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.

Religion Bashing- Religulous

I watched most of the documentary Religulous last night. The show was made by Bill Maher, usually one of my favorite societal commentators. This time, however, he came in way wide of the mark. Instead of being clever and inventive, he just came across as a bully, seeking out weak people and beating them up. It was hardly worthy of him. Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Angier, Natalie

So, I’ll out myself. I’m an Atheist. I don’t believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don’t believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. Read on…

Historic Humanists- Bayle, Pierre

It has been asserted, that a moral Atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime!

If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?

In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him.
— Pierre Bayle Read on…

Historical Humanists- Aristotle

Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Read on…

Historic Humanists- Auden, W. H.

“The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they’ve realised they can’t get away with it.”
–W. H. Auden Read on…

Historic Humanists-Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules

“Theism is so confused and the sentences in which “God” appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.”

— A.J. Ayer Read on…

Humanist Manifesto III- A Review

I didn’t really intend to review the Manifesto again, in detail, though that will happen as I review the series, the responses to it, and my thoughts in retrospect. All experiences are interesting, from one end of the spectrum to the other; this is not one I would particularly put away for safekeeping in a box, but perhaps some lessons can be learned from it. Read on…

Humanist Values- Working for a Better Society

The last two values espoused in the Humanist Manifesto III continue the general feeling set by the previous two, which is to say they may tend to inspire a yawn. But again, I will attempt to find something positive about the statement “Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.” In attempting to do so, I once again consulted the AHA on the subject: Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Allen, Steve

“No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible. ” Read on…