Author: Adam Lee

One of the most optimistic – perhaps excessively optimistic – philosophies that take shelter under the umbrella terms of atheism and humanism is transhumanism. Transhumanism is a set of loosely associated philosophies which all share a belief in the desirability of transcending the biology of the human condition through technology. At the marginally more plausible…

It’s not often I disagree with Richard Dawkins, but I have to do so today. In the opening pages of Climbing Mount Improbable, he discusses what he calls “designoid” objects: Designoid objects are living bodies and their products. Designoid objects look designed, so much so that some people – probably, alas, most people – think…

In the Guardian last week, Tracy Quan had a column titled Agnostic about atheism. It strikes a note we’ve heard before: Quan, though a nonbeliever herself (she describes herself as a “‘cafeteria’ atheist and secular Catholic”), is embarrassed and uncomfortable to hear atheists speaking out forthrightly and wishes we would stop. Some of my fellow…

This month’s Poetry Sunday features another classic by a famous poet who’s already made an appearance: Robert Frost, the skeptical New Englander whose work has become iconic of the American experience. Frost’s views on God are complex. In some of his letters, he calls himself “an old dissenter”, “secular till the last go down”, and…

Given that this is an atheist site, I feel compelled to start this post with a snappy anti-religion quip, so here it is: Children and teenagers are more likely to be molested or assaulted in church than they are on social networking sites like MySpace. Parents, do you want to protect your kids? Keep them…

In one of his “My Answer” columns, Billy Graham replies to a correspondent who doesn’t see the need for organized religion: Don’t make up your own ideas about God, but understand from the Bible who He really is, and commit your life to Christ. “Don’t make up your own ideas” – this is Billy Graham’s…

More than most other belief systems, organized religion emphasizes tradition and continuity with the past. The historical figures who founded today’s prominent churches are considered larger-than-life and thought of as possessing uncommon character and virtue. This is probably because religion is widely equated with morality; given this mistaken assumption, it follows that very religious people…

Today, I’m inaugurating another new post series on Daylight Atheism, “The Contributions of Freethinkers”. The purpose of this series will be to dispel the myth that nonbelievers have never contributed anything of worth or value to human culture by highlighting some famous historical atheists and freethinkers who’ve left their mark. Whether in the arts, the…

In all the universe of religious experience, few figures are so beloved as the Catholic nun known to the world as Mother Teresa. The official biography holds that she selflessly devoted her life to ministering to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta, suffering through poverty and deprivation nearly as great as…

In the opening chapter of The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins penned the following words: An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: “I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.”…