Recommended Sites Note: This page is NOT intended to be a list of all personal home pages maintained by atheists. Rather, this page is only intended to list some exceptionally good home pages on the Internet. Agnosticism / Atheism at the Mining Company (Off Site) Hosted by Austin Cline. Arguments in Favor of Atheism (Off Site) Part […]

          In 1968 a biologist named Aristid Lindenmeyer came up with a set of mathematical rules that modeled the growth of real plants. The basic idea is very simple. Start with a single piece of stem; a “shoot”, if you like. Now, each tick of the clock you take each shoot […]

Several patrons have made claims or asked questions regarding the use of "Polonium halos" in granites as evidence of instantaneous creation. In response, the Secular Web contacted geologist and petrologist Lorence Collins who had already tackled this complicated issue, and following is his reply for the benefit of our readers.

In this explanation of why he is not a Christian, Keith Parsons discusses the role that Christianity has played in perpetuating suffering throughout human history, the bizarre doctrine of inflicting eternal punishment on persons for having the wrong beliefs, the composition, inconsistencies, and absurdities of the New Testament Gospels, William Lane Craig's flawed case for the resurrection of Jesus, the role of legendary development and hallucinations in early Christianity, and C.S. Lewis' weak justifications for the Christian prohibition on premarital sex.

She turned around the medical profession, the courts, and even the legislatures, as she made family planning a rational alternative to the sick notion that some perverse god insists on having an overpopulated world. Late in life she wrote what motivated her activism--"No woman can call herself free who does not own or control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

A critical notice of David Noebel's book, Understanding the Times. I assess in detail Noebel's objections to atheism and biological evolution. Along the way I discuss such diverse topics as the argument from reasonable nonbelief, cosmic vs. personal meaning, methodological naturalism, abiogenesis and the origin of life, whether natural selection is a tautology, beneficial mutations, the fossil record, and punctuated equilibrium.

How Not to Refute Biblical Infallibility A Reply to William Edelen (2000) Jeffery Jay Lowder In his recent column, “The Bible and the Gullible,” William Edelen rails against anyone who believes that the Bible is without error or contradiction. I agree with Edelen that the Bible does contain both errors and contradictions. What I disagree […]

Lowder refutes Paul Copan's claim that Antony Flew's "presumption of atheism" is itself presumptuous.

Almost everybody is excited about Halloween, including most of the television stations. This month, ABC will be airing “World’s Scariest Ghosts: Caught on Tape, while NBC will launch a new series, called “Cursed”, about a man who’s date got angry and put a hex on him. The Fox channel will be showing “FreakyLinks”, featuring stories […]

Nearly three-quarters of a century after science teacher John Scopes was found guilty of breaking Tennessee law for teaching evolution, most Americans have a strong opinion about what should be taught in America’s science classes. In a new nationwide poll on the subject, conducted by DYG, Inc., the polling firm headed by Daniel Yankelovich, and […]

Updated: October 13, 2001 In this column, I want to consider two distinct but closely related questions: (1) can a theist be a freethinker?; and (2) are all nontheists freethinkers? I shall argue that the answer to (1) is “yes” and the answer to (2) is “no.” I shall then argue that nontheists should stop […]

Recently an opinion poll showed that a majority of Americans want evolution taught in U.S. public schools. Americans should use extreme caution before considering this as an argument for the teaching of evolution over creationism (or vice-versa). Evolution should be taught because it’s the best scientific theory with the most favorable evidence on its side […]

People who agitate for the display of the Biblical Ten Commandments in schools, courtrooms, and other public places demonstrate a limited knowledge of the Bible. To isolate and emphasize the first ten commandments of the Hebraic Law is contrary to the way in which the Law was understood, not only by Jews but by Jesus […]

After months of bitter fighting and accusations of religious bigotry, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has named the Rev. Daniel Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, as the new House chaplain. The controversy over the position erupted in December when Hastert and House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) ignored the recommendations of a bipartisan House committee […]

Tacitus’ Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans (2000) Eric Laupot University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa ABSTRACT There is little consensus as to the historical nature of the sect identified by Tacitus in Annales 15.44 as the Christiani. Nor is there any firm consensus on the authenticity and historicity of all of […]

Best of the Modern Library OLD PAGE: New page here: Best of the Modern Library Church-State Separation The Christian Nation Myth (1999) by Farrell Till Our founding fathers established a religiously neutral nation, and a tragedy of our time is that so many people are striving to undo all that was accomplished by the wisdom […]

Forrest argues that philosophical (or metaphysical) naturalism is supported by (1) the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism; (2) the massive amount of knowledge gained by methodological naturalism; (3) the lack of a method or epistemology for knowing the supernatural; and (4) the subsequent lack of evidence for the supernatural.

Theology & Falsification: A Golden Jubilee Celebration (2000) Antony Flew [Note from the Editor of Philosophy Now: Can religious beliefs be disproved? If not, what does this imply? 1950 saw the first appearance of a short article which changed the way theologians look at the problem. Antony Flew describes the circumstances in which he wrote […]

The Little Known Literary Battles Between the Gospel Writers (1999) James W. Deardorff Abstract: The most obvious solution to the Synoptic Problem (order of priority among the New Testament Gospels) has been rejected by most scholars since the 19th century largely because of embarrassments it was causing for the church and/or their own theologies. However, […]

“The Society of Humanist Philosophers 1999 Conference” (1999) by James Still “Al Gore on Arrogant Atheists” (1999) by James Still If the message boards are not yet crawling with the news they soon will be: U.S. Vice President and Presidential candidate Al Gore admitted that he was a born-again Christian. During a 60 Minutes interview, […]

To the extent that loyalty to religious traditions, and appeal to religious authority, are analogous to an appeal to alien political traditions—to that extent a discountenancing of such appeals will be, by parity of reasoning, appropriate within a liberal democracy. Citizens should be free to pursue their religious commitments, so long as those are not incompatible with secular order; but religious reasons as such, not otherwise warrantable, have no place in our political discourse. That is not because they are not "political reasons", but precisely because they are—or are too close to being so. They retain, in spite of their historical divergence from politics, a structurally identical role for appeals to authority, tradition, legal precedent, group solidarity, and the like.

Bradley argues that if objective moral values exist, then any god who commits, commands other to commit, or condones acts which violate objective moral values, does not exist.