Advocatus Atheist

Intro: Pastor Graham Barlin sent me his seven page précis of what he believes atheism to be, called “Atheism Lost.” It seems to be from a sermon, or perhaps, intended pastoral he wrote. I intend to do a thorough review of his seven page explication, but first I should admit that I don’t know much about Mr. Graham Barlin except that he emailed me out of the blue and started quoting scripture to me—which without any context seemed rather meaningless. Random quotes are fine, don’t get me wrong, I like a good quote sharing like the rest, but it seemed rather arbitrary. After a few exchanges the topic of atheism came up. Now if you’re a regular reader of this blog you will know that I was a Born again Born again, baptized twice, in the Assemblies of God Church, a strand of Protestant Evangelical Christianity, which I actively, and piously, adhered to for nearly three decades. Until recently, I was an ardent acolyte of Christian faith—and a passion for my beliefs raged within me as strong a...

This is the most thorough, well researched, video critique of the Kalam cosmological argument I've ever seen. 

The Age of Shallow Conviction and Strong Pretense Every now and again a random Christian sends me Bible verses, thinking, heck, this atheist doesn’t know anything about the Bible. Some just rattle off unrelated quotes, thinking that just by sharing with you this incomprehensible jumble of texts, it will somehow fill you with awe and make you a believer. Usually this tactic backfires because the Bible verses are so incomprehensible that you have no idea what they are trying to say. Other times, the faithful will try to organize quotes, in some kind of rhetorical form, designed to get you to argue or defend your position, but once you do, they will supply other verses which negate your opinion, such as pulling the old ace out of the sleeve, and state the Bible, i.e. God’s Word, is the final authority on everything and so nothing you say could ever be used against their position.  At once, they have made your position irrelevant because the have discounted your opinion, mainly ...

The Genetic Fallacy Isn't a Fallacy If It's True Consider, a little Hindu boy raised in the slums of India who believes in reincarnation, because his Hindu practicing parents raised him to believe in reincarnation, and partly for the accident of his geography. This is proved by the fact that a Christian girl born and raised in the U.S., will nearly always adopt the beliefs of her parents. Predictably, the little Christian girl will grow up not believing in reincarnation whereas the Hindu boy will. But these beliefs, and all the religious beliefs they acquire, do not originate from some underlying truth to the universe, they merely come from the parents. We are, after all, the products of our cultures and environments.

Why Intelligent Design is Not Intelligent [N]othing we currently know from our best sources of knowledge requires anyone to buy into one or more of the many extravagant claims that are made by those who would try to use science to promote their own particular mystical or supernatural worldview. Since these promoters introduce extraneous elements of reality not required by the data, their proposals fail the test of parsimony. It then follows that they have the burden of proving their schemes, not I the burden of disproving them. --Victor J. Stenger ( Timeless Reality )                Mike D. over at The A-Unicornist wrote a good article questioning what it is we mean by design when we talk about something being designed and goes on to criticize, rightly so, those who misuse the term “design” when they talk about “intelligent design.” Feeling inspired by his post, I thought I would add a few of my own thoughts to th...