Reading Time: 5 minutes After 9/11, New Atheism seemed urgent and vital. Now it’s spent and faded. How a promising secular movement lost its way.
The New Atheism
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The New Atheism Is Dead, Long Live Atheism
Reading Time: 5 minutes I don’t think the New Atheist critique of religion was wrong or unnecessary or mean-spirited, but I deplore the baggage that came along for the ride.
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Repost: Another Day, Another Dragon
Reading Time: 4 minutes [This post originally appeared in February 2012. My opinion of Richard Dawkins has changed somewhat since I wrote it, although what I said about his book is still true.] Some days, I hate writing about atheism. I want to tell you why. Two weeks ago, I was watching a PBS show called Inside Nature’s Giants, […]
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Has the Atheist Movement Lost Its Way?
Reading Time: 3 minutes The crude and bigoted behavior of high-profile atheists is real, but it’s not the whole story.
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Some Thoughts on Anti-Theism
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s not good to believe in falsehoods, no matter how benign or comforting they are.
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Repost: The Perils of Scriptural Morality
Reading Time: 3 minutes [I’m taking a break from the blog to bond with and care for my new son. Please enjoy this classic post! I’ll check in periodically to answer comments.] I was cheered by a story I saw last week about about heroic activist groups working to end the barbaric custom of female “circumcision”, aka female genital […]
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Repost: Why Atheism Is a Force for Good
Reading Time: 3 minutes [I’m taking a break from the blog to bond with and care for my new son. Please enjoy this classic post! I’ll check in periodically to answer comments.] If you’ve followed my writing these past few years, you know that I’ve often taken up arms against prominent atheists who’ve made clueless, sexist comments or worse. […]
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Why Atheism Is a Force for Good
Reading Time: 3 minutes If you’ve followed my writing these past few years, you know that I’ve often taken up arms against prominent atheists who’ve made clueless, sexist comments or worse. I’ve also insisted that the atheist movement as a whole needs to pay more attention to social justice, an area where it’s historically been deficient. In all these […]
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Thoughts on the Chapel Hill Shooting
Reading Time: 3 minutes I hope there’s a day when I won’t have to write about the latest mass murder in gun-crazed America, but today isn’t that day. This time, the tragedy took place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where a young family – Yusor Mohamad Abu-Salha, her husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, all […]
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On the Importance of Firebrand Atheism
Reading Time: 4 minutes Steve Neumann, one of my colleagues on the Patheos atheist channel, has written an essay titled “The Case Against In-Your-Face Atheism” which argues that the firebrand style of atheist advocacy does more harm than good. Since he quotes me in it, I thought I’d offer a reply. This is his definition of firebrand atheism: The […]