Advocatus Atheist

It's simple math folks. If *hell is real, then the God who created it is undeniably evil. No ifs ands or buts about it. There are currently 6.9 billion humans living on this planet. Of this the largest religious majority consists of nearly two billion Christians (1.9 billion to be exact). Now whether or not all 1.9 billion Christians prescribe to Orthodox Christian thought and (coincidentally enough) every single one of them just happen to be genuine believers is a different matter. Most Christians will be the first to tell you other Christians are false, fake, wannabe heretics. But assuming there are actually that many genuine Christians (even as we know this is impossible based on diversity of Christian belief alone), but giving the statistic the benefit of the doubt, this means that 71% of the world's population do not believe in Christianity, Jesus, or the Christian concept of God. According to Christian doctrine (e.g., the Bible) this means 71% of the world's pop...

A great video about how Christianity requires submission, obedience, subjection, and honor giving to Government(s). Historically speaking, Christian doctrine, in effect, empowered Nazi Germany by allowing Christian Germany to go along with the Nazi agenda. Yes, Christianity supplied not only the wellspring of centuries of antisemitic propaganda to fuel Nazi antisemitism but also was the backdrop which allowed for such prejudices to go unchecked by deliberately instructing Christian Germans to submit, obey, subject themselves to, and honor Hitler's Nazi Germany!

Epistemology : [mass noun] (Philosophy) the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. As a Matter of Fact: The Nature of Truth Claims Debate usually consists of two parts. First there is the Dialectic , or the argument in which the debater tries to vindicate (or validate) their claims, and then there is Rhetoric , or the part of the debate in which the debater attempts to compel you to agree with them. The goal is to get others to agree with you that your truth-claim is also a fact-claim. This is true of the religious debate as well. “Language, including religious language, is partly about propositions, fact-claims, or what we might call “truth-talk”,” affirms the anthropologist David Eller (Eller 2007, p.57). When it comes to truth claims, or “truth-talk” (i.e., claims which are talked about as being true) the burden of proof always falls on the person making the claim. If for example ...

I recently sat down (at my computer) and had a great online exchange with Mike Doolittle who runs the amazing blog called The A-Unicornist . Mike is one of the most intelligent and clear thinking writers you'll read online, so I was truly honored that he took the time out of his schedule of work, rock, and blogging to have an engaging discussion with me. As we geeked out over things cosmological I couldn't help but feel a little envious of his knack for clarity and easy to understand explanations--whereas I feel I'm always struggling to state things precisely Mike is a natural. Check out his blog if you get a chance and enjoy the discussion! FYI: Just a couple free-thinking laymen shooting the breeze about things they are passionate about. We're by no means experts or professionals here (just so you know), but we both love science, especially the area known as cosmology--the study of the cosmos and our origins. So without further delay, onto the interview. 1.    ...

Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Simon Blackburn and Lawrence Krauss discuss what is moral and whether science can tells us. (Load time may vary depending on Internet speed. It takes about 30 secs every time I load the page. It's worth the small inconvenience though.)

The Atheist Missionary (TAM) runs a spiffy blog and we recently interviewed each other as a means to start an atheist dialog among fellow atheists. Sometimes it's nice to have an intelligent conversation now and again instead of merely having to repeat ( ad infinitum ) to some reality denier that Evolution is a "honest to God" real scientific theory. So we discussed things from the atheist perspective about religion and what we'd like to see more of from the atheist movement. If you're interested my interview it is already up at his web site in a post titled: Advocatus Atheist Q & A. You may want to check it out first as it is the first part of the conversation.  My Questions Following your lead, I guess I will start by asking you a couple of the questions you asked me. AvA : Are you concerned that religion may provide a net positive for the world? Why or why not? TAM : Tristan, I am concerned about those who base their foundation of reality on re...

Epistemology : [mass noun] (Philosophy) the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. Due to numerous Christians now claiming that neuroscience cannot reveal whether morals exist independently of the brain, and that any subject related to morality must be relegated to the religious domain, I am going to do a series of articles in which I lay out the basics of epistemology and show exactly why Christians who espouse this are not only wrong, but they aren't doing themselves any favors, since ultimately--even if a external or independent form of morality should exist--our understanding of it would still be limited by our finite senses and interpreted subjectively by our brains.  Even so, Christians keep telling me objective morality is primarily an ontological concern, and secondarily an epistemological concern, i.e. what we can know about it. What they are in essence claiming is tha...

Does Naturalistic Atheism Equal Nihilism? Part 2 Two boys named Pete and RePete were sitting in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left? Repeat! Two boys named Pete and RePete were sitting in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left? Repeat! Two boys… ah, okay, I think you get the picture. Previously I debated a Christian apologist on whether or not Naturalistic Atheism equates to nihilism. I proved beyond a reason of a doubt that it did NOT. You can read the original article HERE . Recently the discussion resurrected itself, even as I was hoping that reason had won out, it was evident that our Christian friend was bent on maintaining his position even as I had thoroughly refuted it. However, refusing to let a Christian define atheism, which is sort of weird when you think about it (imagine an atheist trying to define Christianity and explain to Christians what it is they do and don’t believe), I felt obligated to respond, again, to his additional comments. This was his response to me...

"And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (1 Cor. 15:14 KJV) The thing is, until Christ's (much rumored) return Christianity is doomed to be in vain (regardless of whether or not he rose from the dead). And it doesn't look like he's coming back anytime soon. Should Christians give up hope? Well, yeah. They should find something more productive to do then practice a vain religion in the futile hope that Christ *might return *someday down the road at some *unknown point in *time. Or they can hope against hope and add to the vapidness of it all.

Theoretical Bullshit of YouTube tells it like it is as he explains to a Creationist why we Atheists do not take them seriously and why we will not debate with them regarding scientific matters. I agree with every point he makes, and furthermore, I concur when he emphatically states, "Go to a f@#*ing library." Well put.