Author: Adam Lee

Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike The hallmark of Atlas Shrugged is the character filibuster: the story grinds to a halt so that one of Rand’s heroes can deliver a long, apparently extemporaneous speech, explaining the philosophical grounding and moral implications of Objectivism in grueling detail. These often stretch to absurd lengths: for example, Francisco’s…

The latest thinkpiece that’s consumed the internet is an editorial by Judith Shulevitz about trigger warnings. A trigger warning, if you don’t know, is a warning label intended to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s meant to give advance warning of material they might find distressing so that they can avoid it and keep…

I was pleased to read about a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute on millennial views about sex. It confirms our generally pro-choice and non-judgmental attitude, with a few caveats: “What we see running through the answers is that where principles of fairness come up, millennials want to see equal access to health…

• GOP congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers asked her constituents for Obamacare horror stories. The response she got was rather different. • “Shouldn’t you be having these same kind of prayer circles around divorce attorneys’ offices to ‘save’ people from acting on the sin of divorce?” • According to federal investigators, a self-described American “patriot” named…

Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike The most noticeable and jarring change between the first and second Atlas movies is that this one has an entirely new cast. This page from the Atlas Society explains why: Part 1 was shot in a rush to keep John Aglialoro’s rights from expiring, and the time pressure and…

If you’ve followed my writing these past few years, you know that I’ve often taken up arms against prominent atheists who’ve made clueless, sexist comments or worse. I’ve also insisted that the atheist movement as a whole needs to pay more attention to social justice, an area where it’s historically been deficient. In all these…

Eight years ago, a particularly nasty cult leader named Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison. Jeffs was – and still is – the spiritual leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an extremist Mormon splinter group with enclaves scattered across the American West. The FLDS, like most cults, was…

My column in the Guardian this week about atheism and social justice got a lot of comments – over 2900 at the time I’m writing this – and most of them were what you’d expect, both for the better and for the worse. But what I’m fascinated by are the people who wanted to argue…

Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike In 2011, a wealthy businessman named John Aglialoro produced a movie based on the first part of Atlas Shrugged. Aglialoro imagined himself as John Galt, boldly speaking the truth to a complacent world. As it turned out, he was more like Ivy Starnes, the inheritor of a famous brand…

This is part 11 of my “Think! Of God and Government” debate series with Christian author Andrew Murtagh. Read my latest post and Andrew’s reply. Hello Andrew, I’m ready to move on to comparing our views on government, really! But I have to tarry on one small point: Goodness itself is not a necessary truth,…