Jen McCreight has complied a large list of awesome female atheists. Kudos to them and many thanks for all their efforts in our fight against superstition, pseudoscience, and ignorance. We need them! Let me rather say it this way: I'm glad to join with them in this common cause. So far her list includes:
PZ Myers has topped every atheist poll so far and isn't doing too bad as a write-in on the
most influential female atheist of 2009. ;-) He creamed all challengers on my own
most vocal atheist poll, and right now he's beating out
everyone in the universe combined. Since he wins all polls here's one in the sidebar where
he cannot win in every category! We've got him this time. So which will it be?
I support this wholeheartedly:
Check out this video of "Noah's Ark and the Great Flood":
Hear Christopher Hitchens interviewed by Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell. He's defending
the fundamentalist critique of liberalism. You see, I agree with the fundamentalist critique of liberalism, as well as the liberal critique of fundamentalism. I agree with the Catholic critique of Protestantism as well as the Protestant critique of Catholicism. They debunk themselves leaving us no reason to accept Christianity in any form. HT: Hemant Mehta.
And lookee here. I bested all but two of them. Now that Jim West is off the market I only need to overtake J.L. Watts for the number one slot. Can it be done? I wonder how I could convince him that he is
boring too. ;-)
Here is an interesting scenario I have wondered myself, so I'd appreciate any input on it since I'm not a scientist:
A GPI comparison of theistic nations to atheist nations shows us that peace
is non-theistic.
Watch the following interview and then read what I consider a refutation of
Reformed Epistemology by Dr. Jaco Gericke afterward. Who wins?
[Written by John W. Loftus] What I’m engaging in here at Debunking Christianity is a huge challenge. I like big challenges. So let me offer one to Christians...
In light of the developments of the last week or more let me recap what has happened. See what you think. I’ll try to keep this brief as possible and I’ll number my points for easy reference, not that I have to, okay?
That's right. For even if some kind of god exists the believer has no reasonable way to know anything about such a god, hence a theistic kind of agnosticism. dguller expressed this cogent argument very well in the comments:
That's right. Not as pictured on the left but a bigger version of the one on the right:
See the story here. Now pseudo-apologists will start finding the remains of a big bowl boat in the mountains of Turkey, right? Right!
It looks like Luke over at
Common Sense Atheism does one a month.
Check them out.
When I first read the selection below I was a believer and thought what Swinburne wrote on this topic in his book,
The Existence of God (1979 ed.), was excellent. No longer do I think so.
I had linked earlier to a site about
Reasoning Fallacies. I think it's time to illustrate them with some real examples of how most Christians argue at DC in a series of short Blog posts. I'll illustrate several of the most blatant fallacies as I see them using that link's nomenclature. Don't get caught or I might write you up for it. ;-) This could be the beginnings of a book, we'll see!
Ricky Gervais describes why he became an atheist.
Link. Gervais directed and starred in the comedy
The Invention of Lying.
Yep, that's true of most of them in my opinion. Here's exhibit "A" named Brad Haggard, and my response. Watch how easy this is because I am not in that box of theirs.
This is a challenge emailed to me from Johnny Pearce. It's interesting:
In May of 2008 I had called upon skeptics to create an organization for
doing humanitarian works. It now looks as if that is going to happen with the
Foundation Beyond Belief. I first heard about it from former DC team member Valerie Tarico
on Exchristian.net. Here is a video about it below:
They're both still missing! ;-) Maybe if and when Jim West comes back he'll deal with what
Dr. Hector Avalos and others wrote here. Sorry, but anyone who claims like Jim West did that "Atheism is insanity. Hence, there’s no more point in arguing with (or even discussing things with) an atheist than there is in walking into an insane asylum and attempting to carry on a lucid conversation with persons utterly devoid of the gift of lucidity," doesn't deserve my respect. For I am one of those people and I take those attacks personally.
I like this one. Women don't always get their fair share of respect.
Go Vote.
Yep, that's what I think, and I don't think he understands what it is enough to offer an effective critique, so this will probably be my last reply to him. We'll see...
That is if you're a young earth creationist. ;-) Hat Tip to
Stephen Law for this.
Check it out here where you'll also see my initial response.
Professor Alan Lenzi posted a CBS 60 Minutes video that I found very interesting about the Wetlands in Southern Iraq where the Sumerian's lived in Ur of Chaldees, the birthplace of civilization.
Yep, that's what I've concluded. Theirs is a faith that must dismiss the tragedy of death. It does not matter to them who dies, how many people die, or what the circumstances are when they die. It could be the death of a mother whose baby depends upon her for milk during the first few months of life. It could be a pandemic like cholera that decimated parts of the world in 1918, or the more than 23,000 children who die every single day from starvation. These deaths could be by suffocation, drowning, a drive-by shooting, or being slowly burned to death. It doesn't matter to them. Their God is good. Death doesn't matter. People die all of the time.
Hey, I'm just tooting my own horn. Why not? It sounds good to me on New Years Eve, since that's what we do. Here are the rankings:
Sometimes I lose patience when I have to respond to the same ill-informed drivel week after week that I just decided to make a post about it. It's claimed that since
Prometheus Books is an ideologically driven publishing house it's not an objective publisher and should be regarded as inferior to some other publishers. Let's think about this, okay?
