Author: Adam Lee

My latest column on the Guardian is up: “It’s time for atheists to stop debating God’s existence and decide what to do about it“. In it, I argue that the atheist movement can’t make critiques of religious belief its whole focus and should be doing more to create justice in this life, which is the…

I was devastated to learn that Terry Pratchett, the renowned fantasy author, died this week at the unfairly early age of 66. Pratchett had been suffering from early-onset dementia for several years, and while he was a vocal advocate of assisted dying, his own passing was natural. (He also worked almost right up to the…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter X Leaving the stranded train behind, Dagny and Owen Kellogg set out into the night to seek help. As they walk along the tracks, they get to talking. Dagny tells Kellogg how hard her job has become, lamenting, “I don’t have a single first-rate man left on the Taggart system”…

On top of all the other atrocities they’ve committed, we have to add another entry to the list of ISIS’ crimes against the human race: their penchant for destroying ancient relics and other historical artifacts in the cities they’ve conquered. While it’s not comparable to the mass slaughter of human beings, this cultural vandalism stands…

My newest column on AlterNet is up, Right-Wingers’ Secession Threats: Fighting Tooth and Nail on the Wrong Side of History. It’s an expanded version of my earlier post on Roy Moore and other social conservatives arguing that they shouldn’t have to obey laws they don’t like. Here’s an excerpt: When a U.S. federal judge –…

For us Americans and others who still rely on the antiquated agricultural ritual of Daylight Savings Time, we “spring forward” this weekend. For the next few weeks, we’ll be rising in the morning dark once again. But as discouraging as it is to lose an hour, it’s a welcome reminder that spring is on its…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter X Having heard the tramp’s conveniently about-to-be-relevant tale, Dagny drifts off to sleep, puzzling over what it might mean. When she wakes up, it’s to a sudden, disorienting silence: the train has stopped moving. The sweep of her hand pressed the light switch and the bell to summon the porter.…

This column originally appeared on AlterNet. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new Cosmos series is a worthy reboot of Carl Sagan’s original. Following in Sagan’s footsteps, Tyson takes viewers on a voyage through the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond, showing how our sun is just one star out of a hundred billion in the…

There’s horrific news from Bangladesh: the atheist activist and writer Dr. Avijit Roy was murdered on the street in Dhaka, hacked to death by two assailants wielding machetes as he left a book fair at Dhaka University. His wife Rafida Ahmed Bonna was seriously wounded in the same attack. An Islamist group calling itself Ansar…

Most of the religious charity solicitation letters that I get have identifiable humanitarian aims, as much as I might disagree with the religious message those aims are wrapped up in. But that isn’t the case for the latest specimen, which begs for money to advance a purely religious mission, without even a pretense of serving…