Author: Adam Lee

My earlier post, “Election Special 2008“, didn’t fully do justice to all the things I wanted to say about this election. I decided it would be better split into two parts, and here’s the second part. First, the historic: A nation built by slaves, that fought a bloody civil war over emancipation, and that has…

A few months ago, a theist contacted me by e-mail to claim that her church, the Mormons, had fulfilled many of the criteria set forth in my essay “The Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists“. There was one criterion she thought was unfair of me to list – evidence of miraculous occurrences brought about through prayer:…

The votes have been cast, the balloons have come down, the champagne has popped and the confetti has been thrown, and we’re officially on the other side of the 2008 elections. Atheists and progressives have much to chew over in these results, and here are some preliminary thoughts of mine. In this post I’ll address…

As the world’s eyes turn to America and tomorrow’s election, I just have to join in. This is an open thread for election predictions, rumors, speculation, results reporting, and whatever else you can think of. Once the polls have closed and the results are all in, I hope to write a longer post, most likely…

One of the surest marks of a pseudoscience is that it stays forever the same, never altering its claims, even as the world changes around it and revolutions in our knowledge come and go. While science evolves over time, with theories becoming refined to more closely track the truth, popular delusions stay the same through…

I awoke from my sleep with a start. It had been a long and wearisome day. I had turned in early, as the late autumn light waned from the sky, and it was now dark and deep outside my window. But now something had roused me, and I had the distinct feeling that I was…

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” Creationists who think themselves clever sometimes ask why, if evolution is true, we don’t see bacteria re-evolving into multicellular organisms. But, as is often true of creationists, this taunt gets the situation completely backwards.…

In the 2004 American presidential campaign, the label “Massachusetts liberal” was used as an epithet by Republican against the Democratic candidate John Kerry. In the argot of conservatives, the term signifies a candidate who is unacceptably far left, out of the mainstream of American politics – as indicated by their association with the prosperous, well-educated,…

Today’s post on morality concerns environmental conservation and sustainability. Human civilization has historically behaved (and many still do behave) as if the Earth was there to be conquered and natural resources were limitless. Environmental devastation is not solely the product of industrialized society; ancient cultures did the same thing, even those with tools no more…

I’ve been reading this account of a disciplinary hearing against the odious John Freshwater, an Ohio science teacher who allegedly promoted religion in his class, repeatedly and illegally, even after being ordered by school administrators to stop. Among other things, Freshwater brazenly taught creationism in class – directing his students to Answers in Genesis and…