This was something that I was considering making a video on for my YouTube channel and then, I decided it would be much better doing it here. This was published on the website for the Houston Baptist University and frankly, it’s just a mess of bald rationalizations for why God is an explanation that isn’t just absurd.
But we like that kind of thing, so let’s go take a look. Continue reading Excuses for God
This comes up a lot and I went and answered a question posed over on the MythVision YouTube channel today that asked if I believed that Jesus was real.
I don’t know. Define your terms first! Continue reading Was Jesus a Myth?
I don’t know why we have to keep having these conversations but apparently we do. A post popped up over on Reddit in which the OP wanted to know the views of atheist moral realists and I pointed out that they’d have a really hard time coming up with any of those because the overwhelming majority were moral anti-realists.
That’s when all of the doo-doo hit the fan. Continue reading Lots of Atheists are Clueless Too!
I recently had someone mention an essay, written by Peter van Inwagen, which purports to be an interesting, perhaps even persuasive look at reasons to be a Christian. So, why not, says I? Let’s go take a look at it and see if it stands up to critical scrutiny.
Spoiler alert for the curious: it doesn’t. Continue reading Examining “QUAM DILECTA”
A while back now, I did a video over on YouTube where I took a look at the Cosmic Skeptic, Alex O’Connor and pointed out that, at least when it came to specific charity claims that he was making, he was going entirely off the rational reservation.
Since then, I’ve looked at a couple of his videos here and there and then, I saw this video from the Non-Alchemist addressing it and I thought I needed to respond. Instead of heading to YouTube though, I really wanted to take an in-depth look, so here we go. Links to videos concerned will be below the fold. Continue reading That’s Not Going to Convince Anyone!
How many times have you run into this one? You’ll be talking to a theist and they will tell you exactly what you think. They don’t ask, they tell. They explain that they know you better than you know yourself. Why? Because they can’t face a world where everyone isn’t fundamentally exactly the same as they are.
So let’s talk about it. Continue reading Whatever Would We Do?
Now Drew over at Genetically Modified Skeptic put up a video about how he’s managed to cope with the loss of his religion over the period of five years since he regained some semblance of sanity and while I think some of the points he made are good, I had a lot of things that I wanted to comment on and some of the things that I’ve learned in the 35+ years since I walked away from Christianity. So here I go and I hope that it can help people who are struggling with the change. Continue reading Deconstructing Religion
This comes up a lot and I’m pretty open about the fact that I don’t really trust the religious very much, at least when it comes to their religious beliefs. I take on apologists constantly over on my YouTube channel and it becomes painfully clear that what they’re saying, it comes from their faith, not from their examination of the objective facts.
But is it worse than that? Let’s look at a single case. Continue reading Why It’s Hard to Trust an Apologist
This is what makes being a secular conservative so difficult sometimes because the vast majority of people that you might have one thing in common with, you invariably strongly disagree with them on their underlying principles.
Take Charlie Kirk, for example. In general terms, I agree with a lot of the things he says. It’s just when he opens his mouth about religion that I absolutely cringe. So let’s explore one of his videos and see exactly where the problems lie. Continue reading Where Charlie Kirk goes Wrong
This is something that I’ve thought for a while but could only really put into coherent words recently. Someone pointed out that it’s very similar to my 30 Second Debate Tactic so it’s been floating around out there for a very long time but hey, I’m going to try to articulate it here.
Theists, it doesn’t matter what your book says until you establish a baseline for your claims! Let’s talk about it. Continue reading Putting the Cart in Front of the God