Reading Time: 2 minutes This guest post is by Jesse Galef, who works for the American Humanist Association. He usually blogs at Rant & Reason. After Andrew Sullivan reposted the disturbing video from a 2006 Answers in Genesis campaign, it caused quite a stir. It turns out that AIG still has a page explaining it: Every day we are […]
Aaron Adair
Posted inGeneral
Should We Honor Good Actions That Stem from Bad Reasons?
Reading Time: 2 minutes This guest post is by Jesse Galef, who works for the American Humanist Association. He usually blogs at Rant & Reason. I want to express how grateful I am to be allowed to contribute here. Not only do I enjoy reading the site, but Friendly Atheist has a great community of commenters. In fact, reader […]
Posted inGeneral, LGBTQ News
The Aftermath of Rick Warren’s Hypocrisy
Reading Time: 3 minutes This guest post is by Jesse Galef, who works for the American Humanist Association. He usually blogs at Rant & Reason. You almost feel sorry for Rick Warren. As Hemant among others has pointed out, he was recently caught making statements that could charitably be called misleading and uncharitably called bald-faced lies. He claimed to […]
Posted inDeath & Dying
The easy ones and the hard ones
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Omigosh. Some of these things are soooo easy, but this one is totally hard.” “What things?” “These Question Book questions. Some are just so easy they’re dumb.” Delaney (7) has been reading Gregory Stock’s The Kids’ Book of Questions on and off for a few weeks now. Two hundred sixty-eight questions to ponder. And she’s […]
Posted inGeneral
On Cryonics
Reading Time: 3 minutes Last summer I wrote a post, “Why I’m Skeptical of the Singularity“, which gave some reasons for doubting that godlike machine intelligences will ever come into being. Today I’ll discuss another idea popular among enthusiasts of transhumanism, namely life extension through cryonics. Here, too, I intend to offer a qualified skepticism. Overcoming Bias presents a […]
Posted inGeneral
As the Right fights…
Reading Time: 4 minutes After dominating the country’s politics for years, the conservatives’ grip on power was quickly fading. The Chief Executive was already enormously unpopular when a financial tsunami struck. Over a million homeowners ended up in foreclosure. Unemployment soared. To avert economic disaster, the government poured billions into a bailout of the financial sector. But it was […]
Posted inGeneral
Home again, for a sec
Reading Time: 2 minutes Back in town after two talks, one seminar, and 1134 driving miles through gorgeous country in the western Eastern Time Zone. Though I didn’t cross into Illinois (“Land of Lincoln”), I was hardly starved for references to the 16th President, whether in Indiana (“Boyhood Home of Abraham Lincoln”), Kentucky (“Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln”), Tennessee (“The […]
Posted inGeneral
the essence of war
Reading Time: < 1 minute The final manuscript prep for Raising Freethinkers is killing me. It literally has its hands around my throat, applying steady pressure to my windpipe, saying Who’s the tough guy now, eh, paesan? Writers…youse guys make me wanna puke. I remember this in the final days before PBB was submitted, too, that ghastly realization that it’s […]
Posted inGeneral
The Curiously Postmodern Modern Apologists
Reading Time: 4 minutes Back in November, a debate with a Christian in another comment thread took a curious turn: But I have faith in the gospel and what it promises me, just like you have faith in your readings. Your suposed facts and my suposed facts, what makes mine so wrong and your so right. Are facts from […]