The following is a guest post by long time OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is an introduction to a new regularly scheduled and on going series of posts that I will feature every Monday. Come back tomorrow to check out the first installment!

Monday School is my attempt to provide a bit of context and balance to Christian Sunday School. The “truths” promoted by those Sunday Schools seem to be deeply embedded in the minds and lives of many people I know and encounter. Because those “truths” seem to have often been drilled into people at a very young and impressionable age, it takes a lot of time and effort to effectively (and not merely logically) counter them. How easy it is to write any lie into wet cement; how difficult it is to change those lies years after the concrete has set.

If my Monday School lessons seem overly detailed and repetitious, it’s because they are by necessity. A flood of well-documented details along with repetition of the basic point that the Bible is fatally flawed is what’s required to reach minds that are in effect encased by hardened cement. If there’s an easier way to reach those minds, please let me know what it is.

Not a Christian yourself? Never been to Sunday School? I think you’re probably still emotionally influenced by Christians and these Sunday School “truths” more than you might realize. Monday School for you - as for me - is meant to serve as a weekly reminder that fact and reason really are on our side. It is meant to provide you with the facts and arguments you need to counter Christians you meet, no matter what part of the Bible they choose as their starting point. And it is meant to serve as an emotional support and “breakwater” that might - over time, and in some small way - help you resist being overwhelmed and swept out to sea by the waves of fear and hostility that Christians, politicians, commentators, family members, friends, and others often seem to direct our way.

I also like to think of Monday School as an example of how to calmly and rationally analyze a subject - any subject. Although I concentrate on the Bible in my Monday School lessons, the techniques I’m using may be easily and successfully used on any other book or writing by almost anyone.

If my Monday School entries don’t work for you on any of these levels, you’re probably better off spending your time reading something else…

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

If Cockroaches were to start a religion like Christianity, I imagine that their services would look something like this:

“Remember my brethren…he willingly died under the boot for your sins. Now, we will drink this blood which symbolizes the wine he drunk at the last supper…”

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The Atheist Blogger wrote a piece today in which he found several flaws with FreeThoughtPedia’s entry on Atheism. I had never heard of FreeThoughtPedia before reading his post, so I decided to check them out. According to their about page, this is what FreeThoughtPedia is:

FreeThoughtPedia is a central repository of philosophical, scientific, scriptural, and historical arguments and commentary on the Freethought movement. Our goal is to provide a resource for those who choose to attribute greater significance to what’s rational and logical, as opposed to irrational, superstitious, mythological and unproven.

On the surface there is nothing wrong with this. However, at the same time, FreeThoughtPedia in its very name is advertising itself as an “encyclopedia” of sorts. In my view, an encyclopedia is a neutral repository of knowledge. That is a goal that Wikipedia strives to maintain. Many, especially in the atheist community, have criticized what is essentially the opposite of FreeThoughtPedia - Conservapedia - for presenting extremely biased or one-sided editorials and providing poor or misguided explanations. Especially their entry on Atheism. As the Atheist Blogger revealed, FreeThoughtPedia may be in danger of heading in that direction as well.

Personally, I think that the idea of a point of view encyclopedia is just a bad idea - whether it is maintained by believers or non-believers. Encyclopedias need to stick to the facts and not editorialize. In principle this could be accomplished by either Conservapedia or FreeThoughtPedia - and I hope it does. But for now, I don’t think I will be using either one.

What do you think? Is a FreeThought Encyclopedia a good idea? Would you rely on it?

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Some Christians attempt to defend their ‘faith’ by claiming that it is a ‘gift’ from God that, supposedly, one should be thankful for! I hear this claim every so often and I am always baffled by it. This is just the latest instance that I received:

“Faith is first and foremost a free and loving gift from God; without the gift there can be no faith.”

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Faith, simply put, is believing a proposition without sufficient evidence. Atheists have been arguing all along that if God exists, He hasn’t provided mankind with any convincing evidence of His existence. Apparently some Christians, like the one quoted above, seem to agree but insist that this is God’s gift to us! So…God’s gift to us is the ability to believe in Him without convincing evidence? Some gift! Not only that, but believing in propositions without convincing evidence is silly at best and dangerous at worse.

Would we accept such an explanation from anybody else? Imagine that the President wanted to invade the country of Iraq (it’s a stretch, I know) because he believed that they were building weapons of mass destruction. Immediately, of course, the people of his country demand evidence. The President however, explains it this way:

‘You must have faith in me, my fellow citizens. Faith is first and foremost a free and loving gift from your elected leader.’

