In continuation of the plan I posted about last week, here’s a draft of the first chapter of the book I’m working on. It’s called Don’t Panic!: On Finding Atheism Unfamiliar and Scary. Summary and a few other bits of info below the fold:
Beta testing a book: Chapter 1: Don’t Panic!: On Finding Atheism Unfamiliar and Scary
May 9, 2012 By 23 Comments
The Avengers, or why are good superhero movies so hard to come by?
May 8, 2012 By 33 Comments
I went to see The Avengers Friday night. My first reaction coming out of it was it was that it was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Certainly the best superhero movie. It looked awesome, the actors did a great job, there were lots of little things that made me go “yup, that’s [...]
Out of the hospital
May 7, 2012 By 7 Comments
Still not feeling great because, headache, and oh yeah an appendectomy involves making holes in your abdominal muscles, which you use way more than you realize. This means I won’t be returning to work until next week, which paradoxically may mean I get a lot of writing (including, but not limited to, blogging) done this [...]
The walkout on Dan Savage and “ignoring” vs. “interpreting” the Bible
May 7, 2012 By 8 Comments
So Dan Savage gave a talk at a high school journalism convention where he said “We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstration, about virginity, about masturbation… [...]
In the hospital
May 6, 2012 By 20 Comments
Yesterday, I was hospitalized with appendicitis. I expect to be here another two or three days. Blogging will be difficult until I get out, though I may at least be able to schedule one or two things I’ve got mostly written. Expect a return to your regularly-scheduled blogging on Thursday, though I don’t really know. [...]
Discussion: What is Richard Dawkins wrong about?
May 4, 2012 By 63 Comments
I got the idea for this post a couple weeks ago, before the debate over Bart Ehrman’s book. Now it feels sort of unnecessary; in fact I’ve thought the opposite may be true. But here it goes anyway:
From the archives: Dawkins, Aquinas, and Feser
May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I was reminded of this post, originally published February 2011, while working on another post about Dawkins that will be going up shortly.
Sam Harris on profiling
May 3, 2012 By 22 Comments
For a recent blog post on profiling, CFI’s John Shook accused Sam Harris of being a “bigoted hate monger.” The reaction in the rest of the atheist internets has been almost all negative, though not quite as harsh. Let’s have a look at what Harris said:
Could Gary Johnson make drug legalization a national issue?
May 3, 2012 By 8 Comments
I don’t know who I’m going to vote for in the 2012 presidential election (besides not Obama or Romney) but I hope Conor Fiedersdorf is right about the impact the Gary Johnson campaign could have on the drug debate (HT: Andrew Sullivan):
Beta testing a book: The one book that will convince you Christianity is false
May 2, 2012 By 23 Comments
As promised, I’m not making publicly available the draft of the Introduction to the book I’m working on. Subtitle, “The one book that will convince you Christianity is false. Here’s the summary:
Beta testing a book: Chris’ crazy idea about how to write a book in the 21st century
May 2, 2012 By 6 Comments
A long time ago I decided that when I finally finished writing my book, I would make it available as an ebook on a pay-what-you-want basis (where “pay-what-you-want” means “even $0″). There are a couple reasons for doing this. The first is purely selfish. As Cory Doctorow likes to say, most creative types suffer more [...]
Talk about points of agreement more
May 1, 2012 By 16 Comments
I’ve written a quite a few posts criticizing other atheists–some of them other FTBers–lately, and somewhat to my surprise, they’ve become some of the most-read posts I’ve ever written. The most-read ones have beat out my previous high-ranking posts on William Lane Craig (though not my #1 most read post since coming to Freethought Blogs, [...]
The things you get called for questioning religion
May 1, 2012 By 17 Comments
I knew Greta’s been called all these things already, but it’s striking seeing them all gathered together in one paragraph. From her latest on AlterNet:
A beautiful first paragraph
May 1, 2012 By 2 Comments
Will Wilkinson reviews the often-unhinged John Gray’s book review of Jonathan Haidt. First paragraph below the fold (includes an amusing note on humanities scholars and “scientism”):
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