Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine is the Viet Nam vet of our Founding Fathers. While Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, et al, are memorialized on our coin and currency, in parks, schools, mountains, and rivers, Thomas Paine is largely ignored. He gave his all for our freedom, but abuse and scorn have been his reward. Even his American grave was desecrated and his body taken, allowing an English bishop to scornfully display his skull.
Pat Robertson’s Big Lie
On February 22, the day of the Michigan state Republican primaries, Christian Coalition Founder Pat Robertson taped a telephone message for a “shadow” campaign in support of Presidential candidate George W. Bush. The message, which went out on phone banks to thousands of Christian Coalition supporters in Michigan, warned that Bush’s rival John McCain was […]
The Apology of John Paul II
In a bit more than a fortnight Pope John Paul II will make a request for forgiveness for the conduct of his church over the centuries. The infirm pontiff has prepared a list of the murders, tortures and horrors the papacy has caused to humanity. It reportedly takes 50 pages to lay it all out--things like the papal pogroms against the Jews, the crusades against Islam, and the Inquisitions that went on for centuries. Will 50 pages be enough?
God’s Protectors
If I hear one I more phony politician make the statement that "we need to return God to the classroom" ... I'll gag. The quackery of God and Jesus talk is a stink that is rising clear to the Ozone layer. What a blessing it would be for us all in these remaining months before the election if the phony "protectors of God" would grow up and recover something called ... integrity. It will be a sad day for America when we reward religious sham at the polls. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Harry Truman, and Barry Goldwater, where are you now that we need you?
The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History
The possibility of finding reliable information about the life of the historical Jesus has fascinated the imagination of generations of scholars from as early as the seventeenth century. Opinion on the issue has moved in waves, coming and going along with moods of pessimism and optimism. Until now, no one has brought together a comparison of the points of view of the most influential writers about the historical Jesus.
The Historical Jesus Quest brings together substantial extracts from the seminal works in Jesus studies over the last two centuries. The extracts are accompanied by brief introductions to each writer, helpful summaries of the central arguments of the works from which the extracts are taken, and incisive assessments of their continuing relevance to current debates. In one resource, this compendium provides the foundation upon which modern research is based and allows these great scholars—Spinoza, Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss, Wrede, Schweitzer, Kahler, Bultmann, Kasemann, and others—to speak in their own words. It is essential reading for all serious students of the Gospels and of the historical Jesus.
The Historical Jesus Quest brings together substantial extracts from the seminal works in Jesus studies over the last two centuries. The extracts are accompanied by brief introductions to each writer, helpful summaries of the central arguments of the works from which the extracts are taken, and incisive assessments of their continuing relevance to current debates. In one resource, this compendium provides the foundation upon which modern research is based and allows these great scholars—Spinoza, Troeltsch, D. F. Strauss, Wrede, Schweitzer, Kahler, Bultmann, Kasemann, and others—to speak in their own words. It is essential reading for all serious students of the Gospels and of the historical Jesus.
G A Wells Errant
G. A. Wells Replies to Criticisms of his Books on Jesus My views on Christian Origins have met with a number of adverse criticisms on the Internet. I am not on-line and have not seen them all, but a sympathizer has kindly sent me printouts extracted from “The Errant Skeptics Research Institute” (errantskeptics.org). They comprise “Who is […]
The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity
How did Jesus of Nazareth live? How was he raised from the dead? How did he become God? These questions are raised and answered by Professor Thomas Sheehan of Stanford University in this original and provocative narrative of Jesus and first-century Christianity. Sheehan argues that Jesus thought of himself not as God or Christ but as God's eschatological prophet proclaiming God's kingdom, that the resurrection had nothing to do with Jesus coming back to life, and that the affirmation that Jesus was divine first arose among his followers long after his death. Employing the best of contemporary historical-critical scholarship, Sheehan paints a plausible picture of a very human Jesus who came to reform Judaism rather than to found Christianity, who met a tragic end at the hands of the Roman Empire, and who in a matter of decades was proclaimed by his followers to be Christ, Lord, and God. This is an electronic reproduction of the Random House book by the same name.
Death and the Meaning of Life
This essay considers whether life is inherently meaningless if death is the permanent end of our conscious existence and our lives are not part of a higher purpose. If a sentient God existed, Augustine argues, then the value that he would attribute to our lives would not be the same as the value that we find in living and thus would be irrelevant. Therefore, we must create our own meaning for our lives regardless of whether or not our lives serve some higher purpose.
Proposed Kentucky Legislation Encourages Christian Bigotry
For the first two years of its existence, 1996 and 1997, Camp Quest , the only secular humanist summer camp in the United States, rented the camp facilities of the Bullittsburg Baptist Assembly in Boone County, Kentucky. Edwin and Helen Kagin, the founders and leaders of Camp Quest, also live in Boone County. From the […]
Afterlife and Meaning
Huddleston questions Still's philosophical assault on the notion of life after death. If one understands this life as a time of soul-making, then our earthly life is neither purposeless nor overshadowed by the afterlife to come.
