Meet Jesy Littlejohn, Founder of “Rainbow Bridge”, Grove City College’s Unrecognized LGBTQ Awareness Group

March 14, 2011 By 5 Comments

Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges.  Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Music, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates 5 Comments

Why Atheists Should Not Give Up Challenging Theism And Theists

February 25, 2011 By 13 Comments

GreenGeekGirl advises the atheist community (and she has a nice defense of the existence of an atheist community against those who do not believe one exists) that we should no longer bother arguing with theists, since this is supposedly futile, but should rather accept we have it pretty good in America and focus on protecting [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats 13 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

“If You Believe In God, You Have To Believe In The Devil”

February 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

Last summer there was a cheesy ad for the latest Exorcist film, and the tagline epitomized and exploited a key twist of twisted religious logic.  The film’s tagline was “If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.”  What’s the idea behind this?  

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates Tagged With: 1 Comment

Apostasy As A Religious Act (Or “Why A Camel Hammers The Idols Of Faith”)

February 17, 2011 By 25 Comments

In “The Three Transformations of the Spirit” in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes the human spirit as successively taking three different forms: the camel, the lion, and the child. The transformations begin with the spirit of the camel, which Nietzsche characterizes as consisting of obedient, self-sacrificing, reverential, [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 25 Comments

What Can An Atheist Love In People’s Religiosity?

February 15, 2011 By 13 Comments

Earlier today, I argued that atheists can vigorously and outspokenly oppose bad faith-based ideas, values, and behaviors, but still love other aspects of the religiosity of their religious friends (and of religious people in general). I argued that religion can be as central to personal identity formation as sexuality is and that to indiscriminately hate [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Prejudice, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Virtues, Virtues 13 Comments

Islamic Apologist, Shabir Ally, Argues Quran And Evolution Are Consistent

February 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Of course I disagree, but I’m sure glad he thinks so and hope more Muslims do too. Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Evolution, Evolution, Islam, Islam, Koran, Koran, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

On Defending True Spirituality And Taking The Word Back From Spiritually Bankrupt Fundamentalism

January 6, 2011 By 5 Comments

So Chris Mooney’s article in Playboy about the spirituality of scientists has sparked some interesting debate in the atheist blogosphere. His new post on the subject explicitly interprets his aims and themes in the piece as essentially saying what I interpreted them to be—to defend the idea that you can have completely sufficient spirituality without [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Spinoza, Spinoza Tagged With: , , 5 Comments

Scientists’ Spiritualities As Alternative Models Of Religiosity

January 5, 2011 By 3 Comments

In my last post, I made clear that I am by no means an “accommodationist” who wants to let religious claims to hegemony over ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology go unchallenged as part of a deal whereby it agrees to either cooperate with or, minimally, not interfere with science education and science-based public policy.  In a [...]

Filed Under: Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Cosmology, Cosmology, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Science, Science, Secularism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

How Belief In “Theistic Evolution” Is Nearly As Much A Denial Of Science As Creationism

December 24, 2010 By 9 Comments

One often hears the refrain that it’s possible to believe in both God and evolution.  And it is in fact true, both psychologically and, more importantly, logically, that one may both believe in God and in evolution. Psychologically we have ample evidence that plenty of people believe in both and logically it is clear that [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cosmology, Cosmology, Creationism, Creationism, Divine Intervention, Divine Intervention, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Science, Secularism 9 Comments