Hardly! Faith is not a gift. It is an excuse for not being capable of adequately convincing others that your belief is true.

If God wants to give a gift to us, then here’s a novel idea. How about God gives us the free and much more loving gift of evidence! Without that gift there can be no and should be no belief.

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Take another look at the famous “turn the other cheek” passage from Luke’s Gospel:

Luke 6:27-36

‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

So let me get this straight…love your enemies, expect nothing in return, and you can expect a great reward later. In other words, you will be rewarded slavishly for your selflessness. Would Orwell have classified this as DoubleThink?

I can imagine Jesus’ followers discussing this among themselves:

“Hey, Jesus said that we will be rewarded if we do not seek any reward.”

“But doesn’t that mean by not seeking a reward we really are seeking a reward”

“Oh, crap. So how does this work again?”

So tell me. Why again do some people claim that Jesus was a “great moral teacher?”

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I have worked feverishly over the past several days on a complete re-design of the AnAtheist.Net website. I essentially threw just about everything from the old site out and created a fresh theme. I hope that you like the new look. There may still be some kinks to iron out over the next few days (or weeks), so we’ll see what happens.

The most significant layout change is the addition of a new home page format. The home page is more compact and can contain additional items besides just the list of blog posts. It features an excerpt from the latest post and a small list of the previous five. The “blog list” has thus been moved off of the front page and into the “Blog” page, which is accessible from the menubar. The menubar also features a sub-menu of blog categories. Clicking on one of these categories will show a list of all blog posts filed under that category.

Finally, I have also added the capability to leave comment karma. You can now vote individual comments up or down with the thumbs up and thumbs down icons. Maybe this will encourage people to leave more comments - or maybe not. Perhaps in the future I will add the ability to sort by karma rating so that high ranking comments are moved towards the top - unless nobody uses it! Or maybe by that time the Wordpress plugin for Intense Debate will finally be available.

I think that about says it all. Leave any feedback in the comments section!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Policy Exchange report found in a 2007 study of BRITISH MUSLIMS:

36% of 16-24 year old British Muslims “believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death, compared to 19% of 55+ year olds.”

Believing that one should be punished by death for changing religions is troubling enough, but the fact is this sort of appalling thing actually happens:

Saudi man kills daughter for converting to Christianity

Riyadh: A Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently killed his daughter for converting to Christianity.

According to sources close to the victim, the religious police member had cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion

(Read More…)

Thanks to Samuel Skinner for alerting me to this story in a comment.

If anyone still harbors any doubt about whether or not religion should be criticized, this news story alone should be sufficient.

To learn more about how apostasy fits into Islam, check out this excellent resource.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The following is a guest post by Richard Collins and is being reproduced from Helium.com. Richard’s blog, The End of Hereditary Religion, contains information and resources for persons dedicated to saving children from childhood religious indoctrination. He also maintains a Facebook group by the same name, as well as Apostate Alley, a directory of resources for people who have left their religion and need some support.

Abrahamic religion refers to the three prevalent monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that claim prophet Abraham as a part of their sacred history. There are approximately 3.8 billion people in the world that belong to an Abrahamic religion. (Source is the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia.)

Throughout history all three religions have used their holy texts to systematically enforce strong sanctions against their opposition. Whether called non-believers, free thinkers, atheists, or agnostics, the punishments range all the way from tribal shunning to death by stoning. If you doubt this, pick up any King James Bible, the Hebrew Bible or the Koran and read carefully. You will find an appalling number of hateful, intolerant, barbaric instructions like these from the bible:

“Whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.-2 Chronicles 15:13

Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD.- 2 Chronicles 19

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known … thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwords the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.-Deuteronomy 13:6-10″

An aside: does this mean that after you brutally murder your disloyal friend or relative the rest of your frowning band comes out to pelt the dead body with stones? Need we wonder long that atheists had little stomach for openly avowing their non-belief?

But what about Muslims, whose public relations machine widely trumpets them as “peaceful people?” Before you sign up to be a Muslim you better be sure that is what you want, because technically the Koran prescribes a barrage of stones should you subsequently convert to another religion. Apparently, Muslims have an unending supply of rocks they are eager to use. Doesn’t any religious person ask themselves why these barbarous iron age prohibitions and cruel punishments still grace the pages of their holy books?

