Posts under ‘Uncategorized’

I’ve recently had a number of people tell me why I became an atheist. Most of the explanations hinge on the core assumption that I know in the back of my mind that God (presumably, the Christian god) is real, but that I’m rejecting him or suppressing him for a variety of reasons (e.g., anger, [...]

Welcome back to Logical Fallacy Thursday. I’m going to look at one of the most common paragraphs in Christian apologetics this week. It’s from C. S. Lewis‘ Mere Christianity, and enough people find it convincing to ensure that I hear it trumped out in casual conversation or serious debate on a regular basis.
Lewis is one [...]

There are two local groups getting together to see Bill Mahr’s new movie Religulous, which opens today.  TONIGHT the Carnegie Mellon AHA (Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics) are meeting at Loew’s theater in Homestead to catch the 7:30pm showing.  You can check out details regarding busing and RSVP to their group here.
Next Saturday October 11th the [...]

If you’re reading this blog, chances are that your default position toward any claim is skepticism until evidence emerges to warrant belief–or at least that’s your ideal. Although skepticism is a cornerstone of critical thinking, I know that there are still areas of my life that lie unexamined. It’s not that I don’t want to [...]

It may be your civic duty, but jury duty sucks and people are always looking for a way out of it.
About six weeks ago I received a summons to go through the jury selection process today. During that time whenever I would mention it to someone they’d suggest a way for me to get out of it. “Tell’em [...]

The ongoing discussion that I’ve been having (largely off the blog) about the recent entries on morality has prompted me to cover one last topic that I only mentioned in passing last time: the Euthyphro dilemma. This should be the last time I talk about morality on the blog for a while, so don’t worry: [...]

I’ve heard two claims a lot in the past year, and I’m going to set them out here for your perusal.
1. Atheism is a religion.
2. Look where atheism leads: godless Communism!
The irony of juxtaposing these frequent criticisms is rich. If atheism is a religion, why is the absence of religion to blame when considering the [...]

I thought I would mention this before I head out to dinner with the Skeptical Cowboy, it’s a great Center for Inquiry (CFI) promo a friend of mine had in their Facebook feed.
You’ll probably recognize a ton of people in this video, including Lawrence Krauss, who is speaking in Pittsburgh on Oct. 3. I recommend Googling anyone [...]

A friend recently emailed me about Jesus (I’ve been getting a lot of these of late), and I wanted to highlight one of her paragraphs as a starting point for discussing Jesus’ “sacrifice.”
Once you take your eyes off of YOUR personal sufferings and what you’re going through and focus instead on Jesus and what he [...]

As I’m sure most Pittsburgh residents are now aware, Bishop Robert Duncan of the Pittsburgh diocese of the Episcopal church (the US branch of the Anglican communion) was recently voted out of office by his church in preparation for an October 4 vote on whether or not the Episcopal church should split and align its [...]