Author: Adam Lee

The third installment of Daylight Atheism’s Poetry Sunday is some time overdue. Once again, I’d like to welcome back Philip Appleman, whose contribution this week is the poem “Creation”. (I will feature other poets – but Professor Appleman has written so many beautiful works, I can’t resist sharing them with my readers.) The Lascaux cave…

I’ve written before that the human mind is a pattern-seeking engine. We are wired by evolution to seek cause-and-effect relationships in the world around us, and when there are relationships to be found, we often do very well. The problem is when there are no causal relationships to be found. People in such situations often…

Opportunity and Obligation One of the driving notions behind libertarian political theory is that society should be a meritocracy. By removing all restraints on competition, we will create a system where the hardest-working, most talented, most creative people succeed. And this is a good idea which I agree with. We need to encourage effort and…

In the summer of 2006, Republican Senator David Vitter (about whom you might have heard some news lately) said the following about a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage: “I don’t believe there’s any issue that’s more important than this one,” said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. “I think this debate is very…

In the marketplace of ideas, atheists and atheism are still fighting to carve out a place. We have made some dramatic gains, but our long-term success is not yet assured. The sheer novelty of our message has, no doubt, attracted much interest and attention, but we must still work to win an established place in…

Summary: A blistering, brilliant counterattack on the forces that have conspired to undermine American democracy. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason is a passionate, scathing book that paints a clear picture of where America has gone wrong. Our democracy is far from dead, but as events of recent years have shown,…

The Tower of Babel The second installment of “Do You Really Believe That?” will examine another classic Old Testament story, the Tower of Babel. According to this story, in the days after Noah’s flood, all humanity spoke one language. Filled with pride and ambition, they came together and began to build a tower “whose top…

Positive and Negative Liberty The second major reason why I am not a libertarian has to do with the social safety net – programs like public education, universal health care, food stamps or unemployment pay – that are funded by redistributive taxation. Hard-core libertarians decry these programs as theft or even slavery, arguing that it…

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an editorial titled What Atheists Can’t Answer. The author, Michael Gerson, is an influential evangelical Christian and was formerly George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter. Compared to most attacks on atheism, including a few I’ve rebutted recently, Gerson’s essay is fair and honest. He rightfully steers clear of the slanderous and…

The U.S. Senate traditionally opens each day’s session with a prayer, and today’s was a first: the invocation was given by Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest who was invited by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. This was the first time a representative of Hinduism has ever been invited to do this. However, there was an…