Who are you, and what’s your history re: religion and stuff? Raised Lutheran (ELCA) in Wichita, Kansas. Became an atheist in 1997/1998 (holy crap, 20+ years ago) Got my BA in religious studies in 2000 (Texas Christian University). MA in religion and culture (University of Manchester, UK) in 2002, and PhD in cognitive science of … Read more
Dear Robin, Our only child is getting married soon. My husband and I love his fiancé and are fully supportive of this arrangement– last year, my husband and I committed to paying for the wedding. Here’s the problem: Turns out that both my son and his fiancé have different beliefs about religion than we do. … Read more
So, two things to mention here. First, hey look! New blog design. I’ve been wanting to change it for quite some time to something more clean and minimalist, and am pretty happy with how things are now. Though I do talk about personal issues from time to time, this isn’t Livejournal and I wanted to … Read more
Dee in conversation with her mother I’m in the market for new comics– but let’s note that to me, all comics are basically new. I have read and loved Maus 1 and 2 by Art Spiegelman and Alan Moore’s Top 10 series, but that’s pretty much it. In thinking about what to start reading I came … Read more
Okay, so we’ve pretty well covered how not to talk to and about people you disagree with, right? It can be summed up pretty easily by asking yourself the following question: Does this thing I’m writing/saying/drawing/etc. actually address the substance of what the person I’m talking about is saying/writing/drawing/etc.? Or does it attack irrelevancies? Because … Read more
Yesterday Ophelia Benson and Richard Dawkins both published, on their respective blogs, a brief joint statement on how atheists should disagree. It’s really unfortunate that such a thing should be necessary, but encouraging that it happened. The statement condemns bullying and harassment generally, and then goes on to cite specific examples of such: In other … Read more
This meme spotted on Facebook. It’s far from the first one I’ve seen…hence this post. Hat tip to Ed Brayton for pointing it out in annoyance. I have beliefs. Some of them are almost certainly false, but I still have them. I do the best I can to hold onto the true ones* and let … Read more
Source So Barney Frank came out last night– again. This time as a “pot-smoking atheist” on Real Time With Bill Maher, when Maher gave himself that label and Frank responded by jokingly asking Maher which one he meant: Bill Maher: … you were in a fairly safe district. You were not one of those Congresspeople … Read more
Richard Dawkins in a still from The Root of All Evil? No, you don’t have to have read the Qur’an to have opinions about Islam.Legitimate opinions.Even scientific opinions.There, I said it. Look, I understand that there’s this common assumption that a religion can be summed up in its text. That all believers in a religion believe that … Read more
This post previously published as an article in the journal Method & Theory in the Study of Religion in 2008. What is the best way for a well-known, unabashedly atheistic philosopher to have a discussion with the American general public about the value and nature of religion? It is not an easy question to answer. … Read more