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…

Pascal’s wager against Theists

A lot of theists talk about Pascal’s wager, “if you (atheists) are wrong you will suffer for all eternity, but if we (theists) are wrong we would have lost nothing.”

This is an example how illogical your thinking is. You are so obsessed with god that you can’t even think straight when it comes to religious matters. Read on…

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…

Reader Content Survey Results

Our reader survey regarding preferred content drew relatively few responses, but those which we received had something to say. First, the basic genre question had some surprises. The folks that answered the survey had five choices in the basic Genre category. The genres and the number of votes each got are as follows: Read on…

The Secular Conscience

I recently attended a talk by Austin Dacey, of New York’s Center For Inquiry. He has a Doctorate in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy. His book, The Secular Conscience – Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, was published in 2008 and has received wide attention. Dacey began with a Bible reading: the story of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham prepared to obey. Isaac was saved in the nick of time by an angel who said, “Never … Read on…

The War Against Secularism Rises

“They want to disown the traditions and heritage of the majority, including the Christian faith and the English language”. Surprisingly enough this quote does not come from the Bible-bashing deep south of America, but from the Local Government Secretary of the UK, Eric Pickles, following the visit of his colleague to show solidarity with the Vatican last week. Who lead this delegation? Baroness Warsi, a Muslim. The series of proclamations of faith and anger at the secular movement marks the … Read on…

God is my co-pilot

PBS ran a program posing (inter alia) the question, “Where was God on 9/11?” The answer: God was in the cockpits of those planes. He was, indeed, the hijackers’ co-pilot. What they did, they did for God. You might argue that theirs was a perversion of religious faith. But people have been thusly arguing for millennia over who’s got the real truth, while religious zealots have tortured and murdered millions upon millions, century upon century, often in service to those … Read on…

A bit of light housekeeping

Once upon a time, this site accepted comments. That was until the Great Mormonism Furor of 2007, which resulted in new Ground Rules for the Eloquent Atheist. You might want to follow that link if you have not previously done so. Even after, or perhaps because of, the Ground Rules post, persons clearly unable to abide by those rules continued to yammer on about the details of Mormon holy underwear construction and other equally weighty subjects. We are not anti-debate, … Read on…

A few words on Christopher Hitchens

Jesus Christ! Christopher Hitchens is a tough read. Yes it’s true that “god is not great.” It’s also true that “religion does poison everything”. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in this room would wave that banner proudly. I do stick to my belief that Hitchens is a tough read. So what are my options to deal with this problem? I guess I could have contacted Christopher Hitchens and ask him to write a “Dummy’s Guide to Freethinking” … Read on…