A couple of weeks ago, there was a story in the news about a Texas high school track team that was disqualified from the state meet because one of their athletes pointed toward heaven after doing particularly well in his qualifying run. Apparently, it broke their rule against "excessive celebration." Despite being an atheist, I… Continue reading Religious Freedom in a Secular Society
Category: Religion
God Made Us This Way — It’s Only Reasonable He’d Be Angry About It
The blog Thomisic Bent has been doing a series lately on why it was perfectly okay for God to command the Israelites to slaughter entire ethnic groups in the Old Testament, even down to the women and children. I've felt obliged to comment on all of them, because toward the end of my time as… Continue reading God Made Us This Way — It’s Only Reasonable He’d Be Angry About It
Atheists Need to Fact-Check Better (Reblog)
Ran across this post over at The Musings of Thomas Verenna, and I think he makes a great point. He states that the image below is something that's going around Facebook right now, and what it claims is simply incorrect. If you'd like to see all the reasons why he finds fault with this image,… Continue reading Atheists Need to Fact-Check Better (Reblog)
The Ultimate Blasphemy
There's a blog I read from time to time called Thomistic Bent. The latest post is a short video that tries to give a good reason for why the Bible says God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide against the Canaanites. The reasoning of this explanation is almost as perverse as the stories themselves. As… Continue reading The Ultimate Blasphemy
The Evidence for Evolution Part 2
You can find the first post in this series here. Time Before we can really dig in (if you'll forgive the pun) to what the fossils tell us, we need to establish a timeline. Many (most?) detractors of evolution maintain that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, because if you take the Bible… Continue reading The Evidence for Evolution Part 2
3 Questions for Atheists — 3rd Question
The first post in this series is here. Here's the 3rd of unkleE's questions: 3. You live your life with some sense of purpose. But Richard Dawkins assures us that that purpose is illusory and the universe shows us just blind pitiless indifference, Professor William Provine, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, confidently asserts that… Continue reading 3 Questions for Atheists — 3rd Question
3 Questions for Atheists — 2nd Question
If you haven't read the first post, you can find it here. Otherwise, I'll assume we're all on the same page. Here's question 2: 2. You behave ethically. I suggest that is because you were brought up christian. Most atheists choose to behave reasonably ethically, but why? Are some things really right and wrong, if… Continue reading 3 Questions for Atheists — 2nd Question
3 Questions for Atheists — 1st Question
A week or two ago, friend and fellow blogger unkleE posed some questions to atheists, and instead of getting into them in that thread, I decided to address them here. 1. Do humans have choice to change the course of events? If so, how does it work in a physicalist universe? If not, who is… Continue reading 3 Questions for Atheists — 1st Question
If You Go to Heaven, Do You Lose Free Will?
If you guys have time, I'd like for you to check out the discussion a few of us have been having over at the Thomistic Bent blog on the post "Can We Be Free in Heaven and yet Not Sin?" Humblesmith wrote this post to answer the following question: If evil and sin are the… Continue reading If You Go to Heaven, Do You Lose Free Will?
The Evidence for Evolution Part 1
When I was growing up, I never for a minute considered that evolution might be true. I already "knew" that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, so evolution was simply error. And in my high school biology classes, our teacher made it clear that she had to teach us about evolution by law,… Continue reading The Evidence for Evolution Part 1
Finding Truth 