Author: Adam Lee

My recent post encouraging readers to join the atheists’ group on Kiva stirred some controversy in a comment thread on Reddit. One commenter, whose sentiments were echoed by several others, writes: You should give because you believe in something – not just to prove a point and rig this like it’s some kind of game.…

In 2006 and 2007, I wrote several entries in a series called A World in Shadow, bolstering the atheist’s argument from evil by describing particularly shocking or egregious instances of natural and moral evils. However, I haven’t written any new entries for this series in some time. To be honest, I stopped writing these posts…

One of the bedrock claims of creationism is that mutation can never create new information, that random changes can only make complex systems worse and never improve them. Although there are many examples of information-increasing mutations in the natural world that prove this claim false, there’s an even more potent and understandable counterexample, one that…

I’ve put up a new post on Dangerous Intersection, “A 24-hour news network lineup I’d like to see“. This is an open thread.

(Editor’s Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site’s policy for such reviews.) Summary: A worthy effort, but at best a shallow draught from a spring that can sustain much deeper drinking. I’ve often said that atheism, to succeed as a movement, needs to do more than just criticize belief…

An accusation that’s often leveled against atheists is that we lack charitable impulses, that faith-based organizations do the hard work of caring for the needy and atheism only promotes selfishness. This is a hateful slur, and to counter it, I’ve discussed outstanding acts of charity by individual atheists in the past. Evidence like this shows…

As you’ve surely heard by now, the landmark 2008 American Religious Identification Survey has just been released. The ARIS is an enormous study that questioned over 50,000 respondents to assemble a broad picture of religious belief and disbelief in the United States, building on previous surveys from 1990 and 2001. The 2001 results showed that…

In the book of First Corinthians, there’s a passage that’s frequently cited by Christian apologists: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the…

A correspondent to William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith column writes in with a very good question, one that atheists have often raised: An acquaintance of mine recently asked me why it is necessary that we be able to choose evil for us to have free will, while it is not necessary that God be able…

I’ve uploaded a new essay to Ebon Musings, “Dating the Good News“. This essay attempts to fix a date of composition for the New Testament’s four canonical gospels based on documentary evidence, both positive and negative, and draws some conclusions on what this date tells us about the evolution of early Christianity. This is an…