Tag atheism

Christmas Busybodies

Busybody: noun; a person who mixes into other people’s affairs; meddler; gossip

Every year at this time, as predictable as snow in Saskatchewan or icicles in Idaho, it happens. The bleating about the “oppression” of Christians starts anew. Usually, it is triggered by some evangelist group that wants to place a nativity crèche on a courthouse lawn or a public park.

Everybody Is Wrong About God

James A. Lindsay is author of Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly which is a book I edited and released on Onus Books. He has recently written a book due for imminent publishing called Everybody Is Wrong About God. I was lucky enough to see a draft version of the manuscript which I worked on with James. It’s great.

Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #8: Belief in God: theism or atheism?

Having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is – Philosophy 101 (Philpapers induced). I will go down the questions in order. I will explain the terms and the question, whilst also giving some context within the discipline of Philosophy of Religion.

Atheist killers; correlation not causation.

This is a topic which I have covered in other ways before, both in the piece “Have I killed someone?” and “A Great Myth about Atheism: Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot = Atheism = Atrocity – REDUX”. This idea that atheism causes people to do X or Y has reared its ugly head. Why am I mentioning this now? Anton Lundin-Pettersson went into a school in Sweden with a mask and helmet, looking pretty dark, and a sword, and killed two people. And it looks like he was an atheist.

PZ Myers has written about it. He did not say that Anton Lundin-Pettersson was an atheist and that this caused his killing spree, but that atheists don’t like admitting when one of their own is a bad person, that atheists pull the No True Scotsman fallacy and skew the stats on atheist atrocities.

Warwick University Student Union bans atheist human rights activist from speaking

The BHA reports this annoyingly insane story. Please tweet them or email a complaint:

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has reacted with alarm at news that a non-religious human rights activist, Maryam Namazie, has been denied the opportunity to speak at a student society event, seemingly because she is an advocate of secularism who is critical of religious extremism.

A Great Myth about Atheism: Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot = Atheism = Atrocity – REDUX

This post is one of my most popular pieces on this blog, and I am revising it slightly to make it even tighter, reacting to previous comments on the last version of this piece. I have tried to be detailed enough for it to be fairly comprehensive, though it could be more detailed; then again, it could be shorter and more digestible. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

UN Secretary-General calls for action over deaths of Bangladeshi bloggers

In a statement issued at the weekend, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the killing of Niloy Neel, the fourth humanist blogger in Bangladesh to be hacked to death by Islamists this year, and called on the Government to do more to prevent further attacks. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed his call, and reiterated its own similar desire to see further violence prevented.

On Defining Atheism

I was recently sent a book to review, by Franz Kiekeben, called The Truth About God which is a whistlestop tour, I think, through atheism and counter-apologetics to arrive at the conclusion not that God is improbable, but that God is impossible. I will be interested to see where that goes (click on the image to buy it).

Real Deconversion Story #11 – Dan Yowell

Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs, as you can see from the various accounts. Dan Yowell was put on to me by contributor Cody Rudisill who has posted the occasional article. I thank MLC for his contribution. Please check out my book of deconversion accounts, edited with Tristan Vick, which can be bought from the sidebar over there >>>, or by clicking on the book cover. The previous accounts can be found here:

UK: 49% have no religion, Anglican Church collapse continues, Islam increases ten-fold since 1983

New findings by the National Centre for Social Research have confirmed the long-term collapse in affiliation with the Church of England and the huge increase in non-belief.

Strikingly, the research also found that there had been a ten-fold increase in those identifying with Islam in the past 32 years. In 1983, Islam represented around half a percentage point of Britain’s population but in 2014 it had reached 5%, the research found.

Classical theism: God’s characteristics shown as incoherent

The classical theistic components of God, his characteristics of being all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing don’t work very well together. This has been something which I have sought to elucidate over the years, so I thought I would compile a synopsis of where we are at with the idea of OmniGod, and what he has created. These are good arguments, I believe, and I would love to see my readers interact with them, and I would love to see theists of all natures take them to task to see if they stand up. Bookmark this page and return to it, if you will – there’s quite a lot here! I would like to see this as a growing compendium.

Ex-Muslim movement growing in Middle East?

This fascinating Dutch article (to which I do not have a link, unfortunately) was translated by a facebook friend Leon Korteweg:

My translation (aided by Google Translate) of an article that appeared in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. Reading and translating this article made me somewhat emotional: I’m delighted by the rise of atheism exactly where it is most needed, which gives me hope, but I’m also saddened by how many victims it takes to make that change happen.

Guest post: Michael Candelario on morality

I have been very busy lately and then the call from OFSTED, the government school inspectorate, came this week, I ended up camped at work for 3 days. It’s over now. To get the ball rolling again is a guest post from ML Candelario. It is interesting toying with the idea of moral nihilism, which all depends on how you define objective or ontic reality. Anyway, over to Cendelario: