Religious Privilege and Grievance-Based Catholic Identity Politics on Full Display

February 7, 2012 By 12 Comments

In a column last week, Melinda Henneberger criticized the Obama administration’s refusal to exempt the Catholic Church from requirements it provide for its employees health insurance which would cover birth control at organizations it runs which have secular functions. The column is an extraordinary exemplification of religious entitlement, identity politics, and anti-secular, anti-democratic demands for [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Faith, Feminism, Feminism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Law, Law, Law & Politics, News Discussion, News Discussion, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Rape, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

"What Are The Limits of Church Authority In the Public Sphere?"

February 5, 2012 By 55 Comments

This is part 2 of a debate with Roman Catholic theology graduate student named Mary. In part 1, we introduced and began to debate the topic of whether or not universities, hospitals, and social agencies run by the Catholic Church should be exempted from laws requiring employers to provide their employees health insurance that covers [...]

Filed Under: Abortion, Abortion, Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Feminism, Feminism, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Law, Law, LGBTQAA, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 55 Comments

"Should Catholic Employers Be Exempted From Paying For Health Insurance Covering Contraception?"

February 5, 2012 By 48 Comments

If you were reading Camels With Hammers regularly before we made the move to Freethought Blogs, you would have frequently been treated to the long, insightful, and vigorously argued comments of my friend Mary. Mary is a Roman Catholic and is politically liberal in many (but not all) respects. We met when I was a [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Feminism, Feminism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , 48 Comments

God and Goodness

January 30, 2012 By 32 Comments

Robin: Look, I get it, Jaime. As an atheist, you think that God’s wisdom is foolishness, that God’s righteousness is wickedness, and that the bloody death of Jesus on the cross is hateful and ugly rather than the epitome of love and beauty that Christians like I think it is. The Bible makes it very [...]

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, Authority, Authority, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, Examining Conceptions of God's Attributes, Goodness, Knowability, and Existence, God, God, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Morality, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Of Religion, Problem of Evil, Rationalism, Religion, Religion Tagged With: , , , 32 Comments

Hell As The Absence of God

January 29, 2012 By 86 Comments

Robin: I know you don’t want to hear it, but Jesus loves you, Jaime. Jaime: Yes, yes, a man who either never existed or who is long dead and rotted by now loves me—and will torture me in hell forever if I don’t worship him, of course. Robin: He just wants you to love him but [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, God, God, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism Tagged With: , , 86 Comments

The Author of The Cranston High School Prayer Outraged

January 14, 2012 By 22 Comments

This week, Jessica Ahlquist and the ACLU won their court case against Cranston High School West in Rhode Island. The school was ordered to immediately remove a banner containing an official school prayer addressed to “Our Heavenly Father” and ending in “Amen”, which hung over the school gymnasium as an unambiguous endorsement of the Christian [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats Tagged With: , , , , 22 Comments

Christians Sexperimenting

January 12, 2012 By 8 Comments

One of the myriad indicators of Christianity’s falsehood is the distinctly religious neuroses it regularly creates around something as natural and as good as sex. In the video below Lisa and Ed Young, authors of Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, discuss how they asked the married couples in their church to have [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Religion 8 Comments

The Hounds of Heaven

December 23, 2011 By 3 Comments

Before reading the very interesting story of his faith and deconversion, I never knew that my vitriolically anti-religious Freethought Blogs colleague Al Stefanelli had until relatively recently been a fundamentalist Christian preacher. The portion of his account in which he writes about how he was treated when he came to realize he was in error explains a [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity 3 Comments

A Few Christian Replies to Hitchens's Death Worth Noting

December 17, 2011 By 6 Comments

Shortly before Christopher Hitchens’s death, Andrew Sullivan movingly reminisced about him and gave a sense of how their friendship was so strong despite such differing views on faith:

Filed Under: Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion 6 Comments

Dan Barker Makes Sense of the Gospel Message

December 3, 2011 By 3 Comments

I know Dan Barker claims to be only a former Christian minister but he still has a gift for bringing the Gospel message alive in a fresh, new way that makes powerful sense of it. It’s weird it would take an atheist’s description to make me see angles in the story of salvation which I [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christianity, Christianity, God, God, Hilarious, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religulous, Religulous, Satire, Satire 3 Comments