I saw one of these in my neighborhood yesterday, and the plate frame prevented me from realizing it wasn’t a new kind of PA plate:

Thank the gods it’s Indiana–so far. Does anyone have specific thoughts on these? I understand that there are two major schools of thought about church/state interaction (the neutral view and the [...]

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’ve been having a number of interesting conversations recently regarding the post on secular morality, and I’d like to discuss some of the thoughts that have emerged from those exchanges.
One of my entry-level statements when discussing human morality is that no matter where it does come from, we can be fairly certain it’s not from [...]

CNN recently interviewed Jim Wallis and Erik Stanley about the Alliance Defense Fund’s attempt to let pastors make political endorsements from the pulpit. Watch the video below, or click here to see it on YouTube.

What’s wrong here is painfully obvious. In his typical fervor to infuse politics with non-partisan religious activism on social issues like [...]

An article this morning in the Post-Gazette begins, “In a city where the local football franchise rates on par with the sacrosanct trinity of God, family and country….”
First off, I don’t mind this. They’re making a good, humorous point about the prevalence of both Christianity (”trinity of God”) and Steelers fanaticism in the Pittsburgh area. [...]

I was out in Philly this weekend and, through the normal course of catch-up conversation, I was asked a question that is quickly rising to the top of my “inevitable” list: “As an atheist, what keeps you from doing just anything?”
Ah, yes. The moral question is a big one. It’s been addressed many times [...]

The Anthropic Principle exists in over thirty different forms, and it’s an important concept for skeptics to deal with because it is used by both theists and atheists to support their differing cosmological claims. Shall we discuss its implications a little bit?
The term “Anthropic Principle” was originally coined by Brandon Carter in 1974 to [...]

“Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper last week fired the head of the bureau’s chaplaincy program.” Apparently, chaplains Lara Zinda and Keith Smith were nice people but somewhat underqualified for the job: they hadn’t been officially ordained.
This issue raises two main questions for the skeptical community–or maybe more (you tell me). Here’s what I’m asking:

What really [...]