Reading Time: 3 minutes When I figured out I was an atheist, I thought that was the end of it. That’s it, I don’t believe in gods. Good enough. I liked the books, the memes, and the freedom of not pretending to believe in things that aren’t real. Religion was just a minor irritant. A fly that got trapped […]
Charity
Posted inThe Secular
Giving Without God: Smashing the myth that nonbelievers don’t do charity
Reading Time: 4 minutes A few years back, writing for The Freethinker magazine, Dale Debakcsy seized my attention with the opening paragraph of a piece in which he pointed out that nonbelievers are increasingly involved in charitable projects despite their scanty, but growing numbers and limited resources. That paragraph read: One of the few remaining lifeboats jettisoned from the […]
Posted inGeneral
A Forced-Birther Fantasizes About Criminalized Abortion
Reading Time: 8 minutes So to answer Herbie Newell’s actual question, if his merry band of domestic terrorists ever did manage to criminalize abortion care, abortions would still happen. They might even become more numerous than ever before — but they would be exponentially more dangerous for the women risking them.
Posted inReligion
Let’s Play: Beach Reach Training!
Reading Time: 10 minutes Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we had a refresher about Beach Reach. That’s the annual Spring Break missionary trip sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Every year, hundreds of young SBC-lings converge on a beach in Texas to offer various free services to partying college students. Of course, they only offer these services to […]
Posted inReligion
George Barna: Hucksters Can’t Stop Huckstering
Reading Time: 9 minutes About a year ago, we had a good laugh at George Barna and his shrill attempts to sell evangelicals his products through the use of fear and dread. It was a pleasing chaser for the sour scariness of his dystopian world-domination plans. Well, he didn’t learn a thing after evangelicals largely ignored his sales pitches last year. Lately, he’s returned with another attempt to frighten evangelicals into buying his product. Today, we ask why hucksters like George Barna just can’t stop, well, huckstering.
Posted inReligion
God’s Club: Being Genuinely Helpful vs. Being Christianly Helpful.
Reading Time: 9 minutes If we really want to help people, then we need to do something that the Christians of God’s Club simply can’t do.
Posted inReligion
5 Non-Supernatural Claims Christians Make (and Why They’re Not Credible Either).
Reading Time: 11 minutes It’s not hard to poke holes in Christianity’s supernatural claims. Anybody with a reasonable grasp of history or science can do it. Entire websites exist to debunk this or that supernatural claim, and I’ve written extensively about them. But there’s more to their worldview than just those supernatural claims! And today we’ll be examining some of those other ones.
Posted inReligion
Even Going At It From the Non-Literalist Angle, It’s Still Not Credible
Reading Time: 8 minutes One of the big mistakes non-believers make–especially those who’ve never been believers themselves–is to assume that all Christians are Biblical literalists. Most Christians are not literalists and would find the idea of the entire Bible being literally true to be purely nonsensical. We’re going to be talking about some of the claims Christians make that aren’t mythological, but first I wanted to briefly mention something that I think could otherwise get lost in the shuffle.
Posted inReligion
Mission Trips: Duggar apples don’t fall far from the Duggar tree, apparently
Reading Time: 9 minutes Last year, I wrote about mission trips in evangelical Christianity–and did not exactly describe the idea in glowing terms. I think even less of it today, and I’ll be talking about why now.