In 2006 a vindictive Shariah court in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan imposed a death sentence on 41-year-old Abdul Rahman for converting to Christianity, 16 years earlier. Poor hapless Abdul was only saved

because of a worldwide outcry against the court’s backwardness. The eventual solution to this international crisis was to spirit Abdul out of the country by plane. And how did the court learn about Abdul? His loyal god-besotted family ratted him out, in accordance with the instructions in the Koran. Although Abdul was given the opportunity to return to Islam and all would be forgiven, he refused. He may be unwise, but Abdul Rahman has integrity to spare.

Looking at history dispassionately, god-sanctioned bigotry and intolerance has accounted for untold hardship, misery and death over the centuries. In modern times, shunning may not sound like a severe punishment, but because humans are social animals and throughout history have organized themselves in tribal fashion, being shunned by your tribe can wreak emotional devastation. Believers, take this stuff seriously notwithstanding that the average person who attends smiling Joel Osteen’s Lakewood megachurch probably would stop short of stoning their family members. One hopes.

In Europe where the enlightenment has been more strongly embraced, atheism is now cheerfully accepted. Historians and those who study such matters believe Europeans turned away from religion in droves because of their long history of religious wars that created so much misery. People finally wised up. Why kill each other and destroy property over improbable, unproven, and might we suggest - improvable beliefs? Thankfully, in Northern Ireland, the last vestige of a hateful, religiously sanctioned war has finally sputtered to a close.

On this side of the Atlantic our awakening has only recently come about. In large part, we can thank the brilliant writing of atheists Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, A. C. Grayling and others who have recently produced seminal books, broadly and forcefully attacking organized religion. Their books have become a publishing phenomenon that has left apologists gasping and sputtering for replies. So far, the best they can come up with is to accuse Pol Pot and Stalin of atheism, so there! Sometimes the more rabid among them include Hitler, but there is reasonable doubt about his exact standing as a Christian.

In addition, the strident, backward, fundamental Christians, who insist the entire country must follow their mean spirited, narrow way of thinking, are now in disarray. The cycle of dying religious fervor on this side of the Atlantic is finally coinciding with the progress of our enlightened European neighbors.

The horrors of September 11, 2001 signaled the beginning of the end of the spell cast by religion; and not a moment too soon. Religion is indubitably the enemy of civilization when an atomic bomb can be fit into a briefcase or airplanes can be blown from the sky with liquid ingredients commonly available at your local Wal-mart and hardware store. Likewise, fertilizer and diesel fuel are easily acquired in this age of do-it-yourself bomb factories. Truck rental businesses scrutinize customers far more carefully these days you may be sure.

So what about fanatics? Ultimately, all religions are structured in a way that almost invites fanaticism because there are no effective counter controls. If your Abrahamic religion veers off into fanaticism, you cannot protest. It says right in the book you will be cast out or worse. Enough, is enough. Humanity must outgrow childish fantasies if we are to progress in the twenty-first century.

Atheism versus religion is no longer simply an academic exercise in philosophy. Atheism may offer our only sane hope for survival.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

As someone who engages in religious debate online frequently, this question seems obvious or even unnecessary. However, one thing that I am surprised to have discovered is that there are many non-believers, atheists, and agnostics out there who are not convinced that we should be debating or criticizing religious beliefs.

Some of these people are of the opinion that we should just tolerate the fact that different people have different beliefs. What’s the point in criticizing someone’s religion if he or she wants to believe it? Maybe if offers a modicum of comfort in that persons life? Others are of the opinion that debating religion or challenging religious claims is simply a waste of time. No argument will ever change the mind of a person who has faith in what cannot be proven anyway. This point of view is summed up nicely by the following comments that I came across online recently:

Who in their right mind has time to waste ‘arguing’ with a deluded person?

You will NEVER get anywhere with logical arguments. The whole point of believing is to mentally and emotionally FORCE yourself to ignore glaring, unexplainable and obvious contradictions because doing so is considered unwavering FAITH and VIRTUE.

Only the believer can free themselves at the right time with the correct input from the world.

Curiously, this person states that a religious believer can move away from his or her religion only with the correct input from the world. Why can’t discussions with non-believers or reading the arguments of non-believers be a significant part of this “input from the world?” Would this same person argue that anti-smoking campaigns are a waste of time because only the smoker can free him or herself at the right time? I hardly think so.

