Author: Adam Lee

Last week, the Westboro Baptist Church (which is choosing increasingly random and bizarre protest targets, including a Swedish vacuum cleaner store) decided to picket a Foo Fighters concert in Kansas City, Missouri. As is their usual strategy, they were no doubt hoping to provoke police or counterprotesters into assaulting them or otherwise violating their constitutional…

This essay was originally published on AlterNet. A few weeks ago, Jon Huntsman torpedoed his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by making the following announcement: To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy. It’s a pathetic commentary on the anti-intellectualism rampant in American politics that this…

While I was doing research for “The Ordinary and Universal Magisterium“, I came across some amazing passages in the New Advent Catholic encyclopedia’s article on infallibility. Since it can be safely assumed that these still represent the Catholic church’s viewpoint, I thought it was worth calling some wider attention to them. The article starts out…

I’ve written before about near-death experiences and what they can prove about the existence of the soul. Now another study has come to my attention, one that has an even more potent conclusion. (HT: Boing Boing) It’s long been known that the content of NDEs is influenced by religion and culture. People who have them…

Although many sects of Christianity consider their own beliefs to be infallible, Catholicism has a formal, bureaucratic process for adding new inerrant teachings to its canon. When the pope speaks “ex cathedra“, officially defining a new dogma, it’s becomes something that all Catholics are required to profess. (I like to think he has a special…

I’m very pleased to announce that I’m going to be on Ring of Fire Radio this weekend, discussing my recent AlterNet article on creationism with Mike Papantonio. (Some of you may remember Papantonio as the voice of reason in Jesus Camp. They also used to be part of Air America, and it’s good to see…

This essay was originally published on AlterNet. The most common stereotype about atheists, the most common reason why religious people fear and distrust us, is the belief that people who don’t believe in God have no reason to behave morally. In the view of the planet’s major religions, the way we know what’s right and…

If you’ve read Penn Jillette’s new book God, No! and want to ask him something about it – or if you just have a general question you’ve been dying to ask him – then this is your lucky day! My soon-to-be blog home, Big Think, is having Penn back for an interview on Friday, and…

Ophelia of Butterflies and Wheels has been writing some excellent posts lately about the abuse and oppression of women in Christian communities. One of them led me to an outstanding blog titled Love, Joy, Feminism. Its author, Libby Anne, grew up in an incredibly strict and fundamentalist Christian home that practiced a way of life…

My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, Why the Anti-Science Creationist Movement Is So Dangerous. In it, I survey the history of the modern creationist movement, point out how it’s completely captured one of America’s two major political parties, and illuminate the larger ideological goals that lie behind the assault on evolution. Read the…