Author: Adam Lee

My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, Why Is Atheism a Bigger Obstacle to Political Office Than Mormonism? In it, I look at poll results showing that American voters remain prejudiced against atheists, and ask why it is that Mormons and other groups have managed to avoid the brunt of similar bigotry, despite holding…

As I’ve mentioned in the past, my wife and I have for several years been attending a Unitarian Universalist church in the New York area. Unitarian Universalism is officially a religion without faith or creed: its foundational seven principles are only about acting morally, and none of them specify belief in God as a requirement.…

The professional debater William Lane Craig has been putting on a great show of offense lately that Richard Dawkins won’t debate him, complete with silly stunts like leaving an empty chair on the stage. Dawkins concisely explains why he refused: first, he gets numerous invitations to debates like this; and second, Craig is a morally…

On my old site, I had regular link roundups for all the stories I saw that interested me, but that I didn’t have the time to write about at greater length. And I’ve had a lot of those stories this week, so here’s some things to read over your Saturday morning coffee: • I’ve previously…

The other day I came across this article from Bloomberg News, from which I learned something that surprised me: a large black market exists for human organs, in spite of international laws banning the practice. This isn’t organ trafficking in the “waking up in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney” sense. More commonly,…

In his book Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins opens with an arresting analogy: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in…

While protests continue to rage in Syria and a new government takes shape in Libya, the origin of the Arab Spring has attained a huge milestone: Tunisia successfully held its first election last week, and aside from scattered protests and violence, the contest appears to have been largely peaceful, free and fair – not to…

When I tell people that I’m an atheist, I’m often asked if I think that fiery rhetoric and sharp critiques of religion, like the kind found in the writing of trailblazers like Richard Dawkins, is harming the cause by offending believers who might otherwise have been sympathetic. The implication is that, if we focus our…

I’ve often written about the moral system I advocate, which I’ve dubbed universal utilitarianism. Although people have a broad range of individual preferences, human nature is, in general, fixed and predictable: certain things reliably bring us happiness, while others reliably cause pain and suffering. Through reason and evidence, we can work out which actions are…

I’ve written in the past about the phenomenon of people who think that their religious beliefs excuse them from doing their job. The correct solution, of course, is to not accept a job whose duties you won’t perform; but the religious privilege that pervades society often leads people to expect that their employer should accommodate…