Why I Don’t Believe in God…

…or How the Most Holy City in the World Can Expose the Holes in Your Faith

The most common question I get asked is “Why don’t you believe in God?” This is a deeply personal question, and like most atheists that are as vocal as I am, it is one I have considered at great length. I was raised by a loving, deeply Christian family. I attended Sunday School regularly in our sparse Lutheran church… Read on…

The Knights Templar: Rise and Fall

This is about Jacques deMolay and the Knights Templar, a romantic tale with a certain mystique, but mostly a story of bad luck, of being in the wrong place and wrong time, with the wrong people owing you money. It begins with the First Crusade. The Crusade was a boondoggle, but a successful boondoggle. After killing nearly everyone in the city, Jew, Muslim and Coptic Christian alike, the Crusaders won control of Jerusalem for about 88 years, from 1099 to … Read on…

The Banality of Evil

In September 2007, at the American Atheist International conference, Sam Harris recalled the American racial lynchings of the first half of the 20th century, when huge crowds in the Deep South-bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, ministers, newspaper editors, police, sometimes even Senators and Congressmen-turned out as if for a family picnic to watch the torture-death of some young man or woman, then the body hung on a tree or lamppost for public display. If you have doubts, click to this link … Read on…

Logic in the Gospels

A first look at Christendom is like a first peek into a kaleidoscope, a snowflake, or a magic-mirror lantern.  In fact, the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001 edition, counts 33,830 Christian variants and sects, often divided on even the most basic tenets of belief.  More conservative counts suggest about 9000 groups1.  By contrast, Islam has about 20 sects or denominations, or maybe a few more, depending on how finely you tune your focus; Judaism perhaps 15; and Buddhism is in a … Read on…

A Funny Thing Happened

Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh (aka Allah), the Pope, Zeus, Odin, and Mohammed walk into a bar…. You don’t hear too many jokes that begin this way.  Religious icons have been fodder for humorists and novelists for centuries, though much of the mockery has stayed underground until the 20th century. Good-natured (and bad-natured) humor directed at gods and their prophets could, and often did, result in slow death. A single death was usually sufficient to slow down the person so bold as … Read on…