What follows is an excerpt from the draft book chapter I posted yesterday In chapter 1, I wrote: “If a child, say one who’d just watched Disney’s Hercules, asked me if the Greek gods are real, I’d say ‘no’ rather than hedge my bets by saying I lack a belief in them. And I don’t [...]
Beta testing a book: Chapter 4: This Is What Your Religion Looks Like to Me
May 30, 2012 By 22 Comments
Here’s the link to this week’s chapter of the book I’m working on, Angry Atheists?: Why the Blacklash Against Dawkins, Harris, and the Rest Is Silly. In this chapter: How to refute your religion in three easy steps Mormonism: racism, archaeology, goofy beliefs, and more! Why you should leave the Catholic church Avoiding philosophy
Homophobia, racism, and the value of inexact analogies
May 30, 2012 By 4 Comments
I got quite a bit of traffic from Reddit over the weekend for my post about excuses for homophobia vs. excuses for racism, but it didn’t come from /r/atheism but from /r/lgbt. That’s great! But there was one comment in the Reddit thread complaining about “appropriationism,” linking to a post titled “Queer History vs. Black [...]
Coming out as an atheist Eagle Scout
May 30, 2012 By 3 Comments
This is a story I’ve only told to a few people. I’ve been meaning to tell it in a blog post for a while, but Greta’s call for atheist coming-out stories just pushed me over the edge. So here it goes.
Skeevy conference presenters and anti-harassment policies
May 29, 2012 By 25 Comments
I shot off a couple tweets on this topic, but didn’t blog about it because I didn’t think I had more than a couple tweets worth to say about it. But now I realize I do. So background: Jen made an off-hand comment at a talk about male speakers being skeevy at atheist conferences, and it [...]
From the archives: Plantinga’s ontological argument, take three
May 28, 2012 By 24 Comments
Plantinga’s ontological argument is an annoying argument in that it relies heavily on jargon that’s unintelligible to the average person, including using “possible” in a somewhat unintuitive way. As a result, even though I think it’s a terrible argument, someone without training in the relevant philosophy is likely to make wrong guesses about what’s wrong with [...]
What a graduate-level philosophy seminar is like
May 28, 2012 By 10 Comments
Last week’s discussion of what philosophical arguments everyone should know about gave me a lot of ideas for posts, but reading the comments, it occurred to me that there is a very big gap between me and almost all of you readers. The gap is this: even if you’ve read a good bit of philosophy, [...]
Don’t make excuses for homophobia that you wouldn’t make for racism
May 25, 2012 By 17 Comments
A couple weeks ago, I came across this quote from National Organization for Marriage Against Certain People Getting Married head Maggie Gallagher:
Daring to state the obvious: the dark side of sacred scripture
May 25, 2012 By 14 Comments
The following is a draft excerpt from chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, Angry Atheists?: Why the Backlash Against Dawkins, Harris, And the Rest Is Silly. One of the clearest examples of religious privilege is this: no one would think it rude to describe an overt racist or tract as “hate-filled.” That’s just being accurate. [...]
Angry Atheists?: Why the Backlash Against Dawkins, Harris, and the Rest Is Silly (Contents)
May 25, 2012 By 10 Comments
This is a post for keeping track of everything I’ve written as part of my “beta testing a book project.” It will be updated whenever I add a post to the series. Bullet points under the link to a chapter are excerpts from the chapter in blog post form.
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