Advocatus Atheist

"What is Faith? Faith, said Paul, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This is a faith that sensible men avoid. The man of reason may have faith, but it will be a faith according to knowledge, and not a faith that dispenses with knowledge. ... Religious faith, however, is something very different. It is not belief based on evidence, but the evidence and the belief in one. The result is that persons who are full of faith always regard a demand for evidence as at once a heresy and an insult. Their faith seems to them, in the language of Paul, the very substance of their hopes; and they often talk of the existence of God and the divinity of Christ as being no less certain than their own existence." --G.W. Foote

"The word 'God' means anything or nothing. Give your God attributes, and see if they are consistent with Evolution. That is the only way to decide whether there is any 'logical antagonism' between Evolution and Theism. The trouble begins when you are 'logical' enough to deal in definitions; and the only definition of God that will stand the test of Evolution is 'a sort of a something.'" -- G.W. Foote

"We tell the men of God, of every denomination, that they are Devil Dodgers, and when they cease to be that their occupation is going. Old Nick, in some form or other, is the basis of every kind of Christianity. Indeed, the dread of evil, the terror of calamity, is at the bottom of all religion; while the science which gives us foresight and power, and enables us to protect ourselves and promote our comfort, is religion’s deadliest enemy. Science wars against evil practically; religion wars against it theoretically. Science sees the material causes that are at work, and counteracts them; religion is too lazy and conceited to study the causes, it takes the evil in a lump, personifies it, and christens it “the Devil.” Thus it keeps men off the real path of deliverance, and teaches them to fear the Bogie-Man, who is simply a phantom of superstition, and always vanishes at the first forward step of courage."  -- G.W. Foote

"Christ has in no wise redeemed the world. He was no god of power, but a weak fallible man like ourselves; and his cry of despair on the cross might now be repeated with tenfold force. The older myth of Prometheus is truer and more inspiring than the myth of Christ. If there be gods, they have never yielded man aught of their grace. All his possessions have been cunningly, patiently, and valorously extorted from the powers that be, even as Prometheus filched the fire from heaven. In that realm of mythology, whereto all religions will eventually be consigned, Jesus will dwindle beneath Prometheus. One is feminine, and typifies resigned submission to a supernatural will; the other is masculine, and typifies that insurgent audacity of heart and head, which has wrested a kingdom of science from the vast empire of nescience, and strewed the world with the wrecks of theological power." --G.W. Foote

I am having a conversation with a person who goes by the name Rockhound570 theist about ignosticism and the implications of it as it relates to God .  He brought up a point that many people, in my experience, often seem to be confused about. It seems there is an ongoing debate in theology as to whether or not we can fully comprehend God, should such a being exist. Or, as some contend, God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot grasp him. Before moving on, let's not forget that the first question relating to ignosticism asks, "What do you mean by God?" This is a fair question, and a good starting place I might add, since human experience tells us that humans have invented a wide range of religious customs and beliefs, have erected competing religious ideologies, and have subscribe belief to a seemingly endless supply of supernatural deities and gods.  So, as you can see, "What do you mean by God?" is a very good question to ask bef...

Ever since Randal Rauser kicked me off his blog three years ago, I have rarely gone back. This year my book The Swedish Fish, Deflating the Scuba Diver and Working the Rabbit’s Foot , a response to Rauser’s The Swedish Atheist, The Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails was released. Soon after, I was directed to a post on his website in which a reader asked if he’d respond to my critique of his book. Needless to say Randal acted as I have come to expect from him, childish, overly defensive and not very professional. He went on to disparage me by slinging not one, not two, not three, not even four, but FIVE ad hominems against my character for the initial comments that got me banned three years ago. Even so, I couldn’t help but venture over to Randal’s blog again when an interesting April 9, 2015 blog post came up in my Disqus news feed simply titled “Mocking Atheism.” I read Randal’s comments, in which he basically sets out to defend atheis...

Here are a few excerpts from my book The Swedish Fish: Deflating the Scuba Diver and Working the Rabbit's Foot on whether or not the God of classical theism is a Perfect being or not. “If God was perfect, and benevolent, then he’d answer all of those people’s prayers, he’d heal the sick, and he’d work a few miracles to avoid all the needless suffering and a perfect being who was all loving couldn't, by his own nature, permit suffering (this objection is known as the Problem of Evil).” – The Swedish Fish (p. 200) “Perfection literally amounts to that which has no flaws. In the previous chapter I raised the question of whether or not a perfect being would ever get lonely or seek adoration and exaltation. The reason for raising these concerns is that one who seeks to be exalted above all things would be considered vain, which is a character flaw I find, and so such a person could not be considered entirely perfect.  Similarly, a person who suffers bouts of loneline...

In literary criticism there is an entire field of study devoted to archetypal literary criticism . This branch of study focuses on the parallels between the various myths, pointing out such things as common mythemes and things like the hero archetype which are present in many of the ancient stories of myth and religion. Usually, when introducing people to this subject matter for the first time, I like to mention the Raglan scale as a good starting place when discussing the subject of comparative myth and legend and historical figures. The Raglan scale lists 22 basic traits that most mythical and legendary figures typically share. If a figure from antiquity shares many of the traits with other well known myths, then they are more likely to be legendary in nature. Likewise, if they share relatively few of the traits then they are probably more or less historical. The Raglan scale follows as such: 1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin; 2. His father is a king, ...

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of civil rights legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (gender), or national origin (ethnicity). It is based on the guiding principles of equality and opportunity with which America was founded upon. A Democracy, after all, requires the protection of people’s basic rights, under which they are given fair and equal opportunity, or as Thomas Jefferson phrased it — the pursuit of happyness .  These rights needed to be protected to ensure the rights of the individual as well as society as a whole are safeguarded against oppression, to offset inequity, and to prevent tyrants and dictators from abusing these rights and threatening the very foundations upon which the Democracy stands. Here’s the thing though, sexual orientation wasn’t included because, frankly, in 1964 the idea of alternative sexual orientations making up the identity of the individual wasn’t well developed in the moral unders...