a while but she recently started to talk to God again because God told […]
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Belief, death, delusion, free will, Parenting, Religious Manipulation | No Comments »
Yesterday on the Friendly Atheist blog, Hemant posted a a clip from an upcoming Christian film called, “Blue Like Jazz.” The clip posted shows a debate between a Christian and an atheist with an audience member asking a question, “Where do we find meaning?” Here is the clip: Now I have a lot of issues […]
Filed under: atheism, debate, Purpose | 1 Comment »
