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That would perhaps be true of most Christians or Mormons since the founding of those religions, but what about the movers and the shakers? The apostles who claimed that Jesus had risen and appeared to them certainly knew it was a lie and were killed for their preaching. Joseph Smith certainly knew h...

Well, generally this argument comes up in talking about the Apostles of Jesus or Joseph Smith, saying that both defended the positions in question at great personal cost. If they were lying, as I contend, why would they maintain that lie even in the face of death? My suspicion is that there's some c...

Sorry if this has already been dealt with on this board, but I couldn't find it. My question relates to a theist argument I've gotten a few times, mostly from Evangelicals but also from a Mormon or two. Basically, I say 'Holy Book X' is false and 'Relevant Person Y' is a liar, they say that if it wa...

Christopher Hitchens puts it better than I have been. "Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it. the solemn elevation of infallible leaders who were a source of endless bounty...

By the way, Brainless. Where the fuck is that history book reference I asked you for? I'm getting sick of refuting Rand-McNally's "American History According to Brainless' Ass."

Name one president that wasn't openly christian. You can't, because there isn't a goddamn one. Do you not see why this is a problem for your theory that it was because of some religious revival that Reagan could make such openly religious bigoted statements and NOT because the country has had a lon...

Christ, one of the main fucking reasons we thought of ourselves as morally superior (we were, though for far different reasons) during pretty much the entire Cold War was our "inherent belief in almighty god". Again, late 40's, early 50's this is entirely true. Commies and pinkos were att...

Christ, one of the main fucking reasons we thought of ourselves as morally superior (we were, though for far different reasons) during pretty much the entire Cold War was our "inherent belief in almighty god". Again, late 40's, early 50's this is entirely true. Commies and pinkos were att...

You do realize I was refering to the Russians, right? Not all atheists in the world were/are American. I don't think the origional revolutionaries were caught up by a "fad" given the fact it meant they were kicked out of the country, and many of them died still convinced they were in the ...

No, it indicates a "strength" of religion that it can adapt like the Borg and never be killed except by direct confrontation. Meanwhile christian "morals" and "values" continued apace in society, undermining progress wherever it could. The Borg adapt because what they ...

OK, but I'm serious: Religion in America comes in waves. It's always there , like the ocean, but sometimes it's more there than others: one minute you're more or less free and clear, and the next it's actively swamping you. Exactly what I'm saying. That's a great way to put it. Hey, moron, I never ...

Certainly the McCarthy 50's were highly religious, and correspondingly highly anti-intellectual. Every week you saw one egghead after another dragged before congress to testify on another professor or to be accused of communism himself, and McCarthy whipped up the populace by uniting them against th...

One can cite the opinions of numerous bookwriters till you are blue in the face, it's not the same thing as proving a fact. I'm providing evidence for what I'm asserting, and giving a source. Forgive me if it clashes with the carefully crafted image in your head of this recent surge of secularism b...

Susan Jacoby's book "The Age of American Unreason" actually spends a great deal of time explaining the continual battle between rationalism, reason and intellectualism and irrationality, unreason, and anti-intellectualism, the latter three of which are invariably bound up in religion. Page...

ITT we discover that children have incomplete conceptions of right and wrong, morality and immorality, and that heinous acts perpetrated against children may actually be something they can recover from due to their intellectual plasticity. Outrage, justified, towering outrage, may come later, but a...

If God is all good, and hence possessing of not one iota of non-good, what then does it mean if God himself claims to be a "jealous God?" Well, not to divert from what may very well be a coming smackdown, but I think it would be relevant to note that at this point in history, religious cl...

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words. What I meant was that there have been several periods in American history when the power of religion was significantly lower than it is today. Notably the founding of America, when the greatest thinkers and politicians of the day were mostly deistic. Even among...

I agree that the distinctions in atheism are splitting hairs, but they are useful, especially if you tend to argue with Evangelicals. One of their common tricks is a false retreat, asking if you can be sure that there is no way that any "supreme being" or "higher intelligence" co...

I have a friend who I debate with most often about everything from morality and God to the fact that comedies aren't represented well in the Academy Awards (he liked Slumdog Millionaire, I say that Wedding Crashers was a much better movie). Unfortunately, a stumbling block I have with my friend is t...

Okay, damn. Check my original post. I was responding to the mother in the OP being bashed for being just as distraught as she had every right to be and mentioned the connection between vaccinations and autism only in passing, but that's what got picked up on because some people saw a conflicting poi...

I think I've expanded a little beyond the intent of my original response. All I've really read has been books and articles aimed at teachers designed to give them an overview of the disease while mostly giving information on how to deal with them in a classroom. What I intended to do was to defend a...

Vaccinations are the only consistent marker in any of these kids, it involves pumping a lot of watered down bad stuff into the veins of little children and it's got a bunch of random side effects that aren't understood. How do you figure that? None of them eat the same food? How about the vitamins ...

"my daughter was gone". Jesus christ, these people are sickening. I want to slap that woman right now--how can she say such a thing? How can she !? It makes me trembling, it really does, and for all I know by experience that parents treat their children like that all the time--how can she...

It isn't so much Texas specifically as it is small towns. The smaller the town is -particularly in the south, but in very liberal states like Washington as well- the more likely the population is to be all-white and the more primed they are for incidents like this. If you take into account the large...

In fact, the most hardcore fundies have developed an entire philosophical system to justify why the Bible must be taken a priori . It's called "presuppositionalism"; if you want to know more, look up Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van Til. They were its luminaries between (roughly) 1930 ...