What's New Archive ● 2003 ● April
What's New on the Secular Web?
See also: Events & The News Wire
April 30, 2003
Added "Notes from the Freethinker's Foxhole" by David M. Payne to the Agora.
"There is an old canard expounded by many in the religious community that says, 'There are no atheists in foxholes.' As a Vietnam vet, I find that observation to be--like so much of organized religion--based on a false premise or misleading observation, for my own deconversion came about courtesy of Vietnam and what I experienced there."
April 25, 2003
Added a link to Therefore, God Exists (Off Site) on the Freethought Humor page.
Common arguments for the existence of "God" in their most bare-naked form, thus making it easy to see just how fallacious--and humorous--they can be.Updated the link to Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF) (Off Site) on the National Organizations page.
April 24, 2003
Added "Utopia-612" by David M. Payne to the Agora.
A short story in the science fiction genre which looks at the current situation in the world, with its religious extremism, and where it may all end up.
April 23, 2003
Reorganized and updated the Freethought Humor page. Added a link to Which Circle? (Off Site), a spoof of Christian campus ministry.
Added a link to Florida-based Space Coast Freethought Association (Off Site) to the listing of Local Organizations Around the World.
April 22, 2003
"Animal and Extraterrestrial Artifacts: Intelligently Designed?" by Loren Petrich becomes the current Feature article.
The "Intelligent Design" movement claims that the scientific community has neglected the possibility that the features of living things are the product of intelligent design. Although the intelligent-design hypothesis is sometimes viewed as a Trojan horse for introducing certain theological hypotheses into science, intelligent design can be performed by entities that are both nonhuman and nontheological, and the scientific community has actually dealt with several important examples of these.
Added "Review of Michael Martin's Atheism, Morality, and Meaning" by Jeffery Jay Lowder to the Modern Library.
What is the relationship between God and morality? Is morality dependent in some way on the existence of God? In the last thirty years, there has been a resurgence of moral apologetics, with theists of various stripes offering increasingly sophisticated defenses of moral arguments for God's existence. Far too many naturalists neglect moral arguments for God's existence. Although it has some shortcomings, Atheism, Morality, and Meaning is a welcome counterexample to this trend.
April 21, 2003
Richard Carrier has revised his essay "The Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy."
"Many helpful readers sent me useful passages and links, and some important corrections, in response to my essay on the virgin birth prophecy. The essay has been promptly updated to reflect these improvements. My thanks go to all who helped." - Richard Carrier
April 18, 2003
Added "Easter quiz" compiled by Donald Morgan to the Agora.
Check your knowledge of the biblical details regarding the events associated with Easter and the Resurrection.
April 17, 2003
Added a link on the Secular E-Mail Lists & Discussion Groups page to BookTalk.
BookTalk, the official book-discussion community for the American Humanist Association, is dedicated to the advancement of critical thinking, reason, intelligence, freedom of inquiry, philosophy and the scientific method. Our focus is on reading and discussing quality, nonfiction texts from a wide range of topics including atheism and agnosticism, freethought, comparative religion, religion and politics, humanism, philosophy, history, ethics, biblical criticism, psychology, contemporary issues, creationism vs. evolution, popular science, the paranormal, social science, current events, and much more. In addition to the message boards, BookTalk has its very own chat room where members enjoy a casual chat every Thursday night.
Added a link on the Internation Organizations page to EARTHWARD (Earth's Atheist Resistance To Holy Wars And Religious Devastation).
EARTHWARD is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, nonmembership, public-benefit, charity organization that provides humanitarian relief aid to civilian victims of religiously motivated violence ranging from acts of violence by individual extremists or terrorist organizations that claim religious justification for their actions to full-scale holy wars waged by religiously dominated governments.
April 14, 2003
The following pages in the Secular Web Modern Library were updated with new links:
Biblical Criticism
Christian Apologetics and Apologists
Christianity
Creationism
Debates
Prophecy
Theistic Arguments: Reviews/Critiques
April 12, 2003
Added "The Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy" by Richard Carrier to the Modern Library.
Carrier summarizes the debate over whether Isaiah in 7:14 meant 'virgin' in what is taken by Christians to be a prophecy of the messiah's birth. He concludes that whatever the case Isaiah probably did not mean a virgin would conceive in any supernatural sense.
April 11, 2003
Added "The Incredible Talking Fish" by Stephen Cheng to the Agora.
An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle. Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe that God has revealed himself in fish form.
April 10, 2003
Paul Doland has extensively revised and expanded his Critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith.
"I have read Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith. The book's stated goal is to investigate the 'toughest objections to Christianity.' Strobel made a list of eight objections that he considers the strongest objections to Christianity, and attempts to answer the questions by interviewing noted Christian authors and apologists. In my view, the answers provided by the Christians Strobel interviewed have serious logical faults and therefore do not adequately answer the objections Strobel raised."
April 8, 2003
Feature Article #2 for April: "Everything You Might Want to Know about Easter" by William Hopper.
Depending, probably, on whether you are or are not a Christian, everything you might (or might not) want to know about the non-Christian origins of one of the most important Christian holidays.
April 7, 2003
Added "Shelley the Atheist" by Gary Sloan to the Agora.
Vilified by his contemporaries as an unrepentant atheist, the great poet was nothing like the monster envisioned by the public.
April 1, 2003
Feature Article #1 for April: "True Bible Found - 'Holy Shit!' Says Pope" by Richard Carrier.
History was made Wednesday March 26th when a group of archaeologists working in a dig at Mabell, Israel stumbled across an ancient stash of wooden tablets which appear to contain the personal diary of Moses, wherein Moses admits that all of the current commandments were entirely his invention.
Book-of-the-Month for April: The Fundamentals of Extremism by Kimberly Blaker (Editor).
On September 11, 2001, Americans witnessed horrific carnage inspired by religious extremism. We saw that religious fundamentalists will stop at nothing to reign terror on those they regard as their enemies. Yet, even now, most Americans fail to realize the magnitude of problems posed by our own country's Christian fundamentalism and Religious Right.
Video-of-the-Month for April: Three Kings.
A confident hybrid of M*A*S*H, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Dr. Strangelove, Three Kings is one of the most seriously funny war movies ever made. Improving the premise of Kelly's Heroes with scathing intelligence, it explores the odd connection between war and consumerism in the age of Humvees and cellular phones.George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich) play a quartet of U.S. soldiers who, disillusioned by Operation Desert Storm, decide to steal $23 million in gold hijacked from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's army. Getting the bullion out of an Iraqi stronghold is easy; keeping it is a potentially lethal proposition.
See "What's New? " for past months and years.