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, […]

          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 […]

        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 […]

        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, […]

        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 […]

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 (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 […]

(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 […]

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.

Professor Drange provides an improved formulation of the theistic fine-tuning argument, but then demonstrates that it still contains many flaws.

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 […]