Author: Adam Lee

The media has been abuzz lately over a Discovery Channel special about a tomb in Israel that, according to the show’s producers, may once have contained the bones of Jesus Christ. The tomb was discovered in 1980 during an archaeological excavation in Jerusalem. Inside, researchers found ten ossuaries – carved stone boxes used in many…

Tomorrow, February 28, will be a date of tremendous importance for all friends of church-state separation in the United States of America. For tomorrow, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom from Religion Foundation will be presenting oral arguments before the nine justices of the Supreme Court, in the case of Hein v.…

Since last month, Beliefnet has been hosting a debate between Sam Harris, atheist author and neuroscientist, and Andrew Sullivan, the conservative commentator and devout Catholic. This is a wonderful debate, and I strongly encourage my visitors to read it for themselves. Both participants are highly educated, articulate and persuasive, and both do an admirable job…

The fifth of the Virtues is passion; in the ancient lists of cardinal virtues, it was sometimes referred to as diligence or zeal. In his famous list of virtues, Benjamin Franklin called it industry. All these terms describe basically the same quality. Passion is the opposite of laziness, apathy, and nihilism: it implies placing value…

I have written in the past about the paranoid, twisted obsession that most religious fundamentalists have with sex. Rather than viewing it as a natural, healthy part of human life, and a source of pleasure and emotional connection when engaged in responsibly, excessive religious devotion leads some believers to view sex as a menacing and…

Via Feministe, I’ve come across a post called A request for advice, on a blog titled Contraception and Christianity. The author, Contraskeptic, is an evangelical Christian wrestling with the issue of whether it is a sin to use birth control. As Contraskeptic explains, his wife has been through three difficult, stressful pregnancies, all three of…

Consumers, be advised! When you want to know the future or ward off bad fortune through the invocation of magical power, don’t trust just any fake dime-store psychic. Be sure to choose only the best fake psychics for all your supernatural needs. Such is the message of a bulletin issued recently by the United Kingdom’s…

Inspired by a post on Debunking Christianity, I’d like to chime in on the “Blasphemy Challenge” conceived of by an atheist group called the Rational Response Squad. This challenge encourages people to film themselves denying the existence of the Holy Spirit, the one unforgivable sin according to certain interpretations of the Bible, and post it…

The fourth of the Virtues is truthfulness, a quality that is in short supply for all that it has been extolled through the ages. The proliferation of new media of communication in our society, from cable news to the internet, has resulted in a wonderful diversity of previously overlooked viewpoints; but it has also created…

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. “Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.” —Lamentations 3:43-44 Across the sky flashed scenes from…