About Michael W. Jones

Michael has been an Atheist since an epiphany in a Baptist church at age 12, was a Unitarian until they became a christian denomination, spent most of his life developing software, and is now earning almost no living at all as a writer. :) He lives in Williams Township, PA and is contemplating what's next after Tucker the Weird Dawg. Michael is a co-founder and the managing editor of The Eloquent Atheist on-line magazine.

Which lies are better: religious or political?

In this space, we often make a big deal about replacing religion-fueled politics with secular-based politics. We want the clerics and preachers to quit telling people how to vote from their pulpits and go back to science-based reasoning for our governance. We somehow feel that this is a big part of the answer for what is wrong with the world. And we may be right. But did you see the recent Obama-Romney debate? Did you get the feeling, later verified … Read on…

Historic Humanists- Clara Barton

Clarissa Harlowe Barton (better known as Clara Barton) (December 25, 1821 (although there is a confusion with her date of birth, as her birth certificate says the 25th, while her family members say that she was born the day before Christmas, the 24th)–April 12, 1912) was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. She has been described as having had an “indomitable spirit” and is best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross. Read on…

Historical Humanists- Professor Henri Louis Bergson

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science”

“Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable”

“The essential function of the universe, which is a machine for making gods.” Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Russell Baker

“One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness among those who assert the faith. In ruder days, disputes about what constituted a fully qualified Christian often led to sordid quarrels in which the disputants tortured, burned and hanged each other in the conviction that torture, burning and hanging were Christian things to do….”
— Russell Baker Read on…

Repression of atheists by the religious right

The Economist Magazine reports this morning that the number of people who identify as Atheists in the United States population has grown five-fold in the last five years. They derived this information from a Gallup poll which reinforces a year-old Pew survey, the latest in a series of such polls taken over the years. Read on…

God, responsibility, and ethics

The religious argument that says it is their God that shows us all the right and wrong ways to act has always seemed full of holes to me. I have seen many of these bubbles pricked in the past on this site, but I am worried by another one, which has a long philosophical history. Of course, it may be just me… Read on…

Historical Humanists- Bagehot, Walter

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.”

“So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it unwise, and their conscience it is wrong.”

— Walter Bagehot Read on…