Reading Time: 12 minutes To understand why atheists might be seen as a threat, it’s worth asking what functions religion has served. The centrality of religion to cooperation and morality over cultural evolutionary time suggests that atheists might be seen as threats to those values. So how does that play out in individuals?
atheists
Posted inThe Secular
The few, the loud: How ‘very online atheists’ differ from other atheists
Reading Time: 18 minutes Most atheists hold far less polarized views than do the most visible atheists online. But online atheists fuel the negative stereotype of atheists overall.
Posted inRacial justice
‘The Great Replacement’: How New Atheists legitimized and spread a white nationalist conspiracy theory
Reading Time: 17 minutes A string of deadly far-right attacks across the globe in the past decade or so had one thing in common: a white nationalist conspiracy theory known as The Great Replacement. From Utoya, Norway in 2011 to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, El Paso, Texas and Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, to the […]
Posted inLeaving Religion
Meet Sam Francis, a 230-year-old London atheist
Reading Time: 3 minutes Samuel Francis wrote a work called ‘Watson Refuted‘ in 1791 London. Here are select quotes that may yet be pertinent 230 years later: The need to challenge religion: “As a member of the community I find myself called upon to expose your reasoning and stop the career of error.” On those wishing that Thomas Paine […]
Posted inThe Secular
Atheist ‘militancy’ driven by ‘an elite ruling class’
Reading Time: 7 minutes After learning from a piece penned for OnlySky a while back by Hemant Mehta that Donohue is paid $1-million a year to shield the Catholic Church from all forms of criticism, I decided to trawl through his Catholic League posts to ascertain what he does to justify his outrageous salary, and found this breathtaking bit […]
Posted inComedy
10 secular alternatives to “Oh My God” during sex
Reading Time: < 1 minute My personal go-to when replacing the word “God” is Lemmy. As in the rock god Lemmy Kilmister. Like when someone sneezes I might say, “Lemmy blesses you.” Or “Lemmy help me, my boss is an idiot.” But saying “Oh my Lemmy,” during sex, particularly if the person’s name doesn’t happen to be Lemmy, could be […]
Posted inHistory
A very brief history of atheism
Reading Time: 5 minutes Where should we start a history of atheism? Shall we start at the cooling of the Earth’s core a few billion years ago? Earlier? Shall we begin at the Big Bang? The point here is that it takes humans to believe or disbelieve in Gods, and billions of years passed before any humans appeared on […]
Posted inReligion
I’m an atheist. Merry Christmas to you!
Reading Time: 4 minutes I love holidays, and Christmas is no exception. Do I believe in Jesus such that I will be celebrating his birth over that time? No. Not at all. I’m an atheist. I’ve even written a book to illustrate that the whole thing really was a mythological tale. In this context, I want to explain how […]
Posted inHealthcare
Atheists, agnostics and humanists much more likely than Christians to get COVID-19 vaccine
Reading Time: 2 minutes Although on the one hand we nonreligious types don’t like to do what we’re told by a skydaddy god that we’ve made up ourselves in our gullible past, on the other hand, we do like to believe what we’re told by experts in the know who have used evidence and rationality to substantiate their conclusions. […]
Posted inUncategorized
It’s Not Just Young White Liberals Who Are Leaving Religion
Reading Time: 4 minutes I am fairly addicted to FiveThirtyEight, even though I am a Brit, although I’ve more recently been watching their podcasts and videos on YouTube. That said, a recent piece was particularly interesting: “It’s Not Just Young White Liberals Who Are Leaving Religion“. It starts: Only 47 percent of American adults said they were members of […]