Advocatus Atheist

Religious beliefs can impact people in different ways. In fact, our beliefs can influence our behavior and thinking to a startling degree. One of the things that helped me leave my religious beliefs behind was that I took a step back and looked at them as an outsider would, as someone who didn’t particularly share the same sets of beliefs as me, and who might even be critical of them. What I learned by doing this was that many of my beliefs defied common sense, others were uncertain, and many others still were just flat out false. This retrospective of looking from the outside in allowed me to see things I haven’t before and eventually it came down to the hard decision to abandon the beliefs that didn’t compute and start from scratch.  I’m very glad I did.  The deconversion process wasn't always easy. Sometimes it was downright painful. But in the process I learned to be more selective, more mindful, of the sorts of beliefs I chose to hold on to.  I ...

After some considerable thought, I have come to the conclusion that questions like "Does God exist?" and "What is God?" are completely meaningless. Having deconverted from Christianity in 2008, I quickly got swept up in what has been, unfortunately, called "The Great Debate." Immediately after my deconversion I entered into my anti-theist phase. As I have come to understand it, leaving an oppressive and controlling ideology often leads to feelings of anger and resentment. Part of the healing process is venting one's frustrations, and sharing the abuse one has endured with others who have experienced the same and who can sympathize. This is one of the reasons I began this blog. Most often, however, such healing can only happen after a painful disillusionment. At the time I deconverted the mislabeled "New Atheism" which is and never has been a new form of atheism but rather a resurgence of secular values, many of them hailing from the ...

It seems that running a blog, which takes time and energy, is rather difficult to do when these isn't anyway to finance the time one spends writing what one likes to write about. This inevitably causes delays in publishing fresh content. My brothers-in-blog Mike D. and Bud Uzoras at the A-Unicornist and Dead-Logic respectively, have taken indefinite hiatuses from their regular blog publishing schedules. I was going to try and buck the trend by sticking around like a sore thumb, but then something strangely peculiar yet wonderfully amazing happened. I got signed to a 12 book deal with Permuted Press and their bran spanking new new imprint Winlock Press. No, no. You read that right. A 12 book deal! I am beside myself, because being picked up by a competitive press with the output and quality, not to mention industry reputation, that Permuted Press has and to be part of a new publishing push to get more Indy authors into the mainstream publishing world just makes me...

8 Questions I'd Ask God: If He Existed 1. What's with man-nipples? Are they for just in case we got captured by Amazonian warrior women and needed to blend in so that we could make our great escape? I bet that's it. Really, there's no other reason for them. 2. What's the deal with Salmon's reproduction? You make them so they have to swim up stream, leap up freakin' waterfalls, only to lay all their eggs and die. Some kind of sick and twisted joke perhaps?  3. What's your obsession with beetles, bugs, parasites, viruses, and bacteria? I mean, sure, they're neat and all, but if it's the human soul you are concerned with, what's this obsession with insects and the like? Just a weird hobby, perhaps? 4. Why did it take six to seven days to create the world? If you're all powerful it should have been a cinch, right? Didn't get it right the first time maybe? Had to make a few corrections perhaps? 5. What's w...

I hunted down a longer clip of the heated debate that occurred on the Bill Maher show between Ben Affleck, Sam Harris, and Maher. If you haven't seen it, watch the longer version here before reading my own thoughts. After giving it some thought, I think it was a big example of miscommunication on top of talking past one another. Affleck wasn't wrong about Maher and Harris painting all of Islam with broad strokes. They are guilty of this virtually every time they open their mouths. But in this case I think Sam Harris made a more than valid point that just went over Ben's head. Harris' point about the number of Muslim practitioners estimated at around 1.6 billion adherents and the fact that 20% of Islam is practiced by legalistic, fundamentalist Muslims, and a fraction of that percentage being a radical element, means that there are over 200 million Muslims who believe in the literal interpretation of the Koran and Islam's core tenets, which include c...

Channel 6 WJAC news in Pennsylvania has reported the follow up to the Pennsylvania teen who was earlier charged with criminal misconduct based on an obscure PA law and threatened with up to 2 years in prison for doing nothing more criminal than posing in front of a Jesus statue. The poses were sexual in nature, sure, but this lewd act done in jest was quicly forgiven by the party offended. It was only the radical religionist district attorney Bill Higgins that decided to mount a holy crusade against what he perceives as a ideological war of 'us vs. them' and theist vs. atheist. I have talked to Mr. Higgins personally and I have come to the rational minded conclusion that Mr. Higgins isn't, in fact, in his rational mind. He is quite delusional.  I am going to analyse the comments he made as reported by WJAC Channel 6 news on the court ruling along with my own personal commentary. First off, Higgins is not wrong, there is an ideological war being wage...

It's crunch time as I near the end of my second wave of editing before the book goes out for eyes to see, then more editing. After ten months of research, I feel it has progressed quite well, and so I share with you and updated bibliography to the book. Since I have six more chapters to edit, the bibliography may expand a little more depending on whether or not I need to cite any more sources, but this is a good look at what the final Bibliography will look like.  You may also notice that I don't cite any websites (unless they are an online journal). I chose to keep all my online references contained to in-text bibliographical material, so the links are contained in the footnotes rather than collected at the end.  I know many books these days tend to have a special bibliographies dedicate to just the web-sources, but seeing as that is about half my citations it would run at least as long as the full bibliography, which would be too long, so I've opted to...