Author: Adam Lee

The Language of God, Chapter 2 By B.J. Marshall Chapter 2 reminds me of a Tim Minchin song, Storm, where one line goes “Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision / Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition.” The next theme Collins discusses in this chapter involves addressing all the harm done in the name…

I haven’t commented until now on this “Ground Zero mosque” – a ridiculous misnomer invented to inflame prejudice, since it’s not at Ground Zero and it isn’t a mosque – because, honestly, I don’t think there’s much that needs to be said. America still has the First Amendment, it still has freedom of religion, and…

(Editor’s Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site’s policy for such reviews.) Summary: Entertainingly irreverent, but with a sharp point under the silliness – though I still haven’t figured out why the Bible on the cover is wearing a bra. It’s always good to see fellow atheist bloggers breaking…

I wrote in my previous post about the creeping spread of fundamentalism in Israel and how ultra-Orthodox Jews are constantly pressing for special privileges and greater political power, even though they’re not willing to contribute to the upkeep of the state. The ultra-Orthodox are exempt from Israel’s mandatory military service, and as many as two-thirds…

Israel, like America, is a modern secular democracy with a noisy religious minority that desires the creation of a theocracy. And as in America, religious fundamentalists in Israel exert political influence disproportionate to their numbers. But Israel’s fundamentalist minority, the ultra-Orthodox or haredi Jews, have had some worrying successes lately in imposing their vision on…

The Language of God, Chapter 2 By B.J. Marshall Collins continues on his theme of the universal search for the divine with an argument from emotions. He cites his beloved C.S. Lewis, who describes this in his book Surprised by Joy. Lewis relates how this search, this intense longing, is triggered by moments of joy,…

Since I’ve been busy the past year and a half answering Lee Strobel’s Case for a Creator, I haven’t written any posts responding to William Lane Craig’s “Reasonable Faith” columns. But I’m done with Strobel’s book now – and Craig has avoided my fire for far too long! Today I’ll address question #170, in which…

Since this is becoming Accommodationism Week on Daylight Atheism, let me turn to the latest piece hushing atheists, written by Quinn O’Neill on 3 Quarks Daily. It plays a familiar tune, so I’ll strike a few well-chosen notes of discord. Suppose you could choose either to maximize human rationality or to maximize human happiness. For…

The Language of God, Chapter 2 By B.J. Marshall In this section, Collins poses the questions of whether the near-ubiquity of the search for the existence of a supernatural being represents “a universal but groundless human longing for something outside ourselves to give meaning to a meaningless life and to take away the sting of…

I’ve told you all the story of how I became an atheist. But I’ve never written about what came before that: what made this a topic of interest for me, what first motivated me to think about these issues at all. Well, today I want to tell that part of the story. This was around…