Creation Stories

December 31, 2011 By 1 Comment

Many religions have creation stories.  The Judeo-Christian creation stories are found in the first chapters of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible.  There is no need to repeat the Genesis stories here.  It can be agreed that there are some metaphorical or analogical correspondences between the Genesis stories and our best science.  [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Cosmology, Creationism, Evolution, Featured, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 1 Comment

Atheist Fundamentalism?

October 28, 2011 By 38 Comments

Kelly: You are an atheist fundamentalist, Jaime. Jaime: That’s impossible, there can be no such thing. Atheism itself is just “a lack of belief”. There is no holy book or other source of “fundamental” positions any atheist must hold. Not every atheist even needs to be an atheist in the same way. Some can only [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Creationism, Creationism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates 38 Comments

"Not Everything In Life Is Logical"

October 24, 2011 By 17 Comments

When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Secularism, Technology, Technology Tagged With: , , 17 Comments

American Values vs. Fundamentalist Values

September 26, 2011 By 12 Comments

Contemporary Evangelical arguments for the mixing of Church and State usually fallaciously assume that for America’s most historically vindicated political, moral, and cultural values to be accepted as good and as true, either theoretically or in practice, or for these values to be preserved and advanced in future generations, Americans must accept and continue to perpetuate [...]

Filed Under: Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Christianity, Creationism, Creationism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats 12 Comments

Synthese Intelligent Design Controversy

April 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

by Eric Steinhart The philosophy journal Synthese has become embroiled in a controversy regarding a special issue entitled “Evolution and its Rivals”. The chief editors of the journal have behaved in ways which have struck many philosophers as inappropriate. You can learn more about the controversy at the Leiter Report. If you’re an academic, you [...]

Filed Under: Evolution, Featured, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Religion and Science Leave a Comment

Tyson On How We Can Tell Nature Was Not Designed For Us

March 19, 2011 By 1 Comment

A really nice rundown from Neil deGrasse Tyson: Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Videos 1 Comment

Trainwreck of the Day

March 5, 2011 By 2 Comments

A couple Christian kids with a nauseating, badly performed anti-atheist song set to “My Humps” (via Greg Laden, whose categorizations of the video say it all about the video’s contents): And then there’s “Don’t Cha Wish Your Savior Was Right Like Mine”: Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Creationism, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religulous, Religulous, Theocrats, Theocrats, Unintentional Comedy, Unintentional Comedy, Videos Tagged With: , 2 Comments

Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution’s Mindlessness

February 21, 2011 By 4 Comments

Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tagged With: , , , , , 4 Comments

Kansas vs. Darwin

February 12, 2011 By 2 Comments

From today through March 12, you can screen Kansas vs. Darwin. Description of the film: Even before they took place, the 2005 Kansas school board hearings on evolution were recognized as a pivotal battle in America’s ongoing war over teaching evolution in the public schools. Organized by believers in Intelligent Design and convened by creationists, [...]

Filed Under: Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Evolution, Film, Film, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Religion and Science, Science, Science Tagged With: , , 2 Comments

Rebutting “Irreducible Complexity” Claims

February 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A couple of months ago I profiled a spectacular video in which Qualia Soup succinctly, clearly, and precisely debunked the creationist argument that within organisms there are designs which are so irreducibly complex that they could not have evolved but must have been intelligently designed. In reply to that video came criticisms from creationists and [...]

Filed Under: Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Science, Science Tagged With: Leave a Comment