Reading Time: 4 minutes Have you heard the shocking news? The world’s most notorious atheist has converted! No, it’s not Richard Dawkins. Or Sam Harris. Or Christopher Hitchens. Or Dan Barker. Or Michael Newdow. Or Julia Sweeney. No, this world-famous, notorious atheist convert is the philosopher Antony Flew. If you’re wondering, “Who?”, you’re probably not alone. Antony Flew is […]
brainwashing
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The Pretense of Superiority
Reading Time: 3 minutes Religion has always been used to sanctify inequality here on Earth, in the present no less than in the past. By teaching their followers that they are God’s chosen rulers, religious authorities can accustom the flock to obedience and ascend to positions of power without the consent of the majority. The fundamentally oligarchic and anti-democratic […]
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Aspiring to Slavery
Reading Time: 3 minutes Last month, I wrote about slavery and the Bible’s embarrassing (though historically understandable, if we assume there was no divine revelation behind it) endorsement of that vile practice. Today, slavery is widely recognized as the evil it is, and though it still exists in some forms, it lingers only in the shadows, not in the […]
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A Failure of Imagination
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the comment thread to my recent post “A World in Shadow IV“, theist commenter Jarrod expressed the following objection to the atheist argument from evil: I have nothing to say against the point that there is much horrible suffering going on; take that and run with it, if you want. But I don’t think […]
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Movie Review: Jesus Camp
Reading Time: 6 minutes I missed seeing the documentary Jesus Camp when it first came out in theaters last September. However, I’ve finally had the chance to view it, and I think this review is better late than never. In any case, so much relevant to the film has happened since then – the 2006 elections, the downfall of […]
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In the Image of God
Reading Time: 5 minutes I have written previously about many different religious beliefs that cause harm to human lives, but today I intend to target a new one. This is the belief that human beings have not come into existence as the result of natural processes – or at least, not solely as the result of natural processes – […]
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A Religious Fugitive is Captured
Reading Time: 4 minutes A few weeks ago, I read Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, a chilling account of the persistence of fundamentalist Mormon sects in the Utah desert that still practice polygamy, often forcing girls as young as 12 or 13 to marry older men who already have dozens of wives. (As Krakauer documents, this […]
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CAP Alert Reviews I
Reading Time: 5 minutes Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers and interested lurkers, I’d like to introduce you all to a group that holds a unique place in my memories: the ChildCare Action Project, or CAP for short. I mentioned in a previous post, A Personal Journey to Atheism, that one of the last things I did before confirming myself […]
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Higher Truth
Reading Time: 4 minutes While browsing Usenet some time ago, I came across this post on the newsgroup alt.religion.christian. It appears to be an excerpt from the book Drawing Near, a collection of 365 “daily readings for a deeper faith” by Christian pastor John MacArthur, whose ministry Grace to You claims a worldwide radio program, eleven million audiocassettes sold, […]