Death Is Not an Event in Life
We tumble into the world without purpose and when we leave it we are gone forever. But I still believe that, rightly examined and understood, we can experience eternal life.
The Riddle of the Four Faces: Solving an Ancient Mystery
It seems problematic that there are four (and only four) gospels in the NT canon. Barefoot seeks to provide a more objective reason for thinking that Ezekiel's mysterious "four faces"—the man, lion, ox, and eagle—play a hand in the selection of the canonical four gospels in the early history of the Church.
The Appeal of Incarnation
Of the many mad destinies we create in our mythologies, McRandle explores the notion of incarnational thinking whereby we separate the mind from the body. When this happens, religious and political exploitation of the body cannot be far behind.
Religious Right Attempts Takeover of Airwaves
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) -- the U.S. governmental agency that regulates the airwaves -- decided recently to revisit its standards for granting non-commercial educational (NCE) broadcast licenses, fundamentalist televangelists who stand to lose their subsidy attacked the agency. Now religious right allies in Congress have come to the televangelists' aid with two new bills.
Is Anybody Out There?
With the decentralized SETI program now running quietly on thousands of PCs, futurists think that we'll discover extraterrestrial intelligence in our lifetimes. Is the whole "first contact" crowd little more than a cargo cult of lonely island peoples or is there something to this whole SETI thing?
Falun Gong: Ancient Wisdom or Mere Scientology?
Moving to their own inner chi, practitioners of the outlawed Chinese sect Falun Gong meditate in parks all over the world. Fresh from Beijing, Brown reports on his encounters with this controversial new movement.
Atheism in the Third Millennium
A second generation atheist, Kim Walker explores the distinguishing characteristics of two common perspectives within the atheist community: that resulting from being born and bred with religion and later suffering a crisis of faith and the perspective of those who are raised as freethinkers from the onset.
A Thought Experiment: On The Problem of Unjustifiable Suffering
Although the problem of suffering has been written about for millennia, with great detail and sophistication, and by some of our world's greatest minds, Dale Proctor revisits the issue with a simplicity that allows all to grasp the insurmountable difficulty it continues to pose to the believer.
Vision of War
Originally published: 1915 Genre: Poetry Subject: World War, 1914-1918 — Poetry
Meta Getalife
by mathew If you’ve ever engaged in debate with a creationist, you’ll know that they can be extremely slippery. One of their favorite tactics is to claim that evolution is “just a theory” because it cannot be scientifically demonstrated. (Of course, it’s not as if any of the stuff they believe can be scientifically demonstrated, […]
Meta Getalife Simreality
Mention computer simulations, and most people will think of SimCity. The Maxis computer game (now sold by Electronic Arts) became an instant classic, and has inspired many imitators. But there’s a less well known Maxis game called SimEarth, which simulates the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. You are […]
Meta Getalife Life
Imagine a grid of squares that stretch away in all directions. Imagine the grid is infinite–or at least, so large that you’ll never find the edge of it. Let’s pretend that each square can either contain life–be “alive”–or contain nothing and be “dead”. We’ll show the “dead” squares as empty white […]
Meta Getalife Coretierra
Early computers were so expensive that it was unthinkable that you would have an entire computer to yourself. Instead, many people would use a single “timesharing” computer system. Unfortunately, early primitive operating systems lacked technologies like memory protection. If a program accidentally malfunctioned, it would sometimes end up crashing other programs, […]
Meta Getalife Epgp
After the unexpected success of Tierra, computer scientists began to explore whether similar techniques could be used to evolve real, useful code. Today, the state of the art is Genetic Programming or Evolutionary Programming, invented (and patented) in 1992 by John R. Koza of Stanford University. Like Tierra, the “DNA” of […]
Meta Getalife Resources
World Of Dawkins: Information about the work of Richard Dawkins. Includes a list of available Biomorph software. Morph Lab: Explore Biomorphs right now, if you have a Java-capable web browser. King Of The Hill: A Core War web site. Core War Pages: Including the complete Core War resource list. The Tierra Home Page: Tom Ray’s […]
Evolutionary Naturalism, Theism, and Skepticism about the External World
Evolutionary Naturalism, Theism, and Skepticism about the External World (2000) J. Wesley Robbins In the closing chapter of Warrant and Proper Function Alvin Plantinga claims that the combination of naturalism (according to which there is no God as conceived of in traditional theism) and evolutionary theory (according to which our cognitive capabilities are the products […]
The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity
(1986-electronic edition 2000) Introduction: How Christianity Came Into Crisis Today at the dawn ofher third millennium, the Christian church is undergoing a theological crisis in what she thinks and believes about Jesus of Nazareth. The crisis grows out of a fact now freely admitted by both Protestant and Catholic theologians and exegetes: that as far […]
Pascal’s Wager Refuted
The author schematizes the infamous argument for belief called "Pascal's Wager," after the seventeenth century French philosopher who first posed it. This argument is then critically analyzed.
The Fine-Tuning Argument Revisited
Professor Drange provides an improved formulation of the theistic fine-tuning argument, but then demonstrates that it still contains many flaws.