The requirement of faith to avoid Hell is the least moral part of Christianity, or at least those forms of Christianity which preach Hell. For the purposes of this post, I am assuming a doctrine of Hell wherein those who either do not believe in Jesus or do not follow him are condemned to Hell; … More Hell Is Immorral
This post is largely inspired by my reading of A Faith Brief: A Lawyer’s Argument for Why Faith Prevails Over Doubt by Patrick M Garry, although I am unlikely to use quotes from the book for this. I was reading through it and adding commentary a bit over a year ago, but I stopped bothering with the … More Faith vs Doubt
A couple of weeks ago, I linked to the story of a woman who is choosing to die this Saturday. This week, I found (…read) a response to her by a Catholic seminarian. The man also has terminal brain cancer, and he has chosen to waste away under the disease until it takes his life. … More A Follow-Up to Brittany Maynard’s Story
Yesterday’s post was quite long, so today’s will be quite short. (Update on that post: he did reply one other time, but had no response to my disagreement, at least not yet – and he’s been active today.) For today, I’d like to point my readers to Greta Christina’s blog post from about a week … More Is It Ethical to Conceal Your Atheism?
I am writing this post because I quickly realized Twitter is not the proper medium for this conversation. This guy sent 19 tweets in a row. Twice. That’s too damn many to respond to properly, especially as the topic is such that I cannot respond to each tweet with a single tweet. Twitter isn’t a … More On Mythmaking and Twitter Arguments
There’s a webcomic almost entirely like any other I follow that deals with topics often encountered by skeptics. Yesterday’s strip was about the Pumpkin Spice Latte and toxins. He certainly gets nothing wrong, that I can see, but I have a tiny bit to add. Saying something is “toxic” is almost meaningless, because essentially everything … More The Woo of Toxicity (Plus a Bit about Cancer)
Tonight, I’m going out to discuss this article at a group I personally like better than last night’s (familiarity might be part of that; also, tonight’s group is smaller, which is better for deep discussion). As far as I can tell, the point of this article is to say that we should choose to act … More Evolution or Emergence: Freedom and Paradox on a Saturated Beach
I’m about to head out to a group to talk about whether there’s an afterlife. On the meetup page, someone posted two links about reincarnation. Here’s the one, and here’s the other. My goal, of course, is to bring skepticism to the group (there are a couple other skeptics as well, but it was started … More Reincarnation and the Afterlife
Just a short, fun, true story today: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/fashion/how-apples-siri-became-one-autistic-boys-bff.html
This isn’t about depression, but I think the analogy is obvious. Check it out. I haven’t been handling my spoons well lately. We’ll see how long that can last – I wish I could motivate myself better to work on this blog.
The Complete History of the Universe: A Personal Journey 