The more atheists and other non-believers are willing to publicly challenge religious claims the more pressure we can put on believers to confront what they believe. Imagine walking into a social event and striking up a conversation with a stranger by explaining how you believe that the resurrected spirit of Elvis was responsible for helping you come out unscathed from a recent car crash. No doubt, the conversation would quickly become uncomfortable and you would soon feel slightly embarrassed by bringing it up in the first place. That’s because a belief in the intervening powers of a resurrected spirit of Elvis is absurd bordering on insane. However, if instead you mentioned how you believe that Jesus saved you from injury, at worst others would simply shrug this off as your religious belief.

Why aren’t some non-believers willing to treat a belief about the resurrected spirit of Elvis on the same level as a belief in the resurrected spirit of Jesus in a conversation? Fear of offense? Convinced that it truly is a hopeless endeavor? Or maybe you are already a conversational atheist - or in other words, a non-believer that seeks to engage religious people in conversations, discussions, and debate.

I would like to introduce to you, which ever the above you are, to a new website that is seeking to promote conversational atheism: http://www.conversationalatheist.com/

As of now, there is an essay posted defending the author’s decision to engage in religious debate. He gives three main reasons:

1. If people are loudly proclaiming their false beliefs, they should not be encouraged or go unchallenged.
2. (Religion) wastes the time, money, and resources of well-meaning people.
3. Religion teaches inappropriate responses to real world problems.

He then responds to four challenges,  a couple of which I outlined above:

1. “Religious people don’t think that they’re lying, they think they’re telling the truth!”
2. “We should respect their beliefs.”
3. “You won’t change anyone’s mind.”
4. “Let believers have their false beliefs, it only harms them…”

Read the essay, “Why do I argue, debate, discuss, and converse about religion?” for more details.

Additionally, the author is working on a book - about which I am very excited - that outlines various strategies for engaging in religious debate. If you would like to receive e-mail alerts concerning the status of this project, you can sign up to the Conversational Atheist mailing list:

Conversational Atheist

E-mail:

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Near the end of June I posted a progress report for Rocky Twyman and his “Pray at the Pump” movement. If you recall, Twyman and a small group of supporters are traveling around the country and praying at gas stations for God to help lower gas prices. When I posted my report card in June, the U.S. national average gas price had actually gone up 21.6% since the Pray at the Pumpers began praying this past April. Nevertheless, lo and behold, since the middle of July gas prices have finally started coming back down - as prices that have risen dramatically usually do.

Well, wouldn’t you know it - Rocky Twyman and company are now trying to take credit for this downtrend. From the BBC:

Rocky Twyman, 59, a veteran community campaigner, started Pray At The Pump meetings at petrol stations in April. Since then, the average price of what the US calls gasoline has fallen from more than $4 a gallon to $3.80.

That is not entirely accurate. As I pointed out, the average price of gasoline has not fallen “since” April. It actually soared between April and the middle of July $3.33 a gallon to $4.12 a gallon - 23.72% - before heading back down to around $3.80 where it now stands as of this writing. Keep in mind that $3.80 is still well above the national average of $3.33 as it was in April (14.11%), when the movement began.

To summarize:

(1) The national average gas price did not start coming down until three months after the Pray at the Pump  movement began - a long time for a deity to react - but not before soaring up 23.72% as a part of a ferocious climb.

(2) The Pray at the Pumpers have still not acheived what they set out to do in April - lower gas prices - as the average price of gas is still 14.11% higher than it was when they began!

That certainly seems like a failure to me. But let’s go back to this recent downtrend. Anyone who closely follows economic news understands what market forces have contributed to this decline. But not Twyman. According to the BBC:

Mr Twyman is sceptical that market forces might be responsible for the lower prices. But he and his prayer warriors have changed their motoring habits.

He might be skeptical but he is clearly not putting all of his eggs in the faith basket:

“We believe not just in prayer - because we believe that faith without works is dead. So we’ve encouraged people to car-pool more and organise their days more, because it’s a combination of faith with these other factors.”

Or it might just be these other factors, as the BBC also reported earlier. In particular, as the price of oil is measured in dollars, a stronger dollar relative to other currencies means lower prices. But maybe they were praying for that, too.

Here’s the deal, though. While there clearly doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the price of gasoline and the actions of the prayer groups, even if there was, correlation does not equal causation. In science, claims are tested by controlling for other factors.  And such a test is deemed successful if the results are consistently repeatable. Twyman and company are, at best, indulging in a deluded form of wishful thinking.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...