Author: Adam Lee

Atlas Shrugged, p. 11-19 The book begins with Eddie Willers, who isn’t actually one of the protagonists, walking through the streets of New York City. He gives a dime to a homeless man who asks him the mysterious question “Who is John Galt?”, noting all the while that the city is dying: The clouds and…

While same-sex marriage is dramatically debated at the Supreme Court this week, it’s worth keeping in mind that just a few days ago, Colorado legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, becoming – to my surprise – the 18th state to have either marriage equality or civil unions. I didn’t realize the cause had come so…

This coming weekend, I’m going to be in Austin, Texas to attend the 2013 National Convention of American Atheists. I’m not going to be in town for long – I’m getting in on Friday afternoon and leaving Sunday morning – but I’m definitely planning to pack as much fun as I can into the time…

[Note: This month, Patheos is organizing a “Why I Am A…” blog series, challenging contributors to explain the basis for their philosophy in 200 words or less. Here’s my contribution. —Adam] I’m an atheist because personal experience isn’t sufficient. People from every religion claim to have personal experiences that bolster their beliefs, whether it’s the…

In the last few days, Melissa McEwan at the feminist blog Shakesville gave a list of advice to atheist men on how to make the secular community more feminist-friendly. There was considerable discussion of her list on Pharyngula, but the usual harassing trolls also decided to pollute the conversation with their stupidity. In response to…

Way back in 2011, I read Ayn Rand’s magnum opus Atlas Shrugged – all 1,074 pages of it – with a promise that I’d eventually get around to doing a chapter-by-chapter review, like my review of Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator. I got sidetracked by other projects for a while, but now it’s…

I’m all over the place this week, I know. In addition to the new column on AlterNet, I have a guest post up at Skepchick, contributing to Surly Amy’s “Speaking Out Against Hate Directed at Women” series. Here’s an excerpt: There’s one thing that just about every atheist activist agrees on, which is that religion…

Via Slacktivist, I came across an interesting essay by Greg Boyd, Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible. (You might remember Boyd as one of the theologians interviewed in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, as well as his more recent and praiseworthy stand against the use of Christianity to support American imperial…

My latest column is now up on AlterNet, You Wouldn’t Believe How Fast Americans Are Losing Their Religion — But the Fundamentalists Have a Plan. In it, I report on the American religious-right activists who are exporting American-style culture wars to the developing world, even as the U.S. and Europe become less religious. The fundamentalists…

Way back in 2011, I wrote about the hilarious box-office trainwreck (see what I did there?) that was Atlas Shrugged: Part I. Inexplicably, Ayn Rand’s dense, multi-hour soliloquies in defense of capitalism failed to translate well into the medium of film. The last news I heard after the movie’s belly-flop was that its producer, heroic…