Advocatus Atheist

When in the past I have lobbied some harsh criticisms against religion, there have always been those whose immediate response is to say, "You better be careful, that's my faith you're talking about." Be careful... or what? I have always found that if your first response is to threaten someone for offering what may be a valid criticism or critique, no matter how controversial, with vague implications toward... whatever ... then this response only makes me want to knock you off your pedestal of self-righteous privilege even more.  Be careful I don't hurt your feelings? Grow up. Seriously. You have no idea how much this self conceited reactionary threatening annoys me. It panders toward an already established level of intolerance and it caters to fear for the sake of shutting up your opposition.  I mean... i t really, really, really, makes me want to take a sledge hammer to the foundations of everything you believe and rattle your goddamn belief...

Some of you are opposed to marriage equality for LGBTs. I have to seriously wonder why. It's no surprise though, that most of you are religious. Most of you are, predictably, right wing. Conservative.  I can make this guess because I have experience on both sides of the fence, so to speak. You see, I used to be a right wing, conservative, Evangelical Christian. Now I'm a liberal atheist. So I know exactly how you think about gay marriage. And I am here to explain exactly why opposing gay marriage isn't only morally reprehensible, but it's stupid. What's more, I'm going to convince you of this fact. So if you want to continue opposing gay marriage, well, you better do yourself a favor and STOP reading now! ~***~

On Facebook and elsewhere there has been this letter followed by the accompanying image, which has been making the rounds (again). Now I offer the reader the letter, in full, to read. I will follow it with my own critique. Here is the letter supposedly written by 95 year old war veteran Harold B. Estes: "Dear President Obama, My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert. I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country. One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man. So here goes. I am amazed, angry and deter...

"As a man Jesus died because he had not the sense to live. As a God he must have died voluntarily. In either case it is an idle, gratuitous, enervating indulgence in "the luxury of woe" to be always afflicting ourselves with the story of his doom. Great and good men have suffered and died since, and other lessons are needed than that may be learnt at the foot of the Cross." --G.W. Foote ( Seasons of Freethought , p. 279)

My new book anthology Reason Against Blasphemy is now available for purchase. I hope you all get a chance to track down a copy. Reason Against Blasphemy collects two important works on blasphemy by two of our greatest Freethinkers. This volume includes both G.W. Foote's memoir "Prisoner for Blasphemy" and Robert G. Ingersoll's defense at the "Trial of C.B. Reynolds" along with two related lectures by Ingersoll on "Blasphemy" and "individuality." This book is chock full of wisdom, insights into morality, philosophy, and human rights issues. I even wrote and extended Introduction about blasphemy in our current day world, of religious hypersensitivity, and why I feel that these two important works by Foote and Ingersoll are worth taking another look at.  But instead of boring you all with the details, here's the introduction I wrote for the book. *** INTRODUCTION to REASON AGAINST BLASPHEMY TRISTAN VICK Isaac...

"Philosophy is the study of ideas in the same way that theology is the study of God, but with one important difference. At least we know ideas exist." --Tristan Vick

"Goldsmith said there are two classes of people who dread ridicule--priests and fools. they cry out that it is no argument, but they know it is. It has been found the most potent form of argument. Euclid used it in his immortal Geometry; for what else is the reductio ad absurdum which he sometimes employs? Elijah used it against the priests of Baal. The Christian fathers found it effective against the Pagan superstitions, and in turn it was adopted as the best weapon of attack on them by Lucian and Celsus. Ridicule has been used b y Bruno, Erasmus, Luther, Rabelais, Swift, and Voltaire, by nearly all the great emancipators of the human mind." --G.W. Foote (From his essay "On Riddicule," Seasons of Freethought , pg. 269)

"Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy." --Robert G. Ingersoll

I'm sorry, I haven't written a blog in quite a while. I've been too busy publishing books and stuff.  But I thought I would write a not so meaningful post mocking a sophist Christian. Not because he's Christian, but because he's sophist. I hate sophists. Mike D. over at the A-Unicornist pointed out recently that the Christian theologian/apologist/whatever David Marshall recently wrote this: "Genuine faith in the Christian sense is that act of mind and will by which we discover all that we ever can come to know. Faith means trusting, and holding firmly to, what we have good reason to believe is true, in the face of trial. In that sense, no science, no history, not even the most platitudinous reasoning, would be possible without faith." At first I was like... But then I remembered that I am actually good at thinking. And so I re-read it, since that usually brings to light the parts that confuse me, and then I was like... ...