Here's some comic relief by using literal lyrics to the video "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It made me laugh out loud.
It's curious to me how often most Christians just do not think about some things. Has it ever occurred to you how human beings first learned what killed us? Take lead poisoning for instance. Do you know that people had to die before we could figure it out? Then think about all of the poisonous plants and venomous creatures. People had to die from eating certain plants and being bitten by certain creatures before we knew what not to do. Take polluted water. Same thing. Read the book,
The Ghost Map and see for yourself. You see, there was no other way. None. And if a good God existed and put us in this environment he didn't do us any good. At best a good God would've told us in advance to avoid the kinds of things that will kill our daughters, fathers, husbands and wives. But he didn't. So he knew in advance people would have to die tragic and sudden deaths before we could figure it out.
Since I don't have a doctorate and the title to my blog is an attention getter some Christian scholars don't think much of me when they first hear of me. Don't misunderstand me. I do have some credentials. To see them just click on my profile page (later Dr. Hector Avalos is going to compare my credentials with those of Jim West). As an atheist I have been honored to speak at a Midwest regional meeting of the
Evangelical Philosophical Society, and was a panelist for the annual
Society of Biblical Literature last year. In February I'm debating Dinesh D'Souza at the
University of Illinois. So this should all say something I'd guess. But to those still unpersuaded let me show you the respect I have gained from some Christian scholars because of my arguments. I have regularly engaged Christian philosophers and apologists here at DC, some of whom you know.
Well, I did it folks. I bested all but two Bibliobloggers in rankings this month, the other results
can be found here. This has caused
no small problem for some Bible bloggers, since they just can't stand the fact that a Blog named "Debunking Christianity" outranked nearly all of them. Now some of them are personally attacking me.
Apparently, the list was shut down because of me,
one lone secular Bible blogger! ;-) Now they'll attack me because I'm crowing about it. But then there is no bigger rooster than Jim West who crowed about his ranking every single month when he was at the top of the list. If someone starts another list I'll be sure to apply for that one too. Whatever criteria they use to exclude me will exclude others, maybe lots of others, including Jim West himself, if the criteria is changed to say one must have an earned doctorate from a recognized accredited institution! ;-) I didn't mean to cause this much trouble. I just wanted to be included. But it has been fun to see their reaction, that's all. More later...
Yep, Christian Bloggers are upset about the fact that I bested nearly all of them this month, being ranked 4th over most all of them (maybe 3rd if we wait until tomorrow to see). Now come
the personal attacks. They'll claim it's because I crowed about this feat,
which I did, and that I attacked Jim West's
credentials, which you can see both Dr. Hector Avalos and I did, although West attacked my credentials to be a Biblioblogger first. They'll also say it's because I criticized an argument of his,
which I did. But the bottom line is that West and the rest just can't stand it. And they're censoring my comments, so in the interests of fairness I'll post what I said for you to judge for yourself whether my latest comment should be censored:
This poll was suggested to me by
Craig A. James and it's a good one. This time before starting the poll I'd like your input. I have Ray Comfort, Dinesh D'Souza (a friend of mine I'll admit), James White, Oral Roberts, Ken Hamm, and possibly JP Holding. Were there any high profile scandals I'm missing, or others you'd like to see included? Other nominees can be suggested below. Tell me why you think they should be included.
Go ahead. See what you think.
By Martin Beckford of the
Telegraph:
Can you see why atheists are so passionate about this? See below:
Why not share my little tidbits with everyone and not have to write stuff twice, right?
Then he is perpetrating a sham, trying to push himself and his work off as a credible scholar from a recognized institution. A
comment from Dr. Hector Avalos alerted me to this. Sounds like Jim "protests too much" doesn't it? Here is what I found:
Suggest them here or over at
Atheist Revolution. Jim West anyone? After all, look what he thinks of atheists:
Jim West just can't take it, 'cause that means he can't crow anymore about his monthly rankings. Sorry Mr. Bible Belt, but you just got roped in by this cowboy. Your time is over, you has-been. So now he's resorted to slamming me
not just once, but
twice. For the record, I'm now ranked in 4th place among Bibliobloggers at Alexa, coming in at 223,352, overtaking the prolific
James McGrath, who's definition of a miracle includes such a feat. No wonder they don't want to do the list anymore, 'cause who wants it known that a site called "Debunking Christianity" beat out most Bible Blogs. This is a smack down, I'd say, and I was only getting started. ;-)
Derren Brown is a skeptic who tried to get various religious leaders to embrace and endorse his spiritual powers. The episodes I recommend here have to do with Derren converting other skeptics with the touch of his hand in front of an evangelical pastor, and he pulled it off! What the hell went on here? Who are we as human beings? This stuff puzzles me to no end. Is it just the era we live in, or the human mind that has a transcendental temptation? See for yourself, especially episodes 2-4 below.
Here is what I think as I went through the archives. See what you think. It seems as though I lean heavily toward later posts because they are fresh on my mind, but then again maybe it's because I keep getting better and better! Here's the countdown:
