Author: Adam Lee

In the several years I have been writing for Ebon Musings, I have received a great quantity of reader feedback. I read it all and, with a very few exceptions, respond to it all, and I am pleased to report that the large majority of it has been thoughtful, sincere and polite, regardless of whether…

Welcome, welcome, friends and fellow progressives, to the 29th edition of the Carnival of the Liberals! My name is Ebonmuse, my weblog is Daylight Atheism, and I’ll be your guide on this tour of some of the best progressive political writing on the Internet. As the glow of our well-deserved victory in the American midterm…

I don’t want to spend all my time picking on the Newsweek/Washington Post blog On Faith, but a recent posting there contained such a devastatingly revealing omission that I couldn’t resist the chance to comment on it. The posting in question was written by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary and a…

As the final hours of 2006 draw to a close, it’s a fitting time to look back on the passing year and sum it all up. Without a doubt, 2006 has been an eventful year for nonbelievers: the downfall of Ted Haggard, the conviction of Kent Hovind, the spectacular defeat of the Republican party in…

Allow me to be absolutely clear about this: I am an atheist. That means I do not believe in any gods. I am not just an “aYahwehist”, lacking belief only in the god of the ancient Hebrews, or an “anAllahist”, lacking belief only in the god of the Muslims. The set of gods in which…

The word “holiday” comes directly from the phrase “holy day”. This designation, in turn, is based on the curious notion that a particular event happening on a certain date forever afterward gives that date some special sacredness or magical quality. The day of Halloween, for example, was once believed to be a time when barriers…

The holidays are traditionally a time for reconciliation, but the Anglican church isn’t taking the lesson of their own religion to heart. As reported in Beliefnet and elsewhere, it is now official: the 77-million-member church is in the process of breaking apart over the issue of how to treat gay congregants. Last week, two large,…

I write the Popular Delusions series to critically investigate widely believed pseudosciences and superstitions. And while the topic of my latest entry in this series may seem odd, I think it fits – for after all, are there not tens of millions around the globe who are taught to believe in Santa Claus or other…

Daylight Atheism was down for about two hours earlier today due to a coding error I made, so my apologies for that. Nothing was lost or damaged, and the site should now be restored to full functionality. The good news is that the reason I’ve been revising code is to handle the steadily increased traffic…

Throughout the Western world, the end-of-the-year holidays are a time for celebrating and making merry. Our most time-honored traditions encourage us to come together at this time in commemoration and gratitude for the blessings that life has to offer and the good fortune we have enjoyed during the year. But even as we are encouraged…