Religions are based on emotional needs, and most religions fulfill the
great tribal need to belong to something larger and more powerful than
ourselves. With the sole exception of pure science, objective truth will
usually be sacrificed in favor of personal and tribal emotional needs.
When asked "what am I?" I always answer by saying I think of myself as being within the historical stream of mysticism, where there is no violence, no dualism and no absolutes.
John Paul does not have enough days left in his life to say "For my part ... I am sorry" to all of the millions and millions of human beings slaughtered by the Christian church ... to all new discoveries of truth ... slaughtered by the church ... or to a legacy that has promoted sexism ... racism ... the desecration of the natural environment and the intolerance of other world spiritual traditions from Buddhism to the American Indian.
The insidious and seductive cliche that seems to saturate the wimpish mind is that you should not be critical of another person's religious beliefs. They all deserve respect, no matter how ignorant ... how bigoted ... how ugly ... how false ... how cruel ... how superstitious ... they all deserve "respect".
Using passages from the Bible, Neal Matson shows that just about any commandment can be gleaned from the Good Book - both ideas of great worth and ideas that are outdated and no longer applicable to humankind. As with many of the ideas printed in the pages of books throughout history, humans have provided much food for thought.
"Dividing the people on racial lines through dubious pseudo-scientific theories has always been a ploy of the Church not only in India but also in different parts of the world."
Indian scholar Aravindan Neelakandan.S., studying missionary strategy and conversion tactics, explores the "theory" of Aryan race and their invasion of ancient India.
Richard Dawkins, after learning about the terrible news of Douglas Adams' death, writes a heart-wrenching lament to the science-fiction writer, humorist and all-together great mind who will be sadly missed by many.
The wonderful varieties of the Ten Commandments...
Drawing on his own experiences as a devotee of a New Age religion, Tabash argues that the universality of searching for the transcendental, and the different sources attributed by people of different perspectives as the cause of lofty experiences, yields no additional evidence in our world of a supernatural being that undergirds reality.
Should atheists want everyone to embrace atheism? Should atheism become a universally held view? Many atheists seem to think so.
Barefoot criticises Tattersall's defense of naturalism, supporting C.S. Lewis' argument that reason cannot be produced by any mechanical organism and therefore must be supernatural.
Richard Carrier looks at a prime example of the "genre" of medical literature that declares Jesus died, and finds it hopelessly wanting, especially for their incompetent historical method.
It was a fleeting but effective life...
For two millennia in Christendom every generation has been the last generation. Just in time, Edward Babinski is here to explain the delay.
Did you know that our familiar calendar is pagan through and through? This intolerable situation must be stopped! A call to action for all true Christians.
There is so much blabbering God talk coming from the phony politicians today that you want to throw up. They can't make a statement without ending it with "God bless you ... and God bless America." Our first six Presidents, Humanists and Deists, would find this talk repugnant.
You are not going to believe you are reading the next paragraph. You had better go get another cup of coffee and sit down, maybe even hold tight to the edge of the breakfast table for balance.
Infidel Bill Schultz answers an evangelical Christian's political assumptions about nonbelief, school prayer, violence, and oh so much more!
Tired of seeing Christian conservatives have all the fun of grousing
at welfare queens getting free rides at taxpayer expense? It's time to get
them to pay for the free ride their imaginary superfriend has been enjoying!
Gerkin takes us on a wild ride through the subtle differences between atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers.
We have broken the code used to encrypt the files on the history of the virus they call the Mensa Flu...
An unbelieving firefighter puts a challenge to the Christian God, using a perspective through the eyes of a profession where the disconcerting tragedy of child deaths cut to your core and, unfortunately, is dealt with all too frequently.
While grieving over his grandfather's passing and preparing a eulogy for him, Lankford discovers some crucial differences between the way believers and nonbelievers handle death.
Hamelin explains formal systems, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and ontology and how they relate to presuppositional apologetics.
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink," John Lennon told a London Evening Standard reporter thirty-five years ago on March 4, 1966. These words shocked America and infuriated a young man who would eventually take Lennon's life.
Lincoln and Kennedy: A living legacy in inconsistent consistencies...
The Catholic Church has banned performing exorcisms during Mass.
Will this come back to bite them?
A man died and was taken to his place of eternal tormet by the devil...
The Bush Administration's idea to support faith-based charities with state funds is loaded with problems.