A recently posted piece on TodayChristian.net.came across my feed today. They call the piece “10 Questions For Every Atheist: Some Questions Atheist Cannot Truly and Honestly REALLY Answer!“(sic) This rather odd claim is followed by the observation: “Which leads to some interesting conclusions…” (You could find the piece here, but the link seems to be dead
A recent public opinion poll (released Feb 24, 2015) showed a couple of very scary points. There is a lot about favored presidential contenders (though none had yet announced), and some not very surprising assessments of public opinion regarding other figures such as Netanhayu and GWBush. However, a few items caught my eye in particular: Q15
I recently got chatting with someone I met in on a political forum, and found myself in a (surprisingly and pleasantly civil) political discussion. The other person and I tend to come from rather different views, but our discourse has been rewarding. He asked me to put forth some comments on the following question, and thought
In conversation with someone I respect today about the #YesAllWomen issue, I mentioned the “M&M” analogy (imagine a bowl of M&Ms. Only 10% are poisoned. Grab a big handful. No? What’s the problem? Not all the M&Ms are poisoned….) as a counter to the “NotAllMen” response to #YesAllWomen. I was informed that viewing every male
I got into a (very civil, actually) discussion on FB about this. The other person began with a CS Lewis quote claiming that the statement: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God” is a fundamentally ludicrous idea. I replied that, given what we
So two stories came up on my FB feed today, and together, they made me see red. They are unrelated stores, and I will link to them both:The first is about a heroic teen who saved a friend from a drunk driver: ”Teen saves friend from suspected drunken driver, gets hit instead”In the first story (which
Anyone who’s read me for any time at all likely knows that I have little patience for either anti-science superstitious hysteria, or ‘one-world’ government, Illuminati conspiracy hysteria. In this category of intellectually offensive and ridiculous nonsense I include things like creationism, anti-vaccers, aromatherapy, micro-chipping, the Bilderburg conspiracy, chem-trails, black helicopters, and so on.That said, there
Recently the self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs warned Jim Bakker that President Obama’s “anti-biblical” policies with regard to LGBT equality will lead to blizzards and “weather disasters” in the upcoming year. Such pronouncements from Jacobs are nothing new; in January of 2011 Jacobs attributed the sudden die-off of blackbirds in Arkansas to the groundswell of support
How to Intelligently Criticize Religion: Atheist claims that are no better than Theist claims. One of the most common criticisms of the religious is that they argue from poor information. Whether it’s cherry-picked, made-up, out of context (yes, sometimes things actually do require context!), or just flat-out wrong, this is a frequent tactic used by
In the last week or so, I’ve come across two largely unrelated news items that have gotten me thinking. I suspect they are not unique, nor are the they sort of headline that typically gets everyone talking. But I can’t help but think these are terrifically important, both in their own right